With the holidays upon us and everyone focused on watching their waistline, it's natural to think about the ideal diet to prevent weight gain and maybe even promote a little weight loss.
Let's face it, it's really difficult to go on a "diet". Diets are faced with a high risk of failure with the bulk of them failing, ending with eventual weight gain above and beyond where you started.
The concept of caloric restriction which has been explored as a way to improve longevity has been shown to be successful in animal models (mice), offering an enticing possibility to humans. But implementing this into your daily lifestyle may be problematic and may not be realistic in the long run.
Another more intriguing approach that has been gaining popularity in the past decade is intermittent fasting (IF), a form of time-restricted eating.
In a nutshell, it's a way to extend the window of time during the day in which you don't eat. Instead of eating from the time you awaken, the goal is to delay the onset of eating, thereby extending your fasting period that naturally occurs when you sleep.
IF involves only eating for a defined period of time in a 24-hour period. For example,
it may involve eating for an 8-hour period during the day — as opposed to grazing on food all day long — and fasting for the remaining 16 hours. (During the fast, you are permitted to drink water, have black coffee, or tea.)
For example, instead of eating from 7 am when you awaken, you would begin eating at 11 am or noon until 7 or 8 pm. When you do eat, the goal is to eat moderately, although you are permitted to eat the foods that you would normally eat.
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