Summer is just around the corner and it’s time to show off your figure again. After the festive, food-filled Christmas and Chinese New Year, is weight loss in the front row of your New Year’s resolutions? “Even if you eat and drink in moderation, it is inevitable that you will gain weight during the festive season and the Chinese New Year when you eat and drink a lot.
At this time of year, many people choose to work out or control their diet by eating high protein and low-fat foods every day, eating only chicken breasts and fruit and vegetables, and staying away from fried foods and sweets.
The complete adherence to a healthy meal diet is undoubtedly very disturbing to people, because very often a low-calorie diet simply does not satisfy the desire to eat, and people wonder, what is the best way to lose weight even if I eat normally most of the time? At this point, many people may think of the world’s most popular diet in recent years – light fasting
What is “light fasting” dieting?
Light fasting is intermittent fasting and can take several forms.
● Intraday fasting: eating normally for only 8 hours of the day and fasting for the other 16 hours.
●Fast of the week: 2 days of the week, usually non-consecutive days, with the calorie intake limited to 500 kcal and 5 days of normal eating.
●Fast of the Month: 3 non-consecutive days of fasting in a month, with the calorie intake limited to 500kcal on these 3 days and normal eating on the other days.
The most appealing aspect of light fasting is that it claims that you don’t have to control your diet and count calories every day and that you can eat whatever you want during the so-called “normal eating” days, whether it’s a dinner party or a high-calorie snack, you can “eat without fear”. These accumulated problems of blood sugar, blood lipids, and weight gain can be solved with a few “fasting days”.Light fasting also has risks，For example：
1. Prone to rebound
Light fasting, in fact, is also a kind of dieting, all need to adhere to a relatively long period of time, and if you stop dieting, the weight may rebound and aggravate.
2. prone to hypoglycemia
Many people will experience dizziness, weakness in the limbs, fatigue, low mood, ease to get anger, lack of concentration, and other problems after taking a light fasting diet. This will also be a big detriment to your work efficiency.
3. Light fasting is not suitable for special groups of people
Not everyone is suitable for light fasting, such as high blood sugar, low blood sugar, low blood pressure, the elderly, malnourished people are not suitable, blindly using light fasting, can aggravate the condition, or even bring serious consequences. For example, if your BMI is below 20 or you are already malnourished, it would be unwise to restrict your nutritional intake at this time.
The current research on light fasting is basically in 2-3 months, and the effect and safety of light fasting in the long term remains to be seen, so we must grasp the degree, like those methods that are advertised as fast weight loss, the principle of which is mostly to get rid of water in the body, once you resume a normal diet, it is easy to rebound. In fact, NA recommends that people lose weight through a reasonable “keep your mouth shut and your legs open” approach rather than such a diet.
“Keep your mouth shut and your legs open” is a long-established diet that we all talk about. But there are also techniques to keep your mouth shut and your legs open.
Firstly, the diet should meet at least three conditions, namely negative energy balance, low glycemic, and nutritional enrichment. The first is mainly to control our calorie intake, not to let the intake of higher than the calories we consume; the second is to try to avoid a large intake of those foods with high glycemic support, so as not to stimulate insulin secretion, accelerating the synthesis of fat; the third should pay attention to nutritional balance, because long-term lack of that nutrient is not good for our body, and the necessary nutrients are also fat Only rich nutrition can ensure the smooth decomposition of fat.
Secondly, it is important not to let up on exercise. Some people may ask, the greater the amount of exercise, the greater the intensity is not the faster you can lose weight, not so. The amount of calories consumed by exercise is determined by several factors, such as gender, weight, and exercise program, and NA’s advice is that if you belong to an obese group, it is best to be guided by a professional in slimming exercises.
Light fasting is more about improving our quality of life, not just about the number on the scale, so don’t overdo it, especially if you are a special group of people who have blindly adopted light fasting and ended up with no success in losing weight, but also brought serious harm to your body.
Light Fasting Food Programme
1. 5+2 pattern of light fasting
Every week, 2 light fasting days and 5 low GI main food days, e.g. Wednesdays and Saturdays can be set as light fasting days.
Light fasting day: Light fasting meal pack x 3 + 100 g of fruit + 500 g of vegetables. Low GI staple days: normal breakfast and lunch, low GI meal pack for dinner. 2.
2. Nutritional recommendations during light fasting
Desirable: Mixed grain staples, pulses, vegetables, eggs, milk, low-fat meats (fish, prawns, skinless poultry).
Avoid: fried foods, sugary drinks, desserts, barbecues, hot pots, and pans.
Light fasting days
Water: Drink plenty of water, make sure you have at least 8 glasses of water a day, and encourage clear coffee and tea (no milk, sugar, companions).
Fruits: Choose fruits with high satiety such as apples, grapefruit, papaya, blueberries, citrus, etc. Avoid fruits with high simple sugar content such as durian and pineapple honey, and do not substitute fruits with dried fruit products.
Vegetables: Choose vegetables that are cooked with less oil and sugar. Stir-frying, raw and blanched are recommended, and avoid blue vegetables with high starch content such as potatoes and corn.
General rule: Ensure that the recipes for light fasting are strictly followed and recorded accordingly.
Low GI Staple Food Day
Three meals: focus on breakfast and lunch to ensure nutritional intake
Meal replacement: Low GI meal packs for dinner, vegetables, and meat, avoiding overeating
Life: Stay on schedule, avoid late-night snacking and get plenty of sleep
Snacks: avoid fruit and dairy products as an addition to meals
Staple foods: Avoid all staple foods such as refined rice and noodles, and advocate replacing half of the staple foods with potatoes, legumes, and other miscellaneous foods.
You must keep your mouth shut when you’re losing weight, everyone knows meat tastes good and everyone knows skinny looks good! You must drink more water during weight loss! To get twice the result with half the effort, then both keep your mouth shut and keep your legs open, combined with exercise and fitness, you can definitely lose weight! You’ll be able to get your body to slim down!