Intermittent fasting

Judas_Queen

I want to start it, I'm just not sure I fully understand it all...

I'd do 5 full days of eating 'normally' - ie still making my healthy choices yadayada. The other two days are 500 cal only.

Are there any restrictions? How many cal should you stick to on the 5 days? Will your body get used to it, and pile on fat once you go back to regular eating? (Obviously not junk food and that malarky because I know this causes you to gain!!)

I have read lots of information, however I can't find the answers to these questions!

The results I've seen are amazing - and it doesn't seem like it would be all that hard to do??..... she says now....:ohwell:

there are loads of books on the 5:2 plan. On amazon in particular I know they have a bunch of free/super cheap kindle books (theyre like £1-£3 some are free in the best sellers range) so perhaps read one of those before trying anything.

that said, i do have a friend who is quite petite, not a lot of body fat and she has been loing consistently on this 5:2 plan and she said she feels a lot better for it.

I think I myself would struggle eating 500 cals for 2 days, but never say never. I might give it a go.


re 16/8 IF - check out leangains.com

there is SO MUCH useful information on there for calculating your BMR and basically talks you through it as if you were an idiot which is great!

harlanJEN

I have researched IF, read several protocols, and I have decided to try a variation between Leangains and Renegade. I will extend my fast from sleeping to 14 hours, will train fasted in am w/ black coffee and BCAAs. Will eat 1/2 carbs during first post workout meal, the rest the last meal of day. mostly protein and fat for afternoon snack-meal. On non-training days, will eat slightly less carbs and eat them later in the day. my overall food and calorie goals will remain the same. I'm essentially skipping breakfast first thing in morning and training fasted. No other changes. Not "painful" to me at all. I am against fasting per se ..but this approach is less radical (to me) than Warrior or Eat Stop Eat.

Will stay this course for a month, then re-assess.

I'm using IF as a tweak to aid me in meeting a specific goal ...these last 15 pounds / recomposition. I'm at 28% BF and would like to be at 22%.

I will be blogging about it .... Summary of my research as to why I've decided to TWEAK with IF, and will also report on my progress in a month.

Jen

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/harlanJEN

FabulousKP

bump

BackTatJIM

Based on the way my body feels, and the results I've gotten thus far,
I highly disagree.

Just stating FACTS ;-) just like how people say the opposite and that you need to eat 6 small meals a day to boost your metabolism. meal timing plays no role in that at all. Eating enough and exercising will speed your metabolism.

BarackMeLikeAHurricane

I'm curious about this too but worried the effects on a women's body and hormones.

Women, did it mess up your cycles or hormones doing this?

I haven't noticed any problems. I don't menstruate but I never have. I take DIM and a couple testosterone boosters but nothing too crazy.

tricksee

I gave it a shot and it wasn't for me but have had great results without it. Meal timing has nothing to do with weight loss and fasting is no shortcut to success. I see to many people on here try IF because they think it has magic powers when it comes to weight loss. best of luck man.

I'd say the effects of fasting has on human growth hormone, insulin levels and IGF-1 are pretty f*cking magical!!!

Go for it guys!!

melmckay99

I haven't been doing the 5:2 thing long enough to say if it works, but I am trying it out because I think it will fit my lifestyle more. It seems these days that being social almost always means something around food (restaurants, dinner parties, events etc ...). I just find it too hard to restrict my calories every day of the week to my recommended daily intake, and then when someone asks you to go out for lunch or something you have to re-plan your whole day, or even worse, say no and start avoiding it, and then becoming a boring anti-social hermit that no one wants to hang out with anymore! I've starting looking at my weekly averages instead of my daily amounts. I figure with the 5:2 I will suffer a bit for 2 days (but not that much cause I still get about 500 cals), but then I can enjoy my other 5 days guilt free.

There have been a lot of studies and whatnot on these types of diets, and some would even say they have additional benefits etc ... I never know what to believe, but I do know this: every person and every body is different and one thing won't work for everyone when it comes to weight loss. So I am trying this out for about 3-4 weeks, to see if it really does fit my lifestyle and if it maintains my weight. Besides, what have I got to lose by trying (except possibly those last 2 lbs! )?

capnrus789

Sorry, thought this was intermittent farting. I do that all the time.

Fasting seems pretty stupid to me. I'm sure there are less extreme methods of getting results.

BarackMeLikeAHurricane

Sorry, thought this was intermittent farting. I do that all the time.

