Fasting is the voluntary abstinence of food, which is different than [[Starvation]]. There are two different states the body can be in and it's one or the other, not both:
When in the fasted state, our body uses the stored energy within it, first being [[Glycogen]] and then fat after all glycogen and glucose is used up. It does this by reducing [[Insulin]] and increasing [[Counter-Regulatory-Hormones]]. While in the fed state, our body uses the readily available glucose from food that's eaten. When we eat, insulin goes up and excess calories that can't be stored as glycogen is stored as fat.
Intermittent fasting is consistent periods of 24 hours where we split it up into eating and fasting. We'll often see notation like 16:8 which indicates 16 hours of fasting, and 8 hours where we can eat. This time period can be adjusted by length for example 18:6 or [[OMAD]], and it can also be adjusted by the time periods. Taking the 16:8 approach as an example, we can eat between 11am-7pm and fast for the rest, or eat between 1pm-9pm and fast for the rest.
Fasting revolves around the idea of doing absolutely nothing. Don't have money? You can fast. Don't have time? You can still fast. Don't like cooking or cleaning? You can still fast! It's a very easy, flexible, and powerful mechanism that almost anyone can do*. It's much more powerful than the "eat less, move more" approach since it doesn't reduce your [[Basal-Metabolic-Rate]], but instead increases it. It also allows our body to tap into the fat stores that we've accumulated, which is what the main purpose of fat is: energy stores when there isn't food around. Fat is not for looks, it's for energy. It's a completely natural process our body goes through to use up stored energy which is safe to do*.
*Note: people who have anorexia, are pregnant/breastfeeding, taking large amounts of medication, or are children should avoid fasting.
I hear a lot that fasting loses muscle, and it can through a process called [[Gluconeogenesis]] if you do it improperly. But if you do it properly, it's actually the opposite: our body doesn't lose any muscle (even if muscle is lost, when we have increased [[Counter-Regulatory-Hormones]] from fasting, our [[Refeeding]] rebuilds that muscle). Sure it loses some protein which includes connective tissue and skin, but it's mostly fat. We've seen those before and after weight loss journeys with obese people and there's excess skin. The body doesn't need the excess skin, it's not for looks that's for sure, and it should get rid of it, but it's not given the time to break that down for energy.
Our bodies are amazing and complicated, so complicated that many medical professionals often debate about handling health. What's so interesting is that our body is not stupid and most of the time, our body naturally goes through self-healing. When we have say an itch on our body, what do our parents and doctors tell us? To not scratch it! When we don't interfere with our normal bodily functions, it does wonders in repairing itself.
One of the key things I found about fasting is that it needs to be [[Sustainable]]. As with most things in life, we have to be consistent. Whether it's practicing for school, getting better at games, cooking, and exercising for example, fasting is no different. We'll always need to challenge ourselves and face adversity.
From my own experience, I had to ease myself into it. Slowly incorporate intermittent fasting and increase the periods of fasting. As our body adjusts to the new habits, we can keep a steady rate or take on those extended fasts. [[Ghrelin]] will kick in and willpower becomes key. Fasting however doesn't mean that we can eat all the junk food we want after fasting. We don't necessarily fit our lifestyle around fasting, but fit fasting around our lifestyle. Obviously if we have health complications then we need to adjust our lifestyle but in general, we fit fasting so that it's sustainable: by adopting healthier lifestyles and fuelling our bodies with what it needs, not what we want.
Easing into fasting can be countradictory to what I talked about in [[Day-5]] about alcholism, smoking, or drug addiction. But why I found this to be the case is because we've been eating almost constantly for our entire lives. Our environment has shifted from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance and it's a double-edged sword: we're able to have variety, but also the ability to go to a McDonald's <1km away and Tim Hortons another <300m away, one grocery/convenience store here and another one right next door. Convenience can be dangerous, so we have to always be mindful of our decisions.
To be short, there isn't any monetary incentive to promote it. Since it revolves around doing absolutely nothing, what is there to make money off of? Maybe selling supplements (which is very controversial), but there's no diet plan attached to it, no exercise plans, no equipment, absolutely nothing.
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