Anonymous wrote:OP here.

Ok, it's been 2 days of "fasting", aka skipping breakfast. It's amazing...I'm not that hungry at all. I have no cravings. I actually made it to 12:30pm. I am usually starving by 10 if I eat breakfast at 7.

what gives?!?

Good job OP, keep it up.
I am trying to eat at 12, 3 and 6, around 400 calories each. Fingers crossed!

OP here.

Ok, it's been 2 days of "fasting", aka skipping breakfast. It's amazing...I'm not that hungry at all. I have no cravings. I actually made it to 12:30pm. I am usually starving by 10 if I eat breakfast at 7.

what gives?!?

Why the criticism for hearing about what works for some people. This is not diet drugs or weird food combinations that endanger someone’s health. This is eating your meals in an 8 hour window. It could be 9 am to 5 pm and no one would bat an eye but if the eating happens between noon and 8 pm it is indicative of disordered eating? WTF?

There is actually a lot of science that supports the benefits of intermittent fasting. I do this in combination with reducing sugar and increasing Unprocessed foods and high fiber foods. Call it radical if you will but you sound silly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, thanks for the info.

Tell me the truth. Did your nutritionist seriously recommend carnation breakfast and margarine or was that hyperbole?

And I’m sure you’re a wonderful mother to your DD.

Seriously both are on the sheet as dairy/fat option. As is low fat granola. On top of three meals 2 snacks are recommended and here are some recommended snacks:

Pizza rolls, 6 totino's pepperoni pizza rolls, 12oz Coca Cola
Half bagel with lox,
4 Fid Newtons with 1 cup whole milk
1 banana, 1tbsp peanut butter, 2 package graham crackers(4 squares)

No joke, there are Oreos listed as snacks, 4 Oreos or 4 chips ahoy!

Did she give me a wrong sheet? Like for a toddler?

You need a new nutritionist.

I think so too. Sad thing is, as I mentioned, we are talking about a hospital/university that is among the best in the States!

DP. I actually see the benefit of giving sample meal plans that include some yummy, not-nutrition-dense foods -- so many people focus on superfoods or nutritionally dense foods that they either cannot stick to their diet or start veering towards disordered eating. Having cookies or pizza rolls as a snack isn't terrible for a teenager or an adult. Not all foods have to be "healthy", some foods can just be yummy. That was the point of Nutella originally, it was yummy and had some calories/sugar.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, thanks for the info.

Tell me the truth. Did your nutritionist seriously recommend carnation breakfast and margarine or was that hyperbole?

And I’m sure you’re a wonderful mother to your DD.

Seriously both are on the sheet as dairy/fat option. As is low fat granola. On top of three meals 2 snacks are recommended and here are some recommended snacks:

Pizza rolls, 6 totino's pepperoni pizza rolls, 12oz Coca Cola
Half bagel with lox,
4 Fid Newtons with 1 cup whole milk
1 banana, 1tbsp peanut butter, 2 package graham crackers(4 squares)

No joke, there are Oreos listed as snacks, 4 Oreos or 4 chips ahoy!

Did she give me a wrong sheet? Like for a toddler?

You need a new nutritionist.

I think so too. Sad thing is, as I mentioned, we are talking about a hospital/university that is among the best in the States!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, thanks for the info.

Tell me the truth. Did your nutritionist seriously recommend carnation breakfast and margarine or was that hyperbole?

And I’m sure you’re a wonderful mother to your DD.

Seriously both are on the sheet as dairy/fat option. As is low fat granola. On top of three meals 2 snacks are recommended and here are some recommended snacks:

Pizza rolls, 6 totino's pepperoni pizza rolls, 12oz Coca Cola
Half bagel with lox,
4 Fid Newtons with 1 cup whole milk
1 banana, 1tbsp peanut butter, 2 package graham crackers(4 squares)

No joke, there are Oreos listed as snacks, 4 Oreos or 4 chips ahoy!

