You may have heard recent claims about the effectiveness of intermittent fasting. Health benefits include not only the obvious benefit of weight loss, but a myriad of additional benefits including decreased likelihood of inflammation, cancers, cardiovascular disease, parkinsons, diabetes and alzheimers. Anything that sounds that good deserves a little investigating.
I first began reading about Intermittent Fasting (IF) when I reached menopause. For the prior 20 years or so, I’d been mindfully active and tried to eat healthfully. I kept a close eye on my weight, with weekly weigh-ins and adjustments when I saw the number on the scale creeping up. Usually, adding in an extra workout each week and skipping the evening glass of wine a couple of times a week would keep the weight in check. Suddenly, these strategies no longer worked. I needed something different. An article suggested IF as a way to regulate weight after menopause.
Soon after, I got my first book and began reading. The science made sense and I thought this could be a good practice to insert into my life. One of the fundamentals that appealed to me is the flexibility. The “intermittent” in IF is the key. This is not about going days and days without food (although it can be). You can decide when, how often, and how aggressively, you want to try it. It seemed the minimum amount of time to see any benefits of fasting would be 12 hours (typically from about 7pm until 7 am the following morning). The “sweet spot,” seemed to be at least 18-19 hours. That’s when autophagy kicks in.
Autophagy, which is greek for “self-eating,” is the state where the body starts using existing fat for fuel, and begins recycling your bodies cells, eliminating the potentially dangerous organelles, particles and pathogens from your cells, thus boosting your immune system and reducing risk for numerous diseases and illnesses. The process of inducing authophagy, and what happens during autophagy, is very complicated. The discovery of the autophagy process is very recent. Although it first became known in the 1960s, it wasn’t until the 1990s when Yoshinori Ohsumi began to identify the mechanisms for autophagy, and its disease fighting capabilities, resulting in his winning the Nobel Prize in physiology in 2016. In fact, the benefits and details of autophagy are so new, that when I went to Wikipedia, searching for a basic explanation of the term, I saw that the pages had last been updated on 4/9/21.
Following this first immersion into IF, I immediately began putting some of the ideas into practice. I started by doing a 42 hour fast, one day a week, and also cutting back on carbs and sugar. It’s not as bad as it sounds. Tuesday was my fast day. Essentially I would stop eating by 7 p,m, on Monday evening. On Tuesday, I had nothing but coffee (with a little milk), and flavored water. Then I wouldn’t eat again until about lunchtime on Wednesday. I eliminated sugar from my coffee and skipped rice, pasta and bread whenever possible. I didn’t see results right away, but I committed to trying it for a month before giving up. For the first 3 weeks, I saw no changes in my weight. Then suddenly, a modest drop. After that I was down about a pound a week until I had lost about 10 pounds, which was thrilling. This had me back to my “maintenance” weight. I decided to keep going and get to that elusive dream weight. But after that, the scale wasn’t budging.
While I seemed to have plateaued, I was intrigued. Time to read another book. Book number two made similar claims to the science and the multiple health benefits of IF. The suggestions around fasting differed slightly. This advice was not as concerned with carbs, but did insist on a “clean fast” during the fasting period. This meant only black coffee, tea or plain water. The author followed a “one meal a day” fasting regimen, which held to the 19 hour fast rule, thereby eating for only 5 hours each day. The author suggested that it was okay to eat your one meal a day over the course of 5 hours, perhaps beginning with a light snack (your appetizer) at 2 or 3 o’clock, followed by your main dish at 500 or 530, and ending with a final dessert or glass of wine, wrapping up by 700. I found it too difficult to keep to the earlier, light snack idea, and soon found I was really eating another meal, so I cut this snack out altogether and just had my dinner with my family, usually accompanied by my glass of wine.
It’s been about 3 weeks on this plan and I haven’t yet lost any additional weight, which is not surprising to me. First of all, I’ve already lost the initial 10 pounds, so it’s natural that losing additional weight would get harder. Also I was not as diligent as I needed to be at the beginning of this new plan. And lastly, I still have cheat days. I probably follow my plan about 5 out of 7 days, skipping on days when social opportunities dictate otherwise: A recent lunch with a good friend and a midday bridal shower at one of my favorite restaurants. I refuse to be a slave to my eating plan. After all, I love eating good food, especially with people that I love! While I am willing to deny myself most of the time, I will always allow myself to enjoy food.
I just finished my 3rd book on IF and this one heavily described the science behind autophagy. It was a little over my head on occasion and I admit to skipping a couple of sections. The book likened the ideal diet to that of the cave men, consisting of periods of eating fatty meat and vegetables, followed by long seasons of berries, or maybe nothing at all, thus cycling annually through periods of autophagy and periods of non-autophagy. The recommended diet was very restricting and I knew wasn’t realistic at all for me. I definitely learned some things that I can use, just as I did with the first two books. Reading about ways to improve my health, my self confidence, and my life, is never a waste of time for me, and I’ll continue with my exploration of IF and autophagy. In fact, book # 4 is on the way as we speak. I’ll let you know what I learn next!
F Words that are not 4 Letters 