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.

In this world of 30-day abs, Instagram filters, and juice cleanses, there's a ton of pressure to look a certain way — and to achieve that look as fast as possible — even if it means sacrificing your health and well-being. Knowing how to burn fat in a smart, sustainable way is quite the challenge.

Fat loss vs. weight loss: They're not the same thing. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, they mean something quite different, and it's more than just a linguistic distinction. Weight loss is what you see on the scale. It's the sum total of all the stuff in your body … and when you weigh less, you have less of all that stuff.

If you're trialing a new eating routine, it's like learning how to meal plan all over again: you have to come up with an approach that not only follows the routine's guidelines but also factors in your nutritional needs, health goals, and personal tastes. Talk about a lot of moving pieces!

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.

Picture it: you're at your happy weight. No calorie trackers. No diets. No extra-demanding workout plans. Sounds too good to be true, right? Maybe not — with the help of intermittent fasting. Before you dive down the rabbit hole of googling weight loss intermittent fasting, we can explain.

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.

It can be daunting to start something new. If you're considering trying a fasting schedule to improve your eating habits, lose some weight, and get on a health kick, you might be anxiously thinking, But how do I even start with intermittent fasting? Let's take the worry and wonder out of the equation so you can get to feeling confident, calm, and in control.

You've been dabbling in the intermittent fasting info pool, thinking about getting started on this lifestyle that's been claimed to be an easier and more flexible way to gain control of your health and maybe lose some weight. There are many types of intermittent fasting methods to choose from, but we're going to compare two of our favorites around here at Simple: intermittent fasting 14:10 vs. 16:8.

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?