Intermittent fasting, I don’t get it
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IF helped me. I was working 12-16 hour days (including gym time). If I ate throughout the entire work day, I’d eat significantly more calories. So, for a while, I’d skip breakfast (except a protein shake after the gym), and have my first meal at noon, then one around 3/4, then the last one around 7/8. A common misconception is that you have a “feeding window” - as a result, some people eat more during their 8 hours than they normally would (bc they eat throughout the 8 hours). However, you really should leave 3-4 hours between “meals.” Mostly a way to control calories in. Depends on your work/life schedule, dietary needs etc though15
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IF helped me. I was working 12-16 hour days (including gym time). If I ate throughout the entire work day, I’d eat significantly more calories. So, for a while, I’d skip breakfast (except a protein shake after the gym), and have my first meal at noon, then one around 3/4, then the last one around 7/8. A common misconception is that you have a “feeding window” - as a result, some people eat more during their 8 hours than they normally would (bc they eat throughout the 8 hours). However, you really should leave 3-4 hours between “meals.” Mostly a way to control calories in. Depends on your work/life schedule, dietary needs etc though
Why exactly to the bolded part?
5 -
IF helped me. I was working 12-16 hour days (including gym time). If I ate throughout the entire work day, I’d eat significantly more calories. So, for a while, I’d skip breakfast (except a protein shake after the gym), and have my first meal at noon, then one around 3/4, then the last one around 7/8. A common misconception is that you have a “feeding window” - as a result, some people eat more during their 8 hours than they normally would (bc they eat throughout the 8 hours). However, you really should leave 3-4 hours between “meals.” Mostly a way to control calories in. Depends on your work/life schedule, dietary needs etc though
Why exactly to the bolded part?
Some people don't understand that calories still apply if they overeat during their feeding window. Spacing out meals helps the poster with calorie control, they just didn't choose their words carefully.4 -
IF helped me. I was working 12-16 hour days (including gym time). If I ate throughout the entire work day, I’d eat significantly more calories. So, for a while, I’d skip breakfast (except a protein shake after the gym), and have my first meal at noon, then one around 3/4, then the last one around 7/8. A common misconception is that you have a “feeding window” - as a result, some people eat more during their 8 hours than they normally would (bc they eat throughout the 8 hours). However, you really should leave 3-4 hours between “meals.” Mostly a way to control calories in. Depends on your work/life schedule, dietary needs etc though
This is a good example of an approach that works for you, and is not something that everyone "should" do.11 -
Not an IF expert here, but I believe there are different varieties of IF floating around right now. 16:8 is one, OMAD (one meal a day) is another, and 5:2 (5 days eating at maintenance and 2 days in which to get the weekly kcal deficit) is yet another. If some form of IF works for you, great. If not, that's okay too.
+1 to what @NovusDies said on the first page. We all have to find the easiest path forward for ourselves. That's going to vary from one person to the next.
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I have hypothyroidism so I deal with being really low energy and weight loss stalls. IF helps me absorb my thyroid medication better (give it a goog if you want more info). Since I've started I've seen a huge decrease in my symptoms. Also, splitting calories between two meals makes it easier to keep up with my calorie deficit.4
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It’s actually worked really well for me. I used to snack more often, so my body didn’t get much of a break. So now for example I stop eating by 8 and start after noon. I used to get nauseous from hunger but none my body’s adjusted to longer periods of not eating and I feel fine. It was just used to eating every couple hours. I find it helps me maintain weight, control my appetite, and eat less overall. No breakfast is fewer calories, yes, but actually less likely to snack between lunch and dinner. I love intermittent fasting. Also coffee is my friend when I am hungry but have another hour or two to go.4
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I actually chose my words exactly. Has to do with insulin (as others have mentioned previously). I did a LOT of reading/research regarding IF. This is one article/example from a Harvard Medical blog (see below). If you are constantly eating/snacking, your insulin levels spike or remain elevated. Therefore, allowing time to fast between meals as well, also has its benefits.
Intermittent fasting can help weight loss
IF makes intuitive sense. The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains (think white flours and rice), are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells don’t use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
Between meals, as long as we don’t snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.
