What’s the Deal With 18:6 Intermittent Fasting?
We’re lucky enough to live in an age where almost everything is customizable to our personal preferences. From our beauty products to the way we travel, we get to pick and choose what works best for us on an individual level. For some reason, though, many of us still force ourselves to eat three meals a day, even when we aren’t particularly hungry.
Food historian Amy Bentley explained to The Atlantic that our proclivity for eating three meals a day isn’t based on nutritional science or the natural human appetite, but rather a societal norm. Still, many of us force ourselves to eat at “normal meal times” because it’s what we’ve been conditioned to do. Some people have begun moving away from this eating model in favor of a more customized eating plan that better fits their lifestyle and body’s needs.
Intermittent fasting is an eating plan that regularly schedules a time for fasting and a time for eating (per Johns Hopkins Medicine). While there are many ways to fast, many prefer a daily approach that restricts eating to a six- or eight-hour window each day, referred to as 18:6 or 16:8, respectively.
Excerpted from Health Digest
