What’s so mysterious about weight loss? Given the American obsession with dieting even as we’re more obese than ever, evidently plenty. Jimmy Akin shares his own story and the science behind the way our bodies are designed to lose weight, rather than the way we’ve been doing it.
Since I started reporting on the amount of weight I was losing by Intermittent Fasting (IF), I’ve had various people ask or comment about loose skin.
Some have assumed that–as I’ve lost 70 lbs now–I must have a lot of loose skin, and they’ve wondered if I’m considering having a tummy tuck.
Others have said that they want to lose weight, but they’re afraid of getting loose skin, and so they are holding back from doing so.
Some have wondered if the prospect of getting loose skin causes me any worries.
To be honest, the idea of developing loose skin never even occurred to me until people brought it up.
Further, even if it were a problem, it would not deter me. I would get down to a weight I consider appropriate for my height and build and deal with any loose skin problems at the end of the process.
But the good news is: the problem isn’t really materializing.
There are a few places on my body where the skin is a little loose (particularly where my limbs join my torso), but this may only be a transient phenomenon, for reasons I’ll explain.
What I can definitely say is that loose skin has not been a problem where you would think it would be–around my stomach.
Like most people who’ve struggled with weight issues, I carried a lot of extra weight around my stomach, and so a lot of that weight has now come off.
At one point, I was wearing pants with a 44″ waist, and at that point I probably weighed around 80-90 lbs more than I do now.
I’m now wearing pants with a 34″ waist, so that means I’ve lost 10″–nearly a foot–from around my waistline.
But: I do not have loose skin around my waist. I certainly don’t have any 10″ of extra skin there. Instead, the skin around my waist has shrunk with my waistline.
Why is this?
If you Google “loose skin,” you will find pictures of people who have lost weight and who now have lots of loose skin. (I don’t really suggest that you do that, BTW. Rhett and Link could feature “loose skin” as one of their “Don’t Google That” segments. That’s why I went with a picture of puppies for this post.)
It thus seems that there are ways of losing weight that result in lots of loose skin, but it appears that Intermittent Fasting does not produce this effect.
A while ago, I saw a video interview with the Canadian nephrologist Dr. Jason Fung, who specializes in IF, and he says that at his clinic, he’s never had to refer a patient for a tummy tuck.
Instead, the patients’ skin shrinks as they fast.
His idea is that the reason for this is that, as your body is looking for things it can burn for fuel, it identifies any excess skin you don’t need as something it can re-absorb and so gets rid of it.
Presumably, there is some hormonal trigger for this: Your body originally sensed that it needed to make new skin as you gained weight, and with the hormonal improvements that accompany fasting, it identifies that skin as no longer needed.
That’s why I think the few places where my skin is a little loose may be temporary.
Frankly, though, I’m just delighted to have the weight off. Health is more important than cosmetic issues, and those can be dealt with other ways if needed.
As you might imagine, it’s a little weird talking about this issue, but I’ve tried to be very open about my weight loss journey, and I wanted to report the good news to people–especially those who have been very concerned about whether they’d get loose skin–that it really hasn’t been a significant issue.
And I can go you one better: A place that you might think you’d get loose skin, and where it would be especially problematic to do so, would be your face. Extra loose skin there would make you look older.
Well, this definitely has not been a problem. I have lost weight in my face and neck–enough that people volunteer the fact they can see the weight loss there if they haven’t seen me in a while–but I definitely haven’t developed new wrinkles or sagging skin.
One of the most common measures of how much weight someone needs to lose is based on what’s known as their Body Mass Index (BMI).
The trouble is, BMIs were not designed for this function, and they have severe limitations in diagnosing overweight and obesity. That’s really not what they’re for.
If you want to determine how much fat you’re carrying, you need to use special tests–the gold standard of which is being dunked in a tank of water and seeing how much of it you displace, allowing your overall body density to be determined.
From that, your personal level of lean body weight (i.e., everything but fat) and fat can be estimated. Info on that here.
In the last few months, through Intermittent Fasting, I’ve lost around 70 lbs, and it’s time for me to start thinking about what my final goal will be.
When I first began Intermittent Fasting, I decided not to initially set a final goal for my weight loss. Instead, I would figure out my ultimate goal as I went along, based on factors like overall health and on my body composition–that is, how much fat I still had on me.
So recently I went to get dunked in a tank to get an initial read on what my body fat percentage is.
Here are the basic results:
Current weight: 187 lbs
Lean body weight: 140 lbs
Fat lbs: 47 lbs
Lean body %: 75%
Fat %: 25%
That 25% rating is listed as “Fair.” By comparison, the two weights I’m about to mention (below) would both be listed as “Very Poor.” For me the “Good” range would start at around 22% or 182 lbs, so that’s only five lbs away.
Incidentally, based on my present body composition, they estimated my current Resting Metabolic Rate would require me to consume 1881 calories per day. That means I’d need to eat 1881 calories just to lie in bed. Any exercise raises the number of calories beyond that.
I am exercising, and I’m not eating that many calories per day, so I’m losing weight.
As a matter of historical curiosity, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see what my body fat % would have been when I was at my peak weight of around 318 lbs and what it would have been when I started Intermittent Fasting at around 256 lbs.
For purposes of the calculations, I assumed the same lean body weight of 140 lbs. It wouldn’t have been exactly that, but it would have been close to it. Here are the results:
Fat lbs (at 318 total lbs): 178 lbs
Fat % (at 318 total lbs): 56%
Fat lbs (at 256 total lbs): 116 lbs
Fat % (at 256 total lbs): 45%
So, since my peak, I’ve managed to cut my body fat % by an estimated 31%, and in the last few months by an estimated 20%.
Of more interest is where it’s going to go, because that helps me establish what my final fat loss goal will be.
Our bodies do need some fat to function properly, but there isn’t an exact number that has been established as optimal (note: optimal and average are not the same thing). For a sample of ranges, see here.
Presently, for my purposes, I’m going to assume that somewhere between 10% and 17% is what I’ll shoot for. That would give me the following parameters as a goal:
Total body weight (at 17% body fat): 170 lbs
Total body weight (at 10% body fat): 156 lbs
These numbers are also historically in line for what a man of my height (6 feet) would weigh before the obesity epidemic began to set in during the 1960s and 1970s. So no, they are not too low, except by the inflated average weights of our own day.