In other words... “Let your body burn fat between meals. Don’t snack.”33 -
amusedmonkey wrote: »IF helped me. I was working 12-16 hour days (including gym time). If I ate throughout the entire work day, I’d eat significantly more calories. So, for a while, I’d skip breakfast (except a protein shake after the gym), and have my first meal at noon, then one around 3/4, then the last one around 7/8. A common misconception is that you have a “feeding window” - as a result, some people eat more during their 8 hours than they normally would (bc they eat throughout the 8 hours). However, you really should leave 3-4 hours between “meals.” Mostly a way to control calories in. Depends on your work/life schedule, dietary needs etc though
Why exactly to the bolded part?
Some people don't understand that calories still apply if they overeat during their feeding window. Spacing out meals helps the poster with calorie control, they just didn't choose their words carefully.
Now I see why the confusion... the “mostly a way to control calories in” was not related to my point regarding leaving time between meals. The last two sentences were referring to IF in general3 -
I actually chose my words exactly. Has to do with insulin (as others have mentioned previously). I did a LOT of reading/research regarding IF. This is one article/example from a Harvard Medical blog (see below). If you are constantly eating/snacking, your insulin levels spike or remain elevated. Therefore, allowing time to fast between meals as well, also has its benefits.
Intermittent fasting can help weight loss
IF makes intuitive sense. The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains (think white flours and rice), are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells don’t use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
Between meals, as long as we don’t snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.
In other words... “Let your body burn fat between meals. Don’t snack.”
Fat gets burned regardless of insulin levels. Something to think about: diabetics are sometimes advised to eat smaller meals more often because that produces and less steep insulin spike curve, so if those for whom insulin actually matters don't see ill effects (or even see benefits) from more frequent meals, why would it matter to those who don't have impaired insulin functions?20 -
There's a lot of disdain or at least gentle dismissal for IF in this thread, so allow me to present an alternative viewpoint, as a person who has been doing 16:8 for five months, after trying various other diet efforts over the years that weren't nearly as effective (i.e. they "failed", whereas this effort has been extremely successful and is still going as strong today as the day I started it).
Yes, IF is not "magic". It's just another Way Of Eating. There are many of those.
Yes, you still need a calorie quota. I've been using the MFP-supplied calorie quota and pairing that with an IF structure. There are people who say you can just eat what you want on IF, but that doesn't make sense. Obviously, you will lose weight in accordance with your calorie deficit, no matter how and when you choose to eat.
Yes, the impact on insulin, diabetes, etc, can be debated, and some of the rampant online discussion about that stuff seems to have more of a "pop science" hype flavor than real medical value.
So ... then why IF?
1. First and foremost, above all else, for me, as a fat person who LOVES food and especially junk food and can find any excuse to eat it unless some equal and opposite force causes me not to, IF provides a structure that completely eliminates night time snacking, which is probably where I gained 90 % of my excess weight over the years. Whether you do 16:8 or 18:6 or 20:4 or 23:1, one thing's for sure: you will not be eating at night. That means no more trips to 7-11 for chips. No "breakdowns" at 1 a.m. making grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches. No popcorn while watching a movie. Nothing. Nada. Zip. When dinner's over, that's it. That one little innovation in my approach has turned everything around for me. IF has a simple, authoritarian, possible fascistic LOL, zero-calorie tolerance for after dinner eating, and there is just a phenomenally huge difference between "No calories after dinner, ever, no excuses, nothing but water, period" and allowing that very first calorie onto the tongue. Because if you're gonna have one calorie, you may as well have two, and tomorrow's a new day so you can start fresh, so ... a few m&m's would be nice. IF eliminates all that excuse baggage. Not magically -- you have to actually comply, but if you comply, which gets easier and easier as time goes on, that baggage disappears and you have new habits -- specifically, a habit of not snacking at night.
If you simply eliminate any and all snacking after dinner, you are intermittent fasting, at approximately 14:10, so there is nothing mysterious about IF: you're giving up snacking to lose weight, with the possible penalty of feeling a little hungry at night for a few weeks.
