The Complete Guide to Fasting Book Review
Fasting is Lindy. Religious traditions have incorporated fasting for thousands of years to help their followers overcome the ills of abundance and ensure their long-term survival and growth.
Fasting as a practice is very simple of adopt and incorporate into day to day living. Fasting works via negativa, it is not ‘doing something’, it is ‘not doing something’. It is a frugal approach to health.
The Complete Guide to Fasting by Jason Fung is a superb book to get an overview of the science behind lifestyle diseases like obsesity and diabetes and how fasting is a natural remedy to address them.
My personal experience: I adopted the 16-8 intermittent fasting model daily during the COVID-19 lockdown and managed to reduce my weight by 6 kg in two months without any detrimental health effect, with zero exercise and without much restriction on what I eat. I have remained at the reduced weight levels for the past six weeks.
Must read if you want to understand the science behind the art of fasting.
Health warning: This article does not constitute medical advice. If you are undergoing treatment for any health condition, please seek medical advice before adopting fasting techniques.
The Complete Guide to Fasting Book Summary
Note: This summary is made up of my notes, thoughts and highlights of important passages while reading the book. I keep updating the summary when I revisit it, and occasionally may edit it to reduce summary length. Don’t be surprised if it has changed between visits. The author’s words are in normal font, while my interpretations are in italics.
INTRODUCTION by Jason Fung, MD
Figuring Out What Causes Obesity
If eating too many calories is the problem, then the solution is eating fewer calories and burning more through an increase in activity.
Insulin is a fat-storage hormone. When we eat, insulin increases, signaling our body to store some of this food energy as fat for later use. It’s a natural and essential process that has helped humans survive famine for thousands of years,
The underlying cause of obesity turns out to be a hormonal, rather than a caloric, imbalance.
If excessive insulin is causing obesity, then clearly the answer lies in reducing insulin. Both the ketogenic diet (a low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat diet) and intermittent fasting are excellent methods of reducing high insulin levels.
Insulin and Type 2 Diabetes
There was an inconsistency between the treatment of obesity and the treatment of type 2 diabetes, two problems that are closely linked.
Reducing insulin may be effective in reducing obesity, but doctors like me were prescribing insulin as a cure-all treatment for diabetes, both types 1 and 2. Insulin certainly lowers blood sugars. But just as surely, it causes weight gain.
In type 1 diabetes, the body’s own immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The resulting low insulin level leads to high blood sugar.
In type 2 diabetes, however, insulin levels are not low but high.
- Blood sugar is elevated not because the body can’t make insulin but because it’s become resistant to insulin – it doesn’t let insulin do its job.
- By prescribing more insulin to treat type 2 diabetes, we were not treating the underlying cause of high blood sugar: insulin resistance.
- That’s why, over time, patients saw their type 2 diabetes get worse and required higher and higher doses of medications.
Insulin causes insulin resistance. The body responds to excessively high levels of any substance by developing resistance to it.
Excessive insulin causes obesity, and excessive insulin causes insulin resistance, which is the disease known as type 2 diabetes.
The problem with how doctors treat type 2 diabetes became clear: we were prescribing insulin to treat it, when excessive insulin was the problem in the first place.
Type 2 diabetes, like obesity, is a disease of too much insulin. The treatment is to lower insulin, not raise it.
NOT JUST ANOTHER F-WORD: MY EXPERIMENTS WITH FASTING by Jimmy Moore
This Has Got to Be a Joke, Right?
Why in the world would you purposely starve yourself? How could anyone possibly think that deliberately being hungry would ever be a good thing? This has got to be a joke, right?
Dr. Seyfried made the bold assertion that an annual seven- to ten-day water fast could be a useful tool for preventing cancer.
Success on IF, and a Growing Ambition
The way you experience yourself physically when you are fasting is practically identical to the way you experience yourself physically when you are eating.
The hunger sensations in fasting are the same as while eating normally.
What we think is hunger is not really hunger. That impulse to eat cannot be taken seriously.
When you eat a low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat diet – a ketogenic diet – it becomes much easier to fast.
- The carbohydrate restriction and protein moderation help to keep your blood sugar and insulin levels under control, and consuming adequate amounts of healthy saturated and monounsaturated fats keeps your hunger at bay.
- And here’s the key to why keto is so great for fasting: being in ketosis teaches your body to burn fat for fuel rather than sugar, and since that’s what your body has to do during fasting, if you’re already in ketosis, your body is already using fuel the way it’s supposed to.
If you’re a sugar-burner, though, your body burns those 2,000 calories of sugar until it’s all gone, and then it triggers hunger until it’s adapted to using fat. As a sugar-burner, you’ll feel the effects of hunger during a fast much earlier and more intensely.
If you’re a fat-burner, when you start fasting, your body simply continues to use fat as its primary fuel.
Extended Fasting Take 1: A Week Without Food
The weight loss on a one-week fast like this is mostly water weight because the fasting process depletes glycogen stores.
Combining Fasting and Nutritional Ketosis
We simply aren’t meant to be eating as much or as often as we do in modern culture, and getting into ketosis by consuming real, whole foods on a diet that is low-carb, moderate-protein, and high-fat, with adequate calories, will allow you to spontaneously fast for twelve to twenty-four hours.
Fasting shouldn’t be physically painful. End it, have something to eat, and try again in a week or so.
The sad fact is, most people don’t listen to what their body is telling them. Instead, they eat more out of habit, comfort, and boredom than anything else.
Fasting is a stress. Whether it is a hormetic (beneficial) stress or potentially a detrimental stress is largely determined by what other life stressors are at play.
Chapter 1 – WHAT IS FASTING?
Fasting is completely different from starvation in one crucial way: control. Starvation is the involuntary abstention from eating. It is neither deliberate nor controlled.
Fasting is the voluntary abstention from eating for spiritual, health, or other reasons. Food is readily available, but you choose not to eat it.
Although fasting has been practiced for millennia, it has been largely forgotten as a dietary therapy.
Through the power of advertising, big food companies have slowly changed how we think of fasting. Instead of being a purifying, healthful tradition, it’s now seen as something to be feared and avoided at all costs.
Fasting was extremely bad for business, after all – selling food is difficult if people won’t eat. Slowly but inevitably, fasting has become forbidden.
The Disappearance of Daily Fasting
Instead of having balanced periods of feeding and fasting, we are now eating perhaps sixteen to eighteen hours of the day and only fasting for six to eight hours.
What Happens When We Eat?
When we eat, we ingest more food energy than we can immediately use.
The key hormone involved in both the storage and use of food energy is insulin, which rises during meals. Both carbohydrates and protein stimulate insulin. Fat triggers a far smaller effect on insulin and its rarely eaten alone.
Insulin has two major functions. First, it allows the body to immediately start using food energy. Carbohydrates are absorbed and rapidly turned into glucose, raising blood sugar levels. Insulin allows glucose to enter cells whih use it for energy.
Protein does not raise blood glucose, but it can raise insulin levels. The effect is variable, and it surprises many people to learn that some proteins can stimulate insulin as much as some carbohydrate-containing foods. Fats are absorbed as fat and have minimal effect on insulin.
