Some do it while seeking spiritual enlightenment or for mental and emotional clarity. Others do it for simpler, more biological benefits such as to help detoxify and reset the body’s natural processes, especially after an overindulgent holiday.
While intermittent fasting itself has its own list of great benefits for our overall health, it gets harder every day and people often find it hard to stick to the schedule resulting in total avoidance of fasting endeavors. They find that it no longer makes sense and get back to their bad old habits.
You don’t have to follow them through and punish yourself with some unhealthy habits as we have the perfect solution for you so you can continue to live a healthy lifestyle.
Thus, before you throw away all the food from your pantry or completely shun away the idea of fasting — stick with us as we are here to help you overcome the challenges.
This digital guide will help you learn what Intermittent Fasting really is and how you can follow proven methods, avoid common mistakes, and emerge on the other side feeling better than ever.
Sounds good? Okay, let’s get started!
What is Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent fasting is not a diet, it is a pattern of eating. It is an eating plan that switches between fasting and eating on a regular schedule. It's a way of scheduling your meals so that you get the most out of them.
The major reason why most people try intermittent fasting is weight management. Research shows that intermittent fasting is a way to manage your weight and prevent — or even reverse — some forms of the disease.
Well, most notably, it’s a great way to get lean without going on a crazy diet or cutting your calories down to nothing. In fact, most of the time you'll try to keep your calories the same when you start intermittent fasting.
There are several different ways to do intermittent fasting, but they are all based on choosing regular time periods to eat and fast. For instance, you might try eating only during an eight-hour period each day and fast for the remainder. Or you might choose to eat only one meal a day two days a week.
After hours without food, the body exhausts its sugar stores and starts burning fat. This is called metabolic switching.
Intermittent fasting works by prolonging the period when your body has burned through the calories consumed during your last meal and begins burning fat.
Top 3 Intermittent Fasting Benefits
Intermittent fasting (IF) is currently one of the world’s most popular health and fitness trends. It is undeniable that intermittent fasting has massive benefits for our overall health. According to research, intermittent fasting affects both our body and brain.
Here are the top 3 benefits of intermittent fasting:
1. Weight loss
As mentioned above, intermittent fasting can help you lose weight and belly fat, without having to consciously restrict calories. By making you eat fewer meals, intermittent fasting can lead to an automatic reduction in calorie intake.
Additionally, intermittent fasting changes hormone levels to facilitate weight loss. In addition to lowering insulin and increasing growth hormone levels, it increases the release of the fat-burning hormone norepinephrine (noradrenaline).
By helping you eat less and burn more calories, intermittent fasting causes weight loss by changing both sides of the calorie equation.
2. Total Health
Studies have shown that intermittent fasting can have powerful benefits not only for weight control but also for the health of your body and brain. It may even help you live longer.
3. Autophagy
Studies show that intermittent fasting extends the health span through circadian autophagy.
Autophagy is the destruction of damaged or redundant cellular components occurring in vacuoles within the cell.
Different Types of Fasting
Many diets focus on what to eat, but intermittent fasting is all about when you eat. With intermittent fasting, you only eat during a specific time.
Fasting for a certain number of hours each day or eating just one meal a couple of days a week can help your body burn fat. And scientific evidence points to some health benefits, as well.
There are several different ways of doing intermittent fasting — all of which involve splitting the day or week into eating and fasting periods. During the fasting periods, you eat either very little or nothing at all.
These are the most popular methods of intermittent fasting:
1. The 16/8 Method
With this method, you fast for 16 hours and then consume your daily calories within a set 8-hour window.
Most people choose simple hours to eat, such as from noon to 8 PM. This way the fasting state is through the night while you sleep and you skip breakfast, which when you think about it, isn’t that hard, especially since breakfast is typically on the go for most people these days.
Other people, who are slightly stricter with their fasting, may choose to eat during a shorter window of time, say 6 or 4 hours.
2. The 5:2 Diet
This way of fasting involves eating as normal for 5 out of 7 days of the week consecutively. On the other two remaining days, you drastically restrict your calories to around 500 a day if you’re a woman and 600 if you’re a man.
3. The 24-Hour Protocol
With the 24-hour protocol, you simply skip two meals in a day and take a break from eating for 24 hours. For example, if you eat on a normal schedule and finish dinner at around 6 PM, you wouldn’t eat again until 6 PM the next day.
So basically, you’d eat your regular three meals a day, and then from time to time choose a day that suits you to skip both breakfast and lunch the following day.
If you can’t do an entire day’s fast, that’s fine; try doing it for 18 hours, and build your way up gradually until you can manage a full 24 hours.
4. Alternate Day Fasting
This fasting method requires you to fast every other day. You can either fast completely on your fast days and only consume water, black tea, and coffee or you can severely restrict your calories to around 500.
If you’re a newbie, I think doing a full fast every other day is quite extreme, so start off by slashing your daily calorie intake and work your way towards a full day fast every other day.
