17 ms·

As (a non-religious) someone who tried fasting while holding down a similar job, my advice is simple: don't break your fast every night. It only takes 24-48 ho

by sambeau 14y ago

As (a non-religious) someone who tried fasting while holding down a similar job, my advice is simple: don't break your fast every night. It only takes 24-48 hours for your body to adjust, your fat to start melting and your blood-sugar levels to stabilise. You also stop feeling hungry. I found that while I was generally a little 'light-headed' my powers of concentration were fine and I returned to full productivity. At first I tried drinking only fruit juice but that gave me an upset stomach so I switched to water and the occasional tea. Once I'd got through the first day of 'starving' hunger I felt great: full of energy and positivity. As long as you have fat on your body you should be fine, however I'm not sure it would be a good idea if you are all muscle: while shutting down your digestive system saves a load of energy, if you have no fat your body it will convert muscle. Pros: * No blood sugar swings * No hunger * Fat loss * A real sense of achievement Cons: * Greasy skin * Zits Do: * Keep exercising to prevent muscle loss * Drink lots of liquid * Eat something light if the starving hunger returns * Be careful if you are already very skinny * Talk to a doctor Don't: * Binge eat every night as you'll feel starving again the next day * Ignore a return to hunger * Drink lots of fruit juice * Binge at the end. Gradually introduce food back to your system.

