Intermittent Fasting to Lose Weight

Intermittent fasting is a dietary method that consists of working fasts into your regular eating routine. These fasts can take place at any interval, but daily and weekly fasts are the most common for purposes of weight loss. The daily approach to intermittent fasting involves eating only during set hours of each day, while the weekly approach to fasting is to not eat or to severely limit caloric intake on certain days of the week.

Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Some of the benefits of intermittent fasting include improved insulin resistance, which is helpful in muscle gain, anti-aging, the prevention of diseases like type 2 diabetes, and weight loss. Intermittent fasting also helps cleanse the body of toxins, increasing immune productivity, longevity and overall health.

Daily Fasting

For daily intermittent fasting, you should set times during which you will eat, such as 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. No matter what time you wake up, you will not begin eating until 10 a.m. and you will eat nothing after 4 p.m. This provides you with six hours of daily eating and, therefore, an 18-hour daily fast.

The main advantage of the daily fasting method is that you can follow the same eating schedule every day, making it easy to stay on track. Disadvantages of daily fasting are a lowered metabolism if caloric intake is too low each day, muscle loss in active people due to the decrease in calories, and increased depression and anxiety in some people.

Weekly Fasting

To use the weekly intermittent fasting method, you will schedule days of the week on which you will not eat or will limit the number of calories you eat. On these days, for instance, you may just have a single 8-ounce glass of fruit or vegetable juice three times a day instead of full meals. On the other days of the week, you can eat a healthy, balanced diet. Some people alternate days of fasting, eating healthy meals every other day and fasting on days in between. One major advantage of weekly fasting is the simplicity of just not eating on fasting days. Since you can eat pretty much unlimited healthy foods on non-fasting days, you will be able to do a lot less calorie-counting than with the daily plan. A possible disadvantage of the weekly method is binging on off-days due to increased hunger.

Healthy or Harmful?

The safety of intermittent fasting is undetermined. Some medical professionals such as Mark P. Mattson of the National Institute on Aging deem it an acceptable way to cut calories and keep weight within a healthy range. Other medical professionals such as American Dietetic Association spokeswoman Ruth Frechman believe that intermittent fasting can cause metabolic confusion, which leads to difficulty in digestion and other medical disorders. As with any extreme weight loss plan, if you want to try intermittent fasting to lose weight, you should start out slowly and consult your doctor.