I came up with an interesting idea on fasting. It has to do with combining the benefits of alternate day calorie restriction with intermittent fasting.
First, we know intermittent fasting is a good thing in terms of health. A number of studies have been done, and more studies are in the works. The essence of a fast is of course skipping food, and further research is needed to find out the benefits of different length fasts.
We also know that alternate day calorie restriction provies health benefits. This is different than lifelong calorie restriction, which has been shown to increase lifespan. Alternate day calorie restriction simply has days of uneven calorie intake. For example, instead of a person eating 2,500 calories day after day, they would eat in a pattern of maybe 1,000 calories one day and 4,000 calories the next. The benefits of this approach do not appear to be connected to fasting periods. In other words, it doesn't matter if the either the high or low calorie days are spread out over several meals or condensed into fewer meals or one meal.
My idea is, why not combine the two for maximum benefits? Here's an example. Let's keep things simple and say a person eats one meal per day in the evening. This gives them a long intermittent fasting period during sleep and the daylight hours. Now you can graft alternate day calorie restriction on top of this. On day 1, the nighttime meal would be smaller, say 1,000 calories. On day 2, the nighttime meal would be larger, in the form of 4,000 calories. A person would simply alternate between "little feasts" and "big feasts" each night, with intermittent fasting during the day.
Would this type of approach work in practice? Would fasting during the day and then only being able to eat a smaller amount at night on some days be too much to handle? I have no idea.
This is pretty far on the other end of the spectrum in comparison to the normal six-meals-a-day advice. But that doesn't mean that this is wrong or wouldn't work. It is probably a very natural eating pattern in many respects. Even animals that eat in feast-or-famine cycles aren't always guaranteed a big feast. Some days their luck would be better than others. Adding this randomness of feast sizes could be beneficial in terms of health.
