From women’s health
If your Instagram feed is any indication, try to get everyone and their mom fixed at intervals from time to time, and maybe you are interested in that too. People swear alternating fasting can have various benefits, from restoring the relationship with food to weight loss. But it can be difficult to do it right and understand what food and drink break a fast (and thus defeats the purpose of having a fixed window).
This is the thing: fasting does not mean you have to go all day or all day without doing it anything in your body. And while the fasting police will not come after you if you do not fast perfectly, it is logical that you want to do it the right way.
You can probably guess that water is good (and a must) during a fast window – you still have to stay hydrated – but what about things like coffee and tea, which are ~ basically ~ water? And can you also have some sugar or cream in it, or is it off limits? Is there some kind of calorie limit here? What is also the best thing to eat and drink when you are ready to fast?
So many questions! But do not stress – dieticians have * all * the answers here for you that break quickly and well.
Here’s a quick refresher on what it means to fast now and then.
Before we investigate what you may and may not eat and drink, it is a good idea to check what is fasting in the first place. Intermittent fasting focuses on following a pattern of periods of eating and fasting, that is, when you eat and do not eat. Intermittent fasting usually lasts for a certain number of hours or even days excreted during the week.
There are many types of intermittent fasting to choose from, but some of the more popular forms include the 16: 8 diet, where you fast for 16 hours a day and eat only for eight hours (most people tend to stop eat in the evening, like 18:00, and then wait to eat again until 16 hours later), and the 5: 2 diet, where you eat less than 500 calories two non-consecutive days a week (for men it is less than 600 calories) and eat normally the rest of the time.
Research has linked alternating fasting with lower insulin levels and blood pressure and increased appetite control. Some people also lose weight while fasting occasionally.
The idea is that any amount of calories can technically break down quickly and should be avoided while in a fast window.
Technically, fasting means not having any kind of food. As a result, “Any amount of calories will break down quickly,” says Scott Keatley, RD, of Keatley Medical Nutrition Therapy.
“The rule of thumb that floats around on the internet is that 50 calories will break down quickly, but it is based on the experience of one random man and has been repeated so often that people believe it to be true,” he says. But, Keatley emphasizes, “Any amount of calories will break down quickly [because] the ingested energy will be broken down as quickly as possible and supplied to your cells. ”
Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast research that gives a set number of calories that are good to fast, says Jessica Cording, MS, RD, author of The little booklet of game changers. Plus, she says, everyone’s metabolism is different, and what you start quickly can be different than what it does for your friend.
There is also the following, according to Cording: “Once you consume enough calories to give your body energy to do anything, it will get you out of that fasting state because your body has been given fuel to work with.” If you have an amount of calories, it means throwing the dice while leaving your solid state.
Here are your best options if you want to * take * something * during your fixed window.
Again, fasting by definition means you have no food, so it’s actually more about what you can drink. These include:
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Water. “Water is definitely good,” Keatley says. It includes still or sparkling water, although flavored water gets a little dark because it usually contains calories.
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Coffee. Black coffee contains about five calories per cup, which is technically nothing, Keatley points out. Yet he says that most people drink black coffee during fasting periods and it goes well. Only skip additives such as milk, creator or sugar. “It will have an effect on your quick effect,” says Cording.
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Tea. Baked tea usually contains the same calories as a cup of black coffee or less. The same rules apply here as for coffee, says Cording.
Some people will drink chicken broth or bone broth, or add MCT oil, ghee or coconut oil to their coffee during a quick time, but all of this will break your quick Cording notes. Broth is surprising, but Cording points out that bone broth in particular contains a lot of protein. “What can happen is that if you take the sauce, you use amino acids as fuel and then you are no longer in the fasting state,” she says.
It is probably also better to wait until you are consuming supplements or vitamins until your eating window.
It’s a little tricky. “Vitamins and minerals contain no calories – these are the things that companies contain along with the vitamins that contain calories,” says Keatley. Usually, salt, potassium and ‘different sugars’ are used to bind the vitamins and minerals as a delivery system, he says, adding that ‘the only revision of the ingredient list on your multivitamin is safe.’ Generally, most vitamins contain seven to ten calories each, although gums have more because of their sugar content, Keatley says.
There is also something to consider: if you are taking a fat-soluble vitamin like vitamin D, you will really want it with food, because it is better absorbed into your body with fat, says Cording.
In general, Cording says that it is better to try to take supplements during your non-fasting state, just to be safe.
If you are ready to break fast, this is what you should eat.
Time to break fast? Enter it gently and choose wisely. Eating a lot of foods high in carbohydrates and sugar in a short period of time will not make you feel good, says Cording. “If you drop a large amount of carbohydrates in an empty stomach into your bloodstream, you will feel uncomfortable,” she says. ‘It can enable you to cause glycemic instability throughout the day, which can cause problems with energy levels and appetite control. It can work against you. ‘
It’s easy to overeat if you break fast (because hello, you’re hungry!), But it can help to plan what you’ll do if you eat again. “If you want to give this diet a try, plan, plan and provide it in your life,” says Keatley.
Cording recommends starting with ‘something on the smaller side’ that also contains a lot of fat, such as nuts and seeds, which she calls ‘a good starting point’. For example, you can drink a handful of almonds while making a larger meal to get your stomach to eat again.
Since you only have so much time in your day to fit in healthy foods, Keatley says it’s best to focus on nutritious options. “I would recommend a complete protein that contains healthy fats and contains vitamins and minerals, such as eggs,” he says. “You still need to get about 25 to 35 grams of fiber in your system, so you should also put high-fiber products like beans, legumes and everything that ends up on -berry on the plate.” Healthy oils like avocado and olive oil can also give you energy, he says.
Then Keatley recommends that you “pause for a few hours and go again with the same formula, but different foods.”
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