Update on my fasting 16:8 for steadier mood

April 14, 2019 Leave a comment

It is hard to know if intermittent fasting does steady the mood. I am sure it helps with self-discipline and that has to be a good thing.

I believe the main benefits for me have been:

  1. Clearer thinking in the morning while stomach is empty
  2. Digestive system will be repairing better while stomach is empty
  3. Far less tempted by junk food as I am not eating between meals

My graph is looking busy as there are now a lot of points, as simply write in my diary the time I have my first and last food each day. Mostly first food is anywhere between 10am and 2pm. Last food is usually close to 6:30pm.

This next week I am going to be experimenting with finishing eating even earlier to see if that helps with sleep.

Intermittent fasting 16-8 update 2018-04-14th

 

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Fasting 16:8 for steadier mood

December 20, 2018 Leave a comment

As soon as I started taking prescription medications I started eating from early morning to late evening with hardly any breaks. It was something like a 8:16 diet, with at best only going 8 hours overnight without eating and sometimes eating at unearthly hours like 2am, 3am, 4am. This was not good for my body shape or my risk for diabetes.

It was not until several years after taking my last prescription medications that I felt able to tackle this excessive eating. Initially with later breakfast, then gradually further decreasing my eating window.

The outcome is that I am now averaging just under 8 hours between first food and last food and so on average going more than 16 hours per night with no food or calorific drinks.

It has taken effort and discipline, resisting early and late eating and making a note of first and last food times, to be able to share my progress graphically:

Intermittent fasting for improving mood and brain health

How might this help with stabilizing mood and improving health?

  1. Developing discipline would seem to be a good thing.
  2. Possibly the main benefit comes from being able to avoid almost all junk food, as having planned meal-times makes it easier to eat planned foods.

Am I going to stick with this?

  1. Yes
  2. Christmas time could prove tricky although I am certainly not going to get upset if I stray a little
  3. I am not planning to push this further such as 17 hours without food in each 24 although I believe I have proved that is within my grasp
  4. I may experiment with the occasional longer fast as that is said to be very good for health

I hope that by sharing this I am demonstrating just something that is possible as we leave extremes of mood behind us.

 

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Natural Sugars or Healthy Fats – It all depends on your mood? #HCLF #HFLC or #LCHF

March 2, 2018 Leave a comment

Yesterday I mentioned ‘High Carbohydrate Low Fat’ and will admit I used the letters HCLF partly because those letters attract attention. Well, I did receive a few emails and this comment posted here at rethinkingbipolar.com:

“…if I am to have breakfast Roger what should I have? Fruit or bacon and eggs?”

  1. Ten years ago I would have said, “Make the most amazing fruit-salad cutting up at least six different colourful fruits. Perhaps add something that makes it unique, like a few cherry tomatoes! Then share with family or even take some to share with a neighbour.”
  2. Five years ago I would have said, “Bacon and eggs great! It is sugar-free. It’ll lower your blood glucose, give you energy and help with weight loss.”
  3. A year ago I would have said, “Ditch the bacon! It’ll be full of toxins. Get the best organic eggs you can, lightly boil or poach these so the white is just hard-ish and the yolk runny.”
  4. Now? Today? I’m thinking that providing we are avoiding junk and minimizing toxins neither option is going to do much harm and each contains an amazing mix of nutrients.

What I believe matters more is the timing of our breakfast (breaking of overnight fasting). I think every nutritionist agrees with what Patrick Holford wrote years ago, “Don’t eat for at least an hour after getting up in the morning”. There can be lots of reasons for delaying breakfast. For me, the time before eating is when I get most done per minute.

