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“More effective” in what capacity? Adherence. > The mean (SD) reduction in energy intake was -313 (509) kcal/d for TRE, -197 (426) kcal/d for CR, and -16 (439)

• francisofascii 3y ago
  > more effective for weight reduction and glycemic control...in adults with Type 2 diabetes
• readthenotes1 3y ago
  There was an article, maybe a year ago, that reported that Tre and three meals a day with the same calories had the same effect. Of course the problem is, I have a hard time just eating three meals a day and not snacking in between.
• jareklupinski 3y ago
  there's a bit of psychology at play too I bet if you have a 'daily budget' of 1500 calories, personally I would much rather skip breakfast and have a burger and fries for dinner than 3 'slim meals' throughout the day (i'd probably stick to that more readily too)
  • jitl 3y ago
    Adherence is all about psychology! Although what works for one person might not work for another as well; if time restricted eating or calorie counting doesn’t work for you, try a different strategy. My target right now is 1600 kcal & 150g protein, and my usual meal plan is a 300kcal protein frappe coffee thing in the morning, a lunch around 450kcal like gumbo, a 550kcal dinner like apricot glazed salmon w/ couscous, and then ~300kcal of Ben & Jerrie’s ice cream for dessert. For me adherence is super easy because those are all foods I love to eat, I’m full all day so I never want to snack, and I’m actually eating more dessert than before this diet because I don’t feel guilty about it anymore (yay decadence). My girlfriend tried the same plan, but something about just knowing about the budget makes her feel totally trapped and she ends up binge eating snacks almost out of “revenge” after a few days. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • olyjohn 3y ago
    I skipped breakfast for years because I was too lazy to make it. Then I ate fast food and pizza all the time and I still got fat. You're not gonna lose weight just skipping a meal.
  • nradov 3y ago
    While dietary adherence might be easier with that eating schedule, it isn't optimal from a protein metabolism standpoint. With any calorie restricted diet you risk losing lean muscle along with fat so you need to get enough protein to mitigate that (along with certain types of exercise and other factors). And that protein should to be split across at least two separate meals in order for your digestive system to process it effectively. https://peterattiamd.com/donlayman/ https://peterattiamd.com/donlayman/
• didibus 3y ago
  I've been doing intermittent fasting for years now, and I've not continued to lose weight past a small initial drop. Only way I can lose weight is if I also start restricting calories.
  • stronglikedan 3y ago
    Everyone's different. I did IF for 6 months and lost to the point of being gaunt, so I had to stop. It seems to have changed my metabolism for the better, because now I can eat what I want (mostly pizza and ice cream) without gaining weight. Of course, I don't overeat, or I would gain weight.
  • pc86 3y ago
    Intermittent fasting doesn't suddenly change the laws of thermodynamics. Of course if you still eat 2,500 calories a day you will likely gain weight unless you already have a lot of muscle (but if you do, you likely know what you're doing enough that you're not reading this article actually hoping to learn anything). The point is that IF makes it easier to reduce calories, in part psychologically but also in part because it's just a lot harder to eat 3,000 calories in 4 hours than it is to eat 3,000 calories in 12 hours.
    • aidenn0 3y ago
      Oh, how I wish I could restrict my eating to 2,500 calories a day; I have a pretty high metabolism, but I manage to out-eat it.
      • pc86 3y ago
        > how I wish I could restrict my eating to 2,500 calories a day You can.
  • paulpauper 3y ago
    Yeah this is what people often forget. In the end it comes down to calories in vs. out. Unless IF revs up metabolism in some way, which the evidence suggests it does not. No free lunch, sorry.
• bgroat 3y ago
  I think for a lot of people (me included), the primary advantage is in ease of measurement. It's hard to count calories accurately. It's very easy to look at the clock and determine if it's between 1300-1900 hours
  • rip_netrunner 3y ago
    That's Time Restricted Feeding, which is not quite the same as intermittent fasting. An example would be doing a 36 hour fast, twice per week.
    • scetron 3y ago
      And the actual title of the study is 'Effect of Time-Restricted Eating on Weight Loss' which describes a concept that is basically the colloquial definition of intermittent fasting. The popular term 'intermittent fasting' usually describes time restricted eating, with a fasting period usually between 16-20 hours.
      • tshaddox 3y ago
        That study needs to update its terminology. They call it “feeding” on the podcast circuit now, not “eating.”
    • mym1990 3y ago
      Intermittent fasting has no strict minimum that you have to fast, it can be 10-12 hours and still be intermittent fasting.
      • pengaru 3y ago
        By that definition everyone who sleeps engages in intermittent fasting.
