Intermittent Fasting

By: Nick Supernova

Intermittent fasting is an ancient, widespread form of healing. It is a life hack for heading into the holiday season because summer bodies are built in the offseason. Starting with the Hallowe’en candies and ending with the holiday season family feasts will have many people bum-rushing their local gyms. Diets come in many forms but aren’t all created equally. Intermittent fasting is a weight-loss strategy, or for some a healthy lifestyle whether or not you are a bodybuilder. Here’s a few options of intermittent fasting to consider. Personally I’ve only explored the 16/8 method and found it very attainable and recommend this method if you’re just curious about exploring the idea of intermittent fasting.

The 16/8 Method
The 16/8 method is fasting every day for 14–16 hours and your daily eating window is restricted to 8–10 hours. Within the eating window, you can fit in two or more meals.

TIP: Try doing this method of fasting by not eating anything after dinner and skipping breakfast. Simple yet effective especially if you tend to skip breakfast or eat breakfast late in the morning. For example, eat your last meal at 8 p.m. and don’t eat again until noon the next day, that’s a 16 hour fast. You can drink water, tea, and other zero-calorie beverages during the fast to help reduce feeling hungry.

In summary, the 16/8 method is daily fasts of 16 hours for men and 14–15 hours for women. Each day you’ll restrict your eating to an 8–10-hour eating window during which you fit in 2+ meals.

Eat-Stop-Eat
This is a great way to lose weight but takes a lot of discipline. However, it’s very important to eat normally during the eating periods. Basically, you should be eating the same portion(s) of food as if you have not been fasting at all. A potential downside of this method is that a full 24-hour fast is fairly difficult for many people.

TIP: You don’t need to go all in, initially. It’s ok to start with a 14–16 hour fast, then move upward from there. Also, drink LOTS of water, tea, and other zero-calorie beverages during the fast to help reduce feeling hungry.

In summary, the Eat Stop Eat fast is an intermittent fasting program with one or two 24-hour fasts per week.

The 5:2 Diet
The 5:2 diet is restricting your calorie intake to 500–600 for 2 days of the week. This diet also permits eating normally 5 days of the week.

This diet is also known as the Fast Diet and was popularized by British journalist Michael Mosley.

On the fasting days, it is recommended that women eat 500 calories and men eat 600 calories.

For example, you might eat normally on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Mondays and Tuesdays are fasting days. For those two days, you eat 2 small meals of 250 calories each for women and 300 calories each for men.

There are no studies testing the 5:2 diet itself which makes this diet highly criticized. However, there are many studies on the benefits of intermittent fasting.

In summary, the 5:2 diet involves eating as you normally would eat 5 days of the week while restricting your calorie intake to 500–600 for 2 days of the week.

Alternate Day Fasting
Alternate-day fasting has you fast every other day, either by not eating anything or only eating a few hundred calories. Many versions of this method exist. Some of them allow a daily intake of up to 500 calories on fasting days. Many studies showing the health benefits of intermittent fasting use versions of this method. A full fast every other day can seem rather extreme, so it’s not recommended for beginners. With this method, you may go to bed very hungry several times per week, which is not very pleasant and probably unsustainable in the long term.