4 ms·
The hype around intermittent fasting is nothing more than the novice effect & the diminishing returns kick in pretty fast.
by 5cott0 7y ago
The hype around intermittent fasting is nothing more than the novice effect & the diminishing returns kick in pretty fast.
- nmfisher 7y agoAs someone who still practises IF, I have been wondering if many of the immediate benefits (weight loss, low cholesterol, reduced inflammation markers, etc) are mostly apparent in sedentary, obese people. IF might work brilliantly for them because it's a psychologically "easy" shortcut to fixing a terrible diet. For those of us who are already lean + good diet + high activity levels, I'm not convinced that IF really brings much to the table. I'm still doing 16:8, but only because I was eating breakfast in the morning out of habit, rather than hunger. When I lose weight, I actually switch back to a regular (5/day) meal plan and reincorporate breakfast. That's the best way I've found to lose fat while maintaining muscle and energy levels. My biggest problem with losing weight on IF is that I have a tendency to binge during the eating window. Eating something small every 3 hours is the easiest way I've found to keep this urge in check.
- qqqwerty 7y agoI think the anti-inflammatory benefits are very real. Digestion is a taxing process, especially so with our modern western diets that are high in protein, sugar, and fat. There are anti-inflammatory diets that might work with similar results, but I imagine fasting is a much more fool-proof way to get the benefits. The other benefits are more dependent on the individual. Like you, I tend to binge. But I also weigh myself every morning. If my weight is drifting up I find that it is easier to cutback on calories when I am only interacting with food for a limited time during the day. So yeah, it is a bit of a hack, but I think calling it a psychological shortcut sells it short. A typical modern western meal can easily be more than 1000 calories. And in a time when most folks work sedentary jobs, there is really no reason they should be eating 3 square meals a day plus snacks. From a diet perspective, intermittent fasting is basically just getting people to skip one of those meals a day. Maybe a good alternate name would be the '2 square meals diet'.
- collyw 7y agoWhen I do IF it lowers my blood pressure (the only thing I can easily measure). I am pretty healthy, I cycle reasonably hard for 20 minutes twice a day (to work and back) and often more. I eat fairly well and am not overweight. Without IF my blood pressure hovers around the borderline for hypertension (my family has a history). With IF it drops to healthy levels.