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Intermittent fasting or “scheduled eating” is one of the most powerful interventions I know of to shed excess weight and reduce your risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

These health benefits are more or less beneficial “side effects” of shifting your body from burning sugar to burning fat as its primary fuel. I’m really pleased to see this approach now receiving more mainstream media attention, as it’s such a potent health-promoting tool.

Most recently,
The Wall Street Journal did a write-up on intermittent calorie restriction, specifically mentioning the 5:2 diet, promoted by Dr. Michael Mosley in his book
The Fast Diet: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting.

The 5:2 strategy involves eating regularly five days a week, and fasting for two. On fasting days, Dr. Mosley recommends cutting your food down to ¼ of your normal daily calories, or about 600 calories for men and about 500 for women, along with plenty of water and tea.

As reported by featured article:

“Some research shows that this more radical-sounding approach may be a struggle at first but ends up being easier to stick with compared with the typical route of cutting calories each day. Some animal studies suggest it also offers other health benefits, including cognitive improvements.”

There are many different variations of intermittent fasting, however. If you are like 85 percent of the population and have insulin resistance, my personal recommendation is to fast
every day by simply scheduling my eating into a narrower window of time each day. I find this method to be easier than fasting for a full 24 hours or more, twice a week.

Once you are at your ideal body weight, don’t have diabetes, high blood pressure, or abnormal cholesterol levels, you can eat more at other times. However, it is probably best to regularly resume some type of scheduled eating regimen on a regular basis.