Our Longevity Diet

We will be taking a short hiatus from this site, as we need to go to Colima again. This time we are driving, so we hope it will have less impact on our eating schedule — though if it is necessary for comfort we will cheat a bit on the days we are actually driving — we expect to maintain our fasting regime while there. We expect to be gone about two weeks.

I can post to this blog from a cyber café, but hesitate to do so, since one never knows when those places have keystroke capture software installed to steal passwords. I’ll have to decide if anything I have to say in those weeks is worth the risk, or if it can wait until our return.

We normally report our monthly weigh-in around the 4th or 5th of each month, but that will have to be later in June, since we like to use the same scale for consistency. As of now, I weigh 95.1 kilos, and Isabel weighs 62.8. I’m down exactly four kilos from when we started the fast almost three months ago, and Isabel is down one kilo — she was down 2.5 kilos at the beginning of this month, but bounced back and then plateaued out at her current weight.

As we approach the end of our third month fasting we are both feeling really well, and see no reason why we wouldn’t continue this for the rest of our lives … so a couple weeks without posts on this blog should just be drop in the bucket by a year or two from now!

In the past few months two things have captured my attention, each of which is just ‘too good to be true’ — according to the old cliché. One will help me lose weight, improve my health, and live longer. The other will save the world.

Of course, the first is intermittent fasting. Years ago, I read the studies about caloric restriction, and thought wouldn’t that be great. But reducing my caloric intake by 40% was not my idea of living. I want to live as long as possible, but only if I can enjoy that long life. Then along came the study results for intermittent fasting which said, in effect — yes, you can eat normally and still have all the benefits of caloric restriction and more, just by adjusting when you eat. That, to me, seemed worth a try. And when I tried it out and found out how easy it is — and found I lost weight — and found I felt better, well, needless to say I’m hooked.

The other revelation, which goes way beyond personal interest (though there is some of that too) and sparks visions of really helping all of mankind cope with the coming disruption of global warming — is something called biochar, inspired by terra preta de los indios, a ‘new’ discovery just 2500 years old!

The terra preta are black soils in the Amazon basin where crops grow with amazing fecundity, while adjoining soils of similar composition are nearly sterile. Scientists have investigated this amazing dirt, and found that one thing distinguishes it from nearby soils that have all their nutriments leached-out by the torrential rains of that tropical climate: the terra preta soils are rich in minute particles of charcoal — dust sized particles (under 50 micrometers) that exert tremendous effects on the fertility of the land.

Now, charcoal is fairly inert in soil — it doesn’t break down much. I know, because I used to be an archaeologist, and I’ve dug up charcoal thousands of years old. But apparently charcoal has other properties, especially when ground up very fine, that make it highly beneficial to the soil. It helps retain water, improves the soil texture, harbors beneficial bacteria, and helps make existing minerals in the soil available for plant use through a chemical reaction that creates cations, a type of ion.

In essence, adding substantial amounts of powdered charcoal to soil has been shown to increase plant production by 50% to 200%. The enriched soil needs less water and less fertilizer, because biochar reduces the loss of fertilizer through run-off (helping to reduce pollution to adjacent lakes and streams). So we can feed more people using less precious water and less fertilizer, while enriching the soil and reducing pollution. Didn’t I say it sounded too good to be true?

And as if that were not enough, we come to the ’saving the world’ part. The world is heating up faster than it has in the past 200,000 years — because mankind is pumping too many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. One of the major greenhouse gases is carbon dioxide. Growing plants take carbon dioxide out of the air, but when they rot or are burned, that carbon goes back into the atmosphere. Turning plants into charcoal and burying (rather than burning) that charcoal — as in biochar — takes about half of the carbon absorbed by the living plant and keeps it out of the atmosphere — for thousands of years.

Large scale biochar production could offset the carbon dioxide our industrial processes and burning of fossil fuels pumps into the air. And there is still more. Biochar is a byproduct of the production of biofuels through pyrolysis of organic material. Unlike other biofuel technologies, this does not require high-sugar plant materials, like corn, but will work with almost anything, including the old corn stalks after the corn has been harvested. The plant material is heated in the absence of oxygen, and volatile chemicals are driven off and captured, making a fuel. The left-over carbonized plant matter is biochar. So this amazingly useful material can be produced at a profit, while reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

So, to bring this amazing tale back to our subject matter — intermittent fasting — you need to eat healthy foods if you expect to extend your lifespan and improve your health. And the best way to know you are getting good healthy vegetables, is to grow them yourself — even if you have to grow them in pots on the patio. And the best way to do that is to add some biochar to your potting soil or garden soil. If your local nursery doesn’t sell biochar yet, demand they start! Spreading the word on this amazing discovery is needed for it to become widespread enough to have any global effect.

I’m working on a website on the subject of biochar, where I’ll also tell you how to make your own, if you are the do-it-yourself type. I’ll post a link in the sidebar of this site when that is up and running.

It pains me to see intermittent fasting lumped in with crazy fad diets and other foolish notions. Today I saw a site touting ‘ionized water’ for use while on your ‘water fast’ — which is distinguished from a ‘juice fast’. If you are drinking fruit juice, you are not fasting — you are on a highly restricted diet.

These sites also tout long-term fasts for weight loss and curing diseases — from seven to forty days fasting. That kind of starvation diet should not be confused with intermittent fasting. Any weight lost during such a fast would be rapidly regained when you resume eating. Nor have I seen any scientific evidence that long-term fasting might cure disease — but then again it doesn’t exactly sound like something main-stream science is likely to conduct controlled experiments on. I’m willing to remain open-minded but uncommitted on that; if nothing else the placebo effect can yield wonderful results at times.

The part that really got my goat, however, was the sales-pitch for a machine to produce ‘ionized water’ which is purported to have all sorts of wonderful effects. Well the scientifically proven effects of intermittent fasting are wonderful too — so I can hardly let that be a criteria for condemnation. In the case of intermittent fasting, the old adage that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t gets broken all to smithereens. Ionized water is another matter altogether though. There is a good, detailed, refutation of the entire idea here — I’ll quote just the summary — read the entire page if you are interested in the details.

• “Ionized water” is nothing more than sales fiction; the term is meaningless to chemists.
• Most water that is fit for drinking is too unconductive to undergo significant electrolysis.
• Pure water can never be alkaline or acidic, nor can it be made so by electrolysis.
• Groundwaters containing metal ions such as calcium and magnesium can be rendered slightly alkaline by electrolysis, but after it hits the highly acidic gastric fluid in the stomach, its alkalinity is gone.
• The idea that one must consume alkaline water to neutralize the effects of acidic foods is ridiculous; we get rid of excess acid by exhaling carbon dioxide.
• The claims about the health benefits of drinking alkaline water are not supported by credible scientific evidence.
• There is nothing wrong with drinking slightly acidic waters such as rainwater. “Body pH” is a meaningless concept; different parts of the body (and even of individual cells) can have widely different pH values.
• If you really want to de-acidify your stomach (at the possible cost of interfering with protein digestion), why spend hundreds of dollars for an electrolysis device when you can take calcium-magnesium pills, Alka-Seltzer or Milk of Magnesia?
• Electrolysis devices are generally worthless for treating water for health enhancement, removal of common impurities, disinfection, and scale control.

That is the scientific analysis. Note that it covers ‘alkaline water’ as well, which is just another variant on the same mumbo-jumbo theme. Don’t confuse scientific evidence with pseudo-scientific jargon. The entire ionized water pitch is illogical and improbable, and one need only look as far as the price tag for the ionization device to find the motive. Snake oil would be more effective at half the cost.

There are dozens of different popular intermittent fasts, and hundreds more variations possible. But in general, they divide themselves into two major groups: intermittent fasting with calorie restriction, and intermittent fasting without calorie restriction. Basically, these are like they sound — in the first, you not only limit when you eat, but you try to structure it so that you eat less calories during your eating times than you had prior to taking up the fast. With calorie unrestricted fasts, you still limit when you eat, but you try to structure it so that during your eating times you have just as much food as you normally would if you were not fasting.

