Since Dr Michael Mosley brought fasting to the masses, it’s become the go-to approach for weight loss and improving our overall health. Is it time to give it a go?
Whether you’ve set your sights on looking leaner on holiday, or you’re just keen to optimise your health, the warmer weather brings a renewed focus on looking and feeling good. For many of us, that means turning to intermittent fasting – that is, eating minimal food for a set period of time – and reaping the weight-loss and health rewards.
Since BBC journalist Dr Michael Mosley presented a Horizon documentary on intermittent fasting in 2012, the method has become one of the most popular ways to manage weight and health, recently garnering 22,000 online searches a month on Google in the UK, and propelling books on fasting by Dr Mosley and his wife, Dr Clare Bailey, up the bestseller charts in record time, with millions of copies sold around the world. So what exactly is intermittent fasting – and how does it work?
There are many evidence-backed ways to give your system a beneficial break from digesting. You might opt for time-restricted eating (TRE), in which calories are consumed within a limited number of hours. Or maybe you’ll choose to go for some regular low-calorie fasting days, where two or three small meals are eaten, totalling around 500-800 calories. But, whatever method you follow, the basic premise remains the same. By skipping meals, you consume less food overall – without having to obsess about calories the rest of the time.
‘Fasting is a clever way of cutting back on food intake without having to meticulously analyse everything you put on your plate,’ says nutritionist Rob Hobson (robhobson.co.uk). ‘But, remember, it doesn’t give you a free ticket to the all-you-can-eat buffet the rest of the time!’ If you do give it a whirl, you’re in good company – Hollywood hotshots such as Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman are crediting their lithe physiques to various forms of fasting, and the hashtag ‘#intermittentfasting’ has received over 100m TikTok views.
A MODERN PHENOMENON
A classic fast normally means going without any food for days, or even weeks. But intermittent fasting such as TRE is a gentle approach, which aims to harness the health benefits of giving your body a few extra hours rest from having to digest and process food.
You can choose to fast by pushing breakfast back by a few hours, extending your overnight break from food, or finishing eating in the afternoon before dinner (recent research found that obese people lost significantly more weight if they ate all meals between the hours of 7am and 3pm). Or perhaps it would suit you better to reduce calories to a minimal 500-600 every other day, or for two days a week, as advocated in Dr Michael Mosley’s ‘5:2’ ap
