Intermittent fasting prompts anti-inflammatory response
academic.oup.com
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So I’m invested in this technique, but I really believe the primary and possibly exclusive benefit is simply calorie restriction.
In a typical “diet” you attempt to restrict calories by remove foods from your diet. The problem is, cravings are real, abstinence doesn’t work, and there are always new foods and new temptations.
On an IF regimen, you restrict calories by removing eating hours from your day. You don’t have to abstain from anything. Temptation is managed by just having a little patience until your next meal.
Possibly there is a deeper truth to why this lifestyle works but I personally like the simplicity of it.
It’s like a rate limiter, for daily food intake.
If IF worked for you that's great, but you shouldn't imply every other diet doesn't work. In my case all I did was track calories of everything I ate (Lose It app, highly recommended) while maintaining a normal eating schedule. Down 105lbs so far. For me I feel like if I just ate whatever I wanted in specific timeframes it'd still be too easy to eat 3000-4000 calories.
You do not need any apps, you do not need to count calories and you do not need remove food you love from the menu.
And while it may sound that you would try to overcompensate for not eating during specific timeframes, what happens in reality is that your body responds by wanting less food, not more.
I mean, just take your example. Counting calories for everything you eat is a significant amount of work, and it's really easy to cheat if you're feeling hungry ("Oh, look, my app says that an 'average' blueberry muffin is only 250 cals, so that's what I'll put in, despite this muffin being the size of my head").
With IF, all you have to think about is whether you're in your feeding window. You can still cheat, but there is no ambiguity about it, so for many people (or, fine, at least for me) it's easier to keep with it. I found myself getting super hungry during my fasting period, but I knew I just had to wait until my feeding period, and I actually found it difficult to overeat during my feeding period because I would just eat until I was full and then would "run out of time" to overeat.
I also track protein to make sure I get at least 170g, so that's an additional benefit.
170g of protein is only 680 cals, so plenty of room left over for carbs and fat.
I personally find it psychologically much easier to not eat at all for now (knowing I'll feast in a while) than to exert the effort of eating less when I'm eating now.
Some hungers turn out not to be that urgent.
There's a different hunger for an empty stomach and for a suddenly drop in blood sugar, etc.
I mean different body signals tell you that you are hungry and you learn to introspect them a bit.
I had quite a bit of fun trying to get to biochemical/physiological/phycological understanding of the triggers/sensations.
The one I could never quite crack is a craving to chew when I could tell my stomach was full and I was satiated otherwise.
It has become such an annoying nag though. If they offered a reasonable one-time payment -- not even for premium features, just to make it stop nagging -- I'd pay it. But no, they want me to subscribe. No thanks.
I mean, you _do_ abstain from eating. But I always found it easier to abstain from something entirely rather than to do it in moderation.
Not a knock or being troll-y but that sound like a religion. As in, funny how patterns established in religion are just as effective outside that context.
I ate 5 or 6 times a day for 15-20 years. I would eat 3 meals, a snack in the afternoon, and then something before bed. And probably more than that to be honest. I was as much of a snacker as anybody.
In April I switched to eating 2 meals a day. I was very hungry for literally 1 or 2 days, and then I just got used to it, and started to like it!
Before that I was on a pretty strict diet for ~4 years. But I relaxed the diet after changing the schedule, and lost about 5 lbs. So the heuristic of just eating twice a day turns out to be easier to maintain than a diet.
Go figure! It was kinda shocking. I do think "3 meals a day" is a relatively recent thing. Millions of people lived for thousands of years without eating 3 meals a day.
Some downsides: I eat bigger meals, and I notice a bigger "tired" crash after dinner. But I think that's better than feely slightly groggy multiple times a day. I definitely am more aware of the fact that eating "slows you down". I do think there is something to the "alert, fasted" state, and I would call that pleasant.
Also I might have slowly gained back the 5 pounds but I'm still under my target weight ("normal" BMI which is like 20th percentile). I think after 6 months your body probably gets used to it, and maybe I relaxed the diet a bit too much. I'll continue to tweak it in the future.
