Time-restricted eating reduces visceral fat and improves metabolic syndrome | Hacker News Reader

Time-restricted eating reduces visceral fat and improves metabolic syndrome

cell.com

322 pointsnabla9272 comments

This study was in Chinese people who were overweight and were eating a lot of carbs (~300g a day). Presumably this was largely high GI rice. IF made a modest difference. They also lost some muscle mass, as expected. The study tested a lot of different variables, apparently without adjusting for multiple hypothesis testing.

Hard to generalise these results. If you are eating a toxic diet, I guess more time without it is a good thing. A similar study in a Western population showed no effect of isocaloric IF [1]. In another study, IF with energy restriction in obese subjects was more effective than energy restriction without IF [2].

I don’t see that the data supports IF as a universal strategy. If you are obese, then these studies suggest eating less, for less hours of the day and less at night is probably beneficial. Otherwise, as far as health interventions go, exercise has a much larger magnitude of benefit than dietary interventions. It also has the major advantage of simplicity - more exercise is better for everyone everywhere at every age [3]. Contrast this with the utterly confusing state of nutrition science. And exercise also makes a difference even when you do a little bit, whereas eating a little bit better does almost nothing.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...

[3] This is not 100% true. There are some contraindications to exercise for people with specific conditions.

EDIT: When talking about the benefits of exercise versus diet, I mean the effects on health in general (mortality, lifespan, healthspan). Exercise isn't an effective method of weight loss as others have indicated.

> They also lost some muscle mass, as expected.

Not sure why that would be expected. Fasting leads to significantly increased levels of HGH which preserves muscle and improves body composition. [1]

Fasting yields an up to 1250% increase in HGH depending on the duration of the fast. [2]

[edit] > ...exercise has a much larger magnitude of benefit than dietary interventions...

This could not be further from the truth. Exercise is not a good way to lose weight. It has a ton of health benefits and you should do it anyways but you should not expect to lose weight from exercise alone.

Think about it, 1lb of fat loss requires a caloric deficit of 3500kcal. An average human burns like 100kcal per mile running - so 35 miles per pound of fat. Deficit. Humans are well known for compensatory eating, after all you're running 1.5 marathons, you're going to be hungry, right? Someone who needs to lose 16bs needs to run from San Francisco to LA along the entirety of the high-speed rail Phase 1 track, via Merced, Bakersfield and Palmdale.

This is bad advice and it simply does not hold up.

> Contrast this with the utterly confusing state of nutrition science.

Fasting is the simplest nutrition science there is. BMR 2000kcal? Don't eat for a day, lose 0.6lbs. Or, you know, run an entire marathon without treating yourself to any more food that day than you would have normally consumed.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3127426/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6758355/

Just because it boosts GH doesn't mean you build muscle. Undoubtedly, fasting has positive metabolic benefits, but building lean muscle mass isn't one of them. The studies I have seen about regular fasting and muscle mass generally show loss or at best maintenance with exercise. Generally you will be catabolising muscle when you wake up from sleeping, until consuming sufficient protein. This is why body builders eat so often, and also try to have some slow release protein before sleeping.

You are right that exercise isn't a good way to lose weight, I am not talking about that at all. By magnitude of benefit I am talking about mortality/longevity/frailty, not weight loss. That's what really matters.

The relationship between body weight and hard clinical outcomes is complicated and not monotonic (obese pre-menopausal women are less likely to get breast cancer, to provide one example). Additionally, asian people suffer from the skinny-fat phenomenon, where they are not obese but have metabolically pernicious visceral fat.

The post you are responding to does not make the claim that it builds muscle, nor does it make reference to lean muscle mass... It says "preserves" muscle (comparable to "maintenance" as you suggested).

I'm not buying it. Muscles use energy even while at rest so in the case of an emergency I'm sure the body will first remove the useless consumption of unnecessary muscle mass than to start tapping the reserves.

In what world would the body prioritize consuming "unnecessary muscle mass" (the thing you need to hunt down and kill food) over fat, which is by definition energy stored for this exact scenario?

Muscle simply doesn't consume much more energy at idle than fat does but is far more useful and far less calorie-dense. A pound of muscle burns 4-6 calories per day at idle vs a pound of fat which burns 2-3 calories. Basically the same.

>In what world would the body prioritize consuming "unnecessary muscle mass" (the thing you need to hunt down and kill food) over fat, which is by definition energy stored for this exact scenario?

I would predict that the body would consume both, in a ratio that shifts from fat towards muscle as energy supplies dwindle, in an attempt to stretch the final reserves by reducing consumption.

HGH promotes breakdown of fats [1] and inhibits the breakdown of muscle [2]. Since fasting significantly increases HGH, that would all make sense.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11086655/

[2] https://diabetesjournals.org/diabetes/article/50/1/96/10905/...

>in a ratio that shifts from fat towards muscle as energy supplies dwindle

it's in fact the other way around. The body first reduces what is not used (unused muscles) and then energy reserves.

[citation needed]

>citation needed

common sense

Try to build some muscle and get shredded... should be very easy with your methode/logic

With respect 'common sense' is frequently wrong which is why I was asking for some study, evidence, documentation etc. Along the lines of the articles I provided.

If you just want an anecdote it certainly works for this guy [1]. And he, in turn links out to a ton of studies.

To be clear at no point did I claim that fasting would grow muscle, I don't have any data to back that up. What I said was that your body will preserve muscle when fasting because muscle is useful and fat is not. This is backed up by the articles I cited indicating significant HGH increase, and articles citing the role of HGH as inhibiting the breakdown of muscle and promoting the breakdown of fat.

Your claim requires evidence.

[1] https://leangains.com/

> Fasting is the simplest nutrition science there is. BMR 2000kcal? Don't eat for a day, lose 0.6lbs.

And there are additional benefits aside from basic weight loss. Fasting for a day every once in a while should be regular behaviour. Some religions sort of get it and there are versions of fasting in most major religions. But for basic weight loss, it's very simple. Stop eating so often, stop eating so much, stop eating garbage. Unfortunately it's not easy.

>Humans are well known for compensatory eating

True, but this applies to fasting as well as exercising (if not more so)!

At the end of the day, what matters most for fat loss is changing your habits. I don't think that "calories in / calories out" has been invalidated, so you have two sets of habits you can adjust. If it is easier for you to reduce calories in with fasting vs. portion control, then go for it.

IME it is incredibly painful to miss a meal, but not so painful to eat less calories when I do eat - particularly if I substitute high density carbs (bread, pasta, sugar) for lower density (veg, etc).

I do think that just focusing on calories out is problematic for the obese and/or long term sedentary - mainly because they are way more likely to injure themselves by not ramping up to activity very carefully...

> IME it is incredibly painful to miss a meal.

Like anything it takes practice! Day two is usually the worst but then hunger basically zeroes out and doesn't come back until ... well, ever. Apparently it returns once you run out of fat stores, but I never got that far. You get cravings once in a while, but not hunger.

> An average human burns like 100kcal per mile running

This is not true, and it’s far off the mark for those who are overweight.

> A general estimate for calories burned in one mile is approximately 100 calories per mile, says Dr. Daniel V. Vigil, an associate clinical professor of health sciences at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

But sure it varies by weight. That said, the super-overweight are also too out of shape to run anywhere close to the required distance.

[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/running-b...

An average human isn't overweight enough to make this matter. That's why it's an average.

For a morbidly obese person they burn more calories standing up and walking around the house than I do. The thing is once you're past this phase of being overweight or obese your caloric expenditure drops precipitously. When I was working out 4 days a week my body adapted such that my caloric consumption had to go from 3200 calories a day to 2500 calories a day to maintain weight.

Running is not an efficient way to burn fat. It never has been, and never will be. The reason marathon runners are so rail-thin is because they run a lot. Running preferentially burns muscle as well due to the quickness of conversion after glucose is gone. Worse yet, there's no increase in calorie burn via muscle gain and hormone stimulation. It's just a flat consumption of calories.

In summary: being overweight is an edge case and not an average. Any mildly trained person will realize a drop in overall calorie expenditure as their body adapts to exercise. This is why modern exercise science emphasizes "confusion". Otherwise you plateau (and pretty hard, usually).

> The reason marathon runners are so rail-thin is because they run a lot. Running preferentially burns muscle as well due to the quickness of conversion after glucose is gone.

I think there's some selection bias to this though. The morbidly obese tend not to be marathon runners, as well as the very muscular. Marathon running is an extreme activity that preferentially self selects certain physical attributes and conditions. This is not to say that a morbidly obese person can't take up marathon running - but they unlikely to be able to maintain it successfully while remaining so.

Original GP quote:

> Otherwise, as far as health interventions go, exercise has a much larger magnitude of benefit than dietary interventions.

Note that GP doesn’t mention weight loss, only health in general. To push further on this point, many studies came with the conclusion that exercice had more impact on health than dieting (subjects wouldn’t lose weight, but get healthier)

e.g: https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(21)00963-9

But exercise increases your muscle mass, which raises your basal metabolism, doesn't it? How big is that effect? Seems like it should be quite big, but I have no data and seldom see it discussed, as if it didn't matter at all.

But then why do we lose muscle mass if we don't exercise? Seems like it would be a huge maladaptation if muscles were "cheap".

Musculature alone doesn't increase basal metabolism by a lot. At least not the muscles gained from typical light exercise stuff. It's a combination of maintaining them and exercise that gets you maybe an extra 300-500 a day average.

