What's the healthiest way to fast?!


Question: What's the healthiest way to fast?
So my goal is to drop 20 pounds. How long should I fast for? What hours should I schedule myself to eat? What should I eat? I know you can eat things like yogurt, fruits and vegetables but what can I eat as a source of protein? How long should I run?

Answers:

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

There is no healthy was to fast.

Instead, you should try the 5 meal a day plan. Basically you eat 5 very small meals throughout the day- they should be from 200 to 350 calories each. This keeps your matabalism going all through the day and you never feel hungry. When you feel hungry (like you would if you were fasting) your body goes into starvation mode and actually stores up the fat you already have. It thinks it needs to hold on to this as long as possible because it may not eat for a long while... then when you do eventually eat it holds onto that food longer too. It's a survival technique the body has...

When you eat your 5 small meals they should be full of fruits, vegetables and lean meats (like chicken breast) or nuts. Don't cut out carbs. Your body still needs those. Instead of eating white bread or rice, try things like multigrain bread or brown rice. It's better for you.

When you exercise don't over do it- running for hours is just going to really tire you out. See how long it takes you to run 2 or 3 miles. Try to do this on an incline. Don't forget to do core work like sit ups, crunches, and don't forget to stretch either! Also, weight work (even with very small light weights) really helps as well.

Keep in mind, losing 20 pounds is going to take a very long time. Especially depending on what you already weight. Take your time. Don't except to lose it all in 2 weeks, think more of along the lines of 3 months.



Fasting? As in only having liquids???
Do not do that.
Your body needs food to function correctly.
Eats foods from the food pyramid in every meal.
Chicken is a good source of protein.
Run the amount that you can one day and gradually start moving up.
For example, you can run .5 of a mile one day, then .8 the next, then 1 mile by the day after that, and so on.

You should at least have 30 minutes a day of moderate intensity workout.



You dont need to fast at all. You need to find your basal(resting) metabolic rate. That will tell you how many calories you should eat for your height weight age and gender to maintain your weight. Just do a search and you can find a calculator online. Once you know your recommended caloric intake lets say its 2400 a day. Keep track of the calories you eat in a day. The easiest way is to use prepackaged food, but there are calculators for this too that will tell you how many calories are in just about food item, from restaurant food to anything at the grocery store.

There are about 3000 calories in a pound of fat, so the object is to eat say 500 calories less than your BMR each day. Every 6 days you should lose 1 pound. It's not recommended to lose more than 2 LBS per week. The reason is you will slow down you metabolism and you body will go into starvation mode and you'll begin to store everything you eat as fat. Thats why starvation diets don't work. You can keep a diet journal to track you foods, calories consumed, and weight loss. Or use one online. WebMD and some other sites have a free online weight journal. That will track your progress and well, theyre pretty cool, thay have a lot of functions. If you have an iphone you can download "LoseIt" app for free, it does the same thing. I'm not advertising, just throwing out a couple names, there are others if you look, including apps and website that cost money.

Exercise does a few things for you. If you build muscle the you will burn more fat all day long,. If you do cardio you will burn x amount of calories for that day. This will give you a deficit of calories that you can use to eat more food if your hungry. Say you are close to maxed out on your calories for the day, you can work out for 45 min and buy yourself a few hundred calories, so you can have a sndwich and still keep losing weight.

Its really just a numbers game. The trick is to eat throughout the day to keep you metabolism up. You want to provide just enough fuel to keep your body happy, but not too much that it gets stored.



There are of course NO healthy ways to fast. Do you see the box near the top of the page?
The one labelled 'Search for questions: '?
Well type in 'lose weight'.
You will find over 518,682 pre-existing questions.
Try the misspellings 'loose weight' and there are another 119,033
In all there are over 637,715 Health section questions requesting solutions to being or thinking you might be overweight.
On average these each yield 6 answers, that is nearly 4 million answers.
(Without searching for any other variations on the question!)

I can usefully summarise these answers in 4 words:

EAT LESS DO MORE. Are you desperate enough to try this???

GP for more years than I care to remember



You don't have to fast. Just change what you eat, and perhaps how much you eat, and get 30 mins of exercise a day. That is the healthiest way to lose weight.



baked chicken is a good source of protein..dont cut off eating all together..just lower your calorie intake and makesure breakfast is the biggest portion you eat in a day.



I don’t get your question.
You’re asking about fasting and then wonder at what time and what you should eat?




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