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When We Eat, or Don’t Eat, May Be Critical for Health
- Apocryphon 8y agoDoes intermittent fasting make its health benefit claims based on any of this? Because this sounds like fasting windows.
- scottLobster 8y agoDepends on they length of the fast. Intermittent fasting focuses on the benefits of not eating for extended periods, and fast lengths can vary from 12 hours to entire days. Time-restricted eating focuses on the benefits of eating daily within a specific time window. The "standard" 16/8 intermittent fast would get all the benefits of time restricted eating as well.
- nikkwong 8y agoWell, that's a shame. I hate eating in the morning, and love eating in the evening. I find it surprising that earlier humans in history didn't follow this pattern, allowing the body to adapt to digesting food later at night.
- xevb3k 8y agoThe paper says: “When overweight individuals with >14 h eating duration ate for only 10–11 h daily...they reduced body weight, reported being energetic, and improved sleep.” The 10 hour period was self selected. So could have been morning or evening I guess. This doesn’t seem very surprising to me. Maybe there are other details that I missed.
- clumsysmurf 8y agoMe too; I find it easy to fast when I skip eating in the morning / afternoon — its like my body realizes its not getting any food and turns off the hunger. "On the time-restricted regimen, the men had lower insulin, reduced levels of oxidative stress, less nighttime hunger and significantly lower blood pressure." If I eat in the morning I'm ravenous until bed time :(
- blunte 8y agoLikewise, I normally don't eat until late afternoon or evening, and I'm usually not hungry until then. But if I eat breakfast, I then want to keep eating all day!
- everdev 8y agoI just tried intermittent fasting (16hr fast, 8hr feeding window). It was very challenging at first and I had to catch myself multiple times opening the cupboard at night by habit, but it did help me realize how much snacking I really do. My fat % is way down and muscle mass up, so it's been very positive so far and much easier after week 2 when my body fully adapted to the new eating style.
- TangoTrotFox 8y agoI've been doing this for about a year now and feel better than ever. The reason I started was a simple view that our bodies spent hundreds of thousands of years, millions if you want to go back to very closely related ancestor species, doing things in a very specific way. And then in a time period of some 2000-3000 years, we've turned everything upside down in terms of the foods we eat, how much we eat, when we eat, and so on. And if you look at society today, the results have been catastrophic. I've never been much of a snacker and have always eaten reasonably well. I was not fat to begin with - but shed a good amount of weight, and also saw an increase in muscle mass. I've also experienced an increase in energy which I assumed was placebo, but going on a year now it hasn't changed. And all of this seemingly from no effort of my own. I don't make any particular effort in my eating besides eating within an 8 hour window each day. The only slightly difficult part was going to bed hungry, depending on your schedule. But somehow your body rapidly adjusts to that as well. When I first started I'd toss and turn on an empty stomach. After a month or two I was sleeping like a baby. Highly recommended.
- saintfiends 8y agoHow do you calculate fat percentage and muscle mass. Is there a way that does not involve expensive equipment?
- everdev 8y agoI bought a WeightGurus scale. It syncs the data to my phone. From what I understand any of the at home measurements like measuring your waist are pretty inaccurate and digital is the only real way to go.
- lerie82 8y ago"During the day, the pancreas increases its production of the hormone insulin, which controls blood sugar levels, and then slows it down at night." What about people that work at night?
- cageface 8y agoAnecdotally I’ve noticed some benefits from skipping breakfast and eating only within an eight hour window. My blood sugar and energy levels are more even throughout the day, I can skip a meal if necessary when traveling or something without feeling too hungry, and I’ve lost a few pounds I was having a hard time getting rid of any other way. In the morning I just drink coffee black and then have a somewhat early lunch and dinner. Maybe it would be more effective to skip dinner instead but this seems to be working.
- bad_user 8y agoI've skipped breakfast for years and my body is not missing it. That said breakfast may be important when doing intermittent fasting for losing weight, because the secret there is to not let your metabolism get used to a certain rhythm, or in other words it's best if you are little unpredictable in what meals you eat or skip — so when doing IF, in some days I eat breakfast and skip dinner. And when eating dinner it's best if you eat light, b/c digestion during the night sleep can make you tired during the next day. My general rule is to eat about half what I ate for lunch.
- nissarup 8y agoWhy would unpredictability be good? If you eat at the same time your body starts preparing to digest the food before you eat it, making for a faster, better digestion of the food.
- jplayer01 8y agoThis is ridiculous - the point of choosing a predetermined window for feeding is so your body adapts to only expecting food within that window. Routine is incredibly important for being able to stick to something like IF. If you're fighting your body at every step by, for example, being unpredictable, you're just screwing yourself.
- iand 8y agoThis seems unlikely in evolutionary terms. It's more likely that eating times were unpredictable for most of our history and that our bodies have evolved to prepare for digestion based on external stimuli such as sight and smell of food.
- surfmike 8y agoRelated: the jetlag fast. Fasting for 12-16 hours and then eating your next meal in the morning in your new destination is supposed to help adjust to jetlag faster. https://harpers.org/blog/2012/03/the-empty-stomach-fasting-to-beat-jet-lag/ https://harpers.org/blog/2012/03/the-empty-stomach-fasting-t...
- mnm1 8y agoI think they're on to something with the intermittent fasting but starting early in the day is not a convincing argument for a night owl like me. I'd like to see them compare the early starting six or eight hour intermittent fasting group to a later one to see if there is a difference and include morning larks in the first one and night owls in the second. My hypothesis is that the groups would fare similarly but without the study we won't know.
