Alternate Day Fasting

[pcmfisher]

The "eat less" advisors are a bit like me saying "give up smoking, it's dead easy". I don't smoke, I don't see what all the fuss is about, these people are just lazy and can't discipline themselves not to smoke. Yeah easy for me to say. I had a relation who gave up heroin easily but can't quit the fags.

I can easily get back down to 78 kilos as I was at 45 - dead simple, go jogging every day - a 10K run three times a week and a half marathon every fortnight.

Loved it in those days, couldn't be arsed nowadays.

One problem when you get older is that you need less food in general, but at 55 you still have the appetite of a 45 year old. Something that most of the younger members who have no trouble with their weight at the moment are going to find out for themselves.

No one said losing weight or giving up smoking is easy.
The fact of the matter is these crazy arse diets are usually not good for you and/or they don't work in the long term.
It stands to reason, just cutting down a little the amount you eat, especially the hi cal stuff, and you will lose weight and stand a much better chance of keeping it off. Its not rocket science.

You say people are lazy or not disciplined enough to give up smoking. If thats not true, what is it?

Yep, when you get older you don't need as much food, therefore as Dr Rudi says.....Eat Less!

 

[Liam_snorkel]

Mosely was on RN's The Science Show this weekend, he said something about fasting for 2 days per week worked well for him and was quite manageable. It's worth a listen.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/eat-fast-and-live-longer/4649612

 

[Dave70]

Mosely was on RN's The Science Show this weekend, he said something about fasting for 2 days per week worked well for him and was quite manageable. It's worth a listen.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/eat-fast-and-live-longer/4649612

Whilst I respect the good doctors 'gonzo' spirit of self experimentation, I cant help but be a little skeptical when he promotes his diet book as life extending.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

well yeah. it worked in rats, but long term clinical trials in humans would obviously take a while.. and the evidence from the great depression is only anecdotal.

 

[Dave70]

well yeah. it worked in rats, but long term clinical trials in humans would obviously take a while.. and the evidence from the great depression is only anecdotal.

The evidence from Hongerwinter studies was pretty solid. At least as far as suggesting starving yourself when pregnant will lead to host of shitty things that will plague the child into its adulthood.
Could have been worse. Could have promised eternal life.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

yeah that was total malnourishment - a bit different to calorie reduction.

on a side note I remember reading/hearing about how the grandchildren of men who were in leaner times between the age of 6-12 (pre and early pubescent) have a reduced risk of heart disease and the inverse for the grandchildren who were well fed at that age. interesting stuff.

 

[komodo]

I can't see this alternate day fasting working.
We used to do similar with cattle. We called it sling shotting though. Run them in a dry paddock for a few weeks then give them a week in a good paddock and pump them full of market scrap vegetables right before going to market. Would put the weight on quick smart.

Like wise I'm under a personal trainer after hitting triple figures with my weight last year. His first comment when looking at my diet was "you don't eat regularly enough"
I've dropped 10kgs so far so something must be working...

 

[Bribie G]

Surprised this thread is still going, haven't looked in here for a few days.

Lost the best part of a kilo already but will report back in a couple of weeks as that could just be a fluid thing.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

this thread reminds me of the Butterfield Diet Plan. It works for me.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWgwJfbeCeU

 

[Dave70]

The secret's in the glass of chilled water and ice pudding.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/weight-loss/question447.htm

 

[Midnight Brew]

It's been about a couple of weeks, how are you travelling Bribie?

 

[Snow]

It's not a diet, and I don't think you can call it a gimmick - not like the Israeli army diet or Atkins or whatever.
I think there's some worthwhile science behind it.

I eat well and I exercise but each year when I get my annual checkup the Cholesterol and Triglycerides sneak up a little more.
It seems to be something that happens as you get older.
I'm interested in seeing if this approach has an effect on those markers.

The doc has threatened me with cholesterol reducing drugs if it goes much higher.

