Everybody must have heard of Intermittent Fasting and Ketogenic Diet as they are the ones that have been trending in the health and fitness community.
Most have raved about the effectiveness when these two are combined and you will hear a lot of success stories documenting their IF and Keto journey.
There will be many questions especially if you are new to this. Is it safe? Will I starve? Is it sustainable? Going for a day or so without food, will I ever be able to do it??
You are not alone. Most of the people ask these valid questions – well, not unless you are health guru or a medical expert and you know everything!
What is Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent Fasting (IF) is a pattern of eating and not a type of diet. This is basically not ‘what’ you eat but ‘when’ you eat. So you may then ask ‘why is it important to schedule when we eat?’ and ‘isn’t the quality of food more important than the time you are eating?’.
Valid questions that we can answer as we go along.
IF is the voluntary timing of meals so that you allow your body to burn your own fat during your fasting window. Normally, as one starts to fast, you will think that you will get hungry but the opposite of that happens.
Instead of getting energy from food, your body gets energy from your stored fat and the body is not really able to decipher where it is getting that energy from.
In pre-historic times, early man wouldn’t have the number of meals like what we have now. They will be consuming food based on when they will be hunting or gathering food. It is not readily accessible as we have them right now.
This is the natural course of metabolism, where in we utilise our own reserve when food is not available.
When you start fasting, your blood sugar goes down and the body produces regulatory hormones that counters the action of insulin.
Hormones that are being produced are the following:
- Human Growth Hormone. This amazing hormone let the body regenerate and renew itself. This is produced in the pituitary gland and production starts when we sleep (that’s why parents tell their kids to sleep early!). Unfortunately, this decreases as we age BUT Growth hormone production is enhanced when we are fasting!
- Cortisol. We must understand that fasting, as well as working out, is a form of stress and cortisol increases as a stress response. This hormone is also known to increase glucose in the blood but when you are fasting, the effect on glucose is almost negligible.
- Norepinephrine. During fasting, insulin level is decreased and Norepinephrine, together with the Growth Hormone, is increased and being produced. This stimulates fat burning and helps you lose weight effectively.
Results of doing Intermittent Fasting and Keto together
In Keto, you have high fat, moderate protein and low carb food and this will let the body use the stored fat because there is no available glucose in the body. This will then lead to the breakdown of fats and production of ketones.
Typically, a normal person will eat 3 meals a day (and snacking in between!). Every time we eat, there will be insulin spike in the bloodstream and continuous eating, especially food with high carb content, will lead to what we know as Insulin Resistance.
During this stage, we develop symptoms like dull skin, lethargy, fatigue, belly fat, cravings, etc. These are all tell tale signs that we are now insulin resistance and weight gain is probably the most noticeable effect.
How do we remedy this? Start Keto Diet – limit the glucose that will enter your body and replace it with fats. This way, the insulin level will not spike and the likelihood of developing insulin resistance is low.
Pairing Keto with Intermittent fasting, will yield a faster effect because Intermittent fasting reduce the frequency of eating.
What to expect when you are in Keto and Intermittent Fasting?
For the first several days of starting Keto Diet and IF, your body will be adapting and will experience hypoglycaemic symptoms (these are the symptoms when you have low sugar!). Your body is starting to shift from using glucose to utilising fat.
Will you go hungry when you are in Keto and IF?
The high fat content in the food that you are eating while on Keto makes you feel satiated that is why you won’t feel hungry. In Intermittent Fasting, there will be no issue on hunger because there will be metabolic adaptation.
If you go on low-caloric diet, you will often feel that you are hungry. This is totally different when you are on Keto. Low caloric diet, there is not enough energy source and the body can sense that there is impending starvation. The response of the body will be to store calories and to reserve as much energy as it can. This will lead to slow metabolism.
Intermittent fasting has zero calories and body will shift to using stored glucose and insulin will go down and fatty acids get released to the circulation producing more energy. This will cause faster metabolism.
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