The numbers assume the present level of 140 lbs lean body mass. If I change that (e.g., if–after I finish losing fat–I decide to build additional muscle, which I’m inclined to do), the numbers will rise accordingly.
I would therefore need to lose between 17 and 31 lbs to be in that range.
Precisely how much I lose is something I will continue to re-evaluate as I go, based on overall health, etc.
Then I’m likely to start building muscle (and thus putting weight–of the good kind–back on).
I’m not trying to do both at once, however. My understanding, including from professional trainers, is that it’s almost impossible to do both at once (for reasons I won’t go into in this post).
What I could do is alternate periods of fat loss with periods of muscle building, but that would only slow down the process of fat loss. I’d rather get rid of the fat and then start building muscle.
In the months I’ve been doing Intermittent Fasting (IF), I’ve changed around what I’ve been eating for my one meal a day, and I’ve noted that (as expected) different meal types have resulted in different amounts of weight loss.
(NOTE: In addition to the food choices discussed below, I’ve also been taking my vitamins and nutritional supplements to make sure I’m not missing out on needed nutrients.)
When I first started IF, I was eating a low carb diet, and I saw rapid weight loss. This was great, and very encouraging.
However, I’d spent something like 15 years (maybe more) eating low carb, and the number of calories I was eating in the one meal was low enough that I decided to try . . .
Phase 2: The Carb Vacation
In this phase I largely went off the low carb diet I’d been on for so long, and in my one daily meal I allowed myself to eat a more normal American diet–e.g., regular pizza, pasta, etc. (not the low carb versions).
I still kept the carbs somewhat down–e.g., I would eat thin crust pizza instead of regular or thick crust–but I allowed myself more carbs than I had in ages.
I also allowed myself popcorn, which has some carbs but not a huge amount (especially if you do the little 110-130 calorie microwave bags).
The carb vacation was fun, but I noticed that it slowed down my weight loss dramatically. I was still losing, but not nearly as fast, and that began to get discouraging.
So it was time for . . .
Phase 3: Fewer Calories and Carbs
I started drawing down the number of calories and carbs I was eating, with the primary emphasis being on reducing calories. The lower those go, the less the ratio of macronutrients (carbs/fat/protein) matters.
At the zero point, a percentage of nothing is still nothing, and the macronutrient ratios don’t matter at all.
I wasn’t at the zero point, but I wanted to get closer, and as I did so, I saw the weight loss rate increase again. (Still without the hunger you might think would be there; since my body is in fat-burning mode, it has a fuel source and doesn’t need to turn on the hunger signal.)
One food I started turning to in this period was soups–the pre-made kind (Progresso, Campbells, etc.), just for convenience.
Because they’re mostly liquid, soups have a lot of heft to them (meaning: they weigh more in your stomach) and, though their carb counts are higher than what I’d normally want, they typically don’t have that many calories.
A large can of soup has a net weight of around 18.5 ounces (more than a pound of food with all that liquid!), but comparatively few calories. For comparison purposes (based on what I currently have in the kitchen):
1 large can Campbell’s Chunky Creamy Chicken & Dumplings: 340 calories
1 large can Campbell’s Chunky Grilled Chicken & Sausage Gumbo: 280 calories
1 large can Progresso Chicken Noodle: 140 calories
Also, soup is hotfood, and that helps, too.
I’ve always liked crackers with my soup, but instead of that I’d allow myself to have popcorn, which is high in crunch factor (satisfying the psychological need to chew) but lower in carbs and calories than crackers.
With the new emphasis on fewer calories and carbs, I saw the weight loss pick up again!
Around this time I also started . . .
Phase 4: Adding a Snack
When I first started doing research on IF, I ran into advisors talking about occasionally allowing oneself a very low calorie snack (e.g., 35-50 calories).
Now, the whole point of intermittent fasting is not to be eating all the time. If you let yourself adopt the “grazing” strategy that has been so prominently recommended in (misguided) diet advice in recent years, you’ll ruin what you’re doing and may actually gain weight.
Consequently, at first I didn’t use any snacks. But occasionally I would have a psychological need to just chew something, even though I wasn’t hungry.
So I re-thought the snacking issue and decided to experiment with allowing myself to have up to 1 snack a day (many days I still have 0 snacks), of a very low calorie variety, on the view that a single bump of <100 calories sometime during the day would not materially throw off weight loss.
Also: Most pickling recipes are way overcomplicated. All you need to do is put sliced cucumbers into a container, cover them with apple cider vinegar (or another vinegar, but apple cider vinegar tastes better), and leave them in the fridge for a few days. That’s all!
My experience was that, indeed, adding this form of minimal snacking did not materially interfere with weight loss.
By this point I was optimizing the basic strategy, so I carried the optimization further in . . .
Phase 5: Low-Carb Soups and Noodles
As I turned over ideas for further optimization in my head, I started thinking about how to further improve the soup strategy.
The things that make soups satisfying include:
It’s got taste
It’s got heft (weight, due to all the liquid)
It’s hot
So what could I do to get the calories down while retaining the satisfaction level of a well-made soup?
The first thing that occurred to me was egg-drop soup.
All you really need for that is chicken broth and eggs. Everything else is optional (some good options include: black and white pepper, salt or salt substitute, green onion garnish, mushrooms or other low-carb, low-cal veggies).
So I pulled out a carton of chicken broth and a carton of Egg Beaters (which are really colored egg whites, so they’re lower in calorie than whole eggs–though whole eggs are fine), and was very pleased with the results!
Also, my mind drifted back to the various low-carb noodles that exist. The best ones are:
Kelp noodles (which are clear and don’t have a taste; I get this kind)
Zucchini noodles (zucchini sliced into noodle form–e.g., using a spiralizer)
What all these have in common is that they are basically fiber and water, which means they satisfy the need to chew, take up space in your stomach, and have next to no calories.
Noodles (whether low carb or not) also are meant to have basically no taste, so you need to add something to them (e.g., a sauce) to give them flavor.
So I thought: Why not use these in soups?
