14 ms·

Meal timing strategies appear to lower appetite, improve fat burning

324 points by prostoalex 7y ago

catotheyoungest 7y ago
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?
- privong 7y ago
  > How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep? There's some body chemistry where being sleep deprived can manifest itself as hunger. I forget the details, but I read about it in "Why We Sleep"[0]. When I had a sleep study done, the pre-study questionnaire seemed to have more about depression symptoms than about sleep itself. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep
  - hkmurakami 7y ago
    Definitely experienced that in finals period in college where I consciously substituted sleep with calories
    - lanstin 7y ago
      I always tell myself, my coworkers, and my kids "If you don't sleep, eat" (else you might go totally bonkers).
- pizza 7y ago
  So did you stop eating as much, or having fewer cravings or anything like that?
  - catotheyoungest 7y ago
    I don't know. I hadn't bothered to quantify, but my sugar jones isn't as bad as it used to be.
- ikeyany 7y ago
  Are you sure your diet did not change? Even your portions stayed the same size?
  - ellius 7y ago
    Can't speak for OP, but my appetite and then weight have steadily decreased for six years since beginning CPAP. As a person with apnea I had no idea that my constant fatigue was causing me to eat so much, or making sustained exercise so impossible, and I really didn't even understand how tired I was. Once I was getting something approximating a good night's sleep, I had more energy, which made me less hungry and more able to sustain exercise. So it was a virtuous cycle and involved the habits you're describing, but those were made possible by alleviating the underlying problem.
    - eurekin 7y ago
      How did you get diagnosed?
      - ellius 7y ago
        Did an overnight study at a sleep clinic. I'd been told for years by friends that I made very weird gasping, snoring noises. After I'd been out of college a few years and realized I was fatigued literally every day despite going to sleep on time, I figured it was time to get checked.
        eurekin 7y ago
        Were you also sleepy during the day? Did you nap for hours as well?
    - SubiculumCode 7y ago
      I've gained 15 pounds since I started using one..bummed
  - catotheyoungest 7y ago
    To be honest, I'm not sure. I don't recall making any conscious changes, though I don't have the sugar jones I used to have.
- sbmthakur 7y ago
  Cannot comment on depression. But from personal experience and after reading Why we sleep, my understanding is that to get maximum benefits from diet and exercise, a good sleep is a prerequisite. This is paramount when you're doing these things for losing weight. I don't see good sleep being recommend enough whenever people embark on a weight-loss journey.
  - _trampeltier 7y ago
    So true. I try not to eat anything after work, not always but usually. During daytime a softdrink with sugar is ok, but also usually after work I drink just water. I eat a bit something for breakfast, even small snacks during the whole day, eat a proper lunch and that's it .. I do sport two evenings a week so I can't eat anyway something before. So why should I eat dinner if I do nothing at home .. If I'm tired and don't go to bed .. wathever reason .. I suddenly start to eat a lot of snacks .. not because I'm really hungry .. just because of be bored. I'm around 40 .. since ever in summer around 60 .. 63 kg in wintertime around 67kg. The only thing I try to avoid is eating dinner at all. I drink softdrinks with sugar, eat chips, icecream, chocolate and for lunch just a standart menue. 20 years ago I was over 70kg and tryed to cook healthy dinner menus for myself .. my weight just went up ..
- ilaksh 7y ago
  Is it a CPAP or an APAP?
- oldie 7y ago
  I'm really glad it did you do much good. For me, it was the other way round. When I used intermittent fasting (in the form of the 5:2 diet) to get my weight under control, I stopped snoring like a rhino, and my sleep improved. As did my wife's. :-) More anecdote: trying to fast of the weight without exercise was miserable. My weight plateaued, and I was permanently cold. Doing some sensible exercise solved both problems. Diet or exercise? False dichotomy.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  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
jedberg 7y ago
I tried IF for a while. I lost a couple pounds and then plateaued. What I realized is that the main thing it was doing was preventing me from snacking at night. I didn't really eat any more than normal during the eating period, I just didn't eat my usual outside of it. So exactly in line with the study. It just didn't do much for me weight-loss-wise. I was already skipping breakfast most days, so waiting until lunch to eat wasn't a big deal. But Stopping at 8pm was tough. I'm usually up until 1-2am, so not eating for the last five or six hours of my day was tough.
- tcmb 7y ago
  So you actually ate less during IF, while in the article both groups consumed the same amount, just at different times: "The same amounts and types of foods were consumed on both schedules." Their IF (or eTRF) groups stopped eating at 2pm each day. Presumably they went to bed a earlier than you, as their breakfast was at 8am, so shifted by your two hours that would mean no food after 4pm. I'd have a hard time doing that. In a way, dinner is a reward for the day's accomplishments for me. I'm not saying it's impossible to adapt to that, but I'd rather work out more than fast for 16 hours every day.
- prostoalex 7y ago
  Satchin Panda from UCSD did a round of podcast interviews when his book came out, and the advice essentially boiled down to having a feeding window of up to 8 hours and having it start towards the earlier part of the day rather than later. The weight gain/loss/plateau seems to correlate with the insulin presence in the blood system, and meals eaten later in the day tend to generate higher insulin response compared to exact same meals eaten mid-day.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    Yeah I read all that, but there's no way I could get away with skipping dinner. Dinner is our family meal. I'd literally have to sit there watching the family eat, or miss out entirely.
- jimnotgym 7y ago
sysbin 7y ago
I eat one big meal per day, sometimes fasting once or two times a month and I definitely have a lower appetite with slim body aesthetics. I didn't crave food once my body adjusted to one daily meal for the timeframe of about a month passing. Realistically I don't do much activity and I assume a bodybuilder wouldn't be able to do one meal per day. I hypothesize the weight of a person, factors from "the mealtime" to the "time of sleep" and for storage of calories compared to used calories. Similar, I hypothesize the timeframe from meal to meal factors into the storage of calories compared to used calories. Furthermore, I hypothesize the individual metabolism of the person factors from the development years by the childhood to adulthood corresponding to the active lifestyle of the individual. Lastly, I hypothesize the individual metabolism of the person factors from the composition of the gut bacteria. (Fasting could help reset the gut bacteria to a healthy state)
tom_mellior 7y ago
As long-term large-scale observational data, consider that the "Mediterranean diet" is widely touted as especially healthy. People in Mediterranean countries tend to eat late dinners, like the control group in this study. No concrete conclusion here, just a general warning about believing in monocausal silver bullets, I guess.
noodle 7y ago
