Eat Stop Eat Intermittent Fasting First Person Interview: Dave “Athlete Creator” Sandel

Note: full disclosure. Dave lifts with me here at the Extreme Human Performance Center, so I know him and yes I will have an affiliate link at the end for you to purchase a product that I make a few bucks off.  If you don’t purchase said product I will not hunt you down via your IP address (like I even know how to do that) and force you to buy it, but if you do I will be forever thankful.

Lets fire up some green tea and put the screws to Dave about his recent fasting experiment and see what we can learn.    Let’s go.

I heard that you lift weights, but yet you did some fasting. Why?

First off, thanks for allowing me some precious bandwidth on your site. For all you non-geeks, bandwidth is…uuhhh, nevermind, I’ll keep my nerdiness to myself. Anyways….

The biggest reason I decided to try fasting was that spring was in the air, and it was time to shed my winter jacket, if you know what I mean. I’ve done every other type of “diet” out there known to man: low carb, carb cycling, veagan, just plain ‘ole “eating clean”, etc. etc., so I decided I might as well give this a try too.

Unlike you, Mike, I can only stand to read research for a couple of hours a week. I’d rather get out there and actually try it. (Editor’s note, since this is my blog I can add my comments, hehee.  Wile I do love to read research, I do try things out too, just ask Dave about Tuesday night lifting sessions).

After hearing about “Eat Stop Eat“, I did some more digging into it and found that Alan Aragon changed his mind about fasting. I also found the Holy Grails of fasting information from Martin Berkhan’s website as well as Brad Pilon (obviously). I didn’t spend a lot of time debating whether or not I was going to ruin myself forever. I saw that these people, among others, were doing it and figured, “what the hell, if they can do it, so can I.”

The rumor mill is that when you fast, muscle will disappear faster than free drinks at a Lindsay Lohan party? Is this true?

Like 99% of the fitness people out there, I thought that were the case too. But if you step back and think logically about it, how can your body possibly eat any noticeable amount of muscle in just 24 hours? Now that I’ve done it, and done a lot more research, it doesn’t make any sense at all that your body will catabolize that much muscle in that short amount of time. It’s like saying that if you take an extra 5 minute break at work, your entire day was ruined and you didn’t get anything accomplished. In reality, what’s another 5 minutes?

Editor’s note: muscle catabolism  (break down) is very over hyped in all the muscle mags and all over the internet.

As for real world results (not to plug my website or anything), a year ago I did 9 weeks of German Volume Training. By the end of it, I was 185lb. and around 13% bodyfat. You can see my actual ending measurements on my site here. Since that time, I’ve lost 10lb. and only 0.5″ off the meaningful measurements: biceps, chest, and quads, of course! Hahaha!

I’m willing to bet that my bodyfat is much lower than 13% right now and my strength has actually increased. So, even if that 0.5″ is somehow all muscle, which I highly doubt, I’m even stronger now, regardless of fasting or not.

Why not just cut back on your normal food intake, why fast?

I may only weigh 175lb. but I am definitely a fat kid at heart. I love, love, love to eat. For 6 days out of the week, I get to eat like I always have while maintaining bodyweight. Now take an entire day’s calories out of the week and voila, caloric defecit (weightloss) by doing nothing! Now, if I want to expedite the whole process, all I have to do is increase my activity level to burn even more calories.

Conversely, if I am trying to maintain or even increase bodyweight, that just means that I REALLY get to induldge my inner fat kid. That means I get to eat a lot (relatively speaking) of excess calories 6 days per week in order to keep caloric excess over the course of a week.

How did you survive 24 hours without food?

It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I choose to fast from Sunday after lunch until Monday at lunch. About the time that hunger sets in on Sunday is the same time I start to get ready for bed, so I get to sleep through that part. The next time it gets hard is around 11:30 on Monday when my co-workers start to bring their lunches back to their desk. Luckily that only lasts for about a half hour before I get to eat. I mean, you do have to have some mental toughness when doing this, but nearly as much as you may think.

Words of wisdom about the fast?

To make fasting even easier, water and stimulants are your friends. I can’t handle coffee on an empty stomach so I turn to its milder cousin, green tea.

Fasting the day after a heavy workout seems to be a bit tougher when you’re body is asking for more calories to repair itself, but again, nothing you can’t handle.

Using the fast as an excuse to binge eat before or after is a recipe for disaster. Make sure you have a healthy psychological relationship with food before you try this. And speaking of binge eating, even though you WILL be hungry when you break your fast, I highly suggest NOT eating everything in sight, regardless of how “clean” it may be. I’ve made that mistake twice: once breaking it with a big meal from a chain restaurant, and once breaking it with chicken breasts (plural), a cup of rice, and tons of veggies. A small snack followed by a normal sized meal an hour or so later seems to work best for me.

I hear you run a fitness website, so fill us in.

Nah, I think those are just rumors. I have a website where I talk like an idiot and try to inform people of better ways to workout and eat, but I think my overall tone of “jackassery” wards off a lot of “serious” fitness folks. They probably wouldn’t want me in their inner circles. You’re taking a pretty big risk by letting me type stuff here, Mike.  (Editor’s note:  I probably have offended enough people for quite some time with my distaste for foam rollers, backwards corrective exercise work, love of vibrams and metabolic flexibility  as it is, so no worries there)

If your readers think they might like a little change up in the way material is presented, they can head over to AthleteCreator.com. And just for your readers only, if they sign up for my newsletter, I’ll give them a detailed, inside look at how I’ve used “Eat Stop Eat” to shed those 10lb. while eating “junk food” weekly and maintaining muscle mass…for free! Of course, they’ll need to email me after they sign-up so I know they come from here.

Crap, I guess that means I actually have to type it up. I better get going!

Congrats on your CSCS certification, what are the plans now?

I seem to be getting asked that quite a bit lately, and I seem to be doing pretty well at avoiding it. So, I’ll see ya next week, bye!

Kidding….

The only thing I know for sure is that I’m completely focused on my training for the next month or so. I need to get that 0.5″ back…especially on the gunz! Hahaha! Hey! Don’t judge. It’s beach season, and I’m a single dude. You know?

My full-time gig is Electrical Engineering (which is totally lame, by the way) so I have the “luxury” of being able to take my time in jumping into the industry. I have a new website in the works and am working on getting some behind the scenes business type stuff taken care of. Obviously I’ll be trying to pick up some clients along the way, but I won’t be pursuing it full steam ahead until I get the other stuff taken care of first. Eventually I will be pursuing training full-time, and I look forward to working with serious athletes in all types of sports.

Thanks again for taking the time to do the interview–much appreciate! See ya next Tuesday night for big bench night at the Extreme Human Performance Center,  ya crazy bastard, I mean faster.

No, thank you for giving me the opportunity to prove to your readers why they’re here instead of over at my slapstick website. :-p (I’m not sure, do you allow smiley faces over here?)

No, no smiley faces are ever allowed here, this is serious business.  ha. I kid, I kid.

If you are interested in dropping a few pounds, I do highly recommend Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat ebook.  There are very few fitness products I whole heartily endorse, and Brad’s is one of them.

Comments?

Let me hear ‘em!

Rock on
Mike T Nelson

PS

If you want to listen to a full hour of free audio on an interview I did with Brad Pilon, check out the post below

Review of Eat Stop Eat: Intermittent Fasting to Lose Body Fat

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