I need advice about intermittent fasting

[RAE]

I personally tend to eat a low moderate amount of carbs and am not worried about fat at all. But -- carbs and sugars don't cause weight gain any more than fat causes weight gain. Having a calorie surplus causes weight gain. You could 100% carbs and you would gain weight if you had a calorie surplus, same thing for fat.

But high carbs and sugar cause weight gain if and only if they result in a calorie surplus over time.

We've discussed this on the forum before, and I don't want to get into an extended debate about it now, but lots of studies have shown this to be incorrect, when it is applied to the human body. I copied the text below from something Dr. Mark Hyman wrote, as he says it better than I can:


"It’s true that when burned in a laboratory setting, 1,000 calories of broccoli and 1,000 calories of soda would indeed release the same amount of energy. But sorry, your law of thermodynamics doesn’t apply in living, breathing, digesting systems. When you eat food, the “isolated system” part of the equation goes out the window. The food interacts with your biology, a complex adaptive system that instantly transforms every bite.

To illustrate how this works, let’s follow 750 calories of soda and 750 calories of broccoli once they enter your body. First, soda: 750 calories is the amount in a Double Gulp from 7-Eleven, which is 100 percent sugar and contains 186 grams, or 46 teaspoons, of sugar. Many people actually do consume this amount of soda. They are considered the “heavy users.”
Your gut quickly absorbs the fiber-free sugars in the soda, fructose, and glucose. The glucose spikes your blood sugar, starting a domino effect of high insulin and a cascade of hormonal responses that kicks bad biochemistry into gear. The high insulin increases storage of belly fat, increases inflammation, raises triglycerides and lowers HDL, raises blood pressure, lowers testosterone in men, and contributes to infertility in women.

Next, the broccoli. First, you wouldn’t be able to eat twenty-one cups of broccoli, because it wouldn’t fit in your stomach. But assuming you could, what would happen? They contain so much fiber that very few of the calories would actually get absorbed. Those that did would get absorbed very slowly. There’d be no blood sugar or insulin spike, no fatty liver, no hormonal chaos. Your stomach would distend (which it doesn’t with soda; bloat from carbonation doesn’t count!), sending signals to your brain that you were full. There would be no triggering of the addiction reward center in the brain. You’d also get many extra benefits that optimize metabolism, lower cholesterol, reduce inflammation, and boost detoxification. The phytonutrients in broccoli boost your liver’s ability to detoxify environmental chemicals, and the flavonoid kaempferol is a powerful anti-inflammatory. Broccoli also contains high levels of vitamin C and folate, which protect against cancer and heart disease. The glucosinolates and sulphorophanes in broccoli change the expression of your genes to help balance your sex hormones, reducing breast and other cancers.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that all calories are NOT created equal. The same number of calories from different types of food can have very different biological effects.

If you still think a calorie is just a calorie, maybe this study will convince you otherwise. In a study of 154 countries that looked at the correlation of calories, sugar, and diabetes, scientists found that adding 150 calories a day to the diet barely raised the risk of diabetes in the population, but if those 150 calories came from soda, the risk of diabetes went up by 700 percent.

Some calories are addictive, others healing, some fattening, some metabolism-boosting. That’s because food doesn’t just contain calories, it contains information. Every bite of food you eat broadcasts a set of coded instructions to your body—instructions that can create either health or disease."



https://drhyman.com/blog/2014/04/10/calories-dont-matter/


https://blog.myfitnesspal.com/ask-the-dietitian-is-a-calorie-a-calorie-2/

 

[Chuckanut]

I personally tend to eat a low moderate amount of carbs and am not worried about fat at all. But -- carbs and sugars don't cause weight gain any more than fat causes weight gain. Having a calorie surplus causes weight gain. You could 100% carbs and you would gain weight if you had a calorie surplus, same thing for fat.

I must disagree. The surplus calories-in/calories-out belief tells us what is happening, but not why it is happening.

Imagine you are walking down a street one evening and most of the restaurants on the street are not very busy, but one restaurant is packed with customers and there is a line on the sidewalk full of people waiting to get in. You ask a friend why that restaurant is so crowded. She tells you it's because more people are entering the restaurant than leaving it. Helpful? Not really. She told you what is happening but not why it is happening. Instead, if your friend tells you "They mailed everybody in town a 50% OFF coupon that can only be used today on their 10th anniversary" you now know the 'why'.

In some people certain foods (usually processed carbs and sugar) tell their bodies to store the calories they eat as fat, thus not making the calories easily available for use by the body. So, the brain triggers the 'eat more' response to get the calories the body needs now. The brain also slows down the body's metabolism since there aren't enough available calories to burn for energy. That is the 'why', in the opinion of many people who have studied this. (Of course, this is subject to revision as we learn more about how the body operates.)

My 2¢, take what you wish and leave the rest.

 

[audreyh1]

If you restricted yourself to doing only what humans "evolved" to do, you would be missing out on most of modern life.

That has nothing to do with whether modern humans require three square meals on a regular schedule each day to be healthy.

I wouldn’t call varying one’s eating schedule to be restrictive.

 

[RAE]

If you restricted yourself to doing only what humans "evolved" to do, you would be missing out on most of modern life.

