My anecdotal experience from 20y of bodybuilding and doing ~3 cuts a year: for cutting, I tried IF, 6 meals a day, low fat, low carb, high fat true keto, balanced... everything works. And works equally well - this is backed by numerous studies. The only difference is the impact on health parameters (different will get worse on low fat vs high fat), satiety, and how easy it is for someone to sustain the diet and stay in a deficit. This will depend on the lifestyle and personal preferences. So my preferred way to cut is high protein, low carb, essential fats, a ton of fiber. When building muscle I go high everything but balanced.
Anything else and more is sectarianism and people bragging about their choices not having verified their true claimed efficacy or benefits.
Everybody's looking for a silver bullet and wants to advocate for their specific one by tearing competing theories down. The reason that IF works is because it's more difficult to eat at a caloric surplus when you can only fill your stomach for 8 hours a day. Full stop. There might be modest ancillary benefits but as far as weight loss it really is as simple as calories in versus calories out. There are tons of variations on this theme dependent on goals and tolerance for discomfort but simple math wins ten times out of ten.
For the layperson IF or keto or something similarly extreme is effective but difficult. It requires strict adherence to a lifestyle that impacts one's social life and makes eating prepared foods difficult. Worst of all it leads to impromptu cheat days in moments of weakness that spiral out of control and negatively affect consistency. For people trying to lead a normal life I personally think eating at 80% TDEE with 1:1:1 macros is the most sustainable - you eat at your leisure, get sufficient protein for lean muscle mass and still eat carbs for energy and fun. It's basically "eat less, have a protein shake." Combine this with some light cardio and body weight/kettlebell stuff while watching TV and you'll see great functional fitness gains in addition to quick and steady weight loss.
Of course it's hard to build an online quasi-religion around moderation so this type of thinking isn't mainstream despite its efficacy.
I really struggled to get lighter a few years ago and what ended up working finally was cutting my protein way down. After repeated failures with high protein/low carb, I finally just went for low protein despite no diet recommending it. It worked great, I lost muscle but it made satiety way easier and my body naturally seemed to shift to a lighter composition.
I still don't see any diets recommending that. It seems like a useful tool, especially given how "fitness" nowadays is lifting weights and chugging protein, there are going to be a ton of dudes in their 30s/40s who put on a boatload of muscle in their youth and now are struggling to get lighter using all the recommended high protein diets. If you don't give the muscle up satiety is going to make it an insane battle.
Did anybody claim otherwise?
Strategies like intermittent fasting or diets that moderate what you eat rather than quantity are focused on the later aspect "strictly sticking to that diet". Because being strict is not sustainable, will power is limited and inconsistent, so wasting it on strategies that are hard to stick to is both futile and a waste of will power. Changing what and when you eat accounts for biology instead of just physics, because those variables have a huge impact on satiety.
The study has a minimum interval of 4 weeks, which does not take much will power. Not to mention the psychological impact of being part of a study.
My experience with IF is that it makes it easier to schedule meals as well as to deal with whatever insatiety feelings come from reducing calories, and this made it easier for me to stay with IF diet than with other diets. I have read research where adherence is significantly higher in IF groups, other where it is lower. Essentially, adherence is firstmost about what works for a specific person. If the diet logistics don't work for you personally, it matters little what statistics say. The point (of any diet for weight loss/management) is always to reduce/control calories intake.
If they had their test subjects eat the same amount to see if intermittent fasting metabolized food better then it seems obvious that there would be little to no difference.
They've cut quite a bit of weight since then and mostly have just focused on keeping their appetite low, and eating healthier more fibrous meals in general.
My personal experience is quite the opposite. In fact, this is the first time I have heard anybody claim that intermittent fasting, when done correctly, does not make you lose weight. Sounds like a study done by people who sell weight-loss drugs or meals.
Intermittent fasting is one of the more reliable ways to lose weight.
Methods like intermittent fasting work by providing a framework that makes it easier for people to achieve that.
It’s better to do portion control, consume fiber and better calories, and exercise to increase metabolism.
That all balances the calories out side of the equation in ways where fasting itself won’t.
https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-bust-the-calories-in...
https://theconversation.com/is-weight-loss-as-simple-as-calo...
That's not how data works.
What really accelerated weight loss for me was extremely rigid ketogenesis. Felt amazingly sharp and dialed in every morning, slept well, shredded pounds.
There is one difference between Ramadan fasting and modern intermittent fasting: Ramadan fasts are 'dry' fasts no water is imbibed and the alimentary canal stays completely unstimulated for long periods of time.
However, there's more than weight. I wonder if Ramadan has a lasting impact on blood sugar stability, for example.
* I only eat one meal a day (supper). It's usually a very large meal, very high in lean protein.
* I avoid sugars and starches of all kinds and minimize other carbs (fruit, root veg, grains).
* After eating, I do 30 minutes on the treadmill.
For a middle-aged woman (a category which finds it particularly hard to lose weight) this has worked rather well. I can eat as much meat, (non-root) veg, dairy and soy as I want and I just keep losing weight.
