Intermittent Fasting - Explain To Me

well it can run in either a condensed eating window eg: eat for 4 hours and nothing for 16 hours

or you can eat one day and then miss a day. Or just miss one day a week of eating.

Studies have shown this system can do all kinds of good in your body. One big one is the increased mental focus that comes when fasting.
One study i read up on had observed a lower amount of muscle tissue loss in the dieters, but they did not understand the reason for it.

"how it works" - you eat less on average per week by not eating at all for a period within the week - a part of one day perhaps, or 24 hour.

It does rely on you not "catching up" the day after the fast, but intermittent calorie reduction has been shown to be as effective as continuous calorie reduction.

well it can run in either a condensed eating window eg: eat for 4 hours and nothing for 16 hours

?

Yeah ive read this system on a few body building sites.

so you eat from 12pm till 4pm and nothing until then the next day.
Its suppost to carry the same good points.
The up side to IF is that as long as you keep the fast less than 36 hours you can work it how ever you want over the week.

4 + 16 = 20

Check out this site: http://bradpilon.com/

What's nice is that he backs up the theory with serious medical studies, not some of the bogus 'studies' you'll see at fad sites.

As long as it's controlled and short-term, you're not going to trash your metabolism as is one unsupported theory.

One big one is the increased mental focus that comes when fasting.

?? Does that increased mental focus happen once they've eaten? I know when I get really hungry, I'm a dumb *kitten*.

LeanGains.com is super informative. I took a lot of the information there and designed a modified IF plan for myself.

I do alternate day fasting, so on one day I eat a max of 500 calories in a day, and the next I eat 2300. I alternate between the two, which averages to 1400 per day, but doesn't give me the diet fatigue that eating 1400 per day would give me. I've been doing this since early January and it's been great for me, easy to fit it around real life situations and doesn't lead me to compulsive overeating like some other plans have in the past. I don't feel hungrier on my low cal days than on my high cal days strangely enough, and I have just as much energy on both!

I just realized recently after reading up on it on the internet that I practised intermittent fasting five days a week for 12+ years back in the late 70's and for most of the 80's although I didn't know it at the time. I believe what I did was similar to what is now called the "Warrior Diet" (fast for about 20 hours; eat for about 4 hours).

For me it was a lifestyle I adopted and it had little to do with weight control or health. You could almost say it was born more out of laziness (hating to make lunches) than anything else -- lol. I never was hungry before going to work in the morning, so skipped breakfast. I didn't feel like making lunches and couldn't afford to eat out so skipped lunch and therefore I didn't eat till I got home from work. After work I would eat whatever I wanted. Instead of eating, what I would do at lunchtime was go for a walk and browse around the stores. Where I worked I could do this summer or winter without worrying about the weather because there was a skywalk from where I worked where you could walk long distances to major shops in the area without ever going outside. I enjoyed this lifestyle and found that on the few occasions that I did eat lunch I would feel more sluggish in the afternoons. When I went for a long walk instead of eating, the afternoons went much better and I was more alert and better able to concentrate on my work. Never had a weight problem during that time. It wasn't until after I got into my mid to late forties that the lbs started sneaking up on me.