Hacker News Reader

Comment by sker | Hacker News Reader

> I find that being hungry is very distracting --hunger constantly nagging you out of your task with the urge of getting up and grabbing a snack

That only applies if you are actually experiencing hunger. I've been doing intermittent fasting for a couple of years and I haven't been hungry one single day - I don't even remember what it feels like. I eat once a day, usually at the end of the day.

It's well known that natural level of catecholamines (adrenaline, noradrenaline) are raised during the fast. As a result, most intermittent fasters report increased focus and alertness during this period. This article about ghrelin is yet another piece of the puzzle of why IF works so well for some people.

View on HN

Cortisol is elevated during fasts and thyroid hormone lowered. Endotoxin absorption is increased by large meals. I would guess daily fasting might be a bad idea. It's perhaps like veganism, where after a period of years it could catch up to you in a bad way.

Of course it makes sense that people would be a bit sharper with elevated adrenaline and cortisol. But those fundamentally put stress on the body.

What duration of fasts are you referring to? I had seen research on Ramadan fasts that indicated that short term fasting did not increase the total amount of cortisol, though the timing shifted.

I was under the impression that short term fasting was metabolically different from term fasting.

My source had been Martin Berkhan's blog. He cites the Ramadan literature in point 8. I'm not well placed to evaluate the papers as I lack expertise.

http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debun...

Ramadan fasting would be a brief period of ~12 hour fasts during the day, right? No biggie. The guy above was saying he eats one big meal every day, indefinitely. I'm no expert but that sounds like a bad idea.

The rule of thumb with stress is that low but chronic is way worse than acute. With that in mind maybe don't eat at all one day a week, but get your three squares the other six.

Why three meals per day? If you're not an expert, then can you point to experts saying that eating just once or twice per day is "chronic stress" and a "bad idea"?

Why one? Normal humans for approximately forever choose two or three spaced meals. The onus would be on those advocating otherwise. Let me know when you find the study where people ate only one meal a day for a year.

> The onus would be on those advocating otherwise.

The onus would be on those making claims. It's for him to support the claim that one a day is healthy, but you are conversely making unsubstantiated claims about the health effects of just eating one meal a day, and the onus is on you to substantiate those.

It is one thing to ask him for evidence of his assertion, another to make your own and expect him to disprove them.

Here's a Ramadan fasting timetable for the UK this year:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/shows/ramadan/timetable/

So more like 18 hours.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com