I’ll add one more anecdote to the mix here. Been doing intermittent fasting and extended fasting since February and I’m down 75 pounds in that time.
I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed. Now I don’t snore at all. My wife sleeps better, I sleep better; win win!
I haven’t exercised at all and I don’t count calories. My biggest diet changes have been cutting out soda entirely and I try to keep my carbs under 100g a day. Many days I’m under 50.
It’s honestly been amazing and I’m glad that I did it now while I’m still young and will be able to physically play with my kids in the future.
One of the other big wins has been physiological and my relationship with food and the feeling of hunger. Living in America, and especially here in the south, food is a religion. Stopping whatever is going on to eat is never looked down on. Snacks all the time, large comfort food meals, etc. While the community aspects around food are a good thing, our dependence on it as a society has crossed over into causing more harm than help.
After starting to fast, I’ve learned that hunger is just another feeling, like being too hot or too cold. Sure, it can be uncomfortable, but it won’t kill you and we can tolerate it a lot longer than we think.
Right now, I’m in the middle of a 7 day fast where I’m only drinking water. Every week I normally fast 48 hours twice a week and then one meal a day for the other 5 days in the week. My relationship with food has morphed and now I’m totally in control of my body. Skipping a meal is no problem and I have no ill side effects.
I’ll wrap this up by saying that I still enjoy food, a lot! When I do eat for my one meal a day, I can easily eat a large salad and a burger and a side. My favorite pastime is going to the movies and eating a meal and a large bucket of popcorn with my wife. Some days though, I eat a “normal” portion and call it good. Sometimes I have dessert. The difference is now that I can manage my love of food in a sustainable way for my body.
Exactly! I've done intermittent fasting for many many years, it works for me. I've told people, "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".
> "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".
Another way to look at it that I've found effective: think of food cravings as an adversarial agent. Your body is blackmailing you: if you give me food, I'll make this craving go away. Trick is, the food you're probably craving -- chips, soda -- don't make the craving go away. They make it worse. Once you notice that you're body doesn't actually make good on its promises to make the cravings stop it's easier to not give in to its demands. And that actually makes the cravings stop. It's no different than dealing with any other bully.
Lately (the past few years) I've been struggling with weight gain I couldn't reverse. I have zero self-control and will snack if food is in close enough proximity. I will also not turn down food, so living in Greece, where great food is available 24/7, is hard on me.
A few weeks ago I decided to try 8/16 IF, which basically means I don't eat past 10 pm (mornings are not a problem, I wake up late and never need breakfast). I'll usually wake up around noon, have my first meal at around 3 or 4, then have a small meal at 9 or just before 10 and that's it for the day.
This has made a very big difference. I have already lost 2 kg without even thinking about it. It helps a lot that I will eat a small meal before I'm hungry (at 9), wheras before I'd wait until 1 am when I was starving and then would eat a large meal.
It has also made compliance a breeze by just not giving me a choice. I'm unable to say "I've eaten a lot today so I shouldn't have this snack too", I would just think "eh I'll have this snack and eat less tomorrow", only for the cycle to repeat the next day. Now, if it's past 10 I don't eat anything, simple.
I definitely recommend this to anyone with compliance problems. I can also 100% relate to your hunger statement, which I learnt the last time I dieted, years ago. Being hungry just means that my body is burning fat, and I can go 30+ hours between meals without really any ill effects.
This can work for people who don't really need a lot of weight loss. Obese people are too deeply conditioned, their brains are wired differently and their bodies probably not responding on the hormonal level the same way as yours. To them it's a bit like suggesting a drug addict to just enjoy the withdrawal crisis. According to this research: "a substantial fraction of obese individuals exhibit an imbalance between an enhanced sensitivity of the reward circuitry to conditioned stimuli linked to energy-dense food and impaired function of the executive control circuitry that weakens inhibitory control over appetitive behaviors"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3124340/
I love (and I mean LOOOOOOVEEEEE) food, eating and feeling full or even overfed. So doing straight multi-day fasting is extremely hard for me, psychologically / motivationally.
However, I'm quite lucky in that I don't really get hungry very soon, if I don't eat. It's quite a weird effect; if I eat in the morning, I'll be hungry throughout the day, but if I skip breakfast (or even lunch), I'll only get hungry towards the evening.
So I just skip breakfast (almost always) and lunch (when I want to lose weight). Greatest diet hack I've ever discovered (actually, psychological hack).
I'm exactly like you (except I hate the feeling of being overfed). I don't need to eat for 4-5 hours after I wake up, but if I do eat something when I wake up, I'll be hungry very soon afterwards.
I've actually had fights with my dietician who insisted I eat breakfast as soon as I wake up, and wouldn't hear any of my links to published research, or even arguments of "if I'm not hungry, why eat extra calories that will just make me even hungrier?!"
Just skip breakfast and eat the first meal when you're hungry (don't wait until you're starving, or you might overeat). You're literally not missing anything.
