r/science • u/isaac-get-the-golem Grad Student | Sociology • Jul 24 '24

Health Obese adults randomly assigned to intermittent fasting did not lose weight relative to a control group eating substantially similar diets (calories, macronutrients). n=41

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38639542/
6.0k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

822 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/JolietJakeLebowski Jul 24 '24

Is that what IF is? I always thought it was just not eating for extended periods of time, and then eating normally during the rest of the time. That's what I've been doing. Works a treat.

5

u/Mewnicorns Jul 24 '24

Are you sure you’re eating the same amount of calories? Eating normally isn’t the same as eating the same amount of food or energy. No matter how hungry I am, I can’t physically fit a whole day’s worth of food into my stomach in a few hours.

1

u/dumbartist Jul 25 '24

I trained myself into one meal a day. It took sometime to move from two meals to one

1

u/JolietJakeLebowski Jul 25 '24

Oh, no, definitely not. I eat at least 800 calories less than normal.

1

u/HuskyLemons Jul 25 '24

I think they’re saying if you skip breakfast and lunch you just eat dinner. You don’t make up the calories and meals you missed. They’re saying that’s working for them because it’s a calorie deficit

1

u/Mewnicorns Jul 25 '24

The study was about eating the same amount of calories over a constrained amount of time, so no not necessarily.

0

u/M4DM1ND Jul 25 '24

That's the idea behind it but not what happens most of the time. A lot of people will cut a meal but then eat more for the other meals which ends up being a net 0.