The different noodles have different properties. Zucchini noodles won’t withstand boiling well, so they need to be put in near the end of cooking.
Shirataki noodles will withstand boiling, and they have a more chewy texture, which would help with the psychological need to chew even better than zucchini noodles.
The downside of shirataki noodles is that they often have an odor that needs to be taken care of by boiling or–better–by dry roasting (i.e., fry them in a pan with no oil), although Skinny Pasta (not the same as Skinny Noodles) claims to have eliminated the odor issue (I’ve got some on order; will let you know what I find).
It struck me that a particularly good bet would be kelp noodles. These don’t have the odor problem that shirataki noodles do, and they can have an almost crunchy texture, which would give even more chewing satisfaction.
But all three kinds of noodles could work: I could get broth (chicken, beef, veggie) or a soup base (e.g., miso, pho, hot and sour), add the noodles, and have a really good, satisfying, low-cal, low-carb soup!
I could even add low-carb, low-cal veggies to the soup and keep everything in the range I wanted.
This seemed so obvious that I thought, “Why hasn’t someone already done this commercially?”
As I was in the store picking up ingredients to do just this, I discovered much to my surprise that someone already had!
I’ve already tried the pho, and it was awesome! It comes only with noodles and sauce (you have to add your own veggies if you want them), but it was really good! And a whole package (2 servings) is only 76 calories!
With that few calories, one could even have a big bowl of soup as a snack during the day and another at night.
So that’s what I’ve been doing recently.
I might, for example, have a bowl of nothing but chicken or miso broth and low-carb noodles during the day (keeping the calories to 50 or so), and then another, more elaborate bowl (with veggies and popcorn) during the night.
Also, soup is not the only thing to which one can add to such noodles. Other things can give them flavor.
Thus I’ve been experimenting with low-carb, low-cal mac and cheese (ziti shaped low carb noodles plus a cheese sauce). In this case, to keep the calories low, I’ve deviated from standard low-carb advice and used low-calorie cheeses for the sauce. On a normal low-carb diet, you don’t do that since low-cal substitutes typically have more carbs, but the number of carbs we’re dealing with here is so small that it doesn’t matter.
Other sauces–e.g., pasta sauces–are also totally possible.
So that’s the current phase of my diet, which is based on Intermittent Fasting using low-cal, low-carb noodles in low-cal, low-carb soups and sauces. These aren’t the only things I’m eating (and I am taking my vitamins to make sure I’m getting enough micronutrients), but they are the core.
And the results have been dramatic! I’ve seen more rapid weight loss since implementing this strategy than I have since I started the program.
Of course, I won’t eat this way indefinitely. But I have found this–in my case (no medical advice is being offered here)–to be a useful strategy to incorporate during this phase of my journey.
And, as I’m only 15-25 lbs from what may be my ultimate goal (having lost 128 lbs overall and 66 lbs since beginning Intermittent Fasting), I’m going to be changing my eating plan soon enough anyway.
“Don’t you ever have a psychological need to eat?”
These are among the questions I get when people ask about the Intermittent Fasting regimen I’ve been using, and which has helped me to lose 58 lbs. in the last number of months.
Here are the answers . . .
Snacking
With the exceptions noted below, I don’t snack.
The basic principle of using Intermittent Fasting for weight loss is that you don’t eat for significant periods of time.
This causes your blood sugar to go down, which causes your insulin to go down, which causes your body to start burning fat.
It follows that one of the things you don’t want to do while fasting is snacking.
This goes against the “grazing” strategy that has been promoted in many diet circles in recent years—whereby, in addition to eating three meals a day, you also eat multiple snacks.
In theory, this is to keep you from eating too much at mealtime because you’re not as hungry, but my experience—and that of many others—is that it hinders rather than helps weight loss.
If you snack and take in a significant number of calories, it causes your blood sugar to spike, which causes your body to release insulin, which causes you to store fat rather than burn it.
By not snacking as part of an Intermittent Fasting regimen, you let your body stop burning food and start burning what’s stored in your fat cells.
This can still leave us with the issues of hunger and a psychological need to eat, however.
Curbing Hunger
As I’ve written before, I’ve been amazed at how little hunger I’ve experienced with Intermittent Fasting.
It seems that hunger is primarily a matter of habit: If your body is used to getting food at a certain time, that’s when it turns on the hunger signal. It’s trying to maintain your ordinary, daily rhythm.
But when you change that rhythm, when you break your ordinary habits, your body quickly adapts to the new daily cycle.
For most people, it only takes the body 2-3 days to adjust to the new routine, and then your body will stop turning on hunger when you don’t want it.
Most of the time. There can be exceptions.
So what do you do then?
A classic piece of advice is to drink non-caloric liquids.
This advice has been around for a long time—so long that it’s reflected in the Catholic Church’s religious discipline of fasting: Drinking water to relieve hunger does not break a religious fast.
Water isn’t the only non-caloric liquid, though. If you’re not doing a fast as part of your religious requirements, there are other options, such as coffee and tea, both of which can have additional health benefits.
(It is, of course, important that you don’t add lots of milk or sugar to them, or you’ll get the insulin spike you’re trying to avoid.)
Diet colas also are typically calorie-free, though there questions about how good they are for you—particularly if they contain artificial sweeteners like Aspartame. (Fortunately, there are now diet sodas that are sweetened with the natural sweetener stevia.)
Whatever non-caloric beverage you choose, it can fill up your stomach, making you feel like you’ve eaten something, and thus help to relieve hunger.
What About Low-Cal Liquids?
Many advocates of Intermittent Fasting (including Dr. Jason Fung) have also recommended bone broth, which isn’t no-calorie but which is low-calorie.
It allegedly has nutrients which can be very good for you, though this isn’t clear to me.
What is clear is that it doesn’t have a large number of calories and so won’t produce a large insulin spike. It thus shouldn’t interfere significantly with weight loss.
On the same reasoning, I’ve also seen Intermittent Fasting proponents give an okay to drinking (unsweetened) almond milk, which is also quite low-cal.
Used in moderation, these low-calorie fluids likely won’t interfere materially with weight loss, though your own experience is the best judge of that.
