Time-restricted eating reshapes gene expression throughout the body
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com
- In mice.
- Tested 16:8 pattern.
- Sustained consistently for nine weeks.
- No exploration in this study of the effects and/or benefits from the gene expression.
N=1 but I've been doing ~16:8-ish along with strict keto for the past five years and the net benefits for me have been transformative in fitness (Weight: -100+ lbs, BMI: Obese->Fit), long-term health (A1C, LDL/HDL, Trigs, BP, resting heart rate all from bad to great), cognitive acuity and emotional stability. First 12 weeks required serious effort/focus to transition habits, palette and metabolism (must RTFM and be rigorous) but after that it's been surprisingly easy to sustain long-term, requiring no will power or conscious effort.
Other surprising experiential learnings: Dietary intake impacts long-term mental/emotional states FAR more than I ever suspected. Food & taste prefs I had since childhood are not innate. Many things I loved no longer even taste good. Hunger pangs and cravings are driven by my blood sugar cycle. Once I stabilized that I no longer get hungry or feel food deprived/obsessed. (<--- all N=1 of course.)
Calorie tracking and restriction pretty much comes with strict keto. Transitioning to keto rigorously requires detailed tracking of every molecule that goes in your mouth (with a food scale and measuring cups), at least for the first 12 weeks. I tracked constantly for about 6 mos until it was automatic for me and I knew every food and portion I typically encounter at a glance. It's hard at first but only tracking part way is the #1 reason for failing to get results.
I didn't do any exercise at all while losing weight, in fact while changing diet I was more sedentary than my usual slug-like activity level due to work and life factors. For me, exercise has always been hard, unpleasant and inevitably makes me hungrier. N=1 but that's what worked best for me and my weight loss was dramatic and super fast (>100 lbs in 8 mos).
To summarize: absolute safest is water only.
16:8 means if your last calories are before 10PM, you wouldn't eat anything at all until after 2 PM. And this would be every day, not every other day.
12:12 might be more common, but not consistently.
That said, it is changing by the day and I see more teenagers snacking at odd times.
There is no need to snack. Meals are plenty enough as is, and as this thread is indicating, maybe even one meal too many.
I do quite a bit of high intensity cardio (cycling) + weight training and my recovery and peak performance suffered a lot when I tried keto for a few weeks, it also tanked my hormone levels. I still focus my carb intake on times around training but generally don't restrict.
If you use MCT oil it would be best to start slowly and not on an empty stomach because it can cause stomach aches otherwise.
I found that it dissolves red solo cups
I've never felt full.
I cried when I realized it. I'm down 30lbs so far.
How do you measure those?
Small correction: 15:9 pattern, if this writeup is correct.
What has worked better for me was longer fasts, eg 48h, max once per week. And lately I‘ve been experimenting with skipping late dinner (no food after 6PM) which is kinda hard but seems to work for improved sleep and digestive health. I usually have visible bags under my eyes, those tend to be greatly reduced when I eat an early or no dinner.
Muscle loss is an adaptation to loss of load on the muscle. Internet trope of "you lose muscle when you lose fat" is just that - a trope. If you were 100lb heavier, your muscles were loaded with extra 100lb. Should you lose the 100lbs, if you do not engage in the appropriate resistance exercises to provide equivalent of additional 100lb load, your muscle mass will decrease
It wasn't until I changed the type of food I was eating and tracking calories that I lost weight. But I still do 16:8 often because its a habit now.
I also find it interesting that the gender of the mice was not specified. If we're talking about hormonal profile changes, this will matter. When intermittent fasting was very popular, a number of women in "the scene" with a vested interest in making IF work noted that while initially it was great, they eventually started experiencing adverse effects, and often felt better on a 14:10 window instead.
Agree with you on the last paragraph re: your experiences. I've needed to substantially change what I eat due to some health challenges, and blood sugar is huge. Protein in the morning (rather than something like oatmeal) is key for me. A dozen eggs a week and my hereditarily-high cholesterol went down, too. Sorry oatmeal folks!
