Intermittent Fasting For Women Over 40: Should You Try It?

A new hot topic in the diet world is intermittent fasting. This is less so a diet than a lifestyle and has many great benefits that can help you improve your overall health. Many women wonder if this method is worth trying for them to help lose weight and gain more energy for everyday life.

What Is Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is eating in cycles extending the normal daily fast that every person naturally does when they sleep to include more waking hours. This forces the body to use more of its fat stores for fuel while giving the digestive system more rest allowing the body to put energy to use in other places like healing the body, reducing inflammation, and filing the brain.

When doing intermittent fasting you leave yourself a specific window of the day that you are free to eat while avoiding anything with calories, artificial sweeteners, and even vitamins during your fasting period.

Intermittent fasting has been shown to increase metabolism by 3 to 14% making it a highly effective weight loss tool you can use to help get in shape faster and keep from gaining weight as age takes its toll.

Is Intermittent Fasting Safe?

Yes, for most people intermittent fasting is safe and effective. For those with health conditions, it is important to consult your doctor or nutritionist before trying intermittent fasting. Fasting should leave you feeling energized. You may feel excess hunger in the first few days while your body adjusts to intermittent fasting. If you feel dizzy or disoriented you may want to eat before your window. The safest way to start intermittent fasting is to start with a larger window and bring it down to a smaller one over time.

Not getting enough nutrition is the biggest risk of long-term intermittent fasting. To fix these issues make sure you are eating high nutrition foods and taking a quality multivitamin (affiliate link – FREE SHIPPING – this is what I take daily) during your open window.

What Are The Benefits Of Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting has been shown to change the function of your cells, genes, and hormones. As your body breaks down cells to restore them, it releases hormones stored in your body’s fat helping to balance your hormones over time. Blood insulin levels drop while blood levels of human growth hormone increase helping to burn off more fat while gaining muscle.

Intermittent fasting can help you lose weight including stubborn belly fat that many women over 40 struggle to lose as their hormones change. With intermittent fasting, you eat less thought the day naturally allowing you to burn off more fat with your normal metabolic activity.

Intermittent fasting can reduce insulin resistance, a common issue overweight women struggle with. As your body becomes more insulin reactive you will likely find you have more energy and burn fat at a faster rate. Improving your insulin resistance helps to prevent and even lessen the effects of type 2 diabetes. For some, intermittent fasting doesn’t have that effect. In one study women showed a rise in blood sugar levels after extended intermittent fasting.

Intermittent fasting has been shown to reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in the body. For those that suffer from high levels of inflammation, some doctors suggest giving intermittent fasting a try. Inflammation is the cause of several age-related aches and pains including arthritis that can slow you down with age.

Intermittent fasting may help improve heart health. Lowering belly fat has been shown to greatly reduce heart health factors. Intermittent fasting has been shown to reduce several other heart heal factors ranging from inflammation levels and blood sugar to lowering LDL cholesterol.

Intermittent fasting has been shown to include the cell repair process in your body. When your body spends less time working on digestion it has more time and energy to put into repairing itself. Over a period of time intermittent fasting, many people have found themselves enjoying more energy, tighter skin, and general improvement in overall health and pain levels.

Intermittent fasting has shown some promising leads to being a great way to help preserve your brain as you are. It has been shown to help your brain create new nerve cells due to spending less time on digestion. This has been shown to help with problems like depression while possibly adding protection against diseases like Alzheimer’s slowing them down and even improving symptoms in some cases.

Should Women Over 40 Do Intermittent Fasting?

Intermittent fasting is a great weight loss tool for women over 40. Intermittent fasting is a great way for women to fight the effects of aging and their rapidly changing hormones to allow them to get in shape and stay in shape when others tend to take a downturn. Middle age currently lands between the ages of 45 and 65. During the middle ages bodies tend to break down and stop preparing themselves as they should. Making the choice to live a healthy lifestyle that promotes body repair can help keep you feeling great longer.

How Much Weight Can You Lose In A Month With Intermittent Fasting?

How much weight you lose during intermittent fasting will vary by how much excess weight you have and what you chose to eat during your open window. If you are not eating healthy you will see slower results and possibly no results at all. While intermittent fasting is a great eating program for many it doesn’t replace the need to eat healthy foods, reduce sugar intake, and make sure you are getting enough protein for your body to be in the best shape possible.

For the average person, intermittent fasting can help them drop 1 to two pounds a week. Some people manage to lose up to 10 pounds in a month but 5 to 8 is more reasonable for most dieters. For most, it will take 2 to 4 months to drop 10 pounds of fat with intermittent fasting alone. (A balanced workout plan is highly recommended.)

5 Reasons To Try Intermittent Fasting If You Are An Over 40 Female

Metabolism

The most popular benefit of intermittent fasting is the improvement of your metabolism. For women over 40, this can help the natural slowing of your metabolism and help to burn off the fat that is stubborn and harmful to your health like visceral fat, the fat that surrounds your internal organs. For many people that have large amounts of weight to lose this has been a great way to lose the fat quickly and even start the process of shrinking loose skin back down.

Brain health

Women tend to see a decline in their memory as they age caused by years of stress we put on ourselves. Intermittent fasting has been shown to help our bodies make new nerve cells that are essential to our mind’s ability to process and remember important information. By starting intermittent fasting before these effects take over you may be able to lessen the effects on your brain caused by stress, poor diet, and environmental factors helping to keep your mind healthy for longer.

Heart health

As we age, our hearts often take a hit from our daily lifestyles and diet. Making changes like starting intermittent fasting in your 40s leaves you plenty of time to improve and protect your overall heart health. From reducing risk factors like belly fat and high cholesterol to helping improve your body’s natural repair process, your heart health can greatly benefit from intermittent fasting.

Digestive health

Intermittent fasting gives your digestive system a break each day. This can help improve your gut and digestive health. This is one area of our bodies that often takes a big hit with aging making it worth giving intermittent fasting a try to help improve your overall digestive system relieving symptoms like indigestion and constipation.

Hormone balancing

Intermittent fasting allows the body to function better and burn off fat-releasing hormones that have been stored in the fat in your body. This can naturally help to balance your hormones and leave your body feeling better over time. As we age we need these small boosts of hormones to help keep us feeling youthful.

How To Stick To Intermittent Fasting If You Are a 40 Year Old Woman (Or Older)

The hardest part of intermittent fasting is sticking to your schedule. Adjusting your open window to accommodate family gatherings, parties, and other events where you may be tempted to eat is a better option than choosing to not fast for the day or opting to not enjoy the food you love with your loved ones that can lead to you feeling discouraged and deprived.

Use a tracking app on your phone to help you keep track of food and when your window opens and closes each day to help stay on track and stick to your intermittent fasting diet.

Get support for your new intermittent fasting journey. This can be from a friend that joins you or an online group of intermittent fasters that can talk about everything with you and give you advice along the way.

Reward yourself. Non-food-based rewards is a great way to get yourself to follow and stick to any diet plan. When you have something to look forward to you are more likely to keep going.

Intermittent fasting for women over 40 can be a great choice to help with weight loss.

Intermittent fasting is a safe and effective option for most healthy women over 40 to help boost their metabolism and lower several age-related health factors that often affect us as we age allowing us to stay youthful and healthy longer. For those that want to give their body a second chance and reset intermittent fasting is a great start towards building a healthy lifestyle and healthy body that can hold up to the tests of time.

My biggest tip for you if you are planning on giving IF a try is to make sure to drink enough water throughout the day. You’ll still need to drink water during your fasting window to keep from getting dehydrated. Read up on how much water you need to stay hydrated if you are unsure.