We are following a schedule that is calorie unrestricted. Yet we still manage to lose weight. How can that be? Well first, there is not a complete correlation between calories consumed and calories used by your body. That assumes 100% absorption of calories by your digestive system, which is unrealistic. Human waste may not be high enough in calories to cook on, like cow manure, but I’m sure it has some calories in it. Perhaps after fasting it has more — I’m really in no position to test that, but merely suggest it as a possibility.

Another possibility is that we are eating less, but just don’t realize it. We eat the same main meal as before, plus a small meal or snack — breakfast on alternate days and an evening snack on the days we don’t eat breakfast. But during fasts we eat nothing, so there is no temptation to snack between meals, because we are not eating meals then. And when we are in the eating period, we are much more aware of our food consumption. We still may have an occasional handful of nuts or piece of fruit for a snack, but probably not as often as we did before taking up the fast.

Some people say your stomach ’shrinks’ when fasting. I don’t know if this is literally true (the stomach is capable of expansion, so it makes sense it can get smaller too, when not kept as full as previously) but it certainly is an accurate description of how it feels — you just don’t want to eat too much, and have less desire for between-meal snacks.

So, of the two types of fast, intermittent fasting without calorie restriction can still lead to weight loss, though slowly and gradually — it is more likely to be permanent loss then temporary weight-loss diets provide. Intermittent fasting with calorie restriction should lead to more rapid weight loss, though for us that was not the case when we temporarily switched to a Fast-5 style diet. Regardless, it seems logical that a calorie restricted diet would be much more difficult to maintain over long periods, and should not be considered for a lifestyle choice.

If you have a lot of weight you need to lose, and find a calorie restricted intermittent fast works for you, then by all means use that to reduce weight. But for a lifestyle choice — for an eating schedule you can stick with for the rest of your life, and that you can count on to bring both health benefits and to keep off the weight you loss — choose a calorie unrestricted fasting regime. It is easy enough to live with, and the benefits are tremendous.

Most people know this, but for those who don’t, it bears repeating. Weight loss diets don’t work. Ever.

Yes, you can lose weight with many of the diets out there — but so long as it is a temporary ‘diet’ rather than a lifestyle, the weight loss will also be temporary. You have to change your life if you want to permanently change your weight. There are two ways to do that. 1) Eat much less food (for the rest of your life!) or 2) Begin intermittent fasting, and learn to control your appetite.

Of course we think #2 is a much better option, not only because it is easier, but because it has additional health benefits beyond weight loss. Something about the intermittent fasting regime allows your body to adjust towards it’s own natural and healthy weight, with only minimal conscious intervention on your part. Learn not to eat when you are not hungry. Learn to accept hunger as a natural consequence of fasting. And learn to not overcompensate when you end your fast, and your body will take of getting rid of excess weight — slowly, and permanently.

With any weight loss diet that works at all, there is an immediate benefit when you begin dieting, then after a couple weeks or a month you reach a plateau — or worse — rebound. That is your body adjusting to the lower calorie levels in your diet. Go back to eating the way you did before the diet, and your now more-efficient body will bloat out with new-stored fat.

Intermittent fasting is not a diet, but a permanent lifestyle. The plateau may be at or near your ideal weight — if not it is likely to be only temporary, and weight-loss will continue after a few more weeks or months. You lose weight more slowly than with a weight-loss diet, but take that as a good sign that the loss will be permanent. You eat a full, satisfying meal each day, and a small meal or snack in the morning or evening, depending on the schedule. You are not deprived of calories, or certain foods, nor suffer any of the other problems associated with weight-loss diets. So it is easy to maintain intermittent fasting as a lifestyle.

Given time, this will become such a widespread and popular lifestyle choice that the neighbors won’t even think you’re weird when they hear the word ‘fasting.’ It will become the predominate method of weight control and health enhancement in years to come because it works, and it’s easy.

