I’ll add one more anecdote to the mix here. Been doing intermittent fasting and extended fasting since February and I’m down 75 pounds in that time.

I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed. Now I don’t snore at all. My wife sleeps better, I sleep better; win win!

I haven’t exercised at all and I don’t count calories. My biggest diet changes have been cutting out soda entirely and I try to keep my carbs under 100g a day. Many days I’m under 50.

It’s honestly been amazing and I’m glad that I did it now while I’m still young and will be able to physically play with my kids in the future.

One of the other big wins has been physiological and my relationship with food and the feeling of hunger. Living in America, and especially here in the south, food is a religion. Stopping whatever is going on to eat is never looked down on. Snacks all the time, large comfort food meals, etc. While the community aspects around food are a good thing, our dependence on it as a society has crossed over into causing more harm than help.

After starting to fast, I’ve learned that hunger is just another feeling, like being too hot or too cold. Sure, it can be uncomfortable, but it won’t kill you and we can tolerate it a lot longer than we think.

Right now, I’m in the middle of a 7 day fast where I’m only drinking water. Every week I normally fast 48 hours twice a week and then one meal a day for the other 5 days in the week. My relationship with food has morphed and now I’m totally in control of my body. Skipping a meal is no problem and I have no ill side effects.

I’ll wrap this up by saying that I still enjoy food, a lot! When I do eat for my one meal a day, I can easily eat a large salad and a burger and a side. My favorite pastime is going to the movies and eating a meal and a large bucket of popcorn with my wife. Some days though, I eat a “normal” portion and call it good. Sometimes I have dessert. The difference is now that I can manage my love of food in a sustainable way for my body.

Happy to answer any questions. AMA.

> hunger is just another feeling

Exactly! I've done intermittent fasting for many many years, it works for me. I've told people, "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".

> "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".

Another way to look at it that I've found effective: think of food cravings as an adversarial agent. Your body is blackmailing you: if you give me food, I'll make this craving go away. Trick is, the food you're probably craving -- chips, soda -- don't make the craving go away. They make it worse. Once you notice that you're body doesn't actually make good on its promises to make the cravings stop it's easier to not give in to its demands. And that actually makes the cravings stop. It's no different than dealing with any other bully.

Blackmail indeed, although it may be a different phenomena; consider:

You need a laundry list of nutrients, and if your body is short of any one of them, it'll crave something that might have it. If it has it in insufficient density, it won't care that it needs to also get an extra 500 Kcal along for the ride - it needs to satisfy each item on the list.

I've seen this behavior in both cats and people -- feed them better quality food, and their cravings & weight go down as the full set of nutrients is found in fewer calories.

(Different topic, also very big on intermittent fasting, ensuring that there are frequent periods where the body recovers energy from fat stores)

I've no idea about how cravings work in general, but when I have a craving for two pizzas it's absolutely nothing to do with nutrients. I think you're probably correct for some subset of people/situations, but there's also a whole set of people who are effectively addicted to food and the cravings are almost 0% to do with not having the correct nutrients.

Yes, there is that, although I'd put that in a different class of cravings, almost engineered cravings created/exploited by the food industry, where foods are engineered for taste and repeated consumption, e.g., drinks that make you more thirsty, or overladen salt & sweet flavors that we're just generally programmed to seek because they are rare in nature, but engineer-able.

I noticed one study a long time ago just about flavor. Basically, rats, being fed standard rat chow, with nutrients and calories kept constant, both groups had full access to the food. Group A had one flavor, Group B had six flavors. Group B gained a lot more weight. So, merely restricting flavor choice will reduce your inclination to eat, and conversely, food engineers creating foods with lots of flavors will increase food and eating...

You supposedly craving two pizzas rather than just pizza sounds like nonsense to me. It is far too specific to be a craving, if anything it sounds more like a habit to me. Whenever I eat pizza I share a small one with my wife and I still feel like I overate.

Lately (the past few years) I've been struggling with weight gain I couldn't reverse. I have zero self-control and will snack if food is in close enough proximity. I will also not turn down food, so living in Greece, where great food is available 24/7, is hard on me.

A few weeks ago I decided to try 8/16 IF, which basically means I don't eat past 10 pm (mornings are not a problem, I wake up late and never need breakfast). I'll usually wake up around noon, have my first meal at around 3 or 4, then have a small meal at 9 or just before 10 and that's it for the day.

This has made a very big difference. I have already lost 2 kg without even thinking about it. It helps a lot that I will eat a small meal before I'm hungry (at 9), wheras before I'd wait until 1 am when I was starving and then would eat a large meal.

It has also made compliance a breeze by just not giving me a choice. I'm unable to say "I've eaten a lot today so I shouldn't have this snack too", I would just think "eh I'll have this snack and eat less tomorrow", only for the cycle to repeat the next day. Now, if it's past 10 I don't eat anything, simple.

I definitely recommend this to anyone with compliance problems. I can also 100% relate to your hunger statement, which I learnt the last time I dieted, years ago. Being hungry just means that my body is burning fat, and I can go 30+ hours between meals without really any ill effects.

This can work for people who don't really need a lot of weight loss. Obese people are too deeply conditioned, their brains are wired differently and their bodies probably not responding on the hormonal level the same way as yours. To them it's a bit like suggesting a drug addict to just enjoy the withdrawal crisis. According to this research: "a substantial fraction of obese individuals exhibit an imbalance between an enhanced sensitivity of the reward circuitry to conditioned stimuli linked to energy-dense food and impaired function of the executive control circuitry that weakens inhibitory control over appetitive behaviors" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124340/

I guess. I'm a big dude, and I find it a lot easier to fast than to eat carefully on a more typical schedule. Part of it is definitely just acclimating to the sensation of food cravings (and also learning to distinguish that feeling from "hunger"), but also, if I don't eat regularly, I tend not to crave food in the first place. I can pretty sustainably stay on an 18 hour fast schedule without breaking.

Given that you're a "big dude" (aka overweight?) I assume you are that way by choice given your comments about how you can control your appetite?

I'm a bit of a fat bastard myself and I think what I've come to realise is that for a huge segment of the population eating just works fine and they can adjust diet to tweak this or that relatively easily. For the rest (like me), my relationship with food is broken and stuff like IF or keto or whatever are patches to deal with that underlying brokenness. It always works for a while, but it always go to shit eventually.

