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One thing the diet industry hates:
Fasting. Hard to make money off not eating food.
It's also highly effective and safe so long as you educate yourself properly before beginning.
I did 14 day fasts with an electrolyte slurry, psyllium husk, and multi vitamins. Take a month off, eat well balanced meals, repeat until goal weight. I lost ~15-20lbs each fast doing it a total of three times to hit my goal weight. Each time is less, because the daily caloric requirement to maintain your body decreases with your weight.
After that, I started gym/weight training.
edit: and never eating junk food or drinking sugar ever again. That includes fruit juice and dairy milk. Unsweetened Coconut "milk" for me now. Processed grains massively reduced too. Basically, flour. Honestly flour probably inflated the waist line for me more than sugar.
So I'm a physician and I support most things people do to import their health but I do try to make sure they're fully informed. In terms of fasting, this cohort study found an adverse association between fasting and cardiovascular death. There are limitations to the study (self-reported diet, etc.) but it followed 20,000 people for 8yrs which is pretty good. Definitely need more study in this area, especially considering the complexity of human metabolism. Here's the highlights from the study but the full text is available at that link:
It's a interesting poster, but look at those error bars!
I wonder why the pre-study ratios of CVD and Cancer were much lower on the 8 hour eating window population?
I did 3 extended fasts, it's not a permanent lifestyle change for me so I don't think that info is relevant to me, more so to the other person who replied with intermittent fasting. Or people who permanent adopt stuff like OMAD.
I eat three times a day.
FFS, don't give them ideas!
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Yes, came to say fasting. Start with intermittent. Work up to OMAD (one meal a day). Then push it further out to 48 hr. plus depending on your weight, with just water, vitamins, electrolytes.
Autophagy is an amazing benefit of it to look into as well. Kicks in hard around 48 hrs, depending on how much sugar and carbs you have to burn off. Which is also why a ketogenic diet is good when you aren't fasting.
Green tea, coffee, tumeric are good at stimulating autophagy too, if you want to dirty fast
Heha, I'm scared, but I'm also interested! (frankly)
Cravings wear off fast. Especially if you are not dry fasting. It's actually easiest after the second day or so if you are getting you electrolytes
Long story short, some years back I damaged something in my esophagus / stomach, and was unable to eat for ~10days. Water was about it for all that time. Maybe a lollipop here and there. Anything more like 'real food' was true agony. I forget if I took man-made vitamins during that time; perhaps a tiny bit here and there.
Finally, whatever it was had healed up, and I was able to eat again, and had lost a good bit of weight, and felt so much more energetic for a few weeks, afterwards!
Stuff like gatoraid, or more exactingly-formulated stuff?
Any calories or sugar ends the fast and any autophagy benefits, so drinks like gatoraide aren't good.
I get a powder blend from health food stores that I mix in water or green tea that's sugar/calorie free. There are lots to chose from, but most have sugar. Stevia sweetened are okay, but may stimulate your appetite.
Please.
I'm drinking G-zero.
It's a grand total of virtually *nothing* upon every sig. count.
One more time, mssr-- what is your magical mixture?
I avoid all artificial sweeteners aside from a few plant based ones like stevia.
Technically, no sugar very low/no carbs don't break fast.
But drinks like g zero have ingredients like starches and artificial sweeteners, which if you research the keto diet, your body basically processes just like sugar. Both are bad for insulin levels, could stop ketosis, and may be bad for autophagy.
Which is why processed foods with starches are very unhealthy even when they brag about being sugar free.
Do you, but I personally avoid always, not just when I fast as I try to stay in ketosis even when not fasting
Thanks for the response. Stevia tastes horrible to me, but... yeah, maybe try it in smaller doses and give it time. :S For example, there are certainly some ground-up dry spices I didn't like at first, such as turmeric and ginger. Now they're regular players in my cooking.
(ooh btw-- any thoughts on stevia counterparts, like agave?)
Yeap, I've read that too from the studies. At this point I add one of my unholy packets (er, sucralose, haha) in to my daily iced tea bottle, which amounts to 28 Fl Oz, or somewhat less than a pint. Hopefully that's not too catastrophic an intake?
Right, my understanding is that processed foods of almost any ilk really are... something we shouldn't be putting inside our bodies. Altho the more 'resistant' a starch is to spiking glucose is a good thing, as I understand it.
