5 ms·

> Also something I was wondering, the repeated emphasis on short-term benefits has me wonder how the participants did after the trial. This right here is the f

> Also something I was wondering, the repeated emphasis on short-term benefits has me wonder how the participants did after the trial. This right here is the first and most important reason to be skeptical of any study on weight loss. None of these things ever turn out to do anything useful on a time horizon that matters. If you want to know how to lose weight for a few weeks you don't need a peer reviewed journal, just go get a "women's health" magazine and read about several ways that really do probably work to lose weight in that timespan. And then you gain it back.

wutbrodo 4y ago
> This right here is the first and most important reason to be skeptical of any study on weight loss. None of these things ever turn out to do anything useful on a time horizon that matters. It's (always) worth skimming the article, or at least the headline. From the subheadline: > *Given the same energy intake and expenditure*, intermittent fasting two days versus one day per week increases weight loss in overweight men and women This study isn't saying "2 day IF is a miracle weight-loss cure and you should just do it bada bing bada boom weight loss solved". It's holding everything constant except the number of fasting days, and finding that it's (quite dramatically) more effective in the short-term. This is a data point, not a weight-loss plan. It doesn't call for "skepticism", just careful reading and limited application (or for a start, reading the article/headline at all). Nutrition is intensely complicated and devilishly difficult to study. But for scientifically-literate people who take it seriously, data points like this shed light on limited portions of the "solution space". This is crucial to mapping out the space enough to understand how to improve your own diet; it's not amenable to an impatient approach that expects every study to be a magic bullet. Even ignoring the signal that this provides, the absolute minimum value of this study is that somebody who's already doing a time-limited IF-1 diet can switch to a time-limited IF-2 diet. That's valuable in and of itself. > If you want to know how to lose weight for a few weeks you don't need a peer reviewed journal, just go get a "women's health" magazine and read about several ways that really do probably work to lose weight in that timespan. With the same improvement in hunger levels, hormone profile, and cardiometabolic health (all mentioned in the for both the control and treatment)? I highly doubt it. Even assuming that IF isn't sustainable[1], people do have short-term weight loss goals sometimes, and IF provides a path to do so that keeps metabolic and hormonal health in mind relative to traditional crash dieting. [1] I've been doing it for....five years now? Not only did I lose a reasonable amount of weight early on, it's been helpful for maintaining during a life phase of suddenly-expanding waistlines among my peers. Plus it's trivial to dial it up slightly when I do feel the need to tighten up a little.
- criddell 4y ago
  If you don't mind sharing, what does your routine look like?
RobertRoberts 4y ago
> None of these things ever turn out to do anything useful on a time horizon that matters. I found IF gave me a tool to help me control my appetite for the rest of my life. Self control is best method for maintaining weight, as it's free and guaranteed to work if used.
- claytongulick 4y ago
  I agree, I'm going on 50 and working hard on a beach body. Traditional wisdom says that's nearly impossible at my age without "supplements" like "vitamin T". I've found that IF is the real key for me. I do one meal per day, and I can see all my nutrients laid out in front of me. Aside from the other purported benefits of IF, this level of control I think is the main benefit to me. I think that a lot of people don't realize how disconnected the feeling of hunger is from your actual (very minimal) caloric requirements. Hunger is mostly a trained response, a production of ghrelin that's mostly a pavlovian response coupled with incredibly complex gut and psychological factors. The hunger response can be trained away in about a week. I generally don't start getting hungry until around 6pm, when I've trained my body that it's dinner time. Snacking, IMHO, is the single biggest weight loss killer.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    "I think that a lot of people don't realize how disconnected the feeling of hunger is from your actual (very minimal) caloric requirements." True, this is my observation as well. "The hunger response can be trained away in about a week." Unfortunately, it is quite easy to fall off the bandwagon in irregular conditions (holidays, vacations, a visit to an elderly relative who insists on feeding you). The adaptation to IF is, in my case, lost just after a day or two of non-IFing. And once it is gone, I have to undergo the week-long self-training again.
    - RobertRoberts 4y ago
      > Hunger is mostly a trained response, I agree as well. > ...it is quite easy to fall off the bandwagon in irregular conditions YES. So, this is where being _committed_ makes the difference. I have many rules that help me with this one is "feeling hunger is normal" and "being uncomfortable getting back on track is normal". (this rule is less refined, but key to overcoming falling off the wagon) And "admit when you fail, and try again", very key to dealing with getting started, or restarted on a good thing in life. The self-training you mention was what I signed on for at the beginning, knowing full well this is normal, so it's not so bad when I have to do it. Likely others have similar experiences.
nonameiguess 4y ago
Aside from what others have pointed out that it's perfectly okay for a scientific study to have limited scope and not try to solve the entire problem of how to lose weight and keep it off, which inherently requires following and monitoring people for a very long time, even the case you're describing here isn't necessarily all bad. Given a person undergoes an intervention, succeeds in losing 40 pounds, then gains it all back over the next five years, that sounds like failure in a vacuum, but that means they spent five years not gaining more weight. If the non-intervention counterfactual is they would have ended up 40 pounds even heavier, then intervention is still a win. Yo-yo dieting with lifetime net zero progress is still better than steadily getting fatter for the rest of your life.
- stormbrew 4y ago
  Yo-yo dieting can potentially create its own health risks.

