We are pleased to announce that as of March 4, 2025, an updated Rich Text Editor has been introduced in the MyFitnessPal Community. To learn more about the changes, please click here. We look forward to sharing this new feature with you!
bbc fasting documentary: what do you all think?
Ange_
Posts: 324 Member
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD3ug4EaKb0That link above is for a documentary made for he BBC called Eat, Fast and Live Longer.
It basically going into the science behind intermittent fasting (IF).
I'd always thought it all was a lot of crap, and that IF was just a way for people to justify their eating disorders or low calorie diets.
But this documentary was rather convincing i must say . If you don't have time to watch it all the fasting version that they ended up saying was the easiest to follow but still had measurable effects was 5:2 which is 2 days a week eating 500 cals (for women) 600 (cals for men) and the rest of the week eating whatever you want. In the study they found that it didn't matter what you at on the 5 days of feeding, that even on a high fat diet people lost weight, lowered their cholesterol, lowered their risk of diabeties and reduced this particular growth hormone they they link to cancer and heart disease risk. And also that people in the study despite being allowed to eat whatever they wanted on those 5 days tended to only eat 110% of what they normally did previously, not really that over the top.
That is all fine and dandy, but then also in the documentary it says eating a high protein diet (which they said was the typical western diet, so probably not even what we are all doing here on EMTWL) increased this growth hormone in particular so in terms of longevity your risk of cancer and heart disease was greatly increased.
So this scares me. So while lots of protein and lots of food might be great for weight loss, building muscles and feeling healthier and all that right now... this documentary suggests in the long term the risk of getting something like cancer is much higher, because our bodies are in overdrive.
i'm not sure what to think now.
There was also an article in Prevention Magazine that seems to be referencing the same study on protein and growth hormone:
http://www.prevention.com/node/22535
Would love some other people to give this documentary a watch and see what you all think.
Thanks
0
Replies
-
The long term life benefits of having a slower metabolism have been studied for years and indeed shows benefits.
But no benefits that outweigh (ha) the negatives of being overweight.
And it's a bear to lose weight on a slower metabolism. Takes longer and is discouraging.
But once you get to goal weight, it's a choice many already follow in the world.
The IF even past weight loss ends up getting you to that same point, different method though.
As that study shows, and the alternate day fasting study which is TDEE one day, 1/4 TDEE the next day, you can actually lose weight decently with them too.
And if it fits in with your lifestyle and you plan on continuing it, can be beneficial. But the study participants went into the study without it seems a messed up metabolism in the first place.
The first big hurdle, they measured their TDEE, no guess work or estimates.
Many report finding the idea of eating only between 4-8 pm everyday great, so bigger part of the is fasting.
Just proves it takes more than a 24 time period by our watches to cause problems. Consistent bad choices causes problems. One day flows into the next and is balanced out.0 -
Haven't seen the documentary but I gave the 2006 study you referenced a quick read. They compared low cal/low protein sedentary, regular/high cal, "high protein" (16%) sedentary, and regular/high cal/high protein endurance runners. It was a snap shot study based on available populations and the general finding was that lower protein OR increased energy expenditure had similar effexts on circulating IGF levels. They didn't have a low cal/low protein/endurance runner group (go figure!) to see if there were additive benefits. So both increased exercise or decreased protein had similar protective effects.
But it's one study, a small one at that, with not great design. It's food for thought, but I'll wait for more data.0 -
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/84/6/1456.full.pdf+html
Here's the link to the 2006 study full text if you're into that.0 -
Yes one thing that really wasn't covered also was how this kind of diet effected performance. Would eating like this mean losing lots of strength? They did lower their fat % though which suggests a higher proportion of muscle.
But i just can't imagine doing any exercise on a day that i've only eaten 500 cals. i know there are all those LeanGains people though that do a version of this kind of thing. Their stuff seems way too extreme for me and could affect quality of life in my opinion.0 -
Yes one thing that really wasn't covered also was how this kind of diet effected performance. Would eating like this mean losing lots of strength? They did lower their fat % though which suggests a higher proportion of muscle.
But i just can't imagine doing any exercise on a day that i've only eaten 500 cals. i know there are all those LeanGains people though that do a version of this kind of thing. Their stuff seems way too extreme for me and could affect quality of life in my opinion.
Weight lifting after the 500 cal eaten isn't bad, the recovery to that burns most of your calories, and mostly fat anyway.
Active Recovery HR zone cardio, which is about 50% fat burn anyway, could be done after feeding too, but a lot more risky to running out of carbs.
Better if you can time it to be the rest day, and your workout previous day was NOT at night.
Since it has shown in the studies to maintain LBM, just as good or better performance than other diet methods that cause a LBM loss.
So ya, gotta have a schedule that would work with it.0
This discussion has been closed.