What you do between fasting is just as important as the fasting. Maybe more so. I don't have anywhere near Jimmy's issues, at least for bodyweight, but one problem I find with intermittent fasting is that some forms of it can throw me out of whack on my ketogenic diet. I don't measure ketones, but the subjective experience that I blame keto for--more energy, better mood, less social anxiety--can get thrown out of whack. Often I'll feel better during the fast--but because I'm basically in maintenance, the fasts mean that when I do eat, I'll need to eat more, and of course that means higher insulin even if it's ketogenic food, increasing appetite even further, so I'll feel better fasting but a little worse when I do eat. For me, out of ketosis can make for binges even on ketogenic food, although if I stick to the ketogenic food, the binging subsides quickly enough. The binges don't actually make me gain weight, but the mood changes/decreased energy from being out of ketosis are annoying.

I think Jimmy needs as much accountability as possible. For his first year of nutritional ketosis, he measured, weighed, took blood and ketone measures several times a day. Every time I hear him on a podcast talking about dangers of orthorexia, talking about how every morsel shouldn't be weighed--no. Weighing out your meat and butter is orthorexic if you're an underweight teen. If you're a cancer patient? Have epilepsy? Find that weighing and measuring and eating consistently keeps you from binges? Are diabetic? Sometimes being really uptight is what works. That year long experiment is what worked most consistently for Jimmy, people focus on what happened during his lazier keto period. I see him criticized on facebook and other places for his egg-fasting experiment as well. That's a case where strict rules about food, eggs, cheese and butter in defined ratios, allowed him to lose weight. It's really a very simplified keto approach--not one more crazy thing he tried, but more evidence that a keto diet can work for the guy if he applies it properly. My only problem with egg fasting is throwing in a little spinach would make for a much better omelet, and probably not hurt anything.

It's really easy to get lazy with keto, and that's fine for a lot of people. For me--if I haven't weighed out some hamburger for a few months, and want to tighten up, and go to weigh out four or five ounces, I'm astonished and dismayed at how little meat it looks like. In a couple of days, if I'm consistent, my appetite readjusts and it seems like plenty for a meal. For stricter ketogenic ratios, I just don't think anybody can get there by eye. If you're in a state where it takes a larger portion to satisfy, maybe portions look smaller, that's how it seems to work for me.

I don't really think Jimmy's problem is insulin resistance. Earlier on in his blog, Jimmy worried about hypoglycemia, one time he ate pizza slices in the teens as an "experiment" and his blood glucose barely budged. That's not insulin resistance--if I had to guess I'd say it was seriously depleted fat cells due to a weight loss of well over a hundred pounds, that were particularly insulin sensitive due to that depletion. The one fasting insulin measure I've seen Jimmy report was 15, that's high enough for somebody like Dr. Davis to be concerned, he advises single-digits, but for the overweight population, it's not a real big number.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXbV0gxRfPo&t=254s

Here's another video somebody posted that shows the results of Jimmy's year long affair with tracking/nutritional ketosis.

A high ratio ketogenic diet is something I find useful, but it can't be done casually. If I eat Atkins or page 4 style, but add all the fat bomb and heavy cream treats I want, I get fatter. If I eat to strict ketogenic ratios, and am careful with my protein portions, I can enjoy liberal amounts of heavy cream etc. without weight gain. Adding fat calories without reducing carb or protein calories will increase the insulin response, replacing protein or carbohydrate calories with fat calories will decrease it.

I agree with you Teaser. It's not orthorexia when it is what you have to do to stay healthy. When I stop weighing and measuring my food, when I get a little sloppy around the edges, allowing a few more carbs in here or there, I gain weight. When I go back to strict compliance with what I know works for me, the weight comes off and then remains stable. I don't ever fall off the wagon and binge on junk. I just increase how much I eat of on plan food and the weight starts to come back on. I am so used to weighing and measuring my food as well as tracking it that it doesn't take much thinking or effort on my part. It's just what I do so I can get on with the rest of my life in as healthy a state as possible.

