Of course, it’s not better. There is no way around the laws of thermodynamics. Weight loss is a measure of taking in fewer calories than you burn. That’s the formulae.
That said, intermittent fasting can be a great way for some people to manage their caloric intake. Some people just find it easier to manage their calories by eating once or twice a day and restricting themselves at others.
At the end of the day, though it’s not meant to be a panacea, it’s a tool to be used for those that prefer it to other options.
Although calories in, calories out is valid, people are not robots. Much of diet science is not on how many calories we should consume (we have that pretty much figured out), but on how we make sure we do it in a way that leaves us satiated and sane. So just commenting on any study about diets with “cico is all that counts” is ignoring a lot of nuance. What is interesting is to learn whether this method of achieving negative cico works for more or less people than other methods.
Which law of thermodynamics applies?
The one that says you cannot burn more calories than your body uses and you have to burn more calories than food you eat. It’s just tongue in cheek that the amount of energy in a (closed) system is conserved.
Of course one question is, does intermittent fasting somehow cause you to increase your base metabolic rate or cause you to digest your food less effectively per unit of food eaten, which could still satisfy thermodynamic constraints while still having an apparently larger effect. This study indicates that at a macro level, people do not have more success with this strategy vs traditional calorie restrictions, which do not support either hypothesis. They don’t disprove the hypotheses, but you don’t disprove such things, only support them. This doesn’t support them.
What you’ve stated is not a law of thermodynamics. The first law of thermodynamics, which is the one often misused to tell us that calories are the only thing that matter, states that within an isolated system, the total energy of a system is constant. It’s well defined. The human body isn’t an isolated system, and the laws of thermodynamics aren’t tongue in cheek.
Our bodies don’t burn calories, and you are right in saying that we do indeed eat food, not calories.
Fasting can, for example, deplete our liver’s glycogen stores, and change the levels of various hormones in our body.
Sort of. Thermodynamics still definitely plays a role. You cannot have more calories than you ingest, and over time, you cannot perform more work than electrochemically possible; this is true precisely because of the laws described by thermodynamic constraints.
The laws of thermodynamics aren’t tongue in cheek. The poster saying you can’t escape the laws of thermodynamics I took to mean they’re making a tongue in cheek response; in other words, they’re sort of being witty and saying the reason this finding was observed is because of the fundamental laws governing energy consumption and use in the human body. That absolutely is rhetorically meeting the definition of tongue in cheek.
A calorie is a unit of heat energy. We cannot ingest a calorie since it has no rest mass. It is a ridiculous simplification of our biology.
We have to disagree on the wit of the poster.
lol so what? You can convert it directly to horsepower. All energy is the same. It’s Hess law and work.
So, it works? I’ve been thinking of trying it since it’s probably the only diet I could achieve.
If you don’t have improper dietary restrictions, try keto. I found it most effective because of how full the food you learn to eat keeps you. It has been the most effective diet I ever tried. Just stay away from the fad keto stuff talking about “loose 200 pounds overnight” nonsense.
wow, wtaf? is there an IF downvote brigade here?
I think it’s because keto is not super healthy long term. You need fiber, friend. You. Need. Fiber.
That being said I’m a big believer of you get to choose what you want to eat, so do what you want with your own body!
I didn’t experience any health problems and fiber is explicitly encouraged as a way to get unavoidable carbs down. Like I said, you have to avoid the fad keto stuff that I luckily got in before it took off. Sounds like most people are only going off the dangerous/nonsensical fad keto stuff that all diets are subject to with enough popularity. Basic rule of thumb is if someone wants you to buy anything more than just food (supplement, pills, etc) stay away. Keto (the actual dietary principle) is just based on a different distribution of macronutrients when achieving your caloric deficit. I wasn’t trying to disparage IF, just offering the comment OP another option in his failed diet search.
Sure, but keto says it totally fine to eat a steak and a stick of butter and nothing else. That doesn’t seem sustainable.
Also I’ve never met anyone that does keto that allows any carbs. I’m glad that apparently that’s not the only way though.
To be clear, I do not care if all you eat is steaks and butter. Not my business. Just trying to offer insight into the down votes. I don’t think it’s the IF crew doing it. It’s probably people who are anti-keto.
Sure, but keto says it totally fine to eat a steak and a stick of butter and nothing else. That doesn’t seem sustainable.
Yet it is, we only need to look at the documented human populations that only had access to animal food before westernization. They sustained, even thrived.
Also I’ve never met anyone that does keto that allows any carbs.
Keto is just metabolic ketosis, any biological state while the body is producing detectable levels of blood ketones. Anyone can achieve it <20g carbs per day, and many people have higher tolerances (age, muscle mass, resting metabolic rate etc).
Just trying to offer insight into the down votes. I don’t think it’s the IF crew doing it. It’s probably people who are anti-keto.
Which includes you… https://lemvotes.org/comment/sh.itjust.works/comment/23819049
Yep. 16-8 fasting is just, skip breakfast and don’t snack at midnight. It’s just an easy way to restrict calories.
And I know that there’s no science behind this, but anecdotally I feel better when I give my digestive system a bit of a break.
Yep
