Fasting Affects the Brain
brainfacts.org
brainfacts.org
The results are profound. I'm a lot more focused and emotionally stable. The only distraction is the frequent "gotta find food" feeling, but that usually subsides within minutes. It's usually not even true hunger, but an impulse instilled in me by a culture focused on eating and "never starving".
Pro-breakfast proponents say that eating breakfast results in eating less throughout the day, but I can't say this has been true at all for myself. When I ate breakfast, I also would snack more throughout the day. Without breakfast, I look forward to meals more and those two meals, which are almost always ketogenic, are more satisfying.
The only negative effect I'm having is that my sex drive has plummeted to near-zero. I suppose that's a good thing for focusing on work, but I wouldn't want to keep that up forever.
Dr. Kellogg and his brother had a business creating various supposed health products and Corn Flakes was part of that.
In 1917 a magazine called Good Health, edited by Dr. Kellogg, wrote "in many ways breakfast is the most important meal of the day". That seems to be the origin and cereal makers ran with it.
More importantly, Dr. Kellogg and his brother started two rival companies. The brother believed that sugar should be added to the formula Dr. Kellogg has been using to treat his patients.
Dr. Kellogg refused, believing sugar to be awful for the body.
Needless to say, we all know which of the two rival companies became the corporate giant, and which of the two rival companies disappeared into history. There was a big court case between the two rival brothers over the "Kellogg" name. After that, the two brothers never talked with each other for the rest of their lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harvey_Kellogg#Breakfast_...
Since the two were brothers, it is somewhat ambiguous to who really invented modern cereal. But Dr. Kellogg was the health-fanatic who would have been studying "healthy breakfasts" and other such stuff.
EDIT: It should be noted that 1890s / early 1900s medical science was downright awful. So definitely take any health claims from that era with suspicion. Be sure to look up "sanatoriums" and how awful their medical practices / beliefs were. There's probably a nugget of truth somewhere in Dr. Kellogg's research, but you've gotta look at his claims through the lens of history to really understand him.
Page three is what you want, and it's worth looking at for a masterclass in garbage science.
The big header gives us "A cereal breakfast. Why it’s the best way to start the day." The subhead asserts "Experts worldwide agree: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day", which is somewhere between disputable and a lie. Below that is a list of wild claims like "People who regularly eat cereal tend to be less stressed, less anxious and are less likely to be depressed."
Wow! Let's see the evidence! Well, about half the studies listed appear to be directly funded by Kelloggs. Many that weren't are about breakfast in general, so "eat cereal" is a misrepresentation of "compared to skipping breakfast and eating unhealthy snacks". And they're full of hilariously poor controls - there's some fumbling with "difficulty sleeping" and a "negative job score", but ultimately the study can't discern "the benefits of eating breakfast" from "the harms of working the night shift" or "leaving at 5AM in a rush".
It's actually fascinating just how many bold, impressive claims Kelloggs manages to make without lying while relying on laughably thin evidence.
The trick to that, of course, is the ambiguity of recommend'. You can ask a dozen doctors if a bowl of cereal with fresh fruit is healthier than nothing at all, or a bowl of plain oatmeal; if they say yes then they "recommend cereal". The same trick still works great for things like toothpaste, where a brand might be dentist-recommended not relative to the competition but to baking soda or plain water.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/28/breakfa...
I remember a handful of occasions in elementary school where they had someone come in and teach kids about nutrition, and the one lady told us that breakfast is the most important meal because we need to start off our day with "lots of energy". These lessons included the food pyramid, which is bad science to start with.
As kids, we were being fed corporate propaganda through government sanctioned education, and sadly I don't think the students or any of the adults at the time realized it.
No wonder elementary kids can't sit still then and are diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)!
The current insanity also grew out of commercials promoting the idea that you needed to spend big for this holiday. Historically, Christmas gifts were basically for children and poor people and the rest of it could be handled as a social get together based on a big meal and/or attending some kind of spiritual/religious thing. It wasn't some obligation to bleed yourself to participate in some out-of-control spending ritual in order to not be on the outs socially with everyone you know.
