Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting

If you are debating whether to start intermittent fasting, here’s a few things to spur you on. I wrote this many years ago as a personal trainer, and it brought to light some of the great benefits that is achieved when you implement this into your routine.

There are a wealth of benefits that could be achieved through altering your timings of meals and extending the fasting period within your day.

The length of your fast would be another topic, though the overall desired effects is what I shall address and also approach it from a weight loss perspective.

So let’s begin.

When fasting, studies have shown that the secretion of growth hormone (GH) increases. This is one of the best fat burning hormones. Studies show that in a five day fasting protocol, men experienced increased growth hormone secretion throughout the five days. Despite length of fasting, studies show that this hormone increases dramatically whether that be a single day of fasting or longer to whether your go day by day intermittently. Participants experienced more frequent GH bursts and each burst secreted a higher mass of GH throughout each day.

The importance of this hormone is paramount. When growth hormone is secreted into the body, it increases Lipolysis. Lipolysis is the breakdown of lipids (fat cells) and involves hydrolysis of triglycerides into glycerol and free fatty acids. In other words, the fat cell is under hydrolysis (which is the stored body fat being broken down into its original form as being a "free fatty acid" and placed back into the bloodstream towards the liver to be converted into energy, in which it will be used by the body in one way or another.)

This is the state in which we want our body to be in most of the time. Though this is easily stopped when we eat certain foods that spike our insulin. (When insulin is spiked, this process cannot happen). Without lipolysis actually releasing stored body fat, it's impossible to break down fat and use this as energy.

Though thankfully, during a fast, insulin decreases and Lipolysis increases. This insulin-blunting aspect of fasting quite literally allows the “fast” to be successful, because without the ability to access stored body fat for energy, making it through a fast with very limited stores of glycogen would be impossible.

Adding to this, results show that fasting makes insulin more sensitive, this provides us with another benefit when we do eat. This means the body doesn't have to secrete as much insulin when sugar is in the bloodstream, making it less likely to be stored as body fat and you are less likely to feel hungry after eating due to it’s ability to stable blood sugar more effectively.

Other benefits shown by studies shows us that fasting increases catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline). The only thing we need to take away from this is that this increases resting energy expenditure during fasting periods. This benefits us greatly especially in the state we are in during a fast, as the energy will be taken from stored body fat. This occurs by the hormone present in adipose tissue "hormone sensitive lipase", which spurs the release of fat.

Sounds great. So whether your goal is to burn body fat, or to become healthier where your insulin is concerned, it is the best of both worlds. Look out for further benefits in later posts from an increased immune system, improved cellular repair, all the way to the brain and heart health and proved longevity.