Intermittent Fasting is a kind of method to lose weight by limiting your daily meal intake. This fasting helps in burning fats from your body and it results in weight loss. When you limit the supply of food, your internal organs rush to find a substitute. Your body feels the need for energy but doesn’t find any nutrition intake, it starts to burn fats to gain the energy.
Since we are going to have a long discussion on how to do Intermittent Fasting for weight loss, we will also talk about who should avoid this, how to keep track of your meal intake and some misconceptions regarding Intermittent Fasting. Read further and gain knowledge about this type of weight loss method.
Table of Contents
How to do Intermittent Fasting for weight loss?
As your body is not habitual to this fasting, always start with a slow pace. Start with scheduling your one day meal and nutrition. Then after a week, go for the second stage by limiting hours of diet. This fasting can vary in time and meal limit as there are many types of Intermittent Fasting, you can choose the method which is best for your body and convenience.
Types of Intermittent Fasting
- 5:2 Fasting in which you fast for Two days of the week and rest five days are your normal meal days. These two days shouldn’t be continuous but alternatives.
- Time limited fasting is restricted to 16 hours meal free day and rest 8 hours for food intake. You can schedule your hours in 1 hour span to two hour span.
- Eat-Stop-Eat is a kind of Intermittent Fasting which happens in a short meal time. You do not eat a whole meal but take small portions from time to time. This way your body doesn’t feel a lack of food and your stomach still gets full throughout the day. This is the best fasting method for beginners.
- Alternate Day meal, 7 days in a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday are best for Fasting and rest of the days will be normal. You can also change the order.
Advantages
- Day became Simple.
- Energetic feel.
- Less health issues.
- Perfect Body Mass Index.
- Intermittent Fasting saves your lot of time from cooking and buying food items for each meal.
- Saves money by avoiding Junk foods.
- More focused mind.
- No unnecessary stress.
Track your Diet Intake
Now that we already know how to do Intermittent Fasting for weight loss, you should schedule and track your Diet plan and meal with help of following things :
- Intermittent Fasting Track apps are available on the internet which are specially designed to plan a chart or your weekly meal.
- Diary writing is best to write everything about your daily diet and then planning for the next day or week.
- Set Alarms for each meal at its specific time. For instance, a 4 am alarm for a light meal and 2 hours later another alarm for the next meal.
- Use Notes app on your phone to make a schedule for your Intermittent Fasting diet and set a reminder on it whether daily, weekly or monthly.
Who should avoid this method?
While discussing how to do Intermittent Fasting for weight loss, we need to be aware of its effect on different types of people. Some people should this method of weight loss such as:
- Children below 18 as their body is still growing, they should avoid going through extreme workout and fasting.
- Old people should not involve in doing any kind of fast as their body is already weak and they are already facing challenges. It’s better for them to avoid it.
- Sick people who are infected with diseases should not go for intermittent fasting. One diet they should focus on should be recommended by their Doctor.
- Patients who recently recovered from any surgery or operation, should focus on their well being. Intermittent Fasting will have bad effects on them.
- We have seen how teenage girls want to achieve the perfect body and try to go through fasting to have desirable results, they should focus on their balanced diet rather than going for intermittent fasting.
Misconception
There are many misconceptions and lies about Intermittent Fasting. One of them is that people think it will help in instant weight loss. No, this is not how it works. Anything which benefits our body takes time. This type of fasting helps in losing excess weight by burning the fat.
People think that Intermittent Fasting is the same as religious fasting where you eat limited food for a limited time. It requires avoidance of both water and food but in the case of Intermittent Fasting, Water is still necessary and can’t be avoided. Some people who start this method of weight loss, do not research or ask anyone but start to eat a type of food and stick with it resulting in sickness, fatigue and nausea. Always start your fasting by consulting with a doctor, nutritionist or pediatrician and researching it.
