Intermittent Fasting & Hunger
Let’s continue our discussion on Intermittent Fasting. Make sure to check out last week’s blog for Part 1!
So, we all know that Hunger , appetite, and satiety (aka fullness) vary from person to person.
Actually feeling hungry or full can depend on many factors like:
- What we’ve recently eaten
- Our hormone levels
- Our Circadian rhythyms
- And many other physiological factors
Whats important to know, hunger comes and goes, and that feeling can be trained.
Furthermore, learning about how you respond to hunger may be one of the most important benefits of fasting.
How might Intermittent Fasting help us?
As our personal training clients know: nutrition is all about “look better”, “feel better”, and “live longer”.
S0 when it comes to IF, studies have shown that it can potentially reduce the following:
- Autoimmune responses
- Blood pressure
- Fat storage
- Risk of Cancer
Secondly, it can potentially increase:
- Cellular turnover and repair
- Fat burning
- Growth Hormone production
- Metabolic Rate
Figure below shows how intermittent fasting affects the body.
So why does everyone do Intermittent Fasting?
With the list of benefits, IF appears to be an amazing cure-all.
So everyone should be doing it right?
IF isn’t for everyone, especially the more extreme versions.
Intermittent energy restriction (IER) or more traditional calorie restriction approaches might suit some people better, especially since they appear to offer most of the same benefits.
Similarly, each person may respond differently to a fasting or energy restriction protocol.
Study averages show one person may do great with IF while another person may not see many benefits, or even significant problems.
Intermittent Fasting may help you improve your health, but it may not help you get extremely healthy
In many studies, healthy and lean people doing IF/IER didn’t see much metabolic benefit because their metabolic markers were already pretty good.
This tells us, it’s not a linear relationship where the more IF/IER you do, the better you feel.
For example, if you’re sick, IF/IER may help you get less sick, or even fully healthy. If you have poor metabolic health, or a chronic disease that responds well to fasting or fat loss, IF/IER may help.
But if you’re already doing well, you might not do much better.
Stay tuned next week for part 3 on intermittent fasting!
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