How to Fast to Lose Weight Properly

There is fasting and fasting, and simply to stop eating is not how to fast to lose weight properly. Everybody needs a certain amount of nutrition in their diet from day to day in order to maintain a healthy metabolism and immune system, and starving your body of either of these critical components of its biochemistry is to risk your life in the name of weight loss.

Some celebrities claim to have been on detox diets where all they took in was water and fiber in order to clear their system of impurities. The only thing that has been scientifically proved here is that they lost weight. Here, we are discussing fasting as a means of losing weight and nothing else. So how can we fast to lose weight properly?

It is very unhealthy to go without food completely, for reasons touched on above. Your body has a certain need for nutrition, particularly certain vitamins and plant chemicals (phytochemicals) that support your immune system and metabolism. Without these you can become extremely ill.

Also, the argument that by ingesting only liquid foods and no solids our body will be forced to burn fat does not hold water. All useful components of our diet are reduced water and fat soluble liquids, and what forces your body to burn fat is a lack of carbohydrates in your diet, not a lack of solid food. Nevertheless, by including just enough fruit and vegetable juices in your liquid diet, and by drinking around three pints of purified water each day, you should be able to lose weight and still consume sufficient nutrients to maintain the critical biochemical processes within your body.

Preparing for such as fast will help your body to get the best benefit from it. Some maintain that a colon cleanse will help reduce the effects of any digestive problems experienced, although this is debatable. However, it will do no harm, so if you believe it will help that it could give you a psychological boost.

Also, it is important that you don't stuff yourself full of carbohydrates before fasting because you will simply delay or even prevent any weight loss for taking place. That is not how to fast to lose weight properly. It is important that rapid weight loss is also healthy weight loss, and stuffing yourself with food prior to fasting is neither healthy nor sensible.

Nor is total fasting, taking nothing by mouth at all, except, perhaps, water. This is likely to damage your system by unnecessarily depriving it of nutrition. Bear in mind your reason for fasting - to lose weight. How to fast to lose weight properly is not to simply take no food, but to force your body to use your fat deposits as a source of energy to feed your metabolism. You should be able to achieve that while maintaining an intake of sufficient nutrition as to avoid any permanent or long-lasting damage to your immune system or any other bodily process.

So how should you set about fasting in a healthy enough way to achieve this? First, you should consider your daily routine. You should not fast unless you can avoid any hard work, or situations that could be dangerous if you felt weak or faint. Fasting affects some people this way, and nor should you fast during menstruation.

Decide if you intend fasting for a long period, or only for two or three days at a time, with eating periods in between. If the latter, what should your diet be between fasting periods? Some combine an intermittent total fast with juice fasting, so they at least take in some nutrition, but here again you have to be careful that you are not putting your core body processes at risk. Your liver needs a degree of nutrition to remain functional.

If you are not used to fasting, you will find it difficult to do without food for more than a day but this is all you may need. If you fast from sunrise one day until sunrise the next day, you will not only give your digestive system a well-earned rest from which it will benefit, but will also have the basis of a healthy weight loss program that does not compromise your well-being. That is how to fast to lose weight properly.

By doing this two to three times each month you will reduce the effect of prolonged fasting on your body and also help to remove many of the toxins built up in your system. When you break the fast, first take two glasses of salted lemon water to flush the system out, and then have breakfast as normal.

By including this as part of a healthy approach to weight loss you will feel better within yourself, be more liable to lose weight permanently and will give a boost to your metabolism that will itself enable you to lose weight more easily.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rachel_Tan