Rachel Sharp Rachel Sharp weighed over 200 pounds and was bulled. She eventually researched intermittent fasting and created an alternate-day method for herself.My name is Rachel Sharp. I am 26 years old and live in Lees Summit, Missouri. I am the mortgage operations assistant at a local Credit Union. I finally found a weight-loss strategy that works for me and dropped over 100 pounds in a year.

I had been overweight ever since I was a little girl. I was badly bullied for it all through school. My weight made me shy and prevented me from making friends. I lacked confidence and self-esteem.

After graduating high school, I tried multiple methods to lose weight. I counted calories, I worked out, and at one point I was even on a prescription weight-loss pill from my doctor. It was frustrating and sank me deep into depression. I was also in an abusive relationship from the ages of 18 to 21. After that relationship ended badly, I felt even more lost than ever, and the weight seemed to pile on even more. Before I knew it, I was at my heaviest: 236 pounds.

It was only two miles long, but I could barely keep up even a mile in. My feet hurt, my knees ached, and I was struggling to breathe. It was embarrassing, and I was so ashamed of myself. Something had to change.

My boyfriend was doing the 16:8 method for his own health reasons, and we had briefly talked about it. I was skeptical at first. But after finding an inspiring first-person article by someone who had success using intermittent fasting, I figured maybe it might work for me.

The woman whose article interested me followed the 4:3 method of alternate-day fasting, where she fasts for three days and eats for four, along with counting calories. It was then (on September 5th, 2017) that I decided while munching on a snack of mixed nuts that I would commit to IF.

I decided to start my own method of complete intermittent, alternate-day fasting (ADF), where I would go every other day (or 36 to 40 hours) without eating, also counting my calories as I went.

When I first started ADF I calculated what my calorie needs would be for my body using a total daily energy expenditure calculator. During my first week of fasting, I allowed myself up to 500 calories on my fasting day to wean myself into going 40 hours without food. In reality, I didnt change much of what I was eating, besides just watching the number calories I was taking in. The second week of fasting, I was able to go the whole fasting day without intaking any calories. Intermittent fasting was a *lot* easier than I thought it would be.

For example, I changed little things, like my 2 percent milk to almond milk, or started measuring out my pasta per serving instead of just using the whole box. The small changes can really add up to a whole lot of success. Within my first month of ADF I lost 16 pounds. I was elated that I had finally found something that worked for me.

Heres what I typically eat in a day now:

Breakfast: Overnight oats or banana oatmeal

Lunch: Cauliflower rice with lemon pepper shrimp or braised beef, or spinach with a sweet potato, hard boiled egg and salsa

Snacks: Mixed nuts, or a protein bar, or I also make my own tortilla chips with high-fiber, low-carb Xtreme Wellness tortillas

Dinner: Two-ingredient dough pizzas or baked chicken with veggies

Dessert: Breyers Low-Carb Vanilla Ice Cream with cookie butter mixed in, or frozen fruit blended in a food processor (healthy sorbet!)

Before intermittent fasting, I never worked out. Now that I had lost some weight, I didnt feel as heavy and thought I would actually be able to really push myself and help my body grow even stronger and healthier. I started using a couch-to-5k running app and took my time, not exactly following the program, but it helped tremendously. I went from hardly being able to jog for two minutes, to running for 20 to 28 minutes without stopping.

Eventually, after a year of ADF, running every eat day, and losing 98 pounds, I also introduced weight lifting into my life with the help of my boyfriend. I worked my way up to my current exercise routine. I run on every fasting day and try to walk two miles on my breaks at work. I lift on the days I am not fasting. Ive found this is the perfect balance for me.

So, I run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and weight lift on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I rest on Sundays.

There have been times when I just wanted to give up and not care anymore. IF is not easy; it takes time and patience. Going without eating can be difficult. But it has had so many more health benefits for me other than weight loss.

I've also found that if I am busy on my fasting days, I am much more likely to stick with it. But if you need to, you can eat up to 500 calories without it disrupting anything. You have listen to the signs of your body. But if it nags at you, just eat. Its definitely okay.

My weight-loss experience has revealed the true me, and I dont ever want to go back to the girl I used to be. I wish I knew I had this type of willpower and strength in me all along because I have overcome so many obstacles since starting that I never thought I would achieve.

