At the very least timed-restricted eating has helped my relationship with food. When I was eating three evenly-spaced meals a day, I was constantly in this pseudo state of kind of hungry, kind of full, but never really very hungry or very full, and always thinking about eating but not eating too much. After doing a pretty easy variation of time restricted eating I literally never think about food other than when I'm eating. I really like the feeling of actual hunger, and then eating when I'm actually hungry. And how much I eat or want to eat just kind of never seems to be a problem.
But beyond that I'm skeptical of the claim there's no benefit, I've felt healthier and my bloodwork has improved, but maybe something else caused that (I wouldn't know what).
I'd imagine any plan that forced you to think about what and when you eat would make you feel better and have your bloodwork improve. If you meal prepped all food you ate on the original schedule every Sunday, that probably would also have helped. Anything that got you out of grazing on snacks all day and making eating decisions with your non-lizard brain.
Same here, it’s also helped with overall calories because the time I eat is restricted. No breakfast, eat a good lunch, eat a good dinner. All eating done within 7-8 hours, I am used to no morning calories so I don’t feel hungry until lunch, and I don’t get the 350-500 calories breakfast brings.
I can heartily second that it's helped my relationship with food.
For years I've recognized that I had an undesirable relationship with food. I really enjoy eating, both for the pleasure, and for the social interactions that come around meals. But, I felt like I was almost always "hungry" or feeling too full from over eating. I had really strong cravings for things like sour candy and ice cream, especially when relaxing at night. I'm 40 years old, 5' 8", and was pushing 230lbs. My belt which used to have four holes, and then a fifth that I made, no longer fit. I was definitely trending in the wrong direction.
The concern for me was not that I had gained a bit of weight but that my relationship with food looked more like an addiction than something I was actually enjoying and benefiting from. I was driven by my cravings and could tell I had some type of eat/crash/eat/crash cycle going on, but I felt somewhat powerless to do anything about it. The cravings were really strong.
I had tried intermittent fasting (one day 500 calories, 2nd day eat normal) a couple years ago and that worked pretty well initially. But over time, the 500 calorie day was just too hard and I'd eat way too much on the "normal" day to compensate for it. Again, a mental/physical cycle that was not healthy.
A month or two ago I came across a comment here on HN where someone shared that they did intermittent fasting by having a six hour window of eating and a 18 hour window of fasting. I decided to give it a try. Their eat window was 2pm - 8pm, but after some experimentation I've found that a 4pm - 10pm window works better for me.
I knew the window between when I woke up and 4pm would be the hardest, so I did some research and it looks like[1] a coffee or two with heavy whipping cream doesn't have an adverse affect on fat burning or glucose levels. Since that's what I was drinking anyway and like it, a coffee soon after I get up and another at 1:00 if needed gets me through the day without hunger being distracting.
I've been pleasantly surprised by how well this has worked and I think I've broken the eat/crash cycle that I had going. The most noticeable difference is that the hunger sensation is different. The sensation of actually being hungry b/c I've not eaten recently is very different from the "I just want to eat" hungry. It's tolerable and, if I can say it this way, even somewhat enjoyable in an "I have control over this now" way. When the hunger does get distracting, which usually doesn't happen until after noon, I know that I can eat in a few hours and I also know I can wait that long and it will be ok.
During my eating window, I eat whatever I want to. But, interestingly, I've found that my desire to eat is also changed. I get full faster and when I'm planning to eat I try to avoid overeating b/c I don't like how it makes me feel and I don't like going to bed stuffed. I still have ice cream and candy at night sometimes and sometimes I don't. If it's in my window, it's ok.
My weight is now trending in a different direction and I'm glad about that. But I'm not approaching this as a diet. I'm approaching it with the perspective that I need to hack my body's normal operating mechanisms to fix a unhealthy trend of compulsive behavior. That also has made a difference.
Yep, this is the way I've always seen it too. You need to avoid the eat/crash/eat/crash cycle. For me the best fit is to eat breakfast, then don't eat anything until dinner. For others it's skipping a day. For others it's only eating in a 6 hour window.
