Micro Experiments in Junk Eating, Gut Feeding, and Fasting
I’ll give you the punch line first.
Whatever your dietary sins, it keeps coming back again and again that a really solid fast with zero food for 24 hours or so is the equivalent of your gardener, Jesus, next to you in the phone booth to doG, redeeming all those sins.
Ive done everything over weeks in terms of crazy “food” like you wouldn’t believe. probiotics and prebiotics only make you shit every 30 minutes if you stress it; with like lots of alcohol, 7-11 microwave burritos, junk food…I could go way on. It really didn’t take long to realize I was really “doing this for [my] science.” And it’s all dead end. No silver bullet. The gut, for better or worse, is the gut and if you develop it enough, it might make you vomit like a dog when it does’t like what you ate or drank (more on that later).
Now I know as much as I possibly can. Nothing you can eat for your cells or your gut can fix you in terms of making you stellar or “bulletproof.” For me, now, I have a sensitive gag and vomit reflex that’s not particularly conscious and i don’t even understand it.
But I think that eating well and feeding your gut is good in regular terms, but it truly seems to me that for me avoiding this gag and vomit reflex, I must eat good food, consume little alcohol (or give a lot of space in-between…yea, tested that too), even less wheat-type products (runnys every time, without fail, and tested by 24 hr fasts).
And. when you go off the rails, or you’re just getting started, there is simply nothing so effective as a 24+ honest fast.
Heretofore, I’m likely to focus on that more, because I can’t give a runny shit anymore about what people want to eat and in the end, forcing a natural hunger for a day or so once a week might be the easiest thing to adhere to in the long run, no worries about anything else. Moreover, you’ll likely figure out your main culprits via fasts, then eat your suspicions. You know what they are.
Guess I’ve come full circle with what Brad Pilon was saying in like 2009.
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Eat real food, to 80% full, and fast sometimes.
“The more you say it, the harder it gets!”
Looking at the research regarding fasting it is no surprise that a fast is able to ameliorate the negative effects of binging on junk food.May be fasting´s gut modulating effects the big player concerning those benefits?probably, but eventually I think there is more to it than gut bugs…. .One thing that strucks me every time I do a 24 + fast is it´s incredible anti-inflammatory effects.Whether it´s some pimples from too much pre/post-lifting chocolate or a client with problems like rheumatism, a fast works like charm almost every single time!I mean most people visiting this blog probably know about this one:sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/06/140605141507.htm
Cheers
So it’s come to this has it? I diligently follow everything you have written about food for nearly a decade and all you come up with is to fast for 24 hours every now and then? What a cunt!
Is this the point where you become fully disinterested in diet and move on with your life?
Well, it is what it is. After doing and trying everything many times, fasting is just such a huge redemption that it makes everything seem more signal noise stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, I thing eating “clean” is the best policy most of the time, but I also think fasting is overal more beneficial regardless of what you eat, than is perfectly clean eating without fasting.
Gotta be honest about my own assessments.
Think of the diets of the longest lived cultures on Earth. Objectively, their diet is 90% “good” stuff, with 10% questionable.
Or as I say to clients “Good enough is good enough if you do it long enough.”
I’ve been leaning this way the past several months, and I’m a bigger IF fan than ever. For me at least, it’s the easiest thing to keep up week after week that I’ve ever done.
a lot of runners (or endurance athletes) believe that they can “run off” the extra calories or bad food, or bad lifestlyyle.
by the same token, i do not believe one can “fast off” an overall crappy diet.
(although i do fast usually 16 hr/day, w/ breakfast is tea + 1 TB HWC).
Richard, if you have Hashimoto’s you are likely to have structural changes in your gut which could explain for instance, your wheat sensitivity. Have you seen this paper? Look at the pics. You may get a shock.
‘Ultrastructural changes in enterocytes in subjects with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis’
gut.bmj.com/content/53/12/1878.2.full
I have also returned to IF, and forgot how much I liked it. I’ve been mostly doing 16-19 hour fasts so far, but would like to get back to the 24 hour fasts.
