Food, meal time, and restaurants all invoke certain emotions and feelings surrounding our consumption of calories. These emotions typically cloud the true nature of the food that we consume. The veil of food has been compounding every day of your existence with inherently social and economic aspects. By removing these constructed false notions through understanding the true purpose and use of nourishment by your body, one can change their eating habits to revert to and maintain a healthy idealistic lifestyle.
The communality of food has survived generations of humans to its current position as a symbol of connection by way of societal indoctrination from birth. This becomes hazardous to many as the commonality of this connection leads to a regularity of meals. Eating time constancy allows your body complacency in how it processes the abundance of calories it consumes.
The roots of these social constructs are intertwined in the pursuit and successful acquisition of a meal in ancient times. The stark contrast between modern day consumption and ancient consumption is ease of access. Finding food many thousands of years ago was typically a communal experience as well. The men would go and hunt together and hopefully bring back a large animal, while the woman would gather fruits, vegetables and nuts. At the end of the day, sharing the haul of the day is a testament to the hard work that the entire family or tribe had exerted to nourish themselves.
But this was the sole purpose of this process: nourishment. The focus on nourishment has been muddled by years of association and differing access. Every calorie consumed by your body is utilized to support itself. These ancient societies would sometimes be forced to go weeks without eating because there were no available food sources. But then, they find a lone bison by a waterhole. Now the tribe has food for a week and plentiful resources. This cyclical nature of food security is coded into human genetics and our evolution has adapted us to this practice. Recent modern advances in food production allows for guaranteed access to food for billions of people. But have we as a species evolved to maximize the food of which we have in abundance?
That answer is, unsurprisingly, no. Evolution is a macroscopic process that requires millions of years to select the most beneficial genes for an environment. Also considering the decrease in natural selection of the human species due to its constantly increasing lifespan and technological innovation, it becomes readily apparent how lifestyle disparity can drastically affect our body systems. Fasting is the natural process coded into our genetics. Yet in developed nations, there are many individuals that will never fast for more than 24 hours. The consistent influx of calories is not needed in human physiology and over time this lifestyle leads to obesity, heart disease, and many other chronic illnesses.
But how can fasting be better for your body than providing fuel in the form of food? Well this starts with ATP as the molecule our body produces for most all metabolic processes. The body needs a consistent supply of this molecule to allow your muscles to contract, your brain to fire synapses, your heart to pump, etc. When you are eating your cells will break down the macromolecules of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins mainly into glucose, acyl fatty acids, and amino acids. These molecules are high in electrons which are funneled through glycolysis, the krebs cycle, and the electron transport chain (ETC) to produce the essential ATP molecule. But once the body has produced enough ATP, the excess molar concentration of ATP acts as a negative feedback stimulus that inhibits glycolysis, the krebs cycle and the subsequent ATP producing steps. But there are still excess glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids to be stored. These are anabolic pathways, or building reactions, that store fatty acids in fat cells, amino acids into muscle tissue, and glucose into glycogen. Congratulations, you are now full! Any further consumption increases the storage of these high energy molecules to be used later.
Well now its later and you haven’t eaten in many hours. To maintain the consistent supply of ATP your body will begin converting liver glycogen into glucose to run through glycolysis, the krebs cycle, and the ETC. Your liver is the largest organ in your body besides the skin and its glycogen stores are capable of providing energy for up to 24 hours of fasting. After the depletion of both muscle and liver glycogen through the energy needs of exercise and lifestyle, the process of gluconeogenesis begins to synthesize high energy molecules from fat stores and proteins.
It is this process that is the genetic holy grail of lifestyle maximization. Decreasing fat stores is accomplished by converting fatty acids to ketones which are more efficient energy sources than both proteins and glucose. Your body will preferentially pull from fat stores as opposed to muscle in this fasted state if there are both available fat stores and sufficiently intense exercise to negate muscle wasting. These overall functions are known as catabolism, or breakdown reactions, that utilize the energy within your body.
But why is self-energy utilization in the form of catabolic pathways evolutionarily favored in humans? Genetic damage is a continual process due to unpredictable minor mutations in the order of nucleic acids that make up our DNA. However, these mutations manifest as malformed proteins in the enzymes, structures, and cells of our body. By utilizing these catabolic pathways more frequently our bodies will consume and breakdown the null proteins that are factors in disease and aging. Without fasting the body has little recourse to correct protein manifested genetic errors.
