Merged Intermittent Fasting -- Good Idea or Not?

[pakeha]

It's basically Turkish ground coffee with cardamom. There are a number of Jordanian brands as well. Whole green cardamom pods are ground with the coffee.

You make it the same way you make Turkish coffee. According to the directions on some brands, if you just mix the grounds with hot water instead of boiling it, you get "Israeli Mud" coffee.

Ah.
Gottit.
I thought we were talking about Israeli coffee beans. My bad.
I'm lazy and just put peeled cardamom seeds from 2-3 pods with the Ethiopian coffee in my espresso coffee maker.

 

[GlennB]

Religious fasting means generally total abstinance.
So does modern day medical fasting.
But alas, the generalized def of fasting can mean full or partial abstinance. Welllllll....someone expanded the definition to allow cheating! How stupid!
They need to find another word that means `sort of` fasting. You`ve got to be kidding me.
If i go to doc next day after he told me to fast, and he screams ``i TOLD you to fast!`` I`ll say that.. ``All i had was one baloney sandwich, and to me and Webster, that`s still fasting!``

Mmmm. I made this point upthread I think. My idea of "fasting" is at least a whole waking day with no food at all, otherwise the word becomes meaningless.

Occasional 1500kcal vs. the regular 2500kcal = "fast"? That's silly.

Just call it 2 days of much-reduced calorie intake (MRCI) per week

 

[pakeha]

That sounds fine, GlennB.
MRCI it is, then.

 

[dlorde]

Religious fasting means generally total abstinance.
So does modern day medical fasting.
But alas, the generalized def of fasting can mean full or partial abstinance. Welllllll....someone expanded the definition to allow cheating! How stupid!
They need to find another word that means `sort of` fasting. You`ve got to be kidding me.
If i go to doc next day after he told me to fast, and he screams ``i TOLD you to fast!`` I`ll say that.. ``All i had was one baloney sandwich, and to me and Webster, that`s still fasting!``

Yes, in the 5:2 diet it is commonly called fasting although it doesn't necessarily involve complete abstinence. You're welcome to abstain completely during the fasting period if you wish, or pick an intermittent fasting diet that specifies that, or make up your own diet from scratch; however the fasting period in the 5:2 diet we were discussing involves restricting to a set maximum calorie intake for the period, as already explained (some abstain until the end of the fast period, some have several mini-meals).

If it really annoys you, I'm sure the forum members would accept you calling it `sort of` fasting, but I doubt they'll join you

 

[dlorde]

That sounds fine, GlennB.
MRCI it is, then.

I'd be quite happy with that (if I could be sure of remembering what it meant)

Have MRCI !

 

[pakeha]

Oh, I'll forget it anon, never fear.
What's interesting is the amount of time MRCI gives you.
And the amount of calories unconsumed, of course.

 

[GlennB]

I'd be quite happy with that (if I could be sure of remembering what it meant)

Have MRCI !

Although I'm skinny and tend to nibble at cals a lot, I could easily do MRCI a few days a week, no prob. I like my salads. I'd imagine it's the nibbling that might help when you're fighting overweight and don't want to feel like you're being punished by missing meals entirely.

Just my €0.02

 

[lionking]

I wonder how old some of those here saying they don't need to diet are?

I never needed to diet in my 20s, 30s and even well into my 40s, but a combination of reduced exercise, a more sedentary lifestyle generally and, well, laziness means I am no longer the lean specimen I once took for granted.

Exercise alone, at my age anyway, is not likely to do the job. This 5:2 regime seems to be working, for now anyway.

 

[eerok]

I never needed to diet in my 20s, 30s and even well into my 40s, but a combination of reduced exercise, a more sedentary lifestyle generally and, well, laziness means I am no longer the lean specimen I once took for granted.

Age does catch up. I was always big and strong, and then I quit smoking just when I went on steady night shift (sort of a double whammy), and now, six years later, I'm more big than strong--6'2" and 300 lbs. I turned into a foodist, love to cook and eat, and night shift is the devil. I'm often tired and sit/lay around in my off hours, especially in the winter.

I turn 60 this year, and that doesn't help at all. One's metabolism slows as one ages--that's a fact. I tried the 16-hour daily fast thing last September, lost some weight, and gained it back over Christmas. I've concluded that trying to lose weight without an exercise program is utterly futile.

