Stop eating

Good shit man fighting the good fight. I want to make a career out of fasting consulting lmao

What are your top tips for fasting?

Don't eat.

Remove all doubt. Burn the boats. There is no decision to be made. You are not a person who eats for the moment. There are no temptations because your course is already set.

Making choices wears down our willpower, which is a finite resource. Remove the choice.

easy:

^^This

If you're only going for a few days then just don't eat. It's that easy. Stay active, get out for walks or easy runs. deload any weight training by about 80%

For extended fasts then i seriously suggest bone broth with added iodized salt. It has all the minerals you'll need to sustain the fast for an indefinite length of time while still being extremely low in calories. A cup a day is more than enough.

With extended fasting i tend to only recommend walking. And if you must weight train, then deload by 70%. I have no hard science to back this up but to me it feels right of course do what feels right for you.

...

MAKE ME

Not to mention that IF is known to drastically increase testosterone.

Fantastic infographic bro

That infographics layout is giving me cancer.
I'm on week three doing intermittent fasting, lost 6lbs so far and I'm feeling mediocre about it. I feel really foggy and dull all day till I break my fast at dinner. Gonna migrate my eating period to the middle of the day I think.

The dullness and fogginess is from decreased blood sugar. Your brain and muscles are both competing for glucose.

Ideally you should train aerobically in a fasted state to encourage epigenetic pressure on your mitochondria to transition to fat for fuel instead of carbs. This will significantly improves brain function.

You can increase the speed at which your mitochondria will adapt by including extended fasting durations into your schedule, such as not eating an entire day out of the week.

This intermittent fasting fog is really persistant to those who have some level of insulin resistance. increase your insulin sensitivity to see much better improvements.

Doing IF with one meal a day now in the second week.
Feels pretty good. My lifts haven't declined and I don't feel tired at all. More awake actually because I don't feel that tiredness after eating a lot for lunch or dinner.
I bulked for the last half year because I was pretty DYEL and this is my first real cut.

Next thing I'd like to try down the road is a several day water fast. But I'm not too sure about it yet.

>top right

since i started doing the fasts i feel a weird fucking noise inside the back of my neck, sort of a rain stick sound. I googled it and a lot of people actually feel it too and it seems to happen when you are hungry. Anyone here experiencing the same? It freaked me out at the beginning.

Already on it, Prof. Chingchong

My first question is to your hydration level when fasting? how does your urine present?

Secondly, headaches and neck aches are often frequent indicators of low sodium within the scope of a fast.

if pee gets too yellow i make sure i drink enough water to make it transparent and keep up this way. I hate salty foods so there's actually a chance that sodium might be involved. I never had a headache in my life, and fasting didn't change it.

It's not pain, just a weird ass sound.

>a weird fucking noise inside the back of my neck

Does it happen when you move your head? Could just be the sound of your skull socket rotating.

nah, it usually happens a bit after waking up, mostly when i'm laying down. Few times a week, sometimes it doesn't happen at all for week/months, the only correlation i could find is that it started along with my 16/18h fasts.

it might be sodium. Sodium is one of those electrolytes the body doesn't really keep around. It needs to come from dietary sources. Things like potassium and magnesium the body stores quite a bit of in the bones.

But because you're fasting that means you have lowered insulin which is the primary motive force in keeping stores of sodium around.

I suggest making up bone broth with added salt. simmer the bone broth and when it's done add some salt, stir, and taste. keep adding salt until you just start to notice it's there. and one cup a day will keep you covered for extended fasts

thanks for the tip, user

Won't broth break your fast?

i assume he mant me to do that while i'm at the eating window

Bone broth does technically contain some calories in the form of protein and fat, but a single cup of broth will not have an appreciable effect on the metabolic fasting state.

The fat has no effect on insulin, which is the point of fasting, to lower insulin levels.

The protein present is minimal, approximately 6 grams per cup of broth. not enough to significantly raise insulin and certainly not enough to break ketosis.

In fact you can dump a shitload of fats into your coffee (like bulletproof coffee) and technically not break the metabolic state of fasting.

