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IS INTERMITTENT FASTING THE ANSWER?! · No Forking Nonsense - The Nutritionist UK

• 0:00
  @paulthenutritionist: Welcome to no forking nonsense. The podcast that slices through the nonsense and serves you straight talking nutrition advice that actually works. I'm Paul, a registered nutritionist and your host. And every episode, I'll be debunking diet myths, breaking down confusing food advice and giving you practical science backed tips to help you eat better, feel better and get your edge back. There'll be no fads, no shite, just real talk that makes sense.
• 0:28
  Let's get stuck in. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Forking Nonsense and today I am going to be going through from a registered nutritionist perspective a bit of a debunk about a trend that I think was really big about three years ago and I still have clients who come to me and they'll say I have tried intermittent fasting or I've been fasting and it works for me, when it clearly hasn't worked because they'll inevitably say well it did work for me and then I put all the weight back on. So I'm just going to go through the truth about intermittent fasting and just explain why it isn't magic for fat loss. There are some benefits, there are certainly some things which don't make sense and remember everything I say I'll back up with receipts. So I'm actually going break down a bit of research for you so you can understand what it actually says and not what moron say on TikTok.
• 1:18
  So you've probably heard about it. Intermittent fasting burns more fat, resets your metabolism, helps you live forever, and that sounds unreal but it's kind of not true. So I'm going to break it all down for you, so you have a clear understanding of what intermittent fasting is, why it can work but why it's not special, and what really matters for fat loss. So intermittent fasting simply is just restricting your eating window. So you would have heard of the five:two, sixteen:eight, and what the sixteen:eight is, is that you fast fast for sixteen hours and you eat for eight hours, which most people probably have an eating window of about eight to ten hours anyway, maybe twelve hours.
• 1:58
  Or you have alternate day fast. And as I say, so you might have five days of normal eating, two days of not eating, or eating sub 500 calories. So it's not a diet type as such. It's just an eating schedule. So you're not changing what you eat.
• 2:12
  It's just changing when you eat. Now, the thing about intermittent fasting in all types of diets, what it essentially is, is just a form of a calorie deficit. And when we're looking to lose weight and lose body fat specifically, what you want to do is you want to put yourself in a calorie deficit. And there are many different ways you can do that. There was back in the day, remember in the nineties, the cabbage soup diet was a thing.
• 2:32
  There was the I think it's I can't remember if it's the no it's not the Cambridge diet, the maple syrup diet where you just say maple syrup. Obviously with the rise of TikTok there's loads of morons doing all sorts of things. I saw a diet where individuals just ate lettuce And all that is is just aggressive versions of putting you in a calorie deficit. So what I want to do is just break down the claims versus the reality. So the first claim being that it burns more fat.
• 2:58
  Now there is a lot of research that shows that when calories and protein are matched, fat loss is identical to normal eating patterns. So there was a research paper in 2020, which was a twelve month study, and it concluded the same weight loss when calories are controlled. Now, fasting doesn't unlock a new fat burning mode. It just literally helps some people eat fewer calories, which is what we want to do, right? When we are looking to lose weight, we're just finding methods that work for us to eat more calories, so you're in a calorie deficit.
• 3:30
  Now the perfect scenario always is to try and get ourselves to the stage where we feel like we're eating as much food as possible. It isn't hard work, but we're still in a calorie deficit. So we can probably throw that one out the window. It boosts metabolism. So actually long fast, lower metabolic rate.
• 3:47
  So I have clients who have chronically under eaten for years, and the fallout of that is that their metabolism actually kind of slows down a little bit and lowers their metabolism. Short fasts will not increase it. They just make you feel more alert because of more adrenaline. And that's why people will often say, I've been fast, I feel ready to go, I want to attack the world, I feel great, I feel excited and really focused. It's literally adrenaline, and at some point you're going to crash.
• 4:11
  And remember, I'm all about balance. What goes up must always come down, so we want to stabilise it. And actually there was a bit of research in the early 2000s which found that there was no metabolic advantage by intermittent fasting. It literally just reduced the intake. The other thing as well is that I often hear is that it improves your insulin sensitivity.
• 4:33
  Now, without getting into too much biology here, this is kind of true, but only if you lose weight. And it's the weight loss itself that actually drives improvements to insulin sensitivity, not the fasting window. So you can get the same benefits in terms of your insulin just by eating balanced meals regularly, but in a calorie deficit. Now, what's really interesting is that people seem to think it works better because psychologically they feel like they're eating fewer meals, so there's fewer opportunities to over eat. Some people like the pain as well and that discomfort of being hungry because they feel like it's proper graft.
• 5:10
  It's like when people go to the gym and they'll do a leg workout that really kills them or they do a hip workout where they lay on the floor and they're right off for two days because it feels like you're making an impact. And I always say to people when you work with nutrition it's actually really boring because what we do is we just kind of chip away slowly and inevitably you will feel better in terms of your energy but in terms of fat loss it kind of happens in the background because we should have your energy, your meal timings, how you feel about food, your energy, your concentration, your sleep, your recovery. That should all be balanced and then the fat loss should just happen. Now, it can feel simple and structured because you can just skip breakfast and then you have two big meals. But again, the fallout of that is that inevitably it's going to impact your blood sugars.
• 5:51
  Your hunger kind of rhythms may not suit. So often people who skip breakfast, they usually find themselves absolutely ravenous by 11:00, although people feel focused because of that adrenaline I've referred to. If you're really hungry, often you just become really irritable. You can't really concentrate. So again, the kind of cons completely outweigh the pros are.
