Some questions about intermittent fasting - help?
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Rannoch3908
Posts: 177 Member
So over the last 20 years of trying to lose weight in every possible way I have found not much works. But what I did find that has successfully worked since last Sept and helped me lose 33lbs so far without feeling deprived is intermittent fasting.
I practice a 19:5 approach - I can start snacking around 3pm each day (fruits, eggs, veggies).
Then I have a nice big dinner around 630
But some questions for those who also do IF:
I stopped drinking coffee in morning because I need creamer -- what are some other options for energy?
I assume zero calorie drinks like Mio Energy, Monster Zero, etc don't break the fast since they are zero calories?
I practice a 19:5 approach - I can start snacking around 3pm each day (fruits, eggs, veggies).
Then I have a nice big dinner around 630
But some questions for those who also do IF:
I stopped drinking coffee in morning because I need creamer -- what are some other options for energy?
I assume zero calorie drinks like Mio Energy, Monster Zero, etc don't break the fast since they are zero calories?
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Replies
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If you ask different IFers, you'll get different answers.
If you consider calories to break a fast, then it would (but you'd also want to be careful with "zero calorie" drinks, as some of them are legally zero calories but per ounce often do have a few calories).
But I would ask myself: is there relevance to a few calories in the morning? If you can answer that question, then you can determine for yourself what you feel comfortable drinking.
Do you think there is a physiological benefit to consuming zero calories before a certain time of day or is this just a way to control your overall calorie intake?8 -
Have you tried any flavoured coffee black, or just freshly ground coffee? I have to say I've grown to like black coffee a lot, although I didn't initially.
It doesn't answer your question but I also wanted to check, are you getting enough calories in a day with a 630kcal dinner and snacks of fruit, veg and eggs?1 -
Been doing IF for almost two years. I started on May 9 of 2019. So far so good; I really like the approach, both for weight loss and for maintenance, and I feel better physically when doing IF regardless of how it impacts my weight. Better, more consistent energy level.
I started out very strictly with IF, meaning NO calories outside my noon to 8 pm eating window. I think that's kind of hard to maintain long-term and that it may be better to have a system one can live with than one that seems "perfect". While I generally think calorie avoidance outside the eating window is a good habit for people who want to do IF, I do allow myself coffee creamer in the morning now. It hasn't impacted anything, other than for me to be happy that I'm getting a proper cup of coffee to get the day started, and to have 30 less calories available for my eating window.
I think it comes down to creating a version of IF that works for you and can keep working for you. The nice thing about IF is that since it's just an eating schedule, it can easily be tailored and customized to meet your needs, which will likely change over time.
I mainly do 17:7 these days - it's the right length of time between my two main meals to avoid snacking. 8 hours was too long. I do agree 19:5 is an interesting approach, although I haven't been able to really make short eating windows of that nature work for myself.
Good luck.3 -
Redordeadhead wrote: »Have you tried any flavoured coffee black, or just freshly ground coffee? I have to say I've grown to like black coffee a lot, although I didn't initially.
It doesn't answer your question but I also wanted to check, are you getting enough calories in a day with a 630kcal dinner and snacks of fruit, veg and eggs?
I think she’s saying her dinner is around 6:30pm not 630 calories. Just to stop the thread going down the ‘OMG eat MORE!’ Rabbit hole! 😉2 -
630 was the time for dinner.
My dinner is normally 800 calories.
I also eat a pear, mango, avocado, larabar, some grapes, and pinneapple chunks + two boiled eggs.
I have not tried flavored coffee...
The reasons I am doing IF include:
-- Hoping to continue burning fat stores all day instead of food I eat.
-- Normally not hungry till afternoon.
-- Saves money on breakfast and lunch
-- Once I eat during day my progress at work tasks slows down.2 -
BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »Redordeadhead wrote: »Have you tried any flavoured coffee black, or just freshly ground coffee? I have to say I've grown to like black coffee a lot, although I didn't initially.
It doesn't answer your question but I also wanted to check, are you getting enough calories in a day with a 630kcal dinner and snacks of fruit, veg and eggs?
I think she’s saying her dinner is around 6:30pm not 630 calories. Just to stop the thread going down the ‘OMG eat MORE!’ Rabbit hole! 😉
Ahhh got it, thanks!2 -
I have been doing iF nearly a year now-16/8- and always start my day with coffee with a TBS double cream. If coffee is your thing in the morning I wouldn't worry too much about the state of ketosis, double cream has zero carbs and very little fat or protein in a single TBS, I think it is unlikely to kick you out of ketosis, though I admit I never actually measured my ketosis or blood sugar level after drinking my coffee. Keto experts will tell you a 'bullet proof coffee' such as coffee with butter is fine, by that logic I replaced the butter with heavy cream, and for me it works fine. Energy drinks that have either aspartame, stevia or erythritol are ok too moderately taken. The danger i think that too much caffein might push one's adrenalin level to dangerous levels.0
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Rannoch3908 wrote: »So over the last 20 years of trying to lose weight in every possible way I have found not much works. But what I did find that has successfully worked since last Sept and helped me lose 33lbs so far without feeling deprived is intermittent fasting.
