Intermittent Fasting

Berto8Teen

Hello everyone. I would like to hear people’s thoughts and opinions on intermittent fasting. I have heard a few podcasts with Jason Fung regarding this topic and I believe he makes some very strong valid points.

neanderthin

I'm not familiar with Fung, I've heard of him but never followed him. I did however try to watch a video but immediately stopped because of his style of speech in it's cadence and inflection and it reminded me of a Canadian politician that also makes me cringe every time she opens her mouth and I'm referring to our previous finance minister Chrystia Freeland, yeah just can't listen to her. this obviously has nothing to do with content, but that's just a guess, lol.

As far as intermittent fasting is concerned and specifically TRF (time restricted feeding) I follow Dr. Satchin Panda who is a professor at The Salk Institute, in California who's a renowned researcher in the field of circadian biology who discovered blue light and how that effects our metabolism and was the first to discovered that eating within a consistent 8-12 hours, called time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting, can prevent or reverse chronic diseases and increase healthy lifespan. Maybe do some research in that space. He has a book out called the "Circadian Code" that explains the science behind it.

It was never about losing weight per se, but for some people that chronically overeat find it helps to restrict calories and lose weight, so that's been the main take away from the general media and most people will talk about it in that context and of course for some it doesn't work for weight loss, so the debate gets heated from what I've seen.

Berto8Teen

I will definitely look into Dr. Panda and his views. Dr. Fung believes that calories as a number it represents is not the entire story and in fact says it has nothing to do with the weight loss. It is the hormones that get produced from the food we take in and what they induce in the body.

I do see his point of view on the matter. If we eat processed foods insulin spikes immediately, gets stored as body fat and he sees that it is important to keep insulin levels as low as possible. When we don’t eat, insulin levels decrease. Basically like, what is the food telling our bodies to do with it. Store it for later or have it ready right at that point for energy.

MmeZeeZee

I don't know much about IF as a theory but I was raised to eat 2-3 meals a day and not snack between meals. On a practical level, this for me translates to eating at about 10 am and 7 pm and that's it. For some people that would be considered a "fast". I've never had trouble with weight like some grazers I know.

With that said there is no way that "what" or "how much" we eat doesn't matter. Science doesn't support that.

I think having a time and a place for everything is certainly helpful when trying to maintain healthy habits. I definitely would not make good choices if every minute of the day I was thinking, "is now a good time to eat a snack?"

Likewise if exercise wasn't built into my daily routing I would do a lot less of it.

Some decisions just need to be pre-made and routinized. IF helps with that.

neanderthin

Ok, I thought it was intermittent fasting you were primarily interested in.

Yeah, calories and hormones are both involved. Calories are just a measurement of energy (heat) where the food we eat has mass and is metabolized by the body to release that energy for different functions.

Insulin has many functions and I don't look at insulin as something negative. Chronically elevated blood glucose levels are another topic and also a health issue where insulin is involved and in a good way for the most part.

Calorie balance is why we lose weight but it has virtually no meaning in the context of health or the etiology of weight gain.

Berto8Teen

So is it safe to say, that intermittent fasting will help us tap into our fat stores for energy?

paperpudding

My opinion is that if IF is useful for you, do it

if it isnt, don't

From a weight loss view I dont believe it makes any difference (or such a small difference as to be totally insignificant) whether one grazes, eats OMAD or anything in between - the total calorie intake is what matters.

Me personally - I just eat when it suits me with no time restrictions.

cmriverside

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48560379#Comment_48560379

If you are eating fewer calories than your body needs to go through its daily tasks, you will be using fat (stored body fat) for energy regardless if you eat once or nine times a day.

neanderthin

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48560379#Comment_48560379

"Tapping into fat stores" is what the body does normally through the day like between meals or when we exercise but weight loss is about energy balance where your using more calories than what your body requires, period. So it would make sense that when we intermittent fast that is happening as well, but again, at the end of the day it's about caloric balance.