An upside not to be discounted is that I spend less time and money on food, and traveling is a lot easier as a result!
The point still stands though.
Like... a largish portion of very cheesy mac 'n' cheese will do it.
Then I stopped it and started to slowly gain more weight. Now I'm on an IF regiment again.
Now, I really doubt it's the calorie restriction that's at work here.
The human body is not a simple physical machine. It's a complex system.
A simple machine would be some like like a car that has a set amount of energy needed and simple mechanism to switch energy source when one of them is almost depleted.
A complex machine is one that responds to the environment and changes its internal behavior. For example, it can decide to activate or shutdown internal systems that use energy in order to conserve energy. It can decide to let go of conserving energy and just make sure the body has a lot of energy for performing the current activity.
Common wisdom says that the body goes in hunger mode if you restrict calories. But I don't think that's what's going on. Because you also restrict calories on IF. Instead I think that when you consistently eat low calorie meals, it activates some mechanism in your body that's meant to conserve energy when you are living through some sort of a famine, or something like that. (another possibility: instead of a famine, it thinks you became a low status individual within your tribe). But when you do IF you typically eat normal size, filling meals, so this mechanism never gets triggered. Further more, there's probably no mechanism in your brain that thinks that going for many hours without food is a bad thing. Quite the opposite: it's just the normal expected thing.
So if you do some exercise while in a fasted state, even though you are technically low on calories, your brain probably thinks you might be hunting for food so it will make sure you can utilize all the energy you need and some more.
> The problem is, cravings are real, abstinence doesn’t work,
I'm not sure what you mean here? Surely fasting is abstinence, is it not?
You can at any time decide to open the fridge and eat something. You can decide at any time to go to the nearby convenience store and buy something to eat.
You don't need to eat 6 meals or 1 per day to lose weight, just do whatever makes it easy for you to consume the amount of calories you want.
I agree that doing 1-2 big meal makes it easier to eat little calories because you can stuff yourself up to a point.
Studies on this are generally poor quality, and you can easily tell by looking at the study content.
Remember when early 2020 all the official organizations (WHO, CDC) were telling people to NOT wear masks because studies showed they didn't work? Yea. Turned out all the studies were really bad quality.
"Scientific" publishing is broken and you simply can't rely on it for useful information. Many studies don't even replicate, but they still get published and cited.
For another example, see: https://twitter.com/cmuratori/status/1459275924059217920
Basically, whenever I hear "studies have shown ..." I just don't care. Let the studies show whatever they want. I will go with my own experience and with personal anecdotes I hear from people. They are way more consistent and reliable.
I may take issue with some of your other statements but fully agree with this observation.
A critical thinker needs to be highly skeptical of the appeal to authority used by invoking the phrases “the science says”, or “studies have shown”.
My eating window is around 4-8pm most days the last 6 months. Usually just one meal of literally anything I want and Im still finding I have to eat more to stop losing weight.
For those of us that aren't burning off excess fat and are active what would a 2700-ish calorie meal look like. Can you learn to eat 2 lbs of steak in one sitting for example and do that every day ? Because it is unlikely there is room in a typical stomach for 20lbs of cauliflower mash or 4.5lbs of pasta eaten all at once.
Also from a time management standpoint spiking your serotonin levels with that massive meal seems counterproductive. Are you really saving time if you are a drowsy for an hour or two after that massive meal ? I realize the parent poster was just contemplating, but if someone has actual experience I would be grateful for a helpful link or comment.
Anyway, fat heavy foods make cramming calories pretty easy. You can hide a lot of butter in mashed potatoes or a pasta sauce.
The body gets used to it over time. I am not strict with it but most days I find it easy to do.
Lots of water throughout the day helps with the empty stomach and not feeling dehydrated.
I skip breakfast and lunch. But can eat heavily within my time window.
The science is off here from my experience.
The metric to watch is time between meals. If you can go 16-20 hours before your next meal, sleep can be included, then you will find your gains staggering.
