I know this feeling well. This is a false sense of sharpness caused by undereating. You dont feel hungry or tired, just energized, light and strong.

I say false sense of sharpness, because you're actually not that alert. Yes, you can push yourself more, but your brain is in flight/fright mode and not thinking rationally.

Are you sure that that is all there is?

May I point to one paper of many that show proinflammatory cytokines to be reduced due to intermittent fasting?

“Under controlled conditions, [diurnal intermittent fasting] led to significantly decreased plasma levels of cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8), particularly IL-1β and IL-6 across 24 h.” – The effects of diurnal intermittent fasting on proinflammatory cytokine levels while controlling for sleep/wake pattern, meal composition and energy expenditure, 2019: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

There are a bunch more. “intermittent fasting il-6” is a decent search to start with: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=7%2C39&q=int...

We tend to eat up mechanistic reports that make us feel good about our preferred lifestyle, but in this topic you’d want to find experiments that increase alertness during IF (something that actually confirms an endpoint). Maybe they exist.

A classic example is the “antinutrients in plants” mechanistic fad while plants in a diet actually increase all health outcomes when put to the test.

Exercise causes a huge inflammatory response too. Thankfully we know better than to stop the analysis there.

The exercise inflammatory/antiinflammatory control loop is indeed wildly interesting! As are the nuances of how the interleukins work.

I deeply encourage people to read the science. And indeed all of it.

As you said: Maybe they exist. They probably do – if the substrate of under-funding things has allowed them to come into existence. There are studies that show general health benefits from intermittent fasting as I recall.

It’s also worth paying attention to one’s experience of the world, and to not discredit it. There’s a distinction between following a fad, preferring a lifestyle, wanting to feel good about it – in a social sense I guess? …versus, say, noticing a sense of clarity whole watching one’s bloodwork results improve.

Read papers. Mostly science. Not too carefully.

Mechanistic ones too. Mechanistic ones too! From personal experience, I ask you to believe me when I give insulin glargine as a clear example of the molecular biology of something clearly showing that a certain medicine is literally dangerous. The zoomed-out general health studies smooth over the substance’s obvious capacity to abruptly flow out of bolus sites and dump 24 hours’ worth of insulin into the bloodstream. It’s obvious from the molecular biology and the anecdotes of horrible blood sugar crashes and people dying in their sleep. Please don’t take too much salt with the mechanistic studies. It’s mechanics all the way down.

> but your brain is in flight/fright mode and not thinking rationally.

Good cautious advice. Thank you.

I always significant increase in weight lifting exercises immediately upon starting fasting. Feels like an adrenaline response tbh.

It seems likely to me that your type 1 brain is more active and sharp, while your type 2 brain is overshadowed.

[Citation required]

[anecdote implied]

Irrational thinking seems unlikely. When glucose deficit, the brain functions fine on ketones. It might be you're experiencing your brain running on ketones.

It's a beautiful thing that we can rebrand "hangry" as "warrior mode". I also noticed this and just came to the conclusion that having breakfast and being in a good mood ("off edge"/"relaxed"/"opposite of warrior mode") was more worth it.

I’m going to tell my wife I’m in “warrior mode” the next time I’m being a hangry jerk. I wonder how that will go.

Next time I skip a meal I’m going to say it’s my tribal warrior response when I feel like raiding the fridge.

Huh, I've been intermittent fasting (eating only between 11am - 7pm for me) for most of this year, and haven't noticed any emotional changes like that.

But the physical ones definitely! I feel way healthier and my bloodwork just came back much improved as well.

For me, though, I don't think it has anything at all to do with the time restriction so much as the inadvertent calorie restriction. I've lost 30 lbs since I started, mostly because intermittent fasting has caused me to cut out my late night snacking and my greasy breakfasts.

In my experience, this is a good description of what happens. Eat less; lose weight; feel better.

Now let's find a way to put this in a pill so manufacturer reps will provide literature to doctors to prescribe it and insurance companies will pay the drug makers so everyone can go to pill maker conferences in Hawaii for education.

