Is It Safe to Work Out During an Intermittent Fast?
Ever heard about a new diet trend only to discover it’s something you’re…already doing? It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it feels like sweet cosmic justice. At least, that’s how I felt when I first discovered intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting involves eating only during certain time-restricted periods. And it turns out I’ve been doing it practically my whole life.
Here’s my confession: I hate breakfast. So when I discovered that skipping it could actually be healthy, it was like I just got permission to do what my body wanted to do anyhow—and I ran with it. Literally. Nearly three years ago, I decided to formalize my eating style and embrace intermittent fasting.
While there are lots of different ways to do it—the 16:8 diet, OMAD (one meal a day), the 5:2 diet—the basic idea of intermittent fasting is to your limit your eating to a particular window of time. After trying a bunch of different protocols, I finally settled on 18:6, meaning I fast for 18 hours a day and eat during a six-hour window, from 2 to 8 p.m. each day. From an eating standpoint, it was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done; I’m not usually hungry until about then anyhow.
Excerpted from Women’s Health
