There are several ways not only to lose excess weight but also to improve the health of the body at the same time. Short-term and intermittent fasting is one of them.

The word fasting in no case should scare you or create in your imagination images of great sacrifice, suffering, and a strong feeling of hunger. Short-term fasting involves making temporary changes to the diet so that the digestive system can take a break from its usual rhythm.

Intermittent fasting is not a diet

This method of losing weight has nothing to do with the usual refusal of food. You won’t have to count calories or suffer from constant hunger pangs.

First of all, short-term fasting is the introduction of certain changes to the diet, the main purpose of which is to reduce portions and get the body used to proper and healthy food. In this way, you will learn to maintain a stable weight and get rid of food addiction.

Short-term fasting involves increasing the interval between meals. It is easiest to increase the interval between the last meal (dinner) and the first (breakfast). In this way, you will help the body to rest better and absorb food more efficiently. This practice is incredibly effective for those who want to lose excess weight.

What regimen should be followed during fasting?

Some nutritionists advise skipping breakfast or dinner. This option is suitable for you only if you can skip one meal without feeling excessively hungry. Please note that this style of eating should be temporary, you should not abuse fasting.

If you want to try short-term fasting for the first time, we advise you to follow this regime:

• Breakfast – 9 am
• Lunch – 2 pm
• Dinner – until 9 pm

We are sure that most of you have just found out that you have intuitively followed such a fast from time to time without even realizing it. However, some people make serious mistakes by having dinner too late or overeating at night.

If you follow our proposed diet, you will starve for exactly 12 hours.

For those who have successfully practiced 12-hour fasting several times, we offer a more complex diet:

• Breakfast – 11 am
• Lunch is at 3 pm
• Dinner – until 7 pm

With the help of this diet, you will be able to check whether your body tolerates a 16-hour fast. Believe it or not, the earlier you eat dinner, the less hungry you will be in the morning.

If you want to extend the break between meals to 18 hours, you can combine breakfast with lunch or lunch with dinner.

How to fast properly?

The main purpose of short-term fasting is to learn how to eat properly and use only healthy and low-calorie foods after it. We advise you to choose nutritious and satisfying food and to exclude from your diet harmful snacks that do not have any nutritional value.

Foods recommended for use during short-term fasting:

• Cold-pressed vegetable oils of the highest grade (coconut, olive, sesame, etc.)
• Beans
• Eggs
• Nuts
• Seed
• Avocado
• Oat groats
• Buckwheat
• Quinoa

Foods that are better to exclude from your diet during fasting:

• Refined flour products (bakery, crackers, and wheat bread)
• Refined sugar
• Ice cream and other dairy desserts
• Fried dishes
• Meat products (sausage, ham)
• Semi-finished products
• Carbonated sweet waters and packaged juices
• Harmful snacks (chips, crackers)

Useful tips for short-term fasting:

• Drink plenty of water throughout the day. Do not forget that water should not be drunk during meals, but between main meals. Very often, a person confuses the feeling of hunger with a banal violation of the water balance in the body. If you want to eat, drink a glass of water.
• Do not tolerate the feeling of hunger if it becomes unbearable. If you are hungry, have a snack. The main thing is not to abuse harmful snacks, and to choose healthy foods.
• You can’t eat solid food during fasting, but you can safely drink herbal teas.
  Chew your food thoroughly and enjoy your meal. Try to make certain changes to the menu to make the diet more varied and interesting. For example, try a few new recipes and learn to enjoy the process of cooking.
• You should not fast on days when you have a lot of work, when you have to drive all day, or if you have important things waiting for you that requires your full attention and concentration.

By regularly practicing fasting, you will feel a strong motivation to continue working on your own body. Each time, fasting will be easier and easier, and you will get real pleasure from this process, and not suffer.

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A protein diet more effective at the beginning of the fight against accumulated fat

To start losing weight and achieve a quick effect, rely on low-fat varieties of chicken, fish, low-fat dairy foods, eggs, and vegetables.

A protein diet was more effective for those who first began to lose weight than a carbohydrate diet (glycemic). Evidence of the study is published in the medical journal Nutrients.

Low-fat chicken and fish, unsweetened vegetables will help you lose weight faster

Two groups of obese and overweight volunteers who were not friends with sports starting a diet. Some ate a protein diet for 8 weeks, others a carbohydrate diet.

Physicians compared their health and body weight at the beginning and end of the experiment. It turned out that the protein diet is particularly effective:

• it quickly expelled fat,
• improved lipid profile,
• reduced cholesterol in volunteers.

The muscle mass was preserved.

Scientists note that to date, studies comparing the effectiveness of protein and carbohydrate diets are almost non-existent.

Now the situation is fixed: if you have long been going to lose weight, but did not know where to start, then pay attention to a protein diet.

Principle of protein diet:

• eliminate simple carbohydrates (sugar, honey, ripe fruit, candy, pastries, etc.);
• protein foods should make up 60% of the daily diet;
• to help digestion, protein dishes are diversified with a small number of unsweetened vegetables and fruits.

A protein diet helps to lose fat quickly and lose weight in a short time. But it is not suitable for everyone, because the diet is not balanced enough.

You can not be on a protein diet:

• with kidney and liver problems,
• if you have gout, diabetes, problems with blood clotting,
• there are diseases of the digestive system, heart and blood vessels,
• during pregnancy and lactation,
• children and adolescents.

Be sure to consult a doctor before dieting!

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You can find a large section of people making efforts to lose their extra pounds, and a large section of them, you would find, will start up with forming a chart for diet. You will, likewise, find that there is a large section of the aspiring weight losers giving up mid way so to end up gaining back  weight previously lost. This is because they find their diet chart hard to follow. There has been a very recent study which emphasizes on the fact that weight loss is a program which depends more on habit and practice rather than on a momentary desire.

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology is where the book was published. According to the study, people who are keen on weight loss should formulate certain skills to be followed before beginning with the process of weight loss. There were about 260 women participating in the study qualifying as obese. The women were divided into two sections. The first section made efforts to lose weight first followed by a program of maintenance. The other section formulated certain rules that they followed before starting their program for losing weight for twenty weeks. 

The results displayed equal results on both sides. Both the sections had lost equal amounts of weight. But difference showed in the long term effect of the procedures. Whereas the second section gained negligible weight in about a year, the first section gained twice the weight gained by the second section.

The point that has been made out most emphatically is that there needs to be followed up certain set of rules so to form a habit or practice following the program for weight loss should be started. Confidence is a significant aspect that the study emphasizes on as confidence is what is needed to motivate oneself when gaining back weight.

It has been noticed that obese people often keep way from entering the program for weight loss, and the reason cited is the fear to gain weight back. These fears often act as prophecies of the kind that take up self fulfilling nature. It is this fear that causes people on getting back even little weight, which, in turn, maximizes the chance of gaining weight.

People make diet charts to be followed when overweight. But, in actuality, weight loss can be triggered only when there is a right program to be followed up.

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