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Group Writing: Intermittent Fasting
I just stepped on the scale. I weigh 295 pounds. That probably sounds like a lot to you, but it sounds like a minor victory for me. For several years, I have weighed over 300 pounds. I have had a lot of health issues over the last 30 years that have led to my being fat. The history doesn’t matter much, but another recent physical challenge had me ready to consider new measures. One measure that I have heard can sometimes “reset” the metabolism is fasting.
I had already been thinking about fasting when someone posted formulae in the PIT for calculating one’s basic metabolic rate (BMR). This is, according to the site where it was referenced, the absolute bare necessity for doing things like breathing and maintaining a heartbeat. Here are the formulae:
- For men= 65 + (6.2 *(multiply by) weight in lbs) + ( 12.7 * height in inches) – ( 6.8 * age in years)
- For women = 655+ ( 4.3 * weight in lbs) + ( 4.3 * height in inches) – (4.7 * age in years)
As an example, say that you have a twenty-one-year-old man who is six-foot-one and 165 pounds. His BMR is: 65 + (6.2 * 165) + (12.7 * 73) – (6.8 * 21) = 1872.3 calories per day. If he is active, he’ll use a lot more calories.
Then there was me. 2457.4 was the number I came up with. Obviously, the number of calories needed per day goes up with height and weight, but down with age. Also obviously, if you don’t meet your minimum for the day, you’ll burn stored energy in the way of fat or protein or whatever the body can get its hands on. And if there’s nothing left to burn, you die. I am not in any danger of having nothing left to burn at the current time. But looking at that number, I thought, do I even eat that much per day?
(Narrator: Well, he certainly wasn’t losing weight before, was he?)
As I had said, I had been considering fasting already, and thought it might help reset my metabolism. The problem with fasting is that I am part of a household. I am also the primary cook in the household. That could make something like a three-day fast difficult, especially if I am cooking for my wife. I went back to the Internet to read more on fasting and found that there are several kinds. Particularly, there are at least three forms of what is called “intermittent fasting.”
The first form might have multi-day fasts, like what I had initially been thinking about doing. There are some religious fasts like this.
A second form, or schedule, of intermittent fasting that I found might have food every other day. So, it would be one day of fasting, the next of eating, the next of fasting again, etc.
The third intermittent fasting schedule was a daily schedule where the hours of eating were restricted followed by a fast. To a certain extent, we do this anyway, it’s just that the hours of fasting are usually when we sleep, perhaps for six or eight hours, and then we might eat for most of the remaining hours of the day with three meals and maybe a snack or two. It is why our first meal of the day is called breakfast, since we are breaking our fast. But the intermittent fasting schedule was much more like what Muslims go through during Ramadan. The fast isn’t just six or eight hours, but most of the day, such as 12 or 16 hours.
This last form of intermittent fasting was something I could do without inconveniencing my wife. I decided I would fast for 16 hours per day and allow myself to eat only within an eight-hour period each day. Due to my wife’s sometimes unpredictable schedule availability for supper, the schedule I set was to be allowed to eat between 1 and 9 p.m. I started about three weeks ago.
If one thinks about it, most people probably usually eat over at least 12 hours per day. Maybe they have breakfast at 7 a.m. Even if they catch an early dinner at 6 p.m., by the time they’re done, it has been about 12 hours since they started breakfast. For some people, it is even more hours per day. For me, I never slept much at one time. Fifteen minutes here, two hours there, so my eating schedule was open 24 hours per day.
(Narrator: And this was why he wasn’t losing weight.)
When one cuts down to only eating within eight hours each day, the first thing I found was that it is difficult to have more than two full meals in the allotted time. One might manage a snack in between the two, but the body needs digestion time, and one soon runs out of one’s eight hours. At the same time, I also started paying a bit more attention to the calories I was consuming. Once I started paying attention, I realized that I had probably been getting a whole passel of calories before as I grazed for 24 hours per day. Now, eating it all within eight hours, it is difficult to even consume 2,000 calories. And that is about right for a man to consume to lose weight.
On the first week, I lost six pounds. As with most diets or regimens that help reduce inflammation, I suspect a lot of that was from water. The subsequent two weeks, I have averaged two pounds per week. That will likely slow down as time goes on. My BMR is dropping with the weight. I’m already down to a BMR of below 2,400 calories per day. Yet, if I can even lose one pound per week, in a couple of years, I could be down to a reasonable weight.
I’m not counting my chickens before they’re hatched, but I’m also not planning on buying new clothes for a while, just in case I go down a size or four in the next couple of years.
Published in Group Writing
Thank you. I have struggled for a while with the complete lack of starch in my “healthy” diet. Especially bananas.
Outstanding!!!!!! (I know you hate exclamation points but they are deserved here). That is a job very well done.
About 10 months ago my cardiologist read me the riot act. “Ekosj … you are in good health, but at your weight that will not last. You are on borrowed time.” I opined in a comment on another post that immediate threats often get taken more seriously than threats in the out years. He definitely got my attention. Some of the nurses in the office recommended the 16 hour intermittent fasting routine. It has worked for me where nothing else has.
Keep up the good work. And if you hit a plateau, don’t lose heart. Especially around the holidays. Just keep grinding it out. Again. Well done.