There's a big difference between skipping breakfast one time and habitually skipping breakfast. The body adapts. You no longer feel hungry in the mornings and you develop new eating patterns - since most people doing IF are focused on health, these are likely to be healthy eating patterns that don't include lots of sugary snacks. Apparently this adaptation takes the form of the liver learning not to expect breakfast after waking and producing glucose at that time, although I have not personally checked the research on this.
I've been doing IF 16:8 for about a year now. I rarely eat processed sugar (except a good croissant a few times a week). Even some fruits like ripe mango taste too sweet to me now.
From personal experience and discussing this with other people, if your fear is that you'll end up getting so hungry that you'll stuff your face with junk, it's not a valid fear beyond the first week. To avoid this I would suggest easing into it. Eat breakfast an hour later for a few days, then two hours later, and finally combine it with lunch.
I tried 16:8 but it never seemed to have any effect on weight loss for the 2PM to 10PM range. And my weight would creep up with that regimen. I suspect that might be related to late night hormonal changes in the human body preventing the digestion of certain types of food. I should try a 16:8 with 12PM to 8PM at some point and track the results.
I've had a similar experience. "unhealthy" seems to often be used in place of "not normal."
I don't blame them. Advertising has been pushing "normal" food choices for 100+ years. Social gatherings are focused too much on eating. People are shamed for being "skin and bones."
I've been doing it for more than 10 years. I never get hunger pangs. I don't feel the need to eat something before leaving the house, or stopping at a drive-thru while out. I'm able to make better food choices. It doesn't mean I starve myself, or abstain from eating lunch/dinner with friends. I get all necessary calories for whatever my goals are (ie fat loss, maintenance, or weight gain).
Constant calorie intake from accessible food products designed to sit on store shelves for months should be considered not normal and unhealthy.
In all of western and handful of middle eastern countries I've lived in, I've never once seen people say that except in jest; e.g. imitating the Concerned Italian Mother or Babushka, etc.
With the exception of 2-3 very skinny coder-types, pretty much everyone I met could have lost 3kg and still looked fine, and most of them (myself included) could probably stand to lose 5kg or more. Pretty much everyone I met in Dubai and the US was fat as fuck; little more reasonable in Canada, Australia, and France. Asia was still pretty lean, but getting bigger.
I start to dread eating a bit now because I get tired/sleepy after I do. I want to eat because I'm hungry but mentally feel clearer if I don't.
At times I've felt the crankiness has been good; the increased aggression has led to some really productive mornings. The flip side of the coin is that it sometimes also leads to negative thoughts and feelings of pessimism until I eat.
I prefer to have a more stable mood so what I'm doing as of late is drinking a protein shake with oat milk for breakfast and a high-quality multi-vitamin. The crankiness completely goes away and mental acuity is still high. It's still excellent for weight control since it's a ~200kcal breakfast that is digested very fast. Arguably better for recovery too since I practice sports every day. It's definitely not IF but it's been serving me well.
I'm also experimenting with a ~24h fast once a week, from Sunday lunch to Monday lunch, but don't have enough experience to know what it's doing for me yet.
3ish years in I feel great, and routinely get comments how 'in shape' I look. I also try to weight train every day and train BJJ a few times/week.
Other things I've learned personally is if I eat poorly the night before (lots of sweets or something), I am more likely to feel a bit of hunger the next morning. Normally I don't really feel hungry though, and if I'm busy I can go right through lunch without noticing.
What I’d suggest is to experiment a bit, perhaps in your case skipping dinner is easier than skipping breakfast. Or try to start by simply not having snacks and gradually increase the intervals between meals.
The advantage is that I no longer get hungry. Ever. If skip lunch I might feel weak by evening but never hungry. You develop this super power against food. You can choose what and when to eat and not give in to whatever is available.
https://hubermanlab.com/effects-of-fasting-and-time-restrict...