It really does look like an addiction and it is helpful to frame it that way. The key element in all of these is that you need to force your body off of blood-sugar, and the only way to do so is to be off of it for a long enough time that half-life diminishes to nothing. This needs to be normal and your body needs to be used to this.
> rigorous one-year study in which people followed a low-calorie diet between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. or consumed the same number of calories anytime during the day has failed to find an effect.
Duh? The reasonable mechanism of action for IF is that it's a tool to consume less calories.
If the study's IF group is eating the same number of calories as the control group as part of the study design, this is the expected result.
> “These results indicate that caloric intake restriction explained most of the beneficial effects seen with the time-restricted eating regimen,” Dr. Weiss and his colleagues concluded.
Yeah! That is the whole point.
> when subjected to a properly designed and conducted study — scientific investigation — [IF] is not any more helpful than simply reducing daily calorie intake for weight loss and health factors.
Yeah! People struggle to "simply reduce daily caloric intake," though.
This study was merely a step in validating and adding credibility to "yeah, calories in-calories out is still the most important factor in determining weight and other health markers." The complexity of the human body shouldn't be turn into something trivial, as your comment suggests. There's a lot of people that studied/studies how the complex web of neurons impact health and well-being, and they added value to the literature. Let's not trivialize the exploration and appreciation into how complex the human body is.
While I always suspected this result to be true, there are many extraordinary claims about the importance of fasting with scientistic explanations (I've seen claims that it works because of different insulin levels, ketosis, blood sugar effects etc.).
So, this study at least puts some of these ideas to rest (if it can be replicated of course, which is not necessarily a given in nutrition "science").
> Duh? The reasonable mechanism of action for IF is that it's a tool to consume less calories.
That's not the only reasonable mechanism.
Even with the same calorie intake, there are other suggested mechanisms. For example altering glucose metabolism, shift from lipid synthesis to the using of of fat and other effects related to breaking body weight homeostasis.
Also there are some theories that spiking mTor less frequently is better. Some interesting research being doing on sirtuins and their role in repair of systems as well, especially in a fasted state.
Disappointing that there's not a word written about which group found their diet easier to stick to. The same calorie intake leading to the same results is a completely unsurprising outcome. What's much more relevant is what makes it easiest for people to stick to such an intake.
It would have been interesting though if the result was positive though. Being able to eat, say, 1400 instead of 1200 for the same effects if you change your meal time would probably drastically change people’s overall eating habits over time.
Anecdotally, I used 16/8 intermittent fasting to lose twenty pounds last year, and then stalled. At that point I started counting calories in addition to 16/8, and lost an additional twenty pounds.
Any successful diet works because it makes you eat fewer calories. What makes IF, low-carb, low-fat, or anything else work for an individual is ease of compliance. I feel better when I eat a lot of protein and skip breakfast, so I'm more likely to stick with it than other eating patterns. My wife, on the other hand, feels like garbage when she tries IF.
There is no magic bullet. Everyone's body and lifestyle is unique, and everyone needs to experiment to see what eating strategies work for them. IF is a very useful tool for many people. Eating six small meals per day is a very useful tool for others. It shouldn't be treated as a holy war.
“These results indicate that caloric intake restriction explained most of the beneficial effects seen with the time-restricted eating regimen,” Dr. Weiss and his colleagues concluded.
I personally do time restricted feeding and notice health benefits so I'm a bit skeptical of this study as there are a ton of variables to consider.
I think original studies done in mice that showed metabolic improvement were based on a time window that if translated to human time would be closer to 4-5 day fasts.
There can be other benefits to time restricted feeding as well for long term health and I use it to help set my circadian rhythm.
Anyway I have a lot of random thoughts on this issue but wouldn't take this study to mean time restricted feeding "does nothing". Curious about other people's experiences / thoughts.
