Do you recommend intermittent fasting?

Question

Tamara Freuman, MS, RD, CDN · Answer

So, do I recommend intermittent fasting? No, I do not, and I'll tell you why. So, what most people are referring to, when they think about intermittent, fasting is something called time restricted, eating where you're kind of choosing a very narrow window of hours and your day, maybe eight hours a day or 10 hours a day and you're limiting all of your food consumption to that narrow window of time. Sometimes, usually, people are skipping breakfast and they might eat from like 7:48 kind of thing and do an 8-hour eating window or maybe they'll do like In 27, that kind of thing. Time restricted eating has shown to be beneficial in a mouse and animal models, but when they actually tested it out in humans compared to just sort of other low calorie or other types of weight loss diets, there was actually no advantage to intermittent fasting compared to other types of diets. So in humans, the data haven't really born out that it is advantageous. The reason that I really don't like it beyond that is because when most people do intermittent, fasting, they're skipping breakfast. East and therefore, they're kind of back loading. All of their food intake, to kind of afternoon, and evening and metabolically were learning. That's actually the least favorable time metabolically to be eating. The majority of your food, our bodies operate on these sort of 24-hour, biological Cycles called circadian, rhythms and different metabolic processes or happening at different rates, at different times of the day and metabolically were much more efficient and kind of primed The morning in the daylight hours and sort of as the day progresses, we all become a little bit diabetic, a little bit more insulin resistant, and there's been some cool studies where they feed. Healthy people the same exact test meal at like 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. and our body's response metabolically gets less and less robust with each sort of, you know, later. And later time frame of that test meal triglycerides are high or low blood sugar is higher. And so what we're really seeing is that people who back load their intake to the later parts of the day are actually probably going to be more prone to metabolic disturbances like insulin resistance, diabetes type stuff, high cholesterol, high triglycerides. And so I much prefer front-loading intake to the early part of the day. So, if you want to do intermittent fasting, maybe think about skipping dinner instead of breakfast. Hope that answers your question.

Dr. Felicia Stoler, DCN, MS, RDN, FACSM, FAND · Answer

Do I recommend intermittent fasting? Not only do I recommend it, I've got to tell you the truth. I've been doing it for four years. I went to a conference on fasting. The first Global Summit on fasting at the University of Southern California, School of gerontology. And I was really Blown Away by the data that was being presented. And in fact, if you think about Evolution, we evolved from humans that survived feast or famine and in fact they spent daylight hours foraging around looking for Food. And then they went to sleep at night. So the question of which intermittent fast you should do or what works for you. Personally, I'm a huge fan of the time restricted eating, I think that works wonders, I think is easy. There's 24 hours in a day. Can you start with 12 hours? So, half the day, can you look at, like, 7:00 to 7:00 or 8:00 to 8:00 and only eat within that window of time? And then if you can do that successfully and you feel okay? Can you shorten that 12 hours to 10 hours and maybe no less than 8? Eight hours, some people would argue that six hours is better. But other people would argue that there are some changes in hormones that occur that might make it worse. So, you know, and that doesn't mean just eat a lot of junk during those time periods. I want people to be thoughtful about the foods that they're consuming and you have to remember, if you're going to go out with your buddies, afterwards, or socialize, and if you're drinking alcohol, those calories count to, it's not just what you're chewing. It's what you're actually taking in in the body, but there are Lots of theories about it being beneficial and helpful when it comes to longevity and I'm a huge fan. So give it a shot, see if it works for you and let us know.

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"Do you recommend intermittent fasting?"