By Lewis Dean August 15, 2019 - 4:51am

Intermittent fasting is growing in popularity as the best way to lose weight and boost metabolism. This shows that intermittent fasting is beneficial to the body. There are several ways to do intermittent fasting. If you are thinking of doing it, you can easily find the type that perfectly suits your lifestyle and achieve great success.

Here are the types:

1. 5:2 fasting

This one of the most popular methods of intermittent fasting. The idea is to eat normally for five days and then eat 500 calories a day for the remaining two days. The fasting days are any days of your choice. The idea is that short durations of fasting can keep you obedient; if you feel hungry on a fast day, you can just look forward to the next day when you can have your favorite meal. Fasting for two days and eating normally for five days is just great.

2. Time-restricted fasting

This type of fasting involves choosing an eating window daily, which should leave 13-16 hours of fasting. Fasting enhances autophagy- a natural process in which the body clears debris and other materials that stand in the way of the health of mitochondria. Doing this helps to optimize fat cell metabolism and insulin function.

You can choose an eating window from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. This eating window is ideal for perhaps someone with a family who eats an early dinner. In time-restricted fasting, the time spent on fasting is almost the same as the time you spend sleeping. 

3. Overnight fasting

This is the simplest method of all the methods of intermittent fasting. It involves fasting for 12 hoursdaily. For instance, you can choose to stop eating after dinner, let’s say by 7 p.m. and then resume eating at 7 a.m. by taking breakfast in the morning. Autophagy still happens at the 12-hour mark.

This method is easy to implement. You don’t have to skip meals; you are only eliminating a bedtime snack. However, this method does not take full the advantages of fasting. If you are fasting to lose some weight, a smaller fasting window means more time to eat, so it may not help in decreasing the number of calories you consume.

4. Alternate-Day fasting

This method was popularized by Krista Varady- a nutrition professor at the University of Illinois. You might fast every day, with the fast containing 25% of your calorie needs while the other non-fasting days, you eat normally. This approach is very popular for weight loss. Research shows that alternate day fasting can effectively help obese adults to lose weight.

5. Whole-day fasting

In this method, you only eat once a day. You can choose to eat dinner and not eat again until the next day’s dinner. This is different from the 5:2 method. Fasting durations are basically 24 hours i.e., dinner to dinner or lunch to lunch. The good thing about this method is that, if done for weight loss, it becomes quite difficult to eat an entire day’s worth of calories in one meal. The disadvantage is that it is difficult to get all the nutrients that your body needs to operate efficiently in one meal.