The 7 Best Fasting Methods
Intermittent-Fasting (IF) is defined as voluntary abstinence from eating for variable time intervals and has been associated with potential beneficial impacts on human health.
Below are some of the best intermittent-fasting techniques along with some detail. Work out what works best for your current lifestyle and give it a go today.
Overnight Fasting
This approach is the simplest of the bunch, and it involves IF for a 12-hour period every day. For example: Choose to stop eating after dinner by 7 p.m. and then resume eating at 7 a.m. with breakfast the next morning.
Autophagy does still happen at the 12-hour mark, though you’ll get more mild cellular benefits. This is the minimum number of fasting hours recommended.
A benefit of this method is that it’s easy to implement. Also, you don’t have to skip meals; if anything, all you’re doing is eliminating a bedtime snack (if you ate one to begin with). But this method doesn’t maximize the advantages of IF.
If you’re using fasting for weight loss, a smaller fasting window means more time to eat, and it may not help you decrease the number of calories you consume.
Eat Stop Eat
Simply put, East-Stop-Eat emphasizes the idea that IF is just taking a break from food for a time. You complete one or two 24-hour fasts per week and commit to a resistance training program. The premise being; when your fast is over, I want you to pretend that it never happened and eat responsibly.
Eating responsibly refers to going back to a normal way of eating, where you don’t binge because you just fasted, but you also don’t restrict yourself with an extreme diet or eat less than you need. Occasional IF combined with regular weight training is best for fat loss. By going on one or two 24-hour fasts during the week, you allow yourself to eat a slightly higher number of calories on the other five or six non-fasting days. That, he says, makes it easier and more enjoyable to end the week with a calorie deficit but without feeling as if you had to be on an extreme diet.
Read more about Eat Stop Eat here
Whole-Day Fasting
Here, you eat once a day. Some people choose to eat dinner and then not eat again until the next day’s dinner. With whole-day IF, the fasting periods are essentially 24 hours (dinner to dinner or lunch to lunch), whereas with 5:2 the fasting period is actually 36 hours. (For example, you eat dinner on Sunday, then “fast” on Monday by eating 500 or 600 calories, and break it with breakfast on Tuesday.)
The advantage of whole-day IF, if done for weight loss, is that it’s really tough (though not impossible) to eat an entire day’s worth of calories in one sitting. The disadvantage of this approach is that it’s hard to get all the nutrients your body needs to function optimally with just one meal. Not to mention, this approach is tough to stick to.
You might get really hungry by the time dinner rolls around, and that can lead you to consume not-so-great, calorie-dense choices. Think about it: When you’re ravenous, you’re not exactly craving broccoli.
Many people also drink coffee in excess to get through their hunger, which can have negative effects on your ability to sleep. You may also notice brain fog throughout the day if you’re not eating
Alternate-Day Fasting
You may be concerned about feeling hungry on fasting days. Previous research published by Dr. Varady and colleagues found that side effects of alternate-day IF (like hunger) decreased by week two, and the participants started feeling more satisfied on the diet after week four.
The downside was that during the eight weeks in the experiment, study participants said that they were never really “full,” which can make adhering to this approach challenging.
Choose-Your-Day Fasting
This is more of a choose-your-own-adventure approach to IF. You might do the time-restricted IF (fast for 16 hours, eat for eight, for instance) every other day or once or twice a week.
What that means is that Sunday might be a normal day of eating, where you stop eating by 8 p.m.; then you’d resume eating again on Monday at noon. Essentially, it’s like skipping breakfast a few days a week.
This approach may be easily adaptable to your lifestyle and is more go with the flow, meaning you can make it work even with a schedule that changes from week to week.
In Summary
IF is a personal decision but once you have decided on which type of fasting you will follow, it is important to take time to measure and document your weight and make sure it is working for you. At Future Health Fitness we can assist in measuring your body composition at regular intervals allowing you to make the best decisions during your health and wellness journey.
IF Apps, worth a look.
Zero
https://www.zerolongevity.com/
Simple
https://simple.life/
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