Unexpected side benefit of "Intermittent Fasting"

[CoffeeGoat]

I was reading a book a few months back called Anti-Fragile, it's an interesting take on thinking about things that are fragile (damaged by disruptions) and things that are "anti-fragile" (improved by disruption). The author is a bit of a jerk but some of the insights were pretty good and borne out by my observations. One of his observations is that historically the human body was used to eating intermittently, some days you kill an antelope and you gorge, other days you strike out and eat a few roots and water or maybe even nothing at all. His assertion was that if humans did this for centuries/millennia we would actually be worse off with a tightly maintained schedule of regular feedings. I've been in the "regular meals" - "breakfast is super important" - "balanced meals" camp for my entire life and so I figured, what the heck let's try something different.

Based on the idea that random chaos would be good for me I did some random chaos - skipped meals at random, did vegetarian days - only meat the next, worked out at random times of the day, etc. Some days I didn't eat at all, just coffee and water, other days I grazed all day long. Early on it was awful, just awful, my workouts sucked, my mental state was foggy, my sleep was a mess, and generally I was a mess. But after 2-3 weeks things improved, dramatically. Before I was pretty sensitive to missing a meal - it would throw off my workouts and make the rest of the day pretty crummy, but after a couple weeks of random my body seemed to adjust and become indifferent, my workouts were pretty consistent with or without food. Mentally I was perhaps a little sharper, less carb roller coaster throughout the day. But mostly it felt like I was less affected by food timing and content.
Now how does this affect hunting? Well for me, as a desk jockey, with three little kids, hunting (particularly back pack hunting) is about as far from normal life as you can imagine. This has historically made it a challenge to keep on top of all of the physical inputs (sleep, food, electrolytes, etc) that allow me to hunt hard. I wouldn't sleep well, so I wouldn't eat well in the morning, and then my metabolism would crash and my entire day would get out of wack and I'd self medicate with a beverage to try and sleep better and the next day would be worse. After 4 days I'd actually be on top of things, but my hunt would be nearly over... I'm really hopeful that this will drastically improve my hunting experience because missing a couple meals is no big deal anymore.

Anyways, your mileage may vary, but if you've historically struggled with managing food input/timing it might be something to investigate. I should also mention I dropped 5-10ish pounds during the process, but it wasn't intentional.

 

[Will_m]

I think what is really to be gathered from this is the adaptability of the human body. I don't know that there is any real benefit to "eating like our ancestors," since their diet plan was whatever they could get their hands on. People are omnivorous, which is a pretty significant evolutionary advantage--nature rarely favors a specialist.

Intermittent fasting is popular, no doubt. But I think people are relating the benefits simply to the fact of intermittent fasting itself, rather than the actual cause of the benefits. The weight loss, for example, I think is a product of eating less calories overall rather than some kind of magical benefit to "eating windows." If you only eat during a certain period of the day, you are going to eat less because, generally speaking, you just can't consume the same quantity of food. It's kind of the same thing about people talking about eating every three hours to build muscle. You aren't doing anything special, you are just eating more.

There's also the mental aspect of the whole thing. You are doing something you believe in, and as a result, you more than likely make better food choices overall.

I like IF because of its simplicity and agree that getting used to eating less often is convenient. It's a huge pain to get hungry every few hours. I do agree that eating crap (basically anything that doesn't look like it just came off the animal or out of the ground) and drinking alcohol will make you feel like equal crap. I can have three drinks and my heart rate will be about 5-10 beats above normal for most of the night.

Not at all challenging your post or anything, it's just a topic that I feel leads itself to good discussion.

 

[CoffeeGoat]

I think what is really to be gathered from this is the adaptability of the human body. I don't know that there is any real benefit to "eating like our ancestors," since their diet plan was whatever they could get their hands on. People are omnivorous, which is a pretty significant evolutionary advantage--nature rarely favors a specialist.

Intermittent fasting is popular, no doubt. But I think people are relating the benefits simply to the fact of intermittent fasting itself, rather than the actual cause of the benefits. The weight loss, for example, I think is a product of eating less calories overall rather than some kind of magical benefit to "eating windows." If you only eat during a certain period of the day, you are going to eat less because, generally speaking, you just can't consume the same quantity of food. It's kind of the same thing about people talking about eating every three hours to build muscle. You aren't doing anything special, you are just eating more.