nsxwolf 14y ago
This was probably very common in the human experience prior to the development of agriculture. People didn't eat regular meals. Hunting opportunities would not have come along every day, and sometimes hunts would fail. I don't think humans would become too weak to throw spears because they didn't have their Cheerios in the morning. When I hear people who have skipped a meal complain "my blood sugar is low", I worry for their health. We have fat stores for a reason. Skipping a meal should not be a big deal.
- Multiplayer 14y ago
  "When I hear people who have skipped a meal complain "my blood sugar is low", I worry for their health. We have fat stores for a reason. Skipping a meal should not be a big deal." That is such a great point. People have been programmed around the 3 meal regime. I have found it fun to experiment with fewer meals and generally it works fine if I have an primarily protein breakfast I sail through to an early dinner.
  - michaels0620 14y ago
    It's gotten even worse now with many fitness gurus strongly advocating 6 small meals a day.
    - manmal 14y ago
      It's what works best for fat-loss, because that way you keep down the blood sugar spikes after every meal. I don't do it though because it's too much of a hassle - instead, you can also keep to foods which don't spike sugar levels much in general.
      - beagle3 14y ago
        > It's what works best for fat-loss, because that way you keep down the blood sugar spikes after every meal. That's a hypothesis that afaik no study was able to support (e.g. http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/truth-about-6-meals-day-weight-loss http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/truth-about-6-meals-day-w... about some studies. I don't have more references right now, but in the past I was looking for a study that supports it, and only found negatives) > instead, you can also keep to foods which don't spike sugar levels much in general. Google "bulletproof diet". I think you'll like it.
        michaels0620 14y ago
        The other issue with people like me who chronically over eat, is that asking me to eat 6 small meals a day is like asking an alcoholic to go to a bar 6 times a day but only order pepsi.
- delluminatus 14y ago
  I think a big part of the "low blood sugar" complaint is people misinterpreting their body. I used to get "low blood sugar" if I didn't eat for six hours or so, even getting headaches from it (I think 60% of the headaches I've gotten in my life have been from the placebo effect, and the rest stress-related). People are just so unused to being hungry that they freak out when it happens.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  Too weak to throw spears, maybe not. Too weak to churn out top quality code may be another matter, however.
  - GFKjunior 14y ago
    You are severely underestimating the mental difficulty of spear hunting in relation to writing a couple of lines of code.
    - makmanalp 14y ago
      Really? I've spear hunted fish when I was a kid and shot targets with a bow (if I were a proto-human it could have been small animals instead) and both were pretty damn easy and not mentally taxing at all.
      - saraid216 14y ago
        What was the risk of getting mauled while doing this?
        makmanalp 14y ago
        The majority of edible animals are not big game (by nature of the food pyramid), and a even a decent chunk of big game are not predators of humans. Plus, it's easy to overwhelm them if you have more than one person. I've never hunted before, but I can't imagine at all that it's a fair fight. Humans have been known to trap them, net them, flank them, shoot them at a distance, lure them, corner them, smoke them out etc. etc. None of which requires a whiteboard, drafting paper or a calculator. Are you really going to argue that any human with any semblance of intelligence (and I don't mean deep thought here) would have to risk mauling to hunt for subsistence?
        GFKjunior 14y ago
        Your post specifically said SPEAR hunting. You do not hunt small game with a spear. Trapping is usually the most effective way of getting meat in the wild. Off topic but some of the best traps are large modern mouse-traps. Just make sure to drill a hole and tie it to a tree with a strong rope so the animal doesn't pull it away. Set it, and you will almost certainly capture a small mammal within a day.
- chc 14y ago
  Times have changed. Nowadays we try to minimize our fat stores because overeating is a bigger threat to us than starvation is. If you're eating balanced meals intended to keep you slim, missing one is a bigger deal than if you pig out on a deer you killed and then miss breakfast the next day.
  - graeme 14y ago
    99% of the population has more fat store than in the days when people hunted deer. The problem is that people aren't used to accessing their fat stores for energy.
    - beagle3 14y ago
      > The problem is that people aren't used to accessing their fat stores for energy. It is my hypothesis that most modern fat stores are not actually energy stores, but rather "toxin" jails (I use "toxin" in the sense of: a substance that the body does not want, possibly because it is harmful, and that takes non-trivial time/effort to metabolize and/or get rid of; think of e.g. mercury). Which would explain why they aren't being used: In many cases, the body doesn't have a chance to get rid of them because bad stuff keeps coming in. (You may laugh, but it is not inherently less plausible -- or less supported -- than the idea that fat stores are used exclusively as energy stores).
      - anthonyb 14y ago
        Doubtful; the primary way that mercury and lead are excreted is through your fingernails and hair.
        beagle3 14y ago
        But that happens at a very slow pace. Where do the mercury and lead spend time until they are excreted? The only answer I was able to get from people who are supposed to know is "all over", "in the cells", "in the blood" and similar meaningless answers. I have yet to find anyone who has an idea about how it is actually distributed through the body.
- manmal 14y ago
