Intermittent Fasting - heart disease or longer life? Which one fucking is it?
is life or death hanging on the time of your eating window?
Nothing enrages me more than the brain hurt caused by two conflicting article headlines published within a month of each other.
A few months back, I covered time restricted eating, intermittent fasting’s trendy younger sibling. Shortly after, a headline hit which was shared all over the non-diet space of the internet.
Intermittent Fasting Causes Heart Disease!!
Cue a chorus of cheers and smug ‘we tooooold you so’ posts from literally every intuitive eating dietician and nutritionist ever.
Does it though? Well, that’s what my clients want to know, some of which have dabbled in the murky waters of every diet in existence. Or, is intermittent fasting good for health and longevity?
So this is what I’ll cover. What the absolute fuck is intermittent fasting? And what are the studies behind these two polar opposite headlines? In fairness, most of the headlines on these topics did go on to have relatively balanced discussions but most of them still came to the conclusion that you should do intermittent fasting if you like it.
What the absolute fuck is Intermittent Fasting?
Intermittent fasting (IF) is an eating pattern where individuals alternate between periods of eating and fasting. It doesn't prescribe specific foods to eat but rather focuses on when you should eat them. Here are some common methods:
16/8 Method: This involves fasting for 16 hours each day and eating all your meals within an 8-hour window. For example, you might eat between 12 pm and 8 pm each day.
5:2 Diet: This method involves eating normally five days of the week while restricting calories to 500–600 for the other two days, which should be non-consecutive.
Eat-Stop-Eat: This involves a 24-hour fast once or twice a week. For example, not eating from dinner one day until dinner the next day.
Alternate-Day Fasting: In this regimen, you alternate between days of no food restriction and days where you either fast or eat very little food.
Warrior Diet: This involves eating small amounts of raw fruits and vegetables during the day and one large meal at night.
THE CLAIMS - IF doubles your risk of heart disease.
A paywall is now in effect. It takes a shit ton of time to read these research papers and give you the non diet, non weight loss perspective. So you can sign up to read the rest.