There’s nothing inherently wrong with Intermittent Fasting. I certainly see how it fits into the whole idea of eating as we evolved to eat, and that probably isn’t five (or six, in some cases) meals a day. Skipping meals seems to work for people when it comes to a leaning out stage where, say, a man is looking to go from 15% body fat to below 10%. Based on what I’ve seen by hanging around in the on-line nutrition and diet communities for the last few years, I’d say that IF is a useful tool in the final stage of becoming a real evolutionary bad ass. As far as using it as part of a weight loss program where you still need to lose 10% or more of your body fat? I’m not so sure about that.
Obviously, I’m not a biochemist, but let’s look at the evolutionary logic here. It’s a great strategy for us, as an animal in a state of nature, to be able to hunt hungry without hypoglycemia making us dumb and shaky and to be able to live on meat and a little bit of green forage nearly forever. At some point, however, the game is up, and the interaction of your genes and your hormones will decide that you’ve now optimized for your particular situation. For a lot of people, this means that they are still carrying around some fat they would rather not be.
I’ve noticed that a lot of people who are very successful on low-carb and paleo diets seem to get to a point where they can’t lose any more fat. Many of these people have lost quite a lot of weight, but they cannot get the last bit off. If they’ve lost 80-100 pounds, it’s the last 25. If they’ve lost 30-50 lbs, it’s the last 10-15. Some percentage of their excess weight just does not want to come off, even though their diets have worked a treat up to that point. The advice I generally see is to go lower in carbs and “add some intermittent fasting.” In low-carb circles (where they are not into skipping meals), people are generally told to go lower in carbs and control calories. Both of these things seem to be exactly the wrong advice, based on our evolutionary adaptations.
To be honest, I *hate* IF. I know people report feeling good while fasting, but I am just not one of those people. I can actually work out fasted without a blood sugar crash. I start at a blood glucose reading of 85 and after exercising, I’m closer to 105 through the magic of gluconeogenesis. This is what people who *like* intermittent fasting report, so I do not claim that I’m special or that I’m an exception to some biochemical rule.
To be perfectly clear: I’m defining a fast as no calories consumed. I don’t mean a juice fast or an egg fast, I mean no food, liquid or solid. Black coffee and tea have a few calories, but they count as non-caloric beverages for the sake of a fast.
Ultimately, what I am saying is that I sincerely doubt skipping three meals in row on a regular basis is an effective strategy to get off a weight loss plateau. If you’re already very close to your goal of being an Art DeVany type bad-ass? Then absolutely, yes.
Here’s what I see on comment boards fairly often:
Someone has been eating a low-carb Paleolithic or Primal-style diet, and has lost a bunch of excess fat and has become keto-adapted. Most people feel quite good in this state, and don’t experience any excess hunger. This is certainly a win-win for the dieter.
Women of child-bearing age may get to this state even earlier than men as their hormones are still thinking about the idea that they might get pregnant. They are eating what they think is good food, and certainly vegetables and high-quality meats can fuel you indefinitely, but it’s not a state that is conducive to weight loss. For some, it can apparently set the stage for infertility. If you read this epic comment thread on Free The Animal, you’ll find a lot of women wind that their cycles get wonky way before they look too skinny.
If you’ve got nothing available but meat and maybe some greens, your best bet for survival is to make glucose out of protein, and that’s what you’re doing. Your hormones have decided that there’s no fruit or tubers in their immediate future, so the best strategy is to hang on to that bit of fat just in case things get worse. Any fat-loss diet is about convincing your body to burn fat. In order to get it to do that, it has to be creatively starved.
And here’s something I’ve never really seen considered: what about all the foods that you’re putting off limits that you can see and smell? Might the psychology of denial have something to do with your body being unwilling to continue shedding fat? Grok wouldn’t be hunting hungry if he had food readily available, now would he?
