Flower 51: I'd be careful using fasting as an artificial method to improve lipids etc. Typically things will just rebound when you are done fasting and you can cause metabolic damage if you over-fast. I should know since I cause myself serious hormonal problems by fasting for too long (intermittent fasting for about two months). Yeah, you feel good when you don't eat and your blood numbers improve, but it's actually really unhealthy in the long term. Your body just goes into starvation mode, spikes cortisol etc. so that when you do start eating again, it's primed to store fat. Obviously if you just fast for a short amount of time, maybe a day or two, and then break it gently, this won't be a huge problem.

Likewise, Nedgoudy, I would suggest that not eating fat at all is not a good idea. Just my 2c. But your body needs good fats for various functions including hormones etc.. Just stick to, e.g. olive oil and salmon oil. Even if you only have one or two tablespoons of olive oil a day, it's better than a fat free diet. Fat intake should not negatively affect choleserol and blood pressure if you are eating well. That's what I believe anyway. But hey, if it works for u...

Most people here have lost weight by restricting calories, though it was done the low carb way, which reduces hunger. I also bet most people here maintain their weights at a lower calorie level too!

Check this out :thup:

http://www.bupa.co.uk/health_inform...10404heart.html

Of course, a low carb diet will give the same, if not better results. :rolleyes:

Rosebud:rose:

Yip. Calorie restriction has helped me a lot in the past, but it's easy to overdo. Obviously, anorexics are not healthy people. U need to get enough.

I went on BP meds at 22 and at my lowest adult weight.
Now I'm about twice that, 37, and I went completely off them about 6 mos ago.

I find that as long as I keep my insulin fairly low, then I have no BP trouble.

I don't see why anyone would want better results... :rolleyes:

Fasting Insulin levels as low as 0.5µU/mL , blood pressure of 100/60 and many around 90/60, average cholesterol of around 160mg, CRP 0.27.

Although I'm not saying low carb wont do something similar, its just that I think a 10% decrease in calories is EASIER than going low carb (in my opinion of course!)

1. Long-term calorie restriction is highly effective in
reducing the risk for atherosclerosis in humans
Luigi Fontana*†, Timothy E. Meyer*, Samuel Klein*, and John O. Holloszy*‡
http://www.juvenon.com/pdfs/may04-atherosclerosis.pdf

It's not good to drop fasting insulin too low though. I once had a too-low level of insulin on a severely hypo-caloric diet and it also causes weird effects. Insulin is an important hormone! It has received a lot of bashing, particularly in low-carb circles. But we really need enough insulin.
Also, again, it's important when doing calorie restriction to not overdo it (as I did) or your cortisol can get out of hand. Chronically elevated cortisol can be as bad as chronically elevated insulin in ways.

Perhaps for someone who does not suffer with carbohydrate addiction... :rolleyes:

Rosebud:rose:

Yakumo, can you tell me more of your personal exp re "negative hormonal effects" and insulin related things also in as dummed down a way of possible please since I'm not as scientifically inclined as some as our fellow paleos?

I don't believe that fasting even once or twice a week would be damaging as the bible states "when you fast" not "If" you fast and also because it was an accepted wol in biblical times to fast and pray regularly so if my Creator recommends it, the One who gave me this body, doing it in moderation shouldn't be a problem for most people anyway.

A little off topic question. My body seems to do best eating paleo/neader
Not long ago I saw a site that included a graph done by people in the medical field testing results of the rice diet which heavily favors days of fruit and rice combined w/one day a week of fish (can't remember if other meat was included) and rice and veggies. No added fats outside of the fat in the fish or meat itself. The graph showed improvement in cholesterol rates and all over balance of numbers there (also that bp and heart health improved)
How is this possible since our bodies need carbs to manufacture its own cholesterol and this is so high carb? Why does it work? Is this "coincidentally" a study that chose people w/out a genetic predisposition to make their own cholesterol and only ingest it through what they eat????
If I ate like that (even though I admit there are days I'd love to get out my chopsticks and dig into a bowl of rice and concentrate on fruit), my bp for one would go sky high!!!!

BTW Yakumo if you'd like to see the "latest bump" re my bp exp, check out the fasting thread that Nancy and I both have been posting on in paleo.

:wave: Terry

Fasting itself can even be quite therapeutic and has long been pursued by many peoples. Muslims still fast all day during Ramadaan. It's quite biblical and very Jewish. However, I have been suffering for some time with various afflictions including a parasite infection, and I found out that if I undereat, all my sypmtoms improve. I suspect that it's because parasites feed on your food, so when you stop eating, they stop eating. But I took it way too far and was basically anorexic. Dropped from about 79kg to 65kg, which, for a 6'3'' male is just not healthy. So just be careful how you do it, and how often. The trouble is that you feel really good if you fast. Your body starts releasing adrenaline and even beta-endorphin to cope. You will probabaly find that although at first you feel a bit low when you start fasting, you end up having great energy! However, soon the trend reverses. I remember I got so weak that I couldn't even stretch. I had to basically just sit around.

Also, your body wants to be happy. It doesn't want to die. When you start starving yourself, it reckons "dude! I'm going to die!" and makes every effort to stop doing that, messing with your hormonal mix. So if you starve yourself, you end up setting the stage for quick fat gain later since your body goes into "fat store" mode. So, starving yourself ends up having a not too dissimilar effect to overeating. Overeating causes hyperinsulinsemia because your insulin receptors just get flooded and turn themselves off. Starvation, although it causes super-low insulin while you don't eat (again, not good for insulin to be too low - it helps keeps you alive!), will end up causing you to store fat when you start eating normally again because your body now has to try rebuild itself by boosting its anabolic hormones. That's why people who eat 6 small meals a day often do well. They keep cortisol and insulin low at the same time. Never worked that well for me though.

I forget a lot of the details of this hormone stuff. Forgive me if I err in the details. The Schwarzbein Principle 2 makes good reading for the relationship between insulin, adrenaline and cortisol and how undereating, or yo-yo dieting can mess up all three. This happened to me. Eventually, all your hormones are shot. My progesterone, testosterone, insulin, cortisol - it all went completely out of whack and it's going to be very, very hard to repair completely. But then again, I starved myself consistently for tmany months, interspersed with short stints of binge eating where I just lost control. I don't think your small therapeutic fasts can compare.

So don't get me wrong. Fasting has helped me a lot in the past. However, if overdone, it can be quite bad. Just be careful. Don't overdo things. Other than that, I don't want to advise anyone, having messed myself up royally in the past (I don't think I should ever give other people advice on what to do! But still I somehow end up doing so...). I'm also not convinced that long-term ketogenic dieting is healthy or natural in spite of what many on this forum say. I personally feel MUCH better when not in ketosis. But I still need to stick to low carb carbs (i have trouble with carbs!). Oh, how I miss chocolate... But it's just not worth it.

As for the rice and fruit thing:
Many people have had their bloodwork improve dramatically on diets relatively rich in carbs such as the macrobiotic diet (which I think would kill me...). I have read one book that hyprothesises different people just have different metabolic types. One man's food is another man's poison so to speak. However, I do not buy the theory that diets rich in carbs necessarily lead to bad blood figures. It is excess food and the consequent excess insulin that will cause these things - not carbs alone. I bet those people eating rice and fruit simply had better insulin sensitivity than you or I. They probably ate enough, but not too much. Perhaps they were even physically active. They had no saturated fat in their diet (which would be bad in large quantities if you ate lots of carbs). They got some omega three. They got fiber. They got vitamin C and nutrients. Maybe they had Basmati rice which is very low GI. All these things are good for you. It's not unreasonable to think that people can eat that way and keep their insulin around 6 or so. I know many people who eat plenty of carbs and are incredibly lean and healthy. I do not believe that the current obesity/Syndrome X epidemic can be blamed on carbohydrate alone. It is a disease born of excess and overconsumption of refined foods, not a disease of macronutrient ratios. That's what I think, anyway. Other cultures have had rice etc. as their staple for centuries and have not been prone to these modern problems- because they eat enough (or not enough), but not too much. You don't have to low carb to keep your major homones at good levels. In fact, how many civilisations have followed low carb diets naturally in the past couple of centuries? The Eskimos. That's like it. The Japanese, Chinese, Egyptians, Africans, etc. etc. - all ate a good dose of carbs. Where was the obesity? Where was the Type 2 diabetes? I'm not bashing low carb, I'm bashing low carbers who bash everything that's not low carb. I personally do MUCH better on a low carb diet than a high carb diet. but I'm messed up. For normal people, it need not be so.

