The Registered Dietitians Take
Skylar Griggs, MS, RD, has counseled thousands of clients on their nutrition and weight loss goals over the course of her career, but she has not recommended alternate-day or any style of fasting to any of them, for a few reasons.
First, the majority of the studies conducted on alternate-day fasting so far have been on animals. And for those studies done on humans, weight loss has not appeared to be significantly different than for people following standard calorie-restricted diets. Weight loss and weight management are the primary reasons people come to me, she said, And the research on weight loss is fairly limited. Second, people show poor long-term adherence to extreme diets, Griggs has found, and she puts alternate-day fasting in this category.
Any diet that is extreme and not approachable is hard to follow, said Griggs. Any diet you cant do 80/20 is not sustainable. When the plan is a bit malleable when it can bend a little bit people are more likely to stay with it.
Alternating between feast and famine days could also have negative effects on the metabolism, Griggs says, ultimately inhibiting weight loss and causing other health issues.
Overall, Griggs advised that people seeking to lose weight should stick to a more traditional plan and avoid going more than 4-5 hours without food during the day to keep the metabolism chugging along and avoid late-night eating since that’s when people are most likely to overeat.
After Seven Months Of Intermittent Fasting And Down 62 Pounds I Decided That I Wanted To Start Adding Physical Activity Into My Life
Before intermittent fasting, I never worked out. Now that I had lost some weight, I didnt feel as heavy and thought I would actually be able to really push myself and help my body grow even stronger and healthier. I started using a couch-to-5k running app and took my time, not exactly following the program, but it helped tremendously. I went from hardly being able to jog for two minutes, to running for 20 to 28 minutes without stopping.
Eventually, after a year of ADF, running every eat day, and losing 98 pounds, I also introduced weight lifting into my life with the help of my boyfriend. I worked my way up to my current exercise routine. I run on every fasting day and try to walk two miles on my breaks at work. I lift on the days I am not fasting. Ive found this is the perfect balance for me.
So, I run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and weight lift on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I rest on Sundays.
Will I Continue Doing The Warrior Diet
I’ve been wondering this every single day over the past 14 days. Some days I’m like, “Hell, no!” I especially felt that way on the third and 13th days. But then on the other days I just felt so good I felt like I wanted to keep this up.
There are two main reasons I’ve contemplated sticking with the Warrior Diet. One, not being bloated has been huge for me, since I have been struggling with that since July 2016. It’s made me so self-conscious and uncomfortable on my worst days, I felt really depressed about it. So to look down and see a flatter tummy and not feel pain makes me tear up I’m so happy.
Intermittent fasting feels like free therapy.
And two, I can’t get over how I’m not obsessing about food. Even when I begin my eating window, I’m not scarfing food down or craving sweets, and I’m not overeating. And during my fasting window, I’m not daydreaming about the food I’ll eat. Restricting my diet for over 20 years and obsessing about weight loss really f*cked me up, and intermittent fasting feels like free therapy. It’s slowly curing me of all my worries and detrimental body-negative thoughts.
I’ve loved the heightened benefits of the Warrior Diet versus the 16:8 plan I’m blown away that I haven’t been famished all day and that I’ve been so energized. I’m over the moon that I’m feeling zero belly bloat because I’m not overeating all day long, and I love not obsessing about food.
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Is It Also Good For People Who Are Within A Normal Weight Range
ADF is not only beneficial for weight loss, but it can also offer health benefits for those who dont have obesity.
A 3-week study analyzed individuals with average weight following a strict ADF diet with zero calories on fasting days.
The researchers found that it resulted in increased fat burning, decreased fasting insulin, and a 4% decrease in fat mass .
However, hunger levels remained quite high throughout the study.
They speculated whether a modified ADF diet with one small meal on fasting days might be more tolerable for people who dont have obesity.
Another controlled study involved individuals with overweight and average weight.
It showed that following an ADF diet for 12 weeks reduced fat mass and produced favorable changes in risk factors for heart disease .
That said, ADF generally provides much fewer calories than you need to maintain weight, which is the reason you ultimately lose weight.
If youre not looking to lose weight or fat mass, or have average weight to begin with, other dietary methods will probably suit you better.
SUMMARY
Alternate-day fasting increases fat burning and reduces risk factors for heart disease in people with average weight.
Theres no general rule regarding what you should eat or drink on fasting days, except that your total calorie intake shouldnt exceed around 500 calories.
Its best to drink low calorie or calorie-free drinks on fasting days, such as:
Here are a few examples of meals that are suitable for fasting days:
Is Adf Beneficial For People In A Moderate Weight Range
Abso-freakin-lutely! As weve highlighted above, alternate-day fasting offers a cornucopia of potential health benefits.
