How To Lose Fat Safely

[ecstatichamster]

But drinking juice all day isn’t fasting. Then it’s just calorie restriction, and the experience of fasting is totally different than calorie restriction. You get this wonderful zen, empty and light feeling. Your digestion gets a break. You feel powerful because you are exerting your will and mastering your appetite instead of being a slave to your appetite. It doesn’t sound like you’ve given real IFing a shot.

How do you know that eating within an eight-hour window increases insulin resistance and releases FFAs? There are credible doctors who claim that fasting increases insulin sensitivity and that running on fat is not harmful (I understand RP disagrees). I don’t know because I have humanities degrees and am totally ignorant about medicine and biology. But i do know that credentialed health professionals debate these subjects, so the science isn’t settled. And I know that clean fasting seems to work well for a lot of people. So why not try it? Start with a big eating window and gradually scale down.

If you can be overweight and happy/unstressed about it, then don’t sweat it.

I and others have posted a number of studies on it.
Even Intermittent Fasting Reduces Insulin Sensitivity (in The Obese)

REVISITING FASTING

Intermittent Fasting Study - Results: Decreased Testosterone And T3

Intermittent Fasting And Fat Gain?

 

[Elie]

Don't high dose T3 and progesterone and keeping microbiom under control (low serotonin)help with gradual weight loss?

 

[ecstatichamster]

But drinking juice all day isn’t fasting. Then it’s just calorie restriction, and the experience of fasting is totally different than calorie restriction. You get this wonderful zen, empty and light feeling. Your digestion gets a break. You feel powerful because you are exerting your will and mastering your appetite instead of being a slave to your appetite. It doesn’t sound like you’ve given real IFing a shot.

How do you know that eating within an eight-hour window increases insulin resistance and releases FFAs? There are credible doctors who claim that fasting increases insulin sensitivity and that running on fat is not harmful (I understand RP disagrees). I don’t know because I have humanities degrees and am totally ignorant about medicine and biology. But i do know that credentialed health professionals debate these subjects, so the science isn’t settled. And I know that clean fasting seems to work well for a lot of people. So why not try it? Start with a big eating window and gradually scale down.

If you can be overweight and happy/unstressed about it, then don’t sweat it.

With all due respect, you make my point. Weight loss uber alles. It’s a terrible unhealthy way to live.

Dr. Peat has said that a BMI of the high 20s is probably healthiest. In fact, nobody has yet succeeded in disproving the fact that people who are fatter actually are living longer healthier lives than thin people. Surprise. This focus on nothing but weight over health is ludicrous. It is hurting people’s health as much or more than anything I can think of.

I showed cites but I could have found 100 because that’s how the body works.

Intermittent fasting increases free fatty acids.

It increases cortisol.

It reduces lean mass.

It reduces the beta cells and thymus cells by killing them, and in men Leydig cells.

It lowers metabolic rate.

It is just bad, bad bad. But people keep doing it. Nothing is as stupid as this fad today. Sorry.

 

[Ron J]

With all due respect, you make my point. Weight loss uber alles. It’s a terrible unhealthy way to live.

Dr. Peat has said that a BMI of the high 20s is probably healthiest. In fact, nobody has yet succeeded in disproving the fact that people who are fatter actually are living longer healthier lives than thin people. Surprise. This focus on nothing but weight over health is ludicrous. It is hurting people’s health as much or more than anything I can think of.

I showed cites but I could have found 100 because that’s how the body works.

Intermittent fasting increases free fatty acids.

It increases cortisol.

It reduces lean mass.

It reduces the beta cells and thymus cells by killing them, and in men Leydig cells.

It lowers metabolic rate.

It is just bad, bad bad. But people keep doing it. Nothing is as stupid as this fad today. Sorry.

I think I may have mentioned this to you before, but the benefits may be due to increased muscle mass from both moving around the extra weight and fat gain. I think staying active to prevent age/stress related muscle waste may be as beneficial.

 

[Nicole W.]

I’m sorry for your husband and I hope he gets better quickly. I’m seeing this all the time with people who lose weight.


This is the craziness that people are living today. Losing weight uber alles. It is literally sickening people at an astounding rate.

I’m kind of resigned to my fat at this point. I just am not willing to starve myself.

 

[Nicole W.]

I have to agree with you there, for most of the middle aged women I know, weight loss ... thinness is EVERYTHING. It’s nuts. My mother always said, kind of crudely... that at a certain age a woman needs to choose between her **** or her face. Meaning that if you are thin, your face will suffer if you are older. My mom maintained that to preserve one’s beauty, additional weight in middle age and beyond is necessary. In the case of my middle aged friends...they can not feel attractive without being thin. Yet, their faces look older than their years. It’s a real reality disconnect! I think aging challenges us to develop a greater level of self acceptance and self appreciation. Part of the aging process involves more weight and I believe that is nature’s design.

