Fasting has numerous health benefits, specifically for overweight adults, more especially for adults suffering from metabolic syndrome diseases & disorders from eating the western diseases of civilization diet or SAD standard American diet with excess carbs, not enough fiber, too little healthy fats & not enough quality proteins. Sugar, Insulin, Sugar, Insulin - stop the madness, give your body a break, thin about fasting & watch the Science of Fasting Video to get started!
Food Basics
Carbohydrates are common foods like bread, pasta, and rice. Simple carbs are either sugar or become blood sugar quickly after consumption. Sweetened beverages like soda pop or carb loaded beverages like beer are examples of high glycemic index drinks. The glycemic index tells you how a food will spike blood glucose levels. Low glycemic foods like fiber rich whole veggies & fruits & grains & nuts & seeds & meat & fish, these foods are low glycemic and typically when consumed in moderation, do not result in blood glucose level elevation spiking. Simple carbohydrates are rapidly digested and rapidly spike elevate blood glucose, which when repeated can give rise to Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hight blood pressure, insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome diseases & disorders. High blood sugars are feed cancer cell development, such that many cancers are made worse faster by persistently elevated blood glucose levels.
Complex carbs & carbs with natural fiber are lower glycemic index. An apple or carrot for example might have as much carbohydrate as a sugar rich commercial candy bar, but the fruit & veggie are much less likely to cause a blood glucose spike because they also contain water, enzymes & other nutrients that are great for the digestive system, like naturally occurring fiber. Whole fruits are healthy to consume, while fruit juices are dangerous like soda pop. It's everything that is removed with juicing the fruit that make fruit juice high glycemic index score, while whole fruit has a lower glycemic index value.
Proteins are made of amino acids & break down into amino acids when digested. These amino acids, nucleic acids & their chemical cousins, are used to make all the biomolecules in the body. The body can even make blood glucose by breaking down proteins in emergencies. Don't worry, fasting for 4 to 7 days is not going to eat away your muscles. Proteins are essential for most cells & for DNA & protein synthesis. You can get proteins from plants, as many vegan people obtain protein like this, but you need a full spectrum of the amino acids to cover all the dietary essential needs that humans have for protein in their diet. Many vegans become sick over time because they are not getting all the amino acids from their diet. Proteins are complicated to digest & as such are low glycemic index.
Fats are lipids, long chains that are important for our eyes, skin, colon, stomach, throat, nose, ears, scalp, hair follicles, and fats are super important as insulators in the brain, and as the primary material of arteries and veins in the circulatory system, capillaries. Eating health mono-unsaturated fats in adequate amounts promotes healthy skin & vitality & fats are low glycemic index as foods & do not typically elevate blood glucose levels. I really like olive oil, coconut oil, butter & lard as fats! I also use MCT oil, almond oil, and prefer cooking in butter for more flavor like all the highly talented chefs do! Natural organic butter tastes better too. Organic means safer for the animals, the farmer, the environment & people in general. It costs a little more, but your voting to improve soil conditions, farm health of the farm workers & animals, you investing in the health of your body & the health of the world around you when you vote with your wallet to buy organic foods.
Tracking Your Daily Macro's
How many grams of:
~Carbohydrates
~Fiber
~Fat
~Protein
Total Calories _____
Water Intake ____ ml or oz
Simple right, carbs, proteins & fats! Not so fast. Drinking enough to stay hydrated makes people have to urinate more & that keeps a lot of people from staying hydrated. Often times when people think they are hungry for a snack or food, they are actually thirsty & regularly confuse thirst & hunger feelings.
Many common affordable foods are mostly made of cheap carbohydrates. High quality fresh foods & health foods cost a lot more. Given that food prices are way up, some up %50 or more in just the last few years, making food less affordable, such that those cheap carbs are some of the only foods that most people can afford to eat regularly.
"Have you eaten rice today" is a way of greeting people in other countries. Even doing research on Premium Cigar smoking reveals that experts on cigars recommend not inhaling the smoke, only puffing on it, but also eating a small meal before smoking, since food can prevent a low blood sugar caused by nicotine.
I do not condone or endorse smoking, since smoking has numerous deleterious effects on health, just like abusing alcohol. I am suggesting that many people who only puff Premium Cigars sparingly are exposing themselves to less risk that someone who smokes 20 cigarettes per day. I think a beer, a glass of wine, a low sugar cocktail - that adult beverages consumed in moderation are perfectly fine. People have been drinking alcoholic beverages for millennia, since antiquity. Wine talked about in the Bible for example.
