[not sure if this strictly qualifies as a lifehack, but it seems to be in the general ballpark]
I have been practising a slightly modified version of alternate-day intermittent fasting since mid-January this year. Basically, every second day, I eat a small breakfast and then nothing until midnight (or at least I try to, in practice I sometimes have a snack at 10-11 pm). There seems to be some evidence that this is good for human health, and I have found it to be rather low-cost—I am still able to do moderately strenuous physical activity on fasting days (namely cycling from university to my home, which is half an hour away and mostly uphill), and do not get particularly hungry either (although I sometimes desire certain foods, hence the snacking). All in all, this seems like the sort of thing that is worth trying.
I do a slightly different form of intermittent fasting where everyday I only have Bulletproof coffee (just fats) from 10 PM to 4:00 PM. You write ” I am still able to do moderately strenuous physical activity on fasting days ” While I’m not an expert, ideally you should not be weaker while fasting because your body is gaining energy from ketosis.
While I’m far from an expert, I think if you go from breakfast until midnight without eating anything you will go into ketosis if you are keto-adapted, and if you are not, you will be in extreme discomfort.
That actually depends. In my case (n = 1) if I stop eating while NOT being keto-adapted, after some period of time I will feel physically weak and mentally slow for a while. That’s my blood sugar crashing, but subjectively it just feels as being weak and slow, not “extreme discomfort” at all. I don’t normally get serious pangs of hunger.
I don’t think I’m typical in this respect, but I would be surprised to learn that I’m only one in a thousand or so.
To clarify: although my wording made it sound like I was slightly weaker while fasting, I haven’t noticed a difference in strength, which is what I wanted that quote to illustrate. Incidentally, I just realised that a better example of that is that I have started weightlifting recently, and have not noticed a difference between fasting and non-fasting days.
I’ve been fasting one day a week since the beginning of May of this year. I usually start Sunday evening and fast through Monday evening or Tuesday morning, around 24 to 36 hours, and this fits my schedule pretty well—alternate-day would be considerably more difficult. The trickiest part is declining offers from coworkers to go to lunch and then having to explain why. Sleeping through the night on Monday can be a little uncomfortable if I’m doing a longer fast.
I’ve fasted erratically for years (when I felt like it, which turned out to be once every month or two), but started the weekly cadence because I found out I had very high total cholesterol (~280 mg/dL) when I went to the doctor in May. When I donated blood in October my total cholesterol was down to ~190 mg/dL.
It’s hard to know how much of this effect to attribute to fasting, since I did make some other minor systematic changes to my diet (more fish, fewer pastries, a shift from butter to olive oil in cooking) and there might be other changes that I don’t know about or haven’t considered. Since I’m comfortable with this amount of fasting and since there are non-health-related benefits I suspect the VoI of a more careful experiment is low to negative. (I can imagine finding out there’s no fasting → cholesterol lowering effect, stopping the habit because of this, and losing out on the less tangible benefits.)
I did a similar thing to this for (iirc) around 6 months. It seemed to help me lose weight and I had no problems with it most of the time, until getting a girlfriend made the scheduling much more of a hassle.
That’s an interesting schedule. Do you find it easier to fast during the day, vs the commonly recommended “don’t eat anything after 6pm until 1pm the next day”?
I have only tried alternate-day fasting, so I can’t really say with confidence. That being said, I think that I would have trouble keeping to the 1pm − 6pm eating window—I have tried going without breakfast on a fasting day, and did not enjoy it at all. Also, eating only between 1pm-6pm every day sounds much more unpleasant to me than not eating every second day, although this might just be an illusion on my part.
[not sure if this strictly qualifies as a lifehack, but it seems to be in the general ballpark]
I have been practising a slightly modified version of alternate-day intermittent fasting since mid-January this year. Basically, every second day, I eat a small breakfast and then nothing until midnight (or at least I try to, in practice I sometimes have a snack at 10-11 pm). There seems to be some evidence that this is good for human health, and I have found it to be rather low-cost—I am still able to do moderately strenuous physical activity on fasting days (namely cycling from university to my home, which is half an hour away and mostly uphill), and do not get particularly hungry either (although I sometimes desire certain foods, hence the snacking). All in all, this seems like the sort of thing that is worth trying.
I do a slightly different form of intermittent fasting where everyday I only have Bulletproof coffee (just fats) from 10 PM to 4:00 PM. You write ” I am still able to do moderately strenuous physical activity on fasting days ” While I’m not an expert, ideally you should not be weaker while fasting because your body is gaining energy from ketosis.
Why would he be in ketosis? If he isn’t eating low carb on his non-fasting days he should have an ample supply of glycogen, right?
While I’m far from an expert, I think if you go from breakfast until midnight without eating anything you will go into ketosis if you are keto-adapted, and if you are not, you will be in extreme discomfort.
That actually depends. In my case (n = 1) if I stop eating while NOT being keto-adapted, after some period of time I will feel physically weak and mentally slow for a while. That’s my blood sugar crashing, but subjectively it just feels as being weak and slow, not “extreme discomfort” at all. I don’t normally get serious pangs of hunger.
I don’t think I’m typical in this respect, but I would be surprised to learn that I’m only one in a thousand or so.
To clarify: although my wording made it sound like I was slightly weaker while fasting, I haven’t noticed a difference in strength, which is what I wanted that quote to illustrate. Incidentally, I just realised that a better example of that is that I have started weightlifting recently, and have not noticed a difference between fasting and non-fasting days.
I’ve been fasting one day a week since the beginning of May of this year. I usually start Sunday evening and fast through Monday evening or Tuesday morning, around 24 to 36 hours, and this fits my schedule pretty well—alternate-day would be considerably more difficult. The trickiest part is declining offers from coworkers to go to lunch and then having to explain why. Sleeping through the night on Monday can be a little uncomfortable if I’m doing a longer fast.
I’ve fasted erratically for years (when I felt like it, which turned out to be once every month or two), but started the weekly cadence because I found out I had very high total cholesterol (~280 mg/dL) when I went to the doctor in May. When I donated blood in October my total cholesterol was down to ~190 mg/dL.
It’s hard to know how much of this effect to attribute to fasting, since I did make some other minor systematic changes to my diet (more fish, fewer pastries, a shift from butter to olive oil in cooking) and there might be other changes that I don’t know about or haven’t considered. Since I’m comfortable with this amount of fasting and since there are non-health-related benefits I suspect the VoI of a more careful experiment is low to negative. (I can imagine finding out there’s no fasting → cholesterol lowering effect, stopping the habit because of this, and losing out on the less tangible benefits.)
I did a similar thing to this for (iirc) around 6 months. It seemed to help me lose weight and I had no problems with it most of the time, until getting a girlfriend made the scheduling much more of a hassle.
That’s an interesting schedule. Do you find it easier to fast during the day, vs the commonly recommended “don’t eat anything after 6pm until 1pm the next day”?
I have only tried alternate-day fasting, so I can’t really say with confidence. That being said, I think that I would have trouble keeping to the 1pm − 6pm eating window—I have tried going without breakfast on a fasting day, and did not enjoy it at all. Also, eating only between 1pm-6pm every day sounds much more unpleasant to me than not eating every second day, although this might just be an illusion on my part.