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't track calories, just intentionally reduced carb intake to below ~25g net per day and increased fat intake. Occasionally I have a cheat meal. Down 35lbs in ~2.5 months. Side effects: I feel like my energy levels are much more consistent throughout the day, but also very discernable. Which is to say, if I'm working out, I can really feel it when I run out of gas. Related, I can't lift as much weight as I could, but that is expected while I'm actively trying to lose weight. I feel like there's a bit more mental clarity, but that could be related to energy levels.
- matnewton85 7y ago
  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..
tcmb 7y ago
I like this example of explaining a scientific term to the lay people: "a respiratory chamber -- a room-like device --"
mabbo 7y ago
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.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Yeah for sanity. Sad I'm having to post this and vote.
- alexpetralia 7y ago
  I always appreciate how the HN crowd evaluates the quality of the evidence, not just the quality of the headline. Great filtering function.
  - weeksie 7y ago
    There's usually one good post. The rest are almost always people sharing their diet stories. Or if the headline is about exercise, you get reams of stronglifts or 5x5 or whatever, nobody cares. It's what engineers tend to do when they're presented with a topic they don't have actual expertise in.
    - _raoulcousins 7y ago
      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.
      - zmmmmm 7y ago
        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 believe it because yesterday something similar happened to their aunt etc. It's something I've never quite figured out.
wetpaws 7y ago
I've been running on IF for at least a decade. Can only eat twice a day. If i try to have breakfast, I don't feel hungry for the rest of the day and have to skip lunch. People in comments mention plateau effect, but this is kind of the point - my weight is stable for years on easy mode and I only have to correct and tweak it slightly +/- a few pounds from time to time.
newnewpdro 7y ago
I'll often go 3-5 days where I only eat small quantities of fruits, vegetables, and nuts, operating in very much a calorie deficit. This has been a thing for years, and when I'm in this mode I don't really have much craving for food, it's kind of surprising to me. Energy levels are fine, I'm generally pretty physically active, it just seems normal and I enjoy the lightness. It's not a lack of appetite though, if I decide to pursue a large meal in this condition, my enthusiasm is high and I'll eat enough food to feed a family of four if I let it happen. But I've noticed if I instead eat more processed foods, especially refined carbohydrates, while trying to exist in this calorie deficit state similarly to my fruits/veggies/nuts mode, I'm miserable, irritable, and constantly craving more food. And it's not some mild craving, it's like craving an addictive drug. I hadn't considered if timing played any significant part in these experiences, what seems very obviously significant was the types of food.
ilaksh 7y ago
How am I going to prevent myself from eating after 2 or 3 PM?
- EamonnMR 7y ago
  The same way you adhere to any other diet plan-you excercise conscious control over your behavior. If you can't cross that hurdle, no diet will work. If you can cross that hurdle, though, you probably don't need a diet plan-calories are printed on most food packages.
- deleted 7y ago
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mnm1 7y ago
What about 1 to 3 meals starting at 2pm to 5pm for 6 hours? I'd be interested to know how that compares. It seems without that data, it's not possible to conclude at all that eating earlier in the day is better than later.
yurishimo 7y ago
I’ll add one more anecdote to the mix here. Been doing intermittent fasting and extended fasting since February and I’m down 75 pounds in that time. I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed. Now I don’t snore at all. My wife sleeps better, I sleep better; win win! I haven’t exercised at all and I don’t count calories. My biggest diet changes have been cutting out soda entirely and I try to keep my carbs under 100g a day. Many days I’m under 50. It’s honestly been amazing and I’m glad that I did it now while I’m still young and will be able to physically play with my kids in the future. One of the other big wins has been physiological and my relationship with food and the feeling of hunger. Living in America, and especially here in the south, food is a religion. Stopping whatever is going on to eat is never looked down on. Snacks all the time, large comfort food meals, etc. While the community aspects around food are a good thing, our dependence on it as a society has crossed over into causing more harm than help. After starting to fast, I’ve learned that hunger is just another feeling, like being too hot or too cold. Sure, it can be uncomfortable, but it won’t kill you and we can tolerate it a lot longer than we think. Right now, I’m in the middle of a 7 day fast where I’m only drinking water. Every week I normally fast 48 hours twice a week and then one meal a day for the other 5 days in the week. My relationship with food has morphed and now I’m totally in control of my body. Skipping a meal is no problem and I have no ill side effects. I’ll wrap this up by saying that I still enjoy food, a lot! When I do eat for my one meal a day, I can easily eat a large salad and a burger and a side. My favorite pastime is going to the movies and eating a meal and a large bucket of popcorn with my wife. Some days though, I eat a “normal” portion and call it good. Sometimes I have dessert. The difference is now that I can manage my love of food in a sustainable way for my body. Happy to answer any questions. AMA.
- betenoire 7y ago
  > hunger is just another feeling Exactly! I've done intermittent fasting for many many years, it works for me. I've told people, "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".
mrmondo 7y ago
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 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.22518
- traek 7y ago
  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.
  - mrmondo 7y ago
    Oh did I - whoops! That quote doesn’t give the sample size (number of people studied and in each group) though?
    - belltaco 7y ago
      I think it was a cross over study. Or everyone went control for 4 days and study protocol for next 4.
      - mrmondo 7y ago
        Hmm. Yeah just if it was like 30 (or even like 100) it’s not exactly overly valuable other than an initial indicator.
100inengyears 7y ago
We really have figured out health for the majority of people and even people on the fringes have enough options close enough to them to make it possible. If you dont live next to a grocery store this is a good thing. Because you get to exercise and get fresh food every day. If we could cure lack of discipline and laziness then we would be good. But we cant (challenge placed) and there will always be people that are looking for a trick rather than putting in the work to be healthy. When watching Game of Thrones is more important than your health (exercising) then health is not something you get to have. Its not a mystery. Articles like these suggest you can be healthy without being active. This is false (challenge placed).
sebringj 7y ago
I would recommend David Sinclair and Jason Fung in terms of resources for this to understand first why intermittent fasting is good for you but of course appropriately applied for the individual. If you start to understand the whys and stop listening to specific people's testimonials or crazy routines in some cases (from your perspective), you'll tailor it appropriately to your life if its something you want to do. Personally, I found it quite easy to incorporate and with great benefit.
