<story><title>Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction</title><url>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37889487/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bgroat</author><text>I think for a lot of people (me included), the primary advantage is in ease of measurement.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;hard&lt;/i&gt; to count calories accurately.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s very easy to look at the clock and determine if it&amp;#x27;s between 1300-1900 hours</text></item><item><author>jitl</author><text>“More effective” in what capacity? Adherence.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The mean (SD) reduction in energy intake was -313 (509) kcal&amp;#x2F;d for TRE, -197 (426) kcal&amp;#x2F;d for CR, and -16 (439) kcal&amp;#x2F;d for controls&lt;p&gt;So — the time restricted eating group reduced calories more than the group that counted calories; but the resulting weight loss has the same cause: reduced calorie intake compared to before.&lt;p&gt;If there’s a take away here, it’s possibly that adherence to a calorie deficit using a time restricted eating plan is easier than adherence to the same calorie deficit by explicitly tracking calories.&lt;p&gt;If you can adhere to a calorie deficit through other means, you won’t lose weight faster by adding intermittent fasting while maintaining the same calorie intake.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>InitialLastName</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s also psychologically easier to manage.  People have an easier time building a schedule where they do or don&amp;#x27;t eat and holding it (say, by skipping breakfast) than they do managing counting calories around things like &amp;quot;I went out to dinner and probably ate too much&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Binary choices (should I eat right now?) take much less cognitive overhead than spectral choices (What should I eat? How much of it? If I eat X and Y now will I have the capacity to eat Z later?)</text></comment>
<story><title>Intermittent fasting more effective than calorie restriction</title><url>https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37889487/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bgroat</author><text>I think for a lot of people (me included), the primary advantage is in ease of measurement.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;hard&lt;/i&gt; to count calories accurately.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s very easy to look at the clock and determine if it&amp;#x27;s between 1300-1900 hours</text></item><item><author>jitl</author><text>“More effective” in what capacity? Adherence.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The mean (SD) reduction in energy intake was -313 (509) kcal&amp;#x2F;d for TRE, -197 (426) kcal&amp;#x2F;d for CR, and -16 (439) kcal&amp;#x2F;d for controls&lt;p&gt;So — the time restricted eating group reduced calories more than the group that counted calories; but the resulting weight loss has the same cause: reduced calorie intake compared to before.&lt;p&gt;If there’s a take away here, it’s possibly that adherence to a calorie deficit using a time restricted eating plan is easier than adherence to the same calorie deficit by explicitly tracking calories.&lt;p&gt;If you can adhere to a calorie deficit through other means, you won’t lose weight faster by adding intermittent fasting while maintaining the same calorie intake.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grecy</author><text>The incredible thing is you don&amp;#x27;t really need to count calories, you just have to avoid complete garbage.&lt;p&gt;As Michael Pollan says &amp;quot;Eat food, mostly greens, not too much&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t eat anything processed, don&amp;#x27;t eat anything with more than one ingredient and only eat meat with at most one meal, and ideally quite a small portion.&lt;p&gt;Completely and utterly ignore things like icecream, chocolate, soda, candy, chips, anything deep friend and other &amp;quot;non food items&amp;quot;. Treat them like Arsenic - i.e. you should &lt;i&gt;never&lt;/i&gt; eat them.&lt;p&gt;There, you are now restricting calorie intake and you didn&amp;#x27;t have to count anything.&lt;p&gt;You should do this for your entire life.</text></comment>