Jean

Jimmy Moore is one of the reasons I'm gun shy about claiming total victory in my low carb lifestyle journey. Coincidentally, my journal entry today mentioned Jimmy and another popular big loser who also regained much after a significant weight loss. Both men claim to be living the LC lifestyle in spite of their current size. People don't always tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth - so help me God. Duh! I try to be honest. It doesn't always happen. I lie and hide the truth from myself as often as I do to others in my forum persona here. The cold, hard truth can be tough to find and it's often difficult to share. With that confession out of the way, what you all know about me is pretty darn close to the truth. I've done what I said I did in reaching my goal weight and I've reported a fair amount of struggle in maintenance. It is not a perfect picture, but it is a fairly accurate reflection of my journey.

Back to Jimmy... I don't know why he is such a big boy again. Does he truly live a low carb , IF, & EF lifestyle? Is he hiding things? Only he and those closest to him will know for sure. But I know that I have stayed low carb in my 16 months of "maintenance." I have had no carb binges or days off since reaching my goal. My overall macros have averaged at or near 60-70% fat, 20-25% protein, and 10-15% carbs (including more fiber than digestible carbs). Yet at one point I was 25 pound up from my lowest low. I clearly have times where I eat too much. I would easily have regained more if I were not working hard to try to reverse the trend. For me, eating the right macros is not good enough. I can easily gain eating low carb. I think that I was born without an off switch. I have other issues that I need to work on. So I'm not willing to step out and call people like Jimmy a fraud. If he is eating low carb, maybe he is a healthy fat guy. IDK. But on the other hand, I think that he needs to step out of the spotlight while he works out his weight problem. He hasn't got himself figured out yet and to outsiders (and to insiders) his message is clouded by his current circumstances.

I think that I wanted to believe that staying low carb was good enough. For some people it is. If they eat the right macros and keep the carbs low enough, then satiety will rule the day. When I start eating I have to make a conscious decision for when to stop. I never get an overwhelming feeling of "full". Eating VLC makes stopping easier. Correction: Eating low carb makes stopping possible. When I eat right satiety will eventually kick in. I just have to know when enough is enough and have the discipline to stop eating when the numbers say I have had enough. That is how it is for me. I was a fat kid before the food pyramid, before we ate fast food, pizza or processed food on a daily basis, before soda was a staple beverage, and before HFCS was put in everything in place of fat. As a kid I watched little TV and played outside all summer. I have always been more sensitive to carbs than most. I could always finish my plate and still want more. Before "fat makes you fat" I was chubby. After the food pyramid I was toast and became a total carb addict as a result. So for me, maintenance will always be a challenge. If I don't put in the work, I won't keep my results.

As far as fasting goes, I think IFs and simply eliminating after dinner snacking did a lot to resolve my insulin resistance. It could be coincidence, but my higher than normal BG was resolved quickly when I started adding IFs to my LC regimen. I have done some longer fasts, but I tend to overcompensate when ending the fast. I have much trouble 'just eating a normal meal" to end a fast as Dr. Fung suggests. I am interested in exploring the benefits of autophagy, but it remains to be seen if EFs will ever become a helpful tool in my LC routine. Maybe practice will help - or - maybe fasting is not the best way for me to go. I lost best when I was eating 3 smaller meals every day. The jury is still out. I'm still working at it.

Thank you for all the thoughtful responses to my short post written when I was still in shock over the photo. I’ve been working my way through the Epigenix talks and when the photo of Jimmy appeared in the YouTube side bar, completely derailed me. I have met Jimmy twice in Durham at the monthly support meetings, first was when talking about his year long NK experiment and he looked as in the 2012 video posted, the next time after he got into Fasting, looking a bit more svelte but still had more to lose to get back to his low weight.

Dr Westman keeps an open mind about fasting, and has always been OK with one meal a day if that is only when you are hungry, but like Phinney, thinks the extended fasts may reduce muscle and lean body mass. Of course, some of his patients regain without having done any fasts. But successful losers and maintainers like Casey and Kristie and others from that group, do not dabble in fasting beyond skipping a few meals.

