THE FAST AND THE SPURIOUS
FASTING appears in many guises. There are cleanses, purges and digestive resets. There are various restricted “eating windows”. But ultimately, they all amount to the same thing: a drastic reduction in your kilojoule allowance for a designated period of time.
The concept is nothing new. Fasting is arguably the original “diet” (the practice gets a fair few nods in the Old Testament), but its popularity has swelled in recent years and now every man and his spotter is seemingly singing its praises, whether for health and performance or for more aesthetic benefits. But there are myriad iterations and, with so many handbooks and cookbooks purporting to help you turn hunger pains into fitness gains, it can be hard to cut through the noise. Will stuffing in a day’s worth of fuel at dinner help you crush it in the gym tomorrow? Is alternating between feast and famine any better than a steady diet? Forced lockdown fosters a spirit of experimentation, meaning there’s no better time to find out. We consulted the experts to help you separate the absurd from the abs-defining.
1
THE WARRIOR DIET
What is it?
Supposedly based on the habits of ancient Greek and Roman soldiers, this intermittent-fasting regimen involves consuming next to nothing during the working day, then gorging in the
