Intermittent Fasting is the cheapest, the easiest, and the healthiest way for you to reach your health and weight loss goals.

My kids always joke that mom’s favorite word is “Efficient”. Back when they were all little, and it was all I could do to keep all the plates spinning, few things delighted me more than efficiency.

Now that the kids are older and life is less stressful,” efficient” has turned to “lazy”. Luckily they work on the same principle.

Intermittent fasting is one of my favorite life hacks, because it does so many incredible things for your body (and your mind). I can’t think of anything that pays bigger health dividends for such a small outlay.

When you see all the things it can do for you, I hope you’ll agree with me, and give Intermittent fasting a try.

And once you train yourself to do it, it’s easy. In fact, it’s easier than NOT doing it.

Think about it; I could give you a detailed meal plan and tell you to do a bunch of meal prep every Sunday night. And that would work. But it’s also a pain.

Or I could tell you to just chill. In fact, you’re gonna be so lazy, you don’t even have to chew for 16 whole hours! And the rest of the time you get to do whatever the heck you want.

Have You Ever Heard of Anything as Easy as Intermittent Fasting?!

Intermittent fasting has gained huge popularity because of its effectiveness with weight loss. And it’s true, it’s exceptionally successful with weight loss.

I could tell you a dozen ways to lose weight. Some hard, some easy. Some healthy and some not. Usually the easier it is, the less healthy it is. This is one of the few exceptions.

Weight Loss with Intermittent Fasting is Just a Fun, Healthy Side Effect

So, yes, one of the benefits of intermittent fasting is that you end up losing weight, because your body is able to heal and repair itself. Your chronic inflammation and excess “Fluff” goes away. The adipose tissue (fat) that your body keeps around as a safe storage place for toxins is no longer needed, so it melts. These are all healthy reasons for your body to release excess weight. You don’t yoyo or rebound from this kind of weight loss.

Then there are the peripheral benefits, like your body chemicals regulate, and you’re able to produce hormones appropriately. All of a sudden you’re less depressed, and you actually feel like going to the gym today.

And the cascade effects, like, when you are more balanced, your body naturally craves foods that support and nourish it, so, without even thinking, your craving for sugars and simple starches wanes. One day you’ll look in the cupboard and notice that the Oreos have gone stale (Unless, of course, you have the 6 kids.)

Why Does My Body Love Intermittent Fasting So Much?

With Intermittent fasting your body gets the chance to rest and repair. Digestion takes up a lot of energy. 16 hours of rest from having to work on breaking down food allows your body to spend its energy on things like tissue remodeling and regeneration.

You Have to Wash Your Brain

Sleep is a big part of health, as we’ve heard over and over.

One of the most fascinating reasons why is that, when you sleep, your brain cells actually shrink to allow for movement of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). This extra movement while you sleep acts as a “brainwash”. It removes toxins and cleans out junk and debris from between the cells.

This happens during a specific stage of sleep that happens pretty early in the sleep cycle, and it takes a large amount of blood flow to run the process.

If you’ve eaten before bed, that blood is down in your gut, digesting and distributing your food. If you give yourself 4 hours between your last meal and sleep, then while you’re resting, your blood flow is available for the CSF “rinse”. A few years ago researchers discovered that this full “brainwash” process is much faster when you are in a deep sleep. In fact, their studies showed that the process goes twenty times as fast when you are in a deep sleep, as compared to when you’re awake.

No wonder why you feel so good after a great night’s sleep.

Sometimes you just can’t manage 4 hours between dinner and bedtime. A good second best is to skip dinner one or more times per week. This gives your brain that blood it needs for the rinse while you sleep, plus, it’s convenient for those busy nights.

Intermittent Fasting Resists Oxidative Stress

The aging process has been attributed greatly to the process of oxidative stress on the body. That’s why “antioxidant” is such a buzz-word. It really is a big deal.

Minimizing the oxidative stress in the body decreases the processes we think of as “aging”. Antioxidants help neutralize the harmful effects of the free radicals responsible for the oxidative stress. And intermittent fasting helps increase the antioxidant content within your body. All of this keeps your body replicating properly and repairing itself efficiently.