jniedrauer 7y ago
One observation from personal experience with prolonged intermittent fasting: My metabolism slowed down quite a lot. After nearly 10 years of eating once per day, my resting metabolic rate was 3-400 calories lower than average. Whether that's a bad thing or not, I have no idea. My grocery bills were certainly low. And it saved a ton of time on meal prep. More recently, I became too physically active to maintain that diet and returned to eating 3-4x a day. My metabolism has steadily returned to baseline since then. It took about 6 months but it is now essentially back to normal.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tonymet 7y ago
I've lost 80 lbs from peak and kept it off for > 15 years without trying. Never gained more than 5 lbs since losing the weight. I've never dieted or restricted my diet. I eat when I have a desire to eat. I eat so called junk food and bad food (butter, olive oil, bacon, meat, fatty nuts, whole milk/half-half) daily. I generally avoid high sugar dishes and rarely drink soda but that's due to taste. In my experience the goal is to align your unconscious desire for food with your bodies daily need. Any attempt to control your hunger through conscious willpower will fail, because that approach reinforces the mind's belief that food is the reward. Instead, first you must get familiar with the feeling of true belly hunger. Most people don't know what this is. Usually you eat due to mind / heart hunger which is the "craving for pizza" or "i'm starving" feeling. You are eating because of habit, reflex or emotional need. Belly hunger is the cramping and headaches you get when you are truly at caloric deficit. Once in a while It helps to go running without calories to push yourself into hypoglycemic sensation. You will get dizzy and fatigued. Once you eat you will feel like you just did narcotics. Now that you know that feeling of belly hunger, you should have that feeling daily (if only mildly). Keep reducing your portions until you hit that feeling regularly. Avoid seconds or having snacks nearby. Eventually belly hunger becomes your signal to eat rather than mind hunger . And when you serve food you will serve portions that will satisfy the belly hunger and not your emotional needs. Once you are at this point you'll be on autopilot. The other side effect is that avoiding eating will become more rewarding since you will enjoy the belly-hunger feeling (since it's natural), and the bloated feeling will elicit disgust. When I was overweight, overeating brought intense relief and pleasure. Now the sensations are inverted and overeating makes me feel deeply disgusted (like eating a rotten apple). tl;dr Align your hunger reflex with your biological need for food by treating your body as a dog that needs to be trained to associate hunger with positive emotions and overindulgence with negative ones.
- iamgopal 7y ago
  This is the conclusion I also reached, I'm also eating whatever I want but not whenever I want, instead when there is a hunger. I'm just couple of months in, but still consistently loosing about kg in ten days easily.
  - 7y ago
namuol 7y ago
> For the study, researchers enrolled 11 adult men and women who had excess weight. It's amazing how low our standard for news is when it comes to things like weight loss.
- MRD85 7y ago
  Depending on the size of the effect, 11 participants can be very valid in an experiment. For example, assume you have 11 participants having a hormone measured after an experiment. If normal readings are 300 with a SD of 30, and at the end of the experiment their mean is 520 with a SD of 40, then you've just shown a strong, significant effect.
  - krick 7y ago
    Yeah, except it usually would be (in the best case scenario) more like "520 with a SD of 40" for 10 people and "1 outlier", which you wouldn't really be able to properly conceptualize let alone explain, since your "outlier" is freaking 10% of the group. That is, ignoring the fact that experiments without a control group can be hardly considered valid at all.
z3t4 7y ago
One strategy to balance food intake is to only eat when it taste good.
fouc 7y ago
Extended waterfasting is amazing folks. It's the simplest way to A) lose weight B) improve your metabolism C) increase your longevity D) help with various problems (like acne, hemorrhoids, etc). Warning: May not be safe for those with a BMI lower than 20. Fasting gives the chance for the body to engage in autophagy which is the breakdown of old or broken cells into their components and reused to repair the body. Fasting takes you to a state of ketosis, where your body switches to fat-burning for fuel. Note that it takes 2 weeks for the muscles to fully adapt to using fuel as the source, so athletic performance will decline for that period. Depending on how fat-adapted you are, it can take anywhere from 3 to 5 days to get past the point of hunger & cravings. It becomes much easier to maintain the fast after that. That means for most people, day 2 or day 3 are the hardest days in the transition. Warning: if you stop at the hard point of the fast after multiple attempts, it will get progressively harder to stick to it and get through (as that will train the body's hormone for cravings to peak at that time).
- aembleton 7y ago
  What is extended waterfasting? What do you do?
  - fouc 7y ago
    Basically don't consume any food or calories at all, for more than 3 days. Mostly just drink water. Tea or coffee is allowed but no sugar or milk. And take the water with some electrolytes. Can be a bit of table salt, or get more complicated by adding other salts like magnesium, potassium, etc. For a fast longer than a week, it is also good to have bone broth which brings in some extra nutrients like phosphorous.
- eridius 7y ago
  Extended waterfasting is dangerous. If you're going to go more than 3 days on even a sub-1000Cal/day diet, please have medical supervision.
  - beagle3 7y ago
    [citation needed]
pcurve 7y ago
" eTRF schedule where participants ate three meals over a six-hour period with breakfast at 8:00 a.m. and dinner at 2:00 p.m." No thanks. There's no way you're enjoying what you're eating if you're stuffing more food down your throat even before your stomach has a chance to digest.
jonnycomputer 7y ago
Just another anecdote, and I haven't done this for too long, but I've found that adopting the rule that I don't eat past 7pm has helped me sleep better, and maybe even lose a little weight. I found myself eating more earlier in the day so that I wouldn't be hungry later, but that didn't seem to change the benefits. The hardest bit is that it can be pretty hard to get an evening meal in before 7 (we do try to cook), and if its after, I pack the dinner for the next day's lunch and sit down with the fam to chat while they eat.
xvilka 7y ago
So the vegetarian keto diet with intermittent fasting is the ultimate solution. But a hard one. Still met a plateu after 6 months, even essentially living on salads.
- deleted 7y ago
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donniefitz2 7y ago
Some of the best info on this can be found in the book, The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Also, here's a short video by him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk
nikkwong 7y ago
