The FastDay Forum

Well god help those people undergoing chemo.... and now they are to deny themselves food when often steroids are prescribed at same time and this leads to increased appetite/weight gain.

[Tracieknits]

When my dad had chemo, he did not want to eat. He had no appetite at all. And my mom would force him to eat. In hindsight, perhaps it was his body's way of telling him what he needed.

Yes, that was the research!

If people are on steroids fasting might actually help them feel less hungry as steroids push up blood sugar dramatically, and that causes the blood sugar swings that make us so ravenous. Steroid-induced hunger is very much like the hunger many of us experience the week before our monthly periods in that nothing you eat will make it any better and you do best by simply accepting you will be hungry and NOT feeding it.

I've experienced both.

[carorees]

@Peebles

I'm trying to write a (very basic) guide to nutrition. Below you quote 55g+ protein as needed when dieting whereas the official guidelines seems to suggest an average of 46g for women. Have you got a reference(s) for how much extra protein is needed during weight loss? Obviously because of the fact that protein intake can drive IGF-1 levels up and also excess protein is turned to glucose I don't want to say we should be eating lots of protein and it would be helpful to be able to suggest some kind of outline max and min figures for people. It is a very confused area and I am getting quite confused myself!!

Thanks in advance

Current guidelines quoted from Volek/Phinney is .8 grams per kg referencing this study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2104036

and this one:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6865776

in the section on protein page 58-62, Art and Science of Low
Carbohydrate Living.

[carorees]

Subject: Dr Mercola

Current guidelines quoted from Volek/Phinney is .8 grams per kg referencing this study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2104036

and this one:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6865776

in the section on protein page 58-62, Art and Science of Low
Carbohydrate Living.

Thanks for the references. They don't quite tell me what I need though the first one kind of does. In that study they use a diet containing protein at 1.5 g/kg IBW and less than 10 g carbohydrate. Of course IBW is not so easy for the average punter to work out so I suppose we could say that the average woman at 5'4" should weigh about 130lb/60kg? The average man at 5'8" would weigh what 155lb/70kg? So they are saying 90g protein for women and 105g for men? That is considerably higher than the 0.8g/kg recommended by health authorities and which you say Volek and Phinney suggest (though I wonder if this is based on IBW or what the average person actually weighs these days which presumably is higher). They compared this diet with one giving 1.2g of protein and 30g carbs. The higher protein lower carb diet seemed to result in higher arm strength after weight loss. The problem is that I am not going to be recommending that everyone goes as low carb as this and I wonder whether the protein intakes needed for retaining muscle mass while dieting are the same when people eat a higher carb diet as on a very low carb diet. The second paper seems to be about athletes but I want to give recommendations for the average person.

So, I don't now know whether the 0.8g/kg is right or some other figure!

Subject: Dr Mercola

... I suppose we could say that the average woman at 5'4" should weigh about 130lb/60kg? The average man at 5'8" would weigh what 155lb/70kg? ...

So, I don't now know whether the 0.8g/kg is right or some other figure!

The .8 per kg figure comes from the US RDA minimum recommendation.

From a table based on height in another Volek/Phinney book, "The New Atkins for a new You", page 42-43 the recommended range of Protein in grams is:

5'4" Woman: 71-149 grams per day
5'8" Man: 82-171 grams per day

I scanned these two pages but can't attach them here because they're too big.

From earlier in the book:

"We recommend protein between 1.5 and 2.0 grams per kilogram reference body weight (0.7 to 0.9 grams per pound reference weight). This translates to between 90 and 150 grams per day for a range of adults, which is about what the average adult in the US is already eating. This level is well tolerated and is not associated with adverse effects on bone, kidney or other health indictors. The reason that protein intakes higher than the minimum recommended (0.8 grams per kilogram) were thought to negatively impact bone is because they cause a small but measurable increase in urinary calcium excretion. On the surface, this could indicate a higher risk for bone loss over time and development of osteoporosis. However, we now know that increasing dietary protein above the minimum also causes greater intestinal absorption of dietary calcium, which balances the slightly greater calcium loss in the urine. In fact, recent research suggests that diets higher in protein are associated with healthier bones as people age."

And a summary from a related study:

"In summary, nitrogen balance was superior with a very low
calorie diet which provided a protein intake substantially greater
than the RDA, and on the average, nitrogen balance approached
equilibrium in moderately obese young women. A protein intake
at only the RDA level was incompatible with nitrogen equilibrium,
being associated with continuing nitrogen losses of 2 g/
d. Despite the differences in nitrogen balance, basal whole body
protein turnover (inferred in the postabsorptive state from plasma
leucine flux) was well maintained after 8 wk of continuous
dieting, declining by only 20% when compared with control
values."

From:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article ... 1-0160.pdf

[carorees]

That's really helpful @ADFnFuel thanks so much!

I think then we might recommend 1.2-2.0g/kg on fast days and 0.8-1.5g/kg on non-fast days. What about people doing the eating window though? 1.2-1.5g?

If you aren't eating enough carbohydrate to supply the brain, your liver converts protein to glucose. In fact, 28% of the protein grams turn into glucose. If you don't take in the extra glucose meant for that conversion, your liver will grab it from your muscle. So we even though fasters here are only doing perhaps 24 hrs worth of no or low carbing and get most of the brain glucose from stored glycogen, a bit of extra protein is protective.

I am coming to think this diet, long term, does reduce glycogen stores, too, since people gain so much when they take a week off. I note that I start dumping water towards evening on fast days, too, in a way that suggests glycogen burning.

Since lean mass is so often lost on diets of all kinds, eating a bit more than minimum requirements is probably a very good idea. And if you are very active, that .8 g per kg might be a bit low, too.

I am not sold on the idea that dietary protein is altering metabolism via IGF. The role of these hormones is far from understood, and popular diet authors glom onto some factoid like "protein raises IGF" because its new and sounds easy to understand. But the reality is far more complex.

hmmm… I've sort of wondered about this keeping protein low(ish) obsession on the forum. But I've never said anything out loud because I don't know the science so well. How solid is the link between dietary protein and IGF levels?

I was reading something recently about how much protein you need if you want to gain muscle mass, so not necessarily what you are after Caroline, and it was more a per meal thing rather than per day. But since people tend to start losing lean body mass as they age, maybe this is relevant?

hmmm… I've sort of wondered about this keeping protein low(ish) obsession on the forum. But I've never said anything out loud because I don't know the science so well. How solid is the link between dietary protein and IGF levels?

I was reading something recently about how much protein you need if you want to gain muscle mass, so not necessarily what you are after Caroline, and it was more a per meal thing rather than per day. But since people tend to start losing lean body mass as they age, maybe this is relevant?

Good question. Other than the FastDiet book, I don't have much on IGF.

From a variety of sources the protein difference between we 'normals' and athletic people is rather minor. Most of us already eat more than the RDA minimum of .8/kg. One quote from the book below: "...even vigorous athletes do just fine when just 15% of their energy intake comes from protein.".

A number of somewhat vaguely-remembered sources report that retaining muscle mass during weight loss is best accomplished with anaerobic weight lifting. Protein wise, four studies are mentioned in The Art And Science of LC Living (Volek/Phinney). Do you want the links? (The last link in an earlier post is but one place to start.)

And this link popped up (using a wider search) for both readability and relevance here:

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/04 ... e-20140304

Interesting stuff. I appear to be approaching the group Up-The-Protein in the next three years if that's the case, though looks like I should be in the Keep-Protein-Low for now. So perhaps 0.8g/kg now rising to 1.2g/kg in the future, as a sedentary woman?

I am not going to worry my pretty little head about any of this as I am happy and healthy as I am on lowish carbs, medium protein, medium to high good quality fats and reduced sugar. As interesting as it all is, ( I actually find it all incredibly fascinating )and I DO Love reading all the links etc, thank you all for your input, but I just don't see me doing the calculations necessary to achieve whatever is considered the optimum because, laziness aside, maths was never my strong point.

Ballerina x

Thanks very interesting

[carorees]

There seems to be a fair amount of evidence that IGF-1 is linked with cancer. This review states that

the IGF system has been implicated in the oncogenesis of essentially all solid and hematologic malignancies

This paper (which ADFnFuel found for me) says that

Here we report data from two long-term CR studies (1 and 6 years) showing that severe CR without malnutrition did not change IGF-1 and IGF-1 : IGFBP-3 ratio levels in humans. In contrast, total and free IGF-1 concentrations were significantly lower in moderately protein-restricted individuals. Reducing protein intake from an average of 1.67 g kg–1 of body weight per day to 0.95 g kg–1 of body weight per day for 3 weeks in six volunteers practicing CR resulted in a reduction in serum IGF-1 from 194 ng mL–1 to 152 ng mL–1.

So this suggests that to reduce IGF-1 we need to keep protein to moderate levels.

Interestingly, this paper notes that weight loss is associated with a decrease in IGF-1 but perhaps that is due to a general reduction in food intake!

There is a link between diet, the IGF-1 system and the way in which IGF-1 acts on cells. It stimulates a pathway called mTOR. mTOR is known as a 'nutrient sensing pathway" because in the presence of high glucose or amino acid levels mTOR is stimulated. When mTOR is stimulated cells multiply and do not die: these are characteristics of cancer cells. This review explains how diet affects mTOR.

Thus, from this we can see that there is a definite route by which excess carbs and excess protein can increase the risk of cancer.