Why intermittent fasting is the only smart "diet" you can try today.
Maybe you have heard of paleo. Or keto. Or Atkins. Now do not get us wrong, they all work, done correctly. Each and one of us tried them and they are effective.
But are they something for our day and age? And lifestyle?
Most of us lead very busy life. We cannot all buy organic. Most of us barely have enough time in the day for a quick shower and some sleep!... We lead such a strained existence that eating healthy or just merely eating is often an afterthought. We grab something and gulp it down on the way to our next chore.
An interesting question: a couple of hundreds years ago was there a keto diet?... paleo diet?... Of course not. Yet obesity was only a problem for the rich. Some of them. What there was plenty of though was a calories scarcity. Most of the people were poor by todays standards. Food was a pretty expensive commodity. People were not fussy and would eat any foodstuff they would have available at hand.
They would also do fasts. Religious fasting was extremely common throughout medieval cultures. We are talking about 12-24 hours of no calories being taken in.
And here is our take.
The only way to make sure we are not going over our daily caloric intake is to postpone taking in calories as much as possible. This is easy, much easier than watching what you eat, how much you eat, weighing food and other time consuming activities.
Why and how fasting works?
Throughout history food was scarce. Whats more, people had to actively EXPEND calories in order to gather fruit, berries or to hunt. Even after a successful hunt the caloric intakes were barely adequate and our earliest ancestors existed in a constant cycle of eating and fasting (coupled with high energy costs while trying to actually acquire food). This explains why fasting is beneficial even in this day and age. We have not evolved that fast!
What happens during fasting?
With nothing in the stomach the insulin levels go down, which unlocks the processes that start burning stored fat for energy. Your liver and muscles also store energy as glycogen and that is being used mainly by the brain (that needs a whopping 25% of your daily energy requirements). If you go without food too much, your body thinks its starving and slows down, start eating muscle and so on. But that happens after 24 hours of fasting. That is why intermittent fasting is the way to go. By having an eating window (for example, from 15.00 to 21.00) you let your body use its fat deposits for food and deplete the glycogen. Then you eat and after a couple of hours from last meal the process restarts itself during the fasting window.
Simple, ancient, effective and FREE.