I've never been obese, so that may be a good point to bring up. At my biggest, I was 187 at 5'10". So not that big, but I lost 35 pounds and have kept it off for 11 years now, using my own style of intermittent fasting.

Yeah but they hint at the reason

> Certain foods, particularly those rich in sugars and fat, are potent rewards [23] that promote eating (even in the absence of an energetic requirement)

If the subjects are used to carb- and sugar-heavy diet, the hormonal spikes will be very stressful on the body.

They also mention fat-heavy foods, but I suspect they are referring to foods high on both fat+sugars, not a green salad with copious amounts of olive oil.

Anecdotal, but one of the things I noticed when I switched to keto for a while was a drastic change in my relationship to sugar. After cutting out sugar entirely, I noticed that water didn't taste bitter anymore, something I'd always attributed to the hard water supply. Coffee is also wildly different now, and I can drink teas without any sugar, which confuses folks when I eat out. (In my part of Texas, iced sweet tea is so popular it's basically the default beverage.)

It's so strange. My whole life I hadn't given sodas a second thought, but that reward signal is strong. I don't think I ever want to go back.

I like to think of hunger as "the feeling of my body burning fat."

>"You know how a workout 'hurts so good"

This is what I exactly tell people. It's the only way to sustain it.

I can think, I can wait, I can fast.

Wise, Sid

I understand your concern and sympathize with those who starve themselves pathologically. However, the posts that you’re referencing are full of joy in the conquering of an addiction to eating. These people are taking steps that truly enhance quality of life and longevity.

I love (and I mean LOOOOOOVEEEEE) food, eating and feeling full or even overfed. So doing straight multi-day fasting is extremely hard for me, psychologically / motivationally.

However, I'm quite lucky in that I don't really get hungry very soon, if I don't eat. It's quite a weird effect; if I eat in the morning, I'll be hungry throughout the day, but if I skip breakfast (or even lunch), I'll only get hungry towards the evening.

So I just skip breakfast (almost always) and lunch (when I want to lose weight). Greatest diet hack I've ever discovered (actually, psychological hack).

I'm exactly like you (except I hate the feeling of being overfed). I don't need to eat for 4-5 hours after I wake up, but if I do eat something when I wake up, I'll be hungry very soon afterwards.

I've actually had fights with my dietician who insisted I eat breakfast as soon as I wake up, and wouldn't hear any of my links to published research, or even arguments of "if I'm not hungry, why eat extra calories that will just make me even hungrier?!"

Just skip breakfast and eat the first meal when you're hungry (don't wait until you're starving, or you might overeat). You're literally not missing anything.

I'm never hungry when I wake up, but I think that's mostly just a habit thing. Your body adjusts to expect food on a schedule, if you normally eat on a schedule.

I only eat lunch (at noon) and dinner (at 8pm), pretty much like clockwork. It's very rare that I eat outside of these times during the work week. I don't snack through the work day, and I very seldom snack at home on work evenings. But I still end up eating too much; lunch + dinner is more than I need. I'm thinking about paring it back to just dinner (perhaps 2 days a week starting out), since that's the most important, socially.

I didn't have any problem sticking with my normal 60kg weight until I got over 35 or so, now I'm up to 70kg or so and I can feel my body fat jiggle as I run up or down stairs - an alien feeling to me.

> I didn't have any problem sticking with my normal 60kg weight until I got over 35 or so, now I'm up to 70kg

Yeah, I put on 10 kg as well once I hit 33. I don't know what happened, everything I've read said your metabolism doesn't slow down until much later, but I exercise more and eat less than I used to, yet I put on a bunch of weight that I can't easily lose.

I'd love to figure out why that is, but I can't find anything.

> Yeah, I put on 10 kg as well once I hit 33. I don't know what happened, everything I've read said your metabolism doesn't slow down until much later

I remained trim eating 4000ish calories a day of junk food from about age 15 to age 22 or so. Attempted to crash diet to a strict 1400 calories a day to make my comes-and-goes six-pack a bit more permanent. Kept it up for about two months. Nothing (more or less) happened. Stopped since it wasn't working. Promptly put on ten pounds. Have struggled to keep my weight under control ever since.

Metabolisms are weird.

Jeez, that sucks. Did you go back to 4000 calories when you stopped? 1400 calories don't sound too terrible, I wonder what happened.

IDK, probably. 4k's a conservative estimate for what I figure the average probably was, it may have been higher, not like I was counting those calories—I was a multiple liters of soda, maybe a whole pizza, perhaps some pop tarts or just eight slices of toast for breakfast kinda teenager. Plus probably some french fries and maybe some potato chips or snack crackers (not a small quantity of either) thrown in there. Maybe a snickers. That'd be one day of food. I have no idea what my body was doing with all that extra energy. Or why my blood pressure was dead in the middle of "healthy".

Man, bodies are weird.

It can be more than just hunger. I don’t typically get hungry until 12-1 so historically do not eat in the am. However I noticed how much more irritable I was in the morning, which is always chalked up to not being a morning person. Now I try to eat a tiny bit, the massive AM mood swings have gone away

Here's a hack that seems to work. Reduce the sides of your serving plates.

We have a tendency to finish all the food that's put in front of us. So many times we continue to eat even if we are not hungry. So by reducing the plate size we end up eating less.

I've noticed that the feeling of hunger only persists for a certain amount of time. If I'm preoccupied with something else or I can't eat while I have that feeling then after a while it just goes away. I think sleep is long enough that it gets over that feeling of hunger and that's why I don't feel hungry when I wake up.

> It's quite a weird effect; if I eat in the morning, I'll be hungry throughout the day, but if I skip breakfast (or even lunch), I'll only get hungry towards the evening.

I think that's actually a pretty normal effect, though perhaps not usually as pronounced as "only get hungry towards the evening". You don't normally get hungry while asleep, so I think one of breakfast's purposes is to kick-start the metabolism, with the side-effect of getting hungry afterwards. Especially if you're on a diet and are sticking to small breakfasts, making that meal counterproductive.

I cut my soda intake from a few a day to nil a day and replaced them with water. Within a few months I had lost 30 lbs. Cutting soda intake makes a big difference. It's not the magic bullet since I've stalled at my current weight but 30 lbs is a big difference given the small change.

I know I'd be at 250lbs if I still drank soda. I used to pound 3-6 mountain dew bottles a day at the computer (that's 12-20oz per bottle). I stopped and water is delicious and satisfying now. I drink small amounts impulsively now, it's like a fixation. Water is the most delicious healthy thing I consume and thank god for that.

