Intermittent Fasting Guide: Everything You Need to Know
Intermittent fasting could be one of the most popular “diets” floating around these days. I personally follow it and I even have some of my clients utilizing the protocol as well. No, this isn’t some fly-by-night yo-yo type of diet like so many others, it actually makes a lot of sense and many say they can easily slide it into their lifestyle much easier than other diets.
There are many methods of intermittent fasting such as a 16:8 and a 24-hour fast (which happen to be the two most popular). However, if you’ve never tried anything like this before, I’d recommend the 16:8 before you try something a little more drastic like the 24-hour or even a 20:4 method.
What does all of this mean? It means you will go without eating (or drinking) any form of calories during your fasting window. You might think you are going to be starving yourself, but I ensure you, you’re not and your body will quickly adapt to not eating at your normal times.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
In a nutshell, intermittent fasting (or commonly referred to as “IF”) is a diet that revolves around a fasting period as well as an eating period. These periods or “windows” depending on the intermittent fasting method you are using can be daily or even weekly and can continue in perpetuity if you wish to maintain the lifestyle.
Now, above I mentioned that many people enjoy intermittent fasting and say it fits their lifestyle. What do I mean by this? Let’s use the 16:8 method as that is the most commonly practiced. What this means is you have a sixteen-hour fasting period where you do not consume or drink calories followed by an eight-hour feeding/eating period.
Seems odd, right? It’s actually quite convenient – let me explain. We live insanely busy lives. We run around from place to place, meeting to meeting, not to mention a hectic home life if you have kids that need to be at various practices or places to meet with friends. Eating a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and fitting in snacks can be a hassle and something that eats up a good portion of your time/day and can cause you to be less productive. The 16:8 method allows you the freedom to be extremely productive and fill your day with whatever activities you wish without needing to remember to stop for a meal.
Related Article: Should You Try a 24-Hour Fast?
Many of you may have a raised eyebrow and may be thinking I’m absolutely nuts for saying you can skip eating for 16 hours, but trust me, there are many benefits that we will get to further into this article. But, let’s take a deeper dive into the 16:8 method and I’ll show you it’s not as difficult as you may think.
We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Many of us sleep for around 7-8 hours each night. When you sleep you are actually fasting without even thinking about it or assuming it’s bad for you. If you are fasting for 16 hours a day and you use up eight of those hours sleeping, you just cut your fasting time (while awake) in half!
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