Is there a timeframe on That? I'm liking the results and I like it all in theory, but I can't let this diet impact my productivity at work. I guess I do need more cardio, I've only been lifting at lunch with some black coffee for fuel.

>timeline?
It honestly depends on the person and approach since there are so many confounding factors.

I suspect, and there's some evidence to support, that the largest impacting factor to this problem is insulin resistance. The more resistant your cells are to insulin, then the more insulin your pancreas needs to pump out to do the same job.

Insulin in the brain competes preferentially for leptin in the brain. That is to say it "blocks" the effects of leptin. And the presence of leptin up-regulates the CNS which in itself will go a long way in battling the fog.

Furhtermore, higher levels of insulin will slow down the release of fatty acids from fat cells into the blood hindering energy transport which can lead to tiredness since the brain is struggling for fuels.

Another confounding factor is how well fat-adapted your muscles are. If you muscles are still holding on to burning carbs, then they are competing for the same energy as the brain. By reducing their dependence on carbs and increasing the fat metabolism you free up more energy for the brain.

and finally, you have dietary carbohydrates. The more carbs you take in, the slower your adaptation. But the type of carbs also impacts this as well. carbs from whole foods have a significantly lower impact on insulin than carbs from processed foods.

I've trained people who went to a 16:8 fasting schedule and did just fine and slipped right through the brain fog in a couple days. And I've had people who fasted for weeks at a time and the brain fog dragged on. In the wide-angled view of these cases its my opinion that insulin resistance was the prime factor in deciding whether or not they had trouble with it.

If you don't want to fast for a week or more then I would suggest a ketogenic diet for your feeding days to ensure maximal insulin suppression

thanks user, this was a very scientific and measured breakdown.

>drastically

fasting always includes broth if it is done for health

if you just consume nothing at all but water it's religious nonsense that directly damages your body. you need electrolytes to function.

glad to see this user ( ) again. Your advice over the past few days has really helped me. I've been doing IF for about a month. Kinda stalled so I did a 36 hour fast. Now I feel great. I actually feel more energetic about 8-18 hours after my last meal than I do any other time of day. I've incorporated a bit of fasted cardio as well.

What do you think about doing fasted cardio ~6 hours after my last meal of the day? I'm doing 6:18 fast. I was thinking it would help me use up any remaining glycogen and transition to running on fat.

>if you just consume nothing at all but water it's religious nonsense that directly damages your body. you need electrolytes to function.

Da fuck... normal human can easily go a few weeks with JUST WATER and suffer no long term problems...
I am still amazed they wasted fuel on the moon missions by sending food with the astronauts... they were only there a few days

I am a HUGE proponent of fasted cardio.

It increases the epigenetic pressure on mitochondria to derive their energy from fat preferentially to carbohydrates.

In the average carb-burning athlete they utilize around 60-40% of their energy through carbohydrate oxidation, starting somewhere up in the sixties and gradually dropping to around 40%. This of course depends on the individuals aerobic fitness and other factors.

Studies in ultramarathoners who use an exclusive ketogenic diet have a relatively stable carb oxidation rate around 11% meaning that almost 90% of the energy they burn is from fast stores.

One of the major advantages of this is that this carbohydrate consumption level starts to call within the range that the liver is able to convert glycerol to glucose. And the glycerol is the backbone the fatty acids are bound to when they're stored as triglycerides in the fat cells.

This completely eliminates 'the wall' and the only limitations to endurance become hydration and the mechanical endurance of the body.

In short. fasted cardio all the way.

I'd also like to give a nod towards Phil Maffetone's Big Book of Fitness which goes into the aerobic training method. Essentially the focus should be on your heart rate, NOT your speed. you want to stay just inside of your aerobic threshold where your mitochondria are capable of oxidizing fat for fuel. When you go anaerobic, the oxidation of fuels becomes limited and then you go into non-oxidative ATP production which has a lot of byproducts and reactive oxidation species. By staying in the aerobic threshold you're forcing the mitochondria to become better fuel burners. And you'll start to see significant speed improvements for the same heart rate.