Curbing the Psychological Need to Eat
I do sometimes have a psychological need to eat—just the desire to bite and chew, particularly something crunchy—when it isn’t time for me to eat, and when I’m not hungry.
Sometimes just doing a self-check and realizing I’m not hungry is enough to let me put the desire aside.
Sometimes drinking a no- or low-calorie liquid is enough (particularly if it’s a hot or warm beverage; I don’t personally have a taste for coffee, but hot green tea or hot bone broth can be satisfying).
But I’ve also been experimenting with another idea.
Safe Snacking?
When I first started researching Intermittent Fasting, I was surprised to find some advocates saying that they’d allow themselves very small snacks.
One gentleman, who was a fitness trainer, allowed himself an occasional snack of up to 35 calories.
After I discovered the recommendations of low-cal liquids like bone broth and almond milk, that got me thinking: A serving of bone broth (depending on what kind you get) can be around 40 calories. And 12 oz. of unsweetened almond milk is about the same (45 calories).
So if those are acceptable, so should some solid foods in the same calorie range.
Now, I wouldn’t recommend sweets in that range. A tablespoon of table sugar has 48 calories, but—being sugar—it will spike your insulin more than just about anything else.
But what about foods that naturally have a good bit of fiber to blunt the effect of whatever calories they have?
Fiber
You could, of course, eat pure dietary fiber—which is indigestible and so has no calories.
Thus you could take fiber capsules or powder—along with enough liquid to prevent it from blocking you up.
That might satisfy hunger, but it wouldn’t really help with the psychological need to bite and chew.
You could make crackers out of fiber (add water to fiber powder, roll out, bake or let dry), though I haven’t found a good source of pre-made fiber crackers.
However, there are foods which are both low-calorie and high-fiber . . .
Veggies
Certain vegetables would work on the above strategy.
For example, an 8 oz. can of green beans contains two servings of 20 calories each, for a total of 40 calories. (I prefer the French-style cut of green beans, but you may prefer ones cut the ordinary way.)
Fresh green beans are also an option, and they have crunch if you don’t cook them. A cup of 1/2 inch pieces of green beans has only 31 calories.
Celery also works. An 8 inch, medium stalk of celery has only 6 calories! It has a nice crunch, though not much flavor (and it has those strings).
Another vegetable—which I like even better for these purposes—is bell pepper.
A medium bell pepper has a total of 24 calories, and so a few slices of one would fit well within the range we’re talking about.
It not only crunches, it also has a bit of taste and even spice, while lacking the strings that celery has.
Bell pepper has become my preferred low-cal veggie for snacking (when I snack, which isn’t often).
And I can offer you one more twist . . .
Spices and Sauces?
Vegetables can be a little boring by themselves, so is there anything we can do to spice them up?
Sure! Add spices! One can add spices, such as salt, NoSalt/Nu-Salt (potassium chloride), cinnamon (which may actually help control blood sugar), chili powder, or whatever you like, as long as it doesn’t have notable calories.
You could also add no- or low-calorie sauces, such as lemon juice or vinegar. In fact, those might help with weight loss (particularly the vinegar, which has the effect of blunting any carbs in the vegetables; that’s why apple cider vinegar has become popular in weight loss circles, though almost any vinegar will help).
Thus if you have some canned green beans (or other soft, low-cal vegetable), you might jazz them up with a little lemon juice or apple cider vinegar (plus whatever low-cal spices you like–maybe a few sesame seeds or poppy seeds?).
There’s also a company named Walden Farms which produces a line of low-calorie sauces.
They advertise their produces as having 0 calories, but it’s really 3-4 calories per 2 tablespoon serving (under U.S. labeling laws, you get to round any number of calories under 5 per serving down to 0).
One of my favorites is eating red bell pepper slices (or any bell pepper slices) with Walden Farm’s chocolate dip. The slightly-spicy and sweet combination is really good.
You can also find Walden Farms in typical supermarkets in the diet section.
Practical Help
The overall key to all of these solutions is keeping the absolute number of calories small.
However, avoiding refined carbohydrates—such as sugar and flour—and adding fiber are also important.
Always check the nutrition information of whatever you’re planning to consume to make sure it’s low enough in calories (things like butter, cheese, and nuts—which are healthful in themselves—are high in calories and thus don’t make good snacks while Intermittent Fasting).
Also, everyone’s body is different, and different people will be able to handle different amounts of low-calorie snacks of the type described here. Your own experimentation and experience will be your best guide.
The good news is that between no-calorie and low-calorie liquids and solids, there are practical helps—both for dealing with hunger and the psychological need to eat—when doing Intermittent Fasting.
The state of diet and nutrition reporting is horrible.
Remember the “chocolate makes you lose weight” claim that the media fell for all over the world—despite the fact it was a deliberate hoax to prove how bad the state of diet and nutrition reporting is?
Okay, fine. Someone needs to write pieces like that. (I guess?)
But if you’re going to be writing pieces with headlines like:
Is skipping breakfast bad for us?
New study finds links with heart disease and obesity
Then you really ought to get the story right. I mean, you’re ostensibly giving people information about their health, and low-information news consumers will be making health decisions based on what you write.
So how well does this piece work?
It starts like this:
Skipping breakfast or eating late in the day could raise the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and obesity according to a new study.
Pretty scary, eh kids? A study showed that?
Except it wasn’t a study.
The piece in question was a “statement” published in the American Heart Association’s Circulation. The abstract, identifying it as a statement, is here.
To be clear, a statement is not a study. To put it in journalese, a statement is basically an editorial.
It does not represent original research. No new experiments were performed. While it does refer to previous studies, it’s an opinion piece that makes recommendations.
So we’re not off to a promising start.
What next?
The study [there’s that word again–ja] from a group of American researchers suggests that the time we eat our meal is equally as important as what we eat.
Writing in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, researchers from Columbia University said both meal timing and frequency are linked to risk factors for a variety of conditions including heart disease, strokes, high blood pressure, blood glucose levels, obesity, and reduced insulin sensitivity.
The researchers reviewed other current scientific studies concerning breakfast and heart disease and found that those who eat breakfast daily are less likely to have high cholesterol and blood pressure, while those who skip breakfast and instead snack and graze throughout the day are more likely to be obese, have poor nutrition, or be diagnosed with diabetes.
