10 Intermittent Fasting Facts Everyone Should Know

Fasting mainly focuses on the timing of when you eat. The current trend in fasting is what is known as intermittent fasting (IF).

Intermittent fasting achieves the goal of taking in less food energy each day than your body burns for normal activity by severely limiting calories during certain days of the week or during specified hours during the day. The theory is that intermittent fasting will help decrease appetite by slowing the body's metabolism.

With intermittent fasting programs, you interrupt your normal eating patterns. This is one way to achieve lasting weight loss.

Eating for 12 hours and then fasting for 12 hours is likely safe for most people,Dr. Valter Longo, University of Southern California longevity researcher explains. “That pattern of eating is very common among people who have record lifespans,” he says. “It seems to match both science and tradition.”

By the way, you can eat whatever you like….anything

What you eat it truly up to you. You might find that even if you enjoy less than healthy foods regularly, you can still lose weight with this plan. But just remember that your best weight loss and the most healthy benefits always come from eating healthy foods….not highly processed foods.

1. Time-restricted eating or IF can but does not necessarily confer weight loss or cardio-metabolic benefits which is the goal of very many people who decide to fast. This is a factor of the way you intermittently fast. See footnote (1) below.

One of the signs of aging is a bulging waistline and for post-menopausal women, it’s about more than just the waistline as the fat accumulation often extends all the way up the abdomen to just below the breasts. It’s called “hormone belly” these days.

The fat accumulation of hormone belly is very stubborn to lose and doesn’t always “dissolve” with mere dieting or exercise. IF is reported to often help women with hormone belly reduce that fat accumulation.

Hormone belly is an indication of diminished sex hormone production. Frequent IF can help revitalize the endocrine and sex glands, normalize hormone production and mitigate signs of aging.

2. The principal benefit of fasting is to give the digestive system a rest. Doing so brings vitality and a greater sense of overall well-being to the body.

“Temporary unemployment of your mouth is actually a very good thing… The energies of the body are at all times divided between assimilation and elimination. The processes of expelling waste and toxins from the body never stop for a moment, but they do slow down when food is consumed.

Much blood is summoned to the digestive organs making digestion the most energy-draining function. When digestion is shut down, the body will mobilize all the available resources for rejuvenation. Not only the digestive organs but also the circulatory, respiratory, glandular and nervous systems are able to rest as well. During fasting, the body will devote every ounce of energy to healing.” —Tonya Zavasta in Your Right to Be Beautiful: How to Halt the Train of Aging and Meet the Most Beautiful You

3. IF is an excellent cleansing method for the brain and circulatory system. Toxic metals we tend to regularly consume whether we know it or not such as fluoride, mercury and other heavy metals cling to the pituitary and pineal glands. This is called calcification.

Fasting helps decalcify these glands making way for clearer meditation and intuitive abilities. (Fasting has its roots in religion and spirituality.)

“If you ever find yourself in a situation where food is not available, you are safe for several weeks is you have salvaged some water… You can have one consolation in your misfortune, fasting can become a rejuvenating experience… you will not only feel better but look better as well.”

“That we must eat to keep up our strength is a deep-seated belief in our society… energy saved on digestion can help to pull us through difficult times.”

6. Just like we must do periodic house cleaning, fasting is a necessary part of healthy clean living in your body. IF gives your body frequent opportunities to get rid of waste.

You may notice that as many people get older, their skin takes on a duller and in some cases, darker muddled appearance. As always, the skin is the first to show what’s going on in the body. Muddled murky skin is a sign that much waste material is being harmfully retained in the body. IF works to cleanse the body of waste.

7. The body relies heavily on stored fats and not protein for energy during a sensible intermittent fast (a 10- to 12- hour window for consuming food during the day). Fat reserves and non-functional tissues are called upon to provide nutrients for more vital organs and systems like brain, heart, lungs and nerves.

In fact, fasting optimizes the way your body uses protein. You will notice an increase in lean body mass and a decrease in body fat.

During a fast, required proteins get re-synthesized by decomposed cells.

As cleansing progresses, the body becomes more efficient at burning fuel, less dependent on glucose and utilizes fatty acids more efficiently.

Regular intermittent fasting combined with a weightlifting routine will produce high quality muscle.

8. Frequent IF boosts new cell production. This gives you a clearer more radiant complexion and makes beauty last.

9. Frequent IF boosts the production of growth hormones while making you quite immune to chronology.

In this sense, when fasting, you might experience past illnesses very briefly and in reverse order. These are not side effects of fasting. They are healing symptoms.

“We are trying to halt the train of aging, and fasting is like pulling the emergency stop lever.” —Tonya Zavasta