Second, insulin helps store the excess energy. There are two ways to store the energy. Glucose molecules can be linked into long chains called glycogen and then stored in the liver. There is, however, a limit to the amount of glycogen that can be stored away. Once this limit is reached, the body starts to turn glucose into fat. This process is called de novo lipogenesis (literally, ‘making fat from new’). This newly created fat can be stored in the liver or in fat deposits in the body. While turning glucose into fat is a more complicated process than storing it as glycogen, there is no limit on the fat that can be created.
What Happens When We Fast?
The process of using and storing food energy that occurs when we eat goes in reverse when we fast. Insulin levels drop, signaling the body to start burning stored energy. Glycogen (the glucose that’s stored in the liver) is the most easily accessible energy source, and the liver stores enough to provide energy for twenty-four after which body starts to break down stored fat for energy.
The body really only exists in two states – the fed (high-insulin) state and the fasted (low-insulin) state. Either we are storing food energy or burning bood energy.
If, however, we spend the majority of the day storing food energy (because we’re in the fed state), then…
If eating and fasting are balanced, then there is no net weight gain.
Stages of Fasting as outlined by George Cahill:
1. Feeding: Blood sugar levels rise as we absorb the incoming food, and insulin levels rise in response to move glucose into cells, which use it for energy. Excess glucose is stored as glycogen in the liver or converted to fat.
2. The postabsorptive phase (six to twenty-four hours after beginning fasting): At this point, blood sugar and insulin levels begin to fall. To supply energy, the liver starts to break down glycogen, releasing glucose. Glycogen stores last for 24 to 36 hours.
3. Gluconeogenesis (twenty-four hours to two days after beginning fasting): At this point, glycogen stores have run out. The liver manufactures new glucose from amino acids in a process called gluconeogenesis (literally, ‘making new glucose’). In non-diabetic person, glucose levels fall but stay in normal range.
4. Ketosis (two to three days after beginning fasting): Low insulin levels stimulate lipolysis, the breakdown of fat for energy. Triglycerides, the form of fat used for storage, are broken into the glycerol backbone and three fatty acid chains. The glycerol is used for gluconeogenesis, so the amino acids formerly used can be reserved for protein synthesis. The fatty acids are used directly for energy by most tissues of the body, though not the brain. The body uses fatty acids to produce ketone bodies which can cross the brain-blood barrierand are used by the brain for energy.
After four days of fasting, approximately 75 percent of the energy used by the brain is provided by ketones.
5. The protein conservation phase (five days after beginning fasting): High levels of growth hormone maintain muscle mass and lean tissues. The energy for basic metabolism is almost entirely supplied by fatty acids and ketones. Blood glucose is maintained by gluconeogenesis using glycerol. Increased norepinephrine (adrenaline) levels prevent any decrease in metabolic rate. Increased norepinephrine (adrenaline) levels prevent a decrease in metabolic rate. There is a normal amount of protein turnover, but it is not used for energy.
Fat is simply the body’s stored food energy. In times of low food availability, stored food is naturally released to fill the void.
The body does not ‘burn muscle’ in an effort to feed itself until all the fat stores are used up.
(You should not fast if you’re malnourished, of course, and extreme fasting can cause malnourishment too).
Insulin Goes Down
A decreased insulin level is one of the most consistent hormonal effects of fasting.
The most effective method of reducing insulin is to avoid all foods altogether.
Regularly lowering insulin levels leads to improved insulin sensitivity – your body becomes more responsive to insulin. The opposite of insulin sensitivity, high insulin resistance, is the root problem in type 2 diabetes
Longer-duration fasts reduce insulin more dramatically.
Lowering insulin also rids the body of excess salt and water because insulin is well known to cause salt and water retention in the kidneys. This is why low-carbohydrate diets often cause diuresis, the loss of excess water – in fact, much of the initial weight lost on a low-carb diet is water.
Diuresis is beneficial in reducing bloating and helping you feel lighter.
Electrolytes Remain Stable
Electrolytes are certain minerals in the blood.
- They include sodium, chloride, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and phosphorus.
- The body keeps their blood levels under very tight control in order to maintain health.
Prolonged studies of fasting have found no evidence of electrolyte imbalances – the body has mechanisms in place to keep electrolytes stable during fasting.
Adrenaline Increases and Metabolism Speeds Up
The vast majority of people feel energized and revitalized during fasting.
- Partly this is because the body is still being fueled – it’s just getting energy from burning fat rather than burning food.
- But it’s also because adrenaline is used to release stored glycogen and to facilitate fat-burning, even if blood sugar is high. The increased adrenaline levels invigorate us and stimulate the metabolism.
After a four-day fast, resting energy expenditure increased by 12 percent. Rather than slowing the metabolism, fasting revs it up.
Growth Hormone Goes Up
Human growth hormone (HGH) is made by the pituitary gland.
Levels peak during puberty and gradually decrease with age. Excessively low growth hormone levels in adults leads to more body fat, less muscle mass, and decreased bone density (osteopenia).
Growth hormone, along with cortisol and adrenaline, is a counterregulatory hormone. These hormones signal the body to increase the availability of glucose – countering the effect of insulin and producing higher blood sugar levels.
Levels of counterregulatory hormones peak just before waking, at approximately 4:00 a.m. or so, increasing blood sugar levels, which fall during the night. The increase prepares the body for the upcoming day by making more glucose available for energy.
Growth hormone also increases the availability of fats for fuel by raising levels of key enzymes, such as lipoprotein lipase and hepatic lipase. Since burning fat reduces the need for glucose, this helps maintain stable blood sugar.
Many of the effects of aging may result from low growth hormone levels.
Exogenous growth hormone – that is, growth hormone that isn’t made by your own body – carries the risk of unwanted side effects. Blood sugar levels can increase to pre-diabetic levels. Blood pressure also goes up, and there is a theoretical increased risk of prostate cancer and heart problems.
Meals very effectively suppress the secretion of growth hormone, so if we’re eating three meals per day, we get effectively no growth hormone during the day.
The most potent natural stimulus to growth hormone secretion is fasting.
The Importance of Healthy Eating
Fasting isn’t a cure-all – healthy eating still matters.
Modern medicine’s greatest challenges are metabolic diseases: obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and fatty liver, collectively known as the metabolic syndrome.
The roots of metabolic syndrome lie in the Western diet, with its abundance of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners and overdependence on refined grains.
Societies that have kept their traditional patterns of eating are not afflicted with these metabolic disorders.
For optimal health, it is not enough to simply add fasting to your life. You must also focus on healthy eating patterns.
What ‘healthy eating’ doesn’t mean
There is a tendency to define a healthy eating pattern as simply some combination of macronutrients. There are only three macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, fats.
The underlying assumption of macronutrient-based guidelines is that all fats are equal, all carbohydrates are equal, and all proteins are equal. This is clearly false.
Dietary guidelines that specify calorie limits unwittingly assume that all calories are equal, but one hundred calories of a green salad does not have the fattening effect as one hundred calories of chocolate chip cookie.
