Interesting but is it worth living being hungry all the time? Are the extra years (you might not get anyway due to illness or accident) on average worth it to you the individual?
First thing to go: snacks. I made a simple rule: don't keep snacks handy. It's way too easy for me to graze. The other thing I did was to greatly reduce my portion sizes. I found a couple of things: first, that if I still felt hungry after finishing a meal, I didn't feel that way a few minutes later. I also noticed that I didn't feel nearly as hungry in general as I thought I would. Keep in mind that restaurant portions often are big enough for two, sometimes three people. If I take half home, there's tomorrow's lunch or dinner. Win-win.
Occasional treats are not a bad thing, but I won't let myself fall into the trap of "oh, just one more bag of chips won't do any harm (lather, rinse, repeat)."
The first summer, I broke out my long-dormant recumbent trike, fixed the broken spokes, and got it back out for long rides, and I also rode a lot last summer as well. During this time, I found that I needed to eat more to support the rides, but I didn't gain weight, and my rides got faster through the season - very noticeably so last summer. Once it got too cold to ride, I had to readjust my eating habits again, but it still wasn't too difficult.
After 28 months of this, I'm down to 195. I'd like to get down to 170, but I'm not going to go nuts trying to hit the target. As it is, my knees and feet are very thankful, and I feel a whole lot better.
I am not eating any healthier, just less food.
For exercise, I started walking my dogs 4-5 nights a week in the evenings for a few miles (think closer to speed walking than regular).[0] I stopped losing weight when I stopped walking so often - the cold is getting to me this year, will resume in the spring. I'm seeing no weight gain though, because I haven't increased the amount of food I'm putting in.
Couple of things to add to your observations:
I've found that with time, a sensation of 'hungry' is just another sensation that my body reports - it's not an imperative to eat. And as I've adapted to reduced calories, this has largely faded.
For the periodic conference or social gathering, I'll and enjoy the excessive amounts of food. For longer events this might cause an uptick of a few pounds, but it settles back to the prior level within a week or two.
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[0] I know - in the US I should put the period inside of the paren (or quote). But that's illogical. I refuse.
I fully support your choice. We're in good company:
"... it is counter-intuitive to hackers to mutilate literal strings with characters that don't belong in them."
I also noticed that my weight tended to stair-step downward.
Case in point: I've done IF on and off for awhile and a mate of mine was interested in trying it. He used to say that one thing that put him off was that he'd get cranky and a little shaky if he didn't eat for awhile. Something you could mistakenly arm-chair away as 'most likely just anxiety about being hungry'.
So he did IF for a bit and it was generally fine. He didn't do it really long-term.
So around a year after that he starts having visual problems. Well, turns out he's a type-1 diabetic and he'd been pre-diabetic for most of his life without realizing it. Relatively late-onset for the condition, but a lot made sense after that diagnosis.
To go back to the original comment, it's probably less about 'talking' to your doctor literally; sure there's nothing they can say about IF that you can't find out yourself, but they can get you blood tests and perform the right physical tests to make sure you're suitably healthy to do IF correctly without harming yourself.
I think the idea that he'd been less glucose-tolerant than average, before developing full-blown type 1, was thrown around but it wasn't anything definite.
Such as?
Please name just one such metabolic product, otherwise this is just pseudo-scientific bullshit. (Extra points for a link to a paper in the primary scientific literature.)
Last time I heard similar bullshit, the guy, when pressed, named "amino acids". Which is not a waste product, it's raw material. If you can't name even one, either you're making stuff up or you've been lied to.
Of course, it makes as much sense to say we shouldn't exercise because it releases "toxins"that make our muscles hurt. But, I'm guessing that's what people are normally misunderstanding in these cases.
Long answer: no, because:
For $reasons I accidentally ended up on a calorie controlled diet, something around 1600-1800 a day. This persisted for too long.
Basically I felt like I was on the edge of a cold all the time. Anything activity like cycling was utterly draining. The world was very dull and grey indeed.
Now, I suspect that what they are talking about here is diet and calorie control (I wasn't eating rice). I doubt it was as extreme as what 1800 kcals a day is for a 6ft3 male.
Now, there were other factors that may or may not have contributed to the feeling of utter "urgh" however, I don't see how its fun to like on a calorie controlled diet, unless you grew up with it.
Let me guess... pretty bad headaches and maybe what feels like palpitations, specially when laying down?
Did you end up getting off the caloric restrictive diet or tone down on the exercise?
For the headaches and the rest, you have to up your electrolytes: sodium, potassium and magnessium. Your body on ketosis will excrete much more of them than usual. Occasionally I get a pretty bad headache that goes away with 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, sometimes even more.
