It took me until I was nearly 50 to discover the key to long-term weight management FOR ME.
As I say elsewhere – fasting may not be for you. This is something you need to decide for yourself and hopefully you will find enough honest, evidence based information here on my site to make an informed decision.
Being obese has been a major issue for me all my life (to date!) and I only wish I’d known about fasting 20 years ago. How different things might have been for me.
My sincere hope with this blog is that I can save some people from the long-term suffering that I endured by helping them find an easy and fast way to lose weight and to control it for the long term.
Why would I starve myself?
My girlfriend calls fasting “starve days” – it’s meant as a joke but this is probably the first fear people have about fasting. Why on earth would anyone voluntarily starve themselves? My Polish dietitian friend told me I was crazy and I’d do permanent damage to my kidneys! What about the health consequences?! Dr Josh Wolrich who’s book “Food Isn’t Medicine” I recommend and talk about here, calls fasting “privileged starvation”.
Well – the fact is that our evolved to feast and fast. All mammals did. Indeed almost all animals have the capacity to store fat (and essential vitamins, minerals and electrolytes) within our bodies during feeding / feast times, in order to survive in periods where food may not be readily available. This is NOT remotely controversial and should come as no surprise to anyone.
Bears, hedgehogs, skunks, groundhogs, snakes, bees and other species all hibernate in winter, sometimes for 6-7 months of the year! They eat literally nothing during that time, losing up to 40% of their entire body weight – but they are sustained by what they have stored in their bodies during the summer months – the feast – so they can endure the extended “fast” in winter.
Do bears suffer from undernourishment over winter and come out of their dens unable to move? Of course not! Mama bears will give birth to their cubs at the end of the summer, hole up in a den where they not only survive on their stored fat and other nutrients but actually feed their offspring. Do the baby bears look malnourished when they come out of the den? Of course not!
Anyone who watched the excellent documentary March Of The Pengiuns will have seen how Emperor penguins go without food for more than 100 days as part of their annual breeding ritual, in one of the most harsh climates known to man, maintaining themselves and their offspring in temperatures of as low as −62 °C (−80 °F)!
This is not something these animals do just because of an unexpected long term famine – it is part of their natural annual cycle.
Humans too once lived this way, relying on our bodies stored up reserves in harsh winters to see us through.
Today – at least in the western world – with food abundantly available at every turn we don’t need to fast. And in fact, this abundance of food, and our habitual eating three (or more!) times per day, every day, without a break is resulting in long term health problems such as the epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes.
I was raised in the ’70’s here in the UK, it was the norm to eat three meals a day. Snacking was frowned on – although I did it – and became the school “fat kid” as a result. Over the last 20-30 years the idea of eating “little and often” seems to have become prevalent. “Snacking” is the norm. But this constant period of “feast” simply tells our body to store fat.
We were NOT meant to live this way and it’s killing us!
So in answer to your question “why would I starve myself” – it’s because that’s what your body was designed to do. Taking control of your habitual eating and fasting intermittently restores your body to an equilibrium. It gives your pancreas a much needed rest from the constant cycle of sugar highs and lows.
Fasting has been demonstrated clinically to reverse type 2 diabetes, one of the most debilitating side-effects of our obesity epidemic.
We all fast overnight when we sleep – this is when the body goes into it’s “repair mode”, destroying unnecessary or damaged cells and recycling. This process is called autophagy. When we fast for longer period this process keeps running. Why? Think about it from an evolutionary perspective. If we are hungry and need to find food we need to be at our best. Our bodies work to keep us as fit as possible by this process of eliminating bad cells and healing.
As a result people on long term fasts have seen life-long scars disappear, hair loss restored, and even more significant debilitating illnesses – including some cancers – literally cured. There are countless cases of fasting improving outcomes for cancer patients – and in eliminating the often crippling side-effects of harsh cancer treatments like chemotherapy.
Fasting also stimulates the secretion of growth hormone, which has proven anti-aging benefits.
The question you need to ask yourself is – why the heck are you NOT fasting!?
And remember – the point of intermittent fasting is that it is intermittent, and the amount of fasts you need – whether it’s three times a week or 1 day every two weeks or even once a month depends entirely on the results you need.
If you came here because you need to lose 100lbs, you can do so safely in 6-12 months by fasting two to three times a week to suit your schedule.
If on the other hand you only have the last stubborn 5-10lbs to lose, you might do that in one or two fast days over a month.
