Intermittent Fasting - Tips?

[yakers]

Lot of different nutritional issues and approaches. I am a firm believer that there is no 'one way' for everyone to eat. But some things emerge that are important and fairly new. The keto diet has been around a while for epileptics and now used by many people. All distance runners know about ketosis. So some do it to lose weight, some for blood sugar control (I did for a while)and some for physical fitness (the most remarkable fitness person I know uses it regularly in his own system to achieve a remarkable Navy SEAL/Army Ranger level of fitness, jumps out of airplanes to ski down mountains and can do hundreds of pushups). I was T2 diabetic and by controlling what (low carb) and when (timed eating) I am able to stay 'normal' without meds. Keto is very low carb and what one eats. IF/timed eating is WHEN I eat and it has a significant impact on my blood sugar, I have daily postings of my blood sugar and A1Cs to show it works, it is not a diet but timed eating, the low carb IS a diet and if I need to I will drop carbs into keto if that keeps me off meds, so far I have not had to.
My diet is NOT based on CICO as having time when my body is not processing any food allows it to recover blood sugar levels. When I eat and the type of calories are more significant than the actual calorie count. I have had to add calories to keep my weight up but I can't up the carbs or the blood sugar goes up.

 

[Vacation4us]

Not needed at all. at best a distraction- red herring IMO. Just like the unnecessary fat bombs.

Medium chain triglycerides (MCT) are easily converted to ketones so some see benefit. But your body readily makes ketones from your own body fat once your daily carb intake drops low enough. Nothing wrong with using coconut oil which is high in MCTs, as part of your daily fats. But no need to drink it to boost ketones.

Fat keeps the hunger away. I drink BP coffee because it gives me energy and keeps me full for hours. I always started my day with a cup of coffee. Cream, sugar and vanilla flavoring was my norm. Now I just drink the BP coffee no artificial sweetener or sugar. I don’t check my ketone levels anymore.

Not sure what you mean by red herring but I enjoy my BP coffee as I enjoyed my prior cup of joe. It’s not a miracle it’s a cup of coffee that helps with satiety.

To each their own. I have read many of your posts and weight is not your issue. Personally I have found that people who have never had an issue with weight can’t relate to those who do, which is fine but I will continue to do what is working for me. You can do what works for you.

 

[youbet]

This discussion is getting complicated and lost in minutia. What is an easy way to get 80% of the benefit of weight loss from 20% of the effort? The best I’ve heard above is “eat what you want between noon and 8.

Maybe I'll have to try strict IF myself, but I was successful in losing 70# just using portion control and I hate to resume "eat what you want" even for only 8 hours a day and break the habit. My doc and nutritionist agree with me.

Now understand, eliminating evening snacking and that sort of thing plays a role in controlling my calorie consumption, so my method does have some element of "timing" involved. But I have no strict rules about maintaining absolutely zero calories for 16 or more hours per day.

To me, the "eat what you want between noon and 8" sounds too good to be true.

 

[youbet]

Personally I have found that people who have never had an issue with weight can’t relate to those who do

+1

Similarly, I've never needed to adjust what I eat to help control body chemistry. All my blood panel data has looked in spec forever. Therefore I often catch myself not able to identify with folks who are selecting foods with the goal of impacting some routinely measured body chemistry metric.

We're all centered on ourselves I guess........

 

[6miths]

To me IF is, as others have pointed out, a way of eating as opposed to a true 'diet' which in the traditional sense usually involves calorie-restriction of some kind. As I have said before, it also strikes me that this is a way to get back an old way of eating that predates the obesity-T2DM-metabolic syndrome epidemic. When I look at my class pictures from the 60's and 70's there were virtually no overweight, let alone obese, kids and the odd one was a rarity. Almost all of these kids were doing 15:9 'IF' almost every day. Maybe eating something for breakfast, having lunch, maybe an after school snack if it could be found and dinner at 5 or 6. So this was more like a traditional 3 meals a day diet. The other difference was that there was no constant snacking on sugary things during the 'fed' hours. Our body is designed to use mostly fats for fuel and along the way we have been convinced that glucose is our 'preferred' fuel and have gone to great lengths to gorge on glucose (or worse some fructose-glucose combination). In our original physiology, we would eat a meal that had some amount of glucose, insulin would briefly go up to facilitate storage and then fall again so we could resume fat utilization. Now many people have glucose on board from morning to midnight, insulin never falls appreciably, glucose gets stored as fat, fat can't be mobilized and basically here we are. Add that fructose has been added to the glucose load and this is handled exclusively by the liver leading to non-alcoholic fatty liver and insulin resistance. NALFD was pretty much non-existent prior to the 80's and now is incredibly common.

I agree with those who say that IF is better called 'time restricted eating' but isn't it amazing that we are even talking about whether maybe it's wise to avoid eating an extra 500 calories AFTER our main meal of the day. Add to the perturbation that these calories are often some glucose-fructose concoction just to mess us up further.