And I also wish I knew there would be people who still criticized me after losing weight. Now, the criticisms I get are not so much about my size, but about my method. People tend to discourage what they dont understand or don't agree with, and I find that IF is one of those prickly topics. (Note: A fasting plan might not be right for everyone, and there are pros and cons to consider, so talk to your doctor or a dietitian first! This is just what worked for me, and I like to be totally honest with people and my social media followers about my approach.)

When you find what works for you, as long as you're in a good place physically and mentally while you do it, that's great. You just have to ignore them and trust the process. No one can control your life except you.

Since starting ADF, I have lost 108 pounds over one year and two months. I am gaining muscle and my body is still changing every day.

Video: Halle Berry on keto and intermittent fasting

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'I Could Barely Walk A Mile Without Being Out Of BreathSo I Tried A Fasting Diet And Lost 108 Pounds' - msnNOW

The new Shannon Storms Beador from The Real Housewives of Orange County is crushing life and doing it with her signature sense of humor.

The mother of three chatted with Showbiz Cheat Sheet about the steps shes taken to live her best life, which includes getting healthy and addressing an issue shes dealt with for the past 18 years. Needless to say, the past year has been extremely transformative for Beador.

After a difficult divorce, Beador gained weight. She felt stuck and unable to move forward. She shared the ah-ha moment that set the wheels of change in motion, plus what she is doing to continue on her path to happiness.

After years of being married, Beador wasnt sure she could stand on her own. You know for me I thought long and hard and talked to a lot of people about it, she says. But for me, there is the physical aspect of gaining weight. But I think that once I felt at ease with myself emotionally then the weight started falling off even more quickly.

She adds, Yes, its about diet and exercise but I think when I emotionally realized I could stand on my own two feet not being married, that made it that much easier.

Beador recently told BravosThe Feast that diet, more than exercise, was the key to her weight loss. Ill tell you how to get rid of it, she said. Diet, diet, diet, diet! I broke two ribs and I couldnt exercise for a couple of weeks. Thats when I lost the bulk of my weight.

While diet is the key, she has to feel satisfied with what she is eating. And I think when you eat healthy you dont have to sacrifice taste, she said. In January, Beador will be expanding her Real for Real QVC food line to include healthy family-style meals. Shes also going to be offering a supplement that can be added to drinks to boost immunity. And yes, her daughters are still part of her taste-testing crew.

RHOC has caught a few of the ladies laughing so hard, theyve accidentally urinated on beds and through clothing. While thats never happened to Beador on camera, incontinence is something shes privately dealt with for the past 18 years.

Shes tried to address the issue for years, but as fans know, Beador prefers natural and holistic treatments. She recently learned about the FDA-approved INNOVO shorts that strengthen the pelvic floor. So theres finally a non-invasive method to end urinary incontinence, she says.

Being able to get the issue under control is huge for Beador. For me, thats life-changing. So to only have to put on some shorts that will strengthen my pelvic floor 30 minutes a day, for five days a week in three months. And Im going to be leak-free its a gift. She adds that thanks to INNOVO, her workouts are more rigorous because she now doesnt have to worry about leakage.

Beador wasnt kidding when she referred to herself as the new Shannon Storms Beador. Her business is expanding and, like many women who suddenly find themselves single after many years of marriage, Beador had to get reacquainted with who she is and realize she can accomplish anything.

Now I feel that if I set a goal I can accomplish it, she says. No just means I have to work harder. So you know I feel kind of invincible and that I can do whatever I set my mind to. So its pretty great.

She adds that shes in a new, solid relationship, plus her girls are happy and healthy too. Today Im the happiest Ive ever been in my life, she shares. And I am in a great relationship and my kids are doing well. Life is good.

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Shannon Beador From 'RHOC' Reveals the Moment When She Knew She Could Lose Weight - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

NLR

Make sure to keep the eye-level shelves of your fridge filled with healthy, ready to eat foods such as boiled eggs, plain yoghurt, small cubes of cheese and grapes, pre-cut veggie sticks (in see through containers or clear food bags) and dips such as hummus, salsa or home-made guacamole. Pre-cut fruit salad and slices of chicken or turkey are also good. Make sure that your healthy food whole foods that are rich in nutrients are both easy to see and easy to eat.

NLR

Tinned salmon is much richer in heart healthy omega-3 fatty acids in comparison to tinned tuna or white fish such as cod or haddock. We should aim to eat two portions of fish a week, one of which is oily and tinned salmon, as well as mackerel, pilchards and sardines, all count as being oily. Tinned salmon is also cheaper than fresh salmon.If it's in the cupboard, you're more likely to eat it.

