Intermittent Fasting. Anyone tried it?

I hate all these fad diets and ways of eating.
Your body works in a very basic way, less calories in than you body burns in a day then you will loose weight.
More calories in than you burn in a day, then you gain weight.

I can't see how these sites praise IF, talk to a doctor. IF is not good for your blood sugar levels your causing it to crash then spike.
This is how to end up as a diabetic over time.

Eat a good healthy balanced diet, spread across the whole day so it will keep your metabolism up and your blood sugar balanced.
It has been proven that it does not matter even if you eat a large meal then sleep, just as long as your calorie intake for the day is lower that what you burn.
KISS (keep it simple, stupid) eat when your hungry , drink when your thirsty. Everything in moderation and you can't go wrong.

there is really no need to waste your energy "hating" and this site does not praise IF, some of the folks here praise it. I like it myself because I have gotten results. chill out. your first post and you got the hate goin already? thats not good for you.

The results are to IF or you being in a calorie deficit? That being said, the leangains site is a wealth of information and great to read. He has cleared a lot of the broscience up for that.

Oh and for the most part, astrojunky correct. "KISS (keep it simple, stupid) eat when your hungry , drink when your thirsty. Everything in moderation and you can't go wrong" Is spot on.

I hate all these fad diets and ways of eating.
Your body works in a very basic way, less calories in than you body burns in a day then you will loose weight.
More calories in than you burn in a day, then you gain weight.

I can't see how these sites praise IF, talk to a doctor. IF is not good for your blood sugar levels your causing it to crash then spike.
This is how to end up as a diabetic over time.

Eat a good healthy balanced diet, spread across the whole day so it will keep your metabolism up and your blood sugar balanced.
It has been proven that it does not matter even if you eat a large meal then sleep, just as long as your calorie intake for the day is lower that what you burn.
KISS (keep it simple, stupid) eat when your hungry , drink when your thirsty. Everything in moderation and you can't go wrong.

there is really no need to waste your energy "hating" and this site does not praise IF, some of the folks here praise it. I like it myself because I have gotten results. chill out. your first post and you got the hate goin already? thats not good for you.

The results are to IF or you being in a calorie deficit? That being said, the leangains site is a wealth of information and great to read. He has cleared a lot of the broscience up for that.

Oh and for the most part, astrojunky correct. "KISS (keep it simple, stupid) eat when your hungry , drink when your thirsty. Everything in moderation and you can't go wrong" Is spot on.

I understand that caloric deficit and only a caloric deficit results in weight loss however you manage to get your deficit. I was talking about how easier it really is doing IF. talk about KISS...IF is really simple after you get it down. No more silly 6 meal planning nonsense, no more packing a lunch if you dont want to hassle...IF is really simple as far as the eating window etc. I use the leangains protocol for the most part but have thrown in a 24 hour fast on occasion and will do so again. IF, to me, is easier than worrying about when and where my next feed will be. Now I know and I can focus on other things.

I can't see how these sites praise IF, talk to a doctor. IF is not good for your blood sugar levels your causing it to crash then spike.
This is how to end up as a diabetic over time.

Eat a good healthy balanced diet, spread across the whole day so it will keep your metabolism up and your blood sugar balanced.

If you have links to studies showing that IF leads to diabetes and/or slows the metabolism, I'd love to see them. I've been IFing for 3 months and I sure don't want to become a diabetic or go into starvation mode.

Gosh!! This thread is something else!!! Haven't looked up the sites refered but remember reading a long time ago in a book called 'Fit for Life' how our daily/24hr biorhythm is divided into three 8-hour cycles which for people with normal work daytime hours are:

noon - 8 pm APPROPRIATION (eating and digestion), occurs when metabolism is most awake and ready for the task of taking on new food for digestion;
8 pm - 4 am ASSIMILATION (absorption and use, of nutrients for cell and tissue repair and growth) which is why our bodies naturally bring on sleep in order for this to happen effectively without energy being spent on any other activity;
4 am - noon ELIMINATION ( of body wastes and food debris), by this stage the body has completed its repair and growth work and is mainly shifting things south through your digestion and cranking up the metabolic engine again, which explains why people are generally not hungry in the morning.

All this said, everyone is a little different in their work/sleep patterns but essentially these hours follow the sun and express what would be our rhythm with nature, ie without the invention of fire or electricity to alter our activity hours. Remember that while we have changed our world technologically, our bodies remain in the stone age period ....

Understanding this natural rhythm is where IF comes into play. By allowing our bodies to have time down, away from digestion and repair in order to eliminate we are allowing our metabolism to fire it's engines with no lag and so it does it's job most effectively.

Fit for Life has a few other theories tagged to it around how, and how not, to mix macronutrients which I must say led to a whole lot of weight loss very quickly for me without counting calories and never going hungry. What eventually made this method 'not sustainable' after about 6 months for me was not the rhythm of eating etc, but the food combining was not socially viable in the long term.

