Thursday, January 17, 2008

Intermittent Fasting - Further update

I have not put up anything about Intermittent Fasting for a while! However, in the last few days I've come across some bits and pieces around the subject that I wanted to record.

(Incidentally I am realising more that that is the purpose of this blog - as much as anything it is a place where I can store things that I find interesting so that I know where they are! It is great that other people find this stuff intersting as well, but ultimately this is a record of nuggets of information that I have come across that I want to file somewhere, ultimately to weave into my bigger understanding of how to eat, train, live....)

Enough of that.

A round up of IF bits and pieces

Six meals a day is dead
- a nice little post from Matt musing on intermittent fasting:

In comparison to the many meals a day idea, you have intermittent fasting - a concept that is not only being confirmed by research but also matches up with our evolutionary heritage. Intermittent fasting is also slowly beginning to filter down to the fitness world and be applied by innovative trainers.

The rest of Matt's blog is well worth a read if you are interested in paleo diets, exercise etc. His little book Stone Age Power is also a great read, synthesising a lot of ideas on evolutionary fitness.

Modified alternate-day fasting regimens reduce cell proliferation rates to a similar extent as daily calorie restriction in mice.

In summary, modified ADF (alternate day fasting), allowing the consumption of 15% of energy needs on the restricted intake day, decreases global cell proliferation similarly as true ADF and daily CR without reducing body weight


Another potential health benefit to fasting. I wonder if this is related to the effects of ketosis as discussed here?


Art DeVany on autophagy
- Art Devany discusses how fasting - being hungry - can promote autophagy (literally self-eating) a process in which your cells consume and recycle damaged internal material.

The process seems to be triggered when the energy content of the cell declines so that the cell literally consumes itself. It goes after the damaged materials first, so there is a strong link between repair of damaged tissues and fasting or low energy state in the cell. So, it you are over-fed you down regulate cellular repair. You want to go hungy episodically to turn on cellular autophagy and repair those damaged tissues.

He points to a study on this here and you can find out more through Autophagy and IF or through The Role of Autophagy in Aging



IF and blood sugar - Brad Pillon author of Eat Stop Eat gives an account of how his own blood sugar levels fluctuate during a fast.

IF, exercise and blood sugar - Brad Pillon explains how exercise impacts on his blood sugar levels during a fast.

UPDATE - Working out on an empty stomach - John Baraban explains what happens to his blood sugar when he works out during a fast


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi there,
I read your Intermittent fasting post. I was interested in knowing it how it differs from Warrior Diet (Dr Ori Halfemkar). As Dr Ori also suggests undereating and overeating.

Chris said...

hi Varun

Intermittent fasting just means occasional fasts. Some people fast for a 24 hours - say 6pm to 6pm - once or twice a week; some people eat on alternate days; some people just extend an overnight fast - e.g. only eating between 5pm and 10pm, so they fast for 19 hours a day.

The Warrior Diet is similar to the last style although Ori does allow some eating during the day rather than a complete fast.

There are lots of entries on this blog about intermittent fasting - look under the labels for intermittent fasting or IF - and increasing amounts of research that this is a healthful way of eating with a lot of benefits: increased GH, lowered insulin etc.