is fasting better than a bad diet?

Hej,

I was just curious lately I have been injured to the point where I couldn't do any shopping so all i could eat what was left in the house which was chocolate covered almonds dried fruit and take away for most of the day. Would it have been better to not eat anything at all and have fasted for the times while I couldnt get any shopping for example I wake up skip breakfast and lunch but then I had the gf come home with some real food for dinner. or would it be better for me to have snacked on the stuff I had over the course of the day until dinner time? basically is it better to fast if you can't get access to good food for some days or to eat what you have until you get the good food? Not talking long term just for a day or so here and there.

ausswe said:

Hej,

I was just curious lately I have been injured to the point where I couldn't do any shopping so all i could eat what was left in the house which was chocolate covered almonds dried fruit and take away for most of the day. Would it have been better to not eat anything at all and have fasted for the times while I couldnt get any shopping for example I wake up skip breakfast and lunch but then I had the gf come home with some real food for dinner. or would it be better for me to have snacked on the stuff I had over the course of the day until dinner time? basically is it better to fast if you can't get access to good food for some days or to eat what you have until you get the good food? Not talking long term just for a day or so here and there.

If you are injured, I think that eating lightly until the real food arrives makes sense It's not like there is zero value in those foods, and if they are eaten around your energy requirements, they could help out with injury recovery. I'd still avoid trans fats .. if there are any in the chocolate coating, it can be scraped off.

I'm not sure if I buy into the cleansing and healing aspect of fasting. People that seem to get a lot out of it do it for several days, with water or sometimes juice. I wouldn't in your situation.

Hell no, you need calories to maintain what you have. No calories = rapid lean tissue loss.

1) eat

2) when possible, eat well.

haha cool thanks for replies guys makes me feel better about snacking on that food all day. My thinking was its better to get some than nothing but I see a lot of people saying fasting is fine and even beneficial but you guys answered that for me so thanks again =).

Starving is never a good experience. I know this all too well. To eat ramen or starve. Screw it sometimes.

haha I know I just feel guilty eating so many chocolate almonds and dried fruit over the day ... it was all I had until the girlfriend got home with some shopping while i was injured. I especially felt guilty about it because I am trying to loose so flab but my reasoning for eating it was I was injured and probably needed something! even if it was just a bunch not so healthy foods. had a good dinner though at least!

Meh. You are injured. You need to eat to recover. Worry about being or getting fat when you're back on your feet.

dried fruit isn't really bad and neither is chocolate almonds.

if you you were eating twinkies and cupcakes ok.

Fruit is good, carbs.

Chocolate tastes good, makes you happy.

Almonds are really good for you and they taste really good. Yeah, maybe they have the problems that nuts do with phytic acid but if that's all you can get your hands on, so what.

I have a friend who was trying to do GB and Poliquin's GVT on basically ramen and eggs and maybe some hot dogs. Horrible, IMO but he was that broke. I told him to start drinking some milk and cook the hot dogs with the eggs to go with the ramen. Cabbage is pretty cheap. Hell, 50c bean and cheese burritos at that point and bologna.

Eat Food is Food. Many of us have been there. Sometimes you just do what you have to do. Many successful athletes have or have had pretty bad diets.

I think the tick is to have healthy snacks available for those times when you run out of real food rather than having rubbish in the cupboards. Once when a situation similar to this happened i had nothing but the materials to make cake and cookies... needless to say that's what I ate for a week, home baked cakes and cookies =D then I was able to get some real food haha

Try it out if you feel like it. Going a bit without food is not going to kill you.

If I was injured and not being able to do shopping I would kindly ask a friend or family to do it for me or use some of those fancy grocery eshops, but in my case I don't have really unhealthy food at home so I wouldn't have really a choice :roll: .

ausswe said:

I think the tick is to have healthy snacks available for those times when you run out of real food rather than having rubbish in the cupboards.

Yeah, having prepared healthy snacks available is great.

I learned to make sure these foods are always available at my home:

- my beloved protein pancakes (cooking 24-30 in a batch)

- about 5 pounds of salad without any dressing (without dressing/salt it can last for days and still look fresh)

- cooked chicken breasts, canned tuna or other sources of protein that go well with salad

- fruits, protein powder, milk

I prepare everything from the list every 4th day - it takes me cca 1 hour. So I have always something healthy and tasty available.

