Benefits of Fasting

Rather than flock to the fad diet, stick to the tried and true. Understand the benefits of intermittent fasting.

Looking through different diets: lemon maple diet, water diet, cookie diet, and even red meat diet can drive you bonkers! How did all this start? Is there anything valid or true about these diets? Well, there is, and there isn't.

All these diets have a few things in common: they want to give you quick results, they want to make you feel good for a short period of time, they want to get into the wellness field and create a revolution, and of course they want to make a million bucks. Apart from all these diets, there is another way to get results. That way has been around for centuries and has been tried and tested throughout those centuries. It’s called fasting. Some people practice fasting for religious reasons or spiritual ones or for dietary cleanse reasons. Regardless of the why, fasting has been proven to be quite beneficial. The father of medicine, Hippocrates claimed, "Fasting is the greatest remedy." Fasting was practiced in the past to cure the sick from various diseases and basically to revive the patient back to health.

There are several benefits of fasting:

Digestive Break

Our digestive system is constantly functioning. The system is consistently working on absorbing nutrients, digesting food, and pushing it to the colon. Just like everything else, our digestive system needs a break. Consider giving it some time off to balance its pH level, to recuperate, and basically do nothing.

Cleaner Diet

A lot of people get into these 3-day juice cleanses or other crash diets assuming that once they are done with this, they will start with a fresh and clean diet. And mostly they do, but it doesn't last too long. Why? Because it doesn't work that way. A healthy diet is a lifestyle, a long journey. But if you do fast, say, once a week, you could create an automatic habit of giving your body a break once a week. This doesn't mean you load up on junk food before and after. It's more about having a "clean day" every week.

Mood Lifter

If you're preparing your food every day or if you're one of those who is health conscious and thinks about what to eat for lunch, snack, and dinner all day, then fasting can give you a physical and mental break. Imagine! A day where you don't have to think about preparation of food, what to have for food, or any kind of food related topic at all!

Stronger Immune System

Intermittent fasting is known to increase your metabolism and create a stronger immune system as it helps to destroy free radicals and reduce inflammation. It's like the phrase "starve a fever," which basically means trying to starve the virus, which increases the production of white blood corpuscles.

6 Packer

Who doesn't want a 6-pack of ripped abs? All of us do. Well, I definitely do. Recently, a lot of fitness geeks dived into intermittent fasting. It's a practice where one doesn't eat after 8 p.m. until 12 noon the next day (12–16 hours of fasting). The theory is, as soon as you get up and haven't given your body any fuel, it switches from consuming carbs to the stored fat, converting them into immediate energy. And from intermittent fasting results, I'm pretty convinced.

So, is fasting for you? Check with your medical advisor and then try it out and see for yourself. Giving your body a break every now and again can make it perform more efficiently.

And for those non-fasting days, try this personal peach parfait!

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