Comment by gwd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gwd | Hacker News Reader

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My theory is that it's more to do with going through periods of calorie deficit, rather than total maximum number of calories. There was a paper posted here a year or two ago purporting to show that fasting triggered "autophagy", which seems to be a sort of "stack ranking" phase for the body.

Anecdotally, I'm nearly 50, and for the last decade people have been commenting on how young I look. All my younger siblings have loads of gray hair, and I've only got a few; my mother even asked me if I dyed my hair (I don't!).

Possibly it's just genetics or something else (like not having a child to take care of until a few years ago); but also possibly it's because I've been regularly doing fasts for religious reasons since I was in my late 20's. I typically aim to do a 36-hour fast once a week (eat dinner on Sunday, eat breakfast on Tuesday); and I've done a number of week-long fasts as well.

There are loads and loads of benefits to fasting, and the potential for a longer, healthier life is one of them.

>like not having a child to take care of until a few years ago

This is 100% the main reason. There are a few studies in this direction showing e.g. that raising a kid ages you faster than smoking or being obese. The physical and mental stress accumulated over so many years is insane.

Anecdotally, this feels true. However, I have not been able to find any credible evidence to back up the claim that raising one or more children has a net-negative effect greater than smoking or being obese.

not mentioning sleep interruption, tststs

Is this from the kids or the spouse along with the kids?

this doesnt change parent comments point, if youre fasting 36 hours a week itll be very difficult to be in calorie surplus while working out. If nothing else youd be binge eating to catchup, which has its own drawbacks

I think people underestimate the calories they've had, and over estimate the calories they need, to begin with. Calorie surpluses with exercise really only fulfills one temporary periodic goal that not everyone one may have. Even as I fasted every day and lost 70 lbs sustainably for years, I was still able to significantly increase my muscle mass, energy capacity, and theoretically my longevity during that period.

"Calorie surplus" could mean two different things (keeping in mind that I'm not a trained physiologist):

1. Over the course of a week, you eat X calories and burn Y calories, where X < Y

2. At any given point in time, is your body burning glycogen or fat?

If you stop eating Sunday after dinner, then by Monday noon your body is out of glycogen and starts burning fat until Tuesday morning after you've had breakfast. If you simply listen to your body and eat until you're sated rather than full, you'll naturally have a slightly larger breakfast on Tuesday, but by lunchtime you'll have your full complement of glycogen again. Then work out and eat like normal.

> If nothing else youd be binge eating to catchup, which has its own drawbacks

The vast majority of animals on this planet go through "boom / bust" cycles: periods where there's lots of food and periods where there's less. The same was true for the vast majority of humans until a century or two ago. Obviously repeatedly losing and gaining 100 pounds is problematic, but losing and gaining 10 pounds over the course of a year, or 1 pound over the course of a week, is perfectly normal from a historical perspective.

What's very unusual from an evolutionary perspective is never going through the "bust" cycle where we live off our fat reserves. That's why intentional fasting is both easier and healthier than you'd think -- because just like exercising, our bodies are actually designed for it, and suffer when we don't get it.

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