  • Only about once a week do I have a meal at the time my relatives would call breakfast time, although still at least an hour after getting up.
  • Four or five days a week, I will; write my ‘morning pages’, wash, dress, do yoga-style exercises, have a few hot drinks, shake, do a tiny bit of aerobic stuff, view most of my incoming emails, type a blog-post or similar, put any clothes washing on, walk, hang the washing to dry – All before I prepare my brunch.
  • Usually one day and sometimes two days a week, such as when I am facilitating a group, I eat nothing before noon, 1pm or even 2pm. Keeping busy allows me to do this without causing big shifts in my mood.

Does any of that sound hypo-manic? In recovery, I used to closely monitor my mood – always in fear of ‘relapsing’ as I had been told I was only in ‘remission’. I’m not losing sight of risks of mental health troubles, just that I now know it is lifestyle, stress etc and not any genetic-fixed-uncontrollable disorder. I keep going and achieving while recognizing my changing moods. I know behavior rather than mood determines my long-term happiness.

How does this relate to the “fruit or eggs” choice?

By brunch or lunch-time, what I fancy eating has changed.

Yes, I can allow myself fruit. I often fancy eggs. Now though, I am just as likely to fancy raw organic sauerkraut wrapped in lettuce leaves. I often include all sorts of raw vegetables in my first meal of the day, which very few people would do if eating earlier.

Calories? It will be great when I can stop ever mentioning calories. For now, I’ll just say that do not restrict calories, just that I can eat a couple of big plates full of many different foods for brunch, be full-up for hours, with less than 600kcal. I’ll share more about what this means to me at a later date.

I’m hoping this long answer is taken well by my new reader and it will inspire others to learn as much as they can about what is becoming a popular route to better health and better moods, which may be referred to as intermittent fasting.

I am welcoming bookings to provide talks and facilitate discussions. Please ask.

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What does it all mean? I welcome your thoughts on any of the above or on this slide I created before my morning walk… 2 hours to go to brunch 🙂

HCLF or LFHC versus HFLC or LCHF - What does it mean - Roger Smith

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Beat Bipolar Bloat #fasting #gluten

September 22, 2017 1 Comment

“All disease starts in the gut.” Hippocrates

Eating late tends to give me gut pains at about 2am and this has been a major driver for disorder in my life.

I made a decision to tackle this by not eating anything after 6pm. I had mixed success for a few days until, 24th August when I put this as my number one objective. I decided to allow myself to eat as much of whatever I fancied during each day, to be certain I’d not be hungry at the end of my early evening meal.

You’ll see here that I was successful:Monitoring time of last food of the dayWell, I was successful in achieving just that one goal for 2 weeks. This came at a price as the 2am gut pains came back far worse. I’d only feel okay when I got up and stayed active. Many nights I was up from hours like 2am to 6am, before sleeping about one more hour to get dressed at 7am.

Overall, I was averaging 4 hours sleep a night. I could not figure out what it could be that I might be eating that was causing all this pain.

I’d been out all day on Tuesday. I ate but was still hungry at 6pm. I made porridge with organic oats. Within an hour I was overcome with extraordinary tiredness and laid down at 7:15pm.

I woke at 4am with my abdomen bloated/distended too painfully to be sleeping anymore. It was good to have slept 8 hours, rather than the 4 hours of the previous nights, but what had caused this bloating?

Could it really be the organic oats I’d been using for more than a year?

I have just weighed the dry milled oats I have left. Knowing when I bought these I can tell my consumption had increased to over 500g/week. Four times as much as before 24th August. Most times I had been up in the night, I only eventually felt able to sleep again after mixing and consuming oats with salt and hot water.

I had become addicted to oats!

I believe that a problem with addictions, leaky-gut and failure of the blood-brain-barrier is that we seem to completely forget the most obvious causes.

I must have been suspecting something was odd, when on 13th Sept I had emailed some friends asking, “What is it that can cause oats to be irresistible or even addictive?”

