How to do Intermittent Fasting? Complete Intermittent Fasting Guide

If you’re interested in starting intermittent fasting and want to know how to do intermittent fasting correctly, this Complete Intermittent Fasting Guide is going to show you a proper way of doing it. This Intermittent Fasting Guide will answer all the frequently asked questions someone who’s just starting out with fasting may have. It’s going to give you everything you need to know to get started with intermittent fasting. It is really easy to get started and there’s nothing too complicated. It’s pretty straightforward!

 

This Intermittent Fasting Guide Answers Frequently Asked Questions including:

What Is Intermittent Fasting? What Are The Health Benefits of Fasting? Do You Need To Reduce Your Caloric Intake While Fasting? How Long Do You Need To Fast For? Will You Die If You Don’t Eat For 24 Hours? Is Fasting Healthy and Natural For Humans? Is It Really Unhealthy to Skip Breakfast? What are the Several Different Ways Of Fasting? What Can You Eat Or Drink During Your Fast? When Should You Exercise While Fasting? How To Break a Fast? How To Know When To Stop a Fast? What Are The Diet Tips For Fasting?

 

By the way, if you’re new to my blog, I’m a nutritionist and a health coach who is all about providing you with the best-science based health and weight loss advice. You can either read this blog post or watch my Intermittent Fasting YouTube video here.

 

 

 

So, What Is Intermittent Fasting?

 

The definition of intermittent fasting: Intermittent fasting is a meal timing plan, where you have eating and non-eating times. During your eating period, you eat as normal, and during your non-eating period, or fasting period, you don’t consume any calories.

 

 

What Are The Health Benefits of Fasting?

 

• Fasting lowers your insulin levels. This helps you to lose weight and prevent/reverse various chronic diseases.
• Fasting induces autophagy, which slows down the aging, and helps you to prevent/reverse diseases.
• Fasting reduces inflammation.
• Fasting promotes brain health, it may help stimulate neuron growth.
• Fasting helps you to live longer.

 

 

Do You Need To Reduce Your Caloric Intake While Fasting?

 

Not necessarily. Let’s say you regularly consume 1800 kcal a day. You could have the same number of calories as you would normally have, just instead of having 6 smaller meals a day, you would have 2-3 larger meals a day. And you would still lose more weight and have better health by doing so. That’s because the benefits of fasting come from the amount of time you spend without food. Not eating affects your physiology in a way that creates various health benefits.

 

 

 

How Long Do You Need To Fast For?

 

Well, this depends on your goals and your capabilities. So first let’s look at what do I mean by your fasting goals. The longer the fast – the more benefits you get. But it takes time and practice until you can comfortably do longer fasts. But even the regular, 16 hours fast is very beneficial. You give your body a chance to rest, stop digesting the food for a while, your body can finally focus on some other tasks that it normally doesn’t have time for.

 

At this point, at 16 hours without food, you deplete your glucose stores and tap into fat burning. You start using your body fat for energy and this can help you to lose excess weight while preserving your lean muscle mass at the same time. Doing this regularly can help you to stay healthy and fit. In addition, you get increased mental clarity.

 

 

You get even more benefits with longer fasts. You increase fat burning even further, you become very efficient at burning your own body fat, and your body goes into the healing and regeneration process called autophagy. Autophagy is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells. “Auto” means self and “phagy” means eat. So, the term autophagy means “self-eating”. It’s like your body doing a renovation, getting rid of the old damaged stuff and replacing it with new. That’s what our bodies do when we stop eating. It eats itself, in a good way.

 

And you usually start autophagy after 18-20 hours of fasting, with maximal benefits occurring after 48–72 hours of fasting. That’s a long time without food… But if you’re sick, if you have some serious health issues, that’s probably the most powerful thing you can do to heal. And even if you are healthy, regular fasting can help you to stay young and healthy for a much longer time. And it can even make you live longer. So, that is definitely something to consider.

 

 

 

So, Will You Starve Till Death If You Don’t Eat For 24 Hours?

 

Definitely no. An average of 70kg/or 154lbs male could survive 1 to 3 months without food. Simply drinking water, taking some supplements, and not getting any calories. Not even talking about someone who is morbidly obese. They could potentially live on their fat stores for a year! But, who would stop eating for a year? It’s best to do it gradually and healthily. That’s the key to long-term weight loss success. If you have some weight to lose, regular 16-18 hour fasts will do great!

