Intermittent Fasting club

[overlandflyer]

i have been intermittent fasting for a year. about half that time i used IF as a weight loss program dropping from a BMI of ~32 down to where i am now in the BMI = 23/24 area. the last 6 months or so, i have been sticking to a daily IF routine ~95% of the time and have been staying within an 8-10 lb range; the same weight i was in college, minus about an inch of height.

thought i'd start this club to let people describe their success or lack thereof with the various forms of intermittent fasting. something i'd like to know personally.... for daily fasting, when do you schedule your eating window? i have a theory on this...

if i am doing a moderate 16/8 daily IF, i like to start eating something shortly after noon. this will put the end at (or typically before) 8pm. to me this provides a 2nd benefit. by juggling around eating times for so long, i have come to the conclusion that ... at least with me... regardless of when i eat, about 7-8 hours after i stop, i get hungry. ok... i know anyone who doesn't IF will be laughing at this point... who DOESN'T get hungry after 8 hours?? the interesting thing that happens, however, when you start to understand how hunger works... in a while, without eating, the hunger goes away.

maybe you can see why noon - 8pm works well, then... in 7-8 hours, it is 3-4am... the middle of the night (most days... hey, i'm retired). by the time i get up, that hunger attack is well past its time. could this be psychological? of course.... that is all that hunger really is. if you don't eat, you will not die... but your brain wants you to think so.


if you have an Intermittent Fasting experience, good or bad, i hope you will share it here.

 

[overlandflyer]

never heard about Intermittent Fasting?

it would be reckless to assume everyone knows about this.
a year ago i didn't.

there is a wealth of information/ videos/ lectures/ talks (TED talks!) on the internet.
here are the first two guys who really turned around my views about what i eat and when i eat.

Dr. Jason Fung - Therapeutic Fasting - Solving the Two-Compartment Problem
Dr. Robert Lustig - Sugar -- the elephant in the kitchen

 

[overlandflyer]

Intermittent Fasting (IF) terminology...

Intermittent Fasting (IF)... in its simplist form, in any 24 period, there is a stretch of at least 14 hours you take in zero calories.

16/8, 18/6, 20/4, etc... shorthand for referring to intermittent fasting times. the pair of numbers always adds up to 24 (hours), the first number indicating the hours of fasting, the second, your daily eating window.

OMAD... One Meal A Day. a diet plan in itself, i just consider this an extreme form of IF. call it a 23/1 IF.

5/2 diet... some people have adapted the basic 5/2 diet (two days of dieting every week) with calorie restriction to add the practice of intermittent fasting on those two days.

Intermittent Fasting makes a lot of sense once you understand some nutrition basics.
there is a lot of information here, but for most people who have no idea what their pancreas does... here is the 101....

 

[overlandflyer]

my biggest problem with intermittent fasting.... at least the past few months... is hitting my eating window and either being distracted or frankly, not being very hungry... or both. i like to start with breakfast around noon so i can end in the late afternoon/ early evening, but here it is today, almost 3pm and because i got distracted with some gardening, i still haven't eaten today and frankly i'm not that hungry right now.

 

[overlandflyer]

one benefit i am convinced IF gives you is a chance to absorb a horrible eating day a lot quicker. yesterday my only input was semi-junk food, but at least it wasn't what i might have called a binge... just a fairly reasonable amount of bad calories. but what does my body have to work with today before my eating window is here? it has no choice other than to keep burning those horrible calories i put in... it has nothing else (like the "healthy" traditional time for breakfast meal... as soon as one gets up) to work with. when i have MY breakfast... about 1-2pm today, my body/ digestive system gets to restart. ... good thing... there was a buy 1, get one free chicken deal at Ralph's a few days ago, and i have a fridge full of parts i need to do something with...

 

[overlandflyer]

good study here (conclusion below)...

