In this 6 part series we will understand the who, what, where and why of the most popular health trend called Intermittent Fasting. Join the conversation by commenting on your fasting routine and benefits you obtain and what is your morning routine that allows you to postpone your breakfast and ride a wave of energy until you “break the fast”.

We hope to address some interesting facts and fictions of our eating habits such as:

• What is Intermittent Fasting?
• How does diet contributes to chronic disease?
• What exactly are the benefits?
• Eating Like Our Ancestors
• Is Breakfast nothing but a marketing scam?
• Is it only for weight loss?
• What exactly are the benefits?
• Is it the same as Keto diet?
• How does it help cure cancer?
• Why does our society want us to eat all day?

What Is Intermittent Fasting?

As defined, Intermittent Fasting consists of eating only in an interval window of time and avoid eating outside this window. This is done to induce specific metabolic and systemic health benefit in energy, digestion and recuperation. Ideally speaking Intermittent Fasting benefits are most realized when eating in only a 4 hour window of time, such as 11am to 3pm and avoid snacking outside that time interval. Eating in a 4 hour window leaves 20 hours of fasting time which does require postponing breakfast to achieve while creating enough fasting energy to eat closer to normal lunch hours.

It isn’t that hard for average people to fast 15 hours a day and eat in a window of 9 hours and avoid evening snacking. Many who do wake up ravishingly hungry after 12-15 hour fasting since their last meal, and look forward to a big breakfast thinking that is the most important meal of the day that will give them the energy to exercise or last until lunch. Achieving at least a 15 hour fast can be healthier if you avoid empty calorie snacking in order to at least give your digestive tract ample time to recover from a complex digestion and nutrient absorption process that can take a lot of our energy and manage our evacuation of waste.

Even if you have a typical satisfying breakfast of eggs, potatoes, bacon and toast or a lighter meal of cereal or fruit and eat 3 meals during a 9 hour window, instead of a typical 14 hour window that includes snacking, you will manage to fast for 15 hours which can work well with a lot of people. But much of what drives people to eat 3 meals a day is eating low nutrient dense food, especially low in satisfying protein and vegetable fiber and too high in simple carbohydrates like bread, pasta, potatoes that spike glucose and release endorphins to produce two dynamic affects: a fuzzy satisfied feeling of fullness and a spike of energy that can result in more hunger to snack soon after. This tail spin of low nutrient and empty calorie meals create cravings and lethargy that turns us into evening couch potatoes with only enough energy to watch TV. Evening television food commercials of pizza, snacks and fast food are timed perfectly to stimulate appetite and now with easy food delivery trending to high fat and carbohydrate snack food it is a recipe for chronic disease and obesity. Couple these snack foods with alcohol or sugary soft drinks and it is no wonder we are the most obese society on earth controlled by media marketing. It is outrageous that the third world cultures have more nutritious high fiber diets compared to ours. They don’t need doctors or exercise machines because they work hard and eat more farm fresh food than we do. These cravings for sugar and carbs are the biggest contributors to chronic disease and a lower productive society that depends on drugs that don’t work or at best only facilitate this lifestyle into chronic disability.

How does diet contribute to chronic disease?

People who enjoy the benefits of intermittent fasting get much more energy during the fasting state and feel more satisfied from one nutrient dense daily meal that leaves no desire to snack. It is very simple, if you feel the need to snack then you should conclude you didn’t eat enough protein or vegetable fiber. A nutrient dense meal should typically consist of 40% organic preferably grass-fed beef or lamb meat protein and 40% fibrous organic fresh vegetables cooked to desired softness smothered and finished in good fats such as Omega3 fatty acid oils like Olive, Coconut, Flax or grass-fed butter. That leaves remaining 20% room on your plate for your favorite carbohydrate to complement the meal as a garnish portion size. This is the absolute opposite of the absurd “Food Pyramid” which has contributed more to an obese society than marketing commercials. Poor people want to fill their stomachs instead of feed themselves nutritious foods. They typically choose 40% diet of cheaper chicken protein meat, usually fried in unhealthy seed oils, and 50% of their plate a starchy carbohydrate which they consider their vegetable of the day. This diet will keep you hungry all day and contribute to chronic disease like diabetes and obesity related conditions faster than any other diet.

The popularity of Intermittent Fasting has proven that you can increase your stamina and energy by postponing breakfast for 3 to 4 hours and riding a wave of Autophagy energy to accomplish morning physical tasks with mental clarity. Yes black coffee also helps because not only do you get a boost of caffeine but if drank black without cream or sugar it also stimulates Autophagy. If you know any multi-generational farmers, you know that they all accomplish the bulk of their physical morning work in a fasting state. Farmers drink a few cups of black coffee and get all their most physically demanding chores done with Autophagy energy while fasting. It was almost noon as the day got hotter, that they came in for “supper”, which was a combination of breakfast and lunch foods, heavy in protein meats, eggs and vegetables with a garnish of potatoes or biscuits to avoid afternoon lethargy. After the meal it was normal to yawn and take a power nap like the lion that ate the giraffe. This avoided the the hottest time of the day that could contribute to heat stroke too. By 2-3 pm they were back maintaining tools and machinery before resuming easier work of mending fences or riding the tractor. Basically they ate one nutrient dense meal at midday, did a little socializing after the meal and only had a light meal at the end of a long day, which was too close to bed time to eat a heavy meal. They didn’t want to sleep with a full stomach digesting a heavy meal because it would contribute to a restless and lighter sleep while digesting. It is well known that the body only repairs itself during deep REM sleep but if you are tossing and turning with indigestion you will not wake up very refreshed and raring to go. It takes a lot of time and energy to digest a high protein meal and we don’t digest as well when lying down. We need gravity and intestinal motility to move the food through digestive nutrient absorption and evacuation stages. This is why people who go to bed with a full stomach don’t feel either very rested or hungry in the morning until completing a digesting cycle. This late eating habit is also a big contributor to bad morning breath and constipation because the food doesn’t have normal evacuation motility propelled by muscular movements. People who eat too close to bedtime also tend to sleep later because either they didn’t rest enough or stayed up later to digest some more before bed. This can easily habituate into a vicious cycle of decline, obesity, apnea and malnutrition.

In the next chapter we will discuss our genetically ancestral feeding habits going back thousands of years and not just a century or two ago and understand how nature designed all living things to hunt and gather in a fasting state with Autophagy energy. Join us in the conversation and read on.