Corrections & clarifications: A photo caption in an earlier version of this story attributed a quote to the wrong person. Don Brown said, “It’s shocking how few Americans fast even consistently 12 hours.”

Over the past five decades, Dale Brubaker had tried all kinds of diets in an effort to keep his body trim. Then he found a regimen that worked: intermittent fasting in which he goes without food for hours or even days at a time.

For support he can turn to his wife or about 100,000 strangers who share his commitment to intermittent fasting and track their time between meals on an app. Any time Brubaker feels his resolve wavering, the app can inspire him by showing how long others have held out. Once someone posted he had gone 240 hours.

“Especially for beginners, it helps you build up your willpower muscle,” the Avon man said of using LifeOmic’s Life Fasting Tracker app. “You say, I could eat now, but if I wait another hour or two, I could go 16 hours.”

After dinner Brubaker, 70, clicks on the app. It runs until the next day when he eats a literal break-fast. Although he periodically does a three-day fast, typically he goes 16 to 18 hours without food. Restricting caloric intake helped him lose five pounds he added last year plus another five.

The app taps into the popularity of intermittent fasting as a weight-loss or health maintenance tool. It lets you track your fast and create circles of friends — those you know in real life and those you know only online — with whom you share your success.

In addition, the app gives you information on intermittent fasting and tips.

'But I like pizza, beer, wine'

The brainchild of Don Brown, the app originally started as a free “fun project” at LifeOmic, Brown’s health care biotech company in Indianapolis. After founding and selling the cloud computing development company to Interactive Intelligence, Brown started LifeOmic to develop a cloud platform for patient data.

Brown was not specifically looking to develop mobile apps when he discovered intermittent fasting a few years ago. Extreme caloric restriction intrigued him at first, but despite evidence that it could contribute to longevity and better health, he decided he just couldn’t do it. A few years earlier he had seen a documentary about people living on 1,200 calories a day and was struck by how sickly they appeared.

“I’m not a gluttonous guy, but I like pizza, beer, wine, and I just quickly decided that if that’s the price of living another ten years or so, I’m not willing to pay it,” Brown said. “I admired the discipline of these people, but I decided that I was not going to be one of them.”

Then he found the work of Dr. Valter Longo, who advocates going hours rather than days without food. Numerous other scientists had done studies that supported this as a way to glean benefits similar to extreme caloric restriction.

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What is intermittent fasting?

Research suggests that a long enough fast sends your body into ketosis, in which the body moves from primarily burning sugar or glycogen to actively burning fat, Brown said. In this way, intermittent fasting bears some similarities to the popular keto diet.

Brown, who is in his early 60s, decided to try it for himself. He gave up his after-dinner snack and the bowl of cereal he would munch later in the night. The first week was hard, he recalled, going from what had been at most a four-hour fast to a 12-hour stint. Within a week, though, it had become routine.

A few months after Brown started intermittent fasting, he had a routine visit with his doctor. Without seemingly dieting, Brown had dropped 10 pounds, and along the way, his lipid and insulin levels also had dramatically improved.

"I became more and more excited about this as a viable intervention that I could do and more people could do,” Brown said. “It’s shocking how few Americans fast even consistently 12 hours.”

How to use the fasting app

Inspired by his own experience, Brown talked up the eating plan to his eight adult children who hopped on board. They started texting one another about how long they had fasted, and in those texts Brown saw the making of a mobile app.

The initial idea was to have a timer that a user would start when commencing his or her fast, denoting how long he or she wanted to fast. The Life Fasting Tracker also shows the user when he or she hits the 12 hour mark and starts burning fat in ketosis.

Users can create circles and invite others to join their circle and compare notes. The app also has public circles so users can follow strangers on their intermittent fasting journeys.

After a version for IPhone caught on, LifeOmic developed a version for Android phones. The app has more than 100,000 users around the world, as far away as Dubai.

Does intermittent fasting work?

Intermittent fasting as an eating plan is gaining traction around the world in many different forms, said Nana Gletsu-Miller, an associate professor of nutrition sciences at Purdue University. Some people try to go for hours-long stretches. Others may opt for five days of normal food intake and two of severe restriction.

Although the data looks promising for shedding pounds and improving metabolic health, intermittent fasting doesn’t perform any better than other dietary restriction plans that result in weight loss, such as balanced diets or the ketogenic diet, she said.

“This is just another approach that people may use as a tool for weight loss,” she said. “I would say that it’s a sound approach, but I want to emphasize it’s no better than the other approaches when you compare them head to head.”

The plan may work particularly well for those who have a tendency to snack late at night, Gletsu-Miller said. Studies suggest that when eating late at night, people tend to consume calories they do not need.

Skipping breakfast, however, could prove more problematic. Some studies suggest that eating breakfast may reduce the number of calories a person consumes throughout the day.

'You really savor every bite'

For Brown, however, the plan has been life-transforming. Most days he fasts up to 17 hours and one day a week he goes a full 24, only consuming water and low-caloric beverages such as unsweetened tea and black coffee.

Once it’s time to eat he has little desire to overindulge and compensate for the meals he missed. Although some people might think of that as a possible downside, he said that most people who engage in the practice actually wind up feeling healthier.

“By the time you have fasted 24 hours, it doesn’t feel good to gorge yourself," he said. "You develop a different relationship with food. I think we find we tend to eat more mindfully. You really savor every bite.

“You don’t want to eat a bag of Doritos. You want something good, substantial, a steak, some really nice salad, nice pasta.”

Fasting also enhances exercise, Brown said. He said he likes to wrap up a long fast with a workout that renders breaking that fast even more enjoyable.

A certified personal trainer and nutrition coach in Evansville, Stacey Stratman first heard about intermittent fasting from a client and had her doubts. After downloading the Life Fasting Tracker app, she decided to try it herself.

Before, she would eat first thing in the morning after a late-night snack. Now she goes up to 16 hours without eating. Every few weeks she does a 24-hour fast.

Although she has not lost weight since starting down this path, that was not what she was after in the first place. She has shaken her sugar habit and sleeps better each night. Now, she confidently recommends the diet and the app to clients.

The Evansville resident credits the app in part with her success.

“It really is just that reminder and the fact that other people are fasting,” she said. “I don’t think I would have successfully been able to work up to a 16-hour day, but I did because of the social aspect of the app.”

More health and wellness apps are coming

Buoyed by this app’s success, LifeOmic is building a general health and wellness app that will encourage users to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, exercise, get plenty of sleep, engage in some sort of stress reduction activity, and fast intermittently. Brown said he plans to release that app at the end of March.

Brown says he thinks that intermittent fasting alone could spark a revolution in Americans’ health if more doctors start recommending it to their patients.

“Intermittent fasting is not a diet. … It really is a lifestyle intervention,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to tell people just put down your fork for a few hours and then have your biscuits and gravy, rather than tell them, I want you to start eating only broccoli.”

Contact IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at 317-444-6354 or shari.rudavsky@indystar.com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter: @srudavsky.