Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent Fasting (IF) comes in a number of different flavours, such as:
- 5/2: 2 days out of the week are restricted to 800kcal with no restriction for the other 5
- Alternate Day Fasting: every 2nd day you don't eat at all
- 16/8: A window of 8hrs per day for eating with 16hrs fasting
If you google for it, you'll likely come across a bunch of stuff purporting the health benefits of fasting. The basic gist is that after 12hrs the body is no longer concerned with processing food and is able to then do other tasks, like cleaning up damaged cells and reducing inflammation that can help with conditions such type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, dementia and cancer. As far as I'm aware there's no definitive studies out there that confirm these benefits are the direct result of IF, as the implied calorie deficit and weight loss could be the actual driving factor. So, I take all that as being nice if true, with the main benefit being its use as a calorie restriction tool.
Most people would state they have 3 meals a day. If this was strictly true, then they would all be doing IF:
- 8am - breakfast
- 12pm - lunch
- 6pm - dinner
That 6pm dinner to the following morning 8am breakfast is 14hrs, so yeah that's IF. But, the reality is more like:
- 8am - breakfast
- 10am - snack
- 12pm - lunch
- 4pm - snack
- 6pm - dinner
- 8pm - snack
- 10pm - snack/supper
That's just a 10hr fasting window.
As we're sleeping for ~8hrs then IF is reducing the eating window while we're awake for some additional hours. Condensing the time, allows us to get back to an actual 3 meals a day and cut out the snacking, meaning that those 3 meals can be more substantial and filling due to the higher concentration of calories. I've been practising 16/8 for around 6yrs now. Well, 16/8 most of the time, but other days it's 14/10 or 12/12 - for all intents and purposes, it's really just skipping breakfast. My eating window typically goes like this:
- 2pm - meal 1 - break-the-fast
- 6pm - meal 2
- 10pm - meal 3 - don't like going to bed with an empty stomach
Each meal would be 600-800kcal, high protein (50g+) and high fibre (veg/fruit) and weigh ~1kg - reducing the urge to snack between meals.
It can take a little getting used to, and getting out of the habit of having breakfast can be tough. But, once over the initial hurdle it can be a worthwhile tool for consistently hitting a calorie deficit.