Is anyone else doing this? For me it wasn’t that far from my innate eating pattern. I’ve never understood wanting to eat breakfast. It’s the one time of day I have no interest in eating. But for many years I believed it was the best way to eat and that my metabolism would slow if I didn’t.
It’s been remarkably successful for me when combined with calorie counting. Even post menopausal I’m losing on average 1.5 -2 pounds per week. My doc who I saw recently asked me what I was doing and then said “so many of my patients who were having trouble losing weight have been really successful with IF.
IF you have tried it, what not eating/eating pattern do you use? I do 16/8. I also after a cheat day (for my birthday) did a 500 calorie day which is considered a fast. I know some people alternate fast and eating days and eat a great deal on their eating days. Has anyone tried that method? It seems hard to sustain. For me the 16/8 comes so close to a natural pattern that I think it is sustainable.
It’s always funny to me how quickly diet fads come and go. Same with healthy eating recommendations. Remember a few years ago how all the experts cautioned us not to “skip meals” and that people who skipped meals to diet would wreck their metabolism, making it harder to lose weight in the future? Now skipping meals is called “intermittent fasting” and it’s a new diet fad…
Add me to the list of people who have never liked to eat breakfast. I’m not normally hungry then and sometimes even feel a little nauseous which food makes worse. But I guess I’m getting cynical to the point where I ignore most of the diet trends and am not sure if my normal, preferred pattern is “skipping breakfast” or “intermittent fasting” or simply “feeling a little green, please no eggs!”
I think there is more hard science behind IF than other “diets”, although I don’t practice it. I’ve been thinking about it, though. Numerous stidies from legit sources have shown benefits (not all are about weight). This NIH article is a bit dense to read, but has a lot of interesting info:
I started eating this way about two years ago, not necessarily to lose weight but just to sleep better after a ny times article on the benefits of early dining as we age. First I didn’t eat after dinner, then moved dinner earlier and earlier. Now my preference is croissant or toast with coffee for breakfast and a leisurely multi course meal with wine around 2:00. I have a martini at 6:00 or a small whiskey later in the evening. If I get hungry in the evening, I eat something, but that’s not often. It was a huge lifestyle shift, but friends were already moving this direction so that helped. I feel so much better when able to follow this schedule.
Dr. Jason Fung, MD is a Canadian nephrologist who began using IF for his type II diabetes patients as a way to decrease the amount of time the body is exposed to insulin. He found out that his patients also lost a lot of weight while doing it.
He wrote a book about it called The Complete Guide to Fasting.
NOTE: IF is not about reducing calories. People who don’t fast but reduce calories severely do not get the same results and benefits as people who fast. You would think it wouldn’t matter how you reduce calories, but the body interprets those two things very differently and acts accordingly.
It’s only been very recently that people have had access to food the way we now do. It was never necessary (nor possible) to eat “six small meals a day” in order to stay slim, strong, and healthy, and it’s still not.
I found the book to be fascinating, though I have never practiced the more extended fasts. I just usually postpone my first meal to lunch, and then eat dinner as normal. When you are eating low carb, this comes rather naturally. When you eat a lot of carbs, it’s next to impossible.
Without knowing it, IF was my regular eating style for long stretches of my life.
As a kid, we did have to eat breakfast. But, then there was nothing until lunch and again nothing until dinner. Dinner was at 5:30 sharp. Once the kitchen was cleaned after dinner, it was considered closed.
Once one my own I found I really didn’t want breakfast. Instead, I am (and was even during the forced breakfast years) hungry around 10 a.m. So now that’s when I eat. Dinner was always as early as possible given work schedules. And again, once the kitchen was closed, that was it.
Then came the family years. Feeding kids, feeding H…feeding, feeding, and feeding people was a main activity every day. I ate when they wanted/needed too. And, got into the habit of snacking while watching TV in the evening. It never really felt good.
Now, semi-empty nesters. H and I eat out a few nights a week. We are always ‘that’ couple. Seated with menu in hand waiting for the dinner menu to start at 4:30 or 5:00. Our dinner friends are pretty much the same way.
Hubby and I have enjoyed several cruises a year for the past few years. After the initial ‘wow’ factor of all the available food, and after indulging a bit too much, we now maintain our land routine when on the water. We’re at the buffet (instead of the 2.5 hr sit down meal which starts at 6:30). And guess what, neither of us has gained weight in spite of what appears to be an increase in consumption during the vacation times.
So count me in the group of IF believers. I just refer to it as intuitive eating.
