Health and Fitness, February, 2019

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RunKitty
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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby RunKitty » Mon Feb 11, 2019 5:21 pm

LadyM, what are the health benefits of IF? My dh has been researching IF. I have unwittingly been doing 16:8 IF for quite awhile. After my breakfast smoothie and a vegetable salad and fruit for lunch, I'm usually not hungry for dinner. And I've always had a 7p.m. cut off for eating, since I don't like the feeling of being full when I go to bed. Some of the people my dh researched were doing just one meal a day. I can't imagine being able to get enough nutrients in just one meal. One guy was eating a whole pizza and four bananas! I'm interested to hear what you have leaned about IF.

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LadyMaverick
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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby LadyMaverick » Tue Feb 12, 2019 10:21 am

what are the health benefits of IF?


I am still learning them myself. I find it time-consuming to sift through all the data about it. I don't tend to believe everything I read or watch.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day group says we must eat when we wake up. And then eat frequently to keep our metabolism humming and control blood sugar. I have been a member of this group all my life.

So I am leary as I dabble with the Intermittent Fasting group. They claim fasting helps in so many areas that I find myself wondering if it improves health in all these areas then WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE DO IT?

Why didn't "I" do it before?

I am reading The Obesity Code by Dr Fung which is kinda sciencey with all the data that he proves. But I find it so fascinating as he breaks down the myths and proves them wrong.

I am reading and binge-watching Dr. Boz [Annette Bosworth, MD] that is an internal medicine physician who started researching fasting in order to help her 84 year old mother who has gone through chemo treatments multiple times. It is fascinating to see her research findings and how she has implemented them on herself and her loved ones. The impossible is happening.

All this to say......I'm still learning about fasting. I am becoming a fan of it the more I learn and the more I experiment on myself.
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LadyMaverick
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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby LadyMaverick » Tue Feb 12, 2019 10:32 am

Some of the people my dh researched were doing just one meal a day. I can't imagine being able to get enough nutrients in just one meal. One guy was eating a whole pizza and four bananas!


I have been reading about OMAD (One Meal A Day). My DD lost about 150 lbs doing that many years ago. She did not eat healthy while doing it. I have not liked the thought of OMAD for that reason.

I think there is a large part of the population that does not eat healthy. So having pizza and banana as their food for the day wouldn't be different for them. Eating unhealthy food only once a day might be an improvement over eating it several times a day.

I have been watching a gal on Youtube documenting her OMAD journey. Six Miles To Supper She has lost 65 lbs doing it and has maintained that weight loss for a couple years. She has young children and prepares a family meal that she eats with them (once time a day). She does what is called "Dirty Fasting". I don't agree (yet?) on many of her WOE but I am learning from her. It's hard to argue with success.

I think OMAD could possibly be a healthy WOE if the correct foods were eaten.
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Nancy
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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby Nancy » Tue Feb 12, 2019 2:00 pm

Did 30 min. On stat bike Tues. And Wed. And short walk.
Last edited by Nancy on Fri Feb 15, 2019 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby LadyMaverick » Tue Feb 12, 2019 3:01 pm

As I was going through my day I had an Aaa-HAAAA moment.

I have unwittingly been doing 16:8 IF for quite awhile. After my breakfast smoothie and a vegetable salad and fruit for lunch, I'm usually not hungry for dinner. And I've always had a 7p.m. cut off for eating, since I don't like the feeling of being full when I go to bed.


THIS!! It makes me wonder how many healthy people with good eating habits do Intermittent Fasting without any planning for it. It is just a way of life for them.

My 88 year old DMom does it and I have high confidence that she has never heard of IF. DMom eats a huge breakfast around 9am then eats another good meal at noon (always finishing this meal with ice cream). DMom typically doesn't eat the rest of the day. Every once in a while she will eat an apple or orange mid-afternoon. DMom maintains a healthy weight and eats whatever she wants. But it is almost impossible to get her to eat in the evening. Once she is done at noon she doesn't eat until breakfast the next day. Thinking..... in the past year I only remember her eating something in the evening one time and that was tasting her birthday cake at her party. After tasting it she left 90% of the cake on the plate.

I feel sorta foolish putting so much effort into learning how to do IF when others do it so effortlessly and naturally. I want to be like that.
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Harriet
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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby Harriet » Tue Feb 12, 2019 4:34 pm

Oh, I got so long-winded with this - sorry - but I have always found it interesting.

For several years in the very early 2010s I did Alternate Day fasting form of I.F., from the 2008 book of that name, with low calories one day and high calories the next. You would start out at less than 500 on your low days (the author Dr. James Johnson called it the 20/100, meaning starting at 20 percent of calories one day, 100 the next) but let low days go up when you felt you were off to a good start, usually a few weeks. I was at 800/1800 for a long time, about 45/100, and even dd learned to ask if I was "up" or "down" on a certain day. There was nothing really wrong with it and it probably helped me keep my weight stable. For all I know, I was receiving the longevity benefits all through that time. I began to blame it for some of what my doctor called "gastritis" (which is how doctors tell you your tummy's irritated) and kind of moved away because I thought maybe the empty-tummy days were causing it. No proof of that.