My observations: (1) you start to pay less attention to the hunger signals over time, (2) food, even bland food, starts to taste really good, (3) this could just be a placebo effect, but I would get really cold when hungry and then feel really warm after I ate, not sure if that was my metabolism increasing after a meal and (4) if I cheated, I could put 3-4 pounds on in a day which I assumed was mostly water and muscle glycogen stores, not fat.
I have also cut alcohol consumption completely out of my life, unless I am celebrating something. This makes me far, far less likely to not care about my weight and my health, and I have no feelings of regret when I am hungry.
But pleasure is easy and ice cream tastes good. Balance is everything.
That's why calorie restriction is a thing of beauty; eat what you want within the bounds of a caloric limit.
Personally, I eat very light all week (sub 1500 calories), then splurge on the weekend.
On the weekends I would eat like a pig and play Oblivion all day.
Still, I lost 50 pounds in 2 months. I do not recommend this. My lung popped (but it healed itself) and some of my hair fell out (it grew back) from the loss in protein intake. Like I said before, balance is everything.
Still, I do agree it makes sense to be light on the weekdays and splurge on the weekends. After all, there's only so much food you can stuff down your gullet in a span of a couple of days without making yourself sick, regardless of your caloric intake from the previous week.
Right. I make no claims about my method being "good". But I work long days, and commute. So I usually don't each during the weekday, then come home and have a great meal. Then TV and bed. I'm sure any benefits come from fewer calories eaten in aggregate.
I'm 46 now and this seems to have started maybe four years ago. It's kind of a bummer because I really enjoy beer and cocktails.
[1] I have a chronic autoimmune digestive disease, at one point I couldn't eat enough to keep from dropping weight, was in hospital with intravenous nutrition etc.; I'm pretty much OK now after surgery and new kick-ass meds.
For most people hunger is a mind set, and eating is a habit.
What sort of data? That we (in the West at least) eat far too much? That you won't starve if you skip eating for a day?
I also enjoy eating. What I meant was, people, generally, aren't eating because their body requires nourishment, but rather because it's meal time.
Amnesiacs who ate a big lunch could eat another large lunch after they forgot the first one.
Not perfect, but it helps indicate a leaning towards hunger, satiety, and the mind.
I agree. And I think that's how most fad diets work: they are roundabout methods of calorie restriction. It's really hard to eat 3000 calories worth of vegetables, or even lean meat.
Also, I've found that eating food high in fat keeps me satiated. I have an avocado w/ coffee for breakfast (~5:45 AM) and that lasts me until ~1pm.
Unfortunately, we (US) teach people that it does require action - through advertising, through school nutrition teachings and implementations (meal + 2 snacks in a 7 hour school day, at least for young kids).
I personally maintain a weight at the edge of under weight generally consuming a high level of calories (and this is in my 50s). I doubt I could survive calorie restriction.
Anyway, maybe it's sour grape but I suspect the whole calorie restriction thing is boondoggle based on ignoring the variety of factors influencing calorie consumption and longevity outside very controlled circumstances. If normal lab mice (or monkeys or some humans) are fat and inactive, calorie restriction might be good for them while it might be very bad for active animals.
Some people eat the same thing for breakfast and lunch every day, by choice. Anyone like that would say that hunger is well worth a longer life.
Personally, I like variety, but I'm trying to change.
Pain is the body's way to signal illness or injury, when the pain is signalling inaccurate, the brain can learn to not feel the pain.
But I spent over a year at perhaps a 10-15% reduction in calories. Persistent discomfort never went away for me. I was only able to maintain the diet by my constant awareness of concrete and measurable progress towards a specific weight loss goal.
I believe that I have more willpower than most, and diets are probably easier for me than most. Yet I doubt that I could live the rest of my life on a calorie restricted diet for the sake of living a bit longer.
I still struggle with overeating when I'm hungry and there's food in front of me.
A lot of people that do it say they don't really have a problem. They eat a large volume of food with a high nutrient-calorie ratio. Or some people only eat within certain time ranges which they say makes it easy to lower calories without getting extra hungry.
Also people they say they feel physically and mentally great when they eat a super healthy and calorie restricted so a little hunger is a mild tradeoff.
See summary of studies: http://outcomereference.com/causes/115-Fasting
Your assumption that you will be "hungry all the time" is incorrect. It's quite easy to run a 25% deficit in keto. So easy that difficulty maintaining body weight is a big reason people stop.
This space is crippled with pseudo-science, but I think the idea is that there could be irrecoverable damage done by that time, and that your old self simply won't heal as well. But I'll bet starting at 60 beats never starting.
People would rather start "bike shedding" rather than try gain a deeper understanding of the topic.