As I’ve mentioned in previous entries, my doctor has told me that I need to make an effort to be healthier. I needed to lose weight if I want to be healthier. One of the things that I have attempted to do for weight loss is IF, otherwise known as Intermittent Fasting. Some people also call it the Eat Stop Eat diet.
The concept of the diet is that when you fast it helps to jump-start your metabolism and helps you to burn more fat. The fast is also not that complicated: while you are not allowed to eat, you are however allowed to drink as long as it is sugar-free (think tea and water or black coffee without sugar).
You can do IF two ways: the 5:2 or the 16:8. At 5:2, you basically eat normally for five days of the week but you fast during two of those seven days in the week. This means not eating for 24 hours straight for two days weekly. An example of this is if you eat Sunday to Tuesday that means that on Wednesday you stop eating at 8AM and then resume again after 8AM on Thursday. Then you do the fast again on a Friday or Saturday.
I haven’t tried 5:2 because I feel that this is something my body would not be able to handle given that I have to go 24 straight hours without food while working at the same time. It’s just not me. I would probably faint trying this! That also seems a bit too extreme if you ask me. Plus with my blood sugar issues, I could go too low because of all that fasting.
With the 16:8 diet, you only have to fast for 16 hours, leaving an 8-hour window to eat for the rest of the day. This means that daily I could still eat but I would stop eating at (for example) 8 PM and resume again at noon the following day.
For me, the 16:8 is the more doable of the IF diets. I have tried this, starting with just a 10 hour fast then moving onto 12 then 14 then finally to the 16-hour fast. I lost 5 lbs in a week of doing this. Take note though that just because you are allowed to eat anything you want in the 8-hour window it doesn’t mean that you can go crazy with the food. In my case, I still did my best to avoid the food that I knew was not healthy for me. So that means nothing with too much sugar and avoiding fried and fatty food. That said, as long as you eat everything in moderation I think you’ll be fine.
Would I recommend doing IF to anyone? Yes, I would if you can manage the schedule. I’ve stopped doing this because sometimes I go to meetings where people offer me food and it makes me feel so rude (and superficial) to refuse by saying I am on a diet. I try to fast whenever I can but I do not do it daily. Still, it is a good diet to try if you want to lose weight. I’d advise seeing a doctor first though before trying this because it has been mentioned that it can cause ketosis and there may be certain health issues that can be complicated by that.
Has anyone else tried this? Leave me a comment and share your story!
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