As other people are mentioning, I think the key factor for weight loss in any of these diets (intermittent fasting, keto, etc) is just making it more difficult to consume calories, which leads to a caloric deficit.
I have a somewhat odd diet, where I naturally prefer to eat a single large (~2000 kcal) meal each day, and don't really eat outside that. I've been maintaining pretty much the exact same weight to within 5lb for years like this, despite it effectively being an extreme ~30-minute time-restricted-eating window.
I've been within +/- 5 lbs for the last 20 years, zero intent or effort. I think some people just have better/worse mental connections to their stomachs. Even though it's wired in (vegas nerve) [1], many people don't seem to be aware that communication is possible. And, people don't realize how smart your stomach is: there's as many neurons in your stomach as a cat brain [2]. Our whole evolution was primarily about appeasing our stomachs, so it makes sense.
I personally listen very closely to my stomach. It's a visceral, literal, two way communication.
I eat when I'm hungry. When I eat, I feel how many calories I need, and I "listen" for how many calories I've consumed. I know when I'm done. My tastebuds say so, and my stomach says so.
I follow my cravings for veggies, protein, etc, and usually literally let my stomach decide what I should eat. I think about different foods, and get a that visceral positive/negative feeling (although it's more than that) from my stomach, and choose based on that. There are many foods that I like the taste of, but my stomach says no.
If I know I have an eventful/physical day planned, I will think of it and my stomach, and get hungrier (in the "feeling" and physical sense) the day/morning before, unsatisfied with normal proportions, and eat extra.
Whenever I've had bloodwork done, all my levels were within 1 quantization of "average"/nominal, so it's treating me well.
You can communicate with your stomach, and it can communicate with you.
I've been doing this since Jan 1, sometimes called OMAD for One Meal A Day. I had already been skipping breakfast, so lunch is now a cup of tea or diet soda.
Maybe it's just the excitement of a new diet plan, but it's helped me lose 25 pounds so far this year, on track for 35 total before I re-evaluate. I just don't seem to have the willpower to only snack in moderation, but limiting myself to an hour a day is working. I can still have that dessert I'm looking forward to, it just has a specific timeframe now. Do I feel hungry sometimes? Yes, but I need some practice being hungry after years of stuffing my face whenever I felt like it.
It's the most effective way I've found to lose weight. I don't think it's doing anything magical to my metabolism. Like you say, it's just a convenient and easy-to-maintain way of eating less. I just know that I don't eat anything in a day until after I get home from work, and I don't even have to think about it.
So would you agree that the main reason for your weight loss on OMAD is caloric restriction from not being allowed to eat when you're sometimes hungry, when you probably would have eaten extra at those times before OMAD?
Yeah, I've been attempting OMAD as well and one thing that never occurred to me is how slowly you get through the groceries. And I never seem to get back to those leftovers :)
> Yes, but I need some practice
> being hungry after years of stuffing
> my face whenever I felt like it.
Why do you need such practice?
I'd honestly rather suffer an hour doing unpleasant cardio to burn off carbs than spending all day feeling miserable and shaky from hunger. Particularly on jobs or tasks where mental focus is essential.
I've found the hunger only lasts 10 minutes or so at times you body thinks are meal times, and actually, having a metal task you can throw yourself into really helps.
I've never experienced shakes, and its not misery per se, but you are constantly reminded you are overweight. :)
Do you mind if I ask what time of day you have your meal? I have the same eating pattern but can't always keep the same daily pattern due to 12 hr work schedules.
I just eat when I get hungry and have the time. No effort to keep the same daily schedule. On most days I'll end up eating 4-6 hours after I wake up, but if I'm busy I have no problem toughing out a few hours of light hunger and eating closer to 10 hours into the day.
A 12 hour work schedule seems pretty difficult to square with this kind of eating habit, and I'd probably just switch to eating smaller amounts whenever I get the chance if I were in that situation. Do you find it particularly uncomfortable to eat multiple meals a day?
The title in HN ("(Any) 8-hour time-restricted-eating window effective for weight loss") is heavily editorialized from that of the NIH blurb ("Timeframe of 8-hour restricted eating irrelevant to weight loss"), but actually better reflects the findings of the actual paper ([1], unfortunately paywalled). They found that people who fasted for 16 straight hours a day lost (a little bit) more weight over 12 weeks than those who followed a Mediterranean diet. However, the weight loss didn't represent a loss of visceral fat (around the abdominal organs, fat which is more likely to be associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease) and so the essential finding was that the time-restricted fasting made no difference.
Fat distribution, including subcutaneous vs visceral, has very clear racial/ethnic genetic associations, not to mention sex. East Asian and especially South Asian groups skew much more toward visceral fat, while European and especially African groups toward subcutaneous fat. Beyond calories in/calories out, generalized advice in this context might not be as helpful on an individual basis as with other health matters. In the context of diet & weight things are already complicated, but at least in this area we know why and can more easily predict how one person's body is likely to respond vs another. (Though, it might just come down to some ethnic groups having to put in alot more effort--e.g. much greater reduction in overall weight--than others for the same reduction in visceral fat.)
Visceral fat has long-term memory, and also come as the last in the line. So the diet mentioned in the study may not have started the visceral fat reduction at all…
And I forgot, you have to exercise, HIIT, calories deficit is not enough.
Forget about Ozempic and other drugs, they are good for people with diabetes. And you have to use them for the rest of life, otherwise there is yoyo effect.
> However, the weight loss didn't represent a loss of visceral fat (around the abdominal organs, fat which is more likely to be associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease) and so the essential finding was that the time-restricted fasting made no difference.
You're making a bit of a leap with "made no difference."
It's well-known that the body "holds on to" visceral fat in many cases, i.e. in order to reduce visceral fat, we first have to lose all the other excess fat. Which the TRE diet achieved: 5-7 pounds in 12 weeks is no small feat!
> You're making a bit of a leap with "made no difference."
I was paraphrasing the results of the study, which was designed specifically to see if fasting would reduce visceral fat as compared to a non-fasting regimen. If you read the abstract I cited, you'll see that there's not even any mention of overall body weight in the abstract -- that finding is buried in a figure of the paper, and mentioned basically in passing.
As for losing losing visceral fat versus other fat, that's partially true, but reality is a little bit more complex than that. Two people with the same 20% body fat can have radically different proportions of visceral and subcutaneous (under the skin) fat, and it's the person with more visceral fat who is at risk. This is why you have studies like this designed to find ways to target visceral fat.
those read the same to me, to be fair; although the important bit is "fasting for 16 consecutive hours", perhaps that gets to the point more effectively.
