I have yet to meet a single person that doesn't lose weight steadily but surely down to a healthy level by even just _attempting_ 16/8 intermittent fasting combined with at least 30 minutes of cardio every day -- even a brisk walk will do as long as it makes you warm and sweat. Even if you miss some days with cardio and only manage 12/12 with intermittent fasting some days, it's literally impossible for the body to gain weight this way. I'm sure there's one medical outlier among ten thousand or something, but in my 39 years I've never met a single one. Cardio is tougher the more you weigh, and intermittent fasting restricts carbs naturally.
I tried 20/4 with 90 minutes every other day. It got me from obese to merely overweight, but stuck there. My doc told me to stop with the IF, that while it worked, it wasn't ideal nutritionally, and had me eat healthy meals three times a day with a high protein snack. Weight still isn't quite into my healthy range, but I feel way better and all my numbers are better.
20/4 is way too extreme, and I'd never recommend it. In that case one would probably have better luck with fasting one or two days a week, but that would have to be under supervision of a professional. The reason 16/8 has become the "baseline" for IF is that it's enough time for 3 proper meals a day, and maybe even a snack in between if you're active. It's what works the best for most people, but of course outliers always exist. Some might be able to do more or less.
Myself and people I've helped all have better effect from a minimum of 30 min cardio every day, than prolonged cardio every other day or fewer. It might seem counterintuitive but the body is all about "use it or lose it" (and don't abuse it, I like to add) and it tries to optimize for the stresses it's commonly exposed to. So if you do a lot of cardio every other day combined with extreme IF but do cardio on rest days, it's probably not going to prioritize the breakdown of fat the same and might even "store" it for the tough work coming the next day.
Yeah 16/8 isn't even an effort because I like my breakfast late. But I'm double fast twitch so my chosen form of cardio is weights. I keep it above 90% max for about 90min three times weekly, but I need the off days for recovery. Happy where I am, numbers are good, wife likes how I look, good enough for me. I put on both fat and muscle easy so being 5% above max healthy weight while eating right amd lifting probably isn't that far out of whack.
It’s not about fasting or even cardio, it’s about caloric restriction. Fasting reduces the calories you eat, and cardio increases the calories you burn.
Fasting also leads to breaking down fat via lipolysis during ketogenesis. Burning calories via exercise, including cardio, primarily stops you from _gaining_ weight.
So yes of course at the end of the day it is about calorie restriction, but fasting helps force your body into a state where it needs to break down stored calories -- ie. fat tissue.
You’re not wrong about breaking down fat via lipolysis but you’re wrong about the overall picture. Also, not sure what you mean by cardio stopping you from gaining weight. Cardio burns calories and you need to burn calories to lose fat.
Anyways, fasting isn’t a body hack like some people think. Just look at this article by Harvard health. At best the benefit is modest:
“intermittent fasting has a similar or even modest benefit over traditional calorie-restriction dieting for weight loss”
One reason is because the body regulates which sources of energy it uses, and will actually compensate for using too much of one energy source. For example, you might burn more fat during intermittent fasting because that’s what’s available at the time, but when you’re not fasting your body will actually burn less fat to compensate.
This is also why doing fasted cardio isn’t a hack. You’ll just burn less fat later and it’ll mostly be a wash.
Reducing the window for eating to 8 hours reduces total caloric intake naturally. I never said it was a "hack". Your linked article explains precisely why intermittent fasting is effective under the heading "The state of ketosis"; when it says "has a similar or even modest benefit over traditional calorie-restriction", that supports what I've been talking about, surely.
And cardio burns calories, sure, but have you tracked your caloric burn when exercising? You can't really do active cardio to burn more than you eat -- not without going into a deficit you have to earn back later. Ketosis isn't as fast as breaking down carbohydrates, so you're right, you don't want to do fasted cardio, usually, unless it's very restricted -- or you load up on carbs via a smoothie or something similar high-availability. I do brisk (~110 bpm average) 30 minute walks during the fasting window early in the morning, but that's about the limit.
We both know you’re trying to frame it as a hack. There’s no point in emphasizing fasting as much as you did if you didn’t think it was a significant improvement over traditional calorie restriction.
So no, I don’t think a “similar or modest” improvement over traditional calorie restriction supports your point. That phrasing suggests they’re not even willing to commit to it being a modest improvement.
You also seem to have completely misunderstood my point. It’s not about ketosis breaking things down slowly. Like I tried to explain, your body has various substrates it can use for energy (fat, muscle), and if you try to “trick” it by forcing it to burn a disproportionate amount of one, it’ll try to make up for it later. So if you do fasted cardio you might be burning more fat during your cardio session, but your body will try to compensate by burning less fat later. So these tricks don’t work, fasted cardio doesn’t help you lose weight more than non-fasted cardio.
Frankly it sounds like you’re getting your information from misinformed right-wing influencers.
> Frankly it sounds like you’re getting your information from misinformed right-wing influencers.
... how did you jump to that final conclusion? No wonder you seem to not be engaging in a good faith conversation here; you've been sitting on that prejudice all along.
A final piece of advice you're unlikely to heed, but I still feel compelled to share it: If you view reality through a broken lens, you'll see a twisted version of reality everywhere. I get my information from reading medical literature, not listening to influencers.
No I’m connecting the dots. A couple days ago you got downvoted for saying Elon Musk is getting us to mars and that he’s a great man. Now you’re arguing about fasting and keto.
If you want to deny it then fine, but I’d have to be an idiot not to connect those dots.
I’d encourage you to step outside your bubble and actually read about these things because you’re definitely not reading medical literature. You’re being fed bro science, not real science.