Muscle mass also isn't lost as quickly as people claim. It varies based on person and diet. You lose some, but many can get back to their former peak in a few weeks if it has been a year or so. Even fairly muscular individuals.

> Not sure why that would be expected. Fasting leads to significantly increased levels of HGH which preserves muscle and improves body composition.

If you lose a lot of weight, that means that your muscles have to work less to move all that weight around.

I have been experimenting with lifestyle TRF for 5 years before finally finding an approach that works consistently with little effort in a modestly socially acceptable way with common food sources.

Starting from 235 pounds I lost 55 pounds since April by restricting my feeding time window to 4 hours and I only exercise once every week or two.

An eating time window larger than 4 hours did not result in any meaningful long term weight loss for me. It must be 4 hours per day or shorter. 4 hours works great.

I barely made a change in my diet to eat healthier besides cutting out foods and beverages commonly known as being bad and I only drink water and coffee. I consistently begin to plateau and this process only stops with increased water intake and exercise, but mostly water intake more than 1 gallon per day.

In terms of effect size time restriction is most critical followed by eating food that isn't obviously unhealthy (e.g. anything containing added fructose), closely followed by drinking a gallon of water per day. Exercise is a distant next step but it has a big effect whenever loss plateau begins.

As I approach my weight goal I plan to expand my eating window by one hour per day per month until I plateau.

Forgive the question, but why is exercise such a distant next step for you?

You very clearly have a lot of self-discipline, and you have your shit together. For me, exercise has always been the most rewarding part of the whole deal.

Really glad that you took the time to make the effort over literal years to find what works for your body. For most people - myself included - that's what it takes.

And most people won't stick with it and see it through.

> You very clearly have a lot of self-discipline, and you have your shit together. For me, exercise has always been the most rewarding part of the whole deal.

Not OP, but answering for myself: I don’t enjoy exercising, and not doing something is far easier than doing something extra.

I have easily removed most carbs (doing Keto), and reduced my eating window to 8h. I’ve been doing this for almost 10 years. Hell, I even got an electronic desk and work standing 70% of my work day.

But exercise is extra. I can’t just do exercise while doing something else (maybe if I enjoyed audiobooks it would work better, but I’m really into reading books), so any exercise takes effort for something I don’t enjoy unlike all other changes.

I felt this way for a very long time and have made similar choices. I simply can't get myself to consistently go out on runs, or work out on gym machines. That said, out of sheer chance I discovered an enjoyment of powerlifting and swimming and I've been able to keep those up, and even look forward to doing them. Perhaps it's a matter of finding the exercise you can tolerate.

There are many forms of exercise outside of a fitness center. I know a handful of guys in their 60's and 70's who are in fantastic shape due to fencing. They can still regularly place in the top 20% of regional tournaments against guys in their teens and 20's.

"Perhaps it's a matter of finding the exercise you can tolerate."

This.

I was a bit of a free-weight gym rat in my 20s and never liked it (still don't), but have over the years find things I have/do enjoy, and that makes it easier to get stuff done. Some are very low friction to accomplish regularly (Kettlebells, ergs, trail-running/hiking...note, I hate running on treadmills or in urban environments, but will alternate running and hiking in an afternoon in the forest like a 5 year old kid exploring. It's actually a joyful event for me. YMMV). Other things happen perennially due to logistics or weather (e.g. swimming, rowing, Bikram yoga).

I've tried lots of other things in between, so there is some measure of "i need to figure out what works and what doesn't" and that in and of itself can be an unpleasant set of experiments, but...

Sure you can do exercise whilst doing something else. I get about an hour's exercise in daily whilst moving to places I need to be.

The idea that exercise needs to be an activity in its own right is somewhat toxic. It puts a big burden on beginning the activity which needs to displace something else. Even for those that manage to get an hour at the gym or whatever, it doesn't necessarily make up for the rest of a sedentary lifestyle.

reminds me of

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUlgSRn6e0

but not very easy depending on where you live

Alas, the furthest I need to go is to the store, about 800 meters away. I walk everywhere, but nothing is far.

You can also just walk around while doing something else, e.g. listening to a podcast or talking to somebody on the phone (this can even be a work meeting!)

Walking is not great exercise from a time efficiency standpoint. It's like half the caloric burn in twice the time of any dedicated exercise, be it running or swimming or weight lifting. Exercise that elevates your heart rate is simply better, from a fitness perspective or from a weight-loss perspective.

Depends on what the goal of the exercise is. For the majority of people who need to be in better health, zone 2 cardio is what they need rather than increased caloric burn. You can't look for time efficiency with zone 2 cardio - you just have to do it for enough time to build conditioning. Depending on the person, zone 2 might be running, but for most people a brisk walk is enough.

That doesn’t matter when you’re sneaking walking into activities you’d normal do sedentary. It’s not competing against dedicated exercise.

I have this goofy plastic As Seen On TV board that is bent in the middle. Whenever I’m watching TV or playing a game, I stand in it and waddle my body so that i’m doing a light core activity.

It doesn’t matter that sprinting is better exercise when I otherwise would be sitting in the couch.

Efficiency isn't the only factor. I'd say the most important factor is enjoyment. We each have a finite amount of willpower. If you're using it up on exercise you hate doing eventually you're going to hit a day where you don't have much willpower, skip the exercise and break the routine.

The most time efficient exercises I know aren't ones you can sustain for longer periods of time. I can consistently walk for hours but only run sprint intervals for a few minutes. Sure every minute of sprinting burns more than a minute of walking but if I can walk significantly longer than I can sprint it will probably lead to a higher total calorie burn.

As others have said, it's not about efficiency. Also, doing a brisk walk does elevate your heart rate (mine goes up to ~100-110 BPM). If your goal is just being healthier, and not necessarily increasing your stamina or building up muscles, than walking is great. It also doesn't fuck with your joints.

> Walking is not great exercise from a time efficiency standpoint.

Sure, but it's infinitely better than a more efficient exercise that never gets done.

As someone with a mostly daily workout habit for the past 10+ years, the trick I’ve found works best is not to exercise, but do a sport (that you enjoy). Then everything else falls into place on its own.

I used to lift. That got boring fast. Then I got into boxing. That hasn’t gotten boring ever. Eventually I started running, you know, to have more stamina in the boxing. That has lead to several marathons and a motivation to beat the magic 3-hour barrier. Now I’m back to lifting because it helps with the running and the boxing.

Running has actually turned into my me time. A socially acceptable way to be alone, outside, ignore the world, and have no responsibilities. Great time to chug through podcasts and audiobooks too.

> Great time to chug through podcasts and audiobooks too.

One of the reasons I feel liking those would be advantageous. But I have a strong dislike for them.

I specifically like podcasts in the context of running and only started listening because I got bored of music. Started audiobooks because podcasts got too short.

Can’t stand either format otherwise.

What about hiking or going on walks?

Not OP, but share similar sentiments with OP about exercise, so maybe this perspective can help. /shrug

Hiking is my jam. I love it, and it's the one area of exercise where getting my ass kicked physically feels incredibly worth it. The trouble with hiking is that I like getting out into the mountains to do it (I prefer the less-traveled hikes that really get out out, up and away from everything and everyone... solitude, baby!), and I have a couple of small kids, so I can only get around to what I consider a "quality" hike once every couple of months. That'll change as they get older, but yeah.

Walks are different; I walk my dog for about 20-30 minutes every night, but it's just not the same for me.

I hate it. I’d rather exercise (which I do, just unhappily) than walk somewhere just for the sake of walking. When going somewhere by myself, I walk at a speed that some people would call jogging, but that’s for getting to a spatial goal.

I don’t know what I did wrong but I was on a Keto type diet for over a year but I lost muscle mass and had multiple alopecia-looking hair loss spots occurring on my scalp. I looked great because I was slimmer but I fell off the keto wagon. Anyhow, I’m eating carbs again and hair is back to full health and muscles are noticeably back to prior mass. I don’t lift—-just usual busy work of activities.

Elimination diets, whether keto or anything else, put people at heightened risk of subtle micronutrient deficiencies which can cause all sorts of weird symptoms. If you're going to eat only a limited set of foods then take a detailed look at nutrition labels and make sure you're not missing something. Multivitamin pills are mostly useless for people eating normal, healthy diets but can be a convenient way to fill in the gaps for people eating restricted diets.

Keto isn't an elimination diet, it's more of a reduction diet (people choose different levels of carbs ranging from the < 10 hardcore crowd to the 30-50g crowd). You can eat a lot of veggies, certain types of fruits, meat, nuts and dairy. There's just a ton of variety available across a wide nutrient spectrum.

Any "diet", even SAD can leave one with deficiencies if you just eat pre-packaged foods. One always should look for variety in their food selection.

Not saying keto is necessary or for everyone - it's not. But it's pretty easy to not be nutrient deficient on it.

Just out of interest, did you eat a balanced diet, mainly with a lot of different vegetables? Or closer to /r/keto "egg & bacon everyday"

GP here, I gave up on keto after one year because it required eating a special diet which is difficult to prepare and store while traveling. 4 hour TRF worked for me long term.

Did you do resistance training on a regular basis while on keto? When at a deficit, your body gets rid of what it doesn't need. The goal is to tell your body it needs the muscle (and doesn't need the fat).

Edit: just read that you don't lift. That's why you lost muscle.

