What is it?
So you may or may not have heard about Intermittent Fasting(IF), but you may be curious either way. It's a way of restricting caloric intake based primarily on timing or windows. The Intermittent fasting that most people are familiar with is the everyday time restricted IF. The feeding windows and fasting windows can be altered, but the most common one with respect to weight(ideally fat) loss is "8/16". An 8 hour window to eat and a 16 hour window of fasting; which in layman's terms means no calories during those 16 hours. The 8 hours is continuous once it starts, although it can be altered as to which 8 hours of the day it is started and stopped by; in other words it can be from 8am-4pm, 12pm-8pm or whatever uninterrupted 8 hour window suits you best.
What do I focus on eating?
The rules are simple, NO calories during the fast and just focus on getting your protein requirements in during your 8 hour eating window. There are small ways around the no calories rule; black coffee for example does technically have calories to it, but the amount is so small it won't really affect it. My 10 oz cup of coffee in the morning contains; 0.1 grams of fat and 0.4 grams of protein equaling about 3 calories. While these are calories; they are so minimal they do not really break your fasted state. Coffee has actually been shown to increase metabolic rate in both obese and normal weight subjects*. Side note; I hate plain black coffee so I use Stevia to sweeten it without adding calories and do without the creamer.
My personal experience
I had been non-stop intermittent fasting for about 2.5 straight months; it's been much easier than I initially thought. I had a client tell me about the idea and go on to hear him say how easy and simple it is, "makes meals very fulfilling and easy to control eating." At first I was very skeptical, and said I wouldn't be able to workout in a fasted state. He said I should try it out before writing it off, so I accepted the challenge. First week was definitely a challenge and required a little bit of getting used to since I have always been a breakfast guy. Coffee and WTF Premix! was by far the biggest help I could get. Naturally, coffee is an appetite suppressant curbing hunger for the later fasted hours that spanned from 9pm-1pm the next day. I break the fast at 1pm everyday since that's my lunch break Monday-Friday. This allowed me to eat from 1pm through 9pm everyday, which if you skip breakfast, it's pretty much normal anyway.Since I'd be on an empty stomach, I was able to closely track my weight and ended up losing some. This kept me on track for a weight-dependent powerlifting match.
SUMMARY
Losing weight all comes down to burning more calories than you take in. This just limits the time in which you take the calories in. The best diet is the one that works for to stick to! Comment for any questions or advice you'd like in the comment section below!