Hi bennyboy:
16:8 has always fascinated me. It started as a miracle diet called the 8 Hour Diet. The book claimed that you could eat all of anything you wanted to eat but if you ate it in an 8 hour ‘window’ you would lose weight. When you read the book, you soon found with its special foods and exercise requirements that it was a standard eat less every day and exercise diet book. It went the way of all fad diets until IF came along, when it was resurrected as a ‘fasting’ diet.
A person can easily eat their TDEE in one sitting lasting less than an hour, so eating in an 8 hour window carries with it no calorie restriction. And people can easily eat twice their TDEE or more in 8 hours, so they have to choose not to eat that much if they don’t want to gain weight. That means people have to make the decision not to over eat, or to under eat enough to lose weight, in that 8 hour period. They also have to make the decision to not eat for the remaining 16 hours of the day. I’m not sure how that is different than a person having to decide not to over eat, or to under eat, with an ‘eating window’ that lasts as long as they are awake regardless of when they eat in that window.
People generally sleep for several hours each day, and most don’t eat right before bed and immediately upon rising. So most people ‘fast’ for 8 or more hours each day. I am not aware of any research that finds that ‘fasting’ for a few more hours each day provides any material health benefits over the benefits obtained from the standard fasting most people experience.
So I guess it comes down to a person’s belief that fasting windows are helpful and that unanswerable refrain – whatever works for me. So my position is simply if it works for you, do it. It is certainly not harmful. I prefer not to diet by the clock, as dieting is hard enough already!
7:33 pm
9 Jan 16