Is it common wisdom though? As far as I know common wisdom says that if you restrict calories then the blood sugar drops and that cause the body to go into hunger mode. The difference being that you can eat, say, 1000 calories of your normal diet and go into hunger mode or you can eat a diet that causes the blood sugar to be stable and not go into hunger mode. This is one of the two main reasons LCHF work so well (the other being that you are way less hungry after 1000 calories of a high fat diet than after 1000 calories of high sugar).
All insulin is, is a signal to cells to absorb sugar from the blood. Think of it this way: if you consume dietery fat, your body will obviously not ignore this fat in your blood and start pulling fat out of your fat storage. It will wait for the fat flowing through your blood to be all used up first. Why would sugar be any different? You have to believe that the design of the calorie input management system is so broken that it reacts so badly to carbs but doesn't react in any negative way to fats.
There's another "theory" of diebetes too: that excess fat int he cells blocks insulin reception. So if you consume high fat, you better not consume any carbs with it or else your body won't know what to do with it.
Now, think about it from an evolutionary point of view. Our ancestors have been sustaining themselves on farming carbs for thousands of years (potato, rice, grains, etc). We should all be very well adapted to a diet that is a mix of carbs and fats and proteins. What is different in the modern age is not an excess of carbs; it's the lack of movement. Athletic people consume upwards of 3000 calories per day with no problems.
My hypothesis is this is the key.
I do something similar to IF. I’ll eat two meals before 10am then won’t eat until 7pm or so.
It’s not that I don’t get hungry it’s that I kind of don’t care? It’s not a big deal and I can wait until the next meal.
Overcoming the psychological “need” to eat is a big part of it.
If I skip breakfast, my body and especially my mind seem slower and weaker for the entire day. I feel like I have to drag myself through the day rather than be pushed. And, when I do get hungry later in the day it's very difficult to ignore. I suspect this is because my body is worried about food.
Is metabolic economics a thing?
I only have coffee in the morning and the only calories in that come from a bit of milk I take in it.
I don't necessarily feel hungry at lunch time either. If there's something going on at work (prod issue, in the zone) I might find myself at 2 p.m. without having eaten.
Sometimes on the weekends I will have a leftover pancake w/ jam for breakfast. What I noticed is that if I've had that, I usually crave food again at noon.
My mind feels significantly keener.
In fact I used to dread eating something, anticipating what felt like a loss of 15 IQ points
BTW what does your IF plan look like? I'm thinking about between 4pm (needs a coffee around 2 or 3) and 8am but not sure if it actually is IF.
If you imagine it to extremes, if you put all your food for the day on a plate and gave yourself 1 hour how much could you eat if you weren't trying to make yourself sick?
For most people of you only eat between noon-8pm, say (”18-6”) then you'll reduce your calorie intake naturally. Couple it with appropriate exercise and you'll lose weight (doesn't mean you'll be healthier necessarily though!).
This is (called 16-8, 16hr fast and 8hr eating window) is actually a recommended way to start IF. I've been on it for ~4 months and can second the effectiveness of weight loss.
About the calorie intake; a funny side effect is that I'm now naturally less hungry even during the 8hr window so the calorie intake has automatically reduced.
I was wondering why would that be and then learned about insulin resistance and things began to fall in place.
Now I'm doing 16-8 IF and close to zero added sugar diet (which is painfully difficult in Indian cuisine, more so during this festival season :-|).
Well, it does. I don't like to feed the myth believed by overweight people that they won't lose weight if they simply started eating 2000 kCal/day. It's psychologically hard, sure (for some) but it would work.
However, it's often easier to eat "nothing" than a little -- especially of high-carb products. It's easier to eat no tortilla chips than to have "just one".
And getting used to a np-food period of the day similarly helps to stop the cravings.
The method I recommend nowadays is to keep your diet as constant as possible, then replace meals or snacks with protein rich, lower calories alternatives until you're satisfied with your protein intake (depending on your weight) and you hit a maintenance diet and , as in your weight doesn't change averaged over two weeks, while doing your normal training regimen (which should include some incremental resistance training for muscle gaining or preservation and some cardio for heart health).
