I've probaby read this before but its great to know there are different
'versions' of IF that will 'work'...
I've been striving to have my two meals within the 5-hr window but my first
meal keeps me so full, I'm just not hungry a couple of hours later and I've
not perfected the 'one meal' so I'm not super hungry during my fast.
This article says he fasts usually 15 hrs/day. Currently, I'm breaking my
fast around lunch, then eating dinner and am done. It's ok for me! But
I've also cut out grains and most fruits, too.
"Intermittent fasting and infrequent meals (2 meals a day)
DateWednesday, June 17, 2009 at 12:17AM
Step 6 is a cultural counterweight to all the stupid advice you see about
"frequent healthy snacks" in the mainstream media. We are told to eat
frequent snacks because the standard american diet with 55% carbs has you
metabolically and emotionally tethered to frequent boluses of glucose.
Go watch a kid's soccer game- they can't play for 15 minutes without a break
for cookies or corn-syrup-laden juice boxes or gatorade - our children are
sugar junkies and the advice to eat frequently is just advice to not stray
too far from your dealer so you can get a fix when your blood sugar starts
to crash!
So I agree with Gary Taubes that we should listen to our bodies, but only
after we have kicked the cocaine, the alcohol, the cigarettes the sugar, and
the cereals.
Otherwise our bodies are likely to tell us we need something that is not
good for us.
My experience has been that without the frantic hunger of a glucose-eater, I
can eat at whatever time is convenient. I eat the right types of foods, with
no measurement, counting or weighing whatsoever, and I stop eating when I am
satisfied. My weight has been absolutely stable eating this way for almost 2
years, putting the lie to the idea that you need to "count calories' to keep
weight off. Our weights and appetites are under hormonal control, and our
bodies regulate them quite precisely at given macronutrient ratios and the
hormone levels that result.
I began to fast spontaneously a few months into eating low carb (my
percentages are about 65% fat, 25% protein and 10% carbs). On LC, the
character of hunger changes completely. Without swings in blood glucose, and
with cellular adaptation towards fatty acid metabolism, the "sick' sort of
hunger that most people think of as hunger goes away. I find that I can
arbitrarily fast for up to 18 hours with no discomfort whatsoever. If the
goal is to keep your insulin levels low, it is only logical that increased
intervals between meals increases the amount of time spent in the
fatty-acid-fueled state, and less in the pro-inflammatory, oxidative
stress-causing state where your body is trying to deal with excess calories,
especially from glucose. I believe intermittent fasting and infrequent meals
decrease the hormonal signals that lead to disease and the hormone sensitive
degenerative diseases that we think of as "aging".
Advantages of infrequent meals:
1) Enhanced metabolic training in the direction of fat metabolism
2) Lower insulin levels and fewer insulin related diseases (Metabolic
syndrome, degenerative diseases, Alzheimer's, common cancers)
3) Greater tolerance for fasting makes it easier to tolerate not eating -
this give you "metabolic headroom" -it makes you more functional and
resilient - You are a Porsche with a 40 gallon gas tank instead of a truck
running on lead acid batteries.
4) If you exercise while fasting, the lack of insulin in the fasting state
improves the fat-mobilizing and insulin-sensitizing benefits of the
exercise.
I eat around noon and again about 9 pm most days. So every 24 hours has a 15
hour fast and once in a while up to 18 hours. Please understand that this is
in no way uncomfortable and my weight has been stable at 157-158 lbs for
over year. It's not some kind of deprivation or an ascetic experience. I
have no idea if this is better than 3 meals a day with a 24 hour fast once a
week. This is just what I do spontaneously, but my reading of the literature
backs it up as beneficial.
I am sure my regime is healthier than the 5 meals a day "The Zone" or other
pseudoscientific diets tell you you must have, or the advice to snack
constantly I get from brochures at my local YMCA. Hunter-gatherers tend to
eat a few leftovers in the morning, hunt all day and then have a big meal at
the end of the day - sounds pretty similar. I doubt if in paleolithic times
they very often fasted on purpose, but I do believe they were adapted to
food scarcity."
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