I've read that intermittent fasting has more "holistic" value than just losing a little bit more weight, specifically on blood sugar or insulin levels, as well as fat storage.
weight loss for health reasons should probably be coordinated with an expert who can look at your contemporary and historical blood tests. To be safest.
It's a bit to do with a change in diet and lifestyle to accompany the eating window but there is definitely something else at play as well.
The human body is an amazing machine and it has all sorts of abilities that we are unaware of. When you starve, your body starts shutting down non essential things first, starts pulling nutrients from everywhere it and limiting activity. Starvation has both a physical and mental element to it - both during the process and following it.
Intermittent fasting has been demonstrated to start a regenerative process in the body. It triggers cellular autophagy, which is kind of like running a cellular defrag.
There have been a lot of studies lately that look into the regenerative aspects of deep sleep following a serious injury - I sus that's the same system behind both things.
In response to the stress of not eating as usual, the body reacts. The mind does too. It sucks while you are starting it but it's nice to be able to know that you can skip of day of eating and be fine. After eating a big dinner and a good night's sleep you should have more energy and feel better for no real reason. I sus this has to do with how we ate while we were evolving - life was just a cycle of involuntarily intermittent fasting.
Unless you do strenuous activity all day - food is energy, you will be wore out of you do too much. The food you first eat after matters too!
Don't make a donut or highly processed/sweetened food the first nutrients after fasting - you'll feel like you ran a marathon. Simple carbs and protein - rice and black beans or oatmeal with seeds is typically what I do.
Everyone is different tho - whatever works for you! All the best of luck, sorry this is apparently my rant for the day - better topic than normal
I've been following Jason Fung and "intermittent fasting" for six or seven years.
I notice that the specific wording "time-restricted eating" has gained popularity in the past couple of years, possibly because "time-restricted" is less of a red flag to the public than "fasting," which may bring up some emotional baggage.
The reason for renaming is just speculation on my part - what's clear is that the eating protocol is the same, only the wording is different.
when i hear "intermittent fasting" i think once or twice a week. Also it's not a silver bullet, but it does "shrink the stomach" a bit if you are mindful of the volume of food you consume to break the fast. better to, as your sibling said, break with a light meal with all the macronutrients and a decent chunk of micronutrients and vitamins than a lumberjack's breakfast. Or if you break in the evenings, the buffet is probably not ideal.
Maybe when people realize they don't need as much food as they thought - especially grasses (sugar, wheat, corn, specifically), they can "change their relationship with food."
or just ozempic i guess, what do i know.
hey i wanted to ninja and let you know i have no problem with what you or sibling said, at all. I'm just speaking to the topic, not trying to argue. I realize a skim makes it seem like i was disagreeing!
The concept of 'eating windows' or timed eating has been studied and tested forever. the difference, if any, is basically nothing. It comes down to eating less. This is why GLP-1 drugs work so well when nothing else does at preventing people from putting as much food in their mouths.
People often confuse the mechanism (calorie deficit) with the behavioral adaptation causing the mechanism.
This leads to great confusion among those not educated in nutrition. Time restricted eating as you say, is not effective if you equate calories to non time restricted eating, however it causes many to eat less over time - assuming they adhere to it and arent prone to binging.
Its pretty simple to explain, if you can limp through your day without food, you arent likely to crush down more than say 2500 calories of food in a small evening window as your stomach is full.
But yes it doesnt change thermodynamics and isnt the magic that bloggers/youtubers and shills espouse, rather it is a tool (among many) available for people to reduce caloric intake.
It is important to understand that time restricted eating is behavioral adaptation to reduce caloric consumption. A calorie deficit is what drives weight loss.
Here is a list of similar things that also "work". It is key to understand that "working"- meaning weight loss is the result of a deficit of energy requiring the body to use stored fuel (fat) as energy over time:
-higher protein is more satiating
-higher fiber is more satiating
-keto diets are for most people pretty satiating so they reduce caloric intake
-GLP1s like Ozempic and Mounjaro lead you to feel "full" and eat less through a few mechanisms - slowing digestion, stabilizing insulin and blood sugar
-Drinking lots of water
-subbing out sugars with artificial sweeteners
-fasting, intermittent fasting, time restricted eating, alternate day fasting. For some can lead to a binge but if you adhere to it you are likely to consume less calories
-switching from processed foods to whole foods high in fiber and protein is more satiating
-wearing tighter and more revealing clothing will lead one to eat less
-weighing yourself daily will lead you to eat less (assuming you understand thermodynamics)
-exercising and cardio will lead you to burn more calories. Muscle mass accrued over time burns modestly more calories than fat mass and cardio burns calories directly
-counting calories directly (leads to greater adherence). Just like budgeting. If you don't measure and estimate what is going in vs going out at all and have no experience measuring you are unlikely to succeed.
It is important to understand that NONE of the above are a substitute for a caloric deficit for losing weight but rather one possible path to CAUSING a caloric deficit. The deficit is still required. These are behavioral tools. Hormones, PCOS, insulin etc are also not workarounds to the laws of thermodynamics. They can make you more hungry or burn more or less calories at the margins but they dont change the equation of calories in vs calories out.
Often people confuse the behavioral method to achieve weight loss with the mechanism driving it, and this leads to most of the confusion on weight loss outside of scientific literature (among blogger quacks, fitness guru snakeoil salesman etc.)
I've struggled with being overweight my entire life. I feel like I am in control and have made a lot of progress-- so I want to preach about this.
Restrictive diets work but if you can't maintain it for a long time (keto, vegan, paleo, etc.) the weight will come back. I yo-yo dieted like many obese people do.
Anyone out there struggling here is how I've lost 160 lbs and gained muscle / mobility:
- Make sure you get good sleep. Sleep is incredibly important.
- Intermittent fast (black coffee, tea, or caffeine pill in the am) lunch afternoon
- track what you eat (there are a plethora of free apps that can help)
- track how much you walk aim for 10k+ steps
- do resistance work outs (free weights, calisthenics, ruck march, etc.)
- cut back alcohol as much as possible
- cut back sugar as much as possible
- use the scale as a tool don't be afraid of it. (when I stepped on a scale I weighed over lbs. it was so painful to see that but ultimately worth it)
The biggest thing that has helped is a shift in my mindset. I look at going to the gym as treat /privilege. I've envisioned the end goal of how I look and feel.
Way too many variables to consider here and the human heart/mind/body is much more complex than this, and at the same time much more simple.
To give one example.. by time restricted eating you are breaking the cycle of eating out of habit when you are not even hungry.. or eating because you crave a certain taste or sensation in the body (as opposed to actually being hungry). You are training the mind/body out of these behaviours so that during the times when you are allowed to eat you are trained not to eat unless actually hungry, for example.
I am sure there are many other things to consider other than just calories in .. calories out - such as adapting the body to use stored fuel .. rather than expecting a constant payload of calories to consume.. etc. etc.