wutbrodo 4y ago

> This right here is the first and most important reason to be skeptical of any study on weight loss. None of these things ever turn out to do anything useful on a time horizon that matters. It's (always) worth skimming the article, or at least the headline. From the subheadline: > *Given the same energy intake and expenditure*, intermittent fasting two days versus one day per week increases weight loss in overweight men and women This study isn't saying "2 day IF is a miracle weight-loss cure and you should just do it bada bing bada boom weight loss solved". It's holding everything constant except the number of fasting days, and finding that it's (quite dramatically) more effective in the short-term. This is a data point, not a weight-loss plan. It doesn't call for "skepticism", just careful reading and limited application (or for a start, reading the article/headline at all). Nutrition is intensely complicated and devilishly difficult to study. But for scientifically-literate people who take it seriously, data points like this shed light on limited portions of the "solution space". This is crucial to mapping out the space enough to understand how to improve your own diet; it's not amenable to an impatient approach that expects every study to be a magic bullet. Even ignoring the signal that this provides, the absolute minimum value of this study is that somebody who's already doing a time-limited IF-1 diet can switch to a time-limited IF-2 diet. That's valuable in and of itself. > If you want to know how to lose weight for a few weeks you don't need a peer reviewed journal, just go get a "women's health" magazine and read about several ways that really do probably work to lose weight in that timespan. With the same improvement in hunger levels, hormone profile, and cardiometabolic health (all mentioned in the for both the control and treatment)? I highly doubt it. Even assuming that IF isn't sustainable[1], people do have short-term weight loss goals sometimes, and IF provides a path to do so that keeps metabolic and hormonal health in mind relative to traditional crash dieting. [1] I've been doing it for....five years now? Not only did I lose a reasonable amount of weight early on, it's been helpful for maintaining during a life phase of suddenly-expanding waistlines among my peers. Plus it's trivial to dial it up slightly when I do feel the need to tighten up a little.

criddell 4y ago
If you don't mind sharing, what does your routine look like?

RobertRoberts 4y ago

> None of these things ever turn out to do anything useful on a time horizon that matters. I found IF gave me a tool to help me control my appetite for the rest of my life. Self control is best method for maintaining weight, as it's free and guaranteed to work if used.

claytongulick 4y ago
I agree, I'm going on 50 and working hard on a beach body. Traditional wisdom says that's nearly impossible at my age without "supplements" like "vitamin T". I've found that IF is the real key for me. I do one meal per day, and I can see all my nutrients laid out in front of me. Aside from the other purported benefits of IF, this level of control I think is the main benefit to me. I think that a lot of people don't realize how disconnected the feeling of hunger is from your actual (very minimal) caloric requirements. Hunger is mostly a trained response, a production of ghrelin that's mostly a pavlovian response coupled with incredibly complex gut and psychological factors. The hunger response can be trained away in about a week. I generally don't start getting hungry until around 6pm, when I've trained my body that it's dinner time. Snacking, IMHO, is the single biggest weight loss killer.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  "I think that a lot of people don't realize how disconnected the feeling of hunger is from your actual (very minimal) caloric requirements." True, this is my observation as well. "The hunger response can be trained away in about a week." Unfortunately, it is quite easy to fall off the bandwagon in irregular conditions (holidays, vacations, a visit to an elderly relative who insists on feeding you). The adaptation to IF is, in my case, lost just after a day or two of non-IFing. And once it is gone, I have to undergo the week-long self-training again.
  - RobertRoberts 4y ago
    > Hunger is mostly a trained response, I agree as well. > ...it is quite easy to fall off the bandwagon in irregular conditions YES. So, this is where being _committed_ makes the difference. I have many rules that help me with this one is "feeling hunger is normal" and "being uncomfortable getting back on track is normal". (this rule is less refined, but key to overcoming falling off the wagon) And "admit when you fail, and try again", very key to dealing with getting started, or restarted on a good thing in life. The self-training you mention was what I signed on for at the beginning, knowing full well this is normal, so it's not so bad when I have to do it. Likely others have similar experiences.

nonameiguess 4y ago

Aside from what others have pointed out that it's perfectly okay for a scientific study to have limited scope and not try to solve the entire problem of how to lose weight and keep it off, which inherently requires following and monitoring people for a very long time, even the case you're describing here isn't necessarily all bad. Given a person undergoes an intervention, succeeds in losing 40 pounds, then gains it all back over the next five years, that sounds like failure in a vacuum, but that means they spent five years not gaining more weight. If the non-intervention counterfactual is they would have ended up 40 pounds even heavier, then intervention is still a win. Yo-yo dieting with lifetime net zero progress is still better than steadily getting fatter for the rest of your life.

stormbrew 4y ago
Yo-yo dieting can potentially create its own health risks.