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Intermittent Fasting - Is it a good idea?
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But OP yes I've been doing IF for like 5 years. It works great for me because I prefer big meals rather than eating 6 times a day.
Please note IF is not skipping breakfast necessarily. You can arrange the feeding time window anytime it fits your life better.5 -
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Ironandwine69 wrote: »But OP yes I've been doing IF for like 5 years. It works great for me because I prefer big meals rather than eating 6 times a day.
Please note IF is not skipping breakfast necessarily. You can arrange the feeding time window anytime it fits your life better.
I agree with this. Breakfast also just means to break the fast of which we all do. Even doing IF or not. Most people don't eat while they sleep so there is always a bit of a fasting period.1 -
Tankiscool wrote: »
Ohhh good memory
it's definitely one feisty burrito.. one that kicks all night and gets hiccups 
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lukejoycePT wrote: »lukejoycePT wrote: »magnusthenerd wrote: »
Bit of a weasel wording there. I can say anything has benefits if done correctly.lukejoycePT wrote: »IF has an insane amount of health benefits if done correctly. Plus it helps keep your calories down.
Amputating legs has insane health benefits if done correctly, e.g., when it saves someone's life because being alive is an insane health benefit compared to being dead.
The overall impression I get on IF is that there are a lot of health benefits touted that end up reducing to be the benefits that come from achieving a healthier body fat.
I'm also a bit leery of people that overly tout its benefits. I've seen shucksters like Fung claim autophagy and low protein keto means the morbidly obese can lose weight without having loose skin - that none of his patients ever have loose skin. I've yet to see him publish his remarkable finds in a dermatology journal.
I don’t know what you mean by Weasel wording.. sounds like your trying to insult me but okay...
And yes is stand by if it’s done right. Fasting for a few hours is not going to give you the results required. You have to follow the protocol in order for it to kick in, that’s why when you sleep, even though you are technically fasting it’s really fasting now is it!
That’s a big leap.... Fungs claims about excess skin to fasting is BS. People have been fasting for 1000’s of years. Fung didn’t invent it.
Lastly, I use it, my clients use it and they notice a difference, lean or not.
I find this stuff fascinating, but why would our bodies be programmed to start working better after a specific number of hours of fasting had passed? What would be the evolutionary advantage to making us pass up food in a world where, if we wait too long, there might not be food available at that point and we would risk going too long without food? It would be like the Universe asking us to play chicken!
It is important to bring up that fasting has been done for 1000’s of years because from a evolutionary point of view we are conditioned to live quite comfortably without food for long periods of time. It has been shown that after a certain time of non eating your body suddenly switches to its hunter gatherer mode and you find yourself more alert with improved cognitive performance. This was purely so we can could hunt food more efficiently. But it also made room for other functions that body intakes when in a fasted stay.
remember breakfast hasn’t been something we’ve done for long.. after all it was invented by companies trying to sell us food. People who say they can’t do it are not really being honest with themselves, a more accurate reply would be, I don’t want to because I enjoy eating breakfast.
There are so many things the body does and improves when I’m a state of discomfort. Half our issues today are based on the fact we don’t make ourselves uncomfortable. We sit for far too long. Everything is too convenient. Even down to having hot water.
See now I've got to bow out of this because you've lost me completely. Your body suddenly switches to "hunter gatherer mode"? People who say they can't skip breakfast are not being honest? I feel confident people ate a morning meal before there were food companies. Unless you can show me some amazing sources that anthropogists and medical researchers I know have never seen, or wow me with the various degrees you've earned that led you to those conclusions, of course. Have a great day.
Yeah, people at breakfast, just not what we'd now consider a typical breakfast. Here's a suggested menu from a menu plan from 1850s Ohio:
Monday.
Breakfast. Corn bread, cold bread, stew, boiled eggs.
Dinner. Soup, cold joint, calves' head, vegetables.
Dessert. Puddings, &c.
Tea. Cold bread, milk toast, stewed fruit.
Dinner = biggest meal (common to be midday in farming households, that was the case even for my grandparents although my grandfather called the evening meal "supper" instead of the British-derived tea).
