Ep. 20 – Is Intermittent Fasting The Best Diet For Weight Loss?

Welcome to the 20th (woohoo!) episode of Vegetarian Health and Longevity from Hurry The Food Up and Sports Nutritionist James LeBaigue.

Intermittent fasting, or time-restricted eating, has a lot of attention right now when it comes to losing weight.

Is it as good as people suggest?

There was a new study out that investigated this exact question and compared it to a usual eating pattern.

The answers might surprise you, and in this episode I’ll dig into the results and how you can use them to your own advantage.

Listen to it here on your favourite provider.

Why all the buzz about intermittent fasting?

Intermittent fasting is something which has a heck of a lot of attention right now, with people using it for a variety of reasons.

Some people claim it helps to improve your metabolism, others suggest it can help you to live longer, while others say it’s the best diet to lose weight.

And if you search online you’ll be sure you can find an article that says something to this effect with heaps of personal testimonials that agree with it.

There was a study I saw recently which grabbed my interest because it was looking at the effects of intermittent fasting on weight loss compared to following a classic eating schedule.

Other studies weren’t as good

Now many studies in the past have done something similar, but there was something special about this one and it made it a much stronger and more reliable study than previous studies, so I was super excited to read about the results.

In this episode we’ll dive into this, and by the end you’ll know whether intermittent fasting has greater benefits for weight loss and whether it’s something that you should follow.

Intermittent fasting has various names and definitions, and there’s not an industry standard definition of it.

You may also hear the umbrella group of time restricted eating used, which, as the name suggests simply means eating within a defined period of time and not at any other.

The windows of eating vary too, with some protocols suggesting a 6 hour eating window, for example 6am to 12pm, and others suggesting a 12 hour window, like 7am until 7pm.

Previous studies have tried to examine the effect of this time restricted eating on weight loss, and the results have generally been positive and shown greater effects within the restricted group.

The issue with time-restricted eating studies

However, there’s a key problem with many of these studies which actually stop them from being that valid, and this is what a recent study addressed and corrected.

The study that I’m talking about was called “Effect of Isocaloric, Time-Restricted Eating on Body Weight in Adults With Obesity” and it used a restricted eating protocol of 8am to 6pm, meaning that participants weren’t allowed to eat outside of those times.

It also required the participants to have consumed 80% of their calories by 1pm, meaning the bulk of their food was in the morning.

The participants of the study were split into two groups, and the other group were allowed to eat at any point between 8am and midnight, with the requirement to eat 50% of their calories between 5pm-8pm, so much more in the evening.

Over a 12-week period, the researchers tracked the participants’ weight, which was the main aim of their investigation.

At the start of the study, the researchers hypothesized that those in the time-restricted eating group would lose more weight than the usual eating pattern group, based on the findings from previous studies suggesting that the restricted groups usually lost more weight.

What were the results of this study?

In this study though, that didn’t happen.

On average, participants in the restricted group lost 2.3kg of weight and those in the normal pattern group lost 2.6kg, and there was no statistical difference between these, meaning that the two dietary protocols showed the same benefits for weight loss.

This is super, super interesting and goes against the grain of previous research—so why is this?

Before we go into the results, just a quick hi to say that if you’re interested in using the vegetarian diet to lose weight then you should check out our free vegetarian weight loss meal plan.

We’ve created a meal plan that has all the recipes, ingredients and instructions easily laid out for you, complete with a shopping list. It’s super easy to follow and has loads of tasty recipes in, so head to htfu.com/try to get started today.

Alright, back to the episode.

What was different about this study?

So, the results of this study might be different to the others because of how the researchers managed the participants diet.

In this study, the participants agreed to only eat the food provided by the research teams, within the specific windows.

Now this is a critical point because what the researchers wanted to control was the calorie and nutrient composition of food.

Their concern was that other studies did not do this adequately.

In some cases they did control calories but did not control macronutrients – so protein, carbohydrate and fat – and in other studies they didn’t properly manage calories at all so it wasn’t a fair comparison.