"by time restricted eating you are breaking the cycle of eating out of habit when you are not even hungry.. or eating because you crave a certain taste or sensation in the body (as opposed to actually being hungry). You are training the mind/body out of these behaviours so that during the times when you are allowed to eat you are trained not to eat unless actually hungry, for example."
You are describing what I posted above. This is a behavioral tool to achieve a mechanism of caloric deficit. Getting out of a cycle of pointless eating is the definition of behavioral shift.
Not exactly sure what you are describing in the next paragraph but we have studies that equate calories between time restricted eating and non time restricted eating and find no statistical difference in expected weight outcomes.
Yes there are differences is hormonal hunger signaling etc. My point is rather that a calorie deficit is why the weight loss occurs. The time restricted eating is the METHOD some choose to help achieve it.
Everything you say is accurate, but there is something that needs a big asterisk:
> calories in vs calories out
Yes, thermodynamics. Also: the human body is a dynamic system where adjusting either of those sides can alter the other. Calorie restriction can lead to slower metabolism, and vise-versa.
It's very easy to observe the changes you mention: A lack of energy in activities in the short term, which you can control with diet adjustments.
In the long term (over the course of a few months), you should be tracking your weight chart and reducing your intake.
The body can adjust to caloric deficits, but not so much that consistent effort over weeks will be blocked.
I think it's necessary to mention how to deal with these changes, whenever they're mentioned.
Yes of course. The impact of caloric restriction on metabolism however is FAR overstated as we know from the available literature.
"Starvation mode" is largely relegated to pseudo science at this point and most of the reduction in metabolism you speak of is due weight loss itself and a small reduction in NEAT.
But yes the human body is a complicated system effected by hormones, and other individual factors.
However it is important for the layman to understand the basics. It VERY rarely helps people struggling with weight loss to gloss over the basics and talk about metabolic adaption or provide other "excuses" like PCOS, hormones or starvation mode. They miss the forest for the trees.
I agree. This nuance is overblown and the knowledge to notice and deal with cues from the body aren't brought up whenever people mention this, which I think is really unhelpful.
This is all true for me except counting calories. I don’t usually eat things with a barcode. I’m also not good at eyeballing 1/4 cup of pecans, for example. In Noom, it requires specific measurements. So if I eat at the hospital cafeteria and get a salad that the staff makes, I don’t feel comfortable logging it because I guarantee the measurements are off.
Now this is different if I have two bananas for breakfast and an apple. That is easy to track and input.
Counting calories even when you don’t have a scale and/or barcodes gets much easier over time as long as you do a few things. One, actually bring a scale when you’re eating out for a bit. It’s a pain, but can help calibrate how much you’re actually eating. This works best with meals that have individual components. Two, use an app that has a good database of food (I use MacroFactor, but I have no clue how good Noom is). There’s plenty of entries for various salad types, and the majority of the calories in a salad tend to be the dressing and any meat anyways. With those two things, even eating out you’ll be a lot more accurate. As long as most of your meals aren’t falling into the estimation category, it also likely won’t have a huge impact on your weight loss goals either.
For me it worked to just estimate and tend to miss high... so if you're not sure how much of something there is, just guess and keep increasing until you're like "well it's definitely not THAT much"... and if I wasn't losing weight I adjusted my estimates up assuming I hadn't hit the mark.
Agreed it isn't simple, but I'm just saying tracking is effective. Tracking is in fact the single most effective way of ensuring a deficit. But yes it isnt easy and you can absolutely be successful in achieving a deficit without tracking. A food scale and weighing and understanding portion sizes for a couple weeks can be a lifetime level learning that you can apply though even if you don't stick to it - as most won't.
Much like you can save money without strict budgeting. I'm saying tracking is objectively "true" contrary to your statement. That doesn't make it easy though. Some find the other suggestions difficult. It is important to find what works for you.
-Yes some studies show that increasing high intensity cardio or LISS cardio vs very low intensity cardio like walking can lead to both higher hunger and a reduction in NEAT, however it isn't correct to necessarily say walking is better.
Walking is also effective, but there is a clear dose response effect here:
-If you run or swim etc for an hour, even with a reduction in NEAT for the rest of the day, you will have burned more calories net than walking for an hour, though it is more taxing.
There are other benefits to higher intensity cardio than pure caloric expenditure (there are also drawbacks).
Walking is cardio. It’s not high intensity cardio, but it’s cardio nonetheless. The main point of cardio for burning calories is to raise your heart rate; walking is the most sustainable way to do this, although it isn’t the fastest way, time wise.
This one is tricky. Tastebuds "adjust" over time. People that eat spicy foods regularly build up a tolerance to spicy. Similarly, I noticed that bitter drinks like beer or tonic water makes me barely taste bitter flavours at all after a while.
Regular consumption of artificial sweeteners have the same effect: they make you less sensitive to sweet flavours, making you compensate by eating sweeter foods.
We have studies on this too and there is no truth to what you are saying. Adding artistic sweeteners has no statistical impact on cravings for sugar and sweeter foods.
Even in a car engine having different kinds of fuels changes how much of it gets converted to energy.
Your body is infitely more complex than a car.
Calories in calories out is not an immutable law.
If that were the case, you could binge eat 30,000 calories and then you'd somehow add 28,000 calories worth of fat to your body in one day, which just isnt how that works.
> Calories in calories out is not an immutable law.
It actually can be, if you define both "in" and "out" in a way which makes it so; but for any definition of those terms where it is an immutable law, we, in practice, have only very rough proxy measures for at least one, and maybe both, of "calories in" or "calories out", and the problem then becomes mistaking the proxy for the actual figure of merit.
But the bigger problem is that CICO is only a starting point, it a set of targets, and an actionable plan that works in the real world isn't just the targets the plan is directed at.
CICO has not been debunked at all. If you take it to the extremes like eating 30k cals in a day yes your body will pass much of it undigested, but that doesn’t debunk it at all but rather adjust one of the 2 inputs into the equation, and for the vast vast majority of people following anything resembling a sane diet, CICO is the determinant of weight loss. You can eat straight sugar in a caloric deficit and body weight will fall off of you. You can eat straight fat or protein and it’ll do the same. You can eat in one meal or 20 meals. It still holds in every single study ever done.
And yet, increasing calories will cause you to gain weight; cutting calories will cause you to lose weight; increasing activity will cause you to lose weight; and decreasing activity will cause you to gain weight.
Yes, it's complicated and there's subtleties; but CICO is the main truth of dieting, and trying to downplay its primacy is misguided or deceptive.
Do you follow this field at all? (I do - very closely.)
Did you bother to google before replying? Obviously not.
