Crossfit Norwest, Raw strength and conditioning and Barefoot Evolution Discussion Forum

[Bec]

Hi everyone,

Just a quick question for anyone who does Intermittent Fasting - Mark and I have been trying our hand at this (Mark is much more experienced than me and doesn't seem to have any problems) this week. I am feeling horribly nauseous, I've been sipping water and black tea and they make it worse, but even if I don't drink anything I have this constant feeling of pukishness. Yesterday I made it through to 11am, but today I cracked by 8:30am and had a one block paleo snack which has made a massive difference.

Is there anything you've discovered helps or is it just a case of letting my body adjust to not having breakfast? I dunno that I can sit at my desk feeling like hurling all morning 3 days a week - it'll start to affect my sales performance I am sure!!

Cheers,
B

[Dan]

Why are you both doing this?

[Rob]

Exactly...... Why are you doing this. IF is exactly that IF. It shouldn't be used with out you knowing exactly WTF it is doing to you.

[Mattyb]

As Phil Gould would say: No no no no no.. lol

ok firstly Dan definatly will go against what i will say here but not sure about Rob..

secondly IF reduced your metabolic rate (MR) which is bad in the long run in regard to fat loss (and weight loss). Your metabolic rate in simple terms is your body burning energy at rest or play. IF reduces you MR at rest (breathing, siting down, sleeping) so hence your actually burning less calories with IF that if your tummy was digesting some sort of food.

the way to go about it in my opinion has always been calories in must be less than calories out during the whole day (exercise, activities of daily living etc). this in turn will decrease your body fat % rather than body muscle % due to fasting. IF causes Carb depletion to some degree but also causes the body to get energy from other sources of your body such as your muscles (hence decreasing muscle size) this causes your nausea and brain function to decrease.

Bec if you and Mark want to tone up / get fit / beach bod etc u need to stop buying temptations at the super market (chocolate, chips, cookies, processed carbs, yogurt, cheese, etc etc). if you dont buy them then there not at home, if there not at home u cant eat them and you find something else (hopefully healthy).

this is the best advise i can give you without demoralizing you about how dumb IF is like im sure Dan and Rob are so tempted to do..

how bad you want things to change is up to you.. others can babysit you through the whole process like the biggest loser house.. at some point you need to make choices and take action for yourself and your family

[Tom]

Firstly, Bec, IF doesn't seem to be working for you so I wouldn't try to find any tips or tricks to adjust to it. Some people are comfortable not eating for that long, others aren't. It's worked tremendously well for some, but it's not the golden path. There are other ways to achieve your goals.

Not too sure why there's such a hate for IF in general however. There's a list of people that have used it to great success, Robb Wolf seems to approve of it. I'm not too sure it's as simple as calories in/calories out Matty, Paleo seems to go against that where you have someone like Dan eating stupid amounts of calories and still losing weight.

[Bec]

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fasting/

[Mark]

Anyway bit of a pile on here but I might clarify some things

1) I have used IF sucessfully in the past - so compressed meal window with 15 hour "fast" to get to around 10%BF with no loss of muscle mass or breaking of my metabolism.
2) By IF it's not all day fasting or any of that bullshit just not eating till around 11:30-12:30 and then stopping eating around 8-9 PM at night.
3) The food in the house is Paleo exclusive - we both paleo zone - I assure you there are no cookies, icecream,cheese, biscuits or gluten of any form whatsoever in the house.

Just read the Primal blueprint by Mark Sisson and it was suggested and indeed it is endorsed by most of the paleo dudes out there like Robb Wolff and heaps of people on the Crossfit board.

We are both working really hard to optimise our performance and body composition and love coming to the box to train so if anyone wants to chat to me about it and give some useful points on why IF a couple of days a week (maintaining zone blocks) is silly I'd love to hear them. Both of us follow the advice given from Rob and everyone else here and what I would consider trusted sources so I'm a bit perplexed?

Anyway open to a non dogmatic discussion

[adrian]

More on IF http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html Tends to suggest that IF is best used when targeting stubborn areas of fat accumulation.

I tried it a couple of years back and lost weight. Its also a bit of a Jedi monk thing - conquering your food desires etc. Good fun.

.

[Dan]

Mark et al,
This sadly went pretty far down hill full of assumptions without anyone really answering my question.
I also had words (incorrectly) put into my mouth which I am not to happy about.

So before anyone does that again can someone please answer my question. Not referring me to links or past experience, but why are you doing this NOW?

Be careful because that is loaded. Mark you mention past success, yet I believe you have never been on paleo until recently, so your mixing and matching many things if I am not mistaken?

Once the WHY question is answered I can offer an opinion.

Be careful (mis)quoting Wolf, Sisson and others. There is a lot more to it then what is in books.

