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Please help with this argument- Intermittent fasting related

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Replies

  • fitnessguy266
    fitnessguy266 Posts: 150 Member
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    IF has been proving many cellular, fat loss, muscle retaining, and many more benefits far beyond just caloric restriction]/b]. I have personally executed many different diet approaches, and IF has proven far superior to any other result wise. My two cents

    In mice. Mice are not humans. A large percentage of mice studies don't prove in humans. Got any high participant, well controlled peer reviewed studies in humans that show any benefits besides calorie control and improved insulin sensitivity/ BG improvements?

    Not really, the difference in my original post vs. the IF debunking attempts posted here is I am speaking from personal experience in results utilizing many different, popular methods....nothing more.

    You are actually only speaking from how you interpreted your personal experience. You didn't answer my questions on how you evaluated your results or how you controlled the experiment to be sure your findings were accurate. The reason is you are just out there living life and if you perceive a change, assuming the change you think happened did happen, you may or may not assign it to the correct cause.

    If you want your personal experience to be proof of something you need to have something more than blind faith in your interpretation to base it on. IMO, the best place to start would be to assume you are wrong. I always assume I am wrong first. Then I try to prove it wrong. Sometimes even if I can't I am still dubious because I am also just living life not conducting a controlled scientific experiment.

    For the longest time I believed in set points. I believe that once your body got to a certain weight it would try to stay there and that losing weight would reset it and allow it to go higher. My personal experiences were interpreted in a way that seemed to confirm this suspicion. The reality is I was not resetting my "set point" I was just resetting my eating habits. When I lost weight I stepped out of my normal routine that maintained me where I was and when I stopped losing I would eat more than I had previously.


    My apologies if I missed the feedback you were seeking with your post, I however did post my "baseline" as to how i measured my results a few posts above. Dedicating 6 weeks to 4 different diet approaches (this is a good timeline to measure results, any debate against it is lack of education and actual attempts) changing nothing in terms of life habits, food choices, and routine, I found IF to be the superior method for the results I was looking for.

    How were you measuring body fat and how do you know the end result was not a combination of the other methods used before it? I also disagree with your 6 week assertion. For me 6 weeks can still yield decent results although not nearly as much as when I started many pounds ago. I am still technically obese so I have plenty of fat stores to lose. When you are trying to cut down to 9 you are starting with very little and so progress will take time and be potentially masked by weight fluctuations for weeks. One of the most common mistakes here at MFP is trying to connect recent changes to current scale results. IF changes your eating routine which can change your restroom routine.

    It is quite possible and even likely if you had reversed the order of the last 2 methods you tried the last one would have still won your vote.

    Good response, however i have much more experience to where I am able to discern weight fluctuations attributed to different dieting strategies, timeline involved, etc. to ACTUAL weight loss. Weight loss is a combination of things, fat loss is not.......by the way I used hydrostatic and caliper methods (yes, I know of the accuracy variance that is possible)...which brings me to my next question.....are we talking in relation to weight loss or fat loss? Even though the two are tied together, they are very different at the same time.

    My experience has taught me through very careful tracking of my weight curve that being able to predict where I actually am in the midst of fluctuations only lasts for a short period of time. The bathroom scale is not precise enough, calories are averages, and daily energy expenditure varies. The spreadsheet I have that I use to analyze my progress is kind of ridiculous. I can predict what my unmasked weight would be in normal situations but there is a margin of error that causes it to drift and require manual updating. The only reason it is ever right though is because I lose weight at about 3500 calories per pound. I have been eating in a 6ish hour window and sometimes less nearly the entire 20 months I have been losing weight. I have actually been eating that way for decades before too but I don't have a spreadsheet for my gaining years.

    My weight loss is somewhat predictable because even if increased fasting were a factor it is not enough of one to produce large enough results to be measured at home.

    I am talking about fat loss that happens inside a weight curve on a bathroom scale. My own curve has been consistently 7.8 pounds from highest to lowest to the extent I can calculate it.






    You have an effective strategy and have a good way of quantifying your results. Keep it up
  • fitnessguy266
    fitnessguy266 Posts: 150 Member
    kimny72 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    To add more substance....i tested Atkins, Keto, and a standard caloric deficit of 1600 calories within a concrete 6 week period measuring results....i could never crack under 9% bf without IF....taking into consideration that every individual's results are HIGHLY different based off genetics etc....it's safe to conclude in my case that IF principles were the deciding factor in achieving my desired results.


    /thread

    How does one person's personal 6 week experience "/thread"?

    I guess you're assuming that your body reacted immediately to how you were eating on a daily basis? What kind of structure did you set up to ensure absolutely no other variables changed during that 6 weeks? Are you a professional researcher? What equipment did you use to measure bf? Calorie burns? Did you sleep the exact same minutes every week? Do you use a step tracker? What about environmental conditions? How did you measure your hydration? Did you quantify digestive transit time and waste production?

    I didn't "overcomplicate" the process with all the methods you are asking me about lol, but good questions nonetheless. However nothing changed in terms of food and caloric intake, same place of employment, same daily routine, same sleep pattern (11pm-7pm) same workout days (Mon, Wed, Fri). Sunday is a day I bump my caloric intake to roughly 2300-2600 to allow for social fun (alcohol and the like) drinking exclusively red wine.....


    To attempt to dissect it further to find the more effective approach with other methods you mentioned is simply unnecessary....has anyone here actually TRIED Intermittent Fasting as an alternative approach to what they have tried in the past? I'm genuinely very curious....