By 2014, the longest time ago that we can search this forum, I wasn't fasting anymore and the farthest back post I can find, I was just saying I used to do it and might do it sometimes again if I felt like it. So I can't find much I said here over those years.

The disappointment for me as I followed ADay was that on the net, everyone on it just posted about calories, and people were eating horribly, insisting they got the same benefits as long as they ate the same calories, no matter what they ate. This was an error in understanding the book. In the book, Johnson based his plan on nutrient-dense and high-water-content foods, suggesting his readers follow Dr. Barbara Rolls' work on eating food with lots of volume, to feel full.

But he also felt he should at least include the popular discussion in those years about whether weight loss in and of itself was a health goal worthy of reaching, no matter what. Walter Wil_let had famously said that since the only benefit between eating 1.5 daily fruit/veg servings and eating 8 was a 25-percent reduction in heart disease (this was later disproved - there are many other benefits), then he believed it wasn't statistically significant enough to suggest that overweight people make it a priority. Dr. Johnson allowed that discussion in his book even though he disagreed, because, as he explained, he believed his theory would triumph. The theory was that I.F. would minimize the impact of heart-disease promotion because (1) you would lose weight, and (2) you would be activating a stress response that would save you from the lack of the fruits and vegetables he advocated. I'd known people of all weights who had died of heart disease, and thought 25 percent more living patients was not just statistically significant it was downright wonderful, so Wil_let's ideas only made me focus on nutrition more.

Eventually the BBC did a series of programs on new ideas in health, with the first one being about this type of fasting, and way more popular than any of the others. The psychiatrist who hosted it wrote a book called The Fast Diet, also called 5:2 (only 2 days at 500 cals per week instead of 3), which was more popular than the AF book had been. As often happens in the publishing world, he didn't even mention Dr. Johnson, who had co-authored the first published study of I.F. in humans in 2004. He did mention the other co-author, Mattson, whose only research had been in rodents until he met Johnson. Oh, well. Mattson's a smart fellow, and deserved attention, too. That Fast Diet author has just come out (last month) with a new book called The Fast 800, with 2 different plans, one of which suggests no alternating times, just a flat 800 calories every day.
So he's skipping all around with this book - he had once said he saw no reason to hold calories low every day. He says there are 3 plans, but the 3rd is the Mediterranean Diet, and I don't see how that's his.

I'm fascinated by medically supervised fasting in facilities, with either juice or water fasts, which are doing great things for sufferers of extreme chronic disease. Wonderful stories coming out of that recently.

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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby LadyMaverick » Tue Feb 12, 2019 5:27 pm

Harriet - I enjoyed reading your experience and knowledge about various ways of fasting!

I'm fascinated by medically supervised fasting in facilities, with either juice or water fasts, which are doing great things for sufferers of extreme chronic disease. Wonderful stories coming out of that recently.


This reminded me about when DH had pancreatitis. He was deathly sick. Oh so sick. DH was put into the hospital and the treatment was nothing. No meds. No nothing. They wanted his body to just rest. He did dry fasting for couple days then they gave him IV fluids for a few days and finally a few days later they allowed him to drink fluids. It worked and he made a complete recovery.
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RunKitty
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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby RunKitty » Tue Feb 12, 2019 9:15 pm

Thanks for all the information, LadyM and Harriet. Very interesting.

Is the one meal a day woman the same one who walks miles in her house? I think I will have to follow her lead, not with the one meal, but with the house walking. We have almost three feet of snow right now. Very unusual for this area. Our vehicles are stuck at the bottom of our driveway. I tried going out to walk/run this morning and made it only half a mile before turning back. What a workout! I ran a little, mostly trudged and fell, so i finished by running in the house. The dog was very excited. I will be so glad to wear running shoes again and run on dirt and dry pavement. ....maybe by the weekend...

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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby LadyMaverick » Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:42 am

Is the one meal a day woman the same one who walks miles in her house?

Yes, that is the lady who started out by walking 6 miles inside her home each day. Now her family are full time RV'ers so she walks outside.

OH MY! Three feet of snow would be a huge challenge for running. I hope you find an alternate way or place to get your daily steps in.
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Re: Health and Fitness, February, 2019

Postby Harriet » Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:29 pm

RunKitty, do be careful! I'm glad the tumble didn't mean you had to stop. I did a video walking workout today - you know, you can find some of those online on youtube, which might help during this time. If you happen to have a pedometer, you can know an approximation of steps. That wont work perfectly, of course, because usually online walking workouts are going to have a lot of different steps and pedometer wont register them all in the same way (side to sides, for instance). And I don't see how you could get credit for the arm part of the workouts, but maybe you could just get a feel for how tired you were and know it was about the same effort as your usual?

I came up with my third perfect 24-habits day of February today. Very pleased about that. Scale is less cooperative than I would have thought. But that is an unimportant number in the long run. It's winter (body thinks I need a warm layer, lol) but it's not much of a mystery that stress is what's impacting my winter this year. Just being aware of that helps.


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