Intermittent Fasting Success?

IF is terrible for social life. If you're dieting correctly and you eat your TDEE-20% you're screwed when you go out with friends after your window. Have one drink and a small snack and you just ate back more than half your deficit. Personally, I don't like anything that bars me from enjoying life in moderation. I liked IF and it helped with satiety, but, it definitely has its drawbacks. It's not for everyone, but, it really can help people who like to graze all day on food. Those little snacks add up.

IF bad for social life? You were doing it wrong. I do 5:2 (limit calories to 500 for 2 days and eat 'normally' (for me that's around 2000 cals) on the other 5 days). This means I am free to go out and have a nice meal/ drinks without 'going over' my calories for the week and I no longer have to feel like I am on 'a diet' all the time. I love it. Four months living like this and I am slowly but surely losing weight and feeling great. If the offer of an evening out comes up on a fast day I can go for it and just do the fast the following day. I am off to a Thai restaurant tonight and I am going to have lot of rich food and because I restricted calories on Monday and Wednesday I am safe in the knowledge I still have a decent calorie deficit at the end of the week. Yay.

IF is not necessary. it is no different than caloric intake in and out. meal timing is irrelevant but this provides structure for those who cannot do it freely.

I am not against it and I am not for it, however some people enjoy the structure of the diet. especially in times when they have to "cut"

I am a new father and haven't been to the gym honestly since August. I was sitting at 221 before I started IF on my last day of vacation on 10/7/2013. Weighed in today at 213. So it's working for me, and I am just making sure I eat higher fats and protien on most days. I eat within reason but I definitely no longer feel guilty having a beer or two with dinner, or having a slice or two of pizza once and a while. Just try to mostly eat whole foods.

That .org site linked above is NOT Berkhan's site!! It's some copycat site with a questionable affiliate link.

The legit site is http://www.leangains.com/

Please edit your post, it could spread bad info.

Hi, I'm the owner of http://lean-gains.org. I found this thread from a notification that my site was linked to. What you said is true - Martin Berkhan's site is http://www.leangains.com. I don't purport my site to be the official Leangains website, as the poster said - in fact, I mention several times on my site that it isn't.

When I first started Leangains nearly two and a half years ago, I found there to be a lack of clear and concise information on macros, training, and that sort of thing. Sure, there was plenty of information available, but you had to extract it from reading tons of posts on Martin's blog - there were no step-by-step guides.

So, I decided to create my site to help out people who were new to Leangains and got confused by the loosely organized info on Martin's site. It's not meant to be a copy of Martin's site and all the content is 100% original - it's simply there to help out Leangains newbies get started. I think it does a pretty good job, as evidenced by all the positive feedback I have received in my email from visitors over the past year.

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "questionable affiliate link." I have Adsense ads and an affiliate link to Eat Stop Eat on the website. It earns very little - not even enough to cover hosting or domain name renewal fees.

Anyway, I hope I've cleared things up for anyone who visits this old thread - I'm a huge supporter of Leangains and a fan of Martin's, not some guy out to make a quick buck.

Some other great Leangains resources to check out are r/Leangains on Reddit and rippedbody.jp (note: this site is not entirely based on Martin's original Leangains, but it comes close - and there's a lot of useful information on it anyway).

Well, today I went a little over my calories--I ate about 100 too many--but I feel like I would have done far worse if I hadn't put myself within an eating window. I fasted from 5pm Saturday night until about 11am Sunday morning. I made a little panini sandwich and then had two waffles and a candy bar. Then I binged on about 3 bowls of cereal. I know this is a horrible intake, but I'm expecting that as I begin to get a handle on IF, I will start to want better foods. I'll see how I do tomorrow. I've tried every crazy diet that is out there, so my main objective is to try to overcome my bingeing.I hope that I will wait until 11am to eat tomorrow. That will have been a 19 hour window, which I think will be good for my digestive system...especially since my eating habits have been terrible lately.