Is Intermittent Fasting Good For Weight Loss?
Is Intermittent Fasting the missing piece in your fat loss journey? Read on to find out...
All good contractors have access to the different tools that might be needed to get the job done well. If the craftsman (or woman) knows what they’re doing they don’t just randomly grab a tool from the toolbox and use it for every task regardless of what they’re doing.
The same goes for us as nutrition coaches.
We deal with real people in the real world and no two people are exactly the same. That’s why we have to have different tools available to us to use.
Intermittent Fasting is one of those tools in our toolbox.
Lately, there are a few hot “trends” in the weight loss space. Maybe you’ve tried this one for yourself or you know someone who is currently doing it.
We’re talking about intermittent fasting or I.F.
If you have a friend who’s had success with I.F. there’s a good chance they’ve told you that it will work for you.
Let’s dig in today to the topic and discuss:
What exactly I.F. is and isn’t.
Potential benefits and overblown claims.
What you should know if you want to give it a try.
Let’s start with what it is and what it isn’t:
Another way to think of I.F. is time-restricted eating.
At its essence, it’s a manipulation of the times during the day in which you are and are not allowed to eat.
When you eat food, you’re in a “fed” state while eating. That state lasts until the nutrients of that meal have been extracted and processed by the body and insulin drops back to baseline levels.
Remember, insulin is the hormone that is secreted in different amounts depending on what we eat. Its role is to shuttle the nutrients that we eat into our cells and muscles.
Once this process is complete, you’re in a “fasted” state.
This process of going from fed to fasted takes between 3 and 6 hours depending on what and how much you eat.
If you’re a 3 meals per day kind of person with no snacking between you MIGHT reach a fasted state during the day, but more likely you only get there at night while sleeping.
If you’re a snacker who eats every 2-3 hours you’re probably only “fasted” overnight until you have breakfast in the morning.
When you practice I.F. you actually aim to spend more time during the day in a fasted state than a fed state by pushing your food intake into a specific feeding window.
Most people aim to spend 16-20 hours in a fasted state each day when doing I.F. So essentially you have a window of 4-8 hours to eat and then you don’t eat again until your next feeding period.
You might be thinking “why”.
Why would people restrict the times during the day that they eat?
The purported health benefits of I.F. include weight loss, improved insulin sensitivity, reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, increased autophagy (we will talk about this) as well as improvements in cognition and hormone health. We will dig into these shortly.
Let’s talk about what I.F. is not.
Most importantly, and we want to drill this in… It is NOT magic.
It does not trick your body into losing weight or fat.
It does not defy the laws of thermodynamics that govern our body weight.
Energy balance still matters.
What I’m trying to say is that if you eat more calories than your body needs, you’re going to gain fat even if you’re only eating for 4 hours during the day. Calories still matter. I hope that was clear.
I.F. is also not an outlet for binging behaviors.
We believe in promoting a healthy relationship with food.
Food is our energy source and should not be a way of dealing with emotional issues through binging.
If eating all of our calories for the day during a feeding window causes you issues in regards to binging, we would avoid I.F.
Lastly, I.F. isn’t an excuse to eat junk.
Focusing on mostly whole nutrient-dense foods regardless of your eating schedule will always leave you feeling more energetic and will usually result in a better physique and decreased risk of micronutrient deficiency than a diet of processed food from a box.
Potential benefits and overblown claims:
Potential benefits
So if Intermittent Fasting is a tool for weight loss, does it work (and why)? It absolutely can, but maybe not because of why you think it can.
Remember how we mentioned that we are all under the rule of thermodynamics? We can all gain or lose weight if we manipulate the relationship between the number of calories that we eat and burn. If we eat less calories during the day or week than we burn, our bodies will turn to stored fat to make up the difference in energy needed to survive.
Since I.F. limits the total amount of time available during the day to eat, it can limit the AMOUNT of food that you eat. This overall reduction in calories can cause you to lose weight.
THIS simple fact is the reason that I.F. can lead to weight loss.
There are different ways that you can structure your “feeding” and “fasting” windows during your day. One of the most popular ones is the “Leangains” method of 16 hours fasting - 8 hours eating. I mean who doesn’t want “lean gains”?!?!
In real life, this might look like "fast all morning until about 1 p.m. and then have lunch and a late dinner from 8-9 p.m." Many people already skip breakfast so this could be the easiest way for someone to dip their toe in the I.F. pool.
Another popular I.F. strategy is what’s called the 5:2 diet. With this setup, you eat normally 5 days out of the week and then eat super low calorie 2 days during the week. Low like 500 calories per day. Since you’re a digital barbell reader you can probably figure out why this method would work. Sounds pretty tough to stick to though!
And then there is the super strict I.F. version known as Alternate Day Fasting where you eat normally every other day and fast (completely or almost completely) every other day. This one sounds downright dangerous!
Overblown claims:
As of now, many of those remain as “claims” as there is very limited verifiable research done on humans to lean upon. Also, many of the studies that we do have were done on extremely small groups (less than 10 people) and often just one sex.
