IF - 1 meal/day


#21

I can’t say for sure, but am guessing it breaks the fast. I have black coffee in the mornings in an effort to IF.


(Steak and iron) #22

I don’t know if I’ve had less than 1200 calories per sitting in months…

Piece of chicken, butter and broccoli, cheese and nuts.


(Blyss (Old @Charmaine)) #23

And here I am getting about 2K currently and back to 2-3 meals a day, up from OMAD. I couldn’t get all I needed in one meal, especially after my 21 day fast. I just didn’t have the space or appetite to do it in one sitting. Getting to OMAD just naturally happened initially. When I was doing OMAD initially, it was actually pretty simple, especially when I was keeping my protein lower, because I was doing mostly fat. 1000 would happen before I knew it.


#24

Dr. Valter Longo has come up with a Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD) that he’s actually patented for helping people with various medical disorders that would benefit from fasting, such as autophagy, and some people have reverse engineered a rough approximation from the patent that he advocates the equivalent of 1 small avocado twice per day for 5 days which is at or under 200 calories with essentially no protein and the carbs are fibrous in nature, the remainder being all fat.

This leads me to extrapolate that a generic fat-fast that doesn’t exceed 200 calories per serving no more than 10 to 12 hours apart would meet virtually all of the requirements of a water-only fast, including the benefits of decreased insulin and autophagy.

So I would say that if a serving of “BPC” or ketogenic coffee is at or under 200 calories, it wouldn’t break the fast.


(Srinivas Kari) #25

I am finding that I am easily able to eat 1700 calories in 1 single meal. Don’t know if its because of hormonal imbalance, but my apetite is huge.
daily meal plan -

  1. 5 egg omlette with cottage cheese and coconut oil
  2. 280 gms chicken breast boneless - curry with onions, spices and coconut oil
  3. 1 serving mutton leg broth
  4. 3 brazil nuts, 2 macadamia nuts, 5 hazelnuts

#28

I have not measured it.

I became thin as a rail doing calorie counting BS…it ruined my metabolism. And I developed aches and pains, followed by weight gain.

I will never ever count calories again. It will restart the process of screwing up my metabolism all over again.

CICO is a fallacy. I eat real food (not bars, shakes, supplements, …etc…) to satiety. The food is moderate protein, low carb and very very high fat. Many photos of the food I eat is posted on this forum. This is all I need. CICO is bullshit.


#30

What??? Calorie counting is calorie counting…regardless of what food regimen you are on. It doesn’t make sense to say that calorie counting is ok when eating keto, and not ok if you are eating a different food regimen.

Calorie counting is based on CICO…which is a fallacy.

Keto allows me to eat to satiety, every meal. No calorie counting.

Nope…again…this is CICO thinking.

I’ve done calorie counting before…it was a disaster. It destroyed my metabolism. I eat WAY more food now on keto…and delicious food…without calorie counting.


(G. Andrew Duthie) #32

Sorry, no.

IF is orthogonal from calorie deficit (or surplus). IF is about when you eat, not how much.

For those of us who don’t buy into CICO, a goal can be to do IF, and get all of our daily caloric needs within a restricted window. This allows the body to get the same amount of energy and nutrient intake, while limiting the time window in which insulin may be stimulated. It is the lowering of insulin, not a deficit of calories, that enables the burning of fat.

Assuming that one needs a caloric “deficit” to lose weight is to assume that our bodies are a steady-state machine, that constantly burn the same amount of calories. That model completely ignores the role of hormones in regulating the inflow/outflow of fatty acids into/out of fat cells, and also ignores how what we eat impacts those hormones.

That’s not to say that reducing calories doesn’t work in the short term (it usually will, at least until basal metabolic rate drops), or that there aren’t people for whom it works to “cut”. The vast majority of people I encounter on these forums are not body builders looking to cut, they are people with deranged metabolisms and problems with insulin resistance for whom the message to worry about calories is part of what got them into that state in the first place.


(8 year Ketogenic Veteran) #33

Preach.
I love you man.


#34

Ah…ok…you just negated your entire argument. You are actually debating yourself here.

Wow…you actually wrote that? Good grief. That’s like saying the poorest people have the best chance to become more rich. Here is a smarter way of looking at the problem: study the ROOT CAUSE of the problem. So, in this example, without addressing the ROOT CAUSE, the poor people remain sequestered in the poverty class. Just like this analogy, state of metabolic damage has a strong influence on weight gain or loss of an overweight person, as well as other metabolic diseases, like diabetes. This is why two people, at the same weight/height/etc, but different level of metabolic damage, will behave differently with weight loss. This is also why some people can repair their metabolism more quickly than others.

Yes it is. CICO is an acronym: calories in calories out.

