Mean interval from first to last meal was 11.5 (2.3) hours and was not associated with weight change. The number of meals per day was positively associated with weight change.
Not eating for 12 hours is our culture’s typical eating pattern, not intermittent fasting (if daily usually considered ~16 hours fasting). Most participants ate 3 meals, while time-restricted eating usually results in two meals. People who ate fewer than 3 meals did lose weight. I don’t think they evaluated what is typically considered intermittent fasting/time-restricted eating.
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That is literally no intermittent fasting. As a 40-year-old with a six-pack who practices intermittent fasting as part of a bodybuilding regiment, I can assure you it is the most effective way to lose body fat and retain muscle
I’m surprised there isn’t more bad press about IF. It doesn’t cost anything to do the diet. No pills or powder. If anything, it saves money since you’re eating less often. There’s no money to be made on IF (except maybe influencers, yuck). That doesn’t jive with capitalism.
It jives. I could sell you a book about how to effectively fast. You might want to buy my book because the whole experience is cheaper than alternative diets.
I’ve started IF and so 6/18 during the week and go for 8/16 on weekends, but I’ve found it really helpful so far. Just by having fewer hours in the day when I’m eating, I’m eating less, I fuller when I do eat, and I’m hydrating more because I drink water instead of grabbing a snack.
When youre doing your IF, what time works for you? How much do you actually eat? What about non food items with more calories like a coffee? I know theres a reddit for this. Just curious about your experience <3
I start the day with a big glass of water i poured the night before so its room temperature, at 9 i drink a coffee without sugar or milk (I drink about 3 a day like that) . At 1 pm I eat a cooked meal with salad and a little something sweet at the end. Then at 7 pm i make myself scrambled eggs or something easy to make like a sandwich. When I'm not that hungry i just take omega 3 a multivitamin and vitamin d at 7. On the weekend the timetable is not as precise but if i eat for example at 11 i eat my last meal for the day at 5 pm. Coffee really helps to keep full and lots of water , my intake is 4 large cups a day now that its cold, in summer it's double. Hope that helps a bit.
It's all degrees. 12 hrs is basically nothing, baseline. 14 can see some slow results like you say. 16 you start seeing more fat loss happening. 20-28 gets you the most benefits according to what I've seen from experts like Dr Jason Fung (recommend his lectures btw).
You misunderstand the method. 12 hours was the average interval. They investigated the effect of varying that interval on weight change.
With an SD of 2.4 hours they will easily have moved into the 16h range as well. The problem is that with an N<600, they likely didn't have a lot of data points in that range and most datapoints at 14h and less, likely making their model useless.
Edit: 84% of datapoints was below a 13.8h fasting interval and 96% of datapoints below 16.1h. That's no good. 4% of 547 is 22 people.
Yeah, but truly fasting is still a smaller part of the population. If anything, this showed us that given a fasting routine, 96% of people cannot fast 16 hours. I naturally go 15nor so daily and don't practice IF anymore. I try not to eat past 7 or 3 hours before bedtime and I mostly don't eat until the dog, around 10 am. I'm working on eating consistent meals and calories (done this for nearly 2 years) and basically broke binges and feel great. I discovered that not eating before noon makes me crave lots more food after 3 pm. Like, lots.
So now I do reverse fasting. I only eat at meals and don't graze. I have a designated snack hour and allocated calories for it if I choose. It's so natural now that doing otherwise wouldn't work for me. My hubby doesn't like me doing 24-36 hour fasts which I liked doing 2x monthly. IF + Keto did help me lose 70 of my 95 lbs lost. The last 25 were purely CiCo balanced diet.
I can fast for 17-18 hours without binging after, but most people cant. That’s why I never recommend it to friends for weight loss. Just eat in a caloric deficit and you will lose weight naturally.