Interesting read! It's also worth noting that circadian rhythm based eating habits (i.e. timing meals in the morning, or at least the bulk of one's caloric intake earlier in the day), are important for more than just weight loss. They reduce levels of inflammation in the body, improve insulin response, improve glucose tolerance, the list goes on and on. Humans evolved to eat when they are at peak-awareness/wakefulness: in the morning/early-day. If one's trying to optimize for peak performance/health/longevity, they should in the AM rather than PM. Personally I only eat one meal a day, stopping all calorie consumption by 11am. I'm in the 2nd day of a 3 day fast; it's definitely an exercise in discipline, but so worth doing. Fasting's stress on the body invokes a "survival of the fittest" response on the cellular level; in which under performing cells are cleaned out. Some news out of USC has stated that a 72 hour fast leads to an "entire reset of your immune system" [0]. Pretty interesting stuff for health-conscientious folks. [0] https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regeneration-of-damaged-old-immune-system/ https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regene...
brandonmenc 7y ago
Since everyone is chiming in with anecdotal weight loss experiences via faddish diets, I'll chime in with mine following "conventional" diet wisdom. 40 years old, 170 lbs down to 135 lbs, slow and steady just by eating a conventionally healthy low fat diet and adhering to CICO. No wacky meal timings. No eating/avoiding an entire macronutrient to excess. Most calories came from whole grains, whey, and fish, and I made sure my belly was full most of the time with vegetables. I drank wine nearly every day, and popped a square of Dove chocolate for dessert most meals. I even ate fast food a couple times a month. Hunger pains and exhausting days in the gym? You bet. But it wasn't difficult, and I still got to eat my favorite foods - just less of them. CICO works. Studies like this are interesting, but almost certainly just tweaking the margins for most people.
- naasking 7y ago
  CICO works certainly, but the advantage of IF is that it makes adherence to CICO easier. You're effectively cutting ingestion opportunities to 1/3 of what they normally are. It's hard to eat 2/3 of your calories in ouch a short time frame.
cheesymuffin 7y ago
I really, really love fasting. It's when you starve yourself. Many people can't do it but I'm living proof that you can. It raises adrenaline and lowers cortisol so I feel just peppy through the day. And now because I went for a week without eating last month and described a mechanism, I have the honor of being a father figure to all of you in telling you that you, too, may starve, and one day achieve the health goals that I've achieved as of last month. I'm a Google engineer btw Edit: stop PMing me asking for pictures and blood test results. HUGE invasion of privacy
jokoon 7y ago
I've never understood the tradition of eating 3 meals a day. Sounds like it comes from religion. If you eat when you're hungry, you will naturally eat less. I always have a good breakfast, and thus start to feel hungry around 3pm or 4pm. I eat then, and usually I don't feel hungry until I go to bed, and I never eat late in the day, simply because digesting at night is a bad idea. Having lunch around noon is weird because I eat without being hungry.
- arcturus17 7y ago
  I’m assuming you work a desk job. Your energy and appetite fluctuations wouldn’t be the same if you had a physically strenuous job.
bharam 7y ago
Here's a weight loss tip I've used with some degree of success: exercise portion control by using smaller dinner plates at home and chew the food on the plate longer (like 30s). The rationale is that the sensation of feeling full takes about 20 minutes to kick in and so by practicing the above you end up eating less over time and as a result lose weight. There is also a possibility your body will make better use of the food this way as there are enzymes in your mouth that help with digestion.
Tharkun 7y ago
Skipping meals is a migraine trigger for me. This makes IF a lot less viable...
joantorres 7y ago
With intermitent fasting 16/8 and weight lifting 3x a week, you can get fit and look amazing in a just a couple if months. Just try it, it works!
astrostl 7y ago
"OMAD" (one meal a day) here. It's been 5 months. Most days, I eat lunch. And that's it, no real calorie consumption outside of that window. Not hungry, not tired, not cranky, not suffering, more free time, actually eating better (having one meal of pure crap in front of you is a clarifying moment), and losing weight at a moderate clip. YMMV, IANAD, etc.
Slimbo 7y ago
I've also had weight loss success with IF. I do 16/8 mostly with the occastional 24 hour fast. I get a lot of pushback that it's 'bro science', and a lot of claims around improving insulin resistance isn't proven, so it's good to get some science behind the practice that clearly works. The reason I have found it effective is that it's simple to follow. I don't need to count calories, I don't have to learn too much at all, I simply don't eat outside of my hours. Given I've now found I don't feel hungry most days until I start eating, it means I eat less. Now the net result may simply be less calories, that that's not as simple as 'calories in calories out', because I'm consuming less as a consequence of the timing, not by consciously eating less. This may be an odd distinction for people who can diet, but for those of us who struggle with weight, it's crucial to success.
SUSANTREVINO20 7y ago
Four years ago I experienced a severe breathing and wheezing problem that my doctor diagnosed as chronic bronchitis with dust allergy. A year later, it worsened and I was diagnosed of COPD. I came across Herbal HealthPoint (ww w. herbalhealthpoint. c om) December, 2018 and learnt about their successful herbal therapy for COPD. I immediately started on the COPD treatment; few weeks into the treatment, i began to notice a reduction in symptoms till it all vanished. I feel better and breath better. I Just wanted to share for people suffering from this horrible lungs disease.
SUSANTREVINO20 7y ago
Four years ago I experienced a severe breathing and wheezing problem that my doctor diagnosed as chronic bronchitis with dust allergy. A year later, it worsened and I was diagnosed of COPD. I came across Herbal HealthPoint (ww w. herbalhealthpoint. c om) December, 2018 and learnt about their successful herbal therapy for COPD. I immediately started on the COPD treatment; few weeks into the treatment, i began to notice a reduction in symptoms till it all vanished. I feel better and breath better. I Just wanted to share for people suffering from this horrible lungs disease.
Mikho 7y ago
Here is very useful data as to food consumption patterns. Nowadays we ruin our body with unnatural eating cycles. Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good for health. From the evolutionary perspective--that invested in a human body 200K years--the way we eat today is broken. And our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Not to mention like adapting to changes in a food consumption we see in the last 50 years. A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. Viceversa--it was build to eat less. It needs to store energy and to use stored energy and only after that to store again. That's a natural cycle and functions that our body needs to execute. Nowadays we just store energy 24/7: "Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage." Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/ Here are also interesting patterns of daily and weekly food consumption from this research including the common eating pattern of food consumption upon which the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and associated chronic diseases has emerged. Image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/fig03/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/...

