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Sunrise Natural Health and Therapies,
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Hockley,
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Have You Tried Intermittent Fasting?

HAVE YOU TRIED INTERMITTENT FASTING? Have You Tried Intermittent Fasting? To be honest times with a scarcity of food was nothing out of the ordinary just a few hundred years ago, we come from times of fast and famine and millions upon millions of people around the world practice this now for religious or spirituality reasons. Yet in the western world we have forgotten its awesome power and ignored its therapeutic potential. In the current climate with people leading such busy lifestyles where shopping, food and cooking are becoming more of a chore than a pleasure. Finally, people are beginning to grasp the concept of Intermittent Fasting (IF) and become aware of the health benefits, hence the growth in popularity. What is Intermittent fasting IF? Fasting has no standard duration, it is merely the absence of eating. Anytime that you are not eating, you are fasting. For example, you may fast between dinner and breakfast the next day, a period of approximately 12-14 hours. Consider the word/term “breakfast”. This refers to the meal that breaks your fast – which is usually done daily. Types of IF 5:2 For 5 days of the week you eat as you normally would, for the other two days (not necessarily consecutive) you would restrict your intake to approximately 500kcals. Time restricted This method of fasting involves eating in an allocated time frame, for example 18:6 or 16:8 (16 hours of fasting: 8 hours of eating – however, this does not mean eat for the entire 8 hours). 24 Hour fasting This takes place once a week from dinner one evening to the eat at dinner time the following evening, fasting inbetween. Is fasting for everyone? If you are on any medications, or diabetic, please seek the advice from a health professional. Tips ♥ Blood sugar levels – a goof tip is to start delaying breakfast maybe by half an hour to an hour every few days. ♥ Check in – Check in with yourself ensure no headaches, dizziness or shaking, ♥ Daily energy requirements – If you have a manual job ensure you have some snacks at hand whilst your body prepares itself to go into ketosis otherwise known as fat burning mode. Once this is the norm for your body you will be less hungry and more energetic. ♥ Keep a little journal or notepad of energy levels, sleep and how you are feeling. Benefits of fasting ♥ Immune boosting ♥ Weight Loss ♥ Increasing growth hormone ♥ Protecting the brain ♥ Increased energy and improved digestive health Are you an advocate? – Here is a bit more info if you wish Learning how to fast properly gives us the option of using it or not. Body fat is merely food energy that has been stored away. If you don’t eat, your body will simply “eat” its own fat for energy. Life is about balance. The good and the bad. The yin and the yang. The same applies to eating and fasting. Fasting, after all, is simply the flip side of eating. If you are not eating, you are fasting. Here’s how it works: When we eat, more food energy is ingested than can immediately be used. Some of this energy must be stored away for later use. Insulin is the key hormone involved in the storage of food energy. 1.jpg Insulin rises when we eat, helping to store the excess energy in two separate ways. Sugars can be linked into long chains, called glycogen and then stored in the liver. There is, however, limited storage space; and once that is reached, the liver starts to turn the excess glucose into fat. This process is called De-Novo Lipogenesis (meaning literally Making Fat from New). Some of this newly created fat is stored in the liver, but most of it is exported to other fat deposits in the body. While this is a more complicated process, there is no limit to the amount of fat that can be created. So, two complementary food energy storage systems exist in our bodies. One is easily accessible but with limited storage space (glycogen), and the other is more difficult to access but has unlimited storage space (body fat). 2.jpg The process goes in reverse when we do not eat (intermittent fasting). Insulin levels fall, signalling the body to start burning stored energy as no more is coming through food. Blood glucose falls, so the body must now pull glucose out of storage to burn for energy. Glycogen is the most easily accessible energy source. It is broken down into glucose molecules to provide energy for the other cells. This can provide enough energy to power the body for 24-36 hours. After that, the body will start breaking down fat for energy. Therefore, the body only really exists in two states; the fed (insulin high) state and the fasted (insulin low) state. Either we are storing food energy, or we are burning it. It’s one or the other. If eating and fasting are balanced, then there is no net weight gain. Hope you enjoyed this and feel educated enough to give it a go? Afterall, what’s the worst that can happen? You may feel better ???? Thanks Claire xx MAY 1, 2019

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