As great as Intermittent Fasting is For Your Brain, It Might Be Even Better For Your Heart

The effects of intermittent fasting on your heart are tied in with the reduction of oxidative stress just mentioned. This oxidative stress is what damages your heart muscles, due to decreased causing ischemic injury (tissue damage due to lack of oxygen) and eventually atherosclerosis.

Another contributor to coronary heart disease is hypertension. Intermittent fasting has been shown to reduce the blood pressure (both systolic and diastolic) and resting heart rate in experimental rodents.

Intermittent fasting works to both provide antioxidant properties, and to increase your resistance to cellular stress.

Intermittent Fasting Starves Cancer Cells

Cancer cells love glucose. They have more glucose receptor sites on their cell membranes than normal body cells. Your healthy cells are equipped to use whatever energy sources are available, like fat or proteins when glucose isn’t available (eg fasting.)

That’s why, when forced into ketosis through fasting, cancer cells die, and healthy cells thrive.

Intermittent Fasting Helps With Diabetes and Insulin Sensitivity

Similar to how intermittent fasting starves cancer cells, the ketogenic state of using fat as fuel is also good for managing insulin levels.

Nearly every disease, ache or pain has some inflammatory component.

We need inflammation as part of our healing process. That’s one of the reasons we don’t down anti-inflammatories any time we have an ache or pain.

But that’s the acute inflammatory process. Chronic inflammation is another story.

Chronic inflammation is a contributor to Alzheimer’s disease asthma, cancer, heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis (AS), type 2 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease. And this is in no way an exhaustive list. Simply a few examples.

As a society, our eating habits lean toward constant over-fueling. This extra stress on the body to digest, store and carry all this excess leads to inflammatory pathways.

Intermittent Fasting Helps with Healthy Gene Expression

When your body senses a shortage of calories it starts to pay attention and prepare, just in case you’re headed into famine. Several messages are triggered in your body when you dot eat for a while. Your body sends hormonal messages to make you able to use stored body fat, and it also starts the process of cellular repair.

While it’s doing those repairs, your body has to make new cells to replace the old, worn out ones. Stressed bodies are like old toner cartridges. They make bad copies. What we normally think of as the aging process is really just a bad copy of a bad copy of a bad copy. Intermittent fasting allows your body the efficiency to express your replication process properly. Like changing your toner cartridge.

Intermittent Fasting Helps Alzheimer’s

Allan Anderson, MD, Director of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Tucson said it best: “In animal studies, intermittent fasting has been shown to increase longevity, improve cognitive function and reduce brain plaque as compared with animals fed a regular diet. One hypothesis is that intermittent fasting enables cells to remove damaged proteins. It has been shown to delay the onset and progression of disease in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s.”

Forget Lifespan, What’s Your Healthspan?

The link between intermittent fasting and longevity alone is enough to convince me to give it a shot. I can be lazy and live longer?

But the best thing here, in my opinion (remember I’m Dr. Gina, with Stay Young Chiropractic. This is kind of my schtick!) is that it improves your HEALTHSPAN.

You’re gonna live longer, but everyone’s doing that these days. Big whoop!

I want you to be like those septuagenarians I often ending up sitting by on the ski lifts. That’s #goals for me, anyway. You can pick what inspires you to stay healthy into your 70s and beyond.

Hopefully now you’re convinced to give it a try. If so, here is a step by step guide on how to do it.

There’s not much cheaper and easier than simply NOT doing something. There are dozens of health benefits from intermittent fasting. Even the side effects of a little boredom at night when you’re hobby snacking, and/or hunger in the morning go away after awhile.

Give Intermittent Fasting a try. And if you need a little help along the way, set up a consult with Dr. Gina.

Another thing that promotes a good immune system, efficient functioning and decreased inflammation is chiropractic adjustments. While we’re on the topic of your health, why not schedule an appointment for a wellness chiropractic visit with Dr Gina, your South Jordan Chiropractor, today.

Interested in monthly health topics with great food and fun neighbors? Come to Dr Gina’s wellness parties. On the second Tuesday of every month at 7pm.