7 ms·

Meal frequency and timing in health and disease

145 points by Mikho 8y ago

Mikho 8y ago
Very useful data as to food consumption patterns. Nowadays we ruin our body with unnatural eating cycles. Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good for health. From the evolutionary perspective--that invested in a human body 200K years--the way we eat today is broken. And our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Not to mention like adapting to changes in a food consumption we see in the last 50 years. A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. Viceversa--it was build to eat less. It needs to store energy and to use stored energy and only after that to store again. That's a natural cycle and functions that our body needs to execute. Nowadays we just store energy 24/7: "Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage." Here is also an interesting patterns of daily and weekly food consumption from this research including the common eating pattern of food consumption upon which the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and associated chronic diseases has emerged. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/fig03/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/...
- projektir 8y ago
  Data is good but the "from the evolutionary perspective" argument is extremely strained and is basically a "just so" story.
  - stochastic_monk 8y ago
    Just because a system evolved under certain constraints does not mean that said constraints are optimal.
    - firethief 8y ago
      No, but it does mean if you perturb the constraints, the system is likely less adapted to the new situation
      - firethief 8y ago
        To elaborate, this weaker principle seems sufficient to support the existence of a "Naturalistic Effect", where the Naturalistic Fallacy would be the assumption that the NE will dominate any other relevant effects. The NE suffices to justify evolutionary-perspective argument, though care must be taken not to overstate the case.
- throwaway8879 8y ago
  Where are you getting this arbitrary "200k years of evolution" from? Yes I know anatomically modern Homo Sapiens have been around for around 200k years, but I don't understand that figure in context of what you're saying.
  - Mikho 8y ago
    "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095 https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/d...
- jly 8y ago
  > our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. The point is that evolution of large, complex polygenic adaptations may be slow but adaptive phenotypic change can occur very rapidly and it has likely accelerated in humans over the last 10k or so years. > A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. We can't go back and ask detailed dieting questions of hunter-gatherer humans 200k years ago, but I'd guess the basic mechanisms of eating were similar to us: they ate when they were hungry and when food was available. For some groups, it seems likely that could often be several times per day. What we do know about pre-agricultural humans is that there is no such thing as a 'typical' diet, and what was eaten and when could vary significantly by geography. Humans have thrived in every region and ecosystem on earth, and our body is highly adaptable and not designed to subsist on a single, perfect diet or eating cycle. Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. It could very well be that the 'what' and 'when' of our modern eating is less of an issue compared to the high caloric intake and sedentary lifestyle.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. 200-300 is 6000 years (assuming 30 years per generation), so that's already consistent with the parent's "many thousands of years". Besides that, we've changed our nutrition and its ingredients more in the last 50 years that we had in the last 20000 years. Adaptation takes much more than that (if it's not even harder to adapt to an ever changing list of factory-produced BS substances that weren't ever co-evolved along with humans, but on some food chemist's and big food corporation's whim). >Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. Not really. Hunter gatherers are said to have been able to gather food for several days in a few hours in a single day.
justboxing 8y ago
Having a hard time reading and understanding these type of academic study papers. Sincere request: Can someone who understands do a TL;DR please? ( Usually when I make this request I get downvoted, but happy to take the risk for this one as I am really curious)
- epmaybe 8y ago
  It's not exactly a study, more of a review of other papers. The authors state that the timing of the food we eat isn't really that great for us. The provide some evidence based meal timings, and discuss ways that they could implement these changes and the pressures against those implementations.
- dalys 8y ago
  The biggest spokesperson for intermittent fasting, Martin Berkhan, just released his long awaited book. https://leangains.com https://leangains.com He also has tons of blog posts dating back many years on his site that should be a bit more easily accessible than reading the research papers directly. I guess a TL;DR is that fasting is good for health in most animals.
Jedi72 8y ago
I find fasting very easy on weekends, very difficult during the week, because the 9-5 routine implicitely stipulates when you should eat. Solving the situation where people need to spend 70% of their waking hours in a job would have huge flow-on effects allowing people to exercise regularly, cook at home more, and eat/live on their own body's schedule.
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  I just skip breafast. Lunch around midday, dinner as soon as I got (I not longer work full-time) home around 7pm. Fits inside the 8hr window and I honestly found skipping breakfast quite easy. I'd have a couple black coffees throughout the morning, and that's it.