Doing frequent hard exercise that builds lean muscle tissue is essential to long-term metabolic health. Just not being fat is insufficient if you want to maintain a good quality of life in your later years.

You may find it unpleasant. That's fine. Learn to enjoy the suffering.

https://www.gabriellereece.com/muscle-as-the-cornerstone-of-...

https://peterattiamd.com/ama39/

This was about how despite following harsh-ish restrictions, exercise is still a problem.

The TRE approach is closer to a natural pattern, as our ancestors - generally - also had a limited window of time in which to eat [when they did]. A notable difference between ancestral and modern habits is that eating was, as a rule, a physical activity in itself [walking and overcoming obstacles in gathering or running - and overcoming obstacles - in hunting].

I also could never motivate myself to do exercise, like running or going to the gym. What I found that works for me are:

- Doing brisk walks, either when you are going somewhere, or if you don't need go somewhere, just around the block. And yes, brisk walking is also exercise =)

- VR gaming (e.g. Beat Saber gets your heart rate up alright, or if you need more, I can recommend boxing or dedicated fitness games, but the latter are again boring to me).

- Yoga at home (I can recommend Yoga with Adriene on YouTube) - going to actual Yoga classes never worked for me, but doing at home works amazingly well

- Hiking - being out in nature feels great and depending on the level of hike, this can be amazing exercise

Hello, we're very similar it turns out.

My solution to this problem was "Couch to 5K" as it told me when to walk and when to run. Just did what I was told. I did duolingo while walking and audiobooks / music while running. Decided to go to the gym every single day for 30 mins (it's very close to my house) to walk and if it was a run day just do what the app told me. I succeeded in completing the program and I'm moving on to the 5K to 10K with the same system in place. It's amazing how the body adapts with small spaced ramp ups like that.

The easy solve for this is choosing to live somewhere where activity is baked into your lifestyle. I haven't 'exercised' in the gym-going sense in years. BUT, I chose to live in a location that allows us to be a single-car HH. So I have 40m per day of 'activity' doing my daily errands on the bike on week days. And on weekends we typically do one or two walks, and once a week I have an indoor soccer. It takes no effort to do something 'extra' to do this once you realize that cars are cancer.

The method of dieting probably drives GP's energy level to the floor. He/she is probably exhausted all of the time.

Nope I have normal energy and ride my bicycle 25 miles at a time every week or two

There is no proven health or performance benefit to drinking extra water beyond your level of thirst. The goal should be to maintain proper hydration and electrolyte balance rather than drinking a certain minimum volume of water. The optimal amount will vary a lot depending on genetics, diet, activity level, and environmental conditions.

https://www.goodtogobook.com/goodtogobook.com

I lose more weight per day when I drink a minimum of 1 gallon of water. The opposite is true when I don't drink enough water because I otherwise "feel fine." Beats me as to why this is so.

I wonder if it is the feeling of satiation rather than any benefit the water is bringing for hydration.

If true it is only a minor and temporary effect because it passes right out within the hour. It seems to work on another level.

I used this technique while cutting in a previous life where I lifted frequently. I'd drink a bowl of "water soup" before bed, so that I would feel temporarily satiated and be able to fall asleep more easily. (My water soup consisted of hot water, a bit of soy sauce to add saltiness, and a bit of sesame oil for greasiness... basically I was making a minimal imitation soup stock.)

> I only exercise once every week or two

If your goal is weight loss, this is fine, but if your goal is a healthy lifestyle, this isn't enough.

I find it interesting you criticize their study methods but then assume what food they are eating (GI rice) without evidence and state that it is toxic, without evidence, and then use this info to draw conclusions.

Forgive me for being brief, Supplementary table 3 breaks down the the baseline food intake, and rice and wheat flour are the top two items.

Regarding your second query, the first line of the abstract of the article is: "Overconsumption of carbohydrate-rich food combined with adverse eating patterns contributes to the increasing incidence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in China. "

High levels of blood glucose are toxic to most tissues, and high GI foods tend to cause glucose spikes. This is like Physiology 101 level common knowledge and not something that requires additional evidence in every little comment.

This isn't wrong, but it's pretty hyperbolic. A large helping of white rice isn't "toxic" in a meaningful way.

But as a diet, this would be glucose spikes multiple times per day, for perhaps a lifetime. That may not qualify as "toxic" I guess, in that it doesn't kill you on the first day. But it is not benign.

Rice is literally the most commonly eaten food in the world, eaten by billions of people a day.

Rice is commonly eaten mostly because it's easy to grow in wet climates, and it's a cheap source of calories. I eat rice myself, but let's not be fooled into thinking that rice and other grains are particularly healthy. Small amounts are fine, but if you get the majority of your calories from grains or consume large quantities in a single meal that cause blood glucose spikes that certainly isn't ideal from a health and fitness perspective. Everything in moderation.

Dumb question: Wouldn’t every diet show no improvement with an isocaloric control group?

I wonder if regular resistance training would've avoided the muscle loss.

First time I’ve seen a “Graphical Abstract” like this (page one of the PDF: https://oa.mg/pdf/10.1016-j.xcrm.2022.100777.pdf) but I love it

Definitely very easy to digest.

Badum tss

Yeah they're popping up on the few papers I read. Do you remember the post "could biologists understand the radio" or similar? These seem to be an attempt to create schematics that is in line with that criticism.

I wonder if there's an AI opportunity here. One that can take academic whitepapers and spit out graphical summaries.

It would have to be significantly better at reading papers than most journalists.

I can imagine an opportunity for a small group of PhDs that vet stories from a large group of science journalists, and that work with graphics designers to produce non-misleading and scientifically accurate graphics like the abstract.

I'd guess a team of 10 PhDs could keep up with the global flow of literature that makes the news. No idea how hard it is to draw those graphics though.

Well yes, but that is the exact opposite of AI right?

You see them in certain journals a lot but honestly they are rarely informative compared to the abstract, and look more like this meme:

https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/vy48hu/this_is_wha...

I'm just skimming through the paper and I see no calorie equated control group or even measuring caloric intake.

If that's the case than this is another "eating less causes weight loss" study, and measuring the benefits of caloric restriction.

They don't even equate caloric restrictions between the methods they compare ?

Are you saying that the reason the low-carb diet doesn't seem to make a difference here is that the participants either didn't follow it strictly or that "low carb" was not measured properly?

Pretty much - unless they made sure the calorie deficit was equal between groups (with reasonable precision) it's hard to argue they are measuring more than differences between caloric deficits (it's probably easier to get to a higher deficit with IF compared to low carb)

Especially since I've read that when you equate calories most of the differencea go away in studies and meta analysis.

This seems to be a study about metabolic syndrom, not weight loss. The weight loss is only a side effect.

Besides improving MS, the study also mentions reduction of visceral obesity.

High visceral body-fat is one of the symptoms of MetS.

Correct. But it seems anyone with excess visceral fat alone could benefit from TRE, even if not suffering from MS, which is having 3 out of 5 symptoms:

- Abdominal obesity - High blood pressure - High blood sugar - High serum triglycerides - Low serum HLDL

The point I guess it that there are dietary regimens that tend to naturally restrict caloric intake without any effort. The question is not if eating less causes weight loss, but which regimen is best to avoid overeating while eating to satiety.

> there are dietary regimens that tend to naturally restrict caloric intake without any effort.

Which ones? I've never seen any, so far.

IF is effort. Low carb is effort. And so on.

Ever tried losing weight just counting calories? you feel hungry, miserable and sooner or later every day becomes a cheat day.

With TRE and even more with keto you feel satiated, insulin is way more stable so hunger is manageable. So you prevent overeating with little effort.

It's obvious that gettint into the regime takes effort, my point is that once you start it's easier to follow than a classic ipocaloric diet.

>The point I guess it that there are dietary regimens that tend to naturally restrict caloric intake without any effort.

By "dietary regimens" are you talking about intermittent fasting? I find it hard to believe that "not eating for 16 hours a day" is "without any effort", or less effort than "not snacking" or "not eating smaller meals".

>The question is not if eating less causes weight loss, but which regimen is best to avoid overeating while eating to satiety.

That's what a lot of commenters are concluding, but it's not really obvious to a uninformed layman who's just reading the title. "Time-restricted eating reduces visceral fat and improves metabolic syndrome" makes it sound like the benefits are coming from the time restriction, not from eating less calories.

> By "dietary regimens" are you talking about intermittent fasting? I find it hard to believe that "not eating for 16 hours a day" is "without any effort", or less effort than "not snacking" or "not eating smaller meals".

As someone who used to weigh a lot more, I think you'd be surprised. The first couple days are a little rough, but after that you're just not very hungry during the day. In contrast, "eating smaller meals" fucking sucked. You're still hungry, you've already gone out of your way to obtain food, and now you have to stop and keep going on with your day. Remember that people don't get fat being used to eating appropriate size meals.

If you don't control people on a high carb diet, there is a massive swing in blood sugar and insulin levels every two hours or so as they binge eat.

Enormous amounts of willpower can push thru that, or a low carb diet destroys the appetite.

Either way if a fat person eats for 16 hours a day unrestricted that'll be about eight cycles of super high blood sugar and the resulting hypoglycemic insulin crash followed by about eight episodes of binge eating.

