Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

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Hi P-hackers. So, I've tried intermittent fasting in various forms 16/8 with 3 meals and 20/4 with 2 meals, and I simply cannot do for any longer than 10 days consecutively. I am used to eating literally within an hour after rising, and then having smaller meals every 3 hours after that. I have gone through probably a total of 10 bouts like this, where I IF for 10 days, and then start just getting anxious all the time, feel like I'm starving (even if I'm eating the same amount of calories as before), and I start spending my time thinking about when I can finally eat again. so I eventually resort go back to my regular eating intervals.

Does this mean my brain is somehow messed up? People say not to try IF-ing until you're healthy or something like that. I am otherwise very healthy- validated by (conventional) doctors, as well as how I feel and perform (both physically and academically). Why can't I intermittent fast for very long? AM I doing something wrong? Is my brain chemistry abnormal?

Thanks for your responses.

flag	asked May 9 2012 at 1:37 foreveryoung 15.5k●2●10●53

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Rather than IF'ing every day, how about every other day? Or do it on weekdays, then feast all weekend? It isn't that you can't do IF, or that your brain's messed up. That you've done IF for 10-day stretches says you definitely can do it. But as your own n=1 result has revealed, doing it every single day doesn't fit your individual needs. So what schedule does? More n=1 experiments are in order until you find out. And the optimal IF schedule for you might not look like what anyone else is doing--but that's okay. It only has to work for you. – More Butter Please May 9 2012 at 4:41

Yeah, I'm thinking I'm going to try doing just 2 days a week and seeing how that works out. – foreveryoung May 9 2012 at 9:16

IFing can be whatever you want it to be, rotate days, weeks, etc. Do what works for you, don't stress over it, if you become anxious perhaps you've taken it too far. Try stopping just before that, day 8? Then give yourself 4-5 days and pick it back up again! What works for one doesnt always work for another so it could just be your bodies way of saying, hey give me a break already!!! :) – Kelly May 9 2012 at 14:54

Why are you doing it at all? – Dan May 9 2012 at 16:59

@ Dan- I want to get the health benefits associated with calorie restriction without actually calorie restricting. – foreveryoung May 9 2012 at 17:48

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YoungPaleoLover · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-09 02:25:48Z UTC

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I have this same problem as well. Honestly, just like most carb re-feed, I think that our bodies do need time to not do the IF because it can put your body in high stress. Personally, I have been straying away from IF and eating when I am hungry-- my body is now acclimated to fasting so tells me correctly when I am hungry-- if I don't feel like eating for 20 hours then so be it! Try doing this-- it is mentally and physically satisfying!

answered May 9 2012 at 2:25

YoungPaleoLover
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Thanks. How do you break your fast? Aren't you ravenous by then? If you're not, I take it as a sign that your body is in starvation mode? That is a place I personally would not like to go. If you are ravenous, then I'd eat like a whole cow and then get bloated and be unproductive the rest of the day. For me, I feel like the 10 day mark is when my body goes to starvation mode and I mentally get very anxious and can't do it, so I break the IF-ing stretch and start back on regular meals. – foreveryoung May 9 2012 at 2:38

That is something I always worry about when breaking a long fast. What I do for the first meal is start it with lots of fat- an avocado, Bacon, and coconut oil-- then I prepare the main course may it be meat cooked in a pan with oil and spices topped with a heaping pile of spinach. I portion out my food so that it's a good enough size to keep me full but still in calorie deficit. If I'm hungry afterwards I may have a sweet potato or drink water and Take L-glutamine. – YoungPaleoLover May 9 2012 at 11:23

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Not eating for 16 hours is NOT anywhere near a starvation trigger. It may be that you're not actually eating as much as you think you are, and your body is handling it. You shouldn't be that hungry when you break a fast, but then 16 hours is barely a fast - it gives your body very little opportunity to adjust. – PrimalDanny May 9 2012 at 11:23

Right I was reading an article which said it actually takes over 40 hours to really put your body in starvation and stress. That being said fasting for 24 hours can sometimes produce starvation feelings like a hollow stomach and feeling cold. – YoungPaleoLover May 9 2012 at 11:27