Okay! Hold your horses! We just hit the money quote.
The thing with all the scary health effects wasn’t just skipping breakfast.
It was skipping breakfast and then going on to “snack and graze throughout the day.”
That’s suggestive of an entirely different headline. Something like:
Snacking and Grazing Throughout the Day Will Make You Obese and Give You Diabetes, Strokes, and Heart Disease
Or perhaps the pithier:
Snacking and Grazing Throughout the Day Will Kill You
At this point, the article has basically gone off the rails, since it’s misframing the issue in terms of “skipping breakfast,” when what it should be focusing on is “snacking and grazing throughout the day.”
It does, however, go on to say a few good things. For example, it notes:
That’s true. The idea that breakfast is a super-important meal is a nutritional myth.
But how does that square with the “skipping breakfast can kill you” narrative the article has been working so far? We’ve got cognitive dissonance here, folks!
The article doesn’t resolve this dissonance, though it does helpfully provide a little more on the subject:
Dr James Betts, a senior lecturer in nutrition at the University of Bath said the idea breakfast is inherently good for us may stem from marketing campaigns designed to sell us cereals, eggs and bacon, and the ‘benefits’ of eating early haven’t actually been scrutinised properly.
Bingo!
Breakfast isn’t the most important meal of the day—unless you’re a food industry marketer trying to get people to buy breakfast foods.
The article also notes:
The researchers from Columbia University writing in Circulation also found that eating late at night could lead to a greater risk of poor cardiometabolic health. In one of the studies analysed it was found that late-night snackers are more likely to be obese when compared to those who don’t eat after a certain hour.
That last phrase is very interesting. If you “don’t eat after a certain hour” then you aren’t “snacking and grazing throughout the day.”
And you know what they call it when you don’t snack and graze throughout the day but have defined eating periods between which you fast?
The classic “three meals a day with no snacks” model of eating is a form of not-very-restrictive intermittent fasting. It has three periods of eating (that’s the not restrictive part) embedded among three periods of fasting (since no snacks).
If you really want to identify whether skipping breakfast is harmful, that’s what you’d want to test it against: three meals a day with no snacks versus lunch and dinner with no snacks.
And there are stronger forms of intermittent fasting, such as eating once a day, once every other day, once every few days, etc.
If only the studystatement by the AHA said something about intermittent fasting!
There is evidence that both alternate-day fasting and periodic fasting may be effective for weight loss, although there are no data that indicate whether the weight loss can be sustained long term.
In addition, both eating patterns may be useful for lowering triglyceride concentrations but have little or no effect on total, LDL, or HDL cholesterol concentrations.
These protocols may also be beneficial for lowering blood pressure, but a minimum weight loss of 6% may be required to see an effect.
Intermittent fasting may also be effective for decreasing fasting insulin and IR[i.e., insulin resistance, the key factor in type 2 diabetes–ja], but fasting glucose remains largely unchanged.
Future work in this area should aim to examine whether these effects still persist in longer-term (>52 weeks) randomized, controlled trials.
So, wow. Intermittent fasting seems to have notable positive health results.
How does that compare to what it said about skipping breakfast?
In summary, the limited evidence of breakfast consumption as an important factor in combined weight and cardiometabolic risk management is suggestive of a minimal impact.
There is increasing evidence that advice related to breakfast consumption does not improve weight loss, likely because of compensatory behaviors during the day.
On the other hand, breakfast consumption can contribute to a healthier eating pattern that leads to slight improvements in cardiometabolic risk profile.
Additional, longer-term studies are needed in this field because most metabolic studies have been either single-day studies or of very short duration.
Got that? They say eating breakfast likely has “a minimal impact”—scarcely justifying the scare tactics used in the article about the “dangers” of skipping it.
Further, skipping breakfast won’t help you lose weight if you don’t also fast and instead engage in “compensatory behaviors during the day”—i.e., the “snacking and grazing throughout the day” referred to earlier.
And most of the studies related to this are basically junk science because they were either “single-day studies” (!) or “of very short duration.”
So Ms. Alexander’s article essentially misreads and distorts the AHA statement.
My impression, upon reading the statement, is that it’s a transitional document. The benefits of not using the snacking/grazing strategy are becoming clear in the scientific data, but old habits die hard, and the authors of the AHA statement haven’t yet gotten to the point of flat out endorsing intermittent fasting.
Time to take some more notes and answer some questions regarding my fasting experience.
First, I have now lost 38 lbs47 lbsfrom my recent high, which means I have lost more than 100 lbs since my all-time high! Woo-hoo!
To visualize 100 lbs, I calculated how many cans of soda it takes to equal that weight. It turns out that it’s 120 cans of soda or five cases of 24 cans each.
Do people with weight problems simply lack motivation or willpower?
Imagine carrying five cases of soda around all the time and being unable to set them down–ever, even for a moment—even when you’re lying on your back!
Now think about how that affects the blame-the-victim, “You just don’t have enough willpower” attitude our society encourages us to adopt regarding those who struggle with weight.
Anyone carrying that much additional weight (like I was) is suffering tremendously and will be highly motivated to get rid of it.
My problem was not lack of willpower but lack of knowing how to get the weight off.
The standard “eat less, move more” advice you hear doesn’t work (and studies show that it doesn’t). Similarly the “eat less fat, fat makes you fat” approach doesn’t work.
Once I discovered an effective means of losing weight (initially low carb, and now low carb plus intermittent fasting), I stuck to them like crazy–to the point that I know others have come to regard me as a diet disciplinarian (at least when it comes to myself). I won’t break my diet just because people are having a party or I’m in a social situation, and I’m willing to be viewed as an oddball for the sake of not impeding weight loss. Motivation and willpower are not problems.
So bear all that in mind when you see someone who has weight issues. Willpower is likely not the issue, but lack of knowledge of an effective way to get the weight off and keep it off. (Because, if you don’t have that, there’s no point.) Odds are, they would become very focused and determined if they found an effective and sustainable way to lose weight.
If you’re doing intermittent fasting, do you need to do anything extra on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday?
It depends on what kind of intermittent fasting (IF) you’re doing, but you may already be fulfilling the canonical requirements for fasting on those days.
