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Comment by SketchySeaBeast | Hacker News Reader

Can we all please acknowledge that intermittent fasting is just a form of calories restriction? If you ate a pizza after jogging, but that was all you ate all day, your results would probably be different as well.

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Reduced calorie intake is just an added benefit.

The main point of intermittent fasting is keeping your insulin levels low for the longest time possible, increasing insulin sensitivity, and forcing the body to use stored fat for energy.

Reduced calorie intake is the bit that makes you lose weight. Increased insulin sensitivity is a result of weight loss. "forcing the body to use stored fat for energy" is the mechanism by which weight loss happens.

Does it matter? Intermittent fasting is a form of calorie restriction I can be successful at, eating 3 tiny meals a day is one I fail at.

It does because you framed it as a matter of timing.

The timing makes me lose weight. The mechanism by which it does so is a black box.

But this black box has "you eat less calories" written in whiteout across it.

But it doesn’t matter to me. One method makes me so miserably hungry 24/7 that I quit after a few weeks of agony, the other makes me forget all about food entirely.

This seems to bother people, who always tell me to do it the “right” way, which to them apparently means using willpower to endure endless suffering.

That's fine, you can live in your world of magic. I don't care for intermittent fasting, it been easier for me to calorie count, but both of our systems are CI/CO. If we can acknowledge the core concept is that weight loss is done through caloric restriction we can then expand that to more implementations, because, as you've pointed out, the "right" way is very personal.

No one in this thread cares about this being the "right" way, they care about being accurate in what we're discussing.

Intermittent fasting, keto, carnivore, sugar diet, etc., all work when they work because it is caloric restriction.

Yes, it does. Because for somebody else, the three tiny meals might work, and intermittent fasting doesn't, and it would equally be good at the result.

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