Thats a good idea having prepared stuff in advanced I am really busy most of the time but maybe sometimes I could fit that in. As for asking people to do some shopping that's exactly what I did got the gf to do it =D but she works outta town some times and as for family well I moved to sweden so I have none and they are so far behind here they don't have e-shopping. Although maybe I could ring the store up and ask for it to be delivered next time anyone else have some good ideas for healthy snacks? perhaps I should open a new thread for that...

Doesn't really matter. Calories in - calories out and hitting your macronutrient and micronutrient needs for the day matters. Eat every 30 minutes or eat one giant meal a day. Or just eat whenever you're hungry

Lots of people fast for 16-20 hours a day and get good results with IF (Intermittent Fasting).

Lindahl said:

Doesn't really matter. Calories in - calories out and hitting your macronutrient and micronutrient needs for the day matters. Eat every 30 minutes or eat one giant meal a day. Or just eat whenever you're hungry

Lots of people fast for 16-20 hours a day and get good results with IF (Intermittent Fasting).

You could not possibly be more wrong about what is important when trying to maintain health OR get the best results from your training. Well, I suppose if you just threw micronutrients out the window you could be very slightly more wrong.

That is literally a 20 year old mindset. Step out of the dark ages.

Joshua Naterman said:

Lindahl said:

Doesn't really matter. Calories in - calories out and hitting your macronutrient and micronutrient needs for the day matters. Eat every 30 minutes or eat one giant meal a day. Or just eat whenever you're hungry

Lots of people fast for 16-20 hours a day and get good results with IF (Intermittent Fasting).

You could not possibly be more wrong about what is important when trying to maintain health OR get the best results from your training. Well, I suppose if you just threw micronutrients out the window you could be very slightly more wrong.

That is literally a 20 year old mindset. Step out of the dark ages.

Having just spent an amazing weekend with Josh, this old timer finally gets it. The yoga world is more than 20 years behind on this simple common sense information. You must eat, and eat according to your output. Just like a good handspring - timing is everything.

Joshua Naterman said:

Lindahl said:

Doesn't really matter. Calories in - calories out and hitting your macronutrient and micronutrient needs for the day matters. Eat every 30 minutes or eat one giant meal a day. Or just eat whenever you're hungry

Lots of people fast for 16-20 hours a day and get good results with IF (Intermittent Fasting).

You could not possibly be more wrong about what is important when trying to maintain health OR get the best results from your training. Well, I suppose if you just threw micronutrients out the window you could be very slightly more wrong.

That is literally a 20 year old mindset. Step out of the dark ages.

How exactly am I wrong? Nutritiming matters somewhat, but it matters far, far less than hitting your macros and micros and getting your daily calories. If anything's outdated it's the idea that you have to be constantly feeding your body in order not to lose muscle mass or "boosting your metabolism". There is no scientific data that supports that idea at all. Infact there's plenty of data that contradicts it.

This is a pretty convincing study -

http://nutritiming.com/docs/Energy_Defi ... p_MSSE.pdf

Cole Dano said:

This is a pretty convincing study -

http://nutritiming.com/docs/Energy_Defi ... p_MSSE.pdf

I agree if you are active it make sense to spread your intake to more-or-less meet energy requirements

although the problem with using this study, besides that it is uncontrolled and self-reported is that:

a) the subjects are all women, in their child-bearing years,

b) they are elite athletes expending extreme amounts of energy daily

and c) women elites, especially in gymnastics, have a high rate of eating disorders, which can alter metabolism

so I personally am not comfortable using this population as a guide for my life.

That said, if you pay attention to your diet at least for a while using nutritiming or any food/activity log you will no doubt

be better off for it.

Cole Dano said:

This is a pretty convincing study -

http://nutritiming.com/docs/Energy_Defi ... p_MSSE.pdf

First of all I find the study a little suspicious coming from what seems to be a biased site. "Nutritiming.com" ?

Having read through that though, the only thing it says is that it's bad for the general performance and appearance of athletes to be in an extended state of energy deficiency. No one has argued that point. The point is that extended state" refers to periods of time longer than 3, 5, 10, 24 or even 48 hours. We're talking weeks of a lower-than-baseline energy intake, which is obviously bad and it makes sense for your body to lower your BMR after such a long time on a calorie deficiency. However we're talking about a time period of up to what, 15 hours tops without food? That's NOT going to lower your BMR in any way shape or form. Neither is it doing to gnaw away at your muscle.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3622486<- This study finds no difference in performance after a 3.5 day fast compared to being in a fed state. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10837292 <- This one finds no correlation between an extended (48 hr) fasting period and a lower BMR. Infact it shows a slight increase in BMR after the fast.

In this study, a mixed meal consisting of 600 calories takes about 5 hrs to be fully digested (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10331398). Eating a larger portion would take even longer than that. Imagine eating a whole food meal like a steak, some potatoes and a bunch of veggies. It would take 8 hrs+ for your body to fully digest it all, with amino acids slipping into your bloodstream during that whole time.

I don't know where this idea that you have to constantly be in a fed state or your body will panic and enter starvation mode comes from, but it has no basis in reality. Eat whenever you want. Hit your macros and micros and your daily caloric needs based on whether you want to gain (energy surplus) or lose fat (energy deficit). Don't fret over this stuf so much, it doesn't have to be that complicated really.

I think you're missing the point Lindahl that the OP was recovering from injury. He was concerned

especially because of that. Everyone misses a meal occasionally and it's no big deal. The question though

is over a long time, how does this chronic behavior affect matters? The studies you quoted measure one-time

occurances, which have no bearing on long-term performance or body composition.

Personally I think it does make sense to spread calories throughout the day, when you can. And elevating

intake around the workout makes some sense. The body does a pretty good job buffering nutrients until

they are needed, including protein in amino acid pools and labile tissue up to a point. But if you have a choice, spreading intake will stabilize insulin when spiking it doesn't serve a major purpose, and also reduce bloating and the chance

of cramping during an athletic performance. I'm not aware of any reputable sports nutritionist who recommends that

athletes skip meals, except those in the "sport" of bodybuilding. Given the amount of calories male athletes typically require, It is just an unnecessary abuse.

FutureisNow said:

I think you're missing the point Lindahl that the OP was recovering from injury. He was concerned

especially because of that. Everyone misses a meal occasionally and it's no big deal. The question though

is over a long time, how does this chronic behavior affect matters? The studies you quoted measure one-time

occurances, which have no bearing on long-term performance or body composition.

There are studies on muslim subjects during ramadan which shows they improve body composition (reduced BF%) during the fast, which lasts from dusk till dawn for weeks.

Personally I think it does make sense to spread calories throughout the day, when you can. And elevating

intake around the workout makes some sense.

Well, it's a choice you make, but in no way is it necessary. If eating 6 times a day fits you better, then by all means go ahead, but just know that there's no reason to believe it leads to a better body composition or better athletic results than eating 3 or 2 times a day.

The body does a pretty good job buffering nutrients until

they are needed, including protein in amino acid pools and labile tissue up to a point. But if you have a choice, spreading intake will stabilize insulin when spiking it doesn't serve a major purpose, and also reduce bloating and the chance

of cramping during an athletic performance.

Spiking insulin is no problem, the body will release the insuline needed to help with anabolism. If you look at total insulin below the curve on a chart measuring the insulin of someone who eats twice a day compared to someone who eats 6 times a day, the total amount of insulin is the same. Also, normal, healthy individuals like most of us on this site, and indeed most people in the athletic community need not worry about insulin spikes.

Regarding bloating, I actually feel and look more bloated when I eat more meals rather than fewer. I think it's because you spend more time in the "fasted" state when you're not eating as often, i.e. on an empty stomach. You just look leaner. Also, I felt no difference whatsoever regarding cramping being on IF and not being on it. I think that also is highly individual.

I'm not aware of any reputable sports nutritionist who recommends that

athletes skip meals, except those in the "sport" of bodybuilding. Given the amount of calories male athletes typically require, It is just an unnecessary abuse.

Alan Aragon is one. He's pretty reputable and agrees that nutritiming is pretty unimportant, could look him up. He's been hired by alot of NFL and NBA teams for nutritional consultation AFAIK. Lots of people, me included, feel that having to eat 6 times a day is more of a hassle than sitting down 2 or 3 times a day and eating for a longer time.