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    Article recommends a 16 hour window and skipping lunch as well a few times a week.
    - trumpeta 8y ago
      I think they meant that a lunch at 12:00 and a dinner before 19:00 fit together in an 8h window, which gives you 16h fasting window.
      - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
        “Examples of such prescriptions include fasting or caloric restriction (e.g., 500 calories) on alternate days or 2 d each week, or forgoing breakfast and lunch several days each week” They do however state that there is no single prescription yet and that various timings should be studied further to find an optimum method.
      - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
        Never mind, your statement makes sense - yeah that’s a 16 hr fasting window.
AndrewKemendo 8y ago
My personal anecdote here. I recently started eating dinner only and shooting for a 16 hour fast daily with only coffee, tea or water during the day. I haven't noticed a real drop in energy, however I have noticed significant brain fog, lightheadedness and irritability in the afternoon. I also have significant feelings of hunger all day, to the point where it's distracting. I realized I needed to be adding some kind of salt to my intake during the day to prevent the lightheadedness. The only zero calorie solution is basically adding basic electrolyte to my water, which means I end up drinking a weak salt brine most of the day which is not very pleasant. I'm not sure if this is sustainable because it takes up so much of my mental energy. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of good resource for doing this kind of diet, so I'm excited to see what comes out in the next few years. Perhaps it's just a transition period and it will work out.
- mooreds 8y ago
  What timeframe do you mean by "recently"?
  - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    I started the Dinner only schedule about two weeks ago. For July I was doing a once weekly 24 hour fast which was terrible in it's own way.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      Two weeks is too recent. After a few months you would not notice a difference vs before.
    - mooreds 8y ago
      Ah. I had a coworker who did some intermittent fasting, but she said she was cranky for a few days and then got into a groove.
    - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
      I don’t know if this relates but I switched to a low carb diet a month ago (no fasting) and the first 2-3 weeks were terrible. I felt noticeably more depressed and my wife noticed it too. She recommended stopping the diet but I kept on and added electrolyte water. After adding electrolytes, I feel as good as ever. I started working out more and have lost 15 lbs but plateaued since. I want to try the fasting diet described in the article with no breakfast and no lunch but I am not sure if I’ll be able to. Since I do not eat carbs at dinner, often I’ll feel hungry around 9pm and it feels like an eternity to breakfast if I don’t go to bed soon there after. I can’t imagine skipping breakfast AND lunch on this type of routine without adding back the carbs. Anyway, I guess my point is that it gets better as you follow whatever diet you embarked on.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
pard68 8y ago
I did a one meal a day plan. Lasted maybe 6 months. Reason I stopped was I started working nights and the combo of 4 hours of sleep and no food just made me a person you didn't want to be around. Had to drop something so I dropped the diet. While I was on it, however, it was great. Really made me evaluate why I eat food and helped me stop eating to satisfy non hunger related needs. Interview for a day job this week, if I get it I think I will switch back to this diet.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >I did a one meal a day plan. Lasted maybe 6 months. Reason I stopped was I started working nights and the combo of 4 hours of sleep and no food just made me a person you didn't want to be around. So why didn't you just shift the meal time?
siruncledrew 8y ago
Does the 16hr window between eating include sleeping time as well?
- tux1968 8y ago
  Yes.
- justboxing 8y ago
  Almost always, yes. If you are referring to intermittent fasting, then the 8 hour eating window starts at your 1st meal of the day. So if you wake up and eat breakfast, then 8 hours from that is when you stop, and then sleep. If, on the other hand, you have your 1st meal as dinner in the evening, then also, you have slept for 8 hours and spent another 8 hours - morning through afternoon fasting. So either way, 8 hours of sleep covers half the fasting. Which is why it's somewhat intimidating cos there's a chance you wake up feeling hungry and can't fall asleep... I do intermittent fasting on week days, but like someone else has mentioned it's kind of difficult to keep up with considering the 9 to 5 work schedule dictates our eating routines (for most people). I did notice an improvement in my digestion and in sleep quality. On days that I do work out, I sometimes wake up and have trouble falling asleep as I feel hungry... that's always annoying.
rixed 8y ago
" Our agrarian ancestors adopted a three meals per day eating pattern, presumably because it provided both social and practical benefits for the daily work and school schedules." Isn't it surprising that school is considered an important factor weighting on the evolution of early farmers?
- downrightmike 8y ago
  Farming allowed for specialization. So school, or learning a trade, or how to make something.
modells 8y ago
I find fasting for a week easier than for 12-16 hours.. eating makes me hungrier; whereas fasting for a few days, the extreme hunger goes away after 3-4 days. Ironically, a friend of mine whom runs a restaurant and works long hours eats like the suggested diet unintentionally: one normal-sized meal a day in the evening because of working nonstop since 5 am. The downside of fasting is that it stimulates the SNS and increases stress and cortisol... which may well cancel out any "good" effects.