 

 

Is Fasting Healthy and Natural For Humans Or Is It A Some Sort Of Fad?

 

From an evolutionary perspective, humans would typically go days without food, often hunting on an empty stomach. Semi-starved animals with enhanced brain function and energy would be more likely to obtain food and find ways to survive. It’s just how we evolved. Eating only when the food is present, maybe once a day, maybe once in 2 or 3 days. It is not natural for us to eat 6 small meals a day, this is a real fad that is making us fat and sick. Reading this blog post will teach you How to do Intermittent Fasting correctly.

 

 

 

Is It Really Unhealthy to Skip Breakfast? Which Is Basically The Same As Intermittent Fasting?

 

That’s what the food industry wants you to believe in. If from all of a sudden, everyone stopped eating breakfast, they would lose millions if not billions! So they will keep funding nutrition research and determining the outcomes, influencing our dietary guidelines, training nutritionists and dietitians, to push this idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that fasting is unhealthy. Yea, right… Why then skipping breakfast helps you to prevent or reverse chronic diseases and lose excess weight?

 

 

 

And There Are Several Different Ways Of Fasting.

 

Depending on the situation and your goals, you can choose which method you want to use. The most common fasting methods include simple intermittent fasting, prolonged fasting, liquid fasting, and dry fasting. You can learn more about each different way below and decide, which type will you want to use. The most common type is simple intermittent fasting.

 

 

So, The First One is Simple Intermittent Fasting.

 

An example would be intermittent fasting 16/8, meaning that you fast for 16 hours and your eating window is 8 hours. So, let’s say you would have your dinner at 8 pm, then wouldn’t eat anything after. You would wake up in the morning and skip breakfast and would have your first meal at 12 pm. You could even carry on, and do this every day if you can. Having 2 larger meals a day and no snacks. But if you feel too hungry and can’t do it regularly yet, just do what you can.

 

 

Over time, when you feel comfortable with it, you could increase your fasting time and do 18/6, meaning you don’t eat for 18 hours, or 20/4, meaning you don’t eat for 20 hours. This would help you to activate that autophagy. But it is easier to start with 16-hour fasts or even a bit less, 14-hour fast, and increase it over time. It might take several months until you are comfortable with regular 18 or more-hour fasts. And you could do this type of intermittent fasting, once, twice, or even 7 times a week.

 

 

Then, The Next Type Of Fasting Is Prolonged Fasting.

 

Which basically means fasting for 24 – 48 hours. This is more focused on cellular rejuvenation called autophagy. It helps you to repair the damage, heal your body, and helps you to recover from various diseases. So, if you have cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia – definitely consider regular prolonged fasts of at least 24 hours. And you could do prolonged fasts once a month or at least once or twice a year.

 

 

One more thing to mention here, if you are a type 2 diabetic and you were told that fasting is bad for you, you should check out this study. It’s A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of randomized controlled trials, looking at The Effectiveness of Intermittent Fasting to Reduce Body Mass Index and Improve Glucose Metabolism. This study found that intermittent fasting may provide a significant metabolic benefit by improving glycemic control, insulin resistance, and adipokine concentration with a reduction of BMI in adults. So, intermittent fasting is actually great for diabetics.  Just keep in mind, it will drastically reduce your glucose and insulin, so do it gradually and safely.

 

 

What Can You Eat Or Drink During Your Fast?

 

During intermittent fasting or prolonged fasting, you’re only allowed to consume some drinks that have no calories. And they have to not interfere with your insulin. You can still drink water, unsweetened tea, or black coffee. Black coffee has been shown to increase the autophagy and fat-burning effects while fasting, so it’s a good idea to have some black coffee while you fast. And of course, no food. Not even a teaspoon of food. No food at all. No carbohydrates, fat, protein, or alcohol. As this would ruin your fast.

 

 

 

Then, The Next Type Is a Liquid Fast.

 

So, as you can see from the name, you’re still allowed to consume liquids. And here you have a bit more flexibility with your drinks. You’re still allowed to consume coffee, coffee with a dash of cream, bulletproof keto coffee, which is basically a coffee with butter and coconut oil, it’s great to have these coffees as they give you a lot of energy and help you to go longer periods of time without any solid food. It also has minimal insulin response, as fats affect your blood glucose and insulin the least.

