Intermittent fasting is a “tactic that almost always works when everything else has failed,” says the so board-certified internist Vincent M. Pedre, M.D. And researches endorse the statement. People can lose 0.8 to 13 percent of their body weight with this weight loss method. And the most appealing part is that one can do so without eating less.
Fasting regulates the hormonal balance responsible for hunger and metabolism. By balancing the insulin, ghrelin, and leptin, fasting makes so that up to 79 percent of the weigh you lose is fat. Not to mention the loss of puffiness, due to the influence insulin has on inflammations.
Another good outcome of fasting and its influence on hormones is that your internal clock gets restored, thus sleeping. And when sleeping is in good shape, the entire organism improves. The gut and microbiome health also benefit from this diet, which isn’t even a diet. It is more of an eating plan.
Intermittent fasting strategies to boost weight loss
- Time-restricted fasting (16/8 method) – This represents the continuous daily fasting for 14 to 16 hours. You eat during the time remaining window.
- Periodic fasting (5:2 Diet) – It means that you eat as usual for five days a week, and then you consume only 500 calories, on the other two days that shouldn’t be consecutive.
- Alternate-day fasting – This one is just like periodic fasting, only you choose your own scheme. Two days you fast, two days you eat normally. Or three days you fast, and one day you eat normally. Fasting means you eat 500 to 600 calories.
- OMAD (one meal a day) is just what it says: only one meal each day. You fast for 23 hours each day.
The most effective intermittent fasting strategy for weight loss seems to be Periodic fasting (5:2 Diet), although all of them proved to work. The only thing that you can intervene and make you fail is if you don’t get your stress levels and hormonal problems under control, and start cheating.
