Im working on my diet but if my eating window is smaller and i still eat the way I was, wouldn’t that reduce my weight. This might be a stupid question but im just starting out.
The IF community’s general consensus is yes.
However, and this is a bit unpopular, it still comes down to CICO ( r/CICO )
If you intake more calories than you are expending, you’re going to gain weight or at least not lose it. It’s my opinion that 65% of weight loss is caloric deficiency based. Now, IF and and a caloric deficiency, now you’re cooking with fire. Add in some exercise, even extra walking, and things start to melt.
My advice (and what worked well for me) was to find a CICO calculator on the internet and try to follow that as close as possible within your window. Then “walk* - park in the back of the parking lot, walk the dog, take multiple trips unloading the groceries from the car, use the furthest restroom away at work, that sort of thing.
I am 6’4” and SW was 250 ish and IF alone got me to 230 but then I plateau’d. Watching calories and being mindful of walking and I’m at 204 and working hard to break sub 200 since the first time since 9th grade (I’m 38 y/o)
It depends what you mean by still eat the way you were. If you mean eating all the food and all the calories you’d normally eat then no, you probably won’t see much change because your calorie intake hasn’t changed. However, if you mean eat the same foods during your window and usual then yes, IF can help. For example - if you do an 8 hour window like a lot of people that basically amounts to skipping breakfast and not eating any snacks after dinner. So even if you eat the same things for lunch and dinner as you’d usually eat then you’re still reducing your calories every day because you aren’t having breakfast calories and you aren’t having post dinner snacks. But if you make lunch twice as big to account for having missed breakfast and have an extra desert at dinner to make up for the missed snacks then you aren’t reducing your overall calories and you won’t see changes.