I never felt more stressed out over food than when I was under the delusion that you have to eat every 3 hours or your body is going to turn into a muscle eating, fat storing monster. Now I am much more relaxed about it. I eat when I have time, and I eat when I'm hungry, not when the clock says so, but when my body says so.

Lindahl said:

Joshua Naterman said:

Lindahl said:

Doesn't really matter. Calories in - calories out and hitting your macronutrient and micronutrient needs for the day matters. Eat every 30 minutes or eat one giant meal a day. Or just eat whenever you're hungry

Lots of people fast for 16-20 hours a day and get good results with IF (Intermittent Fasting).

You could not possibly be more wrong about what is important when trying to maintain health OR get the best results from your training. Well, I suppose if you just threw micronutrients out the window you could be very slightly more wrong.

That is literally a 20 year old mindset. Step out of the dark ages.

How exactly am I wrong? Nutritiming matters somewhat, but it matters far, far less than hitting your macros and micros and getting your daily calories. If anything's outdated it's the idea that you have to be constantly feeding your body in order not to lose muscle mass or "boosting your metabolism". There is no scientific data that supports that idea at all. Infact there's plenty of data that contradicts it.

You are saying this because you do not actually understand how your body works.

I am not going to re-type a 6 hour seminar, but you are confusing such a large number of processes and study implications that I cannot correct you without literally typing out the whole process.

You are more than welcome to continue thinking in ways that you currently understand, but that will not change the reality of what happens in our bodies.

Joshua Naterman said:

You are saying this because you do not actually understand how your body works.

I am not going to re-type a 6 hour seminar, but you are confusing such a large number of processes and study implications that I cannot correct you without literally typing out the whole process.

You are more than welcome to continue thinking in ways that you currently understand, but that will not change the reality of what happens in our bodies.

I'm more than happy to admit I do not fully understand how my body works, which in all honesty no one does. All I, as a layman, can do is ask for scientific evidence, try to understand what it means, and draw my own conclusions. From the evidence I've come across so far, I haven't seen anything that supports the idea that you have to eat every 2-3 hours not to lose strenght or to put on fat. This corresponds well with what I've experienced with my own body during my years of training.

I'm not asking you to spell anything out for me or to give me a seminar. I'm just asking for evidence for your claims. Such as scientific studies.

Alan Aragon is one. He's pretty reputable and agrees that nutritiming is pretty unimportant, could look him up. He's been hired by alot of NFL and NBA teams for nutritional consultation AFAIK. Lots of people, me included, feel that having to eat 6 times a day is more of a hassle than sitting down 2 or 3 times a day and eating for a longer time.

I never felt more stressed out over food than when I was under the delusion that you have to eat every 3 hours or your body is going to turn into a muscle eating, fat storing monster. Now I am much more relaxed about it. I eat when I have time, and I eat when I'm hungry, not when the clock says so, but when my body says so.

http://www.alanaragon.com/an-objective- ... sting.html

With headings in his paper like "Skipping Breakfast = Not Too Brilliant" and "Fasted Resistance Training = Not Optimal" you can't really believe he endorses meal skipping to any degree. Further for resistance athletes he sounds rather against it:

Fasting & Exercise

* All of the above benefits (of IF and CR - caloric restriction) can be achieved by exercise, minus the downsides of fasting.

* A growing body of research shows that exercise can also increase BDNF, and the degree of effect appears to be intensity-dependent.

* Despite equivocal performance effects of pre- or midworkout EAA+CHO, it minimizes muscle damage that occurs from fasted resistance training.

* Immediate preworkout protein and/or EAA+CHO increases protein synthesis more than fasted resistance training with those substrates ingested immediately postworkout.

* It’s possible that a partial fast (as short as 4 hours) before resistance training can negatively impact muscle protein status.

There are studies on muslim subjects during ramadan which shows they improve body composition (reduced BF%) during the fast, which lasts from dusk till dawn for weeks.

Regarding studies during Ramadan, the key thing to note is that typically caloric intake is reduced. This is quite different than the IF approach of maintaining or increasing caloric intake, for bulking. High volume or intense athletics are not recommended by Martin B while fasting.

