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My doctor recommended I begin intermittent fasting - no breakfast, light lunch, normal dinner; 8 hour "eating window" per day. I've been at it for about 18 mont

My doctor recommended I begin intermittent fasting - no breakfast, light lunch, normal dinner; 8 hour "eating window" per day. I've been at it for about 18 months now. About 8 months ago I started really watching how much sugar and highly processed carbs I eat (not a keto diet, just not going crazy with pasta and sweets). I've lost 50 pounds and no longer have to take my hypertension medication. If this were the olden days before you could take medication to treat hypertension then sure, an argument could be made that skipping meals can make you live longer. Today things are slightly different but even so, "skipping meals can reduce your medications" is still pretty significant.

rednerrus 5y ago
Eating less calorie will give you the same benefit.
- bityard 5y ago
  The human body's energy management system is incredibly complicated and rife with subtleties. To the point that the whole "calories in == calories out" meme, while not factually untrue by the standard of Newtonian physics, is just about as useful as saying that gravity is the cause of all airplane crashes.
  - Engineering-MD 5y ago
    Yet people seem to forget about that with diets and that is why it’s useful to remind people in some cases. Your diet doesn’t matter if in the end you consume more calories than expended- you will gain weight. I see it more as a first test of reasonability of a diet, a law of weight loss if you will.
    - pengaru 5y ago
      > Your diet doesn’t matter if in the end you consume more calories than expended- you will gain weight. This isn't true though, it's not the amount of calories you consume but the amount of calories your body actually accesses out of those consumed. If most of the calories you consume simply pass through or get consumed by the parasites living in your large intestine, calories consumed can exceed calories expended by you while still losing weight. The researcher who discovered the general role a pancreas plays in weight gain back in the 1800s had dogs living normal lives after removing their pancreases. Except no matter how much food they consumed, they continuously lost weight, and eventually died as if they'd starved to death. He discovered their urine was sweet after seeing flies were more attracted to their urine than the normal; without pancreas-created insulin the fat cells wouldn't store the energy, it was leaving the system in the urine. This illustrates the role hormones play in energy storage/release. Everyone's hormone levels are different, and how they respond to different foods varies, it's all very subjective, sex, and age-dependent. So even within those calories accessed via the GI tract, there's hormonal variability in what gets stored vs. used vs. excreted. Calories consumed only sets an upper bound; if you consume less calories than expended, you will lose weight. It's not a symmetric relationship like your statement assumes.
      - maximus-decimus 5y ago
        you can basically ignore the effect of your intestinal worm and whatever else by just calculating yourself the amount of calories you need to keep the same weight. Eat 2000 calories and lose 1 pound per week? your baseline is ~2500 calories. Gained a pound? your baseline is ~1500 calories. The fact you don't absorb it all doesn't change the principle in any way. It just mean you need to recalibrate. But since you can't measure EXACTLY how many calories you're actually eating anyway or that you can predict EXACTLY how many calories you need with a calculator, you need to calibrate anyway. So really not absorbing all calories changes literally nothing about the calorie counting method. The biggest advantage of calorie counting is it's more reliable than looking at the balance everyday because a ton of stuff will make you a few pounds heavier/lighter at any time it fluctuates too much. The scale doesn't move for weeks and people panic but really it was just random and then they lose 5 pounds on the 5th week and they think "omg, i must have lost all the weight at once because i ate that one apple!" You just can't use a scale short term. But all you have to do is count the calories, believe in the process, and if after months it doesn't work, you adjust your estimate of how many calories you burn and change your diet based on that.
        jasonmclaren 5y ago
        I would echo this general idea of recalibrating, and add a refinement. Instead of believing the process and waiting for months to see if it works, you can weigh yourself every day and look at the moving average. That will let you ignore the natural daily fluctuations, but still give you regular feedback. In my experience, that regular feedback really helps with the motivation to keep doing the calorie counting.
        maximus-decimus 5y ago
        I did that, but even then it takes weeks if not months to get a good idea from my experience. Basically, my weight would vary by 2 pounds, but i was aiming at losing 1 pound per week, so it took at least 2 weeks before my progress wouldn't get lost in the noise. I've also heard the argument it's worse for women because weight changes with the menstrual cycles, so then you really have to look at the very least one month of data.
