Should I Try Intermittent Fasting

At this point you’re probably asking yourself one question: should I try this? In this post, I plan to tackle the common reasons why people may try IF and some of the safety concerns you might have.

Why try Intermittent fasting?

Maybe you want to do it as a personal challenge. Maybe you want to do it for religious reasons—after all, fasting has been a core practice in many faith traditions for millennia. Or perhaps you’re doing it to improve your weight and health.  As described in earlier posts in this series, fasting has a unique ability to preferentially burn body fat while sparing muscle and has been shown to improve insulin resistance in diabetics.  Although I initially started it for religious reasons, I now enjoy the added focus and mental clarity often achieved with regular fasting and remain convinced in the potential upside of long term IF with respect to prevention of diabetes, cancer, and neuro-degenerative conditions.

But above all else, the main reason I continue IF is that it’s compatible with my understanding of ancestral health.  Although the details of a prehistoric diet and lifestyle are subject to debate, I think we can all agree that our ancestors didn’t have access to a refrigerator or drive-thru every time they got hungry.  It may be impossible to know exactly what our ancestors ate, but we know they ate less often than we do.   Snacking was not ubiquitous and mealtimes were unlikely to be regimented.  Perhaps days would pass between meals.  When it was time to eat, they ate nutritious food to satiety.  Its really a simple concept, and when looked at from this high level perspective, its hardly controversial.

Safety

Obviously one of the first questions that needs to be asked is this: “Is fasting safe?”  In almost all cases the answer is yes, but there are always exceptions.  Once again, refer to the disclaimers on this website and your own personal conscience.  You should consult your physician prior to embarking on even a short fast, as you may be taking medications or have a condition that could make it unsafe.  But all that aside, virtually anyone can do a 24 hour fast safely and easily.  Will you get hungry?  Yes!  Will it kill you if your stomach growls for a few minutes?  Nope.  Many people think their blood sugar will drop if they don’t eat regularly.  Sure, if you’re a diabetic on insulin, that may be the case, but for the vast majority its simply not true (I know, I’ve tested my blood sugar during many fasts and it has never dropped below about 65).  The human body is a tad more prepared for adversity than that!  We are wired with metabolic mechanisms to create energy to power our bodies even in times of shortage.  Recall that fasting was regularly encountered in the Bible (here, here, and here, among countless others) and other early texts such as Seneca’s letters to Lucilius.  Long before the time of Jesus and Ancient Greeks who intentionally practiced fasting, our early human ancestors surely went days without eating.  So when you skip breakfast or your afternoon snack, just think about those guys and you’ll be alright.  And if you think going 40 days and nights without food is impressive, a Scottish man holds the record for the world’s longest fast with a duration of 382 days!

As you reflect on the reasons why you might consider embarking on a fasting experiment of your own, consider these words penned some 2000 years ago:

“There is no reason, however, why you should think that you are doing anything great; for you will merely be doing what many thousands of slaves and many thousands of poor men are doing every day. But you may credit yourself with this item – that you will not be doing it under compulsion, and that it will be as easy for you to endure it permanently as to make the experiment from time to time. Let us practice our strokes on the “dummy”; let us become intimate with poverty, so that Fortune may not catch us off our guard. We shall be rich with all the more comfort, if we once learn how far poverty is from being a burden.”

–Seneca the Younger, from Moral letters to Lucilius (Letter 18)