The impact on this sort of dieting may be with the ghrelin/leptin relationship. I don’t know of any research on this but I think the theory is that by allowing your body to produce more ghrelin throughout the day, you increase your body’s sensitivity to leptin (they use the same receptor in the hypothalamus) thus you get fuller faster and eat less calories.
I’d like to see some solid research showing this is anything more than a novel new way to limit calories to lose weight.
Intermittent fasting is the only practice that ever really worked for me. I didn’t really follow a plan, I just occasionally skipped breakfast and/or lunch due to being really busy with work and kids. Lost 40 pounds and kept it off until a back injury caused me a lot of other issues.
In addition to the fasting I also stayed with whole foods and moderate exercise.
Yes, this is an example of individual success with I.F. Personally, I couldn’t handle skipping breakfast and lunch. Regardless of whether or not I was staying within an overall calorie limit using I.F., I feel that it would encourage binge-type eating during the time that you can eat. Overeating doesn’t feel great. Neither does going hours and hours with nothing in your stomach. But these are only my personal issues, it doesn’t speak to any objective truth in either system.
Several years ago I lost 35# in just a few months unintentionally. I rented a room next door to a donut shop. I have never been a breakfast eater but I started going to the donut shop and buying a cup of coffee with a cinnamon roll every morning. It seemed to kill my appetite until dinner and for some reason I was eating a moderate dinner… I never got hungry at all. When I moved the weight went right back on.
I couldn’t have managed it without being extremely distracted and busy. I slowly built a habit of austerity. It became normal to feel a little hungry all the time, reinforced by seeing a pound drop every 6 days.
But yes, this is definitely my anecdote. I only mention it because I never thought I’d be 12% body fat with an abdominal 6-pack. Here’s hoping I can work around the back injury and get back there.
Oh just about any real diet will require you to feel a little hungry all the time. What I was saying in my previous post was that such long periods without food would encourage binge eating when I was allowed to eat. Rather than feeling a bit hungry but still eating throughout the day, such a fragmented eating schedule would make me feel ravenous on a regular basis.
I’ve been a type 2 diabetic for about 10 years.
I know nothing about short term fasting (one day or less) as it relates to skin sag, weight loss, muscle mass, sex drive, or the other miracles attributed to it, etc…
However, when I manage to embark upon a long term fasting regime (3 to 5 days) I experience a definite improvement in my blood sugar level… Something close to “normal” that lasts (un-medicated) up to 4 weeks after I break-fast… Irrespective of my subsequent diet, with no supplementary medication involved including the daily insulin injections, So I figure it is worth investigating further…
I suppose I’ve been practicing a form of intermittent fasting without knowing it. The way I try to control my diet is by avoiding convenience foods and only keeping foods around the house that have to be cooked and/or prepared in some way which is usually, but not necessarily, healthy stuff. The fact that preparation is necessary keeps me from snacking and makes me cook actual meals way more often.
I’m in the kitchen anyway and I like good food so why to cook something good and healthy? So I do. It’s a lot of work, the cooking and the cleaning, when I could have just gabbed a burger somewhere so I only do it twice a day. I eat around 1:00 or 2:00 every day when I get hungry and then my wife and I usually eat dinner around 9:00 - 10:00.
I always assumed it was a bad habit since ‘breakfast is the most important meal.’
BTW, you can get skin sag from losing weight this way. I didn’t purposely use IF as a dieting method, maybe I did it wrong, but I have lost quite a bit recently and there’s some loose skin there.
This is brilliant. I should give it a shot.
And yet you haven’t yet written a book called ‘I lost 35 pounds by eating donuts’, which I would personally buy a copy of.
Eating breakfast is (according to some studies) better for weight loss. At least a high protein one.
Studies are varied as to the importance of breakfast re weight loss/control.
Rather than buying books, there are some interesting BBC videos on youtube by Michael Mosley about intermittent fasting and blood sugar.
He makes some interesting observations and looks at the evidence in a very deliberate academic manner and tries it himself. Complete fasting is hard, but a reduced diet for a couple of days a week sounds bearable.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=michael+mosley
Losing weight on a diet of doughnuts sounds like TV Gold dust.
