Penn Jillette fasts 23 hours a day to maintain his 100lb weight loss | Hacker News Reader

Penn Jillette fasts 23 hours a day to maintain his 100lb weight loss

latimes.com

125 pointspseudolus108 comments

I can't maintain extreme regimes. Some five years ago I used a combination of intermittent fasting and carb cutting to drop like 40 pounds, I was svelte, looked better than my early twenties.

But eventually I realized this has to become my mother-effing lifestyle if I want to keep looking that way. It's not that I can't do it. It's that the tradeoffs just aren't worth it for me. So I gave it up, piled on pounds for a few years until I felt the need for another health intervention. what I do now is to eat more deliberately and pay close attention to the feeling of satiety so I can stop eating. Pounds are slowly melting away.

My father has the same mindset as Penn. He can't simply watch his eating. Willpower gets depleted and he finds himself eating the rest of the cookies in the bag, and the other two bags as well.

For him, he has to cut out everything "bad". He has to frame it in terms of a moral conflict because otherwise cheat meals turn into cheat days and cheat days turn into dropping the diet for months until he works up the willpower to do it again.

He's also an alcoholic, has been dry for 25 years. Still goes to daily meetings.

When I lost willpower, I gained 20-30 pounds over 5 years. When my father loses willpower, he gains 50-100 pounds. He might do this twice a year.

All-or-nothing feels like prison for me. It's freeing for the addictive mind. Once the moral dynamic is surrendered to, agency is found. The non-addictive mind seeks harmony between competing desires and urges, the desire to have a fun and varied diet vs the desire to be fit and healthy. Addicts can't have harmony because they lose willpower faster than they can accomplish goals. Only in disharmony can they find lasting agency.

> But eventually I realized this has to become my mother-effing lifestyle if I want to keep looking that way.

This is so true, people judge you for not looking like a Hollywood actor (whether you're a man or a woman) but don't realize what it costs to look that way

I lost 100lbs about 10 years ago (from 320 - 220) but after years of vigilance its hard not to find the lifestyle exhausting.

This is due mainly to the fact that this type of lifestyle is not compatible with American culture. Going against the grain is easy early on when the results are fresh, but 10 years in its a slog. I want to eat like everyone else but my experiments doing so even once a week can result in gain.

Food is everywhere here and people often take your choice to not indulge personally. What's worse is having a previous image of "an eater" means people double down on wanting you to "have more / try some". It's a society of pushers.

It is a massive change and unless you've gone full narcissist (insta, fb, celebrity) all you have supporting your "choice" is you.

American culture is not the same everywhere—try living in NYC for a few years, walking around for miles every damn day, I think people stay pretty active and healthy here just by virtue of the urban density, even if we drink a lot more.

When you read up on actors' routines and how they vary pre/post shoot, you understand it's all utterly unsustainable - they do it because it's their job, it's part of their working day. If your boss told you to use docker on project X, you'd learn docker and do it; their boss tells them to lose 20 pounds and look trim, or gain 20 pounds and look fatty, and they do it for the few months required to complete the project, with all sorts of expensive medical help. You don't see how they look inbetween projects, nor do you see the ones that stop being leads (or never make it) because they cannot keep up the effort.

Vanity isn't a good thing to rely on for long-term motivation. Everyone I know who got healthy so they could look good in a mirror failed to stick to the plan.

Friends who do sports and stuff because they love to have no problem maintaining a great physique over the long-term. Looking good and being healthy is just a side effect of more meaningful and tangible pursuits.

That said, there is a pretty wide gulf between

Paid actor who works out 30h a week

and

Never worked out, 200 pounds overweight

I try to at least put 5 hours a week into bridging the gap ;) (sometimes fail :( )

Of course, but my point was that not even Hemsworth and Jackman can look like Thor and Wolverine all year round. Even Mr. Olympian has to vary his diet to look good on trophy day. So, in practice, a regular person will never fully bridge the gap, and judging him/her by those unrealistic parameters is just unreasonable.

