Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Health & Fitness

20/4 intermittent fasting: A sustainable fasting plan that drives results or unnecessary diet fad?

20/4 intermittent fasting: What you need to know

Emily Caldwell
By
clock on the wall
Cats Coming / Pexels

The practice of intermittent fasting has been around for decades, but the use of intermittent fasting as a health and fitness tool has only recently gained popularity within the last few years. Unlike a specific diet that confines a person to specific types of foods, intermittent fasting is more about meal timing, which means it can effectively work regardless of the types of foods consumed. One of the most common types of fasting is the OMAD diet, which stands for one meal a day. But is this intermittent fasting plan sustainable, and should you try it? We’ll break it down below.

wooden serving tray of healthy food
Jane Doan / Pexels

What is intermittent fasting?

Intermittent fasting refers to the general practice of consuming all of your food for a day within a designated “eating window,” followed by a period of fasting where no food or calories are consumed. There are several types of intermittent fasting plans, from the popular 16:8 to the OMAD plan, which is often a 20/4 split. This means that all of your calories for a day will be consumed within a 4-hour window, followed by 20 hours of fasting. You might also hear this referred to as the “warrior diet,” named after a popular book that helped this eating plan gain popularity in the health and fitness industry.

Recommended Videos

glass food meal prepBenefits of intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting offers a variety of benefits that draw people in — from weight loss to improved mental clarity. The benefits of fasting can be enjoyed even with shorter fasts, such as a 14-hour fast, but longer fasts help to induce a state of ketosis.  When you fast for 20 hours a day, the body shifts from a carbohydrate-burning mode to a fat-burning mode known as ketosis. For this reason, you’ll see that many people who practice intermittent fasting also try pairing it with a ketogenic diet to help maximize the benefits of the ketones. However, intermittent fasting can be done with any form of eating, not just ketogenic diets.

Related

Once the body enters a state of ketosis, a byproduct of fat burning known as ketones is produced. The metabolic state of ketosis leads to several benefits, such as weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, enhanced energy levels, and more. Consuming all of your calories within a designated period makes it easier to control your daily calories and put yourself in a deficit for weight loss.

Many people also continue to practice intermittent fasting protocols even after achieving a healthy body weight thanks to the benefits of autophagy. Autophagy is the process of cleaning up waste in your body’s cells, helping to support body detox and cellular repair. The effects of autophagy are still being studied, but many believe autophagy to have a powerful role in biohacking longevity.

Happy handsome bearded man is using his smart phone while he preparing vegan healthy breakfast for a lovely family
My Ocean studio / Adobe Stock

What is an example of a 20 4 fasting schedule?

A 20 4 fasting schedule is often also an OMAD diet, as many people choose to consume only one meal within their 4-hour eating window. However, a 20/4 fasting plan can also be done with two meals within the 4-hour eating time. One of the greatest things about intermittent fasting is the ability to make it work for your unique schedule.

For example, food can be consumed between 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. only, followed by a fasting period until 4 p.m. the next day. If this meal timing does not work well for your schedule, any four hours can be chosen for food consumption. Many people alter their 20 4 fasting schedules to work based on their work and personal schedules.

Man cooking
Jason Briscoe / Unsplash

Is it ok to fast 20 hours every day?

For most healthy people, an intermittent fasting plan is a safe and effective tool to use to help elevate health and achieve fitness goals. However, it is important to eat a variety of wholesome, real foods to ensure no nutrient deficiencies occur. When done properly with a mix of healthy foods, fasting for 20 hours daily is safe. How you choose to break your fast is also important, as breaking the fast improperly can lead to unpleasant side effects such as digestive discomfort. It’s important to start off slowly when beginning your eating window to allow your body to digest food and to ensure your digestive symptom is not overwhelmed after a 20-hour period of fasting.
However, individuals with certain medical conditions, children, pregnant women, and elderly individuals may not be suited for intermittent fasting. Those with specific nutritional needs may find that they cannot consume enough food within a 4-hour window to be done safely. If you’re looking to start a fasting plan, it’s always a good idea to speak with your doctor for additional guidance.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Emily Caldwell
Emily Caldwell
Contributor
Emily is a full time freelance writer with a special focus on health, fitness, lifestyle, food, and nutrition topics. She…
Bone broth benefits: 9 fantastic reasons to add it to your diet
It adds more than vitamins and minerals to your diet
Cup of bone broth

