Intermittent Fasting?

Yes. It works. You may or may not be able to train hard while fasting. Depends on the individual.

When you get hunger pains that's your body's way of let you know to provide it with nutrition. Athletes shouldn't fast. Just eat smart and you'll run/live for a long time.

Not the best idea. wrote:

When you get hunger pains that's your body's way of let you know to provide it with nutrition. Athletes shouldn't fast. Just eat smart and you'll run/live for a long time.

Exactly. Concentrate on a quality diet. Fasting is 100% the wrong direction for an athlete.

Here's a crazier idea. Try running 70-90 mpw this year and see if that makes you faster.

Not the best idea. wrote:

When you get hunger pains that's your body's way of let you know to provide it with nutrition. Athletes shouldn't fast. Just eat smart and you'll run/live for a long time.

Hunger pains will stop after about two days of fasting. Hence, after two days of fasting your body no longer needs any nutrition.

I've been doing this for years. I normally fast in two hour increments. Since I eat small meals, if I fasted any longer than that, I would not get the fuel my body needs to function at such a high level.

Are there any other animals that fast? Seems they eat non stop until full.

Check out "Starving your way to Vigor" from Harper's a couple of years back. Pretty compelling argument for the benefits of occasional fasting. (Author is also a jogger on comments on trying to exercise during a 30-day fast.)

https://cloudup.com/cgrXJBHXyeo

YOU'LL MAKE ALL KINDS OF GAINZ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzfsaXsV-T4

I'm a former mediocre D3 runner, currently training with a club at a D1 school but hoping for the same times you are this winter.

After coming back from a long injury, I tried this over the summer. Generally, I'd stop eating around 7 pm, and would train around 10 the next day, just off coffee. Eating at about 11-12, that put me at a 16-17 hour fast. It worked great-always had energy, and was losing body fat (not muscle-make sure you lift a few times a week). I'm still experimenting with it. I'm doing fairlylow mileage now (50-60) and am trying to keep eating confined to a small lunch and big dinner after my afternoon run, but sometimes I don't. The easiest way for me to do it is when I workout at 10 like during the summer. Due to classes that doesn't always work.

Be sure to get the majority of your carbs in right after you run BTW, and you'll be fine in workouts. Definitely recommend coffee. I'll post here every so often-I've been looking for some way to keep myself accountable while trying this longer-term.

Coffee is a drug, it's bad if you have to rely on it for energy. Energy is measured in calories and there are zero calories in a black coffee no sugar. All it does is stimulate your adrenaline glands, you might as well shuv a cattle prod up ur butt I'm sure you'll have newfound energy that way too.

Fasting and training at the same time is a slippery slope. In your case though, it seems as if you're thinking about eating the same amount of calories you normally would, just in a shorter window of time. As long as you're still eating the right amount of food and not cutting calories, I'd say give it a try.

I have done this for months on end by simply eating an early dinner and skipping breakfast. I will eat lunch around noon and dinner around 6-8, with no snacks whatsoever, resulting in an 18 hour mini-fast.

I eat a big healthy dinner and am not really hungry until 11AM the next day. I got my overweight friend to do this and he lost 10lb and has kept with it for 6 months now. He doesn't exercise so he got used to it quickly without much hunger.

No effects on training, though when running a lot of miles I sometimes cheat and have a small low-carb breakfast if I'm really hungry.

2012 called. They want their diet fad back.

Fasting is healthy but it is not a magic bullet to lower body fat or increased athletic performance.

bigbig wrote:

Coffee is a drug, it's bad if you have to rely on it for energy. Energy is measured in calories and there are zero calories in a black coffee no sugar. All it does is stimulate your adrenaline glands, you might as well shuv a cattle prod up ur butt I'm sure you'll have newfound energy that way too.

I use it more as a way to suppress appetite, though it helps me stay alert if I'm low on sleep as well.

Also-in response to others: IF is by no means a magic bullet, but if you ARE trying to lose weight, it's a good tool if you're able to have a 2000calorie meal at night, as well as maintain muscle easier (theoretically) due to boosts in HGH secretion.

IF the shoe fits... wrote:

I am a male D1 runner who is always looking for interesting ways to try and improve my performance. I'm coming up on a postseason break before my indoor buildup and am considering experimenting with intermittent fasting. For example, trying to limit myself to an 8-hour window of eating each day. I have read that this is great not only for lowering body fat but also for your health and metabolism in general.

Has anyone here had experience with this kind of "diet?" Does anybody train at a high level while doing it? I run anywhere from 50-70mpw and plan to race the 3k and 5k this indoor season, shooting for 8:30/14:50 range times.

The reason IF is so effective is because the majority of people who have had success with it are unfit and have poor insulin resistance. Runners very, very rarely have those problems because the body becomes efficient at storing glucose in muscles with consistent aerobic exercise. So essentially, by intermittently fasting and still training you'll be starving your body of calories, leading to poor training and health issues.

I am not a very competitive runner compared to you, and I have not fasted.

All I can say is that you are walking a dangerous road. In my experience hanging out with cross country runners, starting to obsess about diet is a great way to start a neurotic, dangerous spiral. Please be careful.

The best advice I've ever read about food is still Michael Pollan's " "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

I LAST ATE AT 8 PM LAST NIGHT AND ITS NOW 1025 AND I THINK IM DYING. WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS TO THEMSELVES.

Faster through fasting wrote:

I have done this for months on end by simply eating an early dinner and skipping breakfast. I will eat lunch around noon and dinner around 6-8, with no snacks whatsoever, resulting in an 18 hour mini-fast.

This is a long-time common weight loss strategy and also the way many people eat without ever thinking about it. At some point someone decided "let's call it 'intermittent fasting' and pretend it's a thing."