Merged Intermittent Fasting -- Good Idea or Not?

Kaylee

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From the Bariatric Surgery - weight loss thread:

There's increasing evidence that partial fast regimes are very effective, e.g. alternate days, or the more attractive 5+2 regime, consisting of two days 'fasting' (less than 600 cals/day) and five days eating normally (no restrictions at all). This kind of regime doesn't have the continuous hunger or difficult food preparation or monotony of most diets. It appears that on their 'eat anything' days people generally don't overcompensate, only eating a little more than their previous norm. Check out 'Eat, Fast and Live Longer'.

I found the complete BBC episode here

Basically the gist of the show was that the main point of intermittent fasting is to stay healthy longer, or age well. Although the host did lose weight, that did not appear to be the main focus of eating for 5 days and "fasting" for two. The fasting is actually a very restricted diet of less than 600 calories for men and 500 calories for women, as dlorde said above.

However, after taking a quick look at pubmed to see if I could find any studies to support the episode, I found this abstract published in 2009 which said:

IF (my edit: intermittent fasting) does not affect whole-body glucose, lipid, or protein metabolism in healthy lean men despite changes in muscle phosphorylation of GSK and mTOR. The decrease in resting energy expenditure after IF indicates the possibility of an increase in weight during IF when caloric intake is not adjusted. This study was registered at www.trialregister.nl as NTR1841.

I didn't happen to see anything that supported the BBC show but I'm not knowledgeable about this area and I can find wading through pubmed tough going sometimes. Anybody know more about studies in this area?
 
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This is from 1963, found it via wikipedia: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249073/?tool=pubmed

The wikipedia article sums that up like so:
n the early 1960s, one study of fasting as a method of weight control noted that "[We] have noticed an improvement in the last few months in the ability of these patients to keep their weight under control by observing one fast per week [water only]. This allows them to be more liberal with their diet on the other days. I cannot overemphasize the fact that they prefer this to perpetual daily denial with no alternative."

Though the fact that they didn't have anything more recent makes me a little weary, I haven't had a chance to really look at it. :)
 
I IF every day. However the definitions of 'fasting' vary wildly, and as UNLoVedRebel says do not pay heed to this detox nonsense.

So.....

Fasting as described in the OP as a period of time with minimal calorie intake - if you break the timing intervals down into 24h intervals...

or.... fasting as a period of time, in a 24h interval, where calorie intake IS NOT drastically reduced.

I am the latter.

My eating usually breaks down like this:

Skip breakfast every day - hate it, never hungry - stopped the day I threw up onto my plate of scrambled eggs and grain based boxed crap made me hungry in 90mins. Coffee with heavy cream so a nice wee dose of fat nomnom.

Lunch @1pm, dinner at 8pm.

So my intermittant fast is from 8pm until 1pm ie approx 16-17h. Proper sized meals.

Maybe twice weekly I will skip lunch and not eat until 8pm, and if hungry later I shall eat something else - yes, almost immediately before bed. And that gives me a 24h 'fast'.

So I am really just compressing my calorie intake window, rather than IF-ing at 'starvation' levels.

Check out Leangains for a humourous no-nonsense take on diet and fitness.
 
I think the principal effect of all diets is to make us actually think about what we eat. What effect that has depends on the kind of person you are and what you ate before.
 
I saw the BBC programme and AIUI the theory is that occasionally reducing the amount of work your body has to do to break down and digest food allows it the time necessary to do some regular "essential maintenance". There does seem to be evidence that drastically reducing calories consumed lengthens lifespan, and this was suggested as a less painful way to get at least some of those benefits. It was definitely presented as principally a way to live a longer healthier life, rather than to lose weight.
 
Weather the alternate-day or the 5-2 fasting regime is looked at, does it not simulate the cyclic food consumption, in terms of timing and qty, that our species were used to experiencing for the first say 95% of it's presence on earth ?

Surely daily food intake, and eventual ludicrous expectation of 3 times per pay, is something relatively new and probably only goes back to the start of agriculture ? Before this, a forraging and hunting life-style would mean having irregular food intake in terms of timing and qty ?

It seems more natural to have food intake on such an alternate-day fasting or a 5-2 basis than daily. Maybe this is why positive effects are observed ?
 