Another sample size of 1, but I had the same experience. Eating or not eating breakfast has no apparent impact on my hunger at lunchtime. (Not eating dinner the night before, however, does, so I'm hardly immune to hunger. I wish)
> The only negative effect I'm having is that my sex drive has plummeted to near-zero
This symptom I do not share, however.
Why would you wish such a thing? Being hungry and then eating is one of the nicest things in life.
"hunger is the best sauce" - yes, I agree. Several years ago, I even made a similar comment to yours when I discovered a coworker disliked eating. But that was 50 pounds ago and I was overweight then.
Now I find that a lot of pleasures of the world are less pleasurable because I'm fat. Eating less (and appropriately, but still less) is the key component to not being fat, but that's hard because I'm hungry. I wish to continue to eat, and to enjoy eating, but I'll happily give up that extra burst of enjoyment while eating for the benefits I'd get in the rest of my life - both from the better health and the reduced unhappiness of wanting to eat.
Thus my comment.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102055/
Conclusion
Over the last 50 years in the U.S. we estimate that daily occupation-related energy expenditure has decreased by more than 100 calories, and this reduction in energy expenditure accounts for a significant portion of the increase in mean U.S. body weights for women and men
That's 3000 calories per month, or almost 10 lbs of fat per year.
Yeah, it's funny because I eat plenty of eggs and fat, which have constituents used by the body to produce hormones like testosterone. If anything, I'd expect the opposite effect but I haven't read any literature on the effects it can have on libido, so I'm not sure what's typical.
Could be made up but sounds like a plausible theory to me.
A better general rule, I think, is that people should only eat when they're actually hungry. That could be in the morning or any time. I have an empty stomach in the morning(waking up around 6pm), but I don't usually feel hunger until between 10:30a and 12pm.
Even better, people should avoid the usual breakfast foods that are high in sugar and low in beneficial fats. I would only discourage people from eating breakfast if they're going to regularly eat foods that spike insulin and not exercise enough to compensate, in which case I believe they're setting themselves up for failure in the long term. A healthy breakfast, on the other hand, isn't harmful by any stretch of the imagination.
The easiest way to retrain yourself is to stick to simple rules about when to eat (and what to eat).
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/well/eat/skipping-breakfa...
But it stills strikes for a need of more investigation.
Insulin sensitivity is highest in the morning though and decreases throughout the day.
Wondering why this happens. Any idea?
I'll have a quarter pound steak (sirloin or ribeye), with veggies at 7am, and then not eat again until 6-7pm, when I'll have something light (say salad).
No lack of energy during the day, no cravings. However this does tend to mean that one is largely running on burning fat during the day.
you write that you started this regimen "recently". possibly your body is still adapting to it. initially the effect is weakening to some extent. after a while - provided a healthy diet and body - this should change and make you feel stronger and more vital.
I naturally fell into this routine when I started working. A coffee around 9am then lunch around noon is plenty for me. I also never snack naturally (if it's there I can't stop myself, so I just don't take anything to my desk).
The only problem is lately I work from home and I can schedule some gym time into my day. A hard workout before that first meal is very hit or miss. Some days it's fine - some days I'll be light-headed and feel physically sick. It passes quickly though if I monitor my effort.
1. I fast every week from Sunday after (a big) lunch (1 pm) to Monday lunch (noon).
2. Mon - Sat (i.e., 6x/week) I work out in the morning from 6-7 am so I do feel like I "need" a substantial breakfast to bulk a bit.
* Mon (fasting day): 30' of light cardio and a few minutes of cardio * Tue: Weights (upper body) * Wed: Weights (lower body) * Thu: Cardio + Yoga * Fri: Weights (upper body) * Sa: Weights (lower body) * Sun: Rest
3. I eat lunch at noon.
4. I don't eat dinner, but maybe a handful of nuts and dates.
Works well for me. :)
Are you eating enough healthy fats? (whole eggs, avocados etc). Also maybe look into ZMA (zinc, magnesium aspartate, and vitamin B6) supplementation or at least get your blood work done to see if you are low on anything. A lot of people have lower testosterone levels and sex drive due to low zinc.
