Intermittent fasting = vehicle, not direction

One of the most common things I see and hear is something like, “Yeah I started intermittent fasting to lose fat.” You can replace those last two words with “build muscle” or “recomp” if you want, but it’s all the same.

To this, I say: intermittent fasting is a vehicle, not a direction. 

In other words, intermittent fasting can take you places, but it doesn’t decide the place. You can use intermittent fasting to lose fat, gain muscle, and it’s even been used to do both at the same time. (I find it most useful for “clean bulking,” but that’s just me.)

Reader beware: eating eight meals per day also has the same street cred of being able to lose fat, gain muscle, and recomp. 

So it’s like this:

“I have this roundabout way of how I want to go about losing weight, now how can I configure it to intermittent fasting.”

It’s not:

“I want to lose weight, so I’ll just start intermittent fasting.”

The efficacy of fasting (or anything else, for that matter) depends on how everything is arranged within the concept, not the concept itself. And intermittent fasting, in a nutshell, is simply saying, “I”m only going to eat within these time slots.”

“Eating within time slots” says nothing about fat loss or muscle building or anything else. It’s not like you can take infinite slop and cram your eating into an eight hour window and have intermittent fasting work its magic.

Define your direction, find out what you need to do to get there in some roundabout way, and then, if you’re interest in intermittent fasting, see if you can make it happen.

I’m a fan of intermittent fasting, but I’ll be the first to admit: it’s not for everyone or every situation, and that’s OK because there are many ways to get from point A to point B. The direction comes before the vehicle.