I am a 22 yo male. My height is 178cm and I weigh about 70kg. I regularly exercise and I am vegetarian.
Now to my question: I am fine with my weight and my body in general but I would like to know if there are additional health benefits to IF than just loosing weight. If so, is there literature about it?
I am sorry if this question has been answered before, I am new to this sub.
Thank you in advance!
The main benefits are you can spend longer burning fat stores, longer resting your digestive system and longer in autophagy which is a process where your defective cells are recycled. This latter process is important for the prevention of tumour growth (for example). There are youtube videos to give you an overview but there are some charlatans out there. I recommend Prof Mark Mattson or Prof Ana Maria Cuervo as experts and if they are a bit complex, Valter Longo who is more straightforward.
Some of them off the top of my head are: better quality sleep, better skin, better heart health (blood pressure, lower resting heart rate), mental alertness during the fast, more energy (paradoxically), even exercising deep into your fast can have benefits because your body is producing more growth hormone during that time. For longer fasts you get into autophagy which is an emerging area of research that isn’t fully understood yet but could have profound benefits.
Watch some YouTube videos with Dr. Jason Fung. A lot are focused on weight loss benefits but many of them discuss other health benefits. Many people have interviewed him or had him on podcasts and you’ll find it all there in addition to his own channel (which has a lot of good beginner videos). Once you watch one or two the algorithm will keep feeding IF videos to you to browse through.