![]() Intermittent fasting diet for fat loss, muscle gain and health. It's been a good while since I last wrote about intermittent fasting. I guess largely because there's only so much to say about the topic and because I feel like I've said most of it. Unless you're going to make inferences based on animal studies, there's only so much you can extrapolate from the human experience and write about. Another part of it is that I've lost interest. Once your understanding of nutrition is complete, more or less, you reach a point of radically diminishing returns - at this point, expanding your knowledge further in this realm, won't make an iota of difference for your level of fitness. It's much more fruitful to improve your training regimen and understanding thereof. A rich body of research on the topic has been published since then. The ongoing interest in IF is not surprising, given its mystique that’s wrapped in ancient spiritual origins, all the way to its modern applications to clinical and aesthetic goals. The aim of this article is to bring the reader up- to- date on the scientific findings, with a particular focus on comparing IF regimes with conventional/linear dieting. After all, the question is not whether IF works – it obviously does, as does any mode of caloric restriction. The question is whether it works better than conventional dieting for improving body composition, and if so, to which contexts can we apply it. Article continues.. Importantly, they compared the effects of intermittent energy restriction (IER) to continuous energy restriction (CER) on bodyweight, body composition, and other clinical parameters. Their review included 4. IER with a CER condition. They found that overall, the two diet types resulted in “apparently equivalent outcomes” in terms of bodyweight reduction and body composition change. In addition, neither IER or CER was superior to the other at improving glucose control/insulin sensitivity. No different effects on thyroid, cortisol, and sex hormones were seen between IER and CER, though the authors concede that there’s insufficient research comparing neuroendocrine effects of the two diet types to draw definitive conclusions in this area. Interestingly, IER was superior at suppressing hunger. The authors speculated that this might be attributable to ketone production in the fasting phases. However, this effect was somewhat immaterial since it failed to translate into superior improvements in body composition or greater weight loss. MB: Well, that's not quite true. These studies didn't have a suitable control group, as the participants served as their own controls. Thus, you can't say that it didn't translate into . That's the problem with these systematic reviews Like it says in the paper. Only 1. 2 of the 4. IER with CER: the lack of direct comparison makes it difficult to determine whether IER is superior to CER, or for whom. Limitations of the review included the standard ones – relatively small sample sizes, relatively short trial durations, and heterogeneous study designs making comparisons outside of the same study difficult. An acknowledged limitation worth highlighting was that 1. Varady et al, University of Illinois at Chicago). Ideally, a more diversified and less concentrated set of labs is less likely to repeat the same errors or preserve the same biases. Speaking of the potential for bias, Varady has published a lay- directed book titled, The Every- Other- Day Diet (1. I’m not claiming that Varady is destined to make sure her ADF study results will always square up with her book, but it’s one of the potential caveats nevertheless. I would add to these limitations that there’s a severe lack of IER (and IER vs CER) studies that include a structured training component. MB: I agree wholeheartedly. I'm glad Alan brought this up. The opportunities for fuckery in the scientific literature are endless. Usually, industry is the culprit - you know, studies praising the benefits of snacks or breakfast (sponsored by Kellogg's or General Mills) or studies on the tremendous muscle- building effects of protein powders (sponsored by supplement companies) and the like. These studies can't fully be trusted and needs to be scrutinised more than the rest. They're suspect, because their funding comes from a source that would benefit from a positive result, and the results should always be taken with a grain of salt. And very often, almost always in fact, these studies arrive at a positive result. They seemed more like marketing than science. That's more than 9. Here's how to stop them. If you want to read more about this topic as it pertains to nutritional science, check out Marion Nestle and her writings. She's quite brilliant. Why Calories Count by Marion Nestle. I found this book in a large box of bullshit that I ordered from Amazon two years ago. It was the only thing worth scavenging and I intend to read it after I'm done with a few horror novels. I figure that I'd be properly warmed up by then. A book about food politics and marketing shenanigans can get quite dark and depressing no doubt. But food companies are as unlikely to fund research on intermittent fasting, as Coca Cola is unlikely to fund research on ketogenic diets. What Alan brings up is the potential for bias on the researcher's part, Krista Varady to be