Intermittent Fasting Long-Term for Powerlifting?

Diet and Nutrition
1

So I’ve been doing intermittent fasting for about a month now to cut up drop somebody fat and I really enjoy it But I’m curious to know if this is something that can be done long term as in every day of the week all year long. Powerlifting is my bread and butter and that’s what I would like to continue to do when I try to come back up and start working on increasing my strength in my lifts what are your opinions about doing intermittent fasting but for bulking? I’ve heard conflicting reports just curious what others think

2

It’s not ideal for bulking since you’ll have to eat quite a bit of food at each meal, but for strength it’s fine.

Total calories is what matters most. It doesn’t matter if you eat it in a 12, 8, or 2 hour window.

3

I’m not sure why you’d use intermittent fasting for bulking. I don’t know a ton about it, but it seems counter intuitive to try to increase your food intake while restricting your eating window. That being said, you mentioned you really enjoy it. That’s obviously very important.

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4

Thanks for the responses.

5

I’ve bulked while doing IF (unknowingly). I ate 2 meals a day for a long time.

But depending on how many total calories you need it could be easy or hard.

You can do IF if you only need like 2500-3500 cals, but if you need 4k+ it would be pretty difficult and you would be REALLY uncomfortable for the majority of the day.

6

I like the theory of it, but I think it’s tough to put yourself at maintenance and surplus when you gotta play catch up on calories in your eating window.

I’ve considered doing prolonged fasting for 24hours on the weekend, but I can’t imagine eating anymore than I do already to make up for the deficit

7

It just doesn’t make sense, when your body isn’t processing any more food it will be burning its own tissues for energy. You will get worse results than eating throughout the day.

Even for losing weight, there is nothing magical about it. You just can’t eat that much in a short timeframe so it automatically limits calories. If you ate the same amount of food but spread throughout the day it would give approximately the same results. Maybe better because when you don’t eat for a while your body uses muscle tissue for energy, more than fat.

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8

For power and strength fasting can be helpful also it depends on your calories.

9

why?