Here's a hack that seems to work. Reduce the sides of your serving plates.
We have a tendency to finish all the food that's put in front of us. So many times we continue to eat even if we are not hungry. So by reducing the plate size we end up eating less.
I've noticed that the feeling of hunger only persists for a certain amount of time. If I'm preoccupied with something else or I can't eat while I have that feeling then after a while it just goes away. I think sleep is long enough that it gets over that feeling of hunger and that's why I don't feel hungry when I wake up.
> It's quite a weird effect; if I eat in the morning, I'll be hungry throughout the day, but if I skip breakfast (or even lunch), I'll only get hungry towards the evening.
I think that's actually a pretty normal effect, though perhaps not usually as pronounced as "only get hungry towards the evening". You don't normally get hungry while asleep, so I think one of breakfast's purposes is to kick-start the metabolism, with the side-effect of getting hungry afterwards. Especially if you're on a diet and are sticking to small breakfasts, making that meal counterproductive.
I cut my soda intake from a few a day to nil a day and replaced them with water. Within a few months I had lost 30 lbs. Cutting soda intake makes a big difference. It's not the magic bullet since I've stalled at my current weight but 30 lbs is a big difference given the small change.
I know I'd be at 250lbs if I still drank soda. I used to pound 3-6 mountain dew bottles a day at the computer (that's 12-20oz per bottle). I stopped and water is delicious and satisfying now. I drink small amounts impulsively now, it's like a fixation. Water is the most delicious healthy thing I consume and thank god for that.
I lost 10kgs in the past three months by doing IF. I didn't really need it but now I'm in the normal weight department instead of the slightly overweight. The best thing is that I learned how my body reacts to different occasions of hunger. By experimenting with different types of food and nutritions each time, I almost feel that now I can tune my body. Much like a digital system.
Personally, one of the first things I had to learn when starting IF is to be okay with hunger.
Then, I had to learn what was real hunger. Because of IF I don’t get hungry when I wake up in the morning anymore. But after a week on a holiday with breakfast as a norm, it’s as if my body expects food in the morning and gets hungry just because.
Took some time to reconcile what I experienced with what I was taught growing up, that hunger was bad.
Don't do something like this. A 7 day fast of just water isn't healthy. Your body starts burning more than just your fat. Even when doing something like a highly-restricted-calorie diet such as 960Cal/day you don't want to do for more than 3 days without medical supervision.
With fasting you generally want to take to take some salt. Any time you feel dizzy or nauseous that's basically an indicator that you're lacking some electrolytes. I usually take a bit of table salt or sea salt on the edge of a spoon and then wash it down with water.
Warning: Don't take too much salt all at once, because that can trigger a regurgitation..
I've been doing IF and LCHF for a few months now too. Previously, I only did Keto (no IF) and lost 70 pounds but later put some back on.
The biggest benefit to me from IF isn't the weight loss, it's the increased energy level. I don't know how it works, but I have way more energy, consistently, after routinely fasting.
> I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed.
My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.
Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.
Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.
Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.
This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.
I keep reading mixed reviews about intermittent fasting. One study says it lowers the risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus, because your blood sugar level is pretty low during the fast. The next study says this actually increases the risk, because your blood sugar spikes when you break the fast. This quickly becomes confusing.
For me, I was technically over the threshold for type 2 diabetes before I started IF.
After 3 weeks of IF and healthier eating, that number had already dropped below the threshold to just pre-diabetes. Within 3 months I had reversed that as well. This was all verified by bloodwork.
Now it is true, when you eat, even when not doing IF, insulin spikes. That’s how our bodies process food. During extended fasting, your body will become more sensitive to insulin so it is important that when you eat again, not to stuff yourself with high carb foods that will only exacerbate that.
Now how much you’d have to eat to do hurt yourself, I don’t know, but I guarantee the first time you break a fast with just a bit too many carbs you will feel it. The first time was enough for me!
Thanks for sharing. How do you manage the 48 hour and 7 day fast ? I presume you only consume water and nothing else. I skip breakfast always and can skip lunch and breakfast on alternate days. Are there any trick's to learn to fast for more than 20 hours while being mentally active like coding ?
I know I'm a little late here, but intermittent fasting is actually a pretty trendy thing in the valley right now because of increased mental clarity.
I didn't start it for the mental side effects, but I haven't noticed any strong negatives during my day job. I get 4-6 hours of meaningful work done and then my brain is about finished like most days.
Many people who do IF actually suggest working/playing to keep your mind off the hunger as it's easier to ignore when you're busy.
>>>I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed
I would like to hear more details on this. Being a CPAP machine user I have never heard of this (lungs failing) before.
My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.
Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.
Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.
Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.
This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.
My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.
Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.
Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.
Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admitently irrational fear of them.
CPAP just splints the airway open, but BiPAP actually has an inhale/exhale cycle, so maybe they use it for people who have trouble breathing on their own?
Could you give more details on how the machine caused lung failure? I am thinking of getting a CPAP for my family. Would like to do more research on it.
My grandmother had lost her job and was forced into retirement a bit early and spent a lot of time at home. Since she was single, there wasn’t much for her to do except eat and sleep until others got home from work in the evening.
Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.
Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.
Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.
This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.
I did cut alcohol but not because I wanted to. Doctor required it because of meds I started taking for high cholesterol. Once I get off the meds I’ll probably drink again. I’ve only ever been a social drinker though and rarely at that. Maybe 1-2 beers a month.
My current goal is to weigh 200 pounds by Christmas. So far I’m on track which would be 110 pounds in about 10.5 months.
After that, I’m not sure what I’ll do. The “healthy” range for my height is a bit lower than 200 but I imagine I’ll cut back on the intensity and focus on reinforcing new habits that I’m starting to form.
Already I’m making better food choices which is a huge first step but my portion control is not great. My drastically cut eating schedule let’s my eat a ton in a short period but I want to stop doing that eventually.
It’s a daily grind though; hard to deal with as a software developer that is used to brute forcing any problem I have.
Overall though, I’m excited for the future and happy I’ve learned this lesson while I’m still young and before I have kids.
This is strictly anecdotal, and I would honestly love to see this subjected to a rigorous study, but I lost twenty pounds without additional exercise or dietary changes in the last six months just by having a sleep study done, getting diagnosed with sleep apnea, and being put on a CPAP machine.
How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep?
Cannot comment on depression. But from personal experience and after reading Why we sleep, my understanding is that to get maximum benefits from diet and exercise, a good sleep is a prerequisite. This is paramount when you're doing these things for losing weight. I don't see good sleep being recommend enough whenever people embark on a weight-loss journey.
So true. I try not to eat anything after work, not always but usually. During daytime a softdrink with sugar is ok, but also usually after work I drink just water. I eat a bit something for breakfast, even small snacks during the whole day, eat a proper lunch and that's it .. I do sport two evenings a week so I can't eat anyway something before. So why should I eat dinner if I do nothing at home .. If I'm tired and don't go to bed .. wathever reason .. I suddenly start to eat a lot of snacks .. not because I'm really hungry .. just because of be bored.
I'm around 40 .. since ever in summer around 60 .. 63 kg in wintertime around 67kg.
The only thing I try to avoid is eating dinner at all. I drink softdrinks with sugar, eat chips, icecream, chocolate and for lunch just a standart menue.
20 years ago I was over 70kg and tryed to cook healthy dinner menus for myself .. my weight just went up ..
I've eaten really well for ages: particularly when it comes to low-fiber carbs, I just have no interest, let alone the intense addiction most people seem to have
The exception was my famous sweet tooth, the indulgence of which probably wiped out half the advantages I was seeing from eating well. Since mostly fixing a sleep disorder that I had, my sweet tooth has completely vanished. I had some sense of this, but I wasn't enjoying the sugar as much as I was craving the accompanying dopamine rush, in the same way that I was a more frequent drug user when I still had the sleep disorder.
We likely had it much worse than the average person, but I think about the same thing: most of my friends have sleep problems to some degree, and I can't imagine they're not getting a milder form of the psychological symptoms that plagued me
For me, it was the other way round. When I used intermittent fasting (in the form of the 5:2 diet) to get my weight under control, I stopped snoring like a rhino, and my sleep improved. As did my wife's. :-)
More anecdote: trying to fast of the weight without exercise was miserable. My weight plateaued, and I was permanently cold. Doing some sensible exercise solved both problems. Diet or exercise? False dichotomy.
Can't speak for OP, but my appetite and then weight have steadily decreased for six years since beginning CPAP. As a person with apnea I had no idea that my constant fatigue was causing me to eat so much, or making sustained exercise so impossible, and I really didn't even understand how tired I was. Once I was getting something approximating a good night's sleep, I had more energy, which made me less hungry and more able to sustain exercise. So it was a virtuous cycle and involved the habits you're describing, but those were made possible by alleviating the underlying problem.
Depending on the size of the effect, 11 participants can be very valid in an experiment. For example, assume you have 11 participants having a hormone measured after an experiment. If normal readings are 300 with a SD of 30, and at the end of the experiment their mean is 520 with a SD of 40, then you've just shown a strong, significant effect.
Yeah, except it usually would be (in the best case scenario) more like "520 with a SD of 40" for 10 people and "1 outlier", which you wouldn't really be able to properly conceptualize let alone explain, since your "outlier" is freaking 10% of the group.
That is, ignoring the fact that experiments without a control group can be hardly considered valid at all.
I recently started to diet for the first time ever. Never really needed it, but getting older, I noticed my weight steadily increasing despite regular exercise and finally decided to change.
