Intermittent Fasting: Fewer Hours Eating = Better Health
For me it all started at the onset of COVID. I had never really given much thought to intermittent fasting. Yes, I’ve done plenty a three day juice fast and felt all the better for it every time. But anyone will vouch for the fact that I like to eat. I like to eat a lot! So anything that involves not eating for prolonged periods of time will not be a big blip on my radar.
In March, however, I lost my job in retail when it became one of the hardest hit businesses in the pandemic path. And suddenly I found myself at home all the time, as did many of us. The truth is, for me – if you remove the security aspect from the picture entirely – it wasn’t really a bad thing. I never realized how much I actually had to do in a day until I removed the activity that used to occupy the majority of it. How had I ever had time to go to work? There was so much to do at home just to keep things going!
I live on a small farm and the pandemic snapped us all to attention. The place became a condensed flurry of activity. In the absence of an actual greenhouse, we set up ‘garden’ in the living room of our home. Hundreds of seeds were started from scratch one week into our homestay. It was hours spraying them painstakingly by hand every day. Then there were animals to feed and pens to muck and children to homeschool and things to fix. There were ideas to grow. What there didn’t seem to be enough time for, however, was eating.
The Accidental Intermittent Faster
Having been on a Raw till 4 schedule prior to this entire debacle, I suddenly realized that I very rarely had anything one could identify as an actual meal before noon at best! Not even so much as a fresh juice. The kids would be asking for lunch when I’d be making myself a smoothie for breakfast. I’d be in bed by 10 at night; I’d have my last meal around 7PM and then would be literally be too pooped to chew. That’s 12 hours of not eating every single day.
The thing is, I felt great! I had tons of energy throughout the day. It came as a surprise that I wasn’t waking up hungry. Sometimes I think we assume we’re hungry when we get up. So we eat. We don’t really think about it. I didn’t even really feel very hungry until around the time I had my initial liquid meal and then, did I ever relish it. And for the rest of the day I still fit in plenty of good food to more than sustain me. Somewhere along the line I realized that intermittent fasting had weirdly insinuated its way into my life without my even noticing. And once I noticed, I just kept right on going.
What is Intermittent Fasting?
Before intermittent fasting became the buzzword(s) for a more widely adopted dieting technique, fasting was traditionally attached to religious practices. Fasting has also been a practice of wartime, used largely to conserve rationed amounts of food. Now, however, many are practicing intermittent fasting with their eyes on the prize of weight loss, health and longevity.
There are many different ways that people are adopting to accomplish this. The most common is 16:8: simply stated this means 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours during which you can eat. This is the fasting regime most favored by people who really want to lose weight because it takes 10 to 12 hours for the body to use up calories in the liver and switch over to using stored fat. But there’s also 12:12 (my own diet, it seems), 14:10 or fasting for the entire day every other day or two. For the especially ambitious there’s 5:2 which no longer refers to hours but to days: you eat regularly for 5 days and fast for two.
Really, it almost seems you can make up your own rules to an extent. Just as long as the fasting period is either an equal or greater part of your day or one to two whole days that are a regular part of your week, you’re golden.
Getting Rid of the Garbage
With intermittent fasting the beauty is that when you’re not fasting you can feast on healthy food choices. There’s no need to pay any attention at all to caloric restriction. When you’re in fasting mode, you can still drink water or unsweetened (preferably herbal) teas. If you drink a lot you won’t even feel as hungry and there will be the extra benefit of giving your body a good flush with all that water. This pushes out all the gunk in your system and keeps the body all nice and lubricated to boot! The extra hydration that comes from drinking more water during your fasting hours contributes to the anti-inflammatory effects that are attributed to intermittent fasting. When you combine this with eating a high raw diet, you get an extra boost because of the high water content inherent in fresh fruits and vegetables.
