Intermittent Fasting During Lent

For Christians all across the world, Lent lasts between February 14, 2018, and Thursday, March 29. It is a time to prepare for a believer to be ready for Easter, which marks the resurrection of Christ after his death and burial. Jesus Christ is crucified on Good Friday and is then resurrected on Easter. By preparing through things such as almsgiving, self-denial, sin repentance, doing penance, and more, the Christian makes themselves strengthened as the season goes on. One of the ways you may consider strengthening yourself is by putting intermittent fasting into practice by giving up something such as food or drink.

Intermittent fasting is when you choose to stay away from drink or food for a certain period of time. Such fasting might offer you overall health benefits if you seek to practice it in a way that promotes an end to some health issues you could have. The aforementioned benefits could include epilepsy relief, improved cardiovascular health, and detoxification. Intermittent fasting can assist in stimulation of anti-aging hormones and growth as well as healing one’s body faster.

One’s body enters into fasting mode following 7-8 hours after the previous meal they’ve had. The body will gain its energy from the glucose that has been stored up in someone’s muscles and liver. This glucose that has been stored will be utilized. Once your body runs out of the glucose with the fast continuing, your body will need fat in order to continue going about its days.

After your fat runs out, your body begins to go after stored proteins, which can lead to the process of starvation that is not healthy whatsoever. This could go on for several days as fasting continues on. During intermittent fasting, you can continue to drink water and low-calorie drinks. This sort of fasting can lead for 24 hours, starting after breakfast and going until breakfast the next day. You could also keep it going for the next two days, making it a 36-hour fast that continues on.

Intermittent fasting might able to improve your sensory functions, put an end to any sleep disorders you struggle with, balance out your energy better, and make you more alert. The 5:2 plan is a type of intermittent fasting diet that became popular because of a book and a documentary on the BBC. Such a plan can have you eating for five days of the week and then implementing fasting where you do not eat any more than 600 calories for a man and 500 calories for the woman during the last two days of the week.

Your intermittent fasting could take you in the direction of the Bulletproof diet, which involves a daily fast, which is extended and achieved ultimately only by drinking coffee with coconut oil and grass-fed butter during the morning of the day. Following that, you eat a low-carbohydrate dinner in the evening. Such fasting of this nature might lead to protection against disease, improvement of the brain’s functions, and lifespan increase. You could also be able to control your stress better on the cellular level, which causes fewer troughs and spikes in your cortisol, blood sugar, and other indicators of stress. Beyond that, fasting has plenty of other benefits.

It could help to improve your body’s response to the following: Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. It may lead to an increase in neural plasticity and an improvement of cognitive functions. It can cause stem cell regeneration and affect your inflammation processes. In other areas, it may benefit you if you struggle with diabetes as well as assist in the reduction of your cholesterol levels in various cases.

When you are looking at changing your ways during Lent, intermittent fasting could be the first steps you take toward eventually fulfilling the goals you have for yourself during this religious season and reflecting on the sacrifice of Jesus for all mankind. It might open up further revelations about your life.

About the author: Tommy Zimmer is a writer whose work has appeared online and in print. His work covers a variety of topics, including politics, economics, fitness coaching, addiction and recovery, and the entertainment industry.

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