The FastDay Forum

This was recently posted by Dr. V on her EOD Diet Facebook page. Maybe it changes some of our original beliefs about how long the fast should be, when to eat, etc. Or, maybe it only applies to ADF ?

"Quick update: Our "meal timing" study is now finished and the results have been published in the Journal, Obesity. Please find a link to the abstract below...
Results from this study show that people can eat the fast day meal at dinner or as small meals throughout the day and lose the same amount of weight as eating the meal at lunch. This is contrary to what we expected...before the study was complete, we assumed that people would not be able to control their calories if they ate small meals throughout the day. We were wrong!
In short, feel free to spread your fast day calories throughout the day if this works for you."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25251676

What do we think???

I always have breakfast on fast days and often have a small lunch too. It's always low carb though. So I guess I'm not SO surprised by the result. I'm guessing most people still prefer all their calories in one meal.

I agree with this as I usually have one meal at dinner over last 20 months and hubs usually has 3 small meals on fast days we've both lost weight ( me 23 KGS and hubs 18 kgs)

I lost most of my weight having 3 small meals a day on fasting days, but moved to the one evening meal as a result of joining this forum and reading about this as an option. I actually think I was much better at controlling my total calories with the 3 small meals.

[Debs]

@Sassy1, what were you having as an example of your three small meals?

Interesting, but I'm also interested in the (supposed) health benefits of fasting, not just losing weight. (The study might have looked at that too, but I haven't read it.)

I've thought for some time that Varady over-extrapolated from results in her earlier work and somewhat mis-reported their relevance to meal timing when she and her team had actually initially just chosen lunch as a way to standardise the trial design.

Anecdotally, this freedom to eat your calories as you wish throughout the day matches my observations from seeing the results people post on several related forums (NB, they were reporting ADF/4:3). I've seen reports of substantial health benefits from both people who eat once a day on FDs (and keep it very low) and those who eat several times a day on FDs.

NB: I feel obliged to highlight that this 8-week study involved participants who were sedentary, and "individuals with diabetes, a history of cardiovascular disease, or taking medication for weight loss or glucose or lipid control were excluded". So, for me, it's still an open question as to whether some people (say, with the diagnosis of pre-diabetes or some indication of dysglycaemia) might benefit from reducing the number of times they release substantial amounts of insulin in a day (e.g., eat, tho' it's not as simple as that). See more at: http://www.hcplive.com/conferences/ow-2 ... enuOv.dpuf

This is good news for me as I have just re-started ADF (yesterday being my first day). The funny thing was, I WAS actually going to try eating a 400 calorie lunch with a 100 calorie snack in the evening (as recommended by Dr V). Instead, I found I wasn't hungry at lunch time so ate my meal late in the evening. I've lost almost 2 pounds after my first day...a great start!!
Like somebody said (the one with the lovely giraffe avatar...sorry forgotten your name and can't get to it!) I thought the idea of fasting was the fasting aspect, not just the reduced calorie intake. Hmm, a little confused

The findings seem to fit with finding a method that is sustainable for you, which is discussed a lot on here.

The findings seem to fit with finding a method that is sustainable for you, which is discussed a lot on here.

Spot on. Whatever makes a WOE/WOL sustainable for you is the right method for you, until it isn't - at which point we need to be flexible enough to design something that does fit our circumstances. But, yes, it's the sustainability over time that will always be key to success.

I think that the flexibility of 5:2 is its best quality. There's still a lot of scientific debate around "how many hours fasting" and "what kind of food" and "timing of meals," as well as just exactly what the health benefits are....I think we agree, though, that it's best to do what suits/works for each individual. While I'm interested in the health benefits (my main ones so far have been reduced knee/foot pain, and lower blood pressure) as well, I didn't get baseline tested before starting, so...

I've continued to push my "meals" on light days to as late as I can; a couple of times I actually "forgot" to eat (and then there's those light days that feel neverending...eek). I keep the naked carbs (ie sugars and starches) to a minimum on light days, because I do find that they make me hungrier. (I am not consciously low carb on normal days.) On a typical light day, I have only water/coffee/tea (unsweetened), with perhaps a glass with clear fiber and/or a cuppa veggie broth later in the afternoon, till at least 4 or 5pm, often later. Since I'm a natural night owl and am currently unemployed, I am now likely to eat my "main" meal about midnight--or even later. Even though we are told "eating at night just turns into fat"...I've also read that's not necessarily true...and we've found that so many of the "truisms" about food are faulty--such as "breakfast is the most important meal of the day," "hunger is the enemy and to be avoided at all costs," and "one should eat frequent mini-meals to control hunger / caloric intake"....shall I go on?

