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Inspired by Dr. Mike Eades, Jimmy Moore tried intermittent fasting

Howdy, and welcome to the Internet’s hottest low-carb podcast–“The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore!”

Last September, low-carb expert Dr. Mike Eades (co-author of Protein Power) wrote about a new dietary idea he and his wife decided to do to bring about a more effective weight loss. He called it intermittent fasting.

Whoa! Calorie restriction and hunger on a low-carb plan!? What’s that all about?

Well, leave it to our host Jimmy Moore to roll up his sleeves and put it to the test himself! Listen in for his first-hand observations on intermittent fasting while livin’ la vida low-larb, as well as a great contest that will let ten people win a FREE gift from our new sponsor–Atkins Nutritionals!

LINKS MENTIONED IN EPISODE 67

- Win a special prize from Atkins Nutritionals by clicking on the sponsor ad, leaving a comment, and then e-mailing Jimmy Moore with your name and address where your prize can be mailed. Remember, only the FIRST TEN PEOPLE to do this will win, so enter TODAY!
- Dr. Mike Eades’ blog
- Dr. Eades’ post about “intermittent fasting”
- Dr. Eades’ sharing the difference between Protein Power and the intermittent fast
- Jimmy Moore’s intermittent fast menu

Did you miss anythign that was said in today’s podcast? That’s okay–we’ve got you covered. For a full transcript, please click the following link.

Transcript of Episode 67

This is Episode 67 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore.” I’m happy to be back with you today for another podcast dedicated to the subject of the healthy low-carb lifestyle. Today I have a topic of interest that began last Fall when respected low-carb expert Dr. Mike Eades first brought it up at his blog as a way to help dieters more effectively lose weight and naturally cut calories. I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about this idea lately, so it’s time to do a full podcast show about it. More of that in just a moment.

First, we have a brand new sponsor to share with you today although their products are most certainly not new to low-carb. It’s Atkins Nutritionals and their fantastic line of low-carb bars and shakes. Compared to the other high-protein energy bars and shakes on the market today, the Atkins brand is the leader in keeping sugar to the bare minimum at just 1 gram. Compare that to the competition which has upwards of 24 grams of sugar for a PowerBar, 17 grams of sugar for a Zone Diet bar, and 15 grams of sugar for a Slim-Fast Optima bar! Heck, even a muffin has 17 grams of sugar while a sugary doughnut contains 14 grams of sugar. It is good to be one and that’s what you get from Atkins. Go to TheLivinLowCarbShow.com and click on the sponsor banner for a comparison chart to see how your favorite bars and shakes measure up. The first ten people to sign up and then leave a comment in the show notes section of Episode 67 will receive a very special gift compliments of our friends at Atkins Nutritionals.

Did you hear about the new dietary idea that Protein Power author Dr. Mike Eades started talking about last September at his blog as a natural way to reduce calories? It’s something called “intermittent fasting” and generated the most comments that he had ever received on any subject at his blog. I will provide a link to this historic post by Dr. Eades in the show notes section at TheLivinLowCarbShow.com so you can read it for yourself.

To summarize, this intermittent fast is a little different than the traditional fasting methods of one day on starting at midnight and then one day off ending at midnight. This is more practical because it is more in line with our body’s natural cycle.

Here’s the schedule:

Day 1 - Eat food anytime until 6:00PM and stop eating

Day 2 - Don’t eat until 6:00PM

Day 3 - Eat food anytime until 6:00PM and stop eating

Day 4 - Don’t eat until 6:00PM

So forth and so on. Of course, you aren’t CONSTANTLY eating on the days you stop eating at 6:00PM, but rather you are eating as you normally would when you are hungry in a typical day. And, for the sake of his experiment with intermittent fasting, Dr. Eades even said feel free to eat WHATEVER you want. That’s right, you can even eat chocolate cake if you wanted to. However, he did recommend people stick with low-carb foods and let intermittent fasting maximize the impact of this way of eating, especially for weight loss. There was one lesson that Dr. Eades shared about his experience with intermittent fasting that motivated me to give it a whirl. Here’s what he wrote:

