Dr Rizza: Intermittent Fasting (or IF) is not an actual diet but more of a lifestyle that can be adopted by most of the people. It has many specific health benefits that we’ll discuss shortly, especially for athletes.
IF is different than prolonged fasting (or PF), which has a longer duration and requires medical and nutritionist supervision during the period of fasting.
There are many ways to begin IF and different people will have different styles and preferences for enacting this lifestyle change.
One very important thing is to establish the duration for the fasting period and for the ‘feeding window’ when the patient is allowed to eat meals, also known as Time Restricted Feeding.
During this window, a person can consume a specific number of meals on certain days of the week.
Let’s take a look at the well-known 16:8 model to give some more specific examples.
A person can decide to implement IF 2-3 days a week using this easy model: on the fasting days, the person will fast during a 16 hour period and then feed during an 8 hour period.
This means that the person can finish eating dinner at 8pm at night and then will fast until noon the next morning, and then eat meals between the hours of 12pm to 8pm.
There are many variations to this model depending on each patient and it can be adapted to their unique physical & health conditions and lifestyle. It’s an easy method to start with because the majority of the fasting time is already spent asleep, meaning renouncing feed is easier than in other models.
As with any diet or lifestyle change, it’s always important to keep in mind your goals and what you want to achieve with intermittent fasting.
You should consult a doctor to help develop a sustainable fasting diet plan that takes into consideration important factors such as your gender, age, profession, hormones, physical analysis and medical record.