Whatever you do, don't go on anti-cholesterol drugs! The side effects of statins aren't worth it. Do your research before your doctor dictates what happens to your body. You need cholesterol, as the reason our bodies produce it and retain dietary cholesterol is to treat inflammation. There is lots of evidence that this inflammation is caused by carbs, sugar and omega 3/6 imbalance.

Have a look at these articles, for starters:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/there-only-one-type-cholesterol-heres-why

[SIZE=8pt]http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/08/10/making-sense-of-your-cholesterol-numbers.aspx[/SIZE]

[SIZE=8pt]http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/20/the-truth-about-statin-drugs-revealed.aspx[/SIZE]

I have changed my eating habits in tune with Nora Gedgaudas' approach (see www.primalbody-primalmind.com and get the book), but I am not religious about it - I have lapses, but try to minimise them . Basically I have cut out most carbs (no potato, rice, bread, cereal, pasta etc) and minimise sugar and fruit intake. I eat moderate amounts of red and white meat, fat, lots of vegies, fish and krill oil. I try for 3 AFDs a week, and have changed the WAY I excercise - eg, I used to go for a 25 min jog 2-3 times a week, but now I do 10-15 mins high intensity interval training (30 secs on, 90secs off x 6-8). Since I started this approach in January this year, I have dropped from 98kg to 85kg (thats right - 13kgs in 18 weeks). I feel great, don't get cravings, sleep better, sweat less, feel more alert and have had to get a new wardrobe. I'm still losing about a kilo a fortnight, so I don't know where it will end..... and i still drink plenty of beer, wine and whiskey! :chug:
Cheers - Snow.

 

[Dave70]

Whatever you do, don't go on anti-cholesterol drugs! The side effects of statins aren't worth it. Do your research before your doctor dictates what happens to your body. You need cholesterol, as the reason our bodies produce it and retain dietary cholesterol is to treat inflammation. There is lots of evidence that this inflammation is caused by carbs, sugar and omega 3/6 imbalance.

Have a look at these articles, for starters:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/there-only-one-type-cholesterol-heres-why

[SIZE=8pt]http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/08/10/making-sense-of-your-cholesterol-numbers.aspx[/SIZE]

[SIZE=8pt]http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/20/the-truth-about-statin-drugs-revealed.aspx[/SIZE]

I have changed my eating habits in tune with Nora Gedgaudas' approach (see www.primalbody-primalmind.com and get the book), but I am not religious about it - I have lapses, but try to minimise them . Basically I have cut out most carbs (no potato, rice, bread, cereal, pasta etc) and minimise sugar and fruit intake. I eat moderate amounts of red and white meat, fat, lots of vegies, fish and krill oil. I try for 3 AFDs a week, and have changed the WAY I excercise - eg, I used to go for a 25 min jog 2-3 times a week, but now I do 10-15 mins high intensity interval training (30 secs on, 90secs off x 6-8). Since I started this approach in January this year, I have dropped from 98kg to 85kg (thats right - 13kgs in 18 weeks). I feel great, don't get cravings, sleep better, sweat less, feel more alert and have had to get a new wardrobe. I'm still losing about a kilo a fortnight, so I don't know where it will end..... and i still drink plenty of beer, wine and whiskey! :chug:
Cheers - Snow.

All the cholesterol your body need s comes via the liver, not the diet. This is the same flawed logic many paleo fans seem to buy into.

My LDL was on the high side last year and I brought it back into range simply by eating less red meat - contrary to what many advocates would have you believe.


What get's my back up about this whole paleo movement, raw foodisim - or any exclusionary eating plan is not only how they hijack common sense, but make promises they cant deliver.
Overwhelmingly, hereditary factors are the main driver in longevity, regardless of your diet or bad habit's. If you had half a dozen blood relatives die in their forties from heart disease, chances are you wont be blowing out the candles on your 100th birthday cake either no matter how clean you live. The book hucksters know this, yet continually use it as a selling point.
I guarantee, for every diet plan that advocates the high fat / low carb approach, you'll find some dogmatic vegan rebutting it at every turn with his own equally compelling assertions, men in lab coats and wacky ancestral studies.


