The fasting diet has become popular, and there are many who follow it, so how does it work?

What are its benefits?

What are its caveats?

The answers and more in this comprehensive report.

Several terms have recently appeared, such as "detox", which means eliminating toxins in the body, or "rejuvenation", to talk about what is known as therapeutic fasting. However, the medical director of the "Buchenger Wilhelmey" Medical Center, François de Toledo, believes that these terms are used to indicate To what is achieved after fasting, which is the feeling of being "lighter, more energetic and liberated," according to Deutsche Welle, citing the German version of MSN.

What is meant by therapeutic fasting, also known as (intermittent fasting), or intermittent fasting, is to stop eating several hours a day.

It can be done for only one or two days every week, or fasting 5 days in a row every few months, or up to 10 or more days in a row every year.

The best period of fasting is determined according to the person’s state of health, the stage of his life, his weight, what he suffers from diseases, and what he usually gets from nutrition.

The fasting person usually consumes on his fasting day the equivalent of 200 to 250 calories from juices, vegetables and honey, and during this fasting period the body burns fat instead of relying on glucose as an alternative source of energy.

Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern in which a person switches between periods of fasting and eating, and it does not specify which foods they should eat but when they should be eaten.

Hence, it is not a diet, but rather a system for timing food, and during fasting periods you eat very little or nothing at all.

How it works?

According to the Harvard T.E. Public Health website, these patterns of fasting are the most popular:

1- Alternating fasting: alternating between days in which there are no restrictions on food, and other days in which one meal provides about 25% of the daily caloric needs, for example Monday, Wednesday and Friday fasting, and the other days are normal.

2- Fasting a whole day once or twice: On the day of fasting a person does not eat any food or what represents 25% of the daily caloric needs, with no restrictions on food on the other days, such as the 5: 2 system, that is, not restricting food for 5 Days of the week, with a 400-500 calorie diet for the remaining two days.

3- Daily fasting in hours: for example 16: 8, meaning eating only 8 hours per day, and fasting for the remaining 16 hours.

How much will you lose?

According to the Harvard website, a systematic review of 40 studies found that intermittent fasting was effective for weight loss, with a typical loss of 7-11 pounds over a 10-week period (a pound equals 450 grams).

Criticism

Physiologically, it has been shown that caloric restriction in animals increases the life span and improves the ability to withstand various metabolic stresses in the body.

Although the evidence for caloric restriction in animal studies is strong, there is less convincing evidence in human studies.

According to the Harvard website, long-term low-calorie diets can cause physiological changes that may cause the body to adapt to caloric restrictions, preventing continued weight loss.

Intermittent fasting attempts to address this problem by switching between a low-calorie level for a brief period in which the fasting person eats regular food in a way that prevents these adaptations.

However, research doesn't consistently show that intermittent fasting beats consistent low-calorie diets for weight loss.

other notes

You can always fast on your own, but the Medical Director of the Buchenger Wilhelmie Center, François de Toledo, finds it easier to fast with the participation of others and under medical supervision.

Toledo adds that the desire to lose excess weight can be a strong motivation for fasting, but fasting not only helps with that, but also contributes to lowering cholesterol and fat levels in the blood, improving blood sugar and blood pressure, and improving the health of the heart and blood vessels.

But de Toledo warns that weight gain may be a wake-up call to an unhealthy diet that requires some intervention to break the wrong daily routine followed, and here the importance of fasting appears to help break the fear of changing the old regime and adopting a new healthy eating method.

What is meant by fasting here is not only reducing food quantities in order to lose weight, but changing the followed behaviors. Returning to old eating habits due to life pressures or loss of motivation, for example, will restore all the lost weight again.