Fasting. Just the word puts me off. I have images of imaciated yogis and sexually repressed monks weakly shuffling around, muttering religious mumbo jumbo to distract themselves from their groaning bellies. And yet this is the all new diet/lifestyle that will cure us all from obesity, cancer and death. Oh really?
Well let's ignore that isn't new at all. The Spartan Health Regime has been advocating fasting for over a decade. The Warrior Diet, Eat Stop Eat and most of the various Primal/Paleo diet's have advocated fasting of some variation for years now. However, the trails blazed by these fringe dieters have led scientists to stop investigating the mysteries of dunking biscuits in tea (oh no wait, they have they taxed me again to pay for more biscuit science) and discover just what effects fasting has.
Well obviously the most apparant effect is weight loss. A calorie deficit will always lead to weight loss, period. It can be done in constructive healthy ways and it can be done to strip away your muscle, starve your organs and kill you, but all will produce a lower number on the scale. We'll go into the alternatives in a future post in this series.
More and more evidence is being found to show that fasting, when done in certain fashions, has a range of additional benefits besides weight loss. I said I'd keep these posts short I'm going to simply point you to Dr. Mike Moseley's investigation on BBC iPlayer for those who have access and his article for those who don't. Besides, I am not going to put it as well as he does so why badly reinvent the wheel.
Good, now read his article/watched his program? Great, I won't have to explain it all to you again.
This was enough to peak my interest in intermittant fasting. Enough that I have been doing IF since early January. With highly positive results.
Tomorrow - IF diet options
No comments:
Post a Comment