Fasting
for 24 Hours, Once or Twice a Week (Eat Stop Eat)
This simply means you
go 24 hours without food. If your last meal was at 6pm today, then you wouldn’t
eat until 6pm tomorrow. However, you can, and should, drink plenty of
calorie-free beverages.
Incredibly simple to
follow, and the easiest to put into practice out of all the IF methods – you
just don’t eat anything for about 24 hours once or twice a week. You can freely
drink water and other non-caloric beverages during the fast, but no food. After
the 24 hour fast, you eat a regular meal.
“The best way to eat after fasting is to act as if you didn’t fast”.
Don’t overeat because you haven’t eaten in 24 hours; just eat a regular meal.
For those who prefer
this method of intermittent fasting, it’s recommended that they fast on their
busiest days. This way you don’t focus on not eating food and potential hunger,
but instead you can be very productive. Also, if you know you have a family
event or other social gathering planned, you can adjust your fasting days
accordingly.
Daily
14 – 16 Hour Fast (Leangains method)
This form of intermittent fasting is
used and promoted by Martin Berkhan. He has done an
incredible amount of research on the topic as well, and his results and those
of his clients speak the truth of his system.
The method calls for
men to fast 16 hours each day and for women 14 hours.
Simplified
explanation – if your last meal is at 8pm tonight, you wouldn’t eat again until
10am (women) or 12pm (men) tomorrow.
Don’t consume any
food or caloric beverages during the fasting period. Water, sugar free gum, and
other non-caloric beverages are okay.
This method is
incredibly easy to sustain long term and to follow every day as it’s very
simple to implement.
This IF method
generally means you’ll be skipping breakfast. For some people this could be
quite difficult at first, especially if they buy into the whole “breakfast is
the most important meal of the day” mindset. Some people also feel sick,
sluggish, or light headed if they don’t eat first thing in the morning.
This type of
intermittent fasting can be used for fat loss, building muscle, and even
maintenance, so it’s adaptable for any goal.
Daily
20ish Hour Partial Fast (The Warrior Diet)
This style of intermittent fasting is
known as The Warrior Diet and was created by Ori Hofmekler.
Basically you perform a 20-ish hour partial fast every day, and then have one
large meal at night.
During the fasting
part of the day, you can consume a few servings of raw fruits and vegetables,
fresh fruit/veggie juices, and a few servings of protein (protein shake, some
nuts, boiled eggs, etc) if desired. These are kept quite small.
You eat your main
meal at night. Ori has guidelines for what to eat, and in what order to eat
certain foods (veggies first, then meat, etc).
Having to eat such a
large meal at night doesn’t work for everyone.
It can be difficult to get in all of your fruits, veggies, and protein
with just one large meal. It can lead to
binging on the wrong foods. Some people will inevitably think, “Well, I haven’t
eaten hardly anything all day, so I can eat anything I want”. Then they end up
eating nothing but pizza, wings, and cookies every night.
You don’t have to
worry about food all day. For many people, this is the greatest benefit of the
Warrior Diet. Since you do the vast majority of your eating at night, you don’t
have to worry about preparing food during the day.
It saves money. You
won’t be eating as much as you usually do, so you’ll likely save some money on
your food bill.
Increased energy
levels – many people, myself included, tend to experience greater energy levels
when fasting. This was the case, for me personally, with all three of the
intermittent fasting methods I’ve used.
Fat
Loss Forever IF Method
What do you get when you combine the
most well known intermittent fasting methods – Eat Stop Eat, The Warrior Diet,
and Leangains – and put them into one method? John Romaniello and Dan Go did
just that and “created a ‘hybrid’ fasting program that took all of the popular
methods and combined them in the most intelligent and sophisticated way, all
for one purpose; to use the strengths of each method to cancel out the
weaknesses of others” and created their own version —Fat Loss Forever.
What are the potential downsides of FLF?
First off – if you don’t do well with intermittent fasting, then you definitely
won’t like this. Also, you have a specific IF method to follow on certain days,
and that, for some individuals, could get confusing or be too challenging. My
other main concern is that people will overdo the cheat days and eat tons and
tons of food that is nothing but processed, trans-fat laden crap, even though
the authors say, “Do not use IF as an excuse to eat crap”. If you don’t handle
cheat days well, then this may not be the method for you.
With that said, if you like to have
things laid out for telling you exactly what you should do so there’s zero
guess work on your part, then Fat Loss Forever may be the
method for you.
Alternate
day Fasting
This Intermittent Fasting method is also called "every other day fasting". It is based on a 48 hour rhythm fasting every other day and eating to satisfaction on the other days.
This is mostly practiced by those wishing to lose weight as their
primary objective. It is valued as an alternative to calorie restriction,
because studies on rats and monkeys are showing it to have the same valuable
effects as caloric restriction without the negative emotional and physical
effects.
Caloric restriction is known to produce a long list of health
benefits, like lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, fewer degenerative
diseases, and of course, weight loss.
So you might think these lab rats experienced the beneficial
effects to their health because eating every other day, they must have been
ingesting half the calories as usual, and thus enduring calorie restriction.
But that isn't so. They actually ate twice the calories on the days they were
allowed food, making their total caloric intake the same as the control rats
who were eating "free choice" every day.
You can see why this is such a wonderful revelation to the diet
world. Rather than watching what you eat every day, you simply stop eating
every other day. On the days you do eat, there is no need to count calories or
fret over each meal. You just eat to satisfaction.
Concern over this as a diet plan arise when healthy foods aren't
stressed and poor eating habits can go unchecked on "eating days".
Yo-yoing between no food and junk food isn't going to put you in the best of
health it's apt to create a heavier burden on the body.