I get why so many people are confused about food. I was speaking with a 600lb coworker in the past about about fasting and when I asked him "Hey, I am just curious, you do not have to answer, and I am not suggesting anything or trying to offend you, but have you ever heard of fasting?", he replied "Yeah, I think fasting mentioned in the Bible". I followed with "Do you know what happens when the body no longer getting food?" he replied "I think you die if you do not eat, you get a low blood sugar and feel sick". I asked "Are you diabetic?" "What do you think? Of course I have type 2 diabetes, I think most or nearly all people who are as fat as me are diabetic". I then asked "are you taking insulin?, he replied "Yes, I take insulin in the morning, and at night, long acting Lantus" I said "Ok, would you be wiling to consider watching a YouTube video called The Science of Fasting?" he said "Sure", so I asked him for his phone number and texted him a link to this video
Please Watch "The Science of Fasting Video" via https://youtu.be/sNdWCZWpjxU
In the absence of food, your body enters a ketogenic state where it starts burning stored body fat as fuel. By then end of the first day of fasting you might have a head ache or not feel that great. The second day of fasting can be kinda harsh too as the body starts eliminating stored toxins.
It is absolutely essential to drink water when you wake up, and all day long while fasting. Your body is going to be flushing a lot of water soluble waste into your kidneys, so you have to drink water to keep flushing the junk away into your urine. You might even notice your urine smells weird!
If you are diabetic, an insulin dependent, one of the tricks to fasting is to cut your insulin intake in half or reduce your units of insulin by half. So if you typically take 50 units of Lantus while on a normal eating day, reduce the Lantus to 25 unites or less while fasting. Use a GCM system like the Dexcom G6 or Abbott Freestyle tracker with your smartphone - or do 7 + blood glucose checks with a finger stick test strip glucometer throughout the day. If you have to take a little sugar to recover from a low, that's ok. Less than 150 calories not going to knock you out of ketosis or fasting right away. If you notice you keep going low with a low blood sugar, reduce your insulin dose even further. I highly recommend you read books about diabetic fasting and consult a doctor familiar with fasting, ketogenic diets & interval fasting!
Interval Fasting
Skipping breakfast or dinner, the idea is that you control when you eat to a short interval in the middle of the day, so that you body operates without digesting food for a lot of the day. Giving your gastric system a break from food can also help with digestive problems. There is a cool interval fast app for smartphones called Fastic https://fastic.com/ works with android or iPhone // when you use Fastic it teaches you about interval fasting & all the metabolic & physiological benefits of skipping meals & shortening you eating window, a popular interval fasting method called 16:8, where you fast for 16 hours per day, only eating during the 8 hour feeding window. I skip breakfast every day!
I can write these blog posting much faster & with much greater mental clarity if I do not eat anything on waking. I drink two glasses of water when I get out of bed, then black coffee, sometimes with a dash of whole organic milk to soften the espresso flavor and smooth out the mouthfeel. I then take NMN powder in a 1/4 tsp scoop, around 200-400 mg daily, sometimes more if I do not feel well. I pack my daily vitamins, lisinopril & metformin in a small plastic bottle that I 3D printed out of orange PETG, so that I can take them when I eat lunch later in the day. This enables me to interval fast. Sometimes I also eat dinner earlier and then do not eat anything for the rest of the day. I find that sleeping 5 hours after my last meal makes me sleep better than if I eat something close to bedtime.
Long Term Fasting
Just drink water. You can take a multi-vitamins & black coffee fine, so is neat tea with nothing added! The idea to stop bombarding the body with food. Diet produces a huge steam of chemicals that your digestive system has to liquify in order so that the food components can be absorbed by the intestines into the body, where these food biomolecules are used to make ATP from ADP in the mitochondria of cells, but also to provide the ingredients for DNA transcription so that you body can make new cells, fix existing cells & recycle old cells.
Day 1 of fasting gives you a break from cooking or spending money buying foods on the go, when your out and about. Go for a walk, read a book, write something, do a hobby, take a nap, listen to music, try to enjoy yourself. Go swimming or hiking, or do aerobics. Exercising enhances the benefits of fasting!
Day 2 can be really hard, especially if you are at home near your kitchen where all the food temptations exist. A trip to the grocery store can be really overwhelming. I suggest downtime, take it easy, stay at home, away from the kitchen. Work on the yard, organization, cleaning, fixing, repairing or maintaining things- laundry, dishes- anything other than eating. Don't eat & give your digestive system a break. Anytime you think about being hungry or feel hungry, drink some water, sit down, calm down. If the water alone not doing it for you, eat a pinch of salt. The salt tastes amazing when you have not eaten anything for a day or more. Go to bed earlier & wake up early & drink water right after waking, sleeping dehydrates the body, especially the eyes. Your body will be dumping stored junk during this time of metabolic transition, and that can cause muscle pain, weakness, soreness, joint pain, headache & makes some people feel pretty sick. This is why a lot of people think that eating makes them feel better, but that is not true, as you will find out on day 3.