By the way, this has as much to say about capitalism as a way to organize human activity, an even more interestingly en masse, making people do what they otherwise wouldn’t, because “their boss said so”.

A command economy can be found in many places. Sometimes an entire country engages in it (such as came out in the Nurenburg trials).

Anyone remember what Xanatos said to Owen in Gargoyles right after finding the castle in the series opening?

And the nasty thing about it is that even if you do manage to do it, it's just another brick in a wall. I was expecting heaven's bells to ring out and beautiful women to fall at my feet, given the titanic effort I'd just put forth to accomplish something most people couldn't even think about even trying.

My own girlfriend at the time barely noticed. It rated a mention, but yielded no shift in our relationship dynamics, not even a little one.

It would take another titanic effort to go from good-looking and svelte to Hollywood actor level where people really do get those kinds of reactions from people.

There is no "addictive mind". I am very much like your dad when it comes to food. I just can't not eat something close by, even when I'm not hungry, but I have no interest in alcohol, gambling, drugs, or any other kind of addiction.

People can have trouble with one addictive thing (e.g. loot boxes) while they're completely fine with many other addictive things.

I don't think you're like my dad at all if that's the extent of your weakness for food. My dad will eat the three bags of cookies, then go rummaging through the fridge for ice cream, eat a whole half gallon, then get in his car and go to Krispy Kreme until his craving is satisfied.

As bad as this is, his alcoholism was even worse while he was drinking. He's slowly, slowly getting better, year after year.

One one hand it's a difference in degree and not in kind, on the other it's so much of a degree that it's effectively a difference in kind.

Possibly, but I still find it hard to believe that some people will get addicted to anything addictive. Maybe some people are more likely to get addicted, in general, but I don't think there are people who can't even eg use Instagram for fear of becoming addicted to it.

Is there any research towards this?

It's not the thing that's addictive, it's the mind that gets addicted. And the mind has to like something about it first, once it does, it goes to immense extremes to get as much of it as humanly possible.

Before looking to research, maybe ask a few addicts what it's like to be them first?

For my father it's about finding healthy outlets for his addictive tendencies. He likes no-carb because it allows him to not have to exercise willpower to stop eating, he can just eat as much as his stomach will allow, and not trigger an insulin response. He knows it's not going to cause him to lose a ton of weight because he's still eating a ton of calories, but the little wins are important to him.

Slowly he acquires more willpower in a context of a lifestyle where he doesn't have to be making those decisions all the time.

There's a great documentary by Russell Brand (From Addiction to Recovery, it's on Netflix) where he visits a neurological research facility in Britain where they've seen pretty clear evidence that a percentage of the population are more prone to become addicted; to anything that is.

They are the kinds of people who could get addicted to Instagram due to the dopamine hit.

I highly suggest reading In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate(?). Fantastic eye-opening book. Addiction is very often about past trauma, and as few have any control over that, it might as well be considered the “addictive brain” in my opinion. Really a great book that opened my mind to new views.

That doesn't mean there is no "addictive mind". Just that yours is not too far along that scale.

>But eventually I realized this has to become my mother-effing lifestyle

>what I do now is to eat more deliberately and pay close attention to the feeling of satiety so I can stop eating.

Ah yes, the old trick of avoiding a lifestyle change by adopting an exactly similar lifestyle change.

The only person suggesting a certain lifestyle change need to be all or nothing, is you yourself.

Intermittent fasting is the most non-all or nothing approach to eating that exists. The very definition of intermittent is telling you it's not constant. It's whatever you want it to be.

In fact, you could call what you are doing right now 'intermittent fasting' and nobody would bat an eye.

I'm glad you found something that works for you, but the logic here is not congruent.

Intermittent fasting is a pretty clear course of action, limiting your eating to a small time window over a 24 or 48 hour period. I certainly don't do that. What I'm doing now is very different than what I did before. When I get hungry, I eat. With IF, you have to wait for your feeding window.

