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Comment by guiomie | Hacker News Reader

I'll add that intermittent fasting (16/8) has also conditioned my brain (and stomach likely) to eat less during the non-fasting window. In 6 months I'm down 20 pounds (198 to 178), I've also removed alcohol consumption except for in-person social events. My main concerns with 16/8 are: 1. I drink coffee in the morning, it helps with hunger, but im also wondering if this will have long-term affect to my stomach 2. I'm losing weight, but I'm wondering what to do to stop losing it, I'll soon reach a healthy level. 3. It gets annoying being told 'you shouldnt skip the most important meal of the day' by people all the time.

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I've been doing IF consistently for about a decade. I never needed to lose weight, I did it to improve my healthspan. This is just my experience so obviously YMMV

1) I drink coffee in the morning too. No stomach problems yet, but I'm completely dependent on caffeine. Last summer I did a 4 month hiatus from caffeine and at the end I determined the tradeoff for me wasn't worth it. The energy and focus is just too valuable, to go without.

2) If it's going well, I wouldn't worry about it. At some point your body will stop having a huge fat reserve to burn off, and you will find that your energy levels crater and recover very slowly if you exert yourself too much for a given macro load.

3) You should try an extended fast! My response to "you are skipping the most important meal of the day" is "I don't even eat every day, fasting is good for you". If they press the issue I'll tell them about fasting for 5 days and how good it makes me feel.

And extended fasts really do make me feel amazing after the fact.

The more that one experiments with these diet changes, I think, the more one reveals how untrue that phrase "most important meal of the day" becomes. I feel unstoppable if I skip breakfast, lethargic if I don't.

I'd like to see a RCT that compared two time-restricted eating groups: 7am to 3pm, and noon to 8pm. Which would have the larger benefit over a control group?

Also, it would be good to simultaneously (somehow) check if the results depend on one's genetic or cultural bias towards eating in the morning or evening.

It most definitely is highly personal, like most weight management advice seems to be.

The only immutable truth is that calorie deficit will make you lose weight.

BUT different people find different methods of calorie deficit easier to handle mentally and/or physically.[1]

I can easily go even 20 hours without food maybe only sipping on some water or tea, my grandmother is the same. She can just have a big meal once per day and go about her day (and night) just fine.

My partner on the other hand needs to eat every 3-4 hours or they become completely unbearable mentally. It doesn't need to be a full meal, but some kind of calorie top-up is essential.

[1] ...and it seems that different people get different amounts of calories from the same food, it's a gut flora thing.

I‘m certainly the „snack every 3-4 hours“ type, though I‘m not sure how much of this is already some symptom of insulin resistance.

Probably depends a lot on what (and how much) you eat for breakfast too?

If I don't have some kind of protein in the AM, I quickly start having mental/emotional issues (and end up with recovery problems due to exercise, including pain). Trying to make up for it at lunch is a losing battle.

Glutathione worked for me

Just an anecdote, but for a few years I always skipped breakfast and had black coffee, and I did eventually develop some pretty severe heart burn issues. I went to tea for a while, back on coffee but usually eating breakfast again. I guess I’d just keep an eye on it and take action before it gets extremely painful, I’m not sure it’s guaranteed or anything.

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