The Alternate Day Diet.

Edie30 wrote: »

I have a couple of friends who have been doing this diet for hmmm maybe a year. They are about 3 pounds lighter than when they started!!! Obviously it doesn't work for everyone! I don't really get it but you could give it a bash for a month and see. Ultimately though you'd probaly be better just making a complete lifestyle change but sometimes we take a while to get to that way of thinking. Good luck :-)

Was their goal to lose weight? If so then the diet probably hasn't made much difference for them if they've been at it for a year and only lost 3lbs

regeneration of what? No reputable sources listed in that link, and it's clearly a blog dedicated to the topic which means cherry picking the evidence they do decide to use.

chouflour wrote: »

ana3067 wrote: »

Assuming my TDEE is 2500.
Varady: 1640 or 1685 calories/day on average (way too low, and way too large of a deficit unless I were obese)
5:2 : 1930 or 1960, which would be doable for me. But not great when I am within 10-15lbs from my goal.

Of the two I would recommend 5:2 over Varady simply based on caloric intake.

Having actually read Varady, it isn't 500/600 and TDEE. It's 25% of TDEE (with 500/600 as approximations for anyone who doesn't want to figure out their TDDE) and ad libitum on alternate days. One of the advantages of ADF is that you don't have to log your food on non-fasting days.

Most of the studies have involved obese individuals, with larger deficits and faster losses. She did a small study that involved normal weight participants ( http://www.nutritionj.com/content/12/1/146 ) and it found they lost ~ 6kg in 12 weeks. That's fast - and fast is considered a feature (see the OP of this thread. Speaking of - OP, Varaday says it'll take 8-12 weeks for you to lose your 10lb, so you started a little late!)

As I recall, most of the research was comparing ADF to CR (daily caloric restriction) and found that it was roughly comparable. There may be slight advantage to ADF in maintaining lean body mass. ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21410865 )

Oh, and the cancer stuff. Clearly, I'm just looking for excuses not to go to bed - but here's a Varady cancer study - I'm pretty sure it said "Yeah, ADF probably helps cancer risk as much as CR" http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/7.long

IMO, the chief reasons why "people would subject themselves to intermittent fasting instead of a consistent calorie deficit" are:
It's easy - either you're eating freely/normally that day, or you're eating one small meal that you had to count calories for. There's no logging.
There's minimal sense of deprivation - you get the "new diet" high every other day, and if you go to bed hungry - it's only for one day.
Weight loss is fast. Everyone likes a quick fix, and 4-5% of your body weight over 8 weeks is pretty darn fast.

It's actually about 13lbs in 12 weeks, which is not very fast for obese people. In fact, many people here lost up to 2lbs a week. Not that that's ideal, but when obese it's pretty normal to lose even more initially than one's caloric deficit would expect due to water losses. I suspect that if participants maintained knowledge/awareness/logging of their intake on non restricted days they would see faster results. I can see this method being quite problematic when near one's goal weight.

As far as the reasons you say that people would choose this over regular calorie restriction, I don't personally agree. Mostly:
1) easy is definitely subjective. One day of not eating much doesn't appeal to me, and it's easier for me to eat until full while in a caloric deficit every single day. It's also easier for me to track my intake, particularly because I plan on bulking next year and I need to maintain as much lean body mass as possible - hence tracking protein. I find logging easier than just arbitrarily guessing that I've been in a deficit for the week.

2) I don't feel deprived, but I also don't eat 1200 calories. I eat (as of today) 2150 calories. I also do IIFYM, so I eat anything I want as long as it's within my calories and macros. I had a donut today, was real nice.

3) Again, 13lbs in 12 weeks isn't all that fast, particularly for obese people. For 4% of body weight lost, that's about 7.4lbs in 2 months. Which is about the same rate I lost eating at a standard deficit of 20% below my TDEE every day when I first started. 4% now would be about 3lbs/month or 6lbs in 2 months, which is the same rate, if a bit more, than what I am currently aiming for. So really, no different than using standard calorie restriction.

So the reasons I guess seem to be entirely subjective and basically you won't lose weight faster/better than a noraml deficit unless it helps you maintain a deficit long term. As long as no one claims that it has magical healing powers or something, then it really doesn't matter if one chooses IF or standard deficit or even exercise as a deficit to lose weight.

Not related to this particular pool of studies though, I do wish that more studies would be conducted on non-obese people. Usually if I find an article pertaining to calorie deficit it's on rats or obese people. And usually it's something like "they ate 1300 calories" so... of COURSE they will lose weight. It would definitely be awesome if people could be given more reasonable deficits, matching participants as well as possible beforehand so that everyone would have similar estimated TDEEs and thus similar deficits at 20%.