Then you have the choice of adding a 200 calories protein rich snack if you're trying to build muscle, removing a snack for 200 calories (if you can manage that) or adding some daily cardio consuming an extra 200 calories (like a 20m cardio class, 2x20 minutes walk, a martial arts class, gymnastic skill-work). You should always weight your self to keep track of things. Eventually you'll weight will stabilise to a new low or a new high and you can go through the process again.
In this way, you don't really count calories, you just roughly know that you'll have a few eggs for breakfast, some pasta for lunch, meat or fish for dinner.
My wife is like you though, so obviously it depends on the person.
I recently started cycling for 1h in the morning without having breakfast, and after a few days it became quite easy. Just don't try to convince yourself that it is somehow a bad thing to skip breakfast. Breakfast only makes you hungry for the rest of the day.
I'm doing 16h/8h intermittent fasting, and I only feel slightly hungry on some days in the last 1h before my feeding window.
I'll point out that IF didn't work for me, at least after an initial small drop of bodyweight (2-3kg IIRC). As you said, the reason IF works is the same reason any diet works - it helps restrict calories. But in my case, there were a few problems:
1. I was soon adjusting to the "eating window" and was eating extra portions, cramming in dessert before the window closed, etc. This meant I wasn't eating less calories.
2. I found it very inconvenient to stick to - family dinners, going out to nice restaurants for celebrations, etc caused issues.
A different approach worked much better for me, namely tracking calories using MyFitnessPal, and learning to eat more satiating foods (low calorie density foods as some call them). And especially "anabolic" recipes as they are known around YouTube (basically, low calorie high protein foods).
This gave me way more flexibility, for one thing, but also a much better understanding of how food and energy work - what kind of substitutions are "free" from a food-enjoyment perspective, but super helpful to lose weight.
But like you said - whatever diet is sustainable for you and causes you to eat less calories is a diet that will work.
HOMA-IR (−0.75 ± 0.79 vs. −0.10 ± 1.06; P = 0.004) and
MSS (−0.34 ± 4.72 vs. 0.31 ± 1.98, P = 0.006).
Without knowing the normal range it's impossible to say how big change 0.75 (HOMA-IR) or -0.34 (MSS) are. The article says significant, but how much that is.
Granted, the study was performed in SLC, but these numbers suggest that this is not even a particularly representative sample of SLC, much less of the nation as a whole.
The paper is about "low frequency" IF, which in this case means a 24h water only fast, twice a week for a full month, then only once a week for the rest of the trial.
It's done wonders for my well-being - anecdotally, of course.
It turns out we don't actually need to never be hungry; our society just pushes us to assume that even the tiniest pang of hunger is a negative health issue that is to be instantly eradicated. It's actually fine as long as you're not skinny or otherwise malnourished.
It's ok to fast, and to hear your body demanding sustenance and just say "no, maybe tomorrow" - doubly so if you're 10kg+ overweight like I have been (in my case, 20-40kg) my entire adult life.
Huh, is that really something you feel like your society teaches you? In my upbringing (UK), snacking was very much discouraged (you won't eat your dinner) and although eating meals was encouraged, going without one was never seen as a health issue and would be seen as preferable to giving me other food if I didn't like what had been cooked for me.
I eat very low carb (I target <10g per day, with 20-30g as a hard limit) and it's sort of freaky how prevalent it is, because despite a million food options in some circumstances, precisely 0 of them are without carbs. I've been in airports when I haven't eaten for 18-24h with multiple places vending food and there has been approximately nothing available that would fit my diet.
Obviously hunger where there is food insecurity is terrible. But the first pangs of hunger in an otherwise well fed and, in my case, well padded person? It doesn't seem like it's a big deal to me.
Snacking does seem to have become established in the UK now though for children at least. (I also remember being told not to spoil my appetite as a child.) The children I know now often have some kind of tiny packet of something on the go in between meals.
Consuming 3-5g of salt in 1L of water makes the distraction less sometimes, I find. Also, coffee helps, as does the keto diet.
