The time has come to pay the bill for a confined 2020 in which food, drink, and streaming were the protagonists of entertainment.
One of the complaints I have heard most in my practice, besides the issues related to the face, is linked to weight gain and loss of lean mass in the pandemic.
Taking care of the body in 2021 has become a priority for many people for aesthetic, health, and even mental reasons.
In this context, intermittent fasting has become an essential weapon and physical activity and advanced body treatments. It's all anyone talks about.
But there are some crucial doubts, and I invited nutritionist Patricia Davidson Haiat to help clarify them.
1. Intermittent
Fasting Is A Diet
Myth. In fact, intermittent fasting is a diet strategy that can enhance some diets or weight maintenance. This strategy is characterized by deprivation of food intake for a few hours.
The adequacy of the eating window (the person's period of eating) is fundamental for better execution and results.
2. There Is Only
One Type of Fasting
Myth. There are two types of intermittent fasting: caloric and metabolic. In the first, only liquids such as water, tea, and coffee without sugar or sweeteners can be consumed because no calories can be ingested.
In the latter, small amounts of good fats like coconut oil, TCM (a type of oil called medium-chain triglycerides), or unsweetened coconut milk can be ingested without influencing insulin levels in a way that conditions the body to use fat as an energy source. I.e., metabolically, you are not stimulating glucose or insulin increases.
In both types of fasting, you can do it for 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 24, or even 36 or more hours.
3. Avoid Starting
with Longer Fasts
Truth. The ideal is to make a progression, even starting with alternate days. For Patricia, starting with many hours of fasting is one of the most common mistakes.
Other mistakes are eating light or diet foods sweetened with sweetener during the fasting period, eating freely to compensate for the hours without eating, eating the wrong foods, and eating more times a day.
4. Fasting Benefits
the Skin
Truth. Since this eating strategy rests for the digestive system and involves reducing the intake of inflammatory foods, improving sugar and hormone control (such as insulin and cortisol), there is a direct impact on skin quality, especially in acne conditions.
Therefore, intermittent fasting is, yes, beneficial for beauty.
5. Fasting Is
Dangerous for Your Health
Myth. According to the nutritionist, it improves insulin and cholesterol levels, reduces blood pressure, causes cognitive improvement, reduces the risk of metabolic syndrome, anxiety, and binge eating because it controls the levels of ghrelin and leptin.
Besides that, it improves digestion, causes a reduction in sugar consumption, taste alteration, energy improvement, focus and concentration, cellular repair, which favors longevity and the elimination of unhealthy cells we produce.
Besides weight loss, explains the nutritionist, who reinforces the importance of using this strategy with professional monitoring and appropriate indication especially in people with diabetes using insulin or diabetics taking oral medications, as well as people who have a speedy metabolism, with some metabolic disease that cures with weight loss, children, adolescents in the growth phase, malnourished people, pregnant women or women who are exclusively breastfeeding.
6. Sleeping Counts
as Fasting.
Truth. The period when you are sleeping should be included in your fasting, which makes it easier to adhere to the strategy of having dinner a little earlier and delaying the first meal of the day by a few hours.
After this moment, you will have your diet normalized. This way, it is not so drastic.
7. Fasting Improves
Gastritis
Myth. Because fasting plays a vital role in improving digestion and resting the stomach, it can help gastritis, yes, but only if you also reduce the intake of inflammatory foods.
Depending on what is consumed, gastritis can even worsen. I note that if the person overdoes it with mucosal irritants, such as coffee all the time and more than they drank before, it can be a worsening agent.
8. Fasting Exercises
Are Good for You
Truth. It is not a necessity to train fasting, according to the nutritionist. You can train right after the end of fasting when you have your first meal.
She observes, however, that fasting training is good because studies show that fasting activity increases the efficiency of the mitochondria, which are our energy-producing plants, ensuring more energy, longevity, cellular health, and more performance in burning fat.
9. Lean Mass Is
Lost
Myth. Fasting can help you gain lean mass as long as the feeding window is adjusted, especially in protein and carbohydrate, as well as the hormone levels, especially testosterone, cortisol, insulin, etc good quality of sleep.
But if you have intense strength training, want to gain lean mass but don't eat adjusted to this reality, you will undoubtedly lose lean mass.
Therefore, attention needs to be redoubled regarding food choices in the period when the person is going to eat, the so-called feeding window.
10. Fasting Food
Cannot Be Done in Menopause
Myth. Many menopausal women have insulin resistance caused by the reduction of female sex hormones, and other symptoms such as weight gain, high blood pressure, increased cholesterol, and increased abdominal fat often occurs.
In this sense, fasting in menopause is beneficial because it is a strategy to decrease insulin, reduce blood pressure, and help in weight loss.
To run after the 2020 loss, concerning the body, intermittent fasting can be an exciting strategy.
I am sure that if you associate a well-guided eating routine with physical exercises and bet on super innovative treatments for hypertrophy such as Emsculpt, to recover the loss of lean mass. On bio stimulators, the results will be excellent.