I have no upper-body strength whatsoever. I don’t believe I’ve ever been able to do as many as ten pushups (forget doing them one-armed!), or even more than one or two pull-ups at my best. And since the accident, forget it!
I’m with the comedian who said his motto was “No pain, no pain”! 
Paul, what accident?
When I was 15 or 16, Arhhhhnold burst onto the scene. The people I hung out with all wanted to be body builders, so when I was that age, I could do a ton of wide-grip pull ups. At the time, I never did pushups, as we all were trying to do bench presses instead.
I learned that you need genetics for both body building and strength (and probably drugs, too). I was OK at deadlift and squats, but I’ve always had relatively poor upper body strength. It took me forever, as in years, to get to bench 315, and then I think I did this at most a few reps. Maybe 1-2. (For those not familiar with weights, the weight of choice are “Olympic” weights, which in the US the bar is 45 pounds and the big plates are 45 pounds. So, you want to bench 135/225/315/405, etc.)
But I’m so close to 1 pull up, that i think it’s mainly weight preventing me from completing it. I have a pull up bar, and I stand on a small stool. I start from a position with my head above the bar, go down, do 1/4 of a pull up, go down, do 1/2 a pull up, go down, do 3/4 of a pull up, but when I finally get to a full pull up, I can’t do it. Almost, though.
Anyway, my test was OK. I ate top round, which is pretty lean. I also ate zero percent fat yogurt with some collagen protein. I will likely have to weigh these, as I’m not sure how many calories I’m getting.
Also, while I’m not that concerned about protein, I could be eating too much too quickly. Top round is lean and high protein, as is zero percent yogurt. The collagen protein is not that high (only 8/9 grams per scoop), but added to the rest might be too much.
Ugh, I hate counting calories.
Double ugh, I really tried not to eat after my meal, but I ate three thin slices of ham a while after my meal.
Today, I might try a smaller meal at lunch, and then a smaller one at dinner.
I’ve mentioned it a few times. Bought a bicycle for my 60th birthday and ended up going over the handlebars. Broke both arms.
Maybe I need to rethink this. According to this article, collagen isn’t a complete protein. He suggests not counting it toward a protein goal:
Interesting…
He’s the reason I started taking collagen powder. That, and we had some. And I wanted something to add to my zero-fat yogurt.
@ctviggen I eat collagen in a couple of formats daily. It’s not my sole source of protein so why should I care that it lacks tryptophan? I get that from other protein sources. So I count it as protein - it’s got all the other amino acids - and if I did not count it I’d be overeating them.
@PaulL Start here and several succeeding posts.
And from here.
From my experience I think a recumbent bicycle is at least one of the best if not the best exercise machines for seniors. A recumbent removes all the downside for seniors of ‘upright/diamond frame’ bikes, ie perineal (and for men prostrate) damage, wrist injury and the occasional over-the-bars stop to name a few. For those with balance problems there are recumbent trikes. Add a mid-drive electric motor to the cranks and you’ve got an exercise machine that will get most folks out and about for hours daily having a grand time and benefitting enormously healthwise.
OK, Bob. Now that it’s three months later, how did your experiment work out? Or are you still experimenting?
I’m considering experimenting with a PSMF, but the biggest obstacle is not knowing what a PSMF looks like. Any particular resources, or links to check out?
The reason for trying it is that my Alternate Day Fasts aren’t getting me to my goal, and since about mid-August, every weight measurement is within +/- 2 lbs. Which is fine, it’s just that the midpoint of that range is about 5 pounds too high.
I have decided I can fast and not eat, but if I eat, I can’t eat a small amount. The idea of a PSMF is really about low calorie. And I haven’t been able to do low calorie.
What I’ve been doing is eating higher protein, lower fat, and trying for one 36 hour fast per week. I’m averaging 2 out of 3 weeks for 36 hour fasts, though sometimes that’s due to external events. For instance, today would be my normal fast, but I’m working from home and going to visit my mother. I’ll eat with the family tonight, and it’s tough to sit in front of the family while they eat but I don’t.
I think fasting can be tough, because I do think we can cause our metabolic rates to decrease. How long does that take? I don’t know.
But it also makes sense to me that a PSMF should do the same: at some point, your body will say “Hey, I’m starving here! I’m going to shutdown!”
I think PSMF - if you can do it - is a tool like any other tool. If you try it and it works, then it’s great. If you try it and it doesn’t (or like me, you can’t do it), then it’s not.
Another thing I have been doing is to try to eat a bit more before I hit a 36 hour fast. I THINK that might be helping, but I’m not sure. My guess is that rotating PSMF, longer fasts >24 hours, and the like, with eating a lot might trick our bodies to prevent them from lowers BMR (basal metabolic rate). But, of course, I have no real data on that.
Anyway, let me know if you try a PSMF and if so, if it works for you.
When I see something like 500 calories a day, I think that’s like 4 or 5 ounces of meat, especially if you put anything on it. It’s not even something particularly high fat. A 500 calorie PSMF day isn’t sparing much protein, just some.
I’m just finishing 40 hours of fast today, and after my 6 or 7 hour eating window today I start another fast. I find I’m not really hungry, I just want to eat. Eating is pleasurable - who’d have guessed?
Yeah, it’s really tough to eat that few calories.
There are different viewpoints, and some believe protein helps with satiety. I do find this to be correct for me, at least to a point. That point? When I eat too few calories, I’ll still get hungry.
But in general higher protein for me equals satiety. Right now, I eat a lot of leaner meats, but I still don’t stop eating fat. For example, for “Taco Tuesday” (which is Wednesday this week), I’ll have sour cream. So, while I’m eating a lot of low fat meals, I’m not going crazy about not eating higher fat.
I also found when I was trying to eat a lot of saturated fat that if I ate a TON of saturated fat over a short period, I got a tremendous satiety signal. I did this at “lunch” (my first meal of the day).
The problem? Since it was a pandemic, my kids were home. So I ate dinner with them. And even though I was NOT hungry AT ALL, I would end up eating a normal meal. There’s something hormonal, I think, that causes me to want to eat.
I do PSMF (but relatively high fat, not low fat).
For me at least, IF does not work, I prefer to eat several times per day (4), smaller portions. But this is not in PSMF only, it is in general.
Sometimes it’s a tiresome chore to me… And fasting can be very pleasurable too 
But yeah, I am a big foodie hedonist, I can understand. Eating is a very important joy of life for me and I don’t want it to change ever. Some people consider eating mere refueling, it’s fine but I am not like that.
500 kilocalories is 150g pork chuck roast, it’s such a tiny food, I would get hungry eating that! PSMF is like low-fat, belongs to my room 101. I am a lot like Bob, I need proper sized meals.
And eating a really substantial meal before EF definitely helps me - though I still have a hard time to do it, that’s why my last EF was ages ago. But without very well-fed just before it I have even smaller chances. The bigger my meal, the longer I fast, typically. Tiny meals makes me hungry right away. 1200-1500 kcal lasts for 3 hours, usually (carbs raises the numbers, it’s for very low-carb)… Bigger ones typically last for a day. But food choices matter too, not surprisingly.
For satiation, I need lots of protein and lots of fat (the higher the carbs, the more, no wonder I prefer staying close to carnivore). Just lots of protein can’t work though I probably will make more experiments. But I just stop eating protein at some point and miss the calories, it’s quite bad, according to my tiny experiments. It takes a different type of person to do that and be okay with it (= not eating up a lot of super fatty protein extra to get rid of the bad feeling).
I guess different people are different, but I would not say 150g of pork is little.
It is not a lot, but not little.
Myself, I eat 150g of meat/fish/… per meal, so it is reasonable to me.
Just to understand: how many eggs do you use for an omelette?