If the same person limits their food intake to only 8 hours a day either via appetite suppression due to lower carb diet, or willpower or external force, they can only get about four cycles in of super high blood sugar followed by insulin spike followed by hypoglycemic crash followed by massive binge eating.

It seems likely that four cycles of binge eating per day will cause less "metabolic syndrome" damage than eight cycles of binge eating per day. Even if the total caloric intake is the same, the body at least has more time to recover.

The above "seems" to be what they verified in the paper.

Came here to say the same thing. Lots of studies on fasting and time restricted eating and when calories are equated and put up against low fat, low carb, balanced, all groups show the same improvements in metabolic health and fat loss.

It's a tool to restrict calories, which is the _actual_ thing that improves health. It's slightly less optimal if you're trying to conserve lean body tissue since you're spending more time in a negative nitrogen-balance.

Bottom line from lots of research, do the form of calorie restriction that is most easy for you to adhere to :)

This is not an unfair criticism and deserves discussion. Yet we have no particular evidence (I am aware of) indicating that all strategies for caloric restriction for H. Sapiens shoud be considered equal.

I am surprised why people who levy this critique (including yourself and Dr. Brad Stanfield on YouTube) don't simultaneously acknowledge the possibility that -- even if caloric restriciton is the main mechanism explaining the results -- time-restricted feeding may be a more effective/sustainable caloric restriction strategy than all-day calorie counting either alone or with other interventions lacking the time-restricted element (such as social support, AKA Weight Watchers).

In my own n=1 anecdote, I have lost 20 excess kg over the past 12 months (and continuing to gradually reduce) with time-restricted feeding as the primary intervention. Eliminating my continuous grazing during waking hours due to a time-based "cut off" for all eating was much more effective (in my case) vs previous strategies over decades where I simply "tried" not to snack between meals throughout the day.

In my own experience I am 50 years old today. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes / metabolic syndrome with an A1C of 5.7.-(borderline). weight was 189 pounds. 2 years ago. I started IF. Giving up breakfast then slowly giving up lunch and now eating OMAD ( one meal a day). your BODY WILL get used to eating less. IF worked for me. It seems the MAIN problem is NOT total calories, I read a book by Gary Taubes called "the case for keto." I don't know about bio chem but in the book he said it is not the calories you eat but rather the type of food / calorie. MAIN problem is simple carbs / Sugar. ( slow carbs are veggies) . Simple carbohydrates spike insulin and the harmone insulin is the problem it stores fat. Exercise will just make you hungry. I do exercise , i enjoy running in a fasted state 4-5 miles a way and i do bodyweight muscle building training too. I am no longer pre-diabetic and A1C is normal. But i still gotta keep an eye on it. I dropped weight and and getting used to the keto diet + IF. We have a family history of diabetes in my family. ( dad. brothers. ) all have it and they are on meds. Doctor do not tell you about diet they just put them on Metaformin. I am 2 years on IF and keto and it worked for me. I weigh 165 now. All my blood work is back to normal. Main problem are the simple carbs and frequency of eating. Look around you we live in a carb word / sugar ads everywhere. It is VERY VERY hard to stay away from simple / carbs / sugar but you can do it. Eating healthy is NOT CHEAP either. I do tell my family to try IF and or keto but they are addicted to carbs and are all on metaformin or some diabetic meds. - 2 cents

Really happy for you and your successful health transformation!

But...this is a great example of something working for someone, and then they go on a crusade of why "it's the best" with lots of random untrue statements.

> It seems the MAIN problem is NOT total calories

No that is the main problem, and you got healthy by restricting them, which resulted in loss of weight, which resulted in an improved sensitivity to insulin.

> MAIN problem is simple carbs / Sugar.

Simple carbs and sugars are not more fattening on their own.

> Exercise will just make you hungry.

Exercise is the single best thing you can do to improve your metabolic health, even above dieting, which is great that you do that too.

> It is VERY VERY hard to stay away from simple / carbs / sugar but you can do it

I think when you say "simple carbs and sugars" you're referring to the droves of hyper-palatable, calorically dense packaged foods that are out there. These are not necessarily "dangerous" on their own, but they are easy to over-consume which leads to a caloric surplus, which leads to weight gain, and thennnnnn all the bad stuff follows.

I like fig newtons and eat them everyday :)

I respectfully disagree. Even without a caloric surplus, you can develop metabolic disease from simple carbs and sugars being over represented in your diet. Your body can burn fat and it can burn sugar, and the fat burning pathway is generally more sustainable and healthy long term. Sugar burning pathways are there for quick bursts of energy. Overdevelop the glucose pathways and under develop fat burning pathways and you get a whole bunch of nasty diseases.

This is why there are some chubby people who are in better overall health than some skinny people.

The title is clickbaity and he talks really slowly, still worth watching IMHO. He gets by on one meal a day of 1500 calories. His aim is lifespan prolongation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dR1FCJS8DoM

Does such caloric restricted diet allow one to maintain muscles and/or strength?

If yes, I am mighty interested....

Calorie restriction tends to be worse for maintaining muscle mass than outright fasting.

I can’t believe his basal metabolic rate is under or at 1500cal.

Smaller women might have that.

You'd be surprised... There's quite a bit of genetic variation.

I can maintain my weight at around 190lbs on ~1900 kCal as an active man. That's measuring absolutely everything religiously with a scale, and assuming all oil into every pan is ingested, etc.

My sister is quite overweight and she can maintain weight easily around 1200 kCal.

It does not.

I think you are confusing calorie restriction with fasting.

You can be regularly fasting AND eating the same amount of calories on average. You just eat more between fasts. Fasting just means there is enough period between your meals for your body to get stressed a bit and to have to go into fasting mode.

The idea here is that the act of fasting alone promotes positive changes. A side effect is that most people, usually, are not able to make up all of the calories in a short time. Meaning if you eat only every other day, it actually is quite hard to eat two days of calories within one day.

For me fasting is much more bearable than "dieting". For me dieting just means I am hungry constantly while fasting means I just need to survive until the next meal when I will be able to eat as much as I want and feel satisfied.

Also fasting is sort of self-regulating. As long as I can keep to the fasting period and I am not criminally overeating outside of it, I can reap the benefits of weight loss as if I was on caloric restriction but without having to think about it or counting calories.

Neither caloric restriction nor fasting necessarily means wasting of your muscles. Though if you fast long enough or restrict your calories enough at some point it will become unavoidable.

I personally think it all depends on your cost/benefit. Fasting brings positive effects you can't emulate in any other way. But you don't need to be fasting constantly, I personally think you can get a lot of effects by fasting occasionally (like one day a week, for example).

And without getting too much into details, I think if you are absolutely unwilling to do fasting and would prefer caloric restriction there still are better ways to do it. It is better to reduce your calorie ingestion by reducing hunger relative to your output.

For example, jogging every day in the morning, eating whole fresh fruit and vegetables some time before your meals, will have effect of reducing your hunger and making you eat less without having to be constantly hungry.

> I think you are mistaking calorie restriction with fasting.

I don't think so - the comment said "one meal a day" which is clearly a kind of fasting.

Even the "16:8 diet" is referred to as intermittent fasting, and it's not as extreme as eating only one meal a day.

You are right about the fact this is fasting.

But the parent wrote "Does such caloric restricted diet allow one to maintain muscles and/or strength?" Which means he is asking about caloric restriction responding to comment about fasting.

I'd say the parent's question is perfectly valid: “He gets by on one meal a day of 1500 calories.” implies, in fact outright states, a calorie restricted diet as well as a temporally restricted one.

> Which means he is asking about caloric restriction responding to comment about fasting

1,500 calories per day is calorie restriction for an adult male of this size.

You can eat 5000 calories in one big meal after fasting, or spread put over smaller meals without fasting.

True, but the topic was "one meal a day of 1500 calories" for a muscular individual, i.e. fasting together with a calorie deficit.

Most people would struggle to finish a meal with half those calories, and rightly so - it's excessive. Strongmen could go over that amount a day when bulking, maybe, and that's about the semi-practical limits of the human body (while maintaining at least some semblance of health).

Table 2 of the paper in low carb + time restricted weight loss in kg at three month was -5.0 +/- 0.4 while body fat -3.0 +/- 0.5 and muscle -0.5 +/- 0.2.

If your body fat percentage is high enough (25% or more for example) it is even possible to gain muscle on a calorie deficit. Many studies have shown it's possible to lose fat while gaining muscle for such individuals.

I'm not sure about the "one meal per day" part though - not sure if there are studies for that combined with a calorie deficit.

The lower your body fat percentage is, the harder it is to diet without losing muscle.

"One meal per day" probably won't cut it. I think the idea here is that:

1. you have to do resistance training (lifting weights)

2. you need to consume enough protein so that it can be used to build the muscle mass (100-150g per day)

3. you limit calorie intake by skipping carbohydrates and fats - this is what your body fat can easily replace.

You probably cannot limit yourself to just one meal per day, or skipping eating some days - your body being in the "fasting mode" is the opposite of "muscle building mode".

another problem here is: high fat percentage lowers the testosterone levels, which is not great for gaining muscle. Some testosterone-boosting supplements, like zinc might be useful here.

Sounds about right. Regarding point 3, 1500 kcal per day leaves more than enough budget to have some fats and carbs - 150g of protein is only 600 kcal.

> high fat percentage lowers the testosterone levels, which is not great for gaining muscle.

Anecdotally speaking, I was able to gain muscle / increase strength just fine when I started dieting, and I was definitely above 30% fat. Even if this isn't the case, the fat should melt away quickly on a good diet, so it probably isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

For what it's worth, are you sure you were gaining muscle and not just gaining strength? There are many possible strength-gaining adaptations that can happen in an individual who is gaining no muscle. Actually gaining lean body mass while losing weight is very unlikely. It requires a very untrained, overweight individual with a relatively modest caloric deficit.

I can't prove that I was gaining muscle, but it sure looked like I was. It's not particularly rare either, there are many sources out there debunking the idea that gaining muscle requires gaining weight. This video cites some:

https://youtu.be/wkBtHOBmpb0

Even if I had only been gaining strength, that's still a good thing. So in practice this doesn't change the fact that it's a good idea to train while dieting.

Muscle gaining requires quite a bit of protein. It is not very difficult to constantly get enough protein in a non-vegan diet while consuming only 1500 calories even on OMAD. It is far more difficult to accomplish with a vegan diet on OMAD or IF cycle while only consuming 1500 calories.

It’s not so hard with protein powder. My powder would give me 100g protein in 440 calories.

That leaves just over 1000 calories to eat nutrient dense foods like broccoli and foods that bring even more protein.

(Just for fun, 1000cal of kale/broccoli aka 3kg fills all nutrient bars in cronometer except b12 and d3 and it has 70-90g protein)

Though i’m also not very convinced that we need nearly as much protein as broscientists think. If you aren’t jacked and you can’t grow on 100g protein per day at 200lbs, you aren’t covering enough of your max effort at the gym. Most people make that mistake and do grow no matter how much protein their ingest.

People with low muscle mass definitely don't need 440 calories of protein shake a day to gain muscle.

I was getting great results with about 110 calories worth 30 minutes after exercising (25-30g? "1 scoop" at any rate) plus creatine. I simultaneously lost a lot of fat according to the fat percentage scale at the supplement store.

> It requires a very untrained, overweight individual with a relatively modest caloric deficit.

It's hard to say because many overweight people already have a significant muscle mass, just those muscles are underused and hidden under the fat. When one starts to exercise and looses some weight their muscles' volume will increase with a better blood flow, and will get the proper shape and also become more prominent with less fat over them, but they'll probably not actually increase the muscle mass itself - it's just that we're now able to see them better.

Anecdata here but a few months ago I started eating "one meal every other day" (a massive ribeye with butter and eggs. i have no idea what the calories or protein or whatever are.). I had been strength training for a while without dietary control.

I'm severely obese. Significantly less so than I was when I started fasting, but still over 35 BMI.

I think I've gained a small amount of muscle? It's definitely slowed down since before I was fasting, but lifts are progressing still. It may just be skill progression but these are simple lifts that I'm pretty familiar with (overhead press and deadlift), and I feel like I'm still gaining real strength.

I don't know how to judge muscle size really, especially since I'm losing body fat which is obviously making them look more pronounced.

I do take one "testosterone-boosting 'supplement'" (the main one). I've been running a test level of around 900.

> I do take one "testosterone-boosting 'supplement'" (the main one). I've been running a test level of around 900.

That's basically a PED for your condition. That + protein + muscle load from lifting means you will be gaining muscle and losing fat as long as you engage in a progressive overload ( which is much easier to do with T boosters ).

> If your body fat percentage is high enough (25% or more for example) it is even possible to gain muscle on a calorie deficit. Many studies have shown it's possible to lose fat while gaining muscle for such individuals.

Being a vegan it is very difficult to get enough protein needed to maintain the existing muscle mass, not to mention grow muscles at 1500 calories per day. That's below base for most men even with a lifestyle that does not include anything other than NEAT.

What's NEAT?

All the energy needed for non-exercise activity i.e. eating (edit: muscle movement needed to eat such as lifting a spoon, not the process of digesting), scratching your head, typing on a keyboard, yawning, etc

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12468415/

Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT)

Given the goal is lifespan extension, the implication seems to be the person is trying to do this for an entire lifetime. You can't eat at a calorie deficit in the long term without starving at some point, so that means 1500 KCal at some point has to be equal to your TDEE. There is no way to get that low permanently while having any meaningful amount of muscle.

The comment below claiming TDEE of 1900 for a 190 lb "active" male is interesting. I currently use the Macro Factor App to track meals and TDEE, make everything from scratch from raw ingredients, weigh and measure absolutely everything, including any cooking oil, so the estimates are good as you can get without checking into a metabolic ward, and I'm a 41 year-old male who currently weights 187 lbs and my TDEE is roughly 2900. That's at an activity level of lifting for 60-90 minutes 6 days a week, walking usually one to three hours a day at a pretty leisurely pace, usually while listening to a podcast or playing Pokemon Go, and I live in a four-story house so walk up and down stairs quite a bit.

The famous study on Amish body composition and activity levels had them at an average of 18000 steps and 9% body fat, and they were eating ungodly amounts of food, pounds of potato and grain, upwards of 4000 KCal a day in most cases. I suspect what a western white collar worker considers "active" is skewed a bit. I doubt there were many pre-industrial adults outside of nobility who got by on 1500 a day. Maybe some had no choice during a very harsh winter, but not as an everyday thing for years.

They are opposites. You want to get bigger or maintain muscle mass and simultaneously you want to fast (get smaller) and lose mass. Fasting will definitely cause you to lose mass - some fat and/or muscle.

While working out or lifting will cause you to increase your need for calories and food intake. They are opposing forces. You cannot have it both ways.

Fasting = less mass less food intake. Lifting/muscle mass = more food intake more mass

Fasting doesn't imply eating less (on a larger time scale). You can, for example, eat the same number of calories all at once or spread out over the day.

Perhaps if you're obese and your body can burn enough of its stored fat you could maintain it for a while, but 1500 kcal/day is too low for an active person - for most people it barely covers the BMR needs. In order to stop body from reducing your muscle mass you need to stimulate those muscles a lot, you need to use them hard, so your real caloric needs would be significantly higher. Big problem with such extreme restrictions is that in 6 months body will adapt to low calorie intake (shed the unneeded muscles, slow down metabolism), so if you ever decide to stop the program and go back to the normal dietary regime, you'll be in a big problem how not to get overweight really quickly.

Muscle burns calories. My base metabolism increased by 100-200 calories (from < 1400) after six months of strength training 3 days a week for 30 minutes. (Computer programmer with very little muscle mass...)

Anyway, if you want to lose weight and maintain muscle mass, add protein shakes + creatine + strength training to whatever calorie restrictions you are doing. Get your body fat percentage tested every few weeks. Adjust calories as appropriate to draw down fat or build up muscle. In steady state, most people can either gain muscle or lose fat, but not both at the same time.

(The above works OK for absolute beginners; it gets harder to improve as you improve.)

The "A Workout Routine" book is ranty but has decent introductory routines and links to decent YouTube videos. You'll also need about $150 worth of exercise bands to get started. (Cheap Amazon ones are dangerous, so go to a reputable brick and mortar store's website to choose a brand.)

Forgot to say that he is a world record holder in weightlifting and pretty buff.

You can't cheat the laws of metabolism. If you're in a large caloric deficit, the body will not waste energy building muscle, which is an EXTREMELY expensive process. If you weight train and consume hundreds of grams of protein per day, you can work to maintain the lean tissue, and in some cases if you're a beginner and/or obese, you can put on some muscle in the beginning, but it won't last.

Building muscle requires a slight caloric surplus and sufficient protein intake spread out through the day (last part is more about optimization)

> Building muscle requires a slight caloric surplus

It doesn't:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10838463/

There are other similar studies, plus lots of anecdotal data from people who were able to gain muscle while losing weight.

Exactly, like I said, if you're overweight like the cops in the study, or new to training, or you take steroids, you can build muscle and lose fat. But it's not forever, at some point you'll plateau and need to pick a lane: lose fat and maintain LMB, gain some fat and gain muscle.

We're not talking insane caloric surpluses for the latter either.

True - I was just pointing out that the particular part I quoted was contradictory with that point.

Sorry to say that this person is widely regarded as a cheat and a scammer. He's not popular enough to merit a thorough debunking but consider that

a) he has a physique and strength completely out of the spectrum for his alleged diet;

b) is not available for third-party scrutiny and has completely made-up credentials;

c) every comment easily found about him online is clearly astroturfed by people selling his products.

It's certainly possible to do well on a relatively low-calorie and time-restricted diet, but you'll look skinny, not like superman. Beware the magic food men.

That video is bullshit misinformation. Severe caloric restriction has never been shown to extend lifespan in humans (or any higher primates). It works for small lab animals like mice because they live in safe little cages where there is no risk of traumatic injuries or infectious diseases. A weak human will eventually fall down the stairs and break a hip, and the resulting immobility tends to lead to death within a couple years.

It is simply impossible for a normal height adult man to subsist permanently on 1500 kcal/day while also doing the hard exercise necessary to build and maintain the optimal level of lean muscle tissue. Do the math, the energy balance just doesn't work. It might be barely adequate for a short woman.

There is no one-size-fits-all.

Human body is a complex system, with so many twists and turns. The more dramatic diet you are trying to introduce, the more careful you have to be.

There is no quick and easy solution, do the fasting thing and you'll lose weight in 10 days and then you can eat whatever you want. No. It's about the choices you make every day, it's about lifestyle. Eat healthy (most of the time), sleep well, rest, exercise, manage stress.. and you should be fine.

