Intermittent Fasting Benefits: Healthy, Easy and Effective

There are many intermittent fasting benefits ranging from what happens in your body to how easy the diet is to live with, here’s a summary:

Lower bodyfat

Intermittent fasting has been proven to be a great way to lower bodyfat levels whilst retaining lean mass.

As you’re fasting for 16 hours you’ll naturally be eating less calories than you would if you ate all day. This is one of the reasons people can get away without counting calories, however, I always recommend nutrient tracking to ensure you’re eating enough (and not too much!) protein, carbs and fat.

The manageable nature of the diet means people can stick to it longer term and the increased adherence is a likely reason people are able to get lean using this method.

As you can see from the pic on the right, I got lean and it was really easy!

Easy To Lose Stubborn Bodyfat

Stubborn bodyfat is the last to go when dieting to low bodyfat levels, many people have devised supplementation and exercise regimens to deal with this with varying levels of success.

When you eat your body digests the food to make it available to meet any energy demands. From the moment you eat through till it’s fully digested you are not burning fat.

After digestion your body starts to use the stored energy to meet the energy demands, this can be glycogen (stored carbs), fat or a combination of both.

As fasting sees you going a number of hours without eating your body will be in a fat burning state for much of this period.

The reason stubborn bodyfat can be lost by fasting is because fasting increases catecholamines (ca-tec-ho-la-mines), these guys are responsible for releasing stored fat for fuel utilisation.

The body holds fat in fat cells and catecholamines help to get the fat out of the cells and into the blood stream where they can be burned. Basically they break your fat cells out of jail and help them escape!

Stubborn bodyfat is the last to be released but catecholamines are effective at removing the block on stubborn bodyfat so you can lose that last bit of fat from your abs (guys) or lower body (bottom, legs – ladies).

Calories/Carbs Used For Energy Not Stored As Fat

The food you eat is stored in energy “depots” so your body can call upon them to meet energy needs in the future. The depots are in your liver (small capacity), your muscles (moderate capacity) and as bodyfat (unlimited capacity).

Insulin is the hormone that gets the calories into these depots; it’s the key that opens the door.

Your liver, muscles and fat cells all have a different ability to store the calories; this is known as insulin sensitivity.

Ideally you’d want fat cells to have low insulin sensitivity and your liver and muscle glycogen stores to have high insulin sensitivity.

Well another of the highly desirable intermittent fasting benefits is that it improves insulin sensitivity which means more of the calories you eat will end up where you want them…in your muscles!

Fasting Maintains Muscle Mass

When fasting was first suggested as a way to naturally lose fat and build/maintain muscle the bodybuilding community baulked at the suggestion.

“You’ll go catabolic and enter starvation mode where you lose all your muscle!” and other nonsensical comments were made by people who’ve always been told they need to eat every 3 hours.

Look to science for the answer and it becomes clear, there are 3 main reasons why muscle loss is not a concern:

1. Fasting increases growth hormone which preserves lean mass
2. Protein meals takes 7-10 hours to digest, as you fast for 16 hours, this is likely to only be 6-9 hours where your body is totally fasted
3. Studies show that muscle loss while fasting is not a concern for at least 40 hours

Increased Focus, Energy and Productivity

Anecdotal feedback from dieters is that they feel energised and more focussed once they start eating this way. It’s worth mentioning that this will only occur once you get past the first 2-3 days of “brain fog” which some people go through.

Once your body becomes used to burning fat for fuel you won’t need to go through brain fog again, it’s just a side effect of the metabolic shift (where you usually burn carbs for fuel).

The increased focus and alertness can be attributed to increased norepinephrine & epinephrine levels.

Big Meals Which Satisfy Your Appetite

As an Aries everything I do is governed by an all-or-nothing approach with no half measures.

I prefer to eat this way to and I either want a big meal or no meal at all.

Eating small and often just makes me hungry so I prefer not to eat at all as this regulates my hunger. When it’s time to chow down though, I want to eat big and feel full and satisfied afterwards.

This is the biggest of all intermittent fasting benefits for me and you really don’t feel like you’re on a diet at all which makes this a viable lifestyle choice rather than a short term “diet”.

Reasonable Freedom To Eat Treats

The post workout period is the most forgiving time to eat a little of the bad stuff you’ve been craving.

IF allows the dieter to indulge their cravings during this period which makes the diet easier to live with. This ability to generate long term adherence is one of the most important intermittent fasting benefits.

You only have to go 1-2 days eating “clean foods” before you can satisfy those cravings which makes it easier to “be good” when you need to be.

Only 1-2 Days of Low Carb Dieting

As mentioned above, people who struggle with lower carb dieting will only have to endure 1-2 days max due to the calorie/nutrient cycling style of IF.

Most people can just suck it up and get it done on lower carb days knowing they have a higher carb day within sight. The cycling system also helps to minimize any side effects associated with low carb dieting as you’ll never truly be carb restricted as you’ll have loaded up the day before.

Freedom of Not Worrying About Eating Every 2-3 Hours

Arguably this is one of the biggest intermittent fasting benefits as the liberation of not always worrying about your next meal is awesome.

No more early mornings and late nights filling Tupperware’s to take with you to work.

Summary

As you can see there are such a wide range of intermittent fasting benefits and I truly believe this system is one of the most effective for natural trainees.

Simply put, getting to low levels of bodyfat using more traditional methods is tough and IF makes it child’s play provided you don’t abuse the system and just eat junk.

You really can reap the rewards and get all the intermittent fasting benefits in this article without any great difficulty!

It’s not magic, calorie intake matters but follow the intermittent fasting diet plan properly and the majority of people will see better results than they’ve ever had before!