There's also the mental aspect of the whole thing. You are doing something you believe in, and as a result, you more than likely make better food choices overall.

I like IF because of its simplicity and agree that getting used to eating less often is convenient. It's a huge pain to get hungry every few hours. I do agree that eating crap (basically anything that doesn't look like it just came off the animal or out of the ground) and drinking alcohol will make you feel like equal crap. I can have three drinks and my heart rate will be about 5-10 beats above normal for most of the night.

Not at all challenging your post or anything, it's just a topic that I feel leads itself to good discussion.

I agree with everything you said. It's one of those topics that has a bunch of fluffy nonsense about, and "just so stories" about why it works, and in the end I don't really care so much on the "why" just that it does work. There's a bunch of research ongoing in this area and it'll be interesting to see what shakes out in 5-20 years because I think much of the nutrition work in the last century was overly simplistic. For example the "simple calorie" is an idea yanked from simple physics and as it turns out biological systems are much more complex so it is likely much more complex in how the body handles it.

Anyways, I totally agree that the topic is fun and interesting to discuss, and in my case I saw benefits that were directly useful to my hunting that are not as commonly mentioned when discussing IF - usually it's the "bro you're gonna get shredded!" which I care little about...

BTW -it's also good to hear someone else has noticed that their resting heart rate is elevated after drinking, just one drink usually disrupts my sleep and 3 will really screw it up. Though there does seem to be some interaction with stress where if I'm adequately stressed the alcohol offsets it somewhat - haven't figured that out yet.

 

[TxxAgg]

I agree with alcohol screwing up my sleep. It has gotten progressively worse over the last few years.

 

[CoffeeGoat]

I agree with alcohol screwing up my sleep. It has gotten progressively worse over the last few years.

Me too, does this mean we're getting old? I suppose when I drank when I was younger I didn't have kids getting up in the middle of the night either...

 

[TxxAgg]

OP, I do think there'a something to letting your digestion get back to base zero which will happen with intermittent fasting. Also it helps to shrink your stomach so you can't fit is much in there during times of gluttony.

 

[5MilesBack]

I never gave it a second thought until recently, but I've been fasting for like 18 hours almost every single day of my life. I rarely ever have eaten breakfast, but love my lunch and dinner. So I'll go from 6pm or 7pm every night until noon the next day most days without eating.......but always have my coffee every morning. And I'm 6'6" 220.

That doesn't change a whole lot during hunting season, except maybe dinner at 9pm instead.

 

[Meanderthal]

I went from fat at 32 to fit at 42 by doing workouts with mostly heavy compound lifting combined with intermittent fasting. I also transitioned my macros to high protein and low carbohydrate.

I agree with most of what was said above but I'll add that now I get a noticeable energy boost from eating some carbs when my body doesn't expect it. when I was out of shape I'd eat sugar and starch periodically throughout the day just to maintain a feeling of normalcy. Now I can scarf down the occasional sweet treat for an extra burst of energy while out on a hunt.

 

[Brendan]

I agree with alcohol screwing up my sleep. It has gotten progressively worse over the last few years.

Same here. A glass or two of red wine being the exception right now as long as I don't overdo it. Love beer, it's loving me less and less.

Count me as another there's something to it, but I think we're talking about "Time restricted eating". I believe intermittent fasting is every so often cutting your calorie intake way back for a period of time. Like 5 days on 20-30% normal calories.

FoundMyFitness Topic - Time-restricted eating

Time-restricted eating is a form of daily fasting wherein a person eats only during a limited time window, typically 8- to 12-hours.

www.foundmyfitness.com

I'm in much better shape, leaner, and don't get hungry nearly as easily. I can get up, have coffee, go on a long mountain bike ride, only drink water, and be generally fine until early afternoon. As long as I'm not cranking really high exertion.

 

[Matthaias]

I did 22 hour fasts every week day for a year and a half and lost 60 lbs. This was in combination with a lot of mountain miles. Stalled out at a certain point and cutting alcohol was the best way to push through. After not boozing for a while I notice when I have some drinks I wake up dog tired no matter how many hours I get.