I have always had an odd relationship with food. I am the type of person that only eats to live. If I could live the rest of my life without eating I probably would. This might seem shocking to many people but eating large amounts of food is a massive challenge for me. The more I eat the more I become disgusted with what I am eating.
This disposition to abhor food is what has kept me lean my entire life. I have never not had a six pack because when I do overeat my body will compensate by undereating the next few days. I began to realize the similarity to ancestral eating habits and how my body prioritizes its wellbeing by using the energy it had already consumed.
But how much fasting is too much fasting? Recently, I wanted to cut my body fat percentage even lower and so I relied more on fasting in the form of drastically high caloric restriction. This would entail 3-5 days of a 200-600 calorie intake followed by refeed days of 1000-1500 calorie days. My maintenance calories previously had been at 2500 but with such intense diet modification I estimate it dropped to ~1500 to attempt to establish a new homeostatic metabolism to combat my minimal energy consumption.
Well the weight dropped, and my abs POPPED, but my energy tanked with it. There would be days where I didn’t have the physical energy to get out of bed. There was probably some muscle loss, but I usually dictate most of my calories as majority protein and maintain exercise when I restrict myself so heavily to prevent too much atrophy.
But this was too much. I was in an extreme caloric deficit for months on end because it was too easy for me to just not eat and ignore my hunger pangs by focusing on other things. My nutritional state was suffering, and my immune system was similarly trashed. I had cleaned out some genetic damage but probably caused more in the form of oxidative damage from the stress of being in such a long state of starvation.
I needed to experience this extreme to get a better understanding of what is ideal. I took fasting to the extreme, but I also proved its efficacy in short-term health benefits before the onset of ill-effects of a prolonged high deficit. Fasting is a potent tool in the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle but must be utilized in a dose-dependent manner.
What I found was my self-prescribed ideal amount of fasting is for one day once a week. The effects will be noticeable instantly as a full day’s reduction in calories will come off the weekly net calories and result in an inherent caloric deficit should you not overeat the rest of the days. This is in addition to the intrinsic weekly catabolic benefit.
Another great fasting modality is intermittent fasting. By fasting for 16 hours a day and restricting your eating window to just 8 hours a day, your body can both catabolize and anabolize to take advantage of their respective benefits. Additionally, restricting the daily eating window usually accompanies a decrease in caloric consumption as it is more difficult to consume more calories in a shorter amount of time. I tend to use this often when I really don't feel like eating, so I can concentrate my mental effort on eating during one time window.
On a more extreme scale is a 3-day fast. These aren’t necessary very often, yet they entail a multiplied benefit of a shorter-period fast. Approximately every 3 months I’ve found to be optimal personal prescription with ideal timing being at the end of a bulk before a maintenance caloric eating period preceding a cut.
This all sound well and good but how on earth do I it? Well I just tell myself I am not allowed to eat. Its as simple as that. I know that I will not die by not eating for a small period and thus I can rationally override by brain’s default drive to eat. This takes a lot of practice and why I went on such an extended caloric restriction cycle. I wanted to gain the skill of bodily control in order to change my physique and health at will.
You will fail. And that’s okay, as I failed many times. I would often start my day by fasting and if hunger overtook my thoughts, I would allow myself a couple hundred calories before occupying myself once again and making myself unable to eat for the remainder of the day. Self-control is a battle that is winnable with an increased understanding of your body and mental fortitude.
Moreover, a lot of the literature and research on fasting is still ongoing and there are many aspects that we still don’t understand. While the literature is so far very positive on the benefits of fasting, we still lack consensus on the overall biologic effect and how the duration of a fast would alter such widespread, cellular, and metabolic effects.
This collection of thoughts is my opinion based on my current understanding of biochemistry, which is, admittedly, not a lot. Do your own research to find out the specific health benefits of fasting and make sure your levels of micronutrients are sufficient with a daily multivitamin. You are responsible for your own health and have an obligation to your own wellbeing to consider and understand any potential changes in your lifestyle. So, take back control of your relationship with food but only if you are prepared to dedicate yourself to the understanding of your willpower and the changes it may have to your overall being.
-H
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