If losing body fat is your goal, slowing your metabolism is the last thing you want.
Yet that very thing tends to happen when we cut calories to lose weight. (We know; sometimes it feels like the human body is quite obnoxious, but this is actually a primal survival response that makes sure we don’t conk out in times when food is scarce.) 토토사이트
So now you’re wondering: Does intermittent fasting slow metabolism too?
Good news! All the research points the other way. Intermittent fasting may actually speed up and improve your metabolism.
How does it do that? What magical processes are at work here?!?!
Let us take you on a SIMPLE journey of discovery.
What exactly does metabolism mean?
Metabolism is a complex beast but, very simply put, it’s the internal chemical reactions that convert the food you eat into the energy and substances your body needs to function.
Your resting metabolic rate (RMR)—also known as your basal metabolic rate (BMR)—is the amount of energy you need to function at rest. Your body is still pretty active even when you’re not and uses calories to do things like make your heart beat, keep you breathing, power your brain, and so on.
Essentially, your RMR is the amount of calories you need to stay alive.
If you have a low RMR, you’ll use fewer calories at rest than a similar-sized person with a higher RMR who eats the same amount, and from this, we can see how metabolic rate links to weight management. The lower your RMR, the fewer calories you burn doing anything, and the harder it is to lose weight.
The good news is, you can speed up our metabolic rate with both what and how you eat.
Cue stage left… intermittent fasting.
How intermittent fasting affects your body at the metabolic level
When you fast intermittently, many specific metabolic changes happen.
For instance, your body finds alternative ways to create energy.
When you eat, your body breaks down the carbohydrates in your food into glucose. When you fast, and carbohydrate isn’t available, your body will make glucose from other, non-carbohydrate sources.
This process is called gluconeogenesis: When your body uses glycogen reserves in your liver and water stored within your tissue to create glucose for energy.
Once your glycogen stores are used up, your body turns to other things for fuel, such as your fat cells to burn ketones.
This process is called ketosis, and it’s one of the ways intermittent fasting creates adaptations in your metabolic processes. Regular calorie-counting diets can’t do this.
Intermittent fasting may increase your metabolic rate
Where calorie restriction slows your metabolism (more on this later), short-term fasting with regular refeeds may have the opposite effect.
IF can maintain your metabolic rate, as shown in this study where fat oxidation increased on fasting days and RMR stayed the same.
And, it may increase your metabolic rate—at least in the short term—as in this study where metabolism was boosted by 14% by intermittent fasting.
Driving this effect was a hormone called norepinephrine.
One of norepinephrine’s jobs is to prevent hypoglycemia. To do so, it tells the liver to make more glucose. As we’ve just seen, this is gluconeogenesis, and it’s an energy-hungry process.