Fasting seems pretty stupid to me. I'm sure there are less extreme methods of getting results.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/695972-intermittent-farting?hl=Intermittent+farting

In all seriousness, IF is really not extreme at all. There are different variations that have smaller feeding windows like 23/1 and 20/4 but most people that do 16/8 basically just skip breakfast. I don't consider skipping breakfast to be extreme.

genkimomof2

Sorry, thought this was intermittent farting. I do that all the time.

Fasting seems pretty stupid to me. I'm sure there are less extreme methods of getting results.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/695972-intermittent-farting?hl=Intermittent+farting

In all seriousness, IF is really not extreme at all. There are different variations that have smaller feeding windows like 23/1 and 20/4 but most people that do 16/8 basically just skip breakfast. I don't consider skipping breakfast to be extreme.

Here's the problem I have with that statement. When i was a teenager, I skipped breakfast and lunch regularly, ate from 3-7 and "fasted" the rest of the time. And I gained 100 pounds in four years, two years of which I mostly ate cabbage soup (not pizzas and burgers and other fatty foods...I knew i was heading for disaster and not eating and eating soup was my attempt to stop the train wreck).

I DO NOT recommend skipping meals. If you are losing weight, it is DESPITE your fast, not because of it. Eat lettuce all day if you want to survive on fewer cals, but fasting causes your metabolism to shut down. Not Good.

BarackMeLikeAHurricane

Sorry, thought this was intermittent farting. I do that all the time.

Fasting seems pretty stupid to me. I'm sure there are less extreme methods of getting results.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/695972-intermittent-farting?hl=Intermittent+farting

In all seriousness, IF is really not extreme at all. There are different variations that have smaller feeding windows like 23/1 and 20/4 but most people that do 16/8 basically just skip breakfast. I don't consider skipping breakfast to be extreme.

Here's the problem I have with that statement. When i was a teenager, I skipped breakfast and lunch regularly, ate from 3-7 and "fasted" the rest of the time. And I gained 100 pounds in four years, two years of which I mostly ate cabbage soup (not pizzas and burgers and other fatty foods...I knew i was heading for disaster and not eating and eating soup was my attempt to stop the train wreck).

I DO NOT recommend skipping meals. If you are losing weight, it is DESPITE your fast, not because of it. Eat lettuce all day if you want to survive on fewer cals, but fasting causes your metabolism to shut down. Not Good.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc156352/

SOOZIE429

Here's the problem I have with that statement. When i was a teenager, I skipped breakfast and lunch regularly, ate from 3-7 and "fasted" the rest of the time. And I gained 100 pounds in four years, two years of which I mostly ate cabbage soup (not pizzas and burgers and other fatty foods...I knew i was heading for disaster and not eating and eating soup was my attempt to stop the train wreck).

I DO NOT recommend skipping meals. If you are losing weight, it is DESPITE your fast, not because of it. Eat lettuce all day if you want to survive on fewer cals, but fasting causes your metabolism to shut down. Not Good.

Totally false. There's no such thing as your metabolism "shutting down".

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xvdbtt_eat-fast-live-longer-hd_shortfilms#.UOOjXKz47XS

tricksee

Yep! that ' metabolism ruining ' stuff is total bullsh*t..... yawn

SOOZIE429

I gave it a shot and it wasn't for me but have had great results without it. Meal timing has nothing to do with weight loss and fasting is no shortcut to success. I see to many people on here try IF because they think it has magic powers when it comes to weight loss. best of luck man.

I'd say the effects of fasting has on human growth hormone, insulin levels and IGF-1 are pretty f*cking magical!!!

Go for it guys!!

AND this ^

That's why I do the 5:2 plan. Love it and will probably do it for the rest of my life.

RunHardBeStrong

Sorry, thought this was intermittent farting. I do that all the time.

Fasting seems pretty stupid to me. I'm sure there are less extreme methods of getting results.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/695972-intermittent-farting?hl=Intermittent+farting

In all seriousness, IF is really not extreme at all. There are different variations that have smaller feeding windows like 23/1 and 20/4 but most people that do 16/8 basically just skip breakfast. I don't consider skipping breakfast to be extreme.

Here's the problem I have with that statement. When i was a teenager, I skipped breakfast and lunch regularly, ate from 3-7 and "fasted" the rest of the time. And I gained 100 pounds in four years, two years of which I mostly ate cabbage soup (not pizzas and burgers and other fatty foods...I knew i was heading for disaster and not eating and eating soup was my attempt to stop the train wreck).