Once you are at your ideal weight, you then just need to find the right pattern of fasting to maintain your weight. Maybe fasting once a month is enough. Or even, just after the occasional inevitable blow out at a celebration. The holiday season is often a time when people binge eat while enjoying social events with family. A couple of fast days the week after Christmas or New Years can prevent you putting on weight as a result meaning you can enjoy the holidays guilt free.
As long as you generally eat healthily, fasting is the tool that will put you back in control as you realise that you don’t have to eat. You can eat what you want, however much you want, and when you want. You just have to remember that when you feast, the flip side of that is fast. To retain your body’s natural equilibrium you fast just enough to keep your body where you want it to be, in a healthy weight zone for you.
The Feast – so what is healthy eating?
And again – let’s remember that it’s not all about the fasting. Fasting is one side of the coin. That leaves eating – or “feasting”. The more you are “fasting” the more important it is that your “feasting” is healthy.
The problem is that what you think qualifies as healthy is almost certainly not. You see, you’ve almost certainly been lied to, for your whole life, by the food and medical establishment. If you think fat is bad, all calories are created equal, and the food pyramid is the perfect model for eating – then prepare for a rude awakening. See my page on healthy eating for more information.
What about health issues?
What about the link between fasting and kidney damage? If you currently have kidney disease or other serious kidney problems then fasting may not be your friend. Although short fasts can help with some kidney problems you should definitely consult your doctor before embarking on any fasting program if you have any medical issue related to your kidneys.
Fasting certainly will NOT do any harm to healthy kidneys. Now, this is not me saying this, this is the advice of Dr Jason Fung MD who’s medical training is in Neprhology. Ie he is a trained kidney specialist. It was his discovery that type 2 diabetes is the largest cause of kidney diseases that put him on the path to fasting – and allowed him to discover that fasting is a cure for Type 2 Diabetes.
Sorry did you not hear me at the back?
FASTING IS A CURE FOR TYPE 2 DIABETES.
While type 1 diabetes is inherited, type 2 diabetes is not. There is a direct causal link between obesity and type 2 diabetes. Meaning – if you are obese – and if like me you have been long term / lifetime obese – your risk of developing type 2 diabetes is massively increased. Diabetes is an awful, progressive and degenerative disease with many nasty side effects so getting ahead of it by controlling your weight through fasting could quite literally save your life!
But even if you have Type 2 diabetes today – the good news is – there is a cure. And it is intermittent fasting!! Don’t believe me? Read Dr Fung’s book for yourself. But first, see my disclaimer.
What about vitamin / mineral / electrolyte deficiencies?
Just think back – before the agricultural revolution just 10-12,000 years ago, human beings were hunter-gatherers. We lived in small nomadic tribes, wandering in search of food. Sometimes, we found food. Other times we did not. During winter there would have been lean times, and we would have gone without. How did we survive?
Do you think your ancestors had a Holland & Barrett where they could pop in and get multivitamin supplements? Of course not! Likewise we are not squirrels. We did not hide nuts in a tree to stock up for lean winters. We carried everything with us in our bodies. Fat contains all the calories we need to sustain us. 1lb of fat = 3,500 calories of energy, enough to sustain a person through 1-2 days of moderate activity.
But it’s important to realise and understand that vitamins and minerals are stored in our bodies, primarily in our bones. If you eat healthily these stocks of vitamins and minerals will last us a long time.
Of course – people do starve! Malnutrition is a real thing, and those with eating disorders who don’t eat healthily can starkly testify to this. So it’s vitally important you eat a healthy diet. And, if you were to embark on longer term fasts, then it would be sensible to do so under medical supervision which may insist upon certain supplements. The longest recorded fast was 382 days, by a Scots gentleman named Angus Barbieri, in which he lost 276lbs, and only with a daily multivitamin supplement to sustain him. NOTE however that he was medically supervised!
Don’t try this at home though kiddies! I don’t recommend fasting longer than 10 days without medical supervision, and for most of us fasts of 1-5 days are all we will ever need. If you have particularly intractable issues with obesity, insulin resistence, diabetes you might want to consider pushing your fasting schedule up to 10 days – but always ensure that after fasting you feast and do so healthily, to ensure that your vitamin and mineral stores are topped back up.
But as long as you are only fasting intermittently, and as long as you eat a varied healthy diet on your feeding days, with mininmal supplementation. As I state elsewhere I often take a daily multivitamin and use electroylite tablets during intensive exercise – but it’s worth bearing in mind that some experts state that multivitamin supplements are not likely to add any value. However I’m not sure they are considering fasting use cases.