Hello been reading here a while, but just signed up.
I lift in the evenings, my goal currently is to maintain the muscle I have but lose more fat, I’ve lost several pounds already, trying to get to about 15% bf.
It seems to be working pretty well, I skip breakfast, and eat 2 meals with a protein shake before bed. My question is would I be better off say drinking 2 scoops of protein for breakfast, rather than doing the intermittent fasting? or just continue doing what has worked so far?
Ok, first, you are NOT intermittent fasting. You are skipping breakfast. I have written extensively about that topic and also did a video on it.
Here are the key points:
To qualify as intermittent fasting (as in having the physiological benefits of fasting) you need to be fasted for at least 16h. What you are doing is what most people claiming to be doing intermittent fasting are doing… you have an 8 hours eating window (for example eating from noon to 8pm) and thus conclude that you are fasted for 16 hours. That is not the case. Being fasted is not the time spent not eating. It’s the time between the moment you have digested and absorbed everything from your last meal and the next meal. If your last meal ends at 8pm, you are not fasted at 8:01…you are not fasted at 9, 10 or 11. In fact, if the meal was of a decent size you will likely not be fasted for at least 6 hours after your meal. So you end up fasting for maybe 8-9 hours.
Fasted time when you are awake and active is more effective (to get the physiological benefits from fasting) than when you are sleeping. If most of your fasted time is when you sleep and you only have like 6h fasted while awake and active (from the moment you wake up to your first meal), it is much less effective than true intermittent fasting, like described here:
The article above has a schedule where you only have a feeding window at the end of the day (up to bedtime). So that gives you around 12h of fasting while awake.
Anyway, that doesn’t mean that what you are doing is not going to work. It’s just incorrect to think that you are intermittent fasting. It’s an easy mistake though, because people like to market that as intermittent fasting because it’s the “easy way” to do it and still make you believe that you are part of the group.
Now, to the real question. Can it work?
Sure, if you don’t increase the carbs and fat content of the two remaining meals. What typically happens though (skipping breakfast is probably the no.1 fat loss strategy in the gen pop since the 1960s… which is NOT a good sign considering that the success rate of dieting in the gen pop is less than 10%) is that when you skip breakfast, it typically lead to overeating in the later meals.
Another issue, if you are interested in being muscular, is that it will be hard to get enough protein in 2 meals. You might end up losing muscle in the long run.
In that sense my recommendation is to add the shakes. Protein itself can’t really be stored as fat so adding the shake will not slow down the process and might help with muscle mass and satiety.
I’d recommend you start a protein count. Just count how many grams of protein you’re getting daily and do that for a few days to get an estimate. Don’t worry about counting anything else for now. What’s that number?
When the goal is fat loss, a good rule of thumb is about a gram per pound of body weight. Or, estimate your ideal weight and eat that many grams of protein per day. (Even with that strategy, it’s not going to hurt if you get “too much” protein; it’ll just fill you up and have a thermic effect.) This will prevent muscle loss and metabolism disruption.
One of the problems with IF and faux-IF is that with fewer meals, people might consume less protein. The scale says they’re losing “weight” but that’s no fun if a lot of that weight is muscle. And, of course, muscle loss is probably the top cause of yo-yo dieting. Even when you’re lifting, you can still lose muscle when dieting, but keeping protein high prevent this (unless we’re talking trying to get down to single-digits, then it gets tricky).
Also, when you look at what overweight people have in common, one of the commonalities is (wait for it) skipping breakfast. With most people, this just causes overcompensation of calories in the evening, plus cortisol is high in the morning and breakfast tamps it down. Even many IF fanatics are starting to skip dinner instead of breakfast these days.
Here are a few articles with more info and a few strategies:
For me skipping Breakfast is no opinion. But count the calories with a App on my phone and i think it does not matter when you eat at the day but how much you eat.
Skipping meals doesn’t work for me. It’s hard to keep up with protein imo, and I start losing muscle.
I find that just making portions small enough to cut 3-500 calories per day while keeping protein around 1 gram per pound of body weight or slightly less works well. I have not seen additional benefit at 1.5 to 2 grams personally.
I can’t skip meals either but my breakfast generally leans pretty heavy on the protein side over carbs. I’d say that utilizing shakes may be a good idea in your case too and counting the protein is always a good idea.