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Like others have said, it’s about total calories in that really matters. However, if you follow a strict IF or OMAD type diet you will most likely end up with fewer total calories in. This is mostly due to the size of our stomachs. Instead of filling your stomach multiple times throughout the day in IF you’re filling it once or twice, and typically feel full faster because you’re filling your stomach to capacity. It’s also worth noting that our stomachs shrink in response to fasting.
There is also the “freezer” model for how we can view IF. You can find better examples, but here goes. Think about a fridge. All this tasty food readily accessible. And a freezer is also full of tasty food, but it’s less accessible. You gotta take stuff out and let it thaw before you can eat it, which requires effort. View your body like this, it wants energy (provided by the food you ingest) most of this energy is put in “fridge” for easy access and use in your immediate caloric needs. Anything you don’t use is shoved in the “freezer” and stored in the body as fat.
Every time you eat you’re refilling that fridge of easy access energy. Our bodies are simple and will try to use the least amount of energy to do anything. As long as that fridge has the necessary calories to get things done, it will never pull from the freezer.
So, that original quote from your post isn’t really true. We really don’t utilize fat until we have nothing left. I believe feeling hungry is a good sensation. Hunger is your body starting to shift gears and look around for other sources of energy. Different people handle fasting better than others. Up to you if you want to experiment.
Exercise is number one. However, exercising does not give you a free card to eat like crazy. Few workouts, aside from athletic training regiments, will leave you with a significant caloric deficit.
Hope that helps!
Fat loss, in simple terms, comes down to consuming less calories than you utilize. This is dependent on so many variables. To put it simply, changing up your diet in crazy ways and a lot at once doesn’t have a very successful track record. Take the time to educate yourself and be honest with yourself about what you are currently consuming and find ways to replace things over time with healthier, yummy choices.
There are people who have success with OMAD (One Meal A Day), or intermittent fasting. There are people who have success with eating twice a day. There are people who have success with eating three meals a day. It’s going to depend on what works for you based on your home life, work life, and your free time. It’s a great idea to begin exercising as you do this. Exercising while maintaining a reasonable caloric deficit helps with maintaining current muscle mass, and if you are untrained, you may even build new muscle mass at the beginning, provides you aren’t in too large of a calorie deficit.
TL;DR Weight loss happens because you use more calories than you consume
Neither is better the only thing that matters is overall calorie consumption. Eating in a calorie deficit (consuming less than you utilise) will lead to weight loss, the size of said deficit being the determining factor as to the speed of weight loss.
Burning fat at any given moment makes no difference. You may well burn fat in the morning if you skip breakfast, but eat back all those calories at lunch. It’s a common misconception that eliciting ‘fat burning’ at any given moment will lead to weight loss. I could burn fat all day, eat one big meal in the evening that exceeds my total calories and gain weight. The excess calories will be converted back into fat.
The body uses multiple sources of energy throughout the day. If weight loss is your goal the important thing is to find a way of eliciting a prolonged calorie deficit. This means doing it in a sustainable way, in which you don’t suffer too much. Consuming sufficient protein in excess of the amount necessary to satisfy the requirement for essential bodily functions will help to ensure that your body doesn’t break down its own proteins (muscles).