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Comment by nickbauman | Hacker News Reader

A lot of folks here are using the term "intermittent fasting". This is a term that can make people struggling with eating disorders kinda lose their minds.

May suggest to replace this term with what's probably a better way of saying it anyway, because it's more accurate to what people are really doing when they say IF: Call it "time-restricted eating". You're eating the food you eat for a day in a smaller window. Not really fasting.

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A popular split on Intermittent Fasting is alternate day eating.

So on one day you eat nothing, and the other days you eat a normal amount of food. So it is Fasting. Also the 4-3 split is popular.

But I agree with you people who just skip breakfast and have lunch and dinner should probably just call it an "eating window".

A diet that has worked for 50 years is just, stop snacking after dinner and go to bed. But it's much cooler to say "I'm Intermittent Fasting" than "I just don't bring a bag of Oreos to bed anymore".

There is some correlation between the benefits of "time-restricted eating" and full-blown fasting (autophagy, etc), so it makes some sense to talk about them similarly. There are many benefits to full water fasts, even for 2-3 days (and it's much easier to do successfully if one is already in ketosis). See the work of Dr. Jason Fung: https://thefastingmethod.com/

While we're at it: "Intermittent fasting" versus ... fasting until you die? All fasting is intermittent. IF just doesn't communicate anything regardless. I think it's clear it's just a bad term. Time restricted eating actually describes something specific.

Haha, point. To the extent that the term still applies, "periodic fasting" would be more accurate; but then, that could just as easily refer to yearly fasting during Ramadan. Does one describe the action, or the absence of action? The norm, or the exception? I dunno, language is a funny thing. :)

> This is a term that can make people struggling with eating disorders kinda lose their minds.

Maybe focus on the actual thing and not policing speech?

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