Saying "fasting" has been done for 1000s of years is playing fast and loose with the meaning of the term. Did people count the hours in which they did not eat and eat only within a window? No. Did people in the US and likely Europe tend to eat when it was light, so in certain cultures for a long time that meant in the winter you probably did have a longer period of time when people did not eat? Probably. Is that applicable across humankind? Not really.
I think fewer times in which people could eat (regular meals rather than grazing, no after meal eating) was a cultural way that, along with scarcity, limited how much we could eat and the absence of that is likely related to the increase in obesity, but claiming it's about "fasting" and some hypothetical benefits thereof, is a stretch, of course. (Grazing during an eating window wouldn't be consistent with this either.)
What is true is that in various cultures there were fasting practices which (again) usually did not mean eating within a window (although in some cases like Ramadan it can, but that's only for a period of time per year). Instead it meant not eating certain foods or occasional full fasts (not mere windows).
If you go back to scarcity or hunter gatherer times or whatever, it meant there might be a period of time in which food was not available and that if food was available you'd want to eat (and I think this is why many people today find it easy to overeat, since food is always available and there was no survival benefit to being someone who couldn't eat above their TDEE).
Is it probably good to not eat all the time and to be able to deal with skipping meals occasionally? Dunno but that seems plausible to me. Does this mean there are some tremendous health benefits to eating only within an 8 hour window (or 4 or whatever) daily, beyond if it makes calorie control easier? Seems unlikely and certainly not supported by 1000s of years of human history.
Also, the actual studies are all over the place and in some cases show that the benefit is only for eating during daylight hours or earlier in the day (arguments for circadian rhythm having some effect there). Eating most cals late in the day does poorly in those studies. I'm skeptical of that too, although I find it interesting, and sometimes those studies are cited as evidence for IF in general by people who eat late in the day, which is ironic.
The big issue with pushing an "eat only in the morning and midday" schedule, of course, is that many aren't hungry then (especially if one does not workout or do strenuous work early, as the Ohio farmer would have), and that dinner tends to be the most family-oriented and social meal and the easiest one to include lots of protein and veg in and cook at home in the modern world, unless one does not have a job that covers regular working hours (let alone one where one may work late frequently).11 -
lukejoycePT wrote: »lukejoycePT wrote: »magnusthenerd wrote: »
Bit of a weasel wording there. I can say anything has benefits if done correctly.lukejoycePT wrote: »IF has an insane amount of health benefits if done correctly. Plus it helps keep your calories down.
Amputating legs has insane health benefits if done correctly, e.g., when it saves someone's life because being alive is an insane health benefit compared to being dead.
The overall impression I get on IF is that there are a lot of health benefits touted that end up reducing to be the benefits that come from achieving a healthier body fat.
I'm also a bit leery of people that overly tout its benefits. I've seen shucksters like Fung claim autophagy and low protein keto means the morbidly obese can lose weight without having loose skin - that none of his patients ever have loose skin. I've yet to see him publish his remarkable finds in a dermatology journal.
I don’t know what you mean by Weasel wording.. sounds like your trying to insult me but okay...
And yes is stand by if it’s done right. Fasting for a few hours is not going to give you the results required. You have to follow the protocol in order for it to kick in, that’s why when you sleep, even though you are technically fasting it’s really fasting now is it!
That’s a big leap.... Fungs claims about excess skin to fasting is BS. People have been fasting for 1000’s of years. Fung didn’t invent it.
Lastly, I use it, my clients use it and they notice a difference, lean or not.
I find this stuff fascinating, but why would our bodies be programmed to start working better after a specific number of hours of fasting had passed? What would be the evolutionary advantage to making us pass up food in a world where, if we wait too long, there might not be food available at that point and we would risk going too long without food? It would be like the Universe asking us to play chicken!
It is important to bring up that fasting has been done for 1000’s of years because from a evolutionary point of view we are conditioned to live quite comfortably without food for long periods of time. It has been shown that after a certain time of non eating your body suddenly switches to its hunter gatherer mode and you find yourself more alert with improved cognitive performance. This was purely so we can could hunt food more efficiently. But it also made room for other functions that body intakes when in a fasted stay.
remember breakfast hasn’t been something we’ve done for long.. after all it was invented by companies trying to sell us food. People who say they can’t do it are not really being honest with themselves, a more accurate reply would be, I don’t want to because I enjoy eating breakfast.
