Older Bolder Life

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dig a little deeper

Dig a Little Deeper: A Time to Fast

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Recently a very insightful article posted at Science – A Time to Fast, written by a team from the Translational Gerontology Branch, National Institute on Aging at the NIH in Baltimore. [Science  16 Nov 2018:Vol. 362, Issue 6416, pp. 770-775]

If you have any interest whatsoever in the concept of fasting, even if doing something as ridiculously simple as compressing your eating window during a given day, take a few minutes to read through this article at your leisure.

A section of their of opening comments from the article, emphasis mine –

…Besides socioeconomic status, energy, environmental quality, and genetics are the most powerful determinants of health and longevity. Although environmental quality and genetics are not under our direct control, energy intake is. The consumption of food provides energy and nutrients necessary to sustain life and allows growth, repair, and reproduction. Proper nutrition can influence health and survival and delay or, in some cases, prevent the onset and progression of chronic diseases. However, both hypo- and hypernutrition have the potential to increase the risk of chronic disease and premature death. Furthermore, manipulation of a nutritionally balanced diet, whether by altering caloric intake or meal timing, can lead to a delay of the onset and progression of diseases and to a healthier and longer life in most organisms (2–4). In general, both prolonged reduction in daily caloric intake and periodic fasting cycles have the power to delay the onset of disease and increase longevity. Data from experimental studies in short-lived species and emerging clinical and epidemiological observations indicate that dietary interventions are valuable strategies that can be applied to promote healthy aging. In model organisms, caloric restriction (CR) provides beneficial effects on health and survival, and there is an extensive literature that provides insights into its molecular mechanisms of action (4)…

The authors go on to review key aspects of, and a bit of the history behind, simple caloric restriction, time-restricted feeding (what many of us in the ancestral/Primal worlds identify as intermittent fasting), intermittent fasting and periodic fasting, which the authors define as an eating pattern in which no or few calories are consumed for periods of time that range from one to several days, and what they labeled as fasting-mimicking diets.

There are several excellent diagrams, emphasizing key points from the article, and offering comparisons of the different approaches.

For those who wish to dig a little deeper in the subject of caloric restriction and different approaches to fasting, something all of us have the potential to benefit significantly from, the article is well referenced.

On a personal note, we’ve been, for the most part effortlessly, practicing what the authors term time-restricted feeding for more than two years now. In the ancestral / Primal worlds, this approach is often labelled as using a compressed eating window or intermittent fasting, consuming the predominance of the day’s nutrition in a six to eight hour window.

As we became more Primally-aligned in our own nutrition, and consciously applying the WHEN principle (eat When Hunger Ensues Naturally), eating in a compressed eating window evolved quite naturally, and provided a host of benefits, including better overall energy and endurance, improved mental clarity and cognitive function, improved sleep, intentional/desired weight loss, and more. I personally plan on giving a 5:2 fasting routine a trial run this upcoming first quarter of 2019.

If you’ve tested some form of fasting in your own routine, it’s time to dig a little deeper and give one (or more) of the approaches a spin.

Dig a Little Deeper: The Carbohydrate Insulin Model of Obesity

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Dr. David Ludwig recently published a nifty article over on Medium – The Case for a Low-Carb Diet is Stronger Than Ever – in which he discussed a recent study his team conducted looking at the Carbohydrate Insulin Model of obesity.

From the article, in way of introduction –

…The conventional approach to obesity considers weight control as a matter of accounting — too many calories into the body, not enough calories out. The solution: count calories, eat less and move more. As long as you have a negative “energy balance,” you’ll eventually solve the problem.

Sounds simple. The problem is, calorie restriction is devilishly difficult for most people to sustain over the long term, because the body fights back when it’s deprived of calories. Decades of research shows that, as people lose weight, their hunger inevitably increases and their metabolism slows down.

The more weight you lose, the harder it is to burn off those extra calories, even as hunger and cravings for extra calories keep rising. This isn’t a matter of will power. In the battle between mind and metabolism, metabolism wins. According to nationally-representative data, fewer than 1 in 5 people with overweight or obesity have ever lost just 10% of their weight, for just 1 year.

We each have a sort of set-point, a weight that our body seems to want to remain — it’s lighter for some people, heavier for others, and determined in part by our genes. Some people can eat whatever they want and stay thin. Others seem to gain a few pounds by simply walking past a bakery. For both groups, attempts to either lose or gain significant amounts of weight run into biological resistance…

And the alternative, the Carbohydrate Insulin Model (again, from the article, and there’s a great image summarizing the following at the link)-

…There’s another theory of obesity called the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model (CIM), which argues that we’ve had it backwards all along: Overeating doesn’t cause weight gain, at least not over the long term; the process of gaining weight is what causes us to overeat.

Think of a teenage boy. Eating a lot doesn’t make him grow; his rapid growth makes him hungry and and so he eats a lot. (Of course, adults won’t grow taller no matter how much they eat.)

According to the CIM (see Figure 1), processed, high-“glycemic load”carbohydrates — mainly refined grains, potato products and added sugar — that flooded the food supply during the low-fat diet craze of the last 40 years have raised insulin levels, forcing people’s fat cells into calorie storage overdrive. Our rapidly growing fat cells take up too many calories, leaving too few for the rest of the body. That’s why we get hungry. And that’s why our metabolism slows down if we force ourselves to eat less…

Well worth a read; it’s written as a laymen’s-oriented overview of his study, and the diagrams included are quite illustrative. Despite conventional wisdom’s collective panning of the CIM theory, there’s more research coming down the pike about thoughtful and intentional carbohydrate consumption that’s NOT typical of the standard American diet.