I weigh about 295, and I was over 330 at one time. We are almost twins!
I do carry it well. Nobody realizes what I weigh by looking at me.
Again, not a problem, since I can’t eat most things anyway. Allergies can be good for fighting holiday bloat. 😄
A very timely post on fasting as we enter the traditional American feasting season (Thanksgiving to New Years Day).
Our November theme is “Feast, Famine, Fast.” Stop by today to reserve a day. Interested in Group Writing topics that came before? See the handy compendium of monthly themes. Check out links in the Group Writing Group. You can also join the group to get a notification when a new monthly theme is posted.
Good luck, Arahant. That’s a complicated system you’ve got there.
I’ve been putting on some pounds (I’m six feet and 205 pounds, with a big belly), so I’ve started on a modest Keto diet. What I do is minimize sugars, carbohydrates, breads, pasta, rolls, and most cereals. Thus far it’s working. I’ve lost five pounds in the two or three weeks I’ve been on this diet.
A Keto diet, which emphasizes meats and good fats, is hard for a vegetarian like me to follow.
I was a vegetarian for nineteen years. I averaged putting on five pounds per year.
here is a great podcast on fasting too!
Did that really just drop today?
What is holding you to vegetarianism? (The simplest way to address the conflict is to stop being a vegetarian…)
Yes it did. Well worth listening too as they discuss the spiritual angle on fasting. I recommend everyone listen to it. I’m going to look for the book too. I am holding my eating to 10 hours but would like to try more and just be more mindful of eating. You’re an inspiration Arahant!
You’re an aspiration, Inrahant!
Arahant you just don’t get no respect.
I’m glad my little conversation starter has gotten things going.
@percival and I are from the same town and the same general time-frame. Went to the same high school, etc. He gets the same amount of respect from me. 😄
Phil, I’m a vegetarian because I don’t want animals killed on my behalf.
IIRC, you have at least one dog. Dogs are obligate carnivores, so I assume you feed him (them) non-vegetarian kibble. Which means you’ll kill animals for your dog, but not for yourself?
Actually, during WWII carnivores at US zoos, including the great cats, were fed vegetarian diets and did well.
Several human children went missing, but the big cats did fine.
Phil, I’m a vegetarian because I don’t want animals killed on my behalf.
Phil, I’m a vegetarian, but I don’t insist that others, including my dog, be vegetarians.
I was a pretty strict vegetarian when I was a young man, for about a decade. I did it just for the experience of it, really, to see what it was like to control one’s diet so closely and eat deliberately. My wife and I were young, prosperous, unencumbered with children, and living in a place — Colorado Springs — that catered well to vegetarians. So it was pretty easy.
I eventually gave it up, for no better reason than I began it, and have been a happy omnivore for decades.
But I remember hearing the late great Charles Krauthammer in an interview once comment on what he thought would be the thing that the future would look back on as the great sin of our era, the thing as incomprehensible to the future us as slavery is to the current us. I expected him to say “abortion,” but instead he referred to the confinement and raising of animals for food.
It surprised me. Coming from almost anyone else, I wouldn’t have given it much thought. But it was Charles Krauthammer talking. I still think about it.
I think this is because our bodies are not meant for constant, regular food. We have these tremendously complicated, intricate processes inside to accommodate and support a being who has to go find food to stay alive. Once we got civilized, most of these systems went into shutdown, figuring maybe we had just discovered a pod of Harp seals and would be gorging ourselves for a few days. Our poor, complex, beautiful bodies had no idea the food supply would be constant (and increasingly poisonous, as processing took over).
Now those processes are doing the best they can, but with sad results – heart disease, diabetes, skin problems, mental problems, and mostly – overweight.
Our bodies used to be tough, and routinely capable of things that would astonish us today.
I read that “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” was a slogan made up back in the early 1900’s by that dude Kellogg, to get his health spa patients to eat (and buy) his new invention, corn flakes. And it worked so well!
If you think about it, we were not designed to eat breakfast. When there was no farming, and no refrigeration, we would wake up every morning and start our day with no snacks on hand. So as we got on with our morning, somebody eventually would have to go catch a fish or kill a rabbit or whatever. We might routinely have not expected to eat anything until brunch time. Or maybe even late afternoon. Or tomorrow.
But no worries, our bodies (and we) were totally used to this.
And they can be again. Intermittent fasting isn’t about calorie restriction, it’s about re-awakening those dormant systems present in our glorious internal organs, and all the complex interaction between them to make us as strong and resilient as we were always meant to be by our Creator.
In the holy tome “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” it was either Zaphod or Ford who reminded Arthur , when he made your observation, that they had lettuce friends who had quite strong feelings on that subject also.
Amen.
Link?
After four weeks, I have lost fourteen pounds thus far. That is doing nothing but restricting the hours I can eat.
I live with a vegetarian, and you “veggie” men are pretty wonderful people.
He accepts my eating meat, as otherwise I am off the charts anemic. He also helps me find non-gluten items that make me happy.
My one dog likes split pea soup, sweet potatoes and regular dog food. While the new guy in the kennel will eat anything as long as it is meat or dairy.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Group Writing.