FASTING & WEIGHT LOSS

FASTING & WEIGHT LOSS 

Weight loss means a decrease in body weight intentionally or non-intentionally. Non-intentionally mechanisms include severe illnesses, chronic diseases, malabsorption etc. Intentionally mechanisms include Diet and Exercise.


Basically, the body loses weight when energy expenditure is more than energy consumption.
Many people keep on fasting or skip their meals to lose weight. As a simple mathematics, by doing this, the body will get fewer calories, means the body will lose weight.

But, Is it a right approach to lose the weight?

Let’s understand this, our body works on Metabolism. Whatever we eat, ultimately it gets converted into energy. The process by which our food gets converted into energy is known as Metabolism. Energy is being used by our body to do our daily body functions, like, circulating blood, respiration, excretion, digestion, sleeping etc. The amount of energy is needed to perform all these body functions is known as Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR).

When we fast, initially there is a loss of body weight but it’s not the Fat that is lost, its accumulation of water and fluids. During the initial stage of Fasting, our body starts using energy stored in our Liver and muscles in form of Glucose and Proteins respectively. As long as the fasting, our body gets into the starvation mode, means our brain gets the signal of the scarcity of food, so our body uses less energy to accomplish daily body functions, and body gets into sleep mode or we can say that Fasting leads to slow metabolism.

During Fasting, our body craves to eat more starchy, more fatty foods to get more energy. So, when we start eating again after fasting, we don’t get control over the quantity and quality of food and we consume more calories than we require due to slow metabolism and leads to WEIGHT GAIN.
Moreover, fasting leads to many side effects of Headache, Dizziness, diarrhoea and severe illness etc.