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Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

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Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#51
post #13

To add my strictly anecdotal experience: I recently started to diet for the first time ever. Never really needed it, but getting older, I noticed my weight steadily increasing despite regular exercise and finally decided to change. I always skipped breakfast, but I became a bit more strict about timing and snacking at night in order to align with IF. Switched my diet to a lazy keto (basically adkins) diet - still don…

Conclusion of this study [0]: "Consistent with the carbohydrate-insulin model, lowering dietary carbohydrate increased energy expenditure during weight loss maintenance. "

Some numbers: "[...] linear trend of 52 kcal/d [...] for every 10% decrease in the contribution of carbohydrate to total energy intake"

----------------------- Now on a personal note, as someone who always lived with nutrition plan (and macro tracking for the last years) since 17, I think it's highly unlikely that you take [0]: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4583

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#52
post #13

To add my strictly anecdotal experience: I recently started to diet for the first time ever. Never really needed it, but getting older, I noticed my weight steadily increasing despite regular exercise and finally decided to change. I always skipped breakfast, but I became a bit more strict about timing and snacking at night in order to align with IF. Switched my diet to a lazy keto (basically adkins) diet - still don…

Another anecdotal experience: IF really makes you aware of how your appetite gets going after the first meal. I usually start eating around noon and its like flipping a switch, before hand you just feel kinda numb but afterwards your brain cannot stop thinking about eating.

And how sluggish you feel, too. Digesting really takes a lot of energy!

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#53
post #41
post #15

11 adults in the experiment. No control group (other than against themselves). Experiment ran 8 days. I mean, I'm interested, but I want to see further research before I call this a real result.

Could you elaborate on the no control other than against themselves aspect? I read this in the original paper, “Participants were randomly assigned to follow either the control schedule (eating between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm; 12‐hour daily eating period)” Other than the N is on the lower side, how’s this way of setting up a control group insufficient?

The control group needs to be thinking they're doing something that works. If it's obvious they're in the control group, then it's no longer a control group.

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#54
post #13

To add my strictly anecdotal experience: I recently started to diet for the first time ever. Never really needed it, but getting older, I noticed my weight steadily increasing despite regular exercise and finally decided to change. I always skipped breakfast, but I became a bit more strict about timing and snacking at night in order to align with IF. Switched my diet to a lazy keto (basically adkins) diet - still don…

Another anecdotal experience: IF really makes you aware of how your appetite gets going after the first meal. I usually start eating around noon and its like flipping a switch, before hand you just feel kinda numb but afterwards your brain cannot stop thinking about eating.

How carb-heavy is your diet? That could be the transition from your body using fat/ketones for fuel to using glucose for energy.

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#55

This is strictly anecdotal, and I would honestly love to see this subjected to a rigorous study, but I lost twenty pounds without additional exercise or dietary changes in the last six months just by having a sleep study done, getting diagnosed with sleep apnea, and being put on a CPAP machine. How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep…

I've eaten really well for ages: particularly when it comes to low-fiber carbs, I just have no interest, let alone the intense addiction most people seem to have The exception was my famous sweet tooth, the indulgence of which probably wiped out half the advantages I was seeing from eating well. Since mostly fixing a sleep disorder that I had, my sweet tooth has completely vanished. I had some sense of this, but I wasn't enjoying the sugar as much as I was craving the accompanying dopamine rush, in the same way that I was a more frequent drug user when I still had the sleep disorder.

We likely had it much worse than the average person, but I think about the same thing: most of my friends have sleep problems to some degree, and I can't imagine they're not getting a milder form of the psychological symptoms that plagued me

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#56
post #13

To add my strictly anecdotal experience: I recently started to diet for the first time ever. Never really needed it, but getting older, I noticed my weight steadily increasing despite regular exercise and finally decided to change. I always skipped breakfast, but I became a bit more strict about timing and snacking at night in order to align with IF. Switched my diet to a lazy keto (basically adkins) diet - still don…

I’m down nearly 30lbs in 3 months through intermittent fasting.

Here’s my M-F routine :

7am: weigh myself, text results to my father

Breakfast: Nothing, but I drink a flat white just because I want to.

