Not So Fast

For most of the past year, I've been practicing intermittent fasting. After finishing dinner each night, I'd abstain from eating until lunchtime the next day. It worked well for me, and I still do it a few days each week. But since March, I've been downing a post-workout meal of starchy carbs and protein every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. And more recently, even on my rest days, I've been devouring a big breakfast before heading off to work.

Example: Here's this morning's beefy, bacon-y, eggy morning meal. (Doesn't it look happy?)



The reason I'm no longer fasting every day?

Some days, I haven't gotten enough sleep. Other days, I've been sick with a cold. Either way, I wasn't about to tax my immune system even more by fasting. No sleep? No fast.

Besides, I'm finding it hard to resist the smell of meat in the morning.

Good Morning

My breakfast was incredibly easy (even for me!) to throw together: savory coconut pancakes (just three ingredients: egg, coconut flour and salt) topped with bacon (cooked in the microwave) and avocado. It took less than five minutes to throw together.

I'm downing all the bacon I can before the Whole9 crew tells me I have to stop.

And if you haven't guessed yet, I'm not fasting through the morning every day anymore. More on that later...

Because.

Okay: I've got some explaining to do. Below, I listed (again) the dietary tweaks I intend to implement, along with my reasons. I may mangle some of this stuff up, as I'm just regurgitating what we heard yesterday at the Whole9 Foundations of Nutrition workshop.

THE TWEAK:

Get more sleep -- especially the night before a 5 a.m. class at CrossFit Palo Alto. (Whole9's rule: Didn't get at least 6 hours of sleep? THEN NO EXERCISE FOR YOU. Use that time instead to get more Z's or prep some food.)

THE REASON:

This goes without saying, right? We all know by now that we ought to be getting at least nine -- yes, nine -- hours of sleep per night, or else risk all sorts of health issues, including obesity and diabetes. These and other disorders are all linked to chronic, systemic inflammation; your body's immune system is constantly pushed to work harder than it should to repair and maintain your body in response to the added stress you're placing on it.

Another point that hit home with me at yesterday's presentation: Sleep should take priority over training. Your body doesn't get fitter while you're training. Your body gets fitter when it's recovering and re-building itself. (Some -- including Robb Wolf -- say it's even more important than food.)

Plus, lack of sleep makes you look like crap. No need to crow about functioning on just four hours of sleep; after all, sleeplessness not a sign of virility. 

THE TWEAK:

Stop pounding caffeine after noon.

THE REASON:

I've wavered on this point before, and I sure love me a good cuppa coffee (the cold-brewed stuff is like crack to me). But in the end, I'm kinda-sorta coming around to the Whole9's way of thinking. Caffeine's a potent stressor, and promotes a stress response that I don't need. Plus, if I keep chugging it in the P.M., it's going to keep wreaking havoc on my sleep patterns. Not good.

So starting now: No more coffee after noon. (Read the Whole9's Coffee Manifesto here.)

THE TWEAK:

Reduce my intake of nuts and seeds -- and when I do indulge, I'm going to reach for macadamia nuts and hazelnuts over all others.

THE REASON:

Nuts and seeds are incredibly nutrient-dense foods, which makes 'em a great addition to any diet.

But the concern is that the polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) content in all nuts and seeds have a pro-inflammatory profile, with higher ratios of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fatty acids. By now, we all know why it's important to reduce the markers of systemic inflammation by maintaining a ratio closer to 2:1 or 1:1 than the standard American diet's ratio of upwards of 30:1, right? Besides, there's the whole Chris Masterjohn line of thought about the connection between PUFA degeneration and atherosclerosis.

Of course, some nuts have very low PUFA content (only 2% of the fats in mac nuts are PUFAs, for example), and in the end, they're a net nutritional plus. Others, though, are pretty damned high in PUFAs. (For instance, 72% of the fats in walnuts are pro-inflammatory PUFAs.) So going forward, I'm going to be a more discriminating nut eater -- and favor mac nuts in particular, which studies suggest offer a host of other health benefits as well.

Yes, there's some debate over this stuff (isn't there always?), but even beyond the whole systemic inflammation argument, I've found that it's just way too easy for me to mindlessly binge on nuts. Nuts are super dense in calories. (Just one cup of macadamia nuts, for example, contain almost 1,000 calories.) I'm not a calorie counter at all, but I'm addicted to nuts. If left unchecked, my nut consumption would grow to the point that weight maintenance would surely become an issue. And while nuts are certainly "Paleo" (excepting those "nuts" that aren't actually nuts at all, like peanuts) 'cause cavepeople could eat 'em, that doesn't mean they're the optimal source of dietary fat for modern humans. I think I'm going to try to mindlessly binge on eggs and avocados instead.

