Depends on they length of the fast. Intermittent fasting focuses on the benefits of not eating for extended periods, and fast lengths can vary from 12 hours to entire days. Time-restricted eating focuses on the benefits of eating daily within a specific time window.
The "standard" 16/8 intermittent fast would get all the benefits of time restricted eating as well.
Well, that's a shame. I hate eating in the morning, and love eating in the evening. I find it surprising that earlier humans in history didn't follow this pattern, allowing the body to adapt to digesting food later at night.
Me too; I find it easy to fast when I skip eating in the morning / afternoon — its like my body realizes its not getting any food and turns off the hunger.
"On the time-restricted regimen, the men had lower insulin, reduced levels of oxidative stress, less nighttime hunger and significantly lower blood pressure."
If I eat in the morning I'm ravenous until bed time :(
Likewise, I normally don't eat until late afternoon or evening, and I'm usually not hungry until then. But if I eat breakfast, I then want to keep eating all day!
“When overweight individuals with >14 h eating duration ate for only 10–11 h daily...they reduced body weight, reported being energetic, and improved sleep.”
The 10 hour period was self selected. So could have been morning or evening I guess.
This doesn’t seem very surprising to me. Maybe there are other details that I missed.
I just tried intermittent fasting (16hr fast, 8hr feeding window). It was very challenging at first and I had to catch myself multiple times opening the cupboard at night by habit, but it did help me realize how much snacking I really do.
My fat % is way down and muscle mass up, so it's been very positive so far and much easier after week 2 when my body fully adapted to the new eating style.
I've been doing this for about a year now and feel better than ever. The reason I started was a simple view that our bodies spent hundreds of thousands of years, millions if you want to go back to very closely related ancestor species, doing things in a very specific way. And then in a time period of some 2000-3000 years, we've turned everything upside down in terms of the foods we eat, how much we eat, when we eat, and so on. And if you look at society today, the results have been catastrophic.
I've never been much of a snacker and have always eaten reasonably well. I was not fat to begin with - but shed a good amount of weight, and also saw an increase in muscle mass. I've also experienced an increase in energy which I assumed was placebo, but going on a year now it hasn't changed. And all of this seemingly from no effort of my own. I don't make any particular effort in my eating besides eating within an 8 hour window each day. The only slightly difficult part was going to bed hungry, depending on your schedule. But somehow your body rapidly adjusts to that as well. When I first started I'd toss and turn on an empty stomach. After a month or two I was sleeping like a baby.
I bought a WeightGurus scale. It syncs the data to my phone. From what I understand any of the at home measurements like measuring your waist are pretty inaccurate and digital is the only real way to go.
It's actually exactly the other way around - All digital scales are inaccurate to the point where it's better not to measure at all. The only reasonably accurate method for measuring body fat at home is using calipers at different parts of your body
> you just want a number to track even if it’s grossly inaccurate
I can confirm that even the cheap digital scales will give you the trend with the same approximate shape as high quality measuring systems. If you have enough data points (like measuring 1-2 times per day or over a long period) any outlier will be excluded and the overall trend will be very close to reality. Which is enough for all intents and purposes.
N.B. fasting in general works best if you are eating a high fat diet, instead of eating a lot a carbohydrates. You might also need more salt in your diet, including during your fasting ;-)
Carbohydrates leads to raised insulin levels, which inhibits the consumption of fat from your fat store. Our body is pretty smart, so when insulin goes down, it begins to consume your fat for energy, a metabolic state called ketosis.
But until that insulin goes down, what you're experiencing is the dreaded keto flu. So you can experience fatigue, dizziness, even head aches ... which if serious are not normal and you should stop your fast ;-)
Anyway, for successful fasting what I found is this:
1. eat high fat, low carbs meals; if you can't go full keto, at least do that just before starting your fast
2. you might get an electrolytes imbalance, which is THE reason for dizziness and headaches: the solution is to take salt supplements — e.g. right now I'm in my second day of water fasting, when I woke up I felt a little dizzy, but took 4 grams of salt (about one teaspoon) and now I feel great; there are also "salt tablets" on the market btw, which are easier to swallow
NOTE: there's science behind the keto diet, studies and high profile medics backing it up, but there's also a lot of denial about it. One good book describing what the deal is with insulin resistance, why it makes us fat and why the keto diet is healthy would be the "The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss" by Dr. Jason Fung.
Here's the podcast dedicated to it, talking of keto and fasting; it's a great podcast: http://obesitycodepodcast.com
It works fine with a carbohydrate diet too, provided by "carbohydrates" we mean healthy, complex carbs and not sugary junk. Professor Valter Longo has been getting a lot of buzz lately for this kind of intermittent fasting diet.
His diet is low in protein and fat; he gets furious when he sees doctors advocating the opposite, a trendy practice he believes speeds aging.
There are only 3 macro-nutrients: fat, proteins and carbohydrates.
If you go low fat, you necessarily go low protein too, so you need to replace that with carbohydrates. Even more, you now need "fortified" carbohydrates to get the needed B vitamins and other nutrients usually found in fatty foods, and those will be refined carbohydrates; which is what the American Health Association now recommends. Yes, they actually recommend that people should eat enriched cereals and other bullshit like that.
A high carbs diet made of "healthy, complex carbs" is a myth ;-)
> he gets furious when he sees doctors advocating the opposite, a trendy practice he believes speeds aging.
You cannot claim that without evidence. Nutrition is at this point like alchemy and I won't trust furious alchemists.
Valter Longo is a tenured professor that's been nominated for a Nobel Prize based on his work in nutrition and fasting. I'd hardly call him an alchemist.