Yakumo-
I find myself going "yep, yep, yep" to most of what you say here. I've been burned by an excess of dietary manipulations also. Had we known long ago...alas.

Metabolism dead in the water.

Right now, I've been on Schwarzbein for a month. Despite daily fluctuations, one month later I weight exactly what I weighed one month ago. Exactly to the tenth of a pound!

The good news? Hypertension improvement. I went from the high 150's systolic to 115, 100 yesterday. My doctor wanted to put me on HBP meds last month--I fought it tooth and nail with some supplements and Schwarzbein.

Actually, I thought the weight would come off and then the BP would go down. Wrong.

This is all a very interesting eye opener into our internal science--more than we ever wanted to know.

Yakumo I appreciate your taking time to share your experience w/me. I esp appreciate your humility and that is one reason I was eager to read what you had to say. I feel the same way .... I did major damage to my body through the years from the time I was a little girl through young adulthood and just plain didn't know anybetter and am feeling my way through what works best for this body. I also agree what you said about moderation. "Be temperate in all things" is my guiding word from the Lord. I am grateful for your openness and kind assistance from your own exp. :wave: Terry

Santabarb, How does schw II differ from paleo? Congrats on your bp...what is sys and dias? T :wave:

No prob. Yeah, I think the trouble we all had is that we didn't know any better (but maybe we should have? I did some really stupid things...). Santabard: I think Dr. Schwarzbein stresses that getting healthy will not necessarily mean immediate weight loss. In fact, I'm quite convinced that if I start eating normally again I will get quite fat before it comes off again. My mom would be glad. also, don't neglect the importance of exercise in improving your constitution! but well done, really.

It is, alas, far too easy to really mess yourself up following bad advice. And since I still haven't fixed myself, my advice might yet be bad. And there is a lot of bad low carb advice floating around out there. Don't try all-meat diets! Don't try high saturated fat diets! Don't neglect your bowel flora! I am full of advice on what NOT to do having done most of it. I've tried like every diet.

But Flower51, if you are indeed religious (as it sounds), believe that it's really all in God's hands, not yours. There may be a good reason for what you are going through. I believe that there is a very good reason why I got so messed up (and I think I know what that reason is). Just trust. I know people with worse problems than I have, and they are quite healthy.

Well, good luck to you all. I have found that one thing that helps me is eating more veggies (broccoli! Yum!). Don't concentrate too heavily on meat. I do not believe a very high protein diet is beneficial (bad for adrenaline and bowel flora in my opinion). But again, take what I have to say with a healthy pinch of salt...

Yes Yakamo thank you for reminding me. I believe He's given me this body as a gift, to teach me some things...like trusting Him, temperance and obedience, listening and humility and to rest in His love for me.

I am not "religious" but the most important thing in my life is my relationship with God who calls me to trust and love Him and love others. He loves me so much He rescued me from self and destruction when He sent Jesus to take the punishment I deserve for my sin on Himself. I lived for 27 yrs w/out knowing Him and now for 27 years knowing His faithfulness, love and kindness. In the eternal scheme of things, we have time on this earth for a blink of an eye, and then comes eternity, so where we live, what we have to eat, or wear or own on this earth....those things don't matter as much as how we use them to honor Him and love others.

Like you, I have found too that I feel better when I eat more veggies and use protein as more of a "condiment" than the main meal. That is when my bp is best. Last night I experimented and used some black beans in my salad (I am easing myself into incorporating those as in a few months we'll be in a 3rd world country where that will be one of the only sources of protein available. That is another reason I want to keep my bp down w/out meds...so I don't have to depend on them there). This morning my bp is very good....116/74. :wave: t