" The Fasting Cure is no Fad " WSJ Aug-3

[rotuts]

Ive been interested in fasting for a while  there are said to be some health benefits.

 

an article in the WSJ this weekend renewed my interest :

 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fasting-cure-is-no-fad-11564676512?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=1

 

google :    tThe Fasting Cure Is No Fad  this might get around the pay-wall

 

in essence , for reviweq purposes :

 

""Fasting is one of the biggest weight-loss trends to arise in recent years. Endorsed by A-list celebrities and the subject of a spate of best-selling books, it was the eighth most-Googled diet in America in 2018.''

 

""There are different ways to go about it, but I advise patients to omit either dinner or breakfast, so that they don’t ingest any food for at least 14 hours at a stretch. That makes lunch the most important meal of the day. It also reduces the time spent each day processing food and lengthens the period devoted to cleansing and restoring the body’s cells, both of which have positive health effects.''

 

""Adopting this technique is not as difficult as it may seem. If you sleep from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., you’ve already fasted for eight hours. Now you only need another six. It’s healthy to avoid eating late in the evening to let your body burn energy from food rather than store it, so if you eat dinner by 7 p.m., that’s another four hours. For breakfast, you can limit yourself to coffee or tea (maybe with a small piece of fruit) and make lunch your first proper meal. By that time, you’re clearly beyond the 14 hours and don’t need to restrain yourself: You can eat until you are full.""

 

""There is a logic to it. When we eat, our body releases insulin. That disrupts the process of autophagy (from the Greek, meaning “self-devouring”), by which cells deconstruct old, damaged components in order to release energy and build new molecules. Autophagy helps to counteract the aging of cells and builds immunity. Fasts stimulate autophagy and allow the full molecular process to take place, as a team led by Frank Madeo at the University of Graz in Austria found in 2017.''

 

""asting also can contribute to brain health and happiness. The neurobiologist Mark Mattson, who retired this year from the National Institutes of Health, has demonstrated in experiments for two decades that nerve growth factors contribute significantly to brain health and positive mood. He also found that fasting, restricting calories and exercising spur distinct increases in the best-known nerve growth factor, BDNF.''

 

etc

 

very Interesting I think.

 

does anyone follow this method , which seems benign ?

[KennethT]

Unless I'm on vacation, I never eat breakfast - other than having some green tea.  It's not like I'm intentionally fasting though - I've never really eaten breakfast, even when I was a kid.  For me, this works - if nothing else, it limits my calorie intake and helps me not gain weight by eliminating 1 meal a day.  It's only hard for me to do once I get home from vacation, as my body has adapted to eating 3 times a day, so when I get home, I get hungry around 9AM... so, when this happens, I 'wean myself off' eating breakfast by having a snack and then eat that snack 30 minutes later each day, eventually the snack time coincides with lunch time and I'm no longer hungry in the morning.

[Anna N]

 While I was growing up the main meal of the day was the midday meal. I think it is unfortunate  that most of us have somehow drifted away from that pattern  and now eat our major meal in the evening.  Perhaps it wasn’t exactly fasting but it did make sure that our greatest caloric intake happened in the middle of the day.  

[Tri2Cook]

I very rarely eat after 6 pm at the latest and usually eat the bowl of All Bran that is my daily breakfast at work around 8 am. I rarely eat much between that bowl of cereal and whatever I have for dinner, usually too busy at lunch for more than a small snack. Sometimes not even that. The exception being my day off work when I sometimes eat a lot more throughout the day than I should. But even then the 6 pm - 8 am fast usually remains intact. It's not a chosen eating habit, just the way life steered things. But I have to say that, in the many years I've been eating that way, I haven't seen much positive effect on weight loss or brain improvement come my way. I can still gain weight if I walk too close to a celery stick and the brain seems to be getting less and less reliable as the years go by. 

[lemniscate]

I have a family member that does this, but their weight yo-yos noticeably.   They evangelize about fasting and green juicing drinks.   

Testimonial-ally I am unconvinced by this practice, but I really don't know how "religious" these practitioners are.........

 

So weight loss, ?????

 

Insulin, that may have some science behind it...........dunno

Edited August 4, 2019 by lemniscate (log)

[rotuts]

I was more interested in autophagia

 

and its possible health benefits from 14 hrs of fasting

 

weight loss is a very different matter.

 

its not complicated :  eat more calories than you use , wt goes up

 

etc.

