Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Intermittent Fasting: Four Weeks In

Stroke!  Stroke!  Stroke!  Eureka!

This week I came close to setting a new yearly record for my 30-minute row.  I'm confident that the loss of strength I experienced in the first two weeks is passing now that my metabolism seems to be adjusting.

I'm also getting used to the rhythm of the diet.  It's a little like rowing:  first put everything you've got into the stroke, then relax through the recovery.  I've learned to pace myself better during the fast days.  Having a few "slow release" 100-calorie meal choices, and having learned it helps to start off with a little healthy fat in the morning, I can now look forward to four or five little meals on a typical fast day.  I'm enjoying it more too.  One hundred grams of fresh juicy strawberries -- 32 calories -- seem to taste better every week.  Savour with a tablespoon of my high-garlic homemade hummus -- about 25 calories -- licked slowly off the spoon.  Decadent!  The full days aren't so bad, either.  We really appreciate our meals a lot more.  That delicious feeling of  "I can have anything I want today, now what will it be?"  Surprisingly we are not pigging out.  Rather we're looking around for healthy tasty choices that we can enjoy, ... and enjoy looking forward to on a future fast day.

When it comes to dieting, I'm beginning to conclude, psychology is everything.  This past week the diet has felt very "psychological".  The best and most challenging aspect of the fast days is that I have an extra couple of hours I didn't have before.  It's great to have more time for other activities.  But I'm also acutely aware that if I don't fill those hours with absorbing activities, I'll start thinking of food, and the game will be lost.

So, in the spirit of not thinking so much of food, I'm no longer going to report on our progress every week.  I will report back from time to time when anything significant occurs.  It seems a fitting time to switch gears:  four weeks in and I'm exactly half way to my weight loss target.  Stay tuned!

Resources:

Dr. Johnson's UpDayDownDay Diet™
Calorie Restriction (Wikipedia)
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Intermittent Fasting: Three Weeks In

    An Irishman was terribly overweight, so his doctor put him on a diet.
    "I want you to eat regularly for two days, then skip a day, and repeat this procedure for two weeks. The next time I see you, you should have lost at least two pounds."
    When the Irishman returned, he shocked the doctor by having lost nearly 60 pounds!
    "Why, that's amazing!" the doctor said, "Did you follow my instructions?"
    The Irishman nodded... "I'll tell you though, by jaesuz, I t'aut I were going to drop dead on dat t'ird day."
    "From the hunger, you mean?" asked the doctor.
    "No, from all that darn skippin'!"


So reads the story in my inbox this morning.  Word has gotten around.

Here on the frontlines, we're having second thoughts.  During the first two weeks, my wife had only dropped a pound, and she seems to be tired a lot -- she's a bit discouraged.  I don't think she'd been quite as rigourous as I have.  It's much harder when you're a manager at work, with those frequent working lunches.  I'm hoping we can stick with it long enough to get over the hump, and both see some progress.  It would be harder if it were just I alone.  I feel the worst is behind me -- although yesterday was a fast day after a "half-assed" day, and that was harder than usual. Despite pulling out all the stops for dinner, I only had about 1000 calories the day before.  Today I'd used up most of my calories by noon.  Another reason to hate Mondays.

I've noticed a desire for calorie-rich foods on the full-day morning after a fast day.  I think it's going to be important to have some healthy choices available to fill this need.  A handful of mixed nuts early in the day seems to slake my desire to eat so often.  At about 165 calories an ounce, nuts are pretty much off-limits for the fast day, but a nice way to break it the next morning.  Another option is a bit of avocado -- at 70 calories for a quarter medium fruit, I've also found it helpful to start my fast day with a few slices.  It seems to help me get by much longer with the same intake.  Research suggests that breakfast may be the healthiest time of day to get your necessary fats.  I've never tried it before, but perhaps a little smoked salmon with my fruit smoothie?

There was great news at the end of week three.  I'm 44% of the way there and my wife almost 30%.  My wife says she'll save the smoked salmon for a dinner-time spinach and salmon salad.  She makes a nice one with a little low-fat boursin cheese in the vinaigrette dressing -- about 150 calories for good-sized salad made with the best ingredients.  One good thing about 500 calories a day.  You can buy the best quality and still not blow the budget.  Anyone know where I can get a good Italian truffle?  I've never had one before.  Only 30 calories for a cup -- and about 100 Euros.

Resources:

Dr. Johnson's UpDayDownDay Diet™
Calorie Restriction (Wikipedia)
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Intermittent Fasting: Two Weeks In

"Hey, Honey!  Why don't we head out to the movies.  We've got 200 calories each left today.  Maybe we can split a small bag of popcorn for our dinner.  I'll check the calories on the Internet."  Yikes!  That's when I discovered that a medium bag of movie popcorn, even without the extra "buttery-flavoured topping", could supply both of us with our entire daily allowance!

Five hundred calories is not a lot! About 80% of a quarter-pounder with cheese, or about half a medium bag of movie popcorn with no extra butter, or about two pounds of raw carrots, or about two hundred sugar-free chiclets, or a little more than half a litre of red wine. (I'm not recommending any one of these as the best way to meet the fasting-day totals.)  I continue to look for more filling ways to construct a 125-calorie meal.

For now, I have another challenge.  I row regularly on a Concept2 rowing machine, but my rowing times have been increasing all week. I'm going to have to try and reverse that trend this week.  Our new schedule avoids my wife's exercise days altogether. Mine tends to be daily but less intensive. I may try to do less on the fast days and more on the others, but I really miss it if I don't do some every day. Fortunately, I usually exercise first thing, so I can power off the calories from the day before, with a top-up of small glass of fruit smoothie -- 152 calories. Additionally, we tend to do more exercise on weekends, so having the down days during the week will be good.   Still I'm going to have to push myself more to see if I can get my exercise intensity back to the pre-fasting level.

