Feast or Famine?

#1

Does anybody Feast regularly?

#2

I would need to fast for that so nope. Or at least not intentioally and I do my best to avoid it.
Of course, our (I mean humans in general) terminology may and do differ.

WHAT is feast for you, folks?
It is a big, nice meal if you ask me. I can’t afford big meals even on OMAD.

#3

If by “feast” you intend “eat like you are at your cousin’s marriage lunch”, I don’t do that anymore as I don’t like the bloating and sense of general “being stuffed” afterwards.

If by “feast” you mean “enjoy a very good meal to satiety”, I do it 4 days a week, when I do OMAD. With OMAD, I find I have the joy of eating as much as I want, with the safety valve that I will feel sated without having eaten in excess.

Your mileage may, of course, vary.

#4

This question was posed to me recently. We all tend to subscribe to an evolutionary way of eating, i.e., avoiding processed carbs and fasting (famine), yet do we also feast once in a while? This was a common practice after a successful hunt. If we are to believe the famine side (fasting) was a common practice, then why not feast?

I have not attemped feasting on a regular basis (1x per week) or even on a semi-regular basis, maybe 2x per year at most. However, there is some newer science that seems to suggest that feasting regularly helps with long-term weight loss and mitigates the rebound effect… Could it be evolutionary for us to feast? If I recall from the studies, their definition of feasting was 2x caloric intake for a day: 4000-5000 kcal.

When I have some time, I will also post some of the studies.

#5

I don’t care about my anchestor’s eating and fasting (I mean, knowing is interesting but I won’t base my eating on it), they had very different circumstances. I don’t even care about what is best for people in general.
I like to spoil my own individual body. It gives me plenty of hints how to do it.

If overeating doesn’t feel nice, I definitely don’t want it but I never would lose fat that way, that’s pretty sure. It’s possible just not for me without suffering.

I don’t worry about regain so that part isn’t for me.

I just suspect that having higher-cal days while I normally have a small deficit is a good thing for me. But that’s not twice my energy need, at least usually not. It happens and it’s nice, forcing it would be less nice.

If feasting helps people, I wonder why is that :slight_smile: It boosts metabolism for some of us (it seems I am like that :wink: hence I don’t fear regain) , it may be what I have my mere higher-cal days for: the body and mind feels it’s not just continuous fat-loss and probable restriction… There may be other things… I can imagine it works for some and totally backfired for others. And impossible or awful for some. It would be annoying to me to change my food choices and attitude on those days to be able to eat the same amount for the same satiation level. I like more similar days. I double my calories or protein or fat sometimes but it comes naturally. Wait, maybe this feast should be natural too? Not forced on certain days when our body may not want it…

(Chuck) #6

Yes daily I fast for an average of 19 hours then I eat what my body needs to provide it with the great amount of energy that I have. I definitely eat more now than when I was counting calories and weighing everything I ate.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #7

Every day! (I’m a carnivore.)

I find, by the way, that there is a great deal of difference between eating to satiety and stuffing my stomach to the literal bursting point. The latter was my usual practise as a carb-burner; now, when I eat to satiety, there is plenty of room in my stomach for more food, but I don’t want it.

So instead of “I’m stuffed!” I say, as the French do, “J’en ai eu assez,” “I’ve had enough.”

#8

Of course. I would need plenty of plants to do that! Or soup :smiley:
Even on keto where I had vegs, my stomach only got full when I ate a tablespoon of salt for lunch out of curiosity and drank 2 liter of water with it.
Eating to satiety differs from stuffing ourselves (no matter what our stomach does) too. Fullness (not stomach fullness) is something that comes after even a very serious satiation and I personally dislike it.

Feast is another thing entirely to me, it involves very much food and very fine food. Maybe even the mood to eat it :wink:

(KCKO, KCFO) #9

When I fast, I just return to my normal eats. I have not even had the desire to feast since going keto/lchf.

(Chuck) #10

That is the key, I eat normally but I give my body the 19 hours of no food so it has time relax and rest from having to digest food, it also lowers the insulin levels and blood sugar levels which is to whole reason for fasting.

#11
(Chuck) #12

I disagree, my adult life I haven’t eat breakfast. I am 76 years old, never been hospitalized, never had any type of surgery, I am not on any prescription drugs. Never a diabetic even with my grandmother being a type 1 diabetic. The key is not eating the so called standard diet that our government recommends which is bought and paid for by our food and drug industries. Also, fasting is a key component to a healthy lifestyle.