Every few years, there’s a wellness trend that seems to take over like wildfire, spreading from niche health markets to mainstream culture. From granola to the vegan diet, Epsom salt baths to apple cider vinegar, we are always on the quest for natural solutions to help us feel better, look younger, sleep more soundly, and so on. A few years ago, bone broth entered the scene as a nutritional superfood with purported benefits spanning the gamut from making skin look younger to burning body fat.
It was heralded by Paleo dieters, ancestral health advocates, and CrossFit enthusiasts, and soon conventional food brands and big box stores started making and stocking bone broths, and boutique bone broth cafes opened in major cities around the country, where they exclusively offered gourmet bone broths as soups, drinks, and shots.
Though the clamor surrounding bone broth has quieted from a roaring boil to a more tempered simmer, it’s still a touted health elixir favorite of many athletes and wellness fans. Whether you have yet to sip your first cup of bone broth or it’s been a while since you added it to your grocery list and you’re wondering if bone broth lives up to the hype, keep reading to learn more about the benefits of bone broth.

What is bone broth?
Although it may be a somewhat recent fad, bone broth has actually been prepared and consumed for thousands of years. Bone broth is a nutritious stock made by simmering the bones of animals such as cows, chickens, fish, pigs, bison, and turkeys, along with spices, herbs, and vegetables. Animal hooves, tendons, beaks, and other connective tissues may also be used. The extensive simmering process brings out the minerals, amino acids, vitamins, and healthy fats stored in the bones and connective tissues, creating a nutrient-dense broth. Bone broth may be used as a stock for other soups, consumed as a liquid broth as is, or turned into a health drink.

Read more
From Mediterranean to Paleo, these are the best diets for men to look and feel great
One of these diets will fit your needs
Healthy foods with fruits and vegetables

It seems like eating should be simple: You eat the foods you like in the quantities that satiate you, and that’s that. However, while that’s one way to approach things, most of us find that such a freestyle approach to our diet is too loose and can lead to overeating, nutrient imbalances, and feeling poorly. Plus, we all want to be healthy and maintain our ideal weight and body composition. For these reasons, there are many popular diets that aim to provide structure and rules or principles to guide everything about your eating, from what you should eat and what you should avoid to when you should eat and how much you eat.
Each of these diets has its own guaranteed benefits and specific goals, with a unifying theme supporting overall health and ideal body weight. From Paleo to Whole30, the Nordic Diet to the Ornish Diet, and vegan to Atkins, the menu of diets seems to be constantly growing. While it’s always nice to have choices when making decisions, the overwhelming number of popular diets these days can ultimately lead to paralysis by analysis. How can anyone be expected to sift through all the options and pick the best diet? Speaking with your physician or registered dietician can be a useful approach, or you can try various diets and see how you feel.
Everyone’s body is different, so what works best for you may not work as well for someone else. That said, the best diets for men typically have certain commonalities that make them effective, such as emphasizing healthy vegetables and nutritious fruits, limiting sugar, and focusing on whole, natural foods instead of processed and refined ingredients.
If you’re looking for a good place to start with a few vetted suggestions, keep reading to find out our top picks for the best diets for men.

Best overall: Mediterranean diet
The Mediterranean diet wins our vote for the best diet overall because the evidence speaks for itself -- it’s probably the most researched and tested diet around, with findings demonstrating its superior ability to lower the risk of many chronic diseases, reduce body fat, and improve physical health and performance. The Mediterranean diet is modeled after the typical eating patterns of the Mediterranean region -- especially Greece -- around the 1960s, due to the fact that this population had notably low rates of lifestyle diseases like Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
What makes the Mediterranean diet successful is that it relies on sound nutritional principles: Eat whole, natural foods in moderation, and avoid processed foods. The diet encourages the consumption of vegetables, fruits, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, fish, seafood, and extra virgin olive oil, which provides anti-inflammatory, heart-healthy fats. Poultry, eggs, cheese, and yogurt can be consumed in limited amounts, and red meat is discouraged. Foods to avoid include processed meats like hot dogs and sausages, refined oils, trans fats, processed foods, refined grains like white bread and pasta, sweetened beverages, and any foods with added sugars like ice cream and jelly.

Read more
High protein diets: Everything you need to know
Thinking about a new diet? Here's what a high protein approach looks like
Healthy foods

Fitness goals usually fall under one of two categories: working out more and eating better. This can involve following a high protein diet, adding more veggies to dinners, and getting into a running routine. However, there is no need to wait for January, because you can make positive changes at any time of the year!

Now, there are so many routes one can go when considering a diet. Fortunately, a high-protein approach is one of the easiest to pull off. Moreover, it's a diet that will likely involve some changes to what you eat, but not so dramatically that you'll give up on it after a few weeks.

Read more