I’d like to see a cite for that. The studies I heard about concluded that if mice eat 60% or so of their regular diet they live longer. It wasn’t about when mice were fed but rather about how much.
Wait. Does coffee count as a meal? If so, then I eat all day long.
But seriously, I only have one meal when I get home from work. That’s it. Every now and then, I’ll eat a breakfast or a lunch too. So that’s only 2 meals that day. But usually if I eat a lunch, then I dont need to eat a dinner. And if I just eat a dinner, I’m not hungry all day or anything. Most people I know get sooo hungry around lunch time. They’ll say like “Man, I missed breakfast, I’m soooo hungry”. Me? I dont usually get hungry during the day. But I do drink a lot of fluids and a shit load of coffee…
Here is a cite to the health benefits of fasting. Unfortunately, it does not contain links to the studies.
http://www.rawfoodinfo.com/articles/art_fastinghealthbenefits.html
I will contact my uncle and ask him from which study his info came.
I don’t like most food. Therefore there is no pleasure in it. The fact that I have to eat to live is often inconvenient. It’s just a chore I have to put myself through.
Eating just one meal a day will definitely slow your metabolism, but you won’t necessarily gain weight because your body will require fewer calories, and you will naturally be less hungry.
Since I work out frequently and I space my meals out, I get hungry if I go more than 2 hours without food, but I can take in many calories throughout the day without gaining fat.
Site is a combo of bullshit and half truths. It is true that in mice a reduction in calories leads to a longer mouse life. That is not really “fasting”, that’s “eating less” (“eating less” was achived by every-other day feeding), and damn straight, Americans would be healthier if they ate less. But humans are not tiny rodents either.
Here is a thread over in IMHO about “fasting”
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=8660289#post8660289
and my post: "Yes, it’s called starving, and it is bad for you: "Famine response - Wikipedia
After 2-3 days of starvation, the liver begins to synthesize ketone bodies from precursors obtained from fatty acid breakdown. The brain uses these ketone bodies as fuel, thus cutting its requirement for glucose. After fasting for 3 days, the brain gets 30% of its energy from ketone bodies. After 4 days, this goes up to 70%.
The consumption of ketone bodies by the brain relieves some of the glucose requirement but does not abolish it altogether. The brain retains some need for glucose, because ketone bodies can be broken down for energy only in the mitochondria, and mitochondria are often too big to travel down the long thin processes of neurons to reach the synapses.
In fact, the production of ketone bodies cuts the brain’s glucose requirement from 120 g per day to about 30 g per day. Of the remaining 30 g requirement, 20 g per day can be produced by the liver from glycerol (itself a product of fat breakdown). But this still leaves a deficit of about 10 g of glucose per day that must be supplied from some other source. This other source will be the body’s own proteins.
After several days of fasting, all cells in the body begin to break down protein. This releases amino acids into the bloodstream, which can be converted into glucose by the liver. Since much of our muscle mass is protein, this phenomenon is responsible for the wasting away of muscle mass seen in starvation.
However, the body is not able to selectively decide which cells will break down protein and which will not. In effect, all cells will break down protein, and essential cells (such as lung cells) are just as likely to be broken down as nonessential cells (such as muscle cells). The problem is that proteins are essential to the structure and metabolism of the cell. Most cells can not tolerate the loss of very much protein. Furthermore, about 2-3 g of protein has to be broken down to synthesise 1 g of glucose - so to make 10 g of glucose, about 20-30 g of protein is broken down each day to keep the brain alive.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/e...6851&dopt=Books
The effects of nutritional manipulation on immune function have been extensively studied in animals, but few studies have examined dietary restriction in humans. Obese patients enrolled in a protein-sparing, calorically restricted diet were monitored over a 3-month period with in vitro examination of mitogen- and antigen-induced lymphocyte blastogenesis. The sera from these patients were evaluated for effects on neutrophil chemotaxis, phagocytosis and microbial killing. Significant changes in body weight, triglycerides and glucose occurred during the diet, and most patients exhibited urinary ketosis. The diet was associated with increased blastogenesis in unstimulated cultures and in varicella and candida antigen-stimulated cultures, but blastogenesis was unchanged for phytohemagglutinin, concanavalin A, SK-SD and histoplasma. In assays of serum effects on neutrophil function, patients with urinary ketosis had depression of chemotaxis and microbial killing but not phagocytosis when compared to baseline or nonketotic patients. This study indicates that long-term caloric restriction is associated with significant effects on in vitro lymphocyte stimulation and with significant serum effects on normal neutrophil function.
Of course, fasting for a day or two should be OK, and in fact dudes often have to do this before some tests or procedures. And, going on a 'Fast" for one item in your diet- like “no booze for a month” or “no caffience for a week” is a good way to see how deeply these habits are ingrained."