Yeah, and we could also say that a lot of things about "modern life" (eating ultra-processed foods, driving everywhere instead of walking, high rates of obesity, etc) are resulting in high rates of chronic diseases that were pretty rare before people started living the way many of us do now. I think it is important to consider how our bodies evolved - doesn't mean we have to all go back and live exactly the way our ancestors did (we can't). But there are often things we can do now (like IF, and generally eating mostly real food instead of ultra-processed food) that will help maintain good health.

 

[Bestwifeever]

I must disagree. The surplus calories-in/calories-out belief tells us what is happening, but not why it is happening....

Yes. And I pretty much believe a calorie is a calorie, but protein takes more energy to digest and increases satiety (don't take my word for it, google thermogenesis for articles like this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC524030/ which is science and says "Protein plays a key role in body weight regulation through satiety related to diet-induced thermogenesis."). That's why Weight Watchers' point system gives different points to the same calories depending on the carb/protein/fat macros.

 

[braumeister]

We've discussed this on the forum before, and I don't want to get into an extended debate about it now

Yes, our nutrition/calorie debates are always utterly futile, since nobody is ever convinced they might be wrong.

But to add a bit more to that good information from Dr. Hyman that you quoted, here's more from Peter Wilson, as published by The Economist:

The calorie as a scientific measurement is not in dispute. But calculating the exact calorific content of food is far harder than the confidently precise numbers displayed on food packets suggest. Two items of food with identical calorific values may be digested in very different ways. Each body processes calories differently. Even for a single individual, the time of day that you eat matters.... the beguiling simplicity of counting calories in and calories out is dangerously flawed.

labels on American packaged foods miss their true calorie counts by an average of 18%. American government regulations allow such labels to understate calories by up to 20% (to ensure that consumers are not short-changed in terms of how much nutrition they receive). Th information on some processed frozen foods misstates their calorific content by as much as 70%.

Given the vast evidence that calorie-counting is imprecise at best, and contributes to rising obesity at worst, why has it persisted? The simplicity of calorie-counting explains its appeal. Metrics that tell consumers the extent to which foods have been processed, or whether they will suppress hunger, are harder to understand. Faced with the calorie juggernaut, none has gained wide acceptance.

 

[flintnational]

A confession

I am secretly rooting for the calories in calories out model. I want to live in a world where 1,000 calories of cheez its, ice cream and soda have the same impact on my body as 1,000 calories of salmon, broccoli and olive oil.

 

[bjorn2bwild]

I am secretly rooting for the calories in calories out model. I want to live in a world where 1,000 calories of cheez its, ice cream and soda have the same impact on my body as 1,000 calories of salmon, broccoli and olive oil.

Heh heh, this guy did the experiment for you --------

Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, set-out to disprove the many diets that claim calorie-counting is completely irrelevant and unnecessary for the sake of weight-loss. Certainly, Haub isn’t trying to claim that eating Twinkies and Oreos is beneficial to our health, but he does use an array of junk-food to demonstrate that despite the quality of what a person eats, if the calories are deficient, weight-loss is possible.

https://www.diabetesdaily.com/blog/oh-dear-the-twinkie-diet-actually-works-268743/

 

[flintnational]

^^It is not that calories do not count. I think it has more to do with some calories do a better job of stimulating appetite and some do a better job of satiating appetite.

To pull us back on topic, my wife and I easily skip breakfast and have restricted our eating window to about 7 hours per day, 17 hour fast. I don't think we could have done this consuming refined carbs. But, on a lower carb whole food diet, we are just not hungry in the AM.

 

[ugeauxgirl]

I skip breakfast, and find it helpful for maintaining my weight. I also eat low carb. DH Pooh Poohed both of these till one of his friends tried it, and then lost 20 LBs cutting out carbs. He marveled at how he was hardly hungry anymore. He didn't want to try skipping breakfast but one of his friends tried it so he's considering trying that too.

Since we're posting studies- here is a compilation of 23 studies comparing the weight loss between low fat and low carb diets.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/23-studies-on-low-carb-and-low-fat-diets

 

[yakers]

I have become very interested in food issues after being dxd as prediabetic. I radically altered my diet reducing carbs. I was never heavy, went through chemo/radiation for throat cancer (also which damaged my thyroid) and lost interest in food. For me food is medicine, I eat when its time and tightly controlled. I used My Fitness Pal to track ALL my food for several months untiil I just knew what to eat. I now have normal HbA1c levels. But there are problems in the kingdom. DW is a vegan so we have a vegan-carnivore house. And what would kill me works for her. She can eat a carby meal with desert and her Blood Sugar (BS) barely moves. DW is not overweight but struggles mightly to lose the last 5-10 pounds to get to her ideal weight/size. She eats very little food, I pile up food on my plate, am never hungery and have trouble keeping on weight despite many calories, probably because they are low carb.
After my two years of my 'personal science experiment', internet readings and reading research papers I have only come to three conclusions ABSOLUTELY NOTHING applies to everyone all the time. There are vast differences on how people successfully eat. And one thing I believe will not work for anyone over time is a high carb AND high fat diet. And DIETS DON'T WORK, we need to find our successful WOE (Way Of Eating)
We are all our own science experiment. I have found what works for me.