Every couple of years, as it depends, intermittent fasting re-emerges as a diet trend. “It’s really interesting that it has held such unusual traction as a trend for so many years, because it’s nothing new from a clinical nutrition standpoint,” says Stacey Stephenson, DC, CNSBoard member of the American Nutrition Association.
However, to be fair, intermittent fasting is one of the more beneficial and universally useful nutrition strategies – just not because most people think it is. “Do I consider intermittent fasting a weight loss diet? No, I don’t,” says Dr. Stephenson. “But I think it’s a really great tool.”
So then, you may ask what is this a tool for? Here’s everything you need to know.
What is intermittent fasting?
“Intermittent fasting is as simple as not eating for half a day,” says Dr. Stephenson. “For 12-14 hours of your day, you’re not consuming anything but water. It’s as simple as that.”
Basically, with intermittent fasting, half or more of your day is spent in a fasted state, with a specific window specified for eating. When that window occurs, and how long it lasts, depends on you — nutritionists recommend up to 12 hours, but no less than eight — as long as you’re consistent.
“What is known as intermittent fasting was actually the concept of a window in which you consume calories,” says Ashley Coff, RDNutrition curriculum director for the Integrative and Functional Medicine Fellowship at UC Irvine’s Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute. “It was a way to make people understand that you don’t have to consume calories all the time.”
How can intermittent fasting benefit your body?
First and foremost, the purpose of intermittent fasting is not to lose weight, not to build muscle, but rather as a way to restore some law and order to your body’s core processes.
“The reason fasting has gotten so much attention is that, in the industrial age, and certainly with food available 24 hours a day, we’ve really blurred the boundaries of how to consume calories,” says Coff. “When our body is in recovery mode, doing cleansing work and resting we really shouldn’t be consuming calories. And so the concept was to protect ourselves: This is the time I start eating, and this is the time I stop eating. And that’s what intermittent fasting became.”
“It’s helpful for a simple reason, which probably sounds really boring, is that it gives your digestive system a rest,” says Dr. Stephenson. But it is more important than it seems. As simple as it may seem, taking control of when you eat – and, more importantly, when you don’t eat – is an upstream intervention that impacts your entire body. It’s like flicking a single domino that sets a dozen Rube Goldberg machines in motion.
“Relaxing your digestive system reduces overall inflammation in the body, which leads to better health and a longer life,” says Dr. Stephenson. “And when I say longevity, I don’t mean living to 120. I mean a more healthy life – being fit, not getting sick, energy, balanced hormones, balanced insulin and stable blood glucose.”
Can intermittent fasting help you lose weight?
Whenever a nutrition trend blows up on social media, people assume it will help you lose weight. Therefore, it is important to emphasize to those of the previous generation that intermittent fasting is not a weight loss diet. “I would say the biggest reason people do intermittent fasting is for weight loss,” says Dr. Stephenson. “It seems like an easy solution. ‘Oh, I just don’t eat anything for 12 hours, and then I eat my normal diet—which causes weight gain-In the other 12.’ This is really flawed logic. Ultimately, losing weight is all about calories in and calories out. The timing of when you eat those calories has little or no effect on that equation.