I always skipped breakfast, but I became a bit more strict about timing and snacking at night in order to align with IF. Switched my diet to a lazy keto (basically adkins) diet - still don't track calories, just intentionally reduced carb intake to below ~25g net per day and increased fat intake. Occasionally I have a cheat meal.
Down 35lbs in ~2.5 months.
Side effects: I feel like my energy levels are much more consistent throughout the day, but also very discernable. Which is to say, if I'm working out, I can really feel it when I run out of gas. Related, I can't lift as much weight as I could, but that is expected while I'm actively trying to lose weight. I feel like there's a bit more mental clarity, but that could be related to energy levels.
Conclusion of this study [0]:
"Consistent with the carbohydrate-insulin model, lowering dietary carbohydrate increased energy expenditure during weight loss maintenance. "
Some numbers:
"[...] linear trend of 52 kcal/d [...] for every 10% decrease in the contribution of carbohydrate to total energy intake"
-----------------------
Now on a personal note, as someone who always lived with nutrition plan (and macro tracking for the last years) since 17, I think it's highly unlikely that you take < 25g carbs/day (During bulking phase I dont manage to get under 300g per day).
I’m down nearly 30lbs in 3 months through intermittent fasting.
Here’s my M-F routine :
7am: weigh myself, text results to my father
Breakfast: Nothing, but I drink a flat white just because I want to.
Midday: large bowl of plain unsweetened Greek yoghurt (no additions, which is key - the addition of fruit or other things is what sets off my sugar-loving monkey brain to go seek more). This is low carb yet filling and satiating. I tried out every single one available in my area until I found the one I could settle with. Sometimes I eat a low carb chocolate, ive found a bunch in my local area which I like.
Afternoon: sometimes go for coffee again and add a snack to that
Dinner: whatever I want, which is nice, but generally it doesn’t involve anything deep-fried and is mostly home made. Sometimes it’s a rice dish, sometimes pasta, sometimes meat with veg.
After this meal I’m free to eat whatever I want. If I want to eat dessert, I can, but just need to remember ... I’m texting my weight to my dad tomorrow.
Weekends I can eat anything at any time but also need to remember that Monday is coming and I will be weighing myself. So, I indulge a bit but not TOO much.
There’s no real exercise component here, just the occasional run every week or two.
I’ve also learned not to self-shame. If you fall off the horse, don’t whip yourself into a lather. Just say ‘ok, it happened, tomorrow is another day. Let’s keep going.’
At first, I really struggled at around 3-4pm and was constantly snacking bad things. The thing that’s has helped has been to focus on redirecting my behaviour instead of stopping it. Which is why I now know every single place within a 5 mile radius that sells low carb snacks, the price of each one, and which is my favourite. I also started drinking kombucha for when I have that urge to drink something. One small snack (always less than 10g carbs) is generally enough.
The BEST thing about this above routine is how little mental energy it takes. I don’t track carbs besides paying attention to labels in the act of purchasing, I don’t have to think about lunch, don’t have to whip myself into exercising.
Each week has gradually become easier in terms of maintaining habits. I now know I’ll keep the no-breakfast plus plain yoghurt for lunch routine, but at some point I’ll need to stop losing weight .. so..
I am fascinated (honestly, not sarcastically) by the line "7am: weigh myself, text results to my father".
I've never seen that strategy, but... wow. I'd imagine the accountability that creates is pretty serious.
I had a good run with IF but have backslid. I had a routine similar to yours but maybe stricter (I was making weight for a weight-class sport so had to move quicker).
Another anecdotal experience:
IF really makes you aware of how your appetite gets going after the first meal. I usually start eating around noon and its like flipping a switch, before hand you just feel kinda numb but afterwards your brain cannot stop thinking about eating.
Depending on how heavy you were lifting, you should be able to get back to your old strength by dropping the weight significantly and working back up to it over a few months (maybe do something like Starting Strength).
How do you get under 25g of carbs without counting calories? Almost anything edible has some carbs in it. Even with all being low carb 25g is very easy to attain unless you are very strictly tracking macros.
25g net carbs, which is a concept specific to the diet. You subtract the carbs that have no body impact, like undigestable fiber. So for example, 1 cup of broccoli has 6g carbs, and 3g fiber. Net carbs would be 3g.
> Even with all being low carb 25g is very easy to attain unless you are very strictly tracking macros.
It really isn't that hard. Not sure what to tell ya. I read the labels on things and keep a mental count every day. It's much easier when you're only eating one or two meals a day and not snacking.
Sometimes I'm over 25g, sometimes I'm under. Being perfectly 25g every day isn't required; there isn't anything specifically magical about the 25g line, since the actual goal is inducing mild ketosis in the body and everyone's body is different. 25g is my guideline, but I don't feel bad about it if I'm a bit over.
I don't have a ton of consistency here. Things that are most consistent for me right now:
- I'm a pretty big fan of riced cauliflower blends, which you can get in basically any frozen foods section. Great replacement for rice. A quick easy meal is ground beef + a half bag of riced cauliflower stir fry mix.
