Fasting is Trending, Is It For You?
What was once for survival is now industrial agriculture and we are still learning to live in our advanced world and out run the floating chairs from Wall-E. Humanity has a complicated relationship with food, specifically abundance as our brains are hard wired to crave the most calorie dense food. Miraculous as sapiens might we have failed to evolve our consciousness to a point where everyone is capable of living healthy lives in the industrial farm era. Food is designed in labs to get you to eat it, sugar tickles your brain as much as hard drugs, and cheese is considered addictive.
High performance isn’t just for your apparel and your technology, you are a product of natural selection. Putting good in your mouth is putting good in your body but what is a human to do when fasting in all forms becomes popular. Learn how to do it correctly. The key part of understanding any kind of diet or supplementation is first understanding why someone would try to sell you on it. Fasting is free. It’s even popular with brilliant people from Silicon Valley; notably Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey have spoken highly of their experience with fasting, notably to one another on twitter.
As a health professional and competitive athlete; soy, corn, and refined SUGAR live in my personal doghouse. What stands out to me most about fasting is the hype surrounding something I often do by accident as apart of the hyper focus as long as I am intrigued by what I am doing. This is naturally how my body prefers to operate and run. Most of the science that compliments the movement towards fasting emphasizes where we came from and glorifies it as bio-hacking. Bio-Hacking is a marketing buzzword for healing and living better and adding a higher price. Healthy living is simple and straightforward.
Faster
Survival became industrial agriculture and now we must learn to live in our advanced world and out run the floating chairs from Wall-E. Humanity has a complicated relationship with food, specifically abundance. Miraculous as Sapiens might be we have failed to evolve our consciousness to a point where everyone is capable of living healthy lives in the industrial farm era. Food is designed in labs to get you to eat it, sugar tickles your brain as much as hard drugs, and cheese is considered addictive. Cheez-it’s are designed that way, they hit a snacking point causing a box to disappear as if by magic. None of it is magic anymore it’s science.
High performance isn’t just for your apparel and your technology, you are a product of natural selection. Putting good in your mouth is putting good in your body but what is a human to do when fasting in all forms becomes popular. Learn how to do it correctly. The key part of understanding any kind of diet or supplementation is first understanding why someone would try to sell you on it. Fasting is free. It’s popular with brilliant people from Silicon Valley Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey,
As a health professional and competitive athlete; soy, corn, and refined SUGAR live in my personal doghouse. What stands out to me most about fasting is the hype surrounding something I often do by accident as apart of the hyper focus which wipes out any hunger pains as long as I am intrigued by what I do. This is naturally how my body prefers to operate and run. Most of the science that compliments the movement towards fasting emphasizes where we came from and glorifies it as “bio-hacking”.
My biggest beef (pun very much intended) with the movement is with a company called “Soylent” by design resembles solvent suggesting a super-soy mixture of futuristic poison. Ingesting what is rebranded and barely improved Slim Fast with better marketing would be unwise. Soy, an estrogen booster and inflammatory food for some plays the bad guy in the media, anything in excess is bad. Soy is used constantly as a preservative and sneaks into everything from hummus(looking at you Sabra) to protein shakes to cookies. Soy isn’t something you need, you don’t need excess and ideally your diet is made up of the whole foods you are consuming. “Huel” as in Human Fuel is another one on my “it would be better if you didn’t eat anything list”.
There is so much healing happening in your gut and in your entire body at all times, we all deserve to eat things that will aid in that process. It’s like choosing between rubbing antibiotic cream or dirt in your open wound. My main concern with treating people like cars is that we aren’t and our desire to objectify ourselves robs us of a diverse diet that provides us with minerals and micronutrients by screaming about their macronutrient content. I find it unspeakably drab to encapsulate a diet that could be rich in vitamins and fiber in a beverage you drink three times a day. Call me old school and I’ll point you to my Italian mother, some of this could easily be a cultural disconnect and emphasis on the olde ways.
Big Benefits:
Gut healing benefits of fasting are its crowning achievement. The gut is widely recognized as the second brain with children recognizing anxiety as “tummy aches” this is why I stayed home from school bent over so often as a child. Things that give us an opportunity to level up, be better, are always healing in some way.
The brain and the second brain are running the show but the performers are the hormones. Cortisol is the stress hormone which if you overdo the widely popular caffeine consumption via bulletproof coffee or any stimulant in place of sustenance you are in fact stressing your body. This useful yet highly acidic liquid will even stress your gut you’re trying to heal if you go overboard. It’s great in theory to utilize caffeine do this but don’t mitigate all hunger pain with coffee to drown out the sound of your tummy rumbling. Fasting faces much criticism about the abstaining from food causing those with a history of disordered eating and eating disorders to fall back into old patterns.
Total disclosure I supplement my own diet with protein shakes with the knowing that protein shakes and powder are processed food. With all premade options there are better choices to be made and I apply an 80/20 rule with 20 being processed food because I like them. If I have one I make sure to have fiber elsewhere and when we make our diet liquid protein it will halt parts of our digestion. Fiber keeps us regular and binds to bad cholesterol making it even better for us. Have your shake, have a vegetable.
There are other hormonal benefits associated with fasting but only when done outside of a beginner level. The greatest win here is that you can truly have a clearer mind, less anxiety, and get your circadian rhythm back on track by taking a step back to heal from processed foods.
Psychology Today The Guardian
ABC 7
Tello, M. (2018). Intermittent fasting: Surprising update. Harvard Health Blog, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/intermittent-fasting-surprising-update-2018062914156
First Published 9/17/2019
Updated 2/5/2021
Megan Sherlock
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