If you’re looking to lose weight or maintain a healthy lifestyle, intermittent fasting can be the right choice for you. Maybe, you have heard about this diet trend on social media as many celebrities and influencers are praising this technique. You might think this is similar to other fancy diets where you have to follow strict calorie counts. However, intermittent fasting is the simplest way of losing weight and people have been doing it for centuries. Intermittent fasting is nothing but simply switching between fasting and eating. It is a time-restrict method that involves eating during specific hours followed by fasting. Several researchers have found that intermittent fasting is effective in managing weight and may even prevent some diseases. Now you might ask how this diet works and if it is safe. So, let’s find out more about it!
Intermittent Fasting: How Does It Work?
The secret to losing weight lies in giving your body more time to digest food. Fasting creates a calorie deficit which results in burning excess fat. So, unlike other diets that focus on what to eat, intermittent fasting is a time-based diet that focuses on when you eat. Intermittent Fasting (IF) means you only eat during a specific time followed by fasting for a certain number of hours. When your body doesn’t get food for hours, it starts exhausting sugar stores and burning fat. This metabolic switching helps in losing weight besides providing many other benefits.
A regular eating pattern involves consuming three meals a day plus snacks. If you’re not exercising enough, your body will use calories for the meals you eat. It means that you’re not giving enough time to your body to burn fat stores. But in Intermittent fasting, you give your body enough time to burn calories consumed during your last meal and then start burning stored sugar and fat.
Intermittent Fasting Plans
Intermittent fasting provides you with multiple options to choose a plan that works best for you. It means that there are different ways to do intermittent fasting. However, one thing is common in all these methods- fixing a specific time to eat and fast. For instance, the most popular IF plan is 16:8 where you fast for 16 hours and eat during an eight-hour window. During the eating period, there are no strict rules about what to eat. However, eating healthy food of your choice is recommended. This 16/8 fasting is most commonly practiced because it is easy to stick with this pattern over the long term. But to choose the right IF plan, you can consult your doctor before starting intermittent fasting.
Another plan is 5:2 where you eat normally five days a week and for two days, you limit yourself to one 500–600 calorie meal. Some people also choose Eat Stop Eat method where they fast for 24 hours once or twice per week. Alternate-day fasting is also practiced by some people which involves fasting every other day. If you’re ready to follow an extreme form of intermittent fasting, you can consider the Warrior Diet. In this plan, you eat very little (only a few servings of raw fruit and vegetables) during a 20-hour fasting window. This is followed by 4 hours eating window where you take one large meal at night.