You want to know what our ancestors really ate? **** all. They were lucky not to starve most of the time and probably died from rotten teeth at 25.



Not having a shot at you Snow, just using your post as a springboard to rant from.

 

[Airgead]

The archaeologists tell us that our ancestors probably ate relatively little meat and lots of things like grain, nuts, fruits and tubers. Particularly tubers. lots and lots of tubers. When, as Dave70 said, they had anything to eat at all. We like to think of ourselves as manly hunters bringing down bison and mammoths at will. But in reality - tubers and fruits with occasional meat when someone got lucky.

I find it amusing that so many paleo diet fans cut out carbs and eat heaps of meat.

Unless you are an eskimo that isn't paleolithic at all. And if you are an eskimo then most of the meat you are eating is raw whale and seal fat. Apparently its the eating it raw that makes it not so bad for you. That and living at minus 20. And pushing a sled across miles of snow and ice every day.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Snow]

All the cholesterol your body need s comes via the liver, not the diet. This is the same flawed logic many paleo fans seem to buy into.

My LDL was on the high side last year and I brought it back into range simply by eating less red meat - contrary to what many advocates would have you believe.


What get's my back up about this whole paleo movement, raw foodisim - or any exclusionary eating plan is not only how they hijack common sense, but make promises they cant deliver.
Overwhelmingly, hereditary factors are the main driver in longevity, regardless of your diet or bad habit's. If you had half a dozen blood relatives die in their forties from heart disease, chances are you wont be blowing out the candles on your 100th birthday cake either no matter how clean you live. The book hucksters know this, yet continually use it as a selling point.
I guarantee, for every diet plan that advocates the high fat / low carb approach, you'll find some dogmatic vegan rebutting it at every turn with his own equally compelling assertions, men in lab coats and wacky ancestral studies.


You want to know what our ancestors really ate? **** all. They were lucky not to starve most of the time and probably died from rotten teeth at 25.



Not having a shot at you Snow, just using your post as a springboard to rant from.

Fair enough. The info i have been reading is that our liver doesn't produce nearly enough cholesterol to do the job, and that we definitely need dietary cholesterol as well. However, my main intended point I was trying to get across is that Cholesterol is good for you - it carries antioxidants to your cells to repair inflammation. eliminating cholesterol with man-made drugs is treating the symptom and not the cause.

I don't want to get into un-referenced arguments about what our ancestors really ate (cause I don't have any references with me and can't be arsed chasing them up), but my understanding from general reading on the subject is that some of our ancestors ate lots, some ate not much but high in nutrients, some had fairly homogenous diets and some had highly omnivorous diets. It is thought that this is now manifested in different races of people who have different reactions to different types of food at a cellular level. I certainly don't advocate that one diet (my current one) would be suitable or beneficial to everyone - just that it seems to be working well for me.

 

[Midnight Brew]

The problem with the western diet is there are too many processed foods available and lack of raw foods. Fats taste awesome and they are meant to because in the way back years of early humans we evolved to love carbs/fats to store in our body to provide energy during winter when food was harder to come by. It pretty much explains why fasting is a normal function. I am not a nutritonist or dietition but they would not recommend fasting to anyone as we're civilised and have access to sustainable food sources. What I take away from it all is eating food in its raw state (fruits, vegatables, grains, nuts, seeds, herbs, salads) is that you can eat what ever amount you desire of these foods as their benefits far outway their negatives. Except if you were diabetic. You wouldnt go crazy on the fruit but you could still eat it as the fiber in the fruit will slow the release of natural sugars stored.

It is in the end all down to choice/preference with lifestyle in general eg eating fast food, drinking, exercising, sticking needles into your arm,pissing on public toilet seats and taking vitamin supplements.

 

[Snow]

The archaeologists tell us that our ancestors probably ate relatively little meat and lots of things like grain, nuts, fruits and tubers. Particularly tubers. lots and lots of tubers. When, as Dave70 said, they had anything to eat at all. We like to think of ourselves as manly hunters bringing down bison and mammoths at will. But in reality - tubers and fruits with occasional meat when someone got lucky.

