Is intermittent fasting a healthy way to lose weight?

If you skip meals just to lose weight without a nutritionist’s guidelines, chances are, you might miss out on the food values that are necessary for the body. Dieudonne Bukaba, a private nutritionist at Avega Clinic Remera, says intermittent fasting (IF) is an eating style where you eat within a specific time period, and fast the rest of the time. Though intermittent fasting is an effective way to lose weight, it’s less a diet and more a lifestyle choice. He adds, there are different intermittent fasting methods. With bulletproof intermittent fasting, you get the benefits of fasting without feeling like you’re starving yourself. “When you don’t eat any food for a set period of time each day, you do your body and your brain a whole lot of good. It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. For most of history, people weren’t eating three square meals a day, plus grazing on snacks. Instead, humans evolved in situations where there wasn’t much food, and they learned to thrive when fasting. Nowadays, we don’t have to hunt for food, rather, we spend most of our days in front of computers, and we eat whenever we want even though our bodies aren’t adapted to this behaviour,” he notes. Research shows that humans are well adapted to fasting from time-to-time. Fasting has benefits for weight loss, metabolic health, disease prevention and may even help you live longer. According to Healthline, as long as you stick to healthy foods, restricting your eating window and fasting from time-to-time can have some very impressive health benefits. It is an effective way to lose fat, while simplifying your life at the same time. Bukaba explains that switching to an intermittent fasting diet expands your limits and boosts your performance in a number of ways. Here are some of the powerful benefits of intermittent fasting: It boosts weight loss, increases energy, promotes cellular repair and autophagy (when your body consumes defective tissue in order to produce new parts), and reduces insulin resistance and protects against type 2 diabetes. He adds that intermittent fasting lowers bad cholesterol, promotes longevity, protects against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, improves memory, boosts brain function, and makes cells more resilient. Leah Mfiteyesu, a dietician at Nutri-Santé Nutrition cabinet Kicukiro, says if you want to lose weight in a healthy way, visit a nutritionist to help you make a meal plan according to your weight, height, and your health history. She adds, intermittent fasting can make you skip meals which can lead to fewer intake of calories, to some people who can follow it, it can work, however, to others, it can’t work. The problem is, some people think if they skip meals they are taking fewer calories, yet when they eat, they take more calories at once. This can lead to weight gain. “Many issues have to be considered apart from the diet because if not guided by a nutrition expert, you might just eat anything that you feel like, which might result in complications like stomach ache, anaemia, since intermittent fasting doesn’t specify what to eat and what to leave out. The right feeding should be a balanced diet. “It is not necessary to skip meals, you instead take little, which is composed of vegetables, proteins, and some carbohydrates,” she says. Bukaba says, people who should not consider intermittent fasting are; those with diabetes or other metabolic disorders, people taking medications that require food, anyone with a history of disordered eating, women who are pregnant or trying to conceive, children and teenagers, and anyone who requires a consistent, healthy input of calories throughout the day to be healthy. He also says that intermittent fasting has some disadvantages; you may deal with low blood sugar, it might make you feel sick or fatigued in the morning, especially if you work out, and you might also feel hungrier. editor@newtimesrwanda.com

Lifestyle

Is intermittent fasting a healthy way to lose weight?