Our Longevity Diet

We have now been living our intermittent fasting lifestyle for nine months, and are more convinced than ever that this is the healthiest way to live. Combine the health benefits with the fact that it is so easy to do, and lets us eat whatever we want AND we lost some weight, and it just doesn’t get much better than this.

When we started, we used to try to schedule more strenuous activities so they would occur during eating times, rather than fasting times. But now that has fallen by the wayside as unnecessary. We can do hard physical labor while fasting just easily as during eating periods — in fact it is easier, if anything — they body seems to react to fasting with a jolt of energy.

That makes sense from a biological-evolutionary perspective. When you haven’t eaten in a while is just when you need more energy, to find and process food. Since our fasts are only 23 hours long, there is no danger of muscle loss or any of the other negative effects seen in long-term fasting.

As for weight loss — it has not been dramatic, but then we really were not obese when we began — just a bit pudgy. We were each about 10% above our ideal weight according to the charts. Isabel is now very near her ideal weight, and I’m about halfway there (i.e. 5% over). The amazing thing is we have made zero effort to lose weight — it has just been a side-effect of our healthier lifestyle.

As I write this I need to pause from time to time because I am eating the last piece of Lemon Meringue pie from Thanksgiving — Isabel made two pies, and there are only the two of us. So, to make sure it doesn’t spoil, I’m foregoing my usual healthy breakfast, and having pie. Oh the sacrifices we are called upon to make!

So here is how our weights are, after nine months fasting, Thanksgiving and all:

Date - My weight (kilos) - Isabel’s Weight (kilos)

• 5 March 2008 - 99.2 - 65.9
• 2 Nov 2008 - 96.1 - 60.7
• 1 Dec 2008 - 94.5 - 61.6

Those of you who have been following along will remember my weight shot up 1.5 kilos in September and October, but all that was lost again this past month, plus another 1/10 kilo. Isabel, meanwhile, continues to fluctuate just above her ideal weight of 60 kilos, having gained 9/10 of a kilo last month.

So we are content and feeling good — now let me finish this pie…

I have heard a lot of people describe feelings of weakness, dizziness or faintness when fasting, and wondered why they have those experiences, but I don’t. Then I made a curious observation.

As I’ve often stated, we are not fanatical about our diet. If circumstances make it more convenient or politic to disregard the diet, we do. Our lifestyle is routine enough that those situations rarely arise, so we only ‘break’ the diet about once per month.

Last week was one of those occasions — we were visiting with some of Isabel’s relatives, people who live in a dirt-floored house and cook over burning wood. The head of house is a fisherman, and quite proud of his ability to bring home good food for his rather large extended family, which includes his wife, several of his adult children, some of their spouses, and half a dozen grand-children. When they offered us fried fish for supper, we thought they might take it as an insult if we refused to eat their food (many Mexican’s have that ‘food=love’ mentality), so we ate a small meal late on an evening we would normally be fasting.

The curious part came the next day — about twelve hours after eating that meal I felt extra-hungry, weak and slightly faint when I exerted myself. I laid down in my hammock and the feeling passed. After about an hour I was back to normal. It seemed very odd to me though, since I normally feel fine on ‘fasting’ mornings, and here I was feeling weak when I’d broken the fast.

It wasn’t anything wrong with the food, which was good, if rather plain. My stomach felt empty, not sickly. But why would eating cause me to be more hungry than when I was fasting?

Then I noted the timing. Those feelings came about 12 hours after we ate. Due to the timing of our fasting schedule, I’m normally sound asleep 12 hours after our last meal during an eating period. I probably get these feeling every-other-day! I just never noticed, because I’m asleep. This is why I have emphasized the importance of timing when considering intermittent fasting.

Of course, everyone is different, these are just my experiences. Isabel did not have the same reaction — she felt less hungry that morning than on mornings when we stick to the normal diet. Her monthly cycle seems more influential on how she reacts to the diet — sometimes she needs to sit down and relax for a while on fasting mornings, but as with my experience, the feeling passes within an hour.

So if you want to try intermittent fasting, be sure to pay close attention to the schedule, and how you feel. The first week or two of this diet seem strange, and are nothing to judge by. Get used to the eating pattern first, then see how minor changes affect you. Adjust the diet to fit your personal metabolism — tweak it to make it fit you. This is a lifestyle, not a short-term fad diet. Make sure you adjust it into something you can happily live with for the rest of your life — anything less is not adequate.

Sorry I haven’t posted for a while, but we moved from Chapala to a little town in Colima, Mexico. We live a couple miles from the Pacific in a little cottage we are renovating. We hope to have it available for holiday rentals by late in 2010. We call it Casita Chuparosa — I’ll put a link in the blogroll when I get the new blog up.

So, shortly before we moved, on September 30th, we weighed in. Isabel had gained 3/10 kilo, and I gained 6/10 kilo. Then we weighed ourselves again at the beginning of November (the 2nd) and Isabel was down 1.5 kilos, while I gained again — another 9/10 of a kilo.  Different reactions to the stress of moving I guess. Didn’t help me any that we weighed ourselves when stopping to shop, on the way home from an afternoon at the beach, where we had huge fish-fillet dinners, a jug of coconut water. The electronic scale here also has an attachment for blood pressure and body-fat-index measurement. My blood pressure was right-on at 140/89, while Isabel’s was a bit low. That was anomalous for her, she has had frequent doctor visits (fertility specialists) in the past two years, and never had abnormal blood pressure levels. The body-fat measure is by electronic impedance, so not very accurate, it showed very low for both of us: 21.3% for me and 27.9% for her.

