Seriously?Intermittent fasting?!?!

(Joey) #1

Let the epidemiologically brief self-reported food log confounding relative vs absolute risk data flame wars begin…

(Chuck) #2

I naturally fast 14 to 18 hours each day with out even trying. I have been doing it since I as a young teenager, I am now 76 years old and have never been hospitalized, the most serious illnesses have been my sinuses and mild flu symptoms.

#3

I seriously doubt it but so be it :smiley: I like eating but force-feeding myself would make my life very miserable (sadly, I can gain fat easier than before and lack of IF would give me obesity, most probably. carnivore can do a lot but can’t keep me from overeating if my eating window is huge, not even with great food choices). And I would be quite astonished as human evolution would make eating all day mandatory…

But fine, I don’t get heart problems anyway. But see before. Our evolution. It’s very normal to eat all day in my individual definition (8 hour eating window. I eat whenever I CAN, it’s a very very huge eating window with many meals and almost guaranteed overeating), many people need a way more serious restriction. And they really think we humans are so very similar that everyone needs the same things?

Do I want to read that article I strongly dislike without it…?
Okay, I did. I don’t really trust studies most of the time as there are so very many factors and of course, long term, N=huge studies are irrealistic.
I totally accept that long term IF is unhealthy for many people. Of course it is, not everyone can eat properly on IF. Just like I can’t eat properly without IF, I inevitably overeat (at least I get my nutrients). People who let themselves starve without their needed breakfast surely experience lots of problems. And so on. But IF itself, for the ones who does it naturally and eat enough good food, I just can’t imagine to cause any problems.

I see the article had other ideas for causes for unexpected results. I agree. We just can’t do things the same except IF.

And there was fat-loss mentioned. That’s one version, timing doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the energy balance. I usually overeat on IF, sometimes eat at maintenance and sometimes I eat little but I need luck and effort (and a less than 3 hour eating window does good too). These are different. If one can’t avoid eating a bit too little in their eating window, it isn’t sustainable and easier causes nutrition deficiency especially on a not so great diet. It has no impact of the health effect on people who eat properly…

I did IF way before I heard about IF :slight_smile: It’s just the natural way for me. And I badly need it, too.

(Mark Rhodes) #4

“This is a significant study that should give pause to individuals who promote or follow short-window time-restricted eating,” she said. “It drives home an important point: Weight loss from dieting does not automatically equate to health even if it lowers blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose or inflammatory markers.” all that from another survey study, no hard data

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

If they quoted that lady at all accurately, I think we can safely ignore this study. If lowering weight, blood pressure, glucose, and inflammatory markers doesn’t constitute improved health, then what does? Granted, lowering cholesterol may be a problem.

I wonder if the real problem here is that people are seeing these changes without taking a pill.

(icky) #6
#7

Few things from the study that stood out to me:

However, the findings still need replication and can’t prove that eight-hour, time-restricted eating causes cardiovascular death. They also don’t support long-term use of this approach for preventing cardiovascular death and for improving longevity, he said. (Victor Wenze Zhong)

Time-restricted eating also does not require intake of high-quality foods. As a result, “any mortality associations could be due to consumption of nutrient-poor foods, or even fast or ultra-processed foods,” said Aspry

“There are many remaining questions regarding the analysis, including how accurately the study participants recalled their diet, the quality and content of the food they consumed, and a lack of detail regarding the cause of increased deaths in the study group. It is also critical for future research to define the biological basis underlying this observation,” [Christopher Gardner] said. “Interpreting the findings appropriately will require knowing more about any other potential differences between the people who restricted their eating across fewer than eight hours and those who ate across 12 to 16 hours per day,” In addition, “the way the study participants were determined to be ‘intermittent fasters’ involves some important limitations,” he said. “That characterization is based on two days of diet data.”

So this study was based solely on 2 days of diet data? How is this even considered true science?

I have read a few recent studies this past week that are low quality observational studies but being reported in the media and medical journals as if significant, critical science, and a cause to scare people away from a way of eating or particular products or ingredients. It’s as if we are beginning to slowly see the rollout of master plans made a couple years ago by the corporations and organizations most threatened by the awakening of the public.

#8

I missed that point but I don’t care anyway. These studies can’t be much better than the ones where mice were fed some subpar food. I eat the food that my body likes and I eat whenever it wants it. And it’s almost always IF. Using bad food or going against physical urges to eat changes things a lot, even for the same person! And I think I wrote IF doesn’t suit everyone. IF is as bad for some people (or even much worse if they can’t eat enough) as not doing IF is to me.

(icky) #9
(KM) #10

Exactly what I was thinking! Isn’t chasing markers precisely what the entire med/pharma industry does, in order to promote and prove “health” and “cure” in ailing patients??

(KM) #11

Omg this is such utter hogwash. IF is so iffy to begin with. Somehow it became some kind of “fasting” to not eat between dinner and breakfast, like not eating in the middle of the night is an extraordinary act, and now this is being touted as dangerous? Forgive my arrogance, but people are idiots.

(Chuck) #12

I once had a nurse tell me I should set an alarm and eat something every 3 hours and never go longer than 4 hours without eating. I have always been blunt and asked her if that was why she was as wide as she was tall. Ever since I was a teenager, except while in Navy boot camp, where we were basically forced fed by a schedule. I eat only 2 meals a day at most, and possibly a light snack of a piece of fruit. Now my meals are not necessarily small. I don’t eat after 6pm and seldom before 10am and most days not before noon. I never really knew it was called intermittent fasting until about a year ago.

(Joey) #13

… and two days of diet data for intermittent fasters amounts to 2-3 meals :wink:

(Bob M) #14

There are so many studies like this… Saw one where they gave them two FFQs (food frequency questionnaires) in 30 YEARS. There’s no way that’s useful.

#15

What. This is so extreme and against how people live, I never heard about this. Why? Okay, some people need to eat all the time, those few on the whole planet and maybe there are special circumstances but for nearly everyone, it makes NO SENSE. Did she tell you why she thought it would be useful?
I can’t even eat if I was asleep in the last few hours :smiley: (Except certain naps and force-feeding, poor me as a kid!)
I didn’t even wake up to eat during the night when I was a baby! :rofl: If Mom would have woken me, I would have been too upset to eat, most probably!

We are HUMANS. Not shrews…

(Chuck) #16

I was a teenager, and she was a nurse at the high school. I was a freshman and the school provided breakfast, lunch and several snacks, this was a small country school and we were mostly all from the farms. I was use to getting up very early and and doing my chores, my work around the farm was mostly feeding the farm animals and insuring the cows were put out into the pastures. By the time did this I had to run to catch the bus for a 90 minute ride to school. I did eat at lunch but no snacks. I was lucky the ride home was only 25 minutes. Mom fed me then I did my evening chores then did my homework. I didn’t have to be told to go to bed, I knew I had to be up at 4:30am to do my chores and catch the bus. Oh I forgot to say that I had a job on the bus of keeping the younger kids in their seats. You see all 12 grades were in the one school building.

#17

Now it makes even less sense to me… You had so much to do and you needed your peaceful rest (but others need it too, obviously. just maybe a tad less if they can take naps elsewhere).
I seem to have 3 hour sleeping cycles (my SO has shorter ones and I don’t know how it is for others) so waking me after 4 hours wouldn’t end well. But it would require something way more serious than a few alarms. We had some insanely loud and shill Russian alarm clock when I was a kid, it was a huge shock when it managed to sound at the wrong time on one afternoon but I have eventually learned to sleep through it. Mom taking off my blanket always was successful, not like it was very much visible as my brain needed some more hours to reboot and I even needed several minutes to walk. And it was 5:30 or 6:00. Not 4 hours into sleep, that is AWFUL, I can’t handle waking up during the night and that is usually natural, not out of my sleeping cycles…

(Chuck) #18

When I was a teenager and I was given a chance I could sleep 8 to 12 hours without waking up. But normally I was happy to get 6 to 7 hours of sleep.
While in the Navy I had a schedule of 3 days, 3 evenings and 3 midnight then 4 days off. I was never able to go to sleep while it was daylight, but if it was dark at the time I went to bed then I could sleep.

#19

Apologies for the pay wall

Bottom line the author notes that there were lots of limitations for this study, not the least being that it was based on two days of meals at the beginning of an eight year study!

(KM) #20

Making it a slightly worse “study” than it already was, only about 2% of the study participants (414 out of 20,000) were identified as intermittent fasters at all, even with that lousy two data point survey. For all we know, they just missed two breakfasts out of 2920, because they were busy taking their surveys.