Intermittent fasting is a form of diet/lifestyle where you eat in a certain period of time(usually a 8 hour window) and fast for the remaining time.
Fasting for 16 hours!?
Yes, the standard method of intermittent fasting follows the 16:8 pattern. You fast for 16 hours a day and eat in the remaining 8 hour window(usually 2~10pm). There are a couple more methods to intermittent fasting such as, eat-stop-eat method and the 5:2 method where you massively restrict your calories for 2 days( eating around 500-700 calories) and eating normally in the rest of the days. Personally, the 16:8 kind suits my lifestyle as i'm a student and feel lazy cooking early in the morning.
Advantages
- Upto 5 fold increase in the production of growth hormone which leads to enhanced fat loss and increased muscle growth
- Lower insulin level/level spikes which leads to fat being used as fuel to perform body functions.
- Anti-aging( too controversial to discuss), but many people have mentioned about being on IF(intermittent fasting) and experiencing reduced aging rate. I'm a 20 year old student, so i cant exactly comment on this.
- Huge food portions: If youre like me, i like to eat huge portions and often get hungry if i stay on the 3 meals a day which leads to craving and breaking my diet. Since i get to have huge portions, my cravings are drastically reduced and makes me stick to my diet consistently.
To summarise, IF has a lot of benefits and makes you a fat burning machine. If you have high body fat composition i would 100% recommend, but always consult your doctor before following a specific diet.
Please let me know in the comments if you have any questions regarding IF and i'll try to help you out in any possible way i can :)