Fasting Will Increase Your Discipline And Productivity

StefanMFR · 2016-12-04T02:43:19+00:00

Completely agree that skipping breakfast makes you more productive.

Also, although the research is still limited, intermittent fasting has some really cool benefits as well.

For example, researchers measured the effects of a short Ramadan fast on hormonal levels in single men.

They found that at the end of the short Ramadan fast, the testosterone levels of the men were increased by an average of 180% and their luteinizing hormone (LH) by 67%.

Here's the study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2686332

Fredo100 · 2016-12-04T03:26:24+00:00

I agree with you brother.

I remember when i was in highschool, i used to stop eating at like 9 pm so when i get to school i hadn't eaten for atleast 12 hours and i noticed it increased my ability to socialise greatly (I used to be introverted).

I was a health freak at the time and was super aware of my body which is how i noticed the difference.

Mckallidon · 2016-12-04T07:24:16+00:00

Can confirm similar experience.

Your body doesn't want to digest food before noon. This is known. Digesting food in the morning disrupts your body's elimination. Whenever I eat breakfast I have noticed my attention and focus is shit at work or school. It bogs me down for the whole day mentally and physically. Many cultures only have 2 meals and it's usually a late breakfast/brunch/lunch.

The SAD conception of breakfast is actually the bastard son of the public relations industry. No one ate eggs, bacon and potatoes for breakfast until Big Agro paid Edward Bernays to convince Americans that they should be eating a big breakfast of crap his clients wanted to sell more of. Bad studies "suggest" kids do better in school if they eat a shitty breakfast of surplus Big Agro commodities either in processed cereals at home or school meal programs that are mainly expensive dumpsters for this crap. In most cultures people did not eat a big early breakfast. At best they ate a light breakfast if they did hard labor. Of course people who produce or market food will say you should be sitting on a toilet with a conveyor installed in your gullet.

Fasting has actually increased my BMI decrease and muscle growth without a major change in overall Caloric intake or exercise. Makes sense. It's hard to burn fat when you never let your body dip into it. Food is meant more for recovery, not main fuel. I am much more clear in mind and energized in body fasted. I have found that I can get much more intense workouts done fasted. I contract harder, have more endurance and am just more motivated. Like OP says having food in your gut makes you feel good and kills motivation.

When you think about, it it is also hard to overeat if you don't eat 3 meals a day or only eat within a certain window. As soon as you say it's fair game for a 12-16 hour stretch of course you will overeat. Our ancestors didn't have access to food whenever they wanted. They were in a fasted state most of their lives and got to supplement light snacking with the occasional gorging during the fruiting season or when they bagged game.

As a professional chef, I can attest to the fact that with old habits came much free time wasted making crap to eat for myself and recovering from it. Partly, because I was a chef and would always experiment and do more than most people, but mostly because I ate three times a day like "conventional wisdom" told me to. Now I eat 2 meals. A light easy brunch and one heavy meal that actually requires cooking. Between the time saved cooking for myself less and being much more energetic and clear-headed, I've been getting much more done. I used to be foggy 24/7 and lazy as hell.

TheLaughingRhino · 2016-12-04T13:55:43+00:00

My observation and experience

You'll hydrate more. To my best understanding, most people ( like 80 percent of Americans) are chronically dehydrated. There's a large window during the day where you can only really drink something, so green tea in the morning helps ( a little lime juice is good for you too in the tea) and water otherwise. You'll drink more water naturally with IF, which is good for you
You'll tend to avoid late night "grazing" which is snacking while on the computer or reading or doing something distracting
If your schedule is set a certain way, you'll just be too damn tired to eat any more within your eating window. This is more likely when I'm using an 18/6 versus a 16/8
If you get into a rut, a "buyback day" like a full day fast thrown in ( which turns your 16 hour typical fast into a 40 hour one) is good for you and really helps. Try to schedule that on a non workout day or a weekend day, for your own safety (probably not a good idea to try a max squat at the gym at hour 39 of a long fast) If you have a weekly cheat meal, taking it right before that 40 hour fast might be a good way to do it ( you are satisfying your cravings before, and giving yourself a good calorie load to start off)
For those who struggle with portion control, if you are only eating really one big meal a day, which is usually the case, you can still eat a larger meal and not go over your caloric boundaries.
For those who lift, which should be everyone, if you can, try to make your first meal to be your post workout meal. The struggle here to start is doing your workout at the end of your fast, when you are often gassed out. On the flip side, you learn to adapt.
Having a routine in your eating schedule and cooking in bulk make this much easier to follow and be consistent.
If you do occasionally go out, the typical eating window will likely coincide with the time you'd probably eat out for a dinner with friends
On holidays, you can have your one big plate of Thanksgiving or Xmas dinner, and that's it. Which will likely still push you over your normal calorie limit, but at least you can enjoy yourself and not have holiday weight gain like many others by drastically stuffing yourself.
As mentioned above, your HGH production goes up. Your body also starts to heal when you do longer fasts. All that energy used for digestion now can be refocused into body repair.
You are saving a ton of cash. People who eat like crap are usually eating out or eating large portions, which means they are spending a ton on food, but might not realize it because it's daily, and they aren't seeing the financial impact across a year. In some aspects, eating healthier costs more, but in many ways, many things cost less against the total. Instead of a typical American who gets Starbucks every morning and eats out 3-4 times a week and binge eats and snacks, you are eating less, spending less and can focus your money and energy to something more useful.