THE TWEAK:

Cut the cheese. (HAR HAR! I meant cutting it from my diet.)

THE REASON:

I've already cut most dairy out of my diet, save pastured butter/ghee, the cheese on my burgers/in my salads, and a little Greek yogurt when it's cooked in a few of the dishes that M makes. But after listening to the Whole9 folks lay out their case against dairy, I'm considering eliminating cheese from my diet entirely. In particular, cheeses have an acidifying effect on the body, and an "acid-producing diet promotes bone de-mineralization (i.e. osteopenia and osteoporosis), and also contributes to the following maladies and illnesses: kidney stones, age-related muscle wasting, hypertension, stroke and asthma." Yeesh.

Plus, the beta-casomorphins that are created in the cheese-making process are literally addictive. That's right: When milk is turned into cheese, it becomes dairy crack. And crack is wack.

THE TWEAK:

Eat something starchy/carby immediately post-workout.

THE REASON: 

I'm still doing the intermittent fasting gig (and am enjoying its benefits), so this will require some re-jiggering of my early-morning fasted training routine.

It won't hurt me if I fail to refuel my muscles with some carbs and protein after a long, intense metcon. But the body's uptake of nutrients is most efficient in the half-hour after intense exercise. During this short window, our muscles are particularly insulin-sensitive, so we take advantage of a mechanism called “non-insulin mediated glucose transport” to shove some nutritious carbs into our systems. Protein can also help with refilling our glycogen stores and decreasing the inflammation caused by intense exercise. In other words, we recover faster.

So I'm now considering downing some sweet potato, beets, parsnips, chestnuts or winter squash after hard WODs. (But I'm also considering staying the course and not eating anything, per my current practice and Mat Lalonde's words of wisdom.) [UPDATE: See notes by The Lazy Caveman and The Nutty Kitchen below -- I am now officially off the fence!]

By the way, the Whole9 warns against eating fat or fruit as part of the post-workout meal -- fat'll slow down the body's ability to replenish your muscle glycogen, and the fructose in fruit will prioritize the replenishment of your liver glycogen -- not your muscle glycogen.

THE TWEAK:

Try to get over my aversion to olives, because they're awesome sources of fat (assuming no preservatives or other additives are in the mix).

THE REASON:

The best monounsaturated fats recommended by the Whole9 are avocados, avocado oil, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, olives and olive oil. I already eat copious amounts of everything on the list except olives. And I am nothing if not a completist.

THE TWEAK:

Seriously cut back on fruit, and stop drinking juice altogether.

THE REASON: 

Honestly, I stopped drinking juice eons ago, and I don't go crazy with fruit. I just stuck this one in here just for those of you who still haven't gotten the memo that eating fruit is fine -- but in moderation. (We're talking one to two servings a day.) I get the feeling there are those of you out there who think that going Paleo is a license to go to town on smoothies, juice, and berries in everything. If you're out there, here's why you should watch your fruit intake:

Fruit is not as nutritionally dense as most vegetables. The top ten vegetables on the ANDI (Aggregate Nutrient Density Index) scale range from kale (score: 1000 -- perfect!) to arugula (559). But the most nutrient-dense fruit -- strawberries -- gets a score of just 212.

Fruit is too often used as a crutch by perfectly well-meaning Paleo adherents who rely on fruit to satisfy their lingering sugar cravings. Do you find yourself piling your plate high with fruit for breakfast? Snacking on bananas and grapes all day? Constantly adding fruit to meals just to add some (totally unnecessary) sweetness? Juicing fruit -- thereby removing all the good stuff in order to concentrate the liquid sugar into drinkable form? STOP IT. 

THE TWEAK: 

Never cook with olive oil again.

THE REASON:

"Never" is probably too strong a word. And I should have qualified that statement further by saying "high-heat cooking." Still:

From what we learned yesterday, olive oil -- while mostly comprised of good monounsaturated fat -- still contains proportionally greater amounts of unstable PUFAs than other cooking fats that are available to us (like coconut oil, ghee, etc.)