Its diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks isnt it,whatever works when it comes to successfully losing weight.
However i still think the fasting element is important for the alleged health benefits like @golarnesaid.
Sixteen hours is long enough i think i read and in fact those in poor health are advised not to fast for longer than that,as longer isnt v good for immune system?

This study seems to prove that there are no additional health benefits for fasting through the day. Insulin, LDL, etc, didn't differ among the groups fasting in the different ways. My guess is that intermittent fasting will not turn out to share the benefits of found in studies of prolonged fasting. That is because you don't end up burning off all your glycogen and ending up in a ketogenic state with IF where you do after 2 or 3 straight days of fasting.

Note that it is very unsafe to do a prolonged fast on your own, without close medical supervision. So don't try it. The ketogenic diet is much safer, and it does have quite a few proven metabolic effects, but the kind of strict ketogenic diet that provides the health benefit is very, very tough to stick to. The all-you-can-eat bacon and macadamia nut style of Atkins diet might be fun to eat but it doesn't cause weight loss if you don't build up a calorie deficit and a lot of the foods people eat on it are not particularly healthy.

I found it particularly interesting that this study found that blood pressure was better with the three small meals.

The other thing to note is that the weight loss benefit was better by about 1 lb over 8 weeks in the two groups that did not eat lunch only. So this suggests that eating lunch only is the worst way to do this diet. That makes sense as it would tend to get you into a very hungry state for the rest of the fast day, particularly if your blood sugar was anything but utterly normal. I get hungry about 5 hours after my evening fast day meal, but by then it is almost time for bed so I can say, "Tomorrow I eat!." If I got that hungry at 5 or 6 PM the diet would be very hard to do.

The one problem, for me, with the three small meals approach is that with only 435 calories available to eat for the whole day (my TDEE is around 1550), eating three "small" meals turns into eating three extremely tiny bites of food which isn't satisfying, and there is that problem with the blood sugar moving and making me hungry later. Even two meals was hard for me. I find it much easier to fast when I don't eat lunch because my blood sugar stays flat, though it is harder on my blood pressure.

But I love seeing someone do real research with enough subjects to make the study legitimate. Hats off to Dr. Varady and her associates!

I found it particularly interesting that this study found that blood pressure was better with the three small meals.

The other thing to note is that the weight loss benefit was better by about 1 lb over 8 weeks in the two groups that did not eat lunch only. So this suggests that eating lunch only is the worst way to do this diet.

But I love seeing someone do real research with enough subjects to make the study legitimate. Hats off to Dr. Varady and her associates!

I agree with @peebles - a couple of very interesting and important points !!!

Hi @Debs
I haven't been on the forum for a couple of days. It's been extremely hot and the airconditioning in the caravan could only reduce the temperature to 38C, so we haven't been doing anything! It's 33C in here at the moment, so bearable...

My 3 small meals were brekkie of good quality no-fat yoghurt with small amount of berries/ sultanas (100 cal), then for lunch, boiled egg, small tomato, small carrot and lots of lettuce, celery, cucumber, and 1 vitaweat with vegemite (150 cals) and then dinner of small amount of fish or chicken with steamed low cal veg (150 cal) and small piece of chocolate (50 cal) and small apple (50 cal) for snacks. In reality, I probably consumed more than 500 cals as I did have quite a lot of veg and wasn't worried about exactly counting the cals from them. I lost at the rate of 0.5kg per week, pretty consistently, without changing what I ate on non-fast days (apart from generally giving up having a biscuit when I had a cuppa), certainly in the early days.

But as I have commented elsewhere, I have been very fortunate with how easily 5:2 worked for me. I had so many factors in my favour - I have a relatively low stress life since giving up paid work, I don't have a history of diets and yoyo-ing with my weight, and I am in good health. And my normal diet when I am at home contains very little processed food, apart from chocolate, my big weakness ...!!!! But I do have relatively frequent splurges from time to time when I eat a lot of non-veg carbs... such as like now when on holiday. Fast days do seem to be the antidote to these splurges, and although at times I really don't want to fast, my desire to not regain the weight generally overcomes this!! NB I seem unable to have days when I just cut back a little, as per the more usual calorie controlled diet, which is another reason why this way of eating works for me.
Now you wish you hadn't asked??!