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​Intermittent fasting is currently one of the most popular health and fitness trends. People are using it to lose weight, improve health and simplify their healthy lifestyle.
Many studies (click, click, click) show that it can have huge effects on your body and brain, and may even help you live much more longer.
IF is a term for an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating. It is not a "diet" in the conventional sense, it is more accurately described as an "eating pattern."
These are the most popular methods:

• The 16/8 Method: Also called the Leangains, it involves skipping breakfast and restricting your daily eating period to 8 hours, for example from 1 pm to 9 pm. Then you "fast" for 16 hours in between.
• Eat-Stop-Eat: This involves fasting for 24 hours, once or twice a week, for example by not eating from dinner one day until dinner the next day.
• The 5:2 Diet: On two non-consecutive days of the week, only eat 500-600 calories. Eat normally the other 5 days.

Humans have actually been fasting throughout evolution. Sometimes it was done because food was not available, and it has also been a part of major religion. When you think about it, our ancestors didn't have supermarkets or food available year-round. Sometimes they couldn't find anything to eat, and their bodies evolved to be able to function without food for extended periods of time.


What Is Fasting?

When you eat food, it gets broken down into various molecules that your cells can use. These molecules are released into your blood. Insulin is released as well, and its job is to shuttle the nutrients into the cells. Depending on how much food you eat in a meal, your insulin levels can remain elevated for several hours (from 3 – 6 and more).
When your body is digesting and absorbing what you’ve eaten, it’s in a “fed” or “post prandial” state. Once it has finished processing and absorbing the meal, insulin levels drop to a “minimum” low (or “baseline”) level, and your body enters a “fasted” or “post absorptive” state.
Every day your body moves between “fed” and “fasted” states, and the purpose of intermittent fasting is to extend the amount of time spent fasting.


The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting
1. Promotes Weight Loss
One of the major intermittent fasting benefits is its ability to rev up fat burning and help the pounds slide off. In fact, many people prefer intermittent fasting to traditional diets because it doesn’t require you to meticulously measure your foods and track the calories and grams consumed.
2. Improves Blood Sugar
When you eat, carbohydrates are broken down into glucose (sugar) in your bloodstream. A hormone called insulin is responsible for transporting the glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cells where it can be used up as energy.
3. Keeps Your Heart Healthy
One of the most impressive intermittent fasting benefits is its favorable effect on heart health. Studies show that intermittent fasting can help keep your heart healthy by lowering certain heart disease risk factors.
4. Reduces Inflammation
Inflammation is a normal immune response to injury. Chronic inflammation, on the other hand, can lead to chronic disease. Some research has even linked inflammation to conditions like heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer.
5. Protects Your Brain
In addition to keeping your heart healthy and warding off disease, some studies have found that intermittent fasting could also protect the health of your brain.
One animal study showed that intermittent fasting enhanced cognitive function and protected against changes in memory and learning function compared to a control group.
6. Decreases Hunger
Leptin, also known as the satiety hormone, is a hormone produced by the fat cells that helps signal when it’s time to stop eating. Your leptin levels drop when you’re hungry and increase when you’re feeling full.


For example, fasting triggers a physiological process known as “autophagy,” which deals with the destruction of cells in the body. Autophagy plays a crucial role in maintaining muscle mass and neutralizing some of the degenerative aspects of aging. In fact, it’s the primary mechanism behind the anti-aging effects of calorie restriction.

Eating healthy is simple, but it can be incredibly hard to stick to.

Eating healthy is simple, but it can be incredibly hard to stick to.One of the main obstacles is all the work required to plan for and cook healthy meals. If you do intermittent fasting, this gets easier because you don't need to plan, cook or clean up after as many meals as before. Intermittent fasting is actually very popular among the "life hacking" crowd because it improves your health while simplifying your life at the same time.
The simplest way to incorporate fasting into your diet is to allow your appetite and schedule dictate when you eat. For instance, if you wake up and you’re not hungry, you don’t have to eat breakfast for the sake of it. Wait until you’re hungry. Or if you find yourself stuck in a situation where the only food available is something you really don’t want to eat, skip the meal and make up the calories/macros later.