There are lots of us living very healthy lives on this "mythical" high carb diet. The Okinawans, for example, before their diet was corrupted by processed western foods, got 85% of their calories from sweet potatoes and were the healthiest and longest lived people in the world.
The only B vitamin that's difficult to get on a high carb diet is B12. But that's only because we've removed the bacteria that produce it from our diet by sterilizing our water supplies and improving food hygiene. Animals also get it from bacteria and a lot of commercial meat has added B12. Check here for an exhaustive list of B vitamin sources:
> Valter Longo is a tenured professor that's been nominated for a Nobel Prize based on his work in nutrition and fasting. I'd hardly call him an alchemist.
Sorry but nominations for Nobel prizes are kept secret for 50 years. I highly doubt he was nominated the same year he was born.
>If you go low fat, you necessarily go low protein too, so you need to replace that with carbohydrates. Even more, you now need "fortified" carbohydrates to get the needed B vitamins and other nutrients usually found in fatty foods, and those will be refined carbohydrates; which is what the American Health Association now recommends. Yes, they actually recommend that people should eat enriched cereals and other bullshit like that.
'B vitamins' is very vague. Are you talking about B12? If so, farm animals are supplemented with that anyway - so it's just supplements with more steps. Also, once you hit 40-60 most people have problems absorbing enough B12 and should be supplementing regardless of what they eat.
>A high carbs diet made of "healthy, complex carbs" is a myth ;-)
Hmm, how so? The benefits of HCLF are well documented
I do 16/8 I.F fasting on a HCLF diet and have never experienced any of those issues.
There is plenty of evidence showing the benefits of ketosis on the body, and benefits from people switching from SAD to Keto reversing diabetes and the likes - but that's more down to calorie restriction. With regular keto you're raising your risk long-term for diabetes, heart-disease, cancer and stroke due to increased meat/dairy/egg consumption.
You're far better just eating a varied diet with as little animal produce as possible and doing I.F which releases 5x the amount of ketones than the keto diet.
That's not enough to trigger those symptoms for many people, as it depends on how much salt you have in your diet and your own metabolism of course. But do a 36 to a 72 hours fasting, which is otherwise a very healthy thing to do from time to time and you'll experience it head on.
>> "that's more down to calorie restriction"
Why did the plane crash? Due to gravity. What should the plane have done to not go down? It should've had more lift.
Now tell me, how does that help in establishing why the plane actually crashed and what to do to solve it? That's how "calorie restriction" sounds as an explanation, being a prima facie observation. Of course you're reducing calories. But HOW you're reducing those calories makes all the difference.
Another one: Why do people get rich? Because their spending are less than their earnings. What should people do to get rich? They should cut their spending or raise their earnings. Well duh! But it's a totally useless observation, isn't it?
>> "With regular keto you're raising your risk long-term for diabetes, heart-disease, cancer and stroke due to increased meat/dairy/egg consumption."
That's absolute bullshit.
Here's one of the largest studies on dietary fat, done on 50,000 women, spanning for 8 years, showing that going low fat did absolutely nothing to prevent heart disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28515068
I also wish people would stop posting YouTube videos btw. I don't watch YouTube bullshit. Post links to studies that I can verify.
>Now tell me, how does that help in establishing why the plane actually crashed and what to do to solve it? That's how "calorie restriction" sounds as an explanation, being a prima facie observation. Of course you're reducing calories. But HOW you're reducing those calories makes all the difference.
A ketogenic diet can also reduce hyperglycemia in diabetes, but it is not the wisest choice for the long term, diabetes or not. Addressing the cause of the disease, excess unhealthy fats in the case of diabetes, is better than merely treating the symptoms (hyperglycemia), especially if you can do both with the same intervention (http://www.pcrm.org/health/diabetes-resources).
>Here's one of the largest studies on dietary fat, done on 50,000 women, spanning for 8 years, showing that going low fat did absolutely nothing to prevent heart disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28515068
Whole-food plant-based diets are the only diets shown to reverse heart disease in a clinical setting:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17518696
CONCLUSIONS:
Long-term consumption of a low-calorie low-protein vegan diet or regular endurance exercise training is associated with low cardiometabolic risk. Moreover, our data suggest that specific components of a low-calorie low-protein vegan diet provide additional beneficial effects on blood pressure.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15172426
Randomized trial data suggest atherosclerosis progression and coronary heart disease events are minimized when LDL is lowered to <70 mg/dl
Dr. Kim Williams - the President of American College of Cardiology said, "There are two types of cardiologists: vegans and those who haven't read the data."
Keto absolutely works. The first time I did it was from sedentary and about 60lbs overweight. It felt like a life hack how fast I was losing weight.
Fast forward to a new, leaner, me and I try exercising properly. On Keto there's no way I can exercise. Whilst I felt fine day to day and had a clear head, anything more energetic than walking was a huge effort.
Years later, having dropped keto, a friend and I were very heavily into mid-distance running (10k and half marathon). We weren't particularly fast, but we were doing probably 50k per week training and several events per year.
We decided to do a burst of keto to try to drop a few more pounds whilst maintaining the running since we'd seen some blog posts claiming it was possible to avoid the lack of energy.
First run post keto went from us running routine 55minute 10k to me abandoning the run altogether part way through at 64minutes because I was in agony.
I had a similar experience when trying a keto diet - I struggled to cycle up a single short hill on my commute home, despite being a moderately-fit regular cyclist. Bringing the carbs back in solved this. YMMV.
It's interesting that even some of the more pro-keto/paleo/primal blogs often recommend carbs (albeit appropriate quantities) to support any significant level of exercise.
