Intermittent Fasting

Please note : we do not prescibe diets here at our practice, this blog is merely to educate patients on the benefits of intermittent fasting. Please see Nutritionist for further advice. 

Fasting is the controlled and voluntary withholding or abstinence of food for spiritual, health or other reasons. Intermittent fasting is a pattern of eating that requires you to change when you eat as opposed to traditional dieting that requires you to change what you eat.

How does it work?

When your body is in the fed state, which is when you begin eating and up to three to five hours as your body digests and absorbs the food you just ate, it is very hard for the body to burn fat because your insulin levels are high. Insulin is the key hormone involved in storage of food energy which is stored in two different ways, either as glycogen which is readily available but with limited storage space and the other is as fat which has an unlimited storage space. When we fast, insulin levels fall, signalling the body to start burning stored energy from our fat stores. It takes up to 12 hours for your body to enter what is known as the post-absorptive state, which is a time period where your body is not processing or digesting a meal. It is after this time period where our bodies enter the fasted state which is the optimal fat burning state.

Potential Benefits:

• Improved mental health
• Improves concentration
• Increases energy levels
• Weight and body fat loss
• Allows you to keep muscle mass on while getting lean
• Lowers blood insulin and sugar levels
• Maintenance and/or reversal of type 2 diabetes
• Increases growth hormone
• Lowers blood cholesterol
• Potential Prevention of Alzheimer’s disease
• Activation of cellular cleansing
• Reduction of inflammation

Examples of intermittent fasting schedules:

Shorter fasts <24hrs

• 16 hours: which involves daily fasting for 16 hours with an 8 hour eating window.
• 20 hours: which involves daily fasting for 20 hours with a 4 hour eating window.

Longer fasts >24hrs

• 24 hours: which involves fasting from dinner to dinner or lunch to lunch.
• 36 hours: which involves fasting for an entire day
• Extended fasting

Some popular intermittent Fasting methods:

• 16/8 Method- Skip breakfast and set an 8 hour block where you eat, then fast for 16hrs.
  • E.g. – eat between 11am – 7pm and fast from that day 7pm to 11am the following day.

• Eat-Stop-Eat- Fasting for 24hr’s once or twice a week.
  • E.g. – Fast from Dinner to dinner the following day, once or twice a week.

• The 5:2 Method – Eat unrestricted for 5 days and then on two non-consecutive days reduce your calorie intake to 500-600
  • E.g- Sunday & Friday restrict your calorie intake to between 500-600, remaining days eat as per normal

Lakeside Chiropractic is located at 3/45 Central Walk, Joondalup; central to Perth’s Northern Suburbs. With a wide range of visitors from many surrounding suburbs, such as: Alkimos, Jindalee, Carramar, Tapping, Ashby, Edgewater, Heathridge, Currambine, Neerabup, Ridgewood, Merriwa and Quinns Rocks. We have onsite HICAPS Facilities available for all major health insurance providers (AHM, HIB, HCF, HBF, NIB) we are also a Medibank preferred practitioner and as of the 18th June 2018 we will be a part of the BUPA Members First network.  If you have any enquires or would like to make an appointment feel free to call us on 08 9300 0095 or visit our website www.lakesidechiro.com.au