I practice a 19:5 approach - I can start snacking around 3pm each day (fruits, eggs, veggies).
Then I have a nice big dinner around 630
But some questions for those who also do IF:
I stopped drinking coffee in morning because I need creamer -- what are some other options for energy?
I assume zero calorie drinks like Mio Energy, Monster Zero, etc don't break the fast since they are zero calories?
I think it’s totally fine if you have coffee with creamer because it’s probably only 30-50 calories which shouldn’t make a difference to your total calories in the long run. I don’t do IF but I kinda do- I eat a small piece of fruit at 8am then do my workout and then eat breakfast at 11am. I try to have dinner by 8pm so I’m just condensing all my main calories in a 14-15 hour window which has helped me with adherence and hunger. I can also do this sort of structure for the rest of my life. I’m not strict about it at all and it’s the flexibility that also makes it easier to stick to.2 -
I dabble in IF. I am trying a round of keto at the moment for some quick weight loss. I notice that when I drink an energy drink, even a sugar free energy drink, like a bang, it does affect my ketones.
I read some people that do IF are ok with coffee with cream in the morning during a fasting period. Others disagree.
Right now, I do 2 oz toasted coconut almond milk and 2 grams coconut oil blended in 8 oz of coffee. It foams up nicely, like a latte.
Green tea might be a good choice. Or bone broth. Some people online say bone broth during a fast is ok while others disagree.
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Rannoch3908 wrote: »630 was the time for dinner.
My dinner is normally 800 calories.
I also eat a pear, mango, avocado, larabar, some grapes, and pinneapple chunks + two boiled eggs.
I have not tried flavored coffee...
The reasons I am doing IF include:
-- Hoping to continue burning fat stores all day instead of food I eat.
-- Normally not hungry till afternoon.
-- Saves money on breakfast and lunch
-- Once I eat during day my progress at work tasks slows down.
Time for some truth bombs here...
1. There is nothing magical about IF - it is simply another means of controlling your eating and maintaining a calorie deficit
2. IF DOES NOT help you burn more body fat than any other method of controlling calories.
If you are in a calorie deficit of X calories and your body needs Y calories to run, the difference will ALWAYS be made up from body fat stores. Period. Full stop. It does not matter what method you use to create the deficit, the DEFICIT is what causes the body to burn the body fat stores, not the method that is used to get there.
Many people find that IF increases their adherence to a deficit (myself included), but there is nothing magical about the fasting window either. If you want to add cream to your coffee, then by all means do so.16 -
Rannoch3908 wrote: »630 was the time for dinner.
My dinner is normally 800 calories.
I also eat a pear, mango, avocado, larabar, some grapes, and pinneapple chunks + two boiled eggs.
I have not tried flavored coffee...
The reasons I am doing IF include:
-- Hoping to continue burning fat stores all day instead of food I eat.
-- Normally not hungry till afternoon.
-- Saves money on breakfast and lunch
-- Once I eat during day my progress at work tasks slows down.
The last three reasons are good reasons to do IF, but just be aware that if your circumstances change you will burn fat stores when you're in a deficit whether you're eating during a small window of the day or throughout the day. It's the deficit that creates the demand for your body to use stored fat. If you're doing IF and eating more than you need, you'll store fat even if you're not eating until later in the day.3 -
From what I've read, some cream will raise insulin levels a bit, but not enough to break a fast. Alternative sugars, however, are associated with "central adiposity gain" and might increase appetite. Might want to research this more, as the main study I read was on erythritol, and maybe some are better than others.0
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Erythritol is a pentose-phosphate pathway metabolite and associated with adiposity gain
in young adults
Author(s): Katie C. Hootman, Jean-Pierre Trezzi, Lisa Kraemer, Lindsay S. Burwell,
Xiangyi Dong, Kristin A. Guertin, Christian Jaeger, Patrick J. Stover, Karsten Hiller
and Patricia A. Cassano
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America , Vol. 114, No. 21 (May 23, 2017), pp. E4233-E4240
Published by: National Academy of Sciences
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26483334
1 -
Erythritol is a pentose-phosphate pathway metabolite and associated with adiposity gain
in young adults
Author(s): Katie C. Hootman, Jean-Pierre Trezzi, Lisa Kraemer, Lindsay S. Burwell,
Xiangyi Dong, Kristin A. Guertin, Christian Jaeger, Patrick J. Stover, Karsten Hiller
and Patricia A. Cassano
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America , Vol. 114, No. 21 (May 23, 2017), pp. E4233-E4240
Published by: National Academy of Sciences
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26483334
That study does not say what you seem to be implying. First, the study that you are pointing to has nothing to do with consumption of erythritol - it has to with the body producing erythritol as a byproduct of glucose metabolism. Second, it was an observational study that did not measure the amount of erythritol that the study participants consumed - the only thing that they did was take a blood sample to measure the levels of serum erythritol (as a metabolite) at the start and end of the semester and then measure the differences in the levels.