Today is the last day of two weeks on the 19/5 fasting schedule. We found it much harder than the 23/25 schedule we were following for the preceding two months, and yet Isabel gained weight and I only lost a little. By the end of our two week experiment with this schedule I was exhausted by the end of the day, and ended up sleeping 10 hours a night instead of our usual 8.

We weighed ourselves today. Isabel started this fast at 61.3 kilos two weeks ago, then one week ago she was up to 62.7 kilos, and now today she weighs 62.8. Two weeks ago I weighed 96.9 kilos, and one week ago I was down to 96.0, today I weigh 96.2 kilos. In our first two months on the 23/25 diet Isabel lost 2.5 kilos and I lost 2.2 kilos. Two weeks on this 19/5 diet Isabel gained 1.5 kilos and I lost 0.7 kilo.

We were really expecting better results on the weight-loss from this diet, since we felt hungry and weak so much of the time. We ate normal sized dinners at the start of each five-hour eating window, but less food than we normally would have later in the day, since by the end of the five hours we were not yet hungry again. We felt some pressure to eat anyhow, just because we knew we would be awfully hungry later on — that seems to me a very bad habit to get into (eating when you are not really hungry). Still, I’m sure we had a lot less total food than under the other schedule.

Most diets work at first, then as your body adjusts you either plateau or bounce-back. It may be that our two months on the longer (but less frequent) fasts had us positioned for a bounce-back when we switched to this schedule. In fact, that expectation was one of the driving motivations for changing our diet — in the hope of avoiding any bounce-back. Apparently it didn’t work at all for Isabel, and only slightly for me. Tomorrow we will go back to the 23/25 schedule for it’s health benefits, and see if our weight is affected either way.

I’ve been reading a lot of health-oriented web sites and blogs lately, while researching various styles of fasting and dieting. I keep coming across absurd recommendations, like ‘eat plenty of nuts, but not peanuts — those are a legume’. Say what? When did legume become a dirty word? Beans, peas and lentils are all legumes, and I haven’t heard anyone saying they should be eliminated from your diet. Well, except the paleo-diet folks, who say pre-agricultural man didn’t eat legumes. Nonsense. How would humans have known legumes would make good agricultural crops if they didn’t eat the wild ancestral legume species?

Oh Nuts

Saying ‘peanuts are legumes’ seems to convey the message that they are the exception — other nuts are of course — ?? — er — something else. Let’s see, Walnuts, Pecans and Hickory nuts are Juglandaceae; Chestnut, Beech nuts and acorns are Fagaceae; while Hazel nuts and Filberts are Betulacea; — jeeze, I don’t see much of a pattern here. Oh, and Almonds, Brazil Nuts, Cashews, and (my favorite) Pistachios are all seeds, like peanuts. None of those are considered nuts by botanists. They are all (except sometimes peanuts) considered nuts by health-nuts.

Digging deeper into the peanut controversy, some folks point to the fact that certain people are allergic to peanuts — there must be something toxic in there. My wife, Isabel, is allergic to tomatoes (nearly a national crime here in Mexico) — does that mean tomatoes are unhealthy for the rest of us? On the contrary, tomatoes have been found to be especially healthful, and an integral part of the Mediterranean diet which nutritionists say is heart-healthy. Yes, if you are allergic to peanuts you should shun them like the plague — but the rest of us have no reason to stop eating this healthful food.

Aflatoxin

Finally, there is the aflatoxin scare. Aflatoxin is not found in freshly harvested peanuts, but comes from a mold that may grow on peanuts if they are kept in a hot and damp storage silo. In the U.S., peanuts and peanut products are tested to ensure that dangerous levels of aflatoxin (a carcinogen) are not introduced into commercial food products. In fact, when peanut butters were tested for aflatoxin, the lowest amounts were found in the supermarket brands, like our childhood pal Skippy, and highest levels in ‘organic’ fresh-ground peanut butter at health food stores.

So why not ‘play it safe’ and avoid peanuts because the FDA allows minute amounts of aflatoxin (under 20 parts per billion)? Well, that means you will also have to give up pecans, pistachios, walnuts, milk, grains, soybeans and spices — they have all been found to contain aflatoxin at times.