Just curious, when I think about PSMF. How is this ‘fasting’? I get the ‘protein sparing’ bit (although at the risk of protein poisoning), but eating 500+ calories of protein is not fasting. It’s just restricting calories from both carbs and fat. ‘Modified fast’ would be something like do you want to drink plain water, salted water or club soda.
Yes, that is a good point, a PSMF is not fasting. I guess there is an analogy with Longo’s Fast Mimicking Diet.
The idea is that if you are at say 20%, you are closer to 0% than to 100%.
Fasting is like pregnancy. You are or you aren’t.
I think the folks who came up with the idea just didn’t want to call it the ‘Rabbit Starvation’ diet.
It depends. There is dry fasting, there is fasting with water, and with coffee or tea …
But yes, I would never say that what I am doing is “fasting”.
Ah. I’ve always thought that “protein-sparing” referred to sparing the protein already in the body
2-3 eggs for an omelette/scrambled eggs but it’s just the first eggy course of a proper meal in my world. 8 eggs is a decent amount of eggs per meal/day for me but it’s very little food, no way I get satiated with it under normal circumstances so I eat other things. It’s not too many eggs to have along with a proper amount of meat for a proper, substancial meal (like, 500-600g pork chuck, my most important staple meat).
I never was good with tiny meals but occasionally they happen, just usually very close to other meals.
But super rarely I have 60g meat days too, it’s not a meat dish, just some processed stuff or a turkey neck in my soup. But those almost never are carnivore(-ish) days as I can’t live on eggs and dairy.
It’s different for you and many others as you function well with more than 1(-2) meals a day and you eat a significant amount of plants even on a good day.
But I like the meat I eat anyway and a little would be so pointless, I mean business when I eat, I couldn’t get satiated with a little (unless I would eat very many eggs in various forms including desserts but it’s better to eat more meat).
I see 500g pork a really not big piece after I roast it… Nice, not too little (except when it is) as it’s only the main course, not the whole meal but it’s so small on my plate… 
But I have my own idea about what is small or too little food.
Indeed but there are these things called fasting. Egg fast, fat fast, PSMF. They aren’t fasts but one eats in a restrictive way and I don’t know why but people call that fast sometimes… Egg fast doesn’t even have a calorie restriction, technically, one eats fat and protein alike though very little protein unless someone is able to eat much on that horrible, insanely fatty mini-diet (I can’t but I quit after 9 hours anyway when I tried. but it was very satiating while lasted, similarly to the fat fast that I quit on the 2nd day and only because I got paranoid about my protein).
The egg fast has the worst name as it has very little eggs and it isn’t a fast AT ALL, I think it’s recommended to eat many times a day…? I couldn’t eat much at once anyway unlike on the fat fast (if 1000 kcal is much for someone, that was the amount there and it was enough for a day for me, amazing).
I feel compelled to try PSMF for a day once (scratched that, make it low-fat, so <80g. that’s little, right?). It can’t be much worse than the egg fast… And in the worst case I will get interesting experiences and then quit soon but TRY a meal. It just needs an insane focus to avoid fat. I am bad at it. Once I wanted to eat lots of protein and only focused on my protein and ended up with 220g fat somehow. Once, very long ago I just jumped one of my no satiation fav foods, bread with honey, ate a ton of it and ended up with 45% fat somehow. Fat just appears around me. I need my decade long training and habit and a low level continuous focus on keeping it as low as I comfortably can to only go over 200g fat occasionally. 280g regularly happens but I am usually way lower. But going below 80g… Sounds impossible. But I will make some honest attempt one day 
(Without eating a ton of sugar the previous day as that would make it almost realistic… I had 500kcal days in my life. Not every year, even full fast days are more frequent but they happened.)
I was going by the way people talk about egg fasts or things like that, where they eat nothing but eggs. I think I remember someone talking about a bacon fast. I thought protein sparing fast meant eating nothing but protein.
As I said up above, I know next to nothing about PSMFs. I watched an hour long documentary on Amazon Prime about fasting that specifically talked with Valter Longo about PSMFs but that’s long enough ago that nothing much deeper than remembering I saw it survived.