Then why does your body store excess magnesium, potassium, and other free minerals in the bones?

Why is it even during two week fasts, researches see no significant change in serum electrolyte levels? (excepting sodium)

Sodium is a tricky one because it cannot be stored in the bones and cells only retain surplus sodium because of insulin's pressure.

Sodium levels are a concern during extended fasts but they are generally not a concern unless you're getting into the two week territory.

The other concern is those with type 2 diabetes who may be deficient in magnesium. I've yet to see any conclusive evidence as to why t2d are low in magnesium, but it is a concern for those individuals

I wish you'd stay but I know you'll eventually get run off by the fatfuck keyboard warriors with the intellectual capacity of a five year old, gay no-homo threads, and general faggotry.

We're you ever a fatass? Is that what lead you down this rabbit hole?

We're you ever a fatass? Is that what lead you down this rabbit hole?
Nah. I was never a fatass. I wasn't a skinny or fit kid by any means, just average. It wasn't until late highschool when I started working out.

the thing that started me down this path was my friend. We went to college together and got roomed together. We'd known each other since kindergarten and I'd watched him pack on the pounds over the years. I kept trying to get him to go to the gym but he was always tired, slept all the time. For the longest time I started getting mad at him for being a fat lazy gluttonous piece of shit. He always had snacks and was always eating. Meanwhile he'd get absolutely pissed that i could eat an entire 22" pizza practically every night and never gain a pound.

That's when I started focusing not just on WHAT he ate but WHEN. I could eat a 4,000 calorie pizza over the course of 4 hours, but I wouldn't eat again until the next night.

I started going through the papers on the university's access portal and started seeing a trend. So i formulated a rough out of what I now use to help people to lose weight.

I told him I thought insulin was the problem and we started working on a way to lower insulin and it started working.

Growing up, mom would wake us up for breakfast, and ask if we were hungry. If we were she'd cook for us, if not we wouldn't eat. She would pack leftovers for lunch, and off we went to school. And at dinner we served our own plates. There was never a "eat everything on your plate" admonishment. My brother and I ate ad libitum, but we were never allowed to eat snacks because it would "ruin our dinner"

My friend on the other hand had a hover mom who made him eat every meal, made him finish his plate even if he wasn't hungry, that kind of shit.

(continued)

Because we were allowed to listen to our stomachs we never really broke that natural eating rhythm which has a natural insulin up and down cycle. My friend on the other hand, being made to eat even when he wasn't hungry had that insulin cycle interrupted.

So with everything I learned, the fastest way for a parent to piss me off is for them to force their kid to eat all their vegetables, or finish their plate. Kids know when they're hungry and they're not going to starve to death. Let them dish out what they want to eat and eat until satiety. Don't do anything to unhinge the natural hormonal signaling in their bodies.

Which all of these efforts I've made to help people lose weight and get fit focuses on lowering that insulin, lowering the body weight, and getting rid of visceral fat so that the natural eating patterns are re-established.

I refuse to believe you comvinced dozens of normies to fast

So, ok, insulin blocks leptin which tells our body we have energy to burn and turns up the CBS right?

If insulin blocks it, and turns down the can and makes us hungry... How did evolve in the first place? The more you eat the fatter and hungrier you become? That makes no evolutionary sense.

What would a monthly schedule look like for brain gains? I don't have any interest in lifting weights (anymore) if I can avoid it, right now I commute by bicycle about an hour a day and run 8k once a week.

Should I make my commute and run at least 6 hours after the last meal? I would like to cut in general as well, should I fast for a week? Or two, etc.?

Thanks for this thread OP

Belive it or not. I don't give a flying fuck. But when people see someone go from 400lbs to 180 in a year, get off their medications, start making voluntary healthy decisions like exercising spontaneously and taking up physical activity sports... people start to notice and want in.

>How did evolve in the first place? The more you eat the fatter and hungrier you become? That makes no evolutionary sense.

Perfect sense... eat when the food is available and eat as much as you can... you may not be able to find food again for a long while

Throw out all your food before you start

Do regular exercise during the fast

>CBS
I take it you mean CNS?