But, it’s pretty fluid as far as a diet goes. I usually do 16-8 fasting (eating window of 8 hours, I don’t have dinner, usually stop eating at 15 or 16) but if I feel like having dinner (happens on occasion) or if I have an event or conference, I’ll follow normal eating schedules and it doesn’t affect me much (surprisingly I’m more hungry in the morning if I had dinner).

Depending on your ages, and if you believe the lead-crime hypothesis, your dad may have been exposed to higher lead levels as a child - leading to poorer impulse control.

You know, I don't want to bare all of my dad's demons on social media. But yeah, there's an answer to that question.

> I was svelte

Is this just me experiencing the baader-meinhof effect or did you get inspired to use this after learning about the framework?

Svelte is a common-enough English word?

Svelte is a pretty common way to describe being in good shape.

ironic that you cite 'baader-meinhof' as if it is commonly known, but think 'svelte' is arcane.

Anyone on reddit for more than 6 months will be familiar with that term since it comes up in subs like r/til every other week.

It's definitely not some super common term but I am guessing the overlap between hn and reddit is large enough that most people here would be familiar with it.

On the other hand, I don't think I've ever seen anyone use svelte in common parlance in my lifetime.

I could only guess that for OP English is a second language, the word is quite common in a number of European languages.

Wow, who know what a less-than-common word choice would drive people to think.

I now want a vocabulary study list of words that are just common enough to not be archaic but not so common they won't not cause this reaction, and then put one or two of them in every social media post.

I stand corrected, your grammar is certainly not the result of an European education system.

Do you not like way I type?

Its not a common term for younger generations, but for older ones it was quite common. My parents used it often.

'Fasts 23 hours a day' makes it sound odd and extreme. It's the same thing as 'eats one meal a day', which sounds much more ordinary.

I think that it adds. mplicitly no.snacks, OMAD doesn't necessarily cover snacks though usually it does

This is precisely what I was thinking. My father was a hard working fellow, and only ate one meal a day because it's really all he had time for. Granted, it was a -huge- meal. Many of his coworkers did the same, yet nobody called it 'fasting 23 hours', but rather, 'eating once a day.'

While not strictly one meal, many Parisians have a similar approach.

A very light breakfast - jokingly a coffee and a cigarette but may include a croissant.

Lunch is large, may involve multiple dishes/courses over an hour. After lunch is "coffee" which may take another hour (essentially to allow proper digestion before trying to concentrate on work again).

The evening meal is often light. Many people have a snack with drinks while catching up with friends at a brasserie.

Having spent three months working in Paris, I adopted the above pattern (minus the cigarettes). I gained no weight while there, despite eating delightful pastries for breakfast and not doing the 200-300kms per week of cycling I normally would do at home.

I involuntarily fasted through college simply because I was too poor and busy to afford full meals multiple times a day. I would often only eat dinner, sometimes lunch too, but still managed to maintain a healthy BMI and ate enough to sustain an exercise routine. It took me only a few months to stop feeling "hungry". Now, many years later, I still have no sense of hunger and feel like I have much more control over my body and my mind as a result. My coworkers, on the other hand, seem unable to focus if they don't have lunch by 11 AM.

Based on what I've read on the topic, this isn't actual hunger but appetite. You can't ignore hunger, and it doesn't go away until you've found food.

I have ignored food beyond the normal daily hunger a few different times just for the fun of the experiment. I never experienced any kind of hunger that I would describe as pain, and I could easily ignore it seemingly indefinitely. The only thing that made me stop and eat after about 3 days was fear. By then I was shakey and weak and I was afraid of getting even weaker and maybe not waking up. 3 days should be well short of any serious danger, but I am skinny and tend to constant nervous energy like bouncing my leg & tapping fingers etc. So I had to consider I might have less reserves than most, and possibly burn what I do have faster. Today my girlfriend would obviously never even allow such an experiment to get that far let alone further. But that's the only way I'd go further is with someone else around to watch in case it did go too far. Normally, when I'm doing whatever I want and can afford anything I want, I eat once a day, usually late at night. Have ever since I was responsible for my own meals.