Personally, I don’t think this is a sustainable form of fasting, as it will require you to go to bed hungry a number of times of week; however, it is an excellent way to kick start that fat-burning process again if you hit a weight-loss plateau.
By reducing your calorie intake, all of these methods should cause weight loss as long as you don’t compensate by eating much more during the eating periods.
There’s an easier way!
While there are many ways to complete a fast, there’s one common denominator among all fasters alike, novice or not.
It can spell disaster for the faster, especially if you’re the type of person who is prone to brief bouts of mindless snacking, endless cycles of indulgent eating, or what we like to call “Hangry Decision-Making”.
This can mean that the act of fasting, while beneficial, can often seem like punishment.
Fasting indeed can be mentally and physically very challenging, but we found that the right tea at the right time can overcome the top 3 biggest challenges of intermittent fasting.
1. The hunger pangs
Fasting is hard because you can get so hungry and get hunger pangs. Regardless of mindset, stomach pains are real. Aside from the physical pain, they do not let you forget that you’re suffering through the abstinence of eating food.
2. Mental challenge
Fasting is mentally challenging because you’re often thinking about what you can’t eat, trying to break eating habits, and you’re often replacing something delicious with nothing. It’s mentally challenging and it can really be stressful.
3. Lack of energy
You will definitely become weak if you don’t fuel yourself with food. And this is where our solution comes in!
With a humble cup of perfectly matched, premium, clean tea you can immediately, and positively impact your fast.
How to make it easier?
1. Variety
Variety is the spice of life as they say, and it’s also a big part of the solution for making intermittent fasting easy.
A variety of delicious, fast-friendly beverages keep your mind busy thinking about what you can have and not focusing on empty plates and clock watching.
Mindset plays a very important role in successfully integrating intermittent fasting into your life so that you can fast longer and more often successfully.
2. Leverage nature
Suppress appetite and reduce hunger pangs - there are herbs and spices that can help suppress appetite and reduce hunger pangs.
Boost your energy with the calm energy boost of tea, soothe your energy and anxiety, and relieve the tension with herbal tea.
3. Power up the opportunity
Fasting is hard so make the most of every moment, maximize the opportunity and make it worthwhile!
Intermittent fasting with tea is a power couple that will boost your intermittent fasting results.
Fasting with tea is the perfect opportunity for your body to soak up all the natural botanicals of tea that have a huge array of benefits such as weight loss, gut health, digestive support, and brain function while making the fast physically and mentally easier, and more impactful.
Clean Fasting vs Dirty Fasting
Clean fasting is when you follow an intermittent fasting protocol and ingest only water or non-caloric beverages like tap water, mineral water, sparkling water, black coffee, and black tea.
It’s essential that you stay hydrated during a clean fast. Have lots of water – sparkling, mineral or distilled are all good. However, if you are clean fasting, steer clear of additives like lemon slices, fruits, and herbs. They can add flavor to your water, but they eliminate the purpose of a “clean fast”.
Moderate amounts of black coffee during a clean fast are totally safe, but if you’re concerned about hydration or insulin resistance, it may be a good idea to switch to decaf black coffee or choose herbal teas which are naturally caffeine-free, such as chamomile, or hibiscus. Plain old water can also do the trick!
Dirty fasting is when you eat foods or beverages that are under 50 calories during your fasting window. Your fasting is dirty if you add a bit of creamer to your coffee, or sip on tasty bone broth. Or maybe you add zero-calorie sweeteners in your tea or drink zero-calorie soda.
Here is a list of foods you can consume during a dirty fasting window. If you want to try dirty fasting, add them to beverages for flavor.
- 2 tbsp almond milk (10 calories, 1g carbs)
- 1 tbsp cream (30 calories, 0.5g carbs)
- 1 tbsp 2% cow’s milk (18 calories, 1g of carbs)
- 1 tsp honey (20 calories, 6g carbs)
- 1 tbsp maple syrup (17 calories, 14g carbs)
- Stevia (0 calories, 0g carbs) and Splenda/sucralose (0 calories, 0g carbs)
- 1 tbsp aspartame (35 calories, 7g carbs)
- 1 tsp MCT oil (38 calories, 0g carbs) *100% fat
- 1 cup bone broth (40 calories, 3g carbs)
- Water + juice of 1 lemon (14 calories, 0g carbs)
- Sugar-free chewing gum
So, if you are asking if you can add milk to your tea or almond milk to your coffee, you definitely can with dirty fasting.
Who Can Do Intermittent Fasting?
Some people try intermitting fasting for weight management, and others use the method to address chronic conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, high cholesterol, or arthritis. But intermittent fasting isn’t for everyone.
Some people should steer clear of trying intermittent fasting:
- Children and teens under age 18.
- Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
- People with diabetes or blood sugar problems.
- Those with a history of eating disorders.
Before you try intermittent fasting (or any diet), you should check in with your primary care practitioner first.
But people not in these categories who can do intermittent fasting safely can continue the regimen indefinitely. It can be a lifestyle change and one with benefits.
0 Comments