A short instructional piece by JJ Virgin explaining fasting terminology (fasting, intermittent fasting, time-restricted feeding), outlining common fasting windows (12–14 hour baseline, 6–8 hour feeding window, OMAD, alternate-day and extended 48+ hour fasts), and emphasizing that benefits depend on individual goals and health status.
What exactly is fasting? Now, there are a lot of terms being thrown around interchangeably, most notably fasting, intermittent fasting and time restricted feeding. So if intermittent fasting and TRF time restricted feeding are when you limit the time window that you're eating in, so you're fasting for a specific number of hours each day and then you're eating during a specific number of hours each day, this could include a 12 to 14 hour overnight fast, which honestly is the baseline minimum we should all be doing. Okay, then you can take it further to a six to eight hour feeding window which has some definite benefits. You could shift into omad, that's one meal a day. And then you could start to go into more of a real fast like eating every other day or doing an extended water fast of 48 hours or more. These distinctions are important and which ones you choose are going to be based on your goals and your current health status. Because some of the benefits of fasting require extended time periods to kick in. So we've got to really know what you're trying to achieve.
