Hope I don’t get flamed too badly for this but something to consider: The reason why intermittent fasting works is because it was part of human evolution for thousands of years. Think about how our ancestors lived. They would expend huge amounts of energy hunting an animal for food and eat as much as they could in a very short period of time uncertain when their next meal would come. Fast forward to today and we see skyrocketing rates of depression, obesity and diabetes that coincides with the rise of highly processed foods loaded with sugar designed to get you addicted. I’m not saying IF is a panacea but despite what the food industrial complex wants us to believe, we weren’t designed to eat at all hours of the day. Thoughts?
Agreed 100%. Dr. Jason Fung actually speaks to this topic in his book on fasting and the fact that the food industry are the creators of the the flawed concept of requiring 3 meals per day, with snacks in between.
Personally, I always thought this line of thinking for IF, paleo, etc was a little weird. We’re not who our ancient ancestors are. It’s not like we’re going to go back to being hunter gatherers. They were doing that because there was nothing else, it was that or starve. It took advancements like agriculture to allow society progress. Heck, most of the rising rate issues probably have more to do with people living longer and/or these things being medically studied and understood than it does we’re not eating like someone with a flint spear did.
I do agree with the point about there being a lot of moneyed interests in what we eat. For instance, Cheetos are specifically engineered to be addictive. They perfected the crunch and way it melts so that folks eat more. Or how breakfast being the ‘most important meal of the day’ was all studies done by cereal manufacturers. I think that’s the bigger issue of replacing whole food with stuff that’s been designed and marketed to be eaten all the time. We’re snacking so much more these days than even a few decades ago and it’s almost all on stuff that just makes us hungrier for more snacks.
Dr Fung had a video that even when he was a kid and they were eating 3 not that healthy meals a day there still wasn’t nearly the same obesity problem, his conclusion was snacking.
100% agree we are not “supposed” to be eating all day
“Supposed” is in quotation marks because obviously everyone’s needs are different and there may be people that do have to eat all day but yes most of us are here for weight loss