Anyway, thanks for the comments and advice. I admire what you're doing!
I feel ya on the stevia. It kinda has a weird aftertaste depending on how well it's blended. Lucky for me, I don't have much of a sweet tooth aside from chocolate, which I can find sugar free must of the time.
I used to be all about Agave when it first became popular for cooking and baking, but I've read some unfortunate articles on it the last few years. Most brands are actually basically corn syrup, so you have to be careful when buying. And pure agave is fairly pricey.
As far as natural sweeteners that aren't supposed to be as unhealthy, you could try monk fruit, date, allulose. Or sugar alcohols like xylitol or erythritol. I would still avoid these when fasting if you can.
The fasts I've done that really made me feel amazing after I was done were when I worked up to 5 to 7 days, which I only do every 6 months or so. First two days, I completely dry fast, as that is good for getting you to autophagy quick, and also helps clear out any internal parasites you might be harboring. Then I electrolyte/vitamin with only water the rest of the week.
When I first started, I would dirty fast, with only water, green or black tea, or straight black coffee. It took me a few tries to get past the third day, which is okay. It's best to work up to it! I've been an evening only eater most of my adult life as well, so it was fairly easy for me to step up to a couple days.
Just start out with calorie restriction. Like I said, start at intermentent. Eat in a 8 hour period, and fast for 16. Work up to 20/4, OMAD, then step up to a 48. You can do it!
It's just really good for your body to not constantly have to be breaking down food, so it can get a break, and clean up your body, and dead cells and whatnot.
And if you do indulge in sweets, it's okay. I have periods where I have cheat weeks. But I am pretty much always at a 20 fast/4 eating a day 5 or 7 days a week, with a 48 hr thrown in when I'm feeling like it. And like I said, an extended fast twice a year. Work into it, and you'll do fine
Great writeup
[CC @[email protected] ]
Just want to add if you ever want to debug what a sweetener is doing to your glucose or insulin there is a easy test you can do at home. Wear a CGM (Continuous glucose monitor), which are fairly inexpensive and OTC now. When your blood sugar is flat and stable, take a sample of the sweetener by itself, eat it, and watch the glucose response for the next hour. If it goes up, then there is glucose in it, if it goes down, then the sweetener causes a insulin response.
Wow, thank you!
haha, not sure if that was sarcasm (the internet makes us all skeptical, heh), but I've found CGMs to be a massively useful tool. Where I live I can order them from aliexpress for $20, and that gives me two weeks of biohacking protentional. I've found the best benefit by giving them to my friends so they can see what their bodies are doing, it's been my sneaky way of convincing people to go low carb.
Ah no, I was just kind of amazed that such a device exists!
Oh, but when I looked it up, most models around here seem to go for US$200+, and IIRC there are only two non-prescrip models widely available in the States. Anyway, I'm a big fan of eating low-glycemic food, including limiting one's carbs.
That's really cool that you've found a way to help your friends like that. Over here, from what I've heard, it sounds like diabetes in SEA based on eating regular amounts of white rice is a real problem...
The Diabetes in SEA is a real puzzle. Rice has always been a staple of the local diet, so that can't really account for the rise in type 2 diabetes.
If I had to speculate its a combination of both increased carbohydrate consumption (glucose spikes), process food (glucose spikes, inflammation), and the wide-spread adoption of industrial oils (inflammation, and attacks cholesterol). We know that most dietary problems come from mixing carbohydrates and fat (randle cycle inflammation)
If you are in the US then you might want to check out
I think glycemic index is only useful in the context of dosing insulin, not for gauging overall health of food. I find the carbohydrate-insulin model of health most compelling. The big difference is it's the TIME of elevated blood sugar that is more important then the HEIGHT of the spike. Obviously reducing both is good, shorter time, lower spike, but if you have to focus on one, time has the biggest metabolic payoff.
Thanks for the extensive write-up and advice, mate!
Considering how well it (accidentally) went last time, I'm intrigued about trying a fast again. Still amazed about the burst of energy I got when my stomach finally healed.
Bookmarking this convo for later, and thanks again. :D
I prefer to eat two meals a day. It feels like a sustainable lifestyle instead of just a temporary fix. Normally, I have only breakfast and lunch. If I deviate from that by having something in the afternoon, my weight begins to increase gradually.