“One of the things MD (that’s Dr. Mike’s wife Mary Dan Eades) and I took away from our intermittent fasting experience is the idea that we don’t have to eat three meals per day. We now often skip lunch and don’t seem any the worse for it. Sometimes we get up and get going with all our projects and don’t eat breakfast. We try to skip a meal here and there because we figure it’s probably good for us. When you get used to it, you don’t really even think about it. And it’s good for you. Don’t take my word for it–look at the medical literature.”

Hmmm, that’s very interesting. I’ve been noticing lately on the weekends when my schedule is not as planned as it is during the week that I tend to eat fewer meals than on weekdays. Perhaps I should practice skipping meals, unless I’m explicitly hungry, as well rather than eating simply because it is lunch or supper time. For those of you who are people of faith and believe in God, fasting is actually something Christians are encouraged many times in the Bible to do from time to time. Aside from the obvious physical advantages to fasting, the spiritual implications of doing without food and other such necessities of life for even a short period to spend time praying on behalf of others in intercession is a sign of maturity in your walk with the Lord. In fact, a few years back when I worked in Christian retail, there were several books about fasting including one entitled “Fast Your Way To Health.” This idea of fasting has been around for a while, but many people are unwilling to give up food even for a day here and there. How sad. What do you think about this idea of an intermittent fast? I thought at the time when I first saw it that this is something I would be willing to do myself. And so I did. If the ultimate goal is to eat less calories, then perhaps implementing a fasting schedule like this one could enable you to reduce your caloric intake and you are still eating every single day. What a concept! So, how did it go for me?

It lasted exactly 4 long days, 19 hours, and 15 minutes. BUT IT FELT LIKE AN ETERNITY! I started my intermittent fast experiment on a Sunday night at 6:00pm and all I have to say about it in retrospect is UGH, UGH, and UGH! Perhaps it would be completely unfair of me to not tell you the few good lessons I learned about myself in the context of my diet and health through this intermittent fast experience.

Here is a quick recap of the five things I discovered about myself:

1. I noticed I was pretty addicted to caffeine still. That first day of fasting was painful because of the massive headache I had for most of the day. Once I got to Tuesday, though, the headaches had subsided and I changed my diet soft drink choice to Diet Rite since it has both Splenda and ZERO caffeine. This is a change that has remained permanent ever since.

2. I felt what it was like to be truly hungry again. My philosophy has been to NEVER allow myself to get hungry while livin’ la vida low-carb so I don’t slip back into those old habits I used to endure, especially during my low-fat diet experience when all I did was have hunger pangs. But listening to my body is something beneficial to me now that I am at the stage where food temptation does not befall me like it once did.

3. I realized just how important eating enough food to fuel my daily workouts really is. While I tried to keep up the same resistance and speed of my elliptical workout on day one when I was fasting, it just didn’t happen. While I usually have a 13 resistance at 8.5mph, I had to back off to 7 resistance at 7.0mph to make it through the same amount of time I usually do. Of course, I burned less calories as well. What was worse was even on the days I COULD eat, the very noticeable LACK of energy persisted and did not return until I ended my experiment. It took a few days to regain my strength and endurance.

4. I found out what being ravenously hungry was again. After my second fasting day on Wednesday, I told my wife Christine that we would be going out to Steak & Ale for their all-you-can-eat Prime Rib special. When we have gone there before, they haven’t been as busy as they were that week we went. So the steaks took longer to come to the table than they usually do. I was so hungry that I ate a whole plate of salad in just minutes, devoured the first prime rib, waited 20 minutes for my second and killed that one, too. Then my server brought me another one about 30 minutes later (after my food had settled a bit in my stomach) and I started to eat it when I got halfway done and…WHOA NELLY, I was full! Not just full, but REALLY REALLY FULL! As in, it hurt so much I had to take some Tum-ta-Tum-Tums and lie down for a bit when we got home. I was quite the ravenous beast because of my intermittent fast!

