Intermittent Fasting Schedule and Benefits for Weight Loss

How many hours intermittent fasting for weight loss, a perfect schedule for beginners. “Intermittent fasting for weight loss” is really effective way to reduce your weight very fast. The most common forms are alternate-day fasting diet that is called Intermittent Fasting, where food is cut out or heavily restricted every other day; 5:2 where one 500 to 700 calorie meal is easily eaten on two days per week; and daily-time restricted feeding, where a person will eat during a specific window, for very fast or instance eight hours.

In this article, we will discuss what is exact intermittent fasting hours to get best results, how many hours intermittent fasting, how often intermittent fasting, benefits to intermittent fasting, and of course is intermittent fasting good for women?

Best things to do in intermittent fasting for weight loss, here are some amazing intermittent fasting hours to get best results. Scientists who have reviewed current existing evidence on Intermittent Fasting—where large gaps(large eating period gaps) are left between periods of eating—could have a range of health benefits. How to and what to eat during intermittent fasting for best result?

Intermittent Fasting Hours for Women

Is intermittent fasting good for women? Women over 50 can really face struggles and headaches when trying to lose weight. This can stem from many situations and several things. The main and actual culprit is often a slowed metabolism. The more perfect and lean muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is. But as we get older we lose lean muscle mass easily, and we often become less active and lazy than before. The result? Stubborn body fat that actually just won’t seem to budge. Good hours for intermittent fasting.

• Crescendo Method: Fasting 12–16 hours for two to three days a week to lose weight quickly. Fasting days should be nonconsecutive and properly spaced evenly across the week (for example, Monday, Wednesday and Friday).
• Eat-stop-eat (24-hour protocol): A 24-hour perfect full fast once or twice a week (maximum of two times a week for women). Start with 14–16 hour intermittent fasts and gradually build up.
• The 5:2 Diet (also called “The Fast Diet”): Restrict calories properly to 25% of your usual intake (about 500 calories) for two days a week and eat “normally” the other five days. Allow only one day between fasting days.
• Intermittent or Alternate-Day Fasting: Fasting every other day but regular eating “normally” on non-fasting days. You are perfectly and surely allowed to consume 20–25% of your usual calorie intake (about 500 calories) on a fasting day.
• The 16/8 Method (Leangains method): Fasting for 16 hours a day and properly eating all calories within an eight-hour window. Women are actually advised to start with 14-hour fasts and eventually build up to 16 hours.

Is Really Helpful Intermittent Fasting in Weight Loss?

In this article, you will see the exact and perfect way to lose weight by intermittent fasting. You will take some decisions after reading the whole article with passion because this article included everything about intermittent fasting like, what is intermittent fasting to how to follow it easily what should you eat and drink, how to get the best results? and much more.

How To Get Healthy Fast

If you want to live healthy and longer life then you should follow intermittent fasting because intermittent fasting could perfectly help to live healthily and fit life. That’s exactly according to a review in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In this article, I will show you the exact intermittent fasting diet(intermittent fasting diet plan) that one of my private coaching clients used to lose weight 80 pounds and exactly how to fast. Intermittent fasting is an actual secret code to long life, it will improve mental performance, and (most importantly) rippling six-pack abs. There are many interesting intermittent fasting protocols you can choose from.

Is intermittent fasting works for weight loss?

Will intermittent fasting work?

Many people follow intermittent fasting really for fast weight loss, but a review of past animal and human studies in the New England Journal of Medicine actually indicates it could also help to perfectly reduce blood pressure and improve longevity.

Here, best example of intermittent fasting is Mark Mattson, a Johns Hopkins Medicine neuroscientist who adopted intermittent fasting himself 20 years ago and follow intermittent fasting strictly, and his colleagues looked at studies involving animals and humans.

Mattson’s personal reasons for adopting intermittent fasting began properly and well before he embarked on research into the topic itself.

As I said it actually began about 20 years ago as a method he could use to reduce symptoms related to acid reflux which he found were worse if he ate morning fast or breakfast and then drive or rode his bike to work in the research lab.

What is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting perfectly involves prolonged periods where an individual doesn’t eat.