specific. Aside from researching intermittent fasting, she is also involved in selling books, namely books based off of the research she is doing. While I haven't read The Every- Other- Day Diet, but I have mixed feelings about Krista Varady. She does try a bit too hard for my liking. I covered her work* before in . Note that I'm wrongfully referring to Varady as . In short, she published a pretty shitty review of the subject, but then again, there weren't that many data points around in 2. Five years later, it's gotten a little better, but there's still not enough good data around to draw any definitive conclusions - and like Alan says, a lot of that data comes from the same lab (Varady's). It's worth mentioning that Varady appeared in a laughable infomercial documentary called . In it, Michael Mosley - the show host and soon- to- be- author, interviews researchers working in the field of intermittent fasting and Varady is one of them. After rewatching the segment she appeared in, I found her to be matter of fact and professional even though she dutifully suffered through all the TV show gimmicks thrown at her - they gorged on hamburgers and fries to show that you could stuff your face and still lose weight on ADF, for example. By the way, this . Seems like there was some kind of falling out between Varady and Mosley after that. Don't waste your money. Read the latest Cardiology news, opinion, conference coverage, thought leader perspectives, medical journal articles and more from theheart.org and Medscape. I’ve talked about the role meat may play in increasing the risk of diabetes, and the potential protective role of healthy plant foods. But plant-based diets not. Eat what you want five days a week, send your body to starvation mode for two. The part-time diet that still allows you to eat chocolate cake. A medicallytrained man is unhappy with his health, and so seeks out unorthodox methods. One of these methods is fasting. I remember watching a. If you want a book on intermittent fasting, pick up Eat Stop Eat. Now, speaking of Varady, there's nothing wrong with pushing your agenda, but don't shove it down peoples throats by publishing bad research and doing shady shit like failing to disclose your conflicts of interest, because that makes you suspect in my eyes. That said, there's nothing fishy about her recent work, as far as I can tell. It's entirely possible that Varady and her colleagues got together one night and decided amongst themselves to doctor the results, but I find that very unlikely. It's kind of spooky, but a client just sent me this two minutes ago. I'm mentioned on the same page as Mosley and Varady, and I'm reading it just as I finish up this paragraph. I believe he was reading a book by his doctor, Robin Willcourt. I'll have to ask about the title, so I'll add it here later for those interested. Update: Name of the book is Chasing Antelopes: Why All This Caused All That. When fuckery strikes in science, it's usually a lot more subtle and sinister. I would know, because years ago, I approached Alan with this subject. See, I had uncovered some sophisticated tampering with the results of a study that received a lot of spin on social media and the mainstream news. I was slightly distressed over the fact that he had missed it - the studies appeared in the AARR, not only once, but twice - and presented my findings. I needed a second opinion, because maybe I was making a hen out of a feather. Nope. Alan agreed, it was some shady shit. In fact, it was a case study in deceit. Why Does Breakfast Make Some People Hungry? As mentioned, it wasn’t without grounds that the question piqued my curiosity beyond that which could be attributed to. Tuesday’s Daily Mail has a section called “Good Health” and the resident GP answering questions is Dr Martin Scurr. On Tuesday 26th June 2012, Susan Bence. Links to the headlines. The power of intermittent fasting. BBC News, August 5 2012. The 5:2 diet: can it help you lose weight and live longer? Horizon tells amazing science stories, unravels mysteries and reveals worlds you've never seen before. ![]() Career- ending, if you ask me. But to this day, no one has debunked the findings, and the researcher is still active; polluting the journals with more bullshit for every new study that gets published. Who knows, maybe one day I'll put an end to it. The key point of all this, is that science can't be trusted for shit, unless you do your due diligence and read the fine print. But in this particular case, concerning Krista Varady, I'm not worried. Article continues below.. This limitation also plagues the body of research comparing various within- day meal frequencies. Readers familiar with my work know that Brad Schoenfeld, James Krieger, and I did a meta- analysis on the effect of meal frequency on body composition, and found that higher meal frequencies were associated with greater losses of fat mass and greater retention of lean mass (2. However, sensitivity analysis revealed that the removal of a single study (2. It’s worth noting that the studies in our analysis (and in this entire body of literature) lacked sufficient protein. An exception was Arciero et al (2. Furthermore, 6 meals per day increased lean mass despite hypocaloric conditions. MB: Sure thing. Something like that only happens in a study