[chromedome]

As with anything else health/nutrition related, there are lots of studies with results that are all over the map. Fasting *does* appear to have some benefits re weight maintenance/loss and general healthfulness, though there's a lot of additional research to be done. Time of day is more variable...some studies suggested that skipping breakfast might be counter-productive, but more recent work indicates that eating/not eating breakfast is negligible as a factor in and of itself.

 

Another line of research has looked at eating in the context of the body's circadian rhythms, and there's some grounds to believe that eating past early evening is broadly unhealthy and conduces to weight gain.

 

None of this is really solid enough yet to justify a substantial rearrangement of one's personal life and eating pattern, to my mind, though if the 14-15 hour fasting rotation is a fit for the way you already live/eat then by all means have at it.

 

(disclosure: I dislike late meals/heavy foods, but do snack on fruit, veg, cheese, etc. My GF, otoh, will pick listlessly all day and then eat three times her bodyweight just before bed)

[TicTac]

A lower caloric diet (which fasting typically impacts) has been documented to have life prolonging effects.

 

There was a documentary I saw recently on a village in India and a number of individuals who follow a low caloric diet and have average life spans in the 100's.

 

[Smithy]

My best friend, a physician, and her husband (an epidemiologist, so also no slouch in the health-knowledge business) have been experimenting with 16-hr fasts. It's too early to report on whether they think it makes a difference to their physical well-being. Both are fit; neither is overweight; they simply read the literature and thought it might have long-term benefits. She reports that it really isn't difficult and that she may have lost a pound or two before they went on vacation and the eating schedule was disrupted.

[rotuts]

for me , lossing a pound or two is not difficult at all.

 

I was doing well , long term , no issues , just putting a bit less on my plate

 

then there was thew HeatWave₁  , then the HeatWave₂  

 

then I discovered TJ's  Wraps , and delicious Chicken in Tubs. !

 

weather is a bit cooler here

 

its easy for me to mis breakfast 

 

so we will see.

 

Populations Studies are notoriously difficult to

 

design , and enact.

 

these days , there is so much ' monetary ' pressure 

 

on studies , no Cabal wants to loose its Free Time on the Trough.

 

it might be sugar in soda , or what not.

 

this is a bit off track , my apologies.

 

that being said , 

 

different genetic groups , might be , well , different.

[AlaMoi]

endorse by A-Lister celebs . . . . sends me running for the hills.

[fondue]

I was taught to stoke the basal metabolic rate higher by exercising and eating a snack every two hours for weight loss.

  With fasting, the body will cling to its energy stores and then make sure to have excess, thus defeating the demonstration.

  I always felt like with fasting, you might live longer, but it will feel like a grumpy eternity.

[Smithy]

13 minutes ago, fondue said:

I was taught to stoke the basal metabolic rate higher by exercising and eating a snack every two hours for weight loss.

  With fasting, the body will cling to its energy stores and then make sure to have excess, thus defeating the demonstration.

  I always felt like with fasting, you might live longer, but it will feel like a grumpy eternity.

 

That's always been my take on it too. My best friend says she thought that might happen, but it turns out that by eating dinner at 6 pm (more or less their usual time anyway) and then holding off breakfast until 10 am they're managing the fast. They both go out for exercise early, and don't seem to get hungry then. In my very limited experience along these lines, I've found that fasting for blood labs isn't as big a chore as I expect. 

 

Still, when I get hungry I get hangry...it isn't something I would inflict on my students!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I don't follow a strict schedule but I've been doing this sort of fasting for years before it was fashionable.  Typically on a work day I start in on my sandwich (at work) around 3:30 pm and finish by 5:00 pm.  Then I sit down with my mai tai and peanuts (not at work) about 11:30.  Dinner follows.

 

On non-work days I often don't eat till close to or after midnight -- though this afternoon I had a snack of peanut butter and yogurt about 4:30.  If I'm hungry I eat.  If I'm not hungry I don't eat, except for when I have to interact with normal humans.  And I eat what I want and can afford.  I don't follow any sort of diet.

 

[pastrygirl]

I'm curious about it.  A friend from high school has been doing intermittent fasting - along with exercise and diet changes - and has lost 50 lb and seen improvement in other health measures.  I'm trying to cut down on snacks before bed,  not eating from 7pm - 9am should be do-able if I try.  Is 14 hours the minimum number of fasting hours to make a difference?  My friend says she only eats 3-8pm, I don't know if I could go that long.

[gfweb]

As far as I can see,  losing weight is about total calories taken in and minimizing insulin secretion. A fast will do that but so will Atkins et al.

[Okanagancook]

And so will a low glycemic based diet.