Anything that reduces how much calories you take in without reducing the calories you burn, is going to make you lose weight.
The whole trick in helping people lose weight is finding a way people can easily keep doing that without any expenditure in willpower. That's the big problem with every single diet: it requires discipline and willpower. The less of those it requires, the easier it becomes to stick to the diet.
I'd go a step further: That seems to be the problem with the very idea of a diet. The connotations are all wrong. The idea that it's going to be an expenditure of discipline and willpower is intimately wrapped up in the concept, and it's downright depressing to contemplate doing that indefinitely.
I would guess that it's a lot easier to achieve success if you try to play a different mental game, where the goal is to change your habits in a way that makes a different way of eating the default state instead of something that requires a constant effort. Maybe decide that certain kinds of foods are only for when you're eating out? Maybe buy a rice cooker so that whole grains are more convenient to prepare? Maybe find other motivations entirely? Chip bags and the like aren't recyclable, so my home consumption of junk calories dropped off precipitously after I decided to make a concerted effort to limit the amount of plastic packaging I'm sending to the landfill.
Exactly. Don't follow a diet, but structurally change your eating pattern. Long ago, after a year of eating mostly pizza, I switched to eating mostly stir-fry vegetables. My food still wasn't very varied, but that meant it required little effort and willpower. And it was still a lot healthier than pizza. Lost 5 kg in 5 weeks.
Then I met my wife and she didn't want to eat just stir-fry vegetables, so now I'm heavier than ever.
"Anything that reduces how much calories you take in without reducing the calories you burn, is going to make you lose weight”
Nitpick: it will lower the derivative of your weight against time, but will not necessarily make it negative.
To lose weight, you need to reach a point where you take in less calories than the calories you burn.
Double nitpick: in theory, you can lose weight while taking in more calories than you burn, by replacing stuff in your body by other stuff that store more energy per gram (I don’t know how realistic this is, but you can definitely lose volume without losing weight, by replacing fat by muscles)
I occasionally use intermittent fasting for weight control, and the reason it works for me is because time-restricted eating makes it easy to consume less food. If I skip breakfast, and sometimes lunch, after a couple days I don't get hungry in the morning anymore, and I simply eat what I want the rest of the day, which ends up being significantly less.
I have had much less success with things like calorie counting and portion control. Those diets felt like constant self-denial, and I would inevitably end up fudging the numbers to allow myself to eat more, or would eventually just break down and binge.
So if your point is to say these numbers aren't that interesting because it's "really" just the caloric deficit doing the work here, I would say that could very well be right. But there are a lot of ways to get to a caloric deficit, and time-restricted eating has particular benefits over many of those methods.
My experience is the same. TRE/IF are much easier to adhere to then typical caloric restriction diets or more extreme diets like Paleo or Keto. Skipping a meal is something I get used to after a few days, constantly depriving myself every meal is so damn hard.
Yeah I made a serious go of Keto a couple years ago for about 4 months, and I had really good results with it, but there were a ton of drawbacks as well. Once I got adapted, I didn't have major cravings for carbohydrates, and I felt pretty good on a day-to-day basis, but every time I "cheated" and had a bite of cake for a colleagues birthday or something, I would crash and burn and basically go on a bender of compulsively eating carbs until I could get myself under control. Then it would take another week or so of willpower testing to get myself back on the wagon. Basically it felt like a very all or nothing thing.
There were a couple "weird" things as well. For instance, it affected my sleep, athletic performance and even though I was eating a ton of fiber and taking magnesium supplements, my regularity suffered to a massive degree. The other thing was that my weight rebounded fairly quickly after going off of it.
Basically, Keto seemed like I was doing something sort of extreme to my body, whereas fasting is just simply not eating sometimes, and feels very natural. Also you never have to order off-menu items, or explain why you can't take the cookie somebody baked for you.
this was my experience with keto as well, every time I had to requit carbs I had to go through a multi day to week long carb withdrawal/craving cycle, and the binge risk was so high.
cutting weight is only useful if it isn't going to instantly be regained, especially when you are making so many sacrifices to lose it!
The point of pretty much all intermittent fasting schedules is being "basically forced diet".
While I agree it'd be interesting to see if there are additional benefits vs. the same reduction without the time constraint, a large part of the reason why some people prefer intermittent fasting is that some feel it is easier to comply with. E.g. you only need to exercise self-control for a relatively low number of waking hours.
I've done it in the past, and it was remarkable how easy it was to end up eating less when you compress it in a smaller time window; most of your hunger ends up happening outside of your eating window, towards the end of your fasting period, so you just need to hang in there and count down the time, which for me at least was easier than most other ways of dieting I've trued.
