Day 86: Intermittent Fasting

I found this article on Intermittent Fasting today on the Huffington Post.  A lot of people are talking about IF right now, including me.  As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am considering a lifestyle diet to include intermittent fasting when I have reached my goal weight.  It seems like a simple way to lose weight, or just keep the weight off.

Here's a brief excerpt from the article (click on the link to read the full post):

The basic premise of IF is to enjoy better health via repeatedly fasting for longer periods than is typical on a daily breakfast-lunch-dinner schedule. Variations are endless. Some proponents skip breakfast; others, dinner. Others fast all day every other day, every third day, once per week, or once per month. A friend I know who travels for work six to eight times annually always fasts on the first and last days of his trips, reasoning that airline food is awful anyway. (Fasting, it should be pointed out, means abstaining from solid food; all sensible IF plans allow hydration with water, tea or other no- or low-calorie beverages.) 

The positive effects of IF have been chronicled in a variety of animal and human studies, starting with a seminal experiment in 1946, when University of Chicago researchers discovered that denying food every third day boosted rats' lifespans by 20 percent in males, 15 percent in females. A 2007 review by University of California, Berkeley, researchers concluded that alternate-day fasting may:

• Decrease cardiovascular disease risk.

• Decrease cancer risk.

• Lower diabetes risk (at least in animals, data on humans were less clear, possibly because the trial periods in the studies were not long enough to show an effect).

• Improve cognitive function.

• Protect against some effects of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

Apparently IF is the talk of the internet today.  Here's another BBC Article that came out today on the subject.   It's the third in a series.  You can also check out the other two:  Fasting for Science and Enduring the Hunger Pangs.