Church law allows Catholics in the Latin Rite to have one full meal on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, as well as “some food” (less than a full meal, but not any specified amount) on two other occasions.
If you’re eating that much or less, you’re fulfilling your obligation and don’t need to do anything extra (other than also observe abstinence from meat).
That said, it is a good and praiseworthy thing even for those who are doing IF to reduce their food consumption even more on those days. It’s just not legally (or morally) required.
If you’re fasting for health reasons, does that prevent you from offering it up to God?
Not any more than anything else you have a good, non-religious reason to do. St. Paul states:
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31).
Whatever your task, work heartily, as serving the Lord and not men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you are serving the Lord Christ (Col. 3:23-24).
We can–and should–take any and every good thing we do and offer it up to the Lord, because it’s good and we want to do good in accord with his will.
The fact that there are non-religious reasons for doing it is part of why it’s good. Thus the non-religious reasons don’t stop us from doing it “unto the Lord” or “to the glory of God.” And they thus don’t deprive it of having a spiritual aspect that God will reward.
In fact, in the case of weight loss (or other health benefits), one may view the act of fasting as making spiritual reparations to the extent that getting into this weight/health situation was our fault–and as pure good work to the extent it was not our fault (e.g., due to being misinformed about what a “healthy diet” consists of and eating accordingly).
Having said that, if you don’t do something with a spiritual orientation–if it isn’t at least in the back of your mind by way of what theologians call a “virtual intention”–and you’re doing something for purely non-religious reasons then it won’t have a spiritual dimension and so won’t benefit you in that way.
Have you discovered any new, good books relating to this area?
Yes! I’ve been doing more research in this area, and I have two new books I can recommend:
First, there is Dr. Jason Fung’s book The Obesity Code, which is focused on the science behind obesity–what causes it and how it can be successfully fought.
This is not a standard diet book, but a serious look at the science. If you’re a diet skeptic like I am and have a “show me the science” attitude, this is the book for you!
Second, there is Gary Taubes’s new book The Case Against Sugar. This is a devastating critique of the “calories are the only thing that matters” view and how our society has been severely damaged by Big Sugar and its manipulation of social policy to pump more sugar into the American diet.
Both books are also available on Kindle and Audible.
Both are highly recommended.
Good stuff, Maynard!
What if you have diabetes? Can intermittent fasting help you?
Yes! Absolutely! Here is a talk by Dr. Jason Fung on precisely that point regarding Type 2 diabetes:
I also know a many people who have Type 1 diabetes (formerly called “juvenile diabetes”), and fasting can also help them, though you have to monitor your blood sugar more carefully. Info on that here.
Are you exercising?
Yes. I use both high-intensity, interval exercise and low-intensity, endurance exercise on a regular basis.
At least once a week, I spend 60-90 minutes doing high-intensity, interval-based exercise in the form of one kind of folk dance.
Also, at least once a week I spend three hours doing low-intensity in the form of another kind of folk dance where I am on my feet the entire time.
The number of calories burned in exercise is far too small, and it has the opposing effect of potentially increasing your appetite and thus the number of calories you take in.
Exercise has various health benefits, but weight loss is not one of them.
I dance because it’s fun–and for the other health benefits of exercise. But I don’t exercise for weight loss because both scientific studies and my own experience shows that it won’t help with that.
Since you’re eating only one meal per day, do you miss food and/or cooking?
A little. I love cooking, I’m good at it, and I love trying out new recipes.
The fact I’m eating only one meal per day means that I don’t have the opportunity to try out as many recipes.
The fact that the one meal I eat tends to be late (between 8-10 p.m. in my case, depending on when I get home from dances) also means I tend to go for simple recipes that don’t require a lot of complex cooking, and this deprives me of the opportunity to do new, creative things.
However, I’m far more jazzed about losing weight than I am about trying new or different recipes, so that overrides other considerations. (There’s that motivation thing again!)
If you’re doing one meal a day, when is the best time to eat it?
Probably in the morning. You’ll probably lose more weight that way, but that doesn’t work for me at the moment.
Aren’t you hungry all the time?
Absolutely not! Once your body has shifted into taking energy from your fat cells (which is what the fat cells are there for), it has an energy source, and it doesn’t need to send you the hunger signal to get you to consume more food and get more energy.
Not long ago, I spent hours on a Saturday watching YouTube cooking videos, just because I was interested in the recipes and the techniques the chefs were using to prepare them.
But despite the fact that I spent hourslooking at and thinking about food, I wasn’t hungry at all!
As covered in my original post, hunger is largely a matter of habit, and if you wait a couple of days, your body will figure out that this isn’t eating time any more and will stop sending you hunger signals then.
Also, hunger isn’t a constant. When it does come, it comes in waves, and you can drink non-caloric liquids (water, coffee, tea, etc.) to fill your stomach.
My experience is that hunger isn’t strong and that it usually goes away in 20 minutes or so. (Though it may reappear 2-3 times.)
On some days, I find that I experience mild hunger in midday. I’m interpreting this as a good thing, as signalling me that my body is making the transition from using the energy from the one meal I ate the previous night into fat burning mode.
The earlier in the day this happens, the better! It means I have more time for fat burning before the next meal.
If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen that I’ve recently been chronicling my weight loss journey there, and there’s been a lot of news to report! (The picture is one of me now that I can fit into a shirt that just has an L on the label–no X or XX.)Update: I’m now wearing medium shirts, so I’ve changed the picture.
A few months ago, at the suggestion of my physician, I began to practice intermittent fasting, and it’s really accelerated my weight loss. At the time of writing, I’ve lost 29 lbs38 lbs 47 lbs 58 lbs 6974 lbs84 lbs (it may be more by the time you read this), it’s produced other health benefits (including improved sleep and energy), and it’s been surprisingly easy (very little hunger at all).
I plan to do a blog series about my experience in the new year, but folks on Facebook have been asking a lot of questions, so I thought I’d jot down a few notes here until I can launch the series.
You’re really fasting?
Yes.
Really?
Yes.
Are you hungry all the time?
Not at all. I was surprised at how little hunger I’ve had. I had some for the first few days after I altered my eating pattern, but they went away quickly.
