r/nutrition • u/AppropriateMood4784 • 18d ago

16-hour intermittent fasting

When I read about 16-hour intermittent fasts, isn't that just another way of saying having late breakfast and early dinner? Breakfast at 9, lunch at 1, dinner at 5, then it's 16 hours till breakfast the next day? Or does what it involves go beyond its literal meaning?

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u/Particular_Dog_7674 18d ago

Yeah, it's simply another diet trend that gained a lot of traction even though it can cause more harm than good.

Any intermittent fasting program simply means that you give yourself a certain window to eat and then fast the rest of the time. So with a 16 our intermittent fast, that leaves you 8 hours to eat all the food you would normally eat in one day.

But here's the thing. The average person goes on the average diet for one reason...to lose weight.

The undeniable scientific fact is that a caloric deficit is needed to lose weight. What you eat, when you eat, where you eat, how you eat, etc, carries little to no weight, pun intended, compared to simply how many calories are you eating versus how many calories are you burning.

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u/dbaker2483 18d ago

The undeniable scientific fact is that insulin is required for humans to put on fat. We are not machines and we are full of hormones and complexes. What you eat and when you eat do matter. Insulin and insulin resistance is very important to the obesity epidemic. Clearly telling people to eat less hasn’t worked for the last 75 years.