Our Longevity Diet

A recent article on the TimesOnline site called ‘Is Detox Safe‘ goes from discussing detox fasting — a dangerously unhealthy practice that is not endorsed by any reputable doctors or scientists — and turns the discussion around to alternate day fasting — as if it were the same thing!

Then he/she/it confuses caloric restriction (The Longevity Diet) with detox. Apparently the author decided this whole subject wasn’t worth more than 15 minutes research effort. Then, just to be encouraging the article ends with a totally unrelated anecdote about The General Motors Diet — which is neither fasting, nor life-long caloric restriction, nor a detox diet — and the authors inability to stick with that diet. I suspect the author must be one of those people who can never lose weight, and figures to malign all dieting efforts in one fell swoop, rather than accept responsibility for their own failings. Hey — get a clue — Diets Don’t Work! The only way to lose weight permanently is to change your lifestyle.

We are approaching our six month mark on this alternate day fasting regime (I hesitate to call it a diet, since we do not restrict our calories or food choices). I have lost five kilos (11 pounds) — that is a little under two pounds per month. Since this is a lifestyle choice, not a crash diet for temporary weight-loss, I don’t expect that weight to come back. More importantly, evidence shows that this kind of lifestyle is much healthier than traditional eating schedules. And it is easy — much easier than any diet either of us have ever tried.

Scheduling is everything when making this lifestyle work. We don’t eat for part of each day. One day it is the evening, the next day it is the morning. The two non-eating periods together add up to 23 hours (just because we are too lazy to change our meal-time every other day). Then we have 25 hours when we eat whatever we want. Since the evening fast starts out right after a full meal, we aren’t very hungry that day. Then the next eight hours we are asleep, and don’t miss food at all. The next morning is the only ‘hungry’ time, and we know that about five hours after we get up it will be time to eat again, so bearing that hunger is not difficult.

Naturally, we choose healthy foods — but healthy foods taste better than lard sandwiches and McMuckers GreaseBurgers. We try to make the same healthy food choices we did before beginning the fasting schedule. We eat meat, but only have red-meat about once or twice a week, so it isn’t a big part of our everyday diet. Pork, chicken, fish and even purely vegetarian dishes ensure we get lots of variety. All the fruit and vegetables we eat, and most of the spices, are fresh. Isabel left our one can-opener in Colima on our last visit there (we will be moving there next month) and didn’t miss it until we were back about a month, when she needed to open a can of milk.

This isn’t some whacko diet that we expect to make us live forever, while purging our bodies of evil toxins. It is a healthy lifestyle that keeps us from gaining excess weight and improves our insulin sensitivity, thereby reducing some of the risk factors associated with major diseases. It’s not a panacea, just a healthier choice than our previous lifestyle.

I know, it’s August and typically not ‘cold and flu’ season, but here in Mexico it never really gets cold, so the viral infections are on a different schedule. This is a monsoon climate; 90% of our annual rainfall comes in just four months — June to September — and this is when the contagious bugs spread best. The air is more humid, and that is probably why they survive longer and spread further.

So this month, Isabel and I both caught colds. For the past few years, these annual colds have been lasting two to three weeks. This year, being in our sixth month on our Intermittent Fasting regime, our colds lasted about three days. During that time I didn’t have much of an appetite, so I ate less than usual during eating hours, and was less hungry during fasting hours. Isabel, on the other hand, reports that she felt weak and sometimes even a bit dizzy, near the end of fasting periods, when she was sick with the cold.

Thankfully, the experience was short-lived and we are both back to normal. A few weeks ago we spent several hours out in the hot sun, digging holes to plant trees and shrubs, on a morning that was the end of a fasting period. We were plenty tired and hungry when it came time to eat the picnic lunch we had brought along (Isabel’s delicious ceviche tostadas) but we had no problems with doing hard physical labor while fasting.

As time goes on I only become more impressed with how well this eating schedule makes us look and feel, and how easy it is to stick to the time-table. The only problems we have had were when traveling; we find it very difficult to stay on the schedule at those times. But going off the plan for a few days now and then has absolutely no negative consequences, and indeed some folks think it may even be beneficial, since it breaks the pattern and helps your body learn to adjust better to changing circumstances.