    But in order to effectively end this debate, you need to account for all those variables. Most people are summarily awful at clearly seeing which factors we're most important in achieving success or failure, and the human body is a complicated machine with lots of difficult to measure inputs and outputs. It's one of the issues that make nutritional and health related research so difficult, even in a controlled clinical setting. With all due respect, no one has any reason to trust that you successfully controlled other variables, accurately measured the variables you did account for, and viewed everything with a clinical and unbiased eye

    If you want to say that based on your 6 week experiment, it's definitive that IF is the best strategy for you to reduce your bf, that's great. But you did not prove that as a universal benefit of IF for everyone and a reason to end the thread.

    And most of the folks in this and other IF debate threads are doing or have previously done IF. It's a great strategy to control calories and appetite for some people, and it seems that for some people that eating schedule helps them improve energy and performance, digestion, or sleep. But no one has managed to show and then replicate in legit research that IF is universally healthier or in any way universally "better" than a more traditional eating schedule for anything. It's still in the category of "to each his/her own", can't hurt to try, but isn't right for everyone and for some people it's actually wrong".

    Way to articulate your viewpoint with this post, I agree, it is certainly not a good fit for everyone based on the named factors.
  • fitnessguy266
    fitnessguy266 Posts: 150 Member
    wmd1979 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    To add more substance....i tested Atkins, Keto, and a standard caloric deficit of 1600 calories within a concrete 6 week period measuring results....i could never crack under 9% bf without IF....taking into consideration that every individual's results are HIGHLY different based off genetics etc....it's safe to conclude in my case that IF principles were the deciding factor in achieving my desired results.


    /thread

    How does one person's personal 6 week experience "/thread"?

    I guess you're assuming that your body reacted immediately to how you were eating on a daily basis? What kind of structure did you set up to ensure absolutely no other variables changed during that 6 weeks? Are you a professional researcher? What equipment did you use to measure bf? Calorie burns? Did you sleep the exact same minutes every week? Do you use a step tracker? What about environmental conditions? How did you measure your hydration? Did you quantify digestive transit time and waste production?

    I didn't "overcomplicate" the process with all the methods you are asking me about lol, but good questions nonetheless. However nothing changed in terms of food and caloric intake, same place of employment, same daily routine, same sleep pattern (11pm-7pm) same workout days (Mon, Wed, Fri). Sunday is a day I bump my caloric intake to roughly 2300-2600 to allow for social fun (alcohol and the like) drinking exclusively red wine.....


    To attempt to dissect it further to find the more effective approach with other methods you mentioned is simply unnecessary....has anyone here actually TRIED Intermittent Fasting as an alternative approach to what they have tried in the past? I'm genuinely very curious....

    But in order to effectively end this debate, you need to account for all those variables. Most people are summarily awful at clearly seeing which factors we're most important in achieving success or failure, and the human body is a complicated machine with lots of difficult to measure inputs and outputs. It's one of the issues that make nutritional and health related research so difficult, even in a controlled clinical setting. With all due respect, no one has any reason to trust that you successfully controlled other variables, accurately measured the variables you did account for, and viewed everything with a clinical and unbiased eye

    If you want to say that based on your 6 week experiment, it's definitive that IF is the best strategy for you to reduce your bf, that's great. But you did not prove that as a universal benefit of IF for everyone and a reason to end the thread.

    And most of the folks in this and other IF debate threads are doing or have previously done IF. It's a great strategy to control calories and appetite for some people, and it seems that for some people that eating schedule helps them improve energy and performance, digestion, or sleep. But no one has managed to show and then replicate in legit research that IF is universally healthier or in any way universally "better" than a more traditional eating schedule for anything. It's still in the category of "to each his/her own", can't hurt to try, but isn't right for everyone and for some people it's actually wrong".

    Excellent post @kimny72, and to add to this, the point where it was claimed that calorie intake did not change at all is where I call BS. If calorie intake is exactly the same, then IF is not going to magically accelerate weight loss. It just isn't no matter how many people chime in with their personal anecdotes. As a dozen other people have pointed out in this thread, IF can help SOME people restrict calories which can aid in weight loss, but meal timing in itself doesn't invalidate CICO.

    I respect your opinion, however as I mentioned neither caloric intake or food choices changed...and you mentioned "weight loss"....i emphasized "fat loss" results, did i not? Anxiously awaiting for you to tell me that "recomposition" could not possibly be a factor using IF.....
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    IF has been proving many cellular, fat loss, muscle retaining, and many more benefits far beyond just caloric restriction]/b]. I have personally executed many different diet approaches, and IF has proven far superior to any other result wise. My two cents

    In mice. Mice are not humans. A large percentage of mice studies don't prove in humans. Got any high participant, well controlled peer reviewed studies in humans that show any benefits besides calorie control and improved insulin sensitivity/ BG improvements?

    Not really, the difference in my original post vs. the IF debunking attempts posted here is I am speaking from personal experience in results utilizing many different, popular methods....nothing more.

    You are actually only speaking from how you interpreted your personal experience. You didn't answer my questions on how you evaluated your results or how you controlled the experiment to be sure your findings were accurate. The reason is you are just out there living life and if you perceive a change, assuming the change you think happened did happen, you may or may not assign it to the correct cause.

    If you want your personal experience to be proof of something you need to have something more than blind faith in your interpretation to base it on. IMO, the best place to start would be to assume you are wrong. I always assume I am wrong first. Then I try to prove it wrong. Sometimes even if I can't I am still dubious because I am also just living life not conducting a controlled scientific experiment.

