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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

I tried IF for a while. I lost a couple pounds and then plateaued. What I realized is that the main thing it was doing was preventing me from snacking at night. I didn't really eat any more than normal during the eating period, I just didn't eat my usual outside of it. So exactly in line with the study. It just didn't do much for me weight-loss-wise.

I was already skipping breakfast most days, so waiting until lunch to eat wasn't a big deal. But Stopping at 8pm was tough. I'm usually up until 1-2am, so not eating for the last five or six hours of my day was tough.

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Satchin Panda from UCSD did a round of podcast interviews when his book came out, and the advice essentially boiled down to having a feeding window of up to 8 hours and having it start towards the earlier part of the day rather than later.

The weight gain/loss/plateau seems to correlate with the insulin presence in the blood system, and meals eaten later in the day tend to generate higher insulin response compared to exact same meals eaten mid-day.

Yeah I read all that, but there's no way I could get away with skipping dinner. Dinner is our family meal. I'd literally have to sit there watching the family eat, or miss out entirely.

So you actually ate less during IF, while in the article both groups consumed the same amount, just at different times: "The same amounts and types of foods were consumed on both schedules."

Their IF (or eTRF) groups stopped eating at 2pm each day. Presumably they went to bed a earlier than you, as their breakfast was at 8am, so shifted by your two hours that would mean no food after 4pm.

I'd have a hard time doing that. In a way, dinner is a reward for the day's accomplishments for me. I'm not saying it's impossible to adapt to that, but I'd rather work out more than fast for 16 hours every day.

"I'm usually up until 1-2am": maybe a lack of good quality sleep is your real problem? Bad sleep has been correlated to weight gain