 

 

Then, you can also have some bone broth. Bone broth is made by boiling down animal bones and connective tissue. You can make it yourself if you want, but it takes around 12 – 24 hours, or you can order it on amazon, already made for you. I will leave the link down below where you can order a high-quality bone broth. Bone broth is rich in various minerals, vitamins, amino acids, and essential fatty acids. It increases the healing process. These drinks have calories, but they are all in a liquid form and all have some great health benefits.

 

 

And The Last Type Of Fasting Is Dry Fasting.

 

This is quite extreme. You don’t eat and don’t drink anything. This type of fasting is extremely beneficial for fat loss. As you don’t consume any water, your body will start making its own water. And to do it, it will start pulling out hydrogen from your fat stores. It will take that hydrogen and make molecular water. You could do dry fasting for 24 hours once or twice a year if fat loss is your main goal.

 

 

 

Then, there’s another important thing to mention. There’s a slight difference between men and women when it comes to fasting.

 

Women tend to feel way hungrier and might find it quite difficult to fast. That’s because women have a way more complex reproductive system and fasting might feel like a bigger threat to their bodies, causing the hunger signals to be stronger. So, if you’re a woman and you struggle with fasting, you can start slow. Start with 14 or 16-hour fasts or start with liquid fasts, as it makes it a lot easier.

 

 

When Should You Exercise While Fasting?

 

If you want to work out while fasting, pick a time in the middle of your fast because you might be quite weak at the end of your fast. If your main goal is weight loss, exercising while fasting will help you to burn fat faster. It’s not a must, but if you feel like exercising, go for it.

 

 

Now, Let’s Look at How To Break A Fast?

 

Normally, your gut gets weaker temporarily after fasting, so it would be best to break your fast with something like bone broth. Bone broth helps you to restore your gut’s mucosal layer faster. Then, you could wait around 10 or 30 minutes and have your first meal. Make sure this meal is healthy. Don’t go for MacDonald’s after your fast. Your meal should consist of non-starchy veggies, healthy protein, and fat. You could have some broccoli and cauliflower baked in the oven with butter, together with a serving of wild salmon or grass-fed organic meat, or organic free-range eggs. Have a smoothie or a salad with it. Something healthy.

 

 

You can order high-quality bone broth supplements here in the UK, or here in the US.

 

 

So, How To Know When To Stop a Fast?

 

When you feel like. You can plan to do a 24 hour fast, but let’s say you started feeling horrible at 18 hours and you feel really hungry, you have a stomach ache you have a headache, you don’t feel well.  Just go and eat. But don’t break your fast when you feel slight hunger. You will be more hungry around the times when you normally have meals. Break it when you feel real hunger. It’s important to listen to your body. For example, when you wake up in the morning, you get a natural spike in the stress hormone cortisol, and it will cause slight hunger when you wake up. But if you wait a bit, it will go away. It’s not real hunger.

 

 

And How Do You Start Fasting In General? Diet Tips For Fasting.

 

Well, fixing your diet is really important. If you eat a lot of refined carbohydrates and processed food, there’s a high chance that you have insulin resistance, excess weight and you’re always hungry. It’s just how these foods affect you. If you’re used to having 6 meals a day, it might be difficult to switch to 1, 2, or 3 meals a day. So first, you have to get rid of the foods that make you hungry all the time. Reduce your sugar, other refined carbohydrates, deep-fried foods, processed snacks, refined vegetable oils. Replace them with natural whole foods.

 

 

When you switch to eating natural whole foods, have enough high fibre low starch vegetables, such as broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage, spinach, have enough of high-quality protein, which is around 100g or 3.5 oz of meat or fish with your lunch and your dinner, and have enough of healthy fat, such as grass-fed butter, ghee, organic extra virgin coconut oil, extra virgin olive oil, nuts, seeds, avocados or olives, you start feeling way more satiated and can go longer periods of time without eating.

 

If you want to learn more about healthy eating, you should check out some of my other articles where I explain it in detail. So, this was my detailed intermittent fasting guide where I shared how to do intermittent fasting correctly. I hope you found this intermittent fasting guide useful and easy to follow.

 

Or, if you would like to join my online weight loss coaching program, you can join my it here Online Weight Loss Coaching Program, using the most effective science-based weight loss methods that have nothing to do with eating less and moving more.

 

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