Alternative fasting regime health benefits for weight loss

There are plenty of diets in the world and they can mostly be found online, one of the popular diets at the moment involves intermediate fasting. There is also alternate-day fasting where people fast every other day, in which there appears to be a lot of health benefits from following this diet regime.

Alternate-day fasting diet

The key factor on this regime diet plan is fasting every other day, unlike intermediate fasting which people have to fast every single day which may be difficult for some.

Many go for this regime plan as it is easier to follow, on the days when you are doing fasting you can eat whatever you want.

There are different ways to approach this diet but the common way is to follow the ‘modified’ approach in which one consumes only 500 calories on the days that they are fasting.

What you can consume on fasting days

On the days that the people are fasting, they are allowed to drink whatever the amount of calorie-free beverages they want. Some examples can be water or unsweetened tea or coffee.

If people are following the modified regime plan of this diet they have to consume foods, that will not go above the 500 calories count, or 20-25% of your energy requirements.

Many people find the alternate-day fasting is much easier for them to follow rather than the traditional, everyday calorie restriction.

Weight loss and other health benefits

Apart from weight loss, there are other health benefits such as decreasing the risk of getting type 2 diabetes, by losing weight and restricting calories it is an effective way to improve or even reverse symptoms of type 2 diabetes. It also helps in lowering the insulin levels and reducing insulin resistance, while only having a small effect on the blood sugar control. According to research by the Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University, UK.

This diet regime can also lower the risk of getting heart diseases among obese and overweight individuals.

A safe option fasting regime

According to a study that was published in the Journal Cell Metabolism they discussed the effects of a strict diet regime on healthy people and have discovered several health benefits.

Frank Madeo a Professor at the University of Graz in Austria said, “In this study, we aimed to explore a broad range of parameters, from physiological to molecular measures. If ADF and other dietary interventions differ in their physiological and molecular effects, complex studies are needed in humans that compare different diets”, according to the Gulf News report.

They conducted an experiment with 60 participants who were enrolled for four weeks and were randomised to either an ADF or an ad libitum control group.

Additionally, the researchers have conducted a study on 30 people who were already in the ADF regime for more than six months.

During the course of the experiment, researchers found biological effects in the ADF groups of participants, one of them is the continuous upregulation of the ketone bodies, which are the chemicals the body makes when not enough insulin is in the blood and it must break down the fat instead of the sugar glucose for energy. This even on non-fasting days, which is seen to have many health benefits.