I called a friend who does a lot of fasting, and he said his experience is that hunger is largely a matter of habit. When your body is used to getting a new influx of calories, that’s when it sends the “It’s time to eat now” hunger signal. If you ignore that signal when it comes, it will re-set to the new normal and stop sending you the hunger signal at the old times.
I later asked my doctor about this, and she said it has also been the experience of her patients who have tried intermittent fasting.
What do you do when hunger does come?
I may drink non-caloric beverages to fill up my stomach (water, tea, coffee, no-calorie sodas with stevia [a natural, non-caloric sweetener]).
I also just ignore it, because hunger isn’t a constant. It comes in waves, and my experience has been that if I ignore it for 20 minutes, it will go away on its own.
Really, though, I’ve been amazed at how little hunger there has been.
Jimmy, I’m concerned for you. This sounds unsafe.
Thank you for your concern, but please don’t worry.
First, my doctor was the one who recommended it.
Second, I’m doing it under a doctor’s care, so all the right things are being monitored.
Third, it’s actually very safe (see below.) Fasting is actually a normal part of human experience. We’re designed for it. It’s just not part of our culture (which is a big part of our culture’s problem with weight management and various health issues).
Fourth, in case of problems, fasting is the easiest thing in the world to stop (also see below).
Won’t fasting slow down your metabolism?
Not if you’re doing it right. Calorie restriction will slow down your metabolism, but calorie restriction and fasting are two different things, and the body responds to them differently.
If you reduce the number of calories you eat at each meal but you continue to eat 3-7 times a day then your body will think food is in short supply, but that you do have a supply of it. In that case, your body will adjust your metabolism to the supply it thinks you have. You will get sluggish, irritable, and may feel colder than you otherwise would.
But if you stop the calories, your body will think you don’t have a food supply and that it needs to start burning fat, which is what the fat is there for.
Your body doesn’t know that we aren’t still living in caveman days, so if you aren’t putting new calories in, it think that your food supply has run out and that you need to go kill a bison or something.
It therefore does things to help you be a better bison hunter, like keeping your metabolism revved up.
Won’t fasting cause you to burn muscle instead of fat?
No. We can show that people who are fasting aren’t burning muscle because when the body burns protein (the stuff muscle is made of), there is a byproduct known as urea. When people are eating normally, they have substantial levels of urea in their blood from the protein they eat. But when they start fasting, the levels of urea in their blood plummet, showing that they are not burning protein–either from food (which they aren’t consuming) or from muscle.
Bottom line: You need muscle to go hunt bison, so your body burns the fat and preserves the muscle. The purpose of the fat is to be burned as fuel, so that’s why the body burns it. The purpose of muscle is to help you catch bison, so the body leaves it alone. It will only turn to burning muscle if you’ve used up all your fat and it has no other choice.
Won’t fasting make you mentally fuzzy or give you headaches?
No. You need mental clarity to hunt bison, so your body has an incentive to keep you clear headed. Giving you less clarity or headaches would interfere with a successful bison kill, so your body won’t do that to you.
Or that’s been my experience. If you are used to consuming something (e.g., coffee) that will cause headaches if you stop, and if you then suddenly stop, then you may get headaches. However, it’s not the lack of calories that’s causing the headache. It’s the lack of the specific thing that’s causing the headache.
Also, since coffee is a no-calorie beverage, you can have it when you fast! (Just don’t add cream or sugar.) So you can avoid the problem.
People generally report more mental clarity when fasting, not less, which makes sense if your body is preparing you to go kill bison.
Isn’t fasting unsafe?
For the vast majority of people, no. See previous answers.
Also, billions of people fast, at least occasionally. Catholics, Jews, and Muslims all practice intermittent fasting.
And we’re built for fasting. Our bodies are made to put on fat in times of plenty so they can use it for fuel when the food runs out. That’s why it’s there in the first place. Feasts and fasts are normal parts of human experience, historically speaking, and our bodies are built to handle them.
However, there are some medical conditions in which people either should not fast or should do so under a doctor’s care. This is particularly the case when you are on medications that you may need less of when you fast. For example, diabetics are likely to need less insulin, people who take blood pressure meds are likely to need smaller doses. If you don’t adjust your dosages, your blood sugar or blood pressure might go too low. Therefore, consult your doctor.
However, needing less of these medications is actually a good thing. It means your health is improving! Yay!
More info on these conditions in the resources recommended below.
The one meal I eat is not calorie-counted, but it’s obviously way less than what I would eat during the course of an ordinary day of eating.
It’s also usually low carb/high fat, though I don’t have to be as strict about that as normal.
I eat it in the evening, but you can do it whenever in the day would suit you.
I also stay hydrated and take my normal vitamins/nutritional supplements.
How is eating a meal a day fasting?
It’s an intermittent fast–meaning that I do take some food on a regular basis (in my case, currently once per day).
It’s not a long-term, unbroken fast.
Are long-term, unbroken fasts dangerous?
Well, you will eventually need new calories, but people can go for much longer than they suppose and be perfectly healthy on a fast.
Some individuals literally fast for weeks or months.
The longest fast on record was a Scottish gentleman who–under his doctor’s care–only took water and vitamins for 382 days (no food for more than a year!) and was fine. He also went from over 400 lbs to under 200 lbs, which was the point.
I’m interested in fasting, but I’m afraid to start all at once. Is there a way to work into this easily and gradually?
You bet! That’s what I did. I took it in stages:
I started with a low carb/high fat diet so that, without the carbs, I wouldn’t have the insulin spikes and the resulting hunger they cause (this is why people are famously hungry an hour after eating Chinese food: the high carbs lead to high blood sugar, that leads to insulin release, that leads to a blood sugar crash, and that leads to hunger to get the blood sugar back up)
Then I cut out all snacks, so I was eating only three meals a day.
When hunger did come, I would drink non-caloric beverages or just ignore it since I knew it would shortly go away on its own (see above).
Then I dropped breakfast (the idea it’s the most important meal of the day is not true, which is why so many people find it easy to skip).
Once I was used to eating two meals a day (lunch and a late dinner), I started moving lunch later and later in the afternoon, to narrow the window in which I was eating and extend the period each day in which I was fasting.
