so how does this translate to my day to day?
can i skip breakfast and eat whatever i want for 6-8 hours, ala IF?
does the window of consumption not matter, and i just need to eat fewer calories on the day?
can i skip breakfast and eat whatever i want for 6-8 hours, ala IF?
does the window of consumption not matter, and i just need to eat fewer calories on the day?
For me, simply, it's easier to eat less calories if I intermittent fast. For some reason, if I don't eat breakfast or lunch, I find my hunger is actually sometimes lower, and I don't need to eat a bigger dinner to make up for it.
Certainly eating low-g.i\high-carb foods seems to make me get hungry again very easily.
I also had really good luck with keto, and sometimes a combination of both.
I believe the reason is something to do with blood sugar and insulin not spiking as much, but I'm not a biologist in the slightest.
That has been my experience as well. I feel full a lot more quickly with IF. Even if I fall off the wagon sometimes, I can count on IF as a quick way to fix overeating.
Here's a guide that's not bad. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/intermittent-fasting-gu...
There's nothing destructive about fasting, as long as the person isn't starving. A lot of people confuse fasting with starvation, but they're not the same thing. Body fat is food. As long as you have fat to burn, you're not starving. Few people are going to starve doing even 72 hour long fasts. The human body just doesn't require that many nutrients on an hourly basis. You won't die or get hurt by not eating kale for a few days.
It was common wisdom that skipping a meal was destructive, but it's becoming more accepted that it simply isn't true. It doesn't really make sense that we require the sheer amounts of food that we're eating on a regular basis. Most omnivores and carnivores aren't eating the equivalent of 3 meals a day, and are effectively practicing some form of fasting. If we're supposed to not skip breakfast, then all our ancestors must have been pretty unhealthy, yet fossil evidence doesn't really demonstrate this.
A grazing type diet can be perfectly fine for someone at a healthy weight, but they're not really benefiting from it in any way besides the enjoyment of eating. Even so, it depends on what the person is eating in the first place. If someone eats toast with jelly for breakfast, it's highly questionable whether they're getting any long term health benefit from that at all.
There's a plethora of information about this subject, and I don't have the time to cite it all here. I encourage you to update your knowledge here. Most general practitioners aren't well educated in nutrition, nor are they versed in the latest research, so your doctor may be operating on old wisdom that hasn't panned out.
IMO, nutrition is such a complex topic and I feel like we have only begun to start peeling the layers.
As an aside, did you know that the saying "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was invented by the founders of the Kellogs cereal?
That being said, I will concede that specifically for some (not all) people with some eating disorders, restricting intake can be detrimental to recovery as it increases the chance of a binge later in the day. If you have binge eating disorder, be aware of that if you're considering intermittent fasting.
This is exactly why I don't do that well with fasting, and I don't even have an eating disorder. With anything more than 16:8, it's very easy for me to start binge eating, so the whole thing becomes counterproductive.
Every time I seriously lose weight (usually twice a year, once after winter and once after Christmas), it's eating small, high protein/low-carb meals every 3 hours or so. That puts just enough volume into my stomach to keep the hunger pangs at bay.
That last point is the key: it's a lifestyle change, not a diet, so you need a regimen that is acceptable enough to actually make it a daily routine.
Fasting for a day or three is worth exploring as well and is much easier to do if you're already doing the aforementioned time/carb restricted approach.
2. Yes, it's what I do and I find it works well. If you love breakfast, skip dinner. If you say I love breakfast and I love dinner, well you just won't have the appetite for one of them because of your new ruitine, so it won't really matter. If you start eating at 12pm, you'll want to stop eating by 8pm. If you start eating at 6 am, you'll have your last meal of the day by like 3pm.
3. See above, but as soon as you start eating, the window is now open for business and you may indulge. Ideally, you'll want to compound all of this with a healthy, balanced diet with lots of water, good nights rest, exercise, and limiting stress.
It's basically applying a bunch of very simple principles, and sticking with it. The results will show, for sure. The biggest thing is getting in tune with your body and seeing what works best.