Intermittent Fasting

Fasting is a traditional practice that many cultures and religions have incorporated.

Fasting can be anything from abstaining from particular foods to foregoing all food entirely, for a specified amount of time before resuming normal dietary patterns.

Intermittent fasting is a little different because it has gained popularity recently for the benefits to health that it conveys, rather than for religious or cultural motivations.

The most common reasons that people practice intermittent fasting is for weight management, and for improving insulin sensitivity in the case of diabetes, pre-diabetes, and neurological disorders. It can also be helpful for regulating hormones.

The word “intermittent” implies that this type of fasting is done at irregular intervals, to keep the body guessing, so to speak.

While an intermittent fast can be to abstain from all food for a whole day or even multiple days, the type of intermittent fast that I’m going to talk about today is more comfortable and affords many of the same health benefits.

The basic goal of this type of fast is eat only within a certain time window of the day. For example, 8 hours of the day would be those in which food is consumed, and for the other 16 hours, no food would be consumed. The 16 hours is the fasting period.

A day might look something like this: Wake up at 7:00am, and drink a full glass of water with lemon and a pinch of sea salt to hydrate. At 8:00am, have breakfast. Do not restrict calories, and focus on consuming adequate protein and fat at this meal.

At noon, have a satisfying lunch that includes balanced fat, carbohydrate, and protein. At 3:00pm, consume a hearty snack or mini-meal that is also balanced in the three macronutrients. Stop eating for the day by 4:00pm.

The important part of this type of fasting is, as I said before, not to restrict calories or fat or try to be on a “diet” for that eating window. It is important to still consume adequate nutrient-dense foods to fuel the body. Otherwise, your results will be less than optimal because your body will slow down its metabolism to conserve energy.