Longer fasting than one meal a day is "uncharted territory" https://www.facebook.com/AdaptYourL...52256531683573/


Did the fasting set up Jimmy for a rapid regain? Or was it only overeating, losing his way with tracking, etc? His "insulin resistance" explanation has never held water for me. If you can stand reading one of the epic, vicious rants from The Woo (Jane) about Jimmy and Dr Fung, her post was the first thing that came to mind after seeing that photo. Written two years ago...has the "rapid regain after fasting" all come true for simple biological/hormonal reasons? http://itsthewooo.blogspot.co.uk/20...ng-is.html#more. This article is highly critical of Dr Fung, but readers of this thread have always evaluated his advice as we search for the answers to lose and then maintain our own weight loss. I don’t know what has been going on in JM's life since he tried a few extended fasts, but it has not ended well weight and health wise.

when JM originally lost weight with Atkins or standard Low Carb, the weight regain was attributed to him not staying on plan. But now that he has far exceeded "some regain" and looks to me up to his maximum size, it does appear recent EF experiments have messed with his metabolism to the point of very unhealthy results. I like IF, why I started this thread and we all keep it going, but hope the extreme versions don’t negate the benefits. Time to ignore JM's fasting advice, not creating a weight yo-yo pattern is important to our well-being.

I don't do extended fasts but I do restrict my eating to around 8 hours a day. I manage a "fast" of at least 12 hours every day but not usually more than 16. This is what works for me along with careful carb counting and strict portion control, no calorie counting, just paying attention to my macros so things don't get out of control. I maintain weight this way. As I've said before, "eat when hungry stop when full" doesn't work for me. I do not get clear "I'm full" signals that would regulate my eating. Sometimes I wonder if some of the people who do extended fasts do it more in a competitive spirit or to prove something to themselves, like being more "pure" than others or more macho. I get the same feeling sometimes from the zero carb folks. I'm not saying that everyone who is into extended fasting or zero carb is on some kind of strange ego trip but I suspect that some of them are. It seems like Jimmy jumped on too many bandwagons, got carried away with experimentation, lost site of the goal which is improved health. It is sad .

I can't read the Woo. I find her too nasty. Criticizing people for their science is fine and necessary. No one is 100% right all the time. The combo of arrogance, anger and personal attacks just doesn't sit well with me plus when you come from a place of anger and excess of ego you often get things wrong, throwing out the baby with the bath water.

Jean

This whole thing reminds me of a Dave Feldman cholesterol thread. With his fasting experiments Jimmy finally found something that lowered his ldl cholesterol and particle count--I think I suggested that maybe he was eating more, when he wasn't fasting, and he was getting the same effect that Dave gets when he does his overeating fat experiments.

Woo's latest blogpost is about food reward, this is a bit of a change for her, she wrote a lot of posts pushing hormonal vs. Stephen Guyunet's insistence on food reward as the cause of obesity. She suggests that food reward is what sets Jimmy apart from her. For me, it's--put 'em together. One day out of ketosis, and my susceptibility to highly palatable foods, including low carb ones, goes way up. Out of ketosis, I might eat a pound of peanuts, and be unsatisfied. In ketosis, I can eat an ounce and enjoy that, and be done. I could eat more, but I don't feel like I need to. I think reward is misnamed--the problem isn't that food is rewarding, but that it's not. People become resistant to the reward. Guyunet has posted about studies where food is made very unrewarding, grey paste fed by tube. Obese subjects underate, lean subject ate to maintain their body weight. Proof that food reward is what drives overeating in obesity, when present? If somebody's hard of hearing, they may prefer very loud music. They won't pay attention to music that they can barely hear. Of course you will pay attention to sweet, fatty, salty food if that's the only food that sends a strong enough signal to register.

When something is rewarding, you get it, you enjoy it--and then you lose interest in it. I'm only ever a meal or two away from losing this advantage of being in ketosis. We've talked about ketosis making it easier to fast--maybe making the refeed as ketogenic as possible makes sense as well. Simply eating more of my usual diet, same ratios, can be enough to wake the binge monster.

My n=1 with Aversion Therapy and food took place decades ago at Schick Shadel. At that time, Cheetos were big for me. As treatment I was hooked up to electrodes in a small booth with an enormous jar of ugly fat globs in view and close by. There was a tv screen, I think. I was given Cheetos, instructed to eat them while being told they were baby mice. This was repeated. Supposed to make me barf, I guess. However, I learned from that experiment that if baby mice tasted like Cheetos, I'd still gobble them down.

The "Food as Reward" theory only comes into play with certain types of individuals. For me, if a certain food is lodged in my mind, better keep the target in the store and me out of said store.

Brilliant! That's it for me in a nutshell, preferably almonds, salted.