I think the principal effect of all diets is to make us actually think about what we eat. What effect that has depends on the kind of person you are and what you ate before.

I think there's a lot to this.

It seems to me that the problem with many diets is that they are difficult (and probably unhealthy) to maintain as a lifestyle, and so when the diet finishes, the damaging lifestyle tends to be resumed. I've rarely dieted, but over the years, when my weight starts creeping up, I've fasted for 24 hours and this seems to 'reset' my appetite control, perhaps partly by making me more aware of what and when I eat.

Being consciously aware of what you're eating and when is important when high calorie foods are always within reach - I've often found myself with my head in the cupboard looking for a snack, with no memory of consciously deciding to eat - and only noticing this when the cupboard is empty. It's a bit of a shock to find that packet of biscuits you bought yesterday is gone already. I no longer buy high calorie processed snack foods for this reason, and now I no longer miss them.

The 5 + 2 intermittent fasting regime reduces overall calorie intake and should make you more aware of your eating habits, but doesn't have the continuous stress of a traditional diet. If it also has positive metabolic effects beyond simple caloric regulation of intake, so much the better.

It's not a new idea, intermittent fasting has been around a long time, and has current advocates (e.g. bodybuilder Brad Pilon's 'Eat Stop Eat' regime), but it hasn't had the attention it's getting of late; it may be just another fad, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Personally, I think it's worth a shot. The jury is still out on the overall benefits - according to the Horizon programme, large scale human trials are just beginning, but preliminary results on a small scale with obese subjects have been very encouraging.
 
I IF every day. However the definitions of 'fasting' vary wildly, and as UNLoVedRebel says do not pay heed to this detox nonsense.

So.....

Fasting as described in the OP as a period of time with minimal calorie intake - if you break the timing intervals down into 24h intervals...

or.... fasting as a period of time, in a 24h interval, where calorie intake IS NOT drastically reduced.

I am the latter.

My eating usually breaks down like this:

Skip breakfast every day - hate it, never hungry - stopped the day I threw up onto my plate of scrambled eggs and grain based boxed crap made me hungry in 90mins. Coffee with heavy cream so a nice wee dose of fat nomnom.

Lunch @1pm, dinner at 8pm.

So my intermittant fast is from 8pm until 1pm ie approx 16-17h. Proper sized meals.

Maybe twice weekly I will skip lunch and not eat until 8pm, and if hungry later I shall eat something else - yes, almost immediately before bed. And that gives me a 24h 'fast'.

So I am really just compressing my calorie intake window, rather than IF-ing at 'starvation' levels.

Check out Leangains for a humourous no-nonsense take on diet and fitness.

I know that website. :)

I have been experimenting with a similar protocol of skipping breakfast, but I typically only fast 12-14 hours per day, and I haven't gone any longer.

I quite like it, and I also have things like chicken and brown rice for 'breakfast' at lunch time.

I find it to be a really easy way to manage my calories, not only physiologically, but psychologically.

Breakfast is easy to skip, and it is nice to eat a lot in the evening when I prefer to eat.

I do have a goal of dropping some body fat, and I have been losing ~0.5 kg per week on 2100 kcals/day.
 
This kind of regime doesn't have the continuous hunger or difficult food preparation or monotony of most diets.
There are reputed benefits from an occasional fast but easy weight loss is not one of them.
 
There are reputed benefits from an occasional fast but easy weight loss is not one of them.
I guess it depends on the individual, their general dietary habits and lifestyle, what the 'fast' involves, and how often 'occasional' is. It's been very effective for me, but we're all different.
 
I'm not a nutritionist, but it makes no sense to me to skip a meal that will fuel you for the day, then load up on calories and go to sleep.
To me it seems quite sensible not to eat until you feel hungry, and quite natural to be sleepy after a large meal. Many people just don't feel like breakfast first thing in the morning, and prefer to wait until lunchtime. Breakfast doesn't have to 'fuel you for the day' if you have lunch. Some people find that a high-carb breakfast actually makes them feel hungrier mid-morning (insulin overshoot?) than not having breakfast.

I don't think there are hard and fast rules for everyone, but I do think that the relatively recent traditions of having 3 meals a day, and making breakfast the most important meal, are open to question, and there are many diet myths and misunderstandings, often promulgated or reinforced by commercial interests.
 