NLR

Add your own toppings and flavourings instead.Natural yoghurt can be a great source of probiotics aka friendly live bacteria that have beneficial affects on gut health in addition to being high in protein and providing minerals such as calcium and phosphorus. Buying plain yoghurt means that youre not paying for added refined sugar and you can control exactly what goes in it. Try cinnamon and banana, strawberries and flaked almonds or baked apple pieces and raisins.

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15 nutrition 'nudges' that can improve your eating habits and prevent weight gain - The Telegraph

At 51, Jesse Itzler has already had a string of successes.

When he was in his 20s, he was a successful rapper, who appeared frequently on MTV. (His first single, "Shake It Like A White Girl," reached the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1991.)

In his 30s, he became an entrepreneur and helped build Marquis Jets, one of the largest private jet leasing companies in the world, which he later sold to a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway for an undisclosed amount. Itzler was also a partner in Zico Coconut Water, which was acquired by Coca-Cola in 2013 for an undisclosed sum.

In 2008, he married Spanx founder and billionaire Sara Blakely and by 2015, the couple became co-owners of the NBA's Atlanta Hawks. They also have four children together.

Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, and her husband Jesse Itzler attend the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 9, 2015 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Scott Olson | Getty Images News | Getty Images

But Itzler says none of those successes would have happened without the strict diet and wellness routine that he has been doing for 30 years.

"For me, the No. 1 thing that has changed my life and I know this sounds crazy but I only eat fruit until noon every day," Itzler tells CNBC Make It.

Itzler says when he was 21, broke and living on his friends' couches, he read a book called "Fit for Life" by Harvey Diamond.

"I was about to run my first marathon and I wasn't a runner, so I looking for anything that would give me an edge," he says.

Itzler says the book challenges the reader to only eat fruit until noon for 10 days and then on day 11 go back to your regular breakfast.

"So I did it, and on day 11, after 10 days of fruit, I went back to my regular breakfast, which was things like oatmeal, eggs, bagel and bacon and I felt terrible and that was it. I never went back," Itzler says.

In "Fit for Life," which was first published in 1985 and re-released in 2010, Diamond promotes a diet based on raw fruits and vegetables, with fruits to be only consumed on an empty stomach in the morning. The book also says animal protein should not be combined with complex carbohydrates such as beans or whole grains.

There has beencontroversy over Diamond's Fit for Life diet, especially around the idea of food combining and eating food on an empty stomach. In a study published in the April 2000 issue of the International Journal of Obesity, researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland found that having a low-calorie diet with a mix of food is much more effective than eating foods in certain combinations.

And Erin FitzGerald, RD and assistant clinical nutrition manager at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City tells CNBC Make It that while it's generally not harmful to only eat fruit until noon, she doesn't recommend it.

"I would never recommend that my patients eat only fruit until noon. If anything, we need to 'break' our overnight fast with protein and/or healthy fat. Fruit can be a healthy part of our mornings, but eating a lot of fruit in the morning can potentially harm some individuals in particular, those who have diabetes or who are at risk for diabetes," FitzGerald says.

Still, Itzler says for him, when he eats only fruit until noon he experiences higher energy levels and thinks more clearly, because according to him it gives his digestive system a break. But there is no scientific research to back up what Itlzer says.

After 12 p.m, Itzler says he eats super clean meals that are 80% raw. But he does treat himself to an occasional pizza or sushi roll while eating with his wife and four kids.

Itzler isn't the only entrepreneur, who has experimented with fruit-related diet.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' was at times a frutarian, eating mostly fruit as well as some nuts, seeds and grains. Jobs' was inspired to do a fruit-based diet after reading the book "Mucusless Diet Healing System" by Arnold Ehret in college, according to Walter Isaacson's 2011 biography "Steve Jobs."

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This self-made millionaire says the key to his success is eating only fruit until noon - CNBC

Despite this advice, Americans do not eat meat in moderation, and never have. Since the 1960s, the per-capita intake has doubled. The average man eats more than his own weight in meat every year (even as that weight has increased by 30 pounds since 1960). Americans eat meat in quantities that are double the global average.

