The idea of fasting doesn’t sound great I know and is a bit scary too. We may find this so frightening because of our pre historic survival brains of possibly dying from lack of food combined with the fact that we’ve conditioned our brains to expect food every few hours. As a society, I believe we eat too often and when we do it we’re sometimes consuming the wrong things because of the availability of unhealthy items. If you were placed into the wild, we would soon find out how healthy you ate and how often.
Intermittent fasting – traditionally means to eat all your food for the day in a 6-8hr window (12p, 1pm, 2pm to 8p, 9p or 10p). It has gain much popularity in the health and fitness community for its benefits in aiding fat loss, preventing cancer, building muscle through higher hormone production, and increasing resilience.
Problems you may face:
-with our busy schedules, we may find it difficult to keep our energy high with the lack of food during highly active portions of the day.
– combating the initial hunger pangs, which eventually pass
– breaking habit
There are unquestionable benefits to short term fasting including increased metabolism and sharper focus. Beyond theses benefits, studies show prevention of chronic disease, reduced triglycerides and increased neurogenesis (ease of brain growth and development).
Methods we use to hack the body and brain is drinking coffee with blended grass fed butter or a cup or 2 of bone broth in the morning which gives us a healthy serving of fat calories which provides a sustainable amount of energy until our first meal.
Intermittent fasting and Ketosis – Ketosis is a normal metabolic process that occurs in the body when you restrict calories and carbohydrate. Instead, the body will burn fat (from both internal and external sources) for energy and in the process begin to make ketones which are substances that aid in the efficiency of this fat burning production. A good way to get in to Ketosis is through intermittent fasting. You can obtain this type of state in as quickly as 3 days.
Self experiments
Anastasia has been following intermittent fasting for roughly 2 months now and has seen lots of positive feedback, including more energy, better sleep and weight loss. It also has provided her much more control and self discipline in her food choices because she doesn’t want to waste her meal on something unhealthy as there is a smaller window to eat. Sugar cravings and thoughts of processed food has also been on the decline.
I myself am not adamant in following this type of eating, however every few days I will do a day of intermittent fasting where I won’t eat until 1 or 2p, besides the coffee with grass fed butter in the morning(100-150cal). I’ve also received increased energy levels and in particularly more focus and alertness because my brain switches to a “survival mode” because of the lack of food. It is quite an interesting occurrence. You would think it would be the opposite because of the lack of food, but that may only be the case for the first day or two before the body soon realizes it’s new ways. I would definitely recommend experimenting with it.