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Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

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Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#101
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16 hours of not eating is enough to put your body into ketosis. Perhaps it's related. I know there are health benefits to being in ketosis and eating a keto diet.

Do you have any citation about that? For some reason, I suppose I read it somewhere, I though that for ketosis you need 36 hours.

depends on your glycogen reserves and basal metabolic rate

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#102
post #97

I'm almost 45. Guessing that it's too late for me to adopt this? Also, If i had adopted it at ~20 years old, would that mean I could have potentially lived up to ~140 years old? That seems an extreme lifespan extension.

The subjects were all over 65, if anything you're too young.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#103
post #5

This sort of result has been showed repeatedly. We really need more (and better) nutrition education. The level of obesity and overeating in our society is astounding. I'd be surprised if most people could even implement basic calorie counting.

Having tried implementing calorie counting... how exactly do you do it? You either cook everything yourself and weigh every ingredient. Or you buy totally packaged meals (Lite 'n Easy, etc), or you buy fast food (And even then, the calorie counts in fast food are... inaccurate at best). If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. While it's good…

Some years ago I spent a lot of time calorie counting. I got pretty good at estimating but more importantly became keenly aware of where the calories are hidden. You start to develop simple rules of thumb: beware of the breads and sugars, fruits are full of vitamins but can pack a calorie punch (bananas and grapes on the higher side, strawberries and melons being in the low side), most raw vegetables, negligible. Lean meats, surprisingly low relative to their help in making you feel well fed. Be cautious with cheese; sauces and dressings can be killer.

You don't have to be perfect (or honestly even that precise) but it's immensely helpful to do the exercise for a few weeks to dial your brain in. When you calorie reduce at the same time, you grow razor-sharp appreciation for foods that you can eat a massive amount of that provide few calories. When you're hungry, a choice between a muffin and a tray overloaded with vegetables and turkey slices becomes a lot more clear.

I've often wondered if an app that has me take a picture of everything I eat in a day and then sends me a collage of all yesterday's consumption by email in the next morning would be a suitable replacement for calorie counting. I wonder if the process of taking my phone out to photograph things before I eat them would cause me to more carefully consider my choices, and the private shaming the morning after on days I don't do well would serve as a behavior modifier for the day.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#104
post #12

I read from somewhere that even 16 hours is enough for the benefits of Intermittent fasting. Has anyone done studies with Buddhist monks in Vipassana tradition? They have rule not to eat after midday. Obviously many of them cheat different ways but if you can find the hardcorce monks and monasteries, you would have several thousands (possibly tens of thousands) subjects who have already been following the regime for…

I think it's a lot easier if you just flip that rule. Don't eat before 1pm or something like that. Basically, skip breakfast. Seems a lot easier, and the fasting interval should be about the same. Perhaps I'm biased because this is what I naturally do.

Same here. It avoids the difficult part which is going to sleep hungry

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#105
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy strips and check yourself. You might need much less time

sorry, what are strips?

You can buy ketone strips that will indicate whether you are experiencing ketosis. They react to your urine.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having tried implementing calorie counting... how exactly do you do it? You either cook everything yourself and weigh every ingredient. Or you buy totally packaged meals (Lite 'n Easy, etc), or you buy fast food (And even then, the calorie counts in fast food are... inaccurate at best). If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. While it's good…

> If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. uh, why not? i'll do it right now for you off the top of my head, which anyone can do after they look them up for a while. 100g of white bread = ~ 250 calories / 2 tbsp of mayo = ~ 200 calories / 4 oz of deli turkey = ~ 100 calories / 1 tbsp mustard = ~ 10 calories / 2 slices (2 oz.) of cheese = ~ 240…

One time, as a continually hungry teen, I did a one day calorie count for a scout project. I was suitably horrified to find out at the end of the day that I had consumed around 10,000 calories.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#107
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy strips and check yourself. You might need much less time

sorry, what are strips?

There are tester strips for detecting presence of ketones in urine, originally intended for type I diabetes I think.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I go to the corner shop and get a sandwich I have no idea what's in it and there is no accurate way to estimate. uh, why not? i'll do it right now for you off the top of my head, which anyone can do after they look them up for a while. 100g of white bread = ~ 250 calories / 2 tbsp of mayo = ~ 200 calories / 4 oz of deli turkey = ~ 100 calories / 1 tbsp mustard = ~ 10 calories / 2 slices (2 oz.) of cheese = ~ 240…

You're literally guessing the quantities of the ingredients of the sandwich. (and mixing measurements... grams AND ounces?) How is that counting? That's my point. You're getting a vague idea of what you're eating but it is in no way calorie counting.

It's close enough to get results. Nobody is going to put a sandwich from the local sandwich shop into a bomb calorimeter to figure out how many sandwiches they can eat and still lose weight.

If you're going to get hung up on the term calories let's call them approximate calories (or ACs) instead. If I eat mostly the same foods all the time I can use reasonable guesses to get the ACs in each food. Foods I eat infrequently will probably have a greater deviation between my ACs and the actual calories but that doesn't matter much because I don't eat them very often. Foods I eat frequently will probably have less error and the error doesn't matter much as long as I'm consistent with the numbers.

Let's say I decide I want to lose weight. I can start off with the general rule that for a male of my age, build and activity levels I need about 2500 calories a day to maintain weight. Since I want to lose some weight I'll set my daily AC allowance at 2000. After a couple weeks I check how the weight loss is going. Am I losing weight too slowly? Drop the ACs a bit. Am I losing weight too quickly? Increase the ACs a bit. Keep checking and adjusting every couple weeks until I'm happy with the weight loss.

This approach works in the real world. I do weigh and measure some of my food but if I had to weigh everything down to the last gram to make sure I ate exactly 1947 calories per day for ideal weight loss I'd quit pretty quickly.

Re: Eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life (2006)

#110
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

16 hours of not eating is enough to put your body into ketosis. Perhaps it's related. I know there are health benefits to being in ketosis and eating a keto diet.

Do you have any citation about that? For some reason, I suppose I read it somewhere, I though that for ketosis you need 36 hours.

I did a protein diet for a while and used Keto Strips to check for ketosis. I'd be in ketosis uaually 2-3 hours after noticing I was hungry, roughly 8-12 hours after the last meal.
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