8 ms·

> How do you start? Agatston told me to start by skipping one meal a day, usually breakfast. (Yes, you can have black coffee in the morning, into which he adds

by AnonC 6y ago

> How do you start? Agatston told me to start by skipping one meal a day, usually breakfast. (Yes, you can have black coffee in the morning, into which he adds ghee, a type of clarified butter, and coconut oil to reduce hunger pangs. It’s not your typical cup of coffee.) This may be ok to start with, though black coffee by itself has the ability to kill hunger without these crutches. Adding ghee or coconut oil in black coffee means it’s no longer effectively zero calories, and this is not technically fasting. Same with adding sugar to it. You can skip breakfast and have black coffee, black or herbal teas and water — all these are effectively zero calories. One point this article doesn’t address in the 16:8 scheme is the frequency of eating within the eight hour eating window. Is it ok to have three meals and snacks within that window? Should it be two meals with a good gap between them? I’m sure these variations also determine if it works for weight loss or other benefits. Intermittent fasting with 16:8 makes it easier to consume lower calories. Weight loss typically follows if activity levels are maintained the same or increased (to compensate for a lower basal metabolic rate).

raincom 6y ago
black coffee + ghee/coconut oil is part of keto. He must be doing keto + IF.
- AnonC 6y ago
  Agree. That sounded like “bulletproof coffee” with some changes.
- Roritharr 6y ago
  Having done keto for a long time I can only recommend two options besides Tea. 1. Become a weird coffee person and put some nerd energy into it so black coffee doesn't taste disgusting on it's own. James Hoffman on YouTube is a great way into this. 2. Eschew the coffee and take a teaspoon of MCT Oil before your can of zero-calorie Energy Drink (Coke Zero Energy is my favorite atm). It may be dirty and people are going to tell you Aspartame is evil and is going to make you hungry(it really might, but you are still hours away from your window so black/white discipline is easy to keep alive), but for me it worked much better than dreading the coffee in the morning.
  - 1_player 6y ago
    If your black coffee tastes disgusting on its own, you need to buy better coffee.
    - blunte 6y ago
      And use good water, and follow best practices for whatever brewing method you prefer. Failing any of these (including getting quality beans that are recently brewed), and your coffee may be much worse than it needs to be. I despise Nestle business and social practices, but a Nespresso machine with Nespresso pods is probably the best coffee that most people could hope to make.
      - Roritharr 6y ago
        That's what I mean, if you don't intend to become a weird coffee person black coffee is just not a pleasurable experience for most people. Starbucks made coffee appealing for a vast amount of the population by legitimising to drink 350ml of milk with lots of sugar by adding an espresso. If you are part of this crowd, the sad truth is that zero carb energy drinks are the more realistic morning beverage alternative for you.
        barry-cotter 6y ago
        > if you don't intend to become a weird coffee person black coffee is just not a pleasurable experience for most people. Black coffee is the bomb. Don’t care if it’s Starbucks, Peet’s, FamilyMart, 7-11, it is the superior method of caffeine consumption, whether you like espresso, Americano or some other variety. I do not care about coffee snob stuff but coffee is best served black. Speaking personally. De gustibus non est disputandum.
      - httpsterio 6y ago
        Roasted *, but I disagree. Nespresso is easy, but it's expensive and even at best it tastes like hot garbage. You can grab aeropress for like 30 dollars and throw in a metal filter for like 5 dollars and that's already capable of making single cups of excellent coffee for years. My current aeropress and filter are from 2012 and I'm not really in need of an upgrade any time soon so it's honestly a very affordable brewing device. I do agree on the beans though, freshly roasted beans are more expensive and on top of that a grinder would also be a good idea. You can get a decent electric burr grinder around here for a bit over 60 dollars. On average, I buy both cheap and expensive beans, the cheaper ones are around 10 dollars per kilo and the more expensive ones are around 60 to 70 dollars per kilo. Quick maths tells me that a 8oz cup of the cheaper stuff comes down to about 13 cents and the more expensive one just under a dollar so definitely cheaper than any cafe and this is 3rd wave artisan type coffee we're talking about. Aeropress is basically idiot proof as well, anyone can make a decent cup of coffee with it so I don't really buy into the Nespresso argument here either. For an investment of under a hundred bucks, you can most definitely enjoy extremely good black coffee at home with very palatable running costs as well. I'm happy to expand if anyone has _any_ coffee related questions.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