 

[Muddler]

Agree with the above. It's only a recent thing in human history for us to have 24/7 access to food.

Time restricted eating, 3-5 day fasts and low carb/keto has been a game changer for me. The gut rest has totally alleviated my previously chronic heartburn. Not to mention the other purported benefits. I landed on low carb/keto by eliminating everything that gave me heartburn, not because it's "in style". I like that I can hunt or fish all day and not worry about packing food if I don't want to. Just carry some water/filter straw, some salt and I'm good to go.

 

[CoffeeGoat]

Time restricted eating, 3-5 day fasts and low carb/keto has been a game changer for me. The gut rest has totally alleviated my previously chronic heartburn. Not to mention the other purported benefits. I landed on low carb/keto by eliminating everything that gave me heartburn, not because it's "in style". I like that I can hunt or fish all day and not worry about packing food if I don't want to. Just carry some water/filter straw, some salt and I'm good to go.

This is exactly my findings as well, and why I figured a thread might be helpful. I tend to rebel against "popular" things but in this case it provided some specific benefits to my hunt, good to hear others are finding the same things and hopefully it can help out some people.

agree with most of what was said above but I'll add that now I get a noticeable energy boost from eating some carbs when my body doesn't expect it. when I was out of shape I'd eat sugar and starch periodically throughout the day just to maintain a feeling of normalcy. Now I can scarf down the occasional sweet treat for an extra burst of energy while out on a hunt.

I really like this benefit as well. I used to get that kind of doldrums feeling after not eating for several hours, that tired, almost depressed feeling and while I don't get that anymore - I can still do the quick food pick me up which is great.

 

[loggerchas]

Antifragile was an EXCELLENT book, really makes you think on planning and preparation within life.

I use intermittent fasting 4-6 times a week. The most interesting thing I have noted after several months is how my body will tell me when it needs something specific. Most days it is no problem but once or twice a week a "craving" for salty or protein or energy becomes a real "voice" to be listened to. In my office I keep a few snacks of each kind handy and when I listen to what the body says and determine it is not just a desire but a need, I react and feed the need accordingly. That breaks the IF for the day but it makes a huge difference if mental and physical being for the day.

With just IF as a change, have lost 20# of gut in 7 months. No other changes to diet or exercise.

 

[Bubdog]

I have greatly benefitted from IF. I have lost weight. I can skip meals and not get short tempered. I mostly exercise before work but some days I will not exercise until after work and after not eating since the night before. Being able to skip meals has made my life much easier. I regularly do 16:8 and usually two days a week do 22:2.

 

[Dave0317]

OP,
I haven’t read the book, but have heard of it.
Why do you say the author is a jerk?

 

[CoffeeGoat]

OP,
I haven’t read the book, but have heard of it.
Why do you say the author is a jerk?

I've never met him, and he's probably much smarter than I, but the way he talks about people who think differently about topics that are complex, or slightly controversial comes across as extremely dismissive - or more simply a bit of a jerk.

 

[Dave0317]

I've never met him, and he's probably much smarter than I, but the way he talks about people who think differently about topics that are complex, or slightly controversial comes across as extremely dismissive - or more simply a bit of a jerk.

Gotcha. I have considered reading the book, but I kind of feel like the main points are pretty easily summarized and have been well covered in a number of places.

 

[CoffeeGoat]

Gotcha. I have considered reading the book, but I kind of feel like the main points are pretty easily summarized and have been well covered in a number of places.

I think if it's still worth a read, in my case I listened to the audio book and so I couldn't skip sections that were annoying. If I was reading it I'd just gloss over pontificating nonsense. The general summary is good (and probably adequate) but I think there is value in the extended discussion about how it affects different aspects of life.

 

[ktg]

I did Intermittent Fasting, 16/8, for a couple years without changing my diet. I lost 0 pounds, but my blood pressure and heart rate became the lowest they've ever been. Then I decided to start Keto and I began extending the fasting period after watching Dr. Ekberg's videos on Youtube. I'm now at 21/3 IF on weekdays and I basically eat what I want on weekends. I've dropped 40lbs since last Oct.

 

[huntingfishing]

I feel one of the main benefits to intermittent fasting is that it provides a structure for when to eat, inherently causing reduced calorie consumption.

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