Jun 7, 2018
Today's Super Power U Podcast is a report on Month #1 of
Lisa's Intermittent Fasting Experiment outlining what she did and
the results.
Generally, I really like to support independent podcasters but
today I'm going to make an exception...because well, one thing you
can count on is that I'll always make exceptions, without
exception.
The podcast episode I listened to recently which I loved,
which is an episode of
Radiolab called A Journey from Where to Where which
is snippets of Oliver's Sack's conversations and thoughts in the
final months of his life. I've always been a fan of Sack's
work, especially his book
"Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the
World of the Deaf". But Radiolabs audio
portrait of Oliver Sacks inconsequential chats with his partner
Billy Hayes and his frenzied attempts to get his thoughts on paper
are poignantly captured on this show. I'll put a link in the
show notes.
Today I'm going to review the experiment process I began with
Episode #23, Intermittent Fasting - A Primer
and review each of the weeks since beginning that
experiment. I'll go over what I did each week, what kind of
results I saw and some reflections on the process. I'll also
go over a some points to help you understand what we do
and don't know about process of autophagy which is one of
the purported benefits of fasting. And then I'll tell you my
plans for the next month.
Before continuing it seems prudent to repeat here that I'm not
a Doctor, I'm describing my own experiences and nothing that
follows should be taken as medical advice. And while we're
there here's another note from that show:
In the original Fasting episode #23 which aired on
May 10th I introduced a few different approaches to
Fasting including one which is often considered the easiest entry
point to Intermittent Fasting the so-called 16/8 in which you fast
for 16 hours followed by an 8-hour eating window. That
episode also offers a ton of research on the apparent benefits and
health processes impacted by fasting and lots of practical
resources on how to approach it. If you haven't listened to
that episode and you don't already know much about fasting I'd
recommend heading back over to Episode #23 and listening to that
first.
There I outline the specific benefits I'm personally after
through fasting which I would abbreviate to combatting the onset of
type 2 diabetes and improved insulin regulation, autophagy and
cellular regeneration which I'll go into in more detail
today and which appears to be associated with improved long-term
health and anti-aging properties and finally weight loss, which is,
for many people the primary reason for fasting.
At that point in time, I'd already revised my earlier belief
that I could never fast. I'd done a number of 36-40 hour
fasts by stopping eating on a particular night, usually Sunday for
me, skipping food altogether on Monday and then resuming eating
mid-late morning on Tuesday. My approach was pretty haphazard
and uncommitted but at least I'd already dispelled my earlier
belief that I could never, ever do it. Much of that had to do
with earlier progress I'd done by taking a break from
drinking alcohol starting in February, which was supported by
Rachel Hart's work on ways in which our actions (drinking or
eating) follow feelings, which come from thoughts. That's also a
great episode to go back and listen to
Episode #22 Taking a Break from Drinking
with Rachel Hart if you're trying to make a big, difficult
change of habit or lifestyle.# I'd also already learned that for
long fast days in particular, it's really important to
drink a lot of water.
At the end of the episode, I made a commitment to check back
in on the show once every month figuring that if I got a better
routine in place and maintained it, and then made monthly
adjustments as needed over 3 months I might learn more about myself
and about fasting. So I laid out the general plan that week
because well, additionally public accountability can be really
powerful.
So today is the day of that first check-in one month in.
But first here's what I was thinking at the outset.
My intention was to do one 40-hour fast a week with the rest
of the days fasts at 18 hours followed by one meal or
OMAD
approach inside of a 4-6 hour eating window. My weight
when I started was 140 lbs and I was definitely trepidacious.
I supported the process by reading and listening to podcasts on IF
and I tracked my fasting hours in
VORA (on Android) or
in the iTunes Store and my
weight with the
Withings scale which
uploads data to the
Nokia Health Mate
platform.
After one week on May 17th I reported that I was
feeling really great about hitting that 18-hour fasting window
every day with eating windows between 2 and 5 hours but I did
also break my long fast early at 24-hours for a family social
event that felt important. That week I was noticing how
quickly my thoughts went to the idea that fasting wasn't working
and it wasn't worth the challenge. I reminded myself then
that I have an inclination towards impatience and decided that I
was going to force myself to suspend my disbelief, ban any decision
about whether or not this is workign or worth it, and
take on the mantra of Keep On Going for at least one month. I
had a secret super power this week in the form of my
husband, Joe would put all the data together for me. It shows
that quantitatively I fasted for a total of 143 hours which is an
average of 20 hours per day but I only lost half of a
pound.
