Intermittent Fasting
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Cavemen also didn't have 8 hour jobs, exercised for fitness, or do any other real chores keeping a cave. Also, cavemen didn't have food at their disposal all the time like we do now. I will bet dollars to donuts that if they did, they would be in the same dilema as many overweight people.jennywren93 wrote: »Dr. Fung is a great resource. If you think back to caveman days, they ate when food was around, and didn't when there wasn't any. There is nothing wrong with fasting, it helps bring down your blood sugar (using glycogen stores) and breaking down fat for energy. I don't do OMAD so that I reduce my calorie intake (CICO), but to gain lower blood sugar, more energy and better mental health. I track, but don't care about calories, I am focusing on reaching my fat/protein goals. I am carnivore for the most part. And when I'm not carnivore, I'm still single ingredient foods - like adding tomatoes and cheese to have a "carnivore pizza" etc. Feel free to reach out about any questions for fasting, I've been doing it a while now
Fung does a lot of cherry picked science to back up his way of having people diet. There IS no magic to intermentent fasting. You can eat 6 meals a day and if they added up to the total calories you need to lose weight...........................you'll lose weight.
The issue with the majority of people who are overweight is that they don't pay attention to how many calories they eat in a day. They just think 3 meals a day is standard regardless of what it consists off whether fast food, large amounts of carbs and fats, etc.
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💯. I’ve gained weight on OMAD. I’ve lost weight on OMAD. Been practicing OMAD for around 10 years. There is no magic (sadly). If so, I would be Galadriel by now 😌.3 -
Right off, I don't know much about it. I saw a video about Dr. Jason Fung that sparked my interest. I had previously seen a video about it from another doctor. I thought, "Yeah, right!" I may have seen another. I'm not sure.
Then there was a video by one doctor showing clips of speeches by Dr. Jason Fung. Now that caught my attention. I'm 70 years old and have been taught my whole life to eat three meals per day. However, Dr. Jason Fung and others say to skip meals and even go down to one meal per day. The idea is to let your body dispose of the food you just ate so it can pull stored fat (energy) from your cells. That's about as technical as I can get. Dr. Fung used the analogy of over filling your gas tank when you eat three meals a day. The gas will spill out.
He further said don't eat if you are not hungry and intermittent fasting is a way of ensuring that. Further, don't eat by the clock; It's morning, breakfast, noon, lunch, 5 o'clock, dinner. Last thought, all the doctors I watched said no eating after 6 PM.
Yesterday was my first day of intentional intermittent fasting. I had a light breakfast (300 calories), skipped lunch, and then a nice healthy dinner. It wasn't a bad day. I'm not sure I would do this every day. Dr. Fung told a patient to do it three times per week and had great results.
Last thing, Dr. Fung said he could make anyone fat, just give them insulin. That was a shocker.
What *can* you do forever? Why not find out what that is so it never feels like you’re dieting?
I understand wanting to try things until you find what works, but it takes consistency and time to establish new habits, not just a trial run. The truth is, if you find something you can do forever with the accurate amount of calories you’ll be what you hoped you would be. You just have to decide to do that consistently without anymore switches, trials, and quick fixes. That’s the secret imo. I wish you all the best.2 -
If you think back to caveman days, they ate when food was around, and didn't when there wasn't any
And they had a lifespan of what? 35 years or so?
Not sure why how cavemen lived is set up as a barometer of what to do today.9 -
paperpudding wrote: »If you think back to caveman days, they ate when food was around, and didn't when there wasn't any
And they had a lifespan of what? 35 years or so?
Not sure why how cavemen lived is set up as a barometer of what to do today.
That number would be for "average" lifespan which there are many confounders, I know it may sound complicated but most of the world didn't fair much better in the 1800's. Fossil fuels and the technologies that has brought about has extended human lifespan since then and without it I suspect we wouldn't be doing much better now either.
https://statista.com/statistics/1302736/global-life-expectancy-by-region-country-historical/0 -
Point is really that cavemen didnt fare so well
Point is that this idea that cavemen led some idyllic existence or even just idyllic food eating style, to be emulated now is rather silly.
sure, neither have people in parts of the world since then fared that well either - but nobody says lets eat like they did in Victorian slums so that is sort of moot point.6 -
Didn't fare so well? Compared to what? Most paleoanthropologists agree that once infant mortality rates were removed which I believe was calculated after the age of 5, but I'd have to check, life span was calculated to between 70 and 80 years, the same rate as that found in contemporary industrialized societies.