Read somewhere that starving for a longer period of time, something like 14-16 hours, will lower your insulin levels and activate autophagy. So it's not just about calorie restriction.
Its not a "get somebody to do something". Getting someone to loose weight is a lot like getting someone to stop doing drugs. If they dont want to do it, you are pretty much screwed unless imprisonment is an option. You yourself stick to your diet or you dont.
I think the question pushs on an underlying issue, namely how many people start up with plateau breakers and torture themselves instead of following a simple diet.
So the question is, what is this intermittent fasting? Is it just a psychological trick to get you to stick to your diet? Is your brain tricked into wanting less food or are you tricking your body into loosing more weight? As far as i understand it, its more then just a mind trick to stick to your diet. That is where the comparison with the - 8,6% reduction would come in great. But i doubt you would get much information with just comparing the absolute losses instead of looking at the individuals and how far they are into weight loss.
> torture themselves instead of following a simple diet.
What exactly is a "simple diet"? Not eating certain foods? Limiting portion sizes? Research shows that traditional diets have extremelly low compliance rates.
I'm not an endocrinologist, but as far as I understand, but as far as I understand, part of the effectiveness of IF is related to Ghrelin, a hormone associated with hunger. Basically, Ghrelin is a hormone which is correlated with the feeling of hunger, and it tends to come in waves around your normal meal times. So if I normally eat at 7:00 AM, I will get a wave of Ghrelin at that time every day. But Ghrelin has the property where, if I don't eat within that period where the hormone level is peaking, eventually it will subside whether or not I have eaten. Also if I skip that meal time for a few days, eventually that peak will decrease in magnitude or will go away all together.
So this is part of the reason why IF is effective: it's actually reducing the total amount of physiological hunger I experience in a given day.
>What exactly is a "simple diet"? Not eating certain foods? Limiting portion sizes?
Determine how much calories you get to eat a day to not gain weight. Not to loose weight but also not gaining weight. Once you are capable to hold your weight and understand what gets you how many calories, you reduce. Dont hurry, just get a bit under. Its a marathon not a sprint. No one martyred them self to death in a few month with 200 kcal less a day.
>Research shows that traditional diets have extremelly low compliance rates.
We also have an extremely high rate of jojo eaters. If you never learned to stick to your sustaining energy level when eating, you will go right back up again once you stop with something like intermittent fasting. Or do you really want to do that for the rest of your life? The sad reality is people get just enough motivation to try one of those mystic new fades and are emotionally wrecked when they cant handle the strict regime. Or they keep going and treat them self afterwards. There is no shortcut around learning to eat right, they would have been better off to slowly get their problem under control instead of a desperate hail mary. There is no short term fix for your problem you need long term change. Once you get a stable intake, sure try intermittent fasting to loose more quicker. But remember that you are not going back to before but to your sustaining level. That part isnt optional you arent just dieting you are changing your food intake permanently. If you never learned to just watch your calories and tricked yourself into loosing weight you are screwed. I dont see how intermittent fasting can be seen as a first go to. You need to introduce a diet before you can change your diet. In other words, not "just a few more month" but "Congratulations, this is the new normal now."
> Determine how much calories you get to eat a day to not gain weight. Not to loose weight but also not gaining weight. Once you are capable to hold your weight and understand what gets you how many calories, you reduce.
So you mean calorie counting? This sounds easy, but in my experience it's very difficult to be compliant. You actually have to weigh your food and keep a record of what you're eating. And how do you do this when, for instance, you're someone's dinner guest and they've done the cooking? It's not impossible but it's a lot of work.
> you never learned to stick to your sustaining energy level when eating, you will go right back up again once you stop with something like intermittent fasting. Or do you really want to do that for the rest of your life?
I will tell you how it works for me. In general I get by with "intuitive eating" - in other words I just eat what I want, with some loose guard-rails in place, like I try to eat mostly whole-foods I cook for myself, and I try not to snack between meals.
I also track my weight daily, and when I see it start to increase beyond some normal fluctuations - which might happen, for example, during the holidays, or when I've been having more work lunches out than usual - I do intermittent fasting (essentially skipping breakfast) for a couple weeks to get things under control. This has been a very effective strategy for me for a few years now, and it doesn't take any significant effort or book-keeping.
Moreover, fasting is something which has been a cultural practice across the globe since the beginning of time. Many religions include ritualized fasting as a part of their practice, and I have heard Hindu people talk about taking a day off eating "to balance the body" as though it is a common-sense thing to do.
