Eating in Blocks or Windows

When you’re taking part in regular intermittent fasts (essentially, every day), you have narrowed your window for eating. You might only eat in an 8-hour window during the day (fasting for 16 hours). There are good reasons why some of the prescriptive intermittent fasting regimes are based on this narrowing of the eating window. You take advantage of all the benefits of fasting (e.g., better blood-sugar control, more fat burning, higher glucagon and growth hormone), and you can eat based on hunger level whenever you want during the window.

Chances are, this eating in a narrower window means you only eat two meals a day, but they can be big meals that include supplements (like a whey protein shake) if you’re actually trying to put on muscle. Other people will simply eat fewer calories without breakfast and lose extra pounds. After fasting and exercising, you should break the fast within about an hour and eat. Eat quality protein, like branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs), now that you’ve started the muscle-building process by fasting and lifting weights. There is also evidence that fasting preferentially catabolizes (uses for energy) the BCAAs the body harvests from muscles,⁸ so it makes sense to restore them with quality whey protein (which contains BCAAs) or meat afterward.