Why do you (and the other guy above you) feel the need to argue even when some topic is completely outside your expertise? Why not open your mind to a new idea and learn something?
> but CICO is the main truth of dieting
It's certainly what most physicians and most >25 BMI people believe. And how's that working out? (Think about it before you hit the trigger finger: how. is. CICO. working. out?)
Yes it’s literally the only thing that causes weight loss over time outside of water fluctuations etc. The poster above you is the kind of clueless huckster I mentioned in my main post. No evidence. All BS. Hitchens principle applies: that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I find if i eat an early breakfast, it is indeed hard to not eat after the 8 hours. I find the opposite to be quite easy though. Just skip breakfast and don’t eat until around 1. I get to look forward to food later while actually being hungry.
If you find yourself thinking about food all the time, that’s not healthy or normal. If you finish meals and are still hungry, that’s not normal.
Normal people think about food only when they’re hungry, then they eat, and don’t think about it again until their next meal. It’s very easy to go 8 hours without eating this way.
> It’s very easy to go 8 hours without eating this way.
It's 16 h:
> restricting daily food intake to an 8-hour timeframe […] As long as 16 hours of fasting were maintained
Eating was restricted to an 8h window. Fitting 3 meals into an 8h window would be … tricky. I feel like most people's schedule is "[breakfast], [work], [dinner]" (with lunch in the middle of work), and assuming you work 8h, then you're already outside the study's fasting window. Throw two commutes in there …
> Fitting 3 meals into an 8h window would be … tricky.
That's the main secret to time restricted eating, in my opinion: You don't have enough time to eat as much as you normally do so overall calorie intake tends to decrease. I think the other reason it's helpful for some people is that eating nothing for one meal takes less self control than restricting yourself to a small portion, leading to better adherence than normal calorie counting.
Another long term benefit is that it normalizes the feeling of hunger. To be able to feel hunger after not eating for 15 hours, but be able to wait that extra hour is huge for managing impulsively and learning that simple hunger isn’t as urgent of a bodily demand as one might have previously thought.
There’s a big difference between “I’m malnourished”, “My body feels hungry” and “I want to eat for reasons other than feeling hungry”. Intermittent fasting will definitely teach you what “My body feels hungry” feels like, and shows you how to suppress it for hours.
I think the positive reinforcement of eating during the time window also helps in this learning process.
I read a few years ago that hunger is not pain, it doesn't "hurt" and you can ignore it.
What I find fascinating about hunger is how it interacts with your subconscious. You start daydreaming about food. If you're not paying attention you'll find yourself standing in front of the pantry.
When I'm hungry I feel like my conscious mind is wrestling with my subconscious.
I think about hunger as a pressure. The longer you go without relieving the pressure, the stronger it will become. Eventually, any rational person will follow the natural urge to eat as it grows stronger and stronger.
I find being slightly hungry makes me mentally sharper. It’s a fine line though, as symptoms such as irritability, daydreaming, loss of focus, poor memory recall, and reduced critical thinking skills will accumulate over time.
Pressure is not the right metaphor for me because the hunger comes in waves and you can just ignore it forever. You can kill yourself on a hunger strike for example.
I've been following 16hr fasts by skipping breakfast and eating my first meal at around 12:00 each day. Normally have an afternoon snack, then dinner at 18:00 with my young family. Perhaps a sweet treat by 20:00 after putting the little one to bed. Honestly, it's not that tricky if you bulk up lunch a bit.
Edit: As a sibling comment says quite rightly, you do feel hungry in the late morning, but reacting to that feeling is optional
I stopped feeling hungry in the morning a long time ago. Just unhealthy amounts of coffee, without sugar or milk. If I eat even just the tiniest snack or sweet, the food processing tract will "wake up" and it's over. But if I can avoid that, I only break the fast because of convention, not because of hunger.
But it's also very contexy sensitive: currently working from a place where I usually go for high calorie throughput sports (think Tour de France climbs, but higher and a heavier rider, obviously a lot slower but the energy demand is mostly mass x elevation, almost unpacked to speed) and my body is in "eat! you will need it!" mode every day. Crazy weight gain on the working days.
Why would you even try to fit three meals into 8 hours? That kind of defeats the point.
You would probably fit a snack and meal into that period. It could be a really big meal, and it would still probably be significantly less calories than breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Turns out the key to weight loss is just "eat less" (calories, not volume).
If you need a schedule and restricted hours to do that, great. If you need to track your calorie numbers (or some abstraction-of, like Weight Watchers points), great. If you need to "trick" yourself by eating high-volume-low-calorie foods, great. Whatever works for you. Just, less.
51g carbohydrates per serving, which is a lot, but only 12g of "added" sugar, and you can subtract 6g from that because of the fiber content. i use atkins rules because they're super easy to remember, i think. That's equivalent to 4 Eggo™ buttermilk waffles; again, atkins rules. there's much less added sugar, but the wheat is more highly processed so you get less dietary fiber, in fact, practically none.
Compare that to an "English Breakfast" which has 34g of carbohydrates, 15g of added sugar, but you can subtract 6.4g due to dietary fiber - yes - and it's already looking more fulfilling and better for you. The sodium is off the charts though, i'd guess because of the bacon, sausage, and beans, canned food is lousy with sodium. I'd drink hot tea and take a couple 99mg potassium supplements with that meal. Me, personally. You shouldn't, unless a doctor says so.
As other people are mentioning, I think the key factor for weight loss in any of these diets (intermittent fasting, keto, etc) is just making it more difficult to consume calories, which leads to a caloric deficit.
I have a somewhat odd diet, where I naturally prefer to eat a single large (~2000 kcal) meal each day, and don't really eat outside that. I've been maintaining pretty much the exact same weight to within 5lb for years like this, despite it effectively being an extreme ~30-minute time-restricted-eating window.
I've been within +/- 5 lbs for the last 20 years, zero intent or effort. I think some people just have better/worse mental connections to their stomachs. Even though it's wired in (vegas nerve) [1], many people don't seem to be aware that communication is possible. And, people don't realize how smart your stomach is: there's as many neurons in your stomach as a cat brain [2]. Our whole evolution was primarily about appeasing our stomachs, so it makes sense.
I personally listen very closely to my stomach. It's a visceral, literal, two way communication.
I eat when I'm hungry. When I eat, I feel how many calories I need, and I "listen" for how many calories I've consumed. I know when I'm done. My tastebuds say so, and my stomach says so.
I follow my cravings for veggies, protein, etc, and usually literally let my stomach decide what I should eat. I think about different foods, and get a that visceral positive/negative feeling (although it's more than that) from my stomach, and choose based on that. There are many foods that I like the taste of, but my stomach says no.
