Intermittent fasting is not a diet and has to be executed under the guidance of health professionals. When a person undertakes an intermittent fast for dietary purposes, it can be very effective for weight loss. In fact, most people try intermittent fasting to help lose weight. People who follow intermittent fasting tend to lose visceral fat (fats on the organs) and a similar to slightly less reduction in body weight compared with people who follow more traditional calorie deficit diets. For a healthy person, intermittent fasting offers very few side effects.

Benefits of Intermittent Fasting:

Apart from weight loss intermittent fasting helps in reducing levels of insulin, which makes it easier for the body to use stored fat. It also helps in decreasing blood sugar levels and inflammation in the body. According to the studies fasting also promotes HGH (human growth hormone) which helps the body to utilize fats and grow muscle.  Fasting is a time-tested and ancient tradition that has also been used to reverse the entire aging process during ancient times.

How to Execute Fasting?

Your body is in the fed state when it is digesting and absorbing food. Typically, the fed state starts when you begin eating and lasts for three to five hours as your body digests and absorbs the food you just ate. When you are in the fed state, it’s very hard for your body to burn fat because your insulin levels are high.

After that time span, your body goes into what is known as the post-absorptive state, which is just a fancy way of saying that your body isn’t processing a meal. The post-absorptive state lasts until 8 to 12 hours after your last meal, which is when you enter the fasted state. It is much easier for your body to burn fat in the fasted state because your insulin levels are low. So 16 hours of closed windows and 8 hrs of eating windows (preferably 3 meals a day) can give you significant changes in intermittent fasting.

Things To Keep in Mind When Doing Intermittent Fasting:

You should feel hungry before eating and you should stop eating when you're full. If you feel hungry try adding good fats to your eating window. Keep a track of you water intake. Taking in less than 800 calories per day will cause greater weight loss (with significantly increased hunger), but greater bone loss. That's not healthy or sustainable in the long term. Do not have an extreme approach. Don't throw in the towel, and don't beat yourself up.

You won't undo all your work with one meal, but you might with a bad attitude. Take the time to reassess and make sure the schedule you've set up continues to work with your lifestyle. Maybe it doesn't work anymore and you want to shift your eating window or relax it a bit. That's OK. Don’t give up. Intermittent fasting (IF) has received great interest from the general public, as an alternative to the traditional daily energy restriction model, for the treatment of obesity and related disorders but also as an anti-aging method for increased longevity.

Even though IF is a promising approach for some patients, there have been several claims of its benefits (mainly in social media) that are not evidence-based, at least in humans, leading to doubts among the society and sharp disagreements by its supporters and critics. As such, a critical appraisal of the literature is imperative to guide health professionals advising their patients, while not exaggerating its benefits, nor condemning its practice, yet also raising questions that may be answered by controlled trials in the future.