Our Longevity Diet

Well, at the end of our first week on a 19/5 fasting schedule, our impression is that it is much more difficult than our earlier 23/25 schedule. Even though the fasts are a few hours shorter, we feel more hungry at the end of these fasts than under the other regime. That is logical enough, since we fast twice in every 48 hours this way, whereas the other method only had one fast in 48 hours.

Eating in a five-hour window is a bit strange — we eat our regular main meal at the start of the five-hour window, but we are not really hungry towards the end of that five hour span — yet we know we will soon be hungry, so we eat anyhow. This doesn’t seem like a good idea to me, to eat when you are not hungry is a very bad habit to get into. If we don’t eat, however, we might as well be on a 23/1 schedule — eating one meal per day and fasting 23 hours.

As mentioned earlier, we found the 19/5 fast far too difficult when the five eating hours came in the evening. Changing the schedule so that the eating hours come near the middle of our waking hours makes things much easier. We are just beginning to get hungry at bed-time, and still sleep soundly. If the sleep period were at the very end of the fasting period, I think it might be difficult to get to sleep. Eating between 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM works great, since we sleep from about 1:00 AM to 9:00 AM. Under this schedule I can imagine staying on this diet permanently, but suspect we will prefer going back to our 23/25 schedule in the long-term.

This Fast-5 diet was promoted as a weight-loss diet, and for me that has been the case. Isabel, however, had a bounce-back — hopefully just a temporary set-back. Over the week we were on the 19/5 fasting schedule Isabel gained back 1.4 kilo, while I lost .9 kilo. We will stay on this diet at least one more week before deciding if we will go back to 23/25 right away, or stay on this and try to lose some weight.

Although I only posted about our switch to the classic version of the Fast-5 diet yesterday, we have been on that schedule since Tuesday, so this is our fourth day, and we just can’t hack it. Isabel and discussed it, and this diet just leaves us too weak — we can’t do our work, or follow our normal exercise routine.

I don’t think it is the diet itself that is so hard, but the timing in the usual version is terrible. You go to bed before you are really hungry, and then have all day of the hard part of the fast during waking hours. So as of today we are moving our eating window forward several hours. From now onward, as long as we are following a 19/5 type fast, the eating time will be from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM. This accomplishes two things — first, it allows us to eat at our accustomed time of 2:00 PM for our main meal of the day. Secondly, it moves the end of the fast, the hardest part, to just five hours in the morning and early afternoon. We go to sleep about 1:00 AM, so we only have six hours of fasting at that point, which means we won’t be too hungry and can get to sleep easily, but still have ‘used up’ a good portion of the total fasting time.

We will see how this adjustment goes. I don’t think it should make any difference to the weight-loss potential of this diet, though to be sure I would have liked to continue on the previous schedule for a full week — doing so would have ruined our weekend, and just isn’t worth it. For now we plan to continue with the 19/5 schedule for the rest of this week, and then one full week more — if we can — before we decide if we want to stay on 19/5 for a while or return to 23/25 that we undertook originally.

In either case, when we are satisfied with our weight we will probably go back to the 23/25 schedule, since I suspect the less frequent, but slightly longer fasts are probably more beneficial to health. In the next few posts I’ll review some more of the scientific research, and see what conclusions we can draw from that information.

The Fast-5 regime was developed by Bert and Judi Herring as a weight-loss diet. Bert wrote a short book about the diet in 2005, which may be bought through Amazon or downloaded from the author’s website. It is a very simple fast, with just one rule: you only eat during a five-hour window each day, typically between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM.

Of course if you eat too much during that five hour window, you can still gain weight — but most people can learn to curb their consumption enough to shed some kilos. Once you reach your desired weight, the author recommends that you keep on the diet, but either eat larger meals, extend your five hour window to a slightly longer period, or fast only some days out of the week — whatever best suits your lifestyle. Of course if you go back to eating as you did before the diet, you will gain back the weight you lost.

This diet sounds harder to me than our 23 hour fast out of each 48 hours, but I thought we should give it a try, so we can evaluate it fairly. Compared to our original fast, this method is four-hours shorter for each fast, but there are two such shorter fasts in each 48 hour period, rather than just one. So Tuesday, May 6th, we switched to the classic Fast-5 style, and plan to eat only between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM each evening for at least one week.

The author points out that there is nothing magical about that time period however, so for our second week of 19/5 fasting we plan to change the window to match our earlier eating habits, probably from 2:00 PM to 7:00 PM. At the end of each week we will report on this blog our impression of the fast. Then after the two weeks we will either go back to our original fasting schedule, or extend the 19/5 regime, whichever we feel is best for us.

Well, things did not exactly go as planned on our first long-distance trip while fasting. We didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before because we wanted to leave very early in the morning. Of course when we got to Chapala we had just missed the 7:00 AM bus, so we had to wait 45 minutes for the next one. From there it is an hour ride into Guadalajara, where the bus stops at what is known as the old bus station.

