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Other/Mixed Feedback Request-Health/Wellness Curriculum

Other strength modalities (e.g., Clubs), mixed strength modalities (e.g., combined kettlebell and barbell), other goals (flexibility)
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Hey, @Snowman, thanks for sending me the link. I've been curious about IF and whether it works or not. I just haven't bothered to look into it myself.

I do have a couple of questions though

1. Would a high intensity full body workout help to deplete glycogen so the body could use fat for energy faster? Or is it not necessary?

2. Since we fast so our body can use fat for fuel, is there a minimum amount you could have and not disturb that process. I don't drink coffee. Can't stand the stuff. Not even the smell.
Is a low carb pre-workout drink permitted, or BCAA's?

3. Regarding milk. I love milk. I also have no problems digesting it. Can I still use it for post w.o. nutrition?

Thanks again for the info.
 
1. Yes, it would help force your body to use fat faster. There's a good chance you'll feel like total garbage, though, because your body has to scramble to make pretty significant changes in a short period of time. When I started IF (usually a daily 8 hour feeding window or smaller), a slow paced morning S&S session left me feeling a little drained by noon. A 3 years in now, I can work my butt off all morning, and I feel fine even if I don't eat until 1 or 2. My advice probably won't surprise you. Start by pushing breakfast back as far as you can comfortably, and just work out at whatever time is convenient. Keep your training time consistent, and then the only thing you have to mess with is fasting duration. I can't back this next statement up with research, but I have a sneaking suspicion that 30 minutes of fasted training "counts" for a lot more than 30 minutes of fasted sitting; if you have to break your fast sooner because you worked out, so be it.

2. There's a lot of talk about what does or doesn't constitute fasting. Some people say nothing but water, some people say all the coffee, fat, minerals, electrolytes, and BCAA's you suck down won't take you out of a "fasting state." Really, a lot of people can't even agree on what a fasted state is. My take is, if it causes an increase in insulin, it will probably negate most of the benefits of fasting. Protein and BCAA's usually cause a small increase in insulin, but that could be somewhat negated if it happens during a workout. I would try the first 2-3 weeks without anything extra, then play around with some pre-workout BCAA's (MCT oil would be worth looking into as well), since they're going to have the smallest impact on your fasted state. If you find that you have a hard time making it through a training session fasted, then go ahead and add in some pre-workout BCAA's and/or MCT oil, and wait a month or two to try a totally fasted workout.

Keep in mind, HGH is pretty high when you're fasting, so you don't really have to worry about muscle wasting unless you're really doing some extreme stuff.

3. Yes. If you haven't ran an elimination protocol with it before, that is still worth doing at some point. Also keep in mind that the purpose of milk is to make animals grow and get bigger, and part of the way it does this is by causing a significant insulin response. Many people find weight loss much easier after completely eliminating dairy from their diet. In the spirit of making small, gradual changes and keeping track of what's going on with your body, I would keep drinking milk for a while, then cut all dairy for a couple weeks, maybe in December.


I say this all the time, but only because it's worth saying: Focus on consistency first, and keep the changes as small as they need to be to allow yourself to be consistent. You have the benefit of having been in an athletically demanding job, so the training part of the equation shouldn't give you too much trouble. With the other stuff, though, don't shy away from measuring progress in months, not weeks.
 
@Snowman I've been fasting every morning for a week, but now getting cold hands and feet. I've had this previously with fasting and maybe it's just not for me, but any thoughts why ?
I train in the morning around 6am bent and sinister and usually eat at work around midday.
 
@Stuart Elliott good question. The longer you go without eating, the more your body transitions away from using sugar and towards using fat. At some point, your body will likely get to a point where it's not able to easily break down enough fat to fuel your metabolism, at which point it will significantly slow the metabolism down. When this happens we usually consciously experience things like chills, depressed mood, fatigue, etc. It's likely that your cold extremities are a result of that "metabolic down-shift." This can happen just a few hours after a meal in someone with a poorly functioning metabolism, but in healthy individuals it seems to take more like 12-18 hours. A healthy individual who regularly fasts or uses a ketogenic diet can usually (given enough time) push the "time until discomfort" much farther.

How many hours of fasting does it take for you to notice the cold hands and feet?
Is it pretty consistent, or does it happen at different times on different days?

