Chinese Version
07-12-2021, Tuesday, Cloudy
I’ve been trying to improve my health by improving my diet. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” has been a common saying for decades, so I was a strong believer for a very long time.
“Skipping breakfast affects the development of the brain” made me worried about my son’s health, as he didn’t eat breakfast while studying in college away from home. Therefore, I often reminded him to have breakfast from time to time, which naturally became nagging, because he would not follow my advice on eating breakfast up until now.
Since late September 2020, I have consciously monitored myself eating what I thought was a very healthy daily diet: a very large breakfast, a simple lunch (or even no lunch), and a dinner without rice.
After eating a large breakfast, I always felt satisfied, but I also felt very sleepy. So after my large breakfast, I had to take a nap to be energetic again. I thought my diet of eating a large breakfast is not suitable for those still working, because their morning schedules are always tight and they won’t have time to take a nap in the morning.
In a flash, I had been on a large breakfast diet for more than half a year. And I didn’t feel healthier or worse.
In May 2021, while talking about healthy diet, I said, “I have a large breakfast. I usually don’t eat rice, but only vegetables for dinner”
“Intermittent fasting is a healthy diet” MK said, “Although mice don’t lose weight after intermittent fasting, it extends life span in mice. On the other hand, many people not only improve their health, but also lose body weight by intermittent fasting.”
This is the first time I heard about “intermittent fasting”. I did research and found that this diet style is not very popular online. But I decided to give it a try, because the intermittent fasting skipped breakfast, which is what my son did most of time. I wanted to try it and then tell my son that skipping breakfast is fine.
I asked: “Do I need to avoid any type of food? Such as, I can’t have rice for dinner.”
MK clarified: “No restrictions on the food, just eat as usual, stick to a balanced healthy diet.”
In late May 2021, I started my intermittent fasting. Half a banana or a peach in the morning, lunch (my big meal) at 1:00 PM and dinner at 9:00 PM.
Two weeks later, I noticed that I was no longer sleepy in the morning and I didn’t need to take a nap in the morning. Having a dinner with rice, vegetables and meat, and sometimes a little dessert made me fulfilled and satisfied. Sometimes I skipped dinner because I didn’t feel hungry. I also slept more deeply at night. I didn’t gain or lose weight.
I tried to recommend intermittent fasting to my friends, but the response was not very enthusiastic.
A middle-aged friend said, “After intermittent fasting for a year, my sister lost ten pounds. But it didn’t work for me, because I was hungry before the afternoon and I could not fast for 16 hours. ”
An older friend said, “I have to eat less each meal and eat more frequently.”
A younger friend said, “My friends are all on a low carb diet or keto diet.”
After intermittent fasting for more than 50 days now, I felt very good, I still curiously asked MK: “Why didn’t you recommend a low carbohydrate diet or keto diet to me?”
After a day, MK, a biomedical researcher with MD and PhD, said:”The reasons I recommend intermittent fasting are that:
(1) Studies showed that intermittent fasting extends life span in mice and improves health in humans;
(2) Calorie restriction had been perceived as kind of a gold standard for longevity, but “calorie restriction” theory has been recently revisited;
(3) Intermittent fasting results in longevity in mice without reducing their total food (calorie) intake or their body weight, while calorie restriction decreases body weight;
(4) So, it is thought that intermittent fasting, rather than calorie restriction itself or body weight reduction, may be responsible for longevity by calorie restriction as well as intermittent fasting in mice;
(5) High carbohydrate diet is not good, but zero carbohydrate diet is not good, either;
(6) The benefit of keto diet has not been fully established. On the other hand, our body produces ketone while being fasted regardless of whether we eat keto diet.
Of course, calorie restriction is important for people with obesity. But, if you are not obese, you can improve your health by intermittent fasting without decreasing total food intake or body weight. By the way, intermittent fasting is not recommended for children and pregnant women because the effects of intermittent fasting have not yet been studied in these populations.”
Rice has always been my favorite. Though I have been on a dinner diet without rice for more than ten years, I still often longing for rice at dinner. Intermittent fasting allowed me to have rice for dinner made me happy. Intermittent fasting was easy to operate and improved my sleep quality in 50-day.
Intermittent fasting alters three meals daily to two meals daily, does not require me to avoid rice, and maintains regular dietary intake. I felt the new concept of fasting within 16 hours is probably the key in intermittent fasting.
Little Episodes
1. Samples of my large breakfast diet started in September 2020.
Average Diet vs Intermittent Fasting
2. 07-02-2021, I told Ru, one of my alumina in CUA in 1990s, that :”I am on a new diet now. I will write a story to share with you, so you can try it later.”
