Searching for diet advice online can be exhaustive and may lead to unreliable sources. However, by better understanding the most common types of diets, you can decide which one works best for your lifestyle and overall goals. Nutritionist Anthony O’Reilly from BarBend tells Digital Journal has written about the most popular diets online and their pros and cons.
He turns his attention to intermittent fasting. This approach refers to various meal timing schedules that cycle between voluntary fasting and non-fasting over a given period.
Methods of intermittent fasting include alternate-day fasting, periodic fasting, and daily time-restricted feeding. For example, the 5:2 diet involves severely reducing your calorie intake on two days of the week (to around 500 to 600 calories) and eating a healthy, balanced diet on the other five days.
Intermittent Fasting
Intermittent Fasting involves consuming all your calories within a set time period and then fasting for the rest of the day. There are different approaches to intermittent fasting, with the most popular being an 8:16 split – meaning you consume your calories in an eight-hour eating window and fast for the other 16 hours of the day. You can also do a 10:16, 16:10, or even a 6:20 eating: fasting split.
The concept is that you will be eating fewer calories since you are squeezing them into a narrower timeframe, instead of consuming them throughout the day. Intermittent Fasting is the most popular diet online, receiving a huge 1.2 million average monthly searches worldwide.
Kourtney Kardashian and Jennifer Aniston are among the many celebrities to endorse the benefits of Intermittent Fasting.
The advantages of Intermittent Fasting are:
- Leads to weight loss, helps improve insulin resistance, reduce oxidative stress on your cells, stabilise blood sugar levels, and reduce the risk of strokes.
However, the disadvantages of Intermittent Fasting be can summarized as:
- This form of diet can be difficult to stick with long-term due to low energy, cravings, habits, and the discipline required to stick to the specific time frames.
- Studies investigating intermittent fasting also point to certain side effects that may occur during the fasting stage, for example, mood swings, constipation, dehydration, or diminished sleep quality.
Intermittent fasting is safe for many people, but it is not suitable for everyone. Skipping meals may not be the best way to manage your weight.