Stopping the offending food for a while seems to reinstate the reward factor.

If you've ever been a kid chewing the heads off of animal crackers, listening to them scream, you could predict that baby mouse thing wouldn't work.

I always ate the chocolate bunny's eyes first, didn't like them looking at me.

The animal crackers--I guess those were somewhat muffled screams.

Oh my, teaser. LOL

Lots of thoughts flooding my mind regarding the JM news. First, I hope he finds the correct way of eating, as clearly something is not working. I don't worry about those waiting to pounce with criticism of keto or LCHF, as I know so many who have benefited from this WOE.

Fasting (IF) is a very slippery slope where the news over the past few years has pronounced it a solution to obesity. It's one solution that may work for some. I don't follow the Fung IF recommendations to add a small amount of HWC to my coffee or drink bone broth during an IF. I consider any fat energy, and when I add energy, my fast is over. I have tried extended IFs, and the longest I've done was a 5-day IF. I felt great, but noticed I didn't sleep as long or as soundly. Hunger sensations (not true hunger) stopped after day 2, and I felt great in my workouts likely due to the HGH produced in the later days. Today, I go for 36-48 hour IFs a couple times a month. Maybe an extended IF (no more than 4 days) once a year. IF is not the "golden fleece" for many. The most effective method is to time my eating, so that I have a couple meals a day, sometimes one meal a day, and a long (16-18 hours) period between my last meal of the previous day, and my first meal of the next day. That works for me.

Refeeding after an IF is also an issue if one isn't careful. IF doesn't mean one can eat anything when refeeding, and I think this is where some may fall short. As teaser mentioned, refeeding with the same consistent keto or LCHF WOE is essential to stay on track. There isn't anything magic about this other than consistency and continued learning about what works.

One of the sources of information that impressed me the most recently was a chapter in the book, "Diabetes Unpacked," that really caused me to pay attention. It's chapter 4 titled, "Who Gets Type 2 Diabetes - Understanding and Treating the Causes" by Dr. Robert Cywes. It confirmed my suspicions about carbohydrates being addictive substances. When I finally had success with a LCHF or keto WOE, it was due to me being strict and managing carbs like an addictive substance rather than having any nutritional value. This chapter solidified in my mind this approach. Perhaps JM can use a similar approach to whatever is causing his health to yoyo, and it's truly his health, as weight gains simply are a symptom of something harmful underneath. I am a reformed carbohydrate addict who understands how easy it would be for me to slide back into that mode if I don't stay consistent.

So far no dramatic regain with my IF regime, on average 22/2 daily. It looks as if I will end this year averaging 124 lbs, same as last. I do what my Facebook OMAD group calls "clean" fasting, which only allows plain water, still or sparkling, plain black coffee, plain black black or green tea. No synthetic or natural flavours, sweeteners, milks however low cal, etc etc. Certainly no bone broth or cream or BPC. If it passes your lips, you have begun feeding and the Fast is over.

I feel it's dangerous to pronounce that we KNOW exactly what works and doesn't work about IF. What is or isn't a fast. The only thing I know, is what works for my body and I'd never try to tell somebody else that the way they do IF is wrong. Hope I didn't come across like that. Guess I should always add the caveat. Necessarily, I must trust those whose experience is far greater than my own.

This is one of those issues where I stand solidly on all sides.

Take a person, fast them for sixteen hours, pure water fast, then eat a meal. Or have a person fast for sixteen hours on water, then drink some broth, and have a full meal at the 24 hour mark. The broth fast might not be as pure as the water fast, but it's not going to take very long to recover from the couple of grams of protein in that broth, the difference between a 24 hour fast broken with a bit of bone broth and a water fast is slight vs. more substantial food. If a water fast is easier, it's probably better, if a broth fast is easier, it's probably better.

The idea that tiny bits of protein in broth or coffee will shut down autophagy is something I find doubtful. The only study I've seen showing this was in petri dishes--it's hard to hit the level of nutrient depletion in an intact organism that's possible in a petri dish. If you look at the fully-fed state the average human being's liver secretes something around 70 grams of protein for the intestines to process, basically autodigestion. I don't know how low this goes during a fast, but it's not going to zero.

Personally broth doesn't work for me during a fast. Reminds me too much of yummy meat.