IF does not cause weightloss. Calories in vs calories out as always. Health benefits are not exactly known at this point because the research is primarily in rats but better blood sugar regulation and better insulin sensativity are the two ideas out there currently.

I don't really understand your question though. After the initial adjustment period you're just not feeling that massive hunger that might cause one to binge during your normal fasting period. As always you need to make good food choices there is nothing magic about IF. You can easily gain weight while doing IF I just find it easier to lose weight because I'm eating larger more satisfying meals this way.

The only thing I would not suggest is doing heavy lifting or HIIT during your fasting period unless you're going to be able to eat soon after. Cardio is fine though.

The difference between a fed and a fasted state is insulin. You eat calories, your insulin levels go up and you're no longer fasting. Drink anything you want as long as it doesn't have calories. Coffee and tea are fine. Cofee and tea with lots of cream and sugar are not (of course if you're dieting I doubt you would waste calories on that stuff anyways.)

John, I'm curious how often you fast? From your posts I read it as you having made this your normal eating pattern, is that correct? I haven't read all that much about IF, but the impression I have got is that people usually fast 1-2 days per week.
Interesting topic!

timkerbelle, I've been reading up on IF and it seems like there are two approaches. Fasting 1-2 days per week for 24 hours each, or doing it daily for 15-19 hours. The daily approach really appeals to me so that's what I'm going to try.

Thanks for the advice John.

Yes - it is my normal eating pattern. It is rare for me to eat anything before 2:00 PM although occasionally I'll get dragged to a late brunch on the weekends by my family ... I'll try to delay them past noon but I'm not always successful. :D I follow leangains.com

Others who fast 1-2 days a week are doing it more of the Eat Stop Eat style which is a book I'd like to read but I'm too cheap.

From studies, insulin levels and such seem to really benefit from IF. If you think about it, all through history mankind has 'fasted' between times of eating. The concept of snacking and grazing is a very new concept, like within the past few decades.

Humanity has done Intermittent Fasting (unwittingly) for thousands of years.

I'm not an IF 'pusher' or anything, and I don't think diet in general is a one-size-fits-all proposition, but for certain people (like me) it's a real godsend.

As far as shifting my mentality, that actually was the greatest benefit for me. Instead of worrying about how much to eat now, how many calories to save till later, what if I forget about something I ate, I can just congeal every thing down to a much smaller window that I have to worry about.

For me, it is easily 4 or 5 hours after I get up that I am actually hungry. At that point, I will drink one or two cups of hot tea to satisfy me until it's time to eat.

If you think about your diet right now, I bet you could pinpoint about a 4 or 5 hour window in the day where you are actually hungry. It's rare that people are hungry from the time they get up until the time they go to bed. It's really just a matter of taking that window of time and giving yourself that, and not eating outside of it.

For me, it simplifies matters, rather than complicating them.

I exercise whenever I want to. I know that it's best to do heavy lifting some time around when I eat, but honestly I don't sweat it either way. Most of the time, I do a 60 minute walk and then about 3 days a week I do lifting as well.

I just do it when I want to and don't worry about how close it comes to my eating. It's not like I'm a bodybuilder or anything, so it's not really that exact of a science. I have never had any problems with it.

I also take stomach medication without eating and without issue. And I take allergy pills and shots (I get four allergy shots a week), without eating around it, and it doesn't cause any problem.

I also drink hot tea throughout the day. It's black tea with splenda and fat free half and half. Occasionally I'll drink something else (like a diet green tea) but I am something of a hot tea addict. I drink about 4 ~ 16 oz hot teas per day. :^: LOL.

Most people that do IF are not that strict with drinks, although if they have calories, it can obviously add up.

Because I can't think of a single time when I binged due to hunger.
Sounds like I'm not mentally equipped for IF but I always like to read about others' experiences.

Additional questions for katy, John, and anyone else who IFs--

1. How strict is the term "fast"? Does it take just one calorie to break the fast, or is intaking a very small number of calories (25? 50?) in the morning still low enough to reap the benefits of lower insulin levels and all the other chemical reactions which occur during a fasting state?

2. The article JohnP posted differentiated between truly sedentary fasting (lying completely still, which requires I think something like 16-18 hours between eating) and real life fasting (14-16ish hours) due to the individual moving around, expending calories, etc. By this logic if I were to exercise moderately for 1 hour in the mornings, could I decrease my fasting time? Or did I misinterpret the relationship between calories expended and the length of the fast?

Thanks in advance, all!

I personally find that this is the greatest benefit of IF in my limited experience. IF seems to calm me down significantly so I think less about food, and apparently it also helps with insulin which at least in my case can lead to massive carb binges.

Hey indiblue,
I will just speak from my limited experience but the most I will have during fasting times is coffee/tea with 50ml of skim milk over the course of a few coffees. I know this is 17.5 calories but I still don't consider it to have broken my fast (perhaps it has)
I regularly partake in exercise before I have broken my fast, I still don't eat before 2pm. If anything exercise decreases my appetite. It's not like I intentionally exercise while fasting it's just that I sometimes have to do a lot of physical activity before 2pm. If I were experincing negative effect from doing this such as dizziness or extreme fatigue I would probably eat sooner even if it were before 2pm

I have done both the daily IF (only eating during a certain time window of the day) and weekly IF (not consuming any calories for 24 hours). Even when I'm doing the weekly IF, I follow daily IF out of habit and preference.