The new guidelines were released in Annals of Internal Medicine, a prestigious medical journal published by the American College of Physicians. Robert McLean, the ACPs president and a rheumatologist at Yale, told me that they were the result of an editorial decision by the journal, not the ACP, but he nevertheless defended the analyses. They did not say that eating red meat is safe, he said. They said that the data suggesting its as harmful as we once thought is inconclusive. Theyre not saying to go out and eat all the red meat you want.

Indeed, the guidelines are not telling people to eat all the meat they can. But the explicit recommendation that adults continue their current levels of meat consumption seems detached from any concept of what current levels of meat consumption are, or what they mean for human health. Around the world, global meat production has grown by five times since the 1960s. In the early 1980s, the average Chinese person ate 30 pounds of meat a year. Today that number is nearly 140 pounds, in a country that has grown to more than 1 billion people. Globally, meat consumption is projected to increase by 75 percent over the next three decades.

The health effects of this consumption are significant, and on track to become much more so. Yet the guidelines ignore the most important way in which food affects our bodies, minds, communities, and so much else that constitutes health.

The day before the news reports came out, on a Sunday morning, I got a frenetic call from the physician and researcher David Katz. A fellow in the ACP, he was mobilizing his colleagues internally and throughout the nutrition world in preparation for the publication of the guidelines.

Annals of Internal Medicine was, in fact, about to devote the better part of an entire issue to the consequences of eating meat. Six articles were being published by the same group of authors from NutriRECS. This is uncommon. Getting even a single study published in the journal is considered a high achievement. And the findings of the studies were, overall, predictable: High intake of meat and processed meat was associated with an elevated risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancersthough the authors said they had low certainty in their own findings.

The news alerts came down to the sixth article, which was the set of clinical guidelines. In it, the researchers concluded that because of the low quality evidence, adults should continue eating meat as they do. To arrive at this conclusion, the authors used a technique known as GRADE, which subjectively evaluates different types of evidence. For example, a drug would not simply be recommended because it is effective; the amount of effect would be considered alongside things such as reliability, side effects, and other costs. Based on its analysis, the group decided that the evidence of meats harms to health was not strong enough to recommend that people stop eating meat altogether. And because it deemed this evidence weak, it chose to recommend that people do not attempt to change their habits.

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The Actual Reason Meat Is Not Healthy - The Atlantic

In June the F.D.A. cleared two more treatments for those who want a little muscle without the, er, heavy lifting. One is truSculpt Flex, which pumps up muscle via electrical current, which is similar in principle to the ab belts of those late-night infomercials except it has electrodes that can work on eight areas simultaneously.

The other is CoolTone, an Allergan offering coming later this month, which uses the same principles as Emsculpt but claims to be 50 percent stronger. (Brent Hauser, the vice president for sales and marketing at Allergan, said in an email that tests havent yet concluded how much added muscle mass that amounts to.)

Of course there is a giant asterisk next to these devices, which is that theyre designed for regular gymgoers with minimal extra weight very, very minimal, as in a B.M.I. of 25 or less, Brad Hauser, the vice president for research and development at Allergan, wrote in an email. (Brad Hauser and Brent Hauser are identical twins.) They can be used alone, if you have minimal body fat, but theyre designed so they can be paired, one treatment after another in the same visit, with the fat busters.

How well this entire category of noninvasive devices works is relative.

Liposuction is definitely the gold standard theres no question it works better, said Dr. Mathew Avram, the faculty director for dermatology laser and cosmetic training at Harvard Medical School, as well as a CoolSculpting adviser. But weve seen that patients are willing to pay a premium for modest results with no downtime.

In 2018, the average cost of liposuction was $3,518, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The average CoolSculpting treatment is $2,000 to $4,000, according to company figures, and fat-liquefying lasers like truSculpt ID are $2,150.

The muscle devices offer only temporary results (unlike the fat ones, which are permanent), though again with an asterisk: Ones weight remains the same. Clients feel the muscle firmness (and soreness) immediately, but, as with the fat zappers, results can take some two months to show up.

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Is This the Shape of Things to Come? - The New York Times

Sealed for millenniums, Qesem Cave in central Israel is a limestone time capsule of the lives and diets of Paleolithic people from 420,000 to 200,000 years ago. Inside, ancient humans once butchered fresh kills with stone blades and barbecued meat on campfires.

It was believed that early hominins were consuming everything they could put their hands on immediately, without storing or preserving or keeping things for later, said Ran Barkai, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

But not every meal was scarfed down right after a hunt. Dr. Barkai and his colleagues have found that the caves earliest inhabitants may have also stored animal bones filled with tasty marrow that they feasted on for up to nine weeks after the kill, sort of like a Stone Age canned soup.

