Comment from online personal trainer Dean Piazza :
This is a great article and certainly holds alot of truth. Alot of articles talk about counting calories and following the same eating patterns while this is completely different.
Bodybuilders have been into fasting to accelerate results for over 50 years as its a great way to speed up your metabolism as is adjusting your food intake on different days to make your metabolism work harder rather than consuming the same intake every day which can make your metabolism lazy.
The best meal to skip if you are not hungry is dinner for losing weight so read on below for some interesting tips and research
Dean Piazza
www.getfit.com.au
Dennis Brooks, 60, became interested in nutrition during the last two years of his 20-year army career. For years, he had struggled to keep his weight down and then, after retiring, he was in a car accident and gained even more. To address his frustration, Brooks began skipping breakfast. Then, pleased with his modest weight loss, he began forgoing lunch as well. Now he eats on alternate days (soup, salad, fish or lean meat, vegetables, nuts and occasional desserts) and only drinks water on the other days.
"I have found that on the fasting days if I eat anything it triggers more eating," Brooks says. "But if I don't eat anything, I don't have an appetite. On the next day, I have what I call a controlled binge."
Brooks has lost 20-plus kilograms, gained energy and says his blood pressure and cholesterol levels have improved markedly. He recently published a book about his experience titled The Skip-A-Day Diet System.
He is part of a growing number of people who are adopting an unusual solution to overeating. Rather than battling temptation in grocery stores, restaurants and their own kitchens, they simply don't eat. At least not at certain times of the day or days of the week.
Called intermittent fasting, this rather stark approach to weight control appears to be supported by science, not to mention various religious and cultural practices around the globe. The practice is a way to become more circumspect about food, its adherents say. But it also seems to yield the benefits of calorie restriction, which may ultimately reduce the risk of some diseases and even extend life. Some fasters switch from regular, if comparatively rare, periods of hunger to permanent deprivation. They limit calories all the time.
"There is something kind of magical about starvation," says Dr Marc Hellerstein, a professor of endocrinology, metabolism and nutrition at the University of California.
Neuroscientist Mark P. Mattson, one of the leading researchers of calorie restriction, adds: "In normal health subjects, moderate fasting - maybe one day a week or cutting back on calories a couple of days a week - will have health benefits for [al]most anybody."
Not all nutrition professionals see the merits of fasting. Some think of it as a recipe for disaster, setting up a person for binge eating and metabolic confusion.
Dietitian Ruth Frechman says she frequently sees extreme strategies backfire. "You're hungry, fatigued, irritable," she says. "Fasting is not very comfortable. People try to cut back one day and the next day they're starving and they overeat."
Researchers who study fasting and caloric restriction, however, say the body's hunger cycle ultimately adjusts.
From a biological standpoint, they say, fasting can be helpful whether someone is overweight or normal weight.
"We're brilliant at this," Hellerstein says, referring to humans' physical reaction to not eating. "We're not good at responding to too many calories but we're very good at responding to fasting. Fasting, in itself, is not an unhealthy process."
During fasting, almost every system in the body is "turned down", Hellerstein says. The body changes how it uses fuel. Certain hormone levels fall. Growth stops. Reproduction becomes impossible.
"By the end of three weeks of fasting, you are a completely different metabolic creature," he says.
"It affects many, many processes - but in a somewhat predictable way that takes you towards disease prevention."
Put simply, intermittent fasting appears to provide the same advantages as long-term calorie restriction - defined as eating at regular times but consuming 25 to 30 per cent fewer calories than what is recommended for that person based on age, size and gender. People who eat this way tend to do so by filling up on nutrient-dense but low-calorie foods. They get all the protein, fibre, vitamins and minerals the body absolutely needs - and very little else.
"The idea is that maybe you can trick the system to think it's starving but not make it starve every day," Hellerstein says.
Researchers aren't sure why the body benefits from mini-starvation. One theory is it produces just enough stress in cells to be beneficial.
"What our evidence suggests is that nerve cells in animals that are on dietary energy restriction are under mild stress," Mattson says. "It's a mild stress that stimulates the production of proteins that protect the neurons against more severe stress."
What they do know is that occasionally going without food or reducing calories daily makes the body more sensitive to insulin, which helps maintain normal blood sugar levels. And animal studies suggest calorie restriction may reduce the risk of cancer by slowing the growth of abnormal cells.
"We've been finding that putting an animal on a reduced-calorie diet for a couple of weeks dramatically slows cell-proliferation rates," Hellerstein says. "This is the case in pretty much every tissue you look at: prostate, skin, colon, liver, lymphocytes."
Intermittent fasting and calorie restriction have also been shown in animals to reduce cognitive decline in diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, Mattson says.
Researchers caution that not many studies have examined humans practising intermittent fasting or caloric restriction. But the little evidence that exists is favourable.
A study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that reducing calories by 30 per cent a day increased the memory function of elderly men and women.
University of Utah scientists looked at data from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who have lower rates of heart disease than most Americans. Mormons typically don't smoke or drink alcohol and some abstain from food on the first Sunday of every month. After controlling several factors that protect against heart disease, the researchers found only fasting made a significant difference in lowering the risk of heart disease. Among 448 people surveyed, intermittent fasting was associated with a more than 40 per cent reduction in heart-disease risk.
Another study shows asthma patients who fast have fewer symptoms, better airway function and a decrease in the markers of inflammation in the blood than those who don't fast. The study was published in 2007 in the journal Free Radical Biology & Medicine.
"They complied with the diet pretty well," Mattson says. "If people know that tomorrow they can eat whatever they want, today they can eat less."
"It does demand more than some other diets," says Joseph Cordell, 50, a St Louis lawyer who consumes 1800 to 1900 calories a day.
"But surely the pay-off is dramatically better than anything else. I feel so much better and have more energy. And there is this prospect of living much longer than you otherwise would."
Los Angeles Times
