No. of Recommendations: 7
My wife and I also have experience regarding intermittent fasting to share.
As for me, I was on fast- and slow-acting insulin; 2,000mg metformin; Victoza; and carvedilol, and alpha- and beta-blocker to stabilize my heart, which was going wonky. Spoiler: I became free of all of the above.
Fasting sounded, well, nutty, to me. I needed to look around. I read Fung's book -- although not a greater writer, a great thinker. Why shove glucose away, when you could not introduce it in the first place? The house if flooding -- do you start bailing first, or stop the water from getting in? Why would you not keep your blood glucose (BG) from getting higher in the first place?
Also, looking around it didn't take long to find research going back decades that noted that insulin merely pushes glucose into muscles and nerve cells, and is still toxic, just not in the blood, where we are measuring it. No surprise, then, that insulin has not been shown to extend healthspan or lifespan.
I read some other material as well -- Asprey's Fast This Way, which pointed out that intermittent fasting is the eating pattern of most animals most of the time, as it was for all of humanity until the Industrial Revolution. Also, it takes something like 3 months to starve to death -- you're going to make out all right. Five days or more you should talk to your doctor, but less than that, go for it.
This all sort of made intermittent fasting seem normal, and what we normally do seem kind of odd. My thoughts turned to the money made from diabetics -- the last thing you want is to cure diabetes, if you are a member or beneficiary of Big Pharma. I decided not to think about that too much.
We started by stretching our fasting muscle, as Fung says: 16 hours without eating, eating whatever in an 8 hour window (16:8). Then 18:6. Then 24:1 (OMAD). This was tough. Then, we jumped to 36:6. The last 12 hours weren't that hard. 48:6 likewise: the first day was desperately hungry, then the next day was nearly free. Eventually we went 72 hours, by which time we discovered that electrolytes matter. I leaned on LMNT at first (one of the vanishingly few options without sugar), and then made my own formula I could add to ice water and cocktail bitters. It worked! No more dizziness or strange fatigue.
We hit upon eating dinner Sunday, and not eating again until Thursday afternoon/early evenings. I did that some weeks, then most weeks ' three weeks a month is where I topped out. But on the fourth week, I got sick of food before it was time to fast again. It's always something that needs dialing in.
I lost 100 pounds, got off all those meds, and my A1c went from 8.8 to 4.7. I found that I enjoyed fasting, and I enjoyed feasting ' what a joyous celebration food can be when it isn't a daily grind! My wife went on to lose over 250 pounds, and is near her target weight. She still fasts Sunday-Thursday, and she may simply do that from now on.
Not me. I found a three-month plateau, and some limit on my tolerance for so much fasting. As a result, I gained some of that weight back. I decided to improve my strength and conditioning, burning it off instead. Greater muscle mass is important for healthy longevity.
I got a DEXA scan, and VO2Max, and repeated it 2 months later ' 2 months of hard-core training. Well, as hard core as I can manage, anyway. I cut fat, gained muscle, and my body weight is trending the right direction ' but I'm much stronger already, and gaining well. I'm going to keep doing that.
I don't think of myself as intermittent fasting anymore, but as living with time-restricted eating: I don't eat until mid-afternoon most days. And, I take in very few carbs, only good quality protein, fat, veggies as a rule. Very little alcohol. When there are exceptions, I take 100mg of Acarbose to keep my BG from spiking, and my carbs are slow releasing, anyway ' sweet potato, not sweets. Not too much fruit.
Protein still spikes my BG, so I use Fortagen (an amino acid blend) instead. The DEXA scans prove that it's working, at least for me. And, I am limiting my portions, so that if I have a small meal in the mid-afternoon, I keep it less than 1,000 calories. I don't want to, and that was certainly not my habit, but I do it, and it helps.
Some people say that intermittent fasting is just another way of restricting calories. Well, it does do that. But it can also be a radically powerful intervention for losing weight, resolving diabetes symptoms in a way that actually works, and my benefit you via autophagy, if you fast for long enough. The way I'm doing it, portions still matter, exercise matters ' quite a lot. But I would never have more fully understood my relationship with food if I hadn't fasted, and now I decide what is best for me in ways I was not even aware of, before. 20 years of Atkins didn't do for me what fasting did.
Cheers,
Wot