 

[Iamme]

Regarding the known fact that your metabolism slows as you age ^^....dont tell that to 79 year old Vern! Slim as in high school i bet. Flighty. Water skis. Motorcycle rides. Went on 200 mile snowmobile ride last year. Has a big boat and flits around on deck like a little kid. Does building projects. Will lay on his back under a sink to install a faucet. (I watched him do that last year.) he`s going down to Florida this year to build a big deck for someone down there.
.
Anyway. If you just see how this guy moves. Its like he is on uppers.
.
I wonder if MOST people`s metabolism slows down because they look in a mirror and see they are getting old and figure `what`s the use, anymore?`... they get soft, used to things, bored, things seem less exciting, get lazy. Rather than only some biological slowing down of their metabolism, as the cause of their getting fat.
If my last sentence say is the accepted and proven cause, i wonder what happened to HIM then?

 

[Trakar]

I think the principal effect of all diets is to make us actually think about what we eat. What effect that has depends on the kind of person you are and what you ate before.

True! I think the best "diet" I ever adopted and stuck to, is the practice of only eating food in the kitchen/dining-room. Drive-throughs are fine, but the food stays in the bag until you get to a table and sit down to eat. This equally applies to any sweetened drink or fruit juice, only in the kitchen or at Dining table. So much eating has become an absent-minded process and habit in our modern society that it is little wonder that we have so many obesity issues.

 

[Trakar]

Age does catch up. I was always big and strong, and then I quit smoking just when I went on steady night shift (sort of a double whammy), and now, six years later, I'm more big than strong--6'2" and 300 lbs. I turned into a foodist, love to cook and eat, and night shift is the devil. I'm often tired and sit/lay around in my off hours, especially in the winter.

I turn 60 this year, and that doesn't help at all. One's metabolism slows as one ages--that's a fact. I tried the 16-hour daily fast thing last September, lost some weight, and gained it back over Christmas. I've concluded that trying to lose weight without an exercise program is utterly futile.

Burning calories is always more important than restricting calories. The worse part about quitting smoking before you are experiencing any noticeable health problems, is the dramatic metabolism slowdown you realize. I started smoking at 16, but I was just playing around until I joined the service. I smoked 1-2 packs a day for more than 3 decades and then quit at a time when age was already starting to slow my metabolism. Rough stuff.
My experience is that my weight (and health) is more controlled by what I do or don't do, than by what I eat, or don't eat.

 

[The Don]

Regarding the known fact that your metabolism slows as you age ^^....dont tell that to 79 year old Vern! Slim as in high school i bet. Flighty. Water skis. Motorcycle rides. Went on 200 mile snowmobile ride last year. Has a big boat and flits around on deck like a little kid. Does building projects. Will lay on his back under a sink to install a faucet. (I watched him do that last year.) he`s going down to Florida this year to build a big deck for someone down there.
.
Anyway. If you just see how this guy moves. Its like he is on uppers.
.
I wonder if MOST people`s metabolism slows down because they look in a mirror and see they are getting old and figure `what`s the use, anymore?`... they get soft, used to things, bored, things seem less exciting, get lazy. Rather than only some biological slowing down of their metabolism, as the cause of their getting fat.
If my last sentence say is the accepted and proven cause, i wonder what happened to HIM then?

Muscle requires more energy to "run" than fat. A 79 year old is likely to have less muscle then when they were, say, 40 and so their energy requirements are likely to be lower.

 

[GlennB]

I've always been interested in the fast/slow metabolism business.

Essentially we burn food to produce energy and waste products (primarily H2O and CO2). If I have a 'fast metabolism' then I'm producing more energy per minute than someone eating the same amount who has a 'slow metabolism'. I stay skinny while they might tend to put on weight.

OK, but how does that 'extra' energy I'm producing express itself? Higher basal body temperature seems unlikely. General 'fidgeting' and moving around is a possibility, but it takes a lot of devoted exercise to burn off cals, let alone random leg-crossing and head-scratching and getting up to see whether the washing machine has finished.

All I can come up with is that, having achieved skinniness somehow, my surface area:volume ratio is higher so I need to burn more cals to maintain basal body temperature. If that were true, then it would suggest that people could lose weight just by turning the thermostat down a few degrees, which also seems unlikely.

 

[Trakar]

I've always been interested in the fast/slow metabolism business.

Essentially we burn food to produce energy and waste products (primarily H2O and CO2). If I have a 'fast metabolism' then I'm producing more energy per minute than someone eating the same amount who has a 'slow metabolism'. I stay skinny while they might tend to put on weight.

OK, but how does that 'extra' energy I'm producing express itself? Higher basal body temperature seems unlikely. General 'fidgeting' and moving around is a possibility, but it takes a lot of devoted exercise to burn off cals, let alone random leg-crossing and head-scratching and getting up to see whether the washing machine has finished.

