You do realize that, compared to eating too little, eating too much is really not that bad? Yes, starving yourself does change your relationship with food (in that it makes you hungry and miserable). And, for many people it can start a cycle of food related anxiety (an eating disorder). Perhaps some benefits do exist, but it’s wrong to advocate for fasting without fully addressing the serious health risks.

My parents both have type 2, and I fast every Sunday night until Tuesday morning.

I don't think this makes me at all miserable, although it is easier if I stay busy. I also work a two mile walk into this.

I'm thinking about asking my physician for metformin. I don't need it now, but in cryonics circles it is recognized for life extension properties.

Yes, it changes your relationship into a disordered one.

HN, the website where willingly starving yourself for days on end is not an eating disorder

I'm no fan of fad diets, but a lot of Westerners have a real problem with simply not knowing what hunger feels like.

A lot of people are so habituated to large portions and frequent snacking that they're never meaningfully hungry, just somewhere on the spectrum between "reasonably sated" and "physically incapable of ingesting another morsel". Their eating habits have fundamentally broken the connection between food and sustenance. They've lost the ability to usefully distinguish between the body's natural hunger signals and other motivations for eating like habit, boredom and emotional self-soothing.

I'm not wholly persuaded by the claims made about the health benefits of intermittent fasting, but I do think it's a potentially useful psychological experience if you have a problematic relationship with food.

> not knowing what hunger feels like

True. I found that when I switched to a low-carb diet, my relationship with hunger changed.

For one thing, I was always hungry: nothing makes you feel full like a good batch of carbs. But the hunger was similar to a low-grade background noise; it was fundamentally different than the I-gotta-eat-right-now hunger of the carbolicious diet.

The other thing I noticed is that since I switched diets (7 years ago), I have never "bonked" (run into a wall because I was so hungry). I simply get more hungry, but again, it's more like the background noise gets louder.

That begs the question, "Why not eat more if you're hungry?" The truth is that eating gets tiresome after a while. I remember spending over and hour shoving salad into my mouth and finally saying, "I need to get stuff done; I can't sit here all day eating salad."

Yes, meat can fill me up if I eat enough of it (20 oz. prime rib), but I tire of meat after a while.

Eating more fats will cure the hunger.

For overweight and obese people it probably makes sense, but for the rest?

I can't comprehend what benefit it should have "to know real hunger" if you're a perfectly healty human specimen.

Why would you consider changing what you're doing if you are healthy? I don't think your comment makes sense.

For me, paying closer attention to how I’m feeling has helped me better identify when I’m hungry. I think starving yourself is a really extreme step to take that probably isn’t necessary

Plenty of religious rituals involve fasting yet nobody considers those practitioners to have an eating disorder.

I’ve long believed that intermittent fasting is just anorexia rebranded for tech bros.

Think about it:

1. Creating arbitrary rules to restrict what is eaten and when.

2. Obsession with “bad” foods.

3. Unrealistic and unattainable “goal”: often life extension or some ideal of health/productivity.