Fasting an alternative to holiday glutton
By Eliza Barclay, NPR
Before this season of overindulgence freights us with unwanted pounds or a glutton’s guilt complex, why not try the opposite of the holiday feast: the fast.
Fasting need not be a punishing, multiday ordeal of deprivation. Increasingly, scientists are warming to the intermittent fast, which can be as brief as one skipped meal once or twice a week.
The benefits of fasting seem to extend far beyond managing weight. A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes a cautious but encouraging case for how regularly cutting way back on calories for a short period of time may be good for your health (and that we need to study it more).