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I've started using modified fasting as part of my calorie control method and so far, two months in, I'm liking the results.
I find it much easier to focus on planning for one or two healthy meals a day than for three to five healthy mini-meals a day.

If this has positive repercussions on long-term health and longevity, all the better!
 
I know practically nothing about this subject but...

... I thought the Ramadan (Muslim traditional fast) was considered unhealthy by modern science.

And skipping breakfast was considered a fast way to get diabetes and whatnot?

Again, I confess my ignorance on anything diet related, but I'me very interested.

Even though I eat a pretty healthy diet, I've often wondered how much my eating habits differ from what my body was "designed" for.
That is, how much different from a hunter-gatherer? I try not to stray too far from the basics, such as daily exercises to compensate for my desk-job and not overeating, few convenience foods etc.

Obviously humans used to have a much lower calorie intake, so I'm curious what insights there are regarding that aspect.

To summarise: I though fasting was unhealthy, I'm surprised to find that it is regarded as part of a healthy lifestyle outside new-age circles.
 
... I thought the Ramadan (Muslim traditional fast) was considered unhealthy by modern science.
I'd like to see the evidence for that.

And skipping breakfast was considered a fast way to get diabetes and whatnot?
Odd then, that the vast majority eat breakfast these days, and diabetes rates are soaring. Perhaps there are other factors involved. One has to question what the evidence is and the proposed mechanism connecting diabetes and no breakfast.

Obviously humans used to have a much lower calorie intake, so I'm curious what insights there are regarding that aspect.

To summarise: I though fasting was unhealthy, I'm surprised to find that it is regarded as part of a healthy lifestyle outside new-age circles.

Check out the LeanGains web site; there's a lot of interesting and informative guidance based on recent research and critical thinking. The focus is on muscle gain and fat loss, but there's a lot of myth busting for everyone.
 
I know practically nothing about this subject but...

... I thought the Ramadan (Muslim traditional fast) was considered unhealthy by modern science.

And skipping breakfast was considered a fast way to get diabetes and whatnot?

Again, I confess my ignorance on anything diet related, but I'me very interested.

Even though I eat a pretty healthy diet, I've often wondered how much my eating habits differ from what my body was "designed" for.
That is, how much different from a hunter-gatherer? I try not to stray too far from the basics, such as daily exercises to compensate for my desk-job and not overeating, few convenience foods etc.

Obviously humans used to have a much lower calorie intake, so I'm curious what insights there are regarding that aspect.

To summarise: I though fasting was unhealthy, I'm surprised to find that it is regarded as part of a healthy lifestyle outside new-age circles.

I think the issue with skipping breakfast is that people don't plan food, so they end up getting really hungry and then eating something that is high sugar, high fat, which is really not a great way to break a fast.
 
Those who regularly skipped breakfast had a 21 percent higher risk of developing diabetes than those who did not. The heightened risk remained even after the researchers accounted for body mass index and the quality of the subjects’ breakfasts.

Other studies have also found a link between skipping breakfast and greater risk of Type 2 diabetes. While it is not clear why the relationship exists, some scientists suspect that a morning meal helps stabilize blood sugar through the day.

Some studies show that consuming a larger proportion of your calories later in the day, especially carbohydrates, has a detrimental impact on blood sugar and insulin levels.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/really-to-lower-your-risk-of-diabetes-eat-breakfast/
 
Here's the abstract:

Background: Little is known about the association between eating patterns and type 2 diabetes (T2D) risk.

Objective: The objective of this study was to prospectively examine associations between breakfast omission, eating frequency, snacking, and T2D risk in men.

Design: Eating patterns were assessed in 1992 in a cohort of 29,206 US men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study who were free of T2D, cardiovascular disease, and cancer and were followed for 16 y. We used Cox proportional hazards analysis to evaluate associations with incident T2D.

Results: We documented 1944 T2D cases during follow-up. After adjustment for known risk factors for T2D, including BMI, men who skipped breakfast had 21% higher risk of T2D than did men who consumed breakfast (RR: 1.21; 95% CI: 1.07, 1.35). Compared with men who ate 3 times/d, men who ate 1–2 times/d had a higher risk of T2D (RR: 1.25; 95% CI: 1.08, 1.45). These findings persisted after stratification by BMI or diet quality. Additional snacks beyond the 3 main meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) were associated with increased T2D risk, but these associations were attenuated after adjustment for BMI.