    For the longest time I believed in set points. I believe that once your body got to a certain weight it would try to stay there and that losing weight would reset it and allow it to go higher. My personal experiences were interpreted in a way that seemed to confirm this suspicion. The reality is I was not resetting my "set point" I was just resetting my eating habits. When I lost weight I stepped out of my normal routine that maintained me where I was and when I stopped losing I would eat more than I had previously.


    My apologies if I missed the feedback you were seeking with your post, I however did post my "baseline" as to how i measured my results a few posts above. Dedicating 6 weeks to 4 different diet approaches (this is a good timeline to measure results, any debate against it is lack of education and actual attempts) changing nothing in terms of life habits, food choices, and routine, I found IF to be the superior method for the results I was looking for.

    How were you measuring body fat and how do you know the end result was not a combination of the other methods used before it? I also disagree with your 6 week assertion. For me 6 weeks can still yield decent results although not nearly as much as when I started many pounds ago. I am still technically obese so I have plenty of fat stores to lose. When you are trying to cut down to 9 you are starting with very little and so progress will take time and be potentially masked by weight fluctuations for weeks. One of the most common mistakes here at MFP is trying to connect recent changes to current scale results. IF changes your eating routine which can change your restroom routine.

    It is quite possible and even likely if you had reversed the order of the last 2 methods you tried the last one would have still won your vote.

    Good response, however i have much more experience to where I am able to discern weight fluctuations attributed to different dieting strategies, timeline involved, etc. to ACTUAL weight loss. Weight loss is a combination of things, fat loss is not.......by the way I used hydrostatic and caliper methods (yes, I know of the accuracy variance that is possible)...which brings me to my next question.....are we talking in relation to weight loss or fat loss? Even though the two are tied together, they are very different at the same time.

    My experience has taught me through very careful tracking of my weight curve that being able to predict where I actually am in the midst of fluctuations only lasts for a short period of time. The bathroom scale is not precise enough, calories are averages, and daily energy expenditure varies. The spreadsheet I have that I use to analyze my progress is kind of ridiculous. I can predict what my unmasked weight would be in normal situations but there is a margin of error that causes it to drift and require manual updating. The only reason it is ever right though is because I lose weight at about 3500 calories per pound. I have been eating in a 6ish hour window and sometimes less nearly the entire 20 months I have been losing weight. I have actually been eating that way for decades before too but I don't have a spreadsheet for my gaining years.

    My weight loss is somewhat predictable because even if increased fasting were a factor it is not enough of one to produce large enough results to be measured at home.

    I am talking about fat loss that happens inside a weight curve on a bathroom scale. My own curve has been consistently 7.8 pounds from highest to lowest to the extent I can calculate it.






    You have an effective strategy and have a good way of quantifying your results. Keep it up

    That seems rather patronizing. I had a pretty immediate 'blech' response. I hope that was not your intent.
  • fitnessguy266
    fitnessguy266 Posts: 150 Member
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    IF has been proving many cellular, fat loss, muscle retaining, and many more benefits far beyond just caloric restriction]/b]. I have personally executed many different diet approaches, and IF has proven far superior to any other result wise. My two cents

    In mice. Mice are not humans. A large percentage of mice studies don't prove in humans. Got any high participant, well controlled peer reviewed studies in humans that show any benefits besides calorie control and improved insulin sensitivity/ BG improvements?

    Not really, the difference in my original post vs. the IF debunking attempts posted here is I am speaking from personal experience in results utilizing many different, popular methods....nothing more.

    You are actually only speaking from how you interpreted your personal experience. You didn't answer my questions on how you evaluated your results or how you controlled the experiment to be sure your findings were accurate. The reason is you are just out there living life and if you perceive a change, assuming the change you think happened did happen, you may or may not assign it to the correct cause.

    If you want your personal experience to be proof of something you need to have something more than blind faith in your interpretation to base it on. IMO, the best place to start would be to assume you are wrong. I always assume I am wrong first. Then I try to prove it wrong. Sometimes even if I can't I am still dubious because I am also just living life not conducting a controlled scientific experiment.

    For the longest time I believed in set points. I believe that once your body got to a certain weight it would try to stay there and that losing weight would reset it and allow it to go higher. My personal experiences were interpreted in a way that seemed to confirm this suspicion. The reality is I was not resetting my "set point" I was just resetting my eating habits. When I lost weight I stepped out of my normal routine that maintained me where I was and when I stopped losing I would eat more than I had previously.


    My apologies if I missed the feedback you were seeking with your post, I however did post my "baseline" as to how i measured my results a few posts above. Dedicating 6 weeks to 4 different diet approaches (this is a good timeline to measure results, any debate against it is lack of education and actual attempts) changing nothing in terms of life habits, food choices, and routine, I found IF to be the superior method for the results I was looking for.

    How were you measuring body fat and how do you know the end result was not a combination of the other methods used before it? I also disagree with your 6 week assertion. For me 6 weeks can still yield decent results although not nearly as much as when I started many pounds ago. I am still technically obese so I have plenty of fat stores to lose. When you are trying to cut down to 9 you are starting with very little and so progress will take time and be potentially masked by weight fluctuations for weeks. One of the most common mistakes here at MFP is trying to connect recent changes to current scale results. IF changes your eating routine which can change your restroom routine.

    It is quite possible and even likely if you had reversed the order of the last 2 methods you tried the last one would have still won your vote.