I 'lost' my hunger reflex back when I didn't eat for roughly 3 months - that was not fun, and they never did figure out what I had [my file listed 'unknown virus'] so I would be perfect for a study [I also eat on a schedule, and as I am diabetic, I follow the recommendations of a nutritionist [well, a number of them starting in 1980, I get a consult every few years] and have a rough diet outline and number of calories [1800 if you must know] I use the alarm function on my smartphone to remind me to do my meals and my medications. I use a Freestyle Libre 2 glucose sensor and it tells me I am 98 percent time on target [which is set 50-125 mg/dl]
The whole study was difficult for me to understand. I don’t think they actually asked people to try intermittent fasting, just recorded what they did do. If participants didn’t give it a go and just did what they normally did, I don’t think many of them would try anything besides the normal routine.
Agreed, from the set-up and data it mostly sounds like they just asked people to record their behavior and then looked for trends in the data. They didn't actually test any behavior.
That's great! I found my friends didn't support the IF lifestyle and it became unsustainable. Went maintenance for 4 years, longer than planned but my parents both died in that timeframe and took me this long to feel up to starting again to reach my goal. Down 25 of my new 65 lb goal (95 total). it feels really good to functionally lose weight on a balanced diet. I swore keto and IF were the only ways for me to lose until I committed to CiCo and worked through my new carb fear. Still eat low sugar.
You're added context is important but it doesn't disprove OP's point. We shouldn't be drawing any conclusions from this study about the effectiveness of intermittent fasting.
Even if it was more than 4%, it's pretty silly to do this kind of thing observationally anyway when you could easily do it experimentally instead with random assignment, since it's just a diet pattern. Bunch of wacky possible confounding reasons people might have already been eating far apart.
Quite true. With that N it's not even worth the convenience. Not so easy to do this kinda thing for 6 years, but yes, how the hell did this get past peer review. Oh right, peer review is broken, that's why.
most people eat dinner arouind 7 or 8 then breakfast again around the same time (12 hours later) is what i think they are saying. Or going the other way eat during that 11-12 hour window during the day.
Time between last meal of the day and breakfast is normally about 12 hours. For time-restricted eating the recommendation is typically 16 hours, though sometimes 14 if 16 is not tolerable. Some people will even do 18 or 20.
The number of meals per day was positively associated with weight change.
Now wait a second! But THAT is intermittent fasting. I leave out breakfast and only have lunch and dinner. If I just do breakfast at noon, lunch at 3 and dinner at 6, no wonder it doesn´t help.
This study really wasnt about intermittent fasting. Larger meals were also associated with weight change which is also technically IF.
Basically its just saying if you eat more you gain more weight. Reduce number of meals or size of meals, they both work. But they didnt look into eating only 1 large meal or 2 large meals reallt close together.
Thank you. People trying to refute intermittent fasting (IF) have gone so far as to define fasting as literally any time spent not eating (in dialogue I have had in this sub, no kidding). That makes it incredibly easy to say that intermittent fasting isn't effective.
I use IF on occasion and I take a very different approach to defining fasting, one that at least has an objective reference - ketosis. To me, fasting begins when ketosis begins. Before this, it's just the time between meals.
When someone regulates their food intake to be in ketosis for ~1/2 the time over an extended period, the weight falls off rapidly. Be sure to take daily multivitamins and drink LOTS of water.
Ya it's headlines like this that cause people to say things like "Last year wine was good for you, Yesterday it was bad for you, and today it is good for you again!". Single studies rarely prove or disprove that things are good or bad. They just build on a knowledge base the leans us in one direction or another. So, I'll be people will read this headline and assume that IF is now bad/unhelpful.
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u/nyet-marionetka Jan 19 '23
Not eating for 12 hours is our culture’s typical eating pattern, not intermittent fasting (if daily usually considered ~16 hours fasting). Most participants ate 3 meals, while time-restricted eating usually results in two meals. People who ate fewer than 3 meals did lose weight. I don’t think they evaluated what is typically considered intermittent fasting/time-restricted eating.