But even at it's worst, as far as I got, it wasn't pain and I was able to ignore it.

My personal experience contradicts this. I fasted a few days sometime ago. The first day was OK, the second was miserable and terrible, but then I got "used" to it and stopped feeling hungry (or, alternatively, my brain got used to the stimulus of "hunger" and, even though I could still feel it, it wasn't salient any longer... à la neural adaptation [0]).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_adaptation

I recently read about an interesting experiment on conscientious objectors during the war. They were fed a very restricted diet (in terms of calories) and observed. As it went on they became obsessed with food, they would take recipe books from the library and even collect cooking implements. I guess it's not that surprising from an evolutionary perspective.

The famous experiment is the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experimen...

https://www.eatingdisorderhope.com/information/anorexia/the-...

You can get hunger pains that are well more extreme than having an appetite. Those hunger pains can and will subside if you ignore it long enough.

Everyone is talking about the fasting. It’s not just fasting.

“I went for a radical change in diet — whole-food plant-based, hard-core vegan, vegetables, no processed food, no sugar. And I limited my eating to just an hour a day, so I’m always fasting 23 hours.”

And if you read the book, it was actually even more extreme for the first few months. He only ate baked potatoes. Nothing but baked potatoes. Adding salads later was actually loosening up his diet. :-)

Wow, I would think only potatoes wouldn’t work for even a week. Thank you for the expansion.

I think the temporary single-food diet is to break you of the addiction of sugar and other foods, and then once you've habituated your body to an extremely limited diet, you can safely re-introduce some variety again. In his case it was potatoes, but I think eating solely any one item would have served the same purpose.

Potatoes are quite satiating and reasonably nutritious if you eat the skins.

I've heard that potatoes and dairy has all the nutrition you need. You could eat only that indefinitely and be relatively fine. Maybe not quite as balanced as soylent is trying to be, though.

If you dig into the historical sources for Ireland they keep mentioning how good looking and strong the Irish are compared to the English and Scots. The Irish diet was potatoes and buttermilk.

Oh man you weren't kidding. I put 2000+ calories worth of potatoes and buttermilk into Cronometer and it was surprisingly complete.

The beautiful thing about long fasts is that it’s actually difficult to overeat in a short window.

And the flip side of that is your blood sugar stabilized so much that you are actually not that hungry during the fasting window. I mean the hunger is there, but it’s not panic inducing. It’s just like “meh, I wanna eat, but can wait”.

> The beautiful thing about long fasts is that it’s actually difficult to overeat in a short window.

Man, people who've never been fat have the strangest ideas.

I guess it depends on how short the window and what other restrictions you're placing (e.g. Penn's diet?). But yeah, I can put down 2000 calories at McDonald's in about 10 minutes. And I wasn't even _that_ fat at my fattest (5'10" and 205)

Care to elaborate on the correlation? I've had the same experience as OP when I do 24 hour fasts.

In my experience, the first 3 days are difficult. After that, it's easy. I've never gone longer than 5 days.

I seem to recall hearing that the big(gest) benefit of a short eating window of something up to 8 or 9 hours is reduced markers for inflammation and that working out before breaking fast might be good as well. Can't find sources right now though.

There's no secret to weight loss. You need a calorie deficit. It is much easier to get excited about eating only potatoes or going carnivore or eating one hour a day, but you can also just track your calories and figure out which foods add to your budget without filling you up. Maybe you didn't realize peanut butter had so many calories or exactly how much cereal you were eating. It's definitely easier to go to extremes, but sometimes they can be hard on you, so it might be worth trying the plain boring thing first, being consistent about it, and seeing how it works for you. I tried so many different diets that didn't work before getting a calorie tracking app, following it, and watching my weight drop exactly as predicted. If you're at a point where you need to lose a pound a day and have enough fat that your body can probably live off it for a while, maybe something like this is for you, but I'd expect most people are better counting calories for a month or two.

