By This is a great question, and one I’m asked about all the time. What I would like you to do is decide what your goals are, in terms of fasting, and what it is you wan to achieve out of it. The frequency and length of fasting hours will depend on your goal. Let’s break it down a bit more for you and anyone interested in the answer.
3 essential questions you need to ask yourself regarding the fasting window
- What do I want to achieve from intermittent fasting.
You will be surprised as how many people actually are after different results than from dieting alone. This is fair enough, and one thing I found when starting the journey. For some people, maybe it’s because of health reasons or they want to see if it heals an ailment. Allow the answer to be your driver, and this will determine the next question. - Allocate the frequency and time needed to achieve your goal.
If you want to put on muscle mass, you may need to fast less, and if you are overweight or obese, you will probably want to fast more frequently. As you know, muscle increases your bodies ability to burn body fat stores, and it’s in everyones best interest to try and achieve fat loss as well as gaining muscle. This is achieved by experimentation with the fasting and feeding times. What I would recommend is keeping a diary and closely monitoring your bodies reaction on a weekly basis. After a few months, you will have some great data in order to decide how frequently to fast and also the time frame to fast each day, or every other day. Do what works for your body type and your goals.
Popular fasting times are; 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30 and even 36 or more. - Plan your meals well.
When you are feeding, make sure the meals you consume are whole foods, and cater towards your fat loss or muscle building goals. Whilst it’s a lot easier to get away with not eating as well on the fasting diet, long term this isn’t going to serve your goal, or your health. It’s a good idea to spend 1 day per week where you increase your caloric consumption, but keep this within reason, and always monitor what happens to your body. One treat a week isn’t going to harm your progress, neither is one day of eating more calories. What matters is what you do on a daily basis over time. Be mindful of this, and feed your body the best possible foods.
If you would like to keep in touch during your journey, please do contact me on these various platforms if you need further assistance. I have plenty of other material on my blog or join me on facebook and instagram account. Please feel free to upvote this answer.