- Another quick meal - Trader Joe's green vegetable foursome plus chicken. Add tons of butter, salt and garlic.
- Another quick meal - 3 or 4 egg omelette with shredded cheese topping. Put it on top of a bed of greens, and add some guac or an avocado.
- I make shoyu eggs pretty regularly to snack on.
- I snack on nuts and beef jerky a lot.
- If I'm not feeling very hungry, I'll eat an Adkins meal bar instead of anything bigger. Adkins stuff cuz its convenient, available in a lot of places, and low carb.
- After a workout, I'll drink a muscle milk pro series shake (the premade type, specifically because its low net carbs). Currently looking for better options that aren't just straight whey mixes.
- Adkins also makes some nice low-carb candy type things that I also grab when the notion strikes.
Lastly and probably most importantly, I drink a ton of water and have an increased salt intake, because cutting carbs leads to retaining less water and dehydrating easier. You just feel thirsty a lot more often. Drinking more water just so happens to also help you feel more full
I lift weights 3x/wk as well as a few other activities, and have been since long before I started the diet. I just didn't care at all about what I was eating all that much.
I would recommend David Sinclair and Jason Fung in terms of resources for this to understand first why intermittent fasting is good for you but of course appropriately applied for the individual. If you start to understand the whys and stop listening to specific people's testimonials or crazy routines in some cases (from your perspective), you'll tailor it appropriately to your life if its something you want to do. Personally, I found it quite easy to incorporate and with great benefit.
Interesting read! It's also worth noting that circadian rhythm based eating habits (i.e. timing meals in the morning, or at least the bulk of one's caloric intake earlier in the day), are important for more than just weight loss. They reduce levels of inflammation in the body, improve insulin response, improve glucose tolerance, the list goes on and on. Humans evolved to eat when they are at peak-awareness/wakefulness: in the morning/early-day. If one's trying to optimize for peak performance/health/longevity, they should in the AM rather than PM.
Personally I only eat one meal a day, stopping all calorie consumption by 11am. I'm in the 2nd day of a 3 day fast; it's definitely an exercise in discipline, but so worth doing. Fasting's stress on the body invokes a "survival of the fittest" response on the cellular level; in which under performing cells are cleaned out. Some news out of USC has stated that a 72 hour fast leads to an "entire reset of your immune system" [0]. Pretty interesting stuff for health-conscientious folks.
Since everyone is chiming in with anecdotal weight loss experiences via faddish diets, I'll chime in with mine following "conventional" diet wisdom.
40 years old, 170 lbs down to 135 lbs, slow and steady just by eating a conventionally healthy low fat diet and adhering to CICO.
No wacky meal timings. No eating/avoiding an entire macronutrient to excess. Most calories came from whole grains, whey, and fish, and I made sure my belly was full most of the time with vegetables.
I drank wine nearly every day, and popped a square of Dove chocolate for dessert most meals. I even ate fast food a couple times a month.
Hunger pains and exhausting days in the gym? You bet. But it wasn't difficult, and I still got to eat my favorite foods - just less of them.
CICO works. Studies like this are interesting, but almost certainly just tweaking the margins for most people.
CICO works certainly, but the advantage of IF is that it makes adherence to CICO easier. You're effectively cutting ingestion opportunities to 1/3 of what they normally are. It's hard to eat 2/3 of your calories in ouch a short time frame.
One observation from personal experience with prolonged intermittent fasting: My metabolism slowed down quite a lot. After nearly 10 years of eating once per day, my resting metabolic rate was 3-400 calories lower than average. Whether that's a bad thing or not, I have no idea. My grocery bills were certainly low. And it saved a ton of time on meal prep.
More recently, I became too physically active to maintain that diet and returned to eating 3-4x a day. My metabolism has steadily returned to baseline since then. It took about 6 months but it is now essentially back to normal.
Readit News
I used to snore like crazy, probably had sleep apnea but was too afraid to go get tested since my grandmother died from becoming dependent on the machine and her lungs failed. Now I don’t snore at all. My wife sleeps better, I sleep better; win win!
I haven’t exercised at all and I don’t count calories. My biggest diet changes have been cutting out soda entirely and I try to keep my carbs under 100g a day. Many days I’m under 50.
It’s honestly been amazing and I’m glad that I did it now while I’m still young and will be able to physically play with my kids in the future.
One of the other big wins has been physiological and my relationship with food and the feeling of hunger. Living in America, and especially here in the south, food is a religion. Stopping whatever is going on to eat is never looked down on. Snacks all the time, large comfort food meals, etc. While the community aspects around food are a good thing, our dependence on it as a society has crossed over into causing more harm than help.
After starting to fast, I’ve learned that hunger is just another feeling, like being too hot or too cold. Sure, it can be uncomfortable, but it won’t kill you and we can tolerate it a lot longer than we think.