• 6:11
  Because for others, it really does backfire. And big hunger will often cause people to overeat at night. Or the thing that we completely overlook is impacting your energy levels. So if you're in too much of a calorie deficit, so if you're undereating at any part of the day, what can likely happen is that your training volume or your energy is just low. So if you chronically undereat, the effort is much harder for you to go into the gym or to go for a run, even to go for a walk in winter.
• 6:37
  If you're really, really knackered because you haven't got enough energy, your body will find ways to slow down, and again that's going to impact your sleep overall. If you're under eating, then your body is going to really be trying to clutch on to recovery, and your sleep quality is just going be really poor. It's a tool and not a magic formula. As I say, it's a tool if you're someone who is very comfortable with being hungry, but it's certainly not going to help you in the long term. Some people think it works better because, as I say, they find that having this kind of aggressive feeling of hunger actually supports them, when actually it can be made a lot more easier.
• 7:15
  So what the evidence actually tells us, so what we want to look at when we're looking at research is systematic reviews and meta analysis. They're like the highest quality research, if you like. And there was one from 2015 and 2019 and the one I referred to in 2020. And what they all concluded was that weight loss outcomes actually equal the same as traditional calorie restriction, except you're to be less miserable. And muscle retention, interestingly, is slightly worse because you're not consuming protein periodised.
• 7:44
  You're just having these kind of bigger meals. I also saw something I was sent a video on a one meal a day diet, and it's not a diet, you're just eating all your calories in one go, and that's really aggressive on your digestive system. So if you favour fasted for religious reasons or for whatever reasons, and then you start eating normally again, which often people do, you'll either overeat eventually because your body remembers. So in a week or so, you'll end up overeating or your gut just doesn't like it and you end up bloating. And again, that's going to cause you to be sluggish.
• 8:13
  And the fallout of that is you're just not going to feel very good. And probably again, your training, your concentration, and your normal kind of day to day movement and life, I guess, is going to be absolutely impacted. Perhaps the most significant thing is that adherence seems to all according to research, adherence seems to always drop after about eight to twelve weeks. Now what that means is for the first eight weeks things seem to go okay, but after that people really struggle with hunger and social eating. And what I mean by that is that it's just not a social thing to do.
• 8:46
  If you're intermittent fasting then the fallout of that is that you're going to really struggle if you're invited certainly over the Christmas period. If you're invited on a social event you're probably not going to feel very good sitting there having your 100 calories or whatever you're permitted to eat. You're certainly not going to able to consume alcohol. And if you do consume alcohol, the hangover is going be a lot worse because you've eaten it on a relatively empty stomach. So what the real fat loss equation is, it always comes down to calories, protein consistency.
• 9:14
  So whether you eat at 7AM or 7PM doesn't matter if that overall intake is right. And the intake is we want to make sure we're eating enough protein, want to make sure we're eating regularly enough, we want to make sure we're drinking enough water, we're hitting enough fibre, and most importantly, you're eating as much food as possible so that you feel good but we're in a slight calorie deficit. You lose fat in a calorie deficit not because of when you have your food but what we don't want to do is overload our gut so we have digestive discomfort. So it can work for people who are really busy or who prefer fewer larger meals, but it works if it naturally helps you control calories without thinking too much. Our aim is always to eat as much food as possible, always, because why wouldn't you want to eat as much food as possible if you can do that whilst still losing weight?
• 10:03
  It doesn't work for individuals who train, or train hard, or train early, or if you ever find yourself hungry. Because it's also, as I say, at some point your body will want to claw back those calories and you'll end up overeating anyway. Often with the five:two diet, people can be disciplined as I say for about eight weeks, but the kind of novelty certainly wears off hand. They fast for two days, but on those five days they always seem to overeat according to research by Tinsley and La Bounty in 2015. Now the other thing as well that I think people overlook is the kind of social restrictiveness of it.
• 10:37
  You can't go out for dinners on your fasting day. You can't go to parties. You're going to struggle to go to a wedding. You can't drink because it still counts. And the kind of fallout of all of this is that it isn't a very kind of social exciting thing to do.
• 10:50
  So to conclude, intermittent fasting is not magic, it's just a structure that may help calorie control easier for some people, but very rarely, and the adherence just isn't consistent. When we're looking to lose weight, we want to be in a small calorie deficit whilst still being able to live a life that is actually enjoyable. So if you want a structure that actually fits you rather than fighting your routine, really, you want to find out what your calories are, you want to put yourself in a very minor calorie deficit, and you want to make sure you're eating enough protein, enough carbohydrate, enough fats, enough fibre, and enough you're consuming enough water as well. If you do all of these things and we're consistent over a period of time, it shouldn't feel like hard work. Hard work in terms of being miserable and having all of these restrictions is just going to kill your adherence, as proven by all of the evidence outlined above.
• 11:42
  So I hope that makes sense. I hope that has debunked intermittent fasting. It certainly isn't something that I do. It's not something that I recommend. It's really fucking miserable, and that's not what we want to be doing.
• 11:52
  We want to ensure that we are living a life that is enjoyable. Food is there to be enjoyed. You can eat mostly what you want in context and still lose weight if that is your goal. Now there is no magic bullet to that. As I say, working with a nutritionist is pretty boring, But hopefully that all makes sense.
• 12:08
  If you've got any questions, me know. And hopefully we've debunked intermittent fasting. That's it for this episode of No Forking Nonsense, where the fluff gets binned and the facts get served. If you found this helpful, share it with someone who could do some clarity from an expert. That's me, by the way.
• 12:21
  And make sure you hit follow so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you want more straight talking, no nonsense nutrition advice, come and find me on Instagram Paul, the nutritionist. Until next time, eat smart, feel human again, and stop falling for the forking nonsense. See you next time.