Early Time-Restricted Feeding Improves Insulin Sensitivity, Blood Pressure, and Oxidative Stress Even Without Weight Loss in Men with Prediabetes

put on your technical specs though... this is a "med school level" article for the most part.

interesting that their "control" group was a 12/12 eating/fasting schedule.... the eTRF was the 16/8 IF group. i had to chuckle a bit... since when is not eating for 12 consecutive hours considered "normal". i would have chosen the control group on an 8/16 (8 hour fasting, 16 hour eating) schedule.

i also don't think 5 weeks is enough time to consider the long term effects.
=====+++=====

Conclusion
In conclusion, five weeks of eTRF improved insulin levels, insulin sensitivity, β cell responsiveness, blood pressure, and oxidative stress levels in men with prediabetes—even though food intake was matched to the control arm and no weight loss occurred. Our trial was the first randomized controlled trial to show that IF has benefits independent of food intake and weight loss in humans. Our study was also first clinical trial to test eTRF in humans and to show that eTRF improves some aspects of cardiometabolic health. Our trial tested eTRF in men with prediabetes—a population at great risk of developing diabetes—and indicates that eTRF is an efficacious strategy for treating both prediabetes and likely also prehypertension. We speculate that eTRF—by virtue of combining daily intermittent fasting and eating in alignment with circadian rhythms in metabolism—will prove to be a particularly efficacious form of IF. In light of these promising results, future research is needed to better elucidate the mechanisms behind both intermittent fasting and meal timing; to determine which forms of IF and meal timing are efficacious; and to translate them into effective interventions for the general population.

 

[bensanon]

Thanks for posting, flyer. Interesting. There were also some subjective measures of appetite that they looked at which are summarized in Figure 5 and in their discussion.

eTRF substantially reduced the desire to eat (Δ=−22 ± 7 mm; p=0.007) and the capacity to eat (Δ=−23 ± 6 mm; p=0.001) in the evening and non-significantly decreased hunger levels (Δ=−9 ± 6 mm; p=0.15). Participants also reported that eTRF dramatically increased sensations of fullness in the evening (Δ=31 ± 6 mm; p<0.0001) and nearly significantly increased sensations of a full stomach (Δ=10 ± 5 mm; p=0.07).

 

[aiminglow]

Does skipping a meal count as intermittent fasting? I do that fairly often - maybe twice a week, skipping the evening meal, if I think I've eaten a bit much during the day, but I don't do it according to a plan.

 

[overlandflyer]

the bottom line with IF is finding a time you can put together at least 14 hours... better with 16-18 hours and extremely 20 hours as a daily (over any 24 hour period) fasting time. with me, i find my best times for a 16/8 IF (my moderate fasting times now that i'm mostly in a maintenance mode) if to put my 8 hour eating window to start about noon and end ~8pm. when you look at it that way, you have a point... i am skipping "traditional morning breakfast" in favor of moving MY breakfast to around noon.

other people find an earlier schedule is better. start your eating window in the morning at 8-9 am (or earlier), ending in the early afternoon. both these methods essentially skip a traditional meal time, either early morning breakfast of evening dinner. maybe you can see that skipping lunch will have little effectiveness in an intermittent fast.

i can see the first method (eating window from noon- 8pm) could be easily adapted to anyone's normal schedule. you simply skip breakfast completely... NO glass of OJ, NO pop-tarts, etc... keep it to a cup of black coffee of lemon tea. at noon, YOUR breakfast (break-fast) will be everyone else's lunch. eat dinner at a normal time then ... NO SNACKING IN THE EVENING...!

pretty simple... right?

 

[overlandflyer]

eTRF substantially reduced the desire to eat .

perhaps, but small hunger pangs are a part of my life. i wish i could figure out what brings that feeling on, but it's so random, i don't really dwell on it much. i also find it funny that after i get a hunger pang, later when i think about it passing, i can never recall when it actually stopped... sorta like hiccups...?

 

[overlandflyer]

out of all those charts, i still can't figure out exactly what is meant by "capacity to eat"...? anyone?

 

[bensanon]

Maybe it's like, I could eat a couple slices of pizza versus I could eat a whole large pizza followed by a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

 

[aiminglow]

NO SNACKING IN THE EVENING...!

Definitely! Evening snacking is deadly!

As an occasional meal-skipper, rather than a dedicated hours-watcher, I don't think I really belong in this club, but it's good to drop in and hear the chat and get a few ideas - thanks, guys!

 

[overlandflyer]

i am discovering there are many different methods of IF. some people hear the word fast and immediately think of Gandhi and going weeks without food. with intermittent fasting, the slight inability ( ) to commit is right in the name...! if you can do a 16 hour fast once a week, i'm sure it would be more of a benefit than most think.

there are no attendance requirements here.

 

[bensanon]

Did you see these points in the intro, flyer? I thought they were particularly interesting as I'm assessing whether or not IF will be a good thing for me.

More recently, the longest IF study in humans reported that adults who practiced ADMF for one year were not any healthier than conventional dieters who lost a similar amount of weight, yet they had a higher attrition rate (Trepanowski et al., 2017b).
...
Indeed, studies in humans show that eating in alignment with circadian rhythms in metabolism by increasing food intake at breakfast time and by reducing it at dinnertime improves glycemic control, weight loss, and lipid levels and also reduces hunger (Garaulet et al., 2013; Gill and Panda, 2015; Jakubowicz et al., 2013a, b; Jakubowicz et al., 2015; Keim et al., 1997; Ruiz-Lozano et al., 2016). This suggests that the efficacy of IF interventions may depend not only on weight loss but also on the time of day of food intake. Moreover, these data from circadian studies suggest that combining two different meal timing strategies—IF and eating in alignment with circadian rhythms—may be a particularly beneficial form of IF. We call such a combined intervention early time-restricted feeding (early TRF; eTRF), and we define it as a subtype of TRF where dinner is eaten in the mid-afternoon.

 

[overlandflyer]

Maybe it's like, I could eat a couple slices of pizza versus I could eat a whole large pizza followed by a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

i've been thinking about this ... the other day i was down to two apples. at first i brought out both to cut up, but after a bit of consideration, i put one back in the fridge. glad i did as one was plenty. ...but i often find myself at first thinking i could eat more.

i think the best way to treat this habit is to not think everything you plate out for a meal needs to be eaten... the "clean your plate off" syndrome. a few days ago i plated out some chicken and mushrooms, but when it came down to the last few bites, i didn't force them down, i had half a skillet of leftovers anyway, so back it went into the pan and when cooled down went into the fridge for the next day (it helps that i live alone... lol).

i think i would fail that "capacity to eat" test on a regular basis ... i know i have that bad habit of thinking i can eat more than i need to unless i ultimately (occasionally) become more reasonable.

 

[overlandflyer]

Did you see these points in the intro, flyer? I thought they were particularly interesting as I'm assessing whether or not IF will be a good thing for me.

More recently, the longest IF study in humans reported that adults who practiced ADMF for one year were not any healthier than conventional dieters who lost a similar amount of weight, yet they had a higher attrition rate (Trepanowski et al., 2017b).
...
Indeed, studies in humans show that eating in alignment with circadian rhythms in metabolism by increasing food intake at breakfast time and by reducing it at dinnertime improves glycemic control, weight loss, and lipid levels and also reduces hunger (Garaulet et al., 2013; Gill and Panda, 2015; Jakubowicz et al., 2013a, b; Jakubowicz et al., 2015; Keim et al., 1997; Ruiz-Lozano et al., 2016). This suggests that the efficacy of IF interventions may depend not only on weight loss but also on the time of day of food intake. Moreover, these data from circadian studies suggest that combining two different meal timing strategies—IF and eating in alignment with circadian rhythms—may be a particularly beneficial form of IF. We call such a combined intervention early time-restricted feeding (early TRF; eTRF), and we define it as a subtype of TRF where dinner is eaten in the mid-afternoon.