#13

Of course many of us would make a horrible mistake by eating in the morning :slight_smile: I couldn’t even force down more than a few bites and that would trigger a day of hunger and repetitive tiny meals… Quite possibly ED. Even force-feeding myself sounds horrid.
I barely can suffer my carnivore 5MADs where my first meal is after noon!
The later I start to eat (until 6pm), the better chances I have :wink:
It’s important to know ourselves and not following general advice.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #14

Participants who ate a larger breakfast – which included a dessert item such as a piece of chocolate cake or a cookie – also had significantly lower levels of insulin, glucose, and triglycerides throughout the day,

Amazing! Incredible! Literally.

I wonder what the results would have been like in a population of ketonians. . . .

(KM) #15

I haven’t actually done a stuff-my-face-with-anything-and-everything feast in a long time. But there are days when eating “to satiety” takes twice as many calories as I was expecting!

#17

Many people seem to have this seasonal difference, sometimes on an extreme level (see people who only can eat some fruit when it’s very hot. or so they say).
I never had it. My body wants the same food and the same amount of food all year long, weather has no effect on it. It’s another matter that I get more tempted if I have fresh produce and fresh fruit in my garden around all the time… I still don’t desire them, just find it a good idea to eat some to get joy and variety. Well, the joy of variety I suppose.

Enjoy your Christmas dinner! :wink: I want some new fish species this time. We have not much seafood here and I see others eat interesting fishes, I want that too! Even I can get a few interesting, somewhat pricier (still waaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than steak but not that substantial either) species I never tried.
And pork. Pork is basic for me.

I can eat much on carnivore if I focus on fat (especially added fat or dairy, that doesn’t satiate me well at all but fatty meat isn’t so great either especially that I need a lot of protein) but then I overeat fat so I focus on protein and especially meat. And then my mealsize drops but it’s still fine. My first meal is usually not small at all, way above 50% of my daily calories. That’s good.
So no feast sized meals for me on carnivore. Days are easy if I do eat a lot of fatty meat. I don’t do that.

(Michael) #18

Ever since I did 90 days of ADF my appetite has had no limits. I was certainly feasting then, at over 5000 kcal some days. Now I unfortunately am almost never satiated, and I often eat a 2400 kcal snack. On a daily basis, I am currently trying some other than fasting, and with unlimited appetite, I try to limit my daily intake to 3200 kcal.

(Chuck) #19

Interesting, I don’t know what you eat. But for me, I don’t do any longer fast than 24 hours, I am never really hungry as I use to be when I was a heavy sugar consumer. But I do listen to my body’s needs. I can’t really explain it but my body tells me when I need to eat and what I need and how much. I never feel stuffed but always just comfortable. I love the feeling of almost an empty stomach, something I never really knew before I started fasting beyond just skipping breakfast.
I have days that I eat very little and fill great and I have days I feel like I have eaten too much if I allow my brain to take control. For my it has been disengage brain allowing my body full control of what, when and how much I eat.
My average day is fasting 19 hours. My shortest day fasting has been 14 hours the longest 25 hours. So no I don’t push my body to go without and I don’t force feed my body either.

#20

I love the feeling of an empty stomach while I feel perfectly satiated… But I don’t really feel my stomach unless I really focus on it and I ignore it anyway, it’s not informative for me (the only exception is a full stomach but that can’t happen with my dense food, it was super rare on high-carb too, I typically ate dense food there too though less so). But I do like being well-fasted and blissfully not caring about food for a while (well, eating. I always care about food and like to think about it, read and write about it, make some…)

That’s quite nice, I think I can say the same for the last years. And the vast majority of my life, probably, it’s not like I remember so well or thought about it in the past.
I only had a handful of longer fasts but I want to bring them back, just very occasionally.
Feast sounds good very occasionally too if I slim down a little and see the light in the end of the tunnel. By the way, it seems I finally lost my Unsatiable Hunger days. Those are good for feasting but they are pretty annoying, actually. Carnivore made even my higher-cal days milder.

#21

I have no idea what ADF is. In any way, I would recommend that you start (gradually) to fast. Nothing torturing, just pushing the first meal of the day progressively later until you get to a 16:8 routine, then to something like a 20:4 routine and, at some point, a One Meal a Day routine.

Chances are that, in time, the fast will limit your appetite.