324 points by prostoalex 7y ago

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?

privong 7y ago
> How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep? There's some body chemistry where being sleep deprived can manifest itself as hunger. I forget the details, but I read about it in "Why We Sleep"[0]. When I had a sleep study done, the pre-study questionnaire seemed to have more about depression symptoms than about sleep itself. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep
- hkmurakami 7y ago
  Definitely experienced that in finals period in college where I consciously substituted sleep with calories
  - lanstin 7y ago
    I always tell myself, my coworkers, and my kids "If you don't sleep, eat" (else you might go totally bonkers).
pizza 7y ago
So did you stop eating as much, or having fewer cravings or anything like that?
- catotheyoungest 7y ago
  I don't know. I hadn't bothered to quantify, but my sugar jones isn't as bad as it used to be.
ikeyany 7y ago
Are you sure your diet did not change? Even your portions stayed the same size?
- ellius 7y ago
  Can't speak for OP, but my appetite and then weight have steadily decreased for six years since beginning CPAP. As a person with apnea I had no idea that my constant fatigue was causing me to eat so much, or making sustained exercise so impossible, and I really didn't even understand how tired I was. Once I was getting something approximating a good night's sleep, I had more energy, which made me less hungry and more able to sustain exercise. So it was a virtuous cycle and involved the habits you're describing, but those were made possible by alleviating the underlying problem.
  - eurekin 7y ago
    How did you get diagnosed?
    - ellius 7y ago
      Did an overnight study at a sleep clinic. I'd been told for years by friends that I made very weird gasping, snoring noises. After I'd been out of college a few years and realized I was fatigued literally every day despite going to sleep on time, I figured it was time to get checked.
      - eurekin 7y ago
        Were you also sleepy during the day? Did you nap for hours as well?
  - SubiculumCode 7y ago
    I've gained 15 pounds since I started using one..bummed
- catotheyoungest 7y ago
  To be honest, I'm not sure. I don't recall making any conscious changes, though I don't have the sugar jones I used to have.
sbmthakur 7y ago
Cannot comment on depression. But from personal experience and after reading Why we sleep, my understanding is that to get maximum benefits from diet and exercise, a good sleep is a prerequisite. This is paramount when you're doing these things for losing weight. I don't see good sleep being recommend enough whenever people embark on a weight-loss journey.
- _trampeltier 7y ago
  So true. I try not to eat anything after work, not always but usually. During daytime a softdrink with sugar is ok, but also usually after work I drink just water. I eat a bit something for breakfast, even small snacks during the whole day, eat a proper lunch and that's it .. I do sport two evenings a week so I can't eat anyway something before. So why should I eat dinner if I do nothing at home .. If I'm tired and don't go to bed .. wathever reason .. I suddenly start to eat a lot of snacks .. not because I'm really hungry .. just because of be bored. I'm around 40 .. since ever in summer around 60 .. 63 kg in wintertime around 67kg. The only thing I try to avoid is eating dinner at all. I drink softdrinks with sugar, eat chips, icecream, chocolate and for lunch just a standart menue. 20 years ago I was over 70kg and tryed to cook healthy dinner menus for myself .. my weight just went up ..
ilaksh 7y ago
Is it a CPAP or an APAP?
oldie 7y ago
I'm really glad it did you do much good. For me, it was the other way round. When I used intermittent fasting (in the form of the 5:2 diet) to get my weight under control, I stopped snoring like a rhino, and my sleep improved. As did my wife's. :-) More anecdote: trying to fast of the weight without exercise was miserable. My weight plateaued, and I was permanently cold. Doing some sensible exercise solved both problems. Diet or exercise? False dichotomy.
wutbrodo 7y ago
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

jedberg 7y ago

I tried IF for a while. I lost a couple pounds and then plateaued. What I realized is that the main thing it was doing was preventing me from snacking at night. I didn't really eat any more than normal during the eating period, I just didn't eat my usual outside of it. So exactly in line with the study. It just didn't do much for me weight-loss-wise. I was already skipping breakfast most days, so waiting until lunch to eat wasn't a big deal. But Stopping at 8pm was tough. I'm usually up until 1-2am, so not eating for the last five or six hours of my day was tough.

tcmb 7y ago
So you actually ate less during IF, while in the article both groups consumed the same amount, just at different times: "The same amounts and types of foods were consumed on both schedules." Their IF (or eTRF) groups stopped eating at 2pm each day. Presumably they went to bed a earlier than you, as their breakfast was at 8am, so shifted by your two hours that would mean no food after 4pm. I'd have a hard time doing that. In a way, dinner is a reward for the day's accomplishments for me. I'm not saying it's impossible to adapt to that, but I'd rather work out more than fast for 16 hours every day.
prostoalex 7y ago
Satchin Panda from UCSD did a round of podcast interviews when his book came out, and the advice essentially boiled down to having a feeding window of up to 8 hours and having it start towards the earlier part of the day rather than later. The weight gain/loss/plateau seems to correlate with the insulin presence in the blood system, and meals eaten later in the day tend to generate higher insulin response compared to exact same meals eaten mid-day.
- jedberg 7y ago
  Yeah I read all that, but there's no way I could get away with skipping dinner. Dinner is our family meal. I'd literally have to sit there watching the family eat, or miss out entirely.
jimnotgym 7y ago

sysbin 7y ago

I eat one big meal per day, sometimes fasting once or two times a month and I definitely have a lower appetite with slim body aesthetics. I didn't crave food once my body adjusted to one daily meal for the timeframe of about a month passing. Realistically I don't do much activity and I assume a bodybuilder wouldn't be able to do one meal per day. I hypothesize the weight of a person, factors from "the mealtime" to the "time of sleep" and for storage of calories compared to used calories. Similar, I hypothesize the timeframe from meal to meal factors into the storage of calories compared to used calories. Furthermore, I hypothesize the individual metabolism of the person factors from the development years by the childhood to adulthood corresponding to the active lifestyle of the individual. Lastly, I hypothesize the individual metabolism of the person factors from the composition of the gut bacteria. (Fasting could help reset the gut bacteria to a healthy state)

tom_mellior 7y ago

As long-term large-scale observational data, consider that the "Mediterranean diet" is widely touted as especially healthy. People in Mediterranean countries tend to eat late dinners, like the control group in this study. No concrete conclusion here, just a general warning about believing in monocausal silver bullets, I guess.