The finding may be the earliest example of prehistoric humans saving food for later consumption, and may also offer insight into the abilities of ancient humans to plan for their future needs. The study was published Wednesday in Science Advances.

Dr. Barkais team examined cut marks on nearly 82,000 animal fragments from Qesem Cave, most belonging to fallow deer. The researchers noticed unusual, heavy chop marks on the ends of some leg bones known as the metapodials.

The chop marks make no sense in terms of stripping off the bone, because at this part of the bone there is no meat and very little fat, Dr. Barkai said.

Usually, stripping the hide from a fresh bone requires minimal force, he said. But the heavy chops indicated that the processing used more force than should have been necessary.

We had a hypothesis that these unusual chop marks at the end of the meatless bones had to do with the removal of dry skin, he said. But why were they doing that?

The team concluded that the ancient hominins, who shared features with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals but were probably neither, were removing dry skin on the bones to get to the marrow.

That presented another question: If they were after marrow, why not just remove it from the bone when it was fresh? The researchers hypothesized that the chop marks were an indication that the early humans stored the bones so they could eat the marrow later.

To test their idea, the team collected freshly killed deer leg bones and then stored them for several weeks in conditions similar to those inside the cave. After every week, they would break open a bone and analyze the marrow to see how nutritious it still was.

Every time, a researcher would remove the dried skin using a flint flake and then hammer open the bone with a quartzite tool, similar to what the ancient people would have had used. The researcher wasnt given instructions on how to open the bone.

The team found that the researchers chop marks on the older leg bones with dried skin were similar to what they saw in Qesem Cave.

It was a surprise when we realized that the same marks were generated experimentally, said Ruth Blasco, a zooarchaeologist at the National Research Centre on Human Evolution in Spain and lead author on the study. The Qesem hominids have demonstrated very modern behavior in their livelihood strategies.

Their chemical test showed that after nine weeks, the fat in the bone marrow degraded only a little and was still nutritious.

Jessica Thompson, an archaeologist at Yale University, said the paper was a creative approach to reconstructing a past behavior that is notoriously difficult to identify in the archaeological record.

Their experimental work does a lot to convince me that some of the bones were not very fresh when they were processed, although it is still not clear how common this behavior was, Dr. Thompson said.

Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, praised the study and said that if this removal of dry skin did leave a unique butchery mark, its now up to us zooarchaeologists to look for these traces in older fossil assemblages to see if we can document a greater antiquity of this food storage behavior.

As for the marrow, how did it taste? One of the researchers couldnt resist trying it.

It is like a bland sausage, without salt, and a little stale, said Jordi Rosell, an archaeologist at Rovira i Virgili University in Spain. I can say that its taste was not bad, perhaps a little more rancid in the last weeks, but not bad.

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What Was Kept in This Stone Age Meat Locker? Bone Marrow - The New York Times

Beyonce Knowles is one of the biggest superstars in the world, with a massive fanbase, multiple hit records, and a lifestyle that is the envy of many.

Many of Beyonces fans know and recognize her for the way she works a stage a Queen B performance is definitely an experience to remember, with multiple costume changes, acrobatics, and dance moves that are truly impressive.

Beyonce has worked hard for her success and her stage shows come at a price.

The singer keeps herself in fighting shape by eating healthy and working out regularly but she also keeps it real, and knows not to deprive herself of anything she truly loves. Read on to learn about Beyonces diet and exercise routine, and the foods that she occasionally splurges on.

Beyonce is well known for her curvy figure, but that doesnt mean the superstar allows herself to eat junk food and sweets on the regular. Several years ago, Beyonce and her husband, Jay-Z, started eating a plant-based diet in order to become healthier for themselves and for their children.

She has acknowledged that eating plant-based enables her to feel better and gives her skin a healthy glow.

For breakfast, Beyonce sticks to light meals that dont drain her energy things like egg white scrambles, smoothies, and cereal with low-fat milk. For lunches and dinners, Beyonce enjoys lots of vegetables and lean meats. She also enjoys fish, which isnt packed of calories but still keeps her full throughout the day.

Following Beyonces tough pregnancy with her twins Rumi and Sir, the singer decided to go on a more intense diet in order to prepare for her big Coachella performance. Her diet required her to cut out all sugar and alcohol and to eat strictly vegan foods. Beyonce stuck to it and showed up to Coachella in better shape than ever.

