However, I’m more interested in the CR benefits of IFing, in particular with older individuals (say above 50 years). Claims range from anywhere improved cardiovascular health to better natural anti-oxidant capacity, and I frankly don’t buy it.

Hence, do you have any links to research papers to this field. I’m really looking into studying this area a little more and appreciate any sort of information. Thanks, and keep up the great work!

“Above this 800 or so calorie threshold hunger signals return and the expected daily ebb and flow of hunger resumes.”

Just a small remark here – your body does not have a way to count the exact number of calories you take, so obviously there isn’t a “treshold”. It’s more like a very strange U curve where in certain caloric ranges people don’t get very hungry. And by the way this depends totally on the macro distribution of the calories. Think about 800 calories of refined carbs and 800 calories of protein/fiber/fat mix. So in my opinion your conclusion here is not very upright.

“Researchers compared a control group fed three meals per day to a group fed one meal. The former group experienced less hunger throughout the day, and in an ad libidum test meal following the fasting phase, the one meal group consumed on average 26.5% more than the three meal-a-day group.”

A pro-IF guy would actually tell you that this study proves that IF reduces ad libitum food intake by 57.83% because they ate only 26.5% more on their only expected meal of the day while the other group has two more meals to eat during the day and in the end they will actually take almost two times more calories.

“There exists a hierarchy of hunger response, fasting serving as the maximal acute deficit and thereby eliciting the most hunger.”

Well there is no way anybody can say what elicites “the most hunger” because there are so many mechanisms controling the hunger response and they cannot be seperated and studied. And if they could, they response to them would be quite subjective. This actually corresponds with my last quote and the fact that the studied IF group experienced more hunger throughout the day. Obviosly if you are used to eating 3 or 5 times a day and you reduce them to 1 you are going to be hungrier. That is because on of the main mechanisms in hunger response is triggered by your eating habits. If you want to prove that generally eating once a day makes you hungrier you have to make at least two more comparisons – a group that’s used to eating once a day vs. 3 or 5 meals a day group. And a group that’s used to eat once a day vs. a group that’s used to eat once a day and now moves to 3 or 5 a day. I will let you think about what results we might expect from such studies…

“Researchers over the past few decades have created a classification system for human body types, physical generalizations indicative of genetic propensities in body shape.”

Actually somatotypology was invented by and for psychologists with a very different goal. And it is an extremely bad way to start any reasoning because people always do it backwards. I will explain you in a second what I mean.

“In overfeeding studies, ectomorphic somatypes have the tendency to fidget or otherwise unconsciously match an increase in caloric intake with a concurrent increase in caloric expenditure.”

You got it backwards. It’s not that people who fidget are ectomorphic, but it’s that if you fidge you are going to be ectomorphic. Take someone considered ectomorphic and make him overeat everyday for some time. Make him stop moving around. (by the some time ago BBC did this experiment for a film and the result was the expected one) Voila he’s not an ectomorph anymore. Or take a mesomorph and put him in a concentration camp (scarce food and a ton of stress from the black dressed nazis who do’t love you) and he won’t be a mesomorph anymore. And if you think that those examples are poor, let me ask you have you ever seen somebody who was extremely athletic in his young years but then he stopped with his activities, stress took over him and he became obese and weak (skinny-fat).

I can continue quoting you but I am going to start repeating myself. Excuse me for the extremely long comment and my english (it’s not my native language). Let me know what you think!

Greetings from Bulgaria.

and by the way if you think that my comment is too long for your blog, just delete it and let me know your opinion about it on my mail – SturmBG@gmail.com