Today at the Glitter Gym, the one trainer I respect the most turned to me in front of his client and commented on how lean I have gotten. Then he asked for my secret. I think he expected me to say that I eat 5-6 small meals a day. This is the message that he has been repeating to his clients as they work out. This is the fitness consensus. Unfortunately, like I discovered in investing, survivorship bias clouds the truth.
This is what I said.
I fast one day a week, usually on Mondays. It lowers my insulin levels, increases my growth hormone level and allows me to burn fat much easier.
His client, who was an overweight guy in his early 50s, looked stunned. I had seen that guy around the gym since last summer. He is still the same size. He hasn’t lost a pound. The client responded that it would be too difficult for him to do that. I told him this.
It takes practice. It might be months before you can go an entire day, but it is possible.
I sensed the trainer was going to make the case for 5-6 small meals, so I continued.
I used to eat 5-6 meals a day, but as we get older, we get more insulin resistant. What works for 20 year olds becomes less and less effective as we age.
The trainer then defended the 5-6 meal case, which I will admit can work. I just think it gets more and more difficult as we age. I go back to the observation I made in the post Intermittent Fasting – Fears and Motivations.
Weight lifters, particularly body builders, tend to eat cleaner and more healthy than any other sport. They need to gain muscle and shed fat, so they watch everything they eat. As they age, they get more and more muscle, which equates to a higher metabolism. However, at certain point I noticed they all had a puffiness from fat gain. Given their clean diet and large amount of muscle, they should be much leaner. I suspected the constant eating was affecting their insulin sensitivity.
The trainer then stated getting lean was a constant battle. I kept this disagreement to myself. Being lean should not be a battle. It is your birthright. Get off the treadmill. Lift heavy things. Stop eating so many carbs and be comfortable missing the occasional meal.
Post title comes from Big Audio Dynamite – Rush.
I laughed when I read the new TIME cover story “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin” since you blog about it a lot. Fun read: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1914857,00.html
Great article! It does a good explaining how chronic cardio can make you fatter.
“It takes practice. It might be months before you can go an entire day, but it is possible.”
Bah, I just hopped right in and started doing 18-22 hour fasts to start. Maybe it’s hard if you’re one of those pod people from WALL-E who expect to be 110% comfortable at all times, but otherwise just drink some water or tea and you’ll barely notice it.
Andrew,
The guy I was talking to had clearly not missed a single meal or snack in his 50+ years of life. For him, it is going to be more difficult. Part of the reason for his health failures in the past have been because some diet or exercise plan was sold to him as being easy. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to stress that it may be hard at first, but it gets easier.
I’ve not really embraced fasting, though I will say that I do much less emotional or habit eating than I used to. I also don’t *by default* feel the need to eat at certain times of the day. This is something of a surprise to me, but has only come by taking a half a minute to self-evaluate hunger and hydration. I would say for my entire life I never knew what hunger was. Only in the past few years have I come to understand the feeling of hunger, and only in the past year have I learned to do productive things with it.
I’m obese, still, but I have lost weight, and continue to. The proof is in my main set of pants for work whose waistline is getting ridiculously large for me.
Next is an older set of pants I will make just as ridiculously large.
Also, I wonder if you’ve considered the spiritual associations of fasting, and whether you’ve experienced anything along those lines. Not necessarily God or “God” or religiousity, but feelings of peace of placidness or serenity… or perhaps something else. Many religious disciplines practice the fast and I wonder about what function that serves for those discplines. Does the fast bring one “closer to God” itself, or merely reset the body in such a way so that one may then be “closer to God.”
Interesting that you mention this. My mother used to do 10 day fasts (she did drink tea/coffee) along with prayer and meditation and she said that her mind was clearer and was able to concentrate better.
I do think my mind is clear and peaceful but also that I get a lot more done on IF days because I don’t have to stop what I am doing for meals
@Joe – When I did my 18 and 22.5 mile urban hikes in a fasted state, I got a mental clarity that I’ve never experienced before. I even believe my vision was better. I did all those hikes without wearing (or needing) glasses.