While a good diet is an important part of a healthy lifestyle, being active is also vital. Beyonce has admitted that shes not a naturally thin person and has to work hard in order to stay in fighting shape. For her, staying fit is about mental strength and involves a lot of sacrifices. Beyonce favors interval training, which burns a lot of calories in a short amount of time.

Beyonce stays motivated by listening to great songs while working out and loves to dance as one way of getting her exercise in. Its no secret that Beyonce is very confident. She loves her natural shape and has stated that its not about perfection. Its about purpose.

Beyonce loves a good salad and light dinners of fish and veggies, but she still wont deprive herself of the foods and treats that she likes best. Sundays are Beyonces cheat day, where she allows herself to eat whatever she wants without guilt.

The iconic singer has admitted that pizza is her absolute favorite comfort food and that normally, her Sunday cheat meals include pizza. She prefers her pizza with extra tomatoes and jalapeno peppers.

Queen B also loves hot sauce and likes to add it to lots of different dishes to amp up the flavor and spice. Finally, Beyonce has a soft spot for a couple of fast-food restaurants, including the Southern-style chain Popeyes and In-N-Out burger.

Beyonces diet is one of the more realistic ones in Hollywood, showing that people dont have to starve themselves in order to stay fit and healthy and that regular treats are an important part of staying happy and emotionally balanced.

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Beyonce Works Out, Eats Healthy, and Still Eats Pizza -- You Can, Too - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Theyd be motivated for one or two weeks, but it turned out that their sugar or alcohol consumption was their way of coping with all the stress in their lives, Dr. Chatterjee said. Unless we tackled the stress, they were always going to revert back to what they were doing.

Another thing that struck him was how technology is creating a potent new source of stress. Many people wake up and immediately look at their smartphones and check their email or social media. Then they remain glued to their phones throughout the day, staring at them while they eat, sit at their desks, socialize and lie in bed at night.

Dr. Chatterjee saw a growing number of patients complaining of anxiety and mental health issues, and a high proportion of them were spending vast amounts of time on their smartphones. In his book, Dr. Chatterjee explains that studies have linked constant exposure to social media to depression, especially in adolescents and young adults.

Now more than ever before, were starting to recognize that were leading these lives where we can never switch off, Dr. Chatterjee said. Theres always something to do. Im not pro or anti technology, but I think for many of us were using it in ways that are harming us.

While everyones circumstances are unique, there are some things most of us can do to minimize daily stress levels. Studies show that controlled breathing exercises reduce stress, increase alertness and strengthen the immune system. One simple exercise Dr. Chatterjee recommends is called the 3-4-5 Breath, in which you breathe in for three seconds, hold it for four seconds, then exhale slowly to the count of five.

Any time your out-breath is longer than your in-breath, you help to switch off your bodys stress response and promote relaxation, he said.

If you stare at a screen all day, try taking a tech-free lunch break. Put your phone down for 15 minutes and go out for a walk. Research shows that simply being outside in a park can ease anxiety. On days when you cant get outside, try looking at soothing photographs: One study found that looking at photos of trees and nature helped people lower their heart rates and recover from stressful encounters.

Link:
Stress Can Make You Sick. Take Steps to Reduce It. - The New York Times

Precision feeding emerged 30 years ago and has gained high-level interest since then. These days, precision feeding meets sustainability interests and both concepts find synergies in balancing environmental, economic and social interests of the livestock industry. In this context, algae-clay based technology to improve efficacy of digestive enzymes is promising.

Precision feeding can be defined as:

the development and implementation of feeding techniques that provide the right amount of feed, at the right quality, to each animal or group of animals, each day, depending on their own individual needs and variability.

Over the years, the level of precision has increased thanks to a better comprehension of pig physiological needs, but also with the development of analytical and modelling tools.

Ulva lactuca, also known as sea lettuce, is a good raw material for animal nutrition products. Photo: Dreamstime

In a 2001 publication, scientists Theo van Kempen and Eric van Heugten of North Carolina State University described new recommendations and innovations for precision nutrition. They stressed the need for formulating feed on available nutrient basis, rather than gross nutrient content. They also recommended analysing each batch of ingredients reaching the feed mill using more accurate analytical technologies like infrared spectroscopy. They suggested integrating price of interest of raw materials in formulation software, to formulate on economic interest and not only nutritional interest. The implementation of split sex feeding and phase feeding was also at the heart of their message.