If I know I have an eventful/physical day planned, I will think of it and my stomach, and get hungrier (in the "feeling" and physical sense) the day/morning before, unsatisfied with normal proportions, and eat extra.
Whenever I've had bloodwork done, all my levels were within 1 quantization of "average"/nominal, so it's treating me well.
You can communicate with your stomach, and it can communicate with you.
[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/the-gut-brain-con...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/health-18779997#:~:text=Its%20first...
> vegas nerve
Vagus nerve
I enjoyed mentally speculating what "Vegas nerve" could mean if it was a real thing named after the city and unrelated to the vagus nerve.
I've been doing this since Jan 1, sometimes called OMAD for One Meal A Day. I had already been skipping breakfast, so lunch is now a cup of tea or diet soda. Maybe it's just the excitement of a new diet plan, but it's helped me lose 25 pounds so far this year, on track for 35 total before I re-evaluate. I just don't seem to have the willpower to only snack in moderation, but limiting myself to an hour a day is working. I can still have that dessert I'm looking forward to, it just has a specific timeframe now. Do I feel hungry sometimes? Yes, but I need some practice being hungry after years of stuffing my face whenever I felt like it.
It's the most effective way I've found to lose weight. I don't think it's doing anything magical to my metabolism. Like you say, it's just a convenient and easy-to-maintain way of eating less. I just know that I don't eat anything in a day until after I get home from work, and I don't even have to think about it.
So would you agree that the main reason for your weight loss on OMAD is caloric restriction from not being allowed to eat when you're sometimes hungry, when you probably would have eaten extra at those times before OMAD?
Yeah, I've been attempting OMAD as well and one thing that never occurred to me is how slowly you get through the groceries. And I never seem to get back to those leftovers :)
> Yes, but I need some practice > being hungry after years of stuffing > my face whenever I felt like it.
Why do you need such practice?
I'd honestly rather suffer an hour doing unpleasant cardio to burn off carbs than spending all day feeling miserable and shaky from hunger. Particularly on jobs or tasks where mental focus is essential.
I've found the hunger only lasts 10 minutes or so at times you body thinks are meal times, and actually, having a metal task you can throw yourself into really helps.
I've never experienced shakes, and its not misery per se, but you are constantly reminded you are overweight. :)
Do you mind if I ask what time of day you have your meal? I have the same eating pattern but can't always keep the same daily pattern due to 12 hr work schedules.
I just eat when I get hungry and have the time. No effort to keep the same daily schedule. On most days I'll end up eating 4-6 hours after I wake up, but if I'm busy I have no problem toughing out a few hours of light hunger and eating closer to 10 hours into the day.
A 12 hour work schedule seems pretty difficult to square with this kind of eating habit, and I'd probably just switch to eating smaller amounts whenever I get the chance if I were in that situation. Do you find it particularly uncomfortable to eat multiple meals a day?
The title in HN ("(Any) 8-hour time-restricted-eating window effective for weight loss") is heavily editorialized from that of the NIH blurb ("Timeframe of 8-hour restricted eating irrelevant to weight loss"), but actually better reflects the findings of the actual paper ([1], unfortunately paywalled). They found that people who fasted for 16 straight hours a day lost (a little bit) more weight over 12 weeks than those who followed a Mediterranean diet. However, the weight loss didn't represent a loss of visceral fat (around the abdominal organs, fat which is more likely to be associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease) and so the essential finding was that the time-restricted fasting made no difference.
1: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39775037/
thanks for this summary
speaking of visceral fat, do you happen to have pointers how to reduce that?
Fat distribution, including subcutaneous vs visceral, has very clear racial/ethnic genetic associations, not to mention sex. East Asian and especially South Asian groups skew much more toward visceral fat, while European and especially African groups toward subcutaneous fat. Beyond calories in/calories out, generalized advice in this context might not be as helpful on an individual basis as with other health matters. In the context of diet & weight things are already complicated, but at least in this area we know why and can more easily predict how one person's body is likely to respond vs another. (Though, it might just come down to some ethnic groups having to put in alot more effort--e.g. much greater reduction in overall weight--than others for the same reduction in visceral fat.)
Visceral fat has long-term memory, and also come as the last in the line. So the diet mentioned in the study may not have started the visceral fat reduction at all…
And I forgot, you have to exercise, HIIT, calories deficit is not enough.
Forget about Ozempic and other drugs, they are good for people with diabetes. And you have to use them for the rest of life, otherwise there is yoyo effect.
> However, the weight loss didn't represent a loss of visceral fat (around the abdominal organs, fat which is more likely to be associated with diabetes and cardiovascular disease) and so the essential finding was that the time-restricted fasting made no difference.
You're making a bit of a leap with "made no difference."
It's well-known that the body "holds on to" visceral fat in many cases, i.e. in order to reduce visceral fat, we first have to lose all the other excess fat. Which the TRE diet achieved: 5-7 pounds in 12 weeks is no small feat!
> You're making a bit of a leap with "made no difference."
I was paraphrasing the results of the study, which was designed specifically to see if fasting would reduce visceral fat as compared to a non-fasting regimen. If you read the abstract I cited, you'll see that there's not even any mention of overall body weight in the abstract -- that finding is buried in a figure of the paper, and mentioned basically in passing.
As for losing losing visceral fat versus other fat, that's partially true, but reality is a little bit more complex than that. Two people with the same 20% body fat can have radically different proportions of visceral and subcutaneous (under the skin) fat, and it's the person with more visceral fat who is at risk. This is why you have studies like this designed to find ways to target visceral fat.
those read the same to me, to be fair; although the important bit is "fasting for 16 consecutive hours", perhaps that gets to the point more effectively.
I've read that intermittent fasting has more "holistic" value than just losing a little bit more weight, specifically on blood sugar or insulin levels, as well as fat storage.
weight loss for health reasons should probably be coordinated with an expert who can look at your contemporary and historical blood tests. To be safest.
It's a bit to do with a change in diet and lifestyle to accompany the eating window but there is definitely something else at play as well.
The human body is an amazing machine and it has all sorts of abilities that we are unaware of. When you starve, your body starts shutting down non essential things first, starts pulling nutrients from everywhere it and limiting activity. Starvation has both a physical and mental element to it - both during the process and following it.
Intermittent fasting has been demonstrated to start a regenerative process in the body. It triggers cellular autophagy, which is kind of like running a cellular defrag.
There have been a lot of studies lately that look into the regenerative aspects of deep sleep following a serious injury - I sus that's the same system behind both things.
In response to the stress of not eating as usual, the body reacts. The mind does too. It sucks while you are starting it but it's nice to be able to know that you can skip of day of eating and be fine. After eating a big dinner and a good night's sleep you should have more energy and feel better for no real reason. I sus this has to do with how we ate while we were evolving - life was just a cycle of involuntarily intermittent fasting.
