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I've been on an intermittent fasting schedule (I usually do 16/8) for about a year and a half. I lost some weight during the first several months, but have leve

I've been on an intermittent fasting schedule (I usually do 16/8) for about a year and a half. I lost some weight during the first several months, but have leveled off to a reasonable weight (which is probably 10 pounds heavier than I'd like, but ~25 pounds lighter than when I started intermittent fasting). Overall, I don't see any dramatic changes. Lots of people claim to see a significant difference, usually positive, in energy, strength, mood, sleep, etc. But, I generally think all of those metrics are "about the same" for me. Maybe I'm mildly more energetic because of carrying less weight around. But, I'm also at the age where the effects of aging begin to be noticeable...so, maybe just maintaining levels is progress? Nonetheless, after several years of research into the topic, and related topics like caloric restriction, a couple of years ago I was convinced that the evidence was compelling enough to make it part of my life and started reducing my eating period each day until I was comfortable with 16 hours of fasting each day (sometimes I'll do 20 or 24, if I'm busy and feel OK). I recommend it to people who ask about it, but not because it's a magical cure for all that ails you. I just think the evidence is strong enough to be worth the minor trade-offs. It isn't a risky decision (with the caveat that it probably isn't appropriate for people with diabetes or hypoglycemia or similar)...none of the science indicates negative results, and nearly all of it indicates positive results to one degree or another. It's pretty much like any other diet decision, e.g. eat more vegetables because you'll probably live longer, not because it'll cure cancer or make you an Olympic athlete.

dave1619 8y ago
Are you doing LCHF (low carb high fat) as well or just IF (intermittent fasting)?
- SwellJoe 8y ago
  No, I eat mostly how I've eaten for many years, just on an intermittent schedule. But, I've always eaten pretty healthy; I've been vegetarian for 24 years and relatively conscious of what I eat. I tend to a eat a lot, so if I don't eat good stuff, I get fat. I eat probably more fat than average, and I don't avoid fat, but my diet isn't "high fat", I don't think, and it's certainly not low carb, though I do avoid sugars and many kinds of processed foods, and I never eat fast food. I eat bread, rice, and/or tortillas, regularly, at least once a day, and I tend to eat a pretty sizeable serving. Fruit and vegetables probably make up the majority of the volume/mass I'm consuming most days, but a significant portion of calories come from carbs. My health has always been, thankfully, very good. I'm not doing intermittent fasting to address any specific problem. Losing weight was a goal, because my pants (the same size I've been wearing since college) weren't fitting comfortably anymore...it worked for that, and all my pants fit again. But, I wasn't trying to reboot my eating in some dramatic way. I did try a low carb high fat/protein thing for a while before beginning intermittent fasting, as a way to lose weight, but it didn't work for me. The restrictions just took the fun out of meals. I love food, I love cooking it, love eating it with friends/family, etc. It's pretty hard to have normal meals on a very restrictive diet. I couldn't imagine living out the rest of my days without bread or rice, and any diet change has to be sustainable for decades or it's going to be part of a cycle of weight gain and loss. Intermittent fasting has been sustainable for me. I don't even think about it most days.
  - baxtr 8y ago
    It seems like you’re on a diet very similar to what Valter Longo recommends, which is based on his longevity studies https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet/ https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet/
    - SwellJoe 8y ago
      Yeah, I'm not familiar with Valter Longo, but that diet does pretty well match up with what I'm trying to do. I might be a little high on the protein, when I'm making seitan regularly...it's roughly equivalent to meat in protein content, and as with most things I enjoy I tend to eat a lot of it when I cook it. I'll have to do some more reading about what the science says about vegetable proteins like seitan and tofu.
pizza234 8y ago
> Lots of people claim to see a significant difference, usually positive, in energy, strength, mood, sleep, etc. I'm very skeptical of people's dieting claims in general. First, lots of people, more or less unconsciously, omit their previous condition/background. A typical example of this (that tragically gets always attention on HN) is an obese person making a post about how they made change X and lost Y kgs. When you're obese because of bad habits, any minimal healthy change will lead to weight loss. Second, every [not seriously into sports] person I ever spoke to who applied a change in his/her nutrition, reported the same symptoms (more energy, better sleep, etc.etc.), independently of how absurd the change was. Considering also how extremely variable between samples (=people) lifestyle is, the only reasonable way I accept is just to set emphasis on personal metrics and disregard other people's experience (I actually assume the vast majority of them to be inaccurate to the point of being false, for the above reasons).
- lhl 8y ago
  At the end of the day I agree that it's pretty important to try things out for yourself and see how it goes - intermittent fasting is one of those things that's pretty easy/safe to do (and has shown some insane health, longevity, disease prevention/treatment results in the experimental research lately) - I will say that having never purposefully fasted before, the first couple days of 16:8 sucked but now is fine. I also agree that while research can point you towards general guidelines, personal factors will be an issue. For example, from SNP analysis I carry rs1695(A;G) which reacts poorly to supplemental vitamin E, rs1801282(C;G) which may metabolize saturated fats differently, rs1535(A;G) which is associated with decreased ALA->EPA conversion efficiency, etc. (Which isn't even addressing the lifestyle/epigenetic aspects that are even more importantly, but largely unexplored, harder to test for.)
DoreenMichele 8y ago
But, I'm also at the age where the effects of aging begin to be noticeable...so, maybe just maintaining levels is progress? The thing is we can't clone you multiple times and treat each replica of you differently, so we have no idea if you would be terribly sick or something by now if you had made other choices. I'm always fascinated by anecdotes about fasting, etc. But it's actually incredibly hard to isolate one dietary factor and draw firm conclusions about cause and effect. From what I gather, large scale longitudinal studies are our best data for diet in humans and they conclude things like "A handful of nuts a day is good for you."
- lhl 8y ago
  It's actually not as hard as you think for experimental design to show strong causitive effects - I think randomized controlled trials (in animal and then human models) and meta-analysis are much more effective than epidemiological studies (which don't have effective controls, often don't appropriately correct for other factors, or are specific enough to target specific lines of inquiry and allow spurious conclusions to be drawn). I've just started doing my own research digging through the literature in PubMed and there's a huge amount of research over the past decade especially that's really advanced our understanding of nutrition and metabolism (that sadly, has yet to get full traction in conventional wisdom/popular science). Just a few examples from my collection on fasting (at this point I'm tracking hundreds of publications covering a whole range of different aspects of nutritional science, and this is only over the course of a couple weeks of research): Nørrelund, Helene, K. Sreekumaran Nair, Jens Otto Lunde Jørgensen, Jens Sandahl Christiansen, and Niels Møller. “The Protein-Retaining Effects of Growth Hormone During Fasting Involve Inhibition of Muscle-Protein Breakdown.” Diabetes 50, no. 1 (January 1, 2001): 96–104. https://doi.org/10.2337/diabetes.50.1.96 https://doi.org/10.2337/diabetes.50.1.96. Bhutani, Surabhi, Monica C. Klempel, Reed A. Berger, and Krista A. Varady. “Improvements in Coronary Heart Disease Risk Indicators by Alternate-Day Fasting Involve Adipose Tissue Modulations.” Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) 18, no. 11 (November 2010): 2152–59. https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2010.54 https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2010.54. Harvie, Michelle N., Mary Pegington, Mark P. Mattson, Jan Frystyk, Bernice Dillon, Gareth Evans, Jack Cuzick, et al. “The Effects of Intermittent or Continuous Energy Restriction on Weight Loss and Metabolic Disease Risk Markers: A Randomised Trial in Young Overweight Women.” International Journal of Obesity (2005) 35, no. 5 (May 2011): 714–27. https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.171 https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.171. Chaix, Amandine, Amir Zarrinpar, Phuong Miu, and Satchidananda Panda. “Time-Restricted Feeding Is a Preventative and Therapeutic Intervention against Diverse Nutritional Challenges.” Cell Metabolism 20, no. 6 (December 2, 2014): 991–1005. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2014.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2014.11.001. Rothschild, Jeff, Kristin K. Hoddy, Pera Jambazian, and Krista A. Varady. “Time-Restricted Feeding and Risk of Metabolic Disease: A Review of Human and Animal Studies.” Nutrition Reviews 72, no. 5 (May 1, 2014): 308–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/nure.12104 https://doi.org/10.1111/nure.12104. Fontana, Luigi, and Linda Partridge. “Promoting Health and Longevity through Diet: From Model Organisms to Humans.” Cell 161, no. 1 (March 26, 2015): 106–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.020. I should add that the evidence was so strong for certain behaviors that I have changed my diet (VLCHF + 16+:8IF) and n=1 shows immediate improvements in weight, energy, mental clarity, and even skin health. Somewhat unexpected because I wasn't eating that badly according to common wisdom (and have maintained a moderate overweight, but stable weight for the past 3+yrs).
Angostura 8y ago
I too do 16:8 and am in my 50s. I'm losing moderate amount of weight, but probably because it has made me think about evening snacking. As with you, it's low risk, not a particular problem for me to carry out and cost neutral at worst. The only problem is I tend to feel drowsy after lunch at work :)

dave1619 8y ago

Are you doing LCHF (low carb high fat) as well or just IF (intermittent fasting)?

SwellJoe 8y ago
No, I eat mostly how I've eaten for many years, just on an intermittent schedule. But, I've always eaten pretty healthy; I've been vegetarian for 24 years and relatively conscious of what I eat. I tend to a eat a lot, so if I don't eat good stuff, I get fat. I eat probably more fat than average, and I don't avoid fat, but my diet isn't "high fat", I don't think, and it's certainly not low carb, though I do avoid sugars and many kinds of processed foods, and I never eat fast food. I eat bread, rice, and/or tortillas, regularly, at least once a day, and I tend to eat a pretty sizeable serving. Fruit and vegetables probably make up the majority of the volume/mass I'm consuming most days, but a significant portion of calories come from carbs. My health has always been, thankfully, very good. I'm not doing intermittent fasting to address any specific problem. Losing weight was a goal, because my pants (the same size I've been wearing since college) weren't fitting comfortably anymore...it worked for that, and all my pants fit again. But, I wasn't trying to reboot my eating in some dramatic way. I did try a low carb high fat/protein thing for a while before beginning intermittent fasting, as a way to lose weight, but it didn't work for me. The restrictions just took the fun out of meals. I love food, I love cooking it, love eating it with friends/family, etc. It's pretty hard to have normal meals on a very restrictive diet. I couldn't imagine living out the rest of my days without bread or rice, and any diet change has to be sustainable for decades or it's going to be part of a cycle of weight gain and loss. Intermittent fasting has been sustainable for me. I don't even think about it most days.
- baxtr 8y ago
  It seems like you’re on a diet very similar to what Valter Longo recommends, which is based on his longevity studies https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet/ https://valterlongo.com/daily-longevity-diet/
  - SwellJoe 8y ago
    Yeah, I'm not familiar with Valter Longo, but that diet does pretty well match up with what I'm trying to do. I might be a little high on the protein, when I'm making seitan regularly...it's roughly equivalent to meat in protein content, and as with most things I enjoy I tend to eat a lot of it when I cook it. I'll have to do some more reading about what the science says about vegetable proteins like seitan and tofu.

pizza234 8y ago

> Lots of people claim to see a significant difference, usually positive, in energy, strength, mood, sleep, etc. I'm very skeptical of people's dieting claims in general. First, lots of people, more or less unconsciously, omit their previous condition/background. A typical example of this (that tragically gets always attention on HN) is an obese person making a post about how they made change X and lost Y kgs. When you're obese because of bad habits, any minimal healthy change will lead to weight loss. Second, every [not seriously into sports] person I ever spoke to who applied a change in his/her nutrition, reported the same symptoms (more energy, better sleep, etc.etc.), independently of how absurd the change was. Considering also how extremely variable between samples (=people) lifestyle is, the only reasonable way I accept is just to set emphasis on personal metrics and disregard other people's experience (I actually assume the vast majority of them to be inaccurate to the point of being false, for the above reasons).

lhl 8y ago
At the end of the day I agree that it's pretty important to try things out for yourself and see how it goes - intermittent fasting is one of those things that's pretty easy/safe to do (and has shown some insane health, longevity, disease prevention/treatment results in the experimental research lately) - I will say that having never purposefully fasted before, the first couple days of 16:8 sucked but now is fine. I also agree that while research can point you towards general guidelines, personal factors will be an issue. For example, from SNP analysis I carry rs1695(A;G) which reacts poorly to supplemental vitamin E, rs1801282(C;G) which may metabolize saturated fats differently, rs1535(A;G) which is associated with decreased ALA->EPA conversion efficiency, etc. (Which isn't even addressing the lifestyle/epigenetic aspects that are even more importantly, but largely unexplored, harder to test for.)

DoreenMichele 8y ago

But, I'm also at the age where the effects of aging begin to be noticeable...so, maybe just maintaining levels is progress? The thing is we can't clone you multiple times and treat each replica of you differently, so we have no idea if you would be terribly sick or something by now if you had made other choices. I'm always fascinated by anecdotes about fasting, etc. But it's actually incredibly hard to isolate one dietary factor and draw firm conclusions about cause and effect. From what I gather, large scale longitudinal studies are our best data for diet in humans and they conclude things like "A handful of nuts a day is good for you."

lhl 8y ago
It's actually not as hard as you think for experimental design to show strong causitive effects - I think randomized controlled trials (in animal and then human models) and meta-analysis are much more effective than epidemiological studies (which don't have effective controls, often don't appropriately correct for other factors, or are specific enough to target specific lines of inquiry and allow spurious conclusions to be drawn). I've just started doing my own research digging through the literature in PubMed and there's a huge amount of research over the past decade especially that's really advanced our understanding of nutrition and metabolism (that sadly, has yet to get full traction in conventional wisdom/popular science). Just a few examples from my collection on fasting (at this point I'm tracking hundreds of publications covering a whole range of different aspects of nutritional science, and this is only over the course of a couple weeks of research): Nørrelund, Helene, K. Sreekumaran Nair, Jens Otto Lunde Jørgensen, Jens Sandahl Christiansen, and Niels Møller. “The Protein-Retaining Effects of Growth Hormone During Fasting Involve Inhibition of Muscle-Protein Breakdown.” Diabetes 50, no. 1 (January 1, 2001): 96–104. https://doi.org/10.2337/diabetes.50.1.96 https://doi.org/10.2337/diabetes.50.1.96. Bhutani, Surabhi, Monica C. Klempel, Reed A. Berger, and Krista A. Varady. “Improvements in Coronary Heart Disease Risk Indicators by Alternate-Day Fasting Involve Adipose Tissue Modulations.” Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) 18, no. 11 (November 2010): 2152–59. https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2010.54 https://doi.org/10.1038/oby.2010.54. Harvie, Michelle N., Mary Pegington, Mark P. Mattson, Jan Frystyk, Bernice Dillon, Gareth Evans, Jack Cuzick, et al. “The Effects of Intermittent or Continuous Energy Restriction on Weight Loss and Metabolic Disease Risk Markers: A Randomised Trial in Young Overweight Women.” International Journal of Obesity (2005) 35, no. 5 (May 2011): 714–27. https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.171 https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.171. Chaix, Amandine, Amir Zarrinpar, Phuong Miu, and Satchidananda Panda. “Time-Restricted Feeding Is a Preventative and Therapeutic Intervention against Diverse Nutritional Challenges.” Cell Metabolism 20, no. 6 (December 2, 2014): 991–1005. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2014.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2014.11.001. Rothschild, Jeff, Kristin K. Hoddy, Pera Jambazian, and Krista A. Varady. “Time-Restricted Feeding and Risk of Metabolic Disease: A Review of Human and Animal Studies.” Nutrition Reviews 72, no. 5 (May 1, 2014): 308–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/nure.12104 https://doi.org/10.1111/nure.12104. Fontana, Luigi, and Linda Partridge. “Promoting Health and Longevity through Diet: From Model Organisms to Humans.” Cell 161, no. 1 (March 26, 2015): 106–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.020 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.02.020. I should add that the evidence was so strong for certain behaviors that I have changed my diet (VLCHF + 16+:8IF) and n=1 shows immediate improvements in weight, energy, mental clarity, and even skin health. Somewhat unexpected because I wasn't eating that badly according to common wisdom (and have maintained a moderate overweight, but stable weight for the past 3+yrs).

Angostura 8y ago

I too do 16:8 and am in my 50s. I'm losing moderate amount of weight, but probably because it has made me think about evening snacking. As with you, it's low risk, not a particular problem for me to carry out and cost neutral at worst. The only problem is I tend to feel drowsy after lunch at work :)