Intermittent Fasting Is Good For Your Health

It’s been shown that intermittent fasting can help you lose weight— and because of this, it’s a method that’s being adopted by many fitness trainers and professionals.

- Lisa Steuer

In fact, studies show that intermittent fasting may also improve your health if you are overweight or obese, and different methods of intermittent fasting have been shown to help overweight and obese adults reduce weight and decrease stomach size while also improving triglycerides, cholesterol and blood pressure. In studies that examined eating within specific windows and fasting for 12 to 21 hours per day, eating within a 12-hour window resulted in weight loss and favorable changes in cholesterol.

With intermittent fasting, the fasting period might last for 20 hours, with a four-hour window where you eat. Or, the fast can last for 16 hours, and you would eat within the following eight-hour time interval. Alternate day fasting means you are fasting every other day. On fast days, you’re limited to a two-hour window of time to eat.

Fasting causes cellular changes in your body, which have an effect on weight loss. One of those cellular changes has to do with the hormones insulin, norepinephrine and human growth hormone (HGH). HGH, which helps you keep and build lean muscle, increases when fasting, plus insulin sensitivity improves and insulin levels decrease. In addition, short-term fasting increases norepinephrine (the fat-burning hormone), resulting in a faster metabolism.