EG Proper IF is about giving the GI Tract a rest. It is not necessarily about caloric reduction, in fact its encouraged to get the same amount of nutrients and calories as you would a day if you were grazing. IF can also utilise the nutrients in your food better because you have given your GI Tract a rest, so you get more nutrient absorbtion out of the same amount of food by breaking it up with longer periods between food.

Its quite popular with those that have all their paleo shit in one sock, and want to tinker with it, I would hazard a guess to say that, respectfully, you guys are not there yet. Get a few months clean eating under your belts, there can be much to tweak with a paleo diet to get you to your 10% goal, I would be posting full diet logs up for all to look at, get a bioimpedance test done for some baseline obs, and relax, you have months until beach weather, your overall health and wellness is much more important.

As Rob said, it shouldnt be done without knowing exactly WFT its doing to you. No one has demoralised anyone (Matt), we just want to know what your thinking is with it first.

For the record, I IF regularly. There are times when I am caught without food for extended periods, and I am the king of prior preperation, so I just sit there and go "fuck it, no food for Dan until he gets home, oh well, at least I have food at home, unlike my caveman ancestors". I dont IF on a regular set out pattern because I love food too damn much and eat breakfast so I can think about my morning snack, then about lunch then about another 2 snacks then about PWO meals, then about dinner OH MY IM SO HUNGRY!!!!

[Mark]

Mark et al,
This sadly went pretty far down hill full of assumptions without anyone really answering my question.
I also had words (incorrectly) put into my mouth which I am not to happy about.

So before anyone does that again can someone please answer my question. Not referring me to links or past experience, but why are you doing this NOW?

Be careful because that is loaded. Mark you mention past success, yet I believe you have never been on paleo until recently, so your mixing and matching many things if I am not mistaken?

Once the WHY question is answered I can offer an opinion.

Be careful (mis)quoting Wolf, Sisson and others. There is a lot more to it then what is in books.

EG Proper IF is about giving the GI Tract a rest. It is not necessarily about caloric reduction, in fact its encouraged to get the same amount of nutrients and calories as you would a day if you were grazing. IF can also utilise the nutrients in your food better because you have given your GI Tract a rest, so you get more nutrient absorbtion out of the same amount of food by breaking it up with longer periods between food.

Its quite popular with those that have all their paleo shit in one sock, and want to tinker with it, I would hazard a guess to say that, respectfully, you guys are not there yet. Get a few months clean eating under your belts, there can be much to tweak with a paleo diet to get you to your 10% goal, I would be posting full diet logs up for all to look at, get a bioimpedance test done for some baseline obs, and relax, you have months until beach weather, your overall health and wellness is much more important.

As Rob said, it shouldnt be done without knowing exactly WFT its doing to you. No one has demoralised anyone (Matt), we just want to know what your thinking is with it first.

For the record, I IF regularly. There are times when I am caught without food for extended periods, and I am the king of prior preperation, so I just sit there and go "fuck it, no food for Dan until he gets home, oh well, at least I have food at home, unlike my caveman ancestors". I dont IF on a regular set out pattern because I love food too damn much and eat breakfast so I can think about my morning snack, then about lunch then about another 2 snacks then about PWO meals, then about dinner OH MY IM SO HUNGRY!!!!

Dan, thanks for the response here - I was left a little perplexed by the responses.

As to the why let's get into that as it's at the core.

You tend to go to with what you know and I know my version of IF which is probably a bit of a misnomer but I am not sure I'm being blown away by my progress with both unmetered paleo or paleo zone. The couple of periods of compressed meal frequency a week are there to give me a break from pissing about with the zone diet in the mornings when we are both flat out.

Been going at it for about 2 months now @norwest (with 1 week break due to sickness) with various flavours with a few slip ups here and there but have always remained at least 80% compliant - from my measurement - I use a tanita segmental BIA scale & accumeasure calipers I have lost 1kg and BF has remained at a level on both devices @ 20%.

it's not all bad as I am definatley fitter, a little faster and stonger than when I started but think that this is more down to muscle memory and increase neuromusclar efficiency rather than what I am eating.

I'm 38 rolled up with a cholestrol level of 9.3 and TBH I don't really care about having ripped abs but what I do care about is reducing my risk factor of high vascular fat (which has still not budged) and improving my overall health, bloodwork and performance. So after pretty big changes to exercise(gone from very irregular and working up to 4x a week), total turn around in diet and rest the results for me anyway are pretty underwhelming so I'm looking to tweak the plan to achieve my objectives.

But I'm realistic and know it's going to take a while to get in shape etc as it took a while to do the damage but as a results oriented person I do keep track and do seek to change when it is apparent that stuff isn't really moving along as it should.

Does this make sense now why?