> There is no one-size-fits-all.

> The one-size-fits-all solution: Eat healthy (most of the time), sleep well, rest, exercise, manage stress..

Yeah, I sounded a bit like life coaches do these days. Wasn't my intention. Sorry about that.

People do all that and still end up fat due to how unquantifiable 'healthy' and 'well' are, among others.

There is also nothing dramatic about not eating for most of the day unless you're a growing child.

There are some health conditions that require people to eat less, but more frequently.

I'm not against fasting, to be clear, it's all about what works best for you. And it's up to you to find out what it is.

People like to point to the edge cases, even though it is not helpful for 99% of the population. Let's be real: Almost no one ends up fat, if they are not eating badly (i.e. too much).

> almost no one ends up fat, if they are not eating badly

sure... as there is not any obesity and diabetes epidemic caused by 50+ years of wrong nutritional guidelines.

> as there is not any obesity and diabetes epidemic caused by 50+ years of wrong nutritional guidelines

Which guideline(s), specifically, do you take issue with?

USDA Dietary Guidelines, but it's similar in most western countries (overrepresented carbs, saturated fat demonization)

Yes, to some degree. But what people do when their dogs get too fat? They reduce the amount of food they give them, and after a while their weight goes down. There are many factors like stress, microbiome and sleep, but in the end it still boils down to calories in calories out.

As someone who suffered from insomnia for most of his adult life, I honestly hate when people include "sleep well" in lifestyle choices. As it's something you can easily, or at all, control. On the plus side, diet specifically low carb diet finally cured it for me.

I'm sure it's frustrating to hear over and over again. But generalized advice doesn't and can't apply to everyone. Many people have extremely poor habits around sleep, and don't appreciate or dismiss the importance of it.

Maybe there's some underlying pathology in more cases than you will ever see acknowledged in traditional medical research (e.g. person is mildly addicted to being on a computer screen, or person has breathing problems that make it hard to sleep soundly). But that still doesn't make it bad advice on average and in general!

I get frustrated when people demand a special carve out for their situation in general advice. I mean, I guess they should have written:

Eat healthy (most of the time, unless you are in experiencing food scarcity, sorry), sleep well (unless you have insomnia, then try your best), rest (unless you have small children, then good luck), exercise (unless you have long COVID, there seems to be a trigger effect from exercise), manage stress (unless you are in a war-torn region, then I'm sending my prayers) .. and you should be fine (or your best you if fine isn't possible).

Which seems much less pithy ...

Sure I'm probably biased but I believe sleep quality is a little more difficult to control than the other points you listed. I can't even fathom consciously having bad sleep habits and not fixing them given how disrupting insomnia has been for me.

> I believe sleep quality is a little more difficult to control than the other points you listed

More difficult than food scarcity or war induced stress? Really?

those were exaggerated extremes he included to make a point... (straw man?)

Well, I'm the author of both :-)

Honestly, my wife has insomnia and it is not only difficult to manage but it interacts with all the other issues: increases stress, makes eating healthy difficult (reduction of will power) and exercise is harder to recover from.

People over self-diagnose insomnia instead of addressing lifestyle choices:

https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/

Actually for me fasting was quick and easy. I lost most of the weight within weeks and months. Fasting is much more powerful than your comment would indicate.

Theres a rate of fasting thats harmful though. On the TV show Alone, people are out in the woods for a few weeks to months and they end up just sloughing off weight. One contestant lost 86 pounds in 67 days, you'd practically see it fall off you each day. They do have to get medical checkups because losing all this weight too fast can put a lot of strain on your organs. A few people have been forced to leave the show because of starvation.

My biggest problem of dieting is that I cannot sleep or maintain sleep with the slightest feeling of hunger. Even melatonin helps only a little.

I had a similar problem, and found that it was much easier to deal with hunger in the morning. I generally skip breakfast (curbing hunger with coffee), have a light lunch, and a normal dinner. If I am still hungry before bed, maybe a glass of milk or some yogurt to get me through the night.

Yes, I think that most of the fast/IF style fad diets really boil down to this which is more a diet hack "don't eat in the morning when you are not hungry", which gives you a few hours where it's a slam dunk of easy adherence. And adherence to the plan being the number 1 predictor of successful weight loss (almost tautological, since a superior plan cannot lead to weight loss if it is not adhered to).

You might try reducing your caloric intake during the first half of the day (skip breakfast or breakfast & lunch) and then eating dinner like you normally do.

Is it real hunger or a false hunger feeling? I ask that because I've had issues with feeling hungry at night even though I ate a full dinner a few hours before, then getting up and eating cereal.

I've found that eating less overall can reduce this issue. I assume the stomach and/or mind is adjusting based on food availability.

Having a very good reason not to sucummb to the hunger pains is helpful as well, such as family, sport, etc. I know when I wrestled in high school the feeling of some level of hunger between meals became to be a positive feelings.

Hunger pains that actually wake you up are much more likely to be "actual hunger" than any false hunger you might deal with while you're awake and your waking psyche is in control.

It's similar to how having thirst wake you up is a much stronger sign of potential diabetes than "feeling thirsty" during the day.

If it's happening while you're sleeping, it's probably not psychogenic (or psychosomatic).

I feel “hunger pain” only when I overeat. If I have a normal dinner I sleep well. It probably has something to do with over production of stomach acids. (Just a sample of one to be clear)

I believe it is false. Because whenever I eat until I don't feel hungry, my weight grows. So obviously my body is lying to me.

I haven't found a solution yet.

Try Keto, lots of fat makes you feel full much longer. Takes a couple of weeks or maybe a month to get used to though.

Try drinking a high protein very low sugar shake. It really helps against the feeling of hunger.

The Hackers Diet suggests sticking to a highly restricted (500 calories? I can't remember. It is free and online) diet for a couple of days at the beginning of your diet.

That way when you increase your intake to something that won't kill you in the medium term, your body is much happier than it would be otherwise.

Works for me. YMMV.

Most likely your deficit is waaaay too steep. You should not be starving to the extent that you have hunger pains, or are unable to sleep, or your reproductive system or your immune system shuts down :)

Hungry ape gets woken up early because he needs to go and invest his remaining calories from body fat in to digging up a tuber, or trapping a squirrel or whatever...

Edit. Because obviously the ones with the hunger -> no sleep behavioural repertoire survived to pass on their genes.

I agree with this comment.

I've been on a calorie deficit of 400 for months now and I feel fine. Lost 10 pounds and am pleatueau-ing at 145.

I also work out so my diet is very protein heavy and light on carbs. I don't feel full after meals, but I also don't feel really hungry.

Don't go on an unsustainable calorie deficit. Accept that it'll take time.

In my experience, you need to be very gradual when reducing your daily calorie intake. People get overweight over long periods of time, then one day, they look in the mirror and panic.

Next thing they make a kind of moral judgment of themselves and decide that to attain for their sins, they need to be punished.

So, they completely change their diets and try to stick to this entirely different diet through sheer will power. It is not going to work.

My brother uses an app to track calories and get down to a moderate caloric deficit. It is impressive how over the course of a year he just slowly loses weight consistently. If he can just keep around a neutral caloric intake for the rest of his life he is set, but that has not happened in the past. Maybe this time (fingers crossed).

I've begun IF and have found it helpful for losing weight.

What works for me is one meal a day being dinner with a workout an hour or so after I finish eating. I may also workout before dinner, after I finish work.

I use an apple watch to track my active calories burned and between monitoring what I eat and how active I am, I can control how much weight I can lose on a per day level. It's pretty cool! If I burn ~3500 calories total (2k passive, 1500 active) I can lose up to 1 lb a day. I'd bet I average ~.3 lbs a day of loss and the best part is it stays off!

The timing is critical for me more so than anything else.

I eat dinner around 7 and workout an hour after I finish eating. Usually I run 2-3 miles.

If I get hungry later at night, as I tend to stay up late, I'll have some soup with some bread, olive oil, and spices which I find filling and hits that craving for intense flavors I seem to get.

I'm a horrible sleeper and I have no doubt that if and when I focus on improving my sleeping habits in the same way I'd only see more progress in my weight loss journey

I skimmed through the paper, but this seems to again confirm the benefits of intermittent fasting with a low carb diet

Have you read the paper at all? The actual title contains this: "Time-restricted eating with or without low carbohydrate diet". Look at the "with or without" part.

The graphical abstract seem to indicate that low carb combined with time restriction gave better weight loss results in addition to all the other benefits of time restricted eating.

Did I read the graphic wrong or does paper not match the graphic?

I read the title and looked at the graphical abstract. :)

You’re right in that the LCD did not seem to improve MetS (the focus of the paper), but it looked to me like there were benefits to combining fasting with low carb, i.e., weight went down more.

Chinese overweight adults with metabolic syndrome N=167

Haven't read study yet, but I do 16:8 daily. I'm not sure for me it makes a big difference on weight loss, but maybe a little (I'm already a healthy body weight - not trying to lose). Primarily it is one less meal to think about making. I also eat low carb, but not religiously but more simply based on my diet: meat, eggs, and vegetables mostly (I do avoid almost all refined carbs entirely though except for on rare occasion).

How do you ensure you get enough protein in this situation? Even with meat and eggs as a common source I’d be concerned about getting too much in a single meal and/or not enough overall.

