Intermittent Fasting: The "Calories Don't Matter" Lie • Russ Howe PTI

I love intermittent fasting.

It’s a great tool for improving fat loss, and many of my PT clients have used it over the years.

However, I often see “experts” putting out content claiming that “calories don’t matter on intermittent fasting”, as if eating all of your food between the hours of 12pm-8pm somehow tears a hole in the space/time continuum and pulls body fat through the vortex.

This is complete and utter nonsense!

Deep down I believe we all know it doesn’t work this way, but it’s still easy to get fooled by the glossy hype on some of the videos.

Heck, even my own family have fallen for it.

“This YouTuber says I can eat whatever I want when I do intermittent fasting, because it’s not about counting calories. As long as it’s within my 8-hour feeding window, the fasting helps me burn off alories don’t matter. I get to eat whatever I like as long as it’s between 12 and 8, and the fasting helps me burn everything off!”

This was an actual conversation I had with a relative about a year ago.

I’ve been a PT and fitness writer for 22 years now and I’ve seen a whole lot of bullshit trends come and go during that time, so hearing those logic-breaking claims made me want to give him a shake.

However, as I raised the eyebrow of skepticism I realized it was already too late, for he was sold on the idea of getting awesome results for zero effort.

He waxed lyrical about how his new-found “guru” was at the cutting edge of new research and how he was teaching us all of the secrets which “they” (?) don’t want you to know, so I decided to just let him crack on and check in with him six months later.

He gained 49lbs in that time.

Beware The Bullshitters

does calories matter on intermittent fasting

Unfortunately, this kind of shithousery has existed for decades.

There will always be a charlatan ready to snatch your money with promises of an easier way.

In recent times we’ve seen these tactics used on several “next big thing” supplements (e.g. fat burners, ketones) and diet plans (e.g. Atkins, Dukan, Cabbage Soup, Keto, Intermittent Fasting).

All of these diet plans are very different with regards to the foods which they say are “allowed” or “not allowed”, but the one thing which they all have in common is that calories do matter.

Also, as a general rule I’d like you to start avoiding people who claim to have a “secret”, or claim to be teaching you something which “they” don’t want you to know about. They never provide any actual peer-reviewed research to support their radical claims (because there isn’t any) and they never specify who “they” is (because they don’t exist). The in’s and out’s of weight regulation and body composition are well-known and and easily accessible, but these clowns will instead try to fool you into believing they have insider knownledge which the world’s top scientists are yet to find.

How I.F. Actually Works

Intermittent fasting is not so much a diet, but more a dieting tool.

When I showed you how my clients use it, I spoke about setting up the structure of your “feeding window” in a variety of different ways:

12/12
16/8
20/4
and more!

The concept with all of these is really I.F. models is the same – find the one which fits your lifestyle and then start eating all of your daily calories within your allotted “feeding window”. (1)

Once you get into the habit of doing this on a regular basis, you will notice that your weight loss results begin to improve due to:

Staying within your daily calorie target
Because there’s less chance you’ll over-eat when it’s all crammed into a relatively short window.
Cutting out unplanned snacks
Because once you get used to not eating between certain times of day, those additional calories make a huge difference to results.

I hope that clears this up for you.

As for my old pal, he’s now knee-deep in a “60-day sugar cleanse”, which sounds as much fun as a candlelight dinner with a jar of halitosis.

I don’t believe he’ll ever escape the cycle of falling for every “next big thing” diet plan which he finds on social media, but if I can help you avoid the same mistake, then I’m a happy guy!