Most large Mexican cities have two bus stations, one for in-state travel, and one for inter-state. That is the case with Guadalajara. Of course they are located at as much distance from one another as possible, because having them side by side would be too convenient for travelers. From the old bus station we took a city bus to the (what else?) new bus station — another full hour, crawling across the city and stopping almost every block for passengers.

In the new bus station we only had to wait about half an hour for the next bus to Colima, which left at 10:30 AM. That bus takes half an hour just to cross Guadalajara, so about 11:00 AM we were leaving the city — we got up at 5:00 AM for an early start! The city of Colima is about four hours from Guadalajara by bus, but before we got there Isabel began to feel sick to her stomach. We were supposed to break our fast about the time we got to Colima, but by then she felt too ill to eat anything other than a small bread roll. I had a big sandwich and was feeling fine.

From the city of Colima we took another bus to Tecoman, almost an hour further toward the coast. There we got a hotel room and, since Isabel hadn’t eaten much of anything at Colima, we went to a restaurant for her to get a meal. I had some french fries and a beer while she ate a normal sized meal. I had hoped that would solve her stomach problem, but it wasn’t lack of food that was bothering her, as she continued to feel poorly that night and into the next day.

Our schedule called for resuming the fast the next day, but since we were going to our cottage in Cerro de Ortega that day, we had lots of work to do, and Isabel was still feeling ill. So we decided to abandon the fast for a day or two, until she felt better. We resumed our fasting schedule Sunday, when we made the trip back without stopping for food, and ate when we got home. Isabel was feeling fine again by then, and endured the same grueling trip in reverse without problem, so we assume she just had one of the short-term ‘bugs’ we all get from time to time. If she were at home and could rest, I would not consider that enough to stop the fast — indeed fasting might help cure the bug problem faster, but since we had lots of work (cleaning, moving furniture, we even planted a couple coconut palm trees) the combination of sickness and physical activity was too much to support on an empty stomach. I could have continued fasting, but it would be awkward since we were eating in restaurants. Also Isabel felt she would be ‘cheating’ if she ate when I fasted. In the end we only skipped one and one-half fast periods, but that (and the great seafood in Colima), was enough that I gained back half a kilo. Isabel continued to lose weight, since she was eating lightly because of her upset stomach.

The experience left Isabel with the opinion that fasting is just too difficult under the strain of travel. I suspect it would have been OK had she not gotten ill and if we were going for a restful vacation instead of working on refurbishing the cottage. It was more the combination of strains, rather than travel alone, that caused us to break the fast for a few days. I must admit that habit, too, plays a large part, as we are accustomed to ’splurging’ on our trips to Colima, where the shrimp cocktails, ceviche, and various other seafood dishes beckon us to the beach-front restaurants.

I promised to describe our experience traveling while fasting, but the results of our five day trip will have to wait for a future report, since yesterday was the anniversary of our second month fasting — it is time to report our weight change.

If you have been following along with our blog from the start, and have read the pages about our diet as well as previous posts, you know that we did not undertake this change in lifestyle specifically to lose weight, but sought primarily the health benefits associated with Intermittent Fasting. The weight loss has been a wonderful extra bonus.

We are not scale watchers — we don’t even own one. About once per week we use the electronic scale at the supermarket to check our weight. Since short-term fluctuations are not important, we only report our weight results on this blog once per month.

At 191 cm in height, I weighed 99.1 kilos when we started fasting on March 5th. At the end of the first month, I weighed myself (April 4th), and was down to 97.7 kilos. My primary goal is 90 kilos, the weight the charts recommend as ideal for a man of my height. I think an extra kilo or two below that would be even better. In High School I weighed 81 kilos, but that was a long, long time ago. When Isabel and I were married in 2001 I weighed 89.5 kilos, so I’d be delighted with anything in that range. Today I weigh 96.9 kilos, for a total loss of 2.2 kilos since beginning the diet, and .8 kilo for the month. I was actually down to 96.4 kilos a couple weeks ago, on my weekly measurement. When I post a message about our travels you will see how I gained that extra half-kilo back. A loss of a bit over 2% of my body weight in two months is quite satisfactory, considering that I ate very well during that time — see our list of meals for April to see exactly what we had.

Isabel weighed 65.9 kilos at the beginning of the fast, and 63.6 one month into fasting. Her target weight according the charts should be about 60 kilos. When we were married in 2001 she weighed 57 kilos, so her goal is to get down to that range of 57 to 60 kilos, and stay within it. Today she weighs 61.3 kilos, very near the upper end of her target range. That is a loss of 4.5 kilos since starting the fast, and 2.3 kilos for the month. She finds maintaining the fast a little more difficult than I do, yet she has lost about 7% of her body weight. I think she must be cheating, but I don’t know how, as I sit with her at supper time and see her eating hefty meals — less than me of course, but she is much smaller, only 162 cm tall.

Overall we are both delighted with the results so far, and expect to live a fasting life for the rest of our lives. This is an experiment, however, so we want to make some changes and try out some of the other fasting regimes we have heard about while researching this lifestyle. So beginning today, May 6th, 2008, we are going on a 19/5 fast for a while. If you don’t know what that is, don’t worry, I’ll explain it in a future post. Enough to say that we are once again changing WHEN we eat, without making any major changes in WHAT we eat. Subscribe to our RSS feed to keep informed of new posts as we describe our progress.