Conclusions: Breakfast omission was associated with an increased risk of T2D in men even after adjustment for BMI. A direct association between snacking between meals and T2D risk was mediated by BMI.
http://www.ajcn.org/content/95/5/1182.abstract?etoc
 

Interesting; thanks professor. A 21% increase in risk. My question would now be what was the overall rate of T2d in that population?

A 21% increase in a small overall rate would not be particularly troubling, and might point to uncontrolled factors, such as a genetic predisposition.

My personal experience differs from the NYT description, in that for the many years I went without breakfast, I didn't notice any 'setbacks in mood, memory and energy levels', nor weight gain. In fact, I started gaining weight after switching to eating breakfast (due to no longer commuting to work). However, other associated changes may have made the significant difference; it's difficult to assess at an individual level.
 
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I'd also be interested to know if any work has been done on the differences between the modern high-carb cereal breakfast and the more traditional breakfast with more protein & fat.

I've always found a traditional English breakfast (variations on fried eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, mushrooms, etc) keeps me sated far longer than a supposedly slow-release wholegrain cereal & fruit breakfast. Although this may be partly the overall calorie count involved!
 
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"Slow-release" carbs are still Wile E. Coyote on rocket skates compared to meat and fats.

The difference is so minimal it's almost false advertising. Brown rice, 100% whole wheat, please. Low-sugar Chinese food on a bed of lettuce is light years beyond brown rice, which is only an inch ahead of white rice. (And much better than rice, too. I recommend trying it.)
 
Oh-kay.

Straight out, this is anecdotal. I have no expertise in this other than my experience.

Me? I am 5'8'', 10'6. Same all my life. My father? same all his life.

It matters not what I or he eats. It just stays the same. I do, and my father does also, put on a pound or four over Christmas, but that vanishes in the spring.

I have no idea why that should be so. Nor have I any clue why some colleagues will decamp for food "because they will not be able to function without".

I, and others have at times done 72hr stints working on computers, and inevitably, there are those who must go eat, and those, like myself, who shrug, and say "sure, whatever".

I have no idea why. But my three siblings are the very same.

It baffles me.
 

Uhhh, no mention of whether, like me, those most concerned with their weight were the ones skipping breakfast. Maybe not obese, but know they tend to be in the risk group for diabetes (they are health professionals) Familial maybe?

An MD told me once that "Eating is a habit. You can change habits". Years later I changed some habits and dropped 90 pounds. My T2D virtually went away. So my data for that study would be counter-results: Skipping breakfast lowers the diabetic rate 100%.

But that is a population based study, not individual treatment. My doctor calls me 'non-compliant" because I don't listen to his population study based recommendations. Why settle for 30% improvements based on drugs in studies, when I can get 600% based on my life changes, based on my own knowledge of my own body. (angioplasty rate)
 
I suspect that very light eating and even fasting might be good for one, and I know that many people claim a spiritual boost as well. I've always been pretty lucky and can go at least for most of a day without caring much what or whether I eat. But I would add one word of caution for certain people: if you use dangerous machinery, fasting for a longer time can be a really bad idea. I did try this once long ago, but gave it up after a short trial simply because it became obvious in obvious ways that people who routinely use things like circular saws and axes and excavators, or who ride bicycles on narrow public highways, should not get involved in any regimen that makes them weak or dizzy or makes their blood sugar go wacko.
 
OK, I've read some articles and watched some YT videos on the subject.
Some results are really quite amazing (weight loss).

It's a very interesting subject.

But i get really hungry if I skip breakfast, and then I get a foul mood.
So it might not be for me.

Or does the body adapt, and reduces hunger feelings?

Also:
As far as I can see, there are two regimens;
-skip breakfast, thus reducing food intake with one meal.
-Skip eating one day a week.

Any idea what would be the best approach?
 
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As far as I can dee there are two regimens;
-skip breakfast, thus reducing food intake with one meal.
-Skip eating one day a week.
The Horizon documentary looked at CRON (calorie restriction optimal nutrition), ADF (alternate day fasting) and 5+2 (fasting 2 days per week), where 'fasting' means eating less than 500 cals for women and 600-700 cals for men. CRON isn't really a fasting regime, but continuous calorie restriction.

