A Short Guide to Intermittent Fasting

by: Stefan Simonovic

Source: Flickr

Nowadays, we can witness countless things going on around the world via the Internet, from political and economic changes on a global scale to less significant ones like Buzzfeed losing popularity as opposed to transgender dating trend which is currently on the rise, for example.

On the other hand, there are a lot of different diets online as well, all seemingly designed to help you lose weight, become healthier and maintain an optimal state of body and mind. With that said, we want to introduce you to the recent trend of intermittent fasting and how to properly utilize it to your benefit.

More than just a Fad

There are many diets that make sense nowadays. Unfortunately, there are a lot of fad eating plans that try to sell the idea of losing excess weight within ridiculously short amounts of time, too. Luckily, intermittent fasting is anything like that.

Namely, the IF eating plan is unique in a couple of ways. First, it’s not your regular diet that tells you exactly how much of which food you’re supposed to consume on each day. A person who is intermittently fasting isn’t restricting themselves in terms of which foods they have to eliminate completely from their diet. Instead, they’re just eating foods in a pre-determined manner.

Basically, IF means continuously switching between fasting and regular eating. Most people choose the path of fasting 24 hours twice per week, but you can choose any interval that may suit your needs better.

Interestingly enough, there’s actual science behind this. It has proven that our ancestors, who mostly hunted or gathered their food, didn’t have what to eat sometimes, which forced them into intermittent fasting whether they liked it or not. After some time, those same humans started developing a larger tolerance to hunger, which allowed them to last longer without food and made them physically healthier in the process.

Choose Your Way

As we've said before, there is more than one method of applying intermittent fasting to your eating plan. Since it’s more of an eating pattern than a diet, it offers a lot more freedom than some other modern diets out there.

The 16/8 method is the most basic way of utilizing IF. You should skip breakfast, eat only 8 hours after waking up, and then fast for the next 16 hours. This is repeated on a daily basis and is easiest to follow since it pretty much becomes routine after day three.

We have already mentioned the “fast for 24 hours twice per week” method above. This is the most popular one, as it doesn’t really require too much fasting – you should skip dinner twice a week and you’ll be good.

Lastly, we have the 5:2 method that promotes consuming 500-600 calories for two non-consecutive days in a single week, while you can eat normally for the rest of that same week.


About the author:

Stefan is a writer and a blogger in his spare time. He also works for First Beat Media, a company that mainly focuses on the online dating niche and similar services.