    Good response, however i have much more experience to where I am able to discern weight fluctuations attributed to different dieting strategies, timeline involved, etc. to ACTUAL weight loss. Weight loss is a combination of things, fat loss is not.......by the way I used hydrostatic and caliper methods (yes, I know of the accuracy variance that is possible)...which brings me to my next question.....are we talking in relation to weight loss or fat loss? Even though the two are tied together, they are very different at the same time.

    My experience has taught me through very careful tracking of my weight curve that being able to predict where I actually am in the midst of fluctuations only lasts for a short period of time. The bathroom scale is not precise enough, calories are averages, and daily energy expenditure varies. The spreadsheet I have that I use to analyze my progress is kind of ridiculous. I can predict what my unmasked weight would be in normal situations but there is a margin of error that causes it to drift and require manual updating. The only reason it is ever right though is because I lose weight at about 3500 calories per pound. I have been eating in a 6ish hour window and sometimes less nearly the entire 20 months I have been losing weight. I have actually been eating that way for decades before too but I don't have a spreadsheet for my gaining years.

    My weight loss is somewhat predictable because even if increased fasting were a factor it is not enough of one to produce large enough results to be measured at home.

    I am talking about fat loss that happens inside a weight curve on a bathroom scale. My own curve has been consistently 7.8 pounds from highest to lowest to the extent I can calculate it.






    You have an effective strategy and have a good way of quantifying your results. Keep it up

    That seems rather patronizing. I had a pretty immediate 'blech' response. I hope that was not your intent.

    No, i seriously meant that, one can tell from your posts you have devoted the time necessary to learn how to diet effectively! My apologies if it came off that way!💪
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    IF has been proving many cellular, fat loss, muscle retaining, and many more benefits far beyond just caloric restriction]/b]. I have personally executed many different diet approaches, and IF has proven far superior to any other result wise. My two cents

    In mice. Mice are not humans. A large percentage of mice studies don't prove in humans. Got any high participant, well controlled peer reviewed studies in humans that show any benefits besides calorie control and improved insulin sensitivity/ BG improvements?

    Not really, the difference in my original post vs. the IF debunking attempts posted here is I am speaking from personal experience in results utilizing many different, popular methods....nothing more.

    You are actually only speaking from how you interpreted your personal experience. You didn't answer my questions on how you evaluated your results or how you controlled the experiment to be sure your findings were accurate. The reason is you are just out there living life and if you perceive a change, assuming the change you think happened did happen, you may or may not assign it to the correct cause.

    If you want your personal experience to be proof of something you need to have something more than blind faith in your interpretation to base it on. IMO, the best place to start would be to assume you are wrong. I always assume I am wrong first. Then I try to prove it wrong. Sometimes even if I can't I am still dubious because I am also just living life not conducting a controlled scientific experiment.

    For the longest time I believed in set points. I believe that once your body got to a certain weight it would try to stay there and that losing weight would reset it and allow it to go higher. My personal experiences were interpreted in a way that seemed to confirm this suspicion. The reality is I was not resetting my "set point" I was just resetting my eating habits. When I lost weight I stepped out of my normal routine that maintained me where I was and when I stopped losing I would eat more than I had previously.


    My apologies if I missed the feedback you were seeking with your post, I however did post my "baseline" as to how i measured my results a few posts above. Dedicating 6 weeks to 4 different diet approaches (this is a good timeline to measure results, any debate against it is lack of education and actual attempts) changing nothing in terms of life habits, food choices, and routine, I found IF to be the superior method for the results I was looking for.

    How were you measuring body fat and how do you know the end result was not a combination of the other methods used before it? I also disagree with your 6 week assertion. For me 6 weeks can still yield decent results although not nearly as much as when I started many pounds ago. I am still technically obese so I have plenty of fat stores to lose. When you are trying to cut down to 9 you are starting with very little and so progress will take time and be potentially masked by weight fluctuations for weeks. One of the most common mistakes here at MFP is trying to connect recent changes to current scale results. IF changes your eating routine which can change your restroom routine.

    It is quite possible and even likely if you had reversed the order of the last 2 methods you tried the last one would have still won your vote.

    Good response, however i have much more experience to where I am able to discern weight fluctuations attributed to different dieting strategies, timeline involved, etc. to ACTUAL weight loss. Weight loss is a combination of things, fat loss is not.......by the way I used hydrostatic and caliper methods (yes, I know of the accuracy variance that is possible)...which brings me to my next question.....are we talking in relation to weight loss or fat loss? Even though the two are tied together, they are very different at the same time.

    My experience has taught me through very careful tracking of my weight curve that being able to predict where I actually am in the midst of fluctuations only lasts for a short period of time. The bathroom scale is not precise enough, calories are averages, and daily energy expenditure varies. The spreadsheet I have that I use to analyze my progress is kind of ridiculous. I can predict what my unmasked weight would be in normal situations but there is a margin of error that causes it to drift and require manual updating. The only reason it is ever right though is because I lose weight at about 3500 calories per pound. I have been eating in a 6ish hour window and sometimes less nearly the entire 20 months I have been losing weight. I have actually been eating that way for decades before too but I don't have a spreadsheet for my gaining years.

    My weight loss is somewhat predictable because even if increased fasting were a factor it is not enough of one to produce large enough results to be measured at home.

    I am talking about fat loss that happens inside a weight curve on a bathroom scale. My own curve has been consistently 7.8 pounds from highest to lowest to the extent I can calculate it.






    You have an effective strategy and have a good way of quantifying your results. Keep it up

    That seems rather patronizing. I had a pretty immediate 'blech' response. I hope that was not your intent.