Any idea what would be the best approach?
I suppose it depends on the individual, their lifestyle, what they want to achieve, and what they feel they can live with. Horizon's Dr. Mosley felt that he wouldn't be able to maintain CRON or ADF, but that 5+2 would be bearable. He has now adopted 5+2 with considerable early benefits (bearing in mind his medical profile was pretty poor to start with, and would have required lifestyle changes and/or medication to improve).
 
OK, I've read some articles and watched some YT videos on the subject.
Some results are really quite amazing (weight loss).

It's a very interesting subject.

But i get really hungry if I skip breakfast, and then I get a foul mood.
So it might not be for me.

Or does the body adapt, and reduces hunger feelings?

Also:
As far as I can see, there are two regimens;
-skip breakfast, thus reducing food intake with one meal.
-Skip eating one day a week.

Any idea what would be the best approach?

In my small experience, hunger feelings have been reduced. You get used to the smaller diet, and if you're used to eating too much, that by itself can be helpful. What does not get bypassed is the ability of the body safely to do complex and dangerous tasks when seriously depleted. I reiterate that if you routinely use the kind of machinery in which one careless mistake can remove a hand or a life, complete fasting is likely to be a poor choice even if it's good for the spirit. If you skip a meal, make it supper after you get home. Different people seem to take this differently. My wife, for example, can't skip a meal without getting woozy and having blood sugar attacks that make things like driving a challenge, while I can go a good part of the day with nothing but a couple of cups of coffee. Experiment with your body's reaction to changing diet before going out and chopping your feet off with a chainsaw or driving your forklift through a wall.

I've known a few people who successfully lost weight and stayed active by having a fairly big breakfast, a light lunch and little or no supper.
 
I've known a few people who successfully lost weight and stayed active by having a fairly big breakfast, a light lunch and little or no supper.

As the old saying goes, breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dine like a pauper.

(Or, as the newer one goes, breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner dinner dinner dinner Batman!)

Dave
 
And skipping breakfast was considered a fast way to get diabetes and whatnot?
There are studies correlating skipping breakfast with a number of bad things but there are a bunch of confounders which should make one cautious about drawing conclusions from these studies.
 
As for alternate day fasting, I did it for a time in college,... to save money. I had a cup of oatmeal with skim milk every day (I think I may have had some chopped walnuts with it too) and then every other day I had lunch at the buffet style school cafeteria.

The hardest part, despite being someone with a reputation for being able to eat enormous amounts of food in one sitting, was eating "enough" as I intentionally overfed myself on my eating days to try to avoid excessive fat loss.
 
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As for alternate day fasting, I did it for a time in college,... to save money. I had a cup of oatmeal with skim milk every day (I think I may have had some chopped walnuts with it too) and then every other day I had lunch at the buffet style school cafeteria.

The hardest part, despite being someone with a reputation for being able to eat enormous amounts of food in one sitting, was eating "enough" as I intentionally overfed myself on my eating days to try to avoid excessive fat loss.

That reminds me of a similar money saving program I had when I was in india: I limited myself to 1 meal/day: a thali for lunch, which was basically all you can eat, and very cheap (about US$0.40). But I had the same problem, I could never eat enough in that one meal, I'd get full pretty quickly and try to stuff more food down, but eventually give up.
I only did that for one month, but the entire month I felt extremely weak.

I was trying to extend my limited funds to as long a stay as I could, but eventually realised that was a little extreme.
 
Wow! Lots of food for thought! I just wish I had more time to read about this, esp. the links that you all have supplied. RL is once again rearing its head and demanding more of my time.

Still, I've been able to read a little bit about this so I'll try to add a few, hopefully intelligible :o) :p comments to the thread.

This is from 1963, found it via wikipedia: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2249073/?tool=pubmed

The wikipedia article sums that up like so:


Though the fact that they didn't have anything more recent makes me a little weary, I haven't had a chance to really look at it. :)

These studies are fascinating. I'm also surprised that the Wiki author didn't opt to include references to more recent studies as they are available. Maybe he or she just didn't think its necc? It seems that many of these findings are old news. The BBC show mentioned that scientists have noted the correlations between calorie restrictions and lower death rates since the American Dust Bowl and Great Depression years.

