The intermittent fasting diet: Benefits, methods, and how-to!

Intermittent fasting dietary system has become a crowd’s favorite lately thanks to the great results it achieves in weight and fat loss. According to the recorded cases, intermitted fasting can reduce body weight up to 8% and reduces waist circumference up to 7% over the course of a few weeks.

If you want to know all there is to know about the intermittent fasting diet; the how-to, benefits, and results, stay with us until the end of this article.

What is intermittent fasting?

Intermittent fasting is a time-restricted fasting system where you avoid food, or fast, for 16 hours a day or more, and are allowed to consume food during the remaining hours of the day. This diet is not restricted to the types or amount of food you consume during the 8 hours, it depends on the timing on which you choose to eat.

The benefits of intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting’s most visible and obvious benefit is, of course, weight loss. This diet reduces from 3 – 8 % body weight, it also reduces 4 – 7 % of waist circumference. This is considered to be highly impressive results compared to other dietary systems, as it helps the body retain muscle mass and burn all the access fats, all without the need to decrease the number of calories you consume during the day.

However, weight loss is not the only benefit of intermittent fasting, it is actually one on a very long list of amazing benefits, such as: 

• Enhancing health quality and prolonging life span.
• Lowering blood insulin and sugar levels which helps a great deal with type 2 diabetes patients.
• Possible reduction of inflammation which helps with the protection from chronic diseases.
• Lowering blood cholesterol levels and therefore giving the body better resistance against heart diseases.
• Improving mental clarity and concentration.
• Stimulating the growth of new brain cells which protects the brain from memory loss and Alzheimer’s.
• Increasing growth hormone which helps with getting rid of fats and building muscles.

How to implement the intermittent fasting diet?

Implementing the intermittent fasting system depends on dividing the time, whether the day or the week, into specific sections. In order for it to works, the timing you choose to dedicate for your meals has to be suitable for your daily routine, and the calories you consume have to be within the allowed limit.

In order for this to work smoothly and easily, there have been several methods of implementing the intermittent fasting system, such as:

1. The 16/8 method

This is the most common intermittent approach, it depends primarily on fasting for 16 hours a day and leaving an 8-hour window at the same time every day in which you can are allowed to eat. For example, you can give yourself from 9 am to 5 pm every day to eat and consume whatever food you want, then avoid food completely from 5 pm until the next morning.

2. The Eat-Stop-Eat diet

In this approach, you are to abstain completely from food a full 24 hours once or twice a week. For example, you can fast from breakfast to breakfast, or from lunch to lunch. However, people on this diet can have calorie-free drinks during the fasting period, such as water and tea. As for the rest of the week, you are to keep your calorie count in check, women are allowed to consume up to 2000 calories, and men are allowed to consume up to 2500 calories.

3. The 2:5 system

With this system, you are to choose two non-consecutive days a week to do the intermittent fasting diet, but eat regularly for the rest of the week. However, during these two days, you are only allowed to consume from 500 – 600 calories.

Now that you know all you need to know about the popular intermittent fasting diet, go ahead and give a try. Who knows it could also be a good practice for Ramada.