Staying fit has always been a hot topic throughout the years. From eating healthy food to exercising regularly, a lot of dietary and weight loss programs have come and go. One of the most popular ones today is the Intermittent Fasting.

Not only is IF known to make you lose fats quickly, but it’s also known to be a healthy lifestyle choice. One of the reasons for this is its ability to make the human body become more efficient. So, if you’re interested, you can read on to get an idea on how to effectively do intermittent fasting:

1. Meal Skipping

When beginning intermittent fasting, occasionally skipping meals may be a better choice. This is what you call meal skipping. By doing so, you can still adjust your body instead of suddenly fasting it.

Depending on time restraints of your level of hunger, you can choose on meals to skip. As long as you have a healthy meal each time you eat, skipping meals is recommended.

Moreover, this method of intermittent fasting will work if you monitor it. You can write it on your journal or record it on a tracker app.

This method also adheres to your body’s hunger signals. For instance, you should only eat when you feel hungry and avoid eating when you’re not. By doing so, your body can adjust to the stages of intermittent fasting gradually.

2. Warrior Diet

For stricter intermittent fasting, the warrior diet is recommended. As its name suggests, the warrior diet came from Hofmekler’s experience of staying fit in his military days. With this diet, you fast for 20 hours, and you can only overeat during the 4-hour window. The 20 hours cover overnight and day while the 4-hour window should happen at night.

This diet also originates from primitives wherein they hunt for days and feast at night.

If you want to stay fit using this type of diet, you should eat more protein, vegetables, fruits, and other nutrient-dense foods. During the 4-hour window, you don’t need to count the calories you take as long as you stick to having large portions of protein and healthy fats. But if you’re the calorie-conscious type, you should know how much calories you should take in a day. As much as possible, you should stay away from sugary beverage, salty and sugary processed foods.

With such, you can get optimal body composition, fitness, and health as a result of overeating after long periods of fasting.

3. Alternate Day Fasting

Similar to skipping meals, alternate day fasting lets you skip your meals but in a longer period. In this type of fasting, you only get to eat within 12 hours after 36-hour fasting. Same with the warrior diet, you can eat as much as you want during the 12 hours.

Because of the longer period of not consuming food, alternate day fasting is known as an extreme intervention.

You wouldn’t regret such diet as most experienced a lot of benefits after this fasting. Some say that they’ve reduced their overall body weight as well as their belly fat. The others say that they’ve increased their ketone bodies which are responsible for burning fat. Some even lowered their cholesterol levels with this kind of fasting.

As long as you adhere to regular fasting, you can achieve your body weight goal. Just make sure you consult with your doctor and research thoroughly before undergoing such an extreme fasting method.

4. 16-Hour Fasting

Another intermittent fasting that you can do to lose weight faster is through the 16/8 method. In this fasting, you get to eat your daily meal within the 8-10 hours window after fasting for 14-16 hours. During the eating window hour, you can have two to three meals and more.

This method is easy as you can skip eating anything after dinner up to breakfast. Then, you can eat the next meal at noon so that you can complete the 16-hour fasting. Especially when you’re not doing extreme physical activities, this method may be perfect for you.

Moreover, if you’re already used to skipping breakfast, you can easily adjust to the 16-hour fasting.

Also, you need to take note that this method only works if you avoid eating junk foods and foods rich in calories.

5. 12-Hour fasting

If you don’t want 16-hour fasting, you can opt for shorter fasting. You can consider the 12-hour fasting as one of the least painful and easiest ways to do intermittent fasting. Again, just like other types of intermittent fasting, you need to consume nutrient-dense food. Doing this, you can achieve your desired weight easier.

As easy as skipping meals, you only need to fast for 12 hours a day. Then, you can only eat your required calorie intake within the 12-hour window period. For instance, if you’ve had dinner at 6 PM, then you’re not to take in any food until 6 AM the next morning. And from 6 AM to 6 PM the same day, you can have your healthy meals.

As you can see, fasting this way is easy as you usually sleep in hours after your dinner. By doing so, you avoid taking in unnecessary snacks which can build up over time.

Conclusion

There are more ways to do intermittent fasting, but the mentioned ones are one of the most effective ways. From meal skipping to warrior diet, you can choose the one that’ll fit you. If you can do a longer period of fasting, alternate-day fasting may be good for you. Or choose 16-hour fasting for a not so strict form of fasting. You can even have the 12-hour fasting that you can do regularly without affecting your daily meal intake.

Whatever you choose as your way of doing intermittent fasting, eating nutrient-dense foods will surely help you succeed with your weight goal.