Adopt an Intermittent Fasting Diet

Intermittent fasting (also known as, "IF") is the practice of periodically going without food for a period of time, typically on the order of 20-30 hours. By choosing one of the many regimes out there, or planning your own, you may experience mental, physical, and lifespan benefits.

Steps

1. Set your goal. Determine whether fasting is the right tool to help you achieve it. This will give you added mental strength to continue fasting, should you need it. Some goals for which IF is well suited include:
   
   • Reducing time spent eating, as you will eat a reduced number of larger meals.
     
   • Extending lifetime, though the mechanism is poorly understood and may not apply to humans.
     
   • Losing body fat.
     
   • Increasing (nor)epinephrine levels, enhancing focus and alertness.
     
   • Increasing growth hormone levels, raising bone, organ, and muscle mass.
     
   • Increasing autophagy and associated immune functions, helping you fight off infections and the like.
     
   
   
2. Decide when you will have your last meal of this eating period. Some people like to choose weather to eat or not on a day-to-day basis, but those who like more order in their lives may set up a schedule, such as "I will fast every other day" or "I'm not eating on Monday or Thursday".
   
3. Eat your last meal. Some people binge a little bit, though this means that you will spend more time digesting your food and less time in the "fasting adapted" phase of your food-abstinent period.
   
4. Wait. The benefit of the fast comes primarily from caloric and carbohydrate restriction. Water is absolutely fine, so you may consume as much as you want, and a snack of a couple hundred calories of protein or fat will not massively impact the effectiveness of the exercise.
   
5. Resume eating. Again, no special preparation is required.
   
6. Repeat 2-6 for as long as you want.
   

Tips

• Some popular fasting time-lines:
  
  • "Warrior diet": One meal per day; essentially a 1 hour eating window, 23 hour fast. Some practitioners use a schedule which more closely resembles a 4 hour eating window and a 20 hour fast instead.
    
  • "Eat-stop-eat": One 24 hour fast every two days or so, timed so as to be minimally intrusive to your social eating habits.
    
  • "Every other day": Abstaining from food during the entirety of a calendar day, plus any time that elapses between dinner of the previous eating day and the breakfast of the next. For most people, this is roughly a 33 hour fast with a 15 hour eating window.
    
  
  
• Eating a lot of carbohydrates, especially as the last meal, tends to make you hungry earlier into your fast.
  
• Water can help fill you up, diminishing the hunger.
  
• Consult your doctor before beginning an Intermittent Fasting diet.
  

Warnings

• If you have a history of eating disorders, you should be careful about adopting a IF regime. It may be in your best interest to enlist someone to watch you carefully, to make sure you don't take the fasting to an excessive extreme.
  
• Do not fast if you are pregnant.
  

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Related wikiHows

• How to Choose a Diet That Suits You
  
• How to Establish a Diet Plan
  
• How to Choose the Best Diet
  
• How to Detox
  

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