In 1998, Dean Koehler of Agri-Nutrition Services showed that savings of US$0.06 to US$1.14 were made on diet cost per pig for each additional feeding phase implemented on grow-finish pigs (from 2 to 12 phases).

20 years later, the recommendations of Mr van Kempen and Mr van Heugten are part of the routine work of pig nutritionists and producers worldwide, illustrating how much precision feeding has driven innovation in animal nutrition.

Raw materials reaching feed mills are all analysed for nutritional content (not only protein), most often using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) technology. Feeds are formulated on a net energy basis, which is much closer to the final use of energy than digestible or metabolisable energy, which tend to underestimate energy values of fat and starch rich ingredients, and overestimate energy values of protein rich ingredients. The standard grow-finish pig feed has been replaced by a minimum of 3 feeding phases, along with the evolution of farm equipment to meet these advancements. The evaluation of animal nutrient requirements has also improved, all leading to much more efficient performance in pig farms.

Meanwhile, room for improvement remains important with knowledge constantly improving on pig dietary metabolism and the rapid development of new technologies for real-time measurements. In a 2019 publication, Candido Pomar and Aline Remus of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, talk about precision pig feeding as a breakthrough toward sustainability and review recent and upcoming innovations that contribute to improve precision nutrition and sustainability of farming systems.

In 2012, Luciano Hauschild and others of So Paulo State University introduced a model capable of estimating daily optimal lysine concentration for a pig (Figure 1). The model records pig weight and feed intake every day and uses it to estimate the expected feed intake and growth for the next day, from which it provides a lysine concentration recommendation for the feed.

When challenged in 2 validation trials by Ines Andretta and others, again from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, in 2014 and 2016, this model led to reduce total lysine supply by 27% without impacting growth performance of the pigs. Further steps of development of this model will include variation of the pigs in amino acid efficiency (genetically and individually) as well as requirements for other amino acids. Candido Pomar and Aline Remus, of the 2019 publication, estimated that this further precision feeding model improvement can lead to 60% lower nutrient excretion in the future.

Along with all these developments, digestibility enhancers supplemented in swine feed have been used increasingly in the past 20 years, to further improve feed efficiency and limit nutrient waste. Among them, exogenous enzymes can be used to neutralise anti-nutritional factors or to digest substrates that cannot be hydrolysed by endogenous enzymes.

Such products have allowed huge improvements in diet utilisation, the most relevant example being phytase and phosphorus. Other products aim at increasing the digestibility of all nutrients in the diet. This is the case of an innovative algae-clay based product, MFeed+, which patented technology allows for stabilisation and activation of all digestive enzymes along the digestive tract.

In a digestibility study conducted by the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) in 2014, on growing pigs fed diets formulated with wheat, barley, corn and soybean meal as main raw materials, the algae-clay based product increased the ileal digestibility of energy by 3.4%, lysine by 3.6% and threonine by 5.3%.

More recently tested in a commercial research barn in the US (New Horizon Farm, under the supervision of Kansas State University), the product confirmed its interest in improving feed efficiency of finishing pigs. Pigs of 50.7kg average body weight were placed in 22 pens of 27 pigs each, blocked by body weight and arranged in 2 treatments:

They received 3 different diets over the 3-month trial, all corn-soybean based, formulated to meet PIC 2016 requirements.

Results of the study showed a global increase in performance in the algae-clay group, compared to the control group. The growth rate was improved by 2% (P0.05), with the greatest effect observed in the finishing phase (+3%, P0.001). The use of the algae-clay based strategy tended to decrease the overall feed conversion ratio (-1%/ -3pt, P=0.19), with a significant effect in the finishing phase (-6pt, P0.05) (see also Figure 2).

Supplementation of the algae-clay product did not impact the feed cost per kg of gain and increased the revenue by 2%, leading to a higher income over feed cost (+US$0.75/pig).

Precision nutrition has gained increasing interest in the past 20 years and has brought tremendous improvements in terms of feed efficiency and environmental impact. With the ever-increasing understanding of pig physiological needs and individual variability, together with new technology development for accurate and real-time monitoring of pig performance on farm, there is a bright future and exciting perspectives with precision feeding in the pig industry. Feed efficiency will continue to be improved using digestibility enhancers, which help reduce nutrient losses.

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More precision feeding with digestibility enhancers - Pig Progress