- sosborn 5y ago
  You aren't wrong, but keeping things to an 8-hour window makes it easy to stay within the right calorie range, especially if you pay attention to macros.
  - f311a 5y ago
    Low level of blood glucose before sleep is also very important.
    - thesz 5y ago
      Please find more about orexin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orexin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orexin Let me quote: Orexin (/ɒˈrɛksɪn/), also known as hypocretin, is a neuropeptide that regulates arousal, wakefulness, and appetite.[1] The most common form of narcolepsy, type 1, in which the sufferer experiences brief losses of muscle tone (cataplexy), is caused by a lack of orexin in the brain due to destruction of the cells that produce it. And another quote: Orexin-producing cells have recently been shown to be inhibited by leptin (through the leptin receptor pathway), but are activated by ghrelin and hypoglycemia (glucose inhibits orexin production). To have a good sleep you probably need relatively high glucose level.
      - f311a 5y ago
        Liver and muscles have enough storage of glucose. Low levels of insulin and glucose are pretty important for cardiovascular and liver health. IIRC, some recovery processes and hormone levels in our body depend on the glucose levels and we want to have them during the whole sleep.
- ygjb 5y ago
  I mean, parent post literally wrote that. Cutting carbohydrates and sugars will reduce calories (unless ones diet consists of psyllium husks and sugar alcohols as the carbohydrates and sugars).
colinb 5y ago
I hope you don't mind my asking, how hard was it to skip breakfast? I feel like I'd miss it, but maybe a new morning ritual can take its place...
- HuShifang 5y ago
  Not the parent commenter, but as someone who skips breakfast, it's actually not that difficult, particularly if you drink coffee (which IIRC has recognized appetite-suppressing properties). Just drink it black, and be sure to drink water as well. (Tea might be an option too, but especially in black teas, the tannins in it may make your stomach queasy absent some milk or carbohydrates -- which would defeat the purpose of skipping breakfast.)
- aresant 5y ago
  I've been doing for years and it took about a month - Wake up 6 - 6:15am - Espresso shot around 8am - Regular sized but healthy meal at 11:30am with a small pastry walk 12:30pm - Regular sized but healthy meal at 5:30pm - Little dessert 7pm - Sleep at ~11 - 11:30pm Highly recommend, as OP have had essentially nothing but positives including preliminary weight loss, easy weight management, higher energy, etc
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  I've alternated on and off eating breakfast a few times in my life almost entirely by accident. Once I go a few days without breakfast, assuming I am eating enough around dinner time, I stop getting my morning hunger. I'm back to eating breakfast, but I'm confident I could switch off again if I made the conscience decision to eat a bit more for dinner and take my lunch a bit earlier (I normally eat lunch around 2pm and dinner around 6-7pm).
- taylodl 5y ago
  I was really reluctant to skip breakfast. I was one of those people who if I missed my breakfast I'd be starving by lunch. What I started off doing was eating a mid morning snack, say sliced apples and 2 Tbsp of peanut butter. That held me over until lunch. After a while the peanut butter was dropped and it was just an apple, then later the apple was dropped altogether. Now I get to lunch and it's like, huh, I'm not all that hungry. So the amount I eat for lunch has been diminishing. All along this journey a thing that's been going on is while I'm eating less and less, I have to be careful to eat better and better food. I simply don't eat enough to waste much eating "crap." By eating less and less "crap" and needing to focus on nutrient-dense food I've basically stumbled into what is called the MIND diet.
kibwen 5y ago
> About 8 months ago I started really watching how much sugar and highly processed carbs I eat (not a keto diet, just not going crazy with pasta and sweets). I would assume that this is the biggest contributor. Being consciously mindful of what you eat and how much you eat is extremely effective. But I say this for the benefit of others, and not to diminish your own efforts; if a regimen is working for you, then don't worry about analyzing and just keep at it! :)
- thesz 5y ago
  The problem for me, who intermittently fast for quite long time now, is that it is not possible to stand the level of sweetness in many, many foods. And for other foods you begin to notice mood changes. So, I guess, the sugar and carbs get ruled automagically, when you eat being really hungry.
mzs 5y ago
Yikes, that fasting regimen is a recipe for gall stones in ten years. Maybe seek a second medical opinion.
- taylodl 5y ago
  You've piqued my curiosity - how is this fasting regimen a recipe for gall stones?
  - mzs 5y ago
    first google result^ for: fasting gallstones > Fasting decreases gallbladder movement, which causes the bile to become overconcentrated with cholesterol. ^ https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/gallstones#:~:text=As%20the%20body%20metabolizes%20fat,to%20become%20overconcentrated%20with%20cholesterol https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas....