The reason I stopped in the first place was I thought IF was leading to cold hands and feet, and looking back, I’m sure I was trying to do too much at a time. This time, I make sure to eat plenty of carbs when I am eating (things like potatoes, rice, fruit, orange juice, milk, and, dare I say it, real sugar in coffee!) Also been focusing on coconut oil. Cold hands and feet haven’t been an issue, but I am gonna monitor it. Body temp has been around 98.6 or a bit higher when I’ve measured it, and weight is starting to come off again.
Supposedly, IF helps to boost testosterone as well. This is something I plan on monitoring as well.
I’m beginning to think that the highest impact paleo choices are the ones that don’t have to do with food choices- like fasting, meal frequency, standing, walking, flat shoes, going barefoot, getting plenty of light outside, good sleep, lifting heavy things, and so on. Do those things, and just try and eat a little better, but don’t sweat it.
I’ve noticed that after a crap food binge that my appetite naturally disappears the next day.
totally agree – best formula for me this year has been very little carb on most days ( I know I know I have been reading all the great RS and carb stuff you put out), on days I get tired of no carbs or have social things I usually eat 1 crap meal and 1 healthy carb meal – I always end those nights with 1 to 2 ounces of soaked tigernuts and ice cream… day after I fast for a whole day (36 hours?) then repeat
other things I am trying is not having any alchohol – which I believe has really helped, lifting often, and my cold vest
I think the no alcohol thing would help me out as well.. I’m no alcoholic, but I’ll be damned if I don’t just like to get a buzz on.
Hey Richard – I searched the sire and found no mention of these, which from the author’s description, sound like resistant starch noodles. Shirataki noodles: “made with glucomannan starch extracted from devil’s tongue yams.” Perhaps some of your readers know of these – or of other alternatives?
seriouseats.com/2015/02/how-to-cook-with-shirataki-noodles.html
I’m very curious about these noodles too. These Shirataki noodles are typically made entirely from Glucomannan and I wonder how it compares to Resistant Starch. The convenience factor of how easy it is to prepare them notwithstanding.
I really like the idea that IF might be helpful. But from my own n=1 experience I have to be very careful of fasting/IF. My thyroid shuts down at about 18 – 20 hours and it takes several days of careful nursing to get it functioning properly again. This happens even when on supplemental thyroid – despite claims to the contrary by some “authority” figures. I have a theory that I should be able to IF, but I might need something else to happen first. I’m hoping that the something else is being dealt with at the moment, but will have to see if that is indeed happening, or if it is just one more experiment of hope from the docs that didn’t work for me. But, hey, my health is better than it was for decades so I’m not complaining – much. I just keep on experimenting and hoping that the next something will improve things further.
For those of you who IF/fast, a question: What do you drink while fasting? Is coffee or tea OK? Or, is it water only?
Thanks for your replies…
I was IFing most days for over a year (my average was dinner around 7 and then not eating until noon the next day) about a year ago. I had coffee every morning and I was fine with it not throwing me out of whack.
I did feel good during those IF days. One of the biggest things is the freedom in knowing you’re not a slave to food and that you don’t have to stuff your face every X number of hours. I’ve upped carbs since then with good results, but I do find I’m more dependent on eating a bit more regularly. I’ve actually picked up IFing again a day or two a week in the past two weeks with good results, so maybe the regularity on eating was a bit of a mental game or maybe I had to get my body back into missing a meal.
I had a hard time reaching the full day fasts. I did it once or twice, but I was ready to chow down.
Charlie:
Anything without calories is fine, and there is much evidence that anything without protein is fine. Probably why juice fasts work.
Richard, I like this. I pass by your blog on my road through the interwebs, and when I stop by again you are saying largely what I’ve been thinking. I’m still fasting twice a week, barring last week, due to thyroid pain from a severe house dust mite allergy (just found out officially last week from a 4+ size allergic reaction on a scratch test. Probably explains all my increasingly neurotic food quirks, since I thought it was “bad foods” doing it to me-didn’t even factor in environmental until I got the scratches). I got to the point before I knew what my allergy was that I was sometimes fasting 3xs a week to experience the anti-inflammatory benefits it gave me from severe skin sensitivity and itching.
I love fasting and will probably do it at least once a week for 18+ until the day I die. I also love Mr. Brad Pilon’s work with the ESE program, resistance training and all, which got me turned onto the 24 hour fast.