> This may be ok to start with, though black coffee by itself has the ability to kill hunger without these crutches. I always wonderered how much ok it really was. Dreaking coffee will activate some digistive processes, and make the liver work. So you are not exactly fasting. I never could find a study comparing with, and without coffee.
- wmeredith 6y ago
  You're still fasting because it doesn't affect your blood sugar. That's why you can drink black coffee, tea, or water when fasting for surgery.
  - BiteCode_dev 6y ago
    I heard this, but I can't find any study measuring the differences seriously. Fasting has various effect, not all of them are linked to the sugar consumption.
- tedmiston 6y ago
  What I've read in this area all comes back to "whether or not black coffee breaks the fast depends on the goal of your fasting", i.e., weight loss vs something more specific. [Likewise for other things people don't always think about like vitamin / supplements.] There is more info in [1][2] but tl;dr: - Fasting for metabolic health/weight loss: likely does not break a fast - Fasting for gut rest: does break a fast - Fasting for longevity: likely does not break a fast [1]: https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/ https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/ [2]: https://www.dietdoctor.com/can-use-cream-coffee-fasting https://www.dietdoctor.com/can-use-cream-coffee-fasting
- cutemonster 6y ago
  > activate some digistive processes, and make the liver work. So you are not exactly fasting. There's a difference between working a bit and a lot. Go up in the night, go some steps to the toilet. -- Or go out running 10k. Then back to sleep. Repeat reach night. Coffee or a big meal.
tom_mellior 6y ago
> Adding ghee or coconut oil in black coffee means it’s no longer effectively zero calories, and this is not technically fasting. I guess it depends on how you choose to define your "technical" terms. For example (https://www.bulletproof.com/diet/bulletproof-diet/bulletproof-coffee-intermittent-fasting/ https://www.bulletproof.com/diet/bulletproof-diet/bulletproo...): "The technical definition of “fasting” describes not consuming a single calorie. When your body isn’t burdened with the task of digestion all day every day, it has a chance to carry out cleaning and repair processes that make you healthier. This cleanup and repair process is called autophagy. Depending on your diet, intermittent fasting can also put you in a fat-burning state called ketosis.[2] Learn more about the benefits of intermittent fasting. The good news is that there’s no scientific reason to completely restrict calories to reap the benefits of intermittent fasting. If you only consume fat (no protein or carbs) during your fast, you won’t interrupt autophagy. You’ll also stay in the fat-burning state of ketosis." (I have no opinion on any of this except that I'm amused by hobby nutritionists.)
- xorcist 6y ago
  Please take care when your Internet nutritionist calls ketosis a "fat-burning state". While true, it's also a lot like calling the Internet a "photon transport mechanism". If you experiment with such things, make sure you get the whole picture and is otherwise healthy. Ask anyone with diabetes why.
  - tom_mellior 6y ago
    Vague hints to "get the whole picture" or to "educate yourself" without pointing to approved sources are always bad moves in Internet discussions. But here especially: Skimming the top 10 DuckDuckGo results for "ketosis fat-burning", I'm getting the impression that you would not approve of most of them.
    - xorcist 6y ago
      It should not be of interest to others what I personally would approve of. I don't hand out nutritionist advice on the Internet. The body is an amazing machine. It's still a good idea to at least try to understand the basic processes before making experiments on it. At least understand how ketosis works and why it isn't our default mode of metabolism. While there certainly are people who feel that it is helping them, others would be actively hurt by it. Results on one individual can not be extrapolated into some sort of universal cure. The fact that such advice can be readily found on the Internet anyway probably shouldn't come as a surprise though.
loceng 6y ago