Kyle · Answer 2 · 2012-05-09 01:46:19Z UTC

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Why would you do that every day? I thought IF was a once in awhile thing.... Try doing it once a or twice a week only?

answered May 9 2012 at 1:46

Kyle
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I was under the impression that it was a daily thing to do. Maybe I haven't really done my research. – foreveryoung May 9 2012 at 1:59

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I've IF'ed three times per week for over a year now. A number of PH'ers have been doing it longer, even, or alternate-day fasting (longer intervals). – air_hadoken May 9 2012 at 3:18

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Some of us do it daily. – Canis Minor May 9 2012 at 3:20

there are many different ways to IF, including alternate day fasts, single 24-hour fasts, 16/8 daily fasts, etc...: precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting; marksdailyapple.com/how-to-intermittent-fasting/… – PaleoVenus May 9 2012 at 12:26

air_hadoken · Answer 3 · 2012-05-09 03:38:56Z UTC

I don't know about you but I never really bought into the 16/8 idea. My guidelines for IF'ing are thus:

Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday nights stop consuming solid calories by 10pm (I go out to bars on Thursday night sometimes).
Monday, Wednesday, Friday, have nothing but coffee, tea, or water until 5pm or later. This gives me minimum 19 hours' fast.
Have pre-dinner on hand to eat while making dinner: leftovers from previous meals, canned fish, occasionally tube meat.
Eat however I like the other days. Consciously refeed to keep my energy up.

I started out IF'ing on an MTTF schedule instead of MWF, but that only lasted about four weeks. I'm considering dropping it to MF-only or making Wednesday optional, but only once everything is really under control.

I had tried doing this previously before paleo, low carb but with lots of nut consumption and artificial sweeteners and some grains like on fried chicken fingers, and failed at it. The IF'ing helped my paleo transition in part because I was able to see how different foods affected my body's ability to run on its own supplies. Splenda sweetened tea killed it; now I mostly drink black coffee instead. Dairy elimination (after gluten grain elimination) is resulting in weight loss and greatly reduced hunger, i.e. I'm eating less for my average meal after a fast that I was eating before ever starting IF.

As far as I am concerned, I'm fulfilling the requirements to get benefits from fasting: going 18-60 hours without eating, and doing it on a regular basis. I get the added benefit that I can work three days without a lunch break and leave earlier, while still being able to enjoy a couple lunches a week out with my work friends. So my advice is, in the end, do something that works for your body and your schedule. If 16/8 and 20/4 on a daily basis don't work, don't do those things.

Knarf · Answer 4 · 2012-05-09 03:49:19Z UTC

I feel the same way; I tried IF, and exactly the same symptoms happened.

I was Paleo already for two years, so I was pretty fat adapted, and had no weight to lose, besides maybe those last 2-3 vanity pounds that hide my lower abs. Yet, iso-calorically, I still felt starved sometimes, felt really cold, thought about food too much, and my bowel movements were just crazy (sorry TMI).

I eventually stopped it, and just started eating three meals again. (I was doing 16/8 LG).

I haven't found a solution to it yet; chalked it up to n=1, but am actually slightly worried about why I couldn't do it...

We are all "pseudo" hunter-gatherers aren't we?

I guess my answer would be everyone's different, but I can't pinpoint why IF works for some and not others.

Matthius · Answer 5 · 2012-05-09 01:48:58Z UTC

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Your first priority should be eating a reasonable overall amount of healthy food. As long as you're doing that, your meal frequency shouldn't have much of an impact. Do what feels natural, listen to your body.

answered May 9 2012 at 1:48

Matthius
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Maria · Answer 6 · 2012-05-09 01:49:29Z UTC

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How long have you been eating Paleo? If you're still coming off a high-carb diet, IF could be really hard as you adapt to not getting that energy spike every couple of hours.

