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Comment by alsobrsp | Hacker News Reader

Are there any "good" resources that explain "proper" fasting? The Internet seems to be chock-full with information of questionable provenance.

A personal example. When my wife and I started keto and intermittent fasting we choose the 8/16 schedule and only ate between 12:00-20:00. I was having a conversation recently with a client, family practice doctor, he said I wasn't really intermittent fasting. I was just skipping breakfast. So who knows.

What we did worked well until it didn't. With low carb, <20g; low calorie, < 1300 kcals; and fasting. I lost 60-70 pounds in 2 years. Then I started gaining it back, I an up 40ish. As I understand it now, I have been shorting my calories too much and my metabolism has tanked.

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I dunno, I just know that if anyone complains of any malady here on HN, the fastoids will jump on them like white on rice. It's like /r/nofap for techbro types.

I'm skeptical of most of it too, but that's because there's a lot of competing methods, and probably no one of them is best.

The best summary I've seen is this: https://spyderdoc.substack.com/p/doctors-heart-series-part-6...

Because it is a fantastic summary by a medical doctor that is becoming personally convinced. It presents an overarching narrative of two bodily systems that cannot very well operate at the same time, the second of which operates during periods of fasting because (in part) of the reduction in insulin, which essentially "triggers" the competing, de-facto mechanism.

You probably guessed it, but the autophagy-inducing bit happens as part of that second, insulin-supressed process.

He advocates a 3-day water-only fast once a month (for himself). I personally switched to a one-meal-a-day plan for 3-4 days a week, and am trying to build up to 3 day fasts 1/m.

I also have this link saved for some reason: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S155041311...

What clicked for me recently was the insulin story. Keto, 8/16, multi-day fasting, etc all seem to be tied together under the "reduce time spent with floods of insulin" theme. It wouldn't surprise me if any of them are fine, and advocates of "the one true IF" are just being territorial.

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