The Bottom Line
Studies show that when calorie deficits are matched, people lose weight equally well on a traditional diet as an intermittent fasting protocol. That said, just because intermittent fasting confers no metabolic benefits doesn’t mean it can’t help you in other ways.
If you’re a healthy adult that exercises regularly, whether you should do intermittent fasting boils down to how you like to eat and what best fits your lifestyle. If you get too hungry to comfortably fast for long periods. Find a meal frequency that works for you.
Remember that total daily intake (calories and macros) is what matters most in weight loss. How you get there is of little importance.

The Original Blog post was posted by our fabulous Weight Loss Coach, Registered Dietitian & Personal Trainer's blog - Coach Joel -
​ To read Joel's Blog and Original Post-  Click here >>>>>> 
​ http://your90daystransformation.com/2017/12/22/intermittent-fasting-healthy-lifestyle/

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Every journey has a moment when you've decided you've just simply had enough and want change. This change in my mindset has been a longtime coming for the last 4 or 5 years I've wanted to make a major change, but the final push to begin in a big way just wasn't there until very recently. The biggest positive change has been meeting and communicating with other people on the same path. This is a key piece in the journey!

A bit of my backstory. My weight loss journey has been on and off for most of my adult life. The first time I can remember "dieting" (as we called it back in the day) was after changing schools going from a relaxed environment to a super serious one. Being young and not sure what do with all the emotions I turned to food first (bad idea, but thought it was a good one at the time) Which worked for about a month or two, until I realized what was happening to my body. I can remember my mom had snapped a picture of me on the couch and I did not recognize myself.  The very first diet of my life began shortly after that picture was taken. 

For a few decades after this first diet I was on top of my food intake, very aware of everything good or bad which I put in my body. That change had been a catalyst for change in a good way. I was super committed to staying healthy, studying nutrition and exercising in moderation. All was good for many years. When I met my husband and had my children over a decade later things changed. The birth of my children brought about many changes in my body. The birth was pretty easy to recover from. All seemed fine for months then a serious weight gain started about a year later. That's when the battle with my weight started. Eating healthy everyday and exercising was the only way I could manage my weight consistently and this continued for another decade. Staying really conscious of what I consumed for food and how much exercised.

After that 10 year stretch I'd taken several office jobs back to back and not been as active, because of long hours and driving more. {Which we all need to be active regardless of how busy we are with our families, no excuses} Ready for a change for the last few years I've been meeting with personal trainers, dietitians, nutritionists, doctors and weight loss experts looking at different programs and paths to follow. One wanted me to be on a low fat plan. Another one wanted me to try a high protein plan. To tell you the truth they all have different views on what works and doesn't based on their own training and their clients success rates with different strategies. Much of what is written in books about weight loss is cookie-cutter and not as hands on as it needs to be. For many of us weight loss is just not as simple as calories in and calories out.

In real life we have many factors which prevent us from losing weight easily - hormonal differences, gender, age, metabolism issues, health conditions which prevent easy weight loss, etc. Bottom line is you must not give up and keep trying different plans until you find one which works for you.

I personally have recently started flexible dieting A.K.A. following my marcronutrient intake of foods for the last month. I've found it easy to follow and a convenient for a busy lifestyle. It's not short-term quick fix! It's not one of these trends were you'll drop 20lbs then when you stop you put it back on after you stop. This is a lifestyle you can follow long-term. I've been working with my dietitian and tracking my daily intake of food using My Fitness Pal - ​www.myfitnesspal.com  The strategy we've been using is looking at my health concerns first. Then next looking at the precise amount of calories from protein, carbohydrates and fats which are recommended based on those conditions. Then moving the numbers around based on those health concerns to get my weight to move.  Creating a calorie deficient to create weight loss is the goal, but at the same time working with the differences with metabolism, hormones etc. I must say loaded in the my fitness pal app are the default numbers which I must say will not work for everyone. A very fit person will have different numbers than someone who is not when it comes to carbs, fats and protein. 

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