long piece on Inverse.com about intermittent fasting:
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/weird-powerlifting-history-of-intermittent-fasting
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/weird-powerlifting-history-of-intermittent-fasting
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/weird-powerlifting-history-of-intermittent-fasting
that looks at its somewhat forgotten origins in powerlifting… it was discovered by this male model… it seems based in equal parts on Karl Lagerfeld’s (excellent) diet book (called “Diet”) and the peer-reviewed research by Prof. Mark P Mattson (who I interviewed for the piece and who is chill)… some of the stranger curios of the diet are:
Berkhan (Martin, the ‘discoverer’/founder, he’s in the story) swore in equal parts (if I remember right) about the efficacy of the diet and this thing he called reverse pyramid training, which is the way he worked out, which is a situation where the reps per sets ramp up towards the end…. as in 5 reps, 8 reps, 14 reps… which could work! on a sort of bodybuilding level. But the critical part of me feels like if you are pulling 400 lbs and skipping meals then anything with a heavy load works….
BCAA (branch chained amino acids)… I don’t have the data on this but they went from a very minor thing to a near pantry staple… there are like a ton of flavors of this stuff… basically BCAA is a partial protein (not all the amino acids that make up a protein) that you can drink in the AM (in water or tea) and get a similar experience to a protein shake but calorie free… weird…
I did intermittent fasting from 2011 until maybe 2016 and found it an OK diet… that was when I was lifting the most heavy (by my lights)… it works I guess (anything works if you’re on it and don’t eat everything) and though I have split from it I haven’t eaten breakfast regularly since I started IF…
Also… two interesting things in the weightlifting (olympic) world seem to be relevant to post here….
Eishiro Murakami, aka TANK, a Japanese superheavyweight:
Did a Q&A sesh on Instagram last week and dropped this:
Who knew. Gauze, some readers might know (and some might not), are the preeminent hard-core band from Japan and have been around near 40 years… they are something closer to a sustained art project than a punk band (but they are definitely a punk band)… one of the nice things about Gauze is that they kind of destroy ideas of aging, and are more progression and fidelity… they grow deeper but not wider… all their records have remained pretty fast but they have matured… they have a pretty inspiring thing going. Anyways my thinking is his parents were maybe into Gauze or something; he’s in his early 20s. I asked him what records he liked and he didn’t answer or see; Murakami has the national records for CJ and snatch (higher than the record for the old classes as well).
Also this week, his teammate Toshiki Yamamoto, who had the best clean and jerk at the Worlds last year in his weight class, posted this video of him… squatting …. in a barbershop? after a haircut?
Which is absolutely another interest of the editorial board and one that feels frankly more dialed on the nose than the Gauze thing. Toshiki is cool, when I began following him on Instagram in 2015 he posted photos of his Pump Furys and Air Max 97s and when hashtag follows start he followed the tags in Japanese for those things as well. He still shows up to competition in Furys now and then; I think he got a sponsorship so he doesn’t post photos of him buying them at the mall anymore. While shared taste in sneakers is not what it used to be as far as the basis for proximity, it goes a long way in this case. Add haircut identitarianism and hey, not bad.
Thanks for reading.
Snake