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Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

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Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently did a 3-day fast. It wasn't too bad. I fact I thought I would be ravenously hungry at the end of the 72 hours but I just ate a normal meal and it was fine. I can't say I felt any better after the fast. I had lost a few pounds but nothing else noticable. One problem that people might have with fasting and then wanting to binge is that the starchy, sugary diet that the USDA and FDA have been promoting as "he…

If stupid food scientists would make stupid kale taste as good as yummy chocolate cake I would eat more of it. Seriously though, despite the obvious health benefits, sometimes I can't get the good stuff to be nearly as satisfying as the bad stuff. I wish sugar wasn't so damn addictive. Food is the issue I'm most embarrassed about. I'm not obese, but I'm not svelte either. Self-control is easy right up until the secon…

They can't make kale taste as good as chocolate cake without lacing it with drugs for a very good reason: A large part of our response to foods like chocolate cake has nothing to do with the actual taste, but with how the affect your brain chemistry.

A typical extreme example of this is if you drink a glass of coke when you're full vs. when you have low blood sugar. The subjective taste experience is drastically different.

It'd be amazing if we could make foods that were better for us trigger the same responses, but that will almost certainly either require making us take drugs, or lace those foods with drugs.

Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#242

Appropriate article since I just completed a fast of 19hrs. No water and no food. Muslims do this every year. Last year, on average our fast was just over 18hrs. We fast each day from sunrise to sunset for 30days. Of course, we as a group of people have been doing it for over a thousand years. Cant say we started it due to science, but cant say we noticed the lack of aging either. ;)

Also worth mentioning the positive impact on work productivity: no coffee breaks, no food distraction, no occasional visits to restroom: just solid focus to my work. The only thing I need to take care about is not opening HN periodically.

You can still have black coffee during most fasting regimes. (Though you might want to stick to a beverage more suited to empty stomachs.)

Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If stupid food scientists would make stupid kale taste as good as yummy chocolate cake I would eat more of it. Seriously though, despite the obvious health benefits, sometimes I can't get the good stuff to be nearly as satisfying as the bad stuff. I wish sugar wasn't so damn addictive. Food is the issue I'm most embarrassed about. I'm not obese, but I'm not svelte either. Self-control is easy right up until the secon…

Recognize it for the drug it is, and keep it out of the house. A steak and big salad slathered in olive oil can be even more satifying. Give your self some fun and walk for an ice cream on the weekend, or pasta, whatever. But think of it as the same as going out for a beer, because thats what it is. As you can see, swilling down alcohol three times a day is not a recipe for good health. Theres a great video where a d…

Yes, sign me and my wife up for that one, unfortunatelly...

Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#244
post #194

The authors disclosed they have equity in a company called L-Nutra, which intends to sell diet food packs: http://www.l-nutra.com/index.php/products/prolon Nothing for sale yet, but hopefully the price will be competitive with do-it-yourselfers. I am cautiously optimistic about this direction.

An easy way to fast frequently is to just skip breakfast everyday. Then you automatically get a 16+ hour fast and keep your eating to a short window during the day. This helps kick in autophagy [1], a process whereby our cells repair themselves; a garbage collector for our body if you will. This is most likely the process the scientists are observing as slowed down aging. It's not really a foreign topic as there's 39…

So, I tend to skip dinner as it lets me sleep through the parts where I'm hungry :p

My real question is why would breakfast be optimal? Dinner for me would typically be a bigger meal and at a time when I'm most inactive (and will be for another 10-12 hours)

Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#245
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see this study replicated, only instead of "proprietary (expensive?) product", it was just 40% of your daily caloric intake.... in soylent. Why? Soylent's just another proprietary product.

Soylent open-sourced their recipe afaik, that was part of the whole appeal for many, they could replicate the entire formula and tweak as desired. There's other food-replacements as well, like ensure, which I cited. Edit: Soylent has an entire forum of various varients of their recipe: https://diy.soylent.com/recipes

You can also automatically generate recipes using auto-soylent: https://github.com/nick/auto-soylent The nutrient profile can be taken from the patent.

Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#247
I was annoyed the article didn't actually say what the diet was. Anyway from the Telegraph report of the same story:

Day one of the diet comprises:

10 per cent protein, 56 per cent fat and 34 per cent carbohydrate, making 1,090 calories

Days two to five:

Nine per cent protein, 44 per cent fat and 47 per cent carbohydrate making 725 calories

Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#248
post #204
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has anyone here actually ever TRIED fasting a full 24h day? I've been IF throughout the past 8 months. It's by far the best way of losing weight I've found (10kg in 8 months). I'm planning on doing more fasting this month to lose another 2-3kg which will get me to my goal weight. The longest stretch for me has been 5 days. It's hard for me to describe how I go longish periods(some go for a month+), but essentially…

By losing weight you mean losing fat or mostly muscles? I know that if are already in good shape then you mostly lose muscles not fat first.

From experience bulking and cutting during 10+ years of power lifting, it's fairly hard to lose muscle during short term low calorie diets. It will appear as if you lose muscle as you will flush fluids out of your muscles very early on, and unless you're very lean to start with it's not obvious that this isn't muscle loss.

You will also often appear to be weaker - e.g. I don't hit my 1 rep max when I'm not on a protein heavy diet with a calorie surplus. If I ate badly the day before exercise, I simply do not manage to push myself to my limits. There's no way I've then lost muscle to cause that (if I had, I wouldn't be back to normal next workout with a stricter diet). When I'm cutting that effect is much stronger.

Couple fluid loss and feeling weaker, and it's natural that people assume they've lost lots of muscle, but it takes quite a while or quite extreme deficits before you actually lose enough to notice.

(Even then, training back up again is much easier than the first time)

Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#249

I currently intermittent fast by skipping breakfast + lunch, partially because I'm lazy, partially because it allows me to easily eat 'all my calories' in the end of the day. I really like this as it provides a 'buffer' for unexpected food, such as random cake, or random lunches with colleagues etc. Has anyone here actually ever TRIED fasting a full 24h day? I have. I HATED it. Well, the fasting itself wasn't that ba…

I have always heard that skipping breakfast is bad while eating a small dinner is good[1]. Isn't this diet doing the exact opposite? [1]: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/128/4/337.abstract?sid=6...

http://www.leangains.com/2010/10/top-ten-fasting-myths-debun...

See number 7.

Re: Diet that mimics fasting appears to slow aging

#250
post #215
post #213

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Oh cool, I love your hypothesis. Based on science, easy to implement. I definetly have to test this.

There's lots of studies behind intermittent fasting and there definitely seems to be an effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting

In the case cancer, I heard the reason it's good is that the cancer cells die off faster than the normal ones do, when they're not being fed.
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