Some studies have specifically explored ADFs influence on people with moderate body weight. Heres what they have to report:
- In a small 2005 study in 16 people without obesity, participants lost 2 to 3 percent of their body weight, and their fasting insulin levels went down about 57 percent.
- Another small study from 2013 found that participants in a normal weight range not only lost weight but also reaped cardio-protective perks.
The main bummer is that people who are at a moderate weight may still endure intense hunger levels on fasting days.
Since ADF could lead to some unneeded or unwanted weight loss, a slightly modified fasting practice could be a more manageable or sensible option.
Alternate-day fasting is generally considered safe and tolerable. If youre a healthy adult, it could be perfectly A-OK for you to hop on the ADF bandwagon, at least for a test drive.
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What Did The Research Involve
Researchers recruited 60 volunteers who:
- were aged 35 to 65
- had a BMI of 22 to 30
- were a stable weight
- had blood glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure at recommended levels
- had no history of diabetes, heart disease or stroke, inflammatory disorder or cancer
- had not used tobacco or recreational drugs within 5 years
- drank no more than 15 alcoholic drinks a week
- did not take hormonal medicine or antidepressants, or regular drugs for blood sugar, blood pressure or cholesterol
- were not vegetarian or vegan
- were not pregnant, breastfeeding or planning pregnancy
They randomly assigned half to continue their normal diet and half to alternate day fasting for 4 weeks.
People in the alternate day fasting group were asked to eat and drink normally during only 12 in every 48 hours.
During fasting periods, they could drink only water and unsweetened black or green tea or coffee.
Everyone in the study filled in food frequency questionnaires to record what they ate each day.
Before the start of the study and again at the end, the researchers recorded a range of body measures, including:
- resting energy expenditure
- activity levels
A second group of volunteers was also recruited for investigation. These people all reported having followed the alternate day fasting regime for at least 6 months.
They were also measured, and their measurements were compared with those of the 60 volunteers at the start of the RCT.
What Did I Eat On The Warrior Diet
When 3/3:30 p.m. rolled around, I felt a subtle sense of hunger but wasn’t completely famished. I craved mostly healthy foods and would eat a big tofu kale salad, leftovers, or a bowl of roasted tofu, sweet potatoes, and red peppers. I followed that with a banana, sometimes two, with raw almonds or cashews and plenty of water. Dinner was around 6 p.m., and I’d have whatever was on the menu: black-bean burritos, avocado pasta with Trader Joe’s Meatless Meatballs and steamed broccoli, lentil soup and bread, or veggie burgers with roasted veggies. If I felt like it, I’d eat a little dessert after. Sometimes it was some trail mix and fresh fruit, and sometimes it was a vegan brownie sundae.
I ate what I craved, and as much as I wanted. That was one of my favorite parts about the Warrior Diet. I never felt deprived. I was able to sit down to a huge plate of food and feel completely satisfied because my meal was over 400 calories. Another surprising benefit was that my taste buds became so sharp that even basic foods like fresh mango tasted mind-blowingly delicious.
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Alternate Day Fasting Schedule And Meal Plan
Lets get into how to structure your alternate day fasting meal plan and schedule.
On a non-fasting day, you can eat:
Hunger will be part of your ADF fasting experience , so our SIMPLE advice is to build your diet around lean proteins, healthy fats, veggies and fruits, and whole grain carbohydrates, i.e., foods that:
- control cravings
On a fasting day, if youre modifying your fast, follow the same principles.
If youre wondering what you can drink while fasting, water, unsweetened tea, and coffee will help you most. When you only have 500/600 calories to play with, you want each one to count, so allocate them to your food and let your drinks take care of hydration.
Whether its a fasting day or not, time your meals in a way that:
- gives you sustained energy all day
- helps you make good choices
For example, you can experiment with eating more food earlier in the day or later. Having more smaller meals, or fewer larger meals.
You can drip feed small snacks through your day, open your fast day with a meal to shorten the fasting window, plonk a 500-calorie dinner into the mix, follow a breakfast-lunch-dinner patternyou can cut it up any way you like.
However you play it, make it work for you.
For some support in finding a schedule that suits you, try the easy-to-use SIMPLE quiz to track your meals and fasting hours.
Does The Warrior Diet Make You Incredibly Hungry
This surprised me, too but no, it didn’t. I felt a little hungry around 10 a.m., so I’d have a cup of black coffee or green chai tea. The first couple of days I felt a little hungry around noon, since that’s when I was used to eating. But by the fourth day that passed, I instead noticed noon was the time of day when my mental clarity, focus, and energy really started kicking in.