PUFAs happen to have a low smoke point (the temperature at which the fat begins to smoke and break down chemically). And they're also the most susceptible to oxidation. And oxidation is bad news.

As Inhuman Experiment put it:

What about olive oil then? Even though everyone seems to love olive oil in general, there's something of a debate going on over whether it should be used for cooking purposes. My opinion is that ... it's not the worst choice but it's not the best either. The smoking point of extra virgin olive oil seems to vary from 160 to 190 °C, depending on the free fatty acid content. Virgin olive oil, however, has some properties that make it more heat-tolerant than most other oils...

So which oils should you use for cooking? For sautéing and cooking at light to medium temperatures, my choice would be the ones on the left of the graph: coconut oil, ghee, butter, palm oil, and lard. If you stay below 170 °C, you're in pretty safe waters in terms of oxidation regardless of which one of them you choose. Virgin olive oil seems like a viable choice, too; just make sure the particular olive oil you're using it doesn't start smoking.

But why even bother cooking with olive oil when I can just use the humongous vats of coconut oil and ghee in my pantry for all my cooking needs? I'll just save the EVOO for non-heated applications (e.g., in dressings, etc.)

THE TWEAK:

Break open the vat of duck fat we have sitting in the freezer.

THE REASON:

Note that I didn't say I was going to cook exclusively with duck fat, or that duck fat is superior to all other forms of cooking fats. I just said I was going to break it out.

Still, duck fat (along with beef tallow and goat fat) is -- according to Whole9 -- preferable to cooking with lard. Why? Because lard (and all pork products) generally come from pigs that eat at least some shitty stuff. There's no such thing as a "grass-fed" pig, because pigs aren't ruminants like cows. They're natural omnivores like you and me. So even pastured pigs who are given freedom to root around and eat whatever they can find in the wild nonetheless are provided with supplemental food -- often in the form of cheap grains and corn. (One exception: The pastured pigs at Full of Life Farm, from which we just bought half a pig.)

Besides, duck fat tastes good.

Friday's Workout

Just because it's Christmas Eve doesn't mean I'm skipping my WOD today. And it was a doozy today.

Last night, M and I started watching the video of Mat Lalonde's Nutrition Seminar (which he delivered back in June at CrossFit Academy of Lions in Toronto). (I'll post a review soon, but suffice it to say that I'm learning a TON. You can check out a 10-minute preview of the video here.) At one point (close to the 6-hour mark), Lalonde discusses the benefits of fasted training and his conclusion that post-workout carbs aren't necessary -- provided you're not doing a super-long session of metabolic conditioning work.

So what did we do this morning at our CrossFit box? A super-long metcon.

This is atypical for our gym. Ninety-nine percent of the time, we stick with a strict Max Effort Black Box program, with our time split between warm-up, strength work, and a short (sub-15 minute) metcon. But once in a while -- usually near holidays -- our coach decides to "work a different metabolic pathway." In other words, he beats the shit out of us with a meat grinder of a workout.

Metcon:

"Whitten" - 5 rounds for time:

• 22 overhead kettlebell swings (I used a 53 lb. kettlebell, but RX'ed is 70)
• 22 plyo box jumps (24" box)
• 400 meter run
• 22 burpees
• 22 wallball shots (20 lb. ball, 10' target)

In other words, 440 heavy reps of explosive, full-body movements. Plus, a mile run. As fast as you can.



Seven other masochists showed up for the morning class today, so we had a full house. A few folks scaled the workout down, using lighter weights, fewer reps and/or shorter distances. For example, one person used a 16-inch plyo box, and another ran 200 meters each round instead of the full 400. Half of the class used wallballs of less than 20 pounds, and aimed for an 8-foot target.

The Terminator and I, however, tried to do the WOD as close to RX'ed as possible -- though after trying out the 70 pound kettlebells, we ultimately decided to go with 53 pounds instead. I matched his pace for the first couple of rounds, but he pulled ahead during our third set of wallball shots, and I never quite caught up. I'm getting better at wallballs, but due to my short stature and light bodyweight, I end up having to jump off the floor with every rep in order to heave the 20-pound ball ten feet up the wall. With my shitty hand-eye coordination, this is no easy task.

Result: 42:51. The Terminator beat me by a minute and a half. Everyone was hustling; with proper scaling, even the slowest among us were done by the 52-minute mark.