But to your original point, yes, some people do have increased appetite as a result of consuming artificial sweeteners, but the number of people who do is very small compared to the number of people who regularly consume the artificial sweeteners.
As to breaking the fast - who cares? What is the downside of breaking the fast?6 -
I love IF because as a mother of five, it just really simplifies my day (less meals to plan).
I have to take some heavy duty meds 12 hours apart during my fasting time and I take it with gummy vitaminsn and supplements (multi, mag, and l.theanine) that add up to about 80 calories. So I guess I'm technically breaking my fast at those times, but it's like necessary, so I just do it. It hasn't seen to impact my appetite one way or another (I learn towards never having an appetite). And my weight loss continues to go down 1-2 pounds a week.
That said, have you tried tea? There are so many flavors and many of them are naturally delicious without needing cream or sugar. It might not be as much caffeine, but it'll give you a boost.0 -
The creamer wont have any impact on your IF, I've been doing IF for the best part of a year, haven't been overly strict with it but I enjoy a little milk in my tea first thing, can't do the black tea or coffee thing. There's nothing miraculous about IF for weight loss, its just a means of keeping the calories down - I used to enjoy a 300 calorie breakfast, but was finding weight creep happening after being in maintenance for years, IF sorted that with the removing of that one meal and it feels pretty easy to do.0
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"Therefore, endogenous production of erythritol from glucose" does not sound like the erythritol floating in my protein bar.
At some point of time I used to add five creams and four sugars into my coffee! Worked it down to triple triple. Eventually Double-Double. Then two creams. After starting to log switched them to milk. Within the year the coffee was black.
It has been 7 years.... The other day they gave me a coffee with one cream and one sugar and I truly literally spat out that thing that was so _off_ compared to what I was expecting.
You burn fat 24/7. Fat has the least amount of thermal effect of food, in other words it takes the least amount of effort to store fat as fat.
Regardless of what you burn as fuel at any one particular minute, your total fuel during your 1440 daily minutes comes from the combination of your food intake and your existing energy reserves.
The difference of long-term adherence versus any tiny, if it even exists, benefit of shading your food towards making high thermic effect choices (and yes I will even include protein in that) is the difference between the fact that long-term adhearance means you have succeeded vs burning a couple of more calories what means nothing if you don't also achieve long term adherence!
Our nurse who does keto for some quick weight loss... a reminder that manipulating water weight through glycogen depletion during the induction phase of keto does result in the reduction of total weight, but when you reintroduce carbs the glycogen replenishes! Neither the initial high weight loss or the subsequent disproportionate 5o calories consumed weight gain are related to actual fat level changes. But the scale yo yo does play with people's brains...3 -
I do coffee with IF until night time meals.
The small amount of cream causes no response to my blood sugar, therefore no getting hungry or such. Pretty easy to compare days, or more correctly the difference between early coffee and late coffee.
Coffee actually an appetite suppressant in right amount.
I guess too much could cause some jitters for extra calorie burn. Ya - not purpose.
The reason some "gurus" about IF state you cannot have any calories at all it it'll ruin some of the magical effects they claim happen on IF. Responses with no studied backup to the claims.
Ditto's to burning fat stores isn't happening like you think.
It all adds up the same no matter how you do it.
Eat a small meal and if insulin goes up, you stop stored fat release (you'll still burn fat you ate) - for the short time it's up due to small meal.
Then it drops and back to fat release.
Eat a big meal and with insulin up - fat release stopped for much longer time, than back to normal eventually.
The times add up, the differences in fat release and burn are inconsequential between the methods if the calorie deficit is the same.
Obviously your ability to deal with that level of calories can be effected by what you eat, when you eat, and shoot, even what you eat first in a meal.1 -
So is this not true from Harvard?
IF makes intuitive sense. The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains (think white flours and rice), are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells don’t use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
Between meals, as long as we don’t snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.1 -
Rannoch3908 wrote: »So is this not true from Harvard?
IF makes intuitive sense. The food we eat is broken down by enzymes in our gut and eventually ends up as molecules in our bloodstream. Carbohydrates, particularly sugars and refined grains (think white flours and rice), are quickly broken down into sugar, which our cells use for energy. If our cells don’t use it all, we store it in our fat cells as, well, fat. But sugar can only enter our cells with insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas. Insulin brings sugar into the fat cells and keeps it there.
Between meals, as long as we don’t snack, our insulin levels will go down and our fat cells can then release their stored sugar, to be used as energy. We lose weight if we let our insulin levels go down. The entire idea of IF is to allow the insulin levels to go down far enough and for long enough that we burn off our fat.
FYI - the source for that statement is from a blog which is published under the header of Harvard Medical School. It would be a mistake to think that's anything like Harvard's official position on fasting, the author is simply someone who is publishing on that site. You'd still want to use the same standards for evaluating the reliability of claims, including the evidence, as you would for anything published anywhere.
(In fact, even if this was Harvard's official position, you'd still want to use critical thinking to evaluate it and want to take a look at the evidence that was supporting the claim).3
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