Intermittent fasting (IF) is an increasingly popular eating program that alters the focus of weight control management to what one eats and when he/she eats it.

Unlike the more conservative diets that tend to have a fixed set of rules regarding the type of food to consume, IF alternates between periods of food intake and periods of very low-to-no calorie intake. 

Research that has been carried out on this approach postulates that the human body is well adjusted to starve and be able to survive hours without food the way the survival mechanisms of our hunter-gatherer fathers were.

Trendy diets on intermittent fasting

• The effectiveness of the IF plans is diverse, but it is based on the choice of normal and planned intervals of food item consumption. Time-Restricted Eating (TRE) is the most commonly used and the most recommended one. TRE is the act of minimizing the length of time to eat within a day to a minimal amount. The most common of them is the so-called 16:8 method: individuals abstain 16 hours and spend the remaining eight hours on the intake of their daily caloric intake. It is also characteristic of other fasts where one is supposed to eat between 6 and 8 hours a day.

• There are other systems other than the daily timing one of them being the Modified Fasting in which one eats fully with five days of the week but very little or none at all with the other two non- consecutive days of the week. The other type is the alternate-day modified fasting which involves having a regular diet day followed by a day to which the calorie intake is restricted to about a quarter of the normal intake.

Health Advantages and Mechanisms

• The argument of intermittent fasting is that there are regular eating schedules that can induce a cell change. This alteration may compel the body cells to switch the focus to other important activities including repair, energy conservation and regulation of functions throughout the body.

• IF in short-term studies has been seen to have a number of positive health indicators. Among these benefits, one can note that their weight control, blood sugar level, blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and chronic inflammation can be improved. Particularly, a quality research on 2024 cited high-quality evidence of Time-Restricted Eating to be effective in weight loss, general weight loss, and insulin level improvement in overweight.

Researchers are, however, yet to comprehend the long-term health influence of intermittent fasting. According to other research, the health benefits may be the same regardless of the timing of general calorie restriction. Moreover, few studies have suggested that the popular 16:8 diet may potentially introduce an increased risk of cardiac disease as compared to other time-restricted systems of consuming food.

New users are also likely to experience temporary side effects, including dizziness or a state of open fatigue.

Install the Fitoja app and start intermittent fasting on your own.