Right now, I’m in the middle of a 7 day fast where I’m only drinking water. Every week I normally fast 48 hours twice a week and then one meal a day for the other 5 days in the week. My relationship with food has morphed and now I’m totally in control of my body. Skipping a meal is no problem and I have no ill side effects.
I’ll wrap this up by saying that I still enjoy food, a lot! When I do eat for my one meal a day, I can easily eat a large salad and a burger and a side. My favorite pastime is going to the movies and eating a meal and a large bucket of popcorn with my wife. Some days though, I eat a “normal” portion and call it good. Sometimes I have dessert. The difference is now that I can manage my love of food in a sustainable way for my body.
Happy to answer any questions. AMA.
Exactly! I've done intermittent fasting for many many years, it works for me. I've told people, "You know how a workout 'hurts so good'? Learn to think that way about hunger/cravings. Consider it the same way you would consider a workout pain, as progress not punishment".
Another way to look at it that I've found effective: think of food cravings as an adversarial agent. Your body is blackmailing you: if you give me food, I'll make this craving go away. Trick is, the food you're probably craving -- chips, soda -- don't make the craving go away. They make it worse. Once you notice that you're body doesn't actually make good on its promises to make the cravings stop it's easier to not give in to its demands. And that actually makes the cravings stop. It's no different than dealing with any other bully.
A few weeks ago I decided to try 8/16 IF, which basically means I don't eat past 10 pm (mornings are not a problem, I wake up late and never need breakfast). I'll usually wake up around noon, have my first meal at around 3 or 4, then have a small meal at 9 or just before 10 and that's it for the day.
This has made a very big difference. I have already lost 2 kg without even thinking about it. It helps a lot that I will eat a small meal before I'm hungry (at 9), wheras before I'd wait until 1 am when I was starving and then would eat a large meal.
It has also made compliance a breeze by just not giving me a choice. I'm unable to say "I've eaten a lot today so I shouldn't have this snack too", I would just think "eh I'll have this snack and eat less tomorrow", only for the cycle to repeat the next day. Now, if it's past 10 I don't eat anything, simple.
I definitely recommend this to anyone with compliance problems. I can also 100% relate to your hunger statement, which I learnt the last time I dieted, years ago. Being hungry just means that my body is burning fat, and I can go 30+ hours between meals without really any ill effects.
This is what I exactly tell people. It's the only way to sustain it.
However, I'm quite lucky in that I don't really get hungry very soon, if I don't eat. It's quite a weird effect; if I eat in the morning, I'll be hungry throughout the day, but if I skip breakfast (or even lunch), I'll only get hungry towards the evening.
So I just skip breakfast (almost always) and lunch (when I want to lose weight). Greatest diet hack I've ever discovered (actually, psychological hack).
I've actually had fights with my dietician who insisted I eat breakfast as soon as I wake up, and wouldn't hear any of my links to published research, or even arguments of "if I'm not hungry, why eat extra calories that will just make me even hungrier?!"
Just skip breakfast and eat the first meal when you're hungry (don't wait until you're starving, or you might overeat). You're literally not missing anything.
We have a tendency to finish all the food that's put in front of us. So many times we continue to eat even if we are not hungry. So by reducing the plate size we end up eating less.
I think that's actually a pretty normal effect, though perhaps not usually as pronounced as "only get hungry towards the evening". You don't normally get hungry while asleep, so I think one of breakfast's purposes is to kick-start the metabolism, with the side-effect of getting hungry afterwards. Especially if you're on a diet and are sticking to small breakfasts, making that meal counterproductive.
Personally, one of the first things I had to learn when starting IF is to be okay with hunger.
Then, I had to learn what was real hunger. Because of IF I don’t get hungry when I wake up in the morning anymore. But after a week on a holiday with breakfast as a norm, it’s as if my body expects food in the morning and gets hungry just because.
Took some time to reconcile what I experienced with what I was taught growing up, that hunger was bad.
Warning: Don't take too much salt all at once, because that can trigger a regurgitation..
The biggest benefit to me from IF isn't the weight loss, it's the increased energy level. I don't know how it works, but I have way more energy, consistently, after routinely fasting.
Wait, what ? Could you expand on that ?
Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.
Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.
Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.
This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.
Things that help: - Drinking water - Drinking Coffee - Gentle exercise (something like a walk)
After 3 weeks of IF and healthier eating, that number had already dropped below the threshold to just pre-diabetes. Within 3 months I had reversed that as well. This was all verified by bloodwork.
Now it is true, when you eat, even when not doing IF, insulin spikes. That’s how our bodies process food. During extended fasting, your body will become more sensitive to insulin so it is important that when you eat again, not to stuff yourself with high carb foods that will only exacerbate that.
Now how much you’d have to eat to do hurt yourself, I don’t know, but I guarantee the first time you break a fast with just a bit too many carbs you will feel it. The first time was enough for me!
