Eating on a Clock

Intermittent fasting (IF) changes when you eat, not what you eat. The most popular version is 16:8 — you fast for 16 hours and fit all your meals into an 8-hour window. For most people that just means skipping breakfast and eating from noon to 8 p.m.

Your body is built to handle gaps without food. For most of human history, meals were not guaranteed, and people went long stretches between them and stayed sharp enough to hunt. Going 16 to 24 hours without eating is well within that range.