It's also psychologically easier to manage. People have an easier time building a schedule where they do or don't eat and holding it (say, by skipping breakfast) than they do managing counting calories around things like "I went out to dinner and probably ate too much".
Binary choices (should I eat right now?) take much less cognitive overhead than spectral choices (What should I eat? How much of it? If I eat X and Y now will I have the capacity to eat Z later?)
The incredible thing is you don't really need to count calories, you just have to avoid complete garbage.
As Michael Pollan says "Eat food, mostly greens, not too much".
Don't eat anything processed, don't eat anything with more than one ingredient and only eat meat with at most one meal, and ideally quite a small portion.
Completely and utterly ignore things like icecream, chocolate, soda, candy, chips, anything deep friend and other "non food items". Treat them like Arsenic - i.e. you should never eat them.
There, you are now restricting calorie intake and you didn't have to count anything.
Out of all the advice in these comments, this contradicts the scientific evidence on fitness and nutrition the most. Everyone should do the thing that makes it the easiest for them to attain their health and fitness goals. Living an an acetic life because an internet comment and Michael Pollan said so will work sustainably for very few people.
Adherence/consistency is the single most important factor to consider when building a fitness plan. Evidence shows users of systematic plans like weight watchers points are less likely to lapse in the long term. A very gradual improvement that works for a long time is much better than a deep “improvement” you practice for 1.5 months before giving up.
I’d much rather count calories and eat ice cream every day than treat ice cream as arsenic. For me a little bit of a treat every day makes self control around my diet easier overall - I never buy snacks or overeat at meals because I think “hrrng if I spend this calorie now, I cant spend it on ice cream tonight”. Might not work for everyone - there’s a lot of commenters here who prefer TRE because it’s easier for them; if works well that’s what they should do.
If living an acetic life without treats works the best for you, then do that - but don’t tell other people they should do it too.
There’s no reason to fear treats if you can manage them; if time restricted eating or calorie counting enables someone to eat the food they like, and so life is more enjoyable and it’s easier to adhere to a good diet, they should do that.
> you just have to avoid complete garbage. As Michael Pollan says
That reminds me of something I saw a long time ago:
> Fuzzy Pink Niven's Law: Never waste calories. [...] Don't eat soggy potato chips. Or cheap candy. Or an inferior hot fudge sundae. Or a cold soggy pizza.
What humans consider food has changed more in the last 100 years than it did in the preceding 10,000. Eat what your great-great grandmother would consider food, not what a scientist in a lab is trying to sell you as food.
Cake, donuts, ice cream, etc derive their extreme calorie density and negative satiety from cream, sugar, and frying, not some recent invention by a "scientist in a lab".
It's not hard in the sense that solving complicated math problems is hard, but hard in that it adds a non-trivial amount of effort to an activity you do multiple times a day, every day, in perpetuity.
Even the small effort of measuring your creamer with a teaspoon instead of just pouring it in the cup just takes more time and effort than simply checking what time it is.
This is not really true. Generally speaking, at the grossest level of averaging, regularly eating 2 meals instead of 3 or 1 meal instead of 2 results in a long term net reduction of calories.
Additionally your stomach shrinks under this regime - that one meal will definitely make you feel full and satiated.
All this goes into ease of adherence - I just don't have to think about it. I eat as much as I want for dinner each day and have dropped a steady 10lb/year for the last 5 years.
And the actual title of the study is 'Effect of Time-Restricted Eating on Weight Loss' which describes a concept that is basically the colloquial definition of intermittent fasting.
The popular term 'intermittent fasting' usually describes time restricted eating, with a fasting period usually between 16-20 hours.
Sorry, no. Whether it was always the definition or not, having a daily window to eat that is generally much shorter than normal is called intermittent fasting.
Except for those people who wake up and have a midnight snack.
Cutting out the snacking is probably also a major factor in the effectiveness of intermittent fasting, especially given that snack foods are often more processed, calorie-dense, and less nutritionally balanced than what we typically eat at meals.
I think a lot of people could lose significant weight by simply eating three meals a day at the usual times, but just cutting out snacking between meals entirely and changing nothing else. Just fasting between meals, if you will.
Good observation! Fasting in general is usually at minimum 8 hours, which is also around the time we sleep. There seems to be some evidence that the longer one fasts, the better the benefits. You would be surprised how many people in the US eat right up until they go to bed, and then eat breakfast right after waking up. So for some, extending the fast 2-5 hours is no small feat.
It's hard to count calories accurately.
It's very easy to look at the clock and determine if it's between 1300-1900 hours