 

[Cirion]

You can be thin AND eat a lot and feel great even as a middle aged woman. You don't have to choose between weight or health.

@Kelj is middle aged, relatively lean and can eat over 5000 calories a day and not gain weight and maintains a reasonable BMI.

I am developing my own theories which expand upon hers. Stay tuned for that in the coming months as I mature my scientific models.

Getting older doesn't have to involve more weight. Nor does it have to involve sacrificing health.

 

[ecstatichamster]

I tend to think a bit of weight gain is normal with aging.

 

[YamnayaMommy]

Motivated, personally ambitious people want to maintain an attractive physique.

For thousands of years, probably more, that physique has been defined by a level of leanness that allows you to appreciate musculature and proportions. Sure, there have been periods and artists that like dumpy, fat bodies, too. But the classical aesthetic of relatively lean and strong men and women has been perennially popular in the west.

Achieving that isn’t an option for everybody, but it’s a worthy aspiration. it would be nice to live in a place where everyone didn’t look like misshapen blobs of lard.

As for the relationship between a strong, lean physique and “health,” I doubt anybody who says he knows what BMI is optimal.

And optimal for what? Longevity?

if it’s proven that I could extend my life by five years by eating 5000 calories/day and having a BMI in the mid or upper 20s, i’d choose the shorter lifespan with a BMI in the upper teens or low 20s (for a lady). Because you can do more (physical activities, sports, just moving around, sex) if you’re lean, and you look better in and out of clothes.

But I don’t believe for a second that fatties outlive lean people with good levels of fat free mass.

Also, who even wants to eat that much?

One of the many benefits of fasting is that you don’t have to think about food for a big part of your day, and you can think about more interesting things.

 

[Nicole W.]

You can be thin AND eat a lot and feel great even as a middle aged woman. You don't have to choose between weight or health.

@Kelj is middle aged, relatively lean and can eat over 5000 calories a day and not gain weight and maintains a reasonable BMI.

I am developing my own theories which expand upon hers. Stay tuned for that in the coming months as I mature my scientific models.

Getting older doesn't have to involve more weight. Nor does it have to involve sacrificing health.

I completely agree. But thin is a relative term, of course. I was talking about women who purposely under-eat to remain thinner than they might be had they just eaten to nutrient and caloric satiety.

 

[managing]

Motivated, personally ambitious people want to maintain an attractive physique.

For thousands of years, probably more, that physique has been defined by a level of leanness that allows you to appreciate musculature and proportions. Sure, there have been periods and artists that like dumpy, fat bodies, too. But the classical aesthetic of relatively lean and strong men and women has been perennially popular in the west.

Achieving that isn’t an option for everybody, but it’s a worthy aspiration. it would be nice to live in a place where everyone didn’t look like misshapen blobs of lard.

As for the relationship between a strong, lean physique and “health,” I doubt anybody who says he knows what BMI is optimal.

And optimal for what? Longevity?

if it’s proven that I could extend my life by five years by eating 5000 calories/day and having a BMI in the mid or upper 20s, i’d choose the shorter lifespan with a BMI in the upper teens or low 20s (for a lady). Because you can do more (physical activities, sports, just moving around, sex) if you’re lean, and you look better in and out of clothes.

But I don’t believe for a second that fatties outlive lean people with good levels of fat free mass.

Also, who even wants to eat that much?

One of the many benefits of fasting is that you don’t have to think about food for a big part of your day, and you can think about more interesting things.

To be honest, you seem to be trying to convince yourself more than anything else. Own your choices and quit trying to come up with objectivist arguments.

 

[ExCarniv]

If it’s proven that I could extend my life by five years by eating 5000 calories/day and having a BMI in the mid or upper 20s, i’d choose the shorter lifespan with a BMI in the upper teens or low 20s (for a lady). Because you can do more (physical activities, sports, just moving around, sex) if you’re lean, and you look better in and out of clothes.

But I don’t believe for a second that fatties outlive lean people with good levels of fat free mass.

I Agree with this.

I'd choose to be lean and athletic all day.

 

[managing]

I Agree with this.

I'd choose to be lean and athletic all day.

Sure. But lean and athletic in a healthy way is more elusive than it seems. Pro athletes, for example, have shorter lifespans than non athletes. Even YamnayaMommy admits she is "skinny fat" which is NOT lean and athletic. On the other end of the spectrum, Ray Peat himself is nowhere near an upper 20s bmi.

Lean, in a healthy way almost certainly does not correlate with six pack abs and bikini bods*. But it clearly is not necessary to have a bmi in the high 20s to be healthy either.

Athletic, in a healthy way, also does not correspond with running marathons or even "achievements" falling well short of that either. But couch potato is definitely not healthy either.

Healthy has a range.

*In an Instagram culture sense. I am personally happy to "witness" a range of healthy femininity in bikinis .

 

[Nicole W.]

