It’s important to form and stick with a daily fasting schedule, and set a daily time to eat your last meal in the eating window.
Consume all of your daily calories during your one or two narrow meal times. You may find that the calorie reduction is easy to achieve, since you simply won’t have as much time to consume calories during a week. As part of this process, gradually alter your diet to decrease your consumption of processed foods, including processed meat, dairy, or soda.
A well-balanced diet includes only small amounts of sodium-heavy processed foods and added sugars. Focus on healthy proteins (meats, including poultry and fish), fruits and vegetables, and moderate amounts of daily carbohydrates.
The IF diet can have a dramatic effect on your daily metabolism. Do not fast without consulting with your doctor if you are pregnant or are unwell. Caution: Type 1 diabetics on an IF diet would have difficulty regulating and maintaining healthy insulin levels, due to the deliberately infrequent food consumption.
Some people binge a little starting this strategy, though this means that you will spend more time digesting your food and less time in the “fasting adapted phase” of your food-abstinence period. Eat a full meal before you begin fasting. If you fill up on only sugar-heavy or carbohydrate-heavy foods, before your fast, you’ll become hungry again quickly. Eat plenty of protein and fats when you have a scheduled meal. Going too low on carbs and fat can be hard to maintain, as you’ll feel unsatisfied and constantly hungry when fasting.
The first/main meal after your fast will be the reward for the fasting period. You will be hungry after fasting, so eat a full meal.
Try to choose snacks with fewer than 30 calories, such as a few carrot or celery sticks, a quarter of an apple, 3 cherries, grapes, or raisins, 2 small crackers, or 1 ounce of chicken or fish until your fast ends.
Staying hydrated will also stave off hunger pains, as the liquids will take up room in your stomach.
Keeping motivated to achieve a personal goal through fasting will give you added mental strength to continue fasting, should you need it. [13] X Research source By restricting the amount of time that you spend eating, you may be able to reduce excessive weight gain. You may be able to extend your lifetime expectancy by burning off body fat
For example, a 180 pound man would need at least 1,800 calories per day to get lean, not by starving, while training moderately. If you cut too many calories, you’ll decrease your ability to stay healthy and build muscle tone.
If you’re trying to lose weight, focus on aerobics or cardio exercises in long sessions. If you’d like a more muscled body, focus on short bursts of anaerobic exercise. Anaerobic means working out in short bursts, without raising your heart rate dramatically. It is based on short times of doing resistance or weight exercise, not long sessions of aerobics or cardio.