Anecdotally I’ve noticed some benefits from skipping breakfast and eating only within an eight hour window. My blood sugar and energy levels are more even throughout the day, I can skip a meal if necessary when traveling or something without feeling too hungry, and I’ve lost a few pounds I was having a hard time getting rid of any other way.
In the morning I just drink coffee black and then have a somewhat early lunch and dinner. Maybe it would be more effective to skip dinner instead but this seems to be working.
I've skipped breakfast for years and my body is not missing it.
That said breakfast may be important when doing intermittent fasting for losing weight, because the secret there is to not let your metabolism get used to a certain rhythm, or in other words it's best if you are little unpredictable in what meals you eat or skip — so when doing IF, in some days I eat breakfast and skip dinner.
And when eating dinner it's best if you eat light, b/c digestion during the night sleep can make you tired during the next day. My general rule is to eat about half what I ate for lunch.
Why would unpredictability be good? If you eat at the same time your body starts preparing to digest the food before you eat it, making for a faster, better digestion of the food.
This is ridiculous - the point of choosing a predetermined window for feeding is so your body adapts to only expecting food within that window. Routine is incredibly important for being able to stick to something like IF. If you're fighting your body at every step by, for example, being unpredictable, you're just screwing yourself.
This seems unlikely in evolutionary terms. It's more likely that eating times were unpredictable for most of our history and that our bodies have evolved to prepare for digestion based on external stimuli such as sight and smell of food.
This is completely unsubstantiated. Worse yet, the "from an evolutionary standpoint" trope is frequently (ab)used to support some kind of pseudoscientific idea/diet (Paleo springs to mind here). If you have a real, coherent argument based on verifiable truth to make that is great, but right now you're just making something up and running with it because it feels right to you. Nobody benefits in this scenario, least of all you.
The difference between us back then and us now is context. We live in an age of complete overwhelming external stimulus. You see food or calorie-laden drinks everywhere you look. The point of routine, which is also an evolutionary trait, is to reduce reliance on willpower and avoid wasting energy on making decisions. These are real problems that we have right now because of our body's greedy, opportunistic behavior (which was evolutionarily advantageous when food wasn't so abundant and also had completely different forms).
Different people have different needs. My brother could skip breakfast at will since he was a kid; I would go on a murder spree without my morning food. He never craved carbs in the same way I did, and has a very different body structure.
For the record, there are other ways to do IF: I am pretty happy skipping lunch, because eating mid-day makes me sleepy and slow anyway.
Before I started doing this I also would have a hard time doing without breakfast. And even with breakfast if I had a strong cup of coffee I would get shaky and lightheaded. So it seemed counter-intuitive to me that eating nothing at all would be better but it's worked out that way.
Not saying that's true for you but I thought I couldn't go without breakfast until I actually tried it.
I also would go on a murder spree without my morning food. But then I stopped eating breakfast and ... it worked.
Here's what I did:
1. Make sure you eat late in the evening (I like to eat a snack at 11pm or later)
2. Lower your carb intake
3. Up your protein intake
4. Up your fats
5. Generally have a large dinner instead of a large lunch
I shifted my schedule because I work out in the evening and it makes sense to eat a large meal afterwards. Helps you recover. And I eat late at night because I usually go to bed between 2am and 3am. Need energy.
Part of this shifting schedule was that I gradually reduced the size of my breakfast and eventually removed it. In the mornings I'm not doing anything physically demanding so I don't need that much energy and my large evening intake is still good enough.
That said, I always wake up with a growling stomach and sometimes even hunger pains. They go away after I have some morning tea (warm liquid) and my body generally forgets its hungry if I make it wait like 20 or 30 minutes before I give in.
As a bonus, my bodyfat percentage has gone down to a stable 11% while maintaining the same weight.
Oh yeah, I also drink 2 to 3 cans of Coke Zero per day to help with my sodium intake. Especially with the amount of working out I do I get leg cramps when I forego soda.
Maybe it’s placebo, then. Whatever it is I’ve noticed a clear connection between cutting coke and cramps coming back.
Of course my experiment wasn’t super rigorous and double blind so it could be completely wrong. It’s hard to know. But when it comes to body stuff I find it’s usually best not to overthink. If something works for you, keep doing it. Every once in a while try removing stuff you do to see if there’s an effect.
Just to speak to the contrary, I’ve been using 16:8 for a few months, simply because the evidence for the health benefits of short fasting seems reasonable, and anyway it’s stopped me late night snacking.
One downside is that immediately after lunch I find myself very very drowsy. Sufficiently so that on some days I have to disappear into a meeting room for 10 minutes for a nap.
> Sufficiently so that on some days I have to disappear into a meeting room for 10 minutes for a nap.
Pretty common in some European countries and there are plenty of studies showing the positive benefits of "power napping". Shame it's so frowned upon where I'm from (UK).
I had the same problem. I used to think that drinking a cup of coffee after lunch would help, and it did, but after a few months it stopped being effective and only made it harder to fall asleep in later in the evening. However, about a month ago I started aggressively fixing my sleep schedule and stopped consuming any coffee, and I now don't experience these drowsy after lunch periods at all.
Had a friend in university, he did military service for 1 year and the only thing he had for breakfast during that time was a strong black coffee without any sugar nor milk.
He screwed up his digestive tract for good - there is apparently something in coffee that is quite aggressive on stomach and gets neutralized when mixed with any sugar/milk/food. He will never be able to eat vast array of common foods - things like marmelades and other basic food. Sorry I don't have any further info, has been few years ago.
He might have some unique predisposition for this, don't know, but better be careful and put at least some milk in it. It makes it much more filling anyway
That definitely sounds like some predisposition.
The whole idea around intermittent fasting revolves around eating in a specific time window, outside of that you don't consume any calories at all.
