Comments on: Fast way to better health

By: eran

eran — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 00:26:54 +0000

Victor, you need to add fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes to that diet. You can not lose weight by eating ground Italian sausage. If you weigh 350 pounds, just walking would be a good weight workout for you. The best workout time is morning hours. You shouldn’t be working out 10:30 to midnight. That disturbs sleep and adds to weight gain.

By: Jim in Austin TX

Jim in Austin TX — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:57:20 +0000

@mory – you said ” it�s so odd that everyone looses [sic] significant wt.”. Dr. Eades doesn’t suggest significant weight loss is obtained with IF; you just get a number of health benefits from it. He mentioned losing “a little” weight because he & his wife “couldn�t eat twice as much during the eating days as we would have eaten were we not fasting”. At your BMI=33 (comfortably into the obese range) I’d wager you’d find the weight loss you’re looking for with a strict low carb approach. IF is an idea to consider when you’re at normal weight & considering ways to maintain that new weight.

@eran – Clearly 170lbs on a 6’0″ adult frame isn’t “too skinny” no matter what chart you might consult. At BMI=23 you’re in the middle of the normal range. Maybe you’re wife is just worried about the looks you’re getting from the other chicks

@Anne – If you’re saying that you’re “cheating” with a little cream in your coffee, it shouldn’t be too much of problem. I n a reply he made to a September 15, 2006 post by Esther Hoff (above), Dr. Mike said Dr. Mary does the same thing while IF’ing. I do kind of agree with him when he suggests folks should “buck up” and drink it black. Personally any food I label as something I can’t live without is one I should strongly consider living without – are you really a slave to a specific substance like *cream*? Oh wait, double standard, I can’t live without black coffee myself

I did want to add one more thing about IF to folks who aren’t already low-carbing it. Before I started low-carbing, I couldn’t imagine skipping a meal. If a meal was even an hour late, I always felt desperately hungry, fatigued, and very cranking. I’m pretty sure now that it was the blood sugar spikes & valleys caused by consuming carbs while being borderline insulin resistant – just like most Americans in middle age. So my strong suggestion for anyone overweight is to try a strict low-carb regimen first, and then consider IF only when you’ve reached normal weight. It’s the only way I could have done it.

Standard disclaimer: I’m not a physician and I’m only sharing personal experience.

Good luck everyone & keep this post alive!

By: Anne

Anne — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:46:21 +0000

Hello Doc I love this IF thing!
I just think maybe am not doing enough as I can’t stand coffee without cream and just having tea and water I get a little sick. I am VERY insulin resitant; I don’t know if I am hypoglycemic or that is what I am feeling. I do know if I eat breakfast skip lunch ugh really sick.
My question is am I am doing a little mostly harmless cheating (I do the fast every other day till 6PM thing three days a week) or am I ruining all my efforts? The most important thing is to have good blood sugar levels although I need to lose weight too. I do eat healthy, by preference. Thank you thank you!

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:32:10 +0000

I think IF is the best way to go.

By: eran

eran — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:57:42 +0000

Sounds interesting. I am 51 and 6 foot tall. I weighed 195 pounds 6 months ago and lost 25 pounds on caloric restriction. Now I weigh 170 pounds. Even though my weight is ideal for my height my wife says I look too skinny. Perhaps I can use intermittent fasting and get the benefits without losing further weight.

By: mory

mory — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:42:04 +0000

Geez Jim, I’ve pretty much do what you do, only 2- 36 hour fasts a week– been doing it for at least two years at that pace, I’m only about 10 pounds lighter than I was two years ago in the fall. I’m 57 5’4” about 190 lbs, I was about 200 back then. I’m a chubby little fella. There are so many postive testimonies here to the efficacy of IF, maybe it’s helpful to hear of someone that struggles in it? I don’t really struggle, cuz I like the way I feel doing it, and, I’d be 500 lbs if I didn’t. But it’s so odd that everyone looses significant wt. in such a short time and I’m still and chubbly little guy over two years of doing If?

