LOL, that's what everyone riding the "western diet" blood sugar roller coaster is already doing.
If the diet doesn't reflect the environment our biological needs evolved in, acting without self discipline, eating based on how you feel, is a sure path to obesity, diabetes, and NAFLD.
Horrible advice.
I "feel" like I could go for a bacon cheeseburger basically 24s hours today. I feel like I could eat another right after I finished the first. All of that is emotional.
That is pretty different than symptoms true physical hunger. My stomach starts to grumble after 24 hours without food. After about 48 hours I feel lethargic and cognitively disordered.
I think that a majority of Americans confuse the two because it has been years or even decades since they actually experienced the symptoms of insufficient calorie intake
I don’t think so. In my observation a lot of people eat because it is time to eat, or because others are eating, or because they are bored, or because food is at hand.
> acting without self discipline
That is a curious thing to say. Not eating when one is not hungry takes a lot of self discipline. “Eat only when hungry” is a whole bunch of not eating.
Ever since I switched to whole food diet, I don't get nearly as hungry and easily go 12+ hours without food without a thought
I think you're underestimating just how hungry people feel
Possible. Or people have no clue what hunger really is.
But still the advice didn’t say “eat every time you are hungry”. It said “A good way to start is to eat only when feeling hungry.” That is actually a prohibition. The advice is equivalent with: do not eat when you are not hungry.
It also in the very sentence admits that this is not the only rule to be followed. That’s the “A good way to start”. Meaning that there are other things to be aware of. One of them being what you eat as you mention.
If you want a little more detailed overview see my previous comments here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42138469
One day I'm eating only till 4PM and the next one after 4PM and so on.
Already lost 10 pounds in 2 months from being slightly overweight with no additional lifestyle changes and almost effortlessly because it's surprisingly easy to distract myself from eating for few hours.
I think we are tuned to eat when we want but also to the food not being available all the time.
You're effectively saying "It's good advice if I ignore it half the time", with your positive outcome stemming from the time spent ignoring it and not eating altogether.
It's silly and harmful advice. Feelings are inherently irrational, we shouldn't advise people to act on them.
When it comes to diet, what you eat largely governs how it makes you feel. The "feeling hungry" part is emergent, root cause largely being the diet.
I think the essence of this advice is to avoid eating for social, customary or emotional reasons.
So what I wrote basically is totally unrelated because, you can get away with all of that and eat for any stupid reason if you restrict yourself to doing it just half of the time.
> Feelings are inherently irrational, we shouldn't advise people to act on them.
This is silly and wrong. Emotions and Feelings are fundamental to Mental Health and by extension to Physical Health. See the research by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett and her book How Emotions are Made.
The Mind at Work: Lisa Feldman Barrett on the metabolism of emotion - https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/work-culture/the-mind-at-wor...
> The "feeling hungry" part is emergent, root cause largely being the diet.
This is silly and puts the cart before the horse. Raw Hunger is the root cause and search for food is the consequence from it. Humans have evolved to eat and digest a wide variety of foods but if you only eat harmful ultra-processed food as a lifestyle choice that's on you and needs to be changed. In addition to a proper diet, one should only eat when feeling raw hunger which can be helped with techniques like Time-Restricted Eating/Intermittent Fasting etc.
Question: do you have any system or hack for keeping track of whether it's a < 4pm or > 4pm day? If you do, please share. I have a habit of mindless eating, and will likely not remember to avoid eating at my prescribed times.
By the way, if you are close to your healthy weight when doing this aim to reduce your weight so that your BMI is between 22.5 and 25. This is the area of lowest mortality. There's no point to go lower.
Once you get there you can either abandon alternating, shorten fasting window or just lessen restrictions on fasting periods like allowing eating certain type of foods, like raw vegetables or fruits or nuts so that your weight is maintained.
> reduce your weight so that your BMI is between 22.5 and 25. This is the area of lowest mortality. There's no point to go lower
Thanks. I doubt I'll have to ever worry about going below 22.5 :-). I'm at 28 right now. Gonna be a huge fight to get to 25.
Good luck to you. I feel like being stubborn about keeping it going and able to distract yourself for few hours when hungry are keys to positive outcomes.