Fasting

Zincubus

Anyone who fancies a fresh start and a healthy new life should read up on FASTING !!  

It's completely changed my life .... and it was a necessity . 59 two stone  overweight , not exercising bad diet .... tests showed I had a healthy enough body for my age but was heading straight for Type 2 diabetes  !!

Luckily for me I had a brother in law who'd turned his life around by excluding bread / chocolate & toffees / pies  etc from his diet and skipped breakfast each day meaning he was FASTING 16 hours each day from 9pm till the next day at 1pm .   

I changed my ways overnight .
Emptied the house of all temptations ( no bread / muffins / croissants / pies / chocolate / sweets etc )

My daily sweet treats are now apples / bananas / strawberries and cream / grapes or whatever fruit I fancy !
I lost 2stone  or 29lbs in the first 3 months !!!!   
I've since adapted the regime to suit my needs and preferences BUT I've kept the weight off and feel fabulous mentally and physically !!

I now eat like a king - around 2000 calories per day

PM me if you want a few more details !

Life changing !!!

There are a group of scientists who are now convinced that eating at breakfast will be seen as being as stupid and dangerous as we now know smoking is !!!

The commonly known phrase - Breakfast , the most important meal of the day - was a catchphrase used in a promotion by Kelloggs about 60 years ago to save the company from going down the pan !!!

Last thing .... A few weeks ago on New Year's Day when many were experiencing indigestion and / or a hangover I chose to do a half marathon ( 13 mile jog ) by myself - just because I could !!  Not bad for a 59 year old !!

mjn

Any diet that excludes food groups and missing meals, i'm not interested in.

Plus, i love pies!

Zincubus

That's fine as long as you're happy and healthy .. .

If you're in great health , feel optimistic and energised all through the day , don't have mood swings or drops in energy like myself then carry on as whatever you're doing is working for YOU .

If however , you are constantly craving food and sweet stuff / bread , having drops in energy levels , mood swings , overweight etc etc ..... maybe it's worth reading up on this fasting malarkey

Also I don't regard excluding bread from my diet is excluding a food GROUP .... I still eat potatoes or chips everyday .......

I had no choice and my only regret now is not learning about fasting 45 years ago .

Remember eating breakfast is a relatively new fad  ( last 130 years or so ) . For thousands of years the 'norm' was NOT eating breakfast .

The fasting simply and naturally allows your body to kinda detox , rebuild and renew cells , helps tremendously with digestion etc .

Rather like those crazy binge drinkers who drink massive amounts of alcohol over the weekend then have none for 4 days to allow the liver to magically recover . This is the same principle but it's giving your whole body a daily 'reset'  .

Ruperts slippers

Great health is not a given, smoking, drinking excessively and eating excessive amounts of poor food sources leads to the problems you have mentioned. It's a pity people don't grasp this earlier in their lives, they're missing out on a lot of enjoyable experiences and damaging their own self esteem.

Zincubus

Good points ... I've never been a drinker and never smoked so I guess I'm already have a kind of advantage over many .

I just got hooked on processed foods , bread , muffins , croissants and spreads , toffee bars and chocolate etc  

Aside from being officially obese and carrying two stone of excess fat around I was miserable , mood swings  , lethargic , had indigestion issues , constant headaches , poor sleep so many problems from having a modern lifestyle .

All changed now , I don't get any of the above and never get poorly !

I used to cram cerial ( carbs ) at breakfast as I'd been told for so long how important breakfast was ( COMPLETE LIES ) , then I'd be hungry for tea and toast at morning break 11 am , then craving my sandwiches or a pie or whatever  at dinner time . Constantly craving sugar and chasing carbs all day long . I developed food intolerances over the years . ...... ALL GONE

Cutting out MOST of the crap ( still eat chips a few times a week ) and skipping breakfast so fasting each day from 9pm till 1pm the following day WILL change your lives forever .

Basically I'm regulating my INSULIN to perfect levels all day so no craving sweet stuff or carbs and my energy start high in the morning and REMAIN high ALL DAY long !!!!

markgodley

So it's classed as fasting by not eating from 9pm to 1pm?

Sounds like something i'm already doing then. Very rarely will i have breakfast, i'd much rather have an extra 15mins in bed.

Although if you are looking to lose weight I do believe you should eat little and often. If you starve your body i believe that it starts to hang onto stuff as it's not sure when it will gets the next meal.

If it's working for you tho well done

leamspaceman

Fasting is great. I've been doing it for a few years now. I vary my fasting patterns.

Fasting promotes the repair of existing cells rather than the discarding of damaged cells and growth of new ones.

Paradoxically, it can also help you build muscle as the act of fasting inhibits the IGF-1 production in your body and promotes muscle repair instead.

The biggest thing I got from fasting though was psychological.

When I started fasting I'd obviously be hungry. But hunger can be a state of mind and I started noticing more and more the way food is advertised and how it can subliminally make you want to eat when you're not really hungry at all.

I also realised that I live in a society where feelings of hunger can be nullified as we have food. I realised that when I was 'hungry' I was entering a state that, for some people in the world, continues day after day.

balidey

The problem I have with fasting is the word itself and its religious connotations.
If it was referred to as 'not eating for X hours a day', fine. But for me, anything linked to a religious practice where you have to do something, I just lose all interest.

But yes, cutting down on food, or certain types of food, will obviously have benefits. Weight loss, the process of using more energy than you take in. Eating healthier food, cutting out processed foods, partaking in exercise. It leads to weight loss and better health. Really? Who'd have thought it.

Zincubus

Thanks

I used to think the same as you about the little and often thing but it's fundamentally flawed apparently .

Going back centuries and even now there are people who simply eat all the days food in a small window , I myself eat the 2000 calories in a  window of only 4 hours .....  My main meal is at 5pm and another snack at around 9pm and I also eat as much fruit as I want inbetween those two meals .

I didn't mention it earlier as it will seem bizarre to most but I've been doing this for the last 7 months and feel marvellous .


I've read accounts of cattle herders who just have one massive meal every evening then wake up and do a full day's work without any food ALL DAY until their evening meal . It's important to keep your fluids up all day of course . Just cut out the food

Apparently the nomads , Inuits and all manner of people  have been doing this fasting malarkey for centuries as they've never been brainwashed into the modern way of eating all throughout the day .


Supposedly the hunter / gatherers  will have done something very similar , collecting fruit , berries and hunting through the day and eating during the evening . I'm sure they'd be nibbling on fruit and berries as they went on but their main meat or fish based meal would have been around a camp fire in the evenings ..

All the above wouldn't be waking up and having breakfast before they went out looking for food ....

This daily fasting is known as the 16/8 method and all the information you need is online just google it .

I moved onto the 20/4 method as I felt so great on the 16/8 I felt that I had to try the 20/4 and was lucky enough to find that it just suits me .

I have potatoes in one form or another every day in the main meal along with other vegetables and   a good amount of protein , my second snack at 9pm tends to be mainly protein , usually just chicken , salmon or ham or whatever but I eat bananas apples , pears , grapes or whatevers available in between those two meals .

aslird

It is not the fact that you are fasting that the weight has gone, it is the fact that you have cut out high calorie and high carb food, and are therefore naturally burning off more calories than you intake (2000 calories is the recommend daily amount, give or take - easy to hit without junk food).  Fasting by itself is not a healthy way to lose weight.  You should really call it sensible or healthy eating than fasting.  You can just as easily spread that 2000 calories into 3 meals, and lose just as much weight.