What's The Best Method To Use For Intermittent Fasting?

The best intermittent fasting method is the one that works best for you, and there are six popular methods to choose from. The 16:8 method is where you eat for eight hours and fast for sixteen, similar to the Dubrow Diet. For example, you could have your first meal at noon and your last meal at 8:00 p.m., and repeat this cycle daily. With this method, you wouldn't eat anything after dinner, and you'd skip breakfast. You can drink any zero-calorie drinks during your fast such as water, coffee, or tea (via John Hopkins Medicine). 

The 5:2 intermittent fasting diet is another option, also known as the 'fast diet.' You'd eat normally for five days of the week, and fast for the other two. When you're fasting, you'd restrict your calorie intake to 500 calories for women and 600 calories for men. You can break up your calories into two small meals of 250 to 300 calories each (via John Hopkins Medicine).  

The third intermittent fasting technique, coined Eat Stop Eat, involves fasting for 24 hours, two times a week. You could have dinner at 6:00 p.m. and stop eating until the next dinner at 6:00 p.m. the following evening, for a 24-hour fast. Any zero-calorie drinks are allowed during the fasting periods. Eat normally during the other five days of the week (via Healthline). 

Next up is alternate-day fasting in which you complete a 24-hour fast every other day, but it's a little different than Eat Stop Eat, in that you can have some food during your fasting days. You are limited to 500 calories during the fasting days, although some claim you should eat less than 500 calories. 

The fifth option is The Warrior Diet, where you're allowed to eat small portions of raw fruits and vegetables during the day and then one large dinner during a four-hour eating window. Therefore, the fasting period lasts for 20 hours a day, leaving just four hours for the eating window, in which you're encouraged to eat healthy, unprocessed foods .

Finally, the spontaneous meal-skipping method of intermittent fasting is less structured than the other techniques. With this method, you skip a meal when you're not feeling hungry. Maybe you wake up in the morning, and you're not hungry for breakfast, so you skip it. You're not hungry for dinner during the same week, so you skip it (via Healthline).

If you want to try intermittent fasting, choose one of these six popular methods. You can start slow, like with the 16:8 option. Or, you can start with 12 hours of fasting to ease yourself into it, moving to 13 hours of fasting when you feel comfortable to do so, and so on. Remember to eat healthy foods during your eating windows. Binging on junk food during that allotted time isn't good for you and won't help you lose weight.