All I can come up with is that, having achieved skinniness somehow, my surface area:volume ratio is higher so I need to burn more cals to maintain basal body temperature. If that were true, then it would suggest that people could lose weight just by turning the thermostat down a few degrees, which also seems unlikely.

Ahhh there's the crux, fat provides insulation holding in more body heat, meaning you need to generate less muscle tremor to maintain high basal body temperature. That's why extremely fat people can be seen sweating profusely while the temperature is relatively cool or cold, they aren't generating more heat, they are just retaining it better.

 

[cosmicaug]

I've always been interested in the fast/slow metabolism business.

Essentially we burn food to produce energy and waste products (primarily H2O and CO2). If I have a 'fast metabolism' then I'm producing more energy per minute than someone eating the same amount who has a 'slow metabolism'. I stay skinny while they might tend to put on weight.

OK, but how does that 'extra' energy I'm producing express itself? Higher basal body temperature seems unlikely. General 'fidgeting' and moving around is a possibility, but it takes a lot of devoted exercise to burn off cals, let alone random leg-crossing and head-scratching and getting up to see whether the washing machine has finished.

Producing more heat implies higher a body temperature only when all other things are equal (and I guarantee that all other things will not be equal). It does not imply higher body temperatures in and of itself.

Also, there might be something to non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT (at least some people seem to think so), but it is unlikely to be a great contributor for the reason you mention. However, I suspect that it might be more of a case of cause and effect being misunderstood and that the diminished NEAT often seen in the obese (as compared to lean subjects) might be nothing more an outward sign of leptin resistance (leptin signaling should result in more fidgeting in the overweight but the overweight are thought to often be leptin resistant).

All I can come up with is that, having achieved skinniness somehow, my surface area:volume ratio is higher so I need to burn more cals to maintain basal body temperature. If that were true, then it would suggest that people could lose weight just by turning the thermostat down a few degrees, which also seems unlikely.

Fatter people consistently have higher basal metabolic rates than the rest. Despite being less metabolically active than many other tissues, all that adipose tissue which makes up most of the extra weight in the overfat is not metabolically inert.

 

[GlennB]

Ahhh there's the crux, fat provides insulation holding in more body heat, meaning you need to generate less muscle tremor to maintain high basal body temperature. That's why extremely fat people can be seen sweating profusely while the temperature is relatively cool or cold, they aren't generating more heat, they are just retaining it better.

OK. This seems to mean that the skinniness is the cause of the 'high metabolic rate', and not just the effect of an inherently high metabolic rate.

Put it another way - take two people of same gender, similar height, 'frame', age and lifestyle, one slim and the other overweight ... get the overweight person slimmed down to resemble the slim dude. Would they now have similar 'metabolic rates' by virtue of their similar shape etc?

The way I read this subject, as reported, it's the supposedly high metabolic rate of the naturally slim person that tends to keep them that way, while the slimmed-down person would be more prone to weight gain if they're not careful.

 

[cosmicaug]

OK. This seems to mean that the skinniness is the cause of the 'high metabolic rate', and not just the effect of an inherently high metabolic rate.

Except this doesn't happen. If you measure it, overweight people have higher metabolic rates. It's not the other way around.

Here's an n=1.

The way I read this subject, as reported, it's the supposedly high metabolic rate of the naturally slim person that tends to keep them that way, while the slimmed-down person would be more prone to weight gain if they're not careful.

Some of this perhaps happens but this effect might be overstated.

 

[dlorde]

... it would suggest that people could lose weight just by turning the thermostat down a few degrees, which also seems unlikely.

I recall hearing a while ago that this could happen, but it depends to some extent on the amount of brown fat you have (it varies considerably) and the degree to which you can activate it - see Why brown fat is 'good' in the fight against obesity.

 

[Trakar]

OK. This seems to mean that the skinniness is the cause of the 'high metabolic rate', and not just the effect of an inherently high metabolic rate.

Put it another way - take two people of same gender, similar height, 'frame', age and lifestyle, one slim and the other overweight ... get the overweight person slimmed down to resemble the slim dude. Would they now have similar 'metabolic rates' by virtue of their similar shape etc?

The way I read this subject, as reported, it's the supposedly high metabolic rate of the naturally slim person that tends to keep them that way, while the slimmed-down person would be more prone to weight gain if they're not careful.

Think of fat more as a feedback. maintaining basal metabolism isn't the only way to burn energy, and the more fat you have the less likely you are to exert a lot of energy in other activities (you are heavier, you get hot fast, and the less you do the more muscle mass you lose). Goes back to my earlier point, what and how much you eat, isn't as important is how much you burn,...at least with respect to your weight, overall health is another issue entirely.