> A total of 15,430 genes were DE in at least one tissue, but only 816 and 1,335 genes were differentially up- or downregulated, respectively, by TRF in ≥5 tissues
TRF has had mixed research results vs normal calorie restriction - sometimes leading to a drop of muscle - but it's a bit hard to tell since the studies are not consistent about monitoring protein intake or weight training which is generally necessary to avoid muscle loss when doing any sort of weight lost protocol. I think the latest research is skipping dinner is generally better (eTRF).
The hacks in this style of eating is that once you stop putting calories in your mouth, your insulin levels drop and that makes the fat cells in the body more willing to allow lipids into the bloodstream where the liver can make Ketones out of them - hence the term "ketosis" is often seen when reading about intermittent fasting.
There are also small studies, I'd call them anecdotal yet still informative, that demonstrate a raise in GH in response to an IF style eating pattern. Leptin sensitivity/resistance is also positively impacted by this eating style.
If you want to go down a rabbit hole and really geek all the way out on a topic, theres a lot out there to sort through, debunk and sort into useful information. I encourage you to give it a look.
EDIT: For extra credit - it's natural to look at Fasted Training in the same context. The hack here is that when you train at near peak low insulin levels ( or near peak anyhow which takes about 14h of fasting ) your body will suffer in terms of absolute performance but if done correctly you can train burning mostly fat. Theres as much on this subject to sort through as the first one. A whole host of hormonal and health benefits are purported here and I can say from experience I believe most of them having seen it myself.
I've done quite a bit of fasted training, but can't say I have seen a huge effect myself. That said, I was very fit at the time, most studies have been done on untrained subjects AFAIK. There are also studies that show that base metabolic rate increases after fasted training, but for men only while it decreases for women, which would be counterproductive if they would want to loose weight.
The main problem with most of the studies is that they have been done with very small study populations.
I've tried it and haven't seen much of a difference in weight loss either. Also I have only been able to pull it off with cardio - any fasted training involving weight lifting has been a dreadful experience. I've completely abandoned the idea.
Some people do fasts that last for multiple days, usually 3-7 days - this not I.F.
That way your gut bacteria gets fed and doesn’t get desperate to tell your brain you’re starving.
Personally I don’t feel ketogenic state is reached from 16 hours. Feels like I need at least 24 hours, but usually do 36. Only thing I need other than water is electrolytes. I would get bad headaches without my mineral/pink salt.
Mark Bittman's VB6 Diet - https://www.webmd.com/diet/a-z/mark-bittman-vb6-diet
Vegan by Day, Glutton by Night? Thinking About VB6 - https://www.bittmanproject.com/p/236239_vegan-by-day-glutton...
You can find other posts of people trying it.
You probably need at least more sodium.
https://old.reddit.com/r/fasting/wiki/fasting_in_a_nutshell/...
You don't faint from low blood sugar, you faint from low blood pressure. If you were losing consciousness from low blood sugar you're gong to start convulsing and having seizures, afaik.
In normal homeostasis, insulin lowers blood sugar as needed and glucagon raises it. There is always a balance being made between the two I believe.
Do you think there is 0 signal about potential impacts on humans from testing on mice? How would you prefer research be done with a similar cost, ability to control variables, & level of ethics?
I mean yes, people should not just assume that it will be the same. But as with a lot of studies in mice, it can inform what we study further in humans.
Yes, we don't yet know precisely how similar humans and mice are in this regard, because studies in mice generally precede doing the matching study in humans. But that doesn't mean we should assume that there's absolutely no correlation.
And yes, the more general biological similarities are relevant here because you claim "we simply do not know how to do that mapping", and that's not the case. We can't do a perfect mapping because mice aren't humans, but we can make a good start. We broadly know quite a bit about the relationship between mice and men and what sorts of correlations are more and less likely. E.g., if the study were about fitting through small holes, we'd know that the study wouldn't tell us much about humans. But we use mice because of "their anatomical, physiological, and genetic similarity to humans". [1]
Does that mean people should take this as gospel about what happens in humans? No. But it gives us a lot of good questions and things to explore in humans.