There is always a new fad diet, it was the keto diet for a long time. Keto involves consuming a lot of fat in your diet, a 70 percent fat diet that breaks down stored fats as the main source of energy and in results leads to weight loss. Keto has been working just well with many people until intermittent fasting became the new preferred eating order. Nutrition has become an interesting subject for many urban dwellers who want to lose weight by maintaining healthy eating habits and less by working out.
If you want to lose abdominal fat and see your abs, it is always about the diet, and intermittent fasting has promised a lot apart from just giving you a nice looking body. According to researches, it makes you more alert, you lose excess fat without losing muscles, and it’s also cheaper compared to other diet plans since you won’t be consuming any junk or a lot of food.
So, let’s get into it and see how this works. There are many forms of intermittent fasting; according to some articles I checked out in healthline and Men’s Health, it takes a variety of interesting forms;
The Famous 16:8
One of my friends was on this type of intermittent fasting. Within this program, you starve between 14-16 hours and eat within 8-10 hours. So this means that if you eat dinner at 8 pm, you won’t taste anything else until the following day at around 12pm….so that’s roughly 16 hours of fasting. In between, you can drink a low-calorie beverage like tea and coffee. Now, this is very possible. And should you do it, you are promised to see weight loss in the next 3 weeks or so. Sounds like a great program.
The folks in the village can easily do this because they eat around 9 pm and go to sleep. They wake up at 6 pm and go to the farm. They work on the farm until around 11 am. They come back, clean their feet and drink porridge and sweet potatoes. That’s intermittent fasting at its best. I swear those guys are fit. They live healthier than us.
The interesting 5: 2 diet plan
Within this intermittent fasting diet plan, you just eat normally for 5 days and then restrict your calorie consumption to 500-600 calories for two days. This sounds so easy and is the most adaptable type of intermittent fasting. If for two days you do simple meals like the traditional Ugali, Spinach, and eggs, that will lead to very low-calorie consumption. And then on the other days, you can just eat normally. This is so practical.
However, even during these normal days, you should be watching what you eat. You will still have to be careful with what you put in your stomach for this program to work. You are what you eat.
The Others
Now, those are the two main plans of intermittent fasting because they are specifically guided by a schedule, the remaining plans are kind of random, they are; the warrior diet plan which calls for you to eat fruits and vegetables on day time and then eat a big meal during dinner. Then we have alternate day fasting which I can’t quite grasp how it works because it needs you to go to bed hungry on some days a week or consume a low level of calories on some days.
The remaining plans like random meal skipping involve you skipping meals regularly when you don’t feel hungry like the way Nairobians don’t do lunch. They only drink fresh juice or water.
And finally, we have one called ‘eat stop eat’ which demands that you do a 24-hour starving once or twice in a week.
Well, all the listed eating patterns sound applicable and will need some discipline for you to execute. The most important thing to remember in all this is that during those hours when you eat, you still have to eat healthy meals. It doesn’t make sense starving then eating a lot of junk during your eating hours. It will not help with the weight loss or slimming your waist.
The only people who can execute this properly are single people, it is easier to organize your meals when you live alone. However, a keto diet is better at weight loss than this according to me. Within intermittent fasting, it is more about starving yourself as opposed to a keto diet which limits how much carbs, fats, calories, and vitamins you consume. However, in a keto diet, you might end up losing muscles as you lose weight and that’s not good for your workout if you are a gym enthusiast.
As we Close
I am not a nutritionist and I had to read a lot of research articles as I review intermittent fasting fad as compared to keto. If it sounds interesting, you can check out the linked articles within and find out more of how each works. You can also combine the two and come up with a harmonious program that involves both.
Nice time!
