Intermittent Fasting For Beginners: Hours, Benefits And What To Eat And Drink

Fasting on Yom Kippur — Celebrating Yom Kippur? Don't worry, we've got some easy ways to make your fasting better! Read them here. Shutterstock/ Andrey_Kuzmin

On your path to realize your long-pending weight loss goals, you will often come across two things that you detest from the depths of your heart- fasting and a planned diet. But this daunting task can become a lot easier if you were to opt for intermittent fasting, a way of eating where no one tells or regulates what you eat as all that matters is when to eat.

The benefits of intermittent fasting

- Intermittent can aid in losing weight and belly fat as it lowers insulin levels, heightens growth hormone levels, and increases amounts of norepinephrine (noradrenaline). These, in turn, increase the breakdown of body fat as your metabolic rate increases by 3.6-14%, thus allowing you to burn even more calories.

- It also lowers the risk of Type-2 diabetes as blood sugar levels will be reduced by 3-6% while insulin will be reduced by 20-31%.

- It also keeps your heart healthy by improving factors like blood pressure, blood sugar levels, total and LDL cholesterol, blood triglycerides, and inflammatory markers.

Intermittent fasting is not focused on limiting your calories. It instead narrows down the number of times you can eat. Of the various methods of intermittent fasting, the most common method is called the 16 to 8 split, wherein one fasts for 16 hours and eats for eight hours.

While it sounds and will feel daunting at first, your body will gradually adjust to this new eating schedule. But look at it this way- of the 16 hours you will fasting every day, 8 or more will be spent sleeping. Thus it is just 8 hours of your day when you have to exercise self-control.

And to get there, let’s map out your eating system for the first week of your new eating regime:

Monday

Meal #1: Chia pudding

Snack: Fruit of choice

Meal #2: Chinese chicken salad

Snack: Protein bar

Meal #3: Spicy chicken chilli

Tuesday

Meal #1: Mint chip protein shake

Snack: Nuts

Meal #2: Vegan chickpea salad

Snack: Fruit of choice