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When it comes to nutrition, one of our favorite methods to utilize at Reforged is Intermittent Fasting.
Personally, I have utilized Intermittent Fasting for a variety of benefits: from physical, mental, and even spiritual.
For example, a psychological sense, I find that Intermittent Fasting helps me focus more and stress less.
so in this post, we are going to introduce Intermittent Fasting, and provide you examples of ways to implement it.
Let's dive in!
What is Intermittent Fasting exactly?
Intermittent Fasting is simply defined as a period of time where we don't eat for longer periods of time than typical.
When people utilize Intermittent Fasting, they typically do it for biological, psychological and sociological benefits.
For example, some of us find ourselves stressed out trying to build a diet around our busy lifestyles.
It can also help people who prefer to eat bigger in the evening. Most social gatherings and events typically occur in the late afternoon or evening. Intermittent Fasting allows us to enjoy these events without fear of going overboard.
In our world, many cultures (past and present) have utilized Intermittent Fasting methods for a variety of reasons.
Ancient Greeks fasted for long periods of time because they believed it helped with health and improvements in cognition (brainpower). For the Stoics, they viewed fasting from a philosophical perspective. For civilians, fasting was a normal part of their process (most people did not eat until the evening).
In addition, various religions today will implement periods of fasting as well (ie. Muslims for Ramadan, Jews and Yom Kippur).
In the 1900s, scientists started to study fasted mice and rats. In one of the earliest studies on fasting, researchers put rats on a restricted fasting protocol and found that the rodents that fasted lived longer.
Since then, studies have continued on rodents, and a few have found that restricted periods of fasting in rodents improved brain health, prevented cancer, and slowed aging.
With these promising results, scientists started studying on humans. While we haven't had the exact same results as the rodents did, there were a few things that recent research has POTENTIALLY found.
The following are potential benefits of Intermittent Fasting in humans:
More research needs to be done for us to get more proximate benefits of Intermittent Fasting for humans, but the research seems promising.
The most common way to Intermittent Fast are Time-Restricted Feeding methods.
With Time-Restricted Feeding, you create your own specified time period to fast and feed. One example of Time-Restricted Feeding is a popular Intermittent Fasting method known as Lean Gains.
In Lean Gains, you fast for 16 hours and then you feed for 8 (known as the 16:8 protocol).
Another type of Time-Restricted Feeding is the Warrior Diet, where you fast for 20 hours and feed for 4 (20:4 protocol).
Our personal preference when it comes to fasting are the Time-Restricted Feeding protocols.
There are a plethora of ways to utilize Time-Restricted Feeding. You can read a post on this here.
Alternate-Day Fasting is a method where you fast every other day. This style of fasting may help someone going through a fat loss process if they monitor their calorie intake properly.
For example, if the daily calorie goal is 2300, this would equate to 16,100 weekly calories.
If you're starting with a fast one week, you will be feeding for 3 days. On this week, you will consume ~5360 calories on each day.
If you have a feeding day the following week, you will then be feeding for 4 days. On this week, you will consume ~4025 calories each day.
This may seem like a lot and your weight will fluctuate constantly, but being in a weekly calorie deficit should still help with fat loss.
Intermittent Energy Restriction are methods like Carb Cycling which can be coupled with Intermittent Fasting. For example, you will have low days for about 4 days out of the week, and 3 days where you have higher calorie days.
You can follow a similar process like the one mentioned above with the 16,100 weekly calories.
To conclude this post, I want you to consider a few things.
With Fasting Methods, our goal is Flexibility. If you're primarily following Time-Restricted Feeding protocols Lean Gains (16:8), it's ok if you only fast for 14-15 hours. In fact, some of the potential benefits can occur after 8-12 hours of fasting.
Your fasting method should primarily focus on your lifestyle. For example, I find things to be less stressful when I am only eating 2-3 meals per day. This allows me to adhere to my fasting protocol as well.
This can depend on a variety of factors: from our sex, genetics, age, style of training, and more. In addition, some people don't feel comfortable fasting for long periods of time.
Overall, fasting is another method to have in your arsenal and it does not work for everyone.
Yet, if you feel like you find it easy to commit to, then we've got plenty of content coming at you.
I just wanted to thank you all for reading this introductory post to Intermittent Fasting. If you have any questions or comments, email us at support@reforgedperformance.com, or direct message us on Instagram.
Until next time, Reforged Legion!
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