The question is: Why would anyone do this? I have to admit that, unlike me – the accidental intermittent faster – most people come to the plate with a plan. Most often it has something to do with dieting. Certainly it is true that fasting resets and speeds your metabolism which burns calories quicker. This reset also makes it easier to keep the weight off. The other truth is that, if you have a smaller window of opportunity in which to eat, you’re probably not going to eat as much. Now I’m sure there are some people who beat the odds on this one and go all-out-gluttonous when the bell rings. But, for the most part, you probably just can’t fit the same amount in your belly if you cut out half your eating time!
Beyond Dieting
I myself, care little about dieting at this point. However, I do attempt to live in a way that betters my health. It’s undeniable that, accidental though it was, intermittent fasting really made me feel energetic, alert and productive. And that seems to be one of the substantiated by-products. This is because, during fasting, our brain recieves a boost in a protein known as brain-derived neurotrophic factor. This improves brain function, allowing for better focus, mental clarity and memory. Fasting actually encourages the brain to reproduce cells and get rid of old ones and that makes for better brain health.
In general fasting helps to purge the body of old cells, replacing them with new ones. This is beneficial, not only for the brain, but the body as a whole. It is revitalizing on many levels. Simultaneously, fasting reduces oxidative stress which is key when it comes to anti-aging. It’s believed that intermittent fasting for periods of time throughout ones life can also lead to a longer lifespan.
Intermittent fasting has proven to be as effective as medication to reduce insulin resistance in patients with Type II diabetes. But beyond that studies confirm that it can benefit a slew of other chronic disorders including heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative brain diseases.
Fasting for Survival
It is theorized that intermittent fasting is natural to cultures that evolved in environments where ‘feast or famine’ was just a part of life. Ancient man didn’t necessarily have access to the consistent parade of food that many of us do. It wasn’t all about regular meals and snacks throughout the day. They couldn’t just run to the store for a fast fix. And they were’t sitting around all day either. Life was active.The natural ability to fast allowed them to be able to withstand lean periods successfully and then return to normal once the challenge was over. Let’s face it: history indicates that many more people were subject to eating less. Overeating was reserved for the fortunate. No matter how you got it, you had to work for your food. For many – even most -life wasn’t easy and our bodies miraculously evolved to see to it that we could survive.
Fasting is Not Always the Answer
Admittedly, despite the many benefits, any kind of fasting can have it’s drawbacks. There are mild side effects that can come in the form of dehydration, hunger, weakness and tiredness and last for a few days. Sounds like how I felt when I first went all raw. Plus, you could become quite irritable initially – because that’s what hunger can do to the best of us. Most of these things will pass within a day or two but if not, it’s time to rethink and perhaps to back off. It’s not for everyone.
Certainly if you’re underweight, this wouldn’t be a good path. Unless you want to make up all the calories you aren’t getting in less hours of eating! I honestly believe that this is what I ended up doing on the majority of my intermittent fasting days although I’m definitely not a calorie counter. This does seem kind of counterintuitive. However, being highly raw already and on the slim side, I don’t like to skimp on my nourishment. On those days when I do, I feel it. Anyone who’s ever had an eating disorder should seriously stay away from fasting. This would also apply to those with serious health issues as well as pregnant or breastfeeding women.
Eating Healthy is Better Than Not Eating
My own days of intermittent fasting have become naturally numbered. Ever since winter crept in, I’ve noticed my body is craving the comfort of more food. It’s a natural answer to guard against the frigid days. I’ve learned to listen to this and not fight it. It doesn’t seem to be the right season to go to any extraordinary measures. The one thing about following a Raw till Four lifestyle (or even more so, a fully raw lifestyle) is that your body is constantly being flushed of toxins. All the fruits and vegetables that are the backbone of our diets do this for us. We really don’t need as much help as some other people. Some would actually say we’re on a type of fast all the time. So there’s no reason to go crazy.
There’s no end to the amount of raw foodists who go on juice fasts or water fasts to get that extra purge, that extra boost. But it’s what we do eat on a day to day basis that insures or upsets our general health. Eating healthy is the real key to being healthy. And no amount of intermittent fasting is ever going to change that.
