I do not have a lot of weight to lose. Weight loss was not the point. As a nurse working from home, I found myself looking in the refrigerator and snack pantry way more than necessary. I was not eating for hunger; I was eating because the food was there. Chocolate? Pumpkin pie? Delicious!
By Thanksgiving, I was feeling fatigued and bloated. Too many 100-calorie carbohydrate snacks were being consumed. If I could not sleep, I snacked around the clock, and pounds were creeping on, albeit slowly. It was time for a diet reset.
According to research presented by Medscape, and documented by WebMD, there are three methods for intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern that includes hours or days of little or no food consumption. Common methods for intermittent fasting include alternate-day fasting; the 5:2 intermittent fasting program (2 full days of fasting or highly restricted caloric intake per week); and time-restricted fasting, such as the 16:8 regimen, or the more intense 19:5, which restricts eating to a narrow time window.
I chose the 16:8 regimen, believing it to be best for a nurse working from home. I fast from 8 PM at night until noon the following day.