noodle 7y ago

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't track calories, just intentionally reduced carb intake to below ~25g net per day and increased fat intake. Occasionally I have a cheat meal. Down 35lbs in ~2.5 months. Side effects: I feel like my energy levels are much more consistent throughout the day, but also very discernable. Which is to say, if I'm working out, I can really feel it when I run out of gas. Related, I can't lift as much weight as I could, but that is expected while I'm actively trying to lose weight. I feel like there's a bit more mental clarity, but that could be related to energy levels.

matnewton85 7y ago
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..

tcmb 7y ago

I like this example of explaining a scientific term to the lay people: "a respiratory chamber -- a room-like device --"

mabbo 7y ago

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.

tyingq 7y ago
Yeah for sanity. Sad I'm having to post this and vote.
alexpetralia 7y ago
I always appreciate how the HN crowd evaluates the quality of the evidence, not just the quality of the headline. Great filtering function.
- weeksie 7y ago
  There's usually one good post. The rest are almost always people sharing their diet stories. Or if the headline is about exercise, you get reams of stronglifts or 5x5 or whatever, nobody cares. It's what engineers tend to do when they're presented with a topic they don't have actual expertise in.
  - _raoulcousins 7y ago
    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.
    - zmmmmm 7y ago
      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 believe it because yesterday something similar happened to their aunt etc. It's something I've never quite figured out.

wetpaws 7y ago

I've been running on IF for at least a decade. Can only eat twice a day. If i try to have breakfast, I don't feel hungry for the rest of the day and have to skip lunch. People in comments mention plateau effect, but this is kind of the point - my weight is stable for years on easy mode and I only have to correct and tweak it slightly +/- a few pounds from time to time.

newnewpdro 7y ago

I'll often go 3-5 days where I only eat small quantities of fruits, vegetables, and nuts, operating in very much a calorie deficit. This has been a thing for years, and when I'm in this mode I don't really have much craving for food, it's kind of surprising to me. Energy levels are fine, I'm generally pretty physically active, it just seems normal and I enjoy the lightness. It's not a lack of appetite though, if I decide to pursue a large meal in this condition, my enthusiasm is high and I'll eat enough food to feed a family of four if I let it happen. But I've noticed if I instead eat more processed foods, especially refined carbohydrates, while trying to exist in this calorie deficit state similarly to my fruits/veggies/nuts mode, I'm miserable, irritable, and constantly craving more food. And it's not some mild craving, it's like craving an addictive drug. I hadn't considered if timing played any significant part in these experiences, what seems very obviously significant was the types of food.

ilaksh 7y ago

How am I going to prevent myself from eating after 2 or 3 PM?

EamonnMR 7y ago
The same way you adhere to any other diet plan-you excercise conscious control over your behavior. If you can't cross that hurdle, no diet will work. If you can cross that hurdle, though, you probably don't need a diet plan-calories are printed on most food packages.
deleted 7y ago
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mnm1 7y ago

What about 1 to 3 meals starting at 2pm to 5pm for 6 hours? I'd be interested to know how that compares. It seems without that data, it's not possible to conclude at all that eating earlier in the day is better than later.

yurishimo 7y ago

I’ll add one more anecdote to the mix here. Been doing intermittent fasting and extended fasting since February and I’m down 75 pounds in that time. I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed. Now I don’t snore at all. My wife sleeps better, I sleep better; win win! I haven’t exercised at all and I don’t count calories. My biggest diet changes have been cutting out soda entirely and I try to keep my carbs under 100g a day. Many days I’m under 50. It’s honestly been amazing and I’m glad that I did it now while I’m still young and will be able to physically play with my kids in the future. One of the other big wins has been physiological and my relationship with food and the feeling of hunger. Living in America, and especially here in the south, food is a religion. Stopping whatever is going on to eat is never looked down on. Snacks all the time, large comfort food meals, etc. While the community aspects around food are a good thing, our dependence on it as a society has crossed over into causing more harm than help. After starting to fast, I’ve learned that hunger is just another feeling, like being too hot or too cold. Sure, it can be uncomfortable, but it won’t kill you and we can tolerate it a lot longer than we think. Right now, I’m in the middle of a 7 day fast where I’m only drinking water. Every week I normally fast 48 hours twice a week and then one meal a day for the other 5 days in the week. My relationship with food has morphed and now I’m totally in control of my body. Skipping a meal is no problem and I have no ill side effects. I’ll wrap this up by saying that I still enjoy food, a lot! When I do eat for my one meal a day, I can easily eat a large salad and a burger and a side. My favorite pastime is going to the movies and eating a meal and a large bucket of popcorn with my wife. Some days though, I eat a “normal” portion and call it good. Sometimes I have dessert. The difference is now that I can manage my love of food in a sustainable way for my body. Happy to answer any questions. AMA.

betenoire 7y ago
> hunger is just another feeling Exactly! I've done intermittent fasting for many many years, it works for me. I've told people, "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".

mrmondo 7y ago

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 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.22518

traek 7y ago
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.
- mrmondo 7y ago
  Oh did I - whoops! That quote doesn’t give the sample size (number of people studied and in each group) though?
  - belltaco 7y ago
    I think it was a cross over study. Or everyone went control for 4 days and study protocol for next 4.
    - mrmondo 7y ago
      Hmm. Yeah just if it was like 30 (or even like 100) it’s not exactly overly valuable other than an initial indicator.

