Intermittent and extended water fasting has a great deal of momentum on the internet and I wanted to share with you some of the concepts to consider exploring in your life to gain the benefits associated with such strategies to improve your vitality and overall wellbeing.

I share four books and authors that you can search on the internet and especiall youtube as they all have a stong presence on social media outlets.

First some concepts

Intermittent Fasting is Eating Less Often and giving your body a shorter window of consuming caloric foods and a longer period of rest and digest. An example would be to consume food and caloric beveraes within an 6, 8 or 10 hour period leaving 18, 16 or 14 hours for you digestive system to rest.

Intermittent fasting is the beginning of Metabolic Rehabilitation to restore your metabolism to burn and efficiently utilize Ketones (a by product of burning fat) as a fuel source; especially prefered by the Brain and Heart

Diet Variation: Once adapted to fat burning and utilizing Ketone we may want to mix up our diet variation with a fasting and feasting cycle. We may have an intermittent cycle of 6 hours of feeding and 18hours of fasting 3x per week, 2 feast days where we consume a little more carbohydrates of more protein and say two days of 1 meal only or a 24 hour fasting day. Remember this is an artistic practice and you can play around with this concept.

Extended water fasting is ideally consuming water only for 3,5 , 7, or more days with 5 being scientifically accepted as the best amount of days to shoot for especially for beginners. Also, it would be wise to fat adapted before venturing into the extended water fast and therefore, practicing intermittent fasting for 5, 6 or more weeks.

To help you know if you are becoming fat adapted it is necessary to measure blood glucose levels and ketone levels. I use a keto-mojo for this purpose. During my fast this week I measured BG -81 and Ketones - 3.0 with a Keto Index of 1,5 which is a deep state of autophagy or nutritional ketosis.

Extended water fasting has three phases

The preparatory phase - get you mind right, get your home and environment right and get your support right

The fasting phase - listen to your body and mind. You may need to make some modifications so you can roll with this and not create a huge stressful event where you will yourself through it in pride. The goal is practice not perfection

The post phase - very important as to not consume lots of food or carbohydrates or sugars! This could be a disaster leading you to be really sick.

It is all about metabolic rehabilitation and down regulating leptin and insulin surges thus blood sugar control, increasing insulin sensitivity, down regulating inflammation, improving gut and immune system function, anti-aging, and numerous other benefits.

If you find that you have difficulty with either intermittent fasting or extended water fasting consider you might have high levels of stored cellular toxicity. And this may need to be addressed along the way.

References:

The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, MD
Primal Body: Primal MInd by Nora Gegaudas
Ther Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by Jeff Volek, PhD. and Stephen Phinney, MD, PhD
Beyond Fasting by Daniel Pompa, D.C.

Here is to living into old age with Power and Grace