Let’s say that our mythical person then stumbles on to a Paleo advice board and gets advice to try IF and to cut carbs lower. If it does work, then YIPPEE! you’re now adapted to eating even less. When you try to normalize your diet to that of a healthy eater that’s not consciously dieting, you have a higher chance of gaining back weight. If it doesn’t work, you’ve just put your body under more stress, possibly provoking problems with cortisol or your thyroid, and you are now worse off. None of this causes a problem for Grok, but you want to look good in a bikini, so it’s a problem for you.
I like meat and salads – really I do, but I’m not interested in living on that and nothing else. I do see a lot of hard-ass for the sake of hard-ass in Paleo/Primal circles. Intermittent Fasting and very low or zero carb diets are often the form that takes. Just because you can do that and feel good doing it does not mean that you will shed fat that way. Think about the signals you are sending your body. Do you want to work on being evolutionarily, optimally fit, or would you rather lose more fat first?
Consider just picking one of those if you’ve hit a plateau. A lot of folks seem unable to do both at the same time.
Sterling over ay sterlingadvice.blogspot.com had a great post today touching on IF. A point he made (that he learned from Tom Venuto) was an understanding of calories and macronutrient manipulation to achieve the best results. And I think, barring genetics or messed up body chemistry, that’s a major factor in getting that “ripped” look on IF or any way. I also prefer the leangains way of IF with a daily fast of 16-19 hours for men. Shorter for women, which is an important distinction other forms of IF don’t make.
Stephan has a four part series on bodyfat set point…why we can’t lose those last 15-25 pounds and what to try.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/search?q=set+point
Scroll down to #I in the series and scroll up to #IV
Our bodies are not genetically programmed to give up those last pounds. Our bodies think that if we do, our long term survival is potentially compromised. So metabolism is slowed down & we make glucose from protein and thus insulin rushes in to control the glucose and that energy is stored as fat if not used up immediately. Our bodies will do anything to hang onto the fat in the cells for survival.
It is well documented that older people that are slightly “overweight” i.e. 5-10 pounds and have total cholesterol levels in the 235-275mg/dl will live longer than folks that are normal skinny with low TC or are very much overweight from eating SAD and have high small dense LDL particles. Perhaps the optimal %bodyfat is in the range of
12 to 18% because we are telling our bodies there is no threat to our survival. But just try to get down to 8%BF
without a ton of exercise and caloric restriction. Our bodies fight it all the way.
And there are the cases of long distance runners who appear to be at peak fitness with BF down the 5-8% range that go out for a morning jog and get back home and die on the front lawn of cardiac arrest. The famous runner Jim Fixx
died at the age of 52 in that scenario.
I think I’ll just stay at 12%BF at 160 pounds on a 6′2″ frame at age 66…will do IF once a week and a relatively Low Carb regime (30g Carbs/day. And I’ll do my Body by Science workout once a week workout for 15 minutes and live out my remaining 50 years in a quality pain free and sickness free way of life.
I still look good in a bikini except for the wrinkles and saging skin left over from my SAD days.
Not a fan of long distance running, but the way you describe Jim Fixx is just a bunch of hooey. An elite runner will be in the 5-8% range, long distance & sprinters both. Jim Fixx was far from elite and had a bf% in the mid to upper teens, what one would call skinny fat. He took up running at the age of 35 at a weight of 240 & a two pack a day smoker. While he gave up smoking & lost 60 pounds from running. He still ate mostly crap. Being that his father had his first heart attack at 35 and died of a second one at age 42, he did pretty good. Jim Fixx died of atherosclerosis that had blocked one coronary artery 95%, a second 85%, and a third 50% & would’ve died if he was sprinting like grok.
On the other hand, check out Clarence Bass at cbass.com who is 70 years old & is ripped (bf% 5-8%) year round who eats a whole food diet of around 3000 calories a day & maintains his physique through one full body workout a week & one HIIT session a week.
Dr. Bernstein recommends that people who are on a low carb diet who have stopped losing weight and need to lose more should lower their protein, not further reduce their carbs. Of course, his audience is diabetics and are already eating a very low carb diet.