Do you drink fancy water, or just tap?

(I replace my fancy beer cravings with fancy water)

Just tap water, but my state/county has good tasting water and I also have a fridge filter. If the tap water tasted awful, I'd drink less water for sure.

I think snacking in general is problematic for people.

I lost 10kgs in the past three months by doing IF. I didn't really need it but now I'm in the normal weight department instead of the slightly overweight. The best thing is that I learned how my body reacts to different occasions of hunger. By experimenting with different types of food and nutritions each time, I almost feel that now I can tune my body. Much like a digital system.

> hunger is just another feeling

Personally, one of the first things I had to learn when starting IF is to be okay with hunger.

Then, I had to learn what was real hunger. Because of IF I don’t get hungry when I wake up in the morning anymore. But after a week on a holiday with breakfast as a norm, it’s as if my body expects food in the morning and gets hungry just because.

Took some time to reconcile what I experienced with what I was taught growing up, that hunger was bad.

Are you ingesting anything besides water during your 7 day fast? Coffee? Tea? Vitamins? I'm interested in doing something like this.

Don't do something like this. A 7 day fast of just water isn't healthy. Your body starts burning more than just your fat. Even when doing something like a highly-restricted-calorie diet such as 960Cal/day you don't want to do for more than 3 days without medical supervision.

While it is true that you do burn some muscle, the increased HGH levels immediately replace it when you refeed. This has been studied significantly. And for me, I don’t give a rip about muscle loss right now. I’m just trying to lose weight.

Your body isn’t stupid. You won’t turn into a ball of fat if you fast regularly. Cavemen and even animals have long feast/famine cycles. Our bodies are designed to store fat and burn it when food is scarce.

Now if folks are already in a healthy weight, then yea, extended fasting isn’t necessarily something you want to do a lot of, but for obese people, we have plenty of fat to keep things rolling as long as other essential nutrients are supplemented via multivitamins.

With fasting you generally want to take to take some salt. Any time you feel dizzy or nauseous that's basically an indicator that you're lacking some electrolytes. I usually take a bit of table salt or sea salt on the edge of a spoon and then wash it down with water.

Warning: Don't take too much salt all at once, because that can trigger a regurgitation..

> Any time you feel dizzy or nauseous that's basically an indicator that you're lacking some electrolytes.

If that were true (it's not), there are all sorts of important "electrolytes" that are not in table salt (Calcium, Potassium, Magnesium, etc).

The reason your technique resolves your dizziness is likely a combination of placebo and hydration.

Yeah I could've mentioned those, for a short fast it's not so important. For a longer fast, gotta supplement with those or sip on some bone broth.

I've been doing IF and LCHF for a few months now too. Previously, I only did Keto (no IF) and lost 70 pounds but later put some back on.

The biggest benefit to me from IF isn't the weight loss, it's the increased energy level. I don't know how it works, but I have way more energy, consistently, after routinely fasting.

> I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed.

Wait, what ? Could you expand on that ?

My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.

Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.

Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.

Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.

This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.

> Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.

Thanks for sharing that. I have a CPAP and your account is one more point to something I have been suspecting for a while now, especially in the last few days.

For me hunger is a major distraction and doesn't quite help me to stay focused. How does one manage to keep going at work with the hunger?

It comes in waves, so after a while the sensation of hunger just goes away. Learn ride out the waves and you'll be fine.

I find the feeling of hunger goes away quite quickly when you're fasting, provided you haven't eaten anything already.

Things that help: - Drinking water - Drinking Coffee - Gentle exercise (something like a walk)

I've started bringing popcorn to work in the mornings. Kills the cravings and basically empty food.

I keep reading mixed reviews about intermittent fasting. One study says it lowers the risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus, because your blood sugar level is pretty low during the fast. The next study says this actually increases the risk, because your blood sugar spikes when you break the fast. This quickly becomes confusing.

For me, I was technically over the threshold for type 2 diabetes before I started IF.

After 3 weeks of IF and healthier eating, that number had already dropped below the threshold to just pre-diabetes. Within 3 months I had reversed that as well. This was all verified by bloodwork.

Now it is true, when you eat, even when not doing IF, insulin spikes. That’s how our bodies process food. During extended fasting, your body will become more sensitive to insulin so it is important that when you eat again, not to stuff yourself with high carb foods that will only exacerbate that.

Now how much you’d have to eat to do hurt yourself, I don’t know, but I guarantee the first time you break a fast with just a bit too many carbs you will feel it. The first time was enough for me!

Thanks for sharing. How do you manage the 48 hour and 7 day fast ? I presume you only consume water and nothing else. I skip breakfast always and can skip lunch and breakfast on alternate days. Are there any trick's to learn to fast for more than 20 hours while being mentally active like coding ?

I know I'm a little late here, but intermittent fasting is actually a pretty trendy thing in the valley right now because of increased mental clarity.

I didn't start it for the mental side effects, but I haven't noticed any strong negatives during my day job. I get 4-6 hours of meaningful work done and then my brain is about finished like most days.

Many people who do IF actually suggest working/playing to keep your mind off the hunger as it's easier to ignore when you're busy.

>>>I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed

I would like to hear more details on this. Being a CPAP machine user I have never heard of this (lungs failing) before.

My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.

Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.

Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.

Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.

This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.

My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.

Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.

Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.

Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admitently irrational fear of them.

CPAP just splints the airway open, but BiPAP actually has an inhale/exhale cycle, so maybe they use it for people who have trouble breathing on their own?

Could you give more details on how the machine caused lung failure? I am thinking of getting a CPAP for my family. Would like to do more research on it.

My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.

Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.

Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.

Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.

This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.

Do get CPAP if your sleep study says you need one. It's a complete game changer, depending on the severity of your OSA.

Did you cut out alcohol as well?

I’ve noticed it’s much harder to do in the summer as that cold beer at the end of a hot day is ever so enjoyable.

I did cut alcohol but not because I wanted to. Doctor required it because of meds I started taking for high cholesterol. Once I get off the meds I’ll probably drink again. I’ve only ever been a social drinker though and rarely at that. Maybe 1-2 beers a month.

Really good water, or occasionally a cold glass of milk. I stopped drinking sodas a very long time ago and I never miss it. I think decreasing my sugar intake has increased my appreciation for food in general.

Milk can really spike your blood sugar levels as well, so I would be careful. Go for the whole fat type of milk rather than the skim milk or whatever.

