Sounds like maybe we should skip the severe calorie restriction and go right for fasting. I think eventually they will confirm what my GI doctor told me over 10 years ago - get most, if not all of your calories, between sun-up and sun-down and you'll thank me. Out of three groups of mice the ones that ate as much as they wanted during a short interval and fasted for the rest of the day were the healthiest and lived the longest. Of course I believe it's still wise to eat nutrient dense food, plenty of fiber and water, just do so between the hours of 8am-ish and 6pm-ish. sciencedaily.com/releases/2...
This Might Change Everything - Restless Legs Syn...
This Might Change Everything
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The older I, the more I understand the importance of a good diet.
healthunlocked.com/rlsuk/po...
UPDATE: I don't eat for 16 hours now, from 8 pm to 12 am the next day. If I break the intermitting fasting my RLS get worse after just a few days.
Do you have any fluids in this fasting period and if so, what do you have.
I drink any fluid I like except Coke. Coke makes my RLS hell, I don't know why. If I am really hungry and need something to eat during the fasting time I eat a light soup.
Same here, I have just swapped Pepsi max for zero sugar Schwepps lemonade. What a difference, the lemonade provides extra fluids plus does not affect my RSL.
in reply to silkyreg
This is important. Everyone needs to consider trying this and making it a way of life like you have.
I absolutely love intermittent fasting. I’m a huge foodie (food is my porn) but intermittent fasting makes me feel like a million bucks. The diet we do is the 5:2 diet. 5 days a week eating whatever we want, and 2 days a week eating 500 calories or less. The 500 calorie days are considered “fasting” days and cannot be consecutive. After your body adjusts (2 or 3 weeks in) those become days I genuinely look forward to. Though I’m equally excited about the days I can eat what I want. And the monetary savings are eye opening.
in reply to Guitarpickin
Have you thought about doing the nightly 12 to 14 hour fast and eating what you want during 10 hours of daytime? That is what the article seems to indicate is most beneficial - to mice 😕
Guitarpickin in reply to
I somehow missed the part of the article that clearly described the feeding schedule of the mice. But yes, in general, I have considered a specific period of eating each day but it basically seems like what I do naturally. I typically only eat between 10:00 or 10:30 and prefer my last meal to be 3 or 4 hours before bed. But I do have a glass or two of wine or a beer in the evening and those are both calorie laden. The 5:2 diet is actually a challenge for me-or it was in the beginning, and it’s the only “diet” I’ve found that makes me feel great. Have you tried either? Or are you just getting ready to give the 12-14 hour fast a go? If you do, I hope you love it! The really interesting thing about the article, to me, was learning that daily calorie restriction without “fasting” periods seemed potentially unhealthy. That’s fascinating.
in reply to Guitarpickin
Well, as I pointed out, this holds true in mice. They're hyperactive little creatures that will eat just about anything in the wild and will do so all night long. Then their fear of predators, and I guess Mother Nature, has them calling it quits during the day, all day. So the binge, fast, is what they're used to. With a very restricted quantity of food and without that long period of fasting (forced upon them by predators), you're bucking up against millions of years of evolution AND it's not wise to try to fool Mother Nature. The same is true for us, but not in that order. Plus, we are creatures with a more delicate gut and cannot eat many of the things that our furry friends can, nor are we considered frenetic, and thus I think through-out the millennia we had feast and famine times in our lives, and spent a good portion of the day hunting and foraging for specific foods, but generally speaking, fasted the night away. So I think if you relax a bit in terms of your dietary habits by day, and go with the flow - eating more on some days, less on others, but always fasting by night, I think we will have done the most we can do in terms of diet and RLS. So you are there with your 5-2 diet. Add a few more hours to your nightly fast (and not beating yourself up if you have a saltine cracker at 3am) and you will be right on the money. I'm getting closer to being there. Still, there are many days where my foraging ends at 10 or 11pm, but then I'm not hungry in the morning so usually don't eat until 10am or even 11am. My RLS is well-controlled, and my main interest is having a little fun wherever and whenever I can, so that means everything else in my life suffers, ie diet and sleep. The less I eat, the better I feel, that is just me, I do not recommend it. It is a matter of do as I say, not as I do.
I think close counts in this situation. Doesn’t have to be perfect I would imagine.
The usual recomendation is for carbohydrate restriction, not calorie restriction.
in reply to Eryl
Eryl, don’t even get me started on diet, you’ll be up way past your bedtime. First off, Mother Nature didn’t build us to eat cooked meat. As a matter of fact, cooking meat (and not just red meat) supposedly turns it into a carcinogen. Have you ever felt like meat was sitting in your stomach for a long uncomfortable time versus raw fish which doesn’t seem to? Every living thing contains very specific enzymes that will help the predator digest it. Even our bodies contain enzymes that would help a predator digest us, provided we were eaten raw. Cooking takes away some, if not most, of these enzymes.