Many people I know of do this, in order to lose some weight or gain muscles without adding too much fat, never heard of this problem.
For another anecdote, I have been drinking black coffee, and only black coffee, for the first four to six hours of the day. Sometimes water as well.
I have done this for about six years without damaging my digestion in any detectable way. I would bet money your friend has or had a Helicobacter pylori infection; treatment is antibiotics.
Coffee can be quite acidic which with people with overactive stomachs can cause issues such as acid reflex, ulcer etc.
Instant coffee tends not to be as acidic same goes for cold brews and there are other ways to neutralize the acidity.
If you produce too much acid then intermediate fasting is not a good idea to begin with unless you also take supplements to control your stomach acidity.
I used this quite consistently to drop about 10kg (gradually but quite steadily) to compete in weight-class sporting events. It was really easy as compared to most other methods of weight control.
Lunch->dinner may not be as ideal from the circadian rhythms approach (as per the article) as breakfast->late lunch, but it's sure easier on family/social life.
I skip breakfast, lunch, and have a 3 hour window for eating in the evening. I have more energy during the day, clearer thinking, and dropped some pounds.
Related: the jetlag fast. Fasting for 12-16 hours and then eating your next meal in the morning in your new destination is supposed to help adjust to jetlag faster.
I think they're on to something with the intermittent fasting but starting early in the day is not a convincing argument for a night owl like me. I'd like to see them compare the early starting six or eight hour intermittent fasting group to a later one to see if there is a difference and include morning larks in the first one and night owls in the second. My hypothesis is that the groups would fare similarly but without the study we won't know.
I find it very surprising that the first meal should be after getting up. It seems unlikely to me that our hunter and gatherer foragers had immediate access to food after getting up. Also the article mentions multiple times that food consumption during times of little or no daylight is messing with our internal clocks, but I wonder if that is actually true, because in Winter we only have daylight from about 8am to 4pm, often less. I eat when my body tells me it is hungry, which literally can happen at any time of the day. Sometimes I am physically active for most of the day (sports) and then I am normally pretty hungry at even 9 or 10pm and I think it would be pretty unhealthy not to listen to my own body. This article is pretty much bollocks, the only rule for a healthy lifestyle is: Listen to your body. Don't follow any dogmatic approach!
> Also if it was as easy as "Listen to your body" do you think we would be having all these obesity problems now?
Yes! this is a common misconception. "listen to your body" is not the same as "eat whatever you feel like eating". Your tongue/appetite/addictions can tell you many harmful things. Listening to your body requires a lot of training and sensitivity, otherwise my body keeps telling me to eat cakes ;)
You're right. Your body getting rounder and heavier each year is its way of screaming for help :). Listening to it doesn't just mean "tastes good, means my body likes it". It means changing your habits based on all signals your body sends.
No, that's tasting good in the moment then feeling horrible and crashing afterwards. I understand his comments not very scientifically rigorous, but the message is pretty clear. Eat healthy, work out, feel good. It's pretty obvious when I'm doing something unhealthy, though maybe if you've had horrible diet/exercise your entire life you need to read up on healthy foods/workout routines
But "you need to read up on healthy foods/workout routines" is something completely different from "listen to your body".
The two statements are similar in one way, though: Completely useless as advice that will get people healthier. "listen to your body" will get people to eat what they wan't. "you need to read up on healthy foods/workout routines" will get people to read all sorts of bad advice. Like, for example: "listen to your body".
People might have to learn how to listen. Many modern diets don't really give kids an opportunity to experience different things. How can you know what your body wants if you never had the chance to try?
It is a question of being exposed to a wide array of options and and then of being able to feel what is needed. Compared to a violent craving for sugar and fast food the signal is much more muted.
So it's not just "listen to your body" it's more like "learn to listen to the specific right signals that your body is whispering very, very softly while yelling for more sugar". Is that right?
I'm sorry. This is horrible advice. In fact I would not call it advice at all. Basically you are just saying "do the right thing" without specifying what "the right thing" actually is.
It's not my advice, I know that for many many people it does not work. I'm just saying that's how I understand it and for me it does work. It is hard to imagine it is fundamentally impossible for most, but it might well be.
> Listen to your body. Don't follow any dogmatic approach!
When my body tells me to inject more drugs into my veins because it feels good I should really listen to my body! Your comment is pretty much bollocks to be honest. My example is reductio ad absurdum of course but the point still stands. If we were to listen to our body 24/7 we'd all be mindless instagram/facebook/dopamine zombies.
The slogan should probably be "Learn about your body." Also, there may be some truth to the second part which resonates with what Arnold says: "Shock your body!"
I never interpreted "listen to your body" as "give in to all your body's whims", it's more like: if in your experience you feel better after doing X, then X is probably good for you.
Yes, precisely, if your body tells you to eat cake all day and there are no other consequences then why not?! However if you get fat and unhealthy then guess what - your body tells you to stop eating cake like a maniac. So my argument still stands - listen to your body.
> I find it very surprising that the first meal should be after getting up. It seems unlikely to me that our hunter and gatherer foragers had immediate access to food after getting up.
Well, there can be leftovers from the previous day hunt or something.
> “If you’re constantly eating at a time of day when you’re not getting bright light exposure, then the different clock systems become out of sync,”
So if you live in a part of the world when the sun sets at 2 or 3PM in the winter, you will likely not have a very social eating life following these recommendations.
There's some truth to that I suppose. But, TBH, this comment was mind bending to me. May I remind you that it is possible to eat with friends even though there's no business preparing your food? :)
Without context, that is not a helpful statement. For starters, a 60 day fast will lead to a very large loss of weight, so unless the faster is exceedingly above the ideal weight at the start, it sounds dangerous.
