Best Intermittent Fasting For Women: A Complete Guide

Intermittent fasting has gained popularity recently due to its efficacy and easy-to-follow instructions. Restricting food intake to certain times of day or days of the week has been shown to result in loss of weight. Further, this type of fasting might even have additional health benefits beyond shedding pounds, including beneficial effects on blood pressure, inflammation, and even mood.

Different approaches to dieting are sometimes necessary based on sex, as well as age and health status. Some differences are due to the regular hormonal cycles that women undergo monthly. These changes in hormone levels can have consequences for blood-sugar control and reproductive health, as research has shown.^[1] In addition, the risks may be different with intermittent fasting for women over 50.

Best Types of Intermittent Fasting for Women

The 5:2 Diet

As mentioned above, the 5:2 diet involves eating on five days per week and fasting or restricting on the other two days. Research found it to be more effective^[2] in obese men and women rather than a single day of fasting. It’s important to have at least one eating day between your two fasting days, so planning to eat on weekdays and fast on weekends is not advised. Additionally, on the two fasting days, calorie intake should be around 25% of the intake of non-fasting days.

Eat-Stop-Eat Method

The eat-stop-eat diet is a more aggressive version of the 5:2 diet, with a requirement of at least one day of complete fasting per week. While this diet can result in more rapid weight loss than other schedules, it is necessary to proceed with caution. Women in particular are cautioned to ease themselves into this schedule by beginning with a 5:2 diet for a few weeks before trying complete restriction. They also should never fast completely more than two days per week.

The 16:8 Diet

The 16:8 diet means 16 hours of fasting or restriction and eight hours of consumption. Most people will sleep for half of those 16 fasting hours. In addition, a plan such as this one will likely require one to miss at least one meal per day. Many people implementing a 16:8 schedule will not eat breakfast and will have lunch and dinner within their eight hour food window.

What Is an Intermittent Fasting Diet?

Intermittent fasting^[3] is a dietary approach that involves restricting intake to limited hours of the day or specific days of the week. Generally, it involves eating a regular diet with few restrictions during the eating windows. During the fasting periods, the intake is very little (perhaps 25% of normal) or nothing at all. This intake period might last 6-10 hours, while the restriction period lasts 14-18 hours, including those spent sleeping.

The most common variant is alternate-day fasting. This approach involves an every-other-day strategy, eating regularly one day and restricting the following day, but it can also include a more sporadic schedule. A very common approach to alternate-day fasting is a 5:2 schedule weekly- five days of eating and two days of restriction. Ultimately, the eating and restriction hours/days that you choose with alternate-day fasting will be based on your tolerance of fasting and your individual goals.

Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting for Women

Weight Loss

Losing weight is the most common reason that people try intermittent fasting. By restricting food for lengthy periods of time, the body is forced to burn fat, rather than blood sugar (glucose). This allows the amount of weight loss to be greater than that lost with other dietary plans.

Additionally, since most people can only eat so much in a limited time, total calorie intake is likely to decrease with this diet, also contributing to weight loss. Since losing weight is more difficult for women, a more aggressive approach to dieting can sometimes increase efficacy, as demonstrated in obese women.^[4]

Better Adherence

Among diets, intermittent fasting is one of the easier plans to follow. Since eating windows tend not to be restrictive, there’s no need to count calories, weigh food, or consider proportions of macronutrients per meal. As a result, adherence to this type of diet is much higher, and this allows you to be more successful on a fasting plan provided your intake during eating windows is sensible. Diet trackers can be helpful in keeping you from overdoing it.

Decreased Inflammation and Improved Mood

While most of the health benefits of intermittent fasting are linked to lower weight there are also many other health benefits to consider. This type of fasting has been linked to lower levels of inflammatory markers^[5] in the blood. With chronic inflammation linked to diseases like arthritis, this association can be quite helpful. It has also been shown in some studies to improve mood, so in addition to other measures like regular exercise and therapy, intermittent fasting can make a difference in mental health.

Potential Side Effects in Women

Difficulty Adjusting

Often, attempts to fast intermittently fail because of difficulty in adjusting to a new eating schedule. As the body becomes accustomed to its new normal, we can experience side effects such as irritability, fatigue, and even dizziness. While these symptoms tend to subside as time passes and rarely last beyond a month, they can present a challenge.

Irregular Menstrual Cycles

Women who participate in high-energy sports or who have disordered eating, may begin to experience an irregular menstrual cycle or one that stops entirely. In these cases, food restriction or insufficient intake to sustain increased energy requirements is usually the culprit, but intermittent fasting can also have this result. This change occurs due to the disruption in hormonal communication in the body. While it may not be necessary to stop fasting, the schedule of hours or days may need to be adjusted to recover a normal menstrual cycle.

Tolerance

Most often discussed in the context of drug or alcohol abuse, tolerance occurs when the body becomes used to a drug/alcohol and greater amounts of it become necessary to achieve the same effect. Intermittent fasting can have the same result and in this case, the body becomes used to food restriction causing weight loss to plateau or begin to reverse. While this can be frustrating and it may be tempting to increase restriction to continue seeing results, it is better to proceed with caution. Talking to a health professional can be helpful.

How To Safely Implement Intermittent Fasting

It’s important not to commit to a diet without knowing the risks, and if you have a pre-existing condition, such as diabetes or insulin resistance, talk to a physician before beginning a diet. Intermittent fasting while pregnant can be especially risky. Given their specific risks in this regard, women should avoid total food restriction if possible to meet their goals. If they do decide to fast one to two days per week, they should ease their way into doing so by first restricting to 25% of their normal caloric intake for up to a month.

Conclusion

Intermittent fasting is among the most popular methods to lose weight, but all dieters, especially female dieters, should proceed with caution. No calorie-restriction plan is without risks, and since intermittent fasting strongly emphasizes restriction, a gradual approach and close communication and coordination with a health professional are warranted. That said, you can see impressive results in less time with the right intermittent-fasting plan tailored to your specific needs.

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