Now that's something making the buzz on the net for a while now no? I'm confident you've see it somewhere; YouTube, TV or maybe even some of your friends already tried it too. If so, then please add me into your list of known guinea pigs for this science experiment! Yes, I did this for a while last year and wanted to share my part of the story here.
Intermittent what?
"Intermittent fasting" is well a fast like it's name clearly suggests... it's not a diet, it's neither aiming to make you stay away from your fast food cravings and people are doing it for number of reasons...
There are a lot of people on the internet, that are way better suited than to me to explain what the fuss it all about. Here's Cynthia Thurlow, a nurse practitioner, to tell you all about it:
Experiment context
According to the World Health Organization, overweight people are those having a a BMI (Body mass index) that is greater or equal to 25 but less than 30 [1] Unfortunately, I have always found myself in this range and with confinement last year due to covid-19, needless to say, things got a bit out of control. Thus, after some research here and there, I decided to try IF.
How I did it?
Calorie Counting
First thing I read, is that calorie counting is one of the most important step when it comes to weight loss and it makes sense (but Cynthia above may argue on this!). So I began to look for tools to helping me do just that and fortunately the App Store cranked up with apps for this kind.
One that I found to be particularly useful is Lose It; it's free but also has a premium tier for those who want to get more metrics than just calorie counting.
Here's one of it's main tracking features:
- Calorie counting (from breakfast to diner)
- Exercise logging and
- A Weight loss goal planner
It's database contains a ton variety of foods; from the American to Asian continents you just have it all (or most) plus you can even add your own food or scan a product's nutritional table labels and have it added into it's database.
Keeping track of time
During IF, irrespective of the plan you want to follow, you need to keep a good track of time! Better yet, you need some(one|thing) to motivate you, 'cause that little pat on the back is much need right? Well guess what? Zero (it's the app name :P) will do just that. It even comes with a nice widget showing your fasting progress while a will also make to remind you about when to start and beak your fast.
The Result
After three weeks, I started to see the results, not only the scale showed a -4 kilograms than before but I also started feeling way better. In fact, you'll feel the benefits after just a few days of fasting.
Now what's your views on IF?
Best ++