Relying on macronutrient-based guidelines or calorie limits makes eating far more complicated than it should be. We do not eat a specific percentage of fats, protein, and carbohydrates. We eat foods. Certain foods are more fattening than others. Therefore, the best advice focuses on eating or not eating specific foods, not specific nutrients.
Consistently high insulin levels are the root cause of all the diseases of metabolic syndrome, it’s especially important for those with metabolic syndrome to consider how foods stimulate the release of insulin.
Fasting, of course, is the ultimate weapon in your arsenal when it comes to lowering insulin levels – since all foods stimulate insulin to some degree.
We cannot fast indefinitely, so there are some simple rules to follow to lower insulin levels.
Eat whole, unprocessed foods
Humans evolved to eat a wide range of foods without detrimental health consequences.
What humans haven’t evolved to eat are highly processed foods. During processing, the natural balance of macronutrients, fiber, and micronutrients is completely disrupted.
Processing the wheat berry to remove all the fat and protein means that the result, white flour, is almost pure carbohydrates. Wheat berries are natural; white flour is not. It is also ground to an extremely fine consistency that greatly speeds the absorbption of carbohydrates into the bloodstream.
Our body has evolved to handle natural foods, and when we feed it unnatural ones, result is illness.
There is nothing inherently unhealthy about carbohydrate-containing foods. The problem arises when we start changing these foods from their natural state and consuming them in large amounts.
Processing transforms relatively innocuous vegetable oils into fats that contain trans fats, toxins whose dangers are now well recognized.
Foods should be recognizable in their natural state as something that was alive or has come out of the ground.
If it comes prepackaged in a bag or a box, it should be avoided. If it has a nutrition label, it should be avoided.
The true secret to healthy eating is this: Just eat real food.
Reduce sugars and refined grains.
Avoiding all processed foods is preferable but not always 100 percent possible, for many reasons. It is therefore important to recognize which foods are the biggest offenders.
For everyone, but especially for those with metabolic syndrome, it’s most important to avoid sugars and refined grains, such as flour and corn products. These are more fattening than other foods.
Eat more natural fats
Foods high in monounsaturated fats, such as olive oil, nuts, and avocados, which were previously shunned, are now considered ‘superfoods’ because they are so healthy. Consuming fatty fish, such as wild salmon, are proven to reduce the risk of heart disease.
More and more evidence is showing that naturally occurring saturated fats, such as those found in meat and dairy, are also not harmful to health.
Eat less artificial fats
Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils – found in foods such as shortening, deep-fried foods, margarine, and baked goods such as cakes and cookies – contain trans fats, which our bodies do not handle well. Trans fats raise LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol and lower HDL (‘good’) cholesterol, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Highly processed vegetable oils, such as corn, sunflower, and canola oils, were once considered ‘heart healthy.’ It’s easy to mistake corn oil, for instance, for a natural fat. But actually, corn is not naturally oily.
These oils are very high in inflammatory omega-6 fats. While some omega-6 fats are necessary, we are likely eating ten to twenty times more than in the past.
When our consumption of omega-6 fats is out of balance with our consumption of omega-3 fats (found in fatty cold-water fish, nuts, and seeds), the result is systemic inflammation, which is a factor in heart disease, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel and other chronic diseases.
Eating more healthy fats and avoiding artificial fats, such as partially hydrogenated oils and highly processed vegetable oils, is key to good health.
The basics of good nutrition can be summarized in these simple rules.
- Eat whole, unprocessed foods.
- Avoid sugar.
- Avoid refined grains.
- Eat a diet high in natural fats.
- Balance feeding with fasting.
Different Kinds of Fasting
An absolute fast withholds both food and liquid. This may be done for religious purposes, such as during the holy month of Ramadan in the Muslim tradition. Absolute fasts are not generally recommended for health purposes.
Intermittent fasting can be successfully implemented with either short fasts (less than twenty-four hours) or longer fasts (more than twenty-four hours).
Extended fasting (more than three days) can also be safely used for weight loss and other health benefits.
We encourage consuming plenty of noncaloric liquids (water, tea, coffee) and homemade bone broth, which is full of nutrients.
Overall Effects of Fasting
Fasting has the opposite effects – lower glucose, lower blood pressure, and lower risk of cancer. Plus, we reap all the benefits of the increased growth hormone.
Fasting does not make you tired. Fasting does not burn muscle. There is no starvation mode from fasting
Fasting has the potential to unleash the anti-aging properties of growth hormone without any of the problems of taking artificial growth hormone.
Chapter 2 – A BRIEF HISTORY OF FASTING
There is nothing new, except what has been forgotten. – Marie Antoinette
From an evolutionary standpoint, eating three meals a day and snacking throughout the day is not a requirement for survival or good health.
As periods of involuntary starvation faded, ancient cultures replaced them with periods of voluntary fasting. These were often called times of ‘cleansing,’ ‘detoxification,’ or ‘purification.’
Spiritual Fasting
Fasting is not so much a treatment for illness but a treatment for wellness.
Fasting is thus an act of turning away from temptation and back toward God.
Fasting is not so much about self-denial but about a reaching for spirituality and being able to commune with God and hear his voice.
Going without food for long stretches is what we evolved to do. – Stella B., Leeds.
With no storable grains, and few other foods that stayed fresh for very long, most of our ancestors experienced both feast and famine on a regular basis.
Eating all the time is not normal.
Greek Orthodox Christians may follow various fasts on 180 to 200 days of the year.
Buddhist monks are known to abstain from eating after noon, fasting until the next morning.
Hinduism embraces fasting in the belief that our sins lessen as the body suffers.
Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset during the holy month of Ramadan.
The Early Adopters
The ancient Greeks believed that medical treatments could be observed from nature, and since humans, like most animals, naturally avoid eating when they become sick, they believed fasting to be a natural remedy for illness.
In Paleolithic times, we needed all our mental faculties and keen senses to find food. When food was scarce, our alertness and mental focus naturally increased.
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910), one of America’s foremost writers and philosophers, once wrote, ‘A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors.‘
Modern Fasting
For most of human history, large amounts of food were not readily accessible all throughout the day. Intermittent fasting was likely a regular part of human evolution, and it’s possible our bodies – and brains – have come to expect periods of food scarcity.
Chapter 3 – BUSTING THE MYTHS OF FASTING
Myth #1: Fasting Puts You in ‘Starvation Mode’
The idea of ‘starvation mode‘ refers to the notion that our metabolism decreases severely and our bodies ‘shut down’ in response to fasting.
Most of the calories we spend each day are not used for exercise but for these basic functions.
Reduced metabolism makes us generally cold, tired, hungry, and less energetic – our bodies are essentially conserving energy by not burning calories to keep us warm and moving.
From a weight standpoint, reduced metabolism is a double curse. First, we feel lousy while dieting. Even worse, because we’re burning fewer calories per day, it’s both harder to lose weight and much easier to gain weight back after we’ve lost it. This is the main problem with most caloric-reduction diets.
Your body cannot run a deficit indefinitely – it will eventually run out of fat to burn – so it plans ahead and decreases your energy expenditure. The end result is a decreased BMR.
If short-term fasting dropped our metabolism, humans as a species would not likely have survived.
- In fact, metabolism revs up, not down, during fasting.
- Our bodies do not shut down in response to short-term fasting.
- If we do not eat, our bodies use our stored energy as fuel so that we can find more food.
Humans have not evolved to require three meals a day, every day.
Hormones allow the body to switch energy sources from food to body fat. After all, that is precisely why we carry body fat – to be used for food when no food is available.
Fasting every other day for twenty-two days resulted in no measurable decrease in BMR.
The ‘fasting is unhealthy’ reflex is largely an outcome of the marketing push to encourage consumers to buy food.
Myth #2: Fasting Makes You Burn Muscle
We store food energy as body fat and use this as fuel when food is not available.
- Muscle, on the other hand, is preserved until body fat becomes so low that the body has no choice but to turn to muscle.
- This will only happen when body fat is at less than 4 percent.
If we did not preserve muscle and burn fat instead when no food is available, we would not have survived very long as a species.
During fasting, the body switches from burning sugar (carbohydrates) to fat for energy. Protein is spared.
As you start fasting, the body increases carbohydrate oxidation. This is just a fancy way of saying that it is burning sugar, in the form of glycogen, for the first twenty-four to forty-eight hours after you stop eating, until it runs out of glycogen. With no more sugar to burn, the body switches to burning fat.
At the same time, protein oxidation – that is, burning protein, such as muscle, for fuel – actually decreases.
Rather than burning muscle during fasting, we start conserving muscle. Much of the amino acids that are broken down during regular turnover of cells are reabsorbed into new proteins.
Why would your body store excess energy as fat if it meant to burn protein as soon as the chips were down?
In fact, fasting is one of the most potent stimuli for growth hormone secretion, and increased growth hormone helps maintain lean body mass.
Muscle gain or loss is mostly a function of exercise. You can’t eat your way to more muscle. Exercise is the only reliable way to build muscle.
Diet and exercise are two entirely separate issues. Don’t confuse the two.
Exercise builds muscle. Lack of exercise leads to atrophy of muscles.
If you are worried about weight loss and type 2 diabetes, then you need to worry about diet, not exercise. You can’t outrun a bad diet.
Myth #3: Fasting Causes Low Blood Sugar
During fasting, our body begins by breaking down glycogen (remember, that’s the glucose in short-term storage) in the liver to provide glucose. This happens every night as you sleep to keep blood sugars normal as you fast overnight.
People who engage in fasting for religious or spiritual purposes often report feelings of extreme clear-headedness and physical and emotional well-being. Some even feel a sense of euphoria.
Ketones are a ‘superfood’ for the brain. When the body and brain are fueled primarily by fatty acids and ketones, respectively, the ‘brain fog,’ mood swings, and emotional instability that are caused by wild fluctuations in blood sugar become a thing of the past and clear thinking is the new normal.
If you fast for longer than twenty-four to thirty-six hours, glycogen stores become depleted.
Human brains, unique amongst animals, can also use ketone bodies – particles that are produced when fat is metabolized – as a fuel source.
When glucose is not available, the body begins to burn fat and produce ketone bodies, which are able to cross the blood-brain barrier to feed the brain cells. Up to 75 percent of the brain’s energy requirements can be met by ketones.
Myth #4: Fasting Results in Overeating
The increased calories don’t come close to making up for the lack of calories on the fasting day.
Over time, appetite tends to decrease as the fasting duration increases.
Myth #5: Fasting Deprives the Body of Nutrients
Of the three major macronutrients, there are no essential carbohydrates that the body needs to function, so it is impossible to become carbohydrate deficient.
There are certain proteins and fats that we have to get in our diet. These are called the essential amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) and essential fatty acids.
To further preserve proteins, the body breaks old proteins down into their component amino acids and recycles these into new proteins.
Myth #6: ‘It’s Just Crazy’
Obesity, at its very core, involves some form of overeating.
Chapter 4 – THE ADVANTAGES OF FASTING
Fasting:
- Improves mental clarity and concentration
- Induces weight and body fat loss
- Lowers blood sugar levels
- Improves insulin sensitivity
- Increases energy
- Improves fat-burning
- Lowers blood cholesterol
- Prevents Alzheimer’s disease
- Extends life Reverses the aging process
- Decreases inflammation
Diets Fail
So, the best diet would emphasize whole, unprocessed foods. It would be low in refined carbohydrates and high in natural fats with a moderate amount of protein.
Type 2 diabetes is a dietary disease, and it requires a dietary solution. Most importantly, it is a curable disease.
Fasting is the oldest dietary intervention in the world.
It is not something to do but something to not do.
There is no consensus as to what constitutes a healthy diet,
Advantage #1: It’s Simple
Fasting, by taking a completely different approach, is much easier to understand. It is so simple that it can be explained in two sentences: Eat nothing. Drink water, tea, coffee, or bone broth. That’s it.
When it comes to dietary rules, the simpler, the better.
Advantage #2: It’s Free
I prefer patients to eat organic, local grass-fed beef and organic vegetables, and avoid white bread and other highly processed foods.
Grains enjoy substantial government subsidies, making them far cheaper than other foods.
If a diet is unaffordable, it does not truly matter if it is effective. The price makes it ineffective for those who cannot afford to follow it. This should not doom them to a lifetime of type 2 diabetes and disability.
Fasting is free. In fact, not only is it free, it actually saves money because you do not need to buy any food at all!
The price of fasting is zero.
Advantage #3: It’s Convenient
Asking people to devote themselves to home cooking, as well-intentioned as it may be, is not going to be a winning strategy.
Fasting, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. There is no time spent buying groceries, preparing ingredients, cooking, and cleaning up.
It is a way to simplify your life.
Advantage #4: You Can Enjoy Life’s Little Pleasures
Fasting restores the ability to occasionally enjoy that dessert by balancing out the feast. It is, after all, the cycle of life.
Feasts follow fasts. Fasts follow feasts.
Balance the time that you are eating and the time you are not eating to remain healthy.
Advantage #5: It’s Powerful
Fasting has no ceiling, which offers significant therapeutic flexibility. In other words, you can keep fasting until the desired effects are seen.
The dose can go up indefinitely.
Advantage #6: It’s Flexible
Life is unpredictable. Fasting fits wherever you need it to.
Advantage #7: It Works with Any Diet
Fasting can be added to any diet.
That is because fasting is not about something you do; it’s about something you do not do.
It is subtraction rather than addition.
Chapter 5 – FASTING FOR WEIGHT LOSS
Long-term dieting is an exercise in futility.
Eat Less, Move More Doesn’t Work
Fact #1 – Over the past twenty years, conventional weight-loss advice has called for eating less and moving more.
Fact #2 – Over the past twenty years, obesity rates have exploded.
Even the very best study ever done on caloric reduction as a path to lasting weight loss showed that it failed.
The body prefers to use glycogen for energy rather than body fat.
You need to burn most of the glycogen before you can burn fat.
In essence, the body can burn either sugar or fat, but not both.
When we are not eating, insulin levels are low, allowing full access to the fat freezer – the body is able to easily get at the stored fat.
Insulin inhibits lipolysis – it stops the body from burning fat.
insulin injections, often used in the treatment of diabetes, commonly lead to increased fat accumulation because the body is unable to burn fat.
The root cause of the problem is consistently high levels of insulin, which creates a vicious cycle: too much insulin creates resistance, insulin resistance triggers higher levels of insulin, and that in turn only serves to stimulate more resistance.
High Insulin + Reduced Calories = Slowing Metabolism
To burn fat, two things must happen: you must burn through most of your stored glycogen, and insulin levels must drop low enough to release the fat stores.
The reason the body has to resort to decreasing metabolism and increasing hunger is because insulin remains high, so it doesn’t have access to the energy stored as fat.
When we eat, insulin rises and blocks fat-burning, and the body instead burns glucose, which is now freely available from the ingested food.
Reducing refined carbohydrates reduces insulin. However, protein, especially from animal sources, also raises insulin. Fasting, by restricting everything, keeps insulin lower. Fasting is simply more powerful.
The very low carb diet does remarkably well, providing you 71 percent of the benefits of fasting, without actual fasting.
The inability of most diets to reduce insulin resistance is exactly why they eventually result in weight regain.
To prevent the body from adapting to the new weight-loss strategy and maintain weight loss requires an intermittent strategy, not a constant one. This is a crucial distinction.
Restricting some foods all the time differs from restricting all foods some of the time. This is the difference between failure and success.
Bariatric surgery is surgically enforced fasting.
FASTING AND CORTISOL
Cortisol is a hormone that’s released during times of stress, whether physical or psychological. This activates the fight-or-flight response – it’s a survival adaptation.
Cortisol is also one of the major drivers of obesity.
What to Expect When Fasting for Weight Loss
Fat loss during fasting averages approximately ½ pound per day. If you are losing 1 pound or more a day, the excess above ½ pound is water weight and will rapidly be regained upon eating.
Chapter 6 – FASTING FOR TYPE 2 DIABETES
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. For unknown reasons, the body’s own immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, leading to a severe insulin deficiency.
Type 2 diabetes is a dietary and lifestyle disease. In response to frequent high blood sugar, the body produces excessive insulin, which leads to insulin resistance
Early Treatments for Diabetes
The combination of relative food scarcity and low average life expectancy meant that type 2 diabetes was rare.
Forgotten Wisdom: The Relationship Between Type 2 Diabetes and Diet
Visceral fat, fat that’s stored in and around the organs, likely plays a large role in type 2 diabetes. It’s more harmful to health and, unfortunately, more common than subcutaneous fat.
During both World War I and World War II, the mortality rate from type 2 diabetes dropped precipitously.
Why Fasting Works for Type 2 Diabetes
If the core issue is that glucose is overfilling the cells, then the solution seems rather obvious: get all that glucose out of the cells!
If you are on medications for type 2 diabetes or any other conditions, then it is imperative that you speak with your physician before embarking on the fasting journey.
It’s essential to frequently monitor your blood sugar. You should check your blood sugar at least twice a day and ideally up to four times a day on both fasting and non-fasting days.
I often advise patients to reduce or avoid their blood sugar medications during fasting days and to only take them when blood sugar goes too high.
I consider the optimal blood sugar range while fasting to be 8.0 to 10.0 mmol/L, if you are taking medication.
It is generally better to use less medication during fasting. If your blood sugar goes higher than you wish, you can always take more medication to compensate. However, if your blood sugar goes too low, you must eat some sugar.
Fasting is mind over matter.
Chapter 7 FASTING FOR A YOUNGER, SMARTER YOU
Mammals generally respond to severe caloric deprivation by reducing organ size, with two prominent exceptions: the brain and, in males, the testicles.
Boosting Brainpower
The best-selling novel Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, describes the experiences of American prisoners of war in Japan during World War II.
- During their extreme starvation, the prisoners experienced some astonishing mental clarity that they themselves understood was due to the effect of starvation.
- One man was able to learn Norwegian in just under a week.
- Another described ‘reading’ entire books from memory.
Humans, like all mammals, have an increase in mental activity when hungry and a decrease when satiated.
Animals that are cognitively sharp and physically agile during times of food scarcity have a clear advantage when it comes to survival.
Our ancient ancestors grew more alert and active when hungry so that they could find their next meal – and the same thing still happens to us.
Fasting and hunger energize us and activate us to advance towards our goal, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary.
In animals, both fasting and exercise significantly increase the beneficial BDNF effects in several parts of the brain.
Insulin levels have an inverse correlation to memory – that is, the lower the insulin level, the more memory improves.
So fasting provides neurological benefits two ways: it decreases insulin and leads to consistent, maintained weight loss.
Slowing Aging
Significant research indicating a dramatic drop in inflammation, improvements in insulin signaling, and a near total ‘reset’ of immune function with fasts of 3 – 5 days.
In a process called apoptosis, also known as programmed cell death, cells that reach a certain age are programmed to commit suicide.
When just some cellular components need to be replaced, a process called autophagy kicks in.
Autophagy is a form of cellular cleansing: it is a regulated, orderly process of breaking down and recycling cellular components when there’s no longer enough energy to sustain them.
Apoptosis and autophagy are both necessary to keep our bodies running well.
- When these processes are hijacked, diseases such as cancer occur, and the accumulation of older cellular components may be responsible for many of the effects of aging.
- These unwanted cellular components build up over time if autophagocytic processes are not routinely activated.
Increased levels of glucose, insulin, and proteins all turn off autophagy.
The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) pathway is an important sensor of nutrient availability. When we eat carbohydrates or protein, insulin is secreted, and the increased insulin levels, or even just the amino acids from the breakdown of ingested protein, activate the mTOR pathway.
The body senses that food is available and decides that since there’s plenty of energy to go around, there’s no need to eliminate the old subcellular machinery. The end result is the suppression of autophagy.
Conversely, when mTOR is dormant – when it’s not being triggered by increased insulin levels or amino acids from ingested food – autophagy is promoted.
As the body senses the temporary absence of nutrients, it must prioritize which cellular parts to keep. The oldest and most worn-out cellular parts get discarded, and amino acids from the broken-down cell parts are delivered to the liver, which uses them to create glucose during gluconeogenesis. They may also be incorporated into new proteins.
The dormancy of mTOR is only related to short-term nutrient availability and not the presence of stored energy,
The strongest stimulus to autophagy currently known is fasting,
Fasting cleanses the body of unhealthy or unnecessary cellular debris. This is the reason longer fasts were often called cleanses or detoxifications.
Fasting also stimulates growth hormone, which signals the production of some new snazzy cell parts, giving our bodies a complete renovation. Since it triggers both the breakdown of old cellular parts and the creation of new ones, fasting may be considered one of the most potent anti-aging methods in existence.
Fasting can limit growth of glucose-dependent tumors. Fasting can also target inflammation that contributes to the initiation and progression of tumors.
Chapter 8 – FASTING FOR HEART HEALTH
A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors. – Mark Twain
Cholesterol is used to repair cell walls and also to make certain hormones. It is so vital for human health that virtually every cell in the body has the ability to manufacture cholesterol if needed.
High levels of triglycerides in the blood are strongly associated with cardiovascular disease. It is almost as powerful a risk factor as high LDL cholesterol,
While triglyceride levels respond to diet, the same cannot be said for cholesterol.
High Cholesterol Isn’t a Dietary Problem
The scientific community has long known that eating less cholesterol does not lower blood cholesterol. Our liver generates 80 percent of the cholesterol found in the blood, so eating less cholesterol makes little or no difference.
Eating more cholesterol does not raise blood cholesterol significantly. If we eat less dietary cholesterol, our liver simply compensates by creating more, so the net effect is negligible.
Russian scientist Nikolai Anichkov discovered that feeding cholesterol to rabbits caused atherosclerosis. Rabbits, however, are herbivores and aren’t meant to eat foods that contain cholesterol.
Feeding a lion hay would also cause health problems.
There is a slight negative association between daily intake of total fat (and also of animal fat) with serum cholesterol level.’
The more dietary fat eaten, the lower blood cholesterol.
Millions of people follow a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet because they think that it’s good for their heart, without realizing that these measures were long ago proven ineffective.
There is one simple, natural measure that lowers cholesterol: fasting.
Why Fasting Lowers Cholesterol
The only reliable way to reduce LDL levels is to reduce the liver’s production of it. In fact, studies prove that seventy days of alternate-day fasting could reduce LDL by 25 percent.
Fasting preserves HDL, unlike low-fat diets, which tend to decrease both LDL and HDL.
Chapter 9 – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HUNGER
Practical experience with hundreds of patients shows that while they’re on an intermittent fasting regimen, they most often see their hunger diminish, not increase.
We start to feel hunger pangs approximately four hours after our last meal.
Hunger Starts in the Mind
Hunger is partly a learned phenomenon.
These conditioned responses can be very powerful. In fact, there are measurable physical reactions to the mere suggestion of food. Salivation, pancreatic fluid secretion, and insulin production increase immediately upon the expectation, not the actual delivery, of food.
Hunger starts in the mind.
Intermittent fasting offers a unique solution. By randomly skipping meals and varying the intervals at which we eat, we can break our habit of eating three times a day, come hell or high water.
For most people, the biggest obstacles to fasting are psychological, rather than physiological.
True hunger is generally experienced in the body and brain, not in the stomach.
One of our most important tips for fasting is to stay busy.
It’s important to remember that hunger is not as terrible an experience as we expect it to be.
The secret is to understand that hunger comes in waves. You just need to ride out the waves.
What’s the best way to endure the wave of hunger during fasting? Drinking green tea or coffee is often enough.
Hunger is a state of mind, not a state of stomach.
Chapter 10 WHO SHOULD NOT FAST?
Some people absolutely should not attempt therapeutic fasting, including:
- Those who are severely malnourished or underweight
- Children under eighteen years of age
- Pregnant women
- Breastfeeding women
Seek the advice of a health-care professional before attempting therapeutic fasting:
- You have gout
- You are taking medications
- You have type 1 or type 2 diabetes
- You have gastroesophageal reflux disease
Absolutely Don’t Fast If You’re: Severely Malnourished or Underweight
When body fat falls below 4 percent, the body is forced to use protein in order to feed itself.
The stored energy from fat has run out, and the body must now burn functional tissue to survive. This syndrome is called wasting.
One well-accepted definition of underweight is a BMI of less than 18.5.
Food is the medicine of choice for anorexia, so withholding it is ill-advised.
Anorexia is a psychiatric disorder of distorted body image. Patients perceive their bodies as overweight even though they are severely underweight.
Children have always been excluded from cultural or religious fasting to prevent the unintentional development of malnutrition at a critical time of development.
The developing fetus requires adequate nutrients for optimal growth, and nutrient deficiency may cause irreversible harm during this critical period.
Gout is an inflammatory arthritis caused by excess uric acid crystals in the joints.
Uric acid elimination through the urine decreases during fasting, resulting in a rise in uric acid levels.
If you have type 1 or type 2 diabetes, it’s essential to be particularly careful while fasting or even just changing dietary patterns. This is especially true if you are taking medications. If you continue the same dose of medication but reduce food intake, there is a risk of your blood sugar going extremely low – a situation called hypoglycemia.
You must consult with a physician to adjust the doses of diabetic medications or insulin before starting any dietary program. Careful monitoring of blood sugars is crucially
In gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), commonly known as heartburn, stomach acid backs up into the esophagus, causing damage to the sensitive tissues of the esophagus.
Excessive abdominal fat places increased pressure on the stomach and forces food and stomach acid back up into the esophagus.
Simple techniques to help reduce symptoms of GERD:
- Avoid foods that aggravate reflux – including chocolate, caffeine, alcohol, fried foods, and citrus. Caffeine relaxes the lower esophageal sphincter, which may worsen reflux.
- Finish eating at least three hours before bed.
- Go for a walk after dinner.
- Elevate the head of the bed with blocks.
- Try alkaline water or water with lemon.
- Take over-the-counter medications such as antacids, bismuth solutions, or ranitidine (Zantac).
- Ask your physician about stronger prescription medications, such as proton pump inhibitors.
Fasting has been part of human culture for at least two thousand years.
Chapter 11 – KINDS OF FASTS AND BEST PRACTICES
Most definitions of fasting allow noncaloric drinks only.
The water-only fast is a traditional and classic variant – all other beverages and additives are not permitted during the fasting period. It’s important to note that this fast generally includes zero salt. Without salt, the body cannot hold onto water, and therefore there is some risk of dehydration.
The body has a remarkable ability to retain salt when it is not readily available in the diet.
Juice fasting permits the consumption of juice as well as water. Since juices naturally contain sugars and calories, this is not technically a true fast,
The ‘fat fast’ is a newer variation of fasting. Relatively pure fats, such as coconut oil, cream, and butter, are allowed during this fast, so it, too, is not a true fast.
The popularity of ‘bulletproof coffee‘ has helped this trend. To make coffee ‘bulletproof,’ you add fat in the form of coconut oil, medium-chain triglycerides (MCT oil), or butter from grass-fed cows.
During a fast, small amounts of pure fat or almost pure fat (a spoonful of olive or coconut oil, a pat of butter), and for some, even a very small amount of solid food, such as macadamia nuts or walnuts – something that is primarily fat with a negligible amount of carbohydrate and little to no protein – can be consumed without interfering with the physiological benefits of the fast.
In a ‘dry fast,’ no fluids of any kind are allowed. Muslims practice this type of fasting during the daylight hours of the holy month of Ramadan.
The ‘fasting-mimicking diet‘ is a diet created by researchers to re-create the benefits of fasting without actual fasting.
The key to therapy is prolonged therapeutic ketosis (blood ketones in the range of 3 – 6mM), together with reduced blood glucose levels (3 – 4 mM). Patients will need to use the Precision Xtra meter from Abbott to determine when they can enter the therapeutic zone. GKI ratios of 1.0 or below would best represent the therapeutic range.
Fasting: Best Practices
Cinnamon tea and ginger tea have both been used for their reputed appetite-suppressing power.
Homemade bone broth, made from beef, pork, chicken, or fish bones, is a good choice for fasting days. Animal bones are simmered with other vegetables and seasonings for long periods of time, anywhere from eight to thirty-six hours
Chapter 12 – INTERMITTENT FASTING
In the pre-agricultural era, it is estimated that animal foods provided about two-thirds of the calories in the human diet. So, despite all the modern teeth gnashing about red meat and saturated fats, it seems that our ancestors had little problems eating them.
The term intermittent fasting simply means that periods of fasting occur regularly between periods of normal eating.
Shorter fasts are generally done more frequently, even daily, while longer fasts – twenty-four to thirty-six hours is the most common duration – are usually done two to three times per week.
During short-duration fasts, you are still eating daily, which minimizes the risk of malnutrition. Shorter fasts also fit into work and family-life schedules easily.
Longer-duration fasts give quicker results but are usually done less frequently. Fasting for more than twenty-four hours may sound difficult, but I’ve found that a surprising number of patients prefer to fast longer and less frequently.
In years past, a daily twelve-hour fasting period was considered a normal eating pattern. You would eat three meals a day from, say, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and then fast from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
Daily twelve-hour fasting
This introduces a period of very low insulin levels during the day. This prevents the development of insulin resistance,
The combination of whole foods, lower-carbohydrate diets, less added sugars, and a daily twelve-hour fast was enough to prevent most Americans in the 1950s and 1960s from developing obesity – even though they still ate plenty of white bread and jam, and whole-wheat bread was rare and whole-wheat pasta unheard-of.
16-Hour Fasts. This regimen incorporates a sixteen-hour period of fasting into your daily meal schedule. For example, you might fast from 7 p.m. to 11 a.m. daily. You could also say that you have an eight-hour eating window every day. For that reason, it is sometimes called time-restricted eating.
For most people, I recommend 16:8 intermittent fasting (a compressed eating window) over longer-term fasting.
Hofmekler, drawing upon inspiration from ancient warrior tribes such as the Spartans and Romans, devised a ‘warrior diet’ in which all meals are eaten in the evening during a four-hour window. This results in a twenty-hour fasting period each day.
Weight gain is driven by insulin, and the higher insulin response in the evening was translating into more weight gain for the dinner group.
Obesity is a hormonal, not a caloric, imbalance,
Hunger is lowest in the morning, and breakfast is typically the smallest, not the largest, meal of the day.
Ghrelin, the hunger hormone, rises and falls in a natural circadian rhythm, with a low at 8:00 a.m. and a high at 8:00 p.m.
Forcing ourselves to eat at a time when we are not hungry is not a winning strategy.
So the optimal strategy seems to be eating the largest meal in the midday, sometime between noon and 3:00 p.m., and only a small amount in the evening hours. Interestingly, this is the traditional Mediterranean eating pattern. They eat a large lunch, followed by a siesta in the afternoon, and then have a small, almost snack-sized dinner.
While we often think of the Mediterranean diet as healthy due to the type of foods in it, the timing of meals in the Mediterranean may also play a role.
Chapter 13 – LONGER PERIODS OF FASTING
Breaking insulin resistance requires not just low insulin levels but persistently low levels, we need longer fasting periods.
During longer-duration fasts, health benefits – including weight loss and reduced insulin levels – accrue quickly, but there is also a higher risk of complications for diabetics and those who are taking medications.
If you do not feel well at any point, you must stop fasting. You can be hungry, but you should not feel sick.
During longer fasts, the reduced intake of food often lowers blood glucose. If you take the same dose of medication as you would on a normal eating day, there is a high risk of becoming hypoglycemic, which is very dangerous.
If you’re taking medication to lower your blood sugar, you are overmedicated when you’re fasting.
A twenty-four-hour fast involves fasting from dinner to dinner, or breakfast to breakfast, whatever you prefer.
You do not actually go a full day without eating, since you are still taking one meal on the fasting day.
Easily incorporated into everyday life. You can fast without disrupting family dinners
Brad Pilon, the author of Eat, Stop, Eat, recommends using a twenty-four-hour fast twice a week.
When you’re following a regular fasting regimen that involves longer fasts, it’s best not to deliberately restrict calories after your fast.
The 5:2 diet consists of five normal eating days. On the other two ‘fast’ days, women may eat up to 500 calories per day and men up to 600 calories. These two fast days can be done on consecutive days or spaced apart, depending upon your preference. The 500 to 600 calories can be consumed in a single meal or spread out into multiple meals over the course of a day (though of course they would be very small meals). The reason a limited number of calories are allowed on fast days is to increase compliance.
In alternate-day fasting, you fast every other day. As on the 5:2 diet, 500 to 600 calories are permitted on each fasting day, but because fasting is done every other day rather than twice per week, it’s a slightly more intense regimen than the 5:2 diet.
Longer fasting seems best approached when you have some downtime and can control your activity, work demands,
In a thirty-six-hour fast, you do not eat for one entire day. For example, if you finish dinner at 7 p.m. on day 1, your fast would begin immediately after – you skip all meals on day 2 and not eat again until breakfast at 7 a.m. on day 3.
Type 2 diabetes is a dietary disease. As such, the only logical treatment is to change diet and lifestyle.
Chapter 14 – EXTENDED FASTING
Insulin encourages the kidneys to retain salt and water, so by lowering insulin levels, fasting helps the body excrete excess salt and water. During the first several days of fasting, there’s a corresponding increase in urine flow. The elimination of excess water and salt helped one patient in Gilliland’s study who had severe congestive heart failure: by the end of the two weeks, he was able to walk without breathlessness.
Incorporating intermittent fasting (16:8 and 20:4) and heavy lifting / interval training (to preserve muscle mass and drain those glucose stores) helped me get into ketosis faster and lose fat more efficiently than using a well-formulated ketogenic diet alone.
It’s normal for bowel movements to slow down during prolonged fasting – nothing goes into the digestive system, so it makes sense that little comes out. During the world-record fast, bowel movements occurred every thirty-seven to forty-eight days.
Refeeding refers to the one to two days immediately after an extended fast.
Refeeding syndrome occurs when electrolytes, particularly phosphorus, are depleted due to malnourishment. Adults store 500 to 800 grams of phosphorus in the body. Approximately 80 percent of that is held within the skeleton, the rest in soft tissues.
During prolonged malnutrition, blood levels of phosphorus remain normal as bone stores are used up.
- Once refeeding begins, the food raises insulin levels, which stimulates the synthesis of glycogen, fat, and protein. All of that requires minerals like phosphorus and magnesium.
- This puts an enormous demand on already-depleted phosphorus stores.
- Too little phosphorus is left in the blood, and that causes the body to ‘power down.’
- Muscle weakness and outright muscle breakdown have been described.
- It may even affect the heart muscle and the diaphragm, the muscle responsible for breathing.
To help prevent problems in the post-fast refeeding period, there are two steps we recommend:
1. Do not make an extended fast a water-only fast. Drinking homemade bone broth provides phosphorus and other proteins and electrolytes, which reduces the chances of developing refeeding syndrome. And to prevent vitamin deficiency, take a daily multivitamin.
2. Do all your usual activities, especially your exercise program, during your fast. This helps to maintain your muscles and bones.
Chapter 15 – FASTING TIPS AND FAQS
Fasting used to be an integral part of normal life. In fact, it still is in many religions – for example, the Greek Orthodox and Muslim religions. In these contexts, it’s a communal practice. You’re not fasting alone but with all of your family and friends.
Top 9 Fasting Tips
1. Drink water: Start each morning with a full eight-ounce glass of water. It will help you start your day hydrated and set the tone for drinking plenty of fluids throughout the day.
2. Stay busy: It’ll keep your mind off food. Try fasting on a busy workday. You may be too busy to remember to be hungry.
3. Drink coffee: Coffee is a mild appetite suppressant. There’s also some evidence that green tea may suppress appetite. Black tea and homemade bone broth may also help control appetite.
4. Ride the waves: Hunger comes in waves; it is not constant. When it hits, slowly drink a glass of water or a hot cup of coffee. Often by the time you’ve finished, your hunger will have passed.
5. Don’t tell people you are fasting: Most people will try to discourage you simply because they don’t understand the benefits of fasting. A close-knit support group of people who are also fasting is often beneficial, but telling everybody you know is not a good idea.
6. Give yourself one month: It takes time for your body to get used to fasting. The first few times you fast will be difficult, so be prepared. Don’t be discouraged. It gets easier.
7. Follow a nutritious diet on nonfasting days: Intermittent fasting is not an excuse to eat whatever you like. During nonfasting days, stick to a nutritious diet low in sugar and refined carbohydrates. Following a low-carbohydrate diet that’s high in healthy fats can also help your body stay in fat-burning mode and make fasting easier.
8. Don’t binge: After your fast, pretend it never happened. Eat normally (and nutritiously – see #7), as if you had never fasted.
9. Fit fasting into your own life: This is the most important tip I can offer, and it has the greatest impact on whether you stick to your fasting regimen.
- Do not change your life to fit your fasting schedule – change your fasting schedule to fit your life.
- Don’t limit yourself socially because you’re fasting. There will be times during which it’s impossible to fast, such as vacations, holidays, and weddings.
- Do not try to force fasting into these celebrations. These occasions are times to relax and enjoy.
- Afterwards, you can simply increase your fasting to compensate. Or just resume your regular fasting schedule. Adjust your fasting schedule to what makes sense for your lifestyle.
Fasting is no different than any other skill in life: practice and support are essential to performing it well.
Breaking Your Fast
Break your fast gently. The longer the fasting period, the gentler you must be.
Try breaking your fast with a snack or small dish to start, then wait for thirty to sixty minutes before your main meanl.
Short-duration fasts (twenty-four hours or less) generally require no special precautions, but for longer fasts, it is a good idea to plan ahead.
Here are some suggestions for that first snack:
- 1/4 to 1/3 cup macadamia nuts, almonds, walnuts, or pine nuts
- 1 tablespoon peanut butter or almond butter
- A small salad (instead of salad dressing, try cottage cheese or creme fraiche)
- A small bowl of raw vegetables with some olive oil and vinegar drizzled on them
- A bowl of vegetable soup
- A small amount of meat
Tips for Breaking Your Fast with a Small Snack
- Make sure your portion sizes are small. You will be eating a full meal shortly, so there is no need to gorge.
- Take the time to chew thoroughly. This will greatly help your digestive system, which has been resting for a while. You are slowly bringing your system back online.
- Take your time in general. Your fast is over. If you are feeling anxious to eat again, take comfort knowing you will be having a whole meal within the hour.
- Don’t forget to drink water! Drink a tall glass of water before you break your fast and after your first meal. People often forget to consume fluid after they stop fasting. But we often mistake thirst for hunger. Make sure you stay hydrated so you don’t overeat.
Common Concerns
Hunger
Water: Start your day with a full glass of cold water. Staying hydrated helps prevent hunger.
Green tea: Full of antioxidants and polyphenols, green tea is a great aid for dieters. The powerful antioxidants may help stimulate metabolism and weight loss.
Cinnamon: Cinnamon has been shown to slow gastric emptying and may help suppress hunger. It may also help lower blood sugar and therefore is useful in weight loss.
Coffee: While many assume that it is the caffeine in coffee that suppresses hunger, studies show that this effect is more likely related to antioxidants – although caffeine may raise your metabolism, further boosting fat-burning.
Chia seeds: Chia seeds are high in soluble fiber and omega-3 fatty acids. These seeds absorb water and form a gel when soaked in liquid for thirty minutes, which may aid in appetite suppression.
Dizziness
If you experience dizziness during your fast, most likely, you’re becoming dehydrated. Preventing this requires both salt and water.
Another possibility is that your blood pressure is too low – particularly if you’re taking medications for hypertension.
Headaches
Headaches are common the first few times you fast. It is believed that they’re caused by the transition from a relatively high-salt diet to very low salt intake on fasting days.
Constipation
Bowel movements will typically decrease during a fast simply because there is less food intake. If you are not experiencing actual discomfort, then there’s no need to worry about decreased bowel movements.
Increasing your intake of fiber, fruits, and vegetables during the nonfasting period may help with constipation.
Heartburn
To prevent heartburn after a fast, avoid taking large meals – try to just eat normally. Avoiding lying down immediately after a meal can also help; try to stay in an upright position for at least a half hour after meals.
Muscle Cramps
Low magnesium, which is particularly common in diabetics, may cause muscle cramps. You may take an over-the-counter magnesium supplement.
FAQs
Will fasting make me confused or forgetful?
No. You should not experience any decrease in memory or concentration during your fast. On the contrary, fasting improves mental clarity and acuity.
Does fasting lead to overeating?
The simple answer is yes, you will eat more than usual immediately after fasting. However, the amount of food eaten above the baseline on nonfasting days is not enough to offset the preceding fast.
My stomach is always growling. What can I do?
Try drinking some mineral water. The mechanism is unclear, but it is believed that some of the minerals help settle the stomach.
Can you exercise while fasting?
Absolutely. The benefits include:
1. You can train harder due to increased adrenaline.
2. You’ll recover from a workout and build muscle faster due to increased growth hormone.
3. You’ll burn more fat due to increased fatty acid oxidation. Train harder, build muscle, burn fat. Perfect!
Feasts and Fasts: Understanding the Rhythms of Life
Fit fasting into your schedule, not the other way around. If you know you are going to eat a large dinner, then skip breakfast and lunch.
FASTING FLUIDS
Only certain fluids can be consumed during fasting periods: water, tea and coffee (hot or iced), and homemade broth.
WATER
What you can add to your water
- Limes
- Lemons
- Slices of other fruits (do not eat the fruit itself or consume fruit juice)
- Vinegars (especially raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar)
- Himalayan salt
- Chia and ground flaxseed (1 tablespoon in 1 cup of water)
What you can’t add to your water
- Sweetened powders or drops.
COFFEE
You can consume up to six cups of coffee on a fasting day. The coffee may be caffeinated or decaffeinated. Black coffee is preferable, but you can add up to 1 tablespoon of certain fats to each cup of coffee if you wish (see the list of permitted fats below). Also, you can have unsweetened iced coffee: simply brew your coffee as usual and then refrigerate it or pour it over a cup of ice.
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