Thermic Effect

And there’s something called the thermic effect of food which is incredibly important in studies like this.

When you eat food, your body has to spend energy digesting it, and different foods require different amounts of energy to break them down.

So if the researchers don’t control for this they could see differences between the two groups which were simply down to the nutrient composition of their food, rather than the calorie amounts.

Imagine one participant in the control group was eating 150g of protein a day but not much fat, and another participant in the time restricted group was only eating 60g of protein a day but lots of fat, but overall they were eating the same total calories. 

Protein has the highest thermic effect of food while fat has the lowest thermic effect, which means the person eating more protein would actually have to spend more energy, or calories, digesting the protein, meaning that the amount of calories they actually absorb to then use for energy is lower than the other person.

So as a side tangent, this is one of the reasons why high protein diets can be beneficial for weight loss and why we focus on high protein recipes at Hurry The Food Up.

It’s not always easy on a vegetarian diet but if you use the right nutrients then you can still get all the benefits!

But in this study, the participants diet was completely managed by a team of dietitians, and the participants reported excellent adherence to the dietary protocol.

Overall, this is fantastic because it means that the weight loss effects should really hinge on either the calorie amounts or the dietary protocol.

As I mentioned, in this study there were no statistical differences in weight loss between the two groups even though they followed different protocols.

Because previous studies suggest that it’s the protocol that matters, the researchers should have seen better weight loss results in the time-restricted eating group but because they didn’t, they concluded that it’s the calories that matter, and not the protocol.

What does this mean for you?

Now this is amazing and it fits with the mantra that I follow and always suggest to people.

So I mean take this with a pinch of salt if you want, I am biased and genuinely pleased to see these results because it confirms my way of thinking.

But I always, always encourage people to follow the diet that suits them best–at least within reason.

In my opinion, there just isn’t enough research out there to show that any diet is superior to others when it comes to a pure weight loss point of view when calories are adequately controlled.

By that, I mean that you could follow intermittent fasting or you could eat three meals a day and lose weight, as long as your portions and therefore your calories are correct.

So really it comes down to what diet is the most sustainable for you? What diet or eating pattern are you going to be able to maintain not just for weeks or even months but for the rest of your life?

Because once you’ve got to your target weight you need to stay there and to do that you need to follow the exact habits that you were following, just with a little more food to stop weight loss.

Some people find this really tricky to grasp, and I totally get it.

It’s a marketer’s world

There is so much good marketing out there, so many wonderful success stories, for pretty much any diet, which means you can easily get sucked in and believe the hype.

But the truth is you can keep it really, really simple with weight loss. Find an eating plan that you enjoy, that works for you and you feel you could sustain for the rest of your life.

If it feels too restrictive, you’re having to use loads of willpower to sustain and you constantly feel hungry or tired, then it isn’t for you.

My personal recommendation is almost always to go down the more regular eating pattern of three meals  day with snacks if appropriate.

From my experience with clients I’ve seen such better adherence over the long term coupled with better energy levels.

But if that really doesn’t work for you, or for example you find that time-restricted eating helps you to control your calories while losing weight then fair enough, you go for it.

Just remember that it’s not a magic bullet and you still need to manage your diet once you hit your goal.

Conclusion on intermittent fasting:

So I hope you found this episode interesting and gave you some helpful info about time-restricted eating and weight loss.

If you did find it useful then please give the podcast a quick review on whatever platform you’re listening on. 

It helps the podcast to spread to more like minded people like you, and it’ll only take a moment. Thanks so much, and we’ll speak soon.

So I’d love to hear what you thought of this episode, if you found it useful and interesting then please leave a comment and review on whatever platform you’re listening on.

It’ll help me to know what topics work well for you and to help it spread to more like-minded people! Cheers, and I’ll speak to you soon!

Studies used in this podcast:

Effects of time-restricted eating on bodyweight

And finally, here is the easiest way to sign up to try our meal plans (free).

And a list of our vegetarian meal plans (all also free).

And finally finally: More vegetarian podcasts this way!