I DO NOT recommend skipping meals. If you are losing weight, it is DESPITE your fast, not because of it. Eat lettuce all day if you want to survive on fewer cals, but fasting causes your metabolism to shut down. Not Good.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc156352/

+1. IF works great for me. Helps me keep my calories in check and no binging. If I eat when I first get up then I'm starving all day long, I delay it till noon and I'm golden. People that do IF realize that the IF doesn't cause weight loss, we know it still is cals in vs. cals out. But the other health benefits are worth it. It does not cause your metabolism to shut down nor does eating 6+ meals/day speed it up. You more than likely gained 100 lbs due to yo-yo dieting, not feeding yourself enough calories and destroying your metabolism. You didn't gain it from skipping meals, unless those skipped meals caused you to eat more than you burn when you did eat because you were starving. I

CristinaL1983

I practice intermittent fasting. I usually fast 16-20 hours per day. (Once a week I fast 24 hours). I have not noticed any hormonal changes (either positive or negative). I have been doing this for 3 months and my results have been 12 lbs/month of weight loss with a 2 lb increase in LBM. (So all the weight lost has been fat (or water I guess)). I do strength training and keep a healthy protein level.

The metabolism shutting down is a myth proven time and time again to be nonsense.

I practice IF for a couple reasons: 1) the proven health benefits (increased HGH, insulin sensitivity, increased muscle repair time and many others) 2) Because it fits well into my lifestyle.

Mini_Medic

It is called intermittent fasting because it is intermittent not constant. The way IF works is by letting you eat normally most of the time and then you low-calorie some of the time. By having up days and down days you do not slow your metabolism down (as would happen with constant, not intermittent very low calorie days) nor do you lose very much lean body mass because you have an immediate refeed persay once you finish a fast. So your body doesn't slow down or come to a screeching metabolic halt.
I have done intermittent fasting and I have lost 30 pounds of fat (weight loss occurred in 4-5 months) just by including two IF days a week that consist of 400 calorie breakfasts then no food until the same time the next morning for breakfast. This can be done lunch to lunch, dinner to dinner, whatever fits your lifestyle best! So you see, it isn't even a "fast" since your still eating every single day unlike true fasts where people go days without food. Even with my style of IF, the eat stop eat method, i still eat every day, its just spaced differently and in different amounts. I follow the more extreme version of 5:2. It's not dangerous and its even recommended for ill patients to allow their own body to heal themselves naturally without the constant strain of digestion from eating six times a day.

Scarlett_S

Since I tend to want to consume a huge majority of my calories after 5 pm, IF has worked well for me in the past. When I tried the six small meal thing, I ate breakfast/snack/lunch/snack....and STILL wanted more after 5 pm. I don't think a 16 hour window of fasting is that big of a deal. If you count sleep time, getting ready for work and getting TO work time, you've really only got a few hours left to go.

MsPudding

I've been on diets for a life-time and have lost large amounts of weight many times over, only to gain it back again. I saw the Horizons documentary with Dr Michael Mosley last year which looked into all the science of intermittent fasting and ended with him going on a 5:2 plan himself and improving his blood work by massive leaps. I forgot about the documentary but he recently released a book on it called 'Fast Diet' and having read the science again, I decided to give the 5:2 a go.

In all honesty it suits me because I was always that person who skipped breakfast and got told by anyone and everyone that skipping meals would screw up your metabolism and that you needed to eat little and often....despite the fact that this is not the way the animal world operates and we've just a higher functioning animal ourselves.

I'm only 2 fast days in (doing a Tuesday and Thursday and using my 500 calories on an evening meal) but don't find the fasting part hard at all...in fact I hardly notice it.

Dr Mosley then went on to look at exercise and the latest research on that is pretty eye opening too! For a start off, 20% of people apparently get NO cardio/vascular benefit from exercise what-so-ever. The other thing that was surprising was the study into HIT - by the end of the program the scientists had used Dr Mosley to show that he could get MORE benefits in such 3 minutes of exercise a week. He was made to do 30 second bursts - balls out - on a static cycle and that was proven to be far more effective that him slogging away in a gym for an hour. If anyone's interested in seeing that, Google 'Horizon: The Truth about Exercise' and you should find it free to view on BBC iPlayer.

KANGOOJUMPS

YES!!! IT WORKS!!, join the group here, there are quite a few of us!