I love breakfast, but don’t typically have much breakfast unless there is some occasion. Sometimes even just tea. But when I recently tried to consciously do the IF thing, I found that when I went to eat at lunchtime I just opened the fridge and pigged out. So I ended up eating more than I normally would. I’m trying to lose weight, so now I’m just trying to make breakfast a few bites if I need to and lunch really modest. If you think too much about it, it can psych out your brain and you will overeat. That’s why I don’t count calories either.
Unfortunately, MIL is returning on Monday and it seems like all we do when she is here is eat, eat, eat.
I have done the IF where you do not eat one day a week. It’s really not that hard at all and I did drop some weight. I’m going back to it after Thanksgiving.
I do IF and have for a very long time. Actually before I realized it was a diet fad. It just always came natural to me. i don’t eat breakfast and my first meal of the day is lunch. I do drink just black coffee in the morning. Then I try not to eat anything after 9pm. The one thing for me is my total carb intake. If I exceed 150g then I tend to gain, if I stay under 100g then I tend to lose and in the middle of that maintain.
I am trying to clean up my diet a bit and am reading Dr. Fung’s book after seeing his video’s on YouTube. I’ve had good physical exam results so it seems to be working well for me.
I think people will have long term success with it if it’s close enough to their normal eating pattern. My eating falls within 10 hours typically. As long as I watch carbs, sugar and calories the majority of the time, I’m fine.
@maya54 just know those are my ranges. Yours might be different. I track my meals using the MyFitness Pal app and those numbers are coming from what my tracking shows me. Also, I do work out so your activity level will probably impact your numbers. I workout in the morning in a fasted state and mix between cardio and weights. Nothing overly intense but that’s just what seems to work for me.
Fasting is my idea of Hell. Unless forced to fast for say a blood draw or other medical procedure, I always eat breakfast. On those rare days when I don’t eat breakfast I’ll be feeling weak and have a headache coming on by about 11:00 AM. And once a hunger headache starts it doesn’t go away when I start eating again. It has to run its course - usually about 15 to 18 miserable hours.
Fortunately, I’ve always been fairly slim, so I’ve never had to seriously embrace any of the many diet fads over the years. Some research get published, some doctor writes a book, and the next thing you know celebrities are going on talk shows and infomercials to promote it, and people start embracing it to variable degrees all across the country… Not me. I never went real low fat and currently I’m not real low carb either. The fasting fad is out of the question. I just eat a good old-fashioned three approximately-balanced meals a day, and that’s it.
I tend to view the whole fad diet industry as something analogous to religion. For both religion and fad diets, the topic is emotional, the real product is intangible, and the potential profits are considerable.
To keep from putting on weight I’ve had to cut down on 2nd helpings and desserts over the years as my metabolism has slowed - sort of shaving calories here and there to prevent weight gain rather than “going on a diet” to attempt weight loss. Prevention is always better than cure. I guess where I come the closest to “fasting” is that I don’t snack in the evening. I eat nothing at all from the end of dinner until breakfast the next morning - usually a gap of about 11 or 12 hours. I don’t know whether that is long enough to get any of the supposed benefits of fasting, but I doubt it.
@Scipio , I think your meal plan is reasonable and close to mine. I “fast” about 12 to 14 hours. Try to eat by 6 and breakfast the next morning. I learned that women should eat no more than 25 grams of sugar a day and that really helps me with my choices. I love chocolate and get weak at a Checkout lane. I look at the sugar grams and end of putting it back. Plus, I also try to keep those carbs low.
@Scipio To me this isn’t a fad so much as it is finally rejecting an eating pattern that was terrible for me after all the experts had said for years how vital it was to eat breakfast to msintain metabolism . What I’ve learned is that this is simply untrue for many people.
My IF is between dinner and breakfast, everyday of my life. Otherwise I graze all day long. I even snack in the evenings, usually just some fruit. Works for me.
I’d never skip breakfast! I get headaches if I don’t eat it. But I can see eating it later. I try to do this on weekends and days off work in general. If I could come up with a breakfast item to take to work that I liked, I might be willing to adjust and eat a couple hours later.
Why is it always breakfast that gets on the chopping block with these diet gurus? Why not dinner? If one’s idea of breakfast is coffee and pastries or cereal, sure, cutting that out helps.
I think that the IF gurus talk about getting rid of breakfast because that’s the meal that prior experts said one absolutely positively could not miss or you’d slow your metabolism. Several well regarded studies have established that this is not the case. That’s the real new information.
My kids and I have never really enjoyed breakfast tho H loves it. An early lunch is fine tho and early it late dinner. I rarely snack at night or during the day—maybe fruit or handful of nuts.
