interesting Janet, you might find this interesting too for compares in my semi-private journal
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...85&page=8&pp=15 starting around post #111

I find that around late day 2 to day 3, I'm completely hunger free. From there, it's pretty easy. How do you find your sleep? I seem to require less sleep during a fast (of course, it's an intermittent fast!) and have more energy. Any nagging minor health things seem to clear up as well. Anyone else have the same experience?

Definitely less sleep. I feel revved up, even when I know I should be tired, past my bedtime, my brain is pinging around. Perfectly fine, more energy than usual, during the day but two nights of that was enough, so I took one benedryl and when awake after three hours for the obvious reason after all that hydration, took a low dose of melatonin 1/2 mg. Slept 10 hours last night, definitely doing that again tonight.
My knees are finally better! After months of dithering around with little exercise and off-plan food and drink, IF and then cheating, the doctor depressing me that a trauma event can set off arthritis even though I had none previously, blah, blah...just fasting and zero off-plan foods has allowed them to heal. Long hilly (for NC) walks, up and down stairs without needing to hang onto handrail, no pain at all.

Good news, Janet!!! I know that this has put a damper in your lifestyle for quite some time. Let's hope it stays that way and that your doctor's arthritis talk is just that... talk.

Good advice, I'll get some melatonin for those occasions when I'm revved up later at night.

Just had lunch with a friend who asked me about cutting out wheat, as he had tried it for short durations due to some arthritis symptoms and it worked quite well. Once he went back to wheat foods, it flared up again. His wife had read "Wheat Belly," and so did he at her recommendation. I indicated that all the joint pain in my hands had dissipated shortly after I cut out wheat completely. My only other comment was, "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Two tips from FastingTalk. To eat with your family, put broth in a nice soup bowl, sprinkle some parsley/herbs on top, eat with a spoon and enjoy a meal that seems "normal" to others at the table.
And "Feast when you Feast". DD learned she was hired for a new job, so last night we had a large steak with a creamy mushroom sauce she makes, veggies, salad. A veritable feast, and I have had zero digestive or any other issues from having that meal.
Megan Ramos has many little tips throughout the podcast from her own journey and years of being the patient educator at Dr Fung's clinic, it is worth a listen. Hydration is maybe more important than with just LC, she and her husband drink some water every hour and Carbonated water is filling. I like the sparkling water with essence flavors in them, Costco has them in half liters so can easily carry some with you everywhere. This week, towards the end of the podcast, she mentioned an IDM version of the 5:2 diet.

I have been trying to listen to fast talk. There does seem to be a lot of good information but I find it difficult to listen to the back and forth conversation. Maybe I should just listen in bite size pieces, so to speak.

Jean

This is very much true for me, a good feed, as long as it's reasonably ketogenic, makes it easier to fast the next day. I've been doing every other day fasting for a bit--just cream in my coffee one day, almost two day's food the next, and I'm enjoying it. Maybe the ascetics were frauds, both feasting and fasting can be quite enjoyable.

For podcasts that don't demand my full attention (I'm pretty easily sidetracked...) I'll find a fairly mindless videogame like tetris, I find this intentional distraction keeps my mind from wandering off entirely.

I have a couple of games like that for listening to podcasts. I need to occupy my eyes, apparently I now drive for long periods for work, and podcasts are perfect for such; the driving happens on an entirely different level than the listening.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releas...70501112633.htm



Expect some "fasting sucks" type write-ups from the Daily Mail, etc., and a rebuttal post from Dr. Fung soon.

Biggest failure in this study from my own experience--the fasting group was supposed to eat 500 calories one day, and above maintenance by 25 percent the next, what happened is that they ate a bit over 500 one day, and then underate the next. Brad Pilon is a big fan with his eatstopeat of putting all of the calorie deficit on the fasting days, this way, if you don't eat one day a week but eat full calories the rest, 86 percent of the time you're sort of not dieting, it makes sense for there to be less of an adaptation the less time you spend in an actual deficit. With IF--I find I can sustain every other day eating quite well, as long as the eating days involve abundant food, but things can derail quickly if I eat low on the eating days--I can get by with the odd low day, especially if it's very ketogenic,, but I can't sustain a full week of every other day eating unless I'm doing what would otherwise be "overeating" without the fasting days.

The problem with all these kinds of studies is the over generalization of the findings. This isn't about some generic intermittent fasting but a specific variant of intermittent fasting done in the context of a specific kind of every day eating. The results can't be generalized beyond the type of fasting done in the context of the particular type of eating which this study looked at.

Jean

Krista Varady has done other fasting studies that were more promising for intermittent fasting. A study with different results from earlier studies doesn't really suggest the earlier findings were wrong, so much as that there was something different about the approach in the new study that didn't work. I'm pretty sure that she's said in the past that when people fast one day, instead of making up for all the calories on the next day, people tend to eat a bit more than their usual intake on the eating days. That differs from this study in that people were given calorie targets on both the up and the down days. Maybe they went this way because the IF was up against calorie restriction, and not just up against people eating to appetite--the overall calorie targets were about the same for the daily calorie restriction and the IF. Even if the results were the same--there could still be advantages to restricting only every other day, dieting only half the time, vs. dieting every day.

There's a mouse study where mice were fed ad-lib, and then other mice were fed 95 percent of what the ad-lib mice ate. The restricted animals wound up fatter than the ad-lib fed mice. I don't think this is because eating less causes weight gain, so much as because the stress of restriction causes weight gain--it's entirely possible that feeding the animals exactly the same calories as the ad-lib mice would have been just as stressful, and made them just as fat. The same person might eat 2000 calories, and be sated--or eat it and be stressed that that's all there is. .

Exactly. I get impatient with this approach, as the findings are hardly definitive. Fudge what is supposed to be a fast, and you'll get weak results accordingly. Were they trying to make it easier for the subjects by allowing them to eat something on days they were supposed to be fasting? Some day, I'd like to see the results of a properly designed study that would not allow subjects to vary (cheat) from the protocol designed for their groups. When I fast, I fast. That means no intake of calories and only consumption of water, plain tea, or plain coffee with no fats or sweeteners. In other words, it's a real fast! This smells of selection bias.

I dunno, Varady is a real fasting enthusiast, she's pinned her career to this sort of fasting.

For me, a ketogenic approach seems to be better for weight loss, up day/down day doesn't seem to help much if at all. If I'm very careful to make sure that I'm eating enough on the up days to avoid weight loss and pretty much be in maintenance, while still keeping the macros very ketogenic (which gets harder when you're trying to get in about 3600 calories), there does seem to be some value in that--I'll feel more energetic on both days, and generally more positive. But it only seems to work if I"m even stricter than usual, otherwise I'll lose some of the anti-anxiety effects of ketosis (I can tell because the more SA ramps up, the more often I'll type out a comment on a thread like this and wind up deleting it). My version is different from Varady's, though, I'll take all of the down day calories as heavy cream.