Let's talk about Intermittent Fasting

So I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about intermittent fasting on here and via email lately. Enough to warrant starting a thread about it. I want to preface this by saying that I am NOT an expert on intermittent fasting, so everything I say is going to be either from research or from real world experience between some of my clients and me.

Ok, so here goes...

Intermittent Fasting (IF from now on) is based on the idea that we are genetically similar to our ancient ancestors who were primarily hunter-gatherers. As we can all imagine, being a hunter-gatherer was not easy, and it meant that there would times of hardship (no food) and times of abundance (lots of food). So say you send out your best BRAHs to go out and kill a deer. Well, your brolios suck and can't kill a thing. Therefore they come back empty handed. Tough luck buddy, you have no food. Now, let's say YOU go out hunting the next day, and you're a whiz with a spear. BOOM, you killed 4 deer. Chances are you're going to eat WELL that night.

Over time, our bodies developed a predisposition to responding to this type of eating, this so-called Intermittent Fasting. So the IF diet takes this idea and puts it into the modern world. The theory is that our bodies are not meant to consume food regularly, weather it be 3 meals spread out through the day or 6-8 meals consumed every 2 hours.

Yes, I realize this is going to cause some of you die-hard 6-8ers to point at me and yell "BURN HIM, HE'S A WITCH!!!!" But think about it... If we are descended from hunter-gatherers, then wouldn't it make sense that our bodies would carry some of those same genetic traits that allowed for them to survive?

Now, I've been a hardcore chicken and rice, sweet potato, steak, greens kind of guy for a long time. Give that to me 6-8 times a day and I'm happy, so the first time this was presented to me I laughed and immediately called BS. BUT, I will try anything once so I gave it the good ol' college try and was completely BAFFLED by how well it worked for fat loss!

Here is what I did.

From 8 in the evening, until 12 noon I would NOT eat a thing. So that's 16 hours with NO food. Zip. Nada. Zero. Lots of water though. Starting at 12 noon I would begin my "feast" stage by eating a similar diet that I was on before, but just in a compressed period of time. If my diet called for 3000 calories, I would eat 300 calories, but rather than spread it out over 16-18 hours, I would eat it ALL in that 8 hour time frame. NOT an easy thing to do!

All of my food choices were CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN. I ate just like I would normally eat, just quickly. I want to stress the importance of eating clean. If you fast for 16 hours, then eat like crap you will see NOTHING from it.

If you are interested in IF it is important not to jump immediately into it, test your body to see if it's something you can do.

It is commonly accepted among IF proponents that you should start with what is called a "Trial Fast." This is where you have a small meal, then eat nothing more for another 24 hours, then have another small meal at the end. If you make it through this period without freaking out and binging you should consider yourself able to deal with the hunger that might come from IF.

Some poeple respond very well to this, so they will just repeat the 24 hours fast once per week. That is certainly a viable method, but you may not see as much of a result from it as some of the more advanced methods, it just depends on your body.

I prefer the daily fast, which as I outlined above, is going 16-20 hours a day without eating, then shoving food down your throat for the rest of the day. Ideally, you will actually have your workout immediate BEFORE you start eating. Yes, your workouts may suffer. You will most likely NOT hit PR's. I would just sip some BCAA's right before working out, kill it, then post workout meal and an hour later eat like crazy.

Crazy as it may sound, however, I DID gain LBM while losing a significant amount of fat! I don't know how, I don't know why, I don't even really care!!

As a nutritionist, this goes against everything I've been preaching, but I think it's time for me to swallow my pride and admit that IF really DOES work when done properly. Not only does it work, but it works EXTREMELY well for most people. I have clients that do it and will never go back to the old way of cutting.

Please, ask any questions you may have and I'll do my best to answer them. I would like for this to be an educational discussion of IF methods and results.

so this is basicaly the same thing as the "warrior diet" interesting theory and i can see how it would work. for me, i work out first thing in the morning 6am.....so i would have to toy with the hours to make sure i'm just coming off my fast at that time, correct?

DarksideSix said:

so this is basicaly the same thing as the "warrior diet" interesting theory and i can see how it would work. for me, i work out first thing in the morning 6am.....so i would have to toy with the hours to make sure i'm just coming off my fast at that time, correct?

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basically. So if you were on an 8 hours binge, you would finish your feeding time at about 3PM. So from 1500-0700 is 16 hours. What I would do is get up at 0500, sip some BCAA's, then kill it. When you're done, grab that post workout, then eat an hour later, etc.

