Can Eating Every Other Day Be Good for You?

The Alternate Day Diet Can Slow the Diseases of Aging, Including Cancer, Diabetes, and Heart Disease

 

or many people who have adhered to an extremely low calorie diet in the interest of living longer, the recent research findings by the National Institute of Health are disappointing. While worms, fruit flies and some other mammals live longer when they are kept on a low calorie diet, rhesus monkeys do not. Proponents of the calorie restriction lifestyle choice may still argue that it is a healthier way to eat, but it is a difficult eating plan to stay on. Who wants to be hungry all the time, every day?

Another alternative that could hold promise for the same results is the alternate day diet, or intermittent fasting. I recently read a blog post by a cancer patient indicating that intermittent fasting is proving effective for slowing the growth of cancer and enhancing the effects of chemotherapy. A friend of mine has been following the alternate day diet for two years, and he is looking very fit and well at 60 plus years. As a cancer survivor, I am very interested in anything that could increase my odds of dying at a ripe old age, of something other than cancer. I've done some research, and here's what I found.

The alternate day diet is not hard to follow for most people.
Dr. James Johnson is the doctor who has developed this approach, and it has a lot of things going for it. Diets are notoriously hard to stick to, but most of us can handle it if we know we can eat what we want tomorrow. The way the plan works is that you eat normally on one day, and then the next day you restrict your calorie intake to 20 percent or less than you would usually need. Getting through a day on 500 calories is tough, but not impossible. According to Dr. Johnson, two weeks of alternating normal food intake with these modified fast days will change your body chemistry. After that, the program gets less restrictive.

After two weeks, your body chemistry changes and you start to reap the benefits.

There is a protein in the body called SIRT1 that affects your body in several ways that impact your health. More of this protein is produced when you fast over a period of time. According to Dr. Johnson, it takes a couple of weeks to activate this increased SIRT1 production in the body. The result is slower cell proliferation, better fat metabolism, and generally more efficient use of energy by the cells. There is an excellent article in the International Journal of Biological Sciences describing the impact of SIRT1, which you can find here. This research suggests that activating SIRT1 in can prolong life and prevent cancer. I'll go hungry one out of two days for that!

This way of eating can change your approach to food.
After reading the research on intermittent fasting, I was sold. I've been on the plan for a week, and I have had several surprises. I thought that I would want to eat a lot on my up days, but I haven't. I've been interested in healthier food, and I've enjoyed it more. After my first low calorie day, I broke my fast with some very plain oatmeal with a miniscule amount of maple syrup to sweeten it. It tasted wonderful. I have lost four pounds the first week, and my energy has been excellent. I have not slowed my schedule at all.
Starvation diets will cause your metabolism to slow, making weight loss harder. The normal eating days prevent this, so weight loss is steady.
I think I'm hooked.