Modified “almost” fasting approach?

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

TLDR: whey in water shakes only during day, 1 or 2 solid meals in evening.

Curious BBM thoughts on “almost” intermittent fasting as outlined here: [not linking to their content)

Essentially only consuming lower calorie whey shakes w/ water during the “fasting” period or early parts of the day and saving your calories/whole meals for the later parts of the day?

An OMADish type of schedule typically works well for me (I don’t particular like to prepare/eat/etc. during workday and usually not hungry at all) but I find it really hard to hit protein targets and/or lack energy during training when I start getting into a rhythm for a couple of weeks…

I know this wouldn’t be true “fasting” or OMAD by definition, but it seems logical to me to get best of both worlds of getting multiple protein feedings per day (without ‘eating’) while also backloading calories to the evening to support larger dinners etc. I have done this a few times and it doesn’t seem to negatively affect my appetite.

Any major issues with this approach?

2

In general, I think an individual’s preferred dietary approach affects adherence. In this view, sticking with something you like could be beneficial for generating the outcomes you want. That said, I do not think OMAD, IF, TRF, or this hybrid approach you detail here is likely to best support training later in the day. Seems like that’s been your experience already without sustained success* and that training is important to you. Not sure if trying it again makes much sense to me vs. identifying another strategy with similar adherence levels.

We recently debated a similar topic in our Great Debates series and posted the video:

*Success meaning whatever is important to you regarding dietary influences, e.g. weight management, body comp, performance, health metrics, etc. If you were crushing it with this approach, I suspect you’d just keep doing it regardless of what anyone said :slight_smile: