Alternate Day Fasting / Eat Every Other Day

[Wells]

 

 

 

[liminal_luke]

I often do "leangains" style intermittent fasting, taking in calories only during an 8 hour window daily.  It`s pretty easy for me and helps with weight loss.  It would be interesting to hear how the health benefits of ADF might differ from this and other styles of fasting.

[Wells]

10 hours ago, liminal_luke said:

I often do "leangains" style intermittent fasting, taking in calories only during an 8 hour window daily.  It`s pretty easy for me and helps with weight loss.  It would be interesting to hear how the health benefits of ADF might differ from this and other styles of fasting.

 

Intermittent fasting works for health benefits, if in sum per time unit (for example if you look at the week in total) you consume at least 1/3 less calories than normal. Otherwise, it might work for fat loss, but not necessarily for health benefits.

In other words: The key is calorie restriction (no matter how you organise it: One meal a day, eat every other day, etc.), reduction of calorie intake per week of at least 1/3 less than normal.

That means: If you eat all your normal calories in a short time frame per day, it might have a fat loss benefit but will not have the huge health benefits associated with fasting.

 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Sentry

[Wells]

Also, intermittent fasting for fat loss with calorie restriction might not even work, depending on what you eat and when you eat it. My brother and I both became fatter and fatter (ugly pot belly!) by just eating one big meal of around 1,600 calories in the evening. But we lost fat (belly shrunk down again), when we changed the time point of eating the same meal to the morning. Why? Because the body decides daily anew to burn calories economical or not according to the calorie intake in the morning!

In other words: Skipping breakfast might not be the wisest decision if your goal is fat loss!

 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Sentry

[Wells]

Also: For fat loss, it's important in what form you consume your calories. The body has no problem to transform carbohydrates and fat from nutrition into body fat. The body in theory could in a complicated way transform protein from nutrition into body fat or stored carbohydrates, but in reality (according to scientific studies) doesn't do it.

In other words: The amount of calories you consume as protein will either be transformed into healthy body tissue or cells or will be burnt up as additional body heat (you will feel that), but most likely will not be stored as fat. That's also my personal experience.

Conclusion: The higher the percentage of your consumed calories is in the form of protein, the better for fat loss! Stallone prepared for his Rambo and Rocky movies with an almost pure protein diet (around 1,200 cal per day) plus a cheat day on the weekends (4,000+ cal).

 

Edited July 23, 2018 by Sentry

[Wells]

 

The science of eating every other day / alternate day fasting.

 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Wells

[Wells]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5043510/

 

"Conclusions:

Our results from both the systematic review and the meta‐analysis suggest that ADF [alternate day fasting] is an efficacious dietary method, and may be superior to VLCD [very low calorie diet, < 800 kcal ] for some patients because of ease of compliance, greater fat‐mass loss and relative preservation of fat‐free mass. Head‐to‐head randomized clinical trials are needed to further assess relative efficacy of these two approaches."

 

Edited August 8, 2018 by Wells

[silent thunder]

Ha.  Synchronicity.

I was heading into a long fast two days ago and my body clearly said... 'nope' around hour 30.

And instead offered to eat every other day for a time.

I have accepted.

[Wu Ming Jen]

Being able to eat everyday how much food do you guys have???

[silent thunder]

It's rather insane the relationship with food here.  So many people eating as quickly as possible, whatever is handy and cheap, as if eating were something to get out of the way!  And often eating alone, rather than waiting and sharing at leisure with family or friends.

 

Row upon row of processed food line both sides of every shelf 3 meters high... for tens of thousands of square feet in each grocery store.  And those are the standard grocery stores, not the mega, warehouse freaks of nature... I've been inside a Costco once... still haven't set foot in a Walmart.  Some things are untenable in my life.

 

In each grocery store, there is a thin line of real food, produce, eggs and the like that runs along the outer rim of the space.

 

My son knows to stick to the ring to find real food options.  Regularly while we're shopping and walking by the end caps, he'll peer down an aisle and state "yup, bright colors and boxes... no real food in that aisle either."

 

We are very fortunate in taht we get most all our food from our local Farmer's Market each Saturday.  It hosts some 200 venders.  It's like a festival every weekend.  Live music at each end of the market, about two dozen restaurant stalls, bakeries, juicers, coffee stalls, organic anything you can imagine, pickled everything.  All venders are vetted must be within a 50 mile radius to participate so we know it's not shipped in.  We go to the grocery store for cleaning supplies and odds n ends any more.

Edited August 8, 2018 by silent thunder
grammar

[Lost in Translation]

6 hours ago, silent thunder said:

We are very fortunate in taht we get most all our food from our local Farmer's Market each Saturday.

 

Is this the market at Wilson Park on Crenshaw? My wife and I love that place, although we don't go as much as we used to ever since we started going to Sprouts and Whole Paycheck, I mean Whole Foods.

[silent thunder]

1 hour ago, Lost in Translation said:

 

Is this the market at Wilson Park on Crenshaw? My wife and I love that place, although we don't go as much as we used to ever since we started going to Sprouts and Whole Paycheck, I mean Whole Foods.

That's the one!

How awesome is that giant tree fort?  We love to take our breakfast up there and eat in the shade, or hang out and watch the softball games if they're playing.

[Lost in Translation]

25 minutes ago, silent thunder said:

That's the one!

How awesome is that giant tree fort?  We love to take our breakfast up there and eat in the shade, or hang out and watch the softball games if they're playing.

 

I don"t recall the tree fort. It has been a while, haven't been there since they started work on the duck pond.

[silent thunder]

Next time you're there, head east out of the market into the park, it's just over the hill east side of the duck pond.  It's brilliant.

[rideforever]

 

[redcairo]

@liminal_luke I used to follow Martin's blog when it was active, way back when.

 

Now that fasting is more popular in internet discussion, there is:

 

scheduled eating -- any fast less than 24 hours

cyclic fasting -- any 'consistent' schedule like day on/off, or 5:2, etc.

intermittent fasting -- for >24hrs, UN-regularly scheduled eating

 

Used to just be 'IF' for everything   Now the terms are just a mess lol

 

The last couple weeks I've been doing 2 or 3 simple 1MADs (23hr fast, 1hr eating window) followed by 72h fast, back and forth. I was just speeding up my return to keto to minimize misery.

 

Getting a keto mojo really helped me a lot. Unless I change my mind (which I might soon), my current rule is I figure my GKI (glucose ketone indicator -- which is glucose divided by ketones divided by 18) and if it's over 4.0 I fast for another day and if it's 4 or less I go ahead and eat, either 1 meal, or a 3-4 hour window, depending on what I have and feel like.

 

Martin really deserves credit for his proactive work with weight lifting and cyclic fasting in the early days. Other people wrote books basically just ripping off his ideas!  If you have an interest in keto/fasting/lifting, the ketogenicforums.com have several people real into that there.

Edited July 4, 2019 by redcairo