5. Going without food for 24 hours for me is not realistic. My head was hurting so much on the first day from the caffeine withdrawals that I barely noticed how hungry and light-headed I felt. But by my second fasting day on Wednesday with the headaches gone, I felt like I was floating around my office ready to tip over at any moment. My body was lethargic and walking around was so surreal as if I wasn’t in the living world. As hungry as I was, my co-workers kept asking me if I was okay because I wasn’t my normal chipper self. And it’s true. All I wanted to do was have some food and it would even be low-carb at that. But it was not permitted on my fasting days.

Call me a wimp for not making it through even one whole week on this intermittent fast experiment, but it was just not for me. I did lost 4 1/2 pounds in the short period I was on my intermittent fast, but it was no consolation. Like Dr. Mike, I think the biggest lesson I will take from this experience is that I don’t necessarily have to eat when I’m “scheduled” to. Our bodies are quite complex mechanisms and know when to give us the signal for providing nourishment. The fact is that our stomach can remain quite satisfied even when everyone else around us is chowing down on food because it’s “time to eat.” There was an excellent follow-up post about intermittent fasting versus Protein Power that Dr. Mike addressed at his blog as well which I will also link to in the show notes of Episode 67 at TheLivinLowCarbShow.com. Will I ever do an intermittent fast again? If you asked me that right after my first attempt last September, then the answer is a resounding NO! But perhaps I can rework it a bit to make it work better for my life. I’m always open to trying something a little different like this to see if it makes a difference. And that’s a lesson I think we can all benefit from. Never get so comfortable in what you are doing with your diet that you lull yourself into a false sense of security about your weight. We are all susceptible to putting on some weight when we least expect it even when we have been doing our low-carb diet perfectly. Believe me, it happened to me earlier this year, so be ready for it! A big “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show” THANK YOU to Dr. Mike Eades for reminding us all that low-carb is an ever-evolving concept that should be continually worked on individually to help people lose and maintain their weight while always striving to improve their health as well. If I had to endure another day of that intermittent fast, then you would have had me screaming from the top of my lungs, “CALGON TAKE ME AWAY!” Or even worse, “TO THE FUNNY FARM, THEY’RE COMING TO TAKE ME AWAY, HA HA, THEY’RE COMING TO TAKE ME AWAY, HO HO, HEE HEE, HA HA…”

I’ll provide a link to my menu during that week I was on the intermittent fast so you can see exactly what I ate. Go to the show notes section at TheLivinLowCarbShow.com to see what I ate on the days I was allowed to eat. It was one of the most interesting experiments I’ve ever done since I started livin’ la vida low-carb.

Finally, you might be interested in trying the intermittent fast if you suffer from hypoglycemia. One of my LivinLaVidaLowCarb.com blog readers said she became hypoglycemic at 21 and had no idea what was suddenly wrong with her. After gaining a substantial amount of weight from eating six meals a day, she implemented an intermittent fast strategy for getting her weight back down.

“On the first day I will be useless and shaky for the last few hours of my fast, but on the second day I can function normally for much longer and don’t need to eat until around the time when I gave in on the first day.”

Of course, this is merely anecdotal and you should consult with a physician before attempting such a regimen. But it does go to show you there may be merit to this wild and crazy idea that Dr. Mike Eades first started talking about ten months ago.

That’s it for Episode 67 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore.” Have you ever tried intermittent fasting to help boost your low-carb weight loss efforts? If so, then how did it work for you? I’d love to hear your feedback about this. Don’t forget, go to TheLivinLowCarbShow.com and click on the Atkins banner to sign up. Then leave a comment about Episode 67 and the first ten respondents will receive a special prize from Atkins Nutritionals. Thank you for listening today and come back again on Thursday as we bring you more from the wonderful world of low-carb. So, until next time, keep on livin’ la vida low-carb!

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