Putting aside the potential health benefits of the Fast to Last diet, a major practical question becomes: How could I possibly do it? Fasting for 20 hours in a day seems pretty extreme. There seems to be an overpowering desire in many people to snack and eat throughout the day. This desire may be completely divorced from traditional "hunger"; we may feel it is being caused by stress, emotions, anxiety or just plain boredom. In this post I will outline some tips on how to maintain the fast, and explain what I think is the real source of this apparent hunger.
The first and most important tip is to use the power of sleep to initiate your fast. As I discussed in an earlier post, sleep performs a variety of useful functions. One crucial function (described on p. 11 of the Fast-5 book) is that it prepares the body for an extended fast. It is my belief that in humans the sleeping phase and the fasting phase are not completely synchronous, i.e. the fasting phase is naturally much longer than the sleeping phase. If you wake up and are not hungry, don't eat: yout body is actually well primed to continue its fast.
The second tip is that once the first solid food enters your body, your fast for the day is over. I would then ideally use the next four hours as your feasting period. Much of the desire to eat is a result of what is referred to on pg. 12 of the Fast-5 book as limbic hunger: an unquenchable desire to keep eating once the digestive system is "awakened" by its first meal of the day. The key to a successful fast is to delay this awakening as long as possible. As I will cover in a future post, if you screw up in any one day, don't worry about it. Start the process again the next day.
In summary, I believe that one of the main reasons we eat during the day is not primarily emotional, stress-related, or boredom as we generally think. The primary reason is that once we have awakened our digestive system with the first meal of the day, it becomes biologically extremely difficult to shut down our "desire" to eat. Our body "knows" there is food around and will subconsciously try to consume that food. We blame it on emotions, but it is primarily a biological response.
It has been drilled into our heads from childhood that we should "Eat a healthy breakfast." I would argue that within those four pleasant-sounding, innocuous words lies one of the primary causes of a major health problem in our country. The ideal time to "break your fast" is not when you wake up in the morning, but after a significant portion of the waking day has passed.
The first and most important tip is to use the power of sleep to initiate your fast. As I discussed in an earlier post, sleep performs a variety of useful functions. One crucial function (described on p. 11 of the Fast-5 book) is that it prepares the body for an extended fast. It is my belief that in humans the sleeping phase and the fasting phase are not completely synchronous, i.e. the fasting phase is naturally much longer than the sleeping phase. If you wake up and are not hungry, don't eat: yout body is actually well primed to continue its fast.
The second tip is that once the first solid food enters your body, your fast for the day is over. I would then ideally use the next four hours as your feasting period. Much of the desire to eat is a result of what is referred to on pg. 12 of the Fast-5 book as limbic hunger: an unquenchable desire to keep eating once the digestive system is "awakened" by its first meal of the day. The key to a successful fast is to delay this awakening as long as possible. As I will cover in a future post, if you screw up in any one day, don't worry about it. Start the process again the next day.
In summary, I believe that one of the main reasons we eat during the day is not primarily emotional, stress-related, or boredom as we generally think. The primary reason is that once we have awakened our digestive system with the first meal of the day, it becomes biologically extremely difficult to shut down our "desire" to eat. Our body "knows" there is food around and will subconsciously try to consume that food. We blame it on emotions, but it is primarily a biological response.
It has been drilled into our heads from childhood that we should "Eat a healthy breakfast." I would argue that within those four pleasant-sounding, innocuous words lies one of the primary causes of a major health problem in our country. The ideal time to "break your fast" is not when you wake up in the morning, but after a significant portion of the waking day has passed.
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