I love to eat.

So when I first started hearing about studies proving that short periods of fasting could help people lose weight, reduce inflammation, and initiate a massive repair response in the body, I was skeptical.

I have spent decades studying nutrition. I was a big fan of eating six to eight meals a day. But when there’s a critical mass of research proving a nutritional strategy is working, I want to try it.

I first started with INTERMITTENT FASTING

Intermittent fasting is where you eat all the food you want in a short period of time. When I am intermittent fasting, I eat my meals between noon and 8 pm, giving myself 16 hours in a fasted state. Research proves that fasting for 15-18 hours provides the best health benefit.

At first this was difficult. I love breakfast. So I started by taking a smoothie with me in the morning as I walked out the door. I tried to go as long as could without drinking the smoothie. At first, I could only make it till 10 am (12 hours of fasting). But as I applied intermittent fasting to my health habits every day, I noticed that I could go longer and longer periods without food.

I then tried a 1 DAY BONE BROTH FAST

If you haven’t noticed, bone broth is all the rage right now. And with good reason. Bone broth has nutrients in it that can heal a leaky gut and help provide key nutrients to the liver. It’s also is easy to make.

After I had incorporated intermittent fasting into my life, going long periods without food was becoming easier. This made bone broth fasting quite easy.

The first step in a daily bone broth fast is going to dinner-to-dinner without consuming anything but bone broth. What that means is that you have a healthy dinner one night, drink only bone broth during the next 24 hours, then eat a healthy dinner the next night. That allows you to go 24 hours without food.

Once you have mastered that, you go sunrise to sunset with only bone broth, no food.

The results I experienced were profound.