    No, i seriously meant that, one can tell from your posts you have devoted the time necessary to learn how to diet effectively! My apologies if it came off that way!💪

    It is hard to tell intent on a message board.
  • magnusthenerd
    magnusthenerd Posts: 1,207 Member
    PWHF wrote: »
    PWHF wrote: »
    IF has been proving many cellular, fat loss, muscle retaining, and many more benefits far beyond just caloric restriction. I have personally executed many different diet approaches, and IF has proven far superior to any other result wise. My two cents

    This is exactly my personal experience as well. I wouldn't bother engaging in the debate here, life is too short. Good on you and enjoy your results B)

    If someone (who lives in the USA, not say India) claimed that they had great success with their tiger repelling ring, would you tell them life is too short when others try to convince them the ring isn't the explanation for their dearth of tiger incidents? If the person valued believing in their tiger ring above all else, you would be giving great advice though. Discussing it with people here would eventually lead them to think differently about that ring.

    No it wouldn't, if said person had tried several methods and through trial and error found that the tiger repelling ring worked for them they'd keep doing what they were doing as long as it worked. Flipping it on it's head - if the people trying to convince them valued their opinion above all else and it became apparent that the conversation would just go round in an endless loop the person might decide life is too short to engage in arguing it round in circles.

    My conclusion is that I don't care what other people's opinions are of what I'm doing and as long as it brings me goo d results I will keep doing it. If it stops working I'll stop doing it. I'll leave the debating to the debaters and wish you all a nice day.

    Sorry, let me put a further qualification on it, and the person is rational.
    Saying it works for them is misunderstanding the scenario, or how evidence works. Do... do you understand the whole point is a tiger repelling ring can't be shown to work in a region that doesn't have tigers? I don't want to come off belaboring but your attempts to alter the example scenario comes off as needing this stated explicitly. Changing the scenario doesn't really engage in the argument. It would be like me taking an IF scenario and saying "well what if the person was practicing IF and their feeding window was 20 hours wide and it stopped working? Clearly that would show IF doesn't work."
  • J72FIT
    J72FIT Posts: 5,958 Member
    NovusDies wrote: »
    NovusDies wrote: »
    mmapags wrote: »
    IF has been proving many cellular, fat loss, muscle retaining, and many more benefits far beyond just caloric restriction]/b]. I have personally executed many different diet approaches, and IF has proven far superior to any other result wise. My two cents

    In mice. Mice are not humans. A large percentage of mice studies don't prove in humans. Got any high participant, well controlled peer reviewed studies in humans that show any benefits besides calorie control and improved insulin sensitivity/ BG improvements?

    Not really, the difference in my original post vs. the IF debunking attempts posted here is I am speaking from personal experience in results utilizing many different, popular methods....nothing more.

    You are actually only speaking from how you interpreted your personal experience. You didn't answer my questions on how you evaluated your results or how you controlled the experiment to be sure your findings were accurate. The reason is you are just out there living life and if you perceive a change, assuming the change you think happened did happen, you may or may not assign it to the correct cause.

    If you want your personal experience to be proof of something you need to have something more than blind faith in your interpretation to base it on. IMO, the best place to start would be to assume you are wrong. I always assume I am wrong first. Then I try to prove it wrong. Sometimes even if I can't I am still dubious because I am also just living life not conducting a controlled scientific experiment.

    For the longest time I believed in set points. I believe that once your body got to a certain weight it would try to stay there and that losing weight would reset it and allow it to go higher. My personal experiences were interpreted in a way that seemed to confirm this suspicion. The reality is I was not resetting my "set point" I was just resetting my eating habits. When I lost weight I stepped out of my normal routine that maintained me where I was and when I stopped losing I would eat more than I had previously.


    My apologies if I missed the feedback you were seeking with your post, I however did post my "baseline" as to how i measured my results a few posts above. Dedicating 6 weeks to 4 different diet approaches (this is a good timeline to measure results, any debate against it is lack of education and actual attempts) changing nothing in terms of life habits, food choices, and routine, I found IF to be the superior method for the results I was looking for.

    How were you measuring body fat and how do you know the end result was not a combination of the other methods used before it? I also disagree with your 6 week assertion. For me 6 weeks can still yield decent results although not nearly as much as when I started many pounds ago. I am still technically obese so I have plenty of fat stores to lose. When you are trying to cut down to 9 you are starting with very little and so progress will take time and be potentially masked by weight fluctuations for weeks. One of the most common mistakes here at MFP is trying to connect recent changes to current scale results. IF changes your eating routine which can change your restroom routine.

    It is quite possible and even likely if you had reversed the order of the last 2 methods you tried the last one would have still won your vote.

    My deadstop from continued fat loss stopped at 9% bf, I am not a naturally lean individual, and I started toward the 17-18% bf range before i began my journey to get shredded. I was open minded enough to implement different strategies with reasonable timelines during the course of that journey.....again, I did not achieve the results I wanted UNTIL I incorporated IF strategies....I am not putting IF on the top of Mt. Olympus as the greatest strategy of all time, I am simply saying giving the different approaches I tried, IF came out on top for ME. We seem to be coming to the conclusion that this was a "spur of the moment" strategy that I confused with progress i was making from previous methods....no.
    Here's the problem with personal experience like that - in a person or anything biological, there's too many variable to say a change was effective. The statistical power to isolate the variable just isn't there. I'm sure you felt you were meticulous in trialing out your diets, but you're still one person.
    I've been down to around single digit body fat myself a few times, according to DEXA scans (9.6% and 10.1%). I also am not naturally lean - I started from what was probably more like 50% or more body fat, morbid obesity by BMI. I had large hunger issues when getting to 9.6%, and I let myself creep to around 20% BF or more. The second time when I was at 10.1%, I had no issues maintaining it, no real hunger problems. I could have kept losing weight without much issue, I just didn't care to continue, I felt like recomping instead.
    What was different that time, I can't every truly say. Could it be how long I dieted before? Could it be that I tried a diet break? That I the first time I wasn't eating meat? The first time I was eating an incredibly high fiber intake to get in cheap protein from soy since I wasn't eating meat? That I was practicing more continuous long distance running the second time? Could I just have become psychologically more capable of handling dieting so I had less stress, that lead to less hunger - a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy?
    I can't know because all of those differences applied and more that I'm probably not thinking of off the top of my head.