It’s known as 5:2. Or 16:8. Or eat-stop-eat. There are many variations in that and all are variations of a single diet is intermittent fasting.

The most common forms are alternate-day fasting is Intermittent Fasting plan, where food is actually cut out or heavily restricted every other day(daily-time restricted feeding); 5:2 where one 500 to 700 calorie meal is eaten on two days per week(not daily); and daily-time perfectly restricted feeding, where a person will eat during a specific window, for very fast or instance eight hours.

Also Read – Today’s Trends, Intermittent Fasting Plan

New Intermittent Fasting Diet Plan

The 5:2 diet asks adherents to eat a small amount of food on two days of the week while eating normally on the other five. The 16:8 plan restricts eating to just eight hours of a single day – between 11 am and 7 pm.

Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Here, while certain subgroups of patients who adopt intermittent fasting, including those with diabetes and pre-diabetes may very benefit from adopting this(Intermittent fasting) approach to eating (by lowering HB A1C levels), it’s necessary or its value and principles certainly extend to other subgroups including those with neurologic ailments (multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease), cardiovascular disease, and patients with cancer.

While If may facilitate weight loss by reducing our body caloric intake, its more and very important benefits include improved glucose regulation via lower insulin levels of our body, reduced blood pressure properly, and lower resting heart rate, all indicators of improved health.

There may also be overcome or a reduction in weight-related medical conditions such as elevated cholesterol, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), offered Dr. Minisha Sood from new york, an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York City.

In addition, it’s Very important, intermittent fasting or alignment of eating with our natural circadian rhythms(regularities) may big and positively impact the gut microbiome of our body which could giant improve overall metabolism and our health,” she explained perfectly.

When you eat slowly, your liver turns the food into glucose, which your body burns for energy. Any excess energy in our body is stored as fat in our body and while energy is needed in the future that fat will burn instead of energy.

How Does Intermittent Fasting Work

Metabolic Switching – Intermittent Fasting Keto

Intermittent fasting and keto: When you are fasting, your fat is broken back down into energy and you will get more energy for fat. But it is a different type of energy molecule called a ketone(sometimes called keto diet).

Unlike glucose, ketones are both full of energy molecules and signaling flags and they tell your body it is under stress(not on tension mode). In animals, these signs or signals trigger a variety of responses like increased DNA repair, increased antioxidant defense, reduced inflammation. “Repeated exposure properly to fasting periods results in lasting adaptive responses that actually confer resistance to subsequent challenges,” writes Mark Mattson in the Journal.

Best Steps To Improve Health

Animals in many or various intermittent fasting studies saw improvements in different types of memory or different types of brain skill, they said, and alternate-day fasting and calorie restriction reversed the adverse effects of diabetes or type-2-diabetes, neuroinflammation, and also helped with spatial learning and memory. Intermittent fasting study has also been shown to improve running endurance in mice.

Here, one study on rats – involving rats saw their average life span increase by 80 percent when they were fed alternate days(not every day) from young adulthood. And showing or a review of data from 1934 to 2012 showed cutting calories boosted the longevity of rats by 14 to 45 percent, but 4 to 27 percent in mice.

In the human body, the regimes are connected or associated with improvements in obesity(fat body), insulin resistance, and high blood pressure. And these big effects were beyond what could be divided or attributed to cutting calories alone.

Verbal Memory Test

One more study in older adults found positive effects or improvements in verbal memory. Another led to improvements in thinking skills or thought processes in overweight adults with mild cognitive impairment.

In addition, research on people who live on the Japanese island of Okinawa who practices fasting reflects their low rates of obesity, diabetes, and longer lives there. There are indications or signs it could help with our heart disease, the outcomes of certain types of cancer, may prevent or Alzheimer’s, and ease the symptoms of asthma.

However, most people don’t reap the apparent advantage or benefits of fasting as they eat three meals a day plus snacks and other foods.

In contrast, our ancestors had more irregular eating patterns or a variety of eating variations and weren’t sedentary. Such habits are ingrained in culture or lifestyle and therefore “very rarely be contemplated by patients or doctors. The abundance of food and extensive marketing in developed nations are actually also major hurdles to be overcome.

Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss Schedule

Intermittent Fasting Schedule: All over the world people may also struggle with hunger and irritability and their problems concentration when food is restricting or not to eat—but these side effects pass after one month.

Doctors can advise patients to reduce or overcome their intake gradually to a fasting window of 18 hours a day, including sleep time or on the bed, or transitioning to a 5:2 diet over a period of four months in a year. “Although we actually don’t understand the exact mechanisms, the beneficial effects of intermittent fasting involve strong metabolic switching(Cell Clustering perfectly Promotes a Metabolic Switch that actually Supports Metastatic Colonization) and cellular stress resistance,” they concluded.

Interesting Intermittent Fasting for Overweight

Is intermittent fasting safe?

In addition, more research needs to be done to see if fasting is safe nor harmful and beneficial in populations or our society that have not yet been studied, as most focus on overweight younger who have obesity and middle-aged adults. “We can not generalize to other age groups except younger age group, benefits, and perfect safety of intermittent fasting that have been simply just observed in these accurate studies,” they wrote.

Intermittent fasting may not be suitable for all people with certain long-term health conditions or health-related problems or who have a history of eating disorders should not adopt this Intermittent fasting. Health experts recommend people ask their doctor before trying the regime.

How to Do Intermittent Fasting?

How many hours of Intermittent fasting?

How to start intermittent fasting? The very easiest way or method for most people is limiting daily food intake to a 6 to 8-hour time window (6-hour eating window), which amounts to fasting for 16 to 18 hours each day, Mattson said. Asked for effective tips on how to adopt the lifestyle or healthy life, he said: “try starting intermittent fasting properly as possible as fast with a spouse, partner or friends at work. Just as with starting an exercise regimen it is very easier to do with someone else than alone.”

What to Eat During Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss

Can you drink water during intermittent fasting? Drinking plenty of water, as well as eating healthy and energetic foods such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, whole grains, fish and lean meat, and yogurt, and yes make sure that you have to avoid sugar, salt and fried foods are also advisable.

Breakfast As the Least Likely Meal

Mattson sums his thoughts about IF up by perfectly stating that “from an evolutionary perspective, breakfast is the least likely meal”, a reflection of his thoughts that very embrace cellular adaptations and metabolic switching as products of evolution or new effective research of human physiology.

Mattson perfectly explains that we never awoke to a “ready-made” breakfast or fast food or any cooked food over ten thousand years ago, prior to the giant agricultural revolution.

Instead, humans had to forage or search or find food, or make a “kill”. It involved work and time with the purely natural process of fasting already part of our existence before we could ever eat.

He also envisions how this approach(intermittent fasting approach) could one day be adopted as part of an approach or treatment for obesity(overweight problem), to help jumpstart the process with an inpatient stay, ideally reimbursed by insurance companies or other third-party payers or agencies.

Since we already treat alcohol use disorder and opiate abuse in this manner then why not obesity? The amazing concept is compelling, to say the least.

Is intermittent fasting good for weight loss?

Neither Professor Collins nor Dr. Nick Fuller, who leads an obesity-research one of the best labs at the University of Sydney, recommended intermittent fasting for weight loss.

Dramatically cutting how much you eat will inevitably lead to a drop in weight or weight loss. But your body, thinking it is starving fast, will soon start fighting against you. Your metabolism will very very slow. Your appetite hormones will ramp up.

“You are going to get effective short-term benefits from this,” says Dr. Fuller. “But you have got to exactly realize there are actually strong biological factors that are always going to see you going back to the start – or in a really worse position. This is another big fad, and it’s not the answer to the obesity epidemic.”

In my opinion, intermittent fasting is the most effective, powerful and sustainable way when it comes to weight loss because it’s not really a diet, right? It’s more of an eating pattern. It’s a lifestyle.

Intermittent fasting effectively makes it possible to lose weight by perfectly improving your insulin sensitivity. It really boosts your brain perfectly and improves your health quickly. It actually increases your metabolism, it perfectly increases your energy. It builds your immune system stronger. It increases growth hormones and properly builds lean muscle.