This isn’t true. Not all calories are the same. Some spike insulin, the hormone that is responsible for storing fat, much more than others. Also if I eat 1800 carb heavy calories every day, I’m extremely hungry all the time. If I eat 1800 fat heavy calories every day, I feel satiated. It’s thanks to ketosis and being fat adapted.

Side note, I lost 80 pounds on a low fat diet, gained it back, then lost 80 pounds on a low carb diet so I know from personal experience.

I’m not sure how what you say makes the parent’s post untrue.

I don't know the details of insulin and fat storage, but at the end of the day if you are at a calorie deficit, you will lose weight—that’s physics. Your body can’t magic fat out of nowhere.

Your point appears to be that some things are easier to cut out of your diet than others… which was very much part of what the parent said—they point out that calorie tracking is the best way to work out what foods are the ones that work best for you.

The point is not that all calories are equal from the perspective of sating hunger, but that they are equal in terms of energy input. Knowing that raw number for everything is the best way to understand what is providing you good “bang for your buck”.

None of this contradicts what you say, to be clear—it supports it, which is why I find it odd your post starts with “this isn’t true”.

What I’m saying is untrue is the notion that weight loss is as simple as a calorie deficit and tracking calories. It’s not that simple because some calories make staying in a deficit much harder.

The point is that saying that fat loss is as simple as calories in, calories out is unhelpful and not really true.

Also the whole point of losing weight is to be healthy. If you lost weight eating twinkies you might be skinnier but you are going to have a whole host of other health problems like high blood pressure, cancer, and heart disease.

Rather than conflating it all in a way that leads to misunderstanding, why not say "sure, calories in - calories out defines weight loss, but you need more than that to be healthy".

The point stands that tracking calories gives you a defined goal. It's not the only goal for health, but that doesn't make it useless. The parent post you objected to was not claiming that what you ate didn't matter at all.

You are 100% right that healthy, sustainable weight loss isn't all calories, but weight loss itself absolutely is - and breaking the problem down into parts so people understand how to achieve that weight loss rather than having this arbitrary "healthy eating" idea that is much harder to track is a good thing. No one is advocating for it in isolation.

Penn's diet started out eating only potatoes for two weeks. There was a nutrition professor that ate only Twinkies and lost 27 lbs. There might be a difference in how you feel, but you can lose weight eating anything.

You can lose weight eating any given thing (if energy in is less than energy out, something's gotta give), but it's not psychologically sustainable to keep weight off by eating just Twinkies.

For most people, the eventual goal of losing weight is to keep it off, so the trivial truth that starving yourself inevitably leads to weight loss is unhelpful.

Find out what works for you. Calorie counting is a great tool for figuring that out. Jumping on a trend diet and having it fail is a waste of your time, other than learning it didn't work.

I know from losing about twice that and keeping it off for a about 5 years now that calorie counting does, in fact, work.

People have been told they just need to eat less for the last forty years yet obesity is at record levels. There is clearly more going on.

Cheap, calorically dense food is widely available and people are less physically active than they used to be. Still, people have lost weight counting calories at McDonald's. It's no fun to be responsible, so don't expect people are eager to follow your advice to eat less, drink less, stop smoking, or wear a condom. Tell them to eat a Tide pod, though, and they'll do it.

Physical activity has been falling since the start of the last century but obesity didn’t start climbing until the seventies. There is more to it than your simplistic explanation and solution.

Green Revolution[1] happened and food availability greatly increased. There is no need for more explanation than this.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

It's interesting that that article doesn't mention obesity.

Saying that people are fat because they eat too much had became non-PC around 1990s from my recollection so I would not expect such a statement from any Wiki article in 2019.

I started 16-8 intermittent fasting three months ago. The mornings were difficult the first 3-4 days because I really used to enjoy a good breakfast. I also missed my morning chai.

