Does Intermittent fasting live up to the hype? And compared to other methods, can you eat what you want - even potato chips and chocolate? Based on latest science, intermittent fasting should even be able to do a lot more.

With intermittent fasting, you don't count calories, but hours. During eight hours a day you can eat as much as you want - the rest of the day you fast. Not eating for 16 hours? Sounds tough, but it's actually a no brainer. Because half of these 16 hours you spend sleeping. And when we still lived in caves and had to hunt for our food, lunch was rarely on the table at 12 o'clock sharp. So, our body has adapted to longer phases of food deprivation for thousands of years. In response to a reduced calorie intake, it simply lowers the energy requirement.

Nowadays, however, there is a catch: If, after a diet, you start eating normally again, it often leads to weight gain - the well-known yo-yo effect. With intermittent fasting, on the other hand, the energy requirement does not seem to decrease, and the weight loss therefore remains sustainable. I know this effect from my own experience. As a personal trainer, I often had to start my day very early and therefore mostly did without breakfast - work-related intermittent fasting, sort of speak. I lost 15 pounds over a period of two years. Then I started reading about intermittent fasting and wondered if I had found the holy grail of weight loss.

Tracking down the benefits of intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting is about more than losing weight. Around seven years ago, American researchers published a photo of two mice in the journal Cell Metabolism. One was fat with liver disease, the other slim and healthy. Despite the fact that both mice came from the same breed line, were of the same age, both moved very little and always ate exactly the same...Read More
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