The Science Daily had a couple of articles on a study that was published just this past May that also supported intermittent fasting. Actually, as far as I can tell, the study actually supported restricted meal times:

"This was a surprising result," says Megumi Hatori, a postdoctoral researcher in Panda's laboratory and a first author of the study. "For the last 50 years, we have been told to reduce our calories from fat and to eat smaller meals and snacks throughout the day. We found, however, that fasting time is important. By eating in a time-restricted fashion, you can still resist the damaging effects of a high-fat diet, and we did not find any adverse effects of time-restricted eating when eating healthy food."
Hatori cautioned that people should not jump to the conclusion that eating lots of unhealthy food is alright as long as we fast. "What we showed is under daily fasting the body can fight unhealthy food to a significant extent," she says. "But there are bound to be limits."

Obesity is a major health challenge in many developed countries, reaching global pandemic proportions. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one-third of American adults and 17 percent of youth are obese. Obesity increases the risk of a number of health conditions including: high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Lifestyle modifications, including eating a healthy diet and daily exercise, are first-line interventions in the fight against obesity. The Salk study suggests another option for preventing obesity by preserving natural feeding rhythms without altering dietary intake.

and

When mice on a high-fat diet are restricted to eating for eight hours per day, they eat just as much (my edit: and just as poorly) as those who can eat around the clock, yet they are protected against obesity and other metabolic ills, the new study shows. The discovery suggests that the health consequences of a poor diet might result in part from a mismatch between our body clocks and our eating schedules.

"Every organ has a clock," said lead author of the study Satchidananda Panda of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. That means there are times that our livers, intestines, muscles, and other organs will work at peak efficiency and other times when they are -- more or less -- sleeping.

Those metabolic cycles are critical for processes from cholesterol breakdown to glucose production, and they should be primed to turn on when we eat and back off when we don't, or vice versa. When mice or people eat frequently throughout the day and night, it can throw off those normal metabolic cycles.

"When we eat randomly, those genes aren't on completely or off completely," Panda said. The principle is just like it is with sleep and waking, he explained. If we don't sleep well at night, we aren't completely awake during the day, and we work less efficiently as a consequence.

IMHO, from what I've read (or rather skimmed) so far -- restricting meal times vs restricting overall calories or calorie cycling between zero or almost zero calories on some days vs regular amounts of food consumed in other days is an extremely important distinction -- esp. for premenopausal women. Alternate fasting days a few times a week over a long period of time can result in halting women's periods.

More at Mark's Daily Apple:

Dear Mark: Women and Intermittent Fasting

He got the info from Stefani Ruper's blog:

Paleo for Women

Stefani Ruper also goes on to describe other examples of adverse effects experienced by women who had tried alternate day fasting. But I noted that she specifically referred to alternate day fasting -- not restricted meal times.

Restricting meal times uh more strictly :) interests me and I would like to learn more about it.

Unfortunately, my week days probably won't allow me to narrow the window. I do wake up hungry so I wouldn't want to postpone breakfast. ( I usually have breakfast around 7 or 8 AM). And I often can't eat dinner earlier than 8 or 9 PM. I don't tend to nibble though and I usually have lunch around 1 PM and a snack somewhere between 3 and 5PM. I suppose I could eat within an 8 or 10 hour window if I dropped dinner -- but I'm usually hungry around dinner time also. I'm hoping that there are studies that show that consistent meal times with no nibbling also has many of the benefits that Panda's study, reviewed in the Science Daily articles linked above, discussed.
 
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Like anything else, there are risks and benefits. The benefits of fasting aren't usually what you hear from alternative medicine practioners i.e. it "detoxes" your system (whatever that means)

Fasting has been shown to increase dopamine receptors, thus leading to more pleasure and sensations.

http://gettingstronger.org/wp-conte...yb25nZXIub3JnPHdwdGI+R2V0dGluZyBTdHJvbmdlcg==

I've been researching this one myself lately. ADF (alternate day fasting) seems to have an effect on the SIRT1 gene, which is connected to inflammation and ageing

As for weight loss I went on 5:2 a week and half ago, I've fasted 3 days out of the last 9 so far (going again today) and lost 2 to 3kg already, which is more than you'd expect purely from the calorie deficit. Be interesting to see how it goes long-term.

