Gaining Muscle and Losing Fat (2015)
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Baron
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Well you should ask him what would happen if someone combined a proper diet and exercise with intermittent fasting. Because that's exactly what I'm doing and recommending to others. In no way am I saying that intermittent fasting is a replacement for a balanced diet and exercise.
Baron
ET Founder
Montreal isn't exactly known as a mecca for health and fitness knowledge. I should know. I used to live there. I've never seen more cigarette smokers in all my life.
Good point. But the first link in my prior post points to research suggesting that there is no meaningful benefit to the timing of meals, all else being equal.
I'm not taking a firm stance one way or the other, although I personally no longer indulge in small feeding windows. As I noted in an earlier post, I began to spread out my meals more evenly a while back because I found that eating more heavily towards the end of the day negatively affected my sleep. That was a decision for my personal circumstances. My calorie intake is about the same as it had been before. And as I previously noted, I actually lost a bit of weight even though that was not my intention. I'm not suggesting that spreading out my meals caused the slight weight loss, since there may have been other factors at play. But I'm inclined to think there may not be a meaningful difference in timing my meals as it relates to weight management -- at least for me.
Tell me about it. Until not too many years ago, if you went into a restaurant and asked for a table in the non-smoking section, you might have been seated right next to a guy smoking.
But that has nothing to do with what we're discussing.
Truth be told, I was hoping this thread would have more focus on workout volume, duration, frequency and that sort of thing. Regarding diet, for the most part, I think we all know that we shouldn't eat crap, that our macronutrients should be in balance, and that total calories matter.
I'm not sure that when there are competing studies that give different results, that it is entirely accurate to say that one of the studies 'busted' the other one. How do we know which one was 'busted'?
Assuming the research was conducted properly, I think the only conclusion you can draw is that the answer isn't clear one way or the other. If there is no meaningful difference, then apparently there is no meaningful advantage of one approach over the other, at least as things presently stand. Again, I'm just the devil's advocate here presenting countervailing evidence.
But we are each our very own laboratory, and are free to conduct our own research on ourselves as we see fit. I did and arrived at my own conclusion. For now.
By all means give intermittent fasting a try. I'm curious to know how you will fare, as I'm sure others here are as well. But, to make sure we're isolating the timing of meals, because that is the point of this discussion, your caloric intake should be roughly the same. Keep us posted.
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Baron
ET Founder
You're getting meal timing confused with meal frequency. He's referring to meal frequency, as in the number of times that one eats each day.
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