    What's more, I don't know anyone in the thread saying IF can't sometimes work as an aid to adherence method. The issue any detractor has, as far as I've seen and definitely for myself, is the more grandiose claims that it has some kind of physiological advantage.

    ^^^All of this. Great post!
  • huntersvonnegut
    huntersvonnegut Posts: 1,176 Member
    SnifterPug wrote: »
    I do IF because it helps me control the calories and my hunger - plus I enjoy training in a fasted state much more than in a fed state. I'm not aware of any detriments (at least not to me) and if by any chance IF does have health benefits, what's not to like?

    ^ This. For me, following the 16/8 format just means not eating breakfast (which I often didn’t do before trying IF). My eating window is typically between 12-1PM to 7-8PM. So for now, I’m just using it to control my calories but if future medical research shows that there are other health benefits...well, so I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.
  • Momepro
    Momepro Posts: 1,509 Member
    raven56706 wrote: »
    On my friends side, he says Intermittent Fasting has tons of benefits and doesnt't have to be done with Keto.

    I have said " if it doesnt have anything to do with Keto, why fast? just stick to the calories and thats it."

    i mean correct me if i am wrong (i checked google and forget it. tons of "experts" ) but IF is just a way to restrict your calories thats it. say you eat 1800 calories a day for weight loss. if you eat 200 calories at lets say 8am, then you have the ENTIRE day to eat 1600. You don't have to wait but just be mindful of your eating.

    What i am trying to say is there is no magic to it correct?

    No magic, lol. I use it and skip breakfast and early snacks, so I have more calories to spare for dinner and bedtime. I like it because personally, I can work normally if I'm a little hungry, but I can't sleep unless I'm feeling satisfied. Even a little growling (or nose whistling, or strange smell or itch, or random thread touching my toe wrong...) will absolutely keep me awake, no matter how tired I am.
  • Annagrace75
    Annagrace75 Posts: 29 Member
    I feel my best when I fast during the day, and I eat one large meal in the evening. I have no idea of the exact science behind it except that it works for me.
  • fitnessguy266
    fitnessguy266 Posts: 150 Member
    I feel my best when I fast during the day, and I eat one large meal in the evening. I have no idea of the exact science behind it except that it works for me.
    wmd1979 wrote: »
    wmd1979 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    To add more substance....i tested Atkins, Keto, and a standard caloric deficit of 1600 calories within a concrete 6 week period measuring results....i could never crack under 9% bf without IF....taking into consideration that every individual's results are HIGHLY different based off genetics etc....it's safe to conclude in my case that IF principles were the deciding factor in achieving my desired results.


    /thread

    How does one person's personal 6 week experience "/thread"?

    I guess you're assuming that your body reacted immediately to how you were eating on a daily basis? What kind of structure did you set up to ensure absolutely no other variables changed during that 6 weeks? Are you a professional researcher? What equipment did you use to measure bf? Calorie burns? Did you sleep the exact same minutes every week? Do you use a step tracker? What about environmental conditions? How did you measure your hydration? Did you quantify digestive transit time and waste production?

    I didn't "overcomplicate" the process with all the methods you are asking me about lol, but good questions nonetheless. However nothing changed in terms of food and caloric intake, same place of employment, same daily routine, same sleep pattern (11pm-7pm) same workout days (Mon, Wed, Fri). Sunday is a day I bump my caloric intake to roughly 2300-2600 to allow for social fun (alcohol and the like) drinking exclusively red wine.....


    To attempt to dissect it further to find the more effective approach with other methods you mentioned is simply unnecessary....has anyone here actually TRIED Intermittent Fasting as an alternative approach to what they have tried in the past? I'm genuinely very curious....

    But in order to effectively end this debate, you need to account for all those variables. Most people are summarily awful at clearly seeing which factors we're most important in achieving success or failure, and the human body is a complicated machine with lots of difficult to measure inputs and outputs. It's one of the issues that make nutritional and health related research so difficult, even in a controlled clinical setting. With all due respect, no one has any reason to trust that you successfully controlled other variables, accurately measured the variables you did account for, and viewed everything with a clinical and unbiased eye

    If you want to say that based on your 6 week experiment, it's definitive that IF is the best strategy for you to reduce your bf, that's great. But you did not prove that as a universal benefit of IF for everyone and a reason to end the thread.

    And most of the folks in this and other IF debate threads are doing or have previously done IF. It's a great strategy to control calories and appetite for some people, and it seems that for some people that eating schedule helps them improve energy and performance, digestion, or sleep. But no one has managed to show and then replicate in legit research that IF is universally healthier or in any way universally "better" than a more traditional eating schedule for anything. It's still in the category of "to each his/her own", can't hurt to try, but isn't right for everyone and for some people it's actually wrong".

