My best bet, the first place you heard about intermittent fasting was on the internet, social media precisely.

Yep, not from your doctor, nutritionist, or dietician. The internet!

Now, we know better to take everything from the net with a grain of salt, you must be living in a shoe if you don’t know that yet.

Anyway, a lot of research has been done and it’s been proven, intermittent fasting is an effective and healthy eating pattern.

We have works from prominent authors such as Dr. Jason Fung, Dr. Valter Longo, and Dr. Mark Mattson, who have carried out various research on the topic, to support these claims.

However, I’m curious to know what you heard intermittent fasting was. 9/10, chances are that you heard it involves skipping breakfast, and heaven forbid you miss the most important meal of the day, right? 

Don’t shiver, you only miss your precious breakfast depending on the intermittent fasting style you chose and your timing.

Not enough information right?

Well let’s talk about the different intermittent fasting styles with their rules, shall we?

Intermittent Fasting Rules

 Unless you’re an atheist, every religion encourages its members to fast from time to time. 

Citing an example from the ongoing Ramadan, we know that as Muslims, it’s required of you to fast from dawn to sunset daily during Ramadan.

The hours between dawn and sunset are typically 12/13 hours, so if you’re following such a pattern, we could say you’re doing either the 12/12 intermittent fasting style or the 13/11, depending on what time the sun sets.

12/12, 13/11, what do all these mean?

They’re intermittent fasting styles, systems, patterns… whichever suits you. They indicate your open and closed windows. Open being when you eat, and close, when you fast.

Typically, we’ve all got 24 hours to spend daily, in those hours, a Muslim who starts to fast by 6 am and ends it with a meal by 6 pm, do your countdown, that’s 12 hours without eating, and that leaves him with another 12 hours open window to eat.

And that my dearest is the 12/12 intermittent fasting rule.

Same applies to the 13/11 and other intermittent fasting styles there are, only with the 13/11, you fast for 13 hours with an 11 hours open window to eat and so on… the rules adjust to the different intermittent fasting styles.

Intermittent Fasting Styles for Beginners

• Time-Restricted Feeding

This intermittent fasting style involves restricting your eating to a specific window of time every day. a typical example is what we’ve given above with the 12/12 or 13/11, where you restrain yourself from eating for 12 or 13 hours, and have an open window to eat within the remaining 12 or 11 hours respectively.

A very famous one in this style of intermittent fasting is the 16/8 fasting style. It’s famous because it’s an easy start and is always recommended for beginners.

So let’s say you had your last meal of the day around 7, following the 16/8 style, your next meal should be by 11 am, that’s 16 hours since your last meal, and most of that time, you spend sleeping, well, except you’re a night crawler.

There’s also the 14/10 intermittent fasting style, so if you can’t fast for as long as 16 hours, you can always fast for 14.

• 5:2

This method involves eating normally for five days, but for the remainder 2 days, you’ll be expected to be in a calorie deficit, that is you’re to eat, but the total of the calories of the food you eat within these two days should be lesser than you’d normally consume, specifically should range between 500-600 calories.

This system is great if you can follow it through as it can help you to gradually adjust to eating lesser calories every other day.

• Eat-stop-eat

I wouldn’t exactly recommend this for beginners, since it’ll require that you pick a full day or two out of the week to fast throughout.

Yep, that’s right. Go 24 hours without food.

This style of intermittent fasting is not as easy as the Time Restricted Feeding style, it requires more discipline, however, it can be done, but I’ll recommend that you start easy, and gradually progress to this style if you wish, for the purpose of consistency.

Takeaway 

Prior to popular belief, you can still eat breakfast while intermittent fasting. The trick is to pick an intermittent fasting style that can accommodate breakfast, and clearly, those listed here are great options.

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