Feeding is such an important and complex function, I believe there's also a strong psychological component in fasting. In my case, I'm losing about a pound per week doing light exercise and 15 hours of fasting daily.

Sometimes I've gone to sleep a bit hungry, and I've had dramatic dreams of being weak and emaciated. When I woke up I felt anxious, but just needed to go to the mirror, talk to my subconscious as if it was a child, and show him that we still have a long road to go, but in a few hours there will be a generous breakfast. We're not dying of hunger anytime soon. The anxiety simply vanishes.

These days there's no feeding anxiety anymore, but the subconscious is a very interesting companion. Another night I dreamed that somehow I was at my intended goal, and I didn't know how that happened so fast, and then felt an overwhelming happiness because now I could eat at any hour again! I woke up, and said "Nice try, subconscious", and happily resumed my sleep.

The brain in survival mode acts in funny ways.

Been doing IF on-and-off for maybe 5 or 6 years. I get the same way.

Since you already called this "warrior mode", I'd recommend reading the warrior literature for tools and techniques to help deal with this in a positive way. If you're new to it, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman is a great introduction and there should be enough references on it to start digging deeper.

There is a movie for the book as well but I don't recommend it.

This looks like a perfect antidote to my not-peaceful warrior experiences [1]. Thank you.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2255.Way_of_the_Peaceful...

I find macro timing/restriction to be better in combating "hangryness", meals before 10am and after 4pm are protein and carb heavy and anything in between is higher protien and low or near zero carb. I used to 16:8 and 18:6 IF but Id just be too moody.

Somewhat. I feel focused and active, but it’s more of a calm balanced feeling.

What's the IF protocol do you use? And do you take any Coffee during fasting? Any sugar or milk?

Has this been accompanied by a rise in testosterone by any chance?

How do you get that measured? Don't think it's in the standard NHS bloodwork men my age get as routine in UK. Does it show up in urine for any OTC tests?

yes, I think it happens so you (we) can go hunting or harvesting or something, I can usually refocus that into cooking

your body is in survival mode, so that is to be expected.

Seen it in people. It's a quite beautiful side.

Due to a downvote I wish to reaffirm my position: I do see a somewhat warrior-mode-like side of people who are fasting. And I do find it to be beautiful. It’s not bad company.

> The doc basically said my latest bloods are outstanding

What was the change in blood reports?

I am surprised somone can simply reverse their 'serious' metabolic disease state in mere 6 months.

Then what would be the point of living a healthy lifestyle everyday if you can simply 'get healthy' in a matter of months when you need it.

I've wondered about this for a while. My friends don't give a shit about health and barely do any physical activity. They can get to 'outstanding' equivalent level in 6 months at the time of their choosing? That doesn't seem fair,lol.

Your body really doesn't want to be in some states (because you'll die) so certain markers/metabolic disease states like NAFLD and pre-T2D MetS will lower dramatically soon after the insult (chronic overfeeding) is stopped. RCTs have shown dramatic improvements in as little as a week or two. In my case, both my elevated AST and TG numbers halved a month into making significant lifestyle changes and almost all my bloodwork continued to improve dramatically into my next labs at 9mo and 1y.

That isn't to say there isn't accrued/long term damage, I think most people going through this sort of change will tell you that they are still dealing w/ health issues long term. I've notice that years after my initial interventions, my body still seems much more predisposed to weight gain for example - but trust me though, not feeling like crap is it's own reward. You can basically get used to anything and you don't really realize just how bad you were feeling (slowly getting worse over the course of a decade or so for me) until you turn it around.

Hey I'm really worried about sending out the wrong signal here, so let me tell you it was not a picnic. NOT a picnic! But it was a walk on the park, so to speak.

And I definitely wouldn't let myself go out of shape like that again thinking it would be an easy ride home. Basically I stomped my A1C almost in half, from 50 (knocking on the door of diabetic) down to 30 (complete remission to decent health) - so totally mullahed it. Doc says that's at the limits of medical science, so I was pretty chuffed. Need to maintain now with IF and regular workout.