2. More stringent and typical forms of IF like 16:8 also entail giving up breakfast. Which I did. It was waaaaaay easier than I expected. Turns out, I was hungry in the mornings because breakfast was coming. Within a week of not eating breakfast, I was waking up with ... no appetite whatsoever. I think we've been trained to think of breakfast as "the most important meal" and to feel food craving upon waking, but it dissipates very quickly when one decides to break the fast with lunch, not a morning meal.
3. And thus is a massive pile of calories -- in fact, your entire day's allotment of MFP calories -- made available for lunch and dinner. Voila! Now instead of eating bird food and nibbling on lettuce leaves for meals, you find yourself with half of your entire day's calories allotable to each of two meals. Big meals. Non diet meals. REAL meals. Lasagne. Cheesesteak sub. Pizza LOL And not stupid Weight Watcher's pizza. REAL pizza. Whatever you can think of, you can pretty much eat within reason, to your calorie limit. All of a sudden it doesn't feel like a "diet" anymore; it just feels like ... well, it feels good, because you're really eating. Which means:
4. Dramatic reduction in craving for cheat meals and off days. I eat a 700-800 calorie dinner every single night, so what do I need a cheat meal for? To eat 2,000 calories? Bleh. I'm very happy with what I'm eating every day. I've taken exactly one cheat meal in the past four months.
5. Hunger: So how hungry is the average person, really, on IF? I can't speak for everyone, but for me the first couple weeks were ANNOYING. Hungry in the morning. Very hungry at night. And then it ... stopped. One day, around 1 a.m., I heard my stomach growling and complaining. It was, I realized, pumping out all those acids or whatever is in there to make me feel hungry, but I hadn't even noticed it until it got really loud. It wasn't like I wasn't physically feeling hungry, but I had psychologically detached from that feeling. And I realized: just because my body is signaling it wants food doesn't mean I have to listen to it. It was very empowering! So here's the point: being a little hungry on a diet is gonna happen, because a diet by definition is giving the body less food than it wants, but IF teaches you to accept physically being hungry and to put it out of your mind. That is an immensely valuable skill to have. On IF, you get a daily dose of feeling a little hungry, but not all the time, just at night, and you learn to just manage it.
Now, I come to the last point. The health aspect. Who knows whether all that insulin theory means anything, although, obviously, we feel tired after meals so the body is working hard to digest food, and making it work hard less often should be a good thing, right? But who knows about all that stuff. However, I want to mention blood pressure and HR. Mine, which was borderline hypertension heading toward Stage 1 hypertension, has decreased 18 points since starting IF. And, during the fasting periods - morning and night - it's even lower, another 10 points, putting my BP squarely in the "normal" zone, where it has not been for 15 years. Put simply, blood pressure goes up after you eat (to digest the food), and if you spend vast swathes of your time NOT eating, your BP is gonna be lower, at least during those times but maybe also in general. Likewise, my resting pulse rate has declined from ~ 86 to ~ 74, but during fasting times -- which, again, is most of the day for me -- it hangs out at around 60-63.
So, IF provides a rigid eating structure that does some people a world of good. It isn't for everyone. It's the opposite of the "6 meals a day" approach in which you're constantly nibbling while dreaming of your next cheat meal, and the latter works better for some people. There is no reason to do IF if one doesn't feel like doing IF; there are a billion other ways to diet. But for some people, IF is an amazingly effective dieting tool. And that is why you encounter so much hype about it on the web. Not because those people are dumb, or ill informed, or part of some hyped out deluded crowd who falls for fads, but because for many people IF actually works.
Alrighty, bring on the Woo's.33 -
I actually chose my words exactly. Has to do with insulin (as others have mentioned previously). I did a LOT of reading/research regarding IF. This is one article/example from a Harvard Medical blog (see below). If you are constantly eating/snacking, your insulin levels spike or remain elevated. Therefore, allowing time to fast between meals as well, also has its benefits.
Intermittent fasting can help weight loss
IF makes intuitive sense. The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains (think white flours and rice), are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells don’t use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
Between meals, as long as we don’t snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.
In other words... “Let your body burn fat between meals. Don’t snack.”
No one is saying it isn't a helpful strategy for some. I practice it myself. But the "insulin" thing is just nonsense. Fat lose is all about energy balance and meal frequency is a nonissue. So people should do whatever works and is sustainable for them.