There are so many things the body does and improves when I’m a state of discomfort. Half our issues today are based on the fact we don’t make ourselves uncomfortable. We sit for far too long. Everything is too convenient. Even down to having hot water.
If we're talking evolutionary time-scales, humans have had to deal with starvation for hundreds of thousands of years, to millions if we're taking humans to mean genus homo and not just modern homo sapiens. Still, that doesn't mean it is beneficial, necessary, or safe. Evolution produces reproduces, it doesn't have a goal of optimizing the things people would want. Just for example, Inuit and other arctic populations show a genetic sweep that they've evolved a trait to stay out of ketosis with their diet, but the trait has the downside of causing dramatic increases in infant mortality. I would think this trait actually suppresses some of what you'd consider hunter-gatherer mode.
I also don't think calling it improved cognitive performance is accurate either. My understanding is that as people fast, and particularly as they enter ketosis, what goes up is awareness based task performance, but in their actual performance on things like logic and reasoning tests go down. I recall Sapolsky, a rather renowned neuro-endocrinologist saying judges make their most lenient and sympathetic sentencing when they've recently had a glucose rich meal, such as decisions handed out just after lunch. I think empathy is a form of cognitive performance.
I also don't remember breakfast being invented by cereal companies. I'm pretty sure the term comes from breaking the fast, i.e., the first time someone eats when waking up. The word goes back to Middle English, so as old as ~1066, though that's just for the English word, not the concept.15 -
I do IF just as a default because I don't feel the need to eat anything until about 2 in the afternoon and don't like to go to bed hungry. I also like to be able to eat big suppers, so I will usually have lunch at 2PM, supper around 7/8 PM and maybe a small snack by 10 PM.
Think of it this way: If I eat all of my allotted calories by 6 or 7 PM and am still up until 11 PM (which is usually the case for me), then I know I have to go another 4-5 hours without eating and then have to wait until the next day to eat again. That doesn't work for me.
Whereas if I wake up in the morning knowing (even if I might get a bit hungry at mid-morning) that I can "break my fast" at 2, I have much more will power and don't feel the need to eat knowing I will be eating that day soon.
I don't think IF has any more benefits than any other WOE, as long as you stick to your calorie goal you will do fine. It's a mental thing for me and makes sure that I don't go to bed hungry.7 -
I think it works for some, but not all. It might work for me, but I know it isn’t sustainable because I’m a food addict and being that hungry just doesn’t work well for me.
This is the exact reason I do IF. I'm too am a food addict, and could eat a LOT of food in a day. Right now I am doing IF 20/4. I eat between 3:30pm and 7:30pm. I find that I can eat all I want during that time, and still barely hit the calories for a day (obviously with super high calorie foods, one can eat a lot, even in one sitting). But by having one main mean (supper) with snacks around it, I'm being a food lover that can eat all. the. food. and still lose weight. I just have to be careful to include lot's of healthy food in there. Also noticed that I can be waiting all day to have something specific (ex. cookies). and then once I have them during my eating window, it doesn't taste near as good as I expected, and I eat less (1 or 2 vs. my normal 5+).6 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »I also don't remember breakfast being invented by cereal companies. I'm pretty sure the term comes from breaking the fast, i.e., the first time someone eats when waking up. The word goes back to Middle English, so as old as ~1066, though that's just for the English word, not the concept.
Strictly speaking, breakfast itself wasn't invented by cereal companies, it was the myth that breakfast "is the most important meal of the day". That was an advertising slogan (Kellogg's? Post? I forget whose) that was repeated so often that it eventually just became accepted as a fact.4 -
betsymoomoo wrote: »I do intermittent fasting because it is helping me break my addiction to food. I have a set time that I can eat, I am now eating for fuel vs taste.
Perhaps one day I will go back to eating normally, but I'm not really a breakfast person anyway.
@betsymoomoo whats your IF times set up like?0 -
sunnyside1213 wrote: »I eat at 10/2/6. That gives me 16 hours of no food for my gut to rest. Works for me.
