Three years ago, I wrote a column about intermittent fasting. I had researched it and was intrigued by what I found, but I wasn’t a practitioner. In other words, I wrote an informative column but did not have any personal experience or insights.
Frankly, I didn’t give it much more thought until it was published and I received an incredible response from readers, far more emails on this topic than just about any other topic I have covered in my 43 years as a health columnist. What’s more, the responses were extremely enthusiastic, touting amazing effects and benefits. As a result, I decided I needed to have more first-hand knowledge, so I took the plunge.
Let me begin with the differing types of intermittent fasting. First is the type I follow daily in which I compress my eating into a narrow window. At first, that window was eight hours, meaning I would consume everything I was going to eat for the day between approximately 1-9 pm, and fast (nothing but water, unsweetened tea, or black coffee) the rest of the day. This was easy and presented no problem for me as I had become a firm believer in eating when I’m hungry rather than eating on a fixed time schedule, and typically I’m not hungry when I wake in the morning, so skipping breakfast was not big deals.
By about 1 pm, I would start getting hungry and would have some lunch. But I would go easy on the food, and typically consume 24- to 32-ounces of a nutritious homemade blend with lots of leafy green vegetables and a few carrots, fruit (an orange, apple, blueberries, etc), high protein soy powder (chocolate-flavored), raw walnuts, and soy milk, mixed in a high powered Vitamix blender. There are other blender brands from which to choose, but the key is high-powered, as a regular blender cannot do the job.
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I did this for a while but was anxious to progress and I did quickly, narrowing my eating window to six hours, then four, and oftentimes to only two hours. This meant I was fasting for 18, then 20, and finally as many as 22 hours a day. The results were fantastic and similar to the emails I had received earlier. Most noticeable, my belly fat disappeared, not only the deep belly fat beneath the muscle layer but also the subcutaneous fat just below the skin. This amazed me because, despite all my exercise, I never thought I would lose the “love handles” on my hips or see the “six-pack abs” I had as a young man. But I did, on my way to losing 15 pounds and reaching my goal of 190, my weight as a sophomore in high school.
Other approaches to intermittent fasting may be more to your liking. One is the alternate day approach in which you eat normally and hopefully healthily one day, then fast the next. This could involve a complete fast for the whole day, or more typically, folks will consume a small meal during the day of about 500 calories. Another less demanding approach is the 5:2 method of fasting two out of seven days per week. Again, the fasting days may be without food, or just a small mid-day meal of about 500 calories.
What are the benefits of intermittent fasting and exercise?
I have become a big fan of the research of Dr Mark Mattsona neuroscientist at the National Institute of Aging and a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Thousands of research studies have been done on caloric restriction and intermittent fasting in animals, but little was done on humans until Mattson began his work 25 years ago. At first, he was intrigued by the research prospects of intermittent fasting, then he adopted the lifestyle for himself to improve his health.
Mattson argues that intermittent fasting has many of the same benefits as exercise because they are what he calls “good stressors.” They both stress the body, but instead of a negative outcome, good stressors increase the removal of old cells and trigger their replacement by younger and more viable cells, and they also provide a pronounced anti-inflammatory effect.
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According to Mattson, “If you don’t expose yourself to mild bioenergetic stress, whether it’s exercise or fasting intermittently, then it’s not so good for your cells, particularly as you age. You aren’t tapping all of the processes that help cells resist stress, function efficiently and fight disease.”
Mattson makes the point that exercise stresses the muscles, making them more efficient. He adds that exercise may cause muscles to release proteins (myokines) that signal the brain to promote new connections between nerves. Exercise has been shown to be a key factor in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, and this process of releasing myokines could be a helpful mechanism. Along these same lines, a research study on intermittent fasting carried on for two years supports a positive effect on the brain similar to exercise, with improved cognitive function and memory, possibly helping to prevent mental decline and dementia in later years.
Mattson draws another parallel between exercise and intermittent fasting by pointing out that muscle development does not occur during exercise. It occurs later when you eat and rest. Similarly, intermittent fasting stresses the cells, pushing them like exercise into a stress resistance mode that causes helpful changes, but these changes don’t occur until you eat and rest. Another similarity is that the effects of a longer fast are like increasing the intensity and duration of your exercise.
Intermittent fasting also mimics exercise to increase the rate of production and release of human growth hormone which helps reduce belly fat while promoting an increase in muscle mass.
And finally, both intermittent fasting and exercise promote the health of the immune system. Given these similar benefits, it’s logical to combine the two and maximize benefits. That’s exactly what I have done for the past two years and I have achieved benefits far greater than I imagined at my present age of 75.
Reach Bryant Stamford, a professor of kinesiology and integrative physiology at Hanover College, at stamford@hanover.edu.