BTW, eating and snacking all day and IF are not the only 2 choices. Personally, if I ate and snacked all day my problem would not be insulin. It would be calorie control.
How exactly do fat cells store sugar? I think your understanding of physiology could use a little work. The whole insulin going down and burning fat thing happens with or without IF. Net fat storage over time depends on CI being less than CO irrespective of one's eating schedule.13 -
thelandkraken wrote: »Thank you everyone for explaining it to me!
From what you've all said, it's probably not for me as I naturally eat within 7-8 hours anyway, but I appreciate the different perspectives and reasoning.
Obviously it is for you, because you're already doing it.
In regards to all of the "magical" claims...most of them are BS.
For myself, IF (16:8) would definitely be out of my normal eating norms as I would have to skip breakfast because I usually eat around 8:00/8:30 in the evening. I don't know too many people who eat at 5:00 PM...pretty much everyone I know is still at work and/or just getting off work.6 -
I actually chose my words exactly. Has to do with insulin (as others have mentioned previously). I did a LOT of reading/research regarding IF. This is one article/example from a Harvard Medical blog (see below). If you are constantly eating/snacking, your insulin levels spike or remain elevated. Therefore, allowing time to fast between meals as well, also has its benefits.
Intermittent fasting can help weight loss
IF makes intuitive sense. The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains (think white flours and rice), are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells don’t use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
Between meals, as long as we don’t snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.
In other words... “Let your body burn fat between meals. Don’t snack.”
You can't store fat in a calorie deficit...saying the insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there isn't true.9 -
There's a lot of disdain or at least gentle dismissal for IF in this thread, so allow me to present an alternative viewpoint, as a person who has been doing 16:8 for five months, after trying various other diet efforts over the years that weren't nearly as effective (i.e. they "failed", whereas this effort has been extremely successful and is still going as strong today as the day I started it).
Yes, IF is not "magic". It's just another Way Of Eating. There are many of those.
Yes, you still need a calorie quota. I've been using the MFP-supplied calorie quota and pairing that with an IF structure. There are people who say you can just eat what you want on IF, but that doesn't make sense. Obviously, you will lose weight in accordance with your calorie deficit, no matter how and when you choose to eat.
Yes, the impact on insulin, diabetes, etc, can be debated, and some of the rampant online discussion about that stuff seems to have more of a "pop science" hype flavor than real medical value.
So ... then why IF?
1. First and foremost, above all else, for me, as a fat person who LOVES food and especially junk food and can find any excuse to eat it unless some equal and opposite force causes me not to, IF provides a structure that completely eliminates night time snacking, which is probably where I gained 90 % of my excess weight over the years. Whether you do 16:8 or 18:6 or 20:4 or 23:1, one thing's for sure: you will not be eating at night. That means no more trips to 7-11 for chips. No "breakdowns" at 1 a.m. making grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches. No popcorn while watching a movie. Nothing. Nada. Zip. When dinner's over, that's it. That one little innovation in my approach has turned everything around for me. IF has a simple, authoritarian, possible fascistic LOL, zero-calorie tolerance for after dinner eating, and there is just a phenomenally huge difference between "No calories after dinner, ever, no excuses, nothing but water, period" and allowing that very first calorie onto the tongue. Because if you're gonna have one calorie, you may as well have two, and tomorrow's a new day so you can start fresh, so ... a few m&m's would be nice. IF eliminates all that excuse baggage. Not magically -- you have to actually comply, but if you comply, which gets easier and easier as time goes on, that baggage disappears and you have new habits -- specifically, a habit of not snacking at night.
If you simply eliminate any and all snacking after dinner, you are intermittent fasting, at approximately 14:10, so there is nothing mysterious about IF: you're giving up snacking to lose weight, with the possible penalty of feeling a little hungry at night for a few weeks.
2. More stringent and typical forms of IF like 16:8 also entail giving up breakfast. Which I did. It was waaaaaay easier than I expected. Turns out, I was hungry in the mornings because breakfast was coming. Within a week of not eating breakfast, I was waking up with ... no appetite whatsoever. I think we've been trained to think of breakfast as "the most important meal" and to feel food craving upon waking, but it dissipates very quickly when one decides to break the fast with lunch, not a morning meal.
