Look around, and you'll notice immediately that people are different. Humans vary widely in their shapes and sizes, from the barely-five-foot-tall populations in Indonesia and Bolivia to the easily-six-foot-tall folks of places like the Netherlands and Montenegro. Watch the Olympics, and you'll see diverse body types excelling at different sports: tiny bodies flying through the air in gymnastics, long bodies slicing through the water in swimming, and thick bodies hurling heavy objects through the air.

You made it through your fasting window — congratulations! Whether time flew or you had to grit your teeth through a few hunger pains, you crossed the finish line. … Now what? Is any food fair game, or do you need to ease your body back into eating?

We've all been there: that day when you put on your pants and … ouch. The waistband is scrunching your stomach. The elastic isn't elastic-ing quite enough. Or the belt holes seem to have suddenly shifted in the wrong direction. Whatever the reason, you might have had at least one encounter with clothing waistbands that made you think: could I change my belly shape and size?

Are you a frustrated female who has tried everything to lose weight but can't seem to get the scale to budge? If so, you're not alone. And if there's a male friend, family member, or significant other in your life who seems to drop pounds with ease, it can be quite disheartening.

Menopause can be both an empowering and challenging time. While new opportunities and life paths open up at midlife, hormonal changes can also bring a range of uncomfortable symptoms. Thanks to these hormonal changes, women's health risks go up sharply after menopause.

Back in the day, you could eat whatever you wanted, not think about it, and not worry about weight gain or any health effects, or at least that's how it seemed. But today, it's a different story. You're a little older, perhaps less active than you'd like, and now, eating whatever you want means your jeans aren't as comfortable anymore.

Your body is incredible. It works constantly to keep you alive and functioning. Your hormones — chemical messengers that coordinate bodily functions by carrying signals through the blood to the organs, muscles, tissues, and cells — play a huge role in this. There are over 50 different hormones in the human body, and in the context of weight loss or gain, insulin is thought to be one of the most significant.

Thousands of people trying to lose weight are frustrated by traditional diets that don't work — or work only for a short time before the weight comes back. Health blogs and magazines tell us to cut calories and watch what we eat.

Our bodies, being the wonderfully efficient machines that they are, have a kind of self-cleaning function called autophagy. The research is still very new, but there are some promising results that point to intermittent fasting and autophagy being a sort of health and wellness dream team. Intermittent fasting may trigger the process of autophagy. And the intermittent fasting benefits we know and love (listed below) may actually be due to their connection with autophagy. Some of these fasting benefits are: weight loss, specifically from fat loss, improved cognitive function, reduced inflammation, lower risk of metabolic syndrome, improved heart health, reduced risk of diabetes.

If you've been in the diet world long enough, you might have heard about the concept of a cheat day. This is typically considered a day off from your diet. On the so-called cheat day, you can eat whatever and whenever you want, then you'll return to your regular menu the following day.