Intermittent fasting, where you restrict your food intake to an eight-hour window, is becoming a huge area of research.
Giving our bodies at least 12 hours a day without food allows our digestive system to rest, says Emily Manoogian, clinical researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, and author of a 2019 paper entitled “When to eat”.
Rozalyn Anderson, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine and Public Health, has studied the benefits of calorie restriction, which is associated with lower levels of inflammation in the body.
But if intermittent fasting is a healthy way to eat – how many meals does this leave room for?
Some experts argue it’s best to have one meal a day, including David Levitsky, professor at Cornell University’s College of Human Ecology in New York, who does this himself.
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Wouldn’t one meal a day leave us feeling hungry? Not necessarily, Levitsky argues, because hunger is often a psychological sensation.
“When the clock says 12pm, we may get feelings to eat, or you might be conditioned to eat breakfast in the morning, but this is nonsense. Data shows that if you don’t eat breakfast, you’re going to eat fewer calories overall that day.
“Our physiology is built for feasting and fasting,” he says.
