A Week In

[Troy Archie]

I’ve been tinkering around with IF’ing for a week now with interesting results good and bad and whole set of questions arising from my experiences. First off my plan this week looked like this:

Friday, April 27 fasted for about 23h and ended it with a WOD
Sat & Sun, April 28/29 mini-fasts 13h and finished both off with a WOD and a meal.
Mon 30/04 & Wed 02/04 fasted 20h, ended fast with small meal pre-WOD meal (2p/veggies/2f) 1h before and then larger meal PWO
Tues 01/04 & Thurs 03/04 fasted 17h, ended fast with large meal. Made up for days before feed.
Fri 04/04 fasted 20h, ended with small meal (2p/veggies/2f). WOD 2 hours later.

The Good
-Alert and focused, which is great for school, really getting into “the zone”
-Body composition
-convenience
-Metcom/timed WOD performance increase
-energy levels up
-feel light and fast

The Bad
-almost feel too focused and “zoned out” at times (this might be from having my face stuck in a book 10h a day…)
-drop in weight
- felt really thin and stretched after first fast (23h). even felt I looked thinner and almost anorexic or wiry
-don’t feel overly strong (but I wouldn’t say I feel week)
-Cold (This might be from the fact they have the AC cracked at school. What’s interesting is that after my workout and eat I’m freaking boiling)
-The odd and euphoric feeling you get I feel at times masks or confuse other things your body might be telling you.
By Friday I didn’t feel too good but I don’t know if it was because of IF’ing or stress or lack of sleep…a combination of all…when I went to the gym I just didn’t have it in me. More sleep probably is in order but I do wonder if fasting for about 143h this last week contributed to stress levels.

Question To self and the world
-What are the effects of longer fasts (16-22h) on a continuous basis, is it too much?
-Are full benefits and the secret, if you will to IF’ing only made from working out during the fast?
-1RM & ME strength benefits? Only done 1 ME day so far 7x3 Push Press and was 5lbs down from last time but that said it could have been just that day and I’m seriously week on the OH stuff
-As school gets harder, the pace quickens and the workload gets larger and in turn stress levels go up, so I fall prey to the “Acute Stressors” and come crashing down?
-Does a 15h fast ending with a WOD equal a 22h fast ending in a feed?
-Would it be better to limit these longer fasts (17-22h) that I’m doing to 2-4 days per week?
-Is there any negatives about putting pretty much all my eating for the day into 2-3 meals per day?

More tinkering needed. Science rules.

[Steve Liberati]

Troy,
Alot of good questions you pose but my advice is to fully committ to getting through the initial IF dip/transition and just hang tough for the following 2 weeks or so. Most likely, you will be able to answer most if not all of your own questions. While science clearly rules, the best approach is tinkering around by throwing your personal experience in the black box and observing what comes out the other side.

[kevin mckay]

I agree with Steve, after the first couple of weeks it will be easy just stick it out and you will feel awesome.

[Robb Wolf]

Troy-
A few thoughts. You may have jumped into the deep end here! I usually recommend that folks start on the shorter end of the fast and work their way up. Not 100% necessary but it does seem a little easier.

Training and meal timing. Not sure on any of that stuff. Better to train fasted vs fed. Really not sure and I think it is a bit goal specific. After a week or two fo adaptation I'd run with whatever allows you to get the best intensity in the WO. Mix it up. No solid rules here and I think most of the benefit is just from getting periods of fasting. there is some research that indicates an improves endocrine response with fasting but it was not specific as to whether or not the critters were fed...and that's a tough things as growth hormone response in mice is not tied to food intake, where as it is in humans...sorry, thinking out loud there.


Acute stressors. My thought on this is that intermittent fasting should help things, not hurt. We know for a FACT that a good Paleo/Zone/CLC delivers amazing benefits. Good performance both physically and mentally. Good body comp etc. From that baseline how much, fasting will help and how much will hurt? In my mind we are trying to emulate the eating and lifestyle patterns of our ancestors, hopefully to our benefit. That's great but our ancestors were not typically sleep deprived, and facing the chronic stress of going to school and things like that. Acute stress was the norm and once you accumulate all of these chronic stressors...intermittent fasting may be a bit too much or you may need a very modest dose. Kelly Starrett of CF San Francisco did IF on tues and thurs. He waited to eat his first meals those days till like 1-2pm. He noticed improvements in body comp and performance. It was not that hard to do. he is wrapping up grad school, runs a CF facility and is a dad and husband. Good enough IMO! So the take home message is do what works for you. Start with that base of good paleozone nutrition and tinker form there. Start conservatively, especially since you are in school.