Other than that, your body might just not be built for it. Some people's aren't. Is there a particular reason why you want to IF, or is it just something you think you ought to do?

answered May 9 2012 at 1:49

Maria
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	I've been paleo since I was 13, with a small stint away in which I included oatmeal and protein powder (the combination made up more than 10% of my calories) in a desperate attempt to gain more muscle my junior and senior year of highschool. It has a been a couple years away from oatmeal and a significant amount of protein powder. I eat a pretty balanced diet, and cycle my carbs usually. – foreveryoung May 9 2012 at 1:57
	I want to IF because it has documented health benefits- so I guess because I feel like it is something I ought to do. – foreveryoung May 9 2012 at 1:58

ecks · Answer 7 · 2012-05-09 03:08:33Z UTC

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2 words. Intermitant and Fast. Read the first word- if you don't know what it means look it up.

answered May 9 2012 at 3:08

ecks
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Yeah, but there are many people who only eat 1 meal a day and still consider themselves to be intermittent fasters. And lean gains is 16/8, everyday, right? – foreveryoung May 9 2012 at 3:12

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Dude, that doesn't mean that you have to only eat one meal a day, every day, to be an intermittent faster. – air_hadoken May 9 2012 at 3:21

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...better to look up Intermittent rather than Intermitant....just saying :) – daz May 9 2012 at 5:19

Seems I can't spell ;) good thing search engines have auto correct ;) – ecks May 9 2012 at 9:29

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when you look it up, you get many definitions for intermittent fasting. What differentiates intermittent from regular fasting is that the fast is not continuous for days on end. these are the variations: precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting; marksdailyapple.com/how-to-intermittent-fasting/… – PaleoVenus May 9 2012 at 12:32

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PrimalDanny · Answer 8 · 2012-05-09 11:40:19Z UTC

For many people, skipping a meal seems impossible. On low-carb paleo it's hard not to. That said, I still don't go much for routine. And it can still be a bit bumpy entering a fast. What I last ate, when I ate it relative to activity and relative to bedtime, what activity I've been doing, what I'm doing at the moment - all these factors affect how me and my stomach feel about not getting food. And the more it complains, the more I know I screwed up somehow and that I should ignore it to avoid doing something stupid. But sometimes I'm intending to fast and I'm not really feeling it. It's not ravenous hunger, and a miscue from an overproduction of acid eating away at my stomach lining, it's more a sense that it's been too long since I feasted. I'm happy to break a fast, and trust that things will work out for the best when I decide later if I'm still hungry or actually now well fed.

I usually get in a 36-hour fast (2 nights and a day) every week. Whether a skip breakfast or not I have a big lunch and then feel full all night isn't really a big deal. I can't imagine I'd balance my needs just right though if I tried 10+ days of a fixed eating window. I can't even fix my sleep times that consistently at the moment.

For health benefits, beyond simply making sure you don't eat too much, a one-off full day fast even once a month is likely to get you most of the way there. 16/8 daily windows make sense to me only because I don't like to eat unnecessarily before bed or when I wake up. But I don't count it as a fast.

Mike T · Answer 9 · 2012-05-09 05:45:57Z UTC

Is it possible that to you are keeping yourself a little leaner than your body's natural state and one of the tricks you've developed to help you deal with this is to eat small meals frequently? Perhaps that's making it harder for you to sustain just 2 meals a day (for example)?

I'm not advocating many small meals or claiming that it's more "paleo." I don't think it is and it doesn't work well for me because it triggers mindless snacking/binging, but if you are trying to push your body beyond where it really wants to be, than straight "paleo" strategies might not be enough for you long-term.

I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing to push your body beyond it's natural body fat %. I know many of us on here seem to have that same goal (though maybe not yet the same level of success at it).

Anyway, if you're happy and everything is working for you, then maybe you don't need IF anyway. I agree with what's said above about IF is supposed to be intermittent anyway, but to me 16/8 with 2 meals a day is intermittent, and I feel I could sustain it indefinitely if my schedule allows.

Ambimorph · Answer 10 · 2012-05-09 14:53:21Z UTC

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I find it much easier to skip meals when VLC, most likely because my blood sugar is steady. If the last meal you had was carby, you will have rebound hypoglycemia, which gives you a strong urge to eat.

answered May 9 2012 at 14:53

Ambimorph
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Is there something wrong with me that I can’t intermittent fast?

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