Unless you do strenuous activity all day - food is energy, you will be wore out of you do too much. The food you first eat after matters too!
Don't make a donut or highly processed/sweetened food the first nutrients after fasting - you'll feel like you ran a marathon. Simple carbs and protein - rice and black beans or oatmeal with seeds is typically what I do.
Everyone is different tho - whatever works for you! All the best of luck, sorry this is apparently my rant for the day - better topic than normal
I've been following Jason Fung and "intermittent fasting" for six or seven years.
I notice that the specific wording "time-restricted eating" has gained popularity in the past couple of years, possibly because "time-restricted" is less of a red flag to the public than "fasting," which may bring up some emotional baggage.
The reason for renaming is just speculation on my part - what's clear is that the eating protocol is the same, only the wording is different.
when i hear "intermittent fasting" i think once or twice a week. Also it's not a silver bullet, but it does "shrink the stomach" a bit if you are mindful of the volume of food you consume to break the fast. better to, as your sibling said, break with a light meal with all the macronutrients and a decent chunk of micronutrients and vitamins than a lumberjack's breakfast. Or if you break in the evenings, the buffet is probably not ideal.
Maybe when people realize they don't need as much food as they thought - especially grasses (sugar, wheat, corn, specifically), they can "change their relationship with food."
or just ozempic i guess, what do i know.
hey i wanted to ninja and let you know i have no problem with what you or sibling said, at all. I'm just speaking to the topic, not trying to argue. I realize a skim makes it seem like i was disagreeing!
"Effective" as in "not very"
The concept of 'eating windows' or timed eating has been studied and tested forever. the difference, if any, is basically nothing. It comes down to eating less. This is why GLP-1 drugs work so well when nothing else does at preventing people from putting as much food in their mouths.
People often confuse the mechanism (calorie deficit) with the behavioral adaptation causing the mechanism.
This leads to great confusion among those not educated in nutrition. Time restricted eating as you say, is not effective if you equate calories to non time restricted eating, however it causes many to eat less over time - assuming they adhere to it and arent prone to binging.
Its pretty simple to explain, if you can limp through your day without food, you arent likely to crush down more than say 2500 calories of food in a small evening window as your stomach is full.
But yes it doesnt change thermodynamics and isnt the magic that bloggers/youtubers and shills espouse, rather it is a tool (among many) available for people to reduce caloric intake.
Did you click on the link?
If eating windows had been "tested forever" with conclusive results, studies like this one would not be conducted.
In the end any eating restriction has some influence on lowering weight...
the 8 minute window is probably even better...
It is important to understand that time restricted eating is behavioral adaptation to reduce caloric consumption. A calorie deficit is what drives weight loss.
Here is a list of similar things that also "work". It is key to understand that "working"- meaning weight loss is the result of a deficit of energy requiring the body to use stored fuel (fat) as energy over time:
-higher protein is more satiating
-higher fiber is more satiating
-keto diets are for most people pretty satiating so they reduce caloric intake
-GLP1s like Ozempic and Mounjaro lead you to feel "full" and eat less through a few mechanisms - slowing digestion, stabilizing insulin and blood sugar
-Drinking lots of water
-subbing out sugars with artificial sweeteners
-fasting, intermittent fasting, time restricted eating, alternate day fasting. For some can lead to a binge but if you adhere to it you are likely to consume less calories
-switching from processed foods to whole foods high in fiber and protein is more satiating
-wearing tighter and more revealing clothing will lead one to eat less
-weighing yourself daily will lead you to eat less (assuming you understand thermodynamics)
-exercising and cardio will lead you to burn more calories. Muscle mass accrued over time burns modestly more calories than fat mass and cardio burns calories directly
-counting calories directly (leads to greater adherence). Just like budgeting. If you don't measure and estimate what is going in vs going out at all and have no experience measuring you are unlikely to succeed.
It is important to understand that NONE of the above are a substitute for a caloric deficit for losing weight but rather one possible path to CAUSING a caloric deficit. The deficit is still required. These are behavioral tools. Hormones, PCOS, insulin etc are also not workarounds to the laws of thermodynamics. They can make you more hungry or burn more or less calories at the margins but they dont change the equation of calories in vs calories out.
Often people confuse the behavioral method to achieve weight loss with the mechanism driving it, and this leads to most of the confusion on weight loss outside of scientific literature (among blogger quacks, fitness guru snakeoil salesman etc.)
Rant over.
I've struggled with being overweight my entire life. I feel like I am in control and have made a lot of progress-- so I want to preach about this.
Restrictive diets work but if you can't maintain it for a long time (keto, vegan, paleo, etc.) the weight will come back. I yo-yo dieted like many obese people do.
Anyone out there struggling here is how I've lost 160 lbs and gained muscle / mobility:
- Make sure you get good sleep. Sleep is incredibly important. - Intermittent fast (black coffee, tea, or caffeine pill in the am) lunch afternoon - track what you eat (there are a plethora of free apps that can help) - track how much you walk aim for 10k+ steps - do resistance work outs (free weights, calisthenics, ruck march, etc.) - cut back alcohol as much as possible - cut back sugar as much as possible - use the scale as a tool don't be afraid of it. (when I stepped on a scale I weighed over lbs. it was so painful to see that but ultimately worth it)
The biggest thing that has helped is a shift in my mindset. I look at going to the gym as treat /privilege. I've envisioned the end goal of how I look and feel.
Great to hear!
I don't think this is entirely true.
Way too many variables to consider here and the human heart/mind/body is much more complex than this, and at the same time much more simple.
To give one example.. by time restricted eating you are breaking the cycle of eating out of habit when you are not even hungry.. or eating because you crave a certain taste or sensation in the body (as opposed to actually being hungry). You are training the mind/body out of these behaviours so that during the times when you are allowed to eat you are trained not to eat unless actually hungry, for example.
I am sure there are many other things to consider other than just calories in .. calories out - such as adapting the body to use stored fuel .. rather than expecting a constant payload of calories to consume.. etc. etc.
Peace out.
"by time restricted eating you are breaking the cycle of eating out of habit when you are not even hungry.. or eating because you crave a certain taste or sensation in the body (as opposed to actually being hungry). You are training the mind/body out of these behaviours so that during the times when you are allowed to eat you are trained not to eat unless actually hungry, for example."
You are describing what I posted above. This is a behavioral tool to achieve a mechanism of caloric deficit. Getting out of a cycle of pointless eating is the definition of behavioral shift.
Not exactly sure what you are describing in the next paragraph but we have studies that equate calories between time restricted eating and non time restricted eating and find no statistical difference in expected weight outcomes.