On Wednesday we will be going to Colima for a few days, traveling by bus. This will be our first major break in routine since starting the fast. I must admit, we live a very routine life, and have the luxury of doing the same things at the same times (because we want to, not because we must). I work on-line, so in fact we can be very flexible with our schedule, but we prefer to follow a predictable, enjoyable routine — broken only occasionally by circumstances. Once during the first month of our fasting regime, and once this month, we went to parties, which required minor adjustments. Two other times we went on car trips to nearby places, which meant I had to skip my wine (both were breakfast days), but no other difference, since we took food with us to eat. So this is the first major change of routine, and I’m interested to see how we will deal with it.

The trip begins while we are in the end stages of a fasting period, so we are not supposed to eat anything until between 2:00 and 3:00 pm — when we will be on a bus somewhere between Guadalajara and the city of Colima. I’ve suggested Isabel carry some sweet snacks in her purse, since she sometimes feels dizzy or weak if she exerts herself too much toward the end of the fast. Myself, I’m content to wait until whenever we get into Colima to eat, since the last time we were there I had a very tasty sandwich in the bus station, and so can look forward to another of the same. Our destination is another hour beyond the city, but still in the state of Colima, near the coast.

Obviously, my next post will be after we return on May 4th, and I’ll let you know how we fared. I can appreciate the fact that for many people, such trips and other schedule-changing circumstances are almost constant events (I lived like that when I was younger) — so it may be easier for me to recommend means of dealing with such a lifestyle while maintaining a fasting regime after we go through this experience. I’m looking forward to it.

A note about weight, as someone asked (off-line). We only weigh ourselves about once per week — any more often is too subject to fluctuations to have much meaning. We only report our weight on this blog once per month. Our last weigh-in shows we continue to lose weight, though we each have had one week (and different weeks for each) when our weight went up instead of down. Unless that sea-food from the coast creeps up on us, we expect to report lower weights for this month than last, though perhaps not as low as they are now … before the trip.

It was a study released five years ago that inspired us to try intermittent fasting. I looked into the scientific literature behind life extension in 2002-2004, and came away with the conclusion that the only certain road to a longer, healthier life was to cut caloric intake drastically. To me, that seemed far to ascetic an approach to life. Even if it didn’t make you live longer, it would sure seem longer. I want to enjoy life, not suffer through it.

Then while browsing the web looking for something else entirely, I came across a reference that led me to a study called (oh so succinctly) Intermittent fasting dissociates beneficial effects of dietary restriction on glucose metabolism and neuronal resistance to injury from calorie intake. The abstract was a bit more clear:

Dietary restriction has been shown to have several health benefits including increased insulin sensitivity, stress resistance, reduced morbidity, and increased life span. The mechanism remains unknown, but the need for a long-term reduction in caloric intake to achieve these benefits has been assumed. We report that when C57BL/6 mice are maintained on an intermittent fasting (alternate-day fasting) dietary-restriction regimen their overall food intake is not decreased and their body weight is maintained. Nevertheless, intermittent fasting resulted in beneficial effects that met or exceeded those of caloric restriction including reduced serum glucose and insulin levels and increased resistance of neurons in the brain to excitotoxic stress. Intermittent fasting therefore has beneficial effects on glucose regulation and neuronal resistance to injury in these mice that are independent of caloric intake.

Note that last line. Glucose regulation is a very important health factor, that leads to diabetes when it goes awry. Neuronal ‘resistance to injury’ is basically saying that the brain deteriorates more slowly — so Alzheimer’s and Alzheimer-like diseases are held at bay for a longer period. This was enough to spark my interest. I began to read about the effects of intermittent fasting, and found other benefits cited, some of which I’ll mention in future posts.

When it comes to implementing the fast, I found several schools of thought. Some people fast the same time every day, so they have 20 hours fasting and four hours eating, for example. Others skipped breakfast and lunch one day, and skipped dinner the next — leading to an imbalanced pattern of more calories one day and fewer the next. Others practice ‘alternate day fasting’ and eat normally one day, then either nothing the next, or a very small meal of 300 to 500 calories. Again, a very imbalanced pattern that seemed like it would be difficult to follow.

Luckily, since we live in Mexico, we were already used to eating our main meal in the early afternoon — much earlier than the typical Euro-American diet. So our solution, which I’ve described in other posts, came as a natural approach that more nearly simulates what the experimental mice experienced. Remember: “their overall food intake is not decreased and their body weight is maintained” — so they were not calorie restricted, but stilled showed the health benefits (including, in other studies, longevity). We want that! We are not obese, so while a little weight-loss would be nice, the extreme restrictions of alternate day fasting are just too difficult to maintain for the rest of our lives. Our style of intermittent fasting works. We have lost some weight, and only time will tell if that continues (we only report our weight in this blog monthly, to avoid the confusion of minor fluctuations). But we feel better, and have no qualms about keeping this lifestyle for many, many years to come.