Getting started with intermittent fasting can take some time. You will have to change some of the eating patterns that you are used to, but it can be effective for you in so many ways. You will see that it is easier to lose weight, improve your energy, burn body fat, get more done, and protect against diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and dementia.
Although intermittent fasting is easier than most other diet plans out there, it still takes some work. Some of the things to keep in mind to get the most out of your intermittent fast are:
* Drink plenty of water: Water keeps you hydrated and makes you feel fuller when you are on your fast. Being in a fasted state also acts as a diuretic, which means that your body will naturally expel water at a faster rate than you are used to. What it all boils down to is that you are going to want to aim to consume a gallon of water a day for the best results.
* Drink tea and coffee: When you are feeling hungry, you may find that it’s helpful to drink tea or coffee to keep down your appetite. Caffeine is a natural appetite suppressant. Just try not to consume any caffeine too close to bedtime (at least 3 hours), or you may have trouble falling asleep.
*Keep yourself busy: You may find that are more productive on an empty stomach. If you are keeping yourself busy, not only will you get more done, but you’ll be able to distract yourself from the hunger. If you don’t find productive ways to fill your time, especially at first, then you will find that the hours you are fasting seem to stretch out into days. Don’t make things harder on yourself than they need to be. When it comes to the early days of your new eating habit, make sure your days are packed full of
activities.
* Make it flexible: There are so many options that come with intermittent fasting. You do not have to go with one option because everyone else is. You can mix and match and create the schedule that works for you. Intermittent fasting is all about having the freedom to do it the way that you want.
Try it for at least a month: You need at least three to four weeks to determine if the intermittent fast is right for you. If you don’t do it for this long, then you are not giving the body the time it needs to adapt, and you are not giving it a fair shot. Try it out for at least this amount of time to see if it’s the right choice for you.
* Experiment with fasting methods: What works for one person may not work for you. If you find that certain fasting times are better or that a particular version of intermittent fasting is more effective, then choose those. It’s all experimenting to see what feels right for you.
* Delay your breakfast slowly: One thing that works well for a lot of people is to slowly delay their breakfast. By gradually pushing back your breakfast time an hour every week or so, you will eventually get yourself into an intermittent fast without it being too difficult. For instance, if you usually eat breakfast at 8 am, wait until 8:30 am to eat your breakfast for the first week. Then push your breakfast back to 9 am in week 2. Continue this process until your first meal occurs around noon.
* Drink water in the morning: Often the reason that you feel so hungry in the morning is that you have gone all night without eating. A good habit to start is to drink a glass of water right when you wake up in the morning.
* Add weights: If you are trying to lose weight and tone up, it makes sense to add some weight training to your routine. While you won’t want to mix things up too much when you are first getting started, once your body has adapted to an intermittent fasting lifestyle, there is no reason you shouldn’t take things up a notch.
You will be surprised what your body can handle. If you take things slowly, eventually you should be able to handle a full intensity workout without feeling too drained to function when you are finished.
* Live it up: With intermittent fasting, you need to realize that you can live it up on occasion. You can have fun as long as you ensure it all balances out in the end. While the average diet is all about the foods that you aren’t allowed to eat, an intermittent fasting lifestyle accounts for the fact that sometimes you can’t plan your meals.
This means that as long as you get your fasting period in, there is no reason you can’t move your hours around, as long as you don’t do so constantly. What’s more, there is no reason you can’t indulge now and then, as long as one delicious and decadent dessert doesn’t end up turning into seven or eight.
* Get out of the house: There is a lot of temptation in your home. Therefore, it is better to get out of the house, so you don’t eat all of that food. Even if you have kids around, think of an activity you all can do to keep yourselves occupied. Eat more protein and healthy fat: Eating additional protein with each meal makes it easier to control your appetite and build up your muscles. Eating more healthy fat will give you extra energy and help you feel fuller longer as well.
Thanks to the insidious advancement of the Standard American Diet, a vast majority of those in the Western world eat far too many carbohydrates and not nearly enough protein or healthy fat. To rectify this problem, start considering the macros of the foods you eat. Also, ensure that when you are in an eating window you fill your plate with foods that will make sticking it out to the next window as easy as possible.
* Avoid the bad stuff: You need to make sure that you are not using it as an excuse to eat junk food all the time. Make sure to stick with a well-balanced diet so that you provide your body with enough nutrition, even if you choose to go on a fast. It is important to keep in mind that a big part of intermittent fasting is building up a calorie deficit by the end of the week to support additional weight loss.
As such, if you fill your body full of high-calorie junk food when you do enter an eating window, what you are really doing is undoing all of your hard work. Making healthy choices at all times will improve the overall effectiveness of your weight loss efforts, guaranteed.
As you can see, there are a lot of different things you can do to get the most out of intermittent fasting. This doesn’t mean you should expect constant weight loss, however, regardless of how strict your fasting might be. While you will likely see weight loss at first as your body adapts to fewer calories in its system; this will likely start and stop throughout your time fasting.
The effects are especially noticeable after the first few weeks of the transition as your body tries to hold on to everything it has until it can figure out what is going on. Once it gets with the program, however, things should proceed as expected.
Every diet is going to have periods of weight loss plateau. That is simply a part of weight loss that cannot be mitigated. As long as you stay consistent, weight loss will eventually resume.
The worst thing you can do is to try and change things up to get weight loss back on track as that will only make it more difficult for your body to start losing weight again. Instead, if you stay the course and keep up the good work, you will start seeing results again.
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