re: My experience with intermittent fasting

I have low blood sugar. I get weak or dizzy of I don't eat in time

You said no change in calories consumed. You made it seem as though IF was allowing you to lose 20 lbs without a reduction in calories. You never stated your activity level, but it must be higher than your intake.

That’s all I was saying. I IF as well. I’m not raining on your parade.

You can do anything you want.

10% meal and then 90% meal.

I do a 20/4 normally and my first meal is usually 25% of my calories and the a giant meal 75% later.

Eat nutrient-dense food. Cut out processed garbage.

Purely out of curiosity how do you get recovery protein in your system after a workout when doing IF?

I know nothing about IF, is it primarily a weight loss protocol or can you actually be a functioning athlete while doing IF?

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Normally IF your workout is done fasted or with one small meal beforehand so ALL of your calories come after your workout.

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I ask because at least one person mentioned an AM workout and a PM eating window.

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I'm a big fan of IF but it would be extremely hard for a professional athlete to maintain any type of day to day structure due to their ever changing schedules. A normal person? yes.

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What does IF do outside helping someone that isn't disciplined in their calorie intake? Does it have purported benefits other than weight loss or maintenance?

I am always interested in diets but I don't think this would work for me when I am leaning out. I train AM and PM six days a week and my caloric intake is relatively high.

I am glad to see something that seems to work for so many people.

Would the people downvoting Adam like to share their differing opinions?

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What does IF do outside helping someone that isn't disciplined in their calorie intake? Does it have purported benefits other than weight loss or maintenance?

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It potentially does a number of things, but I'll broadly categorize the effects as health benefits and body composition benefits. Of course these two things are intertwined but generally speaking body composition tweaks are more aesthetics and vanity than health when compared to something like blood pressure and oxidative stress.



Pennington study: Intrinsic health benefits regardless of weight change

Advocate article about the study

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A pilot study conducted at LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center shows that eating all your meals by midafternoon and fasting the rest of the day improves blood sugar control, blood pressure and oxidative stress, even when people don’t change what they eat.

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The research is important, Ravussin said, because it shows for the first time in humans that the benefits of intermittent fasting are not solely due to eating less. Practicing intermittent fasting has intrinsic benefits regardless of what you eat, he said.

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The researchers found that the fasting diet improved insulin sensitivity, which reflects how quickly cells can take up blood sugar, and it also improved the ability of the men's pancreases to respond to rising blood sugar levels. The researchers also found that the blood pressure of the men was dramatically lowered, as well as their oxidative stress levels and their appetite levels in the evening.

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Grant Tinsley study: Time-restricted feeding plus resistance training in active females
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This study compared IF groups to a control group over 8 weeks of resistance training.

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Our study demonstrated that comparable improvements in fat-free mass, muscle thickness, and muscular performance can be achieved with dramatically different feeding schedules (eating over the course of ~7.5 hours/day as compared to ~13 hours/day), provided that both groups are consuming a similar number of calories and sufficient protein (1.6 g/kg).

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This is important because people skeptical of IF are often times leary that it will be bad for muscle gains and athletic performance but this does not seem to be the case.

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In addition to exhibiting no impairment of fat-free mass accretion or muscular performance improvement, both TRF groups exhibited a small amount of fat loss when only those who completed the whole study were considered. As such, it appears that TRF with a relatively high protein diet plus resistance training is a suitable strategy for concurrent muscle gain and fat loss.

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There's alot of information at that link including two previous studies of trained men that showed similar health benefits and body composition benefits.



It's important to keep things in perspective of course. Shitty macros/calories + IF isn't going to get the results of good diet. CICO / IIFYM will always be king when it comes to absolute buck-stops-here fat loss. Adding in IF to good macro controls is probably going to push it further, or give you a little more room for error or cheating on your calories.

Anyway the body composition differences are going to be on the margins over a long period of time, but an additional 2-3lbs of body comp improvement over the course of a year is a good payoff in a 3-5 year window.

I am around 3 weeks in doing 16:8
This week I have been trying OMAD
I’ve noticed headaches around 4 pm, today it started earlier so I ate a banana & a 140 calorie fiber bar
I have not done enough cardio to say I did any cardio
I have lost around 5 #
No big change to diet

I have a lot going on right now, once I am able to sleep & not be stressed I will feel like exercising more & think it will make a big difference
I wish I had a pool

Good luck