I think the best option for you has a lot to do with the above questions, but my advice would be to do one or more of the following three things:
1) End your fast right around the time you notice the cold hands and feet.
2) A couple hours before you expect to get cold, eat a low-carb snack (meat, nuts, buttered coffee or tea, etc), and see if that allows you to make it to lunch comfortably. If it doesn't, discard this option.
3) Just be a little cold for a while. This isn't actually an unhealthy thing, it's just uncomfortable. That being said, discomfort has a way of eroding willpower, and if the goal is to develop healthy, life-long habits, I don't think "fasting=discomfort" is a mental association you want to build.

Eventually, your body will adapt to most things (actually, your body is always adapting to everything), and the health benefits of adapting your body to fasting are pretty motivating IMO. That being said, it can take a lot of time for really significant metabolic change to occur. The difference between my body after 6 months of fasting compared to now (about 3 years of time restricted feeding/IF, like what you're doing) is significant. It just turns out that it takes a while to adjust the previous decades of adaptation.
 
How many hours of fasting does it take for you to notice the cold hands and feet?
Is it pretty consistent, or does it happen at different times on different days?
Pretty consistent,usually around 10-11am, I've also noticed I start to feel a bit hyper!

2) A couple hours before you expect to get cold, eat a low-carb snack (meat, nuts, buttered coffee or tea, etc), and see if that allows you to make it to lunch comfortably. If it doesn't, discard this option.
10.45 am hands started to feel cold so I just ate a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter. Less than 5 minutes later my hands are now warm again, I'll keep a jar on my work desk.

The difference between my body after 6 months of fasting compared to now (about 3 years of time restricted feeding/IF, like what you're doing) is significant.
What are the differences you found?
 
10.45 am hands started to feel cold so I just ate a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter. Less than 5 minutes later my hands are now warm again, I'll keep a jar on my work desk.
Perfect! Even if the last hour or two is "less fasted," I would still consider that much better (and convenient) than having an actual meal. It's funny how the brain works. Our metabolism usually slows down long before we're even close to running out of stored glucose, our brain just starts to go into panic mode once levels get lower that we're used to. Often all it takes is a small amount of food to re-assure your brain that you're not actually going to starve to death, and that it can keep the metabolism humming along. Try playing around with how little you can eat in the late morning, as still avoid the cold hands and feet. Don't get too pedantic about it, but one small spoon full is preferable to three large spoon fulls.

What are the differences you found?
The most obvious difference is how much exercise I can tolerate in a fasted state. For a long time, anything that wasn't strictly "easy strength" type training left me feeling prettyy gassed and hungry (I had to take it really easy with my S&S swings), whereas now I think my body can handle just about anything I can throw at it without needing food. For example, the last couple Fridays I've done a long-ish morning of training (about 1-2 hours) that included some high intensity intervals. These would have left me wrecked a couples years ago because they use up so much stored glucose so fast, but now they're not an issue.
This last spring I went snowshoeing for a few hours through powder with a pretty heavy pack. I ate a spoonful of peanut butter around noon, right before I started, then had another spoonful and a little packet of gummy snacks around 3, an hour or so before I was finished. Don't get me wrong, I was ready to eat when I got up to the cabin, but I never experienced any of those "hunger symptoms," despite only taking in around 300 calories between waking and maybe 5 or 6 in the evening.
Once your body adapts enough, I think exercise actually becomes a pretty potent appetite suppressant. Normally I eat between noon and 1, and my body is pretty used to that routine. If I'm just sitting around, studying all morning (which is usually the case these days), then by 11:30 or so my brain tells me that I should start thinking about my next meal. No hunger symptoms, just the munchies (for lack of a better term). However, if I'm actually doing something, like working or hiking, it usually takes until 2 or 3 before I start to think about food.
 
Regarding the feeling of cold associated with fasting: is this something one can just get used to or is it something that can have a negative effect on people, for example people suffering from arthritis?
 
is this something one can just get used to or is it something that can have a negative effect on people, for example people suffering from arthritis?

My understanding is that our entire body goes through a process of slowing down and conserving energy when our brain thinks that we are in danger of starving (regardless of how much stored fuel we actually have). If we didn't have this, we could easily end up malnourished. I liken this to the way our brain has a "governor" that limits how much force we can produce, because otherwise we would end up trying to pick up something too heavy, and our muscles would just rip away from the bone. In both cases, the governor is often set far more conservatively than it needs to be. Much in the same way you can teach your brain to be "comfortable" sending more juice to your muscles, you can teach it to be comfortable going longer without food. To answer your question, eventually the feelings of cold will go away, once your brain has been trained not to slow the metabolism down after a certain period without food. It's a little more difficult to predict how the slowing metabolism can interact with other issues (like arthritis), since there hasn't been a lot of specific research done in that area. I think the key is to pay attention to your body, and be especially mindful of any changes in pre-existing medical conditions. In other words, I don't know o_O
Since arthritis of any kind has a strong inflammation component, and fasting tends to reduce systemic inflammation, one could theorize that fasting would have a beneficial long-term effect on arthritis. That being said, I think the impact would be gradual enough that it would be very difficult to separate it from everything else going on in the body.
 
