A lot of people hate diets because it means the normal foods they enjoy can no longer be consumed or else a lot of extra fat will pile up on their bodies.
These diets are restrictive, boring and aren’t very flexible.
That’s where a new kind of diet fixes.
This diet isn’t based on what a person eats as much as it is on when a person eats.
Known as intermittent fasting, this diet restricts how much a person eats in a certain time period.
While it’s been popular for a few years now, there haven’t been all that many studies showing why it works,
Now, researchers believe they may have an idea as to why intermittent fasting allows you to eat the foods you enjoy and still lose weight.
Intermittent Fasting Resets Your Body’s Clock So You Can Lose Weight
Our circadian rhythms, the natural rhythms that regulate certain functions in our body. One of the main ones regulated is our metabolic rate.
Researchers believe by restricting the amount of food we eat and driving our body into ketosis; it can help to alter how our metabolism works.
In a new study, researchers split two groups of mice in two.
One group of the mice was given food based on intermittent fasting principles and the other was allowed to eat whenever they wanted.
Both groups were given the same amount of food (in terms of calories and fat). And yet, even though the ate the same amount, the mice that ate whenever they wanted ended up gaining more weight than the other group.
In fact, the intermittent fasting group developed far fewer metabolic issues.
“The authors noted that the animals’ circadian oscillations were more robust in the fasting group.
As the authors of the recent study point out, “[F]asting appears to be a strong metabolic cue to entrain rhythmic gene expression.”
Scientists believe that having more clearly defined cycles might be part of the reason that fasting promotes good health.”
Another Study Confirmed How Well Intermittent Fasting Work
Another study (with mice) confirmed what the first study found.
In that study, they did make one change. They changed the physical activity they were exposed to.
The researchers noted “that while fasting, mice used less oxygen and energy. However, as soon as the mice ate, these gene-driven physiological changes were reversed. This mirrors what researchers have previously seen in humans.
Lead study author Prof. Paolo Sassone-Corsi explains what the researchers found, saying, “We discovered [that] fasting influences the circadian clock and fasting-driven cellular responses, which together work to achieve fasting-specific temporal gene regulation.”
They also note that it influenced different tissue types to different degrees. As Prof. Sassone-Corsi says, “Skeletal muscle, for example, appears to be twice as responsive to fasting as the liver.”
Anecdotally many people who try intermittent fasting swear the results they achieve are unlike anything they can get through regular dieting.
Because intermittent fasting is relatively untested, some people question its safety.
And yet, evolutionarily speaking, intermittent fasting doesn’t seem to pose any problems as we were once conditioned to the feast or famine cycle.
