This is a documentary that was aired on conventional public television and, amazingly, it discusses how your diet can be key to your health and covers the topics of caloric restriction, fasting and intermittent fasting. I don’t agree with everything said in this documentary, but I’m amazed and pleased that these topics are being covered on mainstream television.
- life expectancy increased during the great depression, when food was very scarce
- severely restricting the amount mice eat causes them to live much longer
- Michael compares himself to a man who lives on a restricted calorie, but highly nutritious diet. This other man has been eating 1900 calories a day for about 10 years whereas Michael’s diet has averaged 2300.
- Micheal’s body fat is 27.1% compared to 11.5% in the other man
- Michael abdominal fat is about 30% and Michael gets scared by this
- Michael sees that his diet is undermining his health, and fast
- Learns that IGF1 levels are a key to caloric restriction and longevity
- IGF1 normally forces our bodies into go-go mode
- when IGF1 levels drop the body goes into repair mode
- when we eat a lot of protein, we produce more IGF1 and we are put into go-go mode, there’s no time to go into repair mode
- to reduce IGF1 have to reduce calories and reduce protein
- but, fasting has a more dramatic and quicker reduction in IGF1
- Micheal takes on a 3-day and 4-nights fast to see how his IGF1 reduces
- his IGF1 reduced to almost half his prior level
- his blood sugar also dropped to healthy levels
- he then looks at alternate day fasting (I don’t like this proposal – eating lots of really bad food on alternate days doesn’t make any sense to me)
- he learns that intermittent fasting may reduce the chances of brain related illnesses as well
- he starts a 5-2 fasting regime – 5 days normal eating and 2 days fasting (actually 600 calories per day on the fasting days)
- he does this for 5 weeks
- he lost over 14 pounds and his body fat dropped to 19%
- his IGF1 went down 50% again, glucose dropped to normal, cholesterol improved as well
- he plans to keep doing the 5-2 fast
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