Once “lunch” was within a few hours of dinner, I dropped “lunch.”
This stepwise approach was so successful for me that, the day I first went to one meal, I wasn’t even hungry at dinner time. But it was when I had determined to eat, so I did.
I don’t think I could do low carb. Would that stop me from fasting?
No. Fasting is just not eating, so you can do fasting no matter what diet you normally prefer.
What if I encounter problems fasting?
I love the way the book I recommend below puts it:
What happens if you do get hungry or don’t feel good while intermittent fasting? Ummmm, hello, McFly? You eat something! This isn’t rocket science, people (The Complete Guide to Fasting, p. 21).
What are some of the benefits of fasting?
They include:
Weight loss
Lower blood sugar
Lower insulin resistance
Lower blood pressure
Lower inflammation
It may provide added protection against cancer
Greater mental acuity
You don’t spend as much money on food
You don’t spend as much time procuring, preparing, and consuming food
In my case, I also found my sleep improved (which is noteworthy, because I’m a lifelong insomniac).
If we’re built for fasting and if it has all these benefits, why don’t we hear about it more?
Several reasons. Among them:
Big Food has zero interest in not selling you food. It spends enormous amounts of money in advertising trying to get you to buy stuff to eat.
Therefore, when its “eat all day by adopting a grazing strategy of three full meals plus three or more snacks” causes people to gain weight and have health problems, it’s solution is not going to be “don’t eat.” It’s going to be “eat something different” (e.g., expensive diet products or the latest fad’s “superfood”).
Big Pharma has zero interest in not selling you drugs and medical procedures. Therefore, if you’re suffering from obesity and medical problems, their solution is not going to be fasting but “what kind of drugs or medical procedures can we sell you to address or manage these?”
As the result of economic incentives like these, fasting has virtually disappeared from our culture, though it used to be the norm. Fortunately, it’s being rediscovered, and studies are backing up its health benefits.
As part of your religious duties on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (assuming you’re Catholic), yes–unless you have a medical reason not to.
Otherwise, no, I’m not making recommendations here. I’m explaining what my experience with fasting has been and answer common questions people have asked me.
If you think fasting might be for you, great! It’s certainly helped me! But, as noted above, be sure to check with your doctor, particularly if you have medical conditions requiring things like insulin or blood pressure meds.
God bless you, and stay positive in the combox, folks!
There are different ways to make low-carb equivalents of macaroni and cheese. Some use actual low-carb macaroni noodles, but these can be hard to find, and the texture often is not the same as familiar versions of the dish.
Here is one of my favorite ways to make a low-carb version. It is extremely easy, and it uses only ingredients that you’ll find at a typical supermarket.
1. Get the ingredients
There are only three ingredients:
Heart of palm (14 oz. can)
2 oz. of Velveeta (1/2 inch of the large-size blocks)
3 Tablespoons of unsweetened almond milk (or heavy whipping cream, or Half & Half, or just water)
2. Cut the heart of palm into bite-sized pieces (I like thin rounds, but other shapes, sizes are possible)
3. Cut the Velveeta into smaller, flat chunks so it will melt more quickly and put it in a small saucepan with 3 Tablespoons of unsweetened almond milk (or whatever liquid you are using).
4. Heat the mixture on Medium/Low heat, stirring, until the Velveeta melts (this happens pretty quickly)
5. Gently fold the heart of palm slices into the sauce and serve!
NOTES:
This recipe re-heats and refrigerates well (particularly nice if you like cold macaroni and cheese, as I do).
Heart of palm has a texture that is very much like that of traditional macaroni, even though the shape is different.
You can also use other low-carb items in place of or in addition to the heart of palm–e.g., mushrooms (button mushrooms, or pieces and stems), artichoke hearts, and tofu (though tofu is more fragile than the others, so be extra careful folding pieces of it into the sauce).
You can make the cheese sauce other ways. Velveeta works particularly well–including better than some store-brand knockoffs of Velveeta.
You can add various garnishes to it, including sliced, fresh basil (pictured), chives, or green onion (consider heating the white part of the sliced or chopped green onions with the sauce to make these parts softer).
You can also add spices like black/white pepper, garlic, or mustard to the sauce or on top.
Think about slicing up and adding other things, like tomatoes or hot dogs.
Treat this as you would regular macaroni and cheese and add whatever you normally like to it!
Many people like their steak "rare and bloody." Is that a problem? Is it okay to consume animal blood?
A common objection to the Catholic faith is the idea that the Bible forbids the drinking of blood, yet Catholics claim to drink the blood of Christ in the Eucharist.
It’s true that the Old Testament forbids consuming blood, but what is the status of this requirement for Christians?
Soon we will look at drinking Christ’s blood specifically, but here let’s look at the Old Testament prohibition on consuming animal blood . . .
Animal Blood as Food
Neither Christianity nor Judaism are vegetarian religions. Both acknowledge the possibility of eating animals. Biblical Judaism even mandates it, with the requirement of consuming the Passover lamb.
But what parts of an animal are okay to eat?
Here in America, we are used to eating the flesh of various animals–the muscles or “meat.” But there are other parts, including the organs, the bones (which can be ground up as meal), and the blood.
Often, if you don’t grow up eating something, it will make you squeamish.
I’m pretty adventurous for an American. I enjoy a lot of international foods. I not only will eat sushi (raw fish) without batting an eye, I’ll even eat durian-flavored foods (note: the smell of durian is indescribable; the closest thing I can compare it to is burning rubber).
But as an American, I personally find the idea of consuming animal blood an incredibly squeamish idea.
I mean . . . YUCK!
Different Strokes for Different Folks
I have to acknowledge, though, that people in many other cultures–including Christian ones–feel differently.
Animal blood is consumed in various ways, either as an ingredient in foods or as a beverage.
This includes countries all over the world–in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Even in England (America’s primary parent country!) blood is a principal ingredient in black pudding (a kind of sausage; ecky thump!).
Blood was certainly both an ingredient and a beverage in the ancient world.
So what does the Old Testament have to say about it?
Since I started reporting on the amount of weight I was losing by Intermittent Fasting (IF), I’ve had various people ask or comment about loose skin.
Time to take some more notes and answer some questions regarding my fasting experience.