- makemoniesonlin 8y ago
  who, not whom.
IceDane 8y ago
I've kind of personally adopted a IF regime automatically for the past couple of years. Incidentally I kind of think it started during a bout of depression where I didn't eat enough at all and lost a lot of weight and just looked horrible. Since then I've gotten better at eating, but for the most part I still don't eat until the afternoon or even dinner, and for the most part don't eat anything afterwards(sometimes a late night snack). This has had my friends react and tell me I'm crazy and express their disbelief at how it's possible to go to work or some such and not eat anything all day. I literally have no problems wrt being tired and experience 0 reductions in cognitive ability. I haven't had to take a nap in the afternoon for several years and maintained the same-ish weight while retaining a good deal of muscle mass from my weight training days without having to do much for it. For me, it just works out better. it's just really nice not having to be constantly focused on getting something to eat every few hours and since I'm not stuffing my face with calories all day I've been able to eat basically whatever I want without gaining any weight. I've no plan to stop doing it this way since it's just become the natural way to do things for me. The only issue I experience is the occasional loud stomach rumbles for which my coworkers give me odd looks sometimes.
- alexpetralia 8y ago
  For me, it just works out better. it's just really nice not having to be constantly focused on getting something to eat every few hours and since I'm not stuffing my face with calories all day I've been able to eat basically whatever I want without gaining any weight. This captures my thoughts exactly on it as well. It's just so convenient - the health benefit seems like a bonus.
- memebox3v 8y ago
  I have the same thing. Preople look at me like i'm crazy and tell me that I should be careful not to hurt myself. I make a half hearted effort yo poiny them in the direction of some studies like the above, but mostly people arent smart/knowledgable enough to understand.
  - phkahler 8y ago
    It's amazing how doing something different is automatically viewed as bad for you. I'm guessing you don't look unhealthy? Are the people who say you're crazy healthy?
pella 8y ago
"10 hour window" or "16 hour window"? ---- related ( 1 day ago ) "Eating in 10-hour window can override disease-causing genetic defects, nurture health" https://www.salk.edu/news-release/eating-in-10-hour-window-can-override-disease-causing-genetic-defects-nurture-health/ https://www.salk.edu/news-release/eating-in-10-hour-window-c... HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889591
- dave84 8y ago
  8 hour window, 16 hour fast.
  - deltron3030 8y ago
    Late dinner & breakfast!
qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
I can't eat in the morning, I'm not hungry. When I get home from work, I can't eat, same reason. When I'm hungry, I eat.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
tldr; A fast window of just 16h seems to be enough to gain benefits seen in IF, so perhaps we need to rethink the modern lifestyle
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  That’s exactly what the article talks about.
js290 8y ago
probabilistic structure for fasting… @nntaleb http://bit.ly/2ivHC5d http://bit.ly/2ivHC5d
Fatpizza7 8y ago
After one month of keto diet (less than 20g of carbs and less than 15g of sugar, 75-80% fat), I started IF very easily for 18-20h. I break mostly for social reasons as I'm never very hungry. With the keto diet you loose the cravings, and you are not very hungry, I think it should be achieved before starting IF. I'm also in a deficit and I keep lifting and rowing. Never felt better in my life, I am motivated to the journey for a 10% bodyfat body. I recommend eatthismuch.com to help with meal planning. Just give it a try, the first week is hard and after it's a new life. I feel always good with a very clear mind (I dropped alcohol as well)
- yhoneycomb 8y ago
  Any recommendation for filling, low-carb foods? I like fried eggs personally. Anything similar?
  - bagacrap 8y ago
    Avocado, cheese, salad, nuts
  - Fatpizza7 8y ago
    Lots of veggies. Spinach, green beans, courgettes, cauliflower...
donovanh 8y ago
I started eating one meal a day a few weeks ago. At first I had huge dinners but they’ve tapered off a bit and are now substantial but not crazy, and usually a small snack an hour or so later depending on how I feel. Combined with morning body weight training / running (which feels awesome when fasted) I’m really enjoying it. The few days when I’ve eaten during the day have left me feeling heavy and bloated and the hunger during the day has gone. It’s very doable.
- bagacrap 8y ago
  Almost any lifestyle or diet change can be held for a few weeks. Most studies that show participants losing weight after a diet change don't hold up over longer periods (subjects are back to their old weight after a year).
  - donovanh 8y ago
    I’ve been paying attention to my diet and exercise routine for a few years now and am quite happy with where I am, so I’m really not sure how relevant your comment is. I have no intention of losing weight. I’m more interested in how enjoyable this routine is, how it helps me keep an eye on my macros and how they impact training, and how much I enjoy food too. So far I’m quite happy with it. I’m more interested in creating varied and interesting dinners, I’m still performing well with the workouts and I feel I have more time during the day as I’m not preparing and eating food so often. Just my 2c.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

145 points by Mikho 8y ago

Very useful data as to food consumption patterns. Nowadays we ruin our body with unnatural eating cycles. Basically fasting for around 16 hours a day is good for health. From the evolutionary perspective--that invested in a human body 200K years--the way we eat today is broken. And our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Not to mention like adapting to changes in a food consumption we see in the last 50 years. A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. Viceversa--it was build to eat less. It needs to store energy and to use stored energy and only after that to store again. That's a natural cycle and functions that our body needs to execute. Nowadays we just store energy 24/7: "Emerging findings from studies of animal models and human subjects suggest that intermittent energy restriction periods of as little as 16 h can improve health indicators and counteract disease processes. The mechanisms involve a metabolic shift to fat metabolism and ketone production, and stimulation of adaptive cellular stress responses that prevent and repair molecular damage." Here is also an interesting patterns of daily and weekly food consumption from this research including the common eating pattern of food consumption upon which the epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and associated chronic diseases has emerged. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/fig03/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4250148/figure/...

projektir 8y ago
Data is good but the "from the evolutionary perspective" argument is extremely strained and is basically a "just so" story.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  Just because a system evolved under certain constraints does not mean that said constraints are optimal.
  - firethief 8y ago
    No, but it does mean if you perturb the constraints, the system is likely less adapted to the new situation
    - firethief 8y ago
      To elaborate, this weaker principle seems sufficient to support the existence of a "Naturalistic Effect", where the Naturalistic Fallacy would be the assumption that the NE will dominate any other relevant effects. The NE suffices to justify evolutionary-perspective argument, though care must be taken not to overstate the case.
throwaway8879 8y ago
Where are you getting this arbitrary "200k years of evolution" from? Yes I know anatomically modern Homo Sapiens have been around for around 200k years, but I don't understand that figure in context of what you're saying.
- Mikho 8y ago
  "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095 https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/d...
jly 8y ago
> our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. The point is that evolution of large, complex polygenic adaptations may be slow but adaptive phenotypic change can occur very rapidly and it has likely accelerated in humans over the last 10k or so years. > A human body during 200K years of evolution was not prepared to eating a lot. We can't go back and ask detailed dieting questions of hunter-gatherer humans 200k years ago, but I'd guess the basic mechanisms of eating were similar to us: they ate when they were hungry and when food was available. For some groups, it seems likely that could often be several times per day. What we do know about pre-agricultural humans is that there is no such thing as a 'typical' diet, and what was eaten and when could vary significantly by geography. Humans have thrived in every region and ecosystem on earth, and our body is highly adaptable and not designed to subsist on a single, perfect diet or eating cycle. Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. It could very well be that the 'what' and 'when' of our modern eating is less of an issue compared to the high caloric intake and sedentary lifestyle.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >our body can't adapt to a new pattern--evolution is a slow process that requires many thousands of years. Humans have many adaptations to the 'modern' diet, consisting of large quantities of farmed animals products and cereal grains. Lactose tolerance is one of several well-known examples. In some cases these have only come about in the last 200-300 generations. 200-300 is 6000 years (assuming 30 years per generation), so that's already consistent with the parent's "many thousands of years". Besides that, we've changed our nutrition and its ingredients more in the last 50 years that we had in the last 20000 years. Adaptation takes much more than that (if it's not even harder to adapt to an ever changing list of factory-produced BS substances that weren't ever co-evolved along with humans, but on some food chemist's and big food corporation's whim). >Pre-modern humans did one thing very differently to what we do today: when they wanted to eat, they had to move and work to get their food. Not really. Hunter gatherers are said to have been able to gather food for several days in a few hours in a single day.

