The only reason why you get that hungry is because your body is scheduled to eat that often. While I'm doing intermittent fasting I don't even get remotely hungry until my feeding window.
Same here, except lately I have been stepping up my workouts, and my body has been saying "FEED ME MORE" if I don't give it enough in the first 7 of the 8 hours, so then I am stuffing food in.
As far as "kick starting your metabolism" or however you want to phrase it, there are many ways to do that other than feed yourself, expecially when your feeding yourself calories you don't need. Your body won't burn any fat if you keep giving it calories, AKA the proportion of calories that goes to building muscle vs. feeding your body otherwise will be different. With IF your body uses stored energy/fat to run. If you eat constantly, your body is always going to use those calories before the store fat because its easier. And more than likely your meals are so small, that your not giving your body enough protein and good carbs/fats in those small meals to do the work it needs to do, specifically after your workout, and before bed.
Now you can make the argument that macros are macros and it doesn't matter when you eat them, therefore with the same macros with different timing your body would be forced to burn the same amount of fat, or even more with the spaced out meals, because of "upping your metabolism", but its not that clear cut. Thats old science, as has been stated. What is more likely is that your body more effectively burns fat in a diet like lean gains, where you excercise fasted and feed immediately post workout. Then feed, which puts nearly all of the food intake to work, adding none to little fat, assuming proper diet that is.
Constant feeding actually causes your body to store more fat, because your mind tells your body that you have plenty of food, and that it doesn't need to use what fat is stored in the body.
This can get infinitely complicated and debated. But the facts are that IF works, and small meals CAN work, especially in a bulk (IMO).
Drink alot of water, eat clean and at or slighly above your maint. macros, workout to hard, to failure, with volume, and sleep. basic recipe for success.
After that it's all 99% Bullsheet.
I actually train fasted so I don't eat anything beforehand. I actually feel better fasted than if I ate an hour prior or so. I think it's because when you eat it slowly digests and your body is putting in energy to digest and give your body the nutrition from the food you ate versus just using energy that your body already has stored. Also, I've read/heard that your body produces more HGH in a fasted state so that's another benefit of training fasted.
If you train multiple times a day you could train fasted the first time, then eat post workout. What you'd do really depends on how spaced out your sessions are.
Body produces HGH in response to stress/fasting.
There was also a recent study that a slowly drank protein shake PRE workout actually was beneficial, but that was for muscle growth, not fat loss, but I don't see a pure protein shake hurting. I am going to play around with it a little bit and break my IF rules a little with the shake 1 hr before workout.
And yes it feels great, I do get fatigued in longer workouts at times though, BCAAs would help a lot I'm sure.