What fixed it was my discovery of Zestea, a high caffeine tea. One cup in the morning did the trick. I also ate my breakfast at noon (my scheduled break fast time) for a week. Now, I don’t feel hunger in the AM and sometimes it is 1:30 pm when I have to remind myself to break the fast so I can stay on schedule.

One meal a day here that always has a large amount of salad. Get by lunch with just a bit of cheese and apples. Only coffee for breakfast. Works for me, milage may vary. I really like how an ~2k calorie dinner knocks me out all night for a deep sleep though.

I couldn’t do that. I seem to be metabolically required to eat almost immediately after waking up. I make breakfast and lunch my meals of the day and dinner light-just enough to get me to the next morning.

Similar for me. I do a light (but legitimate) breakfast or I get physically ill. Lunch is my main meal. Little snack for dinner, if anything. I don't sleep well on a full stomach.

Once you cut out carbs it’s 1000x easier.

*highly processed or low quality carbs

Jillette was an indirect catalyst of my "come to weight-loss-jesus" moment last year, since he triggered the process on someone else I follow who in turn triggered me. His methods (which he mostly got from Ray Cronise, iirc) are super-radical and undoubtedly effective, but also hard to follow for regular people. He has a zealot attitude to this particular topic, which can be very off-putting, and some of his approach is probably wrong (sure, in old age you can go vegan and eat once a day, but if you are 25 and moderately active, that's probably not the best idea).

On one point he is correct though: half the battle is realizing that, in advanced societies, you are sold food. You are under constant bombardment from sources telling you to eat this or that, and kept on the leash by sugar and other addictives. In that sense, it's much easier to eat properly in a less-industrial society, where you're not pursued by food advertisement, people are mostly forced to cook raw natural food (although this is changing), and things like "eating out with friends" are rare events rather than expected social routine.

I would agree with and extend your remarks with the observation that eating is a strongly encouraged activity when you're bored or while socializing, both of which are not very healthy.

One of the great side-benefits of fasting is the amount of time saved on shopping, prepping, eating, and thinking about what to eat. It adds up to a significant amount of extra free time.

Meal planning has done this for me. I spend three to five hours per week doing all of this and it solves the problem of being too tired to cook a healty meal.

I'm on my second year on a 23:1 fast. It's worked out great for me. I did the whole carnivore diet thing initially but introduced carbs and other things slowly. Now I pretty much eat anything I want as long as everything fits on one plate and I've cut down my eating window to 30 minutes instead of an hour.

I tried intermittent fasting. (I only cut out one meal, breakfast, and didn't eat between 9pm and 12pm.) It works okay. Even if you eat a slightly heavier lunch as a result, you're still probably consuming fewer calories overall.

But it's hard (as all effective methods are). You are aware that you are hungry.

I've been skipping breakfast for about 2 years now, and I don't get hungry until noon most of the time. The only exception is if I drink alcohol the night before. If the girlfriend and I drink beers on Saturday night, I'm usually starving the next morning.

I suppose people are different, but intermittent fasting has worked great for me. I should mention that I do a mostly low carb diet. I know fasting puts people in a ketogenic state. So, maybe those two go hand in hand?

Same here, I always wondered why it was the case that I felt hungry in the morning after drink a few beers the previous night, as in general I don’t feel any hunger till noon.

Cut out carbs and you’ll get to noon without feeling hungry at all.

So this counts as fasting too? I do this for years (ignore breakfast), and since I am more health counsious nowadays I avoid snacking after dinner. After doing this for some time I don't feel hungry most days.

Maybe this is why I am losing weight nowadays (the fact that I am going to the work by foot probably helps too), who knows.

Breakfast means break - fast. You fast while you’re sleeping. Not eating until noon lengthens your fast.

I find that my hunger level during fasting depends greatly on my level of hydration. And learning to like black coffee and plain tea helps a lot since they can feel more “substantial” than plain water.

Coffee and herbal teas may not be as beneficial during fasting, because as you said, they may be more "substantial".