What is often not acknowledged or even mentioned is that many people have difficulty with fasting because they are addicted to food - either addicted because of euphoric and opiate numbing effects that wheat specifically can cause, or from the numbing of sugar and carbohydrates - as inflammation has a depressant effect on the nervous system. The addiction to food is also self-medicating. If people don't realize this then they will struggle more than they need to. Reducing food intake if you're dependant on that breakfast with wheat and sugar-carbs to numb your nervous system, to calm your current emotions and perhaps pressure from past unhealed/unprocessed trauma, then as you reduce your food intake you're going to get exposed to withdrawals, as well as start being able to feel what's underlying - and you may not understand it nor know how to process it; this is certainly why intermittent fasting is perhaps healthier, gentler, and more sustainable for people to succeed at - as it won't apply or re-expose them to as much pressure with the quelling-numbing effects of many if not most foods. Another part to why fasting can be difficult for people is as your inflammation level goes down, so does the depressant-numbing effect, so you will feel whatever digestive pains and irritation some of the foods you're eating may be causing you more clearly; this coincides with most people commenting how their thinking and senses become much sharper as they deepen into the length of a fast. If you're regularly eating foods you don't realize are agitating your GI tract, any that are causing inflammation, then the potential for fasting to be an enjoyable and easy endeavour for upkeep - weight loss or maintenance - will go down. Edit to add: There may also be mild to severe dis-ease progression, damage/injury to the GI tract from lifelong lack of awareness (being numbed from eating foods that are harmful to you by some of the foods you may/likely have been eating) allowing the damage to progress. You may then be exposed and feeling this pain and then eating again is how you numb feeling it as strongly. Likewise there are bacterial infections that will benefit from fasting, cutting off their food supply greatly - much like why fasting can be beneficial for cancer growth - however, h.pylori bacterial infection for example causes nausea only on an empty stomach - and so that could be why some people are constantly driven to eat, not only to numb themselves but also to reduce nausea without realizing what's actually going on. That's why I also recommend microbiome stool testing. Also, if you underlying physical pain and injuries, reducing the inflammation from food will also increase your perception (and reaction to) to that physical pain - and so until you get that underlying pain treated then you'll be in a more agitated, less numbed state as well. All of what I said above is ultimately why a practice of non-violence is necessary, non-violence towards others but also non-violence towards yourself: be gentle on yourself. I feel it's also important to state that all of this learning is a practice, an experiment you run through with yourself to understand yourself more and how things like food affect you, how breath affects you, how the mind affects you.
SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
> you can have black coffee in the morning, into which he adds ghee, a type of clarified butter, and coconut oil to reduce hunger pangs. It’s not your typical cup of coffee. The idea that you need a special kind of coffee to do intermittent fasting is IMHO a very bad idea: it sets an unnecessary barrier to entry, and it misses the main point: it's about what you don't eat, not what you add to your intake.
- tedmiston 6y ago
  I found that particular quote confusing since adding ghee and coconut oil (e.g., bulletproof) make it very not black coffee and also a food one cannot eat during IF without breaking the fast / foregoing the longevity benefits of fasting [1]. It was weird that the author included that reference here. [1]: https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/ https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/
thesz 6y ago
Please let me point you to https://leangains.com https://leangains.com It has a ton of info - Martin Berkhan is really first person who popularized 16:8. One of advises there is that you can have black coffee with some milk, because milk is really low on calories. Also, from his site again, 10g of BCAA pre and postworkout does not change expression of fasting markers in blood. 10g of BCAA is ~40 calories. Put differently, it is equal to two teaspoons of sugar. And, to finalize, he recommends 14:10 regime for women.
- wmeredith 6y ago
  > milk is really low on calories Excuse me? One cup of milk has about the same as, or a lot more, calories than a cup of Coca-Cola. 149 for whole milk (91 for skim). 98 for the coke.
  - blairbeckwith 6y ago
    In the amounts people usually put in coffee, it is insignificant.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - jedimastert 6y ago
    The real question is how much milk are you putting in your coffee? Not a cup, I don't think. Although, full disclosure, I don't put milk in my coffee so I really wouldn't know...
    - wmeredith 6y ago
      I drink my coffee black. I thought the statement that milk was low on calories was odd.
  - thesz 6y ago
    One cup of milk is about 242g, that means milk has energy density 0.62 calories per gram, much less that sugar (4 calories per gram) or fat (9 calories per gram). Also, it looks like 80 calories will not change fasting state of your body (see above about 20g of BCAA). You may put 80 calories / 0.62 calories per gram = 129 grams of milk or half of cup, into your coffee or tea and not interrupt your fast.

