Intermittent Fasting Diet

Welcome to Intermittent Fasting 101. This is a primer, or guide for the setup that I personally use for Intermittent Fasting for Fat Loss.

Here is the extremely basic summary of how it works:

• On training days, eat 9 hours of the day and fast the remaining 15.
• On off or cardio days, eat 6 hours of the day and fast the remaining 18.
• Weight training 3 days per week
• Cardio 2-4 times per week
• Eat maintenance + 500 calories on weight training days
• Eat 50% of maintenance on other days
• Majority of carbohydrate intake is on weight training days

Again, this plan is specific to fat loss. Plans for mass gain (bulking) and maintenance will be coming soon. Now for the detailed explanation of:

How to set up an Intermittent Fasting Diet for Fat Loss

Establishing Eating / Fasting Times

The time of day in which you eat depends on if you are lifting weights that day, or not. On lifting days, your eating window is 9 hours and on off or cardio days, its 6 hours. You will need to be able to weight train and do cardio at the same time of day, as this will throw off the schedule.

Eating schedule for weight training days

The fast is broken by a pre-workout shake, 15-30 minutes before you being your workout and lasts for 9 hours. For example, since I workout at 1pm, my eating window begins at 12:30 pm and lasts until 9:30 pm. This can be inconvenient if you workout at say, 8pm, so I feel weightlifting at lunchtime or in the morning works best.

Next, we will look at setting up a schedule for off days or cardio days.

Eating schedule for off or cardio days

The fast is broken an hour after cardio is complete and lasts for 6 hours. In my case, I do cardio at 1pm, so my fast is broken at 3pm. It remains 3pm on off days.

Summary

Since I train Monday/Wednesday/Friday, the big picture looks like this:

Monday: Fast ends at 12:30pm and begins at 9:30pm

Tuesday: Fast ends at 3:00pm and begins at 9:00pm

Wednesday: Fast ends at 12:30pm and begins at 9:30pm

Thursday: Fast ends at 3:00pm and begins at 9:00pm

Friday: Fast ends at 12:30pm and begins at 9:30pm

Saturday: Fast ends at 3:00pm and begins at 9:00pm

Sunday: Fast ends at 3:00pm and begins at 9:00pm