If You Are Considering Intermittent Fasting To Lose Weight, Read This First

It was the hottest diet trend in the world just a few years ago, but now research shows that intermittent fasting isn't all that it has been hyped about.

As a life long dieter, I joined the millions of people who thought that time restricted dieting was the magic bullet that I have been looking for my entire life. It seemed easy enough, just eat your meals in a small window of time. For me it was the 16/8 approach where I would fast for the 16 hours beginning at 6pm and fasting until 10am. Then having an eating "window" of 8 hours.

I thought that would be the easiest approach for a beginner as opposed to trying too hard with some of the more longer window. Some people extend the non-eating time to up to 20 hours and only have a 4 hour eating window. Others opt for the OMAD approach which is, one meal a day. That sounds like a brutal way to lose weight through fasting to the extreme.

For me, intermittent fasting was a bust. I tried it for a few weeks, even tracking my calories to be sure that I wasn't over eating during the 8 hour feeding window. It didn't work for me for a lot of reasons, mainly my hours are not conducive to long periods of fasting. I wake up at 3:21 every day, so that would mean that my eating window would not be until 10am. Not sure about you, but not being able to eat for almost 7 hours after awaking was a very hard thing to do. That meant I would have to stop eating by 6pm, which is difficult when you have a family at home that wants to eat dinner with you.

Needless to say, the fasting approach didn't last long for me. Instead I opt to track my calories to stay in line and hopefully stave off gaining weight. Losing it as everyone knows is the hard part.

A comprehensive review of 22 studies involving nearly 2,000 adults found intermittent fasting may make little to no difference for weight loss compared to traditional dieting advice. Researchers analyzed short-term intermittent fasting over 12 months, including popular methods like the 5:2 diet and time-restricted eating. Lead author Luis Garegnani expressed concern about online hype, stating “the current evidence doesn’t justify the enthusiasm we see on social media.” The review found intermittent fasting performed similarly to standard dietary advice or no advice at all regarding weight loss and quality of life. Story URL

So, is this good or bad news for people like me who are in a constant battle with the lbs? I think it is good news because dieting is hard enough without the GLP-1's. You don't have to go long hours without eating in order to lose weight. In fact, I have an inspiration living right under my roof, my daughter. She has lost over 70 pounds and has kept it off for over 2 years. That's amazing and she did it the old fashioned way, eating a little less and moving a lot more. Now all I have to do is listen to her when she says, "dad, put the doughnut down!"