Jim KatsoulisJim AI — Your Personal Guide to Living at Your Goal Weight

3 reasons intermittent fasting doesn't work

21 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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A short YouTube explainer by Jim Katsoulis listing three common reasons intermittent fasting (IF) "doesn't work": (1) people try to change too fast — he recommends progressing gradually (start at 8 hours eating window, then 10, 12, 14); (2) treating 16-hour fasts as mandatory — there is nothing magical about 16 hours and fasting windows should be customized to avoid overeating; (3) believing IF is sufficient — fasting is a tactical way to reduce the eating window but must be combined with mindset, lifestyle changes, and cleaner eating to get full results.

Questions this video answers

Start at 8 hours eating window, then move to 10, then 12, then 14.

December 21, 2025

Chapters

Three reasons intermittent fasting does not work. Number one is that people jump into it too quickly. If you go from eating 16 hours a day to eating only eight hours a day, instantly it's going to feel overwhelming to you and it's probably going to be too hard to keep up. So realize that you can work your way up. You can start at 8, then move to 10, then to 12, then to 14. Which brings us to 2. You do not have to do 16 hours of not eating. There's nothing magical about that. You can decide how long you want to not eat for based on how you feel. One of the biggest mistakes I see people making is trying to get to 16 hours that last two hours. They get so hungry that by the time they get to eat, they're way overeating. So you can customize how long you want to fast to how you feel about it. And number three is thinking that intermittent fasting is all you need. It's not. Intermittent fasting is a tactic to reduce your eating window so you consume less calories. But you also need to work on your mindset and your lifestyle and cleaning up your eating when you are reading to get the full results you want to get.