Scientific Benefits Of Fasting

Scientific Benefits of Fasting

PHYSICAL BENEFITS:

Every time you eat, glucose is stored in your liver as glycogen, which takes about 10 to 12 hours to be depleted. After the glycogen is used up, your body starts burning fats, which are converted to ketone bodies (used by neurons as energy) So if you’re eating 3 meals a day + snacks, your body never gets the chance to deplete the glycogen stores in your liver, in which case, ketones aren’t produced!

MENTAL BENEFITS:

Along with helping with burning fat, ketones promote positive changes in the structure of synapses, important for learning, memory, and overall brain health.

FEELING DIZZY?

This literally means your normal diet is full of sugar! Your body finds sugar is convenient to run on, since it doesn’t require all the effort to burn off that fat does. However, if you stop eating sugar, your body will re-learn to burn fat instead and you won’t feel dizzy during your fasts!

WHAT FASTING DOESN’T DO:

Burn your muscle or vital organ tissue! I repeat: Your body will not burn up your muscle or organ tissue for energy when there is fat on your body that it could use instead. Fasting for 12-72 hours??? You’ll be fine!! Like I said before, when you fast for 12+ hours your body starts burning fat, and it burns fat until there’s no more fat to burn. Only after all that (which for the average person could be as long as 50 DAYS) will it start burning muscle and organ tissues. Don’t sweat it!

NEVER FASTED BEFORE?

Try one of these to ease your way into it: 5:2 diet: limit your intake to 500 calories for two nonconsecutive days per week, then return to a healthy diet (1200+ cals) the rest of the week 8-hour diet: pack all your meals into one 8-hour period a day so your body has time to exhaust its supply of glycogen, start burning fat, and produce ketones

BOTTOM LINE:

Don’t buy into myths, do your own research, drink all your water and be smart! (**This is the condensed version! If you want to know more, my master post goes into much further detail**)