Humans of the upper Paleolithic lived a rich and healthy life and colonized most of the world because they were skilled, well connected socially, to themselves and to other groups where these populations grew and social networks expanded and eventually created the foundation of modern civilization, so not so destitute. This society of modern humans began around 3 million years ago, so we had time to understand and thrive in our surrounding, and suspect they learned a thing or two along the way.
Early humans ate what was available in their immediate environment and they were very skilled at hunting and foraging like every other animal on the planet and ate a species specific diet that was derived through what is generally described as optimal foraging where finding food with the best bang for the buck was part of our life, we were aware of the value of every plant and animal that fell into our orbit. There's also a case to be made that after civilization that human health on average declined as we moved away from finding and gathering food to storing it and living with our animals, which obviously brought on it's own hardships. Crop failures were death sentences, basically putting all their eggs in one basket for a civilization of people that relied on that for their survival, and yeah, the gruel of Victorian England was probably not that great for our health either.
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I would expect that across most areas of the world, paleolithic humans relied a lot on insects for a significant source of protein. Insects can be raised with a lot less ecological impact than many animals currently raised for food.
I'd say if you're really opting to eat what paleolithic humans ate, you'd eat a lot more grasshoppers, crickets, and larvae.
There's a well written book by an author named Daniella Martin called "Edible" that's worth reading if the idea is interesting to you. Your library probably has a copy.
I don't strive to eat like a paleolithic human. I still think eating insects is a really good idea. I also know that even though my brain knows this, I struggle to get past our cultural "fear" of using them for food. I don't know what it will take to get past it. Maybe I need to read that book again.4 -
Entomophagy, eating insects and larvae is pretty well understood and for sure it was a staple in upper and lower Paleolithic humans, no doubt about it, but it never stopped being consumed and I'll leave this as it shows humans continued to eat insects and in certain Countries is quite natural to this day. When in Thailand I ate a few and have to admit, they weren't bad but I think it was easier to consume then there simply because everyone around me was buying them and you didn't get the feeling they were creepy crawlers but just a snack, and so I tried, basically these were cultural norms.
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/14/8/690
Entomophagy has a long and rich history in human culture. In fact, insects have been a part of human diets for thousands of years, with evidence of their consumption found in prehistoric archaeological sites. Throughout history, entomophagy has been a common practice in many cultures, particularly in parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. In some societies, insects were considered a delicacy and were reserved for special occasions, while, in others, they were a staple food source. The roots of entomophagy vary depending on culture and region, but common reasons include the nutritional benefits of insects, their abundance and accessibility, and the cultural and religious significance of certain species. While the practice of entomophagy has declined in some parts of the world due to the influence of Western culture and industrialization, it continues to be important in many societies. Despite its long history and potential benefits, entomophagy has faced cultural and social stigmas in many parts of the world. However, recent efforts have been made to promote entomophagy as a sustainable and nutritious food source and to challenge cultural biases against insect consumption.
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I love how we went from intermittent fasting to eating insects
(We've probably lost the OP along the way...)5 -
mmmmm. Lobster.1
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I love how we went from intermittent fasting to eating insects
(We've probably lost the OP along the way...)
I'm glad you find it interesting and that it doesn't "bug" you too much....
@neanderthin - I surprise myself that I'm still squeamish about it. I hope that will change and that others will join me. I'm waiting to see them in the store. There was a local business here making cricket flour - easy to use, and you can kind of ignore where it's from. Kind of the way people buy meat in pre-wrapped containers and don't actually have to be intimately involved in the killing and butchering of animals in order to have a ribeye.2 -
I love how we went from intermittent fasting to eating insects
(We've probably lost the OP along the way...)
Haha, that happens a lot.
I wonder if early humans engaged in fasting. Paleolithic human engaged in what is called persistent hunting, a method that involved tracking an animal until it collapsed from exhaustion which required endurance, tracking skills and knowledge of animal behavior, all the time in a state of ketosis or mostly in that state, which was a normal metabolic state of Paleolithic human existence. This very well might have influenced and helped the evolution of human physiology and psychology. One adaption that seems to have been crucial was the ability to store adipose tissue where our ancestral primate cousin couldn't, being chimpanzees and bonobos who we share 99% of our DNA with, which allowed hominins to move from the comfort of the trees and jungle to venture out into the savanna and beyond. Yeah, I've also gone down the anthropologic rabbit hole.
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I'm not sure that the way paleolithic peoples ate is terribly relevant today. I remember hearing an in-depth science-oriented discussion of the "Paleo diet" (probably something like Science Friday though I don't recall with certainty). The evolutionary biology perspective was that 10,000 years was more than plenty enough time to have adapted to a more agrarian-style diet.
