I don’t currently do IF, but usually don’t eat for around 12 hours anyhow. I was considering trying a 14 hour fast to assist in weight loss. I keep reading here how we shouldn’t snack, but have meals instead. Why is that? Is that just to prevent mindless snacking, or is there a metabolic reason? I tend to have multiple small meals/snacks in the evening.
Snacking in general if done throughout the day keeps the insulin higher so keeping the body in a fed state so it would be storing the energy it’s consuming and not using any energy that’d already stored in the body. Stored in the muscles, liver and converting body fat from glycogen into glucose, for example. When we fast for say 16 hours or more, our body should have already been able to digest and process whatever we had eaten so then switching energy sources from food energy to energy stored on the body.
Not a doctor, and not a trained nutritionist, but I’ve read some of Dr. Jason Fung’s book in fasting.
I believe the answer to “Why is snacking bad?” has two answers: (A) Calories; (B) Insulin.
If you are constantly eating, calories are constantly coming in. It’s very easy to go over what you are actually burning, and that means your body will be storing fat.
But suppose you are just eating a single potato chip every 15 minutes? You could stretch the bag out to cover a day, maybe two? That’s not a lot of calories.
Dr. Fung has some brief discussions of “starvation studies”, where the subjects are eating, but never enough to cover their actual calorie expenditure. Each time they eat, insulin release is triggered, which would normally tell the body to store the energy. In the special case of insulin being present without sufficient calories, the body will EVENTUALLY slow your base metabolism to try to get your calorie burn rate to match what you actually eat.
Let’s consider a more typical situation of always eating a little more than you really need. Eating basically flips your body’s “insulin switch” into fat storage mode. But … what if your body already has enough fat stored? And what if the constant presence of insulin in your blood stream just becomes “everyday business” for your body? I don’t know the exact mechanism (some people claim saturated fat is the culprit) but many people develop insulin resistance, where the body doesn’t use insulin properly.
I welcome corrections.
I snack, IF just helped me stop the over snacking. I was a big boredom/evening eater/snacker and it cut that out. I have lunch/snack/dinner. Fri/Sat I tend to snack more during my window then have actual meals
When I was fasting my goal was to eat from 3-9 pm every day. I actually felt great and I’m going back to it. I’ve found with me, the more I eat, the more I want to eat. Eating breakfast stokes the fire and I’m hungry all day. if I can make it to 3, I’m actually less hungry and I’m satisfied with less food. The urge to snack on junk also drops.
My doctor also told me fasting helps heal your gut. If you feel bad after eating (which I do when I’m not fasting) you probably have IBS or SIBO.
Fasting has been a life changer for me. Even on days when I do eat 3 meals. I stopped having crap in between. Down 117lbs. Learning about how insulin works really opened my eyes. Sadly I didn’t learn until I was 52.