The point is that people 'graze' to maintain blood sucrose levels and avoid the problems associated with high carb diets. Were your energy levels 'dive' between meals. Because of this Americans tend to have 8-10 "meals" (ie: including snacks) a day.
If this is normal for you:
A hour or two after lunch you get distracted and tired at work so you go up to the vending machine or office kitchen and get a snack. Grab a soda, get some chips, etc to keep yourself awake and focused.
Then that is the problem here we are trying to solve.
So by having time-constrained eating habits this eliminates this for most of the day except for the time period we have designated for eating.
Which means that time controlled eating is a behavior/metabolic "hack" to reduce overall calorie consumption. This way you get conditioned to only wanting to 'graze' during a specific time period.
If you force the study participants to control for calorie input then you are accomplishing the same thing we attempt to do with time constrained eating, just in a different way.
Yes, not only that, but the patients were obese. I think 16:8 schedules can work well to help maintain a healthy metabolism, but if they're obese already, they'd need to completely reset their baseline (ie longer duration fasts) to achieve the results.
This headline is misleading: no benefit. I'd have to say this is flat out incorrect.
Other comments mention bringing you back into your circadian rhythm: yes. I always sleep better when I do not eat late. Having the last meal around 5pm (don't eat after 6) is my personal imaginary cut off point. If I'm with others, I'll probably eat later, but alone I'll stick to it.
The other day I had a big lunch at 2pm and didn't eat after that. I survived. Was I hungry when I went to sleep? Yes. Did my hunger go away reasonably quickly? Yes. Did I sleep well? Yes. Was I starving in the morning? No.
Let your body feel hunger every once in a while. Especially if you live in an industrialized area where food is available at any hour and you have the disposable income to afford it.
Even the abstract directly contradicts the conclusion:
> The mean weight loss from baseline at 12 months was −8.0 kg (95% confidence interval [CI], −9.6 to −6.4) in the time-restriction group and −6.3 kg (95% CI, −7.8 to −4.7) in the daily-calorie-restriction group.
So in other words, beyond caloric restriction, the time-limited group lost more weight.
The study seems to have ignored other measures, such as inflammation markers.
Further, a 16/8 restriction is barely a restriction at all. It's trivial to consume 3 meals in that window. It's also too wide a window to measure the results of autophagy, one of the key reasons to do intermittent fasting.
The confidence intervals overlap by quite a bit. The difference is not statistically significant. If this were a clinical drug trial, the drug would not get approved.
>The study seems to have ignored other measures, such as inflammation markers.
They also ran a panel of metabolic markers, which the abstract says were in line with the overall weight loss results.
This seems to be a (very typical) misuse of NHST. All we want to know in this case is which of the following statements is the more probable:
(1) Intermittent fasting has benefits.
(2) Intermittent fasting does not have benefits.
Instead, what we're being told is that we can't reject (2) with a high degree of confidence. When you look at the sizes of the groups in the study, this is pretty obviously going to be the case. With so few participants there'd have to be an enormous difference between groups in order to be sure that (2) is false. They need hardly have bothered doing the study at all.
Well, the trick is that the confidence intervals overlap, and do so pretty heavily. So, while on average they may have lost more, their test group size was either quite small or had high variability such that it could come down to randomness that one group lost more than the other.
At the end of the study they had 61 in calorie restricted and 57 in intermittent fasting. So, not huge groups. And looking at their confidence range knowing their numbers, it likely means on both sides multiple people lost 7kg on both sides.
I didn't see a way to download that study to get the raw data, which would also be helpful, as I think it would also be useful to look at % body fat loss, etc.
Don't overlook that IF for some individuals can come with psychological aspects, such as the feeling that they're taking action, that this is something they are doing. This helps start the ball rolling toward a goal as opposed to doing the usual thing but not changing any of one's usual routine.
Readit News
But beyond that I'm skeptical of the claim there's no benefit, I've felt healthier and my bloodwork has improved, but maybe something else caused that (I wouldn't know what).
