Comments on: Intermittent fasting guest blog

By: mary titus

mary titus — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:24:27 +0000

Tom N., In reply to your comment, it did take time to adjust to IFing. Your body takes a very
long time to adjust to anything new and 8 weeks is not enough time to determine success with IF.

By: rachel allen

rachel allen — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 01:22:24 +0000

one last update before the comment section closes:

started window eating in jan 2009. lost 6pant sizes in about 4months w/increased workouts,moderate carbs of 100g or so a day.

stalled out for two months. eliminated grains, lowered carbs to 20-40 a day.

im now dropping inches like i did in the initial months of IFing. if IFing doenst work, try low carb IFing. its working amazingly well for me.

also, instead of only window eating each day, ive mixed things up with a few normal eating days (except for morning breakfast, ill never do that again) in my case, its helped to fast more intermittently, as stated above. depends on the person i suppose.

thanks to dr.eades for education and info sharing and all the great comments. its going to make the last half of 09 as good as the first half!

By: Tom N

Tom N — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:35:17 +0000

In the Mattson study mentioned in Part 2 of the post, I noticed that the subjects were only followed for 8 weeks (two different 8 week periods). I’ve also noticed people who have posted here and on other boards who said it took a few months to several months to adjust. Could it be that 8 weeks is not enough time to fairly judge the effects? This is not to mention that it only deals with a daily eating window rather than a 24/24 schedule.

I agree. I’ve been all over the place with this IF regimen. The more recent work I’ve seen has overcome my earlier hesitance about IFing.

By: Mary Titus

Mary Titus — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:32:05 +0000

I take out the complication of calories. I figure that my body is running normally, so I must be getting enough calories. I also do not think of fasting as CR since clories should be considered as a percentage of total food intake, not a number. Percentage-wise, I consume more calories per meal than I did before doing IF. Ketogenically speaking, the higher the ketones, the healthier the body ( as long as it isn’t T1 diabetes ). Therefore I consume a lot of fat calories. How many calories would that be? I have no idea. I think that it is more important to be ketogenic for optimal results and optimal health.

By: warner

warner — Thu, 14 May 2009 00:56:11 +0000

Despite the naysayers and reservations, it seems that a simple approach of fasting for 24 hours once per week (without modifying or increasing food intake on other days), would simply reduce your total calorie intake by 14%, about half of that used in CR diets, and is very likely to have nothing but positive benefits. (One of the additional benefits I haven’t seen mentioned here is healing time for someone with GERD.)

I’m not saying one will lose a lot of weight, or have a big reduction in BG, etc. — just that whatever changes do occur are likely to be beneficial. Perhaps you guys are making this more complex than it is.

By: Mary Titus

Mary Titus — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 22:16:07 +0000

I have been commenting off and on regarding my progress on IF. I continue to be happy and grounded on a low carb based IF. I feel in complete control of my appetite. I make up the rules for the way I do LC/IF. Usually, I eat within a 4 hour window where I eat 2 meals in general. Snacking is very rare, but I allow a snack if I want one. I do not believe that gorging or overeating on this diet should be a consideration. I say this because on some days I may eat like a “pig” other times I eat like a butterfly. I find that eating this way is more balanced. I am not only a low carb eater, I am a concientious eater.I continue to make healthier food choices. PLUS, if I decide that I want an occasional slice of pie or chocolate doughnut I can eat those without falling into a carbohydrate abyss. My husband is in the hospital this week. His absence makes it easier to eat one meal a day and I am taking advantage of that this week. I work in a school district whose spring break is this week, so I should be fine increasing my fast this way. What I like about IF is it permits me to decide when to fast and how long to fast. I find that no fast pattern is written in stone and can be changed from time to time. No desire to go more than 24 hours without a meal, I feel no physical insulin issues. As usual my weight fluctuates but it is now fluctuating in the low 140’s. Interesting to note is that my waist is smaller now at this weight than it was at this weight 4 years ago.I friend of mine, who is a nurse, guessed my weight to be 135 lbs. I told her not to be nice when guessing my weight. I told her to tell me exactly how much she thought that I weighed. I insisted that she guessed my weight because she kept commenting that I was getting too skinny. When I told her that I weighed 144 lbs that morning, her jaw dropped. She told me that she actually thought that I weighed 130 lbs.

By: coolcat

coolcat — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:55:45 +0000

Here is my personal research on fasting.

Male, aged 35, 11.5 stone (after 2 years on a low carb, less that 20-30g carbs a day), works in city.

I tried the intermittent fasting after reading a few blogs and found it tough. So I missed lunch only…and would think about “lunch” all day. Then, I fortuitously..missed breakfast one day after a few weeks of missing lunch and noticed I never thought about lunch.

Since, now 8 weeks of one meal per day around 7pm, I am actually quite amazed by the results. More so in fact that the low carb diet. I never feel sleepy, I can withstand the long travel so much better, and rarely get moody etc. I am quite amazed as I said. But it takes TIME, the results got a lot better after 4 weeks.

However, to sustain myself I have had to eat a lot of saturated fats. Maybe 200-300g of cheese such as brie or jarlsberg. 200g nuts. A lot. This is on top of a protein based meal. I find if I dont eat this much fat I either feel cold or hungry the next day.

Anyway, I can say that I never really want to get off this diet now.

Glad to hear that you’ve done so well. Different people seem to adapt the IF to a way that fits them well. It’s interesting to me to read the different schedules that different people have settled on. Thanks for posting.

By: Arash

Arash — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 18:32:27 +0000

Is IF still worth it?

Basically, I wanted to know what is the latest research supporting IF as a health practice (comparable to CR) and whether it is still a worthwhile effort to incorporate it into my lifestyle. After all, is this hunger every other day making significant enough difference in the quality of my health (I am not trying to loose any weight)?

Also, does the research really support IF being healthy for women? The research cited in Part II of Dr. Eades’ article indicated that it increased insulin resistance for women.

Appreciate your comments?

I plan another post on IF soon. I’ll address these concerns then.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 01:40:40 +0000

I started IF a couple of weeks ago. I’ve tried fasting before but with no luck. then I read everything I could find here and on pubmed which supported the idea that I wasn’t going to die if I went without food for a few hours. psychology is an important factor in IF, in my opinion.

I’m up to 16-19 hour fasts so I’m not at full 24 hour fasts. Not sure if i’ll ever get there. my goal is to eat dinner each evening and then nothing until the next evening.

My most important lesson learned is to be very careful of caffiene intake even if I’m only drinking green tea. My third fast day, I drank several cups more of green tea than my usual and had not only a roaring in my head but a very sleepless night.

Thank you for blogging about IF, I’ve found these articles and everything else on your website very informative and helpful.

I’m glad you’ve enjoyed the site.

By: Mary Titus, Orange California

Mary Titus, Orange California — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:34:04 +0000

I do really like S Reed’s post,

We are discussing IF on Jimmy Moore’s blog. There are some who are speculating doing this. Like S, I lost nearly 20 lbs my first IF year. Also, I can lose more weight when combined with exercise. I have not been sick at all. I plan to have bloodwork done this December while on winter break.Although I do not fast in the same extreme as S, I do have very similar results.