Intermittent fasting?!?

The reserach is very limited but there is increasing evidence that intermitten fasting does not work so well in women. Read this article for a good review of the literature: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/women-and-intermittent-fasting/#axzz34DlDG09p

an 18 hr fast would generally be considered too long for women and it is generally advised to stick to a 14 hr fast and 10 hr eating window (which may well be considered 'normal' eating for many people!)

Intermittent fasting worked for me for a while - I did 5:2 and dropped my first few pounds that way. But I'm a man - our metabolism seems to work differently on this point. Personally, I don't see the point of "fasting" every day, and then gorging in a 6-hour window, but YMMV.

Are you thinking about food because you are hungry, or are you just obsessing? If you are actually hungry, a trick like eating in a 6-hour window isn't going to help at all, you'd be better off upping your intake to something more sustainable.

Most importantly, I wouldn't even dream of working out for an hour while fasting. What is your body going to use for fuel? You'll be burning through what's left of your glycogen stores, but after that, fat-burning isn't going to fuel your workout so your body will start converting protein for fuel. You don't want that. You can work harder and burn more during a properly-fuelled workout than a hungry workout. If you are really stuck on that particular timing, at least eat a banana or something before you start.

In practice, 16:8 is largely just the opposite of "eat small meals every two hours." Instead of eating a bunch of small meals, you eat two, maybe three meals over a shifted eight hour window (ie - 1-9pm instead of a more "typical" eating schedule of something like 8am-5pm). This works especially well as a calorie management system for those with smaller calorie budgets. IE -- instead of 6 meals of 225 calories, one can eat two meals of 675 calories. It would be about the same amount of food, but the two large meals allow for a person to feel the difference between actually hungry and actually full, instead of this strange limbo between the two that some of us feel on the "eat a bunch of small meals" method. If you consider a large meal like that to be "gorging," then far be it from us to stop you from doing what pleases you, though.

Like the OP, I tried the "eat every couple of hours" thing, too, and it made me feel like I was constantly thinking about food and when I could eat again. I personally range between 2 and 3 meals now, and my hunger and thoughts have, in fact, changed how I think about food and when I start feeling hungry. Being able to eat a couple of good-sized meals, without any kind of snacks in between, has allowed me to not feel like I'm obsessing over food. I can actually eat less food and not be hungry than I ever could with the methods that basically keep you from ever feeling hunger by giving you more or less a "food drip."

Finally, I work out fasted. I have to when I do more intense workouts, or I get horrible stomach cramps and nausea that can pretty much kill my workout entirely. Whether the body tries to go after protein or fat depends largely on what exercise is being done, at what intensity, and what the body's anaerobic threshold is (the higher it is, the more intense one can go while still burning fat). These factors matter regardless of fasted state (one need only look at the physique differences between elite athletes of different activities to see that).

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I never understood the whole 16:8 as a fasting thing. To me, calories during that 8 hours is pretty much the same as just eating at a deficit each day but with some of the benefits that fasting gives, but not to the fullest extent. eating in an 8 hour window for me is sort of like a normal eating pattern so alll I would be doing is having to eat at a deficit during those 8 hours.