It is not impossible that humans might live longer if they ate only every other day. But from what I remember of the experiment the mice just sat around also. Not many of us have that luxury, we either have to use our muscles or our brains. It’d be sad if we found that humans on such a diet lived an extra 10 years but lost 10% of intelligence.
That being said- most of us eat too damn much (I am one) and cutting back on those “Double-bacon-cheesburgers with large fries” meals would have many of us living longer- and healthier lives.
There has been some recent research on intermittant fasting. From the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction[WIkipedia article on calorie restriction:
Given that there are a lot of studies that show that calorie restriction works in different animals, it’s not unreasonable to think that it may have some beneficial effects for humans.
My personal opinion: Humans evolved on a cycle of feast an famine. I don’t think it’s too off the wall to think that “limited” starvation may have beneficial effects. I sometimes think it’s like out views on exercise. We used to think that exercise was dangerous and could damage the body (for women in particular). We now know that viewpoint is incorrect. Possibly, calorie restriction “exercises” other metabolic aspects in a beneficial manner. I don’t think the benefits of calorie restriction or intermittant feeding have been proven or disproven at this point.
That is the same study we have been talking about.
Lot of studies? Link to more than the mouse study? What other animals? (I do know of another study on rats). I have not found a study which wasn’t on small rodents. Humans are not small rodents.
And remember, the study was not really about “fasting” (as most dudes think about the term) it was “not eating on odd days but eating all you want on even days”
They have syudied this in humans, but for the 12 hour fast during Ramadan:
http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowPDF&ArtikelNr=12830&ProduktNr=223977&Ausgabe=224621&filename=12830.pdf](Calorie restriction - Wikipedia[WIkipedia article on calorie restriction[/url)
These results showed that daytime oral temperature, subjective alertness and mood were decreased during Ramadan intermittent fasting.
It also adversely effects sleep:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2869.2001.00269.x/abs/
The main finding of the study was that during Ramadan sleep latency is increased and sleep architecture modified. Sleep period time and total sleep time decreased in BR and ER. The proportion of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep increased during Ramadan and its structure changed, with an increase in stage 2 proportion and a decrease in slow wave sleep (SWS) duration. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep duration and proportion decreased during Ramadan. These changes in sleep parameters were associated with a delay in the occurrence of the acrophase of Tre and an increase in nocturnal Tre during Ramadan. However, the 24-h mean value (mesor) of Tre did not vary. The nocturnal elevation of Tre was related to a 2–3-h delay in the acrophase of the circadian rhythm. The amplitude of the circadian rhythm of Tre was decreased during Ramadan. The effects of Ramadan fasting on nocturnal sleep, with an increase in sleep latency and a decrease in SWS and REM sleep, and changes in Tre, were attributed to the inversion of drinking and meal schedule, rather than to an altered energy intake which was preserved in this study.
But that mainly appears to be due to eating at night rather than fasting.
Oops, I hadn’t actually clicked that link 'cause the URL looked so flakey. But I knew I had seen recent studies on intermittant feeding.
My comment was unclear, I meant lots of studies about calorie restriction in general, not just fasting. I know there have been some calorie restriciton studies done with monkeys which aren’t conclusive but have interesting initial results.
Isn’t that just what fasting is? Restricting food and then breaking a fast by eating? I’m not totally getting your distinction. Granted, it’s a narrowly defined fast but it’s still fasting.
Anyway, I didn’t really want to turn this into a debate and I’m not personally sold one way or the other. I just don’t think choosing to eat on alternate days is as flakey and unreasonable as most health fads (such as the raw food diet) or that it’s been definitively proven to be unhealthy.
There’s a guy at work who has been eating only at work for 4 or more years.
He’s under 145, so it’s not making him fat.
He doesn’t eat on the weekends?
I’ve never asked, but knowing him the way I do, I’d imagine he eats daily on weekends, once a day.
The guy has a daytime tech job and runs a syndicated anime production project on the side. Works all the time. Parties so little it scares me. Dates so little I’d think he was gay, but I actually know he isn’t.
Well, most “fasting” nutcases want dudes to fast (with maybe juice) for an extended period, say 1-4 weeks. That is crazy and dangerous.
Yes, you are right, eating every other day doesn’t seem to be harmful, at least compared to the myriad other fad diets out there.
But see that during the Ramadan intermittent fasting of only a 12 hour gap (for weeks sure) had these side effects:“subjective alertness and mood were decreased”
Did early human hunters get to eat more than once a day? I always assumed that in prehistoric times before any sort of food preservation was available, humans would kill something, eat 6 or 7 thousand calories over a few hours, and be fine for a day or two.
Isn’t that how most of the man sized (and bigger) meat eating predators work?
Well, yes, if we are talking a “big kill”. But early humans did not exist just on “big kills,” there was the “gathering” part of “Hunting & gathering”: nuts, roots, berries, insects, slow lizards, eggs, etc. And meat can be dried into jerky.
Yesbut humans are not carnivores either.