It literally cannot be as effective, because some people can eat a large amount of food in a short period of time.
What I suspect they mean is that the average person is more likely to stick to IF than they are to calorie counting. This feels intuitively obvious to me - it's a lot less work. Even on a bulking diet it can be really hard sometimes to figure out how many calories are in foods, small restaurants don't have a clue for example.
If you're assuming perfect adherence on one side and gaming on the other, then of course not.
People who don't want to adhere won't in either case and will find ways to cheat or game the process.
Also, IF (and calorie counting) helps shrink your stomach making giant meals less likely over time.
People are terrible at calorie counting too. Even when they don't give up. They stick to it they get sloppy over time. They'll estimate and round numbers, so they can have one more cookie, etc.
IF does not specify a calorie count. If it did, it would be a subset of calorie counting. There is nothing preventing me from eating 3-5k cals in 8 hours, I do it all the time when bulking.
There is nothing wrong with the idea of IF, it just relies on the fact that you will intuitively eat fewer calories if you restrict your eating to a shorter period. By definition then, it cannot be superior to just actually eating less.
Perfect adherence ignores those things by definition.
I think it's actionably useful to distinguish between "this doesn't work" and "people find it hard/impossible to do this".
I feel like we’re in a transition period where science is staring to take the human into account as part of what is possible. And I encourage that. Form nutrition to economics.
Humans are not fully rational. This is normal and expected. Except in science apparently.
Yes, if you are NASA you can fully account for calories perfectly, but outside of at least a hospital environment is it a fantasy.
It's very hard to over eat in a single meal unless you eat absolute junk food. It's relatively easy to over eat even on healthy food if you eat 3 meals per day + snacks here an there
I feel like NPR has gone down in quality in the last few years.