|
I don't agree. If something helps you eat less calories through a single day, it does have a potential in aiding weight loss. Loosing weight, and keeping it off, is not only about eating less, but also about doing it in a way which is effortless. If you keep struggling to eat less, you're gonna have a bad time loosing weight and keeping it off. Anecdotally, I effortlessly consume much fewer calories throughout the day if I delay my first meal to 13:00 (I usual get up around 8.00). That is to say, it's much easier for me to delay breakfast, than to start fasting only after e.g. 16.00 (because then I'm hungry when trying to fall asleep, and I end up eating right before going to sleep just to be able to fall asleep) On top of that, eating fewer, but larger, meals also helps me eat less throughout the day. It's very easy to overload on calories by snacking. Also, with snacking, you keep your blood sugar high, which makes you hungry, which makes you snack more. By having longer breaks between meals, you not only eat less, you do so with very little effort. |
I think it's basically a combination of two things:
1. It's really difficult to break out of that viscous high blood sugar -> Insulin -> felling hungry cycle using pure will power because it's really strong and it most of the time wins in the long run. Our typical high glucose western diet makes this even harder. (Intermittent) Fasting drastically puts the breaks in, anecdotally it can be very hard at the beginning but for many success arrives before willpower is depleted.
2. IF fasting is basically changing your eating habits while not changing your eating habits. Skipping a meal or two is easy (all you have to do is literally nothing) compared to making sure getting the "right" kind of meal in the "right" amount 3+ times a day is a constant effort both psychologically and depending on your daily routine even logistically. Also there is no feeling of missing out on things you like because you don't have to, you just delay them for a couple of hours.
// edit:
To add to that: In itself it's an interesting finding that there seems no additional weight loss effect by the fasting itself but the framing of this in the media (just to gain some attention) is really, really terrible in my opinion. It can turn people away from trying a weight loss technique which for many who failed and failed again with trying "simple" calorie reduction finally leads to success.