This doesn't seem correct. IF has statistically significant benefits:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-sur...
(Supporting papers linked at the end)
> The IF people (along with the Keto people) use a variety of tricks to try and prove their point. There is absolutely not a single paper showing calorically balanced food intake has clinically significant outcomes. Period, full stop etc. There are tons of papers saying things like if you force people to eat in constrained windows they eat fewer calories (or if you force people to eat high fat diets they eat fewer calories etc.). Those are all useful outcomes: they are "compliance hacks." But they idea that any of these are significantly metabolically different is not at all supported by the science.
1. These papers do not show different outcomes with calorically controlled inputs, as I mentioned. One of the tricks used by the IF scientific community is to serve the same number of calories and so it looks like the same number of calories were consumed in the abstract. They never are, because if this did happen it would have massive implications for our understanding of the human body. It would require us to be wrong about a lot of things.
2. There is a difference between statistical significance (which could be, but has not been, shown in calorically controlled diets), and clinical significance (which definitely has not been shown in calorically controlled diets, and likely will not).
Yeah, welcome to medicine. If you've ever encountered these things in a non-theoretic perspective (i.e., having some condition), you quickly see that doctors don't know shit.
Perhaps not surprising, given that human experimentation is taboo.
Anyways, how does what you're saying mesh with the fact that extra glucose is stored in your body's reserves while ketones are secreted with urine and breath?
That is, unfortunately, exactly why I am so acquainted with this stuff, and yeah, it is pretty frightening to have doctors tell you they just don't know. But to be fair, I'm talking about being wrong about fundamental biology, not medicine, in which massive shake ups like that are far rarer. It's also not like this stuff hasn't been studied.
> Anyways, how does what you're saying mesh with the fact that extra glucose is stored in your body's reserves while ketones are secreted with urine and breath?
Not sure what you mean but fwiw glucose is also secreted in urine and breath.
It’s obviously not true that for any given set of calories consumed the body has only one option of what to do with them. It can build muscle, store fat, repair heart walls, excrete it, and so forth.
This is determined by a bunch of factors including hormones. So if hormonal balance or other metabolic behavior is modulated by macro (or micro) nutrient intake, then the calorie emphasis might be overly simplistic.
Yep, I would not suggest anyone take up a diet of pure sugar, only that if you are trying to use science to set your diet we aren't really confident, at the level of macros, about what makes a difference, but we are very confident about excess calories.
The way you are wording your comments, someone could come away feeling like these things aren’t really worth considering.
It’s like, your comments to me seem like you are technically correct but a person reading them might think “ok, this smart person said the Atkins diet doesn’t really work, it’s all sleight of hand.”
That could be counter productive, because the Atkins diet really DOES work for some people. Proving that it’s likely not working for the reason people think it is can be helpful for accuracy’s sake, but depending on delivery can just become discouraging.
The missing point is these interventions really can be effective. Why they are effective is more of an intellectual exercise.
Not really "supporting papers". Just random papers on the subject, most non-supporting.
E.g. one of linked papers covers a research on "alternate day IF" and concludes: "Alternate-day fasting did not produce superior adherence, weight loss, weight maintenance, or cardioprotection vs daily calorie restriction."
Another is a meta-study that concludes: "Although both treatment interventions achieved similar changes in body weight (approximately 7 kg), the pooled estimate for studies that investigated the effect of intermittent energy restriction in comparison to continuous energy restriction revealed no significant difference in weight loss".
A third of the linked studies concludes: "Research has not demonstrated that alternate-day fasting regimens produce superior weight loss in comparison to standard, continuous calorie restriction weight-loss plans."
So it's just a random "blog" style post, on health.harvard.edu nonetheless, that gives several links, that do not support its thesis.
But a casual reader will think "hmm, the post says IF is good, and gives links to several studies, so the science is solid" (assuming that the links support IF).
I assume you mean low glycemic load. I don't think so. I think we should all focus primarily on eating the right number of calories, and the behaviors that get us to do that. If that is Keto, or IF, or Low GI, even something random like afternoon naps then great.
Also, for some populations, like athletes, a low-gi diet would end up resulting in decreased performance. I think it's really difficult to make sweeping dietary recommendations because there are just so many confounding factors.
We can't answer this confidently, the way I would say it is: there isn't strong evidence to support the idea that either is better.
> Given my current understanding from all the intermittent fasting hype lately, it is indeed better to eat big meals rarely rather than small meals frequently. For some reason, your post got me slightly confused because I lack the necessary knowledge to have a proper model about nutrition in place.
The IF people (along with the Keto people) use a variety of tricks to try and prove their point. There is absolutely not a single paper showing calorically balanced food intake has different clinically significant outcomes. Period, full stop etc. There are tons of papers saying things like if you force people to eat in constrained windows they eat fewer calories (or if you force people to eat high fat diets they eat fewer calories etc.). Those are all useful outcomes: they are "compliance hacks." But they idea that any of these are significantly metabolically different is not at all supported by the science.
As for yourself: nutritional science is weak, and if the nutritional science says do something, and you observe a bad outcome in yourself from doing it, I'd take your own personal data over the nutritional science, frankly. For instance: fiber is a great modulator. If you go to a GI specialist and say "I'm having dietary issues," increasing fiber is usually the first thing they recommend. But also, sometimes that doesn't work and then the next thing is decreasing fiber (FODMAP diet). So it's really hard to make sweeping recommendations because the body is so complex and nutrition involves so many different cooperating systems that can all go slightly wrong.