Did she give me a wrong sheet? Like for a toddler?

You need a new nutritionist.

Anonymous wrote:I don’t really consider it fasting but I’ve gone to 3 meals and zero snacks. It’s helped me control cravings. I find that if I snack, I’m literally always hungry. But if I go for hours without eating, hunger is much more tolerable.

+1. As a doctor once told me, "snacks are for toddlers."

Anonymous wrote:PP, thanks for the info.

Tell me the truth. Did your nutritionist seriously recommend carnation breakfast and margarine or was that hyperbole?

And I’m sure you’re a wonderful mother to your DD.

Seriously both are on the sheet as dairy/fat option. As is low fat granola. On top of three meals 2 snacks are recommended and here are some recommended snacks:

Pizza rolls, 6 totino's pepperoni pizza rolls, 12oz Coca Cola
Half bagel with lox,
4 Fid Newtons with 1 cup whole milk
1 banana, 1tbsp peanut butter, 2 package graham crackers(4 squares)

No joke, there are Oreos listed as snacks, 4 Oreos or 4 chips ahoy!

Did she give me a wrong sheet? Like for a toddler?

PP, thanks for the info.

Tell me the truth. Did your nutritionist seriously recommend carnation breakfast and margarine or was that hyperbole?

And I’m sure you’re a wonderful mother to your DD.

PP, I hear you about dietitians. Recommended calories seem to be very high. I understand that some people can and should eat more than others, because of differences in metabolism, but many people should probably cut back.

During my pregnancy, I saw a nutritionist and her recommendations for a diet we're way more than I was eating, and I was gaining the appropriate amount during my pregnancy. I think our entire country has collectively forgotten how much food, or how little, is the right amount.

Of course, as the mother of a teenage girl, I don't think there's much you can say about any of this to your daughter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. For those who have been doing IF, a couple questions...

1. Did you just jump right into it and fast for 2 days? How rough a start is it? I work and have young kids and worry about being angry and/or unfocussed.
2. If you fast for entire days or multiple days, do you also exercise? Only exercise on days you eat? Or don't exercise at all?

Thanks.

I've been fasting on and off for a couple of years doing 5:2. Yes, I jumped right in. My routine is coffee with cream in the morning, but nothing more until dinner. I drink a lot of water, have herbal tea, sometimes a cup of chicken bullion. For some reason salt seems to help on fasting days - I got headaches when I first started, and the chicken bullion helped a lot. I try to stay to 500 calories on fast days, so for me that is the coffee plus a dinner with lots and lots of vegetables and a piece of protein - chicken breast, an egg, something like that. If I have a few calories left over I'll have a few chocolate chips. During the rest of the week (my non-fast days) I eat the number of calories I can eat a day without gaining weight, which is about 1500 for me. I do most of my exercising (yoga, climbing wall, hiking, kayaking) on the weekends, and I eat normally on the weekends.

Part of what I had to get my head around was mental. I realize some people get dizzy and cranky when they are hungry, but I found I don't have to (but truly, people are different. IF is not a good fit for many people). When I started to see hunger as any other feeling in my body, and not an existential emergency I had to respond to, I stopped feeling so bad when I was hungry. I remind myself that people have always had times of hunger, and they didn't start swooning and hollering when they couldn't bring down a buffalo. They carried on. So basically I told myself to suck it up. Which works for me, but which isn't necessarily helpful for others!

This is disordered and unhealthy, period. Sure, it's a fad now, but it is NOT healthy by any means.

I disagree with you, clearly, and so does my GP and my nutritionist. What for me was disordered was constantly thinking about food and snacking. My body was also disordered and sick with pre-diabetes. I’m healthy now, so I’ll carry on.

DP. Well, I just saw a nutritionist for my teen DD, and honestly these are the same people and GPs who recommended carb full diet for the last 30 years, so I agree with you that Drs who are more open might be on the right track! The list of how much my done growing DD should eat in a day was insane. I grew up in Europe and never ate one third of what this nutritionists was recommending my DD eats, and my DD is not underweight at all. We saw a different nutritionist for my below 1%percentile DS and that is a different story on how much he should eat! So, I decided to take a good look at GPs and many other health professionals who allowed sugar industry to make us into research projects for the last 30 years. Thanks, but no thanks! I will eat how my grandma who was born in 1910 thought me to eat. Plus no way, did us humans evolve to catch up with eating this much food in the last 150 years! Not even in 2000 years can our bodies evolve to process this much food. So, your GP is one of few that is right, the rest are delusional.

I find your post to be fascinating. Please share more!

Really? What would you like to know?

Basically what I highlighted above. European vs American eating, especially through the eyes of a European who went to a nutritionist.

I'll try. She thinks my 16 year old DD should continue to gain weight for several years, DD is not thin, in fact she is gaining weight a bit too fast. My DD is upset about this. I wanted her(and me) see a nutritionist as DD has body image issues that she shouldn't have. Just FYI, my skinny DS is an athlete, so I understand the difference between dietary needs of a junior athlete(over 4 hours per day of practice) and regular teen, who participate in sports, but casually, like my DD.

So for breakfast she should have:
1 of whole fruit, or 32 grapes, or 1 cup berries or melon, or 1 cup canned peaches(really canned peaches?) plus
1 of 1 cup 2%milk, or 1 cup yogurt, or 4 oz fake milk like carnation, plus
1 to 2 servings of 1 cup whole grain cereal, or 1 whole grain muffin/pancake, etc, plus
1 of 1 egg, of egg substitute, or 1 tbps peanut butter, or 1 soy sausage or 2 pieces of bacon or deli meat, plus
0-1 servings of 1 tsp butter/mayonnaise, or margarine 1tbsp cream cheese, or similar fat...

What I had for breakfast at her same age, was open faced sandwich with butter and one thin slice of deli meat, or no deli meat. So part of our breakfast is similar.
Occasionally a small plain yogurt, which is more like keffir type here. When I was younger grandma made me drink a small glass of milk, brought by a farmer down the road, we didn't have cows, but had pigs and chickens. Most often it was just water with open faced sandwich. Size of bread was thin peace of fresh made bread, size of regular slice of sliced bread we get everywhere here. So maybe I don't know how to count calories, but it seems to me that my breakfast had fewer calories by far and I was also very active, and walked everywhere. Daily I probably walked over 4,5 km just from high school to bus stops to back home to music school, etc.. I wasn't hungry till lunch, which was around 2pm, brought no food to school, school day is not as long back home as here. So, I don't know what to think now. I have stats for lunch and dinner too, what I consider insane amount of food is recommended by a nutritionist at a leading DMV medical university and hospital. Grandma raised 6 grandkids, now some over 50 and the rest of us getting there and not a single one is heavy even now. So, what am I to do and believe? I want to add that, what I am describing is a thing of the past, eating habits have changed even back home. Clearly, I am not telling my DD any of my thoughts on the subject, the last thing she needs is a lunatic mom causing more harm.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. For those who have been doing IF, a couple questions...

1. Did you just jump right into it and fast for 2 days? How rough a start is it? I work and have young kids and worry about being angry and/or unfocussed.
2. If you fast for entire days or multiple days, do you also exercise? Only exercise on days you eat? Or don't exercise at all?

Thanks.

I've been fasting on and off for a couple of years doing 5:2. Yes, I jumped right in. My routine is coffee with cream in the morning, but nothing more until dinner. I drink a lot of water, have herbal tea, sometimes a cup of chicken bullion. For some reason salt seems to help on fasting days - I got headaches when I first started, and the chicken bullion helped a lot. I try to stay to 500 calories on fast days, so for me that is the coffee plus a dinner with lots and lots of vegetables and a piece of protein - chicken breast, an egg, something like that. If I have a few calories left over I'll have a few chocolate chips. During the rest of the week (my non-fast days) I eat the number of calories I can eat a day without gaining weight, which is about 1500 for me. I do most of my exercising (yoga, climbing wall, hiking, kayaking) on the weekends, and I eat normally on the weekends.