"

Interesting hormonal effects. Icerat -- your link happened to go to an economics article ... do you happen to recall where you saw the one on the SIRT1 gene?

And its worth mentioning again, esp since I buried that point in post #35, while some habits are equally beneficial for both men and women (or at least premenopausal women) -- alternative day fasting may not be one of them. It appears more studies need to be done to determine that.
 
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I've been browsing other forums focused on diet to see why other people find this type of tactic appealing --

Skip breakfast every day - hate it, never hungry - stopped the day I threw up onto my plate of scrambled eggs and grain based boxed crap made me hungry in 90mins. Coffee with heavy cream so a nice wee dose of fat nomnom.


Many of the posts I saw on this subject mentioned that they don't like to eat breakfast. Some have said that they aren't hungry until they have breakfast and then they are hungry AFTER they eat while they weren't hungry before.


I think the principal effect of all diets is to make us actually think about what we eat. What effect that has depends on the kind of person you are and what you ate before.

I think there's a lot to this.

It seems to me that the problem with many diets is that they are difficult (and probably unhealthy) to maintain as a lifestyle, and so when the diet finishes, the damaging lifestyle tends to be resumed. I've rarely dieted, but over the years, when my weight starts creeping up, I've fasted for 24 hours and this seems to 'reset' my appetite control, perhaps partly by making me more aware of what and when I eat.

Being consciously aware of what you're eating and when is important when high calorie foods are always within reach - I've often found myself with my head in the cupboard looking for a snack, with no memory of consciously deciding to eat - and only noticing this when the cupboard is empty. It's a bit of a shock to find that packet of biscuits you bought yesterday is gone already. I no longer buy high calorie processed snack foods for this reason, and now I no longer miss them.

The 5 + 2 intermittent fasting regime reduces overall calorie intake and should make you more aware of your eating habits, but doesn't have the continuous stress of a traditional diet. If it also has positive metabolic effects beyond simple caloric regulation of intake, so much the better.

It's not a new idea, intermittent fasting has been around a long time, and has current advocates (e.g. bodybuilder Brad Pilon's 'Eat Stop Eat' regime), but it hasn't had the attention it's getting of late; it may be just another fad, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Personally, I think it's worth a shot. The jury is still out on the overall benefits - according to the Horizon programme, large scale human trials are just beginning, but preliminary results on a small scale with obese subjects have been very encouraging.

Many of the posters said similar things. They liked the idea that they only had to think about food during a short window and then they were free to completely forget about it the rest of the day.

It was surprising to me how many people posted and basically said that this approach, restricting meal times, was much easier for them than being able to eat more frequently but with the cost of having to make more decisions throughout the day.

But I am currently reading the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard So after thinking about some of the points the authors make in that book, I'm beginning to realize that the appeal of restricted meal times is not so surprising.
 
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"

Interesting hormonal effects. Icerat -- your link happened to go to an economics article ... do you happen to recall where you saw the one on the SIRT1 gene?

Ooops! I'm deeply insulted nobody noticed earlier ..... :o

It should have linked to this google scholar search

And its worth mentioning again, esp since I buried that point was buried in the post #35, while some habits are equally beneficial for both men and women (or at least premenopausal women) -- alternative day fasting may not be one of them. It appears more studies need to be done to determine that.

Not just sex differences either. I've seen some work indicating other genetic differences in High Carb vs High Fat/Protein diet efficacy.
 
Weather the alternate-day or the 5-2 fasting regime is looked at, does it not simulate the cyclic food consumption, in terms of timing and qty, that our species were used to experiencing for the first say 95% of it's presence on earth ?

Surely daily food intake, and eventual ludicrous expectation of 3 times per pay, is something relatively new and probably only goes back to the start of agriculture ? Before this, a forraging and hunting life-style would mean having irregular food intake in terms of timing and qty ?

It seems more natural to have food intake on such an alternate-day fasting or a 5-2 basis than daily. Maybe this is why positive effects are observed ?


Natural isn't always better. Natural back in the pre-historic days probably also included rotten teeth, early deaths, and lots of other horrid things.

So far I vote for the Panda lab results discussed in the Science Daily articles above (post #35).
 

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