Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intermittent fasting has no strict minimum that you have to fast, it can be 10-12 hours and still be intermittent fasting.
By that definition everyone who sleeps engages in intermittent fasting.
Hence breakfast
Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
91–100 of 169 posts
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intermittent fasting has no strict minimum that you have to fast, it can be 10-12 hours and still be intermittent fasting.
By that definition everyone who sleeps engages in intermittent fasting.
That's right! That's why the first meal of the day is called breakfast.
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think for a lot of people (me included), the primary advantage is in ease of measurement. It's hard to count calories accurately. It's very easy to look at the clock and determine if it's between 1300-1900 hours
but you still have to avoid overeating when doing IF. It's not like you get to just eat to fullness and ignore calorie counts.
This is not really true. Generally speaking, at the grossest level of averaging, regularly eating 2 meals instead of 3 or 1 meal instead of 2 results in a long term net reduction of calories.
Additionally your stomach shrinks under this regime - that one meal will definitely make you feel full and satiated.
All this goes into ease of adherence - I just don't have to think about it. I eat as much as I want for dinner each day and have dropped a steady 10lb/year for the last 5 years.
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#94“More effective” in what capacity? Adherence. > The mean (SD) reduction in energy intake was -313 (509) kcal/d for TRE, -197 (426) kcal/d for CR, and -16 (439) kcal/d for controls So — the time restricted eating group reduced calories more than the group that counted calories; but the resulting weight loss has the same cause: reduced calorie intake compared to before. If there’s a take away here, it’s possibly that a…
there's a bit of psychology at play too I bet if you have a 'daily budget' of 1500 calories, personally I would much rather skip breakfast and have a burger and fries for dinner than 3 'slim meals' throughout the day (i'd probably stick to that more readily too)
I skipped breakfast for years because I was too lazy to make it. Then I ate fast food and pizza all the time and I still got fat. You're not gonna lose weight just skipping a meal.
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#95Latest I've heard is that it all boils down to calories and that intermittent fasting (time restricted eating or 8/16)makes you lose muscle faster due to low protein during the fasting period. Better to eat less calories and consume small amounts of protein throughout the day. https://youtu.be/G3-EW7nWCbU I tried IF a couple times in my life. First time, coupled with lots of endurance exercise, worked great but I was…
> you lose muscle faster due to low protein during the fasting period if this is the reason, then wouldn't adjusting your macros to ensure enough protein mitigate this?
The body doesn't store protein in any real capacity. Fat is stored in adipose tissue and carbs in glycogen, but protein must be available in the bloodstream when needed for muscle maintenance and synthesis.
Even if you up your dietary protein during the feeding window, if you're fasting for lengthy periods of time where the protein has already been utilized for fuel, then the muscles are starved and catabolic. There's no passive protein depot built into our physiology muscles can pull from.
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
After causally seeing popular weight loss advice in US media over the years offering all variety of silver bullets (One Weird Trick etc), I was flabbergasted and betrayed to learn how simple the math of weight loss is once I finally looked into it 4 months ago. Very roughly, there’s 3500kcal in 1lb of body. Given that fact plus your current weight and calorie intake, you can build a spreadsheet in 30 mins to compute…
> Very roughly, there’s 3500kcal in 1lb of body. Given that fact plus your current weight and calorie intake, you can build a spreadsheet in 30 mins to compute the calories per day to make your body any weight you want in a reasonable time frame emphasis on the very roughly ... a significant part of body mass is tissue you do not want to lose: bone, brain, organs
1lb of fat is ~3500 calories and that is simply 9 calories per gram of fat X 453 grams in a pound. its actually closer to 4000 but people just use 3500 because that means you would need a 500 calorie deficit per day to lose a pound a week.
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
8am -> 5pm? Or you had an easier time fasting 5 extra hours than not?
I've heard from many people who have had success with IF that somewhat more aggressive schedules (e.g. 20-4 compared to 16-8) can be easier to maintain.
At that point it sounds more like one meal a day. Which does sound a lot simpler to do, though I can't say how easy or hard.
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intermittent fasting has no strict minimum that you have to fast, it can be 10-12 hours and still be intermittent fasting.
By that definition everyone who sleeps engages in intermittent fasting.
Except for those people who wake up and have a midnight snack.
Cutting out the snacking is probably also a major factor in the effectiveness of intermittent fasting, especially given that snack foods are often more processed, calorie-dense, and less nutritionally balanced than what we typically eat at meals.
I think a lot of people could lose significant weight by simply eating three meals a day at the usual times, but just cutting out snacking between meals entirely and changing nothing else. Just fasting between meals, if you will.
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#99“More effective” in what capacity? Adherence. > The mean (SD) reduction in energy intake was -313 (509) kcal/d for TRE, -197 (426) kcal/d for CR, and -16 (439) kcal/d for controls So — the time restricted eating group reduced calories more than the group that counted calories; but the resulting weight loss has the same cause: reduced calorie intake compared to before. If there’s a take away here, it’s possibly that a…
The main benefit of fasting generally is autophagy (forcing your body to eat dead/old/mutated cells) and increased HGH secretion.
Given that cancers are literally mutated cells, forcing your body to do an occasional cell cleanup seems potentially like a good idea.
Re: Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've done both. I can attest that intermittent fasting, at least for me, is WAY more sustainable ... and actually makes maintaining a calorie deficit easier too. Hunger is a weird thing. People tend to assume that if you don't eat you'll just get hungrier and hungrier. The reality is that hunger comes in waves. If you can ride out a wave of hunger for 30 - 45 minutes it goes away. And the longer you don't eat, the le…
It's very interesting once you experiment with it. I had a much easier time fasting between 8pm -> 5pm, then from 8pm to noon.
I think it's just going to vary a lot by person. I tried a 12-8 fast which basically just meant skipping breakfast which seemed like a gentle intro. A few weeks in and I was so painfully hungry at times I was noticeably irritable and having trouble waking up. Also, didn't lose a single ounce.