@sunnyside1213 is the 16 hours drom the 6p to 10a?0 -
I actually do IF 6:30PM to 10:30AM
Do I get hungry sometimes? Yeah... sure, so what?2 -
I do 16-21 hour IF. I'm 26 years old, female, and I maintain an active lifestyle, 60 mins of moderate activity, 5 days a week. I've been doing it for about a year or two, doing great, no adverse side effects. Granted, this is me, personally. I can't speak for everyone.
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I’m thinking of trying it... however, I exercise early in the am so feel I need my whey shake after ....but then I can go until mid-late afternoon w/o eating that by the time dinner cones around, I’m scrambling to get in all my macros, esp protein for the day. Which by not eating enough is actually hurting my weight loss/muscle gain!0
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Started IF about 15 years ago at 16:8. Now I usually go 20 hours most days for almost a decade. I have more energy. I workout fasted at full intensity and feel great. Give it a try...It isn't anything special or magical for weight/fat-loss so don't worry if IF isn't for you. A calorie deficit is the answer there. Just seems the less time I spend eating the better I feel.5
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I just started with IF after I heard about Dr Eric Berg on YouTube and incorporating a Fat Adapted way of eating.
I tried the Keto way of life 2 years ago and failed miserably because I did not see any weight loss, no mater the amount I worked out or eat within my macros.
But getting an understanding of your body type & learning to “become healthy to lose the weight” instead of “lose the weight than become healthy” just made so much sense.
I also want to implore why did eating 2-3 hours become the staple for healthy living when back in the days you had to hunt, kill, gather fruits & veggies and cook your meals
How often where these people eating when we physically had to get our own food?
Outside of sickness & disease when antibiotics were not around thy weren’t as overweight or unhealthy as we are today
Hope this helps4 -
@Khadijah_R_Jacobs it was only after I stopped dieting to lose weight and started to eat for better health did I lose 50 pounds without trying and now over 4 years later I have maintained that loss. I do IF some but have been keto for the most part since Oct 2014. Now at 68 I have better health and health markers than at 38.
Best of continued success.
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magnusthenerd wrote: »I also don't remember breakfast being invented by cereal companies. I'm pretty sure the term comes from breaking the fast, i.e., the first time someone eats when waking up. The word goes back to Middle English, so as old as ~1066, though that's just for the English word, not the concept.
Strictly speaking, breakfast itself wasn't invented by cereal companies, it was the myth that breakfast "is the most important meal of the day". That was an advertising slogan (Kellogg's? Post? I forget whose) that was repeated so often that it eventually just became accepted as a fact.
If that was what we being referenced as invented by companies, it was stated in a way that wasn't clear. Framed that way doesn't seem particularly relevant either. That companies may have championed breakfast as most important doesn't show something unusual or wrong in having breakfast. It seemed like there was an implication that breakfast is unnatural.1 -
magnusthenerd wrote: »magnusthenerd wrote: »I also don't remember breakfast being invented by cereal companies. I'm pretty sure the term comes from breaking the fast, i.e., the first time someone eats when waking up. The word goes back to Middle English, so as old as ~1066, though that's just for the English word, not the concept.
Strictly speaking, breakfast itself wasn't invented by cereal companies, it was the myth that breakfast "is the most important meal of the day". That was an advertising slogan (Kellogg's? Post? I forget whose) that was repeated so often that it eventually just became accepted as a fact.
If that was what we being referenced as invented by companies, it was stated in a way that wasn't clear. Framed that way doesn't seem particularly relevant either. That companies may have championed breakfast as most important doesn't show something unusual or wrong in having breakfast. It seemed like there was an implication that breakfast is unnatural.
Correct, and I'm pretty sure that's not what the prior poster was trying to say.
It's well known and commonly stated on MFP that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" is a myth and it's totally fine to skip breakfast if that's your natural pattern. Also, no one promotes eating lots of snacks and mini meals unless someone finds that is helpful for them. But that also means that there's no reason to eat in a window or only once or twice a day or to skip breakfast unless that is a pattern that is helpful for a particular individual.3 -
I have just started experimenting with IF using a variety of timings. I find it easier to do 16:8 through the week and then I try a longer fast on weekends. I'm just playing around at the moment but trying to get into the process of making active decisions about my consumption as opposed to inactive. I'm a massive CICO person and have had a lot of success with this in the past but trying IF to get back on the control train Feel free to add me and let's see how this goes! 3
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I can't intermittent fast, at least not without health consequences. Last time I tried IF, I almost went into a hypoglycemic coma (was hospitalized). That's when I stopped completely.2
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I have an issue with it suggesting that IF inherently "causes" weight loss; you still need a caloric deficit. Just because someone skips breakfast doesn't guarantee a deficit.