It's certainly off topic for this thread.3 -
I love how we went from intermittent fasting to eating insects
(We've probably lost the OP along the way...)
I'm glad you find it interesting and that it doesn't "bug" you too much....
@neanderthin - I surprise myself that I'm still squeamish about it. I hope that will change and that others will join me. I'm waiting to see them in the store. There was a local business here making cricket flour - easy to use, and you can kind of ignore where it's from. Kind of the way people buy meat in pre-wrapped containers and don't actually have to be intimately involved in the killing and butchering of animals in order to have a ribeye.
One of my other interests is mucking in the stock market and I particularly like immerging markets. I have an investment in a local company that produces insect protein in the millions of lbs a year, which has turned a decent return in 2 years, and I like AI companies, anyway, yeah insect protein is definitely an immerging market that I suspect has lots of room for growth and expansion, well into the future. Not so keen using it for a big part of my protein intake, I'll leave that with the WEF and when they're consuming it on a regular basis I may change my stance.0 -
I'm not sure that the way paleolithic peoples ate is terribly relevant today. I remember hearing an in-depth science-oriented discussion of the "Paleo diet" (probably something like Science Friday though I don't recall with certainty). The evolutionary biology perspective was that 10,000 years was more than plenty enough time to have adapted to a more agrarian-style diet.
It's certainly off topic for this thread.
There's lots of studies that show the impact of agrarian diets on pretty much every indigenous people from quite a few different countries where they switched from their ancestral diets to agrarian ones, it's certainly interesting.0 -
neanderthin wrote: »I'm not sure that the way paleolithic peoples ate is terribly relevant today. I remember hearing an in-depth science-oriented discussion of the "Paleo diet" (probably something like Science Friday though I don't recall with certainty). The evolutionary biology perspective was that 10,000 years was more than plenty enough time to have adapted to a more agrarian-style diet.
It's certainly off topic for this thread.
There's lots of studies that show the impact of agrarian diets on pretty much every indigenous people from quite a few different countries where they switched from their ancestral diets to agrarian ones, it's certainly interesting.
A quick shift, as we see in relatively recent times when isolated indigenous people suddenly switch diets into foods from the more developed world isn't really an analogue to (say) European heritage people who've had an opportunity to evolve more gradually with a shift in society-wide practices.
This is not an argument in favor of the SAD as we know it now. Certain features of SAD have a longer history, but a lot of it is things that have emerged over perhaps the past century.1 -
I understand what your saying but we were talking in reference to Paleolithic times.
And to your point, I read a few months ago that the grandchildren and children of the mountain shepherd people of Ikaria in Sardinia, who are the famous blue zone indigenous people that come back to their ancestral homes for a visit where apparently the adults said they preferred french fries to other potato preparations, but the interesting part is that potatoes were not known to Ikarians and were first imported around 50 years ago.0 -
So should I be ordering the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate crickets? Or are cricket brownies the way to go?2
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So should I be ordering the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate crickets? Or are cricket brownies the way to go?
Try them all!
I'll come eat some with you so we can compare notes.
I want to get the fried crickets like street food snacks in Asia. I want to feel less squeamish about eating grasshoppers. Will I get there? Who knows. First step is finding someone who wants to feed them to me.1 -
Need a bug thread...
Lol3 -
neanderthin wrote: »Didn't fare so well? Compared to what? Most paleoanthropologists agree that once infant mortality rates were removed which I believe was calculated after the age of 5, but I'd have to check, life span was calculated to between 70 and 80 years, the same rate as that found in contemporary industrialized societies.
Caveman compared to modern people.
But I think this tangent has run its course so not commenting further on that.
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Cavemen also only got about 20-30 years old and most children died before the age of 4. Maybe their diet was healthy kind of compared to nowadays, but their health was not good, and starvation was common. On that note, when talking about the classical Greek and Roman period, live expectancy also was very low, maybe even a wee bit lower on average. Imagine a society of young people with the occasional outliers.1
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Cavemen also only got about 20-30 years old and most children died before the age of 4. Maybe their diet was healthy kind of compared to nowadays, but their health was not good, and starvation was common. On that note, when talking about the classical Greek and Roman period, live expectancy also was very low, maybe even a wee bit lower on average. Imagine a society of young people with the occasional outliers.