  You are mistaken if you think that hunting was the primary source of food in times before agriculture. For many tribes it was (and still is, in some parts of the world) a secondary "luxury" which augmented the gathered food. As you say, hunting can easily fail, or game can become rare because of environmental hiccups. This happens more often than you should think - there are times when deer can't be found for weeks. Blood sugar was mainly kept up with berries, roots, and fruit - nibbling all day long. Fat stores are not so easily accessed - if they were, then all-week-fasting would be the way to go for fat-loss (which mostly leads to muscle wasting and short-term water loss, and a mighty yo-yo effect). Yes, one can use intermittent fasting to lose weight, but weight-loss usually only kicks in after 2-3 weeks. I agree that Cheerios are a bad idea generally, but I'm not pro fasting or skipping meals for weight loss. Fat is stored as an emergency reaction to high blood sugar levels, and you get exactly that when eating more between the fasts (you have to). You constantly expose your brain to too much and too low sugar levels, resulting in highs and lows in your ability to focus (and also your mood).
  - _pius 14y ago
    Yes, one can use intermittent fasting to lose weight, but weight-loss usually only kicks in after 2-3 weeks. Citation needed. I personally know people who've lost weight long term with quite brief periods of intermittent fasting.
    - manmal 14y ago
      I read that somewhere in this ebook on IF, don't recall on which page (great resource btw, one of the few user-friendly books I've seen yet): http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting I can't say anything about the people you mentioned. I myself had absolutely no progress when IFing for some days, only dizziness and irritability.
    - pessimizer 14y ago
      I think he's saying after 2-3 weeks of intermittent fasting, not fasting for 2-3 weeks at a time intermittently. Anecdote alert, but I started doing alternate day fasting after I read the study, then 22 hour a day fasts after I read that people were having results with that. Went from 235 to 185 in 2 years (6' tall, fairly large build.) I'm not strict, and I go off it whenever I'm bored or severely tempted. I count any drink other than water as a snack, and watch the bread, potatoes, and cornstuffs when I am eating. Who knew it could be this easy? I hadn't really been an overeater for years, I just had never had time to starve.
neutronicus 14y ago
My experience with this sort of thing is that despite thrice-weekly lifting sessions, I lose a LOT of muscle. Just a heads-up for anyone thinking of trying this.
- vrodic 14y ago
  You are probably not giving your body enough time to recover the muscles damaged in your workouts. For more details i can recommend "Body by Science" by John Little and Doug McGuff. Or google "muscle recovery time" and read through
- beagle3 14y ago
  > despite thrice-weekly lifting sessions, I lose a LOT of muscle My experience is like the GPs (I only lose muscle if I don't exercise while fasting). Do you have "nontrivial" muscles? My experience is that I don't lose muscles I use (If I don't jog, I _do_ lose leg muscles; if I'm not boxing or swimming, I _do_ lose arm muscles; but if I do both, and balanced exercises like crunches, squats, etc - I don't seem to lose anything).
  - Jd 14y ago
    This is also fascinating. I always assumed I was losing muscles, and perhaps I adjusted my exercise/fasting program to accomodate for this -- but I could have been deluded as I never focused on this point carefully.
barking 14y ago
Another con is 'seriously bad breath' (acetone breath) which is clearly not good if your job involves dealing with people face to face
- beagle3 14y ago
  > Another con is 'seriously bad breath' Goes away after a few days. And probably good for you - it means your body is finally getting rid of some stuff it should have gotten rid of before and didn't.
  - leocassarani 14y ago
    > And probably good for you - it means your body is finally getting rid of some stuff it should have gotten rid of before and didn't. That sounds like the sort of pseudo-scientific, unsubstantiated nonsense you hear all the time from New Age healer types. Do you have a source to back up your claim?
    - beagle3 14y ago
      No, I do not have a source to substantiate it; I'm not sure what the study would be to look for. It is based, however, on personal experience and experience of other people I know (disappearing of bad breath coincides with other very positive and welcome changes, like injuries that were healing very slowly starting to heal at an amazing pace, disappearance of snoring, and similar things). Just a question - would you have reacted the same if I wrote "it isn't bad for you to eat 20 eggs a day", or "eating cholesterol isn't bad for you"? because both of these "accepted wisdoms" (limit egg consumption; dietary cholesterol is bad for you) are unsubstantiated nonsense you hear from everyone (laymen, nutritions, doctors), with no study to support them. And yet they are almost never challenged.
      - irahul 14y ago
        > Just a question - would you have reacted the same if I wrote "it isn't bad for you to eat 20 eggs a day", or "eating cholesterol isn't bad for you"? because both of these "accepted wisdoms" (limit egg consumption; dietary cholesterol is bad for you) are unsubstantiated nonsense you hear from everyone (laymen, nutritions, doctors), with no study to support them. And yet they are almost never challenged. I would have either asked you for citation, or did my own research. But even if I haven't, two wrongs don't a right make. People are biased, and selectively accept garbage. Unsubstantiated nonsense is garbage, irrespective of its acceptance by people who know nothing about it and are accepting things on what makes them feel good.
scotty79 14y ago
I don't get hunger when I don't eat. After almost a day without eating I get headache then I feel weaker and weaker and don't even have enough energy to make myself something to eat. Then I fall asleep. Only after I wake up next day I have enough energy to make myself a meal. I'm still not hungry but reason just has the opportunity to kick in.