Part of what I had to get my head around was mental. I realize some people get dizzy and cranky when they are hungry, but I found I don't have to (but truly, people are different. IF is not a good fit for many people). When I started to see hunger as any other feeling in my body, and not an existential emergency I had to respond to, I stopped feeling so bad when I was hungry. I remind myself that people have always had times of hunger, and they didn't start swooning and hollering when they couldn't bring down a buffalo. They carried on. So basically I told myself to suck it up. Which works for me, but which isn't necessarily helpful for others!

This is disordered and unhealthy, period. Sure, it's a fad now, but it is NOT healthy by any means.

I disagree with you, clearly, and so does my GP and my nutritionist. What for me was disordered was constantly thinking about food and snacking. My body was also disordered and sick with pre-diabetes. I’m healthy now, so I’ll carry on.

DP. Well, I just saw a nutritionist for my teen DD, and honestly these are the same people and GPs who recommended carb full diet for the last 30 years, so I agree with you that Drs who are more open might be on the right track! The list of how much my done growing DD should eat in a day was insane. I grew up in Europe and never ate one third of what this nutritionists was recommending my DD eats, and my DD is not underweight at all. We saw a different nutritionist for my below 1%percentile DS and that is a different story on how much he should eat! So, I decided to take a good look at GPs and many other health professionals who allowed sugar industry to make us into research projects for the last 30 years. Thanks, but no thanks! I will eat how my grandma who was born in 1910 thought me to eat. Plus no way, did us humans evolve to catch up with eating this much food in the last 150 years! Not even in 2000 years can our bodies evolve to process this much food. So, your GP is one of few that is right, the rest are delusional.

I find your post to be fascinating. Please share more!

Really? What would you like to know?

Basically what I highlighted above. European vs American eating, especially through the eyes of a European who went to a nutritionist.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I read The Obesity Code by Dr Fung. Basically he says it's not as simple as calories in/out. Weight gain/loss is dependent on insulin levels. Fasting is a way to do this. He goes way in depth about how the body processes food but that stuff went over my head. Coffee is fine. Black coffee is best but if milk helps you comply then it's ok. Diet sodas are not fine (sugar subs raise your insulin). Some people do 2 days of fasting to five eating. I do 16:8, do basically I eat from noon-8. Around ten I may feel hungry, but I drink water, stay busy and it goes away.

This doesn't seem so much like "fasting" as "skipping breakfast." Not a great idea.

When it helps someone go from pre-diabetic to healthy it is a good idea, wouldn’t you agree?

Nope. I think eating one meal a day would help with that also. It is about figuring out a healthy relationship with food. You are clearly not there yet.

Dumbest post on here. Is it the same poster who insists skipping breakfast is unhealthy? If so, don't open the intermittent fasting thread and move along with your breakfast. Most Americans claim breakfast is the most important meal of the day and then eat what is closer to dessert than breakfast. The health risks of being overweight heavily outweigh skipping breakfast.

Anonymous wrote:I have been trying intermittent fasting, but tbh I am f'ing starving by 10 AM.

Do you drink coffee and tea? That seems to curb it for me.

Anonymous wrote:NP here. I’m finally going to try 16:8 even though I’m fond breakfast. I need to lose 25 pounds and haven’t stuck to the usual low calorie diets well enough.

I normally take one prescription pill and some supplements with breakfast. Is it ok to keep taking them in the morning? I’d rather not have to bring them into work.

I take a prescription that is not recommended to be taken on an empty stomach, and I just take it before bed, along with my vitamins.