Intermittent Fasting

I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I don’t just skip breakfast; I don’t eat anything until late afternoon. But I don’t see the relevance of this study to me, even if valid, because I don’t do it to lose weight.

If I’m losing muscle (I’m not; I never had that much to begin with), it’s because I don’t work out as I should. If I did, I’d have to increase my food uptake (and I’d gain weight, but it would be in muscle). What the eating schedule for that would have to be, I don’t know. I suspect it would just mean that I’d eat more in the evening.

5 thoughts on “Intermittent Fasting”

  1. Any form of fasting will result in muscle loss. The brain, unlike other organs, cannot use fat as an energy source. The only place to get glucose if you aren’t eating it is to break down protein and create glucose from so-called glucogenic amino acids — which come from protein — which come from muscles. That’s why the protein-sparing “ketogenic” diets work. You don’t eat glucose, so you start using fat, but you also eat enough protein so that you use that for creating glucose rather than muscle.

    Short term fasts are fine, but just accept that you will have to rebuild some muscle afterwards.

  2. I do IF periodically. I also lift weight and work out. The best way to keep muscle is to convince your body you are still using it.

    I frequently hike on the Appalachian Trail. One of the tells for a through hiker vs a day hiker is how cut and defined their legs are vs how pathetically small their arms are (the beard and smell are the others). They are burning six to seven thousand calories a day and replacing about three to four. They simply don’t want to carry the mass of food necessary to maintain all their necessary muscle mass. The body catabolizes what it deems to be of less use.

  3. IF works for me.

    This study has many things wrong with it. Like, what are the subjects eating? If the test arm is eating the same thing as the other arm, but only once a day, then they are eating fewer calories than the control arm

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