That said, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17909674 showed weight loss without muscle mass loss, in an un-athletic female population. (Dehydration is also a factor as water is not allowed during the day.)

In active men, http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(99)00145-8/abstract found little change in bf% (< 1.5%) within the error range of measurement. No mention of muscle mass is made in the abstract.

This study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16645692 of metabolic markers during this fast are often negative.

So overall, there is nothing to recommend fasting for athletes.

Well, it's a choice you make, but in no way is it necessary. If eating 6 times a day fits you better, then by all means go ahead, but just know that there's no reason to believe it leads to a better body composition or better athletic results than eating 3 or 2 times a day.

I'm not talking about eating six times a day. Eating 3 square and a few snacks with or without workout nutrition (depending if one works out). That is natural and simply doing what the body calls for. 2 meals is way different than 3. The onus is on you to prove that not eating this way is beneficial for any aspect of athletic endeavors and you have not done that. In fact it seems to have little to offer except hunger.

Regarding bloating, I actually feel and look more bloated when I eat more meals rather than fewer. I think it's because you spend more time in the "fasted" state when you're not eating as often, i.e. on an empty stomach. You just look leaner. Also, I felt no difference whatsoever regarding cramping being on IF and not being on it. I think that also is highly individual.

I agree it's a matter of timing it and may be highly individual. If you are going to perform in a fasted state, there may be energy and hunger issues to deal with. If you are performing after a large meal, there still be food in the stomach laying around. If you can tolerate it, by all means...

spiking insulin is no problem, the body will release the insuline needed to help with anabolism. If you look at total insulin below the curve on a chart measuring the insulin of someone who eats twice a day compared to someone who eats 6 times a day, the total amount of insulin is the same. Also, normal, healthy individuals like most of us on this site, and indeed most people in the athletic community need not worry about insulin spikes.

The timing of the meal is important whether it promotes anabolism. With two or fewer meals it's going to be harder

to time. Not impossible but harder. As well, though nutrients will be released for longer after a larger meal, they still

are released less after each hour, which will leave gaps of several hours of sub optimum supply. While it may not cause a loss, it will not help with gains.

I'm not an insulin alarmist but does the intensity make a difference? For example, I can leave my hand on an object at

100 F degrees for 3 hours without a problem. However, can I leave it on at 200 F for 1.5 hours? The total amount

of heat under the curve is the same It's logical that intensity matters, not just the total amount. The potential

for damage will be increased given the intensity of the release, besides the fact I am not certain that the total amount

is always the same.

Regarding timing, meal size and other factors than calories in general, this does relate some interesting information:

http://www.foodandhealth.com/cpecourses ... nack.shtml

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/berardi1.htm

Everything on the nutritiming page is fairly good as a source for the legitimacy of continuous energy balance, as well as forthcoming research coming from Dr. Benardot this year. It very clearly predicts who has high body fat and who has low body fat in athletes, with no fails. It also predicts performance. Everyone on this website should consider themselves an athlete. This should matter to everyone.

This is a screenshot of references from a PDF file. I am tired to death of talking about this stuff right now. I don't want to retype things.

This concept also bridges the gap between the "anabolic window" and body composition changes seen over long periods, but to bridge that gap I would need 1-2 hours of your time.

'More importantly, when you put it into practice you see superior results every time. I've literally watched a girl in my class change over the course of 2 months while she was one of Benardot's subjects for an upcoming study, which I did not know at the time. All I knew was that she was changing more rapidly than I have seen almost anyone change, and she started winning race after race in steeplechase after 2 years of never even standing on the podium. She went to states, don't know how she did but that's a ridiculous improvement. She dropped 11 seconds off of her race time in less than 2 weeks. If an experienced college athlete seeing these types of results doesn't make you think twice about what you believe currently, then you haven't had enough experience with higher level athletes to know how ridiculously fast that kind of improvement is. In addition to performance improvements, she changed from being a pretty in shape girl to looking like a machine. I watched her VO2max test at the end of the semester and dude... I have rarely seen a woman that lean. The change took 2 months.

