New to Intermittent Fasting... still confused.

akpuggy

I researched IF pretty extensively and the consensus from everyone is that it is very beneficial. However, there is a huge split in the number fo hours to actually fast and what and how to eat when you break the fast.

For example, the Warrior diet sounds great, but is it really a fast when you are allowed to eat small "snacks" throughout the day and then just have a giant "all-you-can-eat" meal at the end of the day? It's not very detailed but I am guessing that you can't eat more than 500 cal. in total for those snack sand then everything in the last meal. What is confusing here is that you are not allowed to eat fat and carbs at the same time, so I could not understand how its possible to eat everything in one meal.

So what I tried was a combination of the Warrior diet and what other real intermittent fasting, where you can't have any food for 16 hours at all. So I Did not eat for 16 hours, then ate small snacks as per Warrior diet advice and then a jian meal at the end. It still seemed a bit hard to fit everything in one meal so now I am trying to simply do a 16/8 diet. This is where I basically skip my breakfast, then have lunch and dinner in the 8-hour window with some snacks in between.

The other thing that most IF diets mention is that you should have some kind of recovery meal at the end of working out. However, I do weight lifting in the morning and do kickboxing in the late afternoon. So it's really not possible to eat anything after the weight lifting if I tend to not eat for 16 hours at least.

Anyway, still reading up on all these things to get something that works best and most sustainable for long term. If anyone has any advice or resources that may be helpful, please do share (also curious on the food types eaten).

mkakids

I do 16/8. Generally i eat from 12/1 -8/9. I work out in the morning, around 8am. I do not eat anything before or after. I usually run 3-5miles 5 days a werk, then lift heavy 2-3 days a week.

Personally, i dont think it is necessary to eat before or after working out. I feel fine and have made strength and endurance progress and have lost 67# in ~ a year.

If you feel faint without eating, or your performance suffers, you may need to eat.


IF is a way to make a calorie deficit easier to attain. It will not help you to lose weight or burn fat if you are not in a deficit.

usmcmp

They suggest that if your workout falls in your fasting window that you supplement with BCAAs after the workout.

andreada98507

akpuggy wrote: »

I researched IF pretty extensively and the consensus from everyone is that it is very beneficial. However, there is a huge split in the number fo hours to actually fast and what and how to eat when you break the fast.

For example, the Warrior diet sounds great, but is it really a fast when you are allowed to eat small "snacks" throughout the day and then just have a giant "all-you-can-eat" meal at the end of the day? It's not very detailed but I am guessing that you can't eat more than 500 cal. in total for those snack sand then everything in the last meal. What is confusing here is that you are not allowed to eat fat and carbs at the same time, so I could not understand how its possible to eat everything in one meal.

So what I tried was a combination of the Warrior diet and what other real intermittent fasting, where you can't have any food for 16 hours at all. So I Did not eat for 16 hours, then ate small snacks as per Warrior diet advice and then a jian meal at the end. It still seemed a bit hard to fit everything in one meal so now I am trying to simply do a 16/8 diet. This is where I basically skip my breakfast, then have lunch and dinner in the 8-hour window with some snacks in between.

The other thing that most IF diets mention is that you should have some kind of recovery meal at the end of working out. However, I do weight lifting in the morning and do kickboxing in the late afternoon. So it's really not possible to eat anything after the weight lifting if I tend to not eat for 16 hours at least.

Anyway, still reading up on all these things to get something that works best and most sustainable for long term. If anyone has any advice or resources that may be helpful, please do share (also curious on the food types eaten).

I really don't know about the Warrior diet and I'm not a weight lifter, but I was able to lose about 25 pounds using many very small meals throughout the day and limiting my daily caloric intake to 20 to 25% of my daily maintenance calories (there's a formula in The Alternate Day Diet to use to calculate how many calories you need daily just to maintain current weight). I guess that it was really a modified fast. I did a 3:4, since fasting every other day just didn't work for my schedule. On non-fast days, I just ate normally. eating only 500 calories in a day is really hard, especially at the beginning, but I found I could stick with it because I knew it was only for a day.

Other than the eating small meals throughout the day, I followed the info in two books, The Alternate Day Diet by James Johnson (an M.D.) and Michael Mosley's Fast Diet. Mosley did the BBC program of a few years back on IF, and also has another book, Fast Exercise (he did that BBC program too), about interval training. If I recall the book has info about timing eating and exercise for the best effect. Sorry I can't offer the specifics - I'm working on other isssues so didn't retain that part.

Although there are recent studies that tend to disprove the idea that it's calories alone that matter when losing weight, it's hard for me to believe that fasting during the day and then essentially binging at the end of the day could work to lose weight. I actually had that kind of eating habit for years and it leads to weight gain for me! I've also found that skipping breakfast just makes me ravenous later on. Instead, it seems to help to eat something like oatmeal in the morning that sticks with me for quite a few hours, so I can go longer without eating much.

jennifer_417

I do 5:2. It's really just a matter of what works for you. You can modify it as necessary, it's just another way to create a calorie deficit.
As far as eating before/after exercise, it mostly boils down to what you can tolerate. I usually have no problems working out fastes, but some people cant, and others feel sick if they eat before or after a workout.

Sued0nim

You do whichever way works for you

It's not magic it's a way to hit your calorie defecit across the week and commit

Yi5hedr3

Do kickboxing and weight lifting on separate days. That will also allow adequate recovery time for both.