Intermittent Fasting For Dummies. Janet Bond Brill

If she makes her dog walking a daily routine, she gets to add an additional 100 calories to her treats stash or 550 calories per night during her five non-fasting days. Five hundred and fifty calories translate into 8 ounces of red wine (approximately 200 calories) plus an additional 350-calorie high volume, slow-eating snack such as a huge bowl of popcorn. No deprivation here!

      

Red wine in moderation is a heart-healthy habit. However, doctors advise against beginning to drink if you don’t already do so. Exercise caution with any alcohol consumption because alcohol carries with it the risk of overindulgence, with many negative health effects. According to the American Heart Association, moderate consumption is one to two drinks per day for men and one drink per day (5 fluid ounces) for women. If you have any doubts about whether it’s safe for you to consume wine or any type of alcohol, ask your personal physician.

      Trying just one more time

      Several intermittent fasting approaches can succeed in helping you attain your goals. Intermittent fasting has many healthful effects on your body such as flipping your metabolic switch and changing your hormonal balance, which contribute to weight loss. But make no mistake about it, intermittent fasting doesn’t work through magic, and these plans don’t work through some secret bio-hack. Intermittent fasting lifestyles cause weight and body fat loss primarily by creating a sustained calorie deficit.

If you’ve tried intermittent fasting for a few weeks and haven’t lost any weight (or maybe you’ve even gained a little) despite doing everything by the book, you can easily get discouraged and give up. One of the major mistakes people make when first trying this lifestyle is giving up too soon. This lifestyle takes time to adjust to and for you to see results. If the plan isn’t working for you after say six weeks, switch to a different intermittent fasting schedule or better yet, come back to this chapter and do the calorie math. The calculations enable you to pinpoint where the problem areas are in your calorie intake (food consumption) and/or calorie output (exercise). Just remember to keep at it.

Chapter 4

      Understanding the Link Between Weight and Health

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      

Facing the facts about excess fat

      

Fighting back against heredity

      

Getting healthier with a more active you

      If you’re overweight and have been trying to lose weight, you are far from alone. The latest national stats on dieting have found that nearly half of American adults are trying to trim their widening waistlines. This is a smart move — being overweight is harmful to your health.

      According to the experts, obesity rates continue to escalate — approximately 72 percent of U.S. adults are now overweight. Add to this statistic the fact that their physical activity rates are abysmally low, and you have the perfect recipe for creating the epidemic of type 2 diabetes that plagues the United States.

      

Scientists differentiate between the terms overweight and obese, using the body mass index (BMI) calculation. Overweight is defined as having a BMI between 25 and 29.9. Obesity is defined as having a BMI of 30 or more. Both terms are used to identify people who are at risk for health problems from having too much body fat. However, obese generally means a much higher amount of body fat than overweight. Everyone who falls in the obese range is overweight, but not the other way around. Refer to Chapter 2 where I discuss the BMI in greater detail.

Clearly, many Americans need to lose weight. In fact, even a modest weight loss of just 10 percent of your body weight can treat and often reverse the un-healthy conditions associated with being overweight.

Discovering What the Scientists Know about Being Overweight

      Everyone needs some body fat for good health. When people eat more calories than they use, their bodies store the extra calories as fat. A couple of pounds of extra body fat is no big deal for most people. The problem arises when people continue this pattern of eating more calories than they burn (creating a calorie surplus) over an extended period of time.

      More and more fat builds up in the body, and eventually the amount of body fat is so great that it can harm a person’s health. Many doctors use the terms overweight or obese to tell if someone has a greater chance of developing serious weight-related health problems from excess body fat. The good news is, when you lose weight and the closer you can get to a normal weight (a BMI under 25), the greater the health benefits.

      

In today’s looks-obsessed society, many people are more concerned that being overweight is an appearance issue. But being overweight is a lot more than aesthetics. A BMI higher than 25 is a medical concern because it can seriously affect your health.

      If you know that your BMI is above 25 and that the extra poundage is from too much fat and not muscle, then read on to see the toll that this condition can eventually take on your body.

      Enumerating the numerous health risks of being overweight

      Too much body fat is bad news for both your body and mind. Not only can being overweight make you feel tired and uncomfortable, carrying extra weight also puts added stress on your body, especially the bones and joints of the legs. The more body fat you have, the greater your risk of developing grave health conditions.

If you’re overweight, you may feel perfectly fine. However, the extra body fat puts an insidious strain on your bodily processes. Luckily, it’s never too late to make positive lifestyle changes such as following an intermittent fasting plan. This action can prevent additional weight gain and promote loss of body fat, which will prevent or alleviate many of the the following health problems associated with being overweight.

      Heart disease

      Heart disease is the leading killer of both men and women in the United States. The American Heart Association has now recognized overweight and obesity as a major, independent risk factor for heart disease. Excess body fat taxes the heart. People who have excess body fat — especially if concentrated around the waist — are more likely to have a heart attack than those people at a healthy weight. The good news is, if you’re overweight or obese, you can significantly reduce your risk for heart disease by successfully losing weight and keeping it off.

      High blood pressure

      High blood pressure is also known as the silent killer because it’s largely a symptomless disease. The fact that high blood pressure doesn’t have symptoms (you can’t see or feel it) is what makes high blood pressure so insidious; left untreated, it will kill you. In fact, high blood pressure remains the most common medical diagnosis in the United States and the condition that doctors write the most prescriptions for. It’s also the number one cause of stroke and kidney disease and a principal cause of heart disease and blindness.

      Overweight people are five times more likely to have high blood pressure than normal weight individuals. The more body fat a person carries, the more blood is needed to provide the tissue with oxygen and nutrients, resulting in higher blood pressure.