So no, calorie restriction isn't the 'only way'.
It's very difficult to not be in a calorie deficit when you only eat once a day and are consistently active.
Unless you have tested this, I find it hard to believe that this isn't really just a caloric deficit compared to whatever you were doing before losing weight, assuming the same activity level.
Probably yes. But you're minimizing the difficulty of staying in caloric deficit.
IF you can stick to one meal per day AND eat mostly protein (vs. mostly sugar / carbs) THEN it's very hard to overeat i.e. be in caloric surplus.
If you snack many times a day, mostly sugar / carbs, and slosh it down with coke or red bull (non-diet, sugary version) it's very hard to keep eating under calorie limit. Sugar / carbs stimulate your hunger, leading to more eating. It's the opposite of Ozempic.
And your glucose levels are chronically elevated which is bad for our bodies. It's basically chronic inflammation.
Now, if you eat a steak once a day, you'll find it very hard to overeat. Like physically, you won't be able to eat too much.
It's still not easy to stick to that but it's simpler and easier than calorie count everything you eat throughout the day.
You restrict calories to one meal where you can't possibly eat 2000 calories at once with the ingredients.
Exercise + starting off at a high weight helps further.
Not a good sign for a meta study. When you average garbage you still get garbage.
As for my personal experience, I looked at scientific papers 5 years ago (no, intermittent fasting isn’t some new social media fad). The consensus back then was that it only slightly increases the speed at which one loses weight, but it helps significantly with adherence to a diet. This was a game changer for me too. With just attempts to control my caloric deficit I failed because I ended up snacking. With intermittent fasting (the strict variant of only eating once after work in my case) I simply had no appetite from the morning until my meal. I also didn’t have cravings before sleep.
This is my experience as well. IF didn't teach me how or what o eat, it taught me not to snack after the last meal of the day, and after losing around 10% of my weight (still obesity grade II), the weight-loss effect was lost. It didn't work for long-term weight loss, it just established a new equilibrium. Also, there's a bounce back if you stop it.
Currently, I'm on Mounjaro (diabetes type II likely caused by obesity and genetics), and IF meshes wonderfully with it, since mounjaro forces you to eat less or feel miserable. So far I've reached obesity grade I (aka plain obesity), and the effect has been very consistent over time, no new equilibrium reached yet.
So, for me, IF is not for weight loss, but it helps if you combine it with a proven method for weight loss.
Any framework that causes an overwieght person to genuinely pay attention to what they eat will have a weight loss impact, because all you have to do to lose weight is eat less. The wide variety of dieting techniques are a good thing because it maximizes the likelihood that any individual will find a framework that induces them to pay attention to their eating habits.
I've gone through many weight loss cycles using various techniques including OMAD. Eating once a day changes your relationship with food, and disrupting that relationship is a thousand times more important than whatever obscure biological processes the fitness gurus suppose are in play.
I mostly ride bikes for exercise and need fuel at least every hour on a ride or else I will bonk out. My output is 500kcal/hour based on power meter, a 4 hour ride would be 2000kcal, it's not doable without some food intake.
I also love weightlifting while being fasted. One meal end of day for me has put me in the best shape I ever have in 36 years. So much that I actually took up running haha.
Then I could wake up, ride hard for hours (hilly terrain), and feel no need to eat until the afternoon.
I do IF and do most of my physical activity before my first meal every day. It was hard at first, but now it's when I have the most energy and clarity.
Also, assertions in support of consumption should be reviewed to make sure it's not put forward into media and study by consumptionists.
The main benefits of intermittent fasting are not in weight loss, but:
- Give your bowels the time to run the "cleaning program" (rumbling) - Reduce inflammation
The big deal for me is not eating stuff with flour (starch?) or sugar.
I already eat healthy, although I switched from chicken to a full protein tofu that's low on calories and that has been a blessing for protein intake (along with egg white). I can eat 60g of protein at lunch in about 350 calories.
That gives me everything I need for the gym.
My snack is apple with a teaspoon of pure pistachio butter, which calms down my desire for sweets (I love pistachio)
Not only that, but intermittent fasting works because of all the food nutrients, when I tried before I was just thinking about food all the time and it was a horrible experience.
Lot of micronutrients, high protein, high fiber, food with slow glucose absorbition, no starch, build up to fasting (start with 12, then next week 18, then 24). Also sleep a lot the day before fasting and drink a lot of water
8 hours is not a short window. I'm pretty sure Golden Corral will kick you out somewhere around hour #3.
That being said, it is an extraordinarily difficult way losing weight and probably is not sustainable long term.
The rest is just all new "fad diets" that cycle every 3 years as people go through the cycle of trying them, seeing results, failing to maintain them "forever" (which is what they'd have to do), and then putting the weight back on.
Every single diet has this problem (Even GLP-1s from what I have seen). The human body seems to have some mechanism by which it attempts to maintain it's current weight. But we all continue to be incredibly prone to "this new fad diet actually works!"