After two weeks on May 24th my report shows that again I
fasted for 18 hours every day except for Friday when I stopped at
16 because I wasn't feeling great and because I wanted to remind
myself that I can be gentle, even imperfect and then pick back up
again. I broke my long fast at 39 hours and again I didn't
feel so great. Paying attention to my body is really
important so I decided that I would shorten my long fast to
36 hour for the next two weeks to see if that
helped. After 2 weeks I was definitely frustrated because I
wasn't seeing any difference in my weight. It's interesting
to me in retrospect that I was basing my feeling of
frustration at the two-week mark on my sense that I didn't lose any
weight probably because the scale numbers were jumping up and down
a lot but because I'd committed to going to one month regardless of
what happened and because I'd also started reading about something
fasters call the Whoosh Effect which is a big sudden drop in weight
usually after a plateau. The reality though which I know from Joe's
data is that week two I fasted a total of 133 hours, a daily
average of 19 hours and actually lost 2.5 lbs. So the whoosh
effect had begun even though I was feeling discouraged. The
brain is a funny thing.
On May 31 my Month 1, Week 3 update report describes doing 18
hours of fasting during the week and 15-16 hour fasts on the
weekend. I also took longer than usual eating windows on the
weekend that week. But after week 3 I noticed that I had
actually lost weight with about a 5 pound differential
since before beginning the experiment which is consistent with
Joe's data which shows that went down another 2.5 lbs for a total
of about 5 lbs in 3 weeks. My total
fasting time for the week was 124 hours which averaged
18 hour a day. At that time, the only change I planned on
was to add sea salt to the long fast day to avoid dehydration and
headaches.
Today is the final day of week 4 and it was a rather
challenging week in my life which a lot of stress and emotions so I
skipped my long fast altogether which brought my total fasting
hours down to 107 which is an average of around 15 per day
substantially less than the first few weeks. Still my weight loss
this week stayed consistent around 2.5 lbs. I've been
wondering how the probably cortisol will impact my body
but I don't really have any way of controlling for
or mesauring that.
Overall, it seemed like I got gentler and gentler with myself
going from 20 hour a day the first week, to 19 the
second, 18 hours average the 3 week and finally a
big dip to 15 hours per week. In terms of weight loss the
first week I showed almost no weight loss in spite of it being the
highest fasting week. The following three weeks average
around 2.5 lbs per week. So, I'll be very curious to see how
the next month plays out in terms of the relationship between total
week-long fasting hours and calories lost. I'm planning to
continue with the more gentle approach by aiming for one long fast
a week and an intended ideal 18 hour fasting day but will a
willingness to be gentle when necessary. I see this as kind
of ideal scenario aspirational approach with a ton
of leway for being human and life.
One thing I've been noticing is what seems to be a very big
improvement in my skin tone. This is totally subjective
perception since I have no way of measuring especially since I
wasn't really expecting it.
One of the great challenges with doing something new
and challenging is finding the right motivation. Because my
motivation is largely based on research that suggests benefits but
there is alway conflicting information, it can be hard to
steer the course. A few weeks ago my friend Keith forwarded
an article from the Guardian
which warned that fasting can raise the risk of diabetes which is
exactly the opposite of the research I've been reading. So,
I'm far from a scientist but that's my husband's leaning so
he showed me how to do research on PubMed and in the process
we found an article called
Cell Metabolism by Sutton, Beyl and
others which concluded that even in the absense of
weight loss an early time-restricted feeding schedule limited to 6
hours between 8am and 2pm improved insulin
sensitivity, blood pressure and oxidative stress levels in
pre-diabetic men.
Another purported benefit of fasting, which is difficult to
understand and challenging to prove is that it increases
autophagy. Autophagy means "self-devouring" and is the
natural way that cells disassemble and recycle their broken
components. These parts include things like amino acids, which are
the building blocks of proteins.
Because autophagy makes these new parts usable to the cell, it also
means they don’t have to come from food. And as you might have
guessed, when we are low on food, autophagy is one way our cells
can continue to get the needed components and so the process is
accelerated.
There is a growing body of evidence, nicely summarized in a review
in the New Scientist a few weeks ago, that increased autophagy can
improve health and delay some diseases, like Huntington’s Disease
and Parkinson’s disease. Autophagy is also thought to improve
health by clearing old dysfunctional and toxic cell
components.
However, please keep in mind that the study of autophagy is new
(for instance, the Nobel Prize for discovering it was only awarded
two years ago) and while overall autophagy looks to be healthy,
it’s also not a simple story. There are at least 6 distinct types
of autophagy in our cells, and also increasing autophagy is not
always good --some types can potentially lead to multiple sclerosis
and accelerate certain types of cancer.
Like many areas of biology, when we don’t understand something, we
have to look to general experiments to see actual outcomes.
Overall, intermittent fasting appears to have beneficial effects,
so to the degree that autophagy is responsible for these, there is
probably some wisdom in the body that allows it to promote only the
healthy kinds of autophagy.
This concludes my update from month one. Next month we'll
look the effects of fasting on other aspects of health.
Other Fasting resources:
More tips on Fasting
Eat Yourself to Live:
Authophagy's Role in Health and
Disease
Super U Resources: