Today’s lifestyle practice recommends to you the therapeutic uses of intermittent fasting and how to implement it in your own life in order to experience its amazing health benefits.
In this series of articles looking at the Lifestyle Practices essential for a healthy lifestyle we so far have looked at:
• The importance of drinking water
• Sleep 8 hours nightly
• The need to be physically active
• Being aware of the dangers of the food you eat.
This lifestyle practice, using intermittent fasting, was the catalyst behind my move from illness to wellness. I encourage you to give intermittent fasting a try for yourself.
What Is Fasting? Fasting, in the strictest sense, is defined as the voluntary abstinence from all food and drink, except water, as long as the nutritional reserves of the body are adequate to sustain normal function. This is a state of relative physiologic rest.
Intermittent fasting (IF) is an umbrella term for various diets that cycle between a period of fasting and non-fasting.
Even if you begin by simply skipping breakfast, you can work your way up to fasting for a full 16 hours a day.
That is my preferred choice of fasting. Intermittent fasting for 16 hours a day. There are many other versions but the benefits I gained from a 16:8 fast were so immense I’d highly recommend it to anybody.
Intermittent Fasting is one of the simplest things you could ever do.
I promise you that you won’t find it challenging at all?
Maybe the first few days, you’ll feel a bit hungry, but you just need to stay committed.
After that it just becomes so simple.
You eat in an 8 hour window, you fast for a 16 hour one.
For me, I stop eating at 8pm. For the next 3 hours, I will only drink water. Then I’m in bed for 8 hours. On waking, at around 7, I then continue fasting till 12. I will drink water through the fasting period, and also coffee, but it has to be black. No milk, no sugar. Basically, no calories. At noon, 16 hours after my last meal I will eat again. It really is that easy.
It simply requires a sixteen-hour period of fasting around your daily meal schedule. For example, you might fast from 7 p.m. to 11 a.m. daily. Then you have an eight-hour eating window every day. How many meals you eat within that eight-hour window is your choice. Some people choose to eat two meals during that window and others eat three.
Can you fast? Yes—it’s been done by literally millions of people around the world, for thousands of years.
Is it unhealthy? No. In fact, it has enormous health benefits.
Will you lose weight? Of course.
Let me go into a little more detail.
Intermittent Fasting gives your body a break from digesting and processing food and allows your powerful internal systems the time to cleanse your body and remove the excess toxins that have built up in your body over the years.
Fasting stops the continual work of the digestive tract, whose activity can drain the body of energy and divert the healing processes. Each time we take in food, the body must secrete digestive enzymes to break down the food, move these simpler components into the cells lining the digestive tract, and further move these nutrients into the bloodstream for distribution throughout the body. All of these functions require a substantial amount of vitality and energy — energy that might otherwise be used to fuel the healing process.
Each time we take in food we take in not only nutrients but also additives and other toxins. The digestive tract, the liver, the kidney, and other organs must work to remove these non-nutritive substances from the body. These wastes include by-products of digestion, bacterial by-products from the decomposition of inadequately digested foodstuffs, and excess nutrients the body cannot use. All these as well as the waste products of normal cellular metabolism must be actively eliminated for us to maintain excellent health. Food, therefore, while providing essential nutrients for life, also introduces toxins.
Fasting, particularly when we are ill and the body is already overburdened with self-produced wastes, can provide a welcome relief by halting the introduction of further toxins and waste products. Without this extra burden, the body is finally able to heal itself.
Fasting takes discipline, but the effort is worth it because it encourages physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.
“The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.” Thomas Edison
I became fascinated by intermittent fasting after a chat with a friend in the gym. I have researched the subject intensely motivated by news of the promising health benefits of fasting. The result was that driven by the knowledge that this could be the way for me to begin bringing massive changes in my health, I was forced to give it a try, and I’m so pleased I did as it really was life changing.
“Fasting is the greatest remedy—the physician within.” Philippus Paracelsus
Anyone suffering from a chronic disease such as diabetes, cancer, stroke, or heart problems will potentially benefit from intermittent fasting, but I strongly advice you discuss it with your doctor before embarking on any kind of fast.
I am not a medical doctor, simply once the owner of a chain of gyms, a life coach and someone whose life was changed by intermittent fasting.
In simple terms fasting is beneficial as a lifestyle change. It accelerates the healing process and allows the body to recover from serious disease in a dramatically short period of time.
The self-healing power of the body is often overlooked. Fasting enables the body to repair and rejuvenate its own tissues, by directly providing the conditions for recovery and removing the impediments that curtail your recuperative powers. Fasting establishes a unique opportunity, vital for the restoration of health.
Fasting followed by an appropriate diet, gives people a choice that can enable them to discard their medication and live in good health. You now possess the autonomy to decide your own fete.
Making this significant dietary change allows people who suffer with coronary heart disease, high cholesterol, overweight or obesity, adult diabetes, high blood pressure, and/or certain digestive and rheumatic degenerative diseases first to reduce and then to eliminate their dependence on medications and to avoid major palliative surgeries, such as heart bypass and angioplasty.
Many thousands of people have restored their health through fasting. Some, ill and distraught from years of discomfort and discouragement, not only improve or recover (often from what are considered incurable diseases) but also experience physical, psychological, and mental rejuvenation. Fasting to heal one self can mean the difference between living life pain-ridden and dependent on drugs, going from one doctor to another for relief, and living a normal pain-free existence into old age.
Let fasting be the magic key that opens the door to your good health and vitality.
LET FASTING BRING ON YOUR BODY’S MIRACULOUS SELF-HEALING AND SELF-REPAIRING PROCESS TO HELP YOU TAKE BACK YOUR HEALTH.
This is Larry Lewis
This article is part of a series and these are the others in the series so far:
- Lifestyle Practices Essential For A Healthy Lifestyle
- Lifestyle Practice One: Drink at least 2 litres of water daily
- Lifestyle Practice Two: Sleep for 8 hours a night
- Lifestyle Practice Three – Get Physically Active
- Lifestyle Practice Four – Be aware of what you actually eat
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