Best Weight Loss Fasting – Intermittent Fasting

How to do exactly intermittent fast? It’s literally a no brainer to do if you have been thinking about whether you should do it or not. Like, if you want to lose weight, just don’t eat. I don’t think it gets any simpler than that thing.

I actually prefer to call it simply taking a small break from eating.

Do you know what I mean? And just ask yourself this simple question. What do you think will happen if you don’t eat what you think will happen if you took a break from eating?

You’re probably most likely going to lose weight. A lot of weight. I always say that what you eat and when you eat are equally as important when it comes to weight loss.

Intermittent fasting really takes care of the when you eat part of the equation and there are many intermittent fasting protocols you can choose from for best result.

How many hours intermittent fasting for weight loss

Intermittent fasting 20 hours: You can do it daily, 16 hours fast. You can do a 20 hour fast. So more of a warrior diet style of eating where you have actually four-hour eating window. You can do a 24 hour fast or more commonly referred to as, OMAD Diet, you can do a 5:2 fast.

Alternate Day Fasting

You can do alternate day fasting and then you can get into more advanced protocols where you do a dry fast or an extended fast where you’re doing like a 3 day intermittent fasting, 7 days fast or God knows how long you want to fast.

But I always say that there are some effective levels to this especially if you’re somebody who’s never fasted before.

Listen…
Weight loss is not a sprint.
OK?
It’s a marathon.
Whoever wins is whoever can stick to it(intermittent fasting) long term.

Let’s say you’re used to eating six meals a day and then all of a sudden you just properly start eating one meal a day. I guarantee you, one hundred percent, you’re really going to have a miserable time doing it.

Again, there are levels, and I always say that your baseline should be honest to just start with a 12 hour fast.

You eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you have a twelve-hour eating window and a twelve-hour fasting window. And this was the norm back in the 50s and 60s and we really didn’t have an obesity epidemic back then. Like, ask your grandma if snacking was a thing back in the 50s and 60s and she’ll most likely say no.

She will say that it will actually ruin your appetite.
That’s probably what she still tells you up to this day.
Right?

And that’s the biggest problem when it comes to snacking in between meals is that we don’t really snack on, you know, salmon or hard-boiled eggs.

I mean, we don’t really bring those for a snack.
Right.
What we bring are really, you know, packaged and convenient things.
And they’re usually processed.
Right.
Like granola bars, protein bars, pop tarts.

That’s the issue with those foods, is that they’re usually highly processed and they’re usually full of sugar. Remember, the poison lies actually in the processing.

16/8 Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss

16/8 fasting diet: Now, once you’ve established the twelve-hour fast as your baseline, then you can get into what I like to call the minimum effective dose of intermittent fasting, which is the 16 hours fast.

How many hours of intermittent fasting for weight loss?

So you should fast for 16 hours and then you have an 8-hour eating window and that is enough. And the easiest way to do this, honestly, is by simply skipping breakfast. Or if you’re somebody who likes to eat breakfast, then you can eat breakfast, lunch and then skip dinner.

Just pick an 8-hour eating window that fits with your intermittent fasting schedule if you follow this intermittent fasting protocol. And if you properly follow the list of foods I’m about to give you, I promise, you’re really going to lose weight very fast and you’re going to see results because it’s definitely not a free for all when it comes to the best and healthy food you eat during your eating window.

How many calories break intermittent fasting

Well you really don’t have to dump your lovely morning routine if you want to give fasting a try. The general and proper rule of thumb is that if you perfectly stay under 50 calories, then you’ll remain in the fasted state of weight loss and being fit.

So, as long as you stay under 50 calories, you’ll remain in the fasted state. I’m not damn sure where this number actually came from, but I’ve seen it dished around by enough reputable people that I’m going to go with it for now. Following the opinion of the majority is typically a lazy move, but here in the weight loss especially in this case I think you’ll be alright if you want to have a cup of coffee in the morning.

Now you clear about calories that actually break your intermittent fasting.

I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend that you track your macros and you track your calories at the beginning just so you have an idea of how much foods you should be eating.

And I will definitely write a new post for the intermittent fasting diet foods list if you ask in the comment section.

If you’ve never done it before, the app gives you an idea of how much you should be eating every day, how many calories you should be eating every day. But I don’t want you to be obsessed with this number.

