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Intermittent fasting does not result in amenorrhea or irregular periods. Hundreds of women have participated in intermittent fasting studies and neither of these adverse effects has ever been reported. However, amenorrhea or irregular periods can occur if you lose too much body fat and drop below a body mass index (BMI) of 18.5. You can check to see if you are staying within the healthy BMI range by using this handy calculator.

Important note: If you have any medical conditions or are taking prescription medication of any kind for any condition at all, we highly recommend speaking with your physician prior to commencing any new diet, eating or exercise regime.

Although the non-fast day technically starts at midnight, we generally recommend that people wait until they wake up to start eating. In this way, your body will benefit from the extended fasting period (in terms of weight loss and heart disease risk reduction).

Yes. Scientists recently completed a study that suggests that people can split up the 500 or 100-calorie meal into 100-200-calorie meals throughout the day, and see the same weight loss results as consuming the meal all at once.

Yes, it’s fine if you drink alcohol on your non-fast days. However, we generally advise against consuming alcohol on the fast day since 1-2 drinks may account for your entire 500-1000 calorie allowance on that day. Since alcohol is completely deficient in nutrients, it’s much better to eat actual food on the fast day.

Yes. However, you may find it difficult to exercise during the first week or two of the diet. We recommend letting your body adjust to the SFD eating pattern for 2 weeks, and then start (or restart) your exercise regimen.

It’s completely fine to occasionally switch your fast days around, if it doesn’t throw your weight loss off-course. For instance, if you have a social outing on Saturday, and that happens to be your fast day, it’s fine to push the fast day back to Sunday. However, just be aware that some people find it difficult to have two fast days back-to-back. Most people find it easy, to start with, to opt for Monday and Wednesday, or Monday and Thursday as their two fast days. Alternatively, if you’re fasting for three days, you can do Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, or Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Find what works for you.

Technically, you can, but we don’t recommend it. People tend to grossly overestimate the number of calories they burn while exercising. This happens because most exercise machines overestimate calories burned by 50-100%. For instance, a typical elliptical machine will tell you that you’ve burned 300-400 calories in 30 minutes, when in actuality, most people will only burn 100-200 calories. Because of this overestimation, people often leave the gym thinking they can eat a 400-calorie snack. However, if they do this (when they’ve only truly burned 150 calories), they will be eating 250 calories more for the day, completely negating the effect of the exercise!

We recommend that you consume foods high in protein on the fast day, to help stave off hunger. Juice is very high in sugar, and very low in protein, so we wouldn’t advise only consuming juice on the fast day.

Yes. In a recent study, scientists showed that normal weight and slightly overweight people can use the diet to drop the last 2-5kg, and achieve their ideal weight. Just keep in mind that as you are close to your ideal weight, your weight loss will likely be quite slow (about 0.45kg per week). To speed up the weight loss, you may choose to add in an extra fast day, or some extra exercise sessions each week.

We would recommend 50-80 grams of protein and plenty of non-starchy vegetables on the fast day. Salad with chicken is a great option. This meal is filling, it takes a while to eat, and it’s high in protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals. Just make sure you measure out your dressing! Salad dressings are sneaky high-calorie foods. If you’re not into chicken, tuna is also a great option as this food is almost 100% protein.

 Download recipes for each method here!