• Date - My weight (kilos) - Isabel’s Weight (kilos)
• 5 March 2008 - 99.2 - 65.9
• 1 Sept 2008 - 94.6 - 61.9
• 30 Sept 2008 - 95.2 - 62.2
• 2 Nov 2008 - 96.1 - 60.7

All through this hectic time we have stuck to our fasting schedule, except on the day we actually moved (Oct 2nd) when circumstances did not make it convenient to eat at the usual hour. Of course after eight months, the diet is so routine we barely need to think about it.

Health-wise we are both feeling fit. As I mentioned earlier, Isabel’s arthritis has returned somewhat, but not as severe as it was before beginning the diet. I have not had any attacks of gout, my leg-cramps have not returned, and we each caught a slight cold in October, but symptoms were shorter-lived than usual, and less severe. My only complaint is that I can not connect to the Internet from the beach!

If you are contemplating a fasting diet, or have tried it, we would love to hear from you! Just join this blog and post a comment…

A new report on caloric restriction (CR) came out today. You will remember that CR is a method that has been known to extend lifespan in animals for more than 70 years now, while our intermittent fasting (IF) technique has only been studied for the past 20 years or less. Most studies have shown that IF has all the benefits of CR, without the need to restrict calories, so people often assume CR studies are always relevant to IF — but there are recorded differences between the two methods.

First, let’s look at the the new report, called Differences Between People And Animals On Calorie Restriction. This study seems to rely primarily on the measurement of Insulin-Like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1), which is itself rather surprising since IGF-1 seems to be one of those hormones that are beneficial at certain levels, while more or less are detrimental — yet the exact optimal levels don’t seem to be known yet. Animal studies of IGF-1 in CR animals generally shows a reduction, but when researchers conducting this study looked at real people who voluntarily have undertaken CR diets, their IGF-1 levels were indistinguishable from people on normal American diets. When some of these CR dieters were asked to reduce their protein intake, their IGF-1 levels fell substantially, mimicking the results found in CR animal studies. The above report states that:

In the majority of the animal models of longevity, extended lifespan involves pathways related to a growth factor called IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1), which is produced primarily in the liver. Production is stimulated by growth hormone and can be reduced by fasting or by insensitivity to growth hormone.

The problem is, there is no hard evidence that IGF-1 levels are a major factor in the longevity effect of CR. Certainly, the evidence suggests that the insulin pathways are relevant, but this particular link in the chain has not been shown to be of major significance. In fact, an earlier study: Intermittent fasting dissociates beneficial effects of dietary restriction on glucose metabolism and neuronal resistance to injury from calorie intake — showed that IGF-1 was increased in IF animal experiments, while it was reduced in CR animals. Yet both groups of animals showed the increased longevity that sparked interest in the protocols to begin with.

Another recent study: Hormone May Hold Key To Helping Elderly Men Live Longer showed that, at least for one group (elderly men) increased IGF-1 levels were associated with greater longevity, largely expressed through reduced cardiovascular risk. In that study, where researchers evaluated 376 healthy elderly men between the ages of 73 and 94 years:

Subjects with the lowest IGF-1 function had a significantly higher mortality rate than subjects with the highest IGF-1 bioactivity. These results were especially significant in individuals who have a high risk to die from cardiovascular complications.

The picture is not a simple one, however, because high IGF-1 levels have also been associated with higher risk of cancer. It seems, in short, that IGF-1 can help cells live longer — even if those cells are cancerous. Researchers thought that the lower IGF-1 levels in CR animals was indicative of a lowered cancer risk, but the IF studies suggest something else is at work here.

When animals are given CR diets, they receive their normal diet at reduced levels. With humans trying to emulate these CR benefits, their concern for nutrition leads them to increase the percentage of protein in their diets, and the results in regard to IGF-1 are different than those in the animal studies — but IF dietary results suggest that may not be such a bad thing. More IGF-1, in the absence of cancer, is probably a good thing — within limits.

Well we are at the six-month mark, half a year on our new lifestyle. I’ve been seriously neglecting this blog for the past couple months because, well, it is all so routine now that I don’t really have much more to say. We have kept to our schedule with only an occasional alteration dictated by circumstances.

After the first several months free from arthritic pain, Isabel’s joints have begun acting up again, so she will be seeing a rheumatologist this week. Wonder what he will have to say about our dietary habits. She is also plateauing out on the weight-loss, so I guess she is fully adjusted to this diet. My weight continues to drop, very slowly — but I take that as a good sign that it is permanent loss. Besides, I needed to lose more than she did to begin with.

So here are the stats:

• Date - My weight (kilos) - Isabel’s Weight (kilos)
• 5 March 2008 - 99.2 - 65.9
• 31 July 2008 - 95.0 - 61.8
• 1 Sept 2008 - 94.6 - 61.9

So I lost another pound or so in the past month, and Isabel’s weight is so close to being the same that it falls within the range of daily natural fluctuations. We are both just happy that we reversed the trend toward gradual weight-gain that we had experienced in the year or two before adopting our intermittent fast.

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.