If you can’t eat enough protein in 8 hours when you’re still eating meat and eggs, your protein goal sounds too high.

I'm down 95 lbs from 325 lbs following my version of low carb\keto for 20 months. I also restrict to 16:8, eat lots of eggs, meat, nuts and leafy greens.

I use a breathalyzer to track ketones and blood test strips for glucose. My lab results at 3, 6, 14 and 20 months show improvement. My A1C is back below diabetic levels.

My father died at 68. I'm almost 67, so I want to find what works for me.

So, you are losing 5 lbs a month. The maximum safe weight loss rate is about 1-2lbs per week. Congrats on sticking with it!

I strongly suggest basic strength training if you are not doing it already. I lost 20lbs on a vegan calorie restricted diet and was obviously weaker / more injury prone afterwards.

That was double-stupid of me, but you are probably losing muscle and lowering your base metabolism unless you are doing something to compensate.

Exercise bands with handles are the best bang for the buck. See my other comments.

"Fifty-eight women were randomized and 31 (53.44%) were lost to follow-up at 12 months. Dropout rates were similar between groups. In the intention-to-treat analysis, there were no significant changes in the body weight after 12 months (Differences in changes from baseline between groups: −0.05 95%CI [-2.34; 2.24] Kg; p = 0.96). An increase in axillary temperature (0.40 °C, 95% CI [-0.14; 0.67]°C, p < 0.01), a reduction in the percentage of body fat (−1.64%, 95% CI [-3.08; −0.19]%, p = 0.02) and waist circumference (−2.57 cm, 95% CI [-5.73; 0.58] cm, p = 0.03 in the mixed model involving 4 measurements) were observed in the intervention group, when compared to the control group."

Effects of time-restricted feeding on body weight, body composition and vital signs in low-income women with obesity: A 12-month randomized clinical trial (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02615...)

Lately I've been just fasting two days every week with good results so far. On fasting days I let myself have a little bit of food, like a can of tuna fish or something. For some reason, just doing one day didn't seem to make any difference- it has to be two days in a row, maybe I'm just going through the stored carbs in my muscles for the first day. This works best when paired with exercise, even on fasting days. But it's really hard to be on a diet all the time, because I just don't have the willpower to keep it up- being hungry all the time day after day after day- whereas if you're doing a punctuated fast you know there's a definite endpoint to it, and then you get to take a break before the next fast. It also means you don't have to spend time counting calories and stuff like that. When I get to my goal weight I'll keep fasting but maybe only once a month or something. Maybe physically it's no different than calorie restriction but psychologically, for me, it's way easier.

A different, Recent study in China found no benefit to TRE:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/time-restrict...

It would seem hunger is associated with vital metabolic processes which are prevented by never being hungry.

Is a cup of coffee (with/without milk) outside of the 8-hour window considered a breach of TRE?

The common wisdom is usually that black coffee is ok, as is anything without or with barely any calories.

Coffee has a tiny amount of calories, but I've always seen people say it's allowed if you're doing TRE. If you set up your 8 hour window well though, it's probably not a huge deal to skip coffee outside the feeding window, if you're worried?

I think depends on why you fast. I've used https://www.zerofasting.com/will-it-break-my-fast/ and https://www.zerofasting.com/will-it-break-my-fast-part-ii/

I‘d say it depends whether drinking coffee triggers insulin release for you, or other growth factors like mTOR. According to a quick search, coffee actually seems to decrease mTOR - that would be ideal for fasting. Milk OTOH is ideal for promoting mTOR (babies need to grow fast), so I‘d avoid milk during a fasting window.

To me, anything beyond water breaks the fast.

That doesn't mean you can't have coffee or a cup of tea, but I wouldn't put milk in it because that's literally food, with many calories, macro and micronutrients, etc.

I recall seeing on HN someone reporting that even bits of toothpaste from toothbrushing trigger the relevant body response for them. How do you tell/measure whether something breaks the fast for you?

The Islamic standard is easy: nothing should pass through your lips when fasting. No water, no smoking, no toothpaste, and if you're really strict you can't even spit.

why is it relevant to a medical conversation?

I don't care that much when I fast. I simply drink water and move on with my life.

"count", versus actual, measurable metabolic change? Fringe dieting schemes only made worse by anecdotal 'evidence'.

I think some people use glucose monitors to monitor their insulin response.

You mean you don't collect data about yourself and your biological processes every second of every day to hyperoptimize your existence? What are you doing on HN?

I skip breakfast and lunch but drink coffee/tea.

It's not about being perfect, do what works for you in the long run, a cup of coffee will always be better than a donut / milk & cereals / a full english breakfast when it comes to calories and insulin response

> It's not about being perfect

This. I've been doing TRF for years. The only thing I have in the morning is black coffee, with an occasional splash of milk. Diet and exercise is all about doing things for the long term where consistency trumps almost all the other details.

This is the absolute key.Following sustainable intermittent fasting for ten yrs is better than a month of extreme fasting for sure.

I also think about the 80/20 rule. If friends want to go to brunch, I go to brunch. If I'm out of town on business and a client wants to meet for breakfast, I eat a bit of breakfast. I don't make a big deal about it because my steady state is TRF.

I'll add though, after TRF for years, when I eat breakfast I notice my energy levels are off for the whole day. And, I'm also crazy hungry the next morning. Whereas normally I'm rarely ever hungry.

Generally coffee and tea are acceptable while fasting, provided you’re not adding anything to them.

The paper is skimpy on methods. I didn't see if they were in a supplement or something. As such it only defined the size of the eating window and its time of day.

I was able to read it on a larger screen and it indeed references a supplement.

Recommended zero calorie beverages: - Water, mineral water, sparkling water, tea, herbal tea - Absolutely no sweetened drink, especially those with artificial sweeteners

https://www.cell.com/cms/10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100777/attachme...

Type 1 diabetic here. My body doesn't produce insulin, so if my glucose level goes up after eating or drinking something, that increase in glucose is a (very) approximate measure of insulin response in someone without type 1 diabetes. Insulin is released/produced/injected in response to glucose level increase (and other signals in someone who doesn't have type 1 diabetes).

In my experience, black coffee is absolutely fine outside of an eating window. I fast for at least 18 hours a day, only drinking black coffee and water when fasting. There was no measurable difference in glucose on occasions when I drank black coffee, vs occasions without (all other things as equal as possible).

Thanks for sharing this.

Did you notice any improvements with your condition (type 1 diabetes) once you started to do intermittent fasting?

It's difficult to tell if IF alone had a change because I also switched to a very low carbohydrate diet at pretty-much the same time. The two combined had a massively positive effect on my diabetes.

My glucose level is much more stable, and A1C is lower. I also use significantly less insulin than a lot of people with type 1 diabetes.

My reason for doing both was to reduce insulin levels as much as possible.

Didn't someone post that they were wearing a glucose monitor and it shoots up every time they drink black coffee?

It does for some people, IIRC. Human metabolism is highly individual.

Common understanding of these matters says no it isn’t. So long as it is black coffe with now sugar. However, when I fast, the coffe I drink can have an adverse effect on my stomach.

I’ve found this can be mitigated by mixing in more water.

Conventional wisdom is <50 cal won't break the fast. Black coffee contains almost zero calories.

Milk spikes glucose levels, so I guess it. depends on how much milk you use.

My problem is: caffeine makes me more hungry, so I need to avoid coffee as well. Tea is OK.

Caffeine makes you hungry? That's weird. It's a stimulate so it should make you less hungry.

Yeah, all of A) stimulants B) hot beverages and C) bitter taste are appetite suppressors. Both coffee and tea work great in my experience, but really high tannin tea can make me nauseous on an empty stomach.

Just to add to the "what to drink while fasting" list, some people see an insulin spike when drinking soft drinks with artificial sweeteners. They don't break the fast for me (I've been one-meal-a-day for years now), but YMMV.

Beware of the man of one study. AFAIK, intermittent fasting is a decent method of lowering overall calories, but hasn't shown other specific benefits. It can definitely be a good tool to use, depending on your personality.

It down regulates mTOR.

Should I stop exercising to reduce spikes in mTOR too? https://peterattiamd.com/dispelling-myths-protein-increases-...

We have a reasonably decent understanding that "abundance" state is bad for longevity. This is a decent overview:

https://www.lifespanpodcast.com/

Kind of off topic but wanted to see if anyone from HN has struggled with horrible brain fog while fasting and if they were able to overcome it? I can't fast more than 16 hours it seems without becoming dysfunctional.

not an expert but could be that you're eating too much sugar before fasting, or entering ketogenesis (it goes away if that's the case)

For me, this went away after a fortnight or so. I also find that if I fall off of my routine, when I restart with a decent fast (72 hours or so) it eliminates this adjustment period. Kicks the body into keto

You may not be getting enough electrolytes, especially salt. Try drinking broth, taking a salt tablet, or adding some salt to your water. For me, the brain fog lifts within half an hour of taking salt.

Also, take multivitamins when dieting.

It could be the water is helping, and not the salt.

Dieting tends to dehydrate me. Burning fat releases a boatloat of stored toxins, and does a number on the kidneys, etc.

You don’t need to time-restrict. Simply reduce all carbs (not just sugars) to max 50g a day, and increase protein (150g a day) and you will dramatically improve your metabolic health.

East&South Asians (study subjects) also stores higher % of viceral fat. Apparently lot's of skinny fat Asians out there who looks healthy but aren't.