I have known for years that oats and wheat are often:

  • often grown on the same farms
  • moved in the same vehicles and stored in the same barns/silos, which may not be fully cleaned between each load
  • processed in the same factories

The oats I have been using are not labelled ‘gluten-free’. (Even so, ‘gluten-free’ is not necessarily completely free of wheat gluten as the label only means that efforts have been made to reduce the risks from gluten. This was confirmed by an investigation into gluten-free oats that revealed most brands tested contained some gluten.)

How come was I able to eat these oats for so long without spotting these could be a major problem for my gut and sleep pattern?

On Tuesday, my Beat Bipolar presentation had included this slide:Beat Bipolar - 2017-09-19 - Zonulin SlideI have heard doctors question the existence of Zonulin, saying all this is unproven and doctors such a William Davies in his book ‘Wheat Belly’ are making outrageous claims about the harm that can be done by just a little gluten. Whether the science is good or not, I believe we each have to go with our gut feelings (pun intended).

I believe that I have been using these oats as a drug! Every time I had some I felt sleepy about an hour later. Sometimes, if having oats at lunchtime I would have an afternoon sleep.

I’ve made a decision and just given away the remainder of those oats so I will not be tempted.

To be continued…

 

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Fat for Fuel – Dr Mercola – #Mercola

March 16, 2017 Leave a comment

Fat for Fuel is a New Book by Dr Mercola

I’ve not read it. I am not selling it. It is however, the way I have gradually been moving for sometime now. It is not only good for physical health but in the longer term is great for steadying moods. If you want to eliminate bipolar disorder then using fat for fuel is almost certainly going to help.

Mammals, and therefore all of us, work well while using fat as our main energy source. This is known as ketosis which is a word that to many people can sound bad. It is not bad, it is just what our bodies do automatically whenever we go without eating for 6 hours or so. (The exact number of hours varies from person to person.)

Question 1 of 2: In a typical 24 hours what is the longest you go without consuming any food or drink that contains carbohydrates or man-made chemicals?

I have found the easiest way to maximizing my time in fat-burning mode is not to eat or drink any carbohydrates in the morning. For me, this includes avoiding drinks with any kind of added milk, because milk contains sugar.

Whether I say I am skipping breakfast on days I do not eat before noon, or I say that I am having a very late ‘break-fast-meal’, it is the days I do this when I feel best and think most clearly.

Question 2 of 2: After reading about Fat for Fuel could you share, using the comments option, how going longer between meals and minimizing snacking helps you to be in the mood you want to be in?

A new website set up by Dr Mercola: www.fatforfuel.org

Just to make it clear… I am not being paid to advertise this… I simply believe most people would be healthier and less prone to mood disorders if eating less often and this requires us to burn fat for fuel.

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Fasting to improve mood

February 6, 2017 Leave a comment

I wrote about fasting to improve mood a month ago. I have made progress and am keen to share this.

Due to my blood sugar being a bit high (not diabetic but often higher than I want it to be) I have created a more ambitious plan for eating better quality food while overall eating less.

For 7 days now I have not eaten before noon. That is, no breakfast at all and no drinks that could be considered as food. This is a big change, for me, especially as I was brought up believing breakfast was essential. I also bought into the idea of “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” before I discovered this meme was invented by businesses that sell breakfast cereals!

I made this transition by initially eating until late in the evening. Gradually I am finishing all eating a little earlier each evening to create a genuine fast, with my first meal feeling like ‘breaking a fast’ rather than a meal called break-fast.

This is day 8. It is 12:45pm and so far not eaten today.

Before I say how I am feeling on this new regime, I want to make it clear that I am not starving myself at all. I am eating a little less but only because I find I am less hungry and more satisfied with the better quality, mainly organic, foods I am choosing.

Moods? Essentially, I am feeling mostly good. I have a little more energy, doing 10,000 steps per day, sleeping through the night and yesterday easily swam 100 lengths… okay, it was a small pool!

If you do not see an update from me within a month, please feel free to ask how my longer overnight fasting is going and how this is improving my health.

Here is my previous article on fasting to improve mood

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