Fasting Types - Alternate Day Fasting

I am kind of winging it with my fasting at the moment, I am listening to my body (and books by Jason Fung) however there are lots of different ways that people fast, you can try the different methods to see what works for you. Today I want to take a look at alternate day fasting. This type of fasting gained enough hype that the NHS even did an article on it. Think is was mainly to stop people from jumping in but interesting nonetheless.  

The concept it pretty simple, you eat every other day. You could do this literally or fast on Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays. In some ways I like this over the idea of the daily 16:8 or 20:4 fasts because (as I am sure I will cover) there are advantages for the more extended fasts. In this example if you maintained some sort of eating window on the eating days, finishing at say 6pm then fast a day and start eating at 10am the next day you have managed a fast of  6 hours + 24 hours + 10 hours 40 hours. 

Another advantage for this style of fasting is, if you like socialising, you can still go out with your friends on a Friday night or if like me you like running but don't fancy running at the end of a day with no eating then you can pick the days you are running / going out to match the days you are eating. 

I found one good story on YouTube which I have embedded below, she explains her 2 year development and weight loss using this style of fasting. Clearly this is a popular topic the the video having had over 1 million views and 50,000 likes. 

Annoyingly the article linked to in the NHS report mentioned above is not, as suggested, freely accessible but cost a shed load of money. As a result I can't actually look into it but the analysis done by the NHS is pretty good. 

There are some freely available papers that you can access such as this one and this one. I think it is interesting that the one on healthy individuals suggests hunger on fasting days does not decrease but I didn't see any mention of this on the obesity paper. I think the diet used on the non-fasting days could be key as a keto diet is much less likely to lead to lots of hunger. 

I will certainly be able to report back on how I feel in the following sates after running: 

1) After the slightly bigger feed on the feeding days. 

2) After running on the end of the fasting day

3) Running in the morning of the feeding day but before breaking the fast. 

Be interesting to compare how I feel on these runs. 

I think that is all. Enjoy.