> Without context, that is not a helpful statement.
On the contrary, it started a discussion.
> For starters, a 60 day fast will lead to a very large loss of weight
Approximately 80 lbs in my case.
I started the fast at 37% bodyfat, according to my somewhat reliable Omron scale which uses Bioelectrical Impedance to measure body fat.
> so unless the faster is exceedingly above the ideal weight at the start, it sounds dangerous.
From my experience, fasting is the opposite of dangerous.
If you're a healthy adult, you can easily fast for 7 days. But yes, you do need the fat stores, though I'm counting that 7 days of fat stores as implicit in 'healthy adult'.
Well, that statement requires a lot more detail. Straight on 60 days is simply infeasible, let alone sustainable. Intermittent fasting is something else.
Please make sure to provide context when making tall claims like that, which could lead others down the wrong road!
Congratulations on a great decision. I'm at the most 10 kg overweight (86 Kg/ 20% body fat right now) and I regularly go a week without ingesting anything but water and electrolytes. Shooting for 20 days of prolonged fasting in August.
I've found it to be the easiest to stick to diet I've ever tried, and I've done everything. If you struggle with moderation, fasting for prolonged periods has been much more productive for me. Not only do you burn fat 3-5x faster than any other diet, but your cravings go away incredibly quickly. I used to compulsively eat 3 chocolate croissants a day and after a couple of long fasts, I don't really care for them.
The emotional benefits are almost bigger. After 3 days without food my mind stops racing and my anxiety melts away. It feels like zen no-mind, and much stronger than I've been able to achieve by meditating.
Needless to say I'm a fan of going without food now, to the point where I hope to do it regularly for the rest of my life (unless evidence comes out pointing to it being bad for your health). Happy to answer any questions that pop up about fasting.
> Shooting for 20 days of prolonged fasting in August.
Awesome. You should be able to do that no problem. Just make sure you're supplementing plenty of sodium, potassium and magnesium.
> The emotional benefits are almost bigger. After 3 days without food my mind stops racing and my anxiety melts away. It feels like zen no-mind, and much stronger than I've been able to achieve by meditating.
This was my experience as well. Somewhere between day 7 and day 10 everything just got easier.
That's really good to hear. How was your libido through the 60 days? Mine pretty much goes away by day 3. That's been the thing preventing me from going longer, girlfriends don't take kindly to the lack of action between the sheets.
On electrolytes, last time I fasted for 5 days I only drank Snake Juice (salts dissolved in water taken through the day) and it did wonders for me. The guy promoting it is more than a little on the wacko side, but he hit the nail on the head with that recipe.
I'd be curious to know why the many online advocates of intermittent fasting (and other time restricted diets) think it's any different than the many other fad diets that have come, gone, and come again.
Diets in general seem to bring out the obsessive optimization that many (especially on this website) are prone too and the "one quick trick" mentality.
I'll be surprised if there is ever any better advice than "eat food. not too much. mostly plants".
Because unlike other fad diets I've actually experienced weight loss, less hunger, better focus, more stable energy levels, lower blood pressure, better sleep, not to mention cost savings on food, since starting a 16/8 intermittent fast. YMMV, but for many people the benefits are quite stark and palpable beyond possible placebo effect.
Sure it's annecdotal, but there's serious science behind some of the benefits (see this article among other studies). To flip your question around, why are you skeptics so certain that it's just another fad diet that will come and go? IF can actually be a useful enforcement mechanism for the first two parts of "eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables"
> why are you skeptics so certain that it's just another fad diet that will come and go?
Because, like most skeptics, we have seen this pattern before. Supposed scientific support and loads of anecdotal evidence are common to all popular fad diets. The scientific support of IF is also much less solid than it's advocates would have you believe.
> IF can actually be a useful enforcement mechanism for the first two parts of "eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables"
I agree with this - so can basically any other fad diet. People that recognize IF as a method of enforcing a basic CICO diet, I agree with. There are plenty of people that, like any other fad diet, think that IF is somehow special in ways unrelated to it's restriction of calories. That's what makes it the same as any other fad diet to me.
> I've actually experienced weight loss, less hunger, better focus, more stable energy levels, lower blood pressure, better sleep
People report this from atkins, vegan, paleo, keto, juice cleanse, weight watchers, south beach, etc. I am happy that you've found a diet that works for you. I hope that everyone finds a healthy diet that works for them.
I just want people to realize that CICO will always be the key to weight loss regardless of how it is achieved, and "eat food. not too much. mostly plants" will (probably) always be the key to a health diet.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadThe "standard" 16/8 intermittent fast would get all the benefits of time restricted eating as well.
"On the time-restricted regimen, the men had lower insulin, reduced levels of oxidative stress, less nighttime hunger and significantly lower blood pressure."
If I eat in the morning I'm ravenous until bed time :(
“When overweight individuals with >14 h eating duration ate for only 10–11 h daily...they reduced body weight, reported being energetic, and improved sleep.”
The 10 hour period was self selected. So could have been morning or evening I guess.
This doesn’t seem very surprising to me. Maybe there are other details that I missed.
My fat % is way down and muscle mass up, so it's been very positive so far and much easier after week 2 when my body fully adapted to the new eating style.
I've never been much of a snacker and have always eaten reasonably well. I was not fat to begin with - but shed a good amount of weight, and also saw an increase in muscle mass. I've also experienced an increase in energy which I assumed was placebo, but going on a year now it hasn't changed. And all of this seemingly from no effort of my own. I don't make any particular effort in my eating besides eating within an 8 hour window each day. The only slightly difficult part was going to bed hungry, depending on your schedule. But somehow your body rapidly adjusts to that as well. When I first started I'd toss and turn on an empty stomach. After a month or two I was sleeping like a baby.