I'm not saying IF is the one and true solution to weight management, but I do not see fasting as more or less an artificial "fad" than portion control.
Calorie counting isn't that hard, and it's not really necessary to weigh your food or be precise. I've done it successfully for a few months. I think the trick is to do it for some time until you relearn certain habits. Like to take two slices of bread instead of three or four, or to not snack on nuts which are high in calories. And for me, to avoid beer. So it's more about becoming aware of how many calories certain foods have, and remember which ones to avoid most of the time.
Counting calories isnt the point, its keeping track of your weight and being able to hold it outside of a diet phase. Learning to stop gaining weight. What works for you works for you, thanks for the explanation. I unfortunately have come across to many people who didnt consider the longterm aspect. You are just finally getting yourself up and loose that weight and then everything will be great and "oh man i cant wait for this to be over". That stuff so often ends sad.
>Getting someone to loose weight is a lot like getting someone to stop doing drugs. If they dont want to do it, you are pretty much screwed unless imprisonment is an option. You yourself stick to your diet or you dont.
Right, so the question is, how can you design such a study where control calorie intake and get people to adhere to it? The only way you can do it is to lock them in a facility where their intake and exercise are strictly controlled, which is either too expensive or not ethical or both. It is basically impossible to conduct such a study, let alone being able to issue effective recommendations based on it if your hypothesis is supported by the study.
I think that's an extremely simplistic/dismissive view. Especially the "just a trick". And suggesting that the main reason people don't addictive behaviours is because they don't want to.
And overeating is extremely addictive. Quitting smoking is dead easy compared to reducing calorie intake. Apparently the 14 hour fast thing works in regulating this addiction in ways that other diets genuinely don't (especially in terms of staying power). Pretty much by definition, addiction is something that happens in the complex interplay of physiological and psychological.
As i understand it, intermittent fasting is a lot more then a mind trick to let you stick to your diet. Its a plateau breaker. Once you are really far into your diet and hit a brick wall, despite the reduction, try a plateau breaker. They apparently actually work, and i am really interested in why. Differently put, I was hoping for medical research here, not psychological.
Yes, I believe any diet that "works" is just the diet happening to make it more manageable to reduce calories below expenditure. A similar diet I've read about is one meal a day. The basic idea is that you can eat whatever you want, but only one time per day (within reason). Most people can't eat their total daily calories in one sitting before feeling uncomfortable. Thus, you lose weight.
> I personally tend to accumulate weight very easily if on a day I have very few high-calorie meals.
Are you saying that if, on a given day, you have a couple high calorie meals, then you are likely to accumulate significant weight by the time you step on the scale the next day?
As far as I understand, it's very unlikely you will see true body compositional changes from one day to another. If you see a jump on the scale, most likely it has to do with water retention and not any kind of real persistant weight gain.
>> this seems to be standard effect of many dietary fads, i.e. they end up enforcing compliance with a low calories regime.
> Which is a good thing!
Not really; actually, it's a bad thing.
In the long term, people trying fad diets generally go back to the old habits.
Going through a diet cycle is always risky, as the metabolism is affected. When one stops a diet, one increases the food income, and needs to be very careful, because for a period, the body will consume less and accumulate fats easier.
If one went through a fad diet, they're more likely not to have enough discipline, and consequently, more likely to get the weight lost and more.
Net effect: more fat on the body and less muscles. This is the yo-yo effect. It's real.
Additionally, fad diets tend to de-emphasize the importance of sports (as they oppose to the very traditional diet regime of "eating less and doing sports"), which cause an impact on the muscle mass.
I meant that if your new eating regime helps you keep calories down, it's good. I didn't mean that you should try keto or if or paleo or WW or whatever for a month and then stop.
If you are actively trying to lose weight in any way, and then go back to old habits then it's bad for you, even if you got the diet from a medical doctor.
If instead you start using any kind of low-calories diet, and can keep it up, then it doesn't matter if it's only because of low calories or because of some other physiological effects.
I am not sold on the idea that dietary fads de-emphasize sport.
> Additionally, fad diets tend to de-emphasize the importance of sports (as they oppose to the very traditional diet regime of "eating less and doing sports"), which cause an impact on the muscle mass.
That'a interesting, because I've read several places that exercise is almost antagonistic with respect to weight loss. Basically doing sport increases appetite, and it's really easy to eat more extra calories than you burned during a workout. On the other hand, diet alone can be very effective at managing weight.
> participants consumed about 8.6% fewer calories
I would say the interesting fact is that people consumed less food. It was basically forced diet.
They should do a different study to see how 14-hours fasting compares with a -8.6% calories intake diet.