Well there is an evolutionary benefit to insulin blocking leptin. There's two times in your life where you start wanting to pack on pounds pretty quick. Puberty and pregnancy.

When the hormal cascades for these conditions occur it triggers a form of insulin resistance which then causes your body to produce more insulin which then blocks leptin's suppression of the vagus nerve. resulting in more hunger. and the increased levels of insulin ensure a higher percentage of the food energy and the lowered CNS packs that energy away.

It's just that because of our overly abundant food supply, and the copious amounts of processed sugar available that this whole system gets twisted around. By integrating fasting and/or ketosis you're simulating famine periods which then bring the insulin under control.

If all you need to lose is a few pounds then basic intermittent fasting will be plenty sufficient to see the benefit

Switching to lower carb intake will increase the levels of ketones available for your brain which are actually more fuel efficient than glucose and results in less reactive oxygen species for your brain cells to deal with.

Start out with a 16:8 feeding schedule for a week or two and see how it goes. If you're not seeing the improvements you want, then extend the fasting period on one or two days, or integrate a fasting day into the week and see how it works after a month or two.

Thanks!

Question for the guy that's clued up on IF here (I hope it's actually you Dr. Fung)

I've been practising OMAD for about 6 months now, great progress and results, love it

But now as I move to the final stretch of the weight loss I'm noticing that my after my meals I'm feeling intensely full, like "my stomach is about to explode" full. They're usually about 1300 calories and consist of vegetables, meat, yoghurt and oils. I don't eat carbs.

I don't want to eat any less than I am already because I'm weightlifting at the same time, but the bloated feeling is starting to get in the way of things that I have to do after dinner

Thoughts?

Not the guy who knows what he is talking about but doing the same. Im trying to just hit the right calories in less foods. More butter and oils on veggies, fattier meats, and protein shakes to hit my macros if needed.

Problem is that I'm pretty sure it's the veggies that are making me feel full, and I'd really hate to cut back on them because...they're veggies

yeah I hear ya. What kind of veggies? I eat a lot of spinach. A lot. You can shrink it and get the water out by sauteeing it. Makes it so you can eat more of the actual spinach and less of the water in it.

Not Dr. Fung, but that guy is doing god's work.

If you're full, you're full. Full stop.

If you get a little hungry again in your window then go ahead and eat ad libitum. But don't force yourself to eat.

Your stomach hasn't physically shrank, it's just releasing the signal hormones that you're done eating which gives you the whole "I couldn't eat another bite" feeling.

Eat to satiety, no more, no less. If you find you're not making the improvements you want in terms of mass over the period of a month, then reduce one of the fasting windows during your week.

Same bro. One meal a day is legit. Down 5 pounds after a long stall in 2 weeks

>whoosh effect
Please explain senpai

Typically some combination of spinach, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, green beans and broccoli

Thanks for the advice, I do sometimes get that natural response that says "no more" but I still try to power through because I feel that I need it for the fuel and it wasn't an issue until now

I'll take up your suggestion, thankyou

shut up you're not my real dad!

Jesus fucking christ can't you google?

leanmuscleproject.com/how-whooshes-impact-your-weight-loss/

>Thanks for the advice, I do sometimes get that natural response that says "no more" but I still try to power through because I feel that I need it for the fuel and it wasn't an issue until now
Trust me, if you're in a metabolically stable state your body will tell you when it wants to eat and what it wants to eat. I've seen this a hundred times from the people I've helped to people who've cured their metabolic syndrome online. You'll be going through your day planning on having some chicken breast and broccoli for dinner but then as the day progresses you'll instead start obsessing on steak.

If you're doing one meal a day and your body says "Hey, yo. I could go for a tall glass of milk right about now, then get some milk."

There's no point restricting calories or meal periods if you're metabolically stable and the food isn't generally that unhealthy (I'm look at you sugar). Especially if you're trying to put on mass.

And on the other side of the coin there's no point in forcing hte body to eat more food than it wants when it's telling you "oh no, I couldn't possibly eat another bite"
One thing I'd like to ask you to do is, while you're eating pay attention to how the food is making you feel emotionally as you're eating. You'll see a pattern.