3. And thus is a massive pile of calories -- in fact, your entire day's allotment of MFP calories -- made available for lunch and dinner. Voila! Now instead of eating bird food and nibbling on lettuce leaves for meals, you find yourself with half of your entire day's calories allotable to each of two meals. Big meals. Non diet meals. REAL meals. Lasagne. Cheesesteak sub. Pizza LOL And not stupid Weight Watcher's pizza. REAL pizza. Whatever you can think of, you can pretty much eat within reason, to your calorie limit. All of a sudden it doesn't feel like a "diet" anymore; it just feels like ... well, it feels good, because you're really eating. Which means:
4. Dramatic reduction in craving for cheat meals and off days. I eat a 700-800 calorie dinner every single night, so what do I need a cheat meal for? To eat 2,000 calories? Bleh. I'm very happy with what I'm eating every day. I've taken exactly one cheat meal in the past four months.
5. Hunger: So how hungry is the average person, really, on IF? I can't speak for everyone, but for me the first couple weeks were ANNOYING. Hungry in the morning. Very hungry at night. And then it ... stopped. One day, around 1 a.m., I heard my stomach growling and complaining. It was, I realized, pumping out all those acids or whatever is in there to make me feel hungry, but I hadn't even noticed it until it got really loud. It wasn't like I wasn't physically feeling hungry, but I had psychologically detached from that feeling. And I realized: just because my body is signaling it wants food doesn't mean I have to listen to it. It was very empowering! So here's the point: being a little hungry on a diet is gonna happen, because a diet by definition is giving the body less food than it wants, but IF teaches you to accept physically being hungry and to put it out of your mind. That is an immensely valuable skill to have. On IF, you get a daily dose of feeling a little hungry, but not all the time, just at night, and you learn to just manage it.
Now, I come to the last point. The health aspect. Who knows whether all that insulin theory means anything, although, obviously, we feel tired after meals so the body is working hard to digest food, and making it work hard less often should be a good thing, right? But who knows about all that stuff. However, I want to mention blood pressure and HR. Mine, which was borderline hypertension heading toward Stage 1 hypertension, has decreased 18 points since starting IF. And, during the fasting periods - morning and night - it's even lower, another 10 points, putting my BP squarely in the "normal" zone, where it has not been for 15 years. Put simply, blood pressure goes up after you eat (to digest the food), and if you spend vast swathes of your time NOT eating, your BP is gonna be lower, at least during those times but maybe also in general. Likewise, my resting pulse rate has declined from ~ 86 to ~ 74, but during fasting times -- which, again, is most of the day for me -- it hangs out at around 60-63.
So, IF provides a rigid eating structure that does some people a world of good. It isn't for everyone. It's the opposite of the "6 meals a day" approach in which you're constantly nibbling while dreaming of your next cheat meal, and the latter works better for some people. There is no reason to do IF if one doesn't feel like doing IF; there are a billion other ways to diet. But for some people, IF is an amazingly effective dieting tool. And that is why you encounter so much hype about it on the web. Not because those people are dumb, or ill informed, or part of some hyped out deluded crowd who falls for fads, but because for many people IF actually works.
Alrighty, bring on the Woo's.
Well said!5 -
I've been more interested in the possible health benefits than weight loss. Weight loss claims are where the money is at, but some of the studies have made me curious, though I'm not sold on it yet.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24032000-200-fasting-power-can-going-without-food-really-make-you-healthier/
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There's a lot of disdain or at least gentle dismissal for IF in this thread,
Is there??
I saw more of people, including me, acknowledging it works well for some people , even if they dont do it themsleves.
In fact your post seems dismissive of other options eg It's the opposite of the "6 meals a day" approach in which you're constantly nibbling while dreaming of your next cheat meal
I probably could be described as eating 6 meals a day - although I see them as 3 meals and snacks, but could be called 6 different size meals (or more or less, my number per day varies)
But that isnt constantly nibbling nor do I spend all my time thinking of my next (non existent) cheat meal
Sure, it works well for you.
It wouldnt for me - and my way has worked well for me for over 5 years.
but I made no derogatory comments about that WOE - unlike yourself who made above comment about 6 meals per day WOE19 -
There's a lot of disdain or at least gentle dismissal for IF in this thread, so allow me to present an alternative viewpoint, as a person who has been doing 16:8 for five months, after trying various other diet efforts over the years that weren't nearly as effective (i.e. they "failed", whereas this effort has been extremely successful and is still going as strong today as the day I started it).
Yes, IF is not "magic". It's just another Way Of Eating. There are many of those.
Yes, you still need a calorie quota. I've been using the MFP-supplied calorie quota and pairing that with an IF structure. There are people who say you can just eat what you want on IF, but that doesn't make sense. Obviously, you will lose weight in accordance with your calorie deficit, no matter how and when you choose to eat.
Yes, the impact on insulin, diabetes, etc, can be debated, and some of the rampant online discussion about that stuff seems to have more of a "pop science" hype flavor than real medical value.
So long as people acknowledge this, I can't imagine anyone would have a problem with it or think it's woo. Absolutely an eating schedule can help people stick to a calorie deficit. My ONLY issue with that is if someone insists that the schedule that they find helpful is best for all.So ... then why IF?
1. First and foremost, above all else, for me, as a fat person who LOVES food and especially junk food and can find any excuse to eat it unless some equal and opposite force causes me not to, IF provides a structure that completely eliminates night time snacking, which is probably where I gained 90 % of my excess weight over the years. Whether you do 16:8 or 18:6 or 20:4 or 23:1, one thing's for sure: you will not be eating at night. That means no more trips to 7-11 for chips. No "breakdowns" at 1 a.m. making grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches. No popcorn while watching a movie. Nothing. Nada. Zip. When dinner's over, that's it. That one little innovation in my approach has turned everything around for me. IF has a simple, authoritarian, possible fascistic LOL, zero-calorie tolerance for after dinner eating, and there is just a phenomenally huge difference between "No calories after dinner, ever, no excuses, nothing but water, period" and allowing that very first calorie onto the tongue. Because if you're gonna have one calorie, you may as well have two, and tomorrow's a new day so you can start fresh, so ... a few m&m's would be nice. IF eliminates all that excuse baggage. Not magically -- you have to actually comply, but if you comply, which gets easier and easier as time goes on, that baggage disappears and you have new habits -- specifically, a habit of not snacking at night.
If you simply eliminate any and all snacking after dinner, you are intermittent fasting, at approximately 14:10, so there is nothing mysterious about IF: you're giving up snacking to lose weight, with the possible penalty of feeling a little hungry at night for a few weeks.
I will disagree here, because it's certainly possible for someone to have an 8 hour window from, say, 4 to 12 pm, and then go to bed at 12 pm or shortly thereafter. Plenty of nighttime snacking there!
Also, I am someone who finds that an eating schedule (of sorts) helps me, and that eating schedule is "no snacking." I often eat breakfast early (before I leave for work, so 6:30), and eat dinner late (after work and cooking and maybe a workout if I workout at night), so 9 or so. I have lunch around noon (although it varies). So my "eating window" is huge -- often about 15 hours, but I don't eat after dinner and I don't snack. That works as well for me as cutting out breakfast or dinner would. Indeed, since my traditional excess snacking time was more at work than at night, having a window from, say, 2 to 10 (to allow for my late dinner) would likely result in me eating more if I ate throughout the window, vs. just having a three mealtimes, no snacks plan for most days. (Sometimes on Friday or the weekends I skip breakfast to have a bigger dinner and because if I workout in the morning it's likely later than on the weekdays. I like breakfast right after running.)
But none of this is to suggest IF isn't the right approach for you. Seems like it is.
(I would not personally find "not eating after dinner to = IF.)3. And thus is a massive pile of calories -- in fact, your entire day's allotment of MFP calories -- made available for lunch and dinner. Voila! Now instead of eating bird food and nibbling on lettuce leaves for meals, you find yourself with half of your entire day's calories allotable to each of two meals. Big meals. Non diet meals. REAL meals. Lasagne. Cheesesteak sub. Pizza LOL And not stupid Weight Watcher's pizza. REAL pizza. Whatever you can think of, you can pretty much eat within reason, to your calorie limit. All of a sudden it doesn't feel like a "diet" anymore; it just feels like ... well, it feels good, because you're really eating.
This is why I do it on days I expect to have a higher cal dinner.
I find that for me it's hard to meet my protein and veg goals with only 2 meals, which is why I don't do that, but I totally get that some people don't find it hard. Just explaining against why I don't think it's the right choice for all (and I believe that we are in agreement on that!).Now, I come to the last point. The health aspect. Who knows whether all that insulin theory means anything, although, obviously, we feel tired after meals so the body is working hard to digest food, and making it work hard less often should be a good thing, right? But who knows about all that stuff. However, I want to mention blood pressure and HR. Mine, which was borderline hypertension heading toward Stage 1 hypertension, has decreased 18 points since starting IF. And, during the fasting periods - morning and night - it's even lower, another 10 points, putting my BP squarely in the "normal" zone, where it has not been for 15 years. Put simply, blood pressure goes up after you eat (to digest the food), and if you spend vast swathes of your time NOT eating, your BP is gonna be lower, at least during those times but maybe also in general. Likewise, my resting pulse rate has declined from ~ 86 to ~ 74, but during fasting times -- which, again, is most of the day for me -- it hangs out at around 60-63.
The improvements likely would have happened without IF, but with the same weight loss. That said, IF seems like an easier way for you to keep a calorie deficit, so not knocking it.
Mainly pointing out that the bolded is certainly not universally true. It's not true for me unless I eat a specific type of meal.
I also don't believe the body works less digesting the same amount of food spread over lots of meals vs. one or two large ones. The same amount of food is digested, after all.So, IF provides a rigid eating structure that does some people a world of good. It isn't for everyone. It's the opposite of the "6 meals a day" approach in which you're constantly nibbling while dreaming of your next cheat meal, and the latter works better for some people. There is no reason to do IF if one doesn't feel like doing IF; there are a billion other ways to diet. But for some people, IF is an amazingly effective dieting tool. And that is why you encounter so much hype about it on the web. Not because those people are dumb, or ill informed, or part of some hyped out deluded crowd who falls for fads, but because for many people IF actually works.
I basically agree with this, except that I think you do get lots of extra hype about it because it's the current in thing and lots of people are being told that there are miraculous results unrelated to the cals consumed and that all should do it.9 -
paperpudding wrote: »There's a lot of disdain or at least gentle dismissal for IF in this thread,
Is there??
I saw more of people, including me, acknowledging it works well for some people , even if they dont do it themsleves.
In fact your post seems dismissive of other options eg It's the opposite of the "6 meals a day" approach in which you're constantly nibbling while dreaming of your next cheat meal
I probably could be described as eating 6 meals a day - although I see them as 3 meals and snacks, but could be called 6 different size meals (or more or less, my number per day varies)
But that isnt constantly nibbling nor do I spend all my time thinking of my next (non existent) cheat meal
Sure, it works well for you.
It wouldnt for me - and my way has worked well for me for over 5 years.
but I made no derogatory comments about that WOE - unlike yourself who made above comment about 6 meals per day WOE
It wasn't my purpose to dis anyone else's WOE; perhaps there was some literary license involved
Ultimately each individual has to find what works for him/her; we'd all be on the same diet if there was one Best Plan. 4 -
IF worked for me. I lost weight on 1200cal/day to start. I measured/weighed my food and did everything I could to assure I was as accurate as possible. Then I hit a plateau. For months. Weight WOULD NOT budge. A doctor I knew talked to me about IF and I decided to give it a try. He is a big advocate of it, and eats that way himself - does it for health benefits. I did 5:2 - meaning I fasted 2 days a week (could only have 500 calories on those days), and ate between 1600-2000 calories the other 5 days. I immediately broke my plateau and continued to lose down to my goal weight. Overall in a week I was eating more calories the IF way:
(9000 - 11,000) compared to 1200 cal/day (8,400). I only felt I was restricting my eating 2 days a week. On my fast days I drank black coffee, lots of water and unsweetened tea, green tea. I always carried boiled eggs with me just in case I couldn't maintain. Sometimes I'd carry chicken broth.
People blow IF off but I got more calories overall and lost more weight. My husband CANNOT do it. Keto works for him (I gain on Keto). Try it if you want - see if it works. Good luck.14
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