For years I've recognized that I had an undesirable relationship with food. I really enjoy eating, both for the pleasure, and for the social interactions that come around meals. But, I felt like I was almost always "hungry" or feeling too full from over eating. I had really strong cravings for things like sour candy and ice cream, especially when relaxing at night. I'm 40 years old, 5' 8", and was pushing 230lbs. My belt which used to have four holes, and then a fifth that I made, no longer fit. I was definitely trending in the wrong direction.
The concern for me was not that I had gained a bit of weight but that my relationship with food looked more like an addiction than something I was actually enjoying and benefiting from. I was driven by my cravings and could tell I had some type of eat/crash/eat/crash cycle going on, but I felt somewhat powerless to do anything about it. The cravings were really strong.
I had tried intermittent fasting (one day 500 calories, 2nd day eat normal) a couple years ago and that worked pretty well initially. But over time, the 500 calorie day was just too hard and I'd eat way too much on the "normal" day to compensate for it. Again, a mental/physical cycle that was not healthy.
A month or two ago I came across a comment here on HN where someone shared that they did intermittent fasting by having a six hour window of eating and a 18 hour window of fasting. I decided to give it a try. Their eat window was 2pm - 8pm, but after some experimentation I've found that a 4pm - 10pm window works better for me.
I knew the window between when I woke up and 4pm would be the hardest, so I did some research and it looks like[1] a coffee or two with heavy whipping cream doesn't have an adverse affect on fat burning or glucose levels. Since that's what I was drinking anyway and like it, a coffee soon after I get up and another at 1:00 if needed gets me through the day without hunger being distracting.
I've been pleasantly surprised by how well this has worked and I think I've broken the eat/crash cycle that I had going. The most noticeable difference is that the hunger sensation is different. The sensation of actually being hungry b/c I've not eaten recently is very different from the "I just want to eat" hungry. It's tolerable and, if I can say it this way, even somewhat enjoyable in an "I have control over this now" way. When the hunger does get distracting, which usually doesn't happen until after noon, I know that I can eat in a few hours and I also know I can wait that long and it will be ok.
During my eating window, I eat whatever I want to. But, interestingly, I've found that my desire to eat is also changed. I get full faster and when I'm planning to eat I try to avoid overeating b/c I don't like how it makes me feel and I don't like going to bed stuffed. I still have ice cream and candy at night sometimes and sometimes I don't. If it's in my window, it's ok.
My weight is now trending in a different direction and I'm glad about that. But I'm not approaching this as a diet. I'm approaching it with the perspective that I need to hack my body's normal operating mechanisms to fix a unhealthy trend of compulsive behavior. That also has made a difference.
1. https://drbeckyfitness.com/coffee-and-intermittent-fasting/
It really does look like an addiction and it is helpful to frame it that way. The key element in all of these is that you need to force your body off of blood-sugar, and the only way to do so is to be off of it for a long enough time that half-life diminishes to nothing. This needs to be normal and your body needs to be used to this.
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
Duh? The reasonable mechanism of action for IF is that it's a tool to consume less calories.
If the study's IF group is eating the same number of calories as the control group as part of the study design, this is the expected result.
> “These results indicate that caloric intake restriction explained most of the beneficial effects seen with the time-restricted eating regimen,” Dr. Weiss and his colleagues concluded.
Yeah! That is the whole point.
> when subjected to a properly designed and conducted study — scientific investigation — [IF] is not any more helpful than simply reducing daily calorie intake for weight loss and health factors.
Yeah! People struggle to "simply reduce daily caloric intake," though.
Dead Comment
So, this study at least puts some of these ideas to rest (if it can be replicated of course, which is not necessarily a given in nutrition "science").
That's not the only reasonable mechanism.
Even with the same calorie intake, there are other suggested mechanisms. For example altering glucose metabolism, shift from lipid synthesis to the using of of fat and other effects related to breaking body weight homeostasis.
Any successful diet works because it makes you eat fewer calories. What makes IF, low-carb, low-fat, or anything else work for an individual is ease of compliance. I feel better when I eat a lot of protein and skip breakfast, so I'm more likely to stick with it than other eating patterns. My wife, on the other hand, feels like garbage when she tries IF.