I find this to be true whenever I fast for 12+ hours. It feels like I'm on a drug.
It's strange to realize how not eating can be good for you.
Fun trivia: the longest a human went without food is 382 days. [0]
Getting there can be brutal though as my mind and body feel weak and it's hard for me to do any highly cognitive tasks. But after my body accepts it I feel "in the zone" and I don't want to eat and disrupt the feeling.
I've never gone longer than 18hrs though.
So, there is nothing weird about what you are experiencing - it's like wanting to get air when you are under water. Doesn't make it a good way to do things.
It's amazing how much of a trend fasting is lately.
Being hungry decreases your will power, as said in the book. That also means refusing offered food affects your will power
Totally this - when I was suffering with anorexia, in the early days where I was skipping meals all the time and burning fat, I felt amazing. Literally, "skipping down the streets because I had so much energy" amazing.
Just remember to eat afterwards or you'll f* yourself up. Please.
I know you're joking, but it's really not a concern at all. A healthy mind will seek food after a fasting period.
I'd add a caution of my own, which is not to gorge yourself during this period. Your body should be given time to adjust back to a normal diet. Though this isn't much of a concern for brief fasts under the intermittent fasting regimen.
From my lived experience I can tell you that if you're vulnerable from the other mental health signals of anorexia, the mental and physical benefits of fasting can be a trigger. So as simplistic as it is to say, break the fast when you intend to break it, and never just stretch it out or do it more regularly simply "because I feel good now".
Maintaining a healthy relationship with food is crucial in the early days. Otherwise you'll find yourself stood in the ready meal aisle of the supermarket for 30 minutes paralysed by a choice between a 300 and 400 calorie ready meal and being mentally unable to rationalise eating either.
TL;DR - set an defined end to your fast and stick the heck to it.
We humans sure do like getting addicted to stuff.
Edit: The biggest difference is age, but conventional wisdom says adults, too, should eat a good breakfast before an important exam. Should you skip breakfast before your LSAT?
A lot of that research is bogus anyway.
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/28/breakfa...
An easy compromise is to get most of your calories around lunch time (or earlier).
I teach the LSAT and I'm astonished how some people try to do it while sleep deprived. In their regular studying too.
(Day before test nerves can impede that night's sleep, which is really unfortunate)
Research, sometimes, is not what it should be.
"It was a combination of fear of indigestion, religious moralization and advertising that helped push the idea of breakfast as the most important meal of the day – but it was a campaign to sell more bacon that really solidified the idea. [..] Edward Bernays [..] exploited all the moralization and health fears around breakfast to help the company push its bacon."
From: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/nov/28/breakfa...
Highly recommend the book "The Complete Guide to Fasting" by Dr. Jason Fung.
When you think about it, while the "naturalness" argument is always suspect, it's very odd that humans eat as often as we do in the US, and unsurprising that negative health consequences follow (and positive health consequences follow fasting).
Such books and doctors, promoting this or that diet, heavily cherry-pick from research papers, they don't reflect the scientific consensus on the matter.
Can you explain this in more detail? CICO seems like it might oversimplify things but it always seemed like a really sane basis for helping shape your diet. If you need to lose weight, you should plan meals to create a calorie deficit. But yes, I would not be surprised to learn that fasting on day X and consuming double your normal calories on day X+1 are not equivalent.
The description of CICO as a "monumental failure" sounds like there's substantial evidence to the contrary -- can you share more info?
I was once well north of the weight of the subject in the article and have since shed about half of it and kept it off for years. I've been through all the games your brain and body play to try and get you to eat more, and all the fad diets out there sound to me exactly like those games. It's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals, but it isn't true and anyone telling you otherwise is trying to sell you something.
The role of hormones (especially insulin) in regulating fat storage and whether stored fat is available to the body as energy is better understood now, and much has been documented about how high insulin combined with low calories over time results in a lowering of the metabolic rate (resulting in stalling weight loss and then weight gain) rather than sustainable weight loss.
