Our 10 Weeks of Alternate Daily Fasting

As I mentioned in this post, when I heard Art De Vany say he eats “two meals a day, sometimes one, sometimes none” I thought that was unfathomable.

But after reading The Obesity Code and The Complete Guide to Fasting, in which Dr. Jason Fung described his experience with his Intensive Dietary Management clinic and how he would get many patients with type 2 diabetes off insulin and diabetes medications within just a few weeks through extended fasting, Lisa and I were ready to give it a try.

Neither of us had even been diagnosed as prediabetic, but Lisa’s fasting blood sugar had been 102 in October 2016, which is what got us started on this dietary and lifestyle journey.

In The Obesity Code, Dr. Fung cited a study of 70 days of alternate daily fasting in which body weight was decreased by an average of 6%, while fat mass decreased by 11.4%, with no loss of lean mass. He also said

Studies of eating a single meal per day found significantly more fat loss, compared to eating three meals per day, despite the same caloric intake. Significantly, no evidence of muscle loss was found.

The Obesity Code, p. 243, Jason Fung, M.D.

It’s important to note that with alternate daily fasting, you’re still eating every day. Typically you eat dinner every evening, and skip breakfast and lunch every other day.

So on Sunday you would eat all three meals, but then on Monday skip breakfast and lunch, limiting yourself to water, black coffee or tea. Then repeat the cycle.

Two Three important additional points:

  1. If you are taking insulin or medications for diabetes, you absolutely need to have medical supervision while fasting to prevent dangerous low blood sugar episodes.
  2. If you’re eating lots of carbohydrates, you will be miserable on an all-day fast. It’s best to get at least somewhat converted to fat metabolism before starting fasting. Eggs, meat, avocados, nuts and other foods relatively high in fats and with moderate protein, combined with limiting carbs to 25-40g per day, will help convert your body to burning fat.
  3. I’m not a doctor. I’m not giving medical advice. Check this out for yourself and make your own decision in consultation with medical professionals you trust.

One more tip: a good way to start is with time-restricted feeding, just skipping breakfast every day and eating lunch and dinner during a 6-8 hour window. This still gives you an extended period of lowered insulin levels, and isn’t quite as extreme as going 24 hours without food.

With all of those caveats, here are my weekly bluetooth scale readings from our 10 weeks of alternate daily fasting. I weighed every day, but for simplicity am just sharing the Wednesday morning readings.

With the caveat that the body fat and muscle percentages seem to be calculated by some voodoo electrical signals running through the soles of my feet, at least all of those readings were coming from the same scale.

So the bottom line is that I lost about a pound of fat per week while essentially preserving muscle mass. (The other 4 lbs. lost, according to the scale, were water weight .)

Note also that when we started the 10-week experiment I was already down 37 lbs. from Peak Lee, as demonstrated in my “before” pictures. So presumably I had already lost the “easy” weight.

And in keeping with the study cited by Dr. Fung, my body weight was reduced by 6.2%, while my body fat was reduced by 18.1%, during the 10-week period.

Have you tried intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding?

If so, how did it work for you?

If not, what questions do you have?

See the whole series about my health journey. Follow along on FacebookTwitter and LinkedIn.

An Unfortunately Named Book

The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung came up among my recommended titles on Audible in May of 2018. (Note: commissions earned through any Amazon purchases are donated to support partial HELPcare Clinic memberships.)

The name didn’t put me off, because the subtitle was compelling: “Unlocking the secrets of weight loss.”

And while by that time I had lost about 25 lbs. through the Trim Healthy Mama Plan and the Slow-Carb Diet, I figured this highly rated and recommended book would add to my knowledge.

Little did I know it would be among the most important books in my health journey.

Dr. Jason Fung is a nephrologist who became increasingly dissatisfied with his practice because he felt helpless to deal with the progressive kidney damage his patients were experiencing.

Many if not most of them had diabetes resulting from obesity, which led them to need increasing amounts of insulin, which led them to gain more weight, and the cycle would continue. Eventually, they would end up on dialysis or would have foot ulcers that required amputation.

In listening to this book, I felt an increasing sense of the despair he must have felt in his practice, because in the first several chapters he laid out the scope of the problem, describing both the epidemic of obesity and why so many diets fail.

Essentially our weight control mechanisms behave like a ratchet, at least in our current food environment. Once we gain weight and our bodies adapt to a new normal, they in effect establish a new “set point.”

If we then follow the “eat less, move more” advice as exemplified by The Biggest Loser, we may achieve some short-term success, but at a long-term price. With chronic caloric reduction, our metabolisms slow because our bodies sense starvation and the need to conserve energy.

Instead of a basal metabolic rate of, for example, 2,000 calories per day it may be reduced to 1,500.

Our body temperature is reduced, as is the stroke volume of our hearts. We end up cold, tired and hungry.

Then when we resume normal eating, we gain it all back (and more) because we still have the lowered metabolism.

Fung describes obesity as primarily a hormonal issue, and highlights those hormones that play the largest roles: leptin, grellin, cortisol and, above all, insulin.

He describes how the Atkins diet showed some success, but that it too tends to have problems with long-term compliance.

This dreary story continues for 18 chapters, until he summarizes as follows:

There are two primary findings from all of the dietary studies done over the years. First: All diets work. Second: All diets fail.

Dr. Fung then gives some helpful advice on the importance of eating whole foods and avoiding sugar and refined carbohydrates. But it isn’t until the final chapter, after nine hours of describing the futility of other approaches, that he provides the solution.

As I said, the title of this book is really unfortunate. I would love to have all of my friends read it, but the title makes it kind of awkward to recommend.

Five days after I downloaded The Obesity Code, I bought a book coauthored by Dr. Fung called The Complete Guide to Fasting, which helped me to understand and implement the solution advocated in Chapter 20 of the first book.

I unreservedly recommend both, but if you want an introduction to Dr. Fung’s message, this address from last year will be helpful.

Next time I’ll tell you what happened when Lisa and I implemented a fasting regimen for 10 weeks starting in mid-May 2018.

See the whole series about my health journey. Follow along on FacebookTwitter and LinkedIn.