Highly recommended.
In most cases any measurement instrument will do, you just want a number to track even if it’s grossly inaccurate.
I can confirm that even the cheap digital scales will give you the trend with the same approximate shape as high quality measuring systems. If you have enough data points (like measuring 1-2 times per day or over a long period) any outlier will be excluded and the overall trend will be very close to reality. Which is enough for all intents and purposes.
Carbohydrates leads to raised insulin levels, which inhibits the consumption of fat from your fat store. Our body is pretty smart, so when insulin goes down, it begins to consume your fat for energy, a metabolic state called ketosis.
But until that insulin goes down, what you're experiencing is the dreaded keto flu. So you can experience fatigue, dizziness, even head aches ... which if serious are not normal and you should stop your fast ;-)
Anyway, for successful fasting what I found is this:
1. eat high fat, low carbs meals; if you can't go full keto, at least do that just before starting your fast
2. you might get an electrolytes imbalance, which is THE reason for dizziness and headaches: the solution is to take salt supplements — e.g. right now I'm in my second day of water fasting, when I woke up I felt a little dizzy, but took 4 grams of salt (about one teaspoon) and now I feel great; there are also "salt tablets" on the market btw, which are easier to swallow
NOTE: there's science behind the keto diet, studies and high profile medics backing it up, but there's also a lot of denial about it. One good book describing what the deal is with insulin resistance, why it makes us fat and why the keto diet is healthy would be the "The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss" by Dr. Jason Fung.
Here's the podcast dedicated to it, talking of keto and fasting; it's a great podcast: http://obesitycodepodcast.com
His diet is low in protein and fat; he gets furious when he sees doctors advocating the opposite, a trendy practice he believes speeds aging.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/13/fasting-diet-valter-long...
If you go low fat, you necessarily go low protein too, so you need to replace that with carbohydrates. Even more, you now need "fortified" carbohydrates to get the needed B vitamins and other nutrients usually found in fatty foods, and those will be refined carbohydrates; which is what the American Health Association now recommends. Yes, they actually recommend that people should eat enriched cereals and other bullshit like that.
A high carbs diet made of "healthy, complex carbs" is a myth ;-)
> he gets furious when he sees doctors advocating the opposite, a trendy practice he believes speeds aging.
You cannot claim that without evidence. Nutrition is at this point like alchemy and I won't trust furious alchemists.
There are lots of us living very healthy lives on this "mythical" high carb diet. The Okinawans, for example, before their diet was corrupted by processed western foods, got 85% of their calories from sweet potatoes and were the healthiest and longest lived people in the world.
https://fanaticcook.com/2015/03/14/the-diet-of-okinawa-1949-...
The only B vitamin that's difficult to get on a high carb diet is B12. But that's only because we've removed the bacteria that produce it from our diet by sterilizing our water supplies and improving food hygiene. Animals also get it from bacteria and a lot of commercial meat has added B12. Check here for an exhaustive list of B vitamin sources:
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/natural-health/b-vitamins-how...
Sorry but nominations for Nobel prizes are kept secret for 50 years. I highly doubt he was nominated the same year he was born.
[0] https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/medicine/
'B vitamins' is very vague. Are you talking about B12? If so, farm animals are supplemented with that anyway - so it's just supplements with more steps. Also, once you hit 40-60 most people have problems absorbing enough B12 and should be supplementing regardless of what they eat.
>A high carbs diet made of "healthy, complex carbs" is a myth ;-)
Hmm, how so? The benefits of HCLF are well documented
Benefits of HCLF:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4691673/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3967195/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4073139/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4245565/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4583329/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4844163/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677007/
Low Carbohydrate Diets and mortality:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20820038
I do 16/8 I.F fasting on a HCLF diet and have never experienced any of those issues.
There is plenty of evidence showing the benefits of ketosis on the body, and benefits from people switching from SAD to Keto reversing diabetes and the likes - but that's more down to calorie restriction. With regular keto you're raising your risk long-term for diabetes, heart-disease, cancer and stroke due to increased meat/dairy/egg consumption.
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/what-causes-insulin-resista...
You're far better just eating a varied diet with as little animal produce as possible and doing I.F which releases 5x the amount of ketones than the keto diet.
That's not enough to trigger those symptoms for many people, as it depends on how much salt you have in your diet and your own metabolism of course. But do a 36 to a 72 hours fasting, which is otherwise a very healthy thing to do from time to time and you'll experience it head on.
>> "that's more down to calorie restriction"
Why did the plane crash? Due to gravity. What should the plane have done to not go down? It should've had more lift.
Now tell me, how does that help in establishing why the plane actually crashed and what to do to solve it? That's how "calorie restriction" sounds as an explanation, being a prima facie observation. Of course you're reducing calories. But HOW you're reducing those calories makes all the difference.
Another one: Why do people get rich? Because their spending are less than their earnings. What should people do to get rich? They should cut their spending or raise their earnings. Well duh! But it's a totally useless observation, isn't it?
>> "With regular keto you're raising your risk long-term for diabetes, heart-disease, cancer and stroke due to increased meat/dairy/egg consumption."
That's absolute bullshit.
Here's one of the largest studies on dietary fat, done on 50,000 women, spanning for 8 years, showing that going low fat did absolutely nothing to prevent heart disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28515068
I also wish people would stop posting YouTube videos btw. I don't watch YouTube bullshit. Post links to studies that I can verify.