Also "it's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals" is a silly and moralistic thing to say. But it typifies the american "scientific understanding" of weight loss. Fat is immoral, suffering is virtue, therefore in order to lose your immoral fat you must suffer.
Just look at all the massive success of those in the IF and keto community in living joyful lives, not deprived, losing fat etc. etc. And then look at all the people for whom calorie counting has completely failed. The information is out there (shruggie)
Well, it's not just some fixed calorie amount they need to take for an eternity. It's the amount that corresponds to their current weight and muscle mass. As those change over time (and their base metabolic rate changes), they should change their calorie target too.
>Also "it's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals" is a silly and moralistic thing to say. But it typifies the american "scientific understanding" of weight loss. Fat is immoral, suffering is virtue, therefore in order to lose your immoral fat you must suffer.
Actually the 'silver bullet' is more typical of the american "understanding" of weight loss.
There's no silver bullet. No pain, no (weight) loss.
If it promises you to lose weight without limiting your calorie intake (e.g. have your weight loss cake and eat it too), then yes.
>but "use our magic equations based on state of the art info from 1958 to calculate your daily food needs and all your food and exercise as numbers and if your equation balances you'll lose weight" isn't
The laws of thermodynamics don't change because we don't have good formulas to calculate the exact amount of calories a person has a basic metabolic rate just based on their weight and height...
Calories still matter, and you should still limit your intake -- whether you do it approximately by "state of the art info from 1958" or with modern medical tests and expensive equipment. Or you know, just with eating less that you normally do, even without counting calories (if you ate 1 steak per day, and you change it to 1/2 a steak, you're eating half as much calories, even if you don't know how many exactly). Skipping BS deserts will cut even more...
No great science required, millions of people have lost way by just eating less...
If you're already very fit and lean, but have some stubborn fat around the "love handle" area or elsewhere, "eat less" doesn't cut it any more. Sure you can reduce that area, but not completely, and while the rest of you turns into an ugly skeleton.
The latter people are then delluded, surgery aside, you can't lose targeted fat from a specific body area. You lose fat across your body AND from that area, or you don't lose fat.
At best, you can trait that area and build some muscle next to the fat.
I'm not convinced most of those evangelists have actually lost and kept off significant amounts of weight, and nearly everything they say reads like a sales pitch so I'm not inclined to trust it.
> Also "it's nice to believe you don't have to suffer to reach your goals" is a silly and moralistic thing to say. But it typifies the american "scientific understanding" of weight loss.
Saying you can achieve your goals with less effort if you BUY NOW is even more american. Even if no one is asking you to actually pay money for a program, they're still shilling an idea.
Keto and fasting are fighting an up-hill battle: the only thing you can sell is guidance, and that is freely available. The keto bar/additive industry is minuscule.
In fact, the article says "He kept to low-fat, low-calorie food for three years. It simply didn’t work. At one point he lost about 10kg but his weight rebounded, though he still restricted his calories."
Keeping a diet like low-carb or low-fat etc (and other fads), is difficult, so many rebounce.
But the true lifestyle change of a balanced diet is difficult anyway too, and most can't do that either.
(And you do need a balanced diet, whether you follow the calories/in out or not).
This doesn't invalidate the calories in/out, just their ability to apply it (and it's not necessarily their fault, they can have all kinds of impediments causing them to overeat, eg. situational depression).
On the other hand, if you know 100% your calories, you can diet even with the most surprising foods:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.profes...
It's hard to doubt that lowering your calories consumed will cause weight loss. However, it's not obvious that the physical mechanism behind weight loss in itself provides enough structure for people to use as a practical tool for weight loss.
It's like if someone is trying to pitch a faster baseball and their coach introduces them to the "conservation of momentum" strategy for throwing faster. The idea being that if you want to move the ball faster, you have to move your arm faster too. Well, duh, but it's not obvious whether this will help anybody. It might be the case that practical strategies for pitching faster never make reference to the principle of conservation of momentum. That doesn't mean that conservation of momentum doesn't ultimately explain why every different strategy works, but it doesn't make "conservation of momentum" a strategy all by itself.
