This is a topic which I have some fondness towards, mainly because I have gained many benefits from its practice.
What intermittent fasting is, is a regular scheduled period of time whereby no food is consumed; a fast. This can be done in various ways. With popular approaches being fast5, the warrior diet, eat stop eat, and leangains approach.
This post is simply a short primer on how to set up an intermittent fasting protocol. I’d note first of all that I’m biased towards the leangains protocol, mainly because it serves as a set of principles geared towards my current goals of fitness. [1]
But First, Why Intermittent Fasting?
Firstly, there is some research supporting some health benefits from intermittent fasting. Firstly, it seems to confer the same benefits as regular fasting (on the order of days). In other words, you can gain some benefits of prolonged fasting in a shorter and less disruptive way. There are also some indicators that intermittent fasting brings about some of the benefits of caloric restriction.
On top of that, there seems to be little to no muscle loss on an intermittent fasting regime if done properly, while markers such as levels of catecholamines, as well as insulin sensitivity seem to be improved.
The second and more significantly experienced benefit is psychological. In general, this is because people tend to gain more focus during the fasting period, both from psychological reasons like not thinking about food, to physiological reasons like the elevated levels of catecholamines (of which adrenaline is one of).
More importantly however, not eating for a period of time implies that when you do eat, you get to eat bigger and more fulfilling meals, given that total daily caloric intake remains the same. This is incredibly beneficial to some people, especially those looking to lose some weight. This is because hunger is usually not present during the fast [2], and yet one could eat enough to satisfaction during the feeding period, even while maintaining a daily caloric deficit.
For more benefits, check out this ebook from the iflife.com.
The Leangains Protocol
Basically, you eat in a 6-10 hour window, which implies a 14-18 hour fast, on a daily basis. You may choose to eat from 12pm – 8pm, and then not eat the rest of the time. Water and non-calorie beverages can be consumed during the period of the fast.
Now, what I have just said is a very simplistic summary of the actual protocol. The creator of the protocol, Martin Berkhan, has various other guidelines and Q&As which can be found on his leangains website.
I would encourage anyone who is interested in giving the protocol a try to first read all of the above posts to gain the needed knowledge to maximise the effectiveness of such a protocol towards whatever goal you may wish to pursue.
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Notes:
[1] The creator of the protocol, Martin Berkhan is first and foremost a fitness consultant, having worked with many elite-level bodybuilders, all the way down to the average person looking to improve their body composition for the sake of looking good naked.
[2] This has got to do both with the hunger blunting effect of elevated catecholamines, as well as the temporal-specificity of hormones which raise hunger like ghrelin. For a full explanation, I highly recommend that you search leangains.com for the term ‘hunger’.
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