I’m well into my 4th year of intermittent fasting as a menopausal woman and have easily maintained my 40 pound weight loss. I do agree with you that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to nutrition and eating patterns. But I also think the standard 16:8 schedule that’s so popular is basically amateur hour, and 18:6 isn’t much better. I’m not surprised so many fail with these lax schedules. 6-8 hours of nonstop feeding won’t boot a lot of people out of sugar-burning mode. This means they’ll feel famished and miserable, overeat during that massive 8-hour eating window, never burn their fat stores… then wonder “why doesn’t IF work for me?”

I usually eat once a day, a balanced meal at lunchtime. If I do eat a second time, it’s a (usually healthy) snack hours later (not another meal) and I eat absolutely nothing in between. No diet soda, no chewing gum, etc. “Hanger” is a distant memory to me. So before people decide IF “just doesn’t work” for them they need to know a lot of us thriving long term with IF consider a 16:8 an absolute feast day and a rare indulgence, not an everyday approach.