Fantastic work, sir. I'm in my senior year of Health and Wellness; if you'd like, maybe some time down the road we can collaborate on something (I'm in the long, slow process of trying to alter some military minds about training and "life" in general, every voice I have to add helps). Easy read, great guidelines.
 
@Miguel I would certainly be interested in that. I'll be active duty Navy in about four years, so it will be interesting to see if any changes have been made by then. I'm not very optimistic, but you never know.
 
@Miguel I would certainly be interested in that. I'll be active duty Navy in about four years, so it will be interesting to see if any changes have been made by then. I'm not very optimistic, but you never know.
I will be in touch, "sir". =]
 
Alright, another academic break is coming to a close, and another chunk of work is finished. Mind numbing to put together, and possibly a little mind numbing to read, but I've finally compiled a reasonable collection of studies that I think are worth citing for some reason or another. It's fourteen pages (for now) of various studies, categorized into behavior, stress, nutrition, fasting, activity, and sleep. I honestly don't expect anybody to actually read through it, but I guess you could if you're reeeaaaally bored and feeling academic. Mostly I just want to let folks know that my project hasn't gotten lost in the med school chaos.

Here it is

I promise the next installment will be a little more interesting, although it probably won't get posted until sometime in spring or early summer. I'm finally moving on to presentable content. My current thoughts for the next drop are posting 1) lecture slides, 2) a one page handout focused on lecture material based interventions, and (if I'm not too tech illiterate) 3) a video of me actually presenting the material. The idea is to end up with lecture slide decks and handouts (and critique-able videos) for each topic. Nutrition might take a couple lectures, but I'll worry about that when I get to it. Again, I'm giving myself until the end of med school to get it all done, but I also know that things are only going to get busier as I move forward. If I can get a rough version of the entire curriculum produced before the didactic portion of school ends (spring 2019), I'll be doing myself a big favor.
 
My understanding is that our entire body goes through a process of slowing down and conserving energy when our brain thinks that we are in danger of starving (regardless of how much stored fuel we actually have). If we didn't have this, we could easily end up malnourished. I liken this to the way our brain has a "governor" that limits how much force we can produce, because otherwise we would end up trying to pick up something too heavy, and our muscles would just rip away from the bone. In both cases, the governor is often set far more conservatively than it needs to be. Much in the same way you can teach your brain to be "comfortable" sending more juice to your muscles, you can teach it to be comfortable going longer without food. To answer your question, eventually the feelings of cold will go away, once your brain has been trained not to slow the metabolism down after a certain period without food. It's a little more difficult to predict how the slowing metabolism can interact with other issues (like arthritis), since there hasn't been a lot of specific research done in that area. I think the key is to pay attention to your body, and be especially mindful of any changes in pre-existing medical conditions. In other words, I don't know

From the quote above, what does "Much in the same way you can teach your brain to be "comfortable" sending more juice to your muscles" mean?
 
I read the original health and wellness document (via phone) and I loved it. Extremely valuable. I loved its simplicity, conciseness and it's well-rounded information well-packed. Looking forward to read its enhancements and tweaks if any in the future. I ordered the blue light blocking glasses. Made a note to myself about increasing the walks. Bookmarked it for future read.
 
From the quote above, what does "Much in the same way you can teach your brain to be "comfortable" sending more juice to your muscles" mean?

This is a reference to the way we train strength as a skill. As we lift heavy weights, the brain learns to "turn on" more muscle and use it more efficiently. If our brain just turned on all the muscle all the time we would constantly be getting injured, so the governor starts out pretty low, and we have to "teach it" that it's safe to generate more force. Ideally, this teaching process is slow enough that the tendons and ligaments have time to adapt and become stronger as well. That's the basic idea of how we can get stronger without getting bigger. It's a little more complex than that, but seeing as I'm not a muscle physiologist, I'm not sure if I could do it justice ;).

I'm glad you enjoyed the thread!
 
Just a little bump to this thread. I posted a new thread with this info and some more material here, in the Everything Else section. That seemed a little more appropriate, since most of it isn't really training related, per se. Check it out, tell me whatcha think.
 
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