by sambeau 14y ago

nsxwolf 14y ago

This was probably very common in the human experience prior to the development of agriculture. People didn't eat regular meals. Hunting opportunities would not have come along every day, and sometimes hunts would fail. I don't think humans would become too weak to throw spears because they didn't have their Cheerios in the morning. When I hear people who have skipped a meal complain "my blood sugar is low", I worry for their health. We have fat stores for a reason. Skipping a meal should not be a big deal.

Multiplayer 14y ago
"When I hear people who have skipped a meal complain "my blood sugar is low", I worry for their health. We have fat stores for a reason. Skipping a meal should not be a big deal." That is such a great point. People have been programmed around the 3 meal regime. I have found it fun to experiment with fewer meals and generally it works fine if I have an primarily protein breakfast I sail through to an early dinner.
- michaels0620 14y ago
  It's gotten even worse now with many fitness gurus strongly advocating 6 small meals a day.
  - manmal 14y ago
    It's what works best for fat-loss, because that way you keep down the blood sugar spikes after every meal. I don't do it though because it's too much of a hassle - instead, you can also keep to foods which don't spike sugar levels much in general.
    - beagle3 14y ago
      > It's what works best for fat-loss, because that way you keep down the blood sugar spikes after every meal. That's a hypothesis that afaik no study was able to support (e.g. http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/truth-about-6-meals-day-weight-loss http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/truth-about-6-meals-day-w... about some studies. I don't have more references right now, but in the past I was looking for a study that supports it, and only found negatives) > instead, you can also keep to foods which don't spike sugar levels much in general. Google "bulletproof diet". I think you'll like it.
      - michaels0620 14y ago
        The other issue with people like me who chronically over eat, is that asking me to eat 6 small meals a day is like asking an alcoholic to go to a bar 6 times a day but only order pepsi.
delluminatus 14y ago
I think a big part of the "low blood sugar" complaint is people misinterpreting their body. I used to get "low blood sugar" if I didn't eat for six hours or so, even getting headaches from it (I think 60% of the headaches I've gotten in my life have been from the placebo effect, and the rest stress-related). People are just so unused to being hungry that they freak out when it happens.
dllthomas 14y ago
Too weak to throw spears, maybe not. Too weak to churn out top quality code may be another matter, however.
- GFKjunior 14y ago
  You are severely underestimating the mental difficulty of spear hunting in relation to writing a couple of lines of code.
  - makmanalp 14y ago
    Really? I've spear hunted fish when I was a kid and shot targets with a bow (if I were a proto-human it could have been small animals instead) and both were pretty damn easy and not mentally taxing at all.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      What was the risk of getting mauled while doing this?
      - makmanalp 14y ago
        The majority of edible animals are not big game (by nature of the food pyramid), and a even a decent chunk of big game are not predators of humans. Plus, it's easy to overwhelm them if you have more than one person. I've never hunted before, but I can't imagine at all that it's a fair fight. Humans have been known to trap them, net them, flank them, shoot them at a distance, lure them, corner them, smoke them out etc. etc. None of which requires a whiteboard, drafting paper or a calculator. Are you really going to argue that any human with any semblance of intelligence (and I don't mean deep thought here) would have to risk mauling to hunt for subsistence?
        GFKjunior 14y ago
        Your post specifically said SPEAR hunting. You do not hunt small game with a spear. Trapping is usually the most effective way of getting meat in the wild. Off topic but some of the best traps are large modern mouse-traps. Just make sure to drill a hole and tie it to a tree with a strong rope so the animal doesn't pull it away. Set it, and you will almost certainly capture a small mammal within a day.
chc 14y ago
Times have changed. Nowadays we try to minimize our fat stores because overeating is a bigger threat to us than starvation is. If you're eating balanced meals intended to keep you slim, missing one is a bigger deal than if you pig out on a deer you killed and then miss breakfast the next day.
- graeme 14y ago
  99% of the population has more fat store than in the days when people hunted deer. The problem is that people aren't used to accessing their fat stores for energy.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    > The problem is that people aren't used to accessing their fat stores for energy. It is my hypothesis that most modern fat stores are not actually energy stores, but rather "toxin" jails (I use "toxin" in the sense of: a substance that the body does not want, possibly because it is harmful, and that takes non-trivial time/effort to metabolize and/or get rid of; think of e.g. mercury). Which would explain why they aren't being used: In many cases, the body doesn't have a chance to get rid of them because bad stuff keeps coming in. (You may laugh, but it is not inherently less plausible -- or less supported -- than the idea that fat stores are used exclusively as energy stores).
    - anthonyb 14y ago
      Doubtful; the primary way that mercury and lead are excreted is through your fingernails and hair.
      - beagle3 14y ago
        But that happens at a very slow pace. Where do the mercury and lead spend time until they are excreted? The only answer I was able to get from people who are supposed to know is "all over", "in the cells", "in the blood" and similar meaningless answers. I have yet to find anyone who has an idea about how it is actually distributed through the body.
manmal 14y ago
You are mistaken if you think that hunting was the primary source of food in times before agriculture. For many tribes it was (and still is, in some parts of the world) a secondary "luxury" which augmented the gathered food. As you say, hunting can easily fail, or game can become rare because of environmental hiccups. This happens more often than you should think - there are times when deer can't be found for weeks. Blood sugar was mainly kept up with berries, roots, and fruit - nibbling all day long. Fat stores are not so easily accessed - if they were, then all-week-fasting would be the way to go for fat-loss (which mostly leads to muscle wasting and short-term water loss, and a mighty yo-yo effect). Yes, one can use intermittent fasting to lose weight, but weight-loss usually only kicks in after 2-3 weeks. I agree that Cheerios are a bad idea generally, but I'm not pro fasting or skipping meals for weight loss. Fat is stored as an emergency reaction to high blood sugar levels, and you get exactly that when eating more between the fasts (you have to). You constantly expose your brain to too much and too low sugar levels, resulting in highs and lows in your ability to focus (and also your mood).
- _pius 14y ago
  Yes, one can use intermittent fasting to lose weight, but weight-loss usually only kicks in after 2-3 weeks. Citation needed. I personally know people who've lost weight long term with quite brief periods of intermittent fasting.
  - manmal 14y ago
    I read that somewhere in this ebook on IF, don't recall on which page (great resource btw, one of the few user-friendly books I've seen yet): http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting I can't say anything about the people you mentioned. I myself had absolutely no progress when IFing for some days, only dizziness and irritability.
  - pessimizer 14y ago
    I think he's saying after 2-3 weeks of intermittent fasting, not fasting for 2-3 weeks at a time intermittently. Anecdote alert, but I started doing alternate day fasting after I read the study, then 22 hour a day fasts after I read that people were having results with that. Went from 235 to 185 in 2 years (6' tall, fairly large build.) I'm not strict, and I go off it whenever I'm bored or severely tempted. I count any drink other than water as a snack, and watch the bread, potatoes, and cornstuffs when I am eating. Who knew it could be this easy? I hadn't really been an overeater for years, I just had never had time to starve.