justboxing 8y ago

Having a hard time reading and understanding these type of academic study papers. Sincere request: Can someone who understands do a TL;DR please? ( Usually when I make this request I get downvoted, but happy to take the risk for this one as I am really curious)

epmaybe 8y ago
It's not exactly a study, more of a review of other papers. The authors state that the timing of the food we eat isn't really that great for us. The provide some evidence based meal timings, and discuss ways that they could implement these changes and the pressures against those implementations.
dalys 8y ago
The biggest spokesperson for intermittent fasting, Martin Berkhan, just released his long awaited book. https://leangains.com https://leangains.com He also has tons of blog posts dating back many years on his site that should be a bit more easily accessible than reading the research papers directly. I guess a TL;DR is that fasting is good for health in most animals.

Jedi72 8y ago

I find fasting very easy on weekends, very difficult during the week, because the 9-5 routine implicitely stipulates when you should eat. Solving the situation where people need to spend 70% of their waking hours in a job would have huge flow-on effects allowing people to exercise regularly, cook at home more, and eat/live on their own body's schedule.

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
I just skip breafast. Lunch around midday, dinner as soon as I got (I not longer work full-time) home around 7pm. Fits inside the 8hr window and I honestly found skipping breakfast quite easy. I'd have a couple black coffees throughout the morning, and that's it.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  Article recommends a 16 hour window and skipping lunch as well a few times a week.
  - trumpeta 8y ago
    I think they meant that a lunch at 12:00 and a dinner before 19:00 fit together in an 8h window, which gives you 16h fasting window.
    - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
      “Examples of such prescriptions include fasting or caloric restriction (e.g., 500 calories) on alternate days or 2 d each week, or forgoing breakfast and lunch several days each week” They do however state that there is no single prescription yet and that various timings should be studied further to find an optimum method.
    - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
      Never mind, your statement makes sense - yeah that’s a 16 hr fasting window.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago

My personal anecdote here. I recently started eating dinner only and shooting for a 16 hour fast daily with only coffee, tea or water during the day. I haven't noticed a real drop in energy, however I have noticed significant brain fog, lightheadedness and irritability in the afternoon. I also have significant feelings of hunger all day, to the point where it's distracting. I realized I needed to be adding some kind of salt to my intake during the day to prevent the lightheadedness. The only zero calorie solution is basically adding basic electrolyte to my water, which means I end up drinking a weak salt brine most of the day which is not very pleasant. I'm not sure if this is sustainable because it takes up so much of my mental energy. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of good resource for doing this kind of diet, so I'm excited to see what comes out in the next few years. Perhaps it's just a transition period and it will work out.

