Fasting

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  • alicefigs
    alicefigs Posts: 1 Member
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    I've been reading a lot about fasting and the many different ways to fast. I believe it (IF) works and is something that can be sustained for a long time especially the 16 hour fasts which is very reasonable. It's often been said to listen to your body, and most of the time it's not hunger that urges us to eat. It's either bec it's breakfast time, break time, dining with friends, etc.
    I've told 2 friends (guys) about it and they did it and it worked for them. I'm just having more trouble losing the weight, being a woman and at 39 yrs old which I think plays a factor. -__-
  • StealthHealth
    StealthHealth Posts: 2,417 Member
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    To chime in again I thought it might be useful to say...
    • On and off I've used fasting protocols for about 5 years now, so it is easily sustainable.
    • I started using the 5:2 diet and later progressed to IF (8:16). I've kind of settled into a 6:18 type thing.
    • When cutting or maintaining I fast about 29 days or the month, only eating a "breakfast" type meal as a special event or family type thing (when bulking I need to eat more frequently to get the calories in)
    • I've played around with longer fasts and they were OK but not for me on a regular basis.
    • I've read a lot about fasting and although I have my own personal opinion on the benefits, my reading of the studies (I restricted my searches to Human iso-calorific studies) tells me that there is no benefit of fasting over that of eating the same number of calories over a longer period*
    • I often work out fasted and do not see a dip in my lifting performance or running times when fasted (unless I embark on a long steady state run of greater than about an hour)
    • I was very surprised when I started fasting about how easy it was to forgo food for long periods and for this reason I recommend that anyone attempting fasting tracks their weekly calories to ensure that the are neither under eating or overeating.
    • I enjoy the simplicity of fasting and it does allow me to hit my calories even when I have a family event or special meal planned.


    * My last data search on all this was about a year ago - there may be new stuff I've not seem and there is also the fact that my searching skills are not up to the job. As such, I would be happy to be proven wrong on this point. There are several opinion pieces which talk about the autophagy argument and the increase in autophagy when fasted, but there doesn't seem to be any studies (that I'm aware of) that show that the increased autophagy levels seen in fasted humans results in a health benefit (although it may well turn out to be the case).
  • amusedmonkey
    amusedmonkey Posts: 10,330 Member
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    @StealthHealth that's exactly my issue with being overly optimistic about any potential health benefit strictly from intermittent fasting. From what I've seen, I haven't found any studies that were able to reliably demonstrate benefits beyond the resulting caloric restriction and weight loss, and very few of these are on humans or of strong statistical relevance. Some interesting blips here and there about meal timing for circadian rhythm and breast cancer (specifically the length of night time fasting and dinner timing), but it's still a new topic and needs further research before related conclusions can be drawn.

    @TimothyFish It has been shown that in many cases various forms of fasting are just as effective for weight loss as chronic caloric restriction, so it boils down to personal choice and writing them off as useless is not demonstrably accurate.

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