IF can be beneficial to building muscle, your GH spikes when fasting, which is why you should eat before bed. Anorexics should just eat big macs or something
[quote]EasyRhino wrote:
Any dietary approach can be taken to obsessive compulsive extremes. I know Martin Berkhan gravitated towards IF’ing because he was tired of being obsessed with eating 6 times a day, etc. For him, IF’ing free’d up a lot of time and energy and was emotially liberating. It also let him “eat big” which was important for him.
But, personally, the idea of abstaining from eating until exactly 3pm followed by 3 means with specific caloric requirements over a precisely 8 hour period just seemed to be a wacky amount of OCD for an allegedly liberating approach.
And this is all just about obsessive control in general. Bodybuilders in contest prep are probably just as obsessive about anorexics, they just eat more.
I dunno, maybe it’s because I actually like 3 squares a day. Sometimes I’ll go crazy and skip breakfast if I’m not hungry.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
Vitamin D - I regularly consume liver, sardines, salmon, and eggs. [/quote]
Regularly consuming the sun also works for that.[/quote]
Being satisfied after a meal is important to me as well. With 6 meals per day, I never felt satisfied and was constantly dealing with hunger all day. I think that even if calories are equal amongst a 6 x approach and a 3x approach, hunger is ramped up much more with the frequent meal approach.
I felt the same way when I considered doing the Lean Gains approach. Granted it’s producing stellar results in many people, but it’s not for me. Three squares a day are for me, and whenever they’re eaten, they’re eaten! So when I was considering the LG approach and read it over, I said to myself, “OK, sounds good; but now I have to worry about a specific time frame in which I’m eating.” Plus I like breakfast foods A LOT and I’m not so fond of carriying already-cooked scrambled eggs in tupperwerware or bringing a tupperware of cereal and another container of skim milk with me to work, nor do I care to eat eggs and ham for dinner.
Dinner is usually at 7 or 8 PM for me. But if I’m in a position in which I have to meet friends or go to an event that includes dinner, Fuck it!, I’m eating when I’m eating - even if that dinner is at 10 PM or even 11 PM or 4 hours or 7 hours after my last meal. As long as caloric and nutrient allotment are gotten for the day, I’m good. Is this an ideal approach? I don’t think so. But for me, at this point, it’s the only way in which I can keep my sanity and allows me free movement (literally and figuratively).
Bottom line: Anything that messes with my social life or mental well being isn’t done.
IF’ing works for me . when dietin i do 16/8 but when bulkin its more like 12/12 . im not really strict and i let my daily activity’s set my time frame . but when i am 16/8ing i feel much better and around the 12 hour mark i definatley feel the catecholains kicking in its like i just popped 100 g caffiene .
WATERMELON as for your op maybe its like using IF’ing as a sort of stepping stone to normal eating patterns like startin at 20 hour fast 4 hour eatin and slowly increaseing the eatin window . first week 20/4 second week 19/5 and so on and so on . just my 2 cents worth.
[quote]blok wrote:
Anorexics should just eat big macs or something[/quote]
Cooly story bro!
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
[quote]blok wrote:
Anorexics should just eat big macs or something[/quote]
Cooly story bro![/quote]
Don’t you know it’s illegal on the internet to post phrases like this without pics?
Slightly more on topic:
I agree with your earlier point: Bottom line: Anything that messes with my social life or mental well being isn’t done.
Eating 6 times a day would mess up my schedule far more than it’s worth, given that I am not a competitive anything and therefore train for fun and to feel and look better (and eventually be able to move heavy shit around). On the other hand, eating 3 times a day actually leaves me feeling hungry a lot, plus I find it difficult to eat sufficient amounts for my current goals in just three sittings.
So, as a result, I eat four meals at somewhat flexible times, plus a large peri-workout protocol that serves as my fifth meal and makes it much easier for me to be relaxed about food the rest of the day.