mooreds 8y ago
What timeframe do you mean by "recently"?
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  I started the Dinner only schedule about two weeks ago. For July I was doing a once weekly 24 hour fast which was terrible in it's own way.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Two weeks is too recent. After a few months you would not notice a difference vs before.
  - mooreds 8y ago
    Ah. I had a coworker who did some intermittent fasting, but she said she was cranky for a few days and then got into a groove.
  - mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
    I don’t know if this relates but I switched to a low carb diet a month ago (no fasting) and the first 2-3 weeks were terrible. I felt noticeably more depressed and my wife noticed it too. She recommended stopping the diet but I kept on and added electrolyte water. After adding electrolytes, I feel as good as ever. I started working out more and have lost 15 lbs but plateaued since. I want to try the fasting diet described in the article with no breakfast and no lunch but I am not sure if I’ll be able to. Since I do not eat carbs at dinner, often I’ll feel hungry around 9pm and it feels like an eternity to breakfast if I don’t go to bed soon there after. I can’t imagine skipping breakfast AND lunch on this type of routine without adding back the carbs. Anyway, I guess my point is that it gets better as you follow whatever diet you embarked on.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

pard68 8y ago

I did a one meal a day plan. Lasted maybe 6 months. Reason I stopped was I started working nights and the combo of 4 hours of sleep and no food just made me a person you didn't want to be around. Had to drop something so I dropped the diet. While I was on it, however, it was great. Really made me evaluate why I eat food and helped me stop eating to satisfy non hunger related needs. Interview for a day job this week, if I get it I think I will switch back to this diet.

coldtea 8y ago
>I did a one meal a day plan. Lasted maybe 6 months. Reason I stopped was I started working nights and the combo of 4 hours of sleep and no food just made me a person you didn't want to be around. So why didn't you just shift the meal time?

siruncledrew 8y ago

Does the 16hr window between eating include sleeping time as well?

tux1968 8y ago
Yes.
justboxing 8y ago
Almost always, yes. If you are referring to intermittent fasting, then the 8 hour eating window starts at your 1st meal of the day. So if you wake up and eat breakfast, then 8 hours from that is when you stop, and then sleep. If, on the other hand, you have your 1st meal as dinner in the evening, then also, you have slept for 8 hours and spent another 8 hours - morning through afternoon fasting. So either way, 8 hours of sleep covers half the fasting. Which is why it's somewhat intimidating cos there's a chance you wake up feeling hungry and can't fall asleep... I do intermittent fasting on week days, but like someone else has mentioned it's kind of difficult to keep up with considering the 9 to 5 work schedule dictates our eating routines (for most people). I did notice an improvement in my digestion and in sleep quality. On days that I do work out, I sometimes wake up and have trouble falling asleep as I feel hungry... that's always annoying.

rixed 8y ago

" Our agrarian ancestors adopted a three meals per day eating pattern, presumably because it provided both social and practical benefits for the daily work and school schedules." Isn't it surprising that school is considered an important factor weighting on the evolution of early farmers?

downrightmike 8y ago
Farming allowed for specialization. So school, or learning a trade, or how to make something.

modells 8y ago

I find fasting for a week easier than for 12-16 hours.. eating makes me hungrier; whereas fasting for a few days, the extreme hunger goes away after 3-4 days. Ironically, a friend of mine whom runs a restaurant and works long hours eats like the suggested diet unintentionally: one normal-sized meal a day in the evening because of working nonstop since 5 am. The downside of fasting is that it stimulates the SNS and increases stress and cortisol... which may well cancel out any "good" effects.

makemoniesonlin 8y ago
who, not whom.

IceDane 8y ago

I've kind of personally adopted a IF regime automatically for the past couple of years. Incidentally I kind of think it started during a bout of depression where I didn't eat enough at all and lost a lot of weight and just looked horrible. Since then I've gotten better at eating, but for the most part I still don't eat until the afternoon or even dinner, and for the most part don't eat anything afterwards(sometimes a late night snack). This has had my friends react and tell me I'm crazy and express their disbelief at how it's possible to go to work or some such and not eat anything all day. I literally have no problems wrt being tired and experience 0 reductions in cognitive ability. I haven't had to take a nap in the afternoon for several years and maintained the same-ish weight while retaining a good deal of muscle mass from my weight training days without having to do much for it. For me, it just works out better. it's just really nice not having to be constantly focused on getting something to eat every few hours and since I'm not stuffing my face with calories all day I've been able to eat basically whatever I want without gaining any weight. I've no plan to stop doing it this way since it's just become the natural way to do things for me. The only issue I experience is the occasional loud stomach rumbles for which my coworkers give me odd looks sometimes.

