What is Fasting
Fitness Diet Reviews asks what is fasting and why should you care?
Before we jump into all the benefits of Intermittent Fasting, lets take a quick shot at defining what is fasting.
Intermittent fasting typically consists of a 24-hour period of fasting followed by several days of ‘normal’ eating. There are several variations on the fast, then don’t fast timing sequence. Some people fast one day and then resume normal eating the next day. Others choose to engage in an extended multi-day fast.
In my own personal experience, fasting every other day or fasting for extended periods of time was not sustainable and had a dramatic impacts on my life. I much prefer an intermittent fast once or twice a week for a 24 hour period. I find I can easily fast one day a week. I struggled with more extreme fasting schedules – one day works for me.
What Happens When You Eat
First lets take a look at what happens to the body when you are not fasting. It typically takes your body around three to four hours to digest your food. After you have digested your food, your body then takes several hours to absorb the foods nutrients. All told, this process takes up to eight or nine hours with fats taking the longest.
What Happens When You Fast
In contrast, when you ask what is fasting, in many ways it’s the absence of ingestion and digestion of foods. After nine hours of fasting, you body has ‘used-up’ your last meal and it turns to your liver to produce glycogen (one of the bodies primary energy sources). Your body will also tap into protein reserves providing up to 12 hours of fuel. After this period of time, the body will turn to fat reserves.
Dangers of Fasting
While fasting can and does have many benefits, prolonged fasting can result in serious injury. As you body begins to use up more and more fat reserves, it will begin to release toxins. Once your fat reserves are used up, your body will begin consuming muscle.
At this stage you are way beyond asking what is fasting. At this stage, any benefits of fasting are long gone and you are starting to cause serious damage to your body. This is another reason why I much prefer Intermittent Fasting. There is a lot of great information on the value, techniques and health benefits of Intermittent fasting available.
Intermittent Fasting Review
I really like Brad Pilan’s Eat Stop Eat, Intermittent Fasting program. If you are interested in purchasing Brad’s eBook, you can do that here. You also might find Fitness Diet Reviews evaluation of Eat Stop Eat helpful which you can find here.
Date: June 12, 2009
Categories: Best Diet Review, Dieting and Fasting, Exercise Fitness and Health





Take me directly to the 
I can tell you right now, doing 100’s of crunches isn’t the way to lose body fat fast. It’s also certainly not the best core workout, but we will save that for a future discussion. To be honest, loosing fat isn’t just about doing a bunch of sit-ups. If that were the case, we could all eat extra cheese pizzas for dinner and then do 20 crunches for desert.
DIET TRAP 1: Eating while watching TV