Intermittent fasting (IF) is an eating pattern that has a time cycle between fasting and eating. There are no provisions in choosing the food to be eaten, the most important thing is the eating window and how long to fast.
Compared to the term "diet" which usually refers to reducing or limiting your food intake, intermittent fasting tends to regulate your eating habits.
Benefits of intermittent fasting
Basically, fasting itself has a good effect on health, especially since fasting has been known for a long time to survive.
Your eating patterns may be irregular because you often eat out of time or skip meals. By doing intermittent fasting, you can improve or form healthier eating behaviors.
This method trains the body's resistance so that it can still carry out its functions even though it is not eating food for a certain period.
How to do intermittent fasting?
There are several different ways to do intermittent fasting, but all of them are based on choosing regular mealtimes and fasting. For example, you might eat only during an eight-hour period each day and fast for 16 hours. Or you may choose to fast for 24 hours twice a week.
Here are some examples of methods that are widely used, such as the including:
- 8/16: Skipping breakfast and limiting your daily mealtime to 8 hours, such as 1–9 p.m. Then you fast for 16 hours.
- Eat-Stop-Eat: Fasting for 24 hours, once or twice a week, for example by not eating from dinner one day until dinner the next day.
- 5:2 Diet: With this method, you only consume 500–600 calories on two non-consecutive days of the week, but eat normally for the other 5 days.
Many people consider 16/8 to be the simplest, and easiest method to implement, and it is also the most popular method in intermittent fasting.
What can you eat during intermittent fasting?
As long as you are fasting, you can still drink water or any drinks that do not contain calories, such as black coffee and tea, as long as they are without sugar.
And during the eating window, you can"eat normally", which doesn't mean overeating everything. You won't lose weight or get healthier if you spend your mealtime eating high-calorie fast food, eating a lot of fried foods, and snacking too much.