IF + CICO?

IF newbie here. I’m currently on day 2, slowly testing the waters to see if this lifestyle is for me. I’m curious—as a long time follower of CICO—will IF still benefit me assuming I know my TDEE and am eating at a calorific deficit? I’m just trying to understand the science of IF in relation to the science of CICO. For more context, the CICO method hasn’t been working for me lately. I can’t seem to get my shit together long enough to see real results. Essentially, I’m using IF to kickstart mindful eating and stop the incessant snacking. But in tracking my calories yesterday I realized I wound up eating the same amount—just obviously within a shorter window of time. From what I understand, the fasting period burns fat right? If so, can I assume I’ll see results faster than with CICO alone?

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i understand IF as achieving two things:

automatic CICO - it’s much harder to blow past your TDEE if you’re only eating in a 4 hour window or whatever. with a small enough eating window, even getting your daily calories can be something of a math problem.
hormone regulation - so as you alluded to, you’re more likely to burn fat in a fasted state, since that’s all you’ve got. but related to this is that your hormone profile will (probably) change such that your body is totally comfortable regulating its own blood sugar this way, without the requirement of constant food and the cravings that come with it. this may make it very easy to go a long time without eating, and to eat much less. in other words, even if CICO is doing all the fat loss work, IF makes it a lot easier to execute on from a psychological/hormonal/appetite perspective.

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>From what I understand, the fasting period burns fat right? If so, can I assume I’ll see results faster than with CICO alone?

Granted there are some folks who believe this, but for my two cents and experience not really. Calories and energy balance are still the driving force behind our changes in weight. Though I do believe that IF has a lot of benefits to adhering to our goals though.

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Weight loss can‘t occur without calorie reduction. Why IF works as a weight loss method for some is by reducing when you can eat it reduces ones calorie intake. IF does not work for everyone however and that’s usually due to ingesting large amounts of calories within the eating window which blows the deficit out of the water and sometimes worse creates binge cycles for some too. It sounds like you are just at the beginning of trying IF, but a long time calorie controlled dieter? Maybe less focus on calories for a few weeks and more on ditching snacking and portion control? Especially ditching snacking. There are a few ways you could go about x-ing snacking out of your life and IF is one, but keep in mind you will have to be consistent for a few months in order to break the habit. Yes, snacking is a habit and really almost nobody requires a daily snack. I have a very strict rule about snacking in my home, including for children, which is eat at your meals until you are full and you can totally wait until your next one. As a matter of fact your biological processes would prefer you not to stuff food down every 2 hours or whatever nonsense mass marketing fed into our heads To get us to eat more which means buy more. I also don’t keep snack foods stocked in my pantry. I have children so if they see cookies that’s all they are gonna reach for, but this also helps me Think about sweets less. We do however eat cookies and icecream, because it’s fun and yummy and life’s short. When we do we go down to the ice cream shop and get a scoop for lunch instead of eating a normal lunch. All, I’m saying is you can quit snacking. You can use IF to help you set a no snacking rule by determining what times a day are snacking cryptonite and excluding most of that time from your feeding window. Or you can just say no more snacking without IF, it either way you have to use consistency to break the habit, which does require you to will yourself and use distractions for a couple of months. The best distractions are doing something that uses your mind and body a bit. So, taking a walk, knitting, doing a chore something simple for like 15-20 minutes.