I have stopped eating breakfast and have early lunch and dinner. This made a difference on my health. Feel less bloated, better digestion etc.

130 g daily carb threshold for the low carb branch seems a bit high. Would have been way more interesting if they compared intermitted fasting with proper nutritional ketosis (carbs under 20g).

Most interesting metabolic changes in low carb only happen if you really cut them to very low amounts.

Eat nothing but meat.

No ketchup, no BBQ sauce, etc., just meat.

For metabolic syndrome, the first go-to is cutting sugar. Specifically, fructose-laden sugar.

For many people, it suffices to eliminate sugary beverages, including juice.

I find the conversation around diet extremely myopic. If the goal is to lead a long and healthy life, the minutiae around exactly when to eat or what to eat (Mediterranean diet) is so unimportant and detracts from so many other important tenets. Those being proper sleep, stress management, and exercise (cardio && strength).

That being said, if a conversation around fasting is what gets people in the door, perhaps it’s not the worst thing in the world.

How is diet any more "myopic" than the other things you listed?

"If the goal is to lead a long and healthy life," then an active lifestyle with good sleep and stress management as described by GP means you begin tuning into your body much more. This increased body and mood awareness in turn precipitates a healthy diet that actually works for your body and supports your exercise regimen and healthy lifestyle.

If you just diet but at not active or sleeping well or are stressed, you are not necessarily leading to a long and healthy life. Perhaps weight loss, but not the stated goal of a long and healthy life.

Has it been studied though ?

Moderate exercise + perfect diet VS lots of exercise and junk diet ?

imho diet is as important as the rest, you can't be healthy eating mcdonalds everyday no matter how much you lift.

I’m not talking about moderate vs vigorous exercise. Check my comment. I’m talking about exercise AND sleep/recovery AND stress. Ie a 360 view on your current mental and physical health.

What I’m saying is that if you are thoughtful about exercise, sleep, and stress, then you will be paying attention to your mood and energy level. And thus you will notice that eating junk food has detrimental effects on your mood and energy level.

People tend to follow diets blindly, and sometimes pure weightlifting routines, but rarely do people blithely exercise, manage sleep, and track stress without increased awareness of what effect diet has on them.

I’ll ask in return: let’s say you have a great diet and do yoga twice a week, but you are constantly sleep deprived and high cortisol from stress, does that lead to a long and healthy life?

I like what you've said and would add hydration to it. I think so often I eat when I'm actually just thirsty.

This is most of fasting, once you’re past the withdrawal.

This was a big takeaway for me when I started intermittent fasting. A lot of what I thought was hunger is actually thirst. The other big takeaway was noticing that when hunger pangs would come around at the normal times I used to eat, just drinking something and ignoring them for a few minutes would cause them to go away.

Yeah, it's not exactly uncharted territory, people spend way too much time on experimenting with fads. And regardless of diet, you still need cardio and strength, and also flexibility training, to keep your body in shape. Even if you find magic shortcut diet to be totally shredded while sitting on your ass, your body is still going to start malfunctioning because of atrophy and stiffness and cardiovascular issues. The best thing to do by far, is adding more varied forms of exercise, but it takes a lot of time, that's the problem..

And that’s where you have to be quite deliberate. Plan out a part of your day to exercise. Don’t disrupt unless it is critical to do so.

Very easy to say “but I was so busy” and not do it, but sticking to a consistent schedule is how the habit (exercise) forms.

Yeah, the biggest limiting factor by far is time, once you get over the issue of motivation/discipline. I bet the optimal thing to do for general health and longevity, is to do light/medium intensity, low impact/risk, exercise of varied sort, for most of your waking hours.

I don't believe that time is really the limiting factor for most middle-class people. It's more a matter of priorities. Most of us spend a lot of time watching TV and scrolling social media.

Exactly, I think this is people saying "I'm too busy." But the reality is that they're "busy" by simply prioritizing other things that may or may not be worth it.

Examples I see all the time: excessive phone time (all activities there), stuffing too many things into one day and subsequently completing only a small portion of those things, distractions at work (non-work web sites), etc.

There are good reasons to use your phone, have a big to-do list, and etc. But it's also easier than you think to schedule 45 mins into your day to power through a fitness activity.

I personally think running/jogging is a top activity in terms of value for your time. Burns calories, improves cardio, the list goes on...

Diet is far more important than sleep, stress management, or exercise for weight loss. Which most people who are dieting are trying to achieve.

There are people who claim to have life-changing results from fixing their diet. An extreme example is fixing/improving epilepsy with medical-keto-diet. Or fixing type-2 diabet with keto/carnivore, etc.

> Those being proper sleep, stress management, and exercise (cardio && strength).

And eating properly...

> Those being proper sleep, stress management, and exercise (cardio && strength).

And being obese impacts all those things. Sure if you are slightly overweight, then _maybe_ diet isn't at the top of the list of things to care about.

But if you are obese, suddenly sleeping well becomes harder because you are more likely to have sleep apnea. You are more likely to have low testosterone making exercise harder to recover from. Being obese means you are more likely to injure yourself when exercising as well. There's probably a link between obesity and stress as well.

All these things are linked, to dismiss diet as minutiae is not the right approach. If you are obese, you should almost definitely think about you diet and not dismiss it (among other things of course).

In America the individual should focus about 90% of their effort on diet, and 10% on exercise. Not because the importance isn't equivalent, but because the social pressures are overwhelming fighting the individual on diet. People are happy to sell you running shoes, but even your immediate family will try to shame you into eating more.

It's the same in any western culture, and I assume every other culture that isn't going through food scarcity too. I only watch live TV when the football's on, and when you're not accustomed to it it's really overwhelming the sheer number of ads for food delivery apps.

Personally I had to vow to myself I would never use delivery apps again after I started using it almost daily, I just don't have the willpower to allow myself it every once in a while.

Throw away your TV.

I upvoted every comment in this chain. It's a reflection of how complicated weight and diet are in North American society right now.

I dont know, it seems to me that what you add to your body is more important than how you use it. Body has its own homeostasis , but food is external stimulus. Plus, the timing of eating is a way to manage the physical exercise of your gut muscles and the diurnal/sleep cycle

And I have a strong belief that many things fall into place by themselves as soon as you change lifestyle. Do more physical activity, you're gonna eat less and better, digest better, less constant snack/sweet, better regularity in when you eat, etc etc

People do talk about all those other things. And talking about diet is not myopic when most people's diet is so poor and unhealthy.

> if a conversation around fasting is what gets people in the door

Obesity is an epidemic in the US.[1] A direct and practical culture-change about food consumption is urgently needed.

Overeating is generally encouraged socially and in advertising. People are literally crippling themselves with fat.

Once the overconsumption of calories is corrected, a person can start exercising to achieve all the benefits of regular activity.

[1] _ https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

All the things enumerated by you are indeed essential for a long and healthy life.

Nevertheless, none of them will prevent you to become overweight. Only controlling your diet can enable you to control your weight.

Being overweight is guaranteed to cause health problems, especially at an old age. For example, my father could not take a certain cancer medication that had very good chances to prolong his life by 4 or 5 years, because he was too overweight. He also had a type of renal cancer that appears much more frequently at overweight men.

For most people, exercise can prevent gaining weight with a poor diet only when it is done during many hours every day, which is something that only professional athletes or movie stars can afford to do.

An adequate diet will prevent gaining weight even in a couch potato.

I have verified this in my personal experience, because I have been overweight during many years, despite doing a lot of exercise.

Only after I have altered my diet and I have begun to measure the amounts of everything I eat, I was able to return to an appropriate weight. Now I can increase or decrease my weight at will to reach any desired value, regardless if I also exercise or not.

Yeah, diet is at least 70% and exercise at most 30%. Unfortunately.

If you come down with some severe health issue from mildly starving yourself for many years you will never attribute it to the starvation. That's part of why anecdotal success stories are mostly worthless, they're laden with agenda and unfalsifiable.

Starvation is never necessary for weight control.

This is why there exist official recommendations for an adequate daily intake for proteins, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals, for anyone to be able to plan a diet that does not lead to starvation.

Experiments on humans are difficult, so it is not known with accuracy which are the best daily intakes. For example some believe that a daily intake of 0.8 g of proteins per kg is enough, while others believe that a daily intake of 1.2 g/kg would be better.

Even when choosing the maximum daily intakes for all essential nutrients that anyone believes to be adequate, the corresponding energy intake is much less than needed by a human.

So the control of the weight can be done by adjusting only the daily intake of carbohydrates and/or fat that are eaten additionally to a diet that is complete for the other nutrients.

When the daily intake of energy is less than necessary for maintaining the current body weight, one will be hungry all the time, but with an adequate diet there is no starvation that could cause health issues.

Just skipping over meals, without a plan of how to ensure that you eat enough of what matters, could cause real starvation and health issues.

Amazing response, thank you. This really opened my eyes, I might try IF/TRE now.

The goal is happiness. No one cares to live a long time being healthy if they are miserable.

> I find the conversation around diet extremely myopic. If the goal is to lead a long and healthy life, the minutiae around exactly when to eat or what to eat (Mediterranean diet) is so unimportant and detracts from so many other important tenets. Those being proper sleep, stress management, and exercise (cardio && strength).

Are you saying that nutrition scientists should ignore diet, and concentrate on the random things in other fields that you find important?

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