I found it was easier to cut out rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, tortillas, condiments, sugars, dairy, etc with this system.

My go to system is to make my post workout meal a smoothie. Throw in some kale, some apple cider vinegar, some peanut butter, some sunflower seeds, some almond milk, some protein powder, some fruit, some greek yogurt, etc and it helps my body transition better after fasting.

My main meal usually consists of some kind of bean stew. Dry beans and some meat with vegetables made in a big batch. You can microwave it and add some cayenne pepper to it for a little extra boost. If you want to increase the volume, use a big bowl, add more water to it, and stir and heat. Helps you hydrate better. For their price and return on macronutrients, dry beans are a massive bang for the buck, both for wallet and health. If you do the stew route, save your meat bones or buy some cheap meat bones from the butcher and boil those in the stew, you'll get the calcium and nutrients from those and that helps too. This would be a good time to do your vitamins/supplements as well ( fish oil, multivitamin, B complex, D3)

I like it, it works for me. I realize it won't work for everyone. I will say, if you lift or drive before your first meal in the schedule, try to take a minute and refocus, i.e. driving and lifting, as in the beginning, it's easy to get a little foggy at times, and you don't want to injure yourself or T bone a school bus because you got loopy. If you do it, you will adapt, and it can become habit forming.

Best advice I got from a long time IF guy, don't be rigid. If a day breaks down and you don't IF, then OK. Or if your window shifts into a 12/12, that specific day, then OK. The trick is not have that happen every day, but to not totally deprive yourself all the time when the circumstances dictate it. Several times, during my workout, I've come to terms that I could not safely make it to the end of the workout without eating something, so I had a little to tide me over. Just listen to your body when practical.

For those beginning, sometimes starting with a 12/12, then shifting to a 13/11, then adding an hour at a time, is a good progression system to ease into a 16/8 or a 20/4 window. Rome wasn't built in a day.

http://www.leangains.com/2010/04/leangains-guide.html

Leangains is a good site to start with, FYI

Good luck to all.

CinematicRacer14 · 2016-12-04T04:04:21+00:00

I fast everyday and I can attest to this.

BlakeBlackheart · 2016-12-04T08:57:01+00:00

I think limiting caloric intake is a must for all grown men and women. Fasting is a means of getting there. I just recently (1.5) years ago found out that I have been kinda doing intermittent fasting unknowingly, but fairly limited. From my experiments fasting is an easy way to limit caloric intake but honestly it doesn't matter how you do it.

Background info: 33 years old, 179 length, 80kg, around 12% bodyfat. Work long hours.

I don't have specific eating window but I eat late when I don't have to work.

So for non work days, a Saturday for example I will wake up late, around 11.00. Waste an hour of my time browsing instagram. Brush my teeth at 12.00. Get into my gym clothes at 12.15. Take a preworkout and then head for the gym. No food in my system. Workout session takes about 2-2.5 hours. When I get home it's about 15.00. I drink my post workout shake and watch fitness related youtube videos for like half an hour. Then I hop into the shower and get dressed which takes about half an hour. When I'm done it's 16.00. I kinda feel the hunger but for me food is a reward for doing work. Going to the gym was half the work. Groceries is the other half. So I check what i need, then go out and get it. By the time I get back, placed all the groceries in their proper space it's 17.30. I then quickly clean the house and when I'm finally done and prepare the first meal of the day it's 18.00. Usually fried eggs with bread and a protein shake. Then usually around 23.00 I get hungry again. I eat an apple. The end

On work days I do eat in the morning but not a regular breakfast. I don't get up early to eat. I think that's ridiculous. Also I'm not a morning person. So I usually start working at 09.00. Between 09.00 and 12.00 I eat 4 race cakes with peanut butter and chilli flakes. Then at 12.00 I eat 500gr cottage cheese with an apple. Then from 13.00 to 20.00 I eat 4 more rice cakes with peanut butter.

Then I go home. Change to gym clothing. Go to the gym and workout. When I'm done it's about 22.15. I go home, drink post workout shake and hit the showers. When it's time to eat it's around 23.00. My dinner consists of 1 chicken breast, 2 boiled eggs, 70 gr of cucumber and 125gr broccoli or 125gr of cabbage. I don't eat carbs for dinner. I go to bed around 01.00 next day

Limiting caloric intake I eat the same shit everyday. At minimum five days a week. On the weekends I allow myself to consume bread. So strictly speaking i have been only doing IF on the weekends but to me that's only part of it. The biggest gains in physique and clarity of mind come from limiting my caloric intake. Due to the season nature of my work there are periods where I can rarely hit the gym: only on Saturday. During that period the physique I worked so hard for disappears only to get rebuild in less busy periods. To counter this effect I decided to limit my caloric intake. That's the only solution as I always eat clean. So I started to see what I could eat on a daily basis without going over 2000 cal per day. I settled on diet described above and I love it. It's about 1970 cals.

