THE BIG QUESTION

INTERMITTENT FASTING

Can restricting the hours you’re allowed to eat, actually supercharge fat loss? Or does the much-touted diet just shrink your life expectancy?

by JOEL SNAPE

For most of our evolutionary history, intermittent fasting wasn’t voluntary. With food scarce and storage difficult, going for hours, or even days, without eating was a common occurrence.

Fast-forward to today, though, and most people reading this will never be far from a quick snack.

That stark contrast in eating habits has left people wondering if those food-free periods were beneficial. And if they were, whether we should reintroduce them. The quandary we face, however, is that we generally live a lot longer than our huntergatherer ancestors did, so intermittent fasting might have downsides for us that they never experienced.

“Fasting helps you create ketones, a chemical that your liver produces when it breaks down fats, which your body can then use for energy”

For the sake of clarity, intermittent fasting typically refers to a diet plan in which you restrict your eating to certain times or on certain days: for instance, only eating during an eight-hour window within a 24-hour period (often referred to as 16:8 eating) or restricting the calories you consume on two days out of every seven (otherwise known as the 5:2 diet).