BY FAI ABDUL GAFFA
I’ve asked for contributors to my blog recently, and where better place to start than at home. My brother, who is a fitness junkie, [who needs to stay home long enough to be my personal trainer instead of doing it once a week] dishes about a hot new diet that has about to hit fitness magazines. I’m kickstarting the new regiment tomorrow, and will update as I go along. In case you need a face to the name, this is my brother:
In a couple of months or even weeks, you’ll start to hear about this new diet fad that has just “hit the stands with its miraculous results”. Let us give you the first scoops into this new diet that -body builders and trainers alike- is said to revolutionize the dieting scene, if there was one to begin with.
Lets begin right from the top. What is a diet? Eating less and tasteless food, at that, comes to mind. Yet we should realize that though this comes as a natural response to the much-hated four-letter word, it isn’t true one bit! A diet is simply our eating habit, or just what we eat. So even when we are not on any diet – eating less/ calorie restriction- we are still on a diet; our normal diet!
The point that I am trying to bring across is that even with whatever you wish to achieve, you will have to have a proper diet. Doesn’t matter one bit if it is, say, to lose weight, gain weight or even maintain the weight that you are at now.
Now, let us get into Intermittent Fasting [let's call it IF from now on so I don't have to run spell check over and over again]. It’s been said to work especially well for those trying to lose the few pounds or even to maintain the current weight you are on. As the name says, IF is simply fasting or not eating during periods of the day.
IF breaks the twenty-four hour period of the day into two parts; a sixteen-hour one and an eight-hour one. It’s quite simple – you’ll only be eating during the eight-hour period and fast during the sixteen hour one. This means that during the eight-hour period, you will eat all the necessary food that’ll last you for the day.
Things may seem a tad ridiculous now, to have only eight hours to eat what you’ll normally have in a day but think about it for a second. Say that you’re not one that usually gets much food for breakfast and can only have your first meal during a break at work, say, at bout eleven in the morning. This shall be the start time of your daily intake and will thus end the daily meals at seven in the evening. Lunch, tea and dinner would pretty much be unaffected by this timing and all you have to do is maybe fit in a snack somewhere so that you won’t be too hungry at night. You will not have to change anything much from your lifestyle other than to ensure that you do not have a late night snack and that’s all!
See – this new eating habit goes against what has been said about having numerous meals and all the benefits that that diet could bring about. However, to get a tad scientific, there has been no conclusive evidence to show that the body reacts any differently to the timing or the number of meals a day that one consumes. All that has been concluded in the numerous studies is the simple factor of calories in versus calories out. This means all that matters is how much of the food you eat do you really use up.
Why should you follow this eating habit then?
- Assuming you’ve bought into the idea that you have to take six small meals a day, with the IF, you’ll be looking at far fewer meals and this would mean that you’ll be either cooking lesser or spending less time looking for food. You don’t have to eat six small meals a day – you can eat as many or as little meals in that eight hours, and only consume water, coffee and tea the rest of the time. No sugar, no milk, no calories.
- The other thing that you should know is that there ain’t no need for you to get up way too early or head to bed any later just to get in that one additional meal that’ll fulfill your daily requirements. With this method of eating, you’ve full control of the hours of the day in which you wish these eight hours to be, making things a lot simpler.
- The positives of this eating habit points to a fact that it would be a much simpler meal plan to follow and thus, it would mean that there is a higher chance that we would stick to it till we lose those pounds, the very least.
Say its Saturday night and you’ve been past the time when you could have any food, yet you’re out with friends and the urge to have a bite of that heavenly chocolate cake becomes much too hard to resist; fret not. This one bite would not derail your entire meal plan but while you are at it, why not have a meal then too?
Piece of cake? Yes, and why not!
See while others may call this the “cheat meal”, a “refeed meal” is what we would instead call it. See, in that week you’ve been so diligent in keeping with the new eating habit and maintaining a similar active lifestyle, high chance is that you are burning way more calories than what your body has been doing for a while. Though this may sound good, having a suddenly overworked body could result in loads of effects that would nothing but throw you off your goals. So forget the eating habit for a night and enjoy it; for you know it’s doing you good!
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