Intermittent Fasting

Up until the development of modern agriculture, fasting was as common of a practice as breathing. Food was not always readily available, and when it was, quantities were limited. You couldn’t head to the grocery store to satisfy your needs. You had to personally grow, catch or hunt for whatever you ate. Therefore, our bodies have become accustomed to the effects of fasting from an evolutionary standpoint. Nowadays, the process of strategically restricting caloric intake (“intermittent fasting”) has become popular, as the incredible effects of the practice have been understood more and more.

To understand intermittent fasting, we must first ask: how does one intermittent fast to begin with? There are multiple methods, and the blog post attached below from Bulletproof coffee’s website details many of them. We’ll touch on the most popular, which is restricted eating in the 16:8 ratio. This means you eat all of your days calories in an 8 hour window, and then refrain from eating for the following 16 hours. The most common 8 hour eating period is 12p-8p, but can be modified to whatever works best for your particular schedule.

As we mentioned, the benefits of intermittent fasting are profound. Some of the most profound benefits are:

1. Increases energy

2. Promotes cellular repair and autophagy (when your body consumes defective tissue in order to produce new parts)

3. Reduces insulin resistance and protects against type 2 diabetes

4. Lowers bad cholesterol

5. Promotes longevity

6. Protects against neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

7. Improves memory and boosts brain function

8. Makes cells more resilient