Intermitent fasting (4/20), excersise


#1

Hello.

I have been doing intermitent fasting for last two years.

I eat only from 18:00 till 22:00.

I think I overeat, so I can’t lose weight.

I want to try excercise, to induce ketosis, state of burning fat.

I need it to control my epilepsy better (max drugs dosages).

I am thinking about excercise in the morning (biking), to deplete Glycogen faster.

Is this a good approachh?

I had a great seizure control during seizures (I lost 11 kg of fat during summer job).


#2

Exercise is nice and good for many things but if you eat little enough carbs, you will be in ketosis anyway.


(Bob M) #3

One thing you could try is eating higher fat. Most of the epileptic diets have high fat to protein ratios, usually 4 to 1 (which I think is grams to grams?). I think they discuss it here, though this also proposes the higher fat keto diet for mental illness:

Here’s another one:

While biking seems like a good idea, in that it will reduce glycogen, I find all exercise causes my blood sugar to go up. (One of my theories is that blood sugar goes up for the specific purpose of replacing glycogen that’s lost. Not sure that’s true though.) That might drop ketones, because my ketones and blood sugar tend to go in opposite directions. It’s unclear to me whether exercise is good or bad in terms of ketones.

As for losing weight, there’s a lot of stuff to try, though they might go against trying to get higher ketones. You could move your eating window earlier, for instance, or at least move your last meal earlier.

For ketones, you could try MCT oils, which will typically raise ketones. It’s a short-term rise, though. A few hours.


(David Cooke) #4

Without having any scientific evidence, it seems to me that eating late at night can’t be good for you for all sorts of reasons. Forget the “Breakfast ISN’T the most important meal of the day” guys. What is important is getting enough sleep, doing some exercise (for example caveman Fred: goes to get some water, grinds some corn, get the fire going… or farmer John who takes a coffee, takes the cows out to the field, mows some grass…) and, having worked up an appetite, sits down to eat. There are always some leftovers. I no longer run 10 K before dawn every day, but I do run for 20 - 30 minutes every morning, rain or shine. Blood sugar tends to go up after a run, I consider that to be normal, . I ate a 5.30 am today and now at midday I am thinking about my next meal. No evening meal after that. Don’t worry about ketones.


#5

One should eat at the time that works for them. Eating in the morning is one of the worst thing some of us can do to ourselves. I am quite passionate about it because it pretty much ruins my day, it was such a joy when I wasn’t a tiny kid anymore and could stop. But I always will have some low level PTSD about it. Breakfast is for the ones who need it and can handle it. Sure, a lot of morning exercise may work up an appetite - or it may not. It depends.

I envy the ones who have that. I try but sometimes fail. I do try to keep lots of processed and frozen things to eat, that helps a lot.

You do you. Not everyone is like that, far from it. Breakfasts always made me very hungry very soon (no matter what type of food, maybe only fat would be a bit better). Without breakfast? Satiated blissful chill :slight_smile:
Again, breakfast is for people who like, need, can handle it.


#6

I need ketones to stop cluster seizures - simple partials (quite pleasurable) but they give me severe OCD.

I want to excercise early in the morning, eat late in the evening (18:00).

" The ketogenic diet is a very high fat, very low carbohydrate, controlled protein diet that has been used since the 1920s to treat epilepsy."

I can’t eat this way (high fat, very low carbs).


(KM) #7

According to AI (sorry), your strategy is a good one. Exercising early in the day, and being in a fasted state when you do so, may release an initial glucose surge but should promote ketosis.

I think you do need to keep your carb intake quite low; the amount of carbohydrate in a SAD diet will almost always be providing extra glucose in a 24 hour period. I haven’t heard of anyone being in any meaningful state of ketosis from exercise alone.

The keto guidelines for macronutrient percentages in diet even for epileptics have loosened from the early years; people have success with varying amounts of fat v. protein but it’s almost always with a small carb load that allows for rapid depletion of glucose / glycogen.


(David Cooke) #8

You may have missed my points. You should exercise as soon as possible, then eat. Also I wasn’t advocating my own lifestyle, I was trying to point out that of course, eating immediately after getting up isn’t a natural way of starting the day.


#9

Maybe you should but not me (unless it’s a 10 hour long hiking or something, that works)… Early eating is a big fat nope for some of us.

It is if one is hungry… Or IDK if it’s natural but one must eat if one is hungry… Basic :slight_smile: Maybe not for everyone but the vast majority of us hates being starved and deprived of needed fuel. Why many others need fuel right in the morning I don’t know but they do. I have plenty from the previous day. (But if I wake up too early, I always immediately eat, it’s not like I have control on it, it’s a strong urge and I don’t want to fight it. And it wakes me up, cool. It’s a tiny meal though. I feel what to do and do it! Much better than listening to someone who isn’t I.)
Sadly, just because we are supposed to be okay without food, we can totally feel awful and weakened and not in proper working order…


#10

I am not sure I understand what these are and why they give you OCD.

Why?

No experience with seizure so please disregard if it would be a problem

I spent many years eating from 5-10PM. I could never ever lose weight unless I did fasts every few weeks (1 -5 days although I drank water and had coffee with cream usually). I am not recommending this. I stayed up well past midnight as well but it did not matter.

Then 1.5 years ago I decided to change it up. I now mostly eat low carb from 11-5. Every once in a while if it is a semi special occasion (eg dinner with friends), I will eat later. I have lost 36 lbs since then. I have made no other changes to my eating and have stopped fasting for more than 18 hours. I have been playing more tennis for the last 2.4 years so I do not think that is what changed. The first two weeks were hard but I got used to it. Also it gets rid of cravings

I read some evolutionary science that says we are more insulin sensitive during daylight hours and process carbs better during that time. There is probably more to it and I am sure others can cite studies