askchapo

Intermittent fasting is a fad diet. People have been fasting for various reasons for millennia but the current packaging of specific windows eg 16:8, 20:4 and the touting of this as some type of cure-all for any number of physical/mental ailments is pretty textbook fad diet shit.

Yes people have been fasting for decades or more. People have also been doing various repackaged low carb diets for decades. People have heavily restricted calories for decades. People doing something for decades doesn’t make it healthy or unhealthy.

The concept of fasting is not a fad. “Intermittent fasting” is definitionally a fad diet. Again, we can agree to disagree.

There is a lot of insidious fatphobia and promotion of disordered eating in these conversations and that’s not just my personal opinion. I’d recommend the “Maintenance Phase” podcast to anyone who might be interested in unpacking some of that.

I’m glad intermittent fasting works for some people and think there are people who can do it in a healthy, beneficial way. It can also be done in a very disordered, unhealthy way. I don’t think the benefits should be discussed and promoted without also acknowledging the potential for creating disordered eating habits.

Dietary needs are complex and bodies are weird. I would generally agree that keto is unhealthy and it’s not a diet I would ever do myself or recommend to others. However, it has been shown to control seizures in epileptics to the extent that they’re able to stop taking anti-seizure meds as long as they stick to a strict keto diet. There are studies that corroborate the anecdotal evidence around keto and epilepsy, but doctors really have no idea why it works like this.

So again, I think a “healthy” diet is very individual. This is why I find diet evangelism concerning. What works for you might trigger anorexia in someone else. What works for me might make someone else anemic.

And all diet conversations are rooted in anti-fat bias, but that’s not a conversation most people are ready to have.