Fast-5 Diet and Lifestyle: Re: [fast5] Fast on! Fast off!

Congratulations to you! Clearly you are thinking about the philosophical aspects of all this.

It's interesting to me that you mention the "Sumo" aspect. Sumo tradition has intrigued me for some time. Mainly because the average Japanese person is both lightweight and healthy, without working too hard at it. Sumos work hard at being heavy, and strong. But the [rather secretive] Sumo diet is different from that of the average Japanese, and I think the differences will tell us a lot about how genes work. I've also met Korean kids who were brought up in America on the "American diet", and their physique came out much like those of my family (which are kind of Sumo-esque too).

I think Fast-5 triggers some kind of insulin reaction, which works nicely to help lose weight. I think food choices trigger some of the same insulin-related things too, although none of this has been studied enough. It *could* be that some of these unexplained plateaus are related to some of these issues, mainly food choices?

The things I've been studying are kind of varied. One big one is vinegar. Yep. Vinegar. Vinegar has a big effect on insulin, possibly because it interferes with iron metabolism. It also helps a lot with appetite, and I've been drinking "Poor man's soda" in the morning which pretty much blocks any kind of hunger. Poor man's soda is:

1 oz vinegar

a glass of water (or cooled tea)

1/4 tsp baking soda

Makes a fizzy drink, which isn't sour. A little like Perrier. It can have honey in it too, although that wouldn't be compatible with fasting.

Another thing that changes hunger is fish and eggs. When my diet has more of either one, I eat less, and am more satisfied, compared to beef or pork. Again, I don't know why, but I do know that the rumored Sumo diet has more beef and pork, less fish and eggs.

The Sumo diet is also rumored to be based on wheat noodles, rather than the usual Japanese rice. There are a number of people looking into this too. Wheat does weird things in the body, some of which might be related to weight gain.

Also, the Sumo diet uses beer, rather than tea. Beer has hops in it, and hops are used in herbal tradition to increase appetite. Tea ... sheesh, tea does a lot of things, I don't begin to understand it. But the tea-drinking cultures tend to be thin.

Anyway, if you "got past a plateau" ... it could just be your body is now ready to let go of either the fat or the water. Or something else changed. If it was me, I'd analyze both.

As for traffic being light ... I'm in a number of groups, and I never have figured out the traffic patterns. Fast-5 though, has the issue that people do it, then just do it. There isn't much to talk about. "Hi! I didn't eat today again!". In some groups there are a lot of recipes (how to make crackers with zero carbs!) or support (I really, really, need a cookie! Please stop me!). But if you look in to the archives, most people are ok after a couple of weeks, so there isn't much to talk about. Also, Fast-5 is now on Facebook, and some people prefer that format.

On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 12:19 PM, entermittenedfaster <no_reply@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Well, down another pound and a half this morning... yippeeee!

Defeat does not exist in this dojo, does it?
NO, SENSEI!

I have been wobbling back-and-forth on the edge of a stubborn plateau for the last couple of weeks, and am hopeful now of attaining a more rapid descent down into the fabled valley of lightness and well-being.

I am nearing the end of my daily fasting period, that enjoyable stretch of emptiness when I know my insulin levels are efficiently low and I can enjoy for the last couple of hours a bounteous buffet of sumptuous, predigested appetizers, happily nibbling away upon my own accumulated belly fat.

So, that makes a grand total of 26½ pounds down from the moment I crested at 290 pounds (there, I said it!) – an enviable sumo physique, I might add – maybe 5 months ago, but the accompanying pain in the hips and knees and the limited mobility prompted me upon that fateful day to make a solemn pledge to get down to my old college fighting weight, or thereabouts. Under 200 pounds, let's say... a bodyweight that begins with a one in the hundreds column sounds about right (I'm 6 foot one and male, for the sake of full disclosure)... I'll fine-tune my goal weight once I arrive in the neighborhood.

For now, it's one day at a time.

I don't want my first post to be too long, and it would be great to hear back from some of you old-timers. The traffic is a little light on this group's site of late, which also prompts me to write to you today.

One thought hit me this morning though, which it might be useful to share. I notice that I never wake up hungry. The transition to fat burning as an energy source that takes place normally during our nightly fast doesn't stop just because we open our eyelids and start moving around. Cruising from wake-up time to break-fast time (somewhere between noon and 3 PM for me) without eating feels easy and natural. I think it's perfectly normal Paleolithic behavior not to be thinking about food in the morning. And for this reason we are scolded with the adage: "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!"

We have to be told that, reminded of that "fact" regularly by our parents, because it is not obvious to us. And it is not obvious to us because our body is not telling us that message itself. And it's not telling us that message because the message is a lie!

So I'm learning to listen to my body and reinterpret its messages more skillfully. When I feel somatic hunger, I don't take that as a command to eat immediately, necessarily. I look at it as a status update from my gut to my conscious mind that it is currently dining on body fat and can happily do so for a few more hours. Why else the hell was I storing up 100 extra pounds of butter cookies inside my own skin? For just such an occasion! Mangiare! Bon appetit!

Oh, good (ho, hum)... it's time for lunch...

All the best,

David