I have been intermittent fasting myself for over 4 months now although i never used to skip breakfast until i heard about fasting because i had a strong believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Surprisingly, since I’ve started intermittent fasting i feel way more energetic in the morning and can easily keep up my focus what used to be very difficult for me.
There are tons of other health benefits so i am going to break intermittent fasting down and give you a little overview of some methods you can use to try it yourself if you want to after reading this post.
Intermittent fasting has been very popular in recent years.
Eating 500 calories 1 to 2 days a week or going 12 to 18 hours a day without food....so it's more a dieting pattern than a real diet. It’s more a way of scheduling your meals so that you get the most out of them. You don’t even have to change WHAT you eat more WHEN you eat.
Science says it can help you lose weight (because a smaller eating window means less calories are consumed over the day) but even better research has shown that intermittent fasting improves blood sugar levels, a decreased risk of heart disease and cancer and according to some neuroscientist it might help your brain ward off neurogenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson. Besides that it can improve your mood and memory.
….and by the way it perhaps even extend lifespan so maybe you want to give it a try.
Additionally, intermittent fasting is a good way to keep muscle mass on while getting lean without going on a crazy diet or cutting calories down to almost nothing. The main reason people try to fast is to lose some fat so this might be on of the simplest strategies for taking bad weight off while keeping good weight on because it requires very little change of behavior.
If you want to giving fasting a shot, there a different options and i guess there is at least one that fits your lifestyle.
This method uses a 16-hour fast followed by an 8-hour eating window which makes it pretty easy to fast on a daily basis in my opinion. It doesn’t matter when you start your eating period do whatever works best for you. Because the fasting is done every day it becomes very easy to make eating on a schedule a habit. You may eat around the same time every day without thinking about it and with daily intermittent fasting you just learn to not eat at certain times or skip breakfast.
That means you incorporate longer fasting periods on alternating days throughout the week.
For example, you eat dinner on Monday night and then don’t eat until Tuesday evening. On Wednesday you would eat normal all day and then start another 24-hour fasting cycle again after dinner on Wednesday evening. This allows a long fasting period on a consistent basis while eating at least one meal every day.
The benefits are that it gives you a longer time in a fasted state then the 16/8 method but from what i have seen it is not that popular.
As you can imagine the 5:2 diet involves eating normal for 5 days of the week and restrict calories to 500-600 on the other 2 days.
For example, you eat normally on all days except Monday and Friday, where you eat a small meal with only 500 calories.
Also a pretty easy way to get into intermittent fasting.
I honestly think that the mental barriers are the biggest thing that prevents people from trying to fast because it is really not that hard to practice it.
So don’t worry you do not die if you don’t eat for 24 hours!!
Give it a try an maybe you get some astonishing results and accidentally live some years longer who knows…..