    Excellent post @kimny72, and to add to this, the point where it was claimed that calorie intake did not change at all is where I call BS. If calorie intake is exactly the same, then IF is not going to magically accelerate weight loss. It just isn't no matter how many people chime in with their personal anecdotes. As a dozen other people have pointed out in this thread, IF can help SOME people restrict calories which can aid in weight loss, but meal timing in itself doesn't invalidate CICO.

    I respect your opinion, however as I mentioned neither caloric intake or food choices changed...and you mentioned "weight loss"....i emphasized "fat loss" results, did i not? Anxiously awaiting for you to tell me that "recomposition" could not possibly be a factor using IF.....

    Its absolutely possible to recomp using IF, however, IF is not going to magically accelerate fat loss when calories consumed are the same. Again, IF works for SOME people because it can help to limit their overall calorie intake, but when calories are the same, regardless of when they are consumed, fat loss will be the same as well.


    I hear you, believe me. However, nothing changed activity wise, stress level wise, diet or routine.....but due to some "sorcery" the results were worlds apart.....? But i digress

  • PWHF
    PWHF Posts: 221 Member
    PWHF wrote: »
    PWHF wrote: »
    IF has been proving many cellular, fat loss, muscle retaining, and many more benefits far beyond just caloric restriction. I have personally executed many different diet approaches, and IF has proven far superior to any other result wise. My two cents

    This is exactly my personal experience as well. I wouldn't bother engaging in the debate here, life is too short. Good on you and enjoy your results B)

    If someone (who lives in the USA, not say India) claimed that they had great success with their tiger repelling ring, would you tell them life is too short when others try to convince them the ring isn't the explanation for their dearth of tiger incidents? If the person valued believing in their tiger ring above all else, you would be giving great advice though. Discussing it with people here would eventually lead them to think differently about that ring.

    No it wouldn't, if said person had tried several methods and through trial and error found that the tiger repelling ring worked for them they'd keep doing what they were doing as long as it worked. Flipping it on it's head - if the people trying to convince them valued their opinion above all else and it became apparent that the conversation would just go round in an endless loop the person might decide life is too short to engage in arguing it round in circles.

    My conclusion is that I don't care what other people's opinions are of what I'm doing and as long as it brings me goo d results I will keep doing it. If it stops working I'll stop doing it. I'll leave the debating to the debaters and wish you all a nice day.

    Sorry, let me put a further qualification on it, and the person is rational.
    Saying it works for them is misunderstanding the scenario, or how evidence works. Do... do you understand the whole point is a tiger repelling ring can't be shown to work in a region that doesn't have tigers? I don't want to come off belaboring but your attempts to alter the example scenario comes off as needing this stated explicitly. Changing the scenario doesn't really engage in the argument. It would be like me taking an IF scenario and saying "well what if the person was practicing IF and their feeding window was 20 hours wide and it stopped working? Clearly that would show IF doesn't work."

    The point was that I'll take my personal experience and keep doing what I'm doing and choose not to argue to death about it on an Internet forum. The tiger repelling ring (which I didn't bother to Google) I just went with as it is what you likened IF to, you could have easily have said 'flying spaghetti monster' and my response would still have been "I don't care, it works for me, have a nice day".

    Call me irrational and tell me I "value believing in my tiger ring above all else", tell the other guy (and anyone else with similar experiences) that their personal experience is 'wrong'. While it's working I'll keep doing it.

    I still don't understand the motivation behind being so anti-IF. Surely if you don't think something works just don't do it and if someone asks you about it share your opinion. Why the drive to shut it down so aggressively? What is that about?
  • J72FIT
    J72FIT Posts: 5,958 Member
    I feel my best when I fast during the day, and I eat one large meal in the evening. I have no idea of the exact science behind it except that it works for me.
    wmd1979 wrote: »
    wmd1979 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    To add more substance....i tested Atkins, Keto, and a standard caloric deficit of 1600 calories within a concrete 6 week period measuring results....i could never crack under 9% bf without IF....taking into consideration that every individual's results are HIGHLY different based off genetics etc....it's safe to conclude in my case that IF principles were the deciding factor in achieving my desired results.


    /thread

    How does one person's personal 6 week experience "/thread"?

    I guess you're assuming that your body reacted immediately to how you were eating on a daily basis? What kind of structure did you set up to ensure absolutely no other variables changed during that 6 weeks? Are you a professional researcher? What equipment did you use to measure bf? Calorie burns? Did you sleep the exact same minutes every week? Do you use a step tracker? What about environmental conditions? How did you measure your hydration? Did you quantify digestive transit time and waste production?

    I didn't "overcomplicate" the process with all the methods you are asking me about lol, but good questions nonetheless. However nothing changed in terms of food and caloric intake, same place of employment, same daily routine, same sleep pattern (11pm-7pm) same workout days (Mon, Wed, Fri). Sunday is a day I bump my caloric intake to roughly 2300-2600 to allow for social fun (alcohol and the like) drinking exclusively red wine.....


    To attempt to dissect it further to find the more effective approach with other methods you mentioned is simply unnecessary....has anyone here actually TRIED Intermittent Fasting as an alternative approach to what they have tried in the past? I'm genuinely very curious....

    But in order to effectively end this debate, you need to account for all those variables. Most people are summarily awful at clearly seeing which factors we're most important in achieving success or failure, and the human body is a complicated machine with lots of difficult to measure inputs and outputs. It's one of the issues that make nutritional and health related research so difficult, even in a controlled clinical setting. With all due respect, no one has any reason to trust that you successfully controlled other variables, accurately measured the variables you did account for, and viewed everything with a clinical and unbiased eye

    If you want to say that based on your 6 week experiment, it's definitive that IF is the best strategy for you to reduce your bf, that's great. But you did not prove that as a universal benefit of IF for everyone and a reason to end the thread.