Midday: large bowl of plain unsweetened Greek yoghurt (no additions, which is key - the addition of fruit or other things is what sets off my sugar-loving monkey brain to go seek more). This is low carb yet filling and satiating. I tried out every single one available in my area until I found the one I could settle with. Sometimes I eat a low carb chocolate, ive found a bunch in my local area which I like.

Afternoon: sometimes go for coffee again and add a snack to that

Dinner: whatever I want, which is nice, but generally it doesn’t involve anything deep-fried and is mostly home made. Sometimes it’s a rice dish, sometimes pasta, sometimes meat with veg.

After this meal I’m free to eat whatever I want. If I want to eat dessert, I can, but just need to remember ... I’m texting my weight to my dad tomorrow.

Weekends I can eat anything at any time but also need to remember that Monday is coming and I will be weighing myself. So, I indulge a bit but not TOO much.

There’s no real exercise component here, just the occasional run every week or two.

I’ve also learned not to self-shame. If you fall off the horse, don’t whip yourself into a lather. Just say ‘ok, it happened, tomorrow is another day. Let’s keep going.’

At first, I really struggled at around 3-4pm and was constantly snacking bad things. The thing that’s has helped has been to focus on redirecting my behaviour instead of stopping it. Which is why I now know every single place within a 5 mile radius that sells low carb snacks, the price of each one, and which is my favourite. I also started drinking kombucha for when I have that urge to drink something. One small snack (always less than 10g carbs) is generally enough.

The BEST thing about this above routine is how little mental energy it takes. I don’t track carbs besides paying attention to labels in the act of purchasing, I don’t have to think about lunch, don’t have to whip myself into exercising.

Each week has gradually become easier in terms of maintaining habits. I now know I’ll keep the no-breakfast plus plain yoghurt for lunch routine, but at some point I’ll need to stop losing weight .. so..

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#57
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the no control other than against themselves aspect? I read this in the original paper, “Participants were randomly assigned to follow either the control schedule (eating between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm; 12‐hour daily eating period)” Other than the N is on the lower side, how’s this way of setting up a control group insufficient?

The control group needs to be thinking they're doing something that works. If it's obvious they're in the control group, then it's no longer a control group.

It’s still a control, just not blinded to the participants (which, yes, can result in bias).

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#58
post #48

I’m not necessarily discounting the results however I found it odd that the primary source didn’t state the sample size (or maybe I missed it)? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.22518

You missed it, right in the abstract :-)

> Methods

> Eleven adults with overweight practiced both early time‐restricted feeding (eTRF) (eating from 8 am to 2 pm) and a control schedule (eating from 8 am to 8 pm) for 4 days each.

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#59
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this specific to engineers? I noticed this in college classes across disciplines. A lot of the time that someone raised their hand, it was to share an anecdote and not a question.

I find it honestly surprising that I see it so much on HN. You have a group of people who largely identify themselves as being rational, objective, intelligent people - datascientists, engineers, etc. - who stereotypically I would think to be naturally sceptical and want to examine evidence closely. But it's absolutely true, the minute some scientific study is posted there are 50 people writing comments that they bel…

Case studies can be very enlightening but there are also problems. Stories may be made up or misremembered. There is also a selection bias in which stories get told and which don't.

The big benefit I think is that people are... well people. If you do the same thing to an atom it will respond in the same way, while people may respond differently depending on any number of factors.

Appetite is known to be heavily entangled with psychology. People eat to celebrate. They eat to celebrate or because they are sad, because they are tired, because they are stressed out, because they are bored or maybe because they passed a bakery.

Case studies can help us understand how all these things interrelate and how to design studies that avoid pitfalls.

Re: Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

#60
post #58
post #48

I’m not necessarily discounting the results however I found it odd that the primary source didn’t state the sample size (or maybe I missed it)? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.22518

You missed it, right in the abstract :-) > Methods > Eleven adults with overweight practiced both early time‐restricted feeding (eTRF) (eating from 8 am to 2 pm) and a control schedule (eating from 8 am to 8 pm) for 4 days each.

Oh did I - whoops!

That quote doesn’t give the sample size (number of people studied and in each group) though?

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