100inengyears 7y ago

We really have figured out health for the majority of people and even people on the fringes have enough options close enough to them to make it possible. If you dont live next to a grocery store this is a good thing. Because you get to exercise and get fresh food every day. If we could cure lack of discipline and laziness then we would be good. But we cant (challenge placed) and there will always be people that are looking for a trick rather than putting in the work to be healthy. When watching Game of Thrones is more important than your health (exercising) then health is not something you get to have. Its not a mystery. Articles like these suggest you can be healthy without being active. This is false (challenge placed).

sebringj 7y ago

I would recommend David Sinclair and Jason Fung in terms of resources for this to understand first why intermittent fasting is good for you but of course appropriately applied for the individual. If you start to understand the whys and stop listening to specific people's testimonials or crazy routines in some cases (from your perspective), you'll tailor it appropriately to your life if its something you want to do. Personally, I found it quite easy to incorporate and with great benefit.

jniedrauer 7y ago

One observation from personal experience with prolonged intermittent fasting: My metabolism slowed down quite a lot. After nearly 10 years of eating once per day, my resting metabolic rate was 3-400 calories lower than average. Whether that's a bad thing or not, I have no idea. My grocery bills were certainly low. And it saved a ton of time on meal prep. More recently, I became too physically active to maintain that diet and returned to eating 3-4x a day. My metabolism has steadily returned to baseline since then. It took about 6 months but it is now essentially back to normal.

deleted 7y ago

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tonymet 7y ago

I've lost 80 lbs from peak and kept it off for > 15 years without trying. Never gained more than 5 lbs since losing the weight. I've never dieted or restricted my diet. I eat when I have a desire to eat. I eat so called junk food and bad food (butter, olive oil, bacon, meat, fatty nuts, whole milk/half-half) daily. I generally avoid high sugar dishes and rarely drink soda but that's due to taste. In my experience the goal is to align your unconscious desire for food with your bodies daily need. Any attempt to control your hunger through conscious willpower will fail, because that approach reinforces the mind's belief that food is the reward. Instead, first you must get familiar with the feeling of true belly hunger. Most people don't know what this is. Usually you eat due to mind / heart hunger which is the "craving for pizza" or "i'm starving" feeling. You are eating because of habit, reflex or emotional need. Belly hunger is the cramping and headaches you get when you are truly at caloric deficit. Once in a while It helps to go running without calories to push yourself into hypoglycemic sensation. You will get dizzy and fatigued. Once you eat you will feel like you just did narcotics. Now that you know that feeling of belly hunger, you should have that feeling daily (if only mildly). Keep reducing your portions until you hit that feeling regularly. Avoid seconds or having snacks nearby. Eventually belly hunger becomes your signal to eat rather than mind hunger . And when you serve food you will serve portions that will satisfy the belly hunger and not your emotional needs. Once you are at this point you'll be on autopilot. The other side effect is that avoiding eating will become more rewarding since you will enjoy the belly-hunger feeling (since it's natural), and the bloated feeling will elicit disgust. When I was overweight, overeating brought intense relief and pleasure. Now the sensations are inverted and overeating makes me feel deeply disgusted (like eating a rotten apple). tl;dr Align your hunger reflex with your biological need for food by treating your body as a dog that needs to be trained to associate hunger with positive emotions and overindulgence with negative ones.

iamgopal 7y ago
This is the conclusion I also reached, I'm also eating whatever I want but not whenever I want, instead when there is a hunger. I'm just couple of months in, but still consistently loosing about kg in ten days easily.
- 7y ago

namuol 7y ago

> For the study, researchers enrolled 11 adult men and women who had excess weight. It's amazing how low our standard for news is when it comes to things like weight loss.

MRD85 7y ago
Depending on the size of the effect, 11 participants can be very valid in an experiment. For example, assume you have 11 participants having a hormone measured after an experiment. If normal readings are 300 with a SD of 30, and at the end of the experiment their mean is 520 with a SD of 40, then you've just shown a strong, significant effect.
- krick 7y ago
  Yeah, except it usually would be (in the best case scenario) more like "520 with a SD of 40" for 10 people and "1 outlier", which you wouldn't really be able to properly conceptualize let alone explain, since your "outlier" is freaking 10% of the group. That is, ignoring the fact that experiments without a control group can be hardly considered valid at all.

z3t4 7y ago

One strategy to balance food intake is to only eat when it taste good.

fouc 7y ago

Extended waterfasting is amazing folks. It's the simplest way to A) lose weight B) improve your metabolism C) increase your longevity D) help with various problems (like acne, hemorrhoids, etc). Warning: May not be safe for those with a BMI lower than 20. Fasting gives the chance for the body to engage in autophagy which is the breakdown of old or broken cells into their components and reused to repair the body. Fasting takes you to a state of ketosis, where your body switches to fat-burning for fuel. Note that it takes 2 weeks for the muscles to fully adapt to using fuel as the source, so athletic performance will decline for that period. Depending on how fat-adapted you are, it can take anywhere from 3 to 5 days to get past the point of hunger & cravings. It becomes much easier to maintain the fast after that. That means for most people, day 2 or day 3 are the hardest days in the transition. Warning: if you stop at the hard point of the fast after multiple attempts, it will get progressively harder to stick to it and get through (as that will train the body's hormone for cravings to peak at that time).

aembleton 7y ago
What is extended waterfasting? What do you do?
- fouc 7y ago
  Basically don't consume any food or calories at all, for more than 3 days. Mostly just drink water. Tea or coffee is allowed but no sugar or milk. And take the water with some electrolytes. Can be a bit of table salt, or get more complicated by adding other salts like magnesium, potassium, etc. For a fast longer than a week, it is also good to have bone broth which brings in some extra nutrients like phosphorous.
eridius 7y ago
Extended waterfasting is dangerous. If you're going to go more than 3 days on even a sub-1000Cal/day diet, please have medical supervision.
- beagle3 7y ago
  [citation needed]

pcurve 7y ago

" eTRF schedule where participants ate three meals over a six-hour period with breakfast at 8:00 a.m. and dinner at 2:00 p.m." No thanks. There's no way you're enjoying what you're eating if you're stuffing more food down your throat even before your stomach has a chance to digest.