    And most of the folks in this and other IF debate threads are doing or have previously done IF. It's a great strategy to control calories and appetite for some people, and it seems that for some people that eating schedule helps them improve energy and performance, digestion, or sleep. But no one has managed to show and then replicate in legit research that IF is universally healthier or in any way universally "better" than a more traditional eating schedule for anything. It's still in the category of "to each his/her own", can't hurt to try, but isn't right for everyone and for some people it's actually wrong".

    Excellent post @kimny72, and to add to this, the point where it was claimed that calorie intake did not change at all is where I call BS. If calorie intake is exactly the same, then IF is not going to magically accelerate weight loss. It just isn't no matter how many people chime in with their personal anecdotes. As a dozen other people have pointed out in this thread, IF can help SOME people restrict calories which can aid in weight loss, but meal timing in itself doesn't invalidate CICO.

    I respect your opinion, however as I mentioned neither caloric intake or food choices changed...and you mentioned "weight loss"....i emphasized "fat loss" results, did i not? Anxiously awaiting for you to tell me that "recomposition" could not possibly be a factor using IF.....

    Its absolutely possible to recomp using IF, however, IF is not going to magically accelerate fat loss when calories consumed are the same. Again, IF works for SOME people because it can help to limit their overall calorie intake, but when calories are the same, regardless of when they are consumed, fat loss will be the same as well.


    I hear you, believe me. However, nothing changed activity wise, stress level wise, diet or routine.....but due to some "sorcery" the results were worlds apart.....? But i digress

    That you know of...
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    I feel my best when I fast during the day, and I eat one large meal in the evening. I have no idea of the exact science behind it except that it works for me.
    wmd1979 wrote: »
    wmd1979 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    To add more substance....i tested Atkins, Keto, and a standard caloric deficit of 1600 calories within a concrete 6 week period measuring results....i could never crack under 9% bf without IF....taking into consideration that every individual's results are HIGHLY different based off genetics etc....it's safe to conclude in my case that IF principles were the deciding factor in achieving my desired results.


    /thread

    How does one person's personal 6 week experience "/thread"?

    I guess you're assuming that your body reacted immediately to how you were eating on a daily basis? What kind of structure did you set up to ensure absolutely no other variables changed during that 6 weeks? Are you a professional researcher? What equipment did you use to measure bf? Calorie burns? Did you sleep the exact same minutes every week? Do you use a step tracker? What about environmental conditions? How did you measure your hydration? Did you quantify digestive transit time and waste production?

    I didn't "overcomplicate" the process with all the methods you are asking me about lol, but good questions nonetheless. However nothing changed in terms of food and caloric intake, same place of employment, same daily routine, same sleep pattern (11pm-7pm) same workout days (Mon, Wed, Fri). Sunday is a day I bump my caloric intake to roughly 2300-2600 to allow for social fun (alcohol and the like) drinking exclusively red wine.....


    To attempt to dissect it further to find the more effective approach with other methods you mentioned is simply unnecessary....has anyone here actually TRIED Intermittent Fasting as an alternative approach to what they have tried in the past? I'm genuinely very curious....

    But in order to effectively end this debate, you need to account for all those variables. Most people are summarily awful at clearly seeing which factors we're most important in achieving success or failure, and the human body is a complicated machine with lots of difficult to measure inputs and outputs. It's one of the issues that make nutritional and health related research so difficult, even in a controlled clinical setting. With all due respect, no one has any reason to trust that you successfully controlled other variables, accurately measured the variables you did account for, and viewed everything with a clinical and unbiased eye

    If you want to say that based on your 6 week experiment, it's definitive that IF is the best strategy for you to reduce your bf, that's great. But you did not prove that as a universal benefit of IF for everyone and a reason to end the thread.

    And most of the folks in this and other IF debate threads are doing or have previously done IF. It's a great strategy to control calories and appetite for some people, and it seems that for some people that eating schedule helps them improve energy and performance, digestion, or sleep. But no one has managed to show and then replicate in legit research that IF is universally healthier or in any way universally "better" than a more traditional eating schedule for anything. It's still in the category of "to each his/her own", can't hurt to try, but isn't right for everyone and for some people it's actually wrong".

    Excellent post @kimny72, and to add to this, the point where it was claimed that calorie intake did not change at all is where I call BS. If calorie intake is exactly the same, then IF is not going to magically accelerate weight loss. It just isn't no matter how many people chime in with their personal anecdotes. As a dozen other people have pointed out in this thread, IF can help SOME people restrict calories which can aid in weight loss, but meal timing in itself doesn't invalidate CICO.

    I respect your opinion, however as I mentioned neither caloric intake or food choices changed...and you mentioned "weight loss"....i emphasized "fat loss" results, did i not? Anxiously awaiting for you to tell me that "recomposition" could not possibly be a factor using IF.....

    Its absolutely possible to recomp using IF, however, IF is not going to magically accelerate fat loss when calories consumed are the same. Again, IF works for SOME people because it can help to limit their overall calorie intake, but when calories are the same, regardless of when they are consumed, fat loss will be the same as well.


    I hear you, believe me. However, nothing changed activity wise, stress level wise, diet or routine.....but due to some "sorcery" the results were worlds apart.....? But i digress

    The results could not be worlds apart in 6 weeks. How much fat do you think you lost or converted during that amount of time?