I make great gains in the gym and I'm as lean as I was when I was sixteen.

Sorry for this huge mess of a story but I thought sharing my routine would best answer all of the possible questions with regards to the how I do it.

TL;DR: Intermittent fasting is cool but find out how much calories you really need to be productive. It's probably around 40% less than what you currently consume.

wakethfkupneo · 2016-12-04T09:26:14+00:00

Skipping breakfast for 2 years now. This, combined with exercising and taking little extra care of what I eat (no more sugar in coffee, clean eating, etc.) helped me to slowly lose 50lbs of excess weight. Took me almost full year to go from borderline obese to what I'd call 'normal', but the thing is it came naturally, on it's own, the moment I developed a habit. There were no shocks or struggling.

Pro tip: when hungry in the morning - black coffee to the rescue. Pure black coffee I must add, no sugar, no milk, just coffee. It doesn't trigger insuline which consequentially doesn't stop production of growth hormone (body builder's wet dream). With a bonus of increased insuline resistance. There are innumerous studies, just google it.

Intermittent fasting was by far the most productive thing I've learned on the internet and needless to say I (M42) look and feel better than 20 years ago.

arghx7 · 2016-12-04T13:32:36+00:00

I think your body gets addicted to always feeling competely full. For me It was tough coming off of eating every 4 hours, like conventional wisdom has suggested.

versus91 · 2016-12-04T20:23:07+00:00

I see your point but i wonder one thing. What happens to your hard earned muscles while you are fasting like this ? Im new to lifting (4 months) and what you guys are telling here contradicts with the grand narrative of 'muscle preservation' / 'muscle building'. According to every article i stumbled upon, if you are in a caloric deficit (especially if you are in a high caloric deficit) you will eventually start to lose your gains, and wont be able to add any muscle.

As a beginner, is it really bad for my body to fast like this ? Because without fasting, i really cant get any desired %fat loss in my body. But i dont want to lose my freshly added muscle mass while doing that.

What would you say about this ?

gjs628 · 2016-12-05T21:33:40+00:00

I put on loads of weight and thanks to chronic pain I can't exercise it off anymore. So I just stopped eating.

I now take a normal plate of food at night for dinner and eat half (I physically can't eat any more than that either) and then finish the other half the next night. During the day I only drink water. No breakfast, no lunch, and I'm never ever hungry enough for it.

This has worked wonders for weight loss, I'm not exhausted all the time like I used to be, and I generally feel great as a result. Eating half a meal a day (or one full meal every two days which I also sometimes do) is working out really well for me. Only caveat is that when you do eat it can't be junk, it needs to be protein and vitamins (meat and veg with a few carbs thrown in). I'm not saying it works for everyone since most of you guys are in the gym and need calories but for me it works wonders.

KyfhoMyoba · 2016-12-06T00:24:41+00:00

Another benefit from fasting one day a week is substantial fat loss, even if you eat double on the following day.

BreathOfDick · 2016-12-04T15:52:03+00:00

Hopefully get a response from OP. I love intermittent fasting, but absolutely cannot skip breakfast or I feel sick by 9 am every time guaranteed (wake up at 530). Additionally I can't focus for shit. So my last meal is lunch at noon and fast for the rest of the day.

While it's great for losing fat and keeping it off, I do not find any increase in productivity and it definitely detracts from my focus - always learning new programming concepts and being hungry the whole time really makes it difficult.

Any tips on how to be more focused when hungry?

PaulAJK · 2016-12-04T16:51:20+00:00

I've been doing IF for a year and a half now, and there's another benefit which I've noticed, and that's that I don't ever get really hungry. I'm very rarely starving hungry. Appetite is apparently controlled by a hormone called Leptin, and it seems that IF reduces or regulates the effects of it.

that's great for eating healthily, because there are always going to be certain times when you're too busy to eat, or the only food immediately available is shit. You can get on with your business without getting distracted by hunger.

JurassicVibes · 2016-12-04T20:29:03+00:00

Wait so all you have to do is eat your food in an 8 hour window rather than 12? That's easy isn't it.

Also can you eat from 7-4 Skipping diner rather than breakfast. Eating breakfast is important to reduce stress and cortisol levels ect dinner is least important

GeorgeBushIV · 2017-01-09T00:05:35+00:00

what about coffee in the mornings?

Title	Fasting Will Increase Your Discipline And Productivity
Author	petrichordog
Upvotes	23
Comments	33
Date	December 4, 2016 2:09 AM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/5gd6qi/fasting_will_increase_your_discipline_and/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/fasting-will-increase-your-discipline-and.65032 https://theredarchive.com/post/65032

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