In nutrition and dietetics, different strategies usually appear to improve health, performance or body composition. However, just as they appear, they usually evaporate, except in cases such as intermittent fasting. Although it has been carried out since the beginning of time, it has been carried out by the general population for a relatively short time. One of the most used fasts is the 16/8 fast, since it has an excellent relationship between benefits and ease of carrying it out.
Talking about intermittent fasting does not mean that we have to go through horribly long periods of hunger, it simply means following a specific eating protocol during which we will alternate periods in which we will not eat calories along with other times in which we can eat food Natural way. Those times when we consume food are called “feeding windows.”
What is an intermittent fasting protocol and what does the 16/8 fasting protocol mean?
A fasting protocol is nothing more than a redistribution of the hours at which we are going to eat our meals throughout the day. We will do this taking into account our daily activity (work, training, obligations…) to be able to adapt it as best as possible and that the birds do not come to us half-time and we are forced to give ourselves a small binge to save the moment. The clearest example of intermittent fasting protocol is the one carried out by the Muslim community during the celebration of Ramadan.
The 16/8 intermittent fasting protocol or “Lean Gains Protocol” (as it is known), is a protocol based on two phases: a first phase of 16 hours of duration in which we are not going to eat any food (generally part of these 16 hours usually coincides with the period we spend sleeping, to make it more bearable) and a eight-hour “feeding window”in which we will distribute the calories that we must ingest in the number of meals that we want, although the normal thing is usually between three and five meals for that time (more than five meals in an eight-hour window would mean having to eat every so often and could be very stressful).
Until a few years ago, normal caloric restriction had been observed to increase lifespan in animals and humans. A normal caloric restriction is the common diet in which certain foods and amounts of them are restricted. Those benefits can be obtained in the same way with the use of intermittent fasting.
What can we eat within our fasting period?
During the 16 hours in which we cannot eat “food” we can eat beverages such as water, coffee or infusions, as they do not contain calories. There are certain foods without calories such as sweeteners or light drinks that, although they do not have calories, they can make our body activate certain mechanisms that are contrary to what we are looking for with intermittent fasting. Therefore, it is preferable to leave these foods aside during the window without food.
We can drink infusions that will make us less burdened by drinking water all the time and will help us discover new liquid alternatives to incorporate into our daily lives if, for example, we want to eliminate other less healthy drinks such as soft drinks and sugary juices, or their sugar-free versions.
What can we do during the fasting period to cope with hunger?
Ideally, the fasting period coincide, in part, with the hours we spend sleeping, so that in this way we spend part of that time sleeping and without feeling that call of hunger that in the first days you may feel because you are not used to it. That is why the 8/16 fast usually consists of not eating dinner or breakfast, thus adding about eight hours of fasting to the recommended eight hours of sleep.
But if for whatever reason those hours we spend sleeping are few, another piece of advice is that part of that fast coincide, for example, with your working day in order to keep you busy and that time passes faster and you do not want to eat so much. Obviously, if you have a stressful job, the fasting protocol may not be a good idea, since stress makes very good friends with hunger and food, and we could end up committing some “atrocity” against our body.
Benefits of the feeding protocol based on intermittent fasting
In lower eukaryotes (cells that make up plants, animals, fungi, protozoa, and most algae), chronic fasting prolongs longevity in part by reprogramming metabolic and stress-resistance pathways; in rodents, intermittent or periodic fasting protects against diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and neurodegeneration, while in humans it helps reduce obesity, hypertension, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis. Fasting therefore has the potential to slow aging and help prevent and treat disease while minimizing side effects caused by chronic dietary interventions.
In the article “Fasting can help protect against brain diseases“, the author states that giving up almost all food for one or two days a week can counteract the impact of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It is because fasting 16/8 can make us benefit from better cognitive health by different protective mechanisms.
How to perform the 16/8 intermittent fasting protocol?
Obviously, if you have never done an intermittent fasting protocol before, the worst thing you can do is start directly by doing the 16/8 intermittent fasting protocol (16 hours of fasting and eight hours of eating) because you will most likely end up succumbing to hunger. As the intelligent machine that our body is, it will work much better if we get used to it little by little before reaching the 16/8 protocol.
To do this, for those who have never done intermittent fasting in any of its “formulas”, the recommendation to reach this protocol would be start with a 12/12 fasting protocol (12 hours of fasting with a 12-hour window of food intake) for at least a week or two (pay attention that we have put “for at least”), so that our body can gradually get used to these changes in its “dietary model”.
Once these weeks of conditioning are over, we have two options to continue: either we switch to an intermittent fasting protocol 14/10 (which would imply a smaller but more gradual step) or we take the final step to protocol 16 /8. The sensations that you are having during the weeks of fasting 12/12 will guide you about what will be the best alternative to move forward.
The next step would be to move towards a intermittent fasting 20/4 or fasting 24/0, that is, not consuming anything for a full day. Fasting for more than 24 hours will not bring greater benefits and they can lead to loss of muscle mass and a very high psychic difficulty. Depending on our choice of the type of intermittent fasting, we can do it several days a week or only one or two days if we fast 24/0.
You can start intermittent fasting 8/16 on any day of the week, rather than every day from the start. On days when we fast 8/16 we can eat more food during the feeding windows, but on days when we eat normally we should take care not to overdo each meal since we will ingest more calories than necessary with a high probability.
In Vitónica | The good, the ugly and the bad of following intermittent fasting
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