Literally anything you say for weight loss, someone will contradict it. IF in particular goes against much of our programming, so it triggers folks. Just be a Good example and people will follow, or maybe they won’t , either-way just do your best for you and you’ll be good.
A couple generations of people’s moms telling them Kellogg’s lie of “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” has really done a number on the health of our society.
That and like evey breakfast food seemingly devolving to being 30% high fructose corn syrup.
Yes, it is common, to the point where people who practice IF try to hide it from their close people. Once, a friend of mine who was struggling with extra weight for a long time, told me (paraphrasing), I tried a stupid thing in order to lose weight, please don’t judge. I was curious and promised not to judge, and he revealed: I tried IF. I was literally speechless. I had to explain to him that there’s nothing wrong with IF, it’s actually how our bodies are supposed to function (historically), and he still felt ashamed until I told him that I myself practice it and couldn’t be happier, and ONLY THEN he felt relieved. Imagine. That’s crazy. But yes, the stigma exists.
I think most folks just don’t understand it and think something more extreme is being suggested.
There’s also just a lot of baggage with weight loss. Pressure from all different fronts to look a certain way or not, being told all your life to eat certain ways, and just a ton of moneyed interest wrapped up in it all. That’s just a lot before rolling up to someone and saying ‘yeah, just skip a meal or two.’
The most important thing is finding something that works for ourselves. It’s fine if it doesn’t work for others. We can all take different paths to similar goals.
Yeah. I follow r/loseit and get really frustrated by the people saying “I have a ton of weight to lose, can’t seem to make any progress, and am ready to give up.” All the top responses are tiny stupid things like “oh, you should weigh everything” and “just trust the process.” Trust me, I’ve tried all of that for the last 10 years. What actually works is just not putting food in my face all the time.
The first few times I saw anything related to IF was with drastic transformations using extreme restriction. It was on Instagram and was people hyping keto OMAD with lots of “bro-science.” Id just roll my eyes and keep on scrolling by. It wasn’t until years later that I actually looked into IF more and saw that those types of people are the vocal minority.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Keto or OMAD is wrong or doesn’t work. It’s just on the more intense end of IF that seems unattainable and unsustainable for someone just starting out. They may lump it into fad diets since they don’t know any better.
A lot of people believe that IF is a fad diet. Which is hilarious because IF is the natural state of existence for pretty much all omnivores and carnivores. Grazing, “eat 8 tiny meals per day” type stuff, actually is a fad diet, complete with pseudoscientific claims based on a total misunderstanding of what metabolism is and how it works.
The “starvation mode” misconception is also big, the myth that your body will ignore your fat and start eating your muscles. Which people should intuitively realize is ridiculous. Fat exists as an energy observe. Muscles exist to let you move, which you need to do in order to find food. If this claim were true the human race would have gone extinct before the discovery of fire. It’s so ridiculous that people believe that. It’s like if you had a savings account with $10000 in it and then you had a financial emergency, you’d say “I can’t use the money in my savings account cause I’m too broke, so I’ll have to sell a kidney on the black market to pay my expenses.
There isn’t much you can do to convince people online. The best way you can convince people IRL is to demonstrate a shameless enjoyment of food during the times when you do eat.