Media Misconceptions
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.
