What is intermittent fasting

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What is intermittent fasting

IF intermittent fasting part 1

If you’re interested in healthy eating, you’re probably already familiar with the abbreviation IF, or Intermittent Fasting or, translated into Polish, intermittent fasting.

What is it? What does it consist of? What are the benefits of eating this way? 

If you want to know the answers to these and many other questions, we invite you to a series of posts about this very topic.

IF intermittent fasting – what is it?

Intermittent fasting is a dietary model that involves temporarily limiting the intake of meals. This may refer to times of the day, i.e. eating at specific times, but also to the week, i.e. restricting your food intake on specific, custom-determined days of the week. During the fasting period one is allowed to drink calorie-free beverages such as black coffee, tea without sugar, herbal infusions or simply water. However, intermittent fasting is not a diet, i.e. it does not specify what meals and what nutritional value one should eat.

Who may fast?

Intermittent fasting may (but does not have to) be a suitable model of nutrition for every person who:

  • seeks to reduce body weight,
  • has a problem with snacking and wants to limit it,
  • suffers from insulin resistance, lipid metabolism disorders and has problems with hypertension

However, it will not be a good option for people who are:

  • underweight or malnourished,
  • suffering from eating disorders (e.g. anorexia, bulimia, orthorexia),
  • suffering from digestive diseases (e.g. gastric reflux, stomach ulcers)
  • with hormonal disturbances (e.g. diabetes mellitus, female menstrual disorders, thyroid disease)
  • pregnant or lactating women

A diet or dietary model should always be tailored individually to each person’s needs, so remember, if you are in doubt as to whether it is right for you or you suffer from a medical condition, consult your doctor and/or dietitian to find out if this dietary model will work for you.

What are the types of fasting?

On the Fitatu app you will find the most popular intermittent fasting. These are:

  1. Fasting 14:10
  2. Fasting 16:8
  3. Fasting 18:6
  4. Fasting 20:4

The first number indicates how many hours per day you fast, while the second number indicates the number of hours that are the eating window during which you eat.

The most popular intermittent fasting, 16:8, can be found in the free version of the app, while the other 3 are available in the Premium version. 

Fitatu will help you keep track of your eating window hours and at the same time make it easier for you to control what you eat thanks to a number of useful features such as:

  • fasting statistics
  • reminders about the beginning or the end of the fasting period, about meals and about drinking water, among other things 
  • A huge database of products and recipes,
  • food catalogue,
  • water consumption counter,
  • possibility to connect training applications.

More posts will be available on the app soon!

What are the benefits of intermittent fasting?

Certainly a big benefit of this way of eating is limiting snacking. Even if you don’t plan on using IF on a daily basis, it can prove to be a great option for special occasions when it’s harder to ensure the quality and regularity of your diet on holidays or holidays, among others. In both cases, using the eating window will allow you to increase the likelihood of maintaining a healthy weight despite eating different meals than you do on a daily basis.

The fact that you eat larger meals is also considered an advantage. 

By following intermittent fasting you have shorter eating windows and eat 3-4 meals a day, which is less than in normal eating, when we eat on average 4-6 meals a day. Because there are fewer meals, but they are still to ensure our energy requirements are met, they are larger. You have to be aware, however, that the nutritional window is followed by several hours of fasting and you have to decide individually whether this period without a meal has a good influence on your well-being and health, or whether it is too long.

There are no scientific studies which would unequivocally confirm the long-term benefits of intermittent fasting in the treatment of hypertension or diseases associated with lipid metabolism disorders. This is still a fairly new subject and more time is needed to be able to draw reliable conclusions. So remember to treat each case individually and discuss the possible use of such a dietary model with your doctor.

How to start intermittent fasting with the Fitatu app?

  1. Download the app and sign up.
  2. Click on the ‘Post’ button at the bottom of the screen, then select the fast you are interested in (in the free version of the app you have 16:8 fasting available, which is a good option to start with).
  3. Set what times you want your eating window (the blue bars indicate the fasting time when you don’t eat meals) and what meals and times you want to eat, then click ‘Save’.
  4. If you want to enable fasting reminders, click on the ‘More’ button in the bar at the bottom of the screen, then go into Settings and then Reminders. Enable the reminders you want by first moving the slider/switcher, then select which specific reminders you want to receive.

Learn more about how fasting works on your body’s physiology and why it makes you lose weight, as well as the exact specifics of the different types of fasting (14:10, 16:8, 18:6, 20:4).

Fitatu App

Download the application from the Play Store or Apple Store and start counting your macros with us!

Do you prefer the web version? No problem. A basic web version is prepared for our subscribers. And now you can use the IF-B discount code by going to https://www.fitatu.com/app/giftcode and get Fitatu Premium for 5,17€/month

What else can you find in Fitatu Premium?

  • over 1000 recipes plus several new ones every month
  • additional plans for intermittent fasting
  • the ability to create shopping lists
  • a choice of six ready-made menus full of meals to choose
  • filtering products and recipes
  • more synchronization with fit apps
  • access to the application in the web version
  • no ads!

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