What is intermittent fasting?
There several ways to do intermittent fasting, whether it’s the 20-4, 16-8, or fasting for an entire day. Unlike other forms of diets and eating patterns, you don’t restrict yourself to this kind of dietary lifestyle. Most individuals choose the 16-8 as it’s the most basic form of fasting. In the 16-8 fasting, you eat during the 8-hour window and fast for the remaining 16 hours. It’s an effective way of losing weight, especially when a restrictive diet isn’t something you’re comfortable doing. During that fasting window, you can only drink water, or black coffee without cream or sugar. Basically, you can’t eat anything with calories in that fasting timeframe.
Why is intermittent fasting effective?
With intermittent fasting, you either skip breakfast or dinner in the process, which is why it aids in weight loss. Instead of restricting, you’re simply fitting your meals and snacks into a certain number of hours in a day. As a result, intermittent fasting reduces your calorie intake for the day. It’s also known to boost your metabolism to encourage calorie burning throughout your day. With a combination of intermittent fasting and exercise, this eating lifestyle can retain muscle mass better than a calorie deficit diet. Lastly, intermittent fasting reduces bloating in the morning, since your body has burned everything during the fasting window.
Can you combine intermittent fasting with keto?
If intermittent is a fasting lifestyle, keto is a high-fat low-carb diet where you can only consume certain food groups. Your body then goes into a state of ketosis, which encourages your body to burn fat instead of carbs for fuel. When combining intermittent fasting with the keto diet, you can achieve faster results for weight loss. However, combining these two eating patterns may not be for everyone as it can deprive you of carbs, which is known to fuel energy in your body. If you feel weaker when combining the two, it’s best to stick to just one eating pattern.
In conclusion, intermittent fasting does work for weight loss, among other benefits. You’d be surprised that people choose to do intermittent fasting not just to get their desired body weight, but for detox purposes. You generally feel less bloated when doing intermittent fasting for quite some time, with the bonus that it helps define your muscles better. When starting out, the 16-8 intermittent fasting is best as it’s the most basic form of intermittent fasting.