Intermittent fasting (IF) is right now one of the most popular fitness and health trends. People are using intermittent fasting for weight loss, improve their health condition, and simplifying their lifestyles. Many studies have shown that it can have powerful effects on the brain and body and may even help you live longer. Here is a guide on what is intermittent fasting and ways to do it.
What Is Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent fasting can be defined as an eating pattern that cycles between periods of eating and fasting. It does not specify which type of foods one should eat but rather it focuses on when you should eat. Intermittent fasting is not dieting in the conventional sense but it is an eating pattern.
Intermittent fasting diet plan includes 16-hour fasts or 24 hours fasting, twice a week. Fasting has been a common practice throughout human evolution. Ancient people did not have refrigerators, supermarkets or food available throughout the year. Sometimes, they could not find any food to eat. As a result, human body evolved to function even without any food for a long span of time.
In fact, fasting is more natural than eating 3 to 4 meals a day. Fasting is often done for spiritual or religious reasons, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism.
What is Intermittent Fasting Time & Method
There are various ways of doing intermittent fasting. All the methods include dividing the day or week into fasting and eating periods. During the fasting period, you must eat either very little or nothing at all. These are the few popular intermittent fasting methods.
16/8 method
The 16/8 method involves fasting regularly for 14 to 16 hours and restricting your regular eating window to about 8 to 10 hours. Within this eating window time span, you can fit in at least two, three, or more meals. This method is popularly known as the Leangains protocol and was popularized by the fitness professional, Martin Berkhan.
Following this method of fasting can be as simple as not eating anything after dinner and then skipping breakfast. For instance, if you finish your dinner at 8 p.m. and do not eat anything until the afternoon the next day, then technically you are fasting for 16 hours. It is generally recommended by intermittent fasting research experts that women only fast for 14 to 15 hours as they seem to do better with short fasts.
People who feel hungry in the morning and like to eat breakfast, this method can be difficult for them to follow at the initial stage. However, several breakfast skippers unconsciously eat this way. You can drink coffee, water, or any other zero-calorie beverages during the fasting period, which in turn can help reduce the hunger pangs.
It is very important to eat healthy foods during your eating window period. This method won’t be useful if you eat lots of junk food or consume too much calories.
Eat-Stop-Eat
This intermittent fasting method involves a 24-hour fast for once or twice a week. This fasting method was popularized by a fitness expert, Brad Pilon, and has been very popular for a few years. By starting the fast from first day’s dinner to another day’s dinner time, this amounts to a total of 24- hour fast. For instance, if you finish your dinner at 7 p.m. on Monday and do not eat until your dinner at 7 p.m. the next day, i.e. Tuesday, you will complete a 24-hour fasting. It is not mandatory to fast from dinner time. You can fast from one day’s breakfast to another day’s breakfast time. The same can be done during the lunchtime too. The result is the same.
During this fasting method, you can have zero-calorie beverages, water, and coffee. However, no solid foods are allowed. If you are following intermittent fasting for weight loss, then it is very important to eat normally during the eating period. In simple words, you must eat the same amount of food as if you had not been fasting.
5:2 diet
The 5:2 diet involves eating normally 5 days a week, while limiting your calorie intake to 500 to 600 for 2 days a week. This diet is also known as the Fast Diet and was popularized by the British journalist, Michael Mosley. During the fasting days, it is suggested that women eat more calories compared to men.
For instance, you might eat normally every day in a week except Mondays and Thursdays. During those 2 days, you can eat 2 small meals. Each meal for women containing 250 calories and 300 calories for men. As critics have clearly pointed out that there is no research showing the benefits of the 5:2 diet, but there are a lot of studies on the various benefits of intermittent fasting.
Alternate day fasting
As the name suggests, in alternate day fasting, you fast every other day. There are many versions of this method. In some of the methods, you can eat 500 calories during the fasting period. Most of the test-tube studies showing the health benefits of intermittent fasting used this method. A full fasting every other day can seem extreme, so beginners should avoid it. With this fasting process, you may go to sleep hungry various times a week, which is not pleasant and possibly unsustainable in the future.
The Warrior Diet
This diet was popularized by fitness expert Ori Hofmekler. It involves eating small quantities of raw vegetables and fruits during the daytime and having a huge meal for dinner. Basically, you fast the whole day and feast at night. This diet was one of the popular diets to be included in the form of intermittent fasting. The food choices in this diet is quite similar to that of the paleo diet- mainly whole and processed foods.
Unplanned meal skipping
There is no need to follow a structured intermittent fasting diet plan to enjoy its benefits. Another option is to skip meals from time to time, like when you do not feel hungry or you don’t have enough time to cook and eat.
It is a myth that people who want to lose fat must eat every few hours. Our body is well-equipped to handle starvation. Therefore, if you are not hungry one day, skip breakfast and simply eat a healthy lunch and dinner. Or for example, if you are traveling somewhere and cannot find anything to eat, do a short fasting.
Skipping just one or two meals when you feel inclined to do so is generally a spontaneous intermittent fasting. You just need to ensure that you eat healthy food.
Intermittent fasting for weight loss
Weight loss is one of the common reasons behind intermittent fasting. By making you eat few meals, intermittent fasting can lead to an automatic reduction in the intake of calories. In addition, intermittent fasting results in changing the hormone levels which in turn facilitates weight loss.
In addition to change in hormone levels and lowering insulin, an intermittent fasting releases the fat-burning hormone, norepinephrine. Due to these changes in hormones, short-term fasting may raise your metabolic rate by 3.6–14%.
By forcing you to eat less and burn more calories, intermittent fasting causes weight loss by changing both the sides of the calorie equation. Several studies have shown that intermittent fasting can be a great weight-loss tool.