[VergeOfDiscovery]

I've always sensed it cannot be good for the body to be constantly digesting food all the time. Personally, nothing puts me to sleep faster than even a moderately heavy meal, although some people I know don't feel right physically if they let themselves get hungry.

Lately, I've been working on shedding some excess weight. Not terribly heavy by any stretch, but I just feel better when lighter on my feet.

I've jettisoned a lot (but not all) of junk from my diet and eat far better (in terms of healthier foods) than I ever have.

Wanting to see more progress, I've recently been experimenting with Time Restricted Eating. The idea is to do all of one's food consumption within say an 8 hour window and give the body a chance to digest everything before ingesting more.

Experiments (in mice) have shown this approach provides a variety of health benefits (especially with regard to obesity, metabolic disorders and type II diabetes).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4255155/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...113820.htm

Mice that were given access to food for limited period of time each day fared better overall compared to mice that had access to food all the time.

How I've applied this is to knock out large meals in the evening, basically ceasing all food intake by 6:00 PM at the latest (sometimes as early as 4:00 PM). That way my body is not still trying to digest a lot of food by the time I go to bed. This approach (prolonged night fasting) is also helping with sleep and digestive issues.

I'm finding that this approach doesn't encourage one to gorge during the 8 hour eating window and seems to prod even further into healthier eating choices overall.

I'm seeing some success with this with regard to weight, but there are definitely other health benefits to be had.

Here's another study on how prolonged nightly fasting reduces the risk of breast cancer recurrence in humans:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27032109

[VergeOfDiscovery]

There's also this:

TRF...can have profound beneficial effects on the health of rodents and humans

Recently, IF and PF, as well as TRF have emerged as potential strategies for avoiding major dietary changes while achieving strong effects not just for one diseases risk factor but for an array of factors that constitutes the foundation for metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and possibly neurodegenerative diseases (Mattson et al., 2014). Although their mechanisms of action are still poorly understood, they appear to promote coordinated effects on the aging process and do not simply inhibit specific enzymes, as it is often the case for drugs

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388543/

[VergeOfDiscovery]

Calorie Restriction in Male Mice Feminizes Gene Expression

Relevant additional application...

Short-Term Calorie Restriction in Male Mice Feminizes Gene Expression and Alters Key Regulators of Conserved Aging Regulatory Pathways

Our data show that CR induces widespread gene expression changes and acts through highly evolutionarily conserved pathways, from microorganisms to mammals, and that its life-extension effects might arise partly from a shift toward a gene expression profile more typical of females

These results suggest that CR has a generally feminizing effect on gene expression

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article...ne.0005242

I mentioned in another post that someone once mentioned that the most significant thing they ever did to feminize themselves and feel more feminine was to lose weight. This study suggests there might be more at play behind the scenes (in terms of feminization) than simply losing the weight.

[Xandi]

Hi Verge,
Even though this is an old post, I thought I'd chime in and share a video here,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UkZAwKoCP8&list=PLMQP3m8_R7YyfLOroLOlh65mbOhOEiUSy&index=12

I've been experimenting with this since 2014, I found it much easier to just skip breakfast instead.
If you try looking back to the last century, you would be amazed to find out that humans haven't always eat breakfast the way we are doing it nowadays. I narrowed the change to one of Bernays's PR stunts, it's a really interesting story if you find time to look into it.
Anyways, from my personal experience, the whole "hunger" feeling is insulin related, your body knows there's a huge load of food coming its way so it prepares itself in advance by producing insulin. To oversimplify, what insulin does is it takes excess glucose from the blood stream and turns it into fat- a good thing to do while you're eating, but insulin without eating completely depletes the sugar from your blood and hence kicks in the survival instinct that pushes you to eat whatever you can get your hands on. It does that because it's easier for it to process new food than to dig in into the storage. The more you eat, the more insulin you make and your body will remember tomorrow to make even more. The end result is insulin resistance (been there) and diabetes (I was getting ready to follow into my father's footsteps and start insulin shots at the age of 37).
Well, what I managed to figure out is that, if you manage to fight the urge to eat, the hunger goes away after about half an hour. Licorice root tea helps a lot to keep the "fake hunger" at bay. Thing is, your body is a smart machine and it figures out really fast that there's no food delivery, so it will kick in burning the fat storage instead. The above video explains a bit of the benefits of that (other than loosing weight).
I first started eating breakfast at the office instead of eating it at home, then after I got used to that, I started pushing the breakfast later in the day, 15 minutes at a time. Couples of months later I realized that my breakfast is really close to lunch time, so I merged them into one meal, then I continued pushing the lunch time later and later, until I finally settled for 3PM as the first meal of the day.
Then I switched jobs and my new employer wasn't happy with me eating in front of my computer at 3PM, I should be eating at noon as everybody else, so I said fuck him and I skipped the office meals altogether. I moved to a different job but the meal time stuck.
Now I am eating my first (and sometimes only) meal of the day around 5 or 5:30 PM and I never felt better, both physically and mentally (went from 270 pounds down to 169 and held that steady for the last (almost) 4 years).
Of course, it matters a lot WHAT you are eating - you must put the junk food in the junk bin where it belongs and get real food instead.

