Can you eat unhealthy while intermittent fasting?

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cristopher32095
cristopher32095 Posts: 2 Member
edited November 2024 in Health and Weight Loss
So I wonder, could someone who fasts to the point of having one meal a day, however chooses to eat a giant cheeseburger and fries stay healthy and continue weight loss so long as they remain in a caloric deficit?

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  • kommodevaran
    kommodevaran Posts: 17,889 Member
    Eating unhealthily means not getting in sufficient nutrition and/or over time, eating too much. Number of meals, cheeseburgers and fries are unrelated factors.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 19,103 Member
    Lose weight? yes. Stay healthy? Not if your missing out on proper nutrition. IF has nothing to do with it, that's true across the board.
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
    edited August 2017
    You can eat a poor diversity of nutrients on any diet or eating schedule and lose weight if in a calorie deficit. It's not ideal, which goes without saying, but physics doesn't care what's ideal for health and what is not so you will lose weight regardless. This always holds true, intermittent fasting or not.

    ETA: a giant cheeseburger can be healthy if it's not the only thing you eat every day. It's just meat, bread, cheese and vegetables after all and these all have nutrients. It becomes a problem when your overall diet over a period of time contains only giant cheeseburgers (or any one food for that matter).
  • TavistockToad
    TavistockToad Posts: 35,719 Member
    cristopher32095 wrote: »
    So I wonder, could someone who fasts to the point of having one meal a day, however chooses to eat a giant cheeseburger and fries stay healthy and continue weight loss so long as they remain in a caloric deficit?

    how much salad does the giant burger have on it?!
  • mabearof6
    mabearof6 Posts: 684 Member
    weight loss is all about a calorie deficit. Fasting is just a method to help control calorie intake.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    As others have said, weight loss is about calories, and a healthful diet is about getting in adequate nutrients without over or under eating.

    Doing IF makes no different: you still lose if you eat under maintenance calories and you still should eat a healthful diet (for health/nutrition, not weight loss).

    One question is whether it makes it easier for you to do that. Some people find that IF helps them control calories. One reason I have not tried OMAD is that there's no way I could get in my vegetables and protein in one meal regularly, as I find them too sating, but others do not have that issue.
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