ADMF... alternate day modified fasting. hmmmm... i'm not sure i would find this easy. essentially IF one day and normal eating the next... i think.

i have to say that establishing a consistent eating day was likely a positive aspect of the daily IF i started and still practice. as i have said, i do have rather lax days.... 12/12 happens a few times a month. but to have to switch around your eating times every day. i can possibly see how that method could have a high attrition rate. i find the more consistent my schedule is, the easier it is to succeed.

i think it would be easier to start with a 12/12 or 14/10 schedule. as i said about this study in the first place... i don't think even a 12/12 day is "normal" for many people. ask anyone you know if they can think of 12 hours in the past week they didn't find themselves eating something. after you can solidly establish this... start cranking back the eating hours.

 

[bensanon]

i've been thinking about this ... the other day i was down to two apples. at first i brought out both to cut up, but after a bit of consideration, i put one back in the fridge. glad i did as one was plenty. ...but i often find myself at first thinking i could eat more.

i think the best way to treat this habit is to not think everything you plate out for a meal needs to be eaten... the "clean your plate off" syndrome. a few days ago i plated out some chicken and mushrooms, but when it came down to the last few bites, i didn't force them down, i had half a skillet of leftovers anyway, so back it went into the pan and when cooled down went into the fridge for the next day (it helps that i live alone... lol).

i think i would fail that "capacity to eat" test on a regular basis ... i know i have that bad habit of thinking i can eat more than i need to unless i ultimately (occasionally) become more reasonable.

I run into this too. Unfortunately, I grew up learning to clean my plate. I think my mother still goes by that policy. I have been thinking it might help to slow down when eating but it seems like I would need to slow waaay down. Like 20 minutes? Isn't that around the amount of time it takes for food to register? This kind of thing makes me wonder if IF would be helpful because I don't do well if I restrict absolutely. Like a light protein snack in the afternoon might help with cravings in the evenings but this may be breaking the benefits of fasting but then again there's this data that shows fasting may improve cravings. What are we to believe??

 

[bensanon]

ADMF... alternate day modified fasting. hmmmm... i'm not sure i would find this easy. essentially IF one day and normal eating the next... i think.

i have to say that establishing a consistent eating day was likely a positive aspect of the daily IF i started and still practice. as i have said, i do have rather lax days.... 12/12 happens a few times a month. but to have to switch around your eating times every day. i can possibly see how that method could have a high attrition rate. i find the more consistent my schedule is, the easier it is to succeed.

i think it would be easier to start with a 12/12 or 14/10 schedule. as i said about this study in the first place... i don't think even a 12/12 day is "normal" for many people. ask anyone you know if they can think of 12 hours in the past week they didn't find themselves eating something. after you can solidly establish this... start cranking back the eating hours.

Makes sense. I think this study was 18/6 and they mentioned in the limitations that many participants found it really difficult to get three meals in in the span of 6 hours. Well, yeah, I would too. Breakfast at 8, lunch at 11, dinner at 2??

 

[overlandflyer]

i mention the words breakfast, lunch and dinner only to give a point of reference to others. i haven't considered my eating habits "3 meals a day" for over a year. i usually call my first food intake of the day as "breakfast" as that is its function, but my breakfast is rarely anything like a traditional Denny's Grand Slam, etc. the closest i ever get is some days i actually will have eggs and something... ham or bacon... or some days i do start off with oatmeal. this morning it was some fried up chicken (done... finally...!!) and ... lol... popcorn.

i sometimes do eat two distinct meals, but my eating window is generally full of random acts of eating. today i finished off my day with some steamed cauliflower.

that study used 12/12 as the control group and 16/8 as the time restricted group. the difficulty in getting all that food into the allotted time might have something to do with the diet they were given. this was basically a "health effects" related study and not a weight loss study. hence, the diet that had to be consumed in 8 hours was the same as the control group had to down in 12 hours. when i was on the 20/4 fasting schedule, you are right in thinking some of my loss had to do with just the sheer time i had to eat. i've never been able to pack in a lot of food in a short time even before i started to affect the change.