Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease [pdf]

The hype around intermittent fasting is nothing more than the novice effect & the diminishing returns kick in pretty fast.

Just learn to like black coffee. It's an acquired taste but once you acquire it, it's easy to do.

> will surely* see benefits

* may.

A) We don’t actually know this, because clinical trials extensive enough to prove it have never been done. B) There’s a lot of variation in humans. Betting that all people will respond the same to any intervention is a bad bet. Case in point: some people survive gunshot wounds to the head.

Related reading:

* “System-wide Benefits of Intermeal Fasting by Autophagy“: https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/pdf/S1550-4131(17)30608...

> We established an isocaloric twice-a-day (ITAD) feeding model wherein ITAD-fed mice consume the same food amount as ad libitum controls but at two short windows early and late in the diurnal cycle. We hypothesized that ITAD feeding will provide two intervals of intermeal fasting per circadian period and induce autophagy. We show that ITAD feeding modifies circadian autophagy and glucose/lipid metabolism that correlate with feeding-driven changes in circulating insulin. ITAD feeding decreases adiposity and, unlike CR, enhances muscle mass. ITAD feeding drives energy expenditure, lowers lipid levels, suppresses gluconeogenesis, and prevents age/obesity-associated metabolic defects. Using liver-, adipose-, myogenic-, and proopiomelanocortin neuron-specific autophagy-null mice, we mapped the contribution of tissue-specific autophagy to system-wide benefits of ITAD feeding. Our studies suggest that consuming two meals a day without CR could prevent the metabolic syndrome.

* “Short-term fasting induces profound neuronal autophagy“: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/

> We first validate the approach by showing that it allows the identification and characterization of autophagosomes in the livers of food-restricted mice. We use the method to identify constitutive autophagosomes in cortical neurons and Purkinje cells, and we show that short-term fasting leads to a dramatic upregulation in neuronal autophagy.

> …

> Our data lead us to speculate that sporadic fasting might represent a simple, safe and inexpensive means to promote this potentially therapeutic neuronal response.

I was vegetarian for about a decade and during that time my cholesterol was too low such that my doctor recommended "nuts, beer, wine, and hard liquor" as a way to boost my LDL. I saved the voicemail he left and it was a running joke that I had a prescription for the bar. The moment I started eating meat again my levels went back up.

My doctor has always said I was overweight but in the last couple years I added an extra 30lbs due lack of routine exercise. This summer I started doing intermittent fasting from 9pm-noon and quickly lost the extra 30lbs of weight but I seemed to have plateaued and haven't lost anymore. I'm 6'5" and my ideal weight is 190lbs, I have always hovered around 200.