I didn't start it for the mental side effects, but I haven't noticed any strong negatives during my day job. I get 4-6 hours of meaningful work done and then my brain is about finished like most days.
Many people who do IF actually suggest working/playing to keep your mind off the hunger as it's easier to ignore when you're busy.
I would like to hear more details on this. Being a CPAP machine user I have never heard of this (lungs failing) before.
Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.
Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.
Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.
This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.
Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.
Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.
Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admitently irrational fear of them.
Well, she knew that she wasn’t supposed to sleep without her machine, so every time she got in bed, she’d put it on. This meant she was maybe spending 16 hours a day with this thing pumping air into her lungs. Now compound that with a sedentary lifestyle and a poor diet over a couple of years and it makes sense.
Her last days were spent in a hospital on a ventilator and every time the doctors tried to remove it for her to breathe on her own, her lungs just could not keep up.
Obviously this is a special case. Many people use these machines with no ill side effects, but for me, since it’s so personal, I have an admittedly irrational fear of them. For me though, I’d rather not need it in the first place if I can avoid it.
This also only happened a few years ago so it’s still fresh for me.
I’ve noticed it’s much harder to do in the summer as that cold beer at the end of a hot day is ever so enjoyable.
Feel free ask any more questions if you want. If this is too open of a forum for you, my DMs are open @DaronSpence on twitter.
Dead Comment
After that, I’m not sure what I’ll do. The “healthy” range for my height is a bit lower than 200 but I imagine I’ll cut back on the intensity and focus on reinforcing new habits that I’m starting to form.
Already I’m making better food choices which is a huge first step but my portion control is not great. My drastically cut eating schedule let’s my eat a ton in a short period but I want to stop doing that eventually.
It’s a daily grind though; hard to deal with as a software developer that is used to brute forcing any problem I have.
Overall though, I’m excited for the future and happy I’ve learned this lesson while I’m still young and before I have kids.
How much obesity and depression could be prevented or alleviated just by making sure people could get a decent night's sleep?
I'm around 40 .. since ever in summer around 60 .. 63 kg in wintertime around 67kg.
The only thing I try to avoid is eating dinner at all. I drink softdrinks with sugar, eat chips, icecream, chocolate and for lunch just a standart menue.
20 years ago I was over 70kg and tryed to cook healthy dinner menus for myself .. my weight just went up ..
We likely had it much worse than the average person, but I think about the same thing: most of my friends have sleep problems to some degree, and I can't imagine they're not getting a milder form of the psychological symptoms that plagued me
There's some body chemistry where being sleep deprived can manifest itself as hunger. I forget the details, but I read about it in "Why We Sleep"[0].
When I had a sleep study done, the pre-study questionnaire seemed to have more about depression symptoms than about sleep itself.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep
For me, it was the other way round. When I used intermittent fasting (in the form of the 5:2 diet) to get my weight under control, I stopped snoring like a rhino, and my sleep improved. As did my wife's. :-)
More anecdote: trying to fast of the weight without exercise was miserable. My weight plateaued, and I was permanently cold. Doing some sensible exercise solved both problems. Diet or exercise? False dichotomy.
It's amazing how low our standard for news is when it comes to things like weight loss.
That is, ignoring the fact that experiments without a control group can be hardly considered valid at all.
I recently started to diet for the first time ever. Never really needed it, but getting older, I noticed my weight steadily increasing despite regular exercise and finally decided to change.
I always skipped breakfast, but I became a bit more strict about timing and snacking at night in order to align with IF. Switched my diet to a lazy keto (basically adkins) diet - still don't track calories, just intentionally reduced carb intake to below ~25g net per day and increased fat intake. Occasionally I have a cheat meal.
Down 35lbs in ~2.5 months.
Side effects: I feel like my energy levels are much more consistent throughout the day, but also very discernable. Which is to say, if I'm working out, I can really feel it when I run out of gas. Related, I can't lift as much weight as I could, but that is expected while I'm actively trying to lose weight. I feel like there's a bit more mental clarity, but that could be related to energy levels.
Some numbers: "[...] linear trend of 52 kcal/d [...] for every 10% decrease in the contribution of carbohydrate to total energy intake"
----------------------- Now on a personal note, as someone who always lived with nutrition plan (and macro tracking for the last years) since 17, I think it's highly unlikely that you take < 25g carbs/day (During bulking phase I dont manage to get under 300g per day).
[0]: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4583
Here’s my M-F routine :
7am: weigh myself, text results to my father
Breakfast: Nothing, but I drink a flat white just because I want to.
Midday: large bowl of plain unsweetened Greek yoghurt (no additions, which is key - the addition of fruit or other things is what sets off my sugar-loving monkey brain to go seek more). This is low carb yet filling and satiating. I tried out every single one available in my area until I found the one I could settle with. Sometimes I eat a low carb chocolate, ive found a bunch in my local area which I like.