jonnycomputer 7y ago

Just another anecdote, and I haven't done this for too long, but I've found that adopting the rule that I don't eat past 7pm has helped me sleep better, and maybe even lose a little weight. I found myself eating more earlier in the day so that I wouldn't be hungry later, but that didn't seem to change the benefits. The hardest bit is that it can be pretty hard to get an evening meal in before 7 (we do try to cook), and if its after, I pack the dinner for the next day's lunch and sit down with the fam to chat while they eat.

xvilka 7y ago

So the vegetarian keto diet with intermittent fasting is the ultimate solution. But a hard one. Still met a plateu after 6 months, even essentially living on salads.

deleted 7y ago
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donniefitz2 7y ago

Some of the best info on this can be found in the book, The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung. Also, here's a short video by him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk

nikkwong 7y ago

Interesting read! It's also worth noting that circadian rhythm based eating habits (i.e. timing meals in the morning, or at least the bulk of one's caloric intake earlier in the day), are important for more than just weight loss. They reduce levels of inflammation in the body, improve insulin response, improve glucose tolerance, the list goes on and on. Humans evolved to eat when they are at peak-awareness/wakefulness: in the morning/early-day. If one's trying to optimize for peak performance/health/longevity, they should in the AM rather than PM. Personally I only eat one meal a day, stopping all calorie consumption by 11am. I'm in the 2nd day of a 3 day fast; it's definitely an exercise in discipline, but so worth doing. Fasting's stress on the body invokes a "survival of the fittest" response on the cellular level; in which under performing cells are cleaned out. Some news out of USC has stated that a 72 hour fast leads to an "entire reset of your immune system" [0]. Pretty interesting stuff for health-conscientious folks. [0] https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regeneration-of-damaged-old-immune-system/ https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regene...

brandonmenc 7y ago

Since everyone is chiming in with anecdotal weight loss experiences via faddish diets, I'll chime in with mine following "conventional" diet wisdom. 40 years old, 170 lbs down to 135 lbs, slow and steady just by eating a conventionally healthy low fat diet and adhering to CICO. No wacky meal timings. No eating/avoiding an entire macronutrient to excess. Most calories came from whole grains, whey, and fish, and I made sure my belly was full most of the time with vegetables. I drank wine nearly every day, and popped a square of Dove chocolate for dessert most meals. I even ate fast food a couple times a month. Hunger pains and exhausting days in the gym? You bet. But it wasn't difficult, and I still got to eat my favorite foods - just less of them. CICO works. Studies like this are interesting, but almost certainly just tweaking the margins for most people.

naasking 7y ago
CICO works certainly, but the advantage of IF is that it makes adherence to CICO easier. You're effectively cutting ingestion opportunities to 1/3 of what they normally are. It's hard to eat 2/3 of your calories in ouch a short time frame.

cheesymuffin 7y ago

I really, really love fasting. It's when you starve yourself. Many people can't do it but I'm living proof that you can. It raises adrenaline and lowers cortisol so I feel just peppy through the day. And now because I went for a week without eating last month and described a mechanism, I have the honor of being a father figure to all of you in telling you that you, too, may starve, and one day achieve the health goals that I've achieved as of last month. I'm a Google engineer btw Edit: stop PMing me asking for pictures and blood test results. HUGE invasion of privacy

jokoon 7y ago

I've never understood the tradition of eating 3 meals a day. Sounds like it comes from religion. If you eat when you're hungry, you will naturally eat less. I always have a good breakfast, and thus start to feel hungry around 3pm or 4pm. I eat then, and usually I don't feel hungry until I go to bed, and I never eat late in the day, simply because digesting at night is a bad idea. Having lunch around noon is weird because I eat without being hungry.

arcturus17 7y ago
I’m assuming you work a desk job. Your energy and appetite fluctuations wouldn’t be the same if you had a physically strenuous job.

bharam 7y ago

Here's a weight loss tip I've used with some degree of success: exercise portion control by using smaller dinner plates at home and chew the food on the plate longer (like 30s). The rationale is that the sensation of feeling full takes about 20 minutes to kick in and so by practicing the above you end up eating less over time and as a result lose weight. There is also a possibility your body will make better use of the food this way as there are enzymes in your mouth that help with digestion.

Tharkun 7y ago

Skipping meals is a migraine trigger for me. This makes IF a lot less viable...

joantorres 7y ago

With intermitent fasting 16/8 and weight lifting 3x a week, you can get fit and look amazing in a just a couple if months. Just try it, it works!

astrostl 7y ago

"OMAD" (one meal a day) here. It's been 5 months. Most days, I eat lunch. And that's it, no real calorie consumption outside of that window. Not hungry, not tired, not cranky, not suffering, more free time, actually eating better (having one meal of pure crap in front of you is a clarifying moment), and losing weight at a moderate clip. YMMV, IANAD, etc.

Slimbo 7y ago

I've also had weight loss success with IF. I do 16/8 mostly with the occastional 24 hour fast. I get a lot of pushback that it's 'bro science', and a lot of claims around improving insulin resistance isn't proven, so it's good to get some science behind the practice that clearly works. The reason I have found it effective is that it's simple to follow. I don't need to count calories, I don't have to learn too much at all, I simply don't eat outside of my hours. Given I've now found I don't feel hungry most days until I start eating, it means I eat less. Now the net result may simply be less calories, that that's not as simple as 'calories in calories out', because I'm consuming less as a consequence of the timing, not by consciously eating less. This may be an odd distinction for people who can diet, but for those of us who struggle with weight, it's crucial to success.

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SUSANTREVINO20 7y ago

Mikho 7y ago

Here is very useful data as to food consumption patterns. Nowadays we ruin our body with unnatural eating cycles. Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good for health. From the evolutionary perspective--that invested in a human body 200K years--the way we eat today is broken. And our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Not to mention like adapting to changes in a food consumption we see in the last 50 years. A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. Viceversa--it was build to eat less. It needs to store energy and to use stored energy and only after that to store again. That's a natural cycle and functions that our body needs to execute. Nowadays we just store energy 24/7: "Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage." Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/ Here are also interesting patterns of daily and weekly food consumption from this research including the common eating pattern of food consumption upon which the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and associated chronic diseases has emerged. Image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/fig03/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/...