Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
1–10 of 214 posts
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#2I love-hate online nutrition articles like this. They all tell you to stop snacking, don't drink soda, limit carbs, etc and then have some little gimmick. The quirk on this one is that occasionally you skip breakfast, too. Makes sense to me. It's just nice to read an article that's not about covid or BLM.
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#3I love-hate online nutrition articles like this. They all tell you to stop snacking, don't drink soda, limit carbs, etc and then have some little gimmick. The quirk on this one is that occasionally you skip breakfast, too. Makes sense to me. It's just nice to read an article that's not about covid or BLM.
Not that it matters, but Covid made the cut here.
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#4He lost 45 lbs, that’s what probably removed his sleeps apnea. Not because of some other magical ability of intermittent fasting. One of my friends also lost a lot of weight and his apnea went away, he went off of his CPAP machine.
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#5https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/esoe-cif0516... warns you intermittent fasting diets could increase diabetes risk.
I wish I had data from before but after I attempted intermittent fasting I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It's possible I had it before, I alas haven't had blood work done for a few years prior. I changed my diet, never attempted fasting again and the 6.8 HbA1c dropped to and stayed steady at 5.3 almost immediately.
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#6He lost 45 lbs, that’s what probably removed his sleeps apnea. Not because of some other magical ability of intermittent fasting. One of my friends also lost a lot of weight and his apnea went away, he went off of his CPAP machine.
Apnea can lead to binge eating, so it may be the apenea was in part responsible for gaining the 45 lbs!
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#7He lost 45 lbs, that’s what probably removed his sleeps apnea. Not because of some other magical ability of intermittent fasting. One of my friends also lost a lot of weight and his apnea went away, he went off of his CPAP machine.
You're probably correct, in that losing a lot of weight greatly improved his health. That said, losing weight is freaking difficult, and if intermittent fasting is a path towards that, it'd be very useful.
I've done a lot of fasting. The results seem pretty good. Pulling it off is non-trivial.
At this point, we need "magical", because nothing else has really seemed to work in general for losing weight.
(And no, didn't read the article, because paywall.)
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#8https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/esoe-cif0516... warns you intermittent fasting diets could increase diabetes risk. I wish I had data from before but after I attempted intermittent fasting I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. It's possible I had it before, I alas haven't had blood work done for a few years prior. I changed my diet, never attempted fasting again and the 6.8 HbA1c dropped to and stayed…
Interesting... that sort of makes sense to me maybe because by going for longer periods of time without resupply (and carbs / sugar), seems like you'd be putting more strain on your systems to keep yourself in equilibrium (blood sugar and otherwise) longer, wearing out that capacity more quickly.
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#9I love-hate online nutrition articles like this. They all tell you to stop snacking, don't drink soda, limit carbs, etc and then have some little gimmick. The quirk on this one is that occasionally you skip breakfast, too. Makes sense to me. It's just nice to read an article that's not about covid or BLM.
> The quirk on this one is that occasionally you skip breakfast, too.
I've done intermittent fasting (IF) for the past 5 years. Apart from a black espresso every morning, I skip breakfast all the time (not just occasionally).
Skipping breakfast is a psychological trick (that doesn't work on everybody, but works well enough to make a difference). The real goal is to entice oneself to eat less by eating fewer meals in a day.
As someone who has practised IF for 5 years, I find I haven't really lost any weight (a benefit claimed by many IF practitioners). That said, I haven't gained any either -- blips on the scale around Thanksgiving and Christmastime automatically flatten within days.
To be absolutely honest, I can't tell if IF actually works, but the routine hasn't been onerous to keep up, and over the past 5 years my health has been mostly the same, no big changes. But perhaps the counterfactual is that if I didn't practice IF, I would've been worse off. (I don't care to test the counterfactual)
Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health
#10> How do you start? Agatston told me to start by skipping one meal a day, usually breakfast. (Yes, you can have black coffee in the morning, into which he adds ghee, a type of clarified butter, and coconut oil to reduce hunger pangs. It’s not your typical cup of coffee.)
This may be ok to start with, though black coffee by itself has the ability to kill hunger without these crutches.
Adding ghee or coconut oil in black coffee means it’s no longer effectively zero calories, and this is not technically fasting. Same with adding sugar to it. You can skip breakfast and have black coffee, black or herbal teas and water — all these are effectively zero calories.
One point this article doesn’t address in the 16:8 scheme is the frequency of eating within the eight hour eating window. Is it ok to have three meals and snacks within that window? Should it be two meals with a good gap between them? I’m sure these variations also determine if it works for weight loss or other benefits.
Intermittent fasting with 16:8 makes it easier to consume lower calories. Weight loss typically follows if activity levels are maintained the same or increased (to compensate for a lower basal metabolic rate).