Yes there are differences is hormonal hunger signaling etc. My point is rather that a calorie deficit is why the weight loss occurs. The time restricted eating is the METHOD some choose to help achieve it.
Everything you say is accurate, but there is something that needs a big asterisk:
> calories in vs calories out
Yes, thermodynamics. Also: the human body is a dynamic system where adjusting either of those sides can alter the other. Calorie restriction can lead to slower metabolism, and vise-versa.
It's very easy to observe the changes you mention: A lack of energy in activities in the short term, which you can control with diet adjustments. In the long term (over the course of a few months), you should be tracking your weight chart and reducing your intake.
The body can adjust to caloric deficits, but not so much that consistent effort over weeks will be blocked.
I think it's necessary to mention how to deal with these changes, whenever they're mentioned.
Yes of course. The impact of caloric restriction on metabolism however is FAR overstated as we know from the available literature. "Starvation mode" is largely relegated to pseudo science at this point and most of the reduction in metabolism you speak of is due weight loss itself and a small reduction in NEAT.
But yes the human body is a complicated system effected by hormones, and other individual factors.
However it is important for the layman to understand the basics. It VERY rarely helps people struggling with weight loss to gloss over the basics and talk about metabolic adaption or provide other "excuses" like PCOS, hormones or starvation mode. They miss the forest for the trees.
I agree. This nuance is overblown and the knowledge to notice and deal with cues from the body aren't brought up whenever people mention this, which I think is really unhelpful.
This is all true for me except counting calories. I don’t usually eat things with a barcode. I’m also not good at eyeballing 1/4 cup of pecans, for example. In Noom, it requires specific measurements. So if I eat at the hospital cafeteria and get a salad that the staff makes, I don’t feel comfortable logging it because I guarantee the measurements are off.
Now this is different if I have two bananas for breakfast and an apple. That is easy to track and input.
I think the approach here is to overestimate your calories a bit if you're not sure. Practice makes perfect when it comes to eyeballing quantities.
Counting calories even when you don’t have a scale and/or barcodes gets much easier over time as long as you do a few things. One, actually bring a scale when you’re eating out for a bit. It’s a pain, but can help calibrate how much you’re actually eating. This works best with meals that have individual components. Two, use an app that has a good database of food (I use MacroFactor, but I have no clue how good Noom is). There’s plenty of entries for various salad types, and the majority of the calories in a salad tend to be the dressing and any meat anyways. With those two things, even eating out you’ll be a lot more accurate. As long as most of your meals aren’t falling into the estimation category, it also likely won’t have a huge impact on your weight loss goals either.
For me it worked to just estimate and tend to miss high... so if you're not sure how much of something there is, just guess and keep increasing until you're like "well it's definitely not THAT much"... and if I wasn't losing weight I adjusted my estimates up assuming I hadn't hit the mark.
Agreed it isn't simple, but I'm just saying tracking is effective. Tracking is in fact the single most effective way of ensuring a deficit. But yes it isnt easy and you can absolutely be successful in achieving a deficit without tracking. A food scale and weighing and understanding portion sizes for a couple weeks can be a lifetime level learning that you can apply though even if you don't stick to it - as most won't.
Much like you can save money without strict budgeting. I'm saying tracking is objectively "true" contrary to your statement. That doesn't make it easy though. Some find the other suggestions difficult. It is important to find what works for you.
> cardio burns calories directly
And lowers energy expenditure afterwards. Walking works better.
A few nitpicks with this:
-Yes some studies show that increasing high intensity cardio or LISS cardio vs very low intensity cardio like walking can lead to both higher hunger and a reduction in NEAT, however it isn't correct to necessarily say walking is better.
Walking is also effective, but there is a clear dose response effect here:
-If you run or swim etc for an hour, even with a reduction in NEAT for the rest of the day, you will have burned more calories net than walking for an hour, though it is more taxing.
There are other benefits to higher intensity cardio than pure caloric expenditure (there are also drawbacks).
Walking is cardio. It’s not high intensity cardio, but it’s cardio nonetheless. The main point of cardio for burning calories is to raise your heart rate; walking is the most sustainable way to do this, although it isn’t the fastest way, time wise.
> subbing out sugars with artificial sweeteners
This one is tricky. Tastebuds "adjust" over time. People that eat spicy foods regularly build up a tolerance to spicy. Similarly, I noticed that bitter drinks like beer or tonic water makes me barely taste bitter flavours at all after a while.
Regular consumption of artificial sweeteners have the same effect: they make you less sensitive to sweet flavours, making you compensate by eating sweeter foods.
We have studies on this too and there is no truth to what you are saying. Adding artistic sweeteners has no statistical impact on cravings for sugar and sweeter foods.
> assuming you understand thermodynamics
Even in a car engine having different kinds of fuels changes how much of it gets converted to energy.
Your body is infitely more complex than a car.
Calories in calories out is not an immutable law.
If that were the case, you could binge eat 30,000 calories and then you'd somehow add 28,000 calories worth of fat to your body in one day, which just isnt how that works.
> Calories in calories out is not an immutable law.
It actually can be, if you define both "in" and "out" in a way which makes it so; but for any definition of those terms where it is an immutable law, we, in practice, have only very rough proxy measures for at least one, and maybe both, of "calories in" or "calories out", and the problem then becomes mistaking the proxy for the actual figure of merit.
But the bigger problem is that CICO is only a starting point, it a set of targets, and an actionable plan that works in the real world isn't just the targets the plan is directed at.
Yes agreed. Obviously molecules are not appearing out of thin air.
I know that CICO has been debunked, but I've never seen such a wonderfully clear example as in your last sentence. Thank you!
CICO has not been debunked at all. If you take it to the extremes like eating 30k cals in a day yes your body will pass much of it undigested, but that doesn’t debunk it at all but rather adjust one of the 2 inputs into the equation, and for the vast vast majority of people following anything resembling a sane diet, CICO is the determinant of weight loss. You can eat straight sugar in a caloric deficit and body weight will fall off of you. You can eat straight fat or protein and it’ll do the same. You can eat in one meal or 20 meals. It still holds in every single study ever done.
And yet, increasing calories will cause you to gain weight; cutting calories will cause you to lose weight; increasing activity will cause you to lose weight; and decreasing activity will cause you to gain weight.
Yes, it's complicated and there's subtleties; but CICO is the main truth of dieting, and trying to downplay its primacy is misguided or deceptive.
Do you follow this field at all? (I do - very closely.)
Did you bother to google before replying? Obviously not.
Why do you (and the other guy above you) feel the need to argue even when some topic is completely outside your expertise? Why not open your mind to a new idea and learn something?
> but CICO is the main truth of dieting
It's certainly what most physicians and most >25 BMI people believe. And how's that working out? (Think about it before you hit the trigger finger: how. is. CICO. working. out?)
>how. is. CICO. working. out?
Fine!
Yes it’s literally the only thing that causes weight loss over time outside of water fluctuations etc. The poster above you is the kind of clueless huckster I mentioned in my main post. No evidence. All BS. Hitchens principle applies: that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Brillant rant.
I have only ever gained weight with intermediate fasting. When my window opens, I feel so hungry that I keep eating.
I know supposedly you adapt to it and don't feel that extra hunger eventually, but somehow not me.
So just skip breakfast?
I mostly have breakfast at about 7am. So no more food after 3pm? Sounds hard to sustain in a normal kind of life.
I find if i eat an early breakfast, it is indeed hard to not eat after the 8 hours. I find the opposite to be quite easy though. Just skip breakfast and don’t eat until around 1. I get to look forward to food later while actually being hungry.
You're not forced to have breakfast at 7am.
If you're healthy, keep doing what you're doing.
If (like most people) you are overweight and unhealthy, what are you going to change?
I find it easier to skip breakfast and start eating a late lunch. That way I can enjoy a normal dinner with the family.
What has worked for me is to delay my meals until noon or even later. Eat protein and veggies for lunch.
black coffee for breakfast
there are several signs that coffee on an empty stomach can raise blood sugar and insulin levels.
It may not be a great idea for certain groups of people.
I don’t eat all night, which is more than 8 hours. Doesn’t seem to work.
If you find yourself thinking about food all the time, that’s not healthy or normal. If you finish meals and are still hungry, that’s not normal.
Normal people think about food only when they’re hungry, then they eat, and don’t think about it again until their next meal. It’s very easy to go 8 hours without eating this way.
> It’s very easy to go 8 hours without eating this way.
It's 16 h:
> restricting daily food intake to an 8-hour timeframe […] As long as 16 hours of fasting were maintained
Eating was restricted to an 8h window. Fitting 3 meals into an 8h window would be … tricky. I feel like most people's schedule is "[breakfast], [work], [dinner]" (with lunch in the middle of work), and assuming you work 8h, then you're already outside the study's fasting window. Throw two commutes in there …
> Fitting 3 meals into an 8h window would be … tricky.
That's the main secret to time restricted eating, in my opinion: You don't have enough time to eat as much as you normally do so overall calorie intake tends to decrease. I think the other reason it's helpful for some people is that eating nothing for one meal takes less self control than restricting yourself to a small portion, leading to better adherence than normal calorie counting.
Another long term benefit is that it normalizes the feeling of hunger. To be able to feel hunger after not eating for 15 hours, but be able to wait that extra hour is huge for managing impulsively and learning that simple hunger isn’t as urgent of a bodily demand as one might have previously thought.
There’s a big difference between “I’m malnourished”, “My body feels hungry” and “I want to eat for reasons other than feeling hungry”. Intermittent fasting will definitely teach you what “My body feels hungry” feels like, and shows you how to suppress it for hours.
I think the positive reinforcement of eating during the time window also helps in this learning process.
I read a few years ago that hunger is not pain, it doesn't "hurt" and you can ignore it.
What I find fascinating about hunger is how it interacts with your subconscious. You start daydreaming about food. If you're not paying attention you'll find yourself standing in front of the pantry.
When I'm hungry I feel like my conscious mind is wrestling with my subconscious.
I think about hunger as a pressure. The longer you go without relieving the pressure, the stronger it will become. Eventually, any rational person will follow the natural urge to eat as it grows stronger and stronger.
I find being slightly hungry makes me mentally sharper. It’s a fine line though, as symptoms such as irritability, daydreaming, loss of focus, poor memory recall, and reduced critical thinking skills will accumulate over time.
Pressure is not the right metaphor for me because the hunger comes in waves and you can just ignore it forever. You can kill yourself on a hunger strike for example.
I've been following 16hr fasts by skipping breakfast and eating my first meal at around 12:00 each day. Normally have an afternoon snack, then dinner at 18:00 with my young family. Perhaps a sweet treat by 20:00 after putting the little one to bed. Honestly, it's not that tricky if you bulk up lunch a bit.
Edit: As a sibling comment says quite rightly, you do feel hungry in the late morning, but reacting to that feeling is optional
I stopped feeling hungry in the morning a long time ago. Just unhealthy amounts of coffee, without sugar or milk. If I eat even just the tiniest snack or sweet, the food processing tract will "wake up" and it's over. But if I can avoid that, I only break the fast because of convention, not because of hunger.
But it's also very contexy sensitive: currently working from a place where I usually go for high calorie throughput sports (think Tour de France climbs, but higher and a heavier rider, obviously a lot slower but the energy demand is mostly mass x elevation, almost unpacked to speed) and my body is in "eat! you will need it!" mode every day. Crazy weight gain on the working days.
Why would you even try to fit three meals into 8 hours? That kind of defeats the point.
You would probably fit a snack and meal into that period. It could be a really big meal, and it would still probably be significantly less calories than breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Lots of not normal people out there
Turns out the key to weight loss is just "eat less" (calories, not volume).
If you need a schedule and restricted hours to do that, great. If you need to track your calorie numbers (or some abstraction-of, like Weight Watchers points), great. If you need to "trick" yourself by eating high-volume-low-calorie foods, great. Whatever works for you. Just, less.
bREAKfAsT Is THE MOST IMpoRTaNT meAL Of THE daY!
If you’re under 18 and not already overweight and still growing, it probably is.
Pretty sure it’s well studied that kids perform better at school when they’ve had breakfast.
> It was popularized in the early 20th century by John Harvey Kellogg
oh weird, American breakfast cereals company says breakfast is the most important meal...
...for their stake/shareholders.
wouldn't it kill those shareholders too?
Yes. It is important that every american eat grain-heavy meals every 4 hours. Same regimen as pigs I bet.
Don't forget the sugar! Frosted Mini-Wheats ... mmm ...
51g carbohydrates per serving, which is a lot, but only 12g of "added" sugar, and you can subtract 6g from that because of the fiber content. i use atkins rules because they're super easy to remember, i think. That's equivalent to 4 Eggo™ buttermilk waffles; again, atkins rules. there's much less added sugar, but the wheat is more highly processed so you get less dietary fiber, in fact, practically none.
Compare that to an "English Breakfast" which has 34g of carbohydrates, 15g of added sugar, but you can subtract 6.4g due to dietary fiber - yes - and it's already looking more fulfilling and better for you. The sodium is off the charts though, i'd guess because of the bacon, sausage, and beans, canned food is lousy with sodium. I'd drink hot tea and take a couple 99mg potassium supplements with that meal. Me, personally. You shouldn't, unless a doctor says so.