Or if you wanted, you can pull it back and eat from 10 in the morning until 6 at night. The choice is entirely up to you. Now it is suggested that you keep that window the same every day. Don’t go changing it too much otherwise you won’t see all of the benefits.
Another type of IF would be the 24 hour fast. Unlike the 16 hour fast by using daily windows, with the 24 hour fast you only perform this once or twice a week to see the benefits. An example of this would be eating dinner at 6 PM, and fasting through the night and the better part of the next day up until dinner at 6PM again. This way you are never going a day without eating, just parts of two days. Now although you may think you’ll overeat at this meal you won’t. There’s a limit to how much food your body can process in one sitting.
During the fast you can chew sugar free gum, drink tea, or even coffee (just don’t put in cream and sugar). Using them will help appetite suppression and make sticking to IF much easier.
Don’t forget to drink a ton of water during your fasts as well.
Although IF might sound like an eating disorder, it is in fact far from it. You are still eating the same amount of calories within a week as your normally would. Or if you are restricting calories like on a diet than you would still be consuming the same weekly amount as well.
The only difference is you are eating them within shorter windows throughout the week.
So How Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
After eating anything, your body will spend several hours processing what you just ate. Because you have all this food in your system your body will prefer to burn it for energy instead of the fat you have stored. Especially if you just ate carbohydrates or sugar. Your body loves to burn those first.
Within the “fasted state”, your body doesn’t have any tasty sugar or carbohydrates, or any food for that matter, so it will decide to pull from your fat stores instead.
Success! You are now a fat burning machine.
The more you fast, the more fat you burn. If you combine this with good eating habits and calorie restriction you can see very impressive results in no time.
IF will not only help you lose weight, but it will make you more disciplined and help you enjoy life while dieting. You can now eat two 600 calorie meals instead of six 200 calorie meals. Or if you prefer the 24 hour fast, you would be eating one 1200 calorie meal. Which means you can eat the foods you want and actually feel full afterwards.
Give it a shot, try not eating after dinner this week and just drink coffee in the morning until lunch. See if you don’t feel better and lose some fat while doing so.