The reason I like the constant snacking approach is that I find that hunger for me does not seem to be at all proportional to energy expended. Hunger is just the feeling that my stomach hurts in a way that feels better if I put more food into it. (It also means I’m much more hungry if I have heart burn.)
It seems weird to me that so many other people seem to have a different experience of what hunger is.
My experience is very similar to HMS Irruncible.
I’m a habitual faster in the sense that I’ve restricted my eating habits to 1 meal a day for going on 15 years now. Invariably, it’s the evening meal. Breakfast is a cup of coffee. Perhaps a second during the day. The reward of a healthy, well balanced meal at the end of the day is one motivating factor. The other is that despite feeling hungry mid way through most days, there is also the physical lightness and psychologically “up” feeling of not walking around all day with a gut full of digesting food. I’ve even skipped eating entirely for 48 to 60 hours without much suffering.
Despite all this, I’m physically active and fit. I’m a lifelong gym rat (mostly free weights and training with my own body weight). I’ve been a competitive downhill skier. An avid cyclist too. I’ve played squash on and off over the years.
That said, there was a period in my life where I gained 90lbs. It took a little over a year and a half to loose the extra weight and get back into fit form using the I.F. method, which has subsequently become a life style for me. I can’t think of any reason to stop or change now.
Most recently, I’ve decided to lose that creeping 5-8 lbs of weight that sneaks up on you in middle age. So I’ve made some changes. I started keeping a caloric intake log (I use an app) and have changed up my training to super-sets with slightly heavier weights and less rest between sets. I’ve been off the bike for a while too but am getting back to riding. But really, the main change is counting calories and sticking more strictly with I.F. That is making all the difference. Though not as quickly as it was 10 years ago.
Download a free calorie counter app to track how much you eat every day. If you track what and how much you put in your mouth honestly on a daily basis, I think you will be:
- surprised by how much you eat compared to how much you need/burn
- be motivated to cut down on foods that really aren’t worth it
- become better on choosing healthier food options and more of aware of reasonable portions
Most of these apps allow you track calories burned doing exercise. So you can really “buy” yourself that scoop of ice cream if you want with a longer/harder workout session.
There is no shame in “gym-ming for food”. 
(Bolding added by me). I think I know what you mean. As in there can be weird components to hunger. The past few years, I actually vomit every time I use the restroom unless I have food in my stomach. Nobody can explain this (I joke that my innards got all mixed up during my c-section). Unfortunately this has not even led to any weight loss, since it’s mostly dry-heaving/liquids. So, I have little appetite most of the time, but I hate the continuous heaving until I eat. It’s like I’m constantly in pregnant state, lol.
I’ve done best in the past with keto, but I can’t really say if I had regular fasting or snacking habits. I ate when I was really hungry, but pretty small amounts, and according to diet. As in, maybe a hardboiled egg and a piece of Wasa toast with mustard around 1 PM for my “breakfast,” then some meat and veg for dinner, and maybe some cheese and cucumber for a late-night snack. It’s hard to get back into that specific routine again, but even though I’m heavy now, I feel like I’m not too far off from that general eating pattern (still being mindful and restricting most of the time).
It is however very easy to delude yourself and “buy” yourself much more than you “earned.” First off the calorie estimators of how much you have burned during exercise in general stink. Secondly they are total calories burned during the time period, not the amount you have burned over and beyond what you would have otherwise. Put that together with the fact that most people way underestimate the calories they put in, even using decent apps to help them, and tracking calories burned during exercise usually ends up resulting in weight gain.
There’s no shame in “gym-ming for food” but it will more often than not result in weight gain.
I’m getting metabolic testing Wednesday hopefully to find out a more accurate idea of how many calories I burn, both baseline and during various stages of cardio.
A few years ago I had a friend who was doing the 2/5 diet (or is it 5/2 ?? whatever…) and I asked him ‘don’t you get really hungry?’
‘Only at mealtimes’ was the response.
Pretty sure I must have looked at him as if he had just sprouted a second head which proceeded to recite Shakespeare’s sonnets in Turkmen. This is not the way it works on Planet Aspidistra! I know nothing of this ‘going from hungry to not hungry by some other method than eating a thing.’, nor this ‘mealtime’ as a distinct thing from ‘time when I feel hungry’.
I can understand people who just don’t get hungry, and forget to eat, way better than that. And I find it hard enough to understand them…