I guess it's kind of like the Warrior Diet, but in my opinion it is better. My understanding of the warrior diet is that you eat throughout the day, just not very much, then eat a ton at night. That's OK, but our ancestors did not ONLY eat at night. I hate going to bed with a brick in my stomach, so I "feed" from 10-6, then go to bed around 9.

Other people wake up, then eat, then don't eat before they go to bed. You just have to find out what works for you!

You said fat loss was good. How good? How'd you measure? Got numbers around still?

When you had a bcaa drink at 0500 and were supposed to be fasting till 0700 wouldn't the resulting insulin spike from the bcaa technically take you out of a fasted mode?

Any cravings during the fast?

I've read stuff on this before, and generally when someone lays claim to "its how our ancestors did it" ie blood type dieting and paleo diet I am immediately skeptical. I am however yet to try it. Maybe in the fall after my competition.

you will get a bit of a spike, but choose a BCAA drink that has no sugar in it, I also started each lifting session with 15 minutes on the elliptical doing a low intensity steady state. The bottom line is that all of the research out there is pretty rough. I too am skeptical of the whole ancestry thing, no doubt, but I can't argue with the results I've seen. I did it for one month and went from about 15% down to 11% via calipers. My weight went from 214 to 197.

I have a local client that will be doing this soon, I will keep his results posted on the web w/ pictures if he will let me.

I had cravings, yes. You just learn to deal with them. I think you would starve PoB. I am not sure this would be a good idea for you because you are a machine when it comes to food!

I started this diet june 23 with my stats at,170lbs 14%bf. weighed my self this morning,nd i came in at 167lbs. idk if iv droped water weight or fat,but man does my stomach look flatter then before. i chose my eating period to be from 2pm-10pm. i would go to the gym at 1pm do a little cardio and my weight training then directly home for my post workout meal nd just smash food down until 10pm. im not going to lie its a little difficult do to a few reasons. i felt sick during my workouts and i would have trouble containing myself from not eatin during my fasting period. but over all, i cant wait to see what happens in the long RUN!!! so far so good.

forgot whose diet it was but all you ate was 2 big big meals a day. morning/night. a few guys on other boards did it with good results. and it isnt the hcg diet...lol

Spongy said:

you will get a bit of a spike, but choose a BCAA drink that has no sugar in it, I also started each lifting session with 15 minutes on the elliptical doing a low intensity steady state. The bottom line is that all of the research out there is pretty rough. I too am skeptical of the whole ancestry thing, no doubt, but I can't argue with the results I've seen. I did it for one month and went from about 15% down to 11% via calipers. My weight went from 214 to 197.

I have a local client that will be doing this soon, I will keep his results posted on the web w/ pictures if he will let me.

I had cravings, yes. You just learn to deal with them. I think you would starve PoB. I am not sure this would be a good idea for you because you are a machine when it comes to food!

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Yeah the craving thing is what has kept me from trying it so far... That usually leads to disaster. I'll eat a box of my daughters go-gurts, follwed by a box of fruit loops and a couple steaks if I don't eat regularly.

I can't do all this weird stuff, too much work

I did the Lean Gains version of IF and it was the best cut I've ever done. The pitch with the Lean Gains version is that you will gain Lean Muscle while losing deep fat. I did lose the fat however I'd did not gain any size at all. With that said I cut and didn't lose any lean muscle at all. Overall I was very happy with the results. Where I noticed a diffrance was the fat I lost was the fat I had accepted as part of being over 40.
I honestly believe I could have got to a "shreaded" state on this program.

In regards to hunger/cravings. After a week or so, it was a nonissue for me. Frankly, I struggle with craving and hunger the first couple of weeks anytime I ratchet down.

I fasted from 6:00 pm to 12:00 noon. The author of the LG IF program outlines a stratigy for people that workout in the morning. I am one of those people. He says to train fasted but to take in BCCAs before training and he has a formula based on weight for the amount of BCCAs. I believe that this is why I didn't gain any LM on the program. He does conceed that training in the afternoons during your feed period is ideal. I believe if you followed IF and worked out in the afternoon or during you food period it would probobly work in regards to adding new muscle.

Overall it worked extremely well for me. Unfortunatly, I was not able to gain with this program and as i stated above I believe this was the result of my schedule and not the program. I am currently doing a carb cycling program with brother Spongy and am in a wicked recomp that has been so effective that it is scary. Waist is down and muscle is up!

Thanks for the props Grind!!!

Also, thanks for the feedback on your experience. I will make note of that. I have a guy starting next week who wants to do this, I will have him workout in the middle of his feeding period and see how that goes!

