Another IF Beginner

[Greg Battaglia]

Mike, I've found in the past that a six hour window does help a lot, however, the main problem with that is that it began to interfere with my social life. I generally go out at night and hang out with friends, etc. If I'm eating for 6 hours at night, and sticking with Paleo foods, that would mean that I must stay home every night until 10:00 or 11:00 just eating and preparing foods. Most people say IF is more convenient, for me it has been less convenient to be honest with you. As sad as it is, in our modern world of high demand and high stress setting aside 6 hours to do nothing but eat and cook is just not feasible. Keep in mind that I'm only 21 years old though, I'm sure when I'm married and settled down eating all night long will be a good method because I'll probably just hang in with the wife. For now, my friends call me every night to hang, which directly interferes with my eating window. Social life, in my opinion, is just as important to health as diet, so I found that eating at night is a problem. I'm going to try the ETD approach, but my gut feeling is that I'm going to end up switching it a more frequent eating pattern during the day with mild CR and low carb, and probably cut my eating time at say 6 PM, so I'll atleast get a mild IF. I don't know, lol, modern life sucks.

[Stuart Mather]

Greg, Art DeVany's fast lengths are usually about 15 hrs, aren't they, in random pattern, which probably works out to about 2 days a week.

Stuart.

[Greg Battaglia]

Stuart-
Art actually does both methods. On most days he eats 2-3 meals up until 6:00pm and then fasts overnight until 9:00am. Additionally, he "tries" to do a 24 hour fast every third day in addition to his 15 hour overnight fasts. I don't know how consistent he is with it, but he does mention that he likes to keep it random, as you noted. I think he just uses the ETD method as a loose template.

[Stuart Mather]

Thanks for the clarification Greg. Yes that daily 'normal' overnight 15 hr fast combined with a 'random occasionally regular' much longer fast does sound ideal in terms of reaping the hormonal/metabolic/gene expression benefits of fasting without the downside of huge meals or calorie shortfalls.

When I was doing the 24/24 approach I found the only difficulty was with the fast breaking meal not turning into an evening of eating. If I could have made that evening meal moderate, and stopped eating by say 7.30pm and broke the overnight fast the following morning at 8am and ate at lib until finishing dinner by 7pm that evening, I'd probably still be doing IF this way now. But I always seemed to go to bed with a full stomach, which everyone advises against.

But perhaps the physiological benefits of breaking the 24 hr fast with moderate eating from say 7pm to about 10.30 (as opposed to gorging quickly and then not eating again that evening) far outweigh the negatives of sleeping soon after eating.

I'm curious also about your mention of the HG evidence that fast breaking eating was never gorging. Is that really true? Most wild animals (particularly meat eaters will really feast after a long awaited kill. I do however take your point that the centenerian evidence is clearly in favour of moderate food intake. But then they had no reason to fast. We IF'ers are simply choosing to do it because the experimental evidence is compelling that it confers health/ longevity benefits.

So the take home message surely is that moderate food intake (in terms of calorie intake/time is paramount. And then however long a fasting period can be endured (less than the 48 hr free amino acid pool available window of course) without the breaking of it being a pig out, so much the better.
Does that sound right?

Stuart.

[Ale Dileo]

Originally Posted by Allen Yeh

Um sure! so...is that a place nearby?

100 km or so, ... you "must" go there!

about my way of IFing : I love this aproach because it separate the working time from the eating and relaxing time,.. this produce in me much less stress and improve the quality of life. In any case i'll try to stretch my eating window ..

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by Greg Battaglia

If I'm eating for 6 hours at night, and sticking with Paleo foods, that would mean that I must stay home every night until 10:00 or 11:00 just eating and preparing foods.

I'm old at 35 and still don't let IF run my social life, in fact it really doesnt interfere....you can always pick from foods at any restraunt....I hate to cook so I find places I know will have stacks of meat, healthy fats and been known to do Guinness on occasion too....I may not be eating Grass fed beef in my fajitas....but my body needs some toxins every now and then to keep the immune system finely tuned and in practice. At least that is what I am sticking with.....of course who knows how it all plays out in the end..as I could live to be 99 or die at 40 from a freak drink coaster accident....

[Greg Battaglia]

Stuart-
I think your right on. All of the studies done on rodents had a much longer eating window than 2 or even 6 hours. The norm was 24 hours fast/24 hours eat. As for the H/G's, that is simply just a observation that I've made on my own. I've seen quite a few documentaries on different H/G groups and the main message that I got from their eating patterns was that they were 1) highly random and 2) didn't fast on a daily basis, but actually ate quite randomly and plentifully when food was available. When food was short the fast usually lasted a day or so. I'd say H/G's would have to fast a couple times a week, but certainly not everyday. Also keep in mind that humans are omnivores, not carnivores. Observing carnivorous behavior can tell you nothing about human eating patterns. Additionally, I think it's also important to consider what your "feast" consists of. I find if I'm feasting and eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and nuts relative to meat I seem to have the most problems. When I eat mostly just meat and fat I can eat a hell of a lot more without any adverse effects. This makes sense as I highly doubt that H/G's would feast on much plant foods if they have a freshly caught animal carcass to feast on. Plants were probably more of back-up foods. Anyway, I think we need to start focusing on centenarian lifestyles versus H/G lifestyles if our goal is to live as long as possible and in as best shape possible. We've no doubt obtained priceless info from studying primitive man, but the truth is that we're probably batting a thousand by hoping to live to 100 by emulating people who to their 30's on average. I'm not saying that living Paleo won't produce centenarians, I'm just saying that we're better off studying people who actually reach 100 if that's our goal. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of similarities between the Paleo lifestyle and the centenarian lifestyle. The most obvious are nutrient dense foods in moderation, strong family/social ties, low stress, and a physically active lifestyle. Anyway, a bit of topic, so I'll just end saying that I'm very confident that a much longer (say 24 hour, as in the studies) eating window is the way to go with IF. The method you describe in your post seems really similar to Dr. Mike Eades description of what worked well for he and his wife. Check it out here if you haven't already http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/?p=278

[Ale Dileo]

I'm resuming this thread to put under your attention the results of my blood test. It' s all ok except the cholesterol levels

Total 278 mg\dl
Hdl 113 mg\dl
Ldl 147 mg\dl
Triglycerides 61 mg\dl

well , I know that high cholesterol isn't an issue and high hdl level is good .. just curious to know if there could be a “too much” issue even with the hdl. However I'll keep on track with my low-carb hi-fat paleo eating and repeat the test in 3 months.

[Robb Wolf]

Ale-
it looks pretty damn good...the ldl/hdl ratio is 1.3...anything less than 4 is considered "good". Triglycerides look pretty good...they will likely improve wiht time.

Are you supplementing with fish oil? What is your exercise like?

Chiao!

[Ale Dileo]

Originally Posted by Robb Wolf

Ale-
it looks pretty damn good...the ldl/hdl ratio is 1.3...anything less than 4 is considered "good". Triglycerides look pretty good...they will likely improve wiht time.

Are you supplementing with fish oil? What is your exercise like?

Chiao!

Ciao Robb (without the "h", .. if your teacher could see... )

Yes, i'm supplementing with fish oil, some day 10 gr, other days 5 gr .. depends on what kind of fats are included in my meal.

Regarding the exercise, .. mostly short (20 min) and intense weightlifting sessions (abandoned cardio long time ago, I'm doing enough cardio during my working time), .. sometimes HIIT sessions.