Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern. You have probably heard of it since this idea really blew up in 2015 and continued gaining popularity among stars and celebrities further on. Intermittent fasting is cycles between periods of eating and fasting (not eating). There are many different patterns of intermittent fasting. For example, the most popular fasting pattern is 16:8. You fast for 16 hours and have an eating "window" 8 hours in a day. During these 8 hours you can intake calories. This pattern is the simplest to stick to.
The good thing about intermittent fasting and the reason it is getting so popular - more than 1 million people doing it on a regular/semi-regular basis - is because the pattern doesn't specify what you should eat. You can eat like you normally would, without any serious diet restrictions!
The most common patterns for fasting are:
Intermittent fasting may look terrible to you at the moment. Not eating for 24 hours must feel awful, right? This reaction is expected but these fears shouldn't take over. While you might feel weak for the first 6 hours (during which you can just sleep if you start in the evening), but after that your body starts producing ketons actively. These ketons become the food for your organisms. So instead of feeding on fats from the food you ate an hour ago, your body will feed on fats from its fats storage, making you lose weight. Because your body will produce ketons, you won't feel hungry at all! This is what scientists found out.
Some healthy benefits include insulin levels falling, effective cellular repair, disease protection, weight loss, muscle gains and etc. It would take you 3 hours to read all good consequences of intermittent fasting.
Now the idea sounds OK, right? To top it all with icing, I found out that not eating for many hours is in fact more healthy for our bodies than eating 3-5 meals in a day.
Not all people should do intermittent fasting. If you are one of the people that fit in the description below, then you can't fast. If you are:
Do not fast for longer than 36 hours though! It might be dangerous because it wasn't studied yet if people can fast for such a long time without harm.