I completely agreed, I gained on IF but that's because I was still eating too much. Timing makes no difference, it's all about how much you ear, or don't.5 -
Breakfast as "eating first thing upon waking" isn't unnatural, although there is some evidence to suggest that spiking your insulin up waking isn't the best way to start your day. At the very least it is not the most important meal of the day because there are a lot of people who don't eat breakfast and are in great shape.
IF is just not eating for a period of time. The point i was making before is that breakfast didn't exist before it was marketed to us, it was just eating. What i mean by that is... we just ate when we had the foods available and then didn't when we didn't.
It's only when people wanted to start making money out of us that we started labeling times of eating as events. The whole eat often and small or 3 meals a day seems counterproductive to me. And while you may disagree because the science is in its infancy you can't really argue with peoples experiences, including my own.
You may say it's due to low calories or low body fat etc but i have been experimenting with my body and how it handles foods for years. I am certain that IF has the benefits that people talk about. I've experienced them myself and i think in a number of years the science will catch up.magnusthenerd wrote: »magnusthenerd wrote: »I also don't remember breakfast being invented by cereal companies. I'm pretty sure the term comes from breaking the fast, i.e., the first time someone eats when waking up. The word goes back to Middle English, so as old as ~1066, though that's just for the English word, not the concept.
Strictly speaking, breakfast itself wasn't invented by cereal companies, it was the myth that breakfast "is the most important meal of the day". That was an advertising slogan (Kellogg's? Post? I forget whose) that was repeated so often that it eventually just became accepted as a fact.
If that was what we being referenced as invented by companies, it was stated in a way that wasn't clear. Framed that way doesn't seem particularly relevant either. That companies may have championed breakfast as most important doesn't show something unusual or wrong in having breakfast. It seemed like there was an implication that breakfast is unnatural.
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lukejoycePT wrote: »The point i was making before is that breakfast didn't exist before it was marketed to us, it was just eating. What i mean by that is... we just ate when we had the foods available and then didn't when we didn't.
It's only when people wanted to start making money out of us that we started labeling times of eating as events. The whole eat often and small or 3 meals a day seems counterproductive to me. And while you may disagree because the science is in its infancy you can't really argue with peoples experiences, including my own.
This is historically false. Naming meals (even something simple like "morning meal", and having socially customary meals is a really long-standing practice. I cited an example from the mid 1800s above, but that's comparatively recent, just read some really old literature.
Even in pre-literary times or cultures, you get communal eating and rituals -- just eating on your own whenever you feel like is what's probably a-typical, and IMO what is likely related to the obesity crisis (in addition to how cheap and plentiful and easy it is to eat now).
Eat often and small is not for me, but it's one way of dealing with it, as is "eat only within a window" or eat 3 meals and only then. But throughout most of human history eating likely has been largely communal. If what you mean was "there were no special foods that one ate in a morning meal that were distinct from other meals" then sure, but that's not really what you said or relevant to the conversation, and that's the case plenty of places now -- eating rituals vary across the world.
Re: you can't disagree with experiences -- if the claim is "this is one possible way to eat that can have positive effects for some (for whatever reason)" then sure. I think IFing can help some people achieve goals. But saying "this worked for me" doesn't support a claim that "this is a better way to eat than other ways" since other people have found other ways of eating to work for them.9 -
I like the idea it gives you're body a rest when you do 16:8 .17
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_Paparazzi_ wrote: »I like the idea it gives you're body a rest when you do 16:8 .
Why does your body need a rest? That would be like holding your breath to give your lungs a break. 20 -
_Paparazzi_ wrote: »I like the idea it gives you're body a rest when you do 16:8 .
Your body rests when you sleep.8 -
snickerscharlie wrote: »_Paparazzi_ wrote: »I like the idea it gives you're body a rest when you do 16:8 .
Why does your body need a rest? That would be like holding your breath to give your lungs a break.
It gives you're body rest from food intake .18
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