I've been hearing this question a lot: is it safe to lose weight by fasting? The answer is, fasting is safe if you do it properly; but it's a much less effective weight loss technique than many people realize. Here's why.
By definition, fasting is self-starvation. Fasting involves changes to your metabolic processes and your body functions that can, when experienced occasionally, provide numerous health benefits. Fasting tends to act as a detoxifying process because the body is thrown into a different metabolic state.
The bad news is that the changes which occur to the metabolism slow it down. No matter what anyone tries to tell you, if you eat less, and your activity level stays the same, your metabolism slows down. The result is that you burn fewer calories. A week or two after the fast, as your metabolism returns to normal levels, you might benefit from the greater metabolic efficiency of a healthier body-but when you're trying to lose weight, this is a roundabout way to do it.
I won't go into great detail about what happens if you fast the wrong way, but it isn't pretty. When the body needs energy, it finds it, and will consume any part of you it needs to in order to keep going. Fasting should only be done with the guidance of a trained health professional and it isn't really the most effective way to lose weight. If you fast unsafely, then it is not safe to lose weight by fasting.
A safer approach is to modify your diet in a way that will increase your metabolism. You'll benefit immediately from higher energy levels and greater weight loss. Increasing your metabolism through diet modifications is called calorie cycling, and involves eating more on certain days and less on others. Your body adopts the higher metabolic rate that comes with increased caloric consumption, but you lose weight on your "light eating" days.
The best-known and most effective diet plan that employs calorie cycling is called FatLoss4Idiots. When I posted a FatLoss4Idiots review on my dieting help site recently, I started getting tons of positive feedback. FatLoss4Idiots is popular for a reason-it works.
Aaron Patterson
Author Bio
The author, Aaron Patterson, went from couch potato to kickboxer in less than a year! His favorite passion is helping people get off their butts and start leading healthier, more active lives through his Website, www.eliminatetheweight.com
