Intermittent fasting - good idea or not?

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itsraeday
itsraeday Posts: 24
in Fitness and Exercise
Just to give you a brief bio on myself:

My name is Rachel, I'm 22 and I weigh 195lbs, currently. I'm 5 foot 8 inches, and my weight doesnt show all the time, but i see and and want it gone. - My fluctuation weight is 190-195 constantly, and im having trouble keeping anything else off. I've tried diet supplements which helped for awhile, but then just stopped- and I was very discouraged.

Anyhow, I've seen various posts on IF, and the ratios seem to be decent enough. Most women are seeming to start at a 5:2, and some are doing daily fasts, 18:6 hourly.

I'm also on an exercise plan, 4-5 days a week; at a moderate to challenging level. i do other various activities including walking, wrestling, wii/xbox games, etc. I do also maintain decent eating habits, but its really hard to stick to eating when ive not done it in soo long.

Does anyone have any tips? Suggestions? Ideas? Comments?

Any help would be awesomely appreciated!

<3Rachel.Nicole

Replies

  • EvanKeel
    EvanKeel Posts: 1,904 Member
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    The 30 second search I did of other threads on this topic seemed to suggest going to: http://www.leangains.com/
  • shlevon
    shlevon Posts: 30 Member
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    As a person that's been IFing on and off since 2007, I would say do IF if it seems like it'd be easier for you to stick with it. The advantage of IF isn't the 8 hour magical eating window (with the common form of 16/8 fasting to feeding ratio), it's the point that there is no need to eat X amount of times a day to stoke the metabolic fire or whatever.

    The advantage of IF is mostly that, all else constant, it's easy for some people to simply say "no" to food for the first few hours of every day such that they get to eat their daily allotment of calories in a comparatively shorter time window later in the day. This is nice in that you get to feel genuine fullness on a daily basis (since the ~2-3 meals or whatever you're eating every day are, by definition, a lot bigger), i.e. it helps some people stick to a given diet.

    In fairness, it's not impossible that there are secondary health benefits to more cumulative fasting hours per week (in terms of certain genes only being expressed in fasting-like conditions), but that stuff is a lot more speculative.

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