Fasting to Lose Weight – Some Tips and Cautions

Fasting to lose weight is one of the many ways people use to achieve rapid weight loss. It would be natural to assume that since eating too much food leads to weight gain, fasting would be helpful in cutting down the total amount of calories that you take. Fasting has also been used by patients for weight management, to rest the digestive tract and for lowering lipids.

There are some things that you will want to know before you start fasting to lose weight. Here are some tips, as well as cautions to keep in mind before you start your fast in your journey to lose weight.

If you’ve always had problems with sticking to diets and self-discipline, one way to help you go through your fasting program is to have a fasting partner. Having someone to fast together with you helps to create that buddy support to go through the initial stages where you’re just getting used to fasting. It can get you through the tough days. Having another person to fast with can also keep you accountable.

Cautions About Fasting To Lose Weight

Here are some cautions about fasting to lose weight - Fasting to lose weight can be hazardous to your health if you are not already leading a healthy lifestyle. If you have a pre-existing health condition, fasting will only make your body and immune system more vulnerable. So if you intend to start on a fasting program to lose weight, check with your doctor especially if you have any health issues.

Fasting and liquid diets may promote rapid weight loss, but not permanent fat loss. So fasting for weight loss doesn't work as well as you would hope. To begin with, many people don't realize that a large percentage of their daily water intake comes from solid foods, not liquids. So the initial amount of weight lost doesn’t come from loss of fat, but from loss of water. But still, there are benefits to fasting other than just the initial loss of water weight.

Fasting To Lose Weight Benefits

Other benefits for fasting are to regain lost energy, heighten clarity of consciousness, enhance innate spirituality, cleanse, rest, regenerate, and rejuvenate the body along with the weight loss. Fasting develops mental will power and increased control over the senses and mind. Overall, if you go on fast, you will benefit more than just from losing some weight.

Fasting gives the digestive tract time to completely rest and strengthen its mucosal lining. A healthy intestinal mucosal lining is necessary for preventing the leakage of incompletely digested proteins into the bloodstream, thereby offering protection against autoimmune conditions.

Fasting triggers a truly wondrous cleansing process that reaches right down to each and every cell and tissue in the body. Within 24 hours of curtailing food intake, enzymes stop entering the stomach and travel instead into the intestines and into the bloodstream, where they circulate and gobble up all sorts of waste matter, including dead and damaged cells, unwelcome microbes, metabolic wastes, and pollutants.

Generally speaking, fasting hastens the destruction of the decaying tissues of the body by means of hunger, and then builds new tissues through nutrition. This is why some scientists suggest that fasting should be regarded as an effective means of restoring youthfulness and longevity.

So while fasting may not directly help you in getting rid of extra fat, it can help you to become healthier in other ways.

Preparing For Your Fast

Prepare the body with a raw food diet and juice to minimize shock on the system. It also acts as neutralizing and purifying agents to cleanse the blood. Prepare yourself physically by taking enough food and also plenty of liquids the day before. Prepare yourself mentally by deciding the night before fasting: "Tomorrow is fasting day, and I am not going to eat anything." If you take this mental determination prior to the fasting day, you will not be hungry during the fasting day.

A prolonged fast should result in the loss of about 5-7 pounds of fecal material from the colon, but this amount is quickly regained upon feeding. Fasting to lose weight is a very popular method among those who have a great amount of weight to lose, or want to learn discipline while they are dieting. However, this route can be extremely dangerous if you are not careful.

Ending Your Fast For Weight Loss

Generally, the longer the fast, the longer it should take to return to the normal diet. It’s also important to chew thoroughly and avoid overeating. The temptation is to start gobbling all your favorite foods that you couldn’t eat while on the fast, and this may lead to excessive eating after your fast. So remember to take it slow, and allow yourself to ease back into your normal (and healthy) diet. You may even find that you don’t really want or need to eat that big a portion as you normally do!

In Summary

Health results from healthful living. No matter how successful a fasting experience might be, it needs to be followed by a consistently healthy lifestyle. Healing takes a lot of the body’s resources and energies, digestion takes up a lot too. You still need nutrients, vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and all the wonderful stuff that helps us rebuild our sick cells and detoxify the body.

Fasting to lose weight should be done with extreme care if at all. Fasting to lose weight is simply not a good way to stay skinny long term. But when combined with an overall healthy lifestyle, fasting not only helps you to lose weight by eating less overall, it also helps to promote a healthier state of being.