Scientists at Johns Hopkins' Laboratory of Neurosciences, Gerontology Research Center, National Institute on Aging have found:
Dietary restriction has been shown to have several health benefits including increased insulin sensitivity, stress resistance, reduced morbidity, and increased life span. The mechanism remains unknown, but the need for a long-term reduction in caloric intake to achieve these benefits has been assumed. [...]
Nevertheless, intermittent fasting resulted in beneficial effects that met or exceeded those of caloric restriction including reduced serum glucose and insulin levels and increased resistance of neurons in the brain to excitotoxic stress. Intermittent fasting therefore has beneficial effects on glucose regulation and neuronal resistance to injury in these mice that are independent of caloric intake.
The only environmental variable that has been shown to markedly affect the rate of aging in a wide range of species is caloric intake: Restricting food intake to a level below that which would be consumed voluntarily results in a decrease in the rate of aging and an increase in average and maximum life span (1, 2). Dietary restriction (DR) reduces cancer formation (3, 4) and kidney disease (5) and increases the resistance of neurons to dysfunction and degeneration in experimental models of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases as well as stroke (6-9).
Intermittent fasting is the key here — this is a type of fasting where you get the full benefits of calorie restriction (increased longevity and disease resistance, weight loss) without having to starve yourself for three and a half days.
Intermittent fasting is exactly what it sounds like: You fast two to three days a week instead of over a long period of time.
During those two or three days, you simply reduce your calorie intake depending on preference. Some people chose to eliminate eating for a whole 24 hours during their fasting days. This is fine (if you can handle the hunger), but there are less painful and inconvenient ways to fast...
Probably the simplest way for beginners is to cut calorie intake on fasting days to about half of what it normally is, and eventually work your way down to 20% of caloric intake. There are a number of ways to do this. You could simply eat half of what you normally do throughout the whole day; skip some of your meals; or try "the window method," my personal recommendation.
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