At the end of the day, you want to be listening to your body and follow the general rule of fat loss.

Eat when you’re hungry.
Don’t eat if you’re not hungry.

Now, once you’ve calculated your macros and you’ve picked your desired intermittent fasting protocol, then it’s time to focus on what you eat part of the equation.

Again, it’s equally as important, right?
What you eat, when you eat.
And there are many different diets that you can choose from.

You can go to Paleo, you can go, Keto, you can carnivore, you can go vegetarian, you can even go vegan.

They all work with intermittent fasting.
And that’s the beauty of it.

And I personally prefer high fat, low carb, moderate protein diet, especially when it comes to fat loss. But there is no matter which type of diet you follow.

Intermittent fasting guidelines

There are certain rules and some strict guidelines that you need to follow perfectly.

Now, if you actually don’t get any further than this one rule that I’m about to give you, I guarantee you you’re still going to get perfect results.

Here it is.

What do you stop eating has far more impact on your health than what you start eating.

What I exactly mean by that is if you really stop drinking soda, if you stop eating fast food, if you really stop eating processed carbs like chips, cookies, bread, pasta, cereal, pizza and so on.

A Proper Intermittent Fasting For Weight Loss Quickly

If you stop eating sugar like candy, chocolate, Granola bars, and most fruit, I can almost guarantee you that you’re going to lose weight and you’re going to be healthy.

And I’m not clearly saying that you should never eat those foods (fast foods) again. I mean, that’s just not practical. But they actually can’t be part of your daily diet.

This is especially true if you’re really overweight, or you have metabolic syndrome and you have actually a lot of weight to lose. You need to get healthy first before you even start thinking about integrating those foods again into your diet.

Diet should mainly consist of plants and animals. You should actually revolve your diet around nutrient-dense, single ingredient and mostly unprocessed foods.

You want to be eating grass-fed and grass-finished beef. You want to be eating pasture-raised chickens and eggs. And you want to be getting your fats from high-quality sources. You want to eat until you’re fully satiated from the foods that I just mentioned. You want to be properly hitting your daily macros and your daily calorie deficit for the day.

What you don’t want to do is you don’t want to start dieting on top of intermittent fasting, because it’s going to make your fasting periods harder.

How Do You Make Your Fasting Periods Easier?

Again, you want to have a nice nutritious meal, but when those hunger pangs arise, the best solution is honestly to just drink water, because most of the time your brain can’t actually distinguish whether you’re just thirsty or you’re hungry.

So try to drink only a glass of water first just to see if you’re really just thirsty.

You can also drink soda, water, black coffee or tea.

It’s also not the end of the world if you add a little bit of cream or heavy cream to your tea or coffee.

Now, once you’ve mastered the 16 hours fast, then you can move on to more advanced intermittent fasting protocols like the 20 hour fast or even a 24 hour fast where you’re just eating one meal a day.

The actually problem with those longer fasts is they’re really less flexible, which means that you actually have to plan ahead, especially if you have social gatherings, you’re going to be going to a party or you’re meeting people for lunch.

You want to time your fast properly and your eating window to coincide with that event perfectly.

But I always say that listen if you plan on doing a 24 hour fast that day, but then you only end up doing a 20 hour fast or even just a 16 hour fast, you’re still winning.

You’re still way ahead of the people who think that eating six meals a day will somehow magically make them lose weight.

Aim for the stars, perfectly land on the moon.

And the reason why these more advanced techniques like the 20 hour fast or 24 hours fast are more powerful is that it’s way harder to eat all your calories in one sitting.

Which means that you’ll naturally eat less.

Speaking of eating less, once you’ve actually tried a 16 hour fasting and a 20 hour fast, you can properly move into one of my favorite intermittent fasting protocols, the 24 hour fast.

One Meal A Day Meal Plan

Intermittent Fasting Effective Diet Meal Plan: Some people also refer to this fasting protocol as OMAD(One Meal A Day) diet. It’s unbelievably powerful because you allow your insulin levels to get really low throughout the day, like 95 percent of the day.