We would be wise to aim our interventions at young children as it is clear that once a person has become obese, it is very difficult to reset their metabolism with anything other than surgical methods.

 

[clifp]

Noon to eight works well for me. I don’t get hungry until about 2PM. The restriction after 8PM helps change evening snacking habits. I wake up by 7AM and have water, black coffee or tea in the morning.

Roughly ten years ago there was a fad diet of eating 200 calories 6 times a day. This is the opposite and mimics other animals on top of the food chain. For example, bears are omnivores and go long times without eating in a cyclic fashion. We were once hunter-gatherers before developing agriculture 10-12,000 years ago. Abundance of food is a relatively recent development. Processed food is even more recent. As a society we haven’t handled it very well.

I'm very interested in this diet. My fat friend has lost enough weight doing intermittent fasting and I've gained enough (thank you Covid) that he now weighs less than me despite being taller.

I lost 20 lbs, 3 years ago on a shake diet, but I swear the biggest impact was the 24-hour fasting one day a week, rather than the boring protein shakes.

Still I am trying to understand the science behind it. Is the primary benefit, it cuts out the late night snacks , which in my case is certainly a source of calories or something else? You talked about body chemistry changes which I didn't completely follow. Does anybody have links to papers, article on IF?
I'm still stuck on calories in < calorie out to lose weight.

 

[audreyh1]

Fat keeps the hunger away. I drink BP coffee because it gives me energy and keeps me full for hours. I always started my day with a cup of coffee. Cream, sugar and vanilla flavoring was my norm. Now I just drink the BP coffee no artificial sweetener or sugar. I don’t check my ketone levels anymore.

Not sure what you mean by red herring but I enjoy my BP coffee as I enjoyed my prior cup of joe. It’s not a miracle it’s a cup of coffee that helps with satiety.

To each their own. I have read many of your posts and weight is not your issue. Personally I have found that people who have never had an issue with weight can’t relate to those who do, which is fine but I will continue to do what is working for me. You can do what works for you.

I was specifically referring to seeking out and using MCT oils.

And I have been overweight at times and was somewhat overweight when I started my keto adventure 2.5 years ago. Regardless, optimal metabolic health is my main focus.

 

[NgineER]

Does anybody have links to papers, article on IF?

I'm still stuck on calories in < calorie out to lose weight.

This Harvard medical school article is pretty concise and has a list of references at the end.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-surprising-update-2018062914156

 

[audreyh1]

Still I am trying to understand the science behind it. Is the primary benefit, it cuts out the late night snacks , which in my case is certainly a source of calories or something else? You talked about body chemistry changes which I didn't completely follow. Does anybody have links to papers, article on IF?
I'm still stuck on calories in < calorie out to lose weight.

Kidney specialist Jason Fung is an authority on intermittent fasting and has popularized it as therapy for treating diabetes and obesity.

 

[Markola]

This Harvard medical school article is pretty concise and has a list of references at the end.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-surprising-update-2018062914156

Great, simple article. The reader comments are equally insightful.

 

[EastWest Gal]

There are books on the subject.

The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, by Stephen Phinney.

The Obesity Code as well as other books by Jason Fung. He is a nephrologist who turned to intermittent fasting to help diabetic patients who were referred to him for kidney disease.

The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz. This journalist spent nine years researching the history of the low fat diet push that began in the last half of the 20th century.

San Diego based cardiologist and lipidologist Bret Scher MD, has a podcast through Diet Doctor. The website has numerous articles as well. Diet Doctor can be accessed without a membership, though parts of the website are accessible only to members.

LowCarb USA has continuing medical education courses and conferences, and maintains a list of low-carb/IF supporting physicians. I found my physician through LowCarb USA.

I recommend starting with the Diet Doctor website and/or podcast. The website has articles. The first book I listed explains the physiology and chemistry involved, but it may get too down in the weeds for some.

 

[SunnyOne]

I've been attempting to find out how many hours of fasting is necessary before autophagy benefits set in. I've seen references anywhere from 16-32 hours. I suppose there are some individual differences and maybe little to no human research studies on it?

 

[googily]

I've been attempting to find out how many hours of fasting is necessary before autophagy benefits set in. I've seen references anywhere from 16-32 hours. I suppose there are some individual differences and maybe little to no human research studies on it?

Correct, there's no confirmed research in humans--it's all animal studies and hypotheses at this point.

 

[audreyh1]

I've been attempting to find out how many hours of fasting is necessary before autophagy benefits set in. I've seen references anywhere from 16-32 hours. I suppose there are some individual differences and maybe little to no human research studies on it?

Honestly, that is simply unknown for humans.

There must be a certain amount happening part of the time. The best guesses I’ve read are that more? starts after 12 hours fasting, but not verified.