Finally i like to mention that there are a few variations to the concept of fasting such as no food or water, water only, or a much softer approach, fruit only, which many argue is not strictly a fast but others say it is still can be considered a fast as fruit is the easiest food for the body to ingest and begin feeding the brain and muscles with fuel, and you generally start with your melons and berries and move toward your apples and bananas as you approach noon. What I liked about Fit for Life is that I was able to eat as much fruit as I wanted till noon ( getting all manner of vitamins and minerals and without a carb count) provided it was with absolutely not any other food. In this way it was a fruit fast. I never became bloated and I got my sugar fix for my brain at the beginning of the day without weighing my body down from its elimination process. Like I said, I lost a lot of weight consistently and easily without ever going hungry.

PS it just occurred to me that if we were living in the stone age, upon waking up with the sun rise it would probably take us a few hours to hunt down our next protein meal, which would have to be fresh as there would not be any refrigeration to keep leftovers from the night before. Our bodies are meant for our survival so it makes sense that we would not want our metabolisms screaming to be fed first thing upon waking. Fruit, vegetables and nuts are the only foods in nature that do not purtrify and are available straight out of the ground or off a tree.

I hate all these fad diets and ways of eating.
Your body works in a very basic way, less calories in than you body burns in a day then you will loose weight.
More calories in than you burn in a day, then you gain weight.

I can't see how these sites praise IF, talk to a doctor. IF is not good for your blood sugar levels your causing it to crash then spike.
This is how to end up as a diabetic over time.

You could not be more wrong. Diabetes type 2 is caused by insulin resistance, which is caused by high amounts of visceral fat and chronically elevated insulin. From a theoretical stand point, it makes much more sense that a fast would increase the sensitivity of your body's insulin receptors, thereby decreasing insulin resistance.

Eat a good healthy balanced diet, spread across the whole day so it will keep your metabolism up and your blood sugar balanced.
It has been proven that it does not matter even if you eat a large meal then sleep, just as long as your calorie intake for the day is lower that what you burn.
KISS (keep it simple, stupid) eat when your hungry , drink when your thirsty. Everything in moderation and you can't go wrong.

Eating less to lose weight is obviously what everything boils down to. But that's easier said than done. And body composition is different than losing weight. Regardless, if IF makes it "easier" to eat less, then that's a good thing.

Sorry if this was posted already, but whoever claimed that IF is bad for insulin sensitivity:

http://jap.physiology.org/content/99/6/2128.full

This is at least one piece of evidence suggesting the contrary.

And here's one more that's indirect examining behavior and glucose concentration after long periods of fasting:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18779282

Sorry if this was posted already, but whoever claimed that IF is bad for insulin sensitivity:

http://jap.physiology.org/content/99/6/2128.full

Thanks for posting this. It's interesting that the trial was done with just men. I've been reading more and more about some possible negative consequences for women with IF (not enough for me to get off of IF but still worth keeping a pulse on).

This is just a summary article about many studies (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3200169/?tool=pubmed), but an interesting snippet:

"Human trials have noted mixed findings with ADF [alternate day fasting] regarding glucoregulatory function. Heilbronn and colleagues [101] noted a decrease in fasting insulin but no difference in fasting glucose following 22 days of ADF. Another study by the same group [103] found that women on a 22 day ADF regimen cleared serum glucose following a test meal (500 kcal, 12.2 g fat, 90 g carbohydrate, 17.6 protein) less efficiently when compared to pre-fast values; no difference in glucose clearance efficiency was seen in men. In the same study, men on an ADF diet experienced a reduced insulin response to the test meal, but this effect was not observed in women. Taken together, these findings suggest that men and women may respond differently to ADF."

Anyway, for what it's worth.

You say shackles I say options. Lets face it, we wouldn't be on this site if we didn't have to 'shackle' ourselves one way or another in order to get the body we want. For me and many others, fasting is a less painful shackle than eating more frequent low cal meals. I totally accept that for other natural grazers the opposite is true. However you must admit that the current mainstream belief is very heavily skewed towards the "breakfast starts your metabolism and you have to keep eating every couple of hours to keep it going" rhetoric. I don't think it hurts to let people know that they don't have to if it doesn't suit them

I am not attacking fasting at all. I am attacking the ridiculous claims that many in the IF community cling too. I was one who fell for them.

As for going into it thinking you'll get ripped, couldn't the same be said for just about anything. There is always going to be the desperate uninformed minority that think something is a magic bullet.... its hardly unique to IF. look at paleo, there are people who seem to think that they can eat anything as long as its clean... um no.

And time after time I see people say "I tried the multiple meal thing and it didn't work". Like fasting is going to cure their lack of calorie control. Even with the Leangains method you're still eating MULTIPLE meals (2-3) so the notion of not eating multiple meals is null and void.

Instead of being concerned about eating "meal 6" you're now concerned about eating in your "window" or wondering if you fasted long enough. Yeah, that's true freedom right there....

Respect for this man. My insight, I do a 16-18 hour fast everyday because it fits my life style and lets me loose from having to worry about eating and planning for 5-6 meals throughout a work day. It's important to know that fasting will not make your muscle tissue dip into catabolic breakdown and it will also not make you more anabolic in any way shape or form. Same can be said with the opposite approach of eating say 6 meals a day. Results of both approaches will eventually be influenced by your overall intake.