This is the mistake. In fact, the hunger pangs and light headedness, nausea, etc. are the result of low blood sugar. This can be a dangerous condition, but our body is equipped to deal with that situation - it can create sufficient energy from stored energy (fat and glycogen) - and will do so if we let it. But most people have conditioned their bodies for a steady supply of easy energy, and this makes the body increasingly less willing to go to the stores for energy (we are at a hormonal imbalance with excessive insulin prevalence which works to lock up fat stores and crave quick increases in blood sugar).
This condition can be gradually fixed with intermittent fasting, which gives the body time to burn off the blood sugar spike, and concomitant insulin, and allow the process of fat burning to pick up, before you start feeding again.
The effect of the fasting can be enhanced by eating fewer carbohydrates (which are the main trigger for blood sugar and insulin), which is the principle behind the keto diet.
Two things have been difficult for me lately:
A) sudden extreme cravings before I start at 5pm
B) a sore throat starting at around 9-10pm. I have no clue why it happens.
Do you guys experience something similar and how do you deal with it?
EDIT: Sorry for the confusion. I meant heartburn.
>A) sudden extreme cravings before I start at 5pm
Have you tried apple cider vinegar? That seems to work for me.
>B) a sore throat starting at around 9-10pm. I have no clue why it happens.
I don't get that specifically, but I do get lowered body temperature. Could sore throat be a symptom of that? Have you tried hot water, perhaps with lemon and/or tea?
No comment on effectiveness, but for anyone who is going to do this, make sure to dilute the vinegar with some water.
It also helps to drink with a straw to avoid residual acid on the teeth (although the water already diluted it enough).
Oh jeez, woopsie. Yeah, forgetting to do that would certainly cause a bit of sore throat. Or 3rd degree burns.
I normally eat a pretty high-salt diet (7-10g per day depending on if I eat out or not), keto or no, and replacing a day's salt with just 1-2g is insufficient to keep my body from cravings. I find that having 3-5g with my other misc electrolyte replacement generally makes it much, much easier for me to skip the day's meals.
Cravings are almost always your body asking for something; the trick is to learn what it's asking for that doesn't involve calories.
Also ignore it and it will go away helps.
When I was young I would hurt myself somehow and go to my mother saying
Me - My arm hurts when I do THIS (bend arm at elbow, back and forth)
Mom- Don't do that and it won't hurt.
Me - (Pikachu meme face)
- swap coffee for green tea
- supplement phosphatidylcholine daily
- drink hot water with a spoonful of apple cider vinegar and honey at night
- measure humidity in your home and make sure it isn't too dry
For me this reduced inflammation and GERD issue presenting sore throat at night. May take over a week to start noticing results.
phosphatidylcholine caps look like fish oil and seem to generate an anti-inflammatory response for me and this research article:
Isn't that basically normal? We call it breakfast for a reason, and 5pm to 9pm is extremely close to what many people do habitually. Maybe a slightly early dinner and a slightly late breakfast, but not by much.
Might be an idea to consult a registered dietician or a GP (general practitioner, a generalist doctor, sometimes called a 'family doctor').
On the few occasions I've gone 24 hours+, the hunger feeling is a little stronger, but still pretty easy to ignore. For one example, there is no difficulty going to sleep.
None of this applies when you are first starting out though :-)
Took a few years of practice to get my metabolism to the point where it can burn ~2000 calories in 2 hours and munge through enough food to feel fully operational the same day. I wonder if the overall effects are similar to intermittent fasting.
Anecdotally I’ve noticed that training for long distance running has made me a lot less sensitive to energy-from-food fluctuations. If you can run for 2+ hours while eating 100cal of running gels, what’s a little missed lunch while sitting at a desk?
1. Does coffee/tea count as a "meal"? I can't get through the day without a couple of cups of coffee and tea.
2. This study mentioned a 24-hour water-only fast, not the IF that most commenters are talking about in this post. Thoughts on that?