As soon as I was finished, recovery was on my mind. I did this metcon in a fasted state, and by the time I wrapped up my last set of wallballs, I'm sure my muscle glycogen stores were at zero. So after a quick pitstop at a nearby supermarket, I drove home to gobble up a bag of carby, starchy chestnuts. And for good measure, I chased 'em down with a plate of M's breakfast frittata and some broccoli.

Santa better bring me some extra fish oil, yo.

Mark Sisson on Fasted Training

Read all about it.

No, Really: Skip Breakfast

In the news: More evidence in support of fasted training and minimizing carb intake.

Belgian researchers worked with three groups of human lab rats: One group ate a ton of food and remained sedentary. The other two groups exercised -- one after eating a "hefty, carbohydrate-rich breakfast" and the other after eating nothing at all. (They ate post-workout.)

The experiment lasted for six weeks. At the end, the nonexercising group was, to no one’s surprise, super-sized, having packed on an average of more than six pounds. They had also developed insulin resistance -- their muscles were no longer responding well to insulin and weren’t pulling sugar (or, more technically, glucose) out of the bloodstream efficiently -- and they had begun storing extra fat within and between their muscle cells. Both insulin resistance and fat-marbled muscles are metabolically unhealthy conditions that can be precursors of diabetes.

The men who ate breakfast before exercising gained weight, too, although only about half as much as the control group. Like those sedentary big eaters, however, they had become more insulin-resistant and were storing a greater amount of fat in their muscles.

Only the group that exercised before breakfast gained almost no weight and showed no signs of insulin resistance. They also burned the fat they were taking in more efficiently.

(Source: New York Times)

Fasted Training?

I recently received an email from a reader asking me what I eat before my morning workout.

My answer: Nothing. As you may recall, I've adopted an intermittent fasting protocol, and I'm exercising on an empty stomach.

Some people think I'm insane for diving into CrossFit workouts ten or twelve hours into a fast. How do you have the energy? they ask. Don't you bonk halfway through your workout? Are you not aware that breakfast is the most important meal of the day?

Certainly, fasted training isn't a good idea unless your cortisol levels are already in check. But if you're  (one of the few of us) getting good sleep, keeping your stress levels low, and aren't pushing your body beyond capacity when exercising, working out without food in your belly is something to consider.

Fasted training can help increase endurance and boost the body's ability to store muscle glycogen efficiently. And as Chris Highcock pointed out, it can help you recover faster from endurance exercise. Plus, from an evolutionary perspective, it's been pointed out that our cavemen ancestors likely exerted themselves most strenuously while hunting for food -- not after they'd filled their stomachs with a meal.

And by the way, breakfast is by no means "the most important meal of the day." That's just a marketing slogan that breakfast cereal makers dreamed up decades ago (and still reverberating in the echo chamber of lazy science, agribusiness marketing, and the informational cascade). Don't swallow the hype: Skipping a meal doesn't "slow your metabolism" and make you fat.

Reader Questions (and an Updated Photo)

First, an email from reader Prescott:

...I recently read your post "Nothing for Breakfast" and was very intrigued by the intermittent fasting concept. If you have space and time at some point, could you make a post about what a "typical" day looks like in terms of when and what you eat? Even just rough calorie counts and how everything would be great! I eat paleo/primal but have been doing 5-6 meals a day because of all the (supposed) benefits. i do feel that smaller meals make it easy on my digestive system; did you have trouble adjusting to getting in your daily calories in an 8-hour window in terms of gastrointestinal issues? IF and 3 meals a day would be much easier!

I don't weigh or measure my food, so my caloric intake's a mystery even to me. A while back, I posted about what I ate during a typical week. But if you want to get more granular, here's what I ate on a couple of days earlier in the week: Sunday (a rest day) and Monday (a workout day):

Sunday

After running some errands with the family, we grabbed lunch at the Old Port Lobster Shack. I had a "Shack Louie Salad" with lobster, crab and shrimp, which -- shameless plug alert! -- you can read about here on M's just-launched food blog, Nom Nom Paleo. (She's posting about what she cooks and eats on a regular basis -- and I pretty much eat the same stuff she does.)

In the afternoon, I snacked on a cup of dried flake coconut and a handful of macadamia nuts.

We made dinner for friends, and ate a ton that night: sous vide shortribs and carrots, cauliflower puree, braised cabbage (from the recipe that Mark Sisson stole), roasted broccoli, Creminelli salami with various cheeses from Cowgirl Creamery, spiced almonds, roasted peppers with balsamic, and fresh strawberries.