Milk is something like 5% low-GI sugars (lactose and galactose), so you're going to have to drink a lot of it to spike your blood glucose.

If you really do want to drink that much milk, and are worried about blood sugar, you should try lactose-free milk - it's just milk that has the enzyme lactase added to it, which breaks down the lactose to galactose, and also results in a bit less sugar overall (to something like 3.5%). I can't tell the difference, taste wise.

Interesting, I didn't know that about lactose-free milk. Thanks, I'll give it a try.

What's wrong with skim milk? Is something added to replace the fat that was removed.

I expect it’s that skim has the same amount of lactose sugar. But, with less fat you’ll likely drink more of it before being satisfied.

Everyone should try lactose-free milk just once just to see how very sweet it is. It has the same sugar content as regular milk, but regular milk’s lactose is a form of sugar that we don’t taste as strongly.

Lactose free milk does tend to have a bit less sugar overall than regular milk - something like 3.5% sugars instead of 5%.

I don't personally notice lactose-free milk as being any sweeter than regular, and it doesn't look like galactose is any sweeter than lactose?

I'm curious to know what your starting weight was and what is your goal weight is, if it's not too personal.

I started at 310 pounds any my current goal is 200 by Christmas. I’m currently at 237 and I started this in February of this year!

Feel free ask any more questions if you want. If this is too open of a forum for you, my DMs are open @DaronSpence on twitter.

I did it for a little over a month and gained a smidge. Felt really hungry half the day too. YMMV.

Well done, 75 lbs (or 5 stone, 5 pounds in real money) is incredible.

Why would you give a weight in a combination of imperial AND metric units?!

If the purpose of using imperial units is to make it as confusing as possible, then this is probably a slight improvement.

Good point, lol. Unfortunately for me I need convert to stones to get a feel for weight

"UK people" use SI units, it's mostly the old who use imperial.

34 kilograms

When do you think you'll reach your goals, and how will you be feeling a year after you reach them?

My current goal is to weigh 200 pounds by Christmas. So far I’m on track which would be 110 pounds in about 10.5 months.

After that, I’m not sure what I’ll do. The “healthy” range for my height is a bit lower than 200 but I imagine I’ll cut back on the intensity and focus on reinforcing new habits that I’m starting to form.

Already I’m making better food choices which is a huge first step but my portion control is not great. My drastically cut eating schedule let’s my eat a ton in a short period but I want to stop doing that eventually.

It’s a daily grind though; hard to deal with as a software developer that is used to brute forcing any problem I have.

Overall though, I’m excited for the future and happy I’ve learned this lesson while I’m still young and before I have kids.

This is strictly anecdotal, and I would honestly love to see this subjected to a rigorous study, but I lost twenty pounds without additional exercise or dietary changes in the last six months just by having a sleep study done, getting diagnosed with sleep apnea, and being put on a CPAP machine.

How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep?

Cannot comment on depression. But from personal experience and after reading Why we sleep, my understanding is that to get maximum benefits from diet and exercise, a good sleep is a prerequisite. This is paramount when you're doing these things for losing weight. I don't see good sleep being recommend enough whenever people embark on a weight-loss journey.

So true. I try not to eat anything after work, not always but usually. During daytime a softdrink with sugar is ok, but also usually after work I drink just water. I eat a bit something for breakfast, even small snacks during the whole day, eat a proper lunch and that's it .. I do sport two evenings a week so I can't eat anyway something before. So why should I eat dinner if I do nothing at home .. If I'm tired and don't go to bed .. wathever reason .. I suddenly start to eat a lot of snacks .. not because I'm really hungry .. just because of be bored.

I'm around 40 .. since ever in summer around 60 .. 63 kg in wintertime around 67kg.

The only thing I try to avoid is eating dinner at all. I drink softdrinks with sugar, eat chips, icecream, chocolate and for lunch just a standart menue.

20 years ago I was over 70kg and tryed to cook healthy dinner menus for myself .. my weight just went up ..

I've eaten really well for ages: particularly when it comes to low-fiber carbs, I just have no interest, let alone the intense addiction most people seem to have The exception was my famous sweet tooth, the indulgence of which probably wiped out half the advantages I was seeing from eating well. Since mostly fixing a sleep disorder that I had, my sweet tooth has completely vanished. I had some sense of this, but I wasn't enjoying the sugar as much as I was craving the accompanying dopamine rush, in the same way that I was a more frequent drug user when I still had the sleep disorder.

We likely had it much worse than the average person, but I think about the same thing: most of my friends have sleep problems to some degree, and I can't imagine they're not getting a milder form of the psychological symptoms that plagued me

> How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep?

There's some body chemistry where being sleep deprived can manifest itself as hunger. I forget the details, but I read about it in "Why We Sleep"[0].

When I had a sleep study done, the pre-study questionnaire seemed to have more about depression symptoms than about sleep itself.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep

Definitely experienced that in finals period in college where I consciously substituted sleep with calories

I always tell myself, my coworkers, and my kids "If you don't sleep, eat" (else you might go totally bonkers).

I'm really glad it did you do much good.

For me, it was the other way round. When I used intermittent fasting (in the form of the 5:2 diet) to get my weight under control, I stopped snoring like a rhino, and my sleep improved. As did my wife's. :-)

More anecdote: trying to fast of the weight without exercise was miserable. My weight plateaued, and I was permanently cold. Doing some sensible exercise solved both problems. Diet or exercise? False dichotomy.

Are you sure your diet did not change? Even your portions stayed the same size?

Can't speak for OP, but my appetite and then weight have steadily decreased for six years since beginning CPAP. As a person with apnea I had no idea that my constant fatigue was causing me to eat so much, or making sustained exercise so impossible, and I really didn't even understand how tired I was. Once I was getting something approximating a good night's sleep, I had more energy, which made me less hungry and more able to sustain exercise. So it was a virtuous cycle and involved the habits you're describing, but those were made possible by alleviating the underlying problem.

I've gained 15 pounds since I started using one..bummed

How did you get diagnosed?

Did an overnight study at a sleep clinic. I'd been told for years by friends that I made very weird gasping, snoring noises. After I'd been out of college a few years and realized I was fatigued literally every day despite going to sleep on time, I figured it was time to get checked.

Were you also sleepy during the day? Did you nap for hours as well?

To be honest, I'm not sure. I don't recall making any conscious changes, though I don't have the sugar jones I used to have.

So did you stop eating as much, or having fewer cravings or anything like that?

I don't know. I hadn't bothered to quantify, but my sugar jones isn't as bad as it used to be.

Is it a CPAP or an APAP?

> For the study, researchers enrolled 11 adult men and women who had excess weight.

It's amazing how low our standard for news is when it comes to things like weight loss.

Depending on the size of the effect, 11 participants can be very valid in an experiment. For example, assume you have 11 participants having a hormone measured after an experiment. If normal readings are 300 with a SD of 30, and at the end of the experiment their mean is 520 with a SD of 40, then you've just shown a strong, significant effect.

Yeah, except it usually would be (in the best case scenario) more like "520 with a SD of 40" for 10 people and "1 outlier", which you wouldn't really be able to properly conceptualize let alone explain, since your "outlier" is freaking 10% of the group.

That is, ignoring the fact that experiments without a control group can be hardly considered valid at all.

To add my strictly anecdotal experience:

I recently started to diet for the first time ever. Never really needed it, but getting older, I noticed my weight steadily increasing despite regular exercise and finally decided to change.

I always skipped breakfast, but I became a bit more strict about timing and snacking at night in order to align with IF. Switched my diet to a lazy keto (basically adkins) diet - still don't track calories, just intentionally reduced carb intake to below ~25g net per day and increased fat intake. Occasionally I have a cheat meal.

Down 35lbs in ~2.5 months.

Side effects: I feel like my energy levels are much more consistent throughout the day, but also very discernable. Which is to say, if I'm working out, I can really feel it when I run out of gas. Related, I can't lift as much weight as I could, but that is expected while I'm actively trying to lose weight. I feel like there's a bit more mental clarity, but that could be related to energy levels.

Conclusion of this study [0]: "Consistent with the carbohydrate-insulin model, lowering dietary carbohydrate increased energy expenditure during weight loss maintenance. "

Some numbers: "[...] linear trend of 52 kcal/d [...] for every 10% decrease in the contribution of carbohydrate to total energy intake"

----------------------- Now on a personal note, as someone who always lived with nutrition plan (and macro tracking for the last years) since 17, I think it's highly unlikely that you take < 25g carbs/day (During bulking phase I dont manage to get under 300g per day).

[0]: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4583

I’m down nearly 30lbs in 3 months through intermittent fasting.

Here’s my M-F routine :

7am: weigh myself, text results to my father

Breakfast: Nothing, but I drink a flat white just because I want to.

Midday: large bowl of plain unsweetened Greek yoghurt (no additions, which is key - the addition of fruit or other things is what sets off my sugar-loving monkey brain to go seek more). This is low carb yet filling and satiating. I tried out every single one available in my area until I found the one I could settle with. Sometimes I eat a low carb chocolate, ive found a bunch in my local area which I like.

Afternoon: sometimes go for coffee again and add a snack to that

Dinner: whatever I want, which is nice, but generally it doesn’t involve anything deep-fried and is mostly home made. Sometimes it’s a rice dish, sometimes pasta, sometimes meat with veg.

After this meal I’m free to eat whatever I want. If I want to eat dessert, I can, but just need to remember ... I’m texting my weight to my dad tomorrow.

Weekends I can eat anything at any time but also need to remember that Monday is coming and I will be weighing myself. So, I indulge a bit but not TOO much.

There’s no real exercise component here, just the occasional run every week or two.

I’ve also learned not to self-shame. If you fall off the horse, don’t whip yourself into a lather. Just say ‘ok, it happened, tomorrow is another day. Let’s keep going.’

At first, I really struggled at around 3-4pm and was constantly snacking bad things. The thing that’s has helped has been to focus on redirecting my behaviour instead of stopping it. Which is why I now know every single place within a 5 mile radius that sells low carb snacks, the price of each one, and which is my favourite. I also started drinking kombucha for when I have that urge to drink something. One small snack (always less than 10g carbs) is generally enough.

The BEST thing about this above routine is how little mental energy it takes. I don’t track carbs besides paying attention to labels in the act of purchasing, I don’t have to think about lunch, don’t have to whip myself into exercising.

Each week has gradually become easier in terms of maintaining habits. I now know I’ll keep the no-breakfast plus plain yoghurt for lunch routine, but at some point I’ll need to stop losing weight .. so..

I am fascinated (honestly, not sarcastically) by the line "7am: weigh myself, text results to my father".

I've never seen that strategy, but... wow. I'd imagine the accountability that creates is pretty serious.

I had a good run with IF but have backslid. I had a routine similar to yours but maybe stricter (I was making weight for a weight-class sport so had to move quicker).

Another anecdotal experience: IF really makes you aware of how your appetite gets going after the first meal. I usually start eating around noon and its like flipping a switch, before hand you just feel kinda numb but afterwards your brain cannot stop thinking about eating.

How carb-heavy is your diet? That could be the transition from your body using fat/ketones for fuel to using glucose for energy.

And how sluggish you feel, too. Digesting really takes a lot of energy!

Depending on how heavy you were lifting, you should be able to get back to your old strength by dropping the weight significantly and working back up to it over a few months (maybe do something like Starting Strength).

Not very heavy, but I was and am still doing Phrak's GreySkull LP.

I have been working back up to it that way, but consistently plateauing at about 20% below my previous peaks.

I do plan on changing my diet once I'm at a place I'm happy with to be a bit more friendly towards weightlifting goals.

That looks like a good program. Another thing I personally started when I cut most carbs was taking creatine, IDK if it's placebo or not but I believe it helped me get those last few important reps

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with it. It isn't perfect, but it fits my goals and limitations due to injury fairly well. Due to other sports, my lower body has always been stronger than upper, and this program focuses a little bit more on upper vs other comparable programs like starting strength. Helps me play catchup

How do you get under 25g of carbs without counting calories? Almost anything edible has some carbs in it. Even with all being low carb 25g is very easy to attain unless you are very strictly tracking macros.

25g net carbs, which is a concept specific to the diet. You subtract the carbs that have no body impact, like undigestable fiber. So for example, 1 cup of broccoli has 6g carbs, and 3g fiber. Net carbs would be 3g.

> Even with all being low carb 25g is very easy to attain unless you are very strictly tracking macros.

It really isn't that hard. Not sure what to tell ya. I read the labels on things and keep a mental count every day. It's much easier when you're only eating one or two meals a day and not snacking.