Day 3 of fasting is where many fasting people start to feel dramatically better
Day 4 many fasting people feel way better than they have in years
Day 5 & onward are full of energy & vitality as your body burns away fat & junk stored in the fat and eliminates it. The gastric system able to rest, restore & recover. It is the 5th through the 7th day when the miracles of fasting help most people with metabolic syndrome disorders. If its your first time fasting, I would strongly advise you to not fast for more than 7 days! If you want to fast longer then 7 days, you need to have a lot of body fat, extra fat to burn. I for example, can only fast for about 4 or 5 days before I burn most of the body fat & my body weight & BMI drops too low. I am called TOFI or thin on the outside & fat on the inside. 4 days of fasting shrinks my liver & burns visceral fats around my core & other organs & by day 4 of fasting I feel amazing.
Make sure to drink more while fasting, than the typical amount of water you drink per day & consider taking a multi-vitamins while fasting. A pinch of salt when you are feeling off at first can really help too!
Fasting better for adults over 30 who are also morbidly obese. Fasting also no suggested for people with eating disorders like anoxia of bulimia. Fasting not for children, their rapidly dividing cells & rapidly devleoping bodies need food nutrients from regular meals.
Reducing sugar intake probably good for most people, especially Americans who suffer from SAD or disease of civlization that have their causal basis in dietary imbalance, specifically an over abundance of carbohydrates, distinctive lack of fiber consumption, deficiency of health fat & quality protein. I think sugar is a dose dependent toxin. Just like caffeine is fine at 400mg or less daily for most adults, but 3000mg or more toxic. The dose often makes the difference. One glass of wine probably well tolerated by most adults, while dinking 3 bottles of wine quickly can give someone alcohol poisoning. Its the same ethanol, its the time & dose that make the difference. The body needs time to metabolize caffeine or alcohol. The body needs time to digest foods & meals.
It takes hours to digest a meal. Many people are overweight, tires & sick because they eat large meals close to bedtime, then wake up & eat a sugary breakfast the next day. Many people are feeling sick because they eat a huge meal at lunch time. This 3 meals per day a metabolic assault on the body, especially when eat meal bigger than what you can hold with both hands cupped. I am astonished when I go to restaurants with Meg my lovely wife, at the portion sizes. Many meals are actually 3+ servings of the food. Meg & I typically order a couple of appetizers & share. Meg cannot eat much at a time, small meals only, so these huge portions end up leaving in a box that I eat as lunch the next day or get thrown away sadly.
Portion Abuse
When a person regularly consumes large portions of food, that persons stomach stretches to adapt, making it harder for the person to feel full, unless they consume a large portion. Most large portions of food contain way too many calories as a meal. Way too many carbs, too much fat, too much protein. The body can only adapt so much food nutrients and has speed limits in terms of how fast foods can be digested & absorbed. The human body is not a food dumpster. The human body is a delicate beautiful complicated machine that you have to feed with intelligent nutrition in order to be healthy, in order to not become morbidly obese & sick with preventable diseases that originate from dietary excesses, from overly large portions of food, huge meals, since everything bigger in America, be careful, share your meal! You do not have to eat it all, ask for box & take the left overs to eat the next day!
Fasting tightens up loose skin from weight loss. Autophagy initiated by long term fasting also gets rid of cancer cells. The body eats itself preferentially consuming cancer cells & old cells & cell debris to make metabolic energy, to heat water & flesh to just above room temperature so all the enzymes can do their work in warm aqueous conditions to make hundreds of chemical reactors happen at thousand of miles per hour, in every single cell 24/7/365! You are beautifully & wonderful made out of recycle star dust formed by gravitational fusion in stars much larger than Earth's Sun, long ago, long before our solar system existed. We are made of the same star dust, 126 chemical elements, that the Earth is made of! That's why we are made of chemical elements form the foods that we eat. This is why eating uranium not intelligent, and why it is intelligent to make use of nutritional science & facts to improve your health & wellness!
I am not a doctors & am not giving out medical advice. I wrote this post with the hope that it will help someone else understand food more & to make healthier lifestyle choices, perhaps giving interval fasting or longer duration fasting a try! Life is a DIY experiment, so are you ready to try Fasting? Watch that Science Fasting Video!
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