Body temp will decrease on IF. That can be good if you live in Chico in the summer and it's 45*C. Not so nice when its cold.

[Troy Archie]

Thanks for the responses all, yes I can see now that I did go a bit off the end board but aren’t most scientific experiments done to an extreme to obtain quicker results and data that can be correlated into a theory? A little too nerdy there huh? Anyway…
As a side note to my ME question, I actually wasn’t down 5lbs and instead just about hit a triple on the Push-Press for my previous 1RM…interesting...

Week 2 Premise:
-Mon/Wed/Fri – Fast days (±22H) end with WOD and big PWM
-Tues/Thru – Feed days, no fast and make up for day before
-Sat – Mini fast (12-16h), AM WOD on empty stomach, end with WOD and PWM, feed day and cheat meal day (my only meal per week that’s non-paleo)
-Sun – Mini fast (12-16h), AM WOD on empty stomach, end with WOD and PWM

All meals sans PWM are P/F and veggies (greens and leaves), which I don’t even count in my carb total. PWM is veggies, tomatoes and yams/squash.
Intake 16P/7C/81F or there abouts…

[Allen Yeh]

Body temp will decrease on IF. That can be good if you live in Chico in the summer and it's 45*C. Not so nice when its cold.

Huh, interesting, never associated my recent temp of 97.2 with IF. I've always been lower than the average temp but never this low.

[Robb Wolf]

Much of the oxidative damage that leads to degenerative disease IMO is mitochondrial decoupling....essentially waste heat generated by decoupling the electron transport chain. Intermittent fasting allows for periods of higher and lower basal metabolic rates (increased post feeding, decreased during a fast).

I just read a paper by Seyfried that indicates individuals who are normal weight but who consume excess calories are at markedly increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases. The folks who enjoy their ability to "eat anything and not gain any weight" are not getting a free ride it seems.

[Brad Hirakawa]

Robb,

Link to paper? Thank you!!

Brad

[-Ross Hunt]

I'd be interested in seeing that, too.

The question, it seems to me, is whether and to what extent caloric intake irrespective of food quality tends to cause disease. Very few people have high food intake without eating a lot of junk; even fewer have high intake while sticking to a Paleo diet.

BTW, has anybody every Oly lifted or Powerlifted on this kind of a diet? I really like how IF sounds, but I remain skeptical about doing high training volume on it. I've had great single training sessions in a relatively fasted state, but it's hard to train volume at high intensity without eating.

I don't have any dissatisfaction with my body comp, and I couldn't stand to lose any bodyweight, but I wouldn't mind lowering my body temperature. It's getting HUMID in Texas.

[Stuart Mather]

Much of the oxidative damage that leads to degenerative disease IMO is mitochondrial decoupling....essentially waste heat generated by decoupling the electron transport chain. Intermittent fasting allows for periods of higher and lower basal metabolic rates (increased post feeding, decreased during a fast).

I just read a paper by Seyfried that indicates individuals who are normal weight but who consume excess calories are at markedly increased risk of neurodegenerative diseases. The folks who enjoy their ability to "eat anything and not gain any weight" are not getting a free ride it seems.

I'd be really interested to read this paper too Robb. Mike Eades just wrote a very interesting reply to a comment on his blog about what happens to excess FFa's if they aren't metabolized (normally), stored, or excreted. It's a wonderful description of mitochondrial decoupling for the layman. He didn't mention the oxidative damage factor though.

Stuart.

[Robb Wolf]

I'll track that down and get either a link to the abstract or the whole article up. i need to read the Eades piece...I was just reading aobut UCP3-uncoupling protien 3....

[Bo Bolund]

I think it's important to stay on schedule, since your body adapts to it. Especially glycogen storage in muscles and liver will improve as you stay on schedule and provide a stable blood glucose during the fast.