There are so many good facts that we’ve been taught that turned out to not be facts:
- The food pyramid / plate is the perfect diet.
- Carbs are evil.
- Eggs are bad for you.
- Red meat will kill you.
- Saturated fat is bad for you.
- Paleo is good for you
- Paleo is bad for you.
- Fasting makes you go into starvation mode.
- etc.
It makes it hard to know what to eat and it changes all the time. I think this funny clip sums it up the best: Wait – don’t eat: [anything?]
About intermittent fasting
As a reminder what that mean (well 2 definitions, there are more):
- 5/2 = 5 days of normal eating and 2 days of 500 calories for me or 600 for him.
- 16:8 = not eating for 16hrs i.e. if I have dinner at 7pm I don’t eat to at least 11am the day after.
“How can that be good for you”? “Your body will go into starvation mode”. “You’re better off just eating healthier and exercise”. This, and every variant of this, I’ve been asked since I started. I’ll add some links at the end of the blog for anyone that’s interested that addresses a lot of that.
Since starting intermittent fasting I have lost 11.kg in 4 1/2 months. Slow and steady and I felt better than in a long time before the weight loss became noticeable. At first I thought that it could be the placebo-effect and if it after over 4 months I don’t care – I feel good!
The hunger then? Am I not hungry all the time? Of course I get hungry but it’s not as bad as I expected mostly (there are bad days as you can read in previous blog posts) and I’ve done this very gradually. You get used to it and learn that hunger isn’t an enemy that must be instantly and always satisfied.
Healthy eating and exercise – of course it’s good for you but to me, that alone hasn’t worked. It’s not sustainable for me. Yo-yo diets, I lose weight, a lot or a little then something happens and I fall off the wagon and put it all back on. Intermittent fasting is the first thing that I feel I can maintain for a long period. I hope to eventually get to a healthy BMI and be able to go from 5/2 to 6/1.
Starvation mode. This is a quote from the Australian 5/2 Facebook group from Dr Mosley. The last paragraph summarises his thoughts on the subject.
“The first thing to say is that “starvation mode” is a myth. The myth seems to be based, in part, on the Minnesota starvation experiment, a study carried out during World War Two in which young volunteers lived on extremely low calorie diets for up to six months. The purpose of the study was to help scientists understand how to treat victims of mass starvation in Europe. After prolonged starvation there was a drop in body temperature and heart rate, suggesting that their basal metabolic rate (the energy burnt by your body when you are at rest) had fallen. This, however, was an extreme situation.
A more recent experiment on the effects of short term calorie restriction, “Resting energy expenditure in short-term starvation” produced very different results.
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/71/6/1511.full.pdf
In this experiment they took 11, healthy volunteers and asked them to live on nothing but water for 84 hours. The researchers found that the volunteers’ basal metabolic rate went up while they were fasting. By day 3 it had risen, on average, by 14%. One reason for this may have been the significant rise they detected in a catecholamine called noradrenaline, which is known to burn fat. If they had continued then, I’m sure, the volunteers’ metabolic rates would eventually have fallen, not least because they would have begun to lose significant amounts of weight. But, certainly in the short term, there is no evidence that starvation mode is anything other than a myth.
There is no reason not to try and cut back on your non-fast days and by doing so you will certainly lose weight faster. The main reason for not doing so is because I don’t want people to feel they are on a perpetual cycle of self denial, which might undermine their willingness to continue. But if you don’t feel like eating as much as you did on your non-fast days, great.” Original source
And more links:
How I made it work for me.
Michael Mosley’s own fasting site or watch the video Eat, Fast and Live Longer and the FAQ
How Intermittent Fasting Might Help You Live a Longer and Healthier Life
Effects of eight weeks of time-restricted feeding (16/8) on basal metabolism, maximal strength, body composition, inflammation, and cardiovascular risk factors in resistance-trained males
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