FED VS. FASTED: THE BIG BENEFITS OF A SMALL BREAK FROM FOOD
When I mention the word fasting to clients, I get either a look of fear, a look of skepticism, or a look of anger. I get it, the idea of fasting can be scary and uncomfortable, and may even seem like a terrible idea for our health! We have been conditioned to eat, all the time. Most people now eat 5 to 6 times per day, many even grazing throughout the day and never really stopping.
The idea that we need to snack was all clever advertising from the food industry. Pretty smart, right? Well, for them anyway. If we fast, or if we eat 3 meals a day, selling all that packaged food is hard!
A few ideas we’ve come to accept as fact are:
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You never skip that one!
Snacking is healthy and should be done throughout the day.
You should never miss a meal; this will slow your metabolism. In fact, you better eat 5-6 small meals per day to keep your metabolism humming along.
A small snack before bed is a good idea.
Let’s look back at the not-so-distant past. The norm was 3 meals a day. We had breakfast before heading off to school or work, around noon we had lunch, and then family dinner in the evening. That was it. There was no food involved in our day beyond those 3-time frames.
In that not-so-distant past when we ate those 3 meals a day, we mainly ate whole foods. There weren’t a lot of processed foods even as an option. It was typically some sort of protein and veggies, and maybe a grain or starch. Eating this way, filled us up and kept us satisfied until the next meal. With no thoughts of food, we just went about our day.
Now that we’re eating 5 to 6 times per day, or grazing throughout the day, it’s largely on highly processed foods that quickly break down in our body causing a rise in our blood sugar, and a subsequent rush of insulin leading to a crash. This literally keeps us hungry all the time. We are never satisfied, we are never really full, and we think about food constantly.
As the “eat all the time” dogma became accepted as healthy and “normal”, fasting became forbidden. Doctors and nutritional authorities started warning of the dangers of skipping even just one meal.
The truth though, fasting has been done by millions of people around the world, for thousands of years. It is not only healthy, but it is critical to a robust metabolism and remaining disease-free.
Fasting is simple, it’s effective, it’s practical, and above all else, it works. So what is the downside? Well, if you’re in the food industry or big pharma, there’s a huge downside. There is no money to be made when people don’t eat!
Now, if you’re thinking, isn’t fasting just a form of starvation? Absolutely not! Someone who is starving has no control. They don’t know when and where their next meal will come from. It is completely out of their control and not at all deliberate. Fasting though is 100% in your control. Food is readily available, and you get to choose when your next meal will happen. People that are starving are typically malnourished. People that are fasting, are often overnourished. Whatever your reason for fasting is, it is voluntary. That is a big and critical distinction from starving!
Let’s look at the differences that happen in the body when we eat, versus when we don’t eat.
When we eat, we’re giving our body more energy than it can use immediately. Our body, which is very smart, stores some of that energy away for us to use later. Insulin is the hormone that not only allows us to use our food as energy but is also the hormone that is responsible for the storage of excess energy. Both carbohydrates and protein raise insulin, while fat has very little impact on insulin production.
As I just mentioned, insulin has two primary functions. First, it is what allows the body to use the food you just ate as energy. Carbs are quickly absorbed and turned into glucose which raises blood sugar levels. Insulin’s job here is to open up the cells to allow the glucose in to be used as energy. Protein is broken down into amino acids and absorbed, or excess is turned into glucose. While protein itself does not increase blood sugar levels, it can stimulate insulin as much as some carbohydrates, depending on the diet that you’re eating. Now fat interestingly enough is directly absorbed and has almost no effect on insulin.
The second role of insulin is to store excess energy, and that can be done in two different ways. It can be turned into glycogen and stored in the liver. The liver has limited space for glycogen though, so when it’s full, the excess is turned into fat. This newly created fat can be stored in the liver or as fat deposits all over the body. And unlike glycogen, our body has an unlimited capacity for storing fat.
Now let’s take a look at what happens when we fast.
Basically what happens when we fast, is the opposite of what happens when we eat. Insulin levels go down and this signals our body to start using stored energy. Our liver starts turning glycogen back into glucose as this is the quickest way to get usable energy when we don’t eat. After approximately 24 hours, our liver runs out of stored glycogen and after that, it starts breaking down body fat for fuel.
So as you can see, your body is constantly either in a fed state, where your insulin levels are high, or it is in a fasted state, where insulin levels are low. High insulin means fat storage, low insulin means fat burning.
Are you starting to see why eating 5-6 meals per day, or snacking, or grazing, may not be the metabolic mecca we’ve been promised? Why eating this way has driven weight gain and chronic disease? Ya, great for the food companies and big pharma, and terrible for us! If we are spending the majority of our day eating and storing food, we will inevitably gain weight. If we want to restore balance in our body, we need to spend time in a fasted state, allowing our body to use up stored energy.
As you’re seeing, fasting is incredible for weight loss, but it’s so much bigger than that! You’ve just learned that one of the huge benefits of fasting is that insulin levels go down. High levels of insulin in the body, lead to a condition called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is a state where the body stops responding to insulin and its solution is to create more and more insulin to try to force the cells open to accept the circulating glucose. This is a vicious cycle because the problem is already too much insulin, and now we’re in a state where the body is creating more and more. Insulin resistance is the root cause of many of the chronic diseases and health conditions that have become so common in our society. (Learn more about insulin resistance HERE)
Here are some of the chronic health issues with insulin resistance as the root cause:
Prediabetes
Type 2 Diabetes
Metabolic Syndrome
Heart Disease
Stroke
High Blood Pressure
High Triglycerides and Low HDL
Abdominal Obesity
Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD)
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Gout
Atherosclerosis
Cancer
Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease
All of these conditions can be improved with lower insulin levels, and there is nothing that is more effective at lowering insulin than fasting. Combine that with a low carbohydrate diet, like the ketogenic diet, and you are well on your way to optimal wellness!
If you’re brand new to fasting and would like to give it a try, an easy way to ease your way into it is to utilize the time you’re asleep. Try finishing your dinner at 7 pm and then don’t eat again until 7 am. That is a 12 hour fast and believe it or not, there are health benefits in just those 12 hours without food!