I was stuffed by 7 p.m., so I stopped.

Monday

After my 5 a.m. workout (done on an empty stomach), I swigged some coffee before heading to the office.

I got caught up with work and didn't get around to eating lunch until noon: Leftover shortribs, cabbage and carrots.

During a short break, I walked over to the Golden Gate Meat Company counter at the Ferry Building and grabbed a $2 "sausage-on-a-stick": A spicy Italian sausage link on a skewer, served with German mustard.

I also snacked on some of Alfieri Farms' Cajun-spiced almonds (I have a little bag of 'em in my desk drawer), some pistachios, and a hard-boiled egg. And when I got home for dinner, we had sous vide chicken breast with roasted delicata squash and cherry tomatoes, with a generous dollop of guacamole on the side.

Afterwards, I was still hungry, so I topped off with some flake coconut and mac nuts (my snack of choice). And at 7:30 p.m., I stopped eating for the night.

As you can see, I don't stick to a regimented meal plan. Rather, I eat whatever (as long as it's lacto-Paleo-compliant) and whenever (as long as it's not before lunch or after dinner). I eat until I'm full. And while I'm sure I end up downing a lot more calories than I'm "supposed" to, I still look, feel and perform just fine.

Next up: A question from an anonymous commenter:

You made some fantastic gains with P90X, but the progress pics stop after round 1 (unless I'm too computer illiterate to find the others). I'd like to see how far you've come now that you're doing the paleo thing along with Crossfit.

This isn't the first time I've fielded requests for more up-to-date progress photos. A few months ago, I wrote:

As for your question about putting up more recent photos, I explained in one of my posts a while back that I've decided not to post them. My goal during Round 1 was to get fit, and taking/posting my progress photos was a good way to keep me accountable. But at this point, I'm just working on maintaining what I achieved during my first 90 days -- so I don't have any visible "progress" to show off. (It's not like I've become Lou Ferrigno or anything; I look pretty much the same as in my 90 day photos.)

This remains true. There's no visible "progress" to show off because I'm not trying to lose fat at this point -- I just want to keep on keepin' on.

But I get the sense that I'll keep getting requests for updated pictures until/unless I give in. So if you must look, I posted a new photo after the jump.

On Second Thought

Remember how I used to extol the values of chocolate milk as a recovery drink?

Now that I've: (1) gone paleo, (2) adopted a regular intermittent fasting schedule, and (3) begun avoiding post-workout-carbs a la Mat Lalonde), this really isn't an option. But that's okay: it's not like chocolate syrup + cow juice is the end-all, be-all. Feasting on Fitness has an excellent post summarizing the pros and cons of chocolate milk for post-workout recovery -- and it turns out there are enough drawbacks to chugging chocolate moo that I'd probably pass on it these days even if it weren't loaded with sugar.

Nothing for Breakfast

I haven't had breakfast -- any food before 11:30 a.m. -- for months.

Since August, I've been playing around with intermittent fasting (IF). This might sound bizarre to some of you, but as the Drs. Eades have pointed out, IF has been shown to have a number of benefits, including:

• Improving longevity;
• Reducing the risk of cancer and other diseases (ranging from heart disease to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's); and
• Improving insulin sensitivity and blood glucose regulation.

As reported last year in the L.A. Times:

During fasting, almost every system in the body is "turned down," [U.C. Berkeley endocrinology professor Mark] Hellerstein says. The body changes how it uses fuel. Certain hormone levels fall. Growth stops. Reproduction becomes impossible. "By the end of three weeks of fasting you are a completely different metabolic creature," he says. "It affects many, many processes -- but in a somewhat predictable way that takes you toward disease prevention."

Oddly enough, scientists don't yet know why IF produces these health benefits.

One theory is that the process produces just enough stress in cells to be good. "What our evidence suggests is that nerve cells in animals that are on dietary energy restriction are under mild stress," [Mark] Mattson [of the National Institute on Aging] says. "It's a mild stress that stimulates the production of proteins that protect the neurons against more severe stress."

But whatever the reasons, IF seems to work. And it has other practical benefits, too, like:

• Increasing growth hormone during fasting (which helps build and maintain muscle mass);
• Weight and body composition maintenance; and
• Not having to make breakfast.

