Being over weight is the top disease in the United States. This is all due to those tasty burgers, pizzas, lasagna and sandwiches drenched in mayo, cheese and oil. While the sight of a pizza right out of the oven may seem too scrumptious to resist, the fact is that it is food like these that cause a person to put on all those extra pounds. However, is the weight gain just due to this one pizza during the whole day? The answer of course is a big no. People gain weight due to the eating habits that they have adopted. Apart from having meals around 3 to 4 times a day, constant nibbling is a part of the lifestyle for many of us. In addition to that many people use frozen meals that are high in calories. Healthy food is becoming more or less an illusion and high calorie food items as the norm. So, how does one even dare to lose weight when surrounded by such yummy looking candies and delicious Italian dishes??

Some might say try a low carb diet, or a high protein diet or simply start starving yourself and survive on liquids. Diet plans have been known to be outdated now as their impact is not long lasting. At the beginning the results might astonish you and those around you, however, after some time, the body weight is stable and people stop gaining any real benefits off these diet plans. So what do to now? Starving yourself persistently has been known to be very dangerous to the health, particularly for women. The solution however is simple, it is Intermittent Fasting.

Intermittent fasting implies that a person goes on a fast once a week for either12 hours, 24 hours or 36 hours depending up on the personal willingness of the person and during this keeps maximum water/ green tea intake. This type of a fast is a safe and healthy way to persistently keep shedding off extra pounds over a long period of time. Intermittent fasting does not have any side effects whatsoever, and has been proven to be very effective as a weight loss plan.

The fact that it requires a person to go on a fast only once a week implies that the rest of the week the person continues with the eating patterns that he has established for himself. Therefore, if your breakfast consists of just milk but the lunch of a scrumptious sandwich and the dinner of lasagna, then you do not have to completely let go of this routine. Only once a week, you will be required to not eat and since not eating for a day has not yet proved to be fatal, it would not really hurt you at all.

So how exactly does a one day long fast contribute to shedding off pounds? The fact is that while we are busy in consuming as many edibles as possible, we forget to maintain a sustainable routine of drinking ample water. In this fast, a person is required to drink large quantities of water throughout the day. Water is known to speed up metabolism. Since the rest of the week the liver does the job of the kidneys due to lack of water, on this one day, the liver can work on metabolizing all the fat stored in the body as there is ample water being supplied to the kidney to work on its own.

In addition to helping in metabolizing the fat, what drinking water throughout the fast does is that it prevents the person from feeling hungry. However, over here a question may pop up that when is the best day to go on a fast? Is it the weekday or the weekend? The thing is that choosing to go on a fast is solely on the preference of the person. While some people might feel that fasting on a Sunday may be much more helpful for them as they do not have to work that day, the truth is that the more idle you are the more possibility there is that you might just cheat on your fast. Therefore, fasting on a working day is considered much more beneficial. While at work, there is little chance of letting them deviate towards thinking about food and drinks, therefore making the fast successful. However, for some people fasting while under pressure can take an opposite turn. Therefore, choosing when to fast is solely on the discretion of the person.

To further maximize the impact of intermittent fasting, it is advised that a person performs some high intensity work out 30 minutes prior to breaking the fast. Exercising even for a short time during an intermittent fast can have amazing results, as it would allow a person to burn off more fats.

Intermittent fasting is thus the rule to adopt. Once a person starts losing weight due to this, the eating patterns themselves can be altered as not eating high calorie foods for a day can help convince a person that they can survive without such high calorie food for more days as well, working towards a healthy eating routine.