What is Intermittent Fasting? How can I fast with food?
Are you a regular fastener or are you worried about coming closer to the fasting world? Probably you have already tried it without even realizing it. Intermittent fasting has become more and more part of our daily routine due to cultural beliefs, more frenetic lifestyles, and healthier nutritional habits.
While following consciously or unconsciously this trend, what if you could practice intermittent fasting in a new and safer way? Namely, by consuming food during the non-eating phase? Read this article to discover how.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
In its traditional meaning, intermittent fasting is a type of fasting that alternates periods of abstention from food with those of eating. The peculiarity of this method is that you must pay attention to time since you eat only during a specific window of hours while for the rest your body does not assume anything, except for water, and enters in this way in a fasting state.
As the clock coordinates, in a certain way, our lives and routines, time is also the main guideline that regulates intermittent fasting. Indeed, based on time, there are different categories or levels of intermittent fasting, namely:
- the daily time-restricted fasting or 16/8 intermittent fasting that involves 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating during a day;
- alternate day fasting: 24 hours of fasting alternating 24 hours of eating;
- 5:2 days fasting: 2 days of fasting and 5 days of eating during a week;
These levels are today practiced consciously and unconsciously by more than 60% all around the world. Have you ever tried? Think about it. Is fasting in your culture an active practice, like in Ramadan or during Indian Festivals, as for instance Navaratri?
Are you following a diet with the supervision of a medical professional that implies some alternating hours or an entire day of fasting? Has it ever happened to you to jump a meal because you had an appointment at that time, or you are late and should run to catch the train? These are just few examples of how intermittent fasting steps into our lives.
The very first step, is to acknowledge this and start doing with consciousness, not just because we don’t have time, since the world around us is running and makes us run as well.
What are the benefits?
Practicing intermittent fasting, as part of our daily routine, means reducing in a regular manner calorie intake, and this facilitates gradual weight loss in the long term since the body in a fasted state starts taking energy from the ketones, energy molecules derived from the breakdown of fats. The release of ketones provides in this way our brains and organism with energy and consequently helps us improve our mental and physical performance.
Apart from the evident effect of enhanced energy, intermittent fasting implies on a deeper level a change in mindset in our approach to food as well as in lifestyle.
In today’s frenetic and consumerism era, where we are continuously exposed to pre-prepared high-in-sugar foods that come at us easily and are used to nibbling or drinking very fast anything we have at hand, just because we run, always, and maybe skip routine meals, intermittent fasting can help us change the perspective of time and nutrition.
The energy we get from such easy high-carb/calorie snacks is just a short-term one and not healthy for our organism since it is derived from bad fats and sugars present in the product in considerable quantity.
It is completely different from the long-term healthy energy we can get by following a daily diet based on good fats and vegetables plus adding to our routine periods of intermittent fasting, which by triggering the natural synthesis of ketones, can support our mental focus and body activeness.
Also, sessions of intermittent fasting, can help us, be more attentive to time, respect food-eating hours and meals, and fast consciously.
Is it safe? Is there another method? Can I fast without really fasting?
Except for people who are used to it, usually it is recommended to approach for the first time intermittent fasting or in general the fasting world with the guideline of your doctor or nutritionist.
What if am I afraid of trying it? Is there another method? Can I fast without really fasting? The answer is yes.
Coming from the science and research that stand behind the ProLon® Fasting Mimicking DietTM, a nutritional programme that thanks to its selected combination of ingredients and nutrients makes your body enter a fasting state for 5 days while you effectively consume about 750 calories of food each day, a new revolutionary method has been developed to approach intermittent fasting as well, but with the same refrain, that is with food.
This special intermittent fasting programme is part of the ProLon® fasting with food pipeline and is called ProLon® ReSet®.
What is ProLon ReSet?
ProLon® ReSet® is a 1-day nutritional programme that allows you to reset, try fast and get its benefits without really fasting.
The replication of the only-water 5:2 days fasting with ProLon® ReSet® allows your body to enter a fasting state and get natural energy while consuming healthy chosen food also during the non-eating hours. You eat normally your daily diet during the 5 days and you eat the selected health-aimed food of ProLon® ReSet® in the last 2 days.
What kind of food? ProLon® ReSet® like ProLon® 5-day comes as a kit composed of vegetable-rich-in-fiber soups, nut-based snacks, herbal infusions, and supplements. The ingredients and raw materials that characterize these products and come from different parts of the world have been accurately selected by the L-Nutra scientific team and blended together to simulate a fasting status while at the same time let your body remain nourished.
Also, used singularly one day a week, ProLon® ReSet® is a good start to purify from an over-eating period characterized also by the assumption of junk food,
and cleanse your body internally with health-focused products.
ProLon® ReSet® is your Monday food purification after crazy weekends or vacations.
Take control of your time to recharge and eat healthier, and manage the generation of energy by changing your mindset and using healthy nutritional sources like ProLon® ReSet®.
References:
De Cabo R., Mattson MP. “Effects of intermittent fasting on health, aging, and disease.”, New England Journal of Medicine, December 2019.
“Alternate-day fasting in nonobese subjects: effects on body weight, body composition, and energy metabolism.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, January 2005.