A ketogenic diet can also reduce hyperglycemia in diabetes, but it is not the wisest choice for the long term, diabetes or not. Addressing the cause of the disease, excess unhealthy fats in the case of diabetes, is better than merely treating the symptoms (hyperglycemia), especially if you can do both with the same intervention (http://www.pcrm.org/health/diabetes-resources).
>Here's one of the largest studies on dietary fat, done on 50,000 women, spanning for 8 years, showing that going low fat did absolutely nothing to prevent heart disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28515068
Whole-food plant-based diets are the only diets shown to reverse heart disease in a clinical setting:
Dr. Richard Fleming showing progression with low-carb diet and reversal with WFPB https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1110832
Dr. Dean Ornish reversing heart disease with a WFPB diet https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9863851
Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr reversing heart disease with a WFPB diet https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25198208
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17518696 CONCLUSIONS: Long-term consumption of a low-calorie low-protein vegan diet or regular endurance exercise training is associated with low cardiometabolic risk. Moreover, our data suggest that specific components of a low-calorie low-protein vegan diet provide additional beneficial effects on blood pressure.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7019459 The study suggests an adverse effect of consumption of beef on plasma lipid and BP levels.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1312295/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15172426 Randomized trial data suggest atherosclerosis progression and coronary heart disease events are minimized when LDL is lowered to <70 mg/dl
Dr. Kim Williams - the President of American College of Cardiology said, "There are two types of cardiologists: vegans and those who haven't read the data."
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/low-carb-diets-and-coronary...
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-not-to-die-from-heart-d...
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-problem-with-the-paleo-...
>I also wish people would stop posting YouTube videos btw. I don't watch YouT...
"N.B" is short for "nota bene" in Latin, which means "note well" or "please take note":
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nota%20bene
Fast forward to a new, leaner, me and I try exercising properly. On Keto there's no way I can exercise. Whilst I felt fine day to day and had a clear head, anything more energetic than walking was a huge effort.
Years later, having dropped keto, a friend and I were very heavily into mid-distance running (10k and half marathon). We weren't particularly fast, but we were doing probably 50k per week training and several events per year.
We decided to do a burst of keto to try to drop a few more pounds whilst maintaining the running since we'd seen some blog posts claiming it was possible to avoid the lack of energy.
First run post keto went from us running routine 55minute 10k to me abandoning the run altogether part way through at 64minutes because I was in agony.
tl;dr keto + exercise may not work for everyone
It's interesting that even some of the more pro-keto/paleo/primal blogs often recommend carbs (albeit appropriate quantities) to support any significant level of exercise.
What about people that work at night?
In the morning I just drink coffee black and then have a somewhat early lunch and dinner. Maybe it would be more effective to skip dinner instead but this seems to be working.
That said breakfast may be important when doing intermittent fasting for losing weight, because the secret there is to not let your metabolism get used to a certain rhythm, or in other words it's best if you are little unpredictable in what meals you eat or skip — so when doing IF, in some days I eat breakfast and skip dinner.
And when eating dinner it's best if you eat light, b/c digestion during the night sleep can make you tired during the next day. My general rule is to eat about half what I ate for lunch.
For the record, there are other ways to do IF: I am pretty happy skipping lunch, because eating mid-day makes me sleepy and slow anyway.
Not saying that's true for you but I thought I couldn't go without breakfast until I actually tried it.
Here's what I did:
I shifted my schedule because I work out in the evening and it makes sense to eat a large meal afterwards. Helps you recover. And I eat late at night because I usually go to bed between 2am and 3am. Need energy.Part of this shifting schedule was that I gradually reduced the size of my breakfast and eventually removed it. In the mornings I'm not doing anything physically demanding so I don't need that much energy and my large evening intake is still good enough.
That said, I always wake up with a growling stomach and sometimes even hunger pains. They go away after I have some morning tea (warm liquid) and my body generally forgets its hungry if I make it wait like 20 or 30 minutes before I give in.
As a bonus, my bodyfat percentage has gone down to a stable 11% while maintaining the same weight.
Oh yeah, I also drink 2 to 3 cans of Coke Zero per day to help with my sodium intake. Especially with the amount of working out I do I get leg cramps when I forego soda.
Not true. The 40mg of sodium in a can of coke zero isn’t enough to offset the liquid in the coke.
When I’m fasting I try and get 7 full grams of table salt daily. I’d wager the coke zero is actually desalinating you.
If you’re cramping at all, you need a LOT more salt. Also likely porassium and magnesium.
Your body’s hormones control your salinity levels on a much vaster timescale than your daily, or even weekly, dietary intake.
Source - https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/how-bod...
Of course my experiment wasn’t super rigorous and double blind so it could be completely wrong. It’s hard to know. But when it comes to body stuff I find it’s usually best not to overthink. If something works for you, keep doing it. Every once in a while try removing stuff you do to see if there’s an effect.
One downside is that immediately after lunch I find myself very very drowsy. Sufficiently so that on some days I have to disappear into a meeting room for 10 minutes for a nap.
Taking a short nap might not necessarily be a bad thing I think. I usually take a 10-20 minute nap in the afternoon if I can.
Pretty common in some European countries and there are plenty of studies showing the positive benefits of "power napping". Shame it's so frowned upon where I'm from (UK).
Going home for 3 hours isn't really the same thing.
What does a typical lunch consist of for you?
He screwed up his digestive tract for good - there is apparently something in coffee that is quite aggressive on stomach and gets neutralized when mixed with any sugar/milk/food. He will never be able to eat vast array of common foods - things like marmelades and other basic food. Sorry I don't have any further info, has been few years ago.