The problem with limited research is that when there are only a few studies to look at, and they conflict with each other we are left scratching our heads.
This is true when it comes to the claims that I.F. can reduce LDL cholesterol levels as well as help control long-term blood sugar levels and promote healthy hormone production and balance. The fact is that we really just don’t know yet. Time will tell.
Another common benefit of fasting that is brought up is Autophagy. Autophagy is a process built into our bodies that allows cells to “self-clean”. Think of it as running the anti-virus program on your computer. When undergoing autophagy our cells realign structures, and rid themselves of “waste”. This process is triggered naturally when a cell is under stress. It’s a self-preservation method. We can force our body into extra bouts of autophagy by stressing our cells with things like exercise and calorie restriction.
Since I.F. is, at its core, calorie restriction through time restriction, it can cause increased autophagy. That is, if a calorie deficit is actually achieved.
Look, if you’re looking for the fountain of youth or for something to make you live longer, losing body fat is probably the best thing that you can do for yourself.
** Remember, I.F. is a tool that *can possibly* help you adhere to a calorie restriction. Make the calorie restriction your goal, not autophagy.
What you should know if you want to give it a try:
If I.F. is a tool in our toolbox for fat loss, is it better than more conventional approaches? I’m glad you asked.
In 2015 the University of Sydney did a huge review of clinical trials comparing the physiological benefits of I.F. to non-fasting weight loss diets. Guess what they found?
Out of the 40 studies that they analyzed, they determined that fasting-based diets held NO added benefits over other diets when it comes to fat loss, body composition (fat vs. muscle), insulin sensitivity, and other hormones.
What can we surmise from this? There are HUGE benefits to fat loss.
We know this.
Reduced risk of just about every chronic disease including type 2 diabetes and cancer comes from getting to, and maintaining healthy body fat levels.
But there’s no practical advantage to trying to lose weight/fat with I.F. UNLESS it is a more sustainable approach for you.
I.F. will not trick your body into burning more fat.
I.F. will not increase autophagy enough to make you stop aging.
Any increase in hormone production / sensitivity (yes even HGH) can be obtained from losing fat with any method.
At the end of the day, the total number of calories that you ate will have the greatest impact on your weight than the time in which you ate. Period.
Energy balance is still king, no matter if you ate all of your calories between 1pm and 9pm.
Ask yourself this question.
If I can restrict my eating times to fit the I.F. mold, can I keep it up long term?
This is the key question because at the end of the day we want all of our clients (and future clients reading this) to have PERMANENT results.
If you can stick with I.F. for a few months and the restriction of calories helps you lose weight, what are you going to do after those 3 months?
What have you learned that will allow you to keep from re-gaining that weight and more?
What have you learned about what your body needs as far as portions of food?
What have you learned about your metabolism?
It’s so important for us to end our relationship with our clients with them knowing how to proceed on their own after they have reached their goals.
We hate yo-yo dieting. You know, when you lose 20-lbs by going hardcore on whatever the flavor of the month diet is only to fall off the wagon and regain that 20 plus another 10.
It’s really bad for you both physically and mentally. We wrote about the negative consequences yo-yo dieting can have on your metabolism.
Fat Loss Frustrations Explained
Today we are going to dig in to some of the specifics of fat loss.
If you answered “yes” to the question of whether or not you can maintain an I.F. lifestyle, then by all means it can be a tool that you can use for fat loss.
If not, download our free calorie guide that will walk you through setting your calories for fat loss without fasting below.
Just remember, there isn’t anything magical about it. Your friend or relative that has lost weight using it may gain it all back once they stop, just like most fad diets. You’re not missing out on any substantial health benefits by choosing to lose fat in a more conventional way.
Think about what’s sustainable for you over the long term. Learn about energy balance from coaches like us. Learn about the basics of nutrition and calories with posts like this.
The Secret to Your Success
We know that calories are our energy source.
The main factor in weight gain or loss is calories in vs calories out (it’s really that simple).
If you want to maintain your body weight you need to eat around the same number of calories that you are burning.
If you want to gain muscle you need to be eating more calories than you are burning.
If you want to lose fat, you need to be eating less calories than you are burning.
Even though we know all of these things we still may not know how much and what to eat!
Learn how to set up your own calorie goals with the video in the post below and then don’t give up when things don’t go perfectly.
How to set up your own caloric deficit
Ready to lose weight?
You might not need to start tracking your calories to lose weight. If you’re eating high calorie things like fast food, soft drinks and candy, start by limited those waaaay down.
Focus on eating more single ingredient foods like fruits, vegetables, eggs, meat etc.
I bet you’ll make a lot of progress just by taking those steps.
But if you’re ready to get down and dirty and want to know how many calories you should be eating to lose fat… let’s do it.
It’s a process worth undertaking because your health is worth it. You’re worth it. Forget the fads and let’s get to work.
If you need specific help you can apply to work one on one with us, we would love to help you.