Nocturnal fasting, which has begun to be talked about because a lot of Hollywood stars practice it, from Gwyneth Paltrow to Jennifer Aniston and Scarlett Johannson, as a variant of intermittent fasting, it’s a bit like the discovery of hot water. Just as it is to say that in a healthy eating journey, it is not only what you eat that counts, but also when. Then loads of articles and books came out – like The 10 Hour Diet by nutritionist Jeannette Hyde – it’s just marketing. Because in a time when food hadn’t become an obsession, nutrients were those coming from fresh and unprocessed products, and meal times were determined by the sun’s cycle and by the alternation between day and night, era It is normal to have a long overnight fast of 14 hours during which the body can draw on fat and regenerates itself with the effect of increasing longevity.
Nocturnal fasting: what it is and how it works
Night fasting basically means not eating anything solid between dinner and breakfast, possibly leaving an interval of 12/14 hours to pass between the last and first meal of the day. To put it simply: it is better to have an early dinner, with a healthy, light and nutritious meal, than to eat until late and go to bed with digestion still in progress. Then that all this doesn’t go well with the daily rhythms and lifestyles is another matter, which in some way requires you to make some adjustments: if you dine at 8.00 pm or later, you can delay the moment of real breakfast limiting oneself, upon waking, to a coffee, a tea, or some drink with no added sugars, such as a centrifuge.
Nocturnal fasting: what scientific research says
That overnight fasting is healthy is also confirmed by more and more scientific research.
A research published Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases of 2019 showed that eating more calories after 8:30 pm is associated with higher levels of total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol, the dangerous one. That is, the timing of meals throughout the day, and in particular dinner times, would be able to regulate the effect of food on our body, regulating its metabolism and therefore a balanced consumption of energy sources.
All this also to the benefit of digestion.
In this regard, the University of Teramo, with one study published in Frontiers in Nutrition in 2022wondered why many inland areas of Abruzzo were characterized by a high presence of healthy centenarians. Basically one of the blue zones studied all over the world. Among the reasons has also been identified sat down (break fast), a habit that many of these long-lived have since childhood which consists of a plentiful lunch around 12, preceded at 6.30 only by a modest breakfast and the evening before by a frugal dinner consumed around 7 pm. In practice an almost intermittent fast without their knowledge with a time interval of about 16 hours between dinner and lunch, with only a modest food intake at breakfast. According to researchers a fundamental habit in reducing the risk of developing diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases and ultimately in ensuring a long and healthy life.
According to one research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2020 night fasting is capable of reduce blood sugar and inflammation indices and, in the long term, to reduce the risk of many metabolic diseases (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular pathologies: subjected to the same Mediterranean diet, subjects who delayed dinner time recorded a 17% lower weight loss than those who dined Soon.
Benefits of nocturnal intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting at night is basically one habit not particularly tiring to acquire and which in a short time can guarantee considerable benefits, starting with a natural feeling of well-being for:
- Increased vitality;
- Increased mental clarity and ability to concentrate;
- Progressive disappearance of fat;
- Reduction of abdominal swelling;
- Better night’s sleep;
Intermittent overnight fasting basically respects the natural biological clock which depends on circadian cycles:
- From 10 to 18: period of maximum activity, it’s time to ingest carbohydrates accompanied by vegetables and fruit.
- From 18 to 3 in the morning: the organism prepares itself for the rest and the repair of the consumption of the whole day. It’s time to ingest proteins to promote cell regeneration.
- Starting at 3 in the morning: the body begins its cycle of elimination of toxins which lasts between 7 and 8 hours. Breaking this cycle can promote fat accumulation, bloating, inflammation, etc. etc.
To get all the benefits of overnight fasting just avoid eating for 10-12 hours at night in order to speed up the metabolism. It is basically a question of not ingesting anything solid during the night hours and thus giving our body time to complete the daily cycle of eliminating toxins. And this will favor the reduction of fat storage and the complete restoration of digestive functions.
How to do night fasting?
The ideal thing would be to dine early, but if this is not possible and you find yourself having dinner between 20 and 21, then you must delay the moment of the real breakfast between 9 and 10 in the morninglimiting ourselves after waking up to a coffee, tea or herbal tea, without milk or sugar, and avoiding restarting our digestive system until 10-12 hours have passed since we had dinner.
It is worth reiterating that this it doesn’t mean skipping breakfast but only to postpone it a bit, allowing time for the cycle of toxin elimination to complete.
READ ALSO: Intermittent fasting and sport: how to do it
Photo by Oriel Mizrahi / Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
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