Timing critical for intermittent fasting to succeed.
You may opt for one fad diet or another — paleo, keto, alkaline (Tom Brady’s) or carb cycling — but none of them takes into account an essential truth about your body: It uses calories, fat, carbs and glucose differently at different times of the day.
Studies show that eating the same amount of calories early or later in the day produces two very different results. Frontload your food intake so you get 80 percent of your calories before 1 or 2 p.m., and you can lose weight. Eat more than 20 percent of your calories in the evening, and you’ll have trouble losing weight and may even pack it on. That’s because timing is everything — in music, love and nutrition.
Your body is made to consume food while the sun is shining and to not consume food while it’s dark. That aligns with the healthy choice of having at least 12 hours between dinner and breakfast. How to schedule your eating
One option that can help you cut out your late-night snacking or dinner-then-right-to-bed syndrome is to consider some kind of intermittent-fasting schedule. You eat so that there’s a chunk of hours in the day when you don’t consume anything but water, coffee or tea.
It can improve your nutrition, superpower your energy level, help you sleep, reduce your risk for Type 2 diabetes and promote weight loss and improved HDL and LDL cholesterol levels. (That is, if you don’t overeat on nonfasting days.)
How does it do that? As Mark Mattson, the senior investigator for the National Institute on Aging, says, “There is considerable similarity between how cells respond to the stress of exercise and how cells respond to intermittent fasting.” True, most studies have been done on lab animals, but there’s mounting evidence that intermittent fasting is beneficial.
• One study of overweight adults with asthma had participants eat just 20 percent of their regular caloric intake on alternate days for eight weeks. The results: They lost 8 percent of their initial body weight, reduced levels of markers of oxidative stress and inflammation and saw asthma symptoms and quality of life improve.
• Multiple studies indicate that intermittent fasting may help stimulate production of adult stem cells, particularly in the intestines and skeletal muscles, which are essential to counter the decline in bodily functions associated with aging.
So what are your choices?
In “What to Eat When,” Dr. Mike’s new book with Dr. Michael Crupain, the “When Way” guidelines are:
1. Fast each night with at least 12 hours between dinner and breakfast. Want more benefits? Extend that to 14 hours, and then 18. This causes your body to burn up most circulating glucose and stabilizes insulin levels. Then your body burns stored fat.
2. Breakfast and/or lunch should contain lean and plantbased protein (think whole grains, legumes, salmon) and fats (think healthy fats in salmon, or use extra-virgin olive oil with grains and veggies). Because your body is naturally more insulin-resistant at night, avoid simple carbs after midday. Dinner should be plant-heavy (salad and other green, leafy veggies) and calorie-light (about 400 calories, if you need 2,000 a day to maintain a healthy weight.)
3. The Longevity Institute at the University of Sothern California says you can superpower your health and boost weight loss by reducing your calorie intake to 1,000 for one day, 750 for four days. Then resume eating the When Way.
Other patterns for intermittent fasting
You may want to try eating for eight hours — say, noon to 8 p.m. daily — and fasting for 16. Or try the two-five routine, in which you restrict your intake to 500 calories a day twice a week. Then, five days you eat a healthy, full complement of calories (that’s 1,800 to 2,400 for most folks). And then there’s the Warrior Plan: eating during four hours a day and fasting for the remaining 20. Check out DoctorOz.com to see one amazing guy who loves this!
Q: It’s now being reported that there’s no amount of alcohol consumption that’s good for you. I thought it was good for the heart to have one or two glasses of wine a day. What’s the story? Tyler, K., New Orleans
A: For years, we docs have said that one alcoholic drink for women and one or two for men is an acceptable daily health risk because alcohol has cardiovascular benefits, even though it also increases the risk of cancer (for example, drinking anything alcoholic ups breast cancer risk for women). But now, new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that drinking that amount may increase a person’s risk of premature death by 20 percent.
The researchers analyzed data from more than 400,000 people and found that even when folks had slight improvements in cardiovascular health, their risk of other health-related problems, such as cancer, outweighed the benefits. That study came on the heels of research published in The Lancet that reviewed data from more than 700 studies and concluded there’s no amount of alcohol that’s good for you.
However, these were selfreported observational studies and all observational studies can be skewed when people misreport how much they drink and their health info and habits, whether intentionally or not. That said, we docs are continuing our regular, low consumption.
But before you decide whether to keep drinking or not — it is an individual choice — check out Go Sober for October, a fundraising effort in the U.K. that attracted more than 66,800 SoberHeros and raised almost $1.9 million for the registered charity MacMillan Cancer Support. It encourages folks to give up alcohol for one month and discover the benefits. One SoberHero, Kathy, who quit for the month said: “After the four weeks, I felt like a different person. I don’t drink hardly anything anymore. I feel absolutely amazing. I feel revitalized.” So maybe you want to start your own Sober Drive and raise money for a charity you feel strongly about. Cheers!