And then you’re just eating one meal. And again, it’s really hard to eat all your calories in one sitting.

If you ever really decide to have a cheat meal, I would do it while I’m on a 24 hour fast. And finally, that one meal is actually going to be your cheat meal.

But you obviously have to be very sensible about this. Like this doesn’t give you the green light to hit up your local all you can eat buffet.

Do you know what I mean?

Now actually a common concern that many people or a lot of people have is that won’t fasting cause muscle loss? Or sometimes the anti fasting crowd of people just goes for the jugular and automatically say that fasting causes muscle loss without any perfect evidence to back it up. And the short and perfect answer is, no.

So here’s how your body utilizes energy.

Your body usually properly stores enough glycogen stores in your liver to last you for two days. After that, your body properly switches to burning fat for energy.

And guess what?

You have approximately about 100,00 calories worth of energy stored in the form of body fat.

Listen, it’s not just there for looks. It’s stored energy waiting to be used. That’s why fasting is really powerful when it comes to fat loss because then you are able to perfectly tap into fat stores for energy when you don’t eat. Unless you are at 4 percent body fat.

You really don’t need to worry about your body burning your own muscles for energy. At the same time, while you’re fasting, you also have a huge uptick in growth hormones or HGH, which also then prevents you from losing muscle and no, your body won’t go into starvation mode. That’s another myth.

Listen, starving means that you have no idea when the next food ration is coming in. Do you know what I mean?

Should You Take A Little Break From Intermittent Fasting
Fasting means that actually you are voluntarily taking a break from eating.

A keyword is voluntary, which means that you can break it whatever you want. You can eat whenever you want. You’re just taking a break from eating. There’s a big difference there.

Now, the other two things that I want to talk about are what exactly should you drink during your fast and should you train fasted? And the first one is easy.

And I kind of mentioned this already, but feel free to drink water, soda, water, black coffee or tea.

You can add little bit of cream to your coffee, and that’s really OK. You can also add some squeeze of lemon or lime to your water if you want a little flavor.

But I think it’s equally as important to talk about what you can’t have during your fast.

You exactly cannot drink diet soda at all, like Diet Coke or anything that’s branded as zero calories, but it’s sweetened with artificial sweeteners.

The actual reason being is that when we’re fasting, the biggest thing that we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to bring down our insulin levels. We’re exactly trying to moderate our insulin levels. The main thing with diet soda and Zero calorie drinks is that yes, it is zero calories. That doesn’t really mean anything.

While it’s zero calories, It still perfectly triggers an insulin response. And when you trigger an insulin response, that actually breaks your fast.

Drinking diet soda triggers the cephalic phase response in your body, which means that your body thinks that you’re eating, that your body thinks you’re about to eat, but you’re still fasting.

So your body exactly sends even stronger hunger pangs.

Notice that you’re always hungrier after drinking a can of diet soda?

Should you workout fast? How to Exercise Safely During Intermittent Fasting?
And I have a separate video that talks about this in further detail but the short answer is yes.

If you could treat fasting, you should do it. Your muscles adapt to whatever energy source is available. See if your body are burning fat while you’re fasting.

Then your muscles will preferentially burn body fat for energy while you’re working out.

But you actually shouldn’t worry about this too much if you can’t train fast because of your schedule.

Listen, as long as you’re working out, you’re going to be OK.

Now, one last thing I have to mention here.
If you’re pregnant, or you’re breastfeeding, if you’re malnourished, if you have an eating disorder, or if you’re a teenager, then you should not fast.

If you have diabetes or you’re taking blood sugar or medication, then you should consult with a medical professional first before you try Intermittent fasting. Otherwise, you’re perfectly good to fast and reap all of its benefits.

The next question then becomes, how are you actually supposed to eat if you want to lose weight? because let’s be honest, 80 percent of your body composition is determined by your diet.

You can’t just freestyle this part.

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Flora

Meet Flora Lambeth, an experienced freelance journalist with a rich portfolio featured in renowned publications such as Women’s Health, Men’s Health, and Woman’s Day. With a passion for infusing humanity into her writing, Flora excels in crafting authentic profiles and narratives. Her expertise lies in covering topics related to Health and Fitness.