6'2' 250 lbs

How long would it take to get me to 200 lbs if I do intermittent fasting at 1200 calories a day? Should I just water fast?

Eh, this information is OK for normies, but it's got problems.

>1. Lifting weights
True.

>2. Keeping your testicle cool
False.
Testicle temperature has only a small and transient effect on testosterone production, nothing long-term.

>3. Quality sleep
True.

>4. Diet
Half-true.
Various vitamin deficiencies will impair testosterone production (among other things). High levels of zinc can increase increase production. Intermittent fasting has not consistently shown to have any positive effect in the long-term. In the fasted state testosterone production will decrease, in the well-fed state it increases but with no net gain. Cholesterol increases testosterone production only if you aren't getting enough cholesterol, which is a rare occurrence.

>5. Lower estrogen
True.
However, this infographic implies that estrogen binds to androgen receptors which is absolutely false. Estrogen signals the liver to increases SHBG production (which lowers free testosterone) and inhibits the release of GnRH from the hypothalamus, subsequently leading to decreased total testosterone levels. The best way to avoid excessive estrogen in the male body is to maintain a low bodyfat% as adipose tissue is the primary peripheral source of estrogen synthase (aromatase).

>6. Reduce stress
Half-true.
"Stress" is vague. Cortisol is a stress hormone and is generally catabolic though it doesn't directly affect testosterone production. Growth hormone is also a stress hormone and is anabolic. Meditation's influence on cortisol is greatly overstated. 10-minutes of daily meditation "drastically reduces levels of cortisol" is false.

>Avoid BPAs
True, but the ubiquity and influence of xenoestrogens is also overstated and frequently misunderstood. Also, the effect that xenoestrogens have on adults is far less than that it has on children who are still growing.

Finally:

>Avoid porn
There's no scientific justification for this. Being obsessed with porn is certainly bad and it could affect your libido, but that's probably more of a psychological problem than a physiological one.

You shouldn't particularly focus on calories while you're intermittent fasting to begin with. Caloric restriction reduces your REE and you want to leave that alone. Eat to satiety, that is until your full. Slow down when eating and when you get to the point you feel your body saying stop, then stop.

The largest benefit to fasting is the reduced baseline insulin levels over time which will lower your so-called 'set weight'. there is a direct correlation between 24hr insulin and body fat.

Regardless of what everyone tells you, 2,000 calories broken up into 6 small meals is metabolically different than 2,000 calories in a 4 hour eating window. The six smaller meals have a greater impact on insulin. They do not necessarily trigger peptide-YY release as strongly as a larger meal. And the six smaller meals keep pulsating the release of ghrelin. The opposite is true of the short eating window.

>Should I just water fast?
If you want to you can, if not then don't.

I am obviously a fan of water fasting for a period to start a weight loss regimen because of it's spectacular effects on lowering insulin and breaking the carb cycle of addiction.

>bone broth with salt has all the minerals you need
Jesus fucking Christ I thought fit was above this level or retardation

Or just drink some salt water...

>I thought fit was above this level of retardation

>Magnesium
Yep bone broth has it
>Potassium
Yep, sure does
>Calcium
I mean it is bone...sooo duh?
>Sodium
I mean we are adding salt?
>Chloride
yep

which is disgusting.

Can I keep drinking heavily?

Not enough levels you monkey you need supplements if you're doing this fasting retardation also you need high protien.
If you want to do something so extreme at least do rfl 2.0 at least lyle McDonald does legit science and references 200 journals in his book

Fasting and protein intake are incompatible. One of the primary benefits of amino restriction (and secondarily calorie restriction) is autophagy.

Do you want to post body m8. Why is autophagy desirable do you want to post studies?

Good one to start with: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3518431/

Is that your body? Or is that your lifts?

Alright, so I hit my halfway mark to my goal weight (at 250 from 300)
For the last two months Ive been doing 16:8 at 1800 calories.
Im already on a low carb diet, it might even be keto low, ive never tested.