Sometimes I'm over 25g, sometimes I'm under. Being perfectly 25g every day isn't required; there isn't anything specifically magical about the 25g line, since the actual goal is inducing mild ketosis in the body and everyone's body is different. 25g is my guideline, but I don't feel bad about it if I'm a bit over.

Eat meat, veggies (no carrots), eggs, and coconut oil. Simple.

Mind sharing the types of foods and meats you eat?

I don't have a ton of consistency here. Things that are most consistent for me right now:

- I'm a pretty big fan of riced cauliflower blends, which you can get in basically any frozen foods section. Great replacement for rice. A quick easy meal is ground beef + a half bag of riced cauliflower stir fry mix.

- Another quick meal - Trader Joe's green vegetable foursome plus chicken. Add tons of butter, salt and garlic.

- Another quick meal - 3 or 4 egg omelette with shredded cheese topping. Put it on top of a bed of greens, and add some guac or an avocado.

- I make shoyu eggs pretty regularly to snack on.

- I snack on nuts and beef jerky a lot.

- If I'm not feeling very hungry, I'll eat an Adkins meal bar instead of anything bigger. Adkins stuff cuz its convenient, available in a lot of places, and low carb.

- After a workout, I'll drink a muscle milk pro series shake (the premade type, specifically because its low net carbs). Currently looking for better options that aren't just straight whey mixes.

- Adkins also makes some nice low-carb candy type things that I also grab when the notion strikes.

Lastly and probably most importantly, I drink a ton of water and have an increased salt intake, because cutting carbs leads to retaining less water and dehydrating easier. You just feel thirsty a lot more often. Drinking more water just so happens to also help you feel more full

> Down 35lbs in ~2.5 months.

Good for you! Is this just from dieting? Or is there an exercise routine in here?

I lift weights 3x/wk as well as a few other activities, and have been since long before I started the diet. I just didn't care at all about what I was eating all that much.

I would recommend David Sinclair and Jason Fung in terms of resources for this to understand first why intermittent fasting is good for you but of course appropriately applied for the individual. If you start to understand the whys and stop listening to specific people's testimonials or crazy routines in some cases (from your perspective), you'll tailor it appropriately to your life if its something you want to do. Personally, I found it quite easy to incorporate and with great benefit.

Interesting read! It's also worth noting that circadian rhythm based eating habits (i.e. timing meals in the morning, or at least the bulk of one's caloric intake earlier in the day), are important for more than just weight loss. They reduce levels of inflammation in the body, improve insulin response, improve glucose tolerance, the list goes on and on. Humans evolved to eat when they are at peak-awareness/wakefulness: in the morning/early-day. If one's trying to optimize for peak performance/health/longevity, they should in the AM rather than PM.

Personally I only eat one meal a day, stopping all calorie consumption by 11am. I'm in the 2nd day of a 3 day fast; it's definitely an exercise in discipline, but so worth doing. Fasting's stress on the body invokes a "survival of the fittest" response on the cellular level; in which under performing cells are cleaned out. Some news out of USC has stated that a 72 hour fast leads to an "entire reset of your immune system" [0]. Pretty interesting stuff for health-conscientious folks.

[0] https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regene...

Since everyone is chiming in with anecdotal weight loss experiences via faddish diets, I'll chime in with mine following "conventional" diet wisdom.

40 years old, 170 lbs down to 135 lbs, slow and steady just by eating a conventionally healthy low fat diet and adhering to CICO.

No wacky meal timings. No eating/avoiding an entire macronutrient to excess. Most calories came from whole grains, whey, and fish, and I made sure my belly was full most of the time with vegetables.

I drank wine nearly every day, and popped a square of Dove chocolate for dessert most meals. I even ate fast food a couple times a month.

Hunger pains and exhausting days in the gym? You bet. But it wasn't difficult, and I still got to eat my favorite foods - just less of them.

CICO works. Studies like this are interesting, but almost certainly just tweaking the margins for most people.

CICO works certainly, but the advantage of IF is that it makes adherence to CICO easier. You're effectively cutting ingestion opportunities to 1/3 of what they normally are. It's hard to eat 2/3 of your calories in ouch a short time frame.

One observation from personal experience with prolonged intermittent fasting: My metabolism slowed down quite a lot. After nearly 10 years of eating once per day, my resting metabolic rate was 3-400 calories lower than average. Whether that's a bad thing or not, I have no idea. My grocery bills were certainly low. And it saved a ton of time on meal prep.

More recently, I became too physically active to maintain that diet and returned to eating 3-4x a day. My metabolism has steadily returned to baseline since then. It took about 6 months but it is now essentially back to normal.

I tried IF for a while. I lost a couple pounds and then plateaued. What I realized is that the main thing it was doing was preventing me from snacking at night. I didn't really eat any more than normal during the eating period, I just didn't eat my usual outside of it. So exactly in line with the study. It just didn't do much for me weight-loss-wise.

I was already skipping breakfast most days, so waiting until lunch to eat wasn't a big deal. But Stopping at 8pm was tough. I'm usually up until 1-2am, so not eating for the last five or six hours of my day was tough.

Satchin Panda from UCSD did a round of podcast interviews when his book came out, and the advice essentially boiled down to having a feeding window of up to 8 hours and having it start towards the earlier part of the day rather than later.

The weight gain/loss/plateau seems to correlate with the insulin presence in the blood system, and meals eaten later in the day tend to generate higher insulin response compared to exact same meals eaten mid-day.

Yeah I read all that, but there's no way I could get away with skipping dinner. Dinner is our family meal. I'd literally have to sit there watching the family eat, or miss out entirely.

So you actually ate less during IF, while in the article both groups consumed the same amount, just at different times: "The same amounts and types of foods were consumed on both schedules."

Their IF (or eTRF) groups stopped eating at 2pm each day. Presumably they went to bed a earlier than you, as their breakfast was at 8am, so shifted by your two hours that would mean no food after 4pm.

I'd have a hard time doing that. In a way, dinner is a reward for the day's accomplishments for me. I'm not saying it's impossible to adapt to that, but I'd rather work out more than fast for 16 hours every day.

"I'm usually up until 1-2am": maybe a lack of good quality sleep is your real problem? Bad sleep has been correlated to weight gain

Could you tell me what IF means please?

From some of the other comments my guess is that it means Intermittent Fasting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting

Intermittent Fasting

Here is very useful data as to food consumption patterns. Nowadays we ruin our body with unnatural eating cycles.

Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good for health. From the evolutionary perspective--that invested in a human body 200K years--the way we eat today is broken. And our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Not to mention like adapting to changes in a food consumption we see in the last 50 years. A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. Viceversa--it was build to eat less. It needs to store energy and to use stored energy and only after that to store again. That's a natural cycle and functions that our body needs to execute. Nowadays we just store energy 24/7:

"Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage."

Article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/

Here are also interesting patterns of daily and weekly food consumption from this research including the common eating pattern of food consumption upon which the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and associated chronic diseases has emerged.

Image: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/...

I've never understood the tradition of eating 3 meals a day. Sounds like it comes from religion.

If you eat when you're hungry, you will naturally eat less. I always have a good breakfast, and thus start to feel hungry around 3pm or 4pm. I eat then, and usually I don't feel hungry until I go to bed, and I never eat late in the day, simply because digesting at night is a bad idea.

Having lunch around noon is weird because I eat without being hungry.

I’m assuming you work a desk job. Your energy and appetite fluctuations wouldn’t be the same if you had a physically strenuous job.

Extended waterfasting is amazing folks. It's the simplest way to A) lose weight B) improve your metabolism C) increase your longevity D) help with various problems (like acne, hemorrhoids, etc). Warning: May not be safe for those with a BMI lower than 20.

Fasting gives the chance for the body to engage in autophagy which is the breakdown of old or broken cells into their components and reused to repair the body. Fasting takes you to a state of ketosis, where your body switches to fat-burning for fuel. Note that it takes 2 weeks for the muscles to fully adapt to using fuel as the source, so athletic performance will decline for that period.

Depending on how fat-adapted you are, it can take anywhere from 3 to 5 days to get past the point of hunger & cravings. It becomes much easier to maintain the fast after that. That means for most people, day 2 or day 3 are the hardest days in the transition.

Warning: if you stop at the hard point of the fast after multiple attempts, it will get progressively harder to stick to it and get through (as that will train the body's hormone for cravings to peak at that time).

Extended waterfasting is dangerous. If you're going to go more than 3 days on even a sub-1000Cal/day diet, please have medical supervision.

[citation needed]

Ingesting nothing but water for days on end being unhealthy really shouldn't need a citation, but if you really want one, go ask your local doctor.

Having done a >20-day fast myself, multiple times, knowing a few others who have, researching the medical evidence AND discussing this with more than one local doctor, I can confidently say:

You have no idea what you are talking about.

That's funny, because I've talked with doctors who oversee medically-managed weight loss programs professionally, and they made it very clear that even just doing 960Cal/day for 3+ days warranted medical supervision. This is also why stuff like Optifast requires a prescription, because it's not safe to do this kind of thing without oversight.

The fact that you've done it really has no bearing on whether it's actually healthy, and I'm going to go ahead and assume that the doctors you spoke to said the equivalent of "it won't kill you but I don't recommend it".

Well, the doctors you asked had a vested interest, they are unlikely to say “we are mostly useless”, so I can just as easily discard that. See how easy it is to maintain one’s belief without evidence?

There is actually a lot of evidence saying anything up to about 40 days on water is fine for a healthy person, although beyond 50 days there is rapid and irreversible damage.

There are whole populations who used to live on 800kcal/days for years.

And for the record, my family doctor’s reply was “just make sure you start eating if you feel any ill effects, don’t go more than a month” - when I came to see him after about a week inquiring if my loss of appetite was something I should be worried about (because thinking and looking at food made me NOT want it, but I was feeling perfect - even better than perfect).

From your response you are likely uninterested, but reading the work of Valter Longo on fasting would probably enrich you.

Also, there’s a huge difference between reducing intake (to e.g. 900 of 500 kcal) which leaves most people hungry and irritated, and going down to essentially zero, which - past the 50 hour mark or so - does not. The doctors you consulted likely have no experience at all with the latter regime in which the body functions completely differently, and which seems like a natural “can’t find food right now” mode.

> Well, the doctors you asked had a vested interest, they are unlikely to say “we are mostly useless”, so I can just as easily discard that. See how easy it is to maintain one’s belief without evidence?

No, the doctor does not have a vested interest in lying to me. They're HMO doctors, this is but one facet of their job, and they're doing it because it needs medical oversight. Hell, the program itself was offered effectively at cost (it's in the HMO's interest to have healthy patients, so they charge just enough for the program to cover their expenses rather than treating it as a profit center).

In a perfectly healthy person, extended fasting is probably fine. Medical supervision isn't because it's particularly dangerous for perfectly healthy people, but because nobody is perfectly healthy and complications can arise with pre-existing undiagnosed conditions.

What is extended waterfasting? What do you do?

Basically don't consume any food or calories at all, for more than 3 days.

Mostly just drink water. Tea or coffee is allowed but no sugar or milk.

And take the water with some electrolytes. Can be a bit of table salt, or get more complicated by adding other salts like magnesium, potassium, etc.

For a fast longer than a week, it is also good to have bone broth which brings in some extra nutrients like phosphorous.

I've also had weight loss success with IF. I do 16/8 mostly with the occastional 24 hour fast. I get a lot of pushback that it's 'bro science', and a lot of claims around improving insulin resistance isn't proven, so it's good to get some science behind the practice that clearly works.

The reason I have found it effective is that it's simple to follow. I don't need to count calories, I don't have to learn too much at all, I simply don't eat outside of my hours. Given I've now found I don't feel hungry most days until I start eating, it means I eat less.

Now the net result may simply be less calories, that that's not as simple as 'calories in calories out', because I'm consuming less as a consequence of the timing, not by consciously eating less. This may be an odd distinction for people who can diet, but for those of us who struggle with weight, it's crucial to success.

11 adults in the experiment. No control group (other than against themselves). Experiment ran 8 days.

I mean, I'm interested, but I want to see further research before I call this a real result.

While it’s often an ostensibly appealing point of criticism, it’s important to note that sample size is just one aspect of study design—the investigators used a crossover design, which substantially increases statistical power. In the Methods, they state that 10 subjects are sufficient to achieve 80% power, which (criticisms of NHST aside) is a generally accepted standard, i.e., to obtain NIH funding for a study, you must demonstrate in your grant application that your design achieves that 80% power benchmark.

I always appreciate how the HN crowd evaluates the quality of the evidence, not just the quality of the headline. Great filtering function.

