Intermittent Fasting

sandman12292019 wrote: »

Any opinions on this. I've heard some people who say they have had great results. Any thoughts?

Do you mean for weight loss?

If IF makes it easier for you to stick to your calorie deficit, it will work. Some people do better containing their appetite to a shorter period of time, so IF helps them. Other people either find their appetite better controlled by consistent eating throughout the day, or might have exercise or work schedules that would make restricting eating times difficult, so it won't help them.

Regardless of when you eat, calories determine weight loss/gain/maintenance. Eating schedules, macro distributions, food types, etc can affect appetite/satiety, compliance, and energy to make it easier or tougher.

It can help control calories for some. A quick search will yield literally hundreds of threads on this topic that may provide some very useful info for you.

1000's of other posts on the topic. Short answer:

Some like it, some don't. If it helps you hit caloric goals, great. If not, don't do it.

All it is is an eating schedule. Nothing fancy about it.

IF is great! My wife and I have been doing the 16:8 version for months (an 8 hour eating window, from 11 am to 7 pm). IF isn't magic - you still have to hit the same calorie deficit target, and you get no "bonus" weight loss for IF vs non-IF. It doesn't suit everyone's schedule or preferences, but when it's a good fit, it does have a few real advantages:

By compacting your meals into a window of 8 hours, you basically get 2 main meals instead of 3. So, for instance, if you're on 1500 cals/day and let's assume for the sake of discussion no snacking, instead of 3 500 calorie meals, you get 2 750 calorie meals. You can do a lot with 750 calories per meal and it feels less like you're "dieting". That reduces the craving for off days and cheat meals, because you're getting full-sized meals constantly, so there's rarely that sense of "I just had a bland piece of chicken with steamed vegetables, I need an off day!" Thus, IF can really help with staying on plan and not going off the rails.

If nighttime eating or snacking is the problem, IF can be a good solution. For us, we have a "zero calorie" policy after 7 pm. We never eat a single calorie after dinner, just water or black coffee. We haven't eaten after dinner in at least two months. And we were huge nighttime snackers! But you have to really commit to not eating outside the window even when you're hungry to reap the rewards.

The first 2 weeks were kinda hard, especially at night, but then it gets easier. We have much less appetite than we had before IF. Not only does your body get used to just not being fed constantly, but your mind adapts too. IF trains you to learn to ignore minor hunger pangs and to break that association between "I'm a little hungry" and "MUST HAVE FOOD NOW". Very oddly, after not eating a thing after 7 pm we never wake up hungry anymore. Actually, we're just much less hungry overall on IF and getting used to not eating food is useful. Those 12 hour fasts for bloodwork that used to seem so horrible are a complete non-event now LOL

So, I recommend IF, but it's important to internalize that IF doesn't cause you to lose more weight than you'd lose eating the same calories in a different way. Actually, I do lose weight a little faster with IF, but I think that's because without all that food bogging me down, I'm more active and energetic, so I think my TDEE might've gone up a bit. But I don't want to encourage the idea that IF will automatically lead to accelerated weight loss; I think that's probably very person specific.

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