I have a few flint and stone arrowheads in my collection from the Canadian pacific northwest but yeah, some lived in caves and others populated lands like North America which started about 40,000 years ago until the land bridge disappeared as the ice sheet that covered most of the northern hemisphere receded about 12,000 years ago and numbers seem to be thought in and around 3-5 million people. This was happening in every country despite as you say with bad health and starving most of the time, but I suspect intermittent fasting was alive and well back then. In North America the vast majority were hunting cultures so it was probably the saturated fat and cholesterol that killed everyone off early in life. Not sure if after colonization their life span increased though.
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So should I be ordering the dark chocolate or the milk chocolate crickets? Or are cricket brownies the way to go?
Try them all!
I'll come eat some with you so we can compare notes.
I want to get the fried crickets like street food snacks in Asia. I want to feel less squeamish about eating grasshoppers. Will I get there? Who knows. First step is finding someone who wants to feed them to me.
The ones I ate were deep fried and then put in a spice mixture and they were pretty tasty I will admit and I did come back for more a few days later. When in Rome as they say.
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I love how we went from intermittent fasting to eating insects
(We've probably lost the OP along the way...)
I'm glad you find it interesting and that it doesn't "bug" you too much....
@neanderthin - I surprise myself that I'm still squeamish about it. I hope that will change and that others will join me. I'm waiting to see them in the store. There was a local business here making cricket flour - easy to use, and you can kind of ignore where it's from. Kind of the way people buy meat in pre-wrapped containers and don't actually have to be intimately involved in the killing and butchering of animals in order to have a ribeye.
It would be hard for me to get over the "yuck" factor with whole insect. But I'd use powdered cricket. Probably not for flour. For my purposes, with few exceptions, it's hard to beat wheat flour.0 -
Many great posts both pro and con. I've fasted several times since I started this thread. I found 18 hours is too much for me. I did 15 hours just yesterday. What shocked me was my glucose levels went up. I don't quite understand it. I guess it's because your body is dumpling stuff into your system. How's that for being technical.
It appears there is no one way to lose weight. I've been down and up over the last 10 years. What's working for me is diabetic meal planning. I don't diet anymore. I lost 10 pounds in the last 22 days. I'm not starving myself. I eat healthier than I ever have. The real trick is to stay away from carbs and sugar. In the past it was burger biggie all the time. I'm down about 90 pounds now. However 70+ was from being sick for over a year. That was caused by diabetes. I didn't know. I should have but I didn't. The only smart thing I did was make a doctor's appointment after I fainted. The nurse said I had the highest A1C ever in that office, 14.7. Not only did they give me strong advice on what to eat and not eat they had the Wellness Center contact me. They meant business. So now I workout with a trainer 3 times a week and see a dietician as well. Some of those workouts are brutal for a 70 year old man. I try to play the "Age Card" as much as possible. Doesn't help.
In regards to older folks don't absorb protein as well as they should. I believe you. I've seen it first hand. My meals consist of Salmon, steak, chicken, legumes, and lean gound beef. The rest is veggies and fruits. Fruits that are not high in sugar and veggies that aren't full of starch.
I really enjoyed the comments, very well thought out.
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Many great posts both pro and con. I've fasted several times since I started this thread. I found 18 hours is too much for me. I did 15 hours just yesterday. What shocked me was my glucose levels went up. I don't quite understand it. I guess it's because your body is dumpling stuff into your system. How's that for being technical.
It appears there is no one way to lose weight. I've been down and up over the last 10 years. What's working for me is diabetic meal planning. I don't diet anymore. I lost 10 pounds in the last 22 days. I'm not starving myself. I eat healthier than I ever have. The real trick is to stay away from carbs and sugar. In the past it was burger biggie all the time. I'm down about 90 pounds now. However 70+ was from being sick for over a year. That was caused by diabetes. I didn't know. I should have but I didn't. The only smart thing I did was make a doctor's appointment after I fainted. The nurse said I had the highest A1C ever in that office, 14.7. Not only did they give me strong advice on what to eat and not eat they had the Wellness Center contact me. They meant business. So now I workout with a trainer 3 times a week and see a dietician as well. Some of those workouts are brutal for a 70 year old man. I try to play the "Age Card" as much as possible. Doesn't help.
In regards to older folks don't absorb protein as well as they should. I believe you. I've seen it first hand. My meals consist of Salmon, steak, chicken, legumes, and lean gound beef. The rest is veggies and fruits. Fruits that are not high in sugar and veggies that aren't full of starch.
I really enjoyed the comments, very well thought out.
Every single persons fasting blood sugar spikes first thing in the morning for example, and that's called the "dawn phenomena" The mechanisms are hormonal. When we sleep our blood sugar drops, mostly because we're not eating and it generally goes below base line, which is normal. Throughout the night certain hormones rise to help stabilized blood sugar which are cortisol, glucagon, adrenaline and human growth hormone and just before we wake up blood sugar rises to help us wake up, it happens to everyone. Mostly it goes undetected and most people aren't measuring their blood glucose levels either. That's one reason. Another is, if a person is IR, which you are the blood spike from just eating will be higher simply because your resistant to insulin and protein will effect insulin levels. If your using a glucose monitor you'll see all these effects. The main focus should be, so your not complicating it is to maintain those lower carb calories and higher fat and if your A1C is tracking lower, your weight is coming down then morning or inter day spiking is noise for the most part and your Doctor should know this, well, we hope they do. Also intermittent fasting's cumulative effect is increased insulin sensitivity.
The whole point of the ketogenic diet as it relates to IR and diabetes is to create a situation where your more insulin sensitive and blood sugar is actually a secondary effect so don't get too caught up with blood sugar levels, they will always fluctuate but it's how insulin sensitive the body is and it's ability to remove that sugar, which is always reflected in someones A1C, it's a little hard to understand I think, it took me a while to figure that out. Increasing Insulin sensitivity is one of the features and effects that comes with the ketogenic diet better than any other diet.
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Ty for the explanation @neanderthin .
It all can seem so incomprehensible, even after/with explanation, because? Of multi-contributing factors?
What i find helpful are actions, and from Neanderthin's description... would say...
To assist in bringing down bs#'s by increasing insulin sensitivity...
Exercise helps bring down, some things more so, like combo cardio/strength training 20 mins a day has perhaps the most enduring afterburn impact, 24+ hrs i have read.
A brisk 10 min walk right after eating can help minimize the hike spike from eating.
Re IF and dawn phenomena - crazy right? Liver dumps bs even without eating in the morning hours....
Re low-carb/super low carb, tried that when my bs tripled triggered from a med. Had no impact until med gradually left body over a year and had to use diabetic meds instead of food & exercise efforts...
Even now, to this day.. wish for a cure.... until then, it is totally worth doing what we can to improve, maintain and slow down progression of diabetes.
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EpochAhead wrote: »Ty for the explanation @neanderthin .
It all can seem so incomprehensible, even after/with explanation, because? Of multi-contributing factors?
What i find helpful are actions, and from Neanderthin's description... would say...
To assist in bringing down bs#'s by increasing insulin sensitivity...
Exercise helps bring down, some things more so, like combo cardio/strength training 20 mins a day has perhaps the most enduring afterburn impact, 24+ hrs i have read.
A brisk 10 min walk right after eating can help minimize the hike spike from eating.
Re IF and dawn phenomena - crazy right? Liver dumps bs even without eating in the morning hours....
Re low-carb/super low carb, tried that when my bs tripled triggered from a med. Had no impact until med gradually left body over a year and had to use diabetic meds instead of food & exercise efforts...
Even now, to this day.. wish for a cure.... until then, it is totally worth doing what we can to improve, maintain and slow down progression of diabetes.
Yep. It's more than just the morning though, it can be anytime where the body requires glucose. We have to remember first that the glucose that stored in muscle (glycogen) is only available for that muscle and isn't used in any other cells in the body whatsoever. So, if we get up and decide not to eat and miss lunch and have something to eat say at 3:00 or when we're sleeping the body will generate glucose for other organs and the brain that require some glucose all the time for example, through a process called "glycogenolysis" also known as "gluconeogenesis" and believe it or not to supplement that limited glucose supply the liver also produces another substrate called ketones and that's called "ketogenesis". Most people think ketones only get generated in a ketogenic diet but the body actually produces them in small amounts daily for everyone for this expressed usage. 0 -
jennywren93 wrote: »Dr. Fung is a great resource. If you think back to caveman days, they ate when food was around, and didn't when there wasn't any. There is nothing wrong with fasting, it helps bring down your blood sugar (using glycogen stores) and breaking down fat for energy. I don't do OMAD so that I reduce my calorie intake (CICO), but to gain lower blood sugar, more energy and better mental health. I track, but don't care about calories, I am focusing on reaching my fat/protein goals. I am carnivore for the most part. And when I'm not carnivore, I'm still single ingredient foods - like adding tomatoes and cheese to have a "carnivore pizza" etc. Feel free to reach out about any questions for fasting, I've been doing it a while now
In a hunter-gather society, if there was no food around, they moved on to somewhere that had a food supply, dug deeper (literally, for grubs and tubers), or starved. It wasn't some natural, idyllic, weight-control mechanism.5
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