        • Ateoto 3y ago
          Hence breakfast
• herdcall 3y ago
  I don't believe it's as simple as what's the net -ve because with TRE the BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) does not reduce like with calorie restricted eating, so the net -ve is higher with TRE even when the calorie intake is the same. Also, reducing the BMR has other negative effects because the body does away with key repairing processes to live with the reduced availability of energy.
  • OrionSeven 3y ago
    Do you have a source that shows BMR does not reduce with TRE?
    • stevenwoo 3y ago
      Multiple hacker news stories have been published about Herman Ponzter and double water studies. https://researchblog.duke.edu/2021/03/24/duke-researcher-busts-metabolism-myths-in-new-book/ https://researchblog.duke.edu/2021/03/24/duke-researcher-bus...
      • pc86 3y ago
        This is the first I've ever heard someone talk about "publishing" a "hacker news story."
        • stevenwoo 3y ago
          I think my brain was searching for "posted" but I was about to step away from my computer and "published" was the only word that came to me then.
  • jitl 3y ago
    I think at reasonable sustainable fitness planning & weight change goals the BMR changes aren’t a significant factor. My target is to lose about 0.9% body weight per week. I did some napkin math numbers before starting my plan and decided not to worry about it much, and in my case seem to be fine. I went from somewhere around 2400kcal daily to 1600kcal daily while eating 3 meals and lifting for 30min a day and my estimated resting energy expenditure per day by Withings & Apple Health is down about 60kcal over ~4 months. They’re not super accurate sources, but at current rates I’ll hit my target minimum weight before my estimated resting expenditure has dropped -100kcal.
• gspencley 3y ago
  I've done both. I can attest that intermittent fasting, at least for me, is WAY more sustainable ... and actually makes maintaining a calorie deficit easier too. Hunger is a weird thing. People tend to assume that if you don't eat you'll just get hungrier and hungrier. The reality is that hunger comes in waves. If you can ride out a wave of hunger for 30 - 45 minutes it goes away. And the longer you don't eat, the less hungrier you get. I think this is because those waves of hunger tend to correspond to your eating habits. So if you're accustomed to eating lunch, you feel hungry around lunch time etc. After a period of adaptation, when this just becomes the new normal, you can find that when it comes time to eat you just don't want to eat all that much either. It's weird, but cool, and seems to work well for a lot of people. Then there is metabolic adaptation, which is thought to be the biggest contributor to people re-gaining any weight that they've lost. What happens is that after dropping around 10% of your body mass, your body kicks in a survival mechanism whereby it lowers your resting metabolic rate to adapt and try to slow the weight loss. This means that two people who weigh the exact same, one of which just dropped a bunch of weight to get there, will require different caloric intakes just to maintain their weight. The person who just cut weight will need 300 - 400 fewer calories per day than the person who didn't. If you cut weight just by caloric restriction alone, this is DISASTROUS, because you are hungry and weak and miserable ... and you need to eat even less just to keep the weight off. Which is why crash diets don't work. You start by making sacrifices, which is uncomfortable, and then when metabolic adaptation kicks in you stop seeing results unless you make even more sacrifices. People can't stick with it so they stop dieting and very quickly and easily regain the weight. Intermittent fasting not only helps with hunger control, but there is research that suggests that it can also increase resting metabolic rate, which can help to counteract metabolic adaptation. But even if it didn't boost RMR, the fact that it helps with hunger control and maintaining a calorie deficit alone would make it more sustainable for more people than just trying to eat less in general.
  • tashoecraft 3y ago
    It's very interesting once you experiment with it. I had a much easier time fasting between 8pm -> 5pm, then from 8pm to noon.
    • 3y ago
• traviswingo 3y ago
  I’ve been IF for a while now, and it’s the easiest approach to “putting down the fork.” Rather than continuing on a standard eating schedule, simply skipping a meal or going longer between eating actually creates a new habit rather than trying to modify a bad one. I’m actually capable of going an entire day without eating now and I’m not craving anything. A lot of days I’ll only have one meal, sometimes two. It’s done wonders for my health. I’ve lost a little under a point per week (wouldn’t recommend more than this), my blood pressure is down, I no longer get heartburn after eating anything, and I feel lighter and healthier. There are also tons of studies indicating that going longer between meals is healthier, and had anti aging effects on a cellular level. Seems to be an all around winner to me.
• rtkwe 3y ago
  I see this kind of 'well actually' style response a lot when calorie counting vs intermittent fasting gets brought up. Yes they're both forms of calorie restriction in general but the mechanism and the ease of adherence is pretty difference so important to study especially given the results that IF seems to be significantly more effective because it's easier to execute.
