Intermittent fasting gets a lot of credit for being a great tool for weight loss and unlocking health-promoting benefits like reduced inflammation, lower systolic blood pressure, and reduced body fat. But when it comes to shredding and bulking, does it stack up to better gains, or could it stop your deadlift goal in its tracks?

Whatever your health goal — from losing weight, gaining lean muscle, or improving insulin sensitivity to feeling more energetic, having better mental clarity, or lowering your risk of certain cancers and medical conditions — fat burning is often part of the plan.

You started intermittent fasting a whole week ago. This morning, you stood on the scale, looked at that irritating number that somehow has the staying power of a red wine stain on white carpet, and thought, How long does it take for this intermittent fasting thing to work, anyway? Now you're hovering anxiously over your fasting tracker, wishing you could speed things up but feeling stumped on how to do so.

Intermittent fasting is an approach to eating that involves a repeated routine of eating windows and fasting windows (periods of time when you don't eat). Rather than focusing on what you eat, it emphasizes when you eat.

For an effective method of losing weight and improving your health, intermittent fasting is refreshingly light on rules (ironic, given the title of this article). And, because we know that change happens more easily when people control their own path, we're not here to start laying down the intermittent fasting law.

In a world where miracle remedies and magic solutions are showcased everywhere, from billboards to nightly news to your social media feed, it can be tricky to sort through all the hyperbole, exceptions, and twisted truths to distinguish fact from fiction. This filtering process can be incredibly convoluted when it comes to health and nutrition, especially because everyone's body is different, and everyone has different needs and goals.

When we're trying to lose weight, we usually think about what we can and can't eat. Bye-bye beer and burgers. Helloooo carrots and kale! But with intermittent fasting, the focus is on when you can and can't eat. 20:4 intermittent fasting comes in hot with a 20-hour — yes, a 20-HOUR — fast and a 4-hour eating window. It sounds a little extreme, huh? So … does it work? Is it necessary to fast that long in order to lose weight or improve your health? Is it even healthy to go 20 hours a day without eating? Let's get some answers.

The one meal a day (OMAD) diet is a type of time-restricted eating intermittent fasting schedule that involves — you guessed it — eating just one meal a day and fasting the rest of the time.

If you're looking for a way to get swole, intermittent fasting may not be your first choice. It's not necessarily the most obvious nutrition method for building muscle mass. But it can be effective if you use it right. Curious? Let's dive into the ins and outs of intermittent fasting and muscle gain.

On the face of it, it seems that intermittent fasting is incompatible with exercise. You need energy to move, let alone grow new muscle or push yourself through a tough cardio session. Surely, training while fasting is a recipe for tanking your energy levels and becoming a crabby, injured, tired mess.