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Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#171

Post by slothtrop »

Early intermittent fasting is the most powerful variation, on two fronts. First, early dinner improve weight loss rate while conversely very late dinner worsen it, along with glucose tolerance. Second, consuming high protein breakfast has strong associations with weight loss and better lipid profile. You can get the best of both worlds.

There's lots of research to this effect - https://www.nature.com/articles/ijo2012229, https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou..., https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/127/1/75/4728738 , https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/oby.20460, https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/104/4/1160/4557123, https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/104/4/982/4557122, https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/11/2624/htm?sfns=mo, https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2016182, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027153171...

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#172

Post by slothtrop »

Jommi wrote: post #33
elric wrote: post #29

For anyone interested in weight loss and heart health, please remember that both are impaired by not getting enough sleep. Studies have shown that you're way more likely to over eat if you get less than 7 hours of sleep a night. Source: "Why we sleep" by Matthew Walker.

This book? https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

His critique is flawed.

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#173

Post by pbhjpbhj »

johnchristopher wrote: post #129
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP. I've an issue with sleep related binge-eating: fullness induces sleepiness, so when I'm awake at night and want to be asleep I'll eat - basically an extra meal. Alcohol too. For me the root issue is other mental health problems. Sleep problems can readily lead to weight gain. I can see how apnoea that exhibits as waking up a lot might lead someone attempting to fall into heavier sleep by overeating. IF, paire…

But sleep apnea doesn't wake you up enough to get out of bed and start eating like pulling all-nighters or insomnia do and going to sleep with a full belly won't prevent flesh/muscle collapsing that causes sleep apnea although I can see how the body burning energy to digest + endorphin from a good meal might help falling asleep faster. > IF, paired with lots of exercise, was working for me before the current crisis.…

I've heard people referring to complex sleep issues as apnoea - I was just suggesting there can be complex causative links. Hopefully the OP can respond an answer the actual question.

Yes, I meant lockdown.

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#174

Post by pbhjpbhj »

xpe wrote: post #98
bobcostas55 wrote: post #95

It "works" exactly like calorie restriction, there's no magic to IF. From a literature review[0]: >Twelve studies used calorie-restricted diets as a comparator to IF and found equivalent weight loss in both groups.11,15-17,19,22,27,28,33,41-43 Study duration was 8 weeks to 1 year, with a combined total of 1206 participants (527 undergoing IF, 572 using calorie restriction, and 107 control participants) and demonstrat…

IF offered better glycemic control for Type II Diabetes (see the last sentence): > Synthesis All 27 IF trials found weight loss of 0.8% to 13.0% of baseline weight with no serious adverse events. Twelve studies comparing IF to calorie restriction found equivalent results. The 5 studies that included patients with type 2 diabetes documented improved glycemic control.

Is "glycaemic control" a general benefit, or is that only good for people with diabetes (and other conditions?)?

I've wondered if IF makes a difference in that way. If there's a pain au chocolat for me, and I eat it at breakfast is that different to me eating all the same food in the day but eating that pain au choc after lunch?

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#175

Post by pbhjpbhj »

meesterdude wrote: post #146
brainzap wrote: post #92

I would prefer we would just call it "eat less"

that's entirely wrong though. Because it's not about cutting the calories of your meals in half - it's about having longer gaps between your caloric intake times, so your body goes into ketosis.

Is that what all IF it's about?

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#176

Post by mam2 »

downerending wrote: post #7
codernyc16 wrote: post #4

He 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'…

CICO magically answers your need for losing weight.

The magical part is sticking to it though.

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#177

Post by downerending »

tom_mellior wrote: post #51
downerending wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

> work in general That's far from sure at this point. Yes, HN is a hotbed of intermittent fasting propaganda [1], which may make it seem like there is general agreement. But you'll find other communities pushing other diets as the one true diet, so... more research is needed. [1] Note, for example, that the submitter subtly but crucially changed the title, which in the original says "works for many " (emphasis mine).

I'm not particularly claiming that IF works. My main point is that nothing we know of really works generally and reliably.

I've personally lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off continually for more than a decade. But I don't really know how I did that, nor do I have much confidence that whatever I did would work for others.

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#178

Post by tedmiston »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #131
AnonC wrote: post #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 bla…

> 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. The idea that you need a special kind of coffee to do intermittent fasting is IMHO a very bad idea: it sets an unnecessary barrier to entry, and it misses the main point: it's about what you don't eat, not what you add to your intake.

I found that particular quote confusing since adding ghee and coconut oil (e.g., bulletproof) make it very not black coffee and also a food one cannot eat during IF without breaking the fast / foregoing the longevity benefits of fasting [1]. It was weird that the author included that reference here.

[1]: https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#179

Post by Diesel555 »

slothtrop wrote: post #169
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem is, I still would have 8 hours in which I must exercise restraint. Packing away 4k calories in a single meal is trivially easy. There is no way to avoid the need for restraint and moderation.

This must depend highly on where your calories come from, because for most people it really isn't that easy. Even bodybuilders will switch to liquid diets to try to pack that much away. If you're consuming lean protein, fibrous vegetables, nuts and pulses, 4000 calories in a sitting is far more difficult. Think of how many apples you can eat in a sitting, and consider that a single apple is 52 calories.

Caloric density is not discussed enough

Re: Intermittent fasting works – not only for weight loss but also for heart health

#180

Post by tedmiston »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #48
AnonC wrote: post #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 bla…

> This may be ok to start with, though black coffee by itself has the ability to kill hunger without these crutches. I always wonderered how much ok it really was. Dreaking coffee will activate some digistive processes, and make the liver work. So you are not exactly fasting. I never could find a study comparing with, and without coffee.

What I've read in this area all comes back to "whether or not black coffee breaks the fast depends on the goal of your fasting", i.e., weight loss vs something more specific.

[Likewise for other things people don't always think about like vitamin / supplements.]

There is more info in [1][2] but tl;dr:

- Fasting for metabolic health/weight loss: likely does not break a fast

- Fasting for gut rest: does break a fast

- Fasting for longevity: likely does not break a fast

[1]: https://www.zerofasting.com/does-coffee-break-your-fast/

[2]: https://www.dietdoctor.com/can-use-cream-coffee-fasting

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