Intermittent fasting 16 8: an effective solution to lose weight?

If you are reading this article, it is probably because you are looking to learn more about 16/8 intermittent fasting and you are probably wondering how to actually do it.

Good thing, that’s exactly what we’ll see in this article!

However, before I begin I prefer to warn you in advance that I will not discuss all the health benefits of intermittent fasting as I already cover them in this article.

What is the 16/8 fast?
This is probably the most popular option when looking to adopt intermittent fasting and involves fasting for 16 hours and eating for 8 hours.

There are 2 possible options to follow this protocol.

Either skip dinner or skip breakfast.

Let us take a concrete example to fully understand.

Skip breakfast:
If you decide to skip breakfast, the goal is to delay your first meal as much as possible.

What rhythm to choose?
To be honest, it doesn’t matter what pace you take as long as you stick to the 2 windows.

However, I personally find it easier to skip breakfast than dinner because it allows me to have a more flexible social life and to go out to dinner more easily.

Conversely, among the people I support to lose weight over the long term, I know that some prefer to skip dinner.

The goal is to find the rhythm that best suits your daily life so that you can keep it up for the long haul without feeling frustrated.

Now that we have seen the 2 possible options, I would like to give you 4 practical tips to get started and achieve your goals.

4 practical tips for a good start
1- Go gradually
If you are new to the 16/8 fast, I recommend that you start step by step.

Instead of skipping your breakfast overnight, I suggest you shift the time you eat it a little bit each day.

For example :

Monday you have breakfast at 7 a.m., Tuesday at 8:30 a.m., Wednesday at 9 a.m., Thursday at 9.45 a.m., Friday at 10:30 a.m., … until you succeed in completely eliminating your breakfast.

The advantage of going little by little and that it allows your body to adapt and you will feel less hunger.

2- Be Patient
As with everything, if you want long term results, it is important to be patient.

I know it’s not always easy to hear and you want to slim down, reshape your body and improve your health quickly, but it seems important to me to be 100% transparent with you.

Just because you are going to adopt 16/8 intermittent fasting over a week doesn’t mean that all of your weight problems will go away.

Instead, I recommend that you test for a minimum of one month, see early results, and adapt your strategy based on your results.

3- Be Flexible
My third tip is to be flexible with yourself.

Too often I see people feel guilty because they failed to meet their fasting window for some X, Y, Z reason.

Example: I missed my fasting window on Sunday morning because I wanted to have breakfast with my family.

On the one hand, I find it great because it shows that these people are motivated but unfortunately they tend to get frustrated quickly and give up.

Instead, I recommend that you be more indulgent with yourself.

In fact, from my personal experience I think that in the long term it is even better to skip certain days of intermittent fasting so as not to see a plateau effect.

Adjust your calorie intake based on your activities
My final tip is to learn to adjust your calorie intake based on your activities.

Basically, 16/8 fasting was popularized by Martin Berkhan to help promote weight loss but also the development of muscle mass by training on an empty stomach.

That’s why I think it’s important to clarify that just because you skip a meal doesn’t mean you have to drastically reduce your daily calorie intake.

Instead, I recommend that you vary the amount of food you eat depending on your day.

For example, on the days when you go to exercise it is important to eat more than the days when you do not exercise in order to promote muscle building.

4- Be careful

eating more than usual does not mean you stuff yourself with crisps, pizzas and ready meals.