No animal is supposed to consume milk after being weened. However, allegedly people with Blood Type B can consume dairy, without deleterious affect. Cavemen ate grains and plenty of vegetables. It’s a fallacy that they were strictly carnivores. Fruit was an exotic so less of that was consumed. I have yet to read about a diet that makes sense given all the many variables.
The plant kingdom contains poisons/lectins (it’s their defense mechanism) that can disrupt the operation of our gut and immune system. And supposedly, depending on your blood type, some of these lectins aren’t disruptive to you, while others are. Good luck navigating this endless sea of hypothesis’. Don’t forget about individual idiosyncrasies/ allergies/sensitivities- which most definitely includes animal flesh and eggs.
My guess is that less “cooked” meat we eat the better and that raw or lightly cooked fish is best. Vegetables are probably better than grains and refined sugar in excess is just plain terrible for us. I grew up being taught that things like maple syrup, cane juice and actually mushrooms had zero benefit. Not that long ago I read that these “sugars” and certainly mushrooms do contain nutrients and loads of anti-bacterial substances. Mother Nature is loathe to create useless, unnecessary things. It is only us, with our over-processing and over-cooking and over feeding of unnatural substances to animals that screw everything up.
in reply to
“Cereals” were found in poor Otzi’s stomach google.com/amp/s/api.nation... Otzi lived a mere 5000 years ago so hardly the final word on what Homo sapiens ate 300,000 years ago when it seems they emerged. And what about the ancestors of Homo sapiens? What was their diet like?
in reply to
Now this is fascinating. Let’s say we’re opportunists in terms of diet and somewhat lazy and historically unskilled at hunting. I have no idea what we should and shouldn’t be eating. I am, however, convinced that we were built and meant to fast from essentially sun-down to sun-up. humanorigins.si.edu/evidenc...
Whst's all that got to do with my comment about restricting carbohydrates not calories?
😅. You’re right, less carbs is good for RLS. Can’t argue with that.
Catlady4921 in reply to
For me the more carbs the better. !!
Catlady!!! Are you joking? Or being sincere? I’m so curious about you. If your RLS were acting up, you could eat something high-carb to tame it? If so, any carb? Like a candy bar? Or would it be better as a slice of bread or potato or something? And could your RLS please teach my RLS how to be more like you?!
Haha , I was being sincere and I doubt your RLSwould want to learn anything from my RLS !! It’s true tho , if I eat cereal and broccoli only it reduces the angriest of Beast but if I so much look at a candy bar it starts snarling !!!!!
Thanks for the clarification and the laugh!! Cereal and broccoli are the unlikeliest of bedfellows. It’s crazy how different we all are. But it’s great you’ve figured out something that works for you!
You see I was right …you don’t want your RLS to learn from mine !! You are welcome tho .!!
KaarinaAdministrator
The person who started this thread has decided to leave our community. When a person closes their account, HU change their username to Hidden.
Haha! You and I must be a bit alike if the thought of going without food for a day seems potentially “painful.” 
Even though intermittent fasting was recommended to me independently by both my neurologist and osteopath to help treat my back and neurological symptoms (RLS, radiculopathy, and PLMD caused, they think, by spinal myelopathy), I cannot yet honestly recommend it to treat RLS-or the other problems. However, fasting two days a week has made it very easy to properly take iron pills on those days (with calorie free citrus tea for Vitamin C).
To answer your feel good question. Like you, I love beer and while I wouldn’t say it makes me feel good, it makes me feel happy at which point I become unaware of anything that feels less than good. But beer-related happy feelings are temporary-of course. With the intermittent fasting, I feel pretty darn good all the time. This is not to say I’m without physical pain or problem, it’s just to say that when I experience one of my various physical ailments, somehow I’m able to deal with it better mentally. Furthermore, I have spent the majority of life being obsessed with food and intermittent fasting has helped me with that. Fortunately, despite my unhealthy relationship with food and overeating, I am relatively thin (5’11” and 145 lbs/66 kilos), so losing weight wasn’t something that needed to happen, but it did. For some, the weight loss may be considered a benefit.
Honestly, the 5:2 diet was incredibly difficult for the first two or three weeks. Not painful, but definitely not fun. However, after I got used to it, I genuinely look forward to the fasting days. But it’s not for everyone. Maybe the daily fasting periods recommended by others (Eitheror, now “Hidden”) would be more manageable…it’s just not what my doctors recommended for me. If the “diet,” which is really a lifestyle, in my opinion, is something you’d like to try, please let me know and I can tell you all the things I learned and the approach that finally made it do-able, then enjoyable.
Sure like this idea!
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