Like I said in an earlier post, IF is mostly for metabolic health and here are a few scientific reasons how that plays out. A few examples are hormones, insulin sensitivity, improved mitochondrial efficiency, lower monocyte activity, improved microbial diversity, reduces permeability and dysbiosis and helps repair gut lining and enhances mucosal barrier function, and this when done throughout someone life will help improve someones health span and lifespan, that's the whole point doing this and weight lose is really just a gift for some people.

Some of those hormones that help with calorie restriction for some people are ghrelin (hunger hormone) and leptin (satiety hormone), helping to improve our appetite, and improving satiety. The structured eating window is credible allowing fewer hours in the day to eat. It apparently can help some people reduce stress related or boredom driven snacking and it makes people think about what they're putting in their mouths and seems to encourage better eating but regardless of why someone finds themselves eating fewer calories, it is a very common side effect and like I said it either gets all the credit and all the vilification. Personally I've only used 5:2 for weight loss which I found effective but my schedule just could never adhere to an 18:6 for example, yeah, that's just not going to happen.

neanderthin

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48560870#Comment_48560870

Do people actually eat nine times a day, who knows, maybe some do. If someone is obese and does eat that many times a day and is eating a diet high in processed foods, which is more than likely in that scenario the constant insulin spiking taking place where there's just not enough time between those meals to put someone in a catabolic state where insulin levels decrease and hormones like glucagon and adrenaline rise, signaling the body to release and utilize stored fat is just not going to happen. Even if someone eating 9 times a day and was actually in a caloric deficit at the end of the day it wouldn't be until insulin drops significantly, which inevitably would be at night and many hours after that last meal, which will end up being, when their sleeping. imo

AnnPT77

This is n=1, no theoretical underpinnings.

I don't know how to count it because I don't think of it that way, but I probably eat 5-6 times during a typical day, sometimes more, rarely fewer than 3; and it occurs between about half an hour after getting up in the morning until very close to bedtime. Most days, I eat 200g+ of carbs.

As far as I can recall, the pattern was similar when I was obese, during weight loss and now in long-term weight maintenance. I lost weight fine, and maintain weight as expected based on calorie intake. That's personalized calorie intake, because I require several hundred more calories daily than MFP or my good brand/model fitness tracker estimate, for any given weight management goal.

When obese, my way of eating was more whole foods than highly processed or refined foods - had been for decades - and still is, but I don't make a religion of avoiding processed foods. My blood sugar as measured in periodic blood tests was never out of the normal range, even when obese. Because of that, A1C was never tested. My cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure were high when obese, normalized part way through weight loss, and are solidly and consistently in the normal range now. That "normal" is heading toward its continuous 10th year.

For the majority of the time for which I have those regular blood tests and blood pressure results, I have been athletically active, including while still obese.

Like I said, I'm not going to give a theoretical justification for any of that: It's just a case study, I guess.

That said, to answer the OP question more directly, I'm not a fan of Fung. In general, I'm skeptical of iconoclasts, partly because the majority of them across the sweep of history have turned out to be dead wrong. Therefore, it takes some hefty evidence to convince me that modern iconoclasts are right before I'll entertain believing their theories.

Fung in particular asserts some things that are completely counter to my personal experience, which makes me even more doubtful of him in particular. Further, he's making much more money doing what he's doing now than he would as a garden variety nephrologist, or whatever medical specialty he's from. Clearly, that's not definitive, not a character fault, but it does allow for multiple possible motivations for his positions and activities. I understand, from someone whose opinion I generally respect, that Fung has had some strong clinical successes, but I also recognize that the cases involved are multi-factorial and complex, so I'm not profoundly confident about the link between his theories and that clinical success. I'm no expert, though.

Certainly neither low carb eating nor fasting have been necessary for me to reach and sustain a healthy weight, have good athletic performance for my demographic, and put my health markers in a range that satisfies me . . . and as far as I can tell, my general health is also in good shape, a contention with which my physician agrees.

Since both low carb and fasting sound unpleasant to me, I don't do either. (I tried low carb. I know that one was unpleasant for me.) I like pleasure, frankly.

If low carb eating or fasting make it easier for someone to achieve their personal goals, I'm all for that . . for them. We're not all identical cookie-cutter humans. Humans are complex, and we're all individuals with different preferences, strengths, challenges, health histories, genetics, and lifestyles.