Afternoon: sometimes go for coffee again and add a snack to that
Dinner: whatever I want, which is nice, but generally it doesn’t involve anything deep-fried and is mostly home made. Sometimes it’s a rice dish, sometimes pasta, sometimes meat with veg.
After this meal I’m free to eat whatever I want. If I want to eat dessert, I can, but just need to remember ... I’m texting my weight to my dad tomorrow.
Weekends I can eat anything at any time but also need to remember that Monday is coming and I will be weighing myself. So, I indulge a bit but not TOO much.
There’s no real exercise component here, just the occasional run every week or two.
I’ve also learned not to self-shame. If you fall off the horse, don’t whip yourself into a lather. Just say ‘ok, it happened, tomorrow is another day. Let’s keep going.’
At first, I really struggled at around 3-4pm and was constantly snacking bad things. The thing that’s has helped has been to focus on redirecting my behaviour instead of stopping it. Which is why I now know every single place within a 5 mile radius that sells low carb snacks, the price of each one, and which is my favourite. I also started drinking kombucha for when I have that urge to drink something. One small snack (always less than 10g carbs) is generally enough.
The BEST thing about this above routine is how little mental energy it takes. I don’t track carbs besides paying attention to labels in the act of purchasing, I don’t have to think about lunch, don’t have to whip myself into exercising.
Each week has gradually become easier in terms of maintaining habits. I now know I’ll keep the no-breakfast plus plain yoghurt for lunch routine, but at some point I’ll need to stop losing weight .. so..
I've never seen that strategy, but... wow. I'd imagine the accountability that creates is pretty serious.
I had a good run with IF but have backslid. I had a routine similar to yours but maybe stricter (I was making weight for a weight-class sport so had to move quicker).
I have been working back up to it that way, but consistently plateauing at about 20% below my previous peaks.
I do plan on changing my diet once I'm at a place I'm happy with to be a bit more friendly towards weightlifting goals.
> Even with all being low carb 25g is very easy to attain unless you are very strictly tracking macros.
It really isn't that hard. Not sure what to tell ya. I read the labels on things and keep a mental count every day. It's much easier when you're only eating one or two meals a day and not snacking.
Sometimes I'm over 25g, sometimes I'm under. Being perfectly 25g every day isn't required; there isn't anything specifically magical about the 25g line, since the actual goal is inducing mild ketosis in the body and everyone's body is different. 25g is my guideline, but I don't feel bad about it if I'm a bit over.
- I'm a pretty big fan of riced cauliflower blends, which you can get in basically any frozen foods section. Great replacement for rice. A quick easy meal is ground beef + a half bag of riced cauliflower stir fry mix.
- Another quick meal - Trader Joe's green vegetable foursome plus chicken. Add tons of butter, salt and garlic.
- Another quick meal - 3 or 4 egg omelette with shredded cheese topping. Put it on top of a bed of greens, and add some guac or an avocado.
- I make shoyu eggs pretty regularly to snack on.
- I snack on nuts and beef jerky a lot.
- If I'm not feeling very hungry, I'll eat an Adkins meal bar instead of anything bigger. Adkins stuff cuz its convenient, available in a lot of places, and low carb.
- After a workout, I'll drink a muscle milk pro series shake (the premade type, specifically because its low net carbs). Currently looking for better options that aren't just straight whey mixes.
- Adkins also makes some nice low-carb candy type things that I also grab when the notion strikes.
Lastly and probably most importantly, I drink a ton of water and have an increased salt intake, because cutting carbs leads to retaining less water and dehydrating easier. You just feel thirsty a lot more often. Drinking more water just so happens to also help you feel more full
Good for you! Is this just from dieting? Or is there an exercise routine in here?
Personally I only eat one meal a day, stopping all calorie consumption by 11am. I'm in the 2nd day of a 3 day fast; it's definitely an exercise in discipline, but so worth doing. Fasting's stress on the body invokes a "survival of the fittest" response on the cellular level; in which under performing cells are cleaned out. Some news out of USC has stated that a 72 hour fast leads to an "entire reset of your immune system" [0]. Pretty interesting stuff for health-conscientious folks.
[0] https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regene...
40 years old, 170 lbs down to 135 lbs, slow and steady just by eating a conventionally healthy low fat diet and adhering to CICO.
No wacky meal timings. No eating/avoiding an entire macronutrient to excess. Most calories came from whole grains, whey, and fish, and I made sure my belly was full most of the time with vegetables.
I drank wine nearly every day, and popped a square of Dove chocolate for dessert most meals. I even ate fast food a couple times a month.
Hunger pains and exhausting days in the gym? You bet. But it wasn't difficult, and I still got to eat my favorite foods - just less of them.
CICO works. Studies like this are interesting, but almost certainly just tweaking the margins for most people.
More recently, I became too physically active to maintain that diet and returned to eating 3-4x a day. My metabolism has steadily returned to baseline since then. It took about 6 months but it is now essentially back to normal.