I find it amusing that so many paleo diet fans cut out carbs and eat heaps of meat.

Unless you are an eskimo that isn't paleolithic at all. And if you are an eskimo then most of the meat you are eating is raw whale and seal fat. Apparently its the eating it raw that makes it not so bad for you. That and living at minus 20. And pushing a sled across miles of snow and ice every day.

Cheers
Dave

You're probably right, but of course back then those tubers were nothing like the selectively bred, scientifically modified, massive, high starch tubers (potatoes, etc) that we buy in the supermarkets now. a million years ago, those tubers would most likely have been mostly insoluble fibre with little nutrient value.

I found the paleo diet stuff pretty amusing myself until I started reading about lots of diets, nutrition, biological processes, etc. Then I realised that a fair bit (not all) of what they were saying started making sense. The sort of food choices I make doesn't cut out all carbs (there are carbs in veges, dairy, nuts, etc), but they do minimise carbs that are easily turned to sugar that my body uses as fuel before it uses protein and fat as fuel. This is why the "diet" is working for me and why I am no longer pre-diabetic from blood sugar/insulin spikes due to carb-based sugar (I never ate sweets or drank soft drink).

Your comments about eskimoes seem strange. Are you saying Inuit people don't cook their whale and seal food? I've seen a few docos showing them cooking and smoking all their whale, seal and bear meat and fat. Studies have shown that they are extremely healthy with that kind of diet (look up the Weston A Price studies of indigenous communities). it's the ones in communities that have been introduced to "westernised" foods that are showing all the "western" diseases.

Cheers - Snow.

 

[bum]

with occasional meat when someone got lucky.

We chased large, skittish animals (horses, etc) to exhaustion.

Even then it was about expending more energy than you consume.

 

[Bribie G]

It's been about a couple of weeks, how are you travelling Bribie?

The ADF (which also meant an AFD ) was getting a bit brutal so I've gone onto the 5:2 regime. Lost about a kilo and a half in 2 weeks which is good if I keep it up. If I can lose 3k a month that means I'll be down to my goal weight in 3 months. However according to the show (I've bought the book) the main benefit is that if you are borderline diabetic, high bad cholesterol etc it improves them significantly.

The fast days aren't so bad, we do shopping and housework and other absorbing things - first couple I just lazed around for the day and it was pretty rugged.

On the feed days I'm Paleo -ish. I don't eat grains - just drink them of course - and no processed sugar or seed oils. Of course we can't really tell what our distant ancestors ate, but several cave dwelling tribes had a nice habit of living at one end of the cave complex and crapping at the other, and large deposits of coprolite have been analyzed and indicate that they ate up to 80% meat.

I go more for eggs, fish and chicken with my main mammal being pork and lamb. All "free range" and antibiotic/hormone free if I can get them. However I do eat a lot of greens, limited fruit as modern stuff is very sugary, and tubers such as sweet potato.

The Oiling of America is an interesting read - the real question to ask is, if eating saturated fat causes heart attacks and strokes then rates of coronary heart disease should have declined sharply after the Second World War. Instead, when seed oils and margarines were adopted, rates soared.

And no it wasn't to do with "until then few people lived to heart attack age". According to my family tree, don't know about yours, but everyone lived into their 90s on butter, dripping, lard and fatty meats. That is if they avoided dying in childhood, going down the pits, fighting in 2 wars, catching diphteria or TB or any of those diseases they didn't have vaccines for, and drinking themselves to death like one of my great granddads. When I was a little kid I had more 90 year old great and great great grandmas and dads than you could point a stick at, and they all dressed in black coats and smelled like mothballs. :unsure:

"Life expectancy in the year xxxx was xx years" is quite misleading.

Edit: The Oiling of Americahttp://www.westonaprice.org/know-your-fats/the-oiling-of-america

 

[felten]

Many of our ancestors were probably cannibals as well, how come no one is trying that diet?