A few undeniable truths about yours truly are 1) As much as I love food and eating, I abhor the thought of eating in the morning. It's just the last thing I want to do, but I LOVE eating at night. And 2) I like freaking HUGE meals. Finally 3) The more frequently I eat, the more I think about food. Considering these facts, try to imagine me forcing myself into the 5-6 mini meals per day routine. I did it for about two months and I was miserable. I choked down breakfast and a morning snack, and then I watched the clock obsessively for the time for my next mini meal. I could think about nothing else other than the next time I'd get to eat. When I did eat, that small little meal or planned snack juuust barely took the edge off my hunger enough for me to obsessively wait for the next mini meal. B the afternoon and evening I was wishing I had the calories left that I had stuffed down my throat in the morning. And, mind you, these were whole healthy food choices. Lean protein, high fiber, complex carbs, etc. Sure, I was losing weight, but I was becoming an anxious starving food-obsessed nutcase.

So I threw that garbage out the window. I started eating my first meal no earlier than noon, and I absolutely prefer to eat later than that. I'm thrilled if I'm just starting to eat around 2-3pm. I can honestly say I do not get hungry before that. Sometimes I'll eat at noon just because I'm bored and it's "lunch time" and I think I need to eat. And I do, but that's not because I'm truly hungry. Generally, I eat either two HUGE meals and a few substantial snacks or three HUGE meals. I feel like I'm eating sooo much food which truly pleases my gluttonous brain, haha. But really, it's a normal amount of food just packed into a smaller time frame. And it did not affect the rate of my weight loss at all, it just made the process easier.

So I find daily IF fasting easy. It's just how my brain and stomach prefer it, and it didn't require much discipline. Weekly IF took a bit more focus. It was hard the first few weeks, I won't lie, but it was definitely more mental than true hunger. I didn't eat anything between my dinner of Saturday until the dinner of Sunday. 7pm to 7pm. It was more of a mental struggle because I set myself up with dreading the thought "oh nooo, I can't eat anything today, I'm going to starve!" But after practicing it for a few weeks, I realized that that was all in my head. In reality, I felt bright, alert, and perfectly fine. Weekly IF helped me break out of my plateau during the last phase of weight loss and helped me lose those last stubborn pounds.

Our eating preferences are very similiar mkendrick. I've been doing the six meals a day and just keeping my early day meals smaller so that I can enjoy more food in the evening. I don't actually feel hungry very often, but I hardly ever feel completely satisfied and I am always thinking about the next meal. It's exhausting spending the whole day thinking about food food food.

I'm really psyched about trying IF. I've decided I'm going to do daily and my eating window is going to be between 2pm and 8pm. I can see this working out for me very well. I might adjust the hours a bit up and down depending on how my body responds to it, but I'm thinking this might be perfect for me.

Glad the OP started this thread. =)

TooManyDimples, I think a lot of people are like us. People who prefer to eat a lot at one time and who are hungrier later in the day. Unfortunately, the "mini meal" and "planned snacks" concepts are the most widely endorsed models these days. So many of us are trying to stuff ourselves into molds that we simply don't fit in.

I'd highly suggest trying daily fasting. Who knows, it may not work for you, but you may discover that it's fanfreakingtastic like I did. I think eating between 2-8pm is perfectly legitimate...that's generally my window. I don't really have a defined time period (except no food before noon), but I don't usually get legitimate hunger feelings until 2. Don't be discouraged if you feel hungry earlier than that. Like I said, I'm NOT a morning eater, but after months of forcing myself to eat at 7am, 9am, and noon...my body was angry that I hadn't fed it at 7am and 9am for a few days. But I got used to it quick and I'm back to feeling disgusted at the thought of eating before noon, lol. And I'm ALWAYS thrilled that I get to eat so much food in the afternoon and evening, hehe.

I found a lot of benefits to it. I follow a daily IF pattern. I'm still consuming a normal amount of calories, but I give my body some time to digest the food. I've noticed a few things:

-I don't feel ravenous when I break the "fast" (a term I use rather loosely because it doesn't typically exceed 12-15 hours).
-It's so much easier for me to keep track of what I've eaten.
-I'm able to pay attention to hunger cues. In turn, I'm able to recognize feeling full more effortlessly than I when I was eating mini-meals.
-I don't experience sugar rushes/crashes like I used to, which is also related to cutting sugar.

I do not like eating several times a day (mini-meals) and I had to accept that that was ok. It had been drilled into my head that in order to lose weight you have to keep your metabolism "up" by constantly feeding yourself. This is simply not true for me. This could be related to my pcos/IR. It really has curbed my grazing behavior and has made my meal planning easier to manage as well.

since, i am pretty sure my problem is insulin resistance, that explains WHY this WOE worked for me in the past, not only would i see the weight go, my body would be restructured due to the resensitizing of my insulin receptors. The ONE TIME i was successful with weight loss and kept it off for 2 years was due to IF, i used the fasting for 24 hours approach, on one day and off the other, i also fasted for prayer and getting closer to God, so that made it more motivating to me.

Before i got pregnant, i learned of the fast 5 approach, i saw great results from that as well. I do agree you need to get used to the WOE. Right now my hunger is so scattered, but usually my hunger doesn't really hit until 1 pm or so like johnP said.

if you have any type of insulin resistance, this WOE is good for you. If you do have it your body is in a CONSTANT fed state anyways. Sugar is available in your bloodstream and all you have to do is burn it off, but if you are constantly feeding you are constantly spiking your blood sugar and insulin levels which only aggravates the problem.

A GREAT BOOK , WHERE I ACTUALLY first learned about insulin resistance is the "Carbohydrate Addict's Diet". Folloiwng that WOE I found i could actually go 5-6 hours in between meals not hungry.