I love intermittent fasting.
It’s a great tool for improving fat loss, and many of my male and female clients have use it throughout the years.
However, I often see people saying that “calories don’t matter when you do I.F.”, which is complete and utter nonsense. Here’s a snippet from a conversation I had with a family member about a year ago:
“This guy on YouTube said I on intermittent fasting I get to eat whatever I like as long as it’s between 12 and 8, and the fasting helps me burn off all the fat!”
Remember, I’ve been a personal trainer and fitness writer for some 22 years now, so hearing this logic-defying misinformation burned a hole in my brain, but as I raised an eyebrow in scepticism I realised it was already too late, for my relative had already been “sold” on the idea of easy results for zero effort.
So let him crack on with it, and he gained 35lbs in the 12 weeks that followed.
Ouch.
Beware The Bullshitters
Unfortunately, people have been falling for stuff like this for decades.
When hard work and dedication seems like too much work, there will always be a charlatan ready to take your money with promises of an easier way.
We’ve seen this with countless diets; cabbage soup, Atkins, Dukan, raw food, keto, intermittent fasting, and more.
Ironically, even though each of those examples are very different in terms of the foods they allow or the “rules” they preach, the one thing which all of these so-called “calories don’t matter” diets have in common is that calories do matter. I recently debunked the fad diet industry in this monstrous article.
How I.F. Actually Works
Intermittent fasting is not so much a diet, but more a dieting tool.
When I explained how my clients use it in this article, I showed you that you can setup the structure of your I.F. feeding window in any number of different ways:
- 12/12
- 16/8
- 20/4
- and more!
The concept with all of these is really the same – find the one which fits your lifestyle the easiest and consume all of your daily calories within your allotted “feeding window”. Getting into the habit of doing this will help you cut out unplanned snacks and it becomes a fantastic tool for helping you stay within your daily calorie targets. (1)
So yes, calories do still matter!
As for my old mate, well, last time I checked he’s now doing a 60-day sugar cleanse which sounds about as appealing as an intimate date with a jar of halitosis. I doubt he’ll ever get out of his cycle of falling for the latest dieting “quick fix”, so don’t you make the same mistake!
References:
- Howell, S., et al. “Calories in, calories out” and macronutrient intake: the hope, hype, and science of calories. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab (2017).