Anyway, sometime over the weekend I managed to pickup a throat infection or more specifically, some sort of tonsillitis. I'm not exactly sure how as I'm usually extremely healthy though one thing is sure, drinking and eating to excess at Canberra's Oktoberfest had nothing to do with it. After spending the last 2ish days of coughing up green things that felt like razor-blades I finally took the guidance (read: orders) of my colleagues and went to the doctor. Pretty stock standard stuff: drink lots of water, bed rest, throat gargle and antibiotics 3 times a day - which is where dilemma struck. I asked doc if I needed to have them with meals as I fast for 16 hours a day most days. When prompted with why, I er.. kinda went blank. I've been reading so much about fasting lately and talking about it with friends but I couldn't think of even a good reason as to why I've been doing it, let alone any of the benefits of fasting. The good doctor then lectured me on how I should be having 6 or so meals a day to be healthy and so as to ensure my metabolism keeps kicking if I want to lose weight (not that I mentioned my weight.. what was she implying?).
Well I've got to go back on Monday, so I plan to be a good girl-scout and be prepared if she asks me if I'm still fasting (against her instruction), so the aim of this post is to explain to myself why I'm eating the way I'm eating. So here we go:
What is fasting?
Straight up, fasting is the act of abstaining from food and/or drink over a designated period of time; medically after 8-12 hours, one is said to be fasting. Most people know of it in relation to religion, my Grandfather (technically abstained) from certain foods before Easter and he was Anglican and most people know of Muslims fasting for Ramadan which involves no eating, drinking or sexy time from Dawn til Dusk over a 4 week period.
The reason I've been fasting however, is for health benefits. Specifically, after being denied fuel for a set period of time and using up all immediate stores; the body will refer to stored fuel for energy. This fuel will change as per availability and is initially glucose (the body's normal fuel source), followed by glycogen stored in the liver (converted to a derivative of glucose via glycogenolysis) and small amounts of protein in the form of amino acids (the precursors to protein). Once body has entered a fasted state, it will turn to fat stores for energy by converting fat into ketones (I'll talk more about this and ketosis - the diet for achieving the same thing - later) and ipso facto - burning dat dere fat along with a host of other benefits but I'll get to that after breaking up this wall of text with a funky image I stole from Precision Nutrition.
Intermittent Fasting
In order to make the most of these benefits, I've been following Intermittent Fasting (IF) which is just abstaining from food for a period, followed by an eating window. There are different variations as to how to adapt an IF protocol including the following:
- Lean Gains - this is a very popular method, especially in bodybuilding circles and it involves a 16 hour fasted period followed by an 8 hour eating window. I follow this protocol and generally eat between 1pm and 9pm each day. It's an IF approach for those who do weight lifting or are highly active and where possible it's recommended to include 'fasted training' (guess what that is?). Fasted training really, really hurts and leaves me feeling totally drained but my fasted workouts are more satisfying and feel (placebo effect possibly) more productive.
- Alternate Day Fasting - this is where you eat within a 12 hour window every other day. For example skipping eating on Monday and then eating between 9am and 9pm on the Tuesday.
- Eat-Stop-Eat - this type of fasting involves one or two full days of fasting per week. Since it's less structured and doesn't have to go hand-in-hand with a training regime, it's recommended that food choices on this type of fast are healthier choices.
- Warrior Diet - like Lean Gains, this fasting protocol is recommended to accompany a workout program and involves a 20 hour fast, followed by a 4 hour eating window.
