Intermittent Fasting Explained: Benefits, Risks, Weight Loss & What Doctors Really Think

[instrumental music] Ruby.

It freaks people out sometimes.

Like, what? You don't eat breakfast? What? You don't eat lunch either? Are you insane? Are you dying? W- like, people cannot wrap their head a- around the way that I eat.

Diet is what you eat.

Intermittent fasting is when you eat.

I've had a patient claim that fasting was the only way she could lose weight.

Intermittent fasting might feel like the latest wellness craze, but humans have actually been doing versions of it for thousands of years, sometimes for religion, sometimes for survival, sometimes even for politics and protest.

But over the last couple of decades, fasting has gone fully mainstream.

Now it's all over TikTok, YouTube, and fitness culture with people claiming it can help you lose weight, boost your energy, improve your focus, and optimize your health.

The problem is intermittent fasting can mean almost anything, aside from your three square meals a day.

There's 16:8, where you fast for 16 hours daily and restrict your eating to an eight-hour window.

There's OMAD, one meal a day.

Alternate-day fasting, 5:2 fasting.

That's five days of eating a typical diet and two of eating a calorie restricted diet.

There are juice fasts.

Basically, everybody has their own version.

So when there are this many options, what actually counts as fasting? Are we really just restricting calories? Is there something else going on? And more importantly, is intermittent fasting good for your health, or is this another wellness trend getting way ahead of the science? Clearly, we have questions.