I was watching a compilation clip about intermittent fasting [0] recently. According to Dr. Rhonda Patrick, coffee and other drinks than just plain water (and maybe vitamins and supplements as well?) break the fast by starting up some metabolic enzymes [1][2].

I guess there goes my round the clock tea gulping. :|

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxjMdqevE88

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxjMdqevE88&t=13m17s

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxjMdqevE88&t=20m10s

“I don’t respect moderation”

What a great quote.

The key for me dropping 28lbs over the last year was calorie counting, after testing an article here about a guy who lost 100lbs. I can't find the link to his blog but it was absolutely amazing. Penn is right, the most effective stuff is the hard stuff, and calorie counting is very hard when there's just food everywhere.

The key for me to keeping the weight off though is exercise. I discovered rowing oddly enough, and I'm part of an indoor rowing studio. It's incredibly competitive but very low impact to your body. You can also burn 400+ plus calories in 20 minutes which is something sort of extraordinary.

I'm in the best shape of my life. None of my pants fit, even though my weight loss has leveled out my waistline continues to shrink as I firm up.

I highly recommend the book by the way. Very entertaining. In his life, he spends a lot of time hanging out with interesting people. Really shows how your career choice influences your whole social circle (e.g., accountant v. magician).

People should try one of those “healthy for life” meal prep services. You get a fixed set of calories and 3 meals a day and I consistently lost a few pounds a week. They work, are slightly expensive but work.

It's interesting to hear the reactions most people have to this type of meal plan. Humans are pretty much animals that evolved to survive not having a secure source of food. Yeah we need to eat but spacing your meals this far apart isn't going to hurt you. I've seen people freak out over this idea but also jump on gimmick diets and workouts that promise huge weight loss for zero effort.

I know Penns plan is different but I've done intermittent fasting and found it super useful in certain situations to regulate calories.

Mad respect. Really like this interview.

Maybe my favorite part is when the interviewer takes the predictable "but you're special" angle:

> Maybe that’s easy for a renowned Type A guy with a nonstop life of shows, acting and bestselling books. But does it apply to the rest of us?

And he just shuts that down

> I don’t consider myself special. For anybody, there’s no pride in doing things easy.

Anyone who spends at most one hour eating in a 24 hour cycle fasts 23 hours a day or more. I don't think it's that uncommon.

Suppose you eat four meals a day, of around 2000 kcal each. That's 23 hours of fasting.

It's not the amount of time you spend or don't spend eating that matters; it's the calories. Thousands of calories can be quaffed down in minutes or even seconds, by a fast eater.

> My first tip is this: “If you take health advice from a Las Vegas magician, you are an idiot.”

That’s hilarious, I’ve always respected Penn Jilette (and Teller), the craftmanship and hard work they put into their act is unique and incredible.

Love the fact that he is so on the ball at 65, I hope to be the same way at that age and older.

We have a saying in our part of the world which echoes the sentiment. It goes like this.

Sage eats once, regular folk eats twice, and gluttonous eats all the time.

Sounds like time and again we are rediscovering old wisdom.

Disclaimer: This is not a value judgement as I myself have never followed this and most people around me are the same.

I naturally eat once a day most days. I don't call it "fasting 23 hours".

This is not an "extreme regime".

Good for him to keep disciplined.

Good on him

> All diet is habit. We have the disadvantage of being born in a very rich country with food everywhere. And changing your eating desires takes years.

Yeah, very tough. I mean intermittent fasting is probably a great choice to improve health (even for people with normal weight). Calling being born in the US a "disadvantage" because there's too much food and wealth reads shrill.

It's not just being in a first world country but the specific country you are in. I used to wonder why Americans had such an obesity problem but after visiting various states it became clear that culture and the environment around you makes all the difference.

You’re taking it out of context. I highly doubt Penn would say it as you’re taking it. In the context he’s talking about weight related health.

I actually provided the context. It's just a silly thing to say, what ever the context.

Overall, it's great to be born in and live in a rich country. But as someone with 100lbs to lose, I would absolutely be much better off if inexpensive sugary food was more difficult to find.

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