[miesman]

Summary of the diet used in the study via ChatGPT4:

IF-P Diet Instructions:

Protein Pacing Days:

• Women: 4 meals/day; Men: 5 meals/day.

• Meals: 2 shakes (breakfast + one), 1 whole food dinner, 1 afternoon snack (men only), 1 evening protein snack.

• Calories: Women: 1350–1500/day; Men: 1700–1850/day.

• Macros: 35% carbs, 30% fat, 35% protein.

• Fiber: 20–30 g/day.

Intermittent Fasting Days:

• Calories: 350–550/day.

• Fasting Duration: 36–60 hours with supplements and snacks.

Protein Intake:

• Each Shake: 30–36 g protein, 9 g fiber.

• Evening Snack: 200–250 kcals.

[instagib]

From the referenced study supplemental documentation on the “fasting” days and non-fasting days. Even the fasting days they allow you to eat 350-550 calories as aforementioned supplements/snacks for a ~9% weight loss and 17% reduction in desire to eat over 8 weeks. Not bad at all if you can manage to do it: 205lbs->184.

Table https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10107279/bin/OB...

Doc https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10107279/bin/OB...

#15 study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10107279/#oby23...

[grecy]

Even shorter summary:

Eating less energy than the body burns results in burning of stored energy reserves.

[pessimizer]

That would be an extremely bad summary, because both diets that were tested were 9000 calories/week. It's the entire point of the study, and it seems that nobody commenting here even bothered to skim it before "ackshuallying" it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Eating less energy than the body burns results in burning of stored energy reserves

Nope [1].

Even proponents of the energy-balance model clarify that “the brain is the primary organ responsible for body weight regulation operating mainly below our conscious awareness via complex endocrine, metabolic, and nervous system signals to control food intake in response to the body’s dynamic energy needs as well as environmental influences” [2].

Calorie in calorie out is the flat-earth model of metabolism, trading truth for simplicity.

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/stop-counting...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000291652...

[Zanfa]

> Each group was given meals with the same number of calories and instructed to eat as much as they wanted, but when participants ate the processed foods, they ate 500 calories more each day on average. The same people's calorie intake decreased when they ate the unprocessed foods.

Your own Harvard link supports the calories in/out theory, but argues against counting calories. Different things.

[JumpCrisscross]

> own Harvard link supports the calories in/out theory

Calorie in / calorie out isn’t a theory, it’s a thermodynamic corollary. I compare it to flat eartherism because “things go down” is similarly a corollary of gravity. The missed link with the latter is that down isn’t what it intuitively means. The missed link with colloquial energy-balance interpretations is “calorie in” and “calorie out” don’t mean what people think it does.

If you have a healthy metabolism, cutting calories and increasing burn—cereris paribus—should spike a starvation response. That has some perks. But it should also reduce your resting metabolism, sometimes below even maintenance levels; it should increase your absorption and sequestration of energy; it should alter your taste to make calories more appetising, and increase existential anxiety around the procuring of those. (Counterfactial: I’m someone who is fine being hungry. )

Just as one can design short bridges on a flat-earth model and be fine, one can deploy this simplistic model (it’s not a theory, that’s the vastly more complex energy-balance model) to make short-term gains. But it’s fundamentally wrong in that it builds the wrong intuitions. Similar to how thinking of our brains as a steam engine or microcomputer sort of works, in some cases, or if you’re trying to be punchy in internet comments, but is fundamentally wrong and misleading.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Yet, you can lose weight on Mountain Dew and Doritos by counting calories.

  Little Debbie Snacks, Oreos, Doritos and Diet Mountain Dew sure don't sound like diet food. But a nutrition professor at Kansas State University ate only convenience store snacks for two months and lost 27 pounds.

  The key? Moderation.

  Mark Haub kept his food intake below 1,800 calories a day -- no extra exercise required.

https://www.npr.org/2010/11/12/131286626/professor-s-weight-...

[miesman]

Dirty Keto!

[grecy]

> Calorie in calorie out is the flat-earth model of metabolism, trading truth for simplicity

Are you proposing mammals can burn more energy than they consume, just by thinking about it?

Where do you propose that energy comes from?