sponsored by EAS, Alan. Article continues below.. However, the question of muscle gain via IF remains unanswered since the investigative focus of IF research has been on weight/fat loss and accompanying clinical effects. No IF studies in the current literature have focused on the goal of gains in muscle size and/or strength. As such, No IF studies to- date (at least none that have passed peer review) have included a structured, progressive resistance training program. This is untreaded ground fresh for the taking by researchers with the desire to do so. Health problems on low fat raw vegan and vegan dietsvegan raw food pyramid. My recent analysis of Harley Johnston’s (3. Bananas a day) aka Durianrider. As I wrote in the analysis, because one person is able to do this – it does not make it a diet that I would recommend. I believe only the extremely high calorie intake has allowed him to get adequate nutrients, added to this some genetic luck. A loose observation is that all those who are able to stay on this type of diet do a large amount of endurance exercise. This uses a large amount of carbohydrate for fuel, maximises insulin sensitivity in the muscles and thus enables the high carbohydrate intake. The high calorie intake is absolutely essential for adequate nutrients. For me to condone such a diet would be negligent and even downright dangerous. Firstly no serious scientist would refute that humans evolved as omnivores, and that an omnivorous diet is the best diet for us to thrive. From Loren Cordain: Metabolic Evidence of Human Adaptation to Increased Carnivory. As a nutritionist my primary commitment is to my clients’ health. I see no evidence that making a permanent switch from an omnivorous to a vegan diet would improve the health of any client. In the short term however some people appear to benefit from a change to a raw vegan diet, however long term, health problems from dietary deficiencies and imbalances inevitably catch up with people. Denise Minger wrote about this in her article Raw Gone Wrong, When the Honeymoon is Over“. Maybe you start feeling like something is inexplicably missing. Maybe your energy takes a dive and noontime naps become the norm. Maybe your weight loss plateaus. Maybe your last dentist visit wasn’t so pretty. Maybe those niggly health problems you had prior to raw—aches and pains, lethargy, allergies, arthritis, skin conditions—start resurfacing out of nowhere. Whatever the reason, raw just doesn’t seem to be working as well as it did in the beginning. Your enthusiasm diminishes, and in its place comes doubt, discontentment, and a plethora of questions. In other words, you start seeing raw foods’ freaky nose hairs and you begin to wonder: what did I get myself into? My own raw honeymoon ended around the one- year mark. Intermittent fatigue, dental woes, hair loss, concentration problems, and some not- so- happy blood test results forced me to rethink the dietary regimen I was so tightly clutching. During this time, I started scouting out the counsel and wisdom of other disgruntled rawbies. What I discovered was this “honeymoon end” was a common phenomenon among raw foodists, and that its occurrence usually led to two things: 1. What worked in the beginning may not work forever, and sometimes you need to tweak things to regain a sense of vitality and health. If you’re in the troubling situation of having been raw for a while but feeling that something’s off, don’t worry—you’re in good company..” Read the rest of the post here. Here are more stories from vegan’s themselves about the health problems encountered after the honeymoon period: Erim Bilgin: Interview with an ex- vegan.“. I was extremely susceptible to stress. Anything would get to me, and I had to learn about self- mastery and breathing techniques and all that shit. It’s funny, because I was saying I was eating a raw vegan diet because it was “natural”, but here I was depending upon all these “unnatural” techniques. It never occurred to me that mental strength should come naturally. I just thought today’s world was too hectic. I would skip school a lot, because just the thought of getting out of bed made me anxious some days. Speaking of the bed, I also had some difficulty sleeping once in a while around my second year of LFRV. Not only was my sleep too light, I also had difficulty falling asleep, since I had to shift my legs all the time. I would later learn that this is a medical condition called Restless Legs Syndrome, a neurological problem. Why weren’t you formed in my gut as promised?)My mood depended entirely on outside conditions. Talk about ups and downs. Cloudy sky meant bad mood. Cold weather meant bad mood. I became addicted to my mp. I just didn’t have the zest to go through the day without some stimulating rhythm. All this, even though I knew pretty much everything necessary to remain calm and centered. But, like I said, I didn’t acknowledge this as a problem with me, I just thought today’s world was too harsh. The problems started to become more physical sometime around the first quarter of 2. My teeth started getting incredibly sensitive, and there were clear signs of heavy acid erosion. I thought the tips of my teeth were always this transparent and that the darkened spots near my gum line were just stains from all the colorful food I was