Articolo che illustra i vantaggi dell'intermittent fasting...
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ntermittent Fasting – Fears and Motivations
Apr 20th, 2009 by MAS.
A little over a year ago, I started seriously reading about Intermittent Fasting (aka IF). The Wikipedia definition of Intermittent Fasting is:<blockquote>Intermittent fasting (IF) is a pattern of eating thatalternates between periods of fasting (usually meaning consumption ofwater only) and non-fasting. A specific form of IF is alternate dayfasting (ADF), which is a 48-hour routine typically composed of a24-hour fast followed by a 24-hour non-fasting period.</blockquote>Whenever I heard holistic or religious people discuss fasting, my thoughts would be something like this:<blockquote>Not for me. I need to eat to 6 meals a day, consumelots of protein and lift weights. If I don’t, I’ll lose muscle and mymetabolism will drop. Missing a meal throws the body into a catabolicstate. Plus it would be too difficult. I need to eat.</blockquote>Then I started reading about Intermittent Fasting from nutritional gurus that coached athletes, including weight lifters. Arthur De Vany, Conditioning Research, Brad Pilon and Mark’s Daily Applewere all using and or recommending IF. However, the vast majority ofnutritional experts oppose Intermittent Fasting. Both groups weresmarter than me and they had a big disagreement.I had been following the never skip a meal and keep eating protein mantra for as long as I could remember. I was relatively lean, I had gained muscle, but something was wrong.
Whenever I got injured or got sick, I was unable to down regulatemy appetite and I’d gain fat. This cycle repeated itself over andover. Longer periods of injury or sickness resulted in more fat gain.
Weight lifters, particularly body builders, tend to eat cleaner andmore healthy than any other sport. They need to gain muscle and shedfat, so they watch everything they eat. As they age, they get more andmore muscle, which equates to a higher metabolism. However, at certainpoint I noticed they all had a puffiness from fat gain. Given theirclean diet and large amount of muscle, they should be much leaner. Isuspected the constant eating was affecting their insulin sensitivity.
I started reading about pre-Agriculture man. Those that survivedbirth and accidents, died with more muscle on their bones than modernman. They did not eat 6 small meal day. Once the food was gone intheir area, they picked up and moved on. They would go through periodsof having no food. Yet they were lean, muscular and cancer free. Iffasting really was catabolic then pre-Agriculture man would not havehad large muscle points on their skeleton.
Many nutritional studies are funded by food and supplementcompanies using college males (they have higher levels Growth Hormone(GH) and Testosterone (T) than older adults). You end up hearing aboutthe ones that prove a need for their product. There is no financialmotivation to discover a health benefit with zero profits. Thefinancial media is financed by entities that want to keep people fullyinvested all the time. Could the food and supplement industry bemotivated to keep people eating and buying all the time? Thesimilarities seem very strong here.
Intermittent Fasting had caught my attention. I was interested ingetting leaner or at least not gaining fat during my non-activeperiods. The anti-inflammatory effects and autophagywere also interesting to me. I also recognized that I had reached thelimit of where 6 low-glycemic meals a day could take me. However, Istill had two fears I needed to address.
Is fasting catabolic? Not for pre-Agriculture manis wasn’t, but why not? When you fast your insulin levels drop bigtime. Your Growth Hormone (GH) levels increase. Exercise, especiallyinterval and weight training, also elevate GH levels. GH isprotein/muscle sparing and GH helps the body mobilize fat for fuel. Not eating for long periods of time (starvation) is catabolic, shortperiods of fasting aren’t. In a recent post titled Protein Breakdownby Brad Pilon, he cited data showing the body targets visceral fat overmuscle by a significant amount, even using a full 7 day fast (non-IF).<blockquote>During a 7 day fast, your liver will lose 40% of itsnitrogen (a marker of protein breakdown) and your visceral organs (yourG.I. system) loses anywhere from 20-28%. Your muscle, skin and skeletononly lose around 8%.</blockquote>
Will my metabolism drop and cause fat gain? Thevery act of eating protein and carbohydrates is thermogenic. You willburn off 20-30% of those calories just by eating. So, yes yourmetabolism will drop by not eating. However, since you can never burnoff more than you can eat, each meal ends with a caloric surplus. Youkeep feeding the insulin monster at the expense of lowering your GHlevels.
In the end, I decided that I needed to know if Intermittent Fastingwould work for me. Both sides of the IF debate knew more science andnutrition than me. Only my own tests would answer the question. If Ilost muscle or strength, I could end the experiment and resume the oldway. Plus, I would only try the IF one day a week.It has been about 5 months since I started this experiment. What happened? I’ll save that for my next post.
criticalmas.com/2009/04/intermittent-fasting-fears-and-moti...
Aggiungo che l'intermittent fasting da gli stessi risultati della restrizione calorica sulla salute:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction#Intermittent_fasting_as_an_alternative_...
Vi voglio far riflette su quello che diceva Cianti che si ricollega a questa metodica.