Let me amplify on what I meant because I wrote a short sentence and didn't spell out the full argument but I think I therefore may have confused... complex subjects don't always work well on a site like this right :-)
I was not under any circumstances suggesting that if you eat junk food you will be OK as long as you Intermittent Fast (IF). For myself, I eat super clean 90% of the time, organic veggies, some nuts and berries, fish, chicken, very little red meat, water, green tea etc. Keto.
Because of the role of insulin (added to the the fact that in developed countries many people have become insulin resistant) when you are eating / digesting you have more insulin in your system and that triggers a cascade of metabolic, hormonal and biochemical reactions, the net sum of which is to store fat, take short cuts with repairing vs building new cells and tendency to put off dealing with toxins vs. breaking them down in the liver. In the west we eat too much, too often, and yes a lot of crap, and so our body never gets that break it needs to catch up. IF provides that down time.
When I said it matters more when you eat than what you eat, my point was that you will get health benefits by just adopting IF, even if you change nothing else. However, of course, the optimum is to eat healthy while doing IF. Most people recommend 90% clean with some cheating maybe 1 or 2 days so you are not a monk...
In addition, I was making the point that I have read stuff that suggests (and I am not sure where I stand on this, because I am not a body builder - just a reasonably fit person) that the practices that some people use around the gym workouts like carb loading before and cramming protein within 30 mins after, may not really add all that much.
For example, lots of people train fasted, and report great energy, and as long as you get enough protein in general, and in particular over the 72 hours post work-out, it doesn't seem to make that much difference vs cramming protein right afterwards. As long as your body has sufficient protein overall, you will be OK.
Now I am not a body builder - I just stay fit, so I was never doing the protein drinks during and after workouts. I know a lot of people who do and I was just offering a perspective on that.
This video has 3 people interviewed - all three make great points but the most interesting is Dr Rhonda Patrick - which starts at 12.33 into the video.
"Why you should do Intermittent Fasting | Joe Rogan feat. GSP, Dr. Peter Attia, Dr. Rhonda Patrick"
At minute 15.30 or so she also speaks to the fact that in tests on mice, they do better eating 'normally' using IF than eating whenever they want. She speaks to the fact that yes if they eat only lard and sugar they will still get fat, but outside of this extreme in essence the restricted hours are the most important factor in gaining muscle and losing fat.
hope that helps?
