3 Incredibly Simple Ways To Start Intermittent Fasting
Everything you need to know about the powerhouse practice
Intermittent fasting is one of the world’s most popular health and fitness trends. And for good reason.
With powerful benefits on the body, brain, and even longevity, it’s no wonder people are raving about it.
But perhaps my favorite aspect of intermittent fasting is how simple it is.
I’ve been fasting for 4 years and find it to be the simplest and most effective eating practice I’ve tried — to date.
Here are 3 simple ways to get started with intermittent fasting — plus, everything else you need to know.
What is intermittent fasting?
Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern in which you alternate between cycles of eating and abstaining from food. You don’t have to watch what you eat and there are no counting calories.
It’s not about “what” you eat, but rather “when.”
Similar to intuitive eating, intermittent fasting achieves results indirectly — without having to think about them.
The concept behind intermittent fasting is simple.
Our ancestors didn’t have supermarkets, refrigerators, or food available year-round. Sometimes they went days without finding food. Fasting has been a practice throughout human evolution.
This is because humans have evolved to be able to function without food for extended periods of time. In fact, fasting is more natural than eating 3,4 (sometimes more) meals per day.
How to practice it — 3 simple methods
On average, it takes a person 12–16 hours to reach a fasted state. During this time, your body’s residual food (and eventually stored fat) is used for energy.
During this time your body can run background processes such as cellular and genial repair as well.
There are almost endless ways to practice intermittent fasting. But, they all share 1 common principle — splitting your day/week into 2 windows:
- Eating window: you eat food
2. Fasting window: you eat very little or nothing.
These are the most popular methods:
The 16/8 method
Is a structure in which you eat for 8 hours of your day and fast for the remaining 16.
Most people find it easiest to stop eating in the evening and eat begin eating in the afternoon. Although, you can fast at any time of day/night.
For example, you would stop eating at 8 PM and begin again at noon the next day.
This is the most popular fasting method. People find the 16/8 method to be the simplest, most sustainable, and easiest to stick to.
24-hour fasts
Instead of fasting every day, some people prefer to do longer fasts 1–2 times per week. For example, you may finish eating dinner at 8 PM and not eat again until 8 PM the next day.
The 5:2 diet
A variation of intermittent fasting where 2 times per week you eat between 500–600 calories. On the other 5, you eat as you normally would.
This is a less extreme approach for people that find it hard to abstain from food completely for long periods of time.
All of these methods follow the same approach: reducing calorie intake and giving your body time to work on background processes.
What can you consume while fasting?
To enter a fasted state, your body must work through all the residual food in your stomach. So, you shouldn’t be consuming calories during this time.
For the first few hours, you may feel hungry. But eventually, your hunger will subside as you enter a fasted state. Many people describe the feeling as light, even euphoric.
It’s important to hydrate while fasting. But, you can also drink:
- Tea
- Black coffee
- Sparkling water
If you do accidentally drink some calories (they’re everywhere), don’t panic. Most people can consume up to 50 calories while fasting without it affecting their state.
While fasting, your body can work on background processes
When you’re not having to constantly digest food, your body has time to run maintenance on a cellular and molecular level.
For example, fasting helps level hormones to make stored body fat more accessible. Your cells also initiate important repair processes and change the expression of genes. Here are some of the changes that occur in your body when you fast:
- Human growth hormone levels increase. This has benefits such as loss and muscle gain.
- Insulin levels drop, making your body more efficient at using stored body fat for energy.
- Cellular repair occurs. This includes autophagy, where cells digest and remove old and dysfunctional proteins that build up.
- Gene expression occurs; the process where a gene’s instructions are used to make a protein. There are changes in the way genes work that can lead to a longer life and better protection against disease.
Fasting is normally looked at as a diet, but it can also balance hormones, increase cell function, and allow for gene expression. It’s pretty amazing.
Fasting has powerful weight loss properties
Intermittent fasting can help you lose weight. This is simply because you eat fewer meals and aren’t as hungry throughout the day. It also changes hormone levels making weight loss easier. Additionally, intermittent fasting can help increase your metabolic rate.
Intermittent fasting can help you lose weight by making you eat fewer calories and helping you to burn more calories. A study from 2014 showed that people who intermittent fasted lost 3–8% of their weight over a period of 3–24 weeks.
Another study showed that intermittent fasting caused less muscle loss than standard methods of continuous calorie restriction. However, keep in mind that the main reason for its success is that intermittent fasting helps you eat fewer calories overall. If you binge and eat massive amounts during your eating periods, you may not lose any weight at all.
Finally, it makes your life simpler
Eating healthy can seem complicated when it’s really not. Intermittent fasting keeps your life simple and gentling nudges you into making healthier choices.
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