3. I've been thinking of going on the "Phil Mickelson" diet: https://golf.com/instruction/fitness/phil-mickelson-age-defy... Any thoughts on that?
some people "cheat" by considering cream-only coffee acceptable as well (it's keto/zero-carb so might not raise blood sugar levels) - see e.g. "bulletproof coffee" by Dave Asprey (NOT ENDORSING ANYTHING ELSE BY THIS SCAM ARTIST)
I tried 23:1 for a week but I could not eat enough in that one hour.
That gives me a stomach ache just thinking about it. 2000C in a sitting is a lot, even with relatively high calorie food choices.
One of the surprising experiments for me with IF is that hunger changes for me. After I'm used to it, I rarely experience hunger outside the eating hours even when I'm losing weight.
When you did your 23:1, what was hunger like for you?
I suspect that if I combine 23:1 with carnivore it'll be much easier to do.
Thanks for the details!
I'm curious to know what long term success looks like for people on an IF diet. I did get my weight under control on IF but when it came time to bulk or cut, in accordance with my strength and conditioning training, it simply wasn't working.
Earlier this year I developed about 30 food allergies (IgE-mediated; I'm using the term "allergy" accurately, not in the fuzzy way we colloquially use it to refer to intolerances, etc, which are entirely different, mechanism- and prognosis-wise). This has absolutely decimated my ability to eat out at restaurants (I literally can't eat anything I don't prepare myself). Logistically it just sucks. It'll be evening after work and someone on the other side of town says "come hang out." I'd love to, but I'll have to drive home one direction, eat, then drive twice as far the other direction. With traffic it'll be 9pm before I can leave, so...yeah, not happening. It's destroyed my social life. My allergies have also affected things that are "quick" or "travel" foods, so basically I always need to heat stuff up. God it sucks.
Naturally, I've arrived at the thought of training myself to "officially" work IF into my life. Unofficially, I do it all the time by way of just...having to go somewhere unexpectedly or staying somewhere longer than I thought, and I don't have any food. About 50% of the time I feel fine and can power through, the other 50% I feel faint and hangry. Can't figure out why.
The other side of this coin, though, is that I'm trying to build muscle mass. Nuff said.
Anyone find a way to satisfy all these competing interests successfully?
Kinda similar to your situation.
I have to prep my own meals, always (it's OK, I'm a very well versed cook, and enjoy everything about that). I sourdough my own bread and portion to two slices a day max. I do a lot of soups and salads (that's new).
And I have a keto week, once a month. That starts with 3-4 days of basically water fast, where I am allowed a cup of soup after sunset, but that's all. Also no smoking or coffee these three days. I do a lot of stretching, but little exercise at that time. It helps to have something to do when a craving comes, so I just go stretch or do hot-cold-mild shower, Wim Hoff style.
You feel amazing at the end of day two. Just gotta hold out.
And it continues to the rest of that week where I eat in a window between 14:00 and 17:00, limiting carbs to 20g, protein to 180g and having lots of fat with it. I try to have my protein first, as well, so that the two meals are a salad with olive oil dressing and three eggs in butter for the other one, or whatever.
That's where I do exercise. Short, violent bursts, short rests, stretches. Feels great, helps with the keto, and redistributes body mass towards eh, fighter-style body, I'd say?
The windowing of eating stays, but the amount restrictions go for the remaining three weeks.
Before I added that keto week it was a struggle, as you describe. But now it is not. There might be many reasons for that, but maybe you should try something similar and find out how it maps onto yourself.
Cheers.
I have so very few foods left that I really just have to eat what I can. And more are dropping all the time.
That said I'll try and adapt your suggestions onto my life as best I can. Thanks.
For me also breakfast doesn't come natural to me, unless my kids bake croissants in the morning ;).
Given the subjects were high cholesterol and/or diabetic, it makes me think their life styles sucked already. I couldn't imagine living like then suddenly being told to stop eating for entire days. I would not be shocked if people didn't really adhere to the guidelines. It seems a food diary was the only thing keeping them "honest". Also a staggering 40% of all participants refused to answer how much alcohol they consumed on average.
If you are going crazy with food or lack of exercise for 6 out of 7 days, I don't think taking a break for one day a week is going to make much of a difference.
I found that one coffee for breakfast, lots of water/herbal tea throughout the day, and then eating a huge dinner and whatever I want between 5-9 works for me. It seems I can consume over 2k calories in those 4 hours.
There is more than one way to lose weight just like there is for gaining weight. Minimize as many of the offending behaviors as possible. Consistency is key. Don't pick something you cannot consistently repeat unless that limited time run is all you're after.
Of the different IF schedules people pick -OMAD, 20:4, 16:8, 5:2, etc-, start with anything that you can do initially without getting frustrated and giving up. You will be able to increase the fasting window over time. It just really works.
Don't get discouraged by words from people that tried and failed (or gave up too quickly), or not even tried but talk out of prejudice. Listen to the encouragement from so many that successfully do it.
Best of luck!!
Joking aside, I've tried intermittent fasting and had more balance / homeostasis as a result. They say `the first element of discipline starts with your diet`. Control diet, and you control many other things.
This will increase the quality of your microbiome -- which in turn, will produce substances that are anti-inflammatory.
It seems we just keep discovering more effects of the microbiome on health. I heard about this anti-inflammation effect just yesterday. I think it was explained as gram negative bacteria overgrowth in the gut (due to a bad bacterial balance). Those bacteria have a hard 'shell' that triggers a potent immune response (with inflammation) when present in the blood stream, which they enter from the small intestine.
So I think your advice to maximize fiber intake is sound. This feeds gut bacteria (unlike most other food which is broken down before reaching the small intestine). Another intervention would be fermented foods.
I used to have a limp for the first 2-3 hours of the day due to very early onset arthritis at 30 in my ankle. Around 38 I discovered that minimizing by nightshade intake nearly "cured" me of the problem.
What a huge change in quality of life.
I still eat some potato, tomato, and eggplant - but I never make or order nightshades on purpose.
if you don't like CR or fasting (or being hungry), consider keto as an alternative, just realize that you'll have to do your homework
I've definitely seen the same anti-inflammatory results that this has.
One day I got interested in IF, looked up the rules and found out I was already on it.
I can't say whether it did anything but it definitely made it hard to consume enough calories, so despite training a lot and despite eating a lot at lunch and dinner, I've always been skinny.
I assume IF could be a good choice for someone who's overweight and barely training or not training at all.
I was training bodyweight and gymnastic at the time, making significant progress in terms of strength - despite that, I saw very little muscle building. I suppose being that lean lowered my testosterone production resulting in little gains.
I had the brilliant idea of even trying going vegetarian, vegan for a while, shifting to a source of proteins which is not as complete and not as well absorbed as proteins coming from animal sources.
After 20 years of reading on the subject and looking at what studies are saying nowadays, if I could go back through my teenage years I would eat close to paleo, 6 times per day and lift weights.
I started IF in July as a means to lose a bit of lockdown weight.
No breakfast, no lunch, only a substantial dinner. 4-5 Drinks taken throughout the day. No real restriction. Lots of walking to keep busy.
I've noticed a significant improvement in management of Colitis. No flares. Enabling me to get back to normal life without worrying about the condition throughout the day. Just (sorry TMI), emptying bowels first thing in the morning (2-3) times. Then don't have to worry all day.
Considering colitis is a primarily inflammatory response (I believe), then this article rings true. YMMV
Once I reach target weight, not sure what I'll do. Maybe just add some more protein or good fats to evening meal. It's been too helpful to give up the routine.
I have Crohn's, and mostly manage it through diet, and am always curious what other people are doing for their IBD.
Sadly and strangely, any time I've made a concerted effort to really eat a model, healthy diet, I react badly after a few weeks.
So, as with everything, I guess, all things in moderation has generally been the key for me lately. Along with IF.
How about yourself? I'm similarly curious.
A marker for inflammation (hsCRP) increased. Weight and waist circumference decreased. Risk of diabetes (HOMA-IR) decreased. Risk of cardiovascular issues (MSS) decreased.