alexpetralia 8y ago
For me, it just works out better. it's just really nice not having to be constantly focused on getting something to eat every few hours and since I'm not stuffing my face with calories all day I've been able to eat basically whatever I want without gaining any weight. This captures my thoughts exactly on it as well. It's just so convenient - the health benefit seems like a bonus.
memebox3v 8y ago
I have the same thing. Preople look at me like i'm crazy and tell me that I should be careful not to hurt myself. I make a half hearted effort yo poiny them in the direction of some studies like the above, but mostly people arent smart/knowledgable enough to understand.
- phkahler 8y ago
  It's amazing how doing something different is automatically viewed as bad for you. I'm guessing you don't look unhealthy? Are the people who say you're crazy healthy?

pella 8y ago

"10 hour window" or "16 hour window"? ---- related ( 1 day ago ) "Eating in 10-hour window can override disease-causing genetic defects, nurture health" https://www.salk.edu/news-release/eating-in-10-hour-window-can-override-disease-causing-genetic-defects-nurture-health/ https://www.salk.edu/news-release/eating-in-10-hour-window-c... HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889591 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17889591

dave84 8y ago
8 hour window, 16 hour fast.
- deltron3030 8y ago
  Late dinner & breakfast!

qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago

I can't eat in the morning, I'm not hungry. When I get home from work, I can't eat, same reason. When I'm hungry, I eat.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

tldr; A fast window of just 16h seems to be enough to gain benefits seen in IF, so perhaps we need to rethink the modern lifestyle

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
That’s exactly what the article talks about.

js290 8y ago

probabilistic structure for fasting… @nntaleb http://bit.ly/2ivHC5d http://bit.ly/2ivHC5d

Fatpizza7 8y ago

After one month of keto diet (less than 20g of carbs and less than 15g of sugar, 75-80% fat), I started IF very easily for 18-20h. I break mostly for social reasons as I'm never very hungry. With the keto diet you loose the cravings, and you are not very hungry, I think it should be achieved before starting IF. I'm also in a deficit and I keep lifting and rowing. Never felt better in my life, I am motivated to the journey for a 10% bodyfat body. I recommend eatthismuch.com to help with meal planning. Just give it a try, the first week is hard and after it's a new life. I feel always good with a very clear mind (I dropped alcohol as well)

yhoneycomb 8y ago
Any recommendation for filling, low-carb foods? I like fried eggs personally. Anything similar?
- bagacrap 8y ago
  Avocado, cheese, salad, nuts
- Fatpizza7 8y ago
  Lots of veggies. Spinach, green beans, courgettes, cauliflower...

donovanh 8y ago

I started eating one meal a day a few weeks ago. At first I had huge dinners but they’ve tapered off a bit and are now substantial but not crazy, and usually a small snack an hour or so later depending on how I feel. Combined with morning body weight training / running (which feels awesome when fasted) I’m really enjoying it. The few days when I’ve eaten during the day have left me feeling heavy and bloated and the hunger during the day has gone. It’s very doable.

bagacrap 8y ago
Almost any lifestyle or diet change can be held for a few weeks. Most studies that show participants losing weight after a diet change don't hold up over longer periods (subjects are back to their old weight after a year).
- donovanh 8y ago
  I’ve been paying attention to my diet and exercise routine for a few years now and am quite happy with where I am, so I’m really not sure how relevant your comment is. I have no intention of losing weight. I’m more interested in how enjoyable this routine is, how it helps me keep an eye on my macros and how they impact training, and how much I enjoy food too. So far I’m quite happy with it. I’m more interested in creating varied and interesting dinners, I’m still performing well with the workouts and I feel I have more time during the day as I’m not preparing and eating food so often. Just my 2c.

deleted 8y ago

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