> The one other factor that probably played a role is that I cut out restaurants.
You would be shocked how many calories restaurant food has (usually >1k calories in a single dish -- no matter what kind of restaurant -- and probably more in the US). Personally, I would've assumed this is the more likely primary factor for your weight loss (combined with the fact you probably eat less food overall because you only have two meals when doing IF). You could try going to restaurants again for a few weeks and see if you start gaining weight again.
To be clear, I have tried going to restaurants both before and after I lost a majority of my weight and I still lost weight but not as rapidly.
It appears as though cutting out restaurants made a difference but it’s also easy to underestimate the power of having a morning-based feeding window. People are more insulin sensitive in the morning and have reduced appetite (hence everyone saying “IF is easy, it’s so easy to skip breakfast”).
Definitely. Coming home after traveling to the US for more than few days means constant hunger and snack cravings for a week or so.
The last few times I’ve been trying to limit the unnecessary sugars from sodas and other sugar rich food since you get so much more sugar than in Europe in the regular restaurant food.
You would be shocked how many calories restaurant food has (usually >1k calories in a single dish -- no matter what kind of restaurant -- and probably more in the US). Personally, I would've assumed this is the more likely primary factor for your weight loss (combined with the fact you probably eat less food overall because you only have two meals when doing IF). You could try going to restaurants again for a few weeks and see if you start gaining weight again.
But, if it works for you -- it works for you.