rednerrus 5y ago

Eating less calorie will give you the same benefit.

bityard 5y ago
The human body's energy management system is incredibly complicated and rife with subtleties. To the point that the whole "calories in == calories out" meme, while not factually untrue by the standard of Newtonian physics, is just about as useful as saying that gravity is the cause of all airplane crashes.
- Engineering-MD 5y ago
  Yet people seem to forget about that with diets and that is why it’s useful to remind people in some cases. Your diet doesn’t matter if in the end you consume more calories than expended- you will gain weight. I see it more as a first test of reasonability of a diet, a law of weight loss if you will.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    > Your diet doesn’t matter if in the end you consume more calories than expended- you will gain weight. This isn't true though, it's not the amount of calories you consume but the amount of calories your body actually accesses out of those consumed. If most of the calories you consume simply pass through or get consumed by the parasites living in your large intestine, calories consumed can exceed calories expended by you while still losing weight. The researcher who discovered the general role a pancreas plays in weight gain back in the 1800s had dogs living normal lives after removing their pancreases. Except no matter how much food they consumed, they continuously lost weight, and eventually died as if they'd starved to death. He discovered their urine was sweet after seeing flies were more attracted to their urine than the normal; without pancreas-created insulin the fat cells wouldn't store the energy, it was leaving the system in the urine. This illustrates the role hormones play in energy storage/release. Everyone's hormone levels are different, and how they respond to different foods varies, it's all very subjective, sex, and age-dependent. So even within those calories accessed via the GI tract, there's hormonal variability in what gets stored vs. used vs. excreted. Calories consumed only sets an upper bound; if you consume less calories than expended, you will lose weight. It's not a symmetric relationship like your statement assumes.
    - maximus-decimus 5y ago
      you can basically ignore the effect of your intestinal worm and whatever else by just calculating yourself the amount of calories you need to keep the same weight. Eat 2000 calories and lose 1 pound per week? your baseline is ~2500 calories. Gained a pound? your baseline is ~1500 calories. The fact you don't absorb it all doesn't change the principle in any way. It just mean you need to recalibrate. But since you can't measure EXACTLY how many calories you're actually eating anyway or that you can predict EXACTLY how many calories you need with a calculator, you need to calibrate anyway. So really not absorbing all calories changes literally nothing about the calorie counting method. The biggest advantage of calorie counting is it's more reliable than looking at the balance everyday because a ton of stuff will make you a few pounds heavier/lighter at any time it fluctuates too much. The scale doesn't move for weeks and people panic but really it was just random and then they lose 5 pounds on the 5th week and they think "omg, i must have lost all the weight at once because i ate that one apple!" You just can't use a scale short term. But all you have to do is count the calories, believe in the process, and if after months it doesn't work, you adjust your estimate of how many calories you burn and change your diet based on that.
      - jasonmclaren 5y ago
        I would echo this general idea of recalibrating, and add a refinement. Instead of believing the process and waiting for months to see if it works, you can weigh yourself every day and look at the moving average. That will let you ignore the natural daily fluctuations, but still give you regular feedback. In my experience, that regular feedback really helps with the motivation to keep doing the calorie counting.
        maximus-decimus 5y ago
        I did that, but even then it takes weeks if not months to get a good idea from my experience. Basically, my weight would vary by 2 pounds, but i was aiming at losing 1 pound per week, so it took at least 2 weeks before my progress wouldn't get lost in the noise. I've also heard the argument it's worse for women because weight changes with the menstrual cycles, so then you really have to look at the very least one month of data.
sosborn 5y ago
You aren't wrong, but keeping things to an 8-hour window makes it easy to stay within the right calorie range, especially if you pay attention to macros.
- f311a 5y ago
  Low level of blood glucose before sleep is also very important.
  - thesz 5y ago
    Please find more about orexin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orexin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orexin Let me quote: Orexin (/ɒˈrɛksɪn/), also known as hypocretin, is a neuropeptide that regulates arousal, wakefulness, and appetite.[1] The most common form of narcolepsy, type 1, in which the sufferer experiences brief losses of muscle tone (cataplexy), is caused by a lack of orexin in the brain due to destruction of the cells that produce it. And another quote: Orexin-producing cells have recently been shown to be inhibited by leptin (through the leptin receptor pathway), but are activated by ghrelin and hypoglycemia (glucose inhibits orexin production). To have a good sleep you probably need relatively high glucose level.
    - f311a 5y ago
      Liver and muscles have enough storage of glucose. Low levels of insulin and glucose are pretty important for cardiovascular and liver health. IIRC, some recovery processes and hormone levels in our body depend on the glucose levels and we want to have them during the whole sleep.
ygjb 5y ago
I mean, parent post literally wrote that. Cutting carbohydrates and sugars will reduce calories (unless ones diet consists of psyllium husks and sugar alcohols as the carbohydrates and sugars).