- dustinmoris 8y agoI find it very surprising that the first meal should be after getting up. It seems unlikely to me that our hunter and gatherer foragers had immediate access to food after getting up. Also the article mentions multiple times that food consumption during times of little or no daylight is messing with our internal clocks, but I wonder if that is actually true, because in Winter we only have daylight from about 8am to 4pm, often less. I eat when my body tells me it is hungry, which literally can happen at any time of the day. Sometimes I am physically active for most of the day (sports) and then I am normally pretty hungry at even 9 or 10pm and I think it would be pretty unhealthy not to listen to my own body. This article is pretty much bollocks, the only rule for a healthy lifestyle is: Listen to your body. Don't follow any dogmatic approach!
- nissarup 8y ago"...the only rule for a healthy lifestyle is: Listen to your body" and "Don't follow any dogmatic approach!" really don't belong together. Also if it was as easy as "Listen to your body" do you think we would be having all these obesity problems now?
- nunodonato 8y ago> Also if it was as easy as "Listen to your body" do you think we would be having all these obesity problems now? Yes! this is a common misconception. "listen to your body" is not the same as "eat whatever you feel like eating". Your tongue/appetite/addictions can tell you many harmful things. Listening to your body requires a lot of training and sensitivity, otherwise my body keeps telling me to eat cakes ;)
- unicornporn 8y ago> “If you’re constantly eating at a time of day when you’re not getting bright light exposure, then the different clock systems become out of sync,” So if you live in a part of the world when the sun sets at 2 or 3PM in the winter, you will likely not have a very social eating life following these recommendations.
- valesco 8y agoFrom what I heard, people don't usually eat out in Scandinavian countries.
- unicornporn 8y agoThere's some truth to that I suppose. But, TBH, this comment was mind bending to me. May I remind you that it is possible to eat with friends even though there's no business preparing your food? :)
- TimSchumann 8y agoI didn’t eat for 60 days. It was, without a doubt, the best decision I’ve ever made for my physical health.
- grondilu 8y agoThis is a very long fast. Tell us more.
- TimSchumann 8y agoYou should be able to find my fasting logs from my 60 day in my post history. Happy to share before/after pictures if you're interested, through I'd prefer not to post them publicly. What else do you want to know?
- tboughen 8y agoI would like to hear more about your experience!
- TimSchumann 8y agoAsk away, I'll do my best to answer. Also, there is a detailed log of my weight and supplement intake for the 60 day fast in my post history.
- tspiteri 8y agoWithout context, that is not a helpful statement. For starters, a 60 day fast will lead to a very large loss of weight, so unless the faster is exceedingly above the ideal weight at the start, it sounds dangerous.
- TimSchumann 8y ago> Without context, that is not a helpful statement. On the contrary, it started a discussion. > For starters, a 60 day fast will lead to a very large loss of weight Approximately 80 lbs in my case. I started the fast at 37% bodyfat, according to my somewhat reliable Omron scale which uses Bioelectrical Impedance to measure body fat. > so unless the faster is exceedingly above the ideal weight at the start, it sounds dangerous. From my experience, fasting is the opposite of dangerous. If you're a healthy adult, you can easily fast for 7 days. But yes, you do need the fat stores, though I'm counting that 7 days of fat stores as implicit in 'healthy adult'.
- wilsonnb2 8y agoI'd be curious to know why the many online advocates of intermittent fasting (and other time restricted diets) think it's any different than the many other fad diets that have come, gone, and come again. Diets in general seem to bring out the obsessive optimization that many (especially on this website) are prone too and the "one quick trick" mentality. I'll be surprised if there is ever any better advice than "eat food. not too much. mostly plants".
- scottLobster 8y agoBecause unlike other fad diets I've actually experienced weight loss, less hunger, better focus, more stable energy levels, lower blood pressure, better sleep, not to mention cost savings on food, since starting a 16/8 intermittent fast. YMMV, but for many people the benefits are quite stark and palpable beyond possible placebo effect. Sure it's annecdotal, but there's serious science behind some of the benefits (see this article among other studies). To flip your question around, why are you skeptics so certain that it's just another fad diet that will come and go? IF can actually be a useful enforcement mechanism for the first two parts of "eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables"
- wilsonnb2 8y ago> why are you skeptics so certain that it's just another fad diet that will come and go? Because, like most skeptics, we have seen this pattern before. Supposed scientific support and loads of anecdotal evidence are common to all popular fad diets. The scientific support of IF is also much less solid than it's advocates would have you believe. > IF can actually be a useful enforcement mechanism for the first two parts of "eat food, not too much, mostly vegetables" I agree with this - so can basically any other fad diet. People that recognize IF as a method of enforcing a basic CICO diet, I agree with. There are plenty of people that, like any other fad diet, think that IF is somehow special in ways unrelated to it's restriction of calories. That's what makes it the same as any other fad diet to me. > I've actually experienced weight loss, less hunger, better focus, more stable energy levels, lower blood pressure, better sleep People report this from atkins, vegan, paleo, keto, juice cleanse, weight watchers, south beach, etc. I am happy that you've found a diet that works for you. I hope that everyone finds a healthy diet that works for them. I just want people to realize that CICO will always be the key to weight loss regardless of how it is achieved, and "eat food. not too much. mostly plants" will (probably) always be the key to a health diet.