Intermittent fasting
I received an email from my web designer asking a few questions about intermittent fasting. Here’s my response, thought it might be helpful for a few more folks.
Hi Rollo,
That’s a good question to ask. Will make a good Blog article.
8pm to 12pm is 16 hours so by noon you will have been in ketosis since about 10am. You probably start running low on carbs by 8am or so. How you manage it will depend a bit on how you have been eating. If you religiously have breakfast, lunch and dinner at evenly spaced intervals and your meals are carb-based your body will wonder what the hell has happened to it. Some people who eat regularly may not have been in ketosis for 10 years. It’s a bit like saying, ‘body, I know we haven’t done any exercise for ten years, but we will do 50 press-ups today’. It isn’t going to happen without a bit of pain.
Conversely, if you eat a relatively high fat diet, skip the odd meal here and there, you will probably do it relatively easily. Your body will kick over into ketosis without much fuss.
Part of the problem is that the feeling isn’t unpleasant when you get used to it. But most of us have been taught that when you get hungry you need to eat; with the inference being that if you don’t eat you are doing yourself some damage. Which of course isn’t the case.
A couple of factors come into play. The majority of toxins are stored in our fat cells. So you might have toxins that have been locked away for 20 years. Once they are released your body starts the process of flushing them out of the body. Which will be a contributor to the headache people sometimes get when they start intermittent fasting.
Autophagy also comes into play. Auto means the self and phagy meaning eat. In the hours when the body is running low on food (carbs) and ketosis is yet to kick in the body goes looking for food. And for something to do. Since there is very little food to digest, and digestion is a very energy-heavy process, the body is free to do a bit of housekeeping.
The body essentially goes into reverse and starts looking for things that are wrong. It starts removing toxic proteins from cells, particularly those associated with neurological diseases. Since there is a lack of food it starts recycling leftover proteins. On a macro level, it promotes regeneration and healthy cells.
The other thing that brings on autophagy is exercise.
Once ketosis kicks in, you can find yourself getting quite nervous or edgy at the start of fasting. When you get used to the feeling you can find it quite enjoyable. Energy is heightened because your body is not weighed down by food digestion. Thinking is clearer. Concentration is better.
If you think back to our primal days, it is quite logical. We didn’t wake up to breakfast; we had to go and catch it. If we spent the whole morning hunting and had nothing to show for it, giving up was not an option. That was the time for clarity and decisive action.
If we had been programmed to throw in the towel after 12 hours of unsuccessful hunting we would never have evolved.
There’s also a strong relationship between your inability to go into ketosis and dementia. But that takes a bit of explaining. That’s another Blog story.
Trust this helps.
Jeff