By: JimD

JimD — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 14:51:06 +0000

[ I left this reply on Oct 14 2011 but it never got added to the stream, so I'm trying again - ]

Hi folks – great post, great replies. I read them all, every last one, over the last week or so. Now I have a question about my weight loss during Intermittent Fasting (IF).

I�m a 51 year old male, 5�11�, and this year I used the low carb way of eating to drop from a BMI of 27.5 to 23 over the last several months. My goal is BMI 22, or 158 lbs – basically college weight.

I hit a plateau for several weeks & wasn�t dropping any more weight while continuing to eat induction levels of carbs, so I started IF just a couple of weeks ago. I do two 36-hour fasts (e.g. fast from Mon dinner to Wed breakfast) per week and I�ve completed four of these.

My fast is as honest a fast as I can make it – just coffee (no sugar or cream), iced tea, water, and chicken broth with a little extra pepper on fasting days. I drink a good amount of water (at least 3 liters) because I realize that caffeine is a diuretic.

My records show I�m losing about 2.5lbs during the fast and regaining 1.0 to 1.5lbs after each fast, so during each of these two weeks I�ve been fasting, I�ve lost a little over two pounds a week.

Now of course I don�t subscribe completely to the �3500 calories equals one pound� equation because I know the body plays games with the metabolism when given too many or too few calories. But what I wonder is this – if my typical diet is 2000 to 2500 calories and I�m only skipping one day of feeding, how am I averaging a full pound of real loss with each fast?

I love it but it seems impossible.

[ Update on Dec 29 2011 ]

I’ve completed 14 of these 36-hour fasts and also have been doing shorter fasts where I just skip breakfast and lunch. I�m just a pound or two away from my goal weight now – the fasting has helped me shed over 10 pounds since my plateau in October.

Overall I’m very happy with the results – I may not be losing a full pound from a single day of fasting, but I’m still finding intermittent fasting to be much easier to handle psychologically than trying to use portion control to reduce calorie intake. Although I haven’t really experienced a “euphoria” that some folks report while fasting, I do feel mentally sharper and I certainly get a euphoric kick out of the first meal I use to break my fast!

I’ll continue to use the 24-hour fast (skipping bkfst and lunch only) for maintenance in 2012. Happy New Year to everyone!

By: jackie

jackie — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 00:12:14 +0000

thanks ashley. that helps. dr. eades, IMO, adrenal fatigue is very real. a great book to read is “Adrenal Fatigue”, by dr. james wilson.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:29:47 +0000

I have had adrenal fatigue.. it is much better now. I used to be so bad that I could hardly do much at all. Anyway, I don’t think IF is very good for when your adrenals are compromised. I found, doing IF, that at first I lost weight and felt really good, but after a while I stopped losing weight and started to get tired a lot again and having to take naps (it is almost involuntary, I HAVE to sleep, not normal tiredness) so I stopped doing it. Since then, I have done better eating low glycemic (got a blood sugar monitor and found I’m borderline diabetic- I didn’t think I could have real insulin problems because I work physically hard and ate decent but that’s apparently no guarantee!) and smaller meals more often. I don’t buy that idea of it keeping your metabolism up, but I think the reason it helps some lose weight is because they don’t ever spike their blood sugar. I think the reason I liked IF so much was because my body so craved having a high blood sugar that I only seemed to get from a large meal (I didn’t care for sweets a whole lot for the most part, not like you would think) so it was worth it not to eat in order to get to eat a real meal. I had a hard time feeling satisfied from food. Since going low glycemic (plenty of protein and fat, good fat that is), I have lost about 8 lbs. They have come off slow about a lb a week but all of it’s been from my belly. Also, my lower back pain is going away as have my stomach problems (the main thing is when I would run it would sometimes throw my stomach into unbearable cramps- I’ve had pancreatitis before and I’d say these are comparable, they’re that painful, also my stomach would overract to herbal laxatives). Now that I’ve done just low GI for a couple months, I think throwing a fast in here and there would be ok, but doing it too often was probably too hard on my adrenals much as I hate to admit it.

By: mreades

mreades — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:36:19 +0000

I have no experience with anyone with adrenal fatigue (which is itself a questionable diagnosis) following an IF, so I can’t say from observation.