eating. My gums started to recede, I broke a molar by biting a tiny piece of a hazelnut shell by mistake, and a few months later my dentist would find six cavities in my raw vegan mouth. Jokingly, she told me I had “basically every dental problem that we have a name for”. But I was taking better care of my teeth than ever! I even avoided those acidic animal products! You know, the ones that leech calcium from your bones? I wondered how I remained cavity free before when I didn’t even brush, let alone floss, let alone brush and floss thrice a day. After the introduction of goat’s kefir and yogurt, I immediately felt an increase of energy, slept better and many issues started to clear up – my acne started to disappear, my knees stopped aching after a run, I gained back weight lost, I was able to retain muscle mass better, I could get out of bed in the morning, etc. I actually asked her to show me the blood test results because I thought there had to be some sort of mistake. But there was no mistake, it was right there in black and white; deficiencies and abnormalities across the board. The results explained perfectly why I had been feeling weak and exhausted for more than 6 months. Whereas I had previously lived for working out and even an hour on the elliptical wasn’t enough for me, lately doing more than 2. When I could I slept till noon, I felt lightheaded when I stood up, I couldn’t remember simple words or the names of my friends, and I was freezing cold even in the midst of a sweltering Saudi summer. Of the myriad symptoms I’ve listed here and the ones I will not be describing publicly, the absolute worst of all was my depression. This awful, lifelong foe I’ve been battling on and off was sneaking back into my life, painting the edges of my world a sickening black and stealing the joy that I had fought so desperately to regain. Lizzie should have been flourishing. Instead, her cheeks were pinched, she was small for her age, and although she had skinny arms and legs, her belly was big and swollen. When Lizzie smiled, Paige suddenly noticed her upper front teeth were pitted with holes. From the article Raw Food Vegan Diets: “. I also read any and every book and article on raw foodism that I could get my hands on. They contained story after story of people curing their heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other diseases through raw foods. The diet simply made sense. Since humans are the only animals who cook their food, we’d have to be better off eating a more natural diet of raw foods. I had low body fat to begin with, and on the raw foods diet my weight dropped from 1. As a regular weightlifter, I noticed my strength decline considerably. I got frequent colds (some say this is the body detoxifying; a more likely explanation is that I wasn’t eating enough protein to ward of infections). I constantly thought about how much I wanted to eat cooked food. The couple who mentored me were also struggling with the diet. One day, I had to admit that it wasn’t working. I slowly weaned myself back onto cooked foods to curb my cravings. Though I tried to resist, my diet became more cooked all the time. One day in 1. 99. I decided to follow my cravings and eat as much cooked food as I wanted. Since then I’ve eaten most of my food cooked and have felt much better. The experience turned me to science, relying more on published scientific research and much less on popular theories and anecdotal reports. As I read more mainstream nutrition science, it became clear that many of the claims made by raw foodists were not true. With respect to gluten alone 3. These health improvements are also similar to those that people rave about when they switch to a conventional paleo diet, that also removes grains, legumes, dairy, processed foods, and high omega 6 vegetable oils and sugar. Some nutrient intakes are improved on a raw vegan diet specifically antioxidants: Antioxidant status in long- term adherents to a strict uncooked vegan diet, and improved fecal flora Faecal microbial flora and disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis during a vegan diet. Another reason for some short term improvements could be the switch from a high protein to a low protein diet which starts a process called autophagy. Here is a list of the nutrients that are deficient: Nutrient imbalances. A thorough outline of vegan diet nutrient deficiencies comes from vegan Registered Dietitian Jack Norris, President of Vegan Outreach who maintains an informative website Vegan Health. A committed vegan, he dispels myths surrounding vegan diets, and provides practical information on deficiencies and supplements required to remain healthy on a vegan diet. Another problem with raw food diets – plant toxins. This article on raw foodism, includes and interesting section on toxins in some raw plant (and animal) foods: http: //www. Avoiding poisoning. As the consumption of raw foods gains popularity, some potentially unsafe foods have reentered the diets of humans. However, the following list includes many foods which are rarely promoted by the educated proponents of raw foodism, especially beans or legumes.* Buckwheat greens are toxic when raw, particularly if juiced or eaten in large quantities by fair- skinned individuals.
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