Overhaul Your Diet with Intermittent Fasting!
Intermittent fasting is one of the more popular (and argument-provoking) diet trends of recent years—it was even the most-searched diet term on Google last year. It’s not hard to guess what it entails: abstaining from food, or at least most food, for specific intervals. It’s been taken up by everyone from Silicon Valley biohackers to TikTok models. Diets based on it have been touted for a huge list of benefits: It might be good for weight loss. It might work to balance out one’s blood sugar. Some even follow it for “mental clarity,” the idea being that by not eating a big lunch, you’ll avoid the grogginess that hits a couple hours later.
But what can anyone legitimately expect to gain from taking on an intermittent fasting diet? Those benefits are all related: “The number one reason people do it is for weight loss, but when you lose weight, that helps lower blood pressure, which helps to prevent heart disease and diabetes,” says Krista Varady, nutrition professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
As GQ has explored before, paying attention to when you eat is just as important as what you’re eating, and intermittent fasting is one of the simplest ways to start experimenting with a diet.
Excerpted from GQ