And I don’t obsess about the exact quantities most of the time either. I know almost exactly how much of what I eat most of the time, simply because it’s much easier for me psychologically, financially and timewise to cook in bulk and stick to roughly the same foods every day.
But when I spent over two weeks home and ate mostly the same as my parents, except more and with some cottage cheese and almonds thrown in during the evening, I was no problem at all. My mom cooked as she does all the time, I just skipped some potatoes a couple of times and did a fast once. Same when I go to a restaurant - I have no problems choosing stuff of the menu, and I eat as much as I feel like.
I honestly believe that worrying about food too much will only hamper once progress and make life stressful. Sure, it might take a while to figure out what fits your schedule and goals, but once you know how to approach things in general you don’t have to worry about the details or stress about not eating x amount of meals every y hours just because someone else does.
Ok, that was way too long for my point.
B.
Very good post.
And anyone who wants to learn A LOT about IFing should purchase Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat, as have I. Then you’ll really see that the term “normal” means absolutely nothing, much less mean anything to straighten out the brains of anorexics!
I briefly counseled some anorexics during my dietetic internship. This is NOT a matter of an eating pattern. You can eat 1 or 8 times per day and still have a food-related mental condition regardless of frequency of eating.
Bricknyce, you’ve had so many good posts in this thread, I couldn’t decide which one to quote.
I’ve been moving back toward the 3 square meals thing (and may even try Leangain’s IF soon) after 7 or 8 years on the six small meals a day plan. Throughout that stretch, I experienced severe digestive issues, but I blamed all of them on my excessive coffee intake and the lingering effects of a very poor lifestyle prior to my starting lifting. However, since pulling back on the meal frequency, my digestion has rapidly improved, even though the meals are larger and the overall caloric intake is the same.
The six meals plan hasn’t even been around that long in bodybuilding. The 60s seem to be the era in which it took hold, and even those early set-ups were usually three full meals with a milk snack or supplement intake in between. Prior to that, historical bodybuilding documents have everyone eating three square meals or something like it. I believe it’s only been since the 90s that the currently-popular eating approach has been at the forefront.
Now, just because I may have discovered that so many small meals don’t work for me (and, based off IF’s widely-reported success, neither do they work for many others), doesn’t mean that some don’t benefit greatly from such a plan. Clearly they do, judging by the results of many natural lifters. I just believe we’ve become too uniform with our dietary recommendations. Everyone seems to agree that the lifting side of bodybuilding allows for a wide variety of techniques while keeping to the basics; why wouldn’t this be the same for the nutritional side.
Thanks! I like your post here too.
One thing we can take into account are those people with exceptionally high caloric needs. Consuming 4,000+ calories over 3 to 4 meals is difficult or impossible for some. I think that’s why the milk snacks, frequent feedings, and supplements became popular for some. However, after some time - like in the 90s, as you mention - big business took over and we can see that’s where the supplement industry just blew up! Magazines became magalogues - and they still are!
I do agree that people should be open to experimentation in the same way they are experimental in training.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
One thing we can take into account are those people with exceptionally high caloric needs. Consuming 4,000+ calories over 3 to 4 meals is difficult or impossible for some. I think that’s why the milk snacks, frequent feedings, and supplements became popular for some. [/quote]
True enough, and I believe those people have a greater natural ability to digest and assimilate than others, just as some can handle more volume/greater intensity in their lifting routines than others. I suspect that for some people who are having trouble growing on more frequent feedings, the answer might be less frequent, but larger, meals, contrary to popular advice. For whatever reason, these people digest larger, less frequent meals easier.
All this said, I don’t want to act as though I will be eating less frequently for the rest of my life. I won’t make grand statements or assumptions based off just the last couple of months. But such a change is working well for me at the moment, and considering all the success stories attached to the various forms of IF, it seems that such a change works for many others-at least for getting lean or lean massing. I think putting on a SIGNIFICANT amount of muscle would still require a large enough caloric intake to necessitate the standard frequent feeding schedule.