Motivated, personally ambitious people want to maintain an attractive physique.

For thousands of years, probably more, that physique has been defined by a level of leanness that allows you to appreciate musculature and proportions. Sure, there have been periods and artists that like dumpy, fat bodies, too. But the classical aesthetic of relatively lean and strong men and women has been perennially popular in the west.

Achieving that isn’t an option for everybody, but it’s a worthy aspiration. it would be nice to live in a place where everyone didn’t look like misshapen blobs of lard.

As for the relationship between a strong, lean physique and “health,” I doubt anybody who says he knows what BMI is optimal.

And optimal for what? Longevity?

if it’s proven that I could extend my life by five years by eating 5000 calories/day and having a BMI in the mid or upper 20s, i’d choose the shorter lifespan with a BMI in the upper teens or low 20s (for a lady). Because you can do more (physical activities, sports, just moving around, sex) if you’re lean, and you look better in and out of clothes.

But I don’t believe for a second that fatties outlive lean people with good levels of fat free mass.

Also, who even wants to eat that much?

One of the many benefits of fasting is that you don’t have to think about food for a big part of your day, and you can think about more interesting things.

Where do you live where everyone looks like a misshapen blobs of lard? This post seems to indicate that you have some deep prejudice against large people, or um... fatties, as you call them.

 

[YamnayaMommy]

I agree that healthy has a range and not everyone needs to look like an athlete. That’s an ideal that not everyone can achieve.

But we’re living in a world where majority of people are fat and sick and look like ***t.

Fat people impose a huge cost to society in the form of increased medical spending. The industrialized agriculture required to provide all these calories is harmful to the environment and ethically catastrophic when you consider the tens of billions of animals raised and slaughtered each year for food, often in inhumane conditions.

Aesthetics aside, fatness is costly and unethical.

 

[managing]

I agree that healthy has a range and not everyone needs to look like an athlete. That’s an ideal that not everyone can achieve.

But we’re living in a world where majority of people are fat and sick and look like ***t.

Fat people impose a huge cost to society in the form of increased medical spending. The industrialized agriculture required to provide all these calories is harmful to the environment and ethically catastrophic when you consider the tens of billions of animals raised and slaughtered each year for food, often in inhumane conditions.

Aesthetics aside, fatness is costly and unethical.

You can pretend to set aesthetics aside if you want. But you are still pushing an agenda based on spurious arguments, motivated by contempt for others. Looking like an athlete is not "an ideal that not everyone can achieve." If you have an "ideal" image of your body, you've already lost the battle (for health).

What people have allowed to happen to themselves can sometimes be appalling. And, as well as morbidly obese people, that includes anorexics, skinny fat, and desperately depressed metabolisms and other health problems related to objectified ideals that are in nobodies best interest. Including the best interests of those who "achieve" those "ideals".

SMH

 

[Nicole W.]

I agree that healthy has a range and not everyone needs to look like an athlete. That’s an ideal that not everyone can achieve.

But we’re living in a world where majority of people are fat and sick and look like ***t.

Fat people impose a huge cost to society in the form of increased medical spending. The industrialized agriculture required to provide all these calories is harmful to the environment and ethically catastrophic when you consider the tens of billions of animals raised and slaughtered each year for food, often in inhumane conditions.

Aesthetics aside, fatness is costly and unethical.

I think that the IDEA that fatness=disease or ill health is becoming increasingly debated. It is not fact. Sometimes the excess weight is the symptom and not the cause of disease. There are several publications that discuss this phenomenon. Thin people eat meat too and grain, and mostly don’t grow their own food, so....yeah... we all depend on industrial agriculture and drive the consequences of those enterprises. I think you’d have better luck going after the cigarette smokers and the bottled water drinkers if you want to talk about the massively expensive toll on society and the environment.

 

[corvetteseeker]

I think the premise of what @YamnayaMommy is saying is that it's normal to want to aspire to attain an optimal physique/leanness combo.

In almost every field and arena, if you work hard enough at something, you can achieve it. Leannes seems to be a bit of an an outlier here. But surely one would understand why it sounds unnatural for a driven person who is looking for an ideal life to hear their goal is unattainable.

 

[corvetteseeker]

Just thinking out loud and trying to make sense of this ....here what's I don't understand about @Kelj premise ...

There are millions of Americans who try to listen to their own body's signals and feed themselves sufficiently without ever dieting.
And yet most are overweight and many are obese. So how do we reconcile this with the hypothesis that if we feed ourselves sufficiently for a long enough time, we will attain a decent weight?

I had never dieted for my whole life yet kept tending to reach a set point of being overweight when I had an otherwise sedentary lifestyle.
When my job became an active one, I suddenly would eat the same foods yet lean out.

 

[corvetteseeker]

@Cirion - sounds promising, amigo! I'm very interested in what you're working on. Will PM you shortly ...