I know: You think this is utter bullshit. After all, "breakfast is the most important meal of the day," right? We hear this a lot -- but has anyone come up with any science to back this up? Or do we get an earful about how you need to "eat lots of small meals a day -- starting with breakfast -- to fuel your metabolism"? Because that's a load of hooey. Studies have shown that eating small, frequent meals doesn't do anything. But can you work out in the morning in a fasted state? I do, and I'm doing just fine. IF doesn't impair exercise. If anything, it boosts fat loss.

Let's review: A consistent line of research (going all the way back to the 1940s) demonstrates that IF confer lots of health benefits. And science has also disproven the theory that constantly grazing on tiny portions of food throughout the day somehow improves health.

You know me: Based on what I'd learned, I had to give IF a try.

More after the jump...

Caloric Restriction

You've heard of Caloric Restriction (CR), right?

As its name suggests, CR is a dietary approach that restricts caloric intake. Done properly, it slows the aging process and extends life.

No, I'm not making this up.

Lab mice on CR can live up to 50 percent longer than if they ate a more typical diet.

The maximum life span of a typical lab mouse is 39 months, corresponding to 110 years in humans. [UCLA Professor and Biosphere 2 crew member Roy] Walford and researchers have demonstrated that mice that eat only 60 percent of their preferred diet will live as long as 56 months -- the equivalent of 165 human years -- provided they start their diets before three months of age. Although these mice are smaller than their normally fed peers, they seem to retain their youthfulness and intellects well into their extended old age. “We’ve found that a 36-month-old restricted mouse will run a maze with the same facility as a six-month-old normally fed mouse,” Walford says. “That’s a substantial preservation of intellectual function.”

Similar results are seen in studies involving all sorts of living creatures, from yeast cells and roundworms to fruit flies and spiders. Even rhesus monkeys live a lot longer on CR, with significantly reduced rates of diabetes, cancer, and heart and brain disease.

There aren’t yet any published studies on CR’s effects on the average human lifespan, but research shows that humans on CR are healthier, with lower cholesterol, fasting glucose, triglyceride levels, and blood pressure. Based on available evidence, scientists believe that a 30 to 40 percent reduction in caloric intake could significantly extend human lives.

The problem?

CR is not fun. As Michael Eades points out:

When rats live out their little ratty lives calorically restricted in their cages, they seem to show signs of depression and irritability. Primates do for sure. If primates don’t get enough cholesterol, they can actually become violent. But if you’re willing to put up with a little irritability, hostility and depression, it might be worth cutting your calories by 30 percent for the rest of your long, healthy miserable life.

Plus, as characterized by a New York Magazine writer who hosted a CR dinner party, the hardcore CR lifestyle can seem deeply bizarre:

[T]he weirdnesses are starting to pile up, and my guests are looking weirder and weirder themselves, like emissaries from a future I’m not sure could ever feel like home: a world where the food grows in vats, where the porn industry just barely survives on government subsidies, where the physically ideal male has the BMI of Mary-Kate Olsen and the skin tones of an Oompa-Loompa.

I take a deep breath then and think, A world where 80 is the new 40. And suddenly, all those little weirdnesses seem quite manageable again.

At which point Michael, having finished his helping of asparagus and Quorn, picks up his plate without a word and does what any normal person who has not eaten a truly filling meal in years would do: He holds the plate up to his face and commences licking it clean. April looks on smilingly, and though I feel another tingle of vertigo coming on at the sight, it passes soon enough.

I’m not one to shy away from trying different strategies for better health, but I have zero interest in experimenting with CR. Call me spoiled, but I’m no ascetic. Eating’s too much fun to deprive myself of its pleasures.

And I ain’t eatin’ no Quorn. (Well… maybe I’ll give it a taste, just to see if it’s as unappetizing as it looks.)

But consider this: There’s evidence that Intermittent Fasting (IF) offers the same benefits of CR -- but without having to reduce overall caloric intake.

It probably won’t shock you to learn that M and I have been playing around with a variant of IF for a couple of weeks, limiting our daily eating windows to an 8-hour period. (Sound weird and complicated? Think of it this way: We don’t snack after dinner -- say, after 6:30 -- and we delay breakfast until later in the morning -- like 10:30.)

I’ll post more about IF (and our experiences with it) soon, so stay tuned.

Decisions, Decisions

When you just can't decide whether you want a burger or a pizza -- and you happen to be in New York City -- go get yourself a Burger King Pizza Burger.

Or better yet, just skip lunch altogether.

(Source: Serious Eats)