Intermittent fasting varies for everyone but I'm going to share what I do and give you guys some key tips on how to understand this way of eating. Fasting to me is more than weight loss but also gives you clarity. Intermittent fasting (IF) is currently one of the world’s most popular health and fitness trends.
People are using it to lose weight, improve their health and simplify their lifestyles. Many studies show that it can have powerful effects on your body and brain and may even help you live longer.
Intermittent fasting (IF) is an eating pattern that cycles between periods of fasting and eating.
It doesn’t specify which foods you should eat but rather when you should eat them.
It’s not a diet in the conventional sense but more accurately described as an eating pattern.
Common intermittent fasting methods involve daily 16-hour fasts or fasting for 24 hours, twice per week.
#1: 16/8 Method
This method means fasting every day for about 16 hours and restricting your daily eating window to 8 hours. Within the eating window, you can fit in 2-3 or more meals.
*It can be as simple as not eating anything after dinner and skipping breakfast.
For example, if you finish your last meal at 8 p.m. and don’t eat until noon the next day, you’re technically fasting for 16 hours.
For those who get hungry in the morning and like to eat breakfast, this may be hard to get used to. However, many breakfast skippers instinctively eat this way.
You can drink water, coffee and other zero-calorie beverages during the fast, which can help reduce feelings of hunger. It’s very important to eat healthy foods during your eating window. or this method won’t work if you eat a lot of processed foods or an excessive number of calories.
#2: 5:2 Method
This way of eating what you typically eat 5 days of the week and restricting your calorie intake to 500–600 for 2 days of the week.
For example, you might eat normally every day of the week except Mondays and Thursdays. For those 2 days, you eat 2 small meals of 400-600 calories each.
#3: Eat. Stop. Eat (ESE)
Eat Stop Eat involves a 24-hour fast once or twice per week.
Fasting from dinner one day to dinner the next day amounts to a full 24-hour fast. For example, if you finish dinner at 7 p.m. Monday and don’t eat until dinner at 7 p.m. Tuesday, you’ve completed a full 24-hour fast. You can also fast from breakfast to breakfast or lunch to lunch — the end result is the same.
Water, coffee, and other zero-calorie beverages are allowed during the fast, but no solid foods are permitted.
If you’re doing this to manage your weight, it’s very important that you stick to your regular diet during the eating periods. In other words, you should eat the same amount of food as if you hadn’t been fasting at all.
The potential downside of this method is that a full 24-hour fast may be fairly difficult for many people. However, you don’t need to go all in right away. It’s fine to start with 14–16 hours and then move upward from there.
#4: Alternate Day Fasting
In alternate-day fasting, you fast about every other day. There are several different versions of this method. Some of them allow about 500 calories during the fasting days.
A full fast every other day can seem rather extreme, so it’s not recommended for beginners.
#5: Warrior Diet
It involves eating small amounts of raw fruits and vegetables during the day and eating one huge meal at night.
Basically, you fast all day and feast at night within a 4-hour eating window. This was one of the first popular diets to include a form of intermittent fasting.
This diet’s food choices are quite similar to those of the paleo diet — mostly whole, unprocessed foods.
**Several studies have observed that fiber-rich diets tend to reduce hunger and, therefore, the number of calories consumed per day, potentially leading to weight loss**
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