There's usually one good post. The rest are almost always people sharing their diet stories. Or if the headline is about exercise, you get reams of stronglifts or 5x5 or whatever, nobody cares. It's what engineers tend to do when they're presented with a topic they don't have actual expertise in.

Is this specific to engineers? I noticed this in college classes across disciplines. A lot of the time that someone raised their hand, it was to share an anecdote and not a question.

I find it honestly surprising that I see it so much on HN. You have a group of people who largely identify themselves as being rational, objective, intelligent people - datascientists, engineers, etc. - who stereotypically I would think to be naturally sceptical and want to examine evidence closely.

But it's absolutely true, the minute some scientific study is posted there are 50 people writing comments that they believe it because yesterday something similar happened to their aunt etc. It's something I've never quite figured out.

It's because HN users aren't really that intelligent; they just give off that impression instead. We're all mostly normal people here, and act like normal people. This isn't some special club of 1000x geniuses.

Even if this is true, each of us has a moral obligation to believe the very opposite re: ourselves.

Case studies can be very enlightening but there are also problems. Stories may be made up or misremembered. There is also a selection bias in which stories get told and which don't.

The big benefit I think is that people are... well people. If you do the same thing to an atom it will respond in the same way, while people may respond differently depending on any number of factors.

Appetite is known to be heavily entangled with psychology. People eat to celebrate. They eat to celebrate or because they are sad, because they are tired, because they are stressed out, because they are bored or maybe because they passed a bakery.

Case studies can help us understand how all these things interrelate and how to design studies that avoid pitfalls.

My favourite version of this is when a scientific study comes out and you get lots of posts from people saying, effectively, I disagree with science based on my feelings. The difference between anti-vaxxers or creationists and the average HN poster isn't as big as many pretend it is, I think.

Could you elaborate on the no control other than against themselves aspect?

I read this in the original paper, “Participants were randomly assigned to follow either the control schedule (eating between 8:00 am and 8:00 pm; 12‐hour daily eating period)”

Other than the N is on the lower side, how’s this way of setting up a control group insufficient?

The control group needs to be thinking they're doing something that works. If it's obvious they're in the control group, then it's no longer a control group.

It’s still a control, just not blinded to the participants (which, yes, can result in bias).

Yeah for sanity. Sad I'm having to post this and vote.

Title says "appear to...", not "does...", so there's that. Semantics counts.

Just another anecdote, and I haven't done this for too long, but I've found that adopting the rule that I don't eat past 7pm has helped me sleep better, and maybe even lose a little weight. I found myself eating more earlier in the day so that I wouldn't be hungry later, but that didn't seem to change the benefits.

The hardest bit is that it can be pretty hard to get an evening meal in before 7 (we do try to cook), and if its after, I pack the dinner for the next day's lunch and sit down with the fam to chat while they eat.

Here's a weight loss tip I've used with some degree of success: exercise portion control by using smaller dinner plates at home and chew the food on the plate longer (like 30s). The rationale is that the sensation of feeling full takes about 20 minutes to kick in and so by practicing the above you end up eating less over time and as a result lose weight. There is also a possibility your body will make better use of the food this way as there are enzymes in your mouth that help with digestion.

With intermitent fasting 16/8 and weight lifting 3x a week, you can get fit and look amazing in a just a couple if months. Just try it, it works!

"OMAD" (one meal a day) here. It's been 5 months. Most days, I eat lunch. And that's it, no real calorie consumption outside of that window. Not hungry, not tired, not cranky, not suffering, more free time, actually eating better (having one meal of pure crap in front of you is a clarifying moment), and losing weight at a moderate clip. YMMV, IANAD, etc.

I’m not necessarily discounting the results however I found it odd that the primary source didn’t state the sample size (or maybe I missed it)? https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.22518

You missed it, right in the abstract :-)

> Methods

> Eleven adults with overweight practiced both early time‐restricted feeding (eTRF) (eating from 8 am to 2 pm) and a control schedule (eating from 8 am to 8 pm) for 4 days each.

Oh did I - whoops!

That quote doesn’t give the sample size (number of people studied and in each group) though?

I think it was a cross over study. Or everyone went control for 4 days and study protocol for next 4.

Hmm. Yeah just if it was like 30 (or even like 100) it’s not exactly overly valuable other than an initial indicator.

I like this example of explaining a scientific term to the lay people:

"a respiratory chamber -- a room-like device --"

Some of the best info on this can be found in the book, The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung.

Also, here's a short video by him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuj-oMN-Fk

What about 1 to 3 meals starting at 2pm to 5pm for 6 hours? I'd be interested to know how that compares. It seems without that data, it's not possible to conclude at all that eating earlier in the day is better than later.

Skipping meals is a migraine trigger for me. This makes IF a lot less viable...

So the vegetarian keto diet with intermittent fasting is the ultimate solution. But a hard one. Still met a plateu after 6 months, even essentially living on salads.

The same way you adhere to any other diet plan-you excercise conscious control over your behavior. If you can't cross that hurdle, no diet will work. If you can cross that hurdle, though, you probably don't need a diet plan-calories are printed on most food packages.

This is the conclusion I also reached, I'm also eating whatever I want but not whenever I want, instead when there is a hunger. I'm just couple of months in, but still consistently loosing about kg in ten days easily.

awesome work. trust me getting control over eating will be one of the most liberating feelings in the world. and your discipline will spill over into other aspects of life--it becomes quite empowering.

I forgot to mention that I do have dessert daily usually a home made cookie or cake which is less sweet than the store bought sweets.

I really, really love fasting. It's when you starve yourself. Many people can't do it but I'm living proof that you can. It raises adrenaline and lowers cortisol so I feel just peppy through the day. And now because I went for a week without eating last month and described a mechanism, I have the honor of being a father figure to all of you in telling you that you, too, may starve, and one day achieve the health goals that I've achieved as of last month. I'm a Google engineer btw

Edit: stop PMing me asking for pictures and blood test results. HUGE invasion of privacy

One strategy to balance food intake is to only eat when it taste good.

" eTRF schedule where participants ate three meals over a six-hour period with breakfast at 8:00 a.m. and dinner at 2:00 p.m."

No thanks. There's no way you're enjoying what you're eating if you're stuffing more food down your throat even before your stomach has a chance to digest.

As long-term large-scale observational data, consider that the "Mediterranean diet" is widely touted as especially healthy. People in Mediterranean countries tend to eat late dinners, like the control group in this study.

No concrete conclusion here, just a general warning about believing in monocausal silver bullets, I guess.