Who said macro counting was the same as CICO? Tracking carbs at the beginning of the keto journey, to keep them low to prevent insulinogenic response, as well as keeping protein at moderate level, and then eating fat to satiety (no counting) allows ketosis. when a person embarks on keto for the first time, they need to lose the habit of eating starchy and sweet foods, as well as overcoming the fear of fat, which is helped through a food diary. I tracked carbs and protein at the beginning for only a few weeks to learn keto regimen. Once I quickly figured it out, I no longer needed it as it became daily habit, easy to keep. Eat fat to satiety…no need to track.

Nope. I eat fat to satiety. My body is smart enough to know how much I need to eat. Is it possible that my body induces me to eat to deficit? I dunno. I let it do it’s thing. Coming up with a pedestrian math formula based on a bunch of erroneous metabolic rate assumptions is asinine when my body is capable of doing it naturally.

Too late

Nope. A person can consume more food on an IF regimen, and still lose weight…while conversely gain weight if they eat less food but at higher frequencies during the day, like breakfast-snack-lunch-snack-dinner-snack. The constant nibbling is an example of provoking insulinogenic response, which has a damaging effect on metabolism and hormones. This difference in insulinogenic response explains why a person would react differently with less food consumed. It runs contrary to CICO, which would otherwise erroneously state that the person should lose weight with less food.

I have first-hand experience in how asinine CICO and calorie counting is. I lost weight, doing calorie counting, and then, while staying at the same LOW CALORIE COUNT I gained the weight back. I didn’t gain the weight back because I ate more…I was eating less and less and less…and I managed to lower my metabolism.

The fallacy of CICO is based on unscientific anecdotes. It ruins the metabolism, and destroys health. It is better to learn what the correct way of eating is. I eat delicious food, to satiety, that improves metabolism. That’s the winning strategy. CICO is a ridiculous strategy that has been shown over decades that it does not work and destroys people’s health. It destroyed mine.


(Richard Morris) #35

Congrats. I lost a huge amount not counting calories. So it appears from this sample of 2 that Calorie counting may be neither necessary nor sufficient for weight loss, but it doesn’t prevent weight loss. So I say if that’s working for you - go for it.

But what you are talking about is actually not calorie counting, but caloric restriction. If you are calorie restricting so you don’t over consume calories, then you are restricting yourself to a “fat macro”.

Science supports caloric restriction for short term weight loss, but not for long term weight loss or metabolic health.

Kevin Hall at the NIH once did a 6 year followup study of contestants on The Biggest Loser.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21538/epdf

This competition is of course, a variant of “eat less, move more” which is to say the competitors intentionally increased their exercise output and restricted their energy intake. So it was possible to use energy balance models to predict what that caloric deficit would be and to predict their weight change.

This study analysed the participants RMR (resting metabolic rate = how much energy they use when not running on a treadmill), DEXA body composition analysis to determine FM and FFM (fat mass and fat free mass), Weight, TEE (Total energy expenditure) using doubly labeled water, and RQ (Respiratory quotient) which tells you if they are burning mostly fat (RQ=0.7) or mostly carbs (RQ=1.0), or protein (RQ=0.8), and Physical activity in kCal/kg/day.

The NIH did that battery of tests before the competition commenced. Then again at the end of the competition 30 weeks later, and finally 6 years later.

BMI %BF FFM RQ RMR Activity
Start 49.5±10.1 49.3±5.2 75.5±21.1 0.77 2,607±649 5.6±1.8
30 weeks 30.2±6.7 28.1±8.9 64.4±15.5 0.75 1,996±358 10.0±4.6
6 years 43.8±13.4 44.7±10 70.2±18.3 0.81 1,903±466 10.1±4.0

So what were the results of all that caloric restriction?

We can see that they started the competition with an average BMI around 50, at the end of the competition it was down to 30, and 6 years later it was up to 44. A similar story is told in the body fat %. They lost weight doing the competition and gained most of it back after 6 years.

You might be inclined to assume these are fat lazy people who ran like rats on a treadmill when there was money on the line, and stopped … but that would be wrong. Look at their rates of Activity. They started at a sedentary 6 kCal/kg and by the end of the competition it was up to an active 10 kCal/kg … and 6 years later at followup it was STILL up around 10.

You might say well with all that exercise they would have increased muscle mass which burns more calories and when they finished the game they stopped going to the gym. That would be wrong too. They lost FFM in the competition (76 down to 64 and back up to 70).

No what happened in this tragedy can be seen in the RQ and RMR numbers.

You can see in the respiratory quotient numbers that they started out the competition burning a mixed diet (0.77), ended up the competition burning more fat than anything else (0.75), and 6 years after they were burning mostly protein (0.81). So we can assume they kept to their low calorie high protein diets even 6 years later.

