I’m not going to do this but my sister wants to try alternate day fasting with me after seeing the benefits on me. She joined a Facebook group that states autophagy can be reached by eating up to 500 calories on “fasting” days and eating normally the other days. I disagree and want to do it my way which is zero calories. They’re saying there’s proof you will lose the same amount of weight. I tried to say it’s calories in vs. calories out and zero calories will lose faster than eating 500. Can anyone point me in the direction of some science or explain to me so I can tell her? Thanks!
Honestly I find it much easier to fast. Food, specially in small amounts, ends up making me feel hungry. With fasting it is just an even feeling that I find more manageable and after a day and change it even gets easier.
So she sees that it worked, but then goes out and finds something else to try… sounds a bit like she is intimidated by the concept of fasting. She should try it before she starts poking holes on it, she may find that it is not necessary.
Dr. Jason Fung. https://www.dietdoctor.com/renew-body-fasting-autophagy
“What turns off autophagy? Eating. Glucose, insulin (or decreased glucagon) and proteins all turn off this self-cleaning process. And it doesn’t take much. Even a small amount of amino acid (leucine) could stop autophagy cold. So this process of autophagy is unique to fasting – something not found in simple caloric restriction or dieting.”
Does she need to lose weight? Or does she just want autophagy? If she’s trying to lose weight, maybe let her do it the way she wants and you continue to go the way you are. She may find it works great for her or may find, like a lot of people here, that the 500 calories makes things ‘worse’ in terms of feeling hungry.
I started out like her but quickly found no food is much easier than a little bit. It was just enough to piss me off and want a lot more. So let her find her own way.
The Fasting Mimicking Diet is based off of this. You’ll get autophagy from it if your protein is really, really low (under 20g.) I combined the FMD with Fisetin/Quercetin recently and straight up felt like I was starving to death, lol. If she decides to do that she should probably try to just fast on those days and only eat a small amount if she’s having problems with it. Ideally, it’d just be a regular fast, but some people struggle with that, especially when first starting out.