Is Intermittent Fasting The Best For Fat Loss?

Hey Fit Family!

Is Intermittent Fasting the Best for Fat Loss?

When you control for calories and protein intake it doesn’t look like intermittent fasting (IF) outperforms other meal frequency strategies for fat loss [1-3].

Also, fat oxidation over 24 hours looks to be the same whether you eat two or three meals in the day [4].

So, if Intermittent Fasting or eating more often don’t seem to have any special fat loss magic...what’s the point?

As much as eating frequency doesn’t seem to matter on average in the weight loss literature, as a coach I think eating frequency REALLY DOES MATTER for the individuals we work with.

To put it as simply as I can - the upside of eating less often is that you can eat bigger meals and the downside is that you eat less often.

For real people, both of these can be a big deal. The greatest benefit of IF is that it potentially allows for more flexibility with food in social settings, but it likely comes at the cost of skipping a meal.

They are many different acronyms associated with IF the most notable being eTRF (early Time-Restricted Feeding) and dTRF (delayed Time Restricted Feeding), but for most non-biohackers IF pretty much just means skipping breakfast.

Breakfast is notoriously thought of as healthy because healthy people generally eat breakfast, but again, in the controlled literature there doesn’t seem to be anything magical about eating or not eating breakfast for fat loss [5, 6].

Now, some people love love love breakfast and this isn’t something they want to give up and that isn’t a big deal at all! It just means that the rest of their meals will likely be smaller if they want to maintain the same calorie deficit as someone who is Intermittent Fasting.

On the flip side, some people are so busy in the morning and they could personally care less about breakfast that they would rather move those calories into their dinner which is more often eaten with family or friends.

Let’s dig deeper into this concept with a real-world example.

If a female is trying to lose weight and maintain or gain muscle on a 1,300 calorie diet the more eating occasions she has the more she will have break that total up.

So, if she uses 300 to 400 calories at breakfast that means that her lunch and dinner are going to be smaller.

Now, if she skips one meal and stacks those calories into the other two meals they are going to get significantly bigger, and honestly, for this person, it may be the difference between being able to eat carbs at dinner and not being able to eat carbs at dinner…which for most normal people and especially those with families can be a really big deal!

Below is an example of what those two scenarios at 1,300 calories combined with reasonable macros might look like in My Fit Foods:

Three Meals and One Snack at 1,300 Kcals

(Macros: ~120 Protein, ~50 Fat, and ~90 Carbs)

Morning Meal:
Small Good Morning Sunshine

Lunch:
Small Lean Lemon Turkey

Shake:
1 Scoop My Fit Foods Grass-Fed Whey
12 oz Unsweetened Almond Milk
1 Medium Banana

Dinner:
Regular Buffalo Chicken

Now below is the same calorie total and macros broken down into a prototypical Two Meals and One Protein Shake Intermittent Fasting Schematic.

Meal 1:
Regular Lean Lemon Turkey

Shake:
1 Scoop of Grass-Fed Whey
12 oz Unsweetened Almond Milk
1 Medium Banana

Meal 2:
Regular Buffalo Chicken
AND
Small Mile High BBQ Chicken

Forgoing breakfast gets this person a regular for lunch and much more flexibility at dinner, but they don't get breakfast.

In a controlled setting, I’d bet the farm that neither of these plans will beat the other for fat loss, but in the real world which one looks BETTER TO YOU?

Finding that dietary plan is what is most important and that is what our Nutritional Consultants at My Fit Foods are trained to do...

We work with you to find what strategy best fits into YOUR life and then we use the deliciousness and extreme practicality of My Fit Foods to accelerate your results.

#GIVEAFIT

REFERENCES:

1. Headland, M., et al., Weight-Loss Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Intermittent Energy Restriction Trials Lasting a Minimum of 6 Months. Nutrients, 2016. 8(6).
2. Cioffi, I., et al., Intermittent versus continuous energy restriction on weight loss and cardiometabolic outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Transl Med, 2018. 16(1): p. 371.
3. Schoenfeld, B.J., A.A. Aragon, and J.W. Krieger, Effects of meal frequency on weight loss and body composition: a meta-analysis. Nutr Rev, 2015. 73(2): p. 69-82.
4. Ogata, H., et al., Effect of skipping breakfast for 6 days on energy metabolism and diurnal rhythm of blood glucose in young healthy Japanese males. Am J Clin Nutr, 2019. 110(1): p. 41-52.
5. Bonnet, J.P., et al., Breakfast Skipping, Body Composition, and Cardiometabolic Risk: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Trials. Obesity (Silver Spring), 2020. 28(6): p. 1098-1109.
6. Sievert, K., et al., Effect of breakfast on weight and energy intake: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 2019. 364: p. l42.