"Eat high quality foods" may very well be a better strategy for losing weight than counting your calories. It might be easier and more healthy than calorie counting for most people. That doesn't mean that "calorie in/out" doesn't on some level explain why this strategy works (although, there might be good reason to doubt this in some cases, new research suggests that the interaction between gut bacteria and food are an important factor in how people respond to different diets). But the fact that "calorie in/out" explains weight loss doesn't mean that it needs to be the central concept in everybody's dieting decisions.
So, it obviously isn’t just “carbs time 4k/cal”. Ok, let’s assume we can tell which carbs are useful and which aren’t. It takes energy to extract that energy. How much? IIRC there is over 50% variation between people (and even same person at different time) of the amount of energy actually extracted - yet almost everyone uses 100year old Atwater factors as if they were a fundamental physical constant.
Glucose storage is supply based. But gluconeogenesis (conversion of protein to glycogen) is demand based, so you must be at a deficit for the 4kcal/gr protein measure to be used.
How about body temp? A person at 35.6C uses a few tens or hundred calories less per day than a standard 36.7C person. Yes, these exist. Did you take this into the CO equation?
Did you consider the liter of ice cold water you drank? Takes 37kcal to warm it up to body temp.
CICO as usually practiced has 20-30 margin of error, which makes it much less useful than people assume. Unsurprisingly, it does work for e.g. 70% of the people, who assume the rest are not properly counting.
I don't think that's the case at all - do we have examples where people, strictly observed didn't lose weight when eating under their caloric requirements?
There absolutely is a pile of mitigating factors in how someone eats or lives, but that's like saying "exercise has been proven to not help people run marathons" just because most people who try to run a marathon don't succeed.
Furthermore - on phone now, can’t find ref - but mass general IIRC had a study where people where being significantly over fed (with a feeding tube) yet lost weight; google Robert Israel and Michel Cabanac for more info.
CICO is an often useful approximate description - but it is not (other than tautologically useless) a law.
The fallacy is that those numbers are anything but a very vague approximation.
On the regular medical world, there are just new inputs about things that also matter, as science and our understanding progresses (as opposed "the calories thing is wrong, let's throw it out altogether").
Take me, for example. Ever since I was a teen I have fasted until midday most days (for lack of time) and it significantly affects my cognition. I start feeling irritable at about 10am and unable to concentrate because of feelings of hunger, stomach grumbling, and slight shakiness.
I am a teacher now, and I can tell how my cognition is doing every morning depending on my performance in the classroom. I find that I often mumble and screw up my grammar while lecturing if I haven't had breakfast. I am not calm, but I would not say I feel "energized." I am clearly anxious. My anxiety gradually increases until I have lunch. Then I feel calm and with the ability to think.
It might be genetic. My grandmother was known to be unable to function without breakfast. My mother was the same way.
Why not both?
Unless you're a competitive body builder on show day, you've probably got enough fat to cover a few weeks worth of energy needs.
Think about it, you don't drink while sleeping, so that's 7 or 8 hours right there. If you ever been not drinking for 2 or 3 hours before going to bed, than you're close to 12 hours.
In fact, google "dry fasting", lots of people are experimenting with it. "dry fasting" for 24 hours feels very different than "water fasting" for the same amount of time. There is no published scientific studies about it, I suspect because of liabilities fear when people go to extremes, but I am convinced that short term (~ 24 hours) it is different and beneficial. Every theory you will find online is bro science, but, you can't dismiss hundreds (thousands) of people experimenting and and reporting positive results.
But remember that this fast is done for mental reasons, and not physique. Even though it can be difficult, I really look forward to it throughout the year. It does bring euphoria and increased focus and other positive "mental" effects.
To say it has no benefits is obviously wrong. It can be a great experience!
I fast for 23 hours every day, eating one larger than normal meal in the evenings.