colinb 5y ago

I hope you don't mind my asking, how hard was it to skip breakfast? I feel like I'd miss it, but maybe a new morning ritual can take its place...

HuShifang 5y ago
Not the parent commenter, but as someone who skips breakfast, it's actually not that difficult, particularly if you drink coffee (which IIRC has recognized appetite-suppressing properties). Just drink it black, and be sure to drink water as well. (Tea might be an option too, but especially in black teas, the tannins in it may make your stomach queasy absent some milk or carbohydrates -- which would defeat the purpose of skipping breakfast.)
aresant 5y ago
I've been doing for years and it took about a month - Wake up 6 - 6:15am - Espresso shot around 8am - Regular sized but healthy meal at 11:30am with a small pastry walk 12:30pm - Regular sized but healthy meal at 5:30pm - Little dessert 7pm - Sleep at ~11 - 11:30pm Highly recommend, as OP have had essentially nothing but positives including preliminary weight loss, easy weight management, higher energy, etc
xboxnolifes 5y ago
I've alternated on and off eating breakfast a few times in my life almost entirely by accident. Once I go a few days without breakfast, assuming I am eating enough around dinner time, I stop getting my morning hunger. I'm back to eating breakfast, but I'm confident I could switch off again if I made the conscience decision to eat a bit more for dinner and take my lunch a bit earlier (I normally eat lunch around 2pm and dinner around 6-7pm).
taylodl 5y ago
I was really reluctant to skip breakfast. I was one of those people who if I missed my breakfast I'd be starving by lunch. What I started off doing was eating a mid morning snack, say sliced apples and 2 Tbsp of peanut butter. That held me over until lunch. After a while the peanut butter was dropped and it was just an apple, then later the apple was dropped altogether. Now I get to lunch and it's like, huh, I'm not all that hungry. So the amount I eat for lunch has been diminishing. All along this journey a thing that's been going on is while I'm eating less and less, I have to be careful to eat better and better food. I simply don't eat enough to waste much eating "crap." By eating less and less "crap" and needing to focus on nutrient-dense food I've basically stumbled into what is called the MIND diet.

kibwen 5y ago

> About 8 months ago I started really watching how much sugar and highly processed carbs I eat (not a keto diet, just not going crazy with pasta and sweets). I would assume that this is the biggest contributor. Being consciously mindful of what you eat and how much you eat is extremely effective. But I say this for the benefit of others, and not to diminish your own efforts; if a regimen is working for you, then don't worry about analyzing and just keep at it! :)

thesz 5y ago
The problem for me, who intermittently fast for quite long time now, is that it is not possible to stand the level of sweetness in many, many foods. And for other foods you begin to notice mood changes. So, I guess, the sugar and carbs get ruled automagically, when you eat being really hungry.

mzs 5y ago

Yikes, that fasting regimen is a recipe for gall stones in ten years. Maybe seek a second medical opinion.

taylodl 5y ago
You've piqued my curiosity - how is this fasting regimen a recipe for gall stones?
- mzs 5y ago
  first google result^ for: fasting gallstones > Fasting decreases gallbladder movement, which causes the bile to become overconcentrated with cholesterol. ^ https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/gallstones#:~:text=As%20the%20body%20metabolizes%20fat,to%20become%20overconcentrated%20with%20cholesterol https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas....