Fasting For Weight Loss - Benefits And Drawbacks

You have probably heard that eating less is always going to help you lose weight. As long as you eat a balanced meal every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, yet cut back on how much your intake actually is, the inevitable result is losing weight without any health risk at all.

Unfortunately, unless you have a very specific diet plan that includes all of the essential ingredients that you will need to stay healthy, you could actually be starving yourself in a multitude of ways that could lead to health issues.

Fasting for weight loss is the next step up, the virtual elimination of food from your diet in order to promote the loss of fat from your body.

There are many benefits and drawbacks to this particular course of action, some of which will be described in this article to help you make an educated decision in regard to fasting and weight-loss.

What The Experts Say

Although most fitness experts will concur that augmenting your diet, and adding a healthy exercise routine, are the two best courses of action to take when trying to lose weight, there are some that believe that fasting can actually provide better results.

It has been reported that dieters that fast actually feel much stronger, especially after the first few days.

The initial 48 hours tends to be very difficult as your body is craving the food that you traditionally eat on a regular basis. Fasting will definitely lead to weight loss, but the problem is that it is only a temporary solution.

Your body will begin to use your fat storage in an attempt to perpetuate your body's activities and energy needs, but then other processes will kick in, which may actually defeat the process of losing weight altogether.

Drawbacks Of Fasting For Weight Loss

One of the main drawbacks to this type of dieting is that the brain needs glucose in order to function. Glucose is actually able to cross the blood brain barrier, providing the cells of your brain with the nutrients that they need.

Since the brain requires glucose to function, an absence of glucose can create very detrimental effects. The primary reason that this will occur is that the brain cannot use the fat that we have stored in our bodies for energy. Many studies have shown that individuals that are fasting actually lose cognitive abilities.

Therefore not only will you feel weaker as a result of not having your traditional food intake, your brain will begin to diminish in its cognitive awareness, allowing you to become more lethargic and have a greater difficulty processing simple things.

Another drawback is the development of a condition called ketosis. When the body begins to break down the fat that you store in order to feed the cells of your body, metabolizing the fat actually creates an abundance of ketone levels in the bloodstream.

Although this is usually associated with individuals that have type I diabetes, a low-carb, high-fat diet, or those that are alcoholics, the development of ketones in abundance leads to acetone in the bloodstream. This causes your blood to become very acidic, and as a result of this, it may actually cause damage to your liver and kidneys.

Is Fasting For Weight Loss Ever Safe?

In the end, it really comes down to a personal choice. Fasting can definitely force your body to go into a state of ketosis, making it use fat reserves that can inevitably lead to losing weight. However, if you fast for too long, the acetone build up within your bloodstream may start to cause kidney and liver damage, something that you want to avoid.

Therefore, it is probably a good idea to fast for a period of days, and then resume a normal healthy diet. This will help you remove the excess fat that your body has been storing, and then allow you to maintain your weight through healthy dieting and exercise.

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