Intermittent Fasting for Beginners
Intermittent Fasting (IF) is a practice that many Ashtanga yoga practitioners integrate into their regular routines, whether they know it or not. It is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. It isn’t focused on which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them.
As yoga students in Mysore, India, when we are practicing early in the morning around 5am or earlier, we often will have finished our last meal for the day around 4pm or 5pm at the latest. Then we are up early practicing, maybe have a coconut or two, or a chai or coffee, afterwards we go back to our homes, rest, shower, and finally reappear again sometime around 9am or 10am for breakfast.
Common intermittent fasting methods involve a daily 16-hour fast, followed by an 8-hour period of eating, which is basically what most students follow while living and practicing in Mysore.
Another way to follow intermittent fasting is to fast for 24 hours, once or twice per week.
Fasting has been a practice throughout human evolution. Ancient hunter-gatherers didn’t food readily available, and sometimes they couldn’t find anything to eat. As a result, we’ve evolved to be able to function without food for extended periods of time.
In fact, in today’s world, with so much excess… incorporating regular periods of fasting can have some really amazing benefits on your body at a cellular level and also on your metabolism.
When you fast, several things happen in your body on a molecular level. Your body adjusts hormone levels to make stored body fat more accessible to be converted into energy. Your cells also initiate important repair processes and alters the expression of genes.
Here are some changes that occur in your body when you fast:
Human Growth Hormone (HGH) goes up! This will boost muscle growth, increase your strength and exercise performance. It will also help you recover from injury and disease. Optimal HGH levels are especially important for weight loss, injury recovery, and athletic training.
Insulin Sensitivity improves! Your levels of insulin drop dramatically, which helps your body to convert stored fat into energy.
Cellular Repair and Gene Expression are initiated! When fasting, your cells initiate their repair processes, digesting and removing old and dysfunctional proteins that will build up inside. Positive changes occur in our genes related to longevity and protection against diseases.
But let’s be honest… Most people experiment with intermittent fasting because they are interested in losing weight! And it actually works! With fewer meals, there is an automatic reduction in caloric intake. In addition, intermittent fasting alters hormonal levels to help burn fat, by increasing the release of the fat burning hormone norepinephrine (noradrenaline). And because of the hormonal shifts, short-term fasting has actually been shown to help increase metabolic rate, which will increase you energy and make you feel better!
Want to know more…
Enjoy this Wellness Wednesday Video on Intermittent Fasting
Now it’s your turn…
Tell me in the comments below have you ever tried intermittent fasting?
Do you want to give it a go?
What benefits did you receive from it?
What questions do you have about it?