What it cost me was:

IF, 12 or 18 hour sessions once (occasionally twice) per week.

Diet change to 80% plant based, more raw veg, nuts, fish

Setting a reminder to drink water

Walking 20 miles twice a week with a full pack (that's where most people will wobble a bit).

Cold water sea swimming (you get used to it)

I added two tricks. One is to walk on sand. Other is replace lost weight by stuffing a modular armour jacket with little sand bags in the plate pockets. When I dropped from 95kg to 90kg I just added 5 kilos of sand and so on. This happens gradually. When you carry around the weight you lost it keeps the calorie burn the same per mile and really motivates you because you can literally feel how much lighter you are when you take the vest off. Also you can just drop weight if you get exhausted on a long yomp.

Yes I am lucky too. I live in a place with opportunity for outdoor activity. Probably good metabolic genetics. Made time to do the health work by dropping some contracts (I consider it an investment in myself like college etc) Also I took the diagnosis seriously and researched an action plan.

Oh yea for sure. I understand that you put in a lot of effort for the results that you mentioned.

> The doc basically said my latest bloods are outstanding

But I am not clear if you've had any lasting damage from the past or is everything is simply reversed. Is there anything that cannot be reversed with any amount of effort?

It's a mixed bag as I understand it. Some things recover quick and some take much longer, many years of changed lifestyle.

It's got me more interested in health and biology for sure. The human body is remarkably hackable.

Things like bone density and tendon health definitely change slowly. Superficial organ fat, the most dangerous type, is apparently the first thing to go, and you can get so it won't go on quickly again. That's what the cold swimming is for, something to do with types of fat metabolics. I think being overweight for a considerable time (a few years) may have given me joint damage, knees maybe, but TBH I've not pushed myself into injuries and I think it's all strengthening well. I may move to some light strength training soon, but I prefer bodyweight only. Getting to the state where you can even do bodyweight, like 20 press-ups, is a great target.

If you're thinking about doing this... DO IT. I wish I could be beside you on some long walks. Maybe talk to the doc first and set a reasonable plan. But the fasting is not as hard as you think. After the first couple times it gets old and you start to make friends with hunger.

And what ever you improve, whether it's lasting or not, that's gotta be good right?

>Then what would be the point of living a healthy lifestyle everyday if you can simply 'get healthy' in a matter of months when you need it.

Because the labs are just indicators of whether or not damage is being done.

If you have high LDL for example, disease state is correlated to how long, and how high LDL levels have been. (The evidence for that is robust.) So for example, while you can improve those levels in 6 months, that doesn't mean you weren't racking up damage for the previous 10 years.

This is a common thing with most health indicators actually: blood pressure, LDL, blood sugar, etc. End organ damage, and risk of adverse events are correlated to how high and how long levels were maintained.

> that doesn't mean you weren't racking up damage for the previous 10 years.

> and risk of adverse events are correlated to how high and how long levels were maintained.

Is there a way to measure this though. How can I tell what my current level of damage is.

GP got the usual indicators into shape. Is all the 'racking up damage' reversed in OPs case ?

>Is there a way to measure this though. How can I tell what my current level of damage is.

It's a cumulative thing. There are ways to ascertain the damage, but not through routine tests.

>GP got the usual indicators into shape. Is all the 'racking up damage' reversed in OPs case ?

Particularly in the case of cardiovascular damage like atherosclerosis and resulting kidney damage, narrowing arteries, etc, no it's not reversed.

> There are ways to ascertain the damage

Well, what are these ways.

This would get very specific to the organ systems involved, and starts to get above my understanding, but it'd be things like:

Coronary calcium scan to check for the progress of atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries, ultrasound of the kidneys, maybe the heart to check for left ventricular hypertrophy (or do you need an echocardiogram for that?), ultrasound for the carotid arteries, etc.

Like sex, do you want to have the benefits along the way or wait until the last days of life?

Yes but my question is doesn't poor diet and lifestyle have lasting damage or can it be simply reversed in few months like OP.

Your body goes into hunting mode. The problem is your environment - body yearns to be in nature, hunting or braaiing.