The idea of Intermittent Fasting (IF) first came to my attention about two years ago, when several of my social media acquaintances began posting about their experiments with it. Soon, I also saw various celebrities and influencers extolling the health and weight-loss benefits of this eating plan. Based on their posts, I (quite mistakenly) understood it as being some glorified form of starving oneself into slimness, and promptly ignored it.

It was only about six months ago, when I heard that a few friends of mine - friends I trust more than, say, Gwyneth Paltrow - were practising IF, that I bothered to learn about it more seriously. Simply put, IF is an eating pattern that alternates between periods of eating and fasting. The most common methods of doing this include:

the 16/8 method, where you restrict your eating to eight consecutive hours in a day;
24-hour full fasts, where you don’t eat anything for one or two 24-hour periods within a week
the 5:2 diet, where you eat normally five days a week, but consume only 500-600 calories for two non-consecutive days

With all of these methods, there usually isn’t any restriction on water, or low-calorie beverages like black coffee or tea.

The underlying mechanism is thought to be linked to the body’s insulin levels. During the periods when you are fasting, your insulin levels go down and your body will be able to burn up its stored energy, leading to weight loss.

Apart from weight loss, a whole host of other (largely inconclusive) health benefits are attributed by enthusiasts to IF, from a more active metabolism to heart and brain health. For me personally though, the basic idea seemed fairly logical: reduce your overall calorie intake and hopefully lose weight.

And I must admit, I immediately caught on to the 16/8 method - mostly because of my utter laziness. With this method, I could skip breakfast and sleep in an extra half hour every morning! After all, I had pretty much been unthinkingly practising this on most days anyway: finishing dinner by about 8pm, and then because I skipped breakfast, only having my next meal at 1pm the following day. This works out to about 16 or 17 hours of fasting. So how difficult could it be to continue doing this?

As it turned out, the moment I told myself I was consciously not going to eat anything till lunch the next day, my brain started rebelling and clamouring for everything edible in sight. So while my “unplanned” IFs had seemed so easy, doing it intentionally certainly was not, at least not for the first week or so. After the first two weeks though, it actually started becoming routine, and I rarely found myself getting hungry before my 16-hour window was up.

And what of all the supposedly amazing benefits of practising IF?

In my case, even though I tried it consistently for three months and continue to do so at least five days a week, I’ve had no actual weight loss. But keeping in mind that I didn’t make any other changes to my exercise routine or my diet - other than following the IF - it hardly seems surprising. As with most of these things, it isn’t a magic cure.

However, I have seen some changes. I find that my appetite in general has become smaller, meaning I eat less than I used to during my meals. I also feel less inclined to snack in between meals. The biggest difference is that I feel less bloated on a daily basis, as I usually do when I try to have the prescribed three meals - and the post-lunch sluggishness seems to have been minimised greatly.

Our Verdict: Fad Or Fab?

Mostly fab. If actual weight loss is your main goal, IF alone might not be enough; you’ll likely need a more comprehensive approach that includes both exercise and healthy meal planning. But I can see IF working hand-in-hand with these, as well as offering some benefits of its own.

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