I'm beginning to feel less deprived on the fast days as I build up my repertoire of 100-calorie "meals".  Foods with a low glycemic index seem to be good choices:  a meal consisting of a tablespoon of my homemade hummus and a medium apple -- total calories 97 -- becomes one of my fast-day staples.  Another good choice is my mostly-vegetable-and-legume slow-cooker stews, with just a little meat flavouring -- about 75 to 125 calories per small ladle, depending upon the recipe.  If only the kids didn't like them so much!  Cleaned out again!

The week was punctuated with my wife's birthday -- fortunately it was an Up day. The boys made us a five-course Thai dinner -- they're accomplished cooks -- topped off with ganache torte. Afterwards, my wife said she was looking forward to her fast day!

Five-course meals and all, at the end of Week Two, I'm 28% of the way towards my goal.  That definitely provides motivation.  And as our friend who went first says: "You can do anything for one day." That's sort of true, and we hope it's enough.

Resources:

Dr. Johnson's UpDayDownDay Diet™
Calorie Restriction (Wikipedia)
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Intermittent Fasting: One Week In

A week ago, my wife and I embarked on an alternate-day diet, a regime of intermittent fasting:  500 calories one day, no restrictions the next.  It's now been one week since the first fasting day.

We now have a spreadsheet of over 100 foods that we think we may eat on fast days.  The first shock is that our vitamin pills and other supplements constitute about five percent of our fast-day total calorie intake! And my coffee -- already cut back from before -- is another ten percent.  My "light" breakfast has used up half the day!  Apparently, once our weight targets are achieved, we can close to triple the fast-day totals.  But for now, it's looking a little more challenging than I'd anticipated.  Had I really once gone five days with no food at all in my crazy college days?

We had started the diet with a "half assed" day, followed by a full fast, and by the end of the first full day, I had 78 calories left for dinner.  Two ounces of plain canned tuna and five capers later, and supper's over.  With lots of time left for evening activities!

As my friends had reported, we had no desire to binge the day following a fast day.  If anything, we ate less to start, although we had to eat more often during the morning.  For the first few days, I felt a curious urge to binge at the end of a full day.  I have no idea why that would be!

Meshing the diet with our work, exercise and social calendars has proven to be one of the more challenging aspects.  My wife is part of a large management team, and lunch-time meetings are common.  It's hard to sit and chew sugar-free gum -- three calories per chiclet -- when the Indian buffet  -- calories unknown -- is laid out in front of you!

For our first week, Saturday was a scheduled fast day.  But after starting the day with some exercise, followed by shopping expeditions and spring yard-work, we crashed completely long before it was time for our 100-calorie supper.  We quickly adjusted the schedule for the following week so that we could eat well most of the weekend, as well as the days we exercised most heavily.  We spent Saturday evening sprawled on the living room rug, dreaming of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

At the end of one week, I've achieved six percent of my target weight loss.  Despite the challenges, I'm beginning to feel this is workable. I'm taking comfort in field reports that the fast days get easier. We're looking forward to those feted higher-calorie fast days, once we achieve our targets -- about 10% weight loss.

Resources:

Dr. Johnson's UpDayDownDay Diet™
Calorie Restriction (Wikipedia)
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Intermittent Fasting - a Report from the Field

In the wake of Thanksgiving dinner, I read some reports on the benefits of intermittent fasting.  In addition to weight loss, there were some claims that alternate-day calorie restriction might have some of the life-extension, health-enhancing benefits of permanent low-calorie regimes.  I passed them on to a few friends and thought no more about it over Christmas.

Then, early this year, one of those friends announced that he and his wife had picked up on my suggestion, had now been on the plan for a few months, and had already lost 20 pounds.  He continued, "We are psychologically content knowing that a 'famine' day will soon be followed by a regular day... as soon as we wake up in the morning. This is the first plan that we've been able to follow without feeling deprived."  Even better news, my friend had just received good results from his last tests for cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

I decided it was time to take a closer look.  My friends were following a plan developed by Dr. James Johnson as a result of research he had been doing on calorie restriction.  Their progress sounded promising.  And besides, how hard could it be?  In my college days, I'd once gone over five days with no food, just to see what it would be like.  Compared to that, a single-day fast seemed like a piece of melba toast.

I had had some success over the previous six months by switching to a more vegetable-rich, lower-starch diet.  Quite effortlessly, I had lost a little over a pound a month since the change, and was feeling good.  But I still wanted to lose another 20 pounds or so, and was looking for an edge.  This seemed like it might be the ticket.

I had a feeling my wife might be attracted to the structure of the diet.  Eat next to nothing one day;  throw away the calorie counter the following day.  When I approached her, my suspicions proved correct.  On top of the attraction of the diet itself, there was the appeal of not having to think about food at all on the "down" days.  She generally took on meal planning for the family, and the thought of fewer meals to plan proved irresistible.

So, we decided to try it out.  The rules were pretty simple:  limit calorie intake to 500 calories on day, relax all restrictions the next, repeat in two-day cycles.  At our friends' suggestion, we made one change.  To better fit the fast days to our weekly schedules, we ran the cycle for six days, followed by a "half fast" day on the seventh -- this last day soon came to be called the "half assed" day.  As it turned out, we would soon have to make an adjustment.

I also started accumulating calorie counts for some of the smaller servings, dishes and snacks that I figured we'd have to focus on during the fast days.

My wife and I both took some measurements and set some targets for ourselves.  Independent of one another, we both had set goals of losing exactly 10% of our current weights.  The race was on!

Resources:

Dr. Johnson's UpDayDownDay Diet™
Calorie Restriction (Wikipedia)
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