Intermittent Fasting Yayyyy

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Yea I pretty much agree with the above (the review and Alan's), though my comment about it being "worse":

I think the worst thing you can say about IF is that it's not clearly superior to not IF for most stuff. In terms of it being *worse* for the items Jordan is indicating, I would have to assume that is coming from his personal experience, as the sum of literature doesn't really support any of those points to the best of my knowledge.

The data shows that people stick with it less, have worse insulin sensitivity, and BMR goes down sometimes. Since it doesn't do any better when done correctly, I think those drawbacks and the performance drop offs for many make it a worse choice for any outcome.

[Dlk93]

So we have one person saying the literature supports "IF isn't clearly worse" and another person saying "IF clearly isn't optimal". That's why I want the sources backing up these claims so I can make up my own mind about it.

[nykid]

Isn't one simple reason it's suboptimal that by restricting the number/time of meals it limits the amount of MPS?

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

So we have one person saying the literature supports "IF isn't clearly worse" and another person saying "IF clearly isn't optimal". That's why I want the sources backing up these claims so I can make up my own mind about it.

I don't think that's what's being said at all. I would ask you to read more closely. It's just a different interpretation of the same data- you are free to go look up the primary data and interpret it yourself. I would argue that Aragon's piece on it does not suggest "IF isn't clearly worse", rather that "it's definitely not any better and may have some drawbacks", which is a bit more moderate a stance than I take. My take is that there are multiple potential drawbacks without any benefits.

Isn't one simple reason it's suboptimal that by restricting the number/time of meals it limits the amount of MPS?

Meh, I don't think anyone is going to notice the difference between 3 and 5 MPS events in a day and there's not data suggesting this is significant.

[Dlk93]

I don't think that's what's being said at all. I would ask you to read more closely. It's just a different interpretation of the same data- you are free to go look up the primary data and interpret it yourself. I would argue that Aragon's piece on it does not suggest "IF isn't clearly worse", rather that "it's definitely not any better and may have some drawbacks", which is a bit more moderate a stance than I take. My take is that there are multiple potential drawbacks without any benefits.

Oh right, no I was referring to the comment made by blowdpanis above ("the worse thing you can say about IF..."

My take on all of this now vis-á-vis my friend who's stuck on IF, is that both he and I are so unacquainted with the data and with how to interpret the data, that it's basically pointless to quibble about it. If IF allows him to lose weight (albeit in a sub-optimal way) then just do the damn diet. But what frustrates me, is when he, and others on different diets,* loses weight and automatically attributes all of his success to IF, when it was nothing other than the calorie restriction that led to his weight loss.

*A guy running a ketogenic diet talked to me about how much weight he lossed while adding to his bench, when it's clear that the weight loss came from the calorie restriction caused by cutting out all the carbs, and the strength gain was because he was/is a novice.

Anyways, thanks for the posts. I'm not going to stop learning about this, but I'm definitely going to stop having fruitless conversations about it with other people.