How Intermittent Fasting Boost Your Metabolism?



 What Is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent Fasting is somewhat different from regular fasting. In intermittent fasting, you eat and fast alternately. At the start of the day, you skip breakfast, eat your first meal in the early afternoon, and your last meal around 8 p.m. This fasting pattern is gaining popularity as it proves to be helpful in weight loss and managing diseases like type 2 diabetes, and heart issues.

To know the details of intermittent fasting like its types, benefits, eating plans, etc. you can visit



What Is Metabolism?

Metabolism is a chemical process that occurs inside the body by which the body extracts energy from the food we eat. Even at rest, the body needs energy to perform certain activities such as breathing, digesting food, circulating blood throughout the body, and growing cells.

A body at rest uses some calories to perform these tasks. The number of calories the body uses in resting conditions is the body's metabolic rate, also called basal metabolism.

Normally, the body metabolizes carbs to get energy but in absence of carbs body shifts to fat metabolism. You start losing weight only when your stored fats are metabolized or burned.


Intermittent Fasting and Metabolism

Studies have proved that fasting for long periods decreases metabolism but fasting for shorter periods increases metabolism. This increase is due to the release of a hormone called norepinephrine which promotes fat burning.

At the start of intermittent fasting, when your body finds no carbs from outside, it will start burning glucose stores. After some days, these stores undergo depletion, the body will shift toward fat metabolism. This is the time when you will start losing weight.


Shockingly, research recommends that the impact of intermittent fasting has something similar or more positive consequences on metabolism contrasted with conventional consuming fewer calories. The motivation behind why many think intermittent fasting further improves metabolism is because of less loss of lean weight and more fat burning. It's difficult to lose weight without losing a little lean mass, yet research proposes that a lower level of lean mass is lost while shedding pounds with intermittent fasting than with customary eating fewer carbs. Protecting more lean mass implies the body's calorie-consuming eases backless. Simultaneously, short fasting periods make the body tap into fat stores and consume a greater percentage of fat mass for energy.


How does Intermittent Fasting Help In Weight Loss?


Intermittent fasting promotes weight loss by initiating fat-burning by balancing some fat-burning hormones that can make it possible for weight management.


1. Insulin:

Insulin is a hormone released in the body after meals. It functions primarily to maintain blood glucose levels by removing excess glucose from the blood and storing it in the liver and muscles. Insulin also stimulates the body to store fats and inhibits fat burning.

Therefore you can't burn fats and can't lose weight in presence of insulin. While following intermittent fasting, your insulin release is up to minimal levels as there is no excess glucose in your blood. Thus in the absence or scarcity of insulin, your body starts burning fats to meet energy needs. 

As the stored fats continue to burn you start losing weight.


2. Nor Epinephrine:

It is a hormone released in stress and makes you active and alert. It also liberates fats from body stores and makes them available for burning.

In fasting, the body releases nor- epinephrine to help you burn more fats helping in weight loss.  


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