Benefits of IF
Rather than type out points from varied sources, I'm going to be lazy and paste the list of proposed benefits of IF as detailed in Precision Nutrition's PDF on IF:
REDUCED
• blood lipids (including decreased triglycerides and LDL cholesterol)
• blood pressure (perhaps through changes in sympathetic/parasympathetic activity)
• markers of inflammation (including CRP, IL-6, TNF, BDNF, and more)
• oxidative stress (using markers of protein, lipid, and DNA damage)
• risk of cancer (through a host of proposed mechanisms; we’ll save them for
another review)
INCREASED
• cellular turnover and repair (called autophagocytosis)
• fat burning (increase in fatty acid oxidation later in the fast)
• growth hormone release later in the fast (hormonally mediated)
• metabolic rate later in the fast (stimulated by epinephrine and norepinephrine
release)
IMPROVED
• appetite control (perhaps through changes in PPY and ghrelin)
• blood sugar control (by lowering blood glucose and increasing insulin sensitivity)
• cardiovascular function (by offering protection against ischemic injury to the heart)
• effectiveness of chemotherapy (by allowing for higher doses more frequently)
• neurogenesis and neuronal plasticity (by offering protection against neurotoxins)This great PDF can be found here.
Other reported benefits include the following:
- Being able to eat more satisfying and bigger meals whilst trying to follow a caloric reduced diet (my 'breakfast' today was 3 eggs, 3 rashers of maple bacon, a massive chorizo sausage and some spinach all fried in coconut oil and it was orgasmic). If I'm over this damn illness tomorrow, I'll post a picture of the steaks I'll be frying up for steak night with the boys and they're huge.
- Mental focus and clarity by way of not constantly thinking of food by knowing that you have designated feeding windows. It sounds strange and you'd think that when fasting you'd be constantly hungry and counting down to the next window - I know I thought this - but through some phenomenon, it's true!
- Less caffeine dependence, this is a purely personal thing. Before trying IF I'd have a long black in the morning and afternoon and then a stim-loaded pre-workout supplement before getting to the gym just to keep me going and motivate me to get to the gym which resulted in caffeine-addled sleep that wasn't restful and had me looking for supplements to get some decent rest. Now I have my force-of-habit coffee when I get to work and lately before gym I'm been having stim-free preworkout supplements and much better sleep.
- Money saving and efficient, by being able to plan only two or three big meals each day, I can save a heap of time and buy ingredients in bulk (helloooo Costco/Aldi) which ends up saving me lots of money.
Reasons to NOT do IF
Um.. I looked, I really did and I couldn't come up with much. Most of the results on Google related to fasts involving just water, just juice or nothing at all. I agree that these sound very healthy. Another common theme among the search results related to extended fasts and the laundry list of things that happen to the body after fasting too long including the following scary culprits:
- The body goes into starvation mode and starts storing everything as fat whilst eating muscle because it doesn't know when it will get food - I don't know how much of this is true but it sounds bad and I don't want any part of it!
- Metabolism slows down so that it can last for longer on fewer calories. I actually believe this and it's the reason why I only did my Protein Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF) for 3 weeks (with 2 carbup weekends).
- Not eating is catabolic i.e. the body being in a state of catobolism results in the breakdown of muscle tissue.
What this means for me?
Since I'm a stubborn mofo, I never intended to stop IF-ing regardless of what the doctor told me because I obviously know better (note: sarcasm). However, after spending my sick-day today researching this (in between napping and watching Season 3 of Hung) so I didn't come off looking like a dumbass writing about IF without knowing the facts, I think if the doc asks me next week in my checkup - I should be able to coherently respond as to why I'm still fasting.
My own IF journey
My friend and I starting IF/Keto this week and a new training regime
Alright I'm going to go and lie down, being sick sucks.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting
http://www.leangains.com
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-intermittent-fasting
http://www.theiflife.com
http://www.bodyrecomposition.com
http://blog.superbootcamps.co.uk/2011/intermittent-fasting/intermittent-fasting-roundtable-with-martin-berkhan-brad-pillon-and-mike-odonnell/
http://www.fitnessspotlight.com/2008/3/3/why-i-do-if-and-everyone-should-to/
http://logmyloss.com/?page_id=1121
On a related note, my phone's auto-correct replaces the word 'fasting' with 'dating'. So when I messaged my colleague and fellow IF-er after seeing the doctor and told him that I shouldn't be dating...awkward.
-----UPDATE-----
I posted on the LeanGains Facebook wall regarding the doctor's reaction to my fasting and besides the multiple 'what a quack' responses, someone posted the following link on the Health Benefits of Fasting which contains some very good information and is written much better than this fever-affected garb:
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1834
Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment