How and why I fast

Three reasons why I've incorporated fasting into my life

Note: I am not a doctor, and I don't advocate for fasting if you have a heart condition. The following are my own experiences so proceed at your own risk.

I'm not kidding when I say that fasting has been the best tool for me to take ownership over my health. It's had such a profound impact on my life that I want to share my experiences so that you might consider trying it out for yourself. I've been experimenting with fasting for nearly a decade, upping my length with each fast, and then seeing how my body responds. It's fascinating, practical, magical, and I wish we would collectively revisit this topic as a society instead of writing it off. When you look into history you will find that fasting has been part of who we are for a very long time.

I still get a lot of flack and pushback for my fasting from some people probably because there's confusion and misinformation around it, and that's totally fine. I can't really blame people for not immediately embracing fasting considering how often we've been lied over the last century. In my own circles, though, it's mostly been accepted—but for many of you reading this, fasting might be an entirely new concept, or perhaps you're even against it. If that's the case I'd just ask that you suspend any opinions you have and consider my experiences.

1/ Weight management

I am a firm believer that losing weight can solve so many our problems and ailments, be it physical, psychological, relationships, confidence, etc. Because you're reading this, you're most likely a person in a developed country and have an abundance of food. Most of us are fortunate and don't have to constantly be worrying about food, but with that abundance comes a full fridge and an ease of overeating.

There wasn't always an abundance of food around at all times. As hunter gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, if we we didn't get hunt an animal, or have access to fruits and vegetables, we just wouldn’t eat. Eating constantly throughout the day just simply wasn't in the cards. When we did manage to kill an animal, the group would gorge on it. Then there may be periods where we didn’t eat, sometimes going many days. We evolved this wonderful body to carry around fat to be used for energy so that when we were short on food, our bodies would then use those fat deposits to sustain us. Fat is like batteries, something we can use when there isn’t energy around. It’s magical and amazing. (Though, most ancient cultures wouldn’t be carrying around a ton of fat like many of us today.)

For those of us with European roots, the concept of eating two to three meals a day came about within the last 500 years. In places like Spain, they can have as many as five meals a day. The USA has of course adopted three daily meals. But again all of this has been within the last 0.01% of human history so we need to acknowledge that and proceed accordingly.

Native Americans would eat when they would feel like it. That wasn't a problem for them because they a) they didn't always have food around and b) the quality of their food was much higher (it was unprocessed and didn't contain artificial sweeteners and sugar). They ate pure foods consisting of mostly nuts, berries, vegetables, and wild caught fish/game. These high protein and high fiber meals make humans feel and keep you trim, so they didn’t have to worry about weight management because it was naturally built into and regulated by the system. That isn't the case for Western cultures in 2022.

We can work to mirror the patterns of hunter gatherers by incorporating fasting into our lives—introducing an ancient system that has proven to work. By and large, there has been no greater tool for my weight loss than fasting. The speed in which fat melts off is unparalleled. I simply can't stress this enough. Also, when you fast for long enough, say for more than 18 hours, your body will burn up all of the glycogen stores and then switch over to using the fat on your body as fuel. This puts your body into a state called ketosis and it feels fantastic. There are a lot of benefits to ketosis:

• Weight loss

• Abundant energy

• Feeling satiated

• Improved blood sugar management and insulin resistance

• Better looking skin and hair

Side note: In 2016-2017, I experimented with a ketogenic diet and remember my first time getting into ketosis—colors became insanely vivid, sounds started to get sharper, and my mood improved by an order of magnitude. I loved it and became so addicted the feeling of ketosis that I decided to do keto for two years.

2/ Health & Energy

Besides the obvious weight loss, I like to fast for other health benefits that are profound. Fasting is like a reset for the body. Instead of shocking the body with insulin spikes, you give it a rest and it cleans itself out.

There's been a lot of data coming out about how the gut directly influences the brain and the state of your body at large. So when you drink a lot of alcohol and eat processed foods, the gut microbiome starts to weaken, causing inflammation, which increases your odds of getting sick. Consistent and prolonged fasting is a way to hedge or curb some of the damage done to the gut microbiome. In fact, there’s some evidence that has shown that fasts that last a week or more can almost entirely reverse some of the effects from a damaged gut microbiome. I highly recommend that you go down the rabbit hole and explore the science for yourself.

The energy you feel is out of this world. When I'm in a fasted state I feel like I can work forever. There's an endless supply of energy due to being in ketosis. Oddly I've learned to like the feeling of being hungry because I know I won’t get tired from eating—and I know that I will be more productive. No more crashes. It's basically impossible to get any meaningful work done when such a meal is consumed, especially one that is high in carbs.

There's an easy way to avoid that, and it’s to not eat. There's a real freedom in not having to think about eating throughout the day too. When you fast, you realize just how much time you spend thinking about what food you’re going to be eating later, how you’re going to prepare it, who you’re going to eat with, and so on. All things I love but it's refreshing to give yourself a break.

3/ Spiritual

Finally, I fast for what you might call spiritual or existential reasons. I do it to feel more grounded with reality, with nature and myself. Prominent religions like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism have long included fasting in their rituals because there's a spiritual connection that’s created when we alter consciousness. As we heighten our awareness, we become in tune with the rhythm of life and the universe.

I also fast as a way to become more disciplined and to conquer my emotions. You've heard people say they get "hangry" ... truth is, we all get hangry but the difference is that some people have become comfortable with the temporary feeling of hunger and others are ruled by it. Not having food is good because it helps training ourselves to regulate our emotions. I like that I don't have another thing that rules me, especially in a world where it’s easy to be lured into being ruled by the next thing. Knowing that you can handle a situation where you might not have access to food is liberating. Take traveling as an example—rather than eating the crap at the airport or on the plane, you could fast instead. All that will happen is that you will get extra hungry and can reward yourself to a delicious meal when you arrive at your destination. I got this trick from Anthony Bourdain.

And like Bourdain, I love food. I really really love food. This point might seem counterintuitive, but because I truly love food, fasting gives me a newfound appreciation for food. Every time I break a fast, I’m in awe of how awesome food is. "Oh you must hate food!" I will hear from people. No, it’s quite the opposite. Another healthy side effect of fasting is that I tend to crave real foods and I’m more able to taste the sweetness of a carrot, or the protein from meat. It's joyful to taste food like this. So if your palette feels stale or blunted, a fast could help reintroduce the fond appreciation for food that you once had.

Recommendations

If you’re new to fasting, I recommend that you start small. I am by no means the most seasoned person when it comes to fasting and I haven't done a prolonged fast over 90 hours yet. Just start with "skipping breakfast" aka intermittent fasting, as these are completely worthless calories.

Start to skip out on lunch, too. Yes, you will experience hunger pangs but they go away after a couple of hours. From there you can start to move into 36-60 hour fasts where you skip one to two whole days without food. From my experience it's the first day that is the hardest. Oftentimes, by the time you’re ready to break your fast, you won’t be hungry at all. It’s weird.

AN IMPORTANT NOTE - If you're going to do fasts longer than 36 hours, you should really be looking into properly re-feeding. Re-feeding is just eating after a fast and doing it improperly can be dangerous, especially you eat too much food or eat high glycemic foods.

A note on longer fasts: avoid losing muscle mass by lifting heavy. Invariably there will be a some loss of muscle but this can be mitigated through strength training.

I tend to stick to one meal per day if I can. Otherwise when I want to do prolonged 48+ hour fasts, I will break the fast with some sort of bone broth, as well as some tomatoes and cucumbers in olive oil. I eat very light vegetables—this is important because these foods are less likely to mess with your insides, they will be light on your stomach and not cause a bad reaction. After a fast, you really want to ease into having food again. I've broken this rule before and had a ton of gluten which wrecked my system and I felt beyond tired and oddly depressed, so please be careful.

Anyways, there's a lot to fasting. But it’s completely transformed the way I life and work. If you're interested in fasting, don’t hesitate to send me a message and let me know if you try it out for yourself.

As always, if you think someone will find this valuable, please share it with them. Thanks for reading!