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Whats The Bottom Line For Midlife Women And Intermittent Fasting
Liskov says she favors a time-restricted eating plan known as 12/12, where food is eaten for half the day, generally between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. This pattern of eating has helped many people lower their energy intakes, lose weight, and reduce the amount of unhealthy nutrients eaten, she says. A key reason is that many people eat healthy foods during the day but then devolve to snacks of sweets and chips before bedtime.
Its important to be sure youre eating healthy foods during the eating window, rather than filling up on nutritionally empty calories, says Carol Roberts, MD, a functional medicine physician in Naples, Florida, who recommends IF to some of her patients. If youre on a junk food diet, its not going to be good for you to eat for fewer hours. Better food selection is also important, she says.
To work long-term, an IF eating plan also has to mesh with your lifestyle, experts say. If you regularly go out socially for breakfast or eat dinner late at night, for example, aiming to fast during these times is not sustainable.
, the obstetrician-gynecologist who created the Galveston diet, suggests women who want to try IF ease into it, such as by pushing the morning meal back every few days until its finally close to noon.
Dr. Roberts says mornings arent the hardest part for most IF dieters aiming for a 16/8 schedule. A cup of black coffee goes a long way toward keeping people happy in the morning. The hardest part for many is to not snack at night, she says.
Drawbacks Of Alternate Day Fasting
Alternate-day fasting comes with a few riders you must watch out for:
1. Tendency To Overeat
Immediately after a fast day, you might feel super hungry and eat a lot of food. It is expected in the ADF beginner stages and will take some time to get used to. You will eventually know what and how much to eat.
2. Forgetting That Food Is Enjoyable
In your quest to lose weight with alternate-day intermittent fasting, do not forget to eat wholesome food and enjoy your meals.
Explore your options with alternate day fasting if you feel it is not for you, there are many other, less intense intermittent fasting plans.
3. Grumpy, Sleepy, Dopey Feelings
You will likely have reduced energy levels due to severely cutting down on calories during your ADF fast days. It will also affect your thinking ability and mood. But not to worry these are temporary feelings and will pass.
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Efficient Autophagy Is Essential For Cardiovascular Homeostasis
Autophagy is indispensable for survival as mice with global deletion of an essential autophagy gene die during embryogenesis or soon after birth.3 However, conditional knock-out of autophagy genes in cardiac or vascular cell types does not affect perinatal viability and, thus, allows for studying the physiological role of autophagy in an organ-, tissue- and even cell-specific manner.
Along similar lines, vascular homeostasis is massively compromised if any of its cell types lack a non-redundant autophagy gene. For instance, mice deprived of autophagy-related gene 7 in their vascular smooth muscle cells show abnormal vascular contractility and calcium homeostasis.8 Consistently, endothelial-specific knock-out of Atg7 or Atg5 leads to increased bleeding tendency due to diminished endothelial supply of von Willebrand factor, which is a haemostatic binding protein required for platelet adhesion.9
How Do You Do It
There are a few different methods, so if you’re interested in giving it a try start with the method that sounds like it will be easy for you to pull off.
I recommend this eating schedule method as a starting point for those interested in trying IF. The Leangains method allows you to eat for 8 hours and fast for 16. In the beginning, I started with 12 hour fasts and worked my way up to 16. 18 hours is the recommended maximum fasting time for this method.
I found this plan really easy to follow with its loose eating window. I would eat lunch between noon and 2pm to break my fast, and I could still meet up with friends for happy hour and eat dinner with my husband like normal. Then, I would stop eating at 8pm and wait until noon the next day to break my fast.
This method was easy to fit into my regular schedule and it also didn’t interfere with my social life – a real bonus!
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Potential Risks Of Alternate
According to this study, alternate-day fasting is safe to practice for several months, but I dont want to make light of the potential health risks that you may incur from alternate-day fasting. You should be aware of these risks. If you notice adverse health effects, scale back.
Malnutrition
It should be no surprise that eating less may contribute to inadequate nutrition. In our current food supply system, getting enough nutrients from food alone can be challenging when you get three square meals a day! Imagine when you are substantially decreasing your caloric intake! I have been a firm believer in supplementation for years, even before experimenting with intermittent fasting. I suffered from frequent headaches, allergies, and chronic fatigue for over a decade despite eating a varied whole-food diet. I discovered I was vitamin D deficient, so supplementing with vitamin D3 made a big difference. I also noticed that taking a histamine blocker and a superfood shake improved my energy level and reduced my allergies.
All that to say that you need to pay attention to how your body is reacting. Are you tired, getting sick more often, losing hair, or feeling moody? It may be time to take a step back. If you notice any adverse health effects, its time to re-evaluate. Focus on nourishing your body with nutrient-dense foods. Read Intermittent Fasting for Weight Loss: 7 Tips to Help you Achieve the Results You Want for further guidance.
Eating Disorders
