Winter is a happy season for some exciting festivals such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but it is also a harvest season. Why? In fact, here what you’re to harvest is not fruits or crops but FAT, even a large pound of fat. As is known to all, it is much easier for people to gain fat in winter, compared with that in the other three seasons, So, if you don’t want to gain fat and maintain your original weight, or even lose weight, something must be done from now on and intermittent fasting may be a solution worth trying.
And there is no doubt that you must learn about some necessary information in order to do it successfully.
What is Intermittent Fasting and Overnight Fasting?
Intermittent fasting, also known as fasting, is a useful way to lose weight, and keep healthy. When fasting, you are required to eat during a specific time only and must stop eating during the rest of the time. Fasting is thought to be a natural process because the diet mode of intermittent fasting conforms to that held by human ancestors who could suffer from hunger for a long time before finding something to eat. The core of intermittent fasting lies in its control that strictly regulates eating and fasting time periods to provide the consumed food enough time to be metabolized to finally stop fat from being generated.
Fasting has a wide range of health benefits for both body and the brain, like increasing the levels of antioxidant enzymes, which help repair cellular damage. Besides, fasting has also been linked to a reduction in inflammation and the cellular processes that can trigger Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
There are numerous plans for intermittent fasting and all of them are based on regular eating and fasting schedules, such a plan as Warrior Diet, 16:8, 12:12, 5:2, and overnight fasting, among which overnight fasting is quite popular due to its high efficiency and convenience to burn fat.
Overnight fasting is the commonest type of fast for 12 hours a day, which requires fasters not to eat anything among 12 hours from the moment to go to bed until the next day morning, thus helping maintain a circadian rhythm. In addition, there is research proving that with 24-hour access to some food, those eating the biggest meal of the day in the morning gained less weight than those who ate their biggest meal at the end of the day and before sleep.
For example, you could choose to fast between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. In order to fast correctly, you would need to finish your dinner before 7 p.m. and wait until 7 a.m. the next day to eat breakfast. However, during this period, water and beverage without sugar can be consumed when food and drink are deeply craved.
Why Overnight Fasting?
So, after reading above, some of you may have such a question that why overnight fasting is so recommended, and there are two reasons. On one hand, overnight fasting has a long history background, and the most widespread and best-known one is Jewish people’s Fasting Day. Due to different sources and purposes, the specific practice also has a difference. In general, the purpose of fasting can be classified into the following types including commemorating an unfortunate event, repenting, achieving self-purification, restraining people’s desire for material, and promoting spiritual strength. On that day, Jewish people are not allowed to eat anything or drink some beverages, like alcohol. And some of them even are asked not to take a shower and wear shoes all day. What’s more, such a custom still remains.
On the other hand, the efficiency of overnight fasting has been proved by scientists. As a director of the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston Medical Center, Caroline Apovian, once being interviewed by an interviewee from BU Today, proved that an overnight diet can help people lose as many as nine pounds in the first week while offering an abundance of food options, including chocolate. At the same time, she said that this diet also has earned the endorsement of some medical peers, including Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, who described the Overnight Diet as the easy-to-follow, rapid weight loss plan that dieters were desperately looking for.
Rules to Effectively Start Overnight Fasting
Some of you perhaps cannot help doing overnight fasting right now with a belief that it is very easy to start, and it is enough to restrain your food intake after dinner. However, as an old saying goes, practice makes louder than theory, that is to say, you can never make a judgment before really knowing it. But it doesn’t mean that as a fasting beginner, you cannot do it successfully. Once you control your food intake according to the specific recommend strictly and continuously, at the same time, obey these following rules to the most extent, then you are very likely to arrive at your goal.
Don’t Stay Up Late
You may already know that sleeping earlier is good for health, but do you know that sleep has a close tie with weight loss. Numerous studies have suggested that restricted sleep and poor sleep quality may lead to metabolic disorders, weight gain, and an increased risk of obesity and other chronic health conditions. Most importantly, research has also shown that lacking sleep while dieting can reduce the amount of weight loss and encourage overeating. In addition, a study finds that people who slept more lost fatter than the group who slept less. More than half of the weight loss during the 8.5 hours of sleep was fat versus only one-quarter of the weight loss during the 5.5 hours of sleep. People literally burned fat while they slept. So, in order to ensure the quality of intermittent fasting, and lose much fat, you are advised to sleep as soon as possible and have an efficient sleep.
Eat Healthily
Some of you may also in the myth that you can eat whatever you want, even eating junk food all day, just as you eat nothing after dinner. The fact is that without a balanced and healthy eat, it is also impossible for you to achieve your losing goal. A balanced and healthy diet means that you should put these kinds of foods on your plate.
Fruits
- Choose whole fruit over fruit juice
- Choose from a variety based on color
- Have fruit with your main meals: breakfast, lunch, or dinner
- Add frozen, canned, or dried fruit to your meal/snack/smoothie
Vegetables
- Choose from a variety based on color
- Start your day with a vegetable (in any form)
- Add beans, peas, or lentils in your salad or side dishes
- Snack on vegetables salads, veggie sticks, stir-fry/steamed vegetables
Grains
- Choose at least half are whole grain
- Start your day with grains
- Enjoy whole grains in different ways
- Have grains for snacks
Protein foods
- Choose lean protein, including meats, poultry, eggs, fish, seafood, nuts and seeds, beans, peas, lentils and soy products
- Start your day with a protein food
- Have a seafood dish at least once a week, preferably oil fish
- Enjoy nuts, seeds, and soy products
Dairy
- Choose low fat or fat-free dairy, lactose-free dairy or fortified unsweetened plant-based alternatives.
- Start your day with dairy
- Snack on dairy
- Consider lactose-free dairy and fortified unsweetened plant-based alternatives
Oil
- Use mostly vegetables oils for cooking instead of fats such as butter, ghee or lard
- Reduce or replace fat in recipe with oils. (e.g. use olive oil in banana bread instead of butter)
- Try a new oil for salad dressing, such as sesame oil, flax-seed oil.
- Use oil spray to reduce oil used for cooking.
Use a Tool if Necessary
The above tips are very useful to lose weight with a strong self-control ability. However, if you are the one who have a weak insistence, and a bad memory to do fasting every day, you must turn to some auxiliary tools, such as an app. Here you are suggested to download and use Fastyle.
Fastyle is an easy-to-use intermittent fasting tracker app. From Fastyle, you’ll get customized guidance, useful tips and constant motivation along your journey of fasting till your goal is achieved.
Bottom Line
- Fasting is a good way helping maintain weight and lose weight, and it has several eating patterns. Overnight fasting suits fasting beginners most among them.
- Overnight fasting has a long history, and has been proved by scientists to be beneficial for burning fat, thus helping lose weight.
- In order to ensure the efficiency of fasting, you are recommended to have a balanced and healthy diet, at the same time, try to sleep as earlier as possible.
- If you really have a poor memory and bad self-control ability, it is wise for you to turn to an app, and Fastyle can be believed as a best choice.
Reference Articles:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34579042/
https://weillcornell.org/ljaronne
https://drmache.com/interview-dr-caroline-apovian-age-defying-diet/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4861065/
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2013/overnight-diet-fast-permanent-weight-loss/
- How to Do Intermittent Fasting Based on a Shift Work Schedule
- Do Nuts Break a Fast and a List of Nuts on Calories
- 5 Steps Starter Pack to Combine Mindful Eating with Intermittent Fasting
- Mindful eating
- Warrior Diet
