The buzz is spreading: intermittent fasting is useless, and even dangerous.
For around the last ten years or so, health gurus and influencers have been telling us to time-restrict our meals for better health and longer life.
Now, they’re putting out videos warning us against it. What gives?
First, a Few Definitions
Many writers, influencers and journalists mix these terms up.
FASTING: going without food for an extended period, 36 hours plus.
This is an ancient tradition. Some do it for religious or political reasons – which are far outside the scope of this article. Others do it for health purposes.
Long fasts do seem to have medical value. Clinics such as True North have helped many people. However, patients at such clinics are constantly monitored by medical professionals. Plus, this is considered a one-time, major medical intervention to treat severe health problems. Medically supervised fasting shouldn’t be considered like a visit to a spa.
INTERMITTENT FASTING: As originally laid out by Brad Pilon in his book EAT STOP EAT, IF is going without food for three meals in a row. They can be all on the same day, or go from lunch through tomorrow’s breakfast. Just miss three meals in a row – once or twice per week.
The other five or six days of the week, you eat as usual.
That once or twice per week part is important, I believe, because some years ago intermittent fasting for three meals or one day per week, done just one or two (two only if you need to lose weight) days per week became time restricted feeding.
TIME RESTRICTED FEEDING: Eating only during a relatively small window of time – on a daily basis.
Your daily window of eating begins with your first bite and ends with your last. Typical windows for most of us are 12 to 16 hours. Some people make their window even longer by getting up and eating in the middle of the night.
Initial studies showed a health benefit from restricting eating to only 12 hours per day. Or 10. Or 8 – or even four. Some people still eat only One Meal a Day.
Plus, notice that although both IF and TRF keep you from eating during certain periods, TRF is CONSTANTLY restrictive. Every day, you eat during your window – not before and not after. IF as originally presented to the world is restrictive only on one or two days per week.
WARNING: Whether fasting is or isn’t worth the trouble is your choice. It is, however, stressful to your body. If you go without food for three or more days – some might even say one day – you’re taking a risk. Yes, even though some gurus tell you to fast for many days at a time.
Therefore, I suggest never fasting for more than one day at a time without medical supervision.
Study Flaws
The first studies were done on rodents. Obviously, they’re not people.
Also, rodents don’t live nearly as long as we do. To them, fasting for sixteen hours a day – while eating for eight – is a long time.
The original studies done on people often did not keep calorie intake between the TRF and control groups equal.
That is, the study participants on time restricted feeding tended to eat fewer calories than the participants in the control group, who could eat at will, as usual.
The COCHRANE Meta-Analysis
The Cochrane group looked at a large number of the studies done on the health benefits of fasting. They found that calories make a big difference in results.
The participants on TRF schedules ate fewer calories. Therefore, they tended to lose weight.
They improved their health because they consumed fewer calories. That’s all.
Their health didn’t improve because of restricting their feeding window. It improved because they ate fewer calories, and so lost weight.
When studies forced both groups – TRF and control — to consume only the same number of calories, there was NO difference in health outcomes between the two groups. That’s why the original theory behind TRF appears simply wrong.
Of course, it’s not unreasonable to turn things around. Yes, many people who had improved health conditions benefited from losing weight. But they consumed fewer calories because they went on the TRF window schedule.
Therefore, many experts are saying, there’s no reason to worry about daily feeding windows. Just eat fewer calories.
Yeah, JUST eat fewer calories. If it were really that simple, weightloss wouldn’t be a $90+ billion industry in the US alone.
Protein Shortages and Muscle Loss?
One expert believes TRF is best avoided because it makes obtaining your daily minimum intake of protein impossible. This can adversely affect your health, especially older folks who need more protein than younger adults.
This connects to the reasonable speculation that restricting calories too much leads to muscle loss. Our muscle tissue is not static. Every day, we burn some and every day we make some.
You’re going to burn muscle tissue every day. On days you eat enough protein, you should replace that older muscle tissue with new muscle.
But if you’re fasting, you don’t consume protein, so the new muscle doesn’t get made.
Some fasting advocates claim that when you’re fasting your body burns only stored fat for energy, not muscle tissue. However, it burns both.
91% Higher Risk of Heart Disease?
The National Science Foundation of China funded a study carried out by several universities in China, and by Harvard and Northwestern Universities in the US. They expected to find an eating window of eight hours would improve people’s health.
They found that people who ate less than eight hours per day had INCREASED risk of heart disease – 91% higher.
Even worse, eating only eight hours per day increased their cancer risk THREE times.
Conclusion
Missing a few meals on an irregular basis is not going to hurt you.
However, if you squeeze all your eating into an 8-hour or smaller window, day after day, you could be hurting your longterm health.
Apart from fasting, we know it’s healthier to not eat at least four hours before you go to bed. You’ll sleep better when your body can focus on sleeping and not on digestion.
Eating one supersized meal per day could be unhealthy just because it’s a strain on your digestion and your heart – and must really spike your blood sugar levels.
Food quality is also a factor. Focus on whole plant foods, not on sugar and other processed junk. If you need more calories, get them from kale and blueberries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZfOGLklnBM
https://blog.marketresearch.com/u.s.-weight-loss-industry-grows-to-90-billion-fueled-by-obesity-drugs-demand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gx3f2cl88s&t=594s
https://s3.amazonaws.com/cms.ipressroom.com/67/files/20242/8-h+TRE+and+mortality+AHA+poster_031924.pdf