Thanks for the thread sponge after that annoying you tube video that was posted I started thinking about giving this diet a shot. My schedule at work will be changing soon so will my workouts will be moved to am again with that I should be able to fast from 3pm on. I have no problem putting down grub, I will miss dinner though how long typically should you run this diet?

man, that's a point of conversation as well. No one really has any set guidelines for it. As of right now it's all just broscience. I know guys that have done it for 9 months and longer. I think it comes down to how long YOU want to do it. There's no real negative health benefit from it, and some people report improved overall blood levels (once again, I have not SEEN these tests, so this is all just word of mouth so far.). My GUT reaction would be that you can do this as long as you want. It most likely depends on how you adjust to it, etc.

My biggest concern would be muscle loss during the fasting phase.

i've been doing this for last 6-8 weeks, and yeah its pretty good, just need to get used to it. I usually have my last meal at around 10pm, and break my fast following day at 2pm, usually try to get my biggest meal in then. Some people advocate training while fasted, but this i cant really do, since i can only workout in the evening. I have dropped weight, but i was running a bit too much of a deficit, and felt my strngth starting to go down, so back on a bulk now, and with a lot more cleaner foods as well,
Going to start doing hiit twice a week too to help keep fat low.
A lot of people ask, how long one should run this type of diet for, but the way i see it and a lot of others who have had good succes, it is more of a way of life, and just generally changing ones eating habits

ive ran the WD with success, had 3j set me up an IF diet, even though he did not want too!, and also ran a few IF diets based off my old trainer IRON ADDICT (RIP BUDDY) his books are awesome as well,

id run mine with 3 "underfeed meals a day" as hofmekler suggested, 1 cup yogurt or cottage cheese along with 1 cup blueberries, and then at night have a FEAST! salad, protein, a few carbs if i could fit them in and some dessert! it was awesome,

ive also seen a few guys over at ironaddicts.com run theres with strickly pizza and doughnuts and actually made decent gains with little to no fat gain, not sure what their livers or blood worked looked like after that but they did it!

great way of life, a ton of respectable people are trying it!

I use to employ a similar type of technique with my pre-contest diet. It work very well for me and I was without any doubt always the most ripped competitor in my class.

A couple of tweeks from the first time to the last show and it looked like this...

-13 hour fast nightly from 6 pm to 7 am.
-calories rotation on a 2/1 low/low/high schema 7 days a week
-the macro mix I found worked best for me was almost a 50%/50% carb/pro with near almost no fats other than supplemented EFA.
-calories were kept between at 2100 for low days and 2600 for high days
-on high days the add cals came for all carbs
-I only did 20 minutes of light cardio 3X a week
-Clen was used in 2 week on/2 week off patterns
-my total diet lasted 10 weeks prior to show date
-typically started my diet from the 8% body fat range and I would come in close to the low 4% range

Good posting cashout! As he said thats how HE did it, its all based on how one responds to IF, some like it and do well, and others do not,

I like not having to cook and carry food, and interupt my life "to go and eat" it is a breathe of fresh air to me and i have a ton of energy thru the day when i use the WD, the smaller meals can be used with protein, or just straight veggies for the meals durrig the week, and the WD author even suas that a few small pieces of chicken are ok if u need protien thru the day,

My last trainer ironaddict (wes) RIP, also has guys take in bcaas and efas with the veggie meals

I interment fast and this shit works
Iv seen no lost in strength or endurance in the gym.
All iv seen is fat lost.

My feeding time is 9pm- 2am this work best for my schedule.

The key is to Start eating 2 hours after you work out and stop eating 2-3 hours before bed

Makes life so easy.
Now yes down side is trying to consume 3500cals in that time. But your feeding window can be up to 8 hours.

Anyone trying to cut try this shit and tell me it doesn't wokrk

Pinkbear said:

I interment fast and this shit works
Iv seen no lost in strength or endurance in the gym.
All iv seen is fat lost.

My feeding time is 9pm- 2am this work best for my schedule.

The key is to Start eating 2 hours after you work out and stop eating 2-3 hours before bed

Makes life so easy.
Now yes down side is trying to consume 3500cals in that time. But your feeding window can be up to 8 hours.

Anyone trying to cut try this shit and tell me it doesn't wokrk

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I like this in theory. For me, in practice, it was exactly as you described: nigh'on impossible to get all my calories in after work and before bed & when I did succeed in doing so I felt bloated and disgusting & my sleep quality suffered. Its a pain in the arse to pack and carry food, but I've found my body responds better to small meals throughout the day.