by AnonC 6y ago

raincom 6y ago

black coffee + ghee/coconut oil is part of keto. He must be doing keto + IF.

AnonC 6y ago
Agree. That sounded like “bulletproof coffee” with some changes.
Roritharr 6y ago
Having done keto for a long time I can only recommend two options besides Tea. 1. Become a weird coffee person and put some nerd energy into it so black coffee doesn't taste disgusting on it's own. James Hoffman on YouTube is a great way into this. 2. Eschew the coffee and take a teaspoon of MCT Oil before your can of zero-calorie Energy Drink (Coke Zero Energy is my favorite atm). It may be dirty and people are going to tell you Aspartame is evil and is going to make you hungry(it really might, but you are still hours away from your window so black/white discipline is easy to keep alive), but for me it worked much better than dreading the coffee in the morning.
- 1_player 6y ago
  If your black coffee tastes disgusting on its own, you need to buy better coffee.
  - blunte 6y ago
    And use good water, and follow best practices for whatever brewing method you prefer. Failing any of these (including getting quality beans that are recently brewed), and your coffee may be much worse than it needs to be. I despise Nestle business and social practices, but a Nespresso machine with Nespresso pods is probably the best coffee that most people could hope to make.
    - Roritharr 6y ago
      That's what I mean, if you don't intend to become a weird coffee person black coffee is just not a pleasurable experience for most people. Starbucks made coffee appealing for a vast amount of the population by legitimising to drink 350ml of milk with lots of sugar by adding an espresso. If you are part of this crowd, the sad truth is that zero carb energy drinks are the more realistic morning beverage alternative for you.
      - barry-cotter 6y ago
        > if you don't intend to become a weird coffee person black coffee is just not a pleasurable experience for most people. Black coffee is the bomb. Don’t care if it’s Starbucks, Peet’s, FamilyMart, 7-11, it is the superior method of caffeine consumption, whether you like espresso, Americano or some other variety. I do not care about coffee snob stuff but coffee is best served black. Speaking personally. De gustibus non est disputandum.
    - httpsterio 6y ago
      Roasted *, but I disagree. Nespresso is easy, but it's expensive and even at best it tastes like hot garbage. You can grab aeropress for like 30 dollars and throw in a metal filter for like 5 dollars and that's already capable of making single cups of excellent coffee for years. My current aeropress and filter are from 2012 and I'm not really in need of an upgrade any time soon so it's honestly a very affordable brewing device. I do agree on the beans though, freshly roasted beans are more expensive and on top of that a grinder would also be a good idea. You can get a decent electric burr grinder around here for a bit over 60 dollars. On average, I buy both cheap and expensive beans, the cheaper ones are around 10 dollars per kilo and the more expensive ones are around 60 to 70 dollars per kilo. Quick maths tells me that a 8oz cup of the cheaper stuff comes down to about 13 cents and the more expensive one just under a dollar so definitely cheaper than any cafe and this is 3rd wave artisan type coffee we're talking about. Aeropress is basically idiot proof as well, anyone can make a decent cup of coffee with it so I don't really buy into the Nespresso argument here either. For an investment of under a hundred bucks, you can most definitely enjoy extremely good black coffee at home with very palatable running costs as well. I'm happy to expand if anyone has _any_ coffee related questions.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

> This may be ok to start with, though black coffee by itself has the ability to kill hunger without these crutches. I always wonderered how much ok it really was. Dreaking coffee will activate some digistive processes, and make the liver work. So you are not exactly fasting. I never could find a study comparing with, and without coffee.

wmeredith 6y ago
You're still fasting because it doesn't affect your blood sugar. That's why you can drink black coffee, tea, or water when fasting for surgery.
- BiteCode_dev 6y ago
  I heard this, but I can't find any study measuring the differences seriously. Fasting has various effect, not all of them are linked to the sugar consumption.
tedmiston 6y ago
What I've read in this area all comes back to "whether or not black coffee breaks the fast depends on the goal of your fasting", i.e., weight loss vs something more specific. [Likewise for other things people don't always think about like vitamin / supplements.] There is more info in [1][2] but tl;dr: - Fasting for metabolic health/weight loss: likely does not break a fast - Fasting for gut rest: does break a fast - Fasting for longevity: likely does not break a fast [1]: https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/ https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/ [2]: https://www.dietdoctor.com/can-use-cream-coffee-fasting https://www.dietdoctor.com/can-use-cream-coffee-fasting
cutemonster 6y ago
> activate some digistive processes, and make the liver work. So you are not exactly fasting. There's a difference between working a bit and a lot. Go up in the night, go some steps to the toilet. -- Or go out running 10k. Then back to sleep. Repeat reach night. Coffee or a big meal.

tom_mellior 6y ago

> Adding ghee or coconut oil in black coffee means it’s no longer effectively zero calories, and this is not technically fasting. I guess it depends on how you choose to define your "technical" terms. For example (https://www.bulletproof.com/diet/bulletproof-diet/bulletproof-coffee-intermittent-fasting/ https://www.bulletproof.com/diet/bulletproof-diet/bulletproo...): "The technical definition of “fasting” describes not consuming a single calorie. When your body isn’t burdened with the task of digestion all day every day, it has a chance to carry out cleaning and repair processes that make you healthier. This cleanup and repair process is called autophagy. Depending on your diet, intermittent fasting can also put you in a fat-burning state called ketosis.[2] Learn more about the benefits of intermittent fasting. The good news is that there’s no scientific reason to completely restrict calories to reap the benefits of intermittent fasting. If you only consume fat (no protein or carbs) during your fast, you won’t interrupt autophagy. You’ll also stay in the fat-burning state of ketosis." (I have no opinion on any of this except that I'm amused by hobby nutritionists.)

xorcist 6y ago
Please take care when your Internet nutritionist calls ketosis a "fat-burning state". While true, it's also a lot like calling the Internet a "photon transport mechanism". If you experiment with such things, make sure you get the whole picture and is otherwise healthy. Ask anyone with diabetes why.
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  Vague hints to "get the whole picture" or to "educate yourself" without pointing to approved sources are always bad moves in Internet discussions. But here especially: Skimming the top 10 DuckDuckGo results for "ketosis fat-burning", I'm getting the impression that you would not approve of most of them.
  - xorcist 6y ago
    It should not be of interest to others what I personally would approve of. I don't hand out nutritionist advice on the Internet. The body is an amazing machine. It's still a good idea to at least try to understand the basic processes before making experiments on it. At least understand how ketosis works and why it isn't our default mode of metabolism. While there certainly are people who feel that it is helping them, others would be actively hurt by it. Results on one individual can not be extrapolated into some sort of universal cure. The fact that such advice can be readily found on the Internet anyway probably shouldn't come as a surprise though.

loceng 6y ago

What is often not acknowledged or even mentioned is that many people have difficulty with fasting because they are addicted to food - either addicted because of euphoric and opiate numbing effects that wheat specifically can cause, or from the numbing of sugar and carbohydrates - as inflammation has a depressant effect on the nervous system. The addiction to food is also self-medicating. If people don't realize this then they will struggle more than they need to. Reducing food intake if you're dependant on that breakfast with wheat and sugar-carbs to numb your nervous system, to calm your current emotions and perhaps pressure from past unhealed/unprocessed trauma, then as you reduce your food intake you're going to get exposed to withdrawals, as well as start being able to feel what's underlying - and you may not understand it nor know how to process it; this is certainly why intermittent fasting is perhaps healthier, gentler, and more sustainable for people to succeed at - as it won't apply or re-expose them to as much pressure with the quelling-numbing effects of many if not most foods. Another part to why fasting can be difficult for people is as your inflammation level goes down, so does the depressant-numbing effect, so you will feel whatever digestive pains and irritation some of the foods you're eating may be causing you more clearly; this coincides with most people commenting how their thinking and senses become much sharper as they deepen into the length of a fast. If you're regularly eating foods you don't realize are agitating your GI tract, any that are causing inflammation, then the potential for fasting to be an enjoyable and easy endeavour for upkeep - weight loss or maintenance - will go down. Edit to add: There may also be mild to severe dis-ease progression, damage/injury to the GI tract from lifelong lack of awareness (being numbed from eating foods that are harmful to you by some of the foods you may/likely have been eating) allowing the damage to progress. You may then be exposed and feeling this pain and then eating again is how you numb feeling it as strongly. Likewise there are bacterial infections that will benefit from fasting, cutting off their food supply greatly - much like why fasting can be beneficial for cancer growth - however, h.pylori bacterial infection for example causes nausea only on an empty stomach - and so that could be why some people are constantly driven to eat, not only to numb themselves but also to reduce nausea without realizing what's actually going on. That's why I also recommend microbiome stool testing. Also, if you underlying physical pain and injuries, reducing the inflammation from food will also increase your perception (and reaction to) to that physical pain - and so until you get that underlying pain treated then you'll be in a more agitated, less numbed state as well. All of what I said above is ultimately why a practice of non-violence is necessary, non-violence towards others but also non-violence towards yourself: be gentle on yourself. I feel it's also important to state that all of this learning is a practice, an experiment you run through with yourself to understand yourself more and how things like food affect you, how breath affects you, how the mind affects you.

SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago

> you can have black coffee in the morning, into which he adds ghee, a type of clarified butter, and coconut oil to reduce hunger pangs. It’s not your typical cup of coffee. The idea that you need a special kind of coffee to do intermittent fasting is IMHO a very bad idea: it sets an unnecessary barrier to entry, and it misses the main point: it's about what you don't eat, not what you add to your intake.

tedmiston 6y ago
I found that particular quote confusing since adding ghee and coconut oil (e.g., bulletproof) make it very not black coffee and also a food one cannot eat during IF without breaking the fast / foregoing the longevity benefits of fasting [1]. It was weird that the author included that reference here. [1]: https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/ https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/

thesz 6y ago

Please let me point you to https://leangains.com https://leangains.com It has a ton of info - Martin Berkhan is really first person who popularized 16:8. One of advises there is that you can have black coffee with some milk, because milk is really low on calories. Also, from his site again, 10g of BCAA pre and postworkout does not change expression of fasting markers in blood. 10g of BCAA is ~40 calories. Put differently, it is equal to two teaspoons of sugar. And, to finalize, he recommends 14:10 regime for women.

wmeredith 6y ago
> milk is really low on calories Excuse me? One cup of milk has about the same as, or a lot more, calories than a cup of Coca-Cola. 149 for whole milk (91 for skim). 98 for the coke.
- blairbeckwith 6y ago
  In the amounts people usually put in coffee, it is insignificant.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jedimastert 6y ago
  The real question is how much milk are you putting in your coffee? Not a cup, I don't think. Although, full disclosure, I don't put milk in my coffee so I really wouldn't know...
  - wmeredith 6y ago
    I drink my coffee black. I thought the statement that milk was low on calories was odd.
- thesz 6y ago
  One cup of milk is about 242g, that means milk has energy density 0.62 calories per gram, much less that sugar (4 calories per gram) or fat (9 calories per gram). Also, it looks like 80 calories will not change fasting state of your body (see above about 20g of BCAA). You may put 80 calories / 0.62 calories per gram = 129 grams of milk or half of cup, into your coffee or tea and not interrupt your fast.