We’ve known for a long time that Caloric restriction slowed the metabolic rate, what was surprising was after the show was over that their rates did not return. They started the competition with a resting metabolic rate of 2,600 kCal/day, at the end of 30 weeks of competitive caloric restriction it had dropped to 2,000 and by the end of the 6 years it had further dropped to 1,900 kCal/day.

This meant despite working just as hard, and their diet being mostly low calorie high protein fare … they were still able to find excess calories in their budgets by making energetic cost savings elsewhere in their metabolism. Who knows, maybe they grew less hair, or ran their immune systems at a slower rate.

I have a theory … if you look at the hormonal assays (with which this study was underpowered to detect correlations)

fasting insulin fasting glucose HOMA-IR
Start 10.4±8.5 95.7±16.3 2.5±2.2
30 weeks 3.9±1.9 70.2±21.9 0.7±0.4
6 years 12.1±7.5 104.9±48.7 3.6±4.6

HOMA-IR is a marker of insulin sensitivity with 1.0 being a 35 year old man with no insulin resistance. You can see they went from moderately insulin resistant to quite sensitive to profoundly insulin resistant. Seriously bad things happened to these people and that specific result was not even mentioned in any of the analysis of their data. INCREDIBLE!

Anyway the bottom line is if you caloricly restrict, your metabolism will slow. As long as you restrict it will not return - and bad things will happen as your body desperately tries to hold on to energy. Weight loss depends on you burning fat, not holding onto it.

I’ll leave to Kevin Hall the last word

The classic Minnesota semistarvation experiment demonstrated a sustained suppression of RMR during a period of weight regain with controlled refeeding when subjects were prevented from eating above baseline levels. Interestingly, increased hunger has been associated with metabolic adaptation and when the Minnesota experiment subjects were allowed to eat ad libitum they consumed calories substantially above baseline levels and the suppression of RMR rapidly reversed.


How much fat? What about for losing weight?
Restrict plate fat when trying to lose body fat - discussion
(Richard Morris) #36

It was on Joe Rogan I believe. The question people need to answer is why they are fasting. If they are trying to encourage glucagon mediated autophagy then anything that reduces insulin will do the job. And conversely just thinking about food can cause a cephalic insulin response, as can stretching your stomach by putting anything in it (even water or fat).

Personally I don’t dry fast, I think that is dangerous. So if I am going to stay hydrated, and it inevitable I am going to think about food … then it’s inevitable that my glucagon mediated autophagy will necessarily phase on and off. In that circumstance, if a small amount of fat would allow me to prolong a fast it would be worth taking the small insulin hit. IMO.


(Tracy Lee Gerrard) #37

CICO is a crock of s**t. The body is not a scientific vessel that treats all calories the same as it would in a laboratory. A calorie from sugar is never going to be dealt with the same way as a calorie from fat or protein. You should look at the Intensive Dietary Management website by Dr Jason Fung who has an incredible write up about the calories not being realistic or accurate. As far as I’m concerned, counting calories is a SAD (standard american diet) introduction to justify eating sugar laden rubbish. You should eat when hungry and stop when full. I can easily go two to three days fasting as I listen to when my body is hungry. Once you’ve been eating IF or LCHF for a while your body does start to recognise the full and hungry signals again.


(Richard Morris) split this topic #38

49 posts were split to a new topic: Restrict plate fat when trying to lose body fat - discussion


Restrict plate fat when trying to lose body fat - discussion
(Peyton) #39

This is exactly what I needed to hear. I feel liberated. Thank you for your articulate and thoughtful responses. Whew! I’m on the right track. :blush:


Restrict plate fat when trying to lose body fat - discussion
(KetoCowboy) #40

Since I just sat through an inane YouTube lecture by a CICOpath, it was nice to visit these forums and stumble upon someone talking sense.


#41

Would it be ok to have black coffee or caffiene pills, or green tea during this 3 day fast?


#42

Two small avocados are closer to 500?


(Kenneth Lee) #43

I have one “meal” a day about 1k calories. But I’m never hungry. I have coffee( grass fed butter, coconut oil, heavy whipping cream, almond milk, vanilla extract, cinnamon, and a Stevie drop or 2) less than 200 calories and my multivitamin pack at 5 before yoga and it gets me til around noon I have either an avacodo or a table spoon of coconut BUTTER. I say butter because it’s not oil and people message me asking if I meant oil. No it’s butter. It’s the “meat” of the coconut. That gets me until 5 or 6 maybe later if Im a badass I have some type of meat usually veal, deer, elk, but also beef chicken or pork. I pan sear it with bacon fat and and have it with a hand full or spinach


(Bacon for the Win) #44

this is one of my favorite things to make. If I could find the food processor blades at my dad’s I’d be all over it. Miss my coconut butter.


Restrict plate fat when trying to lose body fat - discussion