Recently I am seeing a lot more people talking about intermittent fasting. I have been using this tool for over a year after I saw a whole bunch of videos and read a whole bunch of articles on the subject.

"Intermittent Fasting" has become the mainstream name for what is actually called Time Restricted Eating.

Basically the quick way of explaining how to do IF is you eat all your meals in an 8 hour window and go 16 hours not eating or drinking anything except water.

Some even go longer and personally I have gone over 2 days with no food and even updated steemit every couple of hours. But don't just stop eating for days right away. I feel it is important to understand what is happening in the body.

The importance of doing your own research

Now, obviously we don't have time and resources to conduct our own research and even if we did this is not our expertise. So the next best thing, in my opinion, is so to gather information from many reputable sources and truly understand what happens in the body when you are not eating for over 16 hours.

So lets say you only eat from 12pm - 8 pm, when you are not eating for a long time your body is not digesting food so instead has plenty of energy to do other things. When you go deep into fasting your body can turn waste inside cells into fuel for somewhere else in the body...now THAT is efficient! But even on day one of IF what really benefits is your insulin levels. Insulin is a very important hormone that keeps your blood sugars regulated.

Our body has a very small amount of sugar in the blood, maybe 1 teaspoon, so when you drink or eat, especially carbs and sugar like soft drinks, rice, fruit, ect, your pancreas releases insulin to open up muscle and fat cells to store the excess sugar in the form of glucose. This glucose is gathered and stored in your liver, muscles and is binded to water. Which is why when you start IF and lower your consumption of carbs, you will almost immedietly use up most of your glucose(sugar) and pee out a lot of the water that was being retained.

Take it one day at a time, I recommend doing some research, I recommend searching for talks from Dr Eric Berg where he talks about intermittent fasting and insulin. Also search for Dr Rhonda Patrick talking about time restricted eating. Start slow, work your way into it...I am at a point where sometimes I can eat once a day and feel amazing, while some other people can't function unless they eat. You slowly adapt and get better and better. This is a great tool to lose fat but make sure you do your research so you understand why healthy salt and high amounts of green salads are important for energy and for your liver.

I will occasionally make posts like this where I talk about some life changing techniques and people can correct me or add in more info that is relevant and worth sharing so we can all share knowledge and resources.

I am not the most organized writer, blogger, or anything. But I just wanted to share something that was great for me and actually might save someone from diabetes if they read this and start asking themselves questions.

eric-boucher