What is intermittent fasting and how it can help your body

Over the past decade, intermittent fasting has been a trend. It involves eating in a particular period of time and fasting for the rest of the hours. Unlike the traditional diet, this doesn't restrict the amount and type of food you consume it rather says to eat whatever you want but in a particular time period and fast in the other.

So basically intermittent fasting is not about starvation but about cutting your way back to calories for a short period of time.

Types of intermittent fasting:

1. Time-restricted eating: In this, you set a fasting and eating window.

• The 16/8 method: For example, if you fast for 16 hours of the day then you can eat only during the 8 hours left. Since most people are fasting while sleeping they find this method convenient.
• The 14/10 method: Only eating between 9 am and 7 pm.

2. The 5:2 diet: In this, you maintain a normal healthy diet for 5 days and restrict your calorie intake to 200-500 calories/day for the rest two days of the week.

3. Alternate day fasting: In this, we have to limit our calorie intake to 500 on fasting days and a normal healthy diet on non-fasting days.

4. The warrior diet: It involves eating raw fruits and vegetables during the day and one large meal at night.

Pros of intermittent fasting:

1. Changes the function of hormones, cells, and genes: when sugars are not available for a long time in our body, our body utilizes the stored fat and helps in the breakdown of stored fat. For sugar utilisation insulin is required, since there are no sugars during the fasting period, insulin level drops and helps in burning fat.

2. Can reduce insulin resistance: Hence lowering our risk to type 2 diabetes.

3. Weight loss: This method is soo much in trend because it’s easier to follow, doesn’t require a strict diet plan, no starvation, and also less need to cook meals so an easy lifestyle is possible. It helps to burn visceral fat and improves weight loss.

4. Can reduce oxidative stress and inflammation of our body: Oxidative stress is one of the reasons for aging and chronic diseases. So what happens in oxidative stress is there are reactive Molecules in our body which react with important proteins like DNA and damage them. Therefore intermittent fasting can help reduce it and decrease the signs of early aging.

Cons of intermittent fasting:

1. Hunger and cravings: Studies show that when we go long hours without eating it might increase our hunger and cravings and we may increase our calorie intake. In 2022 a study was done taking into consideration 1422 participants Who were in a fasting regimen for around 4 to 21 days and they tend to experience hunger only during the first few days of the fasting regiment so this shows that our body will get adapted to fasting and hunger might not be an issue later on but initially it might be a trouble.

2. Headaches: Headache is a common side effect in intermittent fasting most of people experience this in the initial few days of the fasting. Studies show that this headache may be due to low sugar intake and caffeine withdrawal which is seen in most of people.

3. Irritability and other mood changes: most people experienced irritability because of low sugar intake although women experienced more irritability but at the end of the fasting period they had a higher sense of pride and achievement for completing it.

4. Other side effects are : Fatigue, Digestive issues, Bad breath, Sleep disturbances