If you want a giant pile of science on this, you're going to have to wait 10 years. If you want to take advantage of everything your body is willing to give you with the right stimuli combinations then I will highly suggest that you try it yourself and see. It should go without saying that if you have a fitness enthusiast's activity level then food quality is going to make a much bigger difference on the carb side than if you are a competitive athlete in a physically demanding sport simply due to the level of full-body glycogen depletion and the effect this has on glycogenesis speed.

There is also a pile of evidence showing that intermittent fasting is associated with increased insulin resistance. All you have to do is a pubmed search for the two terms. There are honestly too many.

You should know that our bodies are capable of producing chemicals that make us feel good and sometimes keep us from noticing the sub-optimal nature of our current status. Just because you feel satisfied does not mean your body has gotten what it needs.

Short version:

Your body is made to require a certain amount of sugar, both at rest and when working at varying intensities. As the level of stored sugar decreases, our bodies adjust by making sugar out of other things. Unfortunately those other things are intact proteins. Yes, lactate can be used, but I had a long PM discussion with FiN about why that doesn't make a practical difference under normal circumstances. After HIIT, it certainly can offset up to 60% of the reliance on protein for GNG, but that is short-lived. Meaning for less than 4 hours.

There are other threads where I have detailed this quite clearly, and explained how using labile protein stores actually means tearing down excess liver mass and after a certain point the body switches over to skeletal muscle. In either case you end up spending energy and protein rebuilding the torn down tissues, leaving less protein available to be used for new skeletal muscle synthesis.

When you combine this with a lower carb diet you are now redirecting protein to GNG as well as the reconstruction of the labile stores.

There is a good reason why the typical math you describe does not work: It does not take into account the cyclical nature of:

carb restriction -> protein in GNG -> Less protein available for tissue synthesis -> unintended calorie deficits due to energy required for GNG and unaccounted-for thermic effect of protein metabolism -> lowering of free IGF-1, T3, and virtually everything associated with lower body fat levels -> impaired maintenance of lean mass -> slower metabolism due to loss of lean mass -> same calories cause more fat gain.

Another screen capture.

By itself, when combined with exercise and sufficient calories, this limits performance and sets a cycle of new proteins being built from the exercise stimulus then being broken down for energy (carbs). This is exactly why, on the leangains site, Martin clearly tells everyone that leangains produces very slow gains in lean mass and that you need to eat exactly how he tells you to.

If you do it juuuuust right, and it is certainly possible to do without using complicated maths, you will just barely stay in positive protein synthesis balance, which is why you see very slow gains. This does not take into account the high nitrogen load on the kidneys that comes from using extra protein in GNG. Combined with a diet that is recommended to already be high in protein, at 2+ grams per kg BW this extra load can put you into a danger zone where you WILL see long-term kidney damage.

There are a ton of people who don't get the results they see in his testimonials, and Martin tells them very clearly that the testimonial results are due to his direct, and strict, supervision. That's because the positive protein synthesis balance is so small.

As for Aragon, he's a smart guy and he is right as well as wrong. Aside from Dr. Benardot, I'm the only person out there talking about dynamically meeting energy demand in real time, and I go further. I base meal composition on the breakdown of fuel substrate you have been burning based on activity. No one, period, is doing this besides me. That is part of why I get better results... I prefer to look at exactly what is happening based on known factors, and adjust the diet accordingly. This means that your macronutrient breakdown for a 24 hour period will not match hardly any of your meals when looked at individually. If that concept doesn't immediately make at least a little bit of sense, you may be beyond my ability to help.

If you compare my way with what Aragon is talking about, they are completely different. He is talking about standard nutritional practice, meaning that you do the standard "I need this much protein, carbs and fat" and break them apart into balanced meals. That's retarded to do, because you don't always burn the same breakdown of energy substrates. However, when you compare 3 meals per day with 6 meals per day the main difference will be a somewhat higher body fat level when trying to gain weight. For that purpose, and because team sport athletes only do this for a few months per year, there really IS no practical difference between 3 meals and 6 aside from some body fat that they will later lose by the time the season starts.

If you want to have the combination of truly awesome looks and truly awesome performance, in objective terms related to what you are getting versus what your body is chemically capable of achieving with the correct inputs (which is different from whatever any of us think subjectively), my way is better. I literally follow what the body does and replace what is used by percentage according to the best experimental data we have, and it works stupefyingly well.