Just my two cents

Cheers,
Xandi

[VergeOfDiscovery]

Hi Verge,
Even though this is an old post, I thought I'd chime in and share a video here,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UkZAwKoCP8&list=PLMQP3m8_R7YyfLOroLOlh65mbOhOEiUSy&index=12

I've been experimenting with this since 2014, I found it much easier to just skip breakfast instead.
If you try looking back to the last century, you would be amazed to find out that humans haven't always eat breakfast the way we are doing it nowadays. I narrowed the change to one of Bernays's PR stunts, it's a really interesting story if you find time to look into it.
Anyways, from my personal experience, the whole "hunger" feeling is insulin related, your body knows there's a huge load of food coming its way so it prepares itself in advance by producing insulin. To oversimplify, what insulin does is it takes excess glucose from the blood stream and turns it into fat- a good thing to do while you're eating, but insulin without eating completely depletes the sugar from your blood and hence kicks in the survival instinct that pushes you to eat whatever you can get your hands on. It does that because it's easier for it to process new food than to dig in into the storage. The more you eat, the more insulin you make and your body will remember tomorrow to make even more. The end result is insulin resistance (been there) and diabetes (I was getting ready to follow into my father's footsteps and start insulin shots at the age of 37).
Well, what I managed to figure out is that, if you manage to fight the urge to eat, the hunger goes away after about half an hour. Licorice root tea helps a lot to keep the "fake hunger" at bay. Thing is, your body is a smart machine and it figures out really fast that there's no food delivery, so it will kick in burning the fat storage instead. The above video explains a bit of the benefits of that (other than loosing weight).
I first started eating breakfast at the office instead of eating it at home, then after I got used to that, I started pushing the breakfast later in the day, 15 minutes at a time. Couples of months later I realized that my breakfast is really close to lunch time, so I merged them into one meal, then I continued pushing the lunch time later and later, until I finally settled for 3PM as the first meal of the day.
Then I switched jobs and my new employer wasn't happy with me eating in front of my computer at 3PM, I should be eating at noon as everybody else, so I said fuck him and I skipped the office meals altogether. I moved to a different job but the meal time stuck.
Now I am eating my first (and sometimes only) meal of the day around 5 or 5:30 PM and I never felt better, both physically and mentally (went from 270 pounds down to 169 and held that steady for the last (almost) 4 years).
Of course, it matters a lot WHAT you are eating - you must put the junk food in the junk bin where it belongs and get real food instead.

Just my two cents

Cheers,
Xandi

I've been mostly a breakfast skipper for much of my adult life. Even of late, I just have two cups of coffee (mmm) and 1 piece of toast with peanut butter in the am. On days off I may certainly do more!

I never read Fit For Life but I recall it does suggest not eating anything before noon. To me, the key thing is that the body does not (and should not) be under the pressure of digesting food 24/7. I have friends that swear that they cannot be empty stomached with out it driving them crazy in a bad way, but I know for myself that skipping meals is not that difficult. 

Currently, I don't eat lunch while working (for multiple reasons). I just feel better not being weighed down by it. 

I have vegan friends, but to me, if I were a vegan, I'd be plenty happy sticking with vegetables (which I love) and not trying to make up for a lack of meat with meat substitutes. Even the highly praised Impossible Burger is mostly soy. I'd have more respect for it if it actually contained at least some range of vegetables. Since it doesn't, when I'm in the mood for a burger, mine is Angus!

[Stevenator.]

I’ve been a breakfast skipper my whole adult life, too. I don’t like going to bed hungry, so that probably does add to my figure.

[Xandi]

I’ve been a breakfast skipper my whole adult life, too. I don’t like going to bed hungry, so that probably does add to my figure.

The science behind loosing the weight is simple. It comes down to energy storage and not that whole calories crap.
Whatever you eat, goes through your liver and all glucose is converted into glycogen and stored onsite right in the liver. That way, whenever your muscles need energy, the liver will convert glycogen into glucose and release it into the bloodstream. All sucrose gets converted directly to fat, that's why you should run away whenever you see sugar, half of it is sucrose.
A good meal would give an average modern citizen a 12 to 14 hours reserve of glycogen (if you work out or do hard physical labor you burn it faster). Once the glycogen reserve is depleted, you get hungry at first and then if you abstain from eating, your body will switch to burning fat. The longer you stay in that mode, the more fat you will burn. Of course, eating processed food would bring all the fat reserve right back.
I pig out most nights but I only eat what I cook myself or raw fruit and vegetables. My weight stays flat at 169 pounds.
In the video I posted above, Mattson describes a bit the benefits of switching into fat burning mode, it goes all the way to brain cells regeneration.

[Xandi]

I've been mostly a breakfast skipper for much of my adult life. Even of late, I just have two cups of coffee (mmm) and 1 piece of toast with peanut butter in the am. On days off I may certainly do more!

I never read Fit For Life but I recall it does suggest not eating anything before noon. To me, the key thing is that the body does not (and should not) be under the pressure of digesting food 24/7. I have friends that swear that they cannot be empty stomached with out it driving them crazy in a bad way, but I know for myself that skipping meals is not that difficult. 

Currently, I don't eat lunch while working (for multiple reasons). I just feel better not being weighed down by it. 

I have vegan friends, but to me, if I were a vegan, I'd be plenty happy sticking with vegetables (which I love) and not trying to make up for a lack of meat with meat substitutes. Even the highly praised Impossible Burger is mostly soy. I'd have more respect for it if it actually contained at least some range of vegetables. Since it doesn't, when I'm in the mood for a burger, mine is Angus!

I guess I classify as a vegan myself based on what I am eating. I took a break from eating meat back in 2014 and to my surprise, a couple of months later I realized that meat smells like rotten decomposing carcass (which technically is). I could never force myself to eat meat again, the stench is way too powerful for me. Imagine my wife and kids are meat eaters, what a happy place my place is 
Afterwards I ran into Esselstyn's experiment and I dropped the rest of the animal products.
So yeah, I might be a vegan, but I'm not one of them 
Vegan junk food is worse than regular junk food, fact.