He might have some unique predisposition for this, don't know, but better be careful and put at least some milk in it. It makes it much more filling anyway
I have done this for about six years without damaging my digestion in any detectable way. I would bet money your friend has or had a Helicobacter pylori infection; treatment is antibiotics.
The stomach ache went away when you quit? If not... are you sure you don't have helicobacter pylori?
Instant coffee tends not to be as acidic same goes for cold brews and there are other ways to neutralize the acidity.
If you produce too much acid then intermediate fasting is not a good idea to begin with unless you also take supplements to control your stomach acidity.
Lunch->dinner may not be as ideal from the circadian rhythms approach (as per the article) as breakfast->late lunch, but it's sure easier on family/social life.
https://harpers.org/blog/2012/03/the-empty-stomach-fasting-t...
Also if it was as easy as "Listen to your body" do you think we would be having all these obesity problems now?
Yes! this is a common misconception. "listen to your body" is not the same as "eat whatever you feel like eating". Your tongue/appetite/addictions can tell you many harmful things. Listening to your body requires a lot of training and sensitivity, otherwise my body keeps telling me to eat cakes ;)
Eating sugar releases dopamine. Is that not my body telling me it's good?
The two statements are similar in one way, though: Completely useless as advice that will get people healthier. "listen to your body" will get people to eat what they wan't. "you need to read up on healthy foods/workout routines" will get people to read all sorts of bad advice. Like, for example: "listen to your body".
It is a question of being exposed to a wide array of options and and then of being able to feel what is needed. Compared to a violent craving for sugar and fast food the signal is much more muted.
I'm sorry. This is horrible advice. In fact I would not call it advice at all. Basically you are just saying "do the right thing" without specifying what "the right thing" actually is.
When my body tells me to inject more drugs into my veins because it feels good I should really listen to my body! Your comment is pretty much bollocks to be honest. My example is reductio ad absurdum of course but the point still stands. If we were to listen to our body 24/7 we'd all be mindless instagram/facebook/dopamine zombies.
Well, there can be leftovers from the previous day hunt or something.
So if you live in a part of the world when the sun sets at 2 or 3PM in the winter, you will likely not have a very social eating life following these recommendations.
Happy to share before/after pictures if you're interested, through I'd prefer not to post them publicly.
What else do you want to know?
On the contrary, it started a discussion.
> For starters, a 60 day fast will lead to a very large loss of weight
Approximately 80 lbs in my case.
I started the fast at 37% bodyfat, according to my somewhat reliable Omron scale which uses Bioelectrical Impedance to measure body fat.
> so unless the faster is exceedingly above the ideal weight at the start, it sounds dangerous.
From my experience, fasting is the opposite of dangerous.
If you're a healthy adult, you can easily fast for 7 days. But yes, you do need the fat stores, though I'm counting that 7 days of fat stores as implicit in 'healthy adult'.
Please make sure to provide context when making tall claims like that, which could lead others down the wrong road!
I'd say 65 lbs lost and kept off for over a year is very sustainable. Far better than any of the alternatives I'd tried.
I've found it to be the easiest to stick to diet I've ever tried, and I've done everything. If you struggle with moderation, fasting for prolonged periods has been much more productive for me. Not only do you burn fat 3-5x faster than any other diet, but your cravings go away incredibly quickly. I used to compulsively eat 3 chocolate croissants a day and after a couple of long fasts, I don't really care for them.
The emotional benefits are almost bigger. After 3 days without food my mind stops racing and my anxiety melts away. It feels like zen no-mind, and much stronger than I've been able to achieve by meditating.
Needless to say I'm a fan of going without food now, to the point where I hope to do it regularly for the rest of my life (unless evidence comes out pointing to it being bad for your health). Happy to answer any questions that pop up about fasting.
Awesome. You should be able to do that no problem. Just make sure you're supplementing plenty of sodium, potassium and magnesium.
> The emotional benefits are almost bigger. After 3 days without food my mind stops racing and my anxiety melts away. It feels like zen no-mind, and much stronger than I've been able to achieve by meditating.
This was my experience as well. Somewhere between day 7 and day 10 everything just got easier.
On electrolytes, last time I fasted for 5 days I only drank Snake Juice (salts dissolved in water taken through the day) and it did wonders for me. The guy promoting it is more than a little on the wacko side, but he hit the nail on the head with that recipe.
Diets in general seem to bring out the obsessive optimization that many (especially on this website) are prone too and the "one quick trick" mentality.
I'll be surprised if there is ever any better advice than "eat food. not too much. mostly plants".
Sure it's annecdotal, but there's serious science behind some of the benefits (see this article among other studies). To flip your question around, why are you skeptics so certain that it's just another fad diet that will come and go? IF can actually be a useful enforcement mechanism for the first two parts of "eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables"
Because, like most skeptics, we have seen this pattern before. Supposed scientific support and loads of anecdotal evidence are common to all popular fad diets. The scientific support of IF is also much less solid than it's advocates would have you believe.
> IF can actually be a useful enforcement mechanism for the first two parts of "eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables"
I agree with this - so can basically any other fad diet. People that recognize IF as a method of enforcing a basic CICO diet, I agree with. There are plenty of people that, like any other fad diet, think that IF is somehow special in ways unrelated to it's restriction of calories. That's what makes it the same as any other fad diet to me.
> I've actually experienced weight loss, less hunger, better focus, more stable energy levels, lower blood pressure, better sleep
People report this from atkins, vegan, paleo, keto, juice cleanse, weight watchers, south beach, etc. I am happy that you've found a diet that works for you. I hope that everyone finds a healthy diet that works for them.
I just want people to realize that CICO will always be the key to weight loss regardless of how it is achieved, and "eat food. not too much. mostly plants" will (probably) always be the key to a health diet.