Nothing extraordinary, I think the caloric deficit reduced the weight and weight loss brought down risk of diabetes and cardiovascular issues.
I don't think it says much about IF.
I did low carb/cal AM (1 egg) and didn’t eat til 3 PM. I did this most days of the week. There are other confounding variables so don’t take it as medical advice, since the diet can also exacerbate seizures.
More about the history of fasting and epilepsy here (which also cites the Bible verse, god forbid):
https://www.medlink.com/articles/ketogenic-diet-in-the-treat...
Of course I’m being downvoted because I mentioned a religious text. It’s in other secular ancient texts as well. My point was more about how fasting and the ketogenic diet has been recognized as a treatment for mental diseases for a long time. As it relates to the title, a lot of them are suspected to have roots in inflammation and metabolism.
Unfortunately I don't remember the name but very recently I heard a (Christian in this case) scholar on the radio talk about the bible and religion in general that really resonated. He wasn't reading the bible and other ancient texts quite literally like so many of us do. He saw them as regular people describing the world they saw and distilling the wisdom they gained and wanted to preserve in the pictures of their time. His interpretations just made sense to me and I says that as a totally non-religious person. And that's because they weren't dogmatic and "religious" or prescriptive, like so many a preacher is the Sunday before an election, telling everyone who to vote for.
As mentioned before (both here in another comment and other posts on HN), I find the population control aspect of religion very fascinating. In the currently active world religions this will probably not be seen kindly and more like heresy. But just the fact that many of the major religions will see each other that way too is fascinating. Or even slight variations of the same major religion for that matter. Usually it's much easier to talk to people about this for long lost/dead religions and it's fascinating how they see those aspects in those religions, but not their own.
Funny that you mentioned population control, one could consider science a popular religion of today ;) As you said, not all religions get along.
That, and marvel is the new greek mythology, they'll unfortunately be watching those movies a thousand years from now in history class and thinking we were idiots.
I think you're thinking of ketosis, which is ~72hrs. You can also verify entering ketosis by the smell & color of your urine. We're not 100% sure how ketosis relates to cellular autophagy.
I think the OP is talking about Steen Ekberg the keto youtuber. His stuff is legit and well sourced, but unfortunately marketed to look like facebook meme videos.
I do find it interesting that a group of people I would otherwise suspect of being more pro-science would be so enthusiastic about bro-science.
Fasting isn't really that weird at all, people have been doing it for literally thousands of years. Christians do it, Muslims do it, Jews do it, Buddhists do it, and so on. A small fraction?
I do IF just because it makes me feel better and more healthy, but sometimes I fast for religious reasons.
Whilst with IF it's about adopting a habit that stays constant and that negates the potential feelings of hunger by teaching your body that there's no point in complaining food comes in this time-period no matter how hungry it pretends to be. IF is about creating a norm that is no longer experienced as a privation.
How do you get a large populace to eat healthily?
You can either try to convince them with sound arguments and scientific studies. Or you get them to believe in your religion and tell them whatever they need to hear to get them to do it as a side effect. I'm pretty convinced that there's some other motives behind fasting in religions than healthy eating, such as natural scarcity of food during certain times etc. but if you wanted to get them to do it, this would be a great way to do it. And I don't think anyone can deny the potential health benefits of it. After all, what is Ramadan if not IF?
Look at these idiots spending an hour preparing green leaves and lean cuts of chicken when I, a intellectual just buy a box of Twinkies and get my calories in a fraction of the time and effort. I am obviously the superior Hunter gatherer
I and at least one other friend (coincidentally who is a hardcore athlete and in accounting not tech) both noticed it really is the food that clouds our minds and makes us unproductive at work and fall asleep in meetings. And the improvement onLy got better going from low carb to IF eating daily or per 48hrs, so we are weird for having common sense? Or basic logic skills? If brains only work correctly when in "starvation" perhaps it is you who needs to work on rewriting some definitions of words. !!! Astounded.
I never experienced a "food coma".
If I'm starving I can't think straight.
The sad thing is most of us would be better off lifting weights or making money or going to social events than developing eating disorders.