Hi, I’ll start by saying that I’m totally new to it. Been doing IF for only a week now, where I stop eating after 10pm (often even earlier) and start eating at 2pm. I can’t speak about any significant progress yet of course but seeing that I’m skipping breakfast and I can enjoy my dinner without any remorse I think that it will give good results just by calories in - calories out.
My question is about how strict does IF have to be. For example, I like drinking coffee sometimes and when I do I drink cafe late as I don’t really enjoy taste of coffee only. I know that drinking coffee with milk or drinking some apple juice will break the fast, but what are the benefits of keeping it strict?
If my main goal is just to lose some weight and what I find the most useful in IF is restricting the time I can eat and therefore amount of food I eat, does it really matter if I keep it as strictly no calories for 16+ hours? Again, what are the benefits of keeping it strict and do they really matter that much?
If you just want to lose weight, you will be fine using time-restricted-eating to control your intake.
If you want the benefits of letting your gut rest and taking your body from the “digest and store” setting and giving it time each day to “repair and refresh”, then you might want to be stricter during the no-food hours.