There is no magic bullet. Everyone's body and lifestyle is unique, and everyone needs to experiment to see what eating strategies work for them. IF is a very useful tool for many people. Eating six small meals per day is a very useful tool for others. It shouldn't be treated as a holy war.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114833
139 patients over 12 months.
“These results indicate that caloric intake restriction explained most of the beneficial effects seen with the time-restricted eating regimen,” Dr. Weiss and his colleagues concluded.
I personally do time restricted feeding and notice health benefits so I'm a bit skeptical of this study as there are a ton of variables to consider.
I think original studies done in mice that showed metabolic improvement were based on a time window that if translated to human time would be closer to 4-5 day fasts.
There can be other benefits to time restricted feeding as well for long term health and I use it to help set my circadian rhythm.
Anyway I have a lot of random thoughts on this issue but wouldn't take this study to mean time restricted feeding "does nothing". Curious about other people's experiences / thoughts.
The point is that people 'graze' to maintain blood sucrose levels and avoid the problems associated with high carb diets. Were your energy levels 'dive' between meals. Because of this Americans tend to have 8-10 "meals" (ie: including snacks) a day.
If this is normal for you:
A hour or two after lunch you get distracted and tired at work so you go up to the vending machine or office kitchen and get a snack. Grab a soda, get some chips, etc to keep yourself awake and focused.
Then that is the problem here we are trying to solve.
So by having time-constrained eating habits this eliminates this for most of the day except for the time period we have designated for eating.
Which means that time controlled eating is a behavior/metabolic "hack" to reduce overall calorie consumption. This way you get conditioned to only wanting to 'graze' during a specific time period.
If you force the study participants to control for calorie input then you are accomplishing the same thing we attempt to do with time constrained eating, just in a different way.
Deleted Comment
but the study is only for weight loss not general 'health benefits' yea?
Other comments mention bringing you back into your circadian rhythm: yes. I always sleep better when I do not eat late. Having the last meal around 5pm (don't eat after 6) is my personal imaginary cut off point. If I'm with others, I'll probably eat later, but alone I'll stick to it.
The other day I had a big lunch at 2pm and didn't eat after that. I survived. Was I hungry when I went to sleep? Yes. Did my hunger go away reasonably quickly? Yes. Did I sleep well? Yes. Was I starving in the morning? No.
Let your body feel hunger every once in a while. Especially if you live in an industrialized area where food is available at any hour and you have the disposable income to afford it.
> The mean weight loss from baseline at 12 months was −8.0 kg (95% confidence interval [CI], −9.6 to −6.4) in the time-restriction group and −6.3 kg (95% CI, −7.8 to −4.7) in the daily-calorie-restriction group.
So in other words, beyond caloric restriction, the time-limited group lost more weight.
The study seems to have ignored other measures, such as inflammation markers.
Further, a 16/8 restriction is barely a restriction at all. It's trivial to consume 3 meals in that window. It's also too wide a window to measure the results of autophagy, one of the key reasons to do intermittent fasting.
>The study seems to have ignored other measures, such as inflammation markers.
They also ran a panel of metabolic markers, which the abstract says were in line with the overall weight loss results.
(1) Intermittent fasting has benefits.
(2) Intermittent fasting does not have benefits.
Instead, what we're being told is that we can't reject (2) with a high degree of confidence. When you look at the sizes of the groups in the study, this is pretty obviously going to be the case. With so few participants there'd have to be an enormous difference between groups in order to be sure that (2) is false. They need hardly have bothered doing the study at all.
At the end of the study they had 61 in calorie restricted and 57 in intermittent fasting. So, not huge groups. And looking at their confidence range knowing their numbers, it likely means on both sides multiple people lost 7kg on both sides.
I didn't see a way to download that study to get the raw data, which would also be helpful, as I think it would also be useful to look at % body fat loss, etc.