  • jitl 3y ago
    After causally seeing popular weight loss advice in US media over the years offering all variety of silver bullets (One Weird Trick etc), I was flabbergasted and betrayed to learn how simple the math of weight loss is once I finally looked into it 4 months ago. Very roughly, there’s 3500kcal in 1lb of body. Given that fact plus your current weight and calorie intake, you can build a spreadsheet in 30 mins to compute the calories per day to make your body any weight you want in a reasonable time frame (losing >1% a week is generally viewed as unhealthy and risky). Of course adhering to the plan is the challenging part - and then it’s helpful to consider strategies like TRE, once you understand the metric target part. I wrote the comment as a reaction to the editorialized headline suggesting to some degree that TRE is a silver bullet / One Weird Trick. Maybe it is effectively that for many people - but in case there’s a casual reader scrolling past I want to give them a bit more of the ground truth that’s somehow not popular knowledge.
    • PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      > Very roughly, there’s 3500kcal in 1lb of body. Given that fact plus your current weight and calorie intake, you can build a spreadsheet in 30 mins to compute the calories per day to make your body any weight you want in a reasonable time frame emphasis on the very roughly ... a significant part of body mass is tissue you do not want to lose: bone, brain, organs
      • anthonypasq 3y ago
        1lb of fat is ~3500 calories and that is simply 9 calories per gram of fat X 453 grams in a pound. its actually closer to 4000 but people just use 3500 because that means you would need a 500 calorie deficit per day to lose a pound a week.
• j45 3y ago
  The only challenge of intermittent fasting for the masses if anyone happens to need to take medication in the morning that requires some food. Moving the eating window isn't always ideal.
  • bluescrn 3y ago
    The 'only challenge'? The problem with most diet/fitness advice is that it comes from fit+healthy people who've never had serious weight/health problems, and for whom it's all easy.
    • aidenn0 3y ago
      For an example that isn't from such people, there is always The Hacker's Diet[1]. I'm not nearly type-A enough for it to work with me, but at least it's from someone who struggled with weight. 1: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/
    • j45 3y ago
      Only was wrong. ‘A major’ Appreciate you stepping out to engage in this. I’m going to answer this in support of the perspective you’re speaking from. There is advice available from people who haven’t always been healthy and fit, but are now. Should someone seeking diet/fitness advice take it from someone who hasn’t become and remained reasonably fit or diet? One thing for me I strive towards is remembering building discipline is one of the key if not the master habit that unlocks so many other ones. For me a responsible mindset empowers, and a victim or blame mindset disempowers and I try not to forget it. Longevity whether I like it or not is based on two things, a bit (not a lot) of regular exercise where uninterrupted walking over 60-90 minutes is amazing, and reducing the amount of processed food and step by step making sure the diet is one that best suits each individuals body. Reducing a harmful activity is a great start instead of making big leaps. I have folks with weight and health problems in my life. It’s easier sometimes to think it’s easy for people who have it done, but not know their story Starting and keeping going 1% better every day is the way and something everyone can learn to do relative to themselves as long as they don’t compare, and don’t stop. Intermittent fasting (starting with a smaller window and increasing it by 5 minutes every day than normal can be very helpful).
• oooyay 3y ago
  I've (unintentionally) done intermittent fasting for most of my adult life. Frankly, it's just mindless. I don't have to think about it that hard. When I did keto or calorie counting years prior it was basically not only part of my day but part of my life.
• tempsy 3y ago
  The main benefit of fasting generally is autophagy (forcing your body to eat dead/old/mutated cells) and increased HGH secretion. Given that cancers are literally mutated cells, forcing your body to do an occasional cell cleanup seems potentially like a good idea.
  • ac29 3y ago
    I looked briefly into this and it seems that while there is evidence that intermittent fasting may be useful in preventing cancer and may be useful as an adjunct cancer treatment (in addition to chemotherapy and/or other treatments), the effect is largely from weight loss, not other mechanisms. Review article here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9530862/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9530862/ From the conclusion: "There is presently little evidence that intermittent fasting, without any reduction in body weight and proper balanced diet and exercise, can enhance cancer outcomes." So, while the details in this review are interesting, the conclusions seem to come down to basic health advice: maintain a healthy weight, eat a healthy diet, and get exercise. Seems like good advice for pretty much everyone.
    • tempsy 3y ago
      intermittent fasting isn't long enough to trigger autophagy autophagy takes at least a few days. wouldn't really considered IF to even really be "fasting" at all. it's just a fancy term for skipping breakfast.
• mx20 3y ago
  The problem with your thinking is that you assume that your eating habits don't effect your energy consumption. But that is wrong, if your Blood Sugar is to high your Body can't access Fat and needs to Burn other sources that are scarce and it prefers to make you tired and cold to reduce energy consumption. That doesn't happen if your Blood Sugar is very low and you can easily access your Fat reserves. Eating spikes your Blood Glucose, that's why intermittend fasting works so great.