Im thinking about doing a fast to help with my concentration, since Im ADHD in my senior year of Electrical engineering. I got through junior year without meds through sheer force of will, but would love if this helped.
Im torn though, Ive done a ton of reaserch and found two very different ideas. One saying it will leave me with a broken metabolism, constantly cold and tired with all the weight coming right back.
Have any of you any personal experience with using this for weight loss or improving concentration?
If not Ill just have to be pacient and keep this 1000 cal deficit up another 6-8 months.

>80 replies
the fuck

>ubiquity of xenoestrogens is also overstated
how?? they're in the majority of consumer products.

23 hours into my first attempt at a fast, I got nauseous and threw up. Any ideas why?

How much water did you drink?

About the average amount of water I drink per day.

Started lifting again a few weeks ago after a year long break. I want to recomp so I decided to tackle diet differently. And now I'm in this thread.

Went on a 2 day fast to start. The mental clarity from the adrenaline was amazing. And coming face to face with the mental addiction to food was mind blowing. I could get over stomach pains, that was easy, but my brain so hard wired to eat salty carb rich shit all the time was insane. I'm now 4 days into One Meal A Day. It's been good for the most part, the first day I ate way too much, and yesterday I think I drank 1000 calories worth of beer after I ate. But over all I feel so much better. I don't get low blood sugar crashes all the time now. I feel a little sleepy after eating, but that's because I eat way too fast for my body to catch up and say "woh slow down there bud!" So that is something I'm having to work on.

Oh 6'3 chubby btw. Lifting 3 times a week. Haven't seen any issues with my newbie gains even when I lift on an empty stomach and don't eat until 5 hours later.

Do you consume 100% of normal daily calories during that single meal?

Oh boy

Ok so idk if you know as much about the ketogenic diet as you do fasting, but you're the least retarded person I've seen on this website in months so I'll ask anyway.

Right now I'm on a ketogenic diet and I'm probably gonna start doing a 16:8 fast also. I wanna spread the word that this shit actually works but getting past the first week is the hardest part, and most of my friends have very limited willpower. Basically my question is; would fasted cardio make the transition to ketosis happen quicker?

Not him, but any physical exercise is going to drain the glycogen storage faster. The sooner that storage is depleted the sooner your body moves to another form of energy.

This.

but dude if you're on a keto diet already, you should have done some preliminary research....there are tons of tips and tricks to get into ketosis faster

The Ketogenic diet accomplishes almost all of the metabolic benefits of fasting.

>was 5'4, 165lbs
>water fasted for 19 days, lost 20lbs
>broke my fast with some small slices of pineapple
>suddenly hungrier than I've ever been in my life
>go on to eat a pork pie and about 4 chocolate bars that were in the fridge
>feel sick, sleep it off
>wake up, tell family I've broken my fast
>everybody's happy, wants to order takeout for lunch
>eat half a large(!) "Meateor" dominoes pizza with some cookies and a box of wings
>worst indigestion of my life that night
>that was a week ago today, and I've barely shat since then
>when I have shat it's been thanks to laxatives
>still feel like I haven't digested it all and have continued to eat like a pig
>daren't step on the scales
>whenever I burp it smells like egg

Sorry for the long post, I'm just looking for some advice on how to fix this

Am I gonna fuckin' die

>thanks to laxatives
Miralax is GOAT

Yeah but it'd be nice if my digestive system actually woke up and remembered it had a job once upon a time

>fast for 19 days for weight loss
>break fast with junk food
>wonders why he can't shit

Were you dropped on your head as a baby?

True.

Natural cures, increase water(fun fact ~70% of water is absorbed through colon), increase fiber, make sure you work out.

Eat prunes/drink prune juice.

Were you?

I know this is my fault, I'm asking for advice on how to fix it. Maybe try reading a post fully before you reply to it.

Thanks user. Do you reckon if I start eating well my digestive system would start back up eventually?

I was considering doing another fast to fix it but I didn't know if that would just leave the food in my system in a kind of limbo.

Quit being a fucking pig with no self control first. Fucking disgusting. You've probably gained back a sizable share of what you lost. You could take psyllium daily until things get back to normal.