neutronicus 14y ago

My experience with this sort of thing is that despite thrice-weekly lifting sessions, I lose a LOT of muscle. Just a heads-up for anyone thinking of trying this.

vrodic 14y ago
You are probably not giving your body enough time to recover the muscles damaged in your workouts. For more details i can recommend "Body by Science" by John Little and Doug McGuff. Or google "muscle recovery time" and read through
beagle3 14y ago
> despite thrice-weekly lifting sessions, I lose a LOT of muscle My experience is like the GPs (I only lose muscle if I don't exercise while fasting). Do you have "nontrivial" muscles? My experience is that I don't lose muscles I use (If I don't jog, I _do_ lose leg muscles; if I'm not boxing or swimming, I _do_ lose arm muscles; but if I do both, and balanced exercises like crunches, squats, etc - I don't seem to lose anything).
- Jd 14y ago
  This is also fascinating. I always assumed I was losing muscles, and perhaps I adjusted my exercise/fasting program to accomodate for this -- but I could have been deluded as I never focused on this point carefully.

barking 14y ago

Another con is 'seriously bad breath' (acetone breath) which is clearly not good if your job involves dealing with people face to face

beagle3 14y ago
> Another con is 'seriously bad breath' Goes away after a few days. And probably good for you - it means your body is finally getting rid of some stuff it should have gotten rid of before and didn't.
- leocassarani 14y ago
  > And probably good for you - it means your body is finally getting rid of some stuff it should have gotten rid of before and didn't. That sounds like the sort of pseudo-scientific, unsubstantiated nonsense you hear all the time from New Age healer types. Do you have a source to back up your claim?
  - beagle3 14y ago
    No, I do not have a source to substantiate it; I'm not sure what the study would be to look for. It is based, however, on personal experience and experience of other people I know (disappearing of bad breath coincides with other very positive and welcome changes, like injuries that were healing very slowly starting to heal at an amazing pace, disappearance of snoring, and similar things). Just a question - would you have reacted the same if I wrote "it isn't bad for you to eat 20 eggs a day", or "eating cholesterol isn't bad for you"? because both of these "accepted wisdoms" (limit egg consumption; dietary cholesterol is bad for you) are unsubstantiated nonsense you hear from everyone (laymen, nutritions, doctors), with no study to support them. And yet they are almost never challenged.
    - irahul 14y ago
      > Just a question - would you have reacted the same if I wrote "it isn't bad for you to eat 20 eggs a day", or "eating cholesterol isn't bad for you"? because both of these "accepted wisdoms" (limit egg consumption; dietary cholesterol is bad for you) are unsubstantiated nonsense you hear from everyone (laymen, nutritions, doctors), with no study to support them. And yet they are almost never challenged. I would have either asked you for citation, or did my own research. But even if I haven't, two wrongs don't a right make. People are biased, and selectively accept garbage. Unsubstantiated nonsense is garbage, irrespective of its acceptance by people who know nothing about it and are accepting things on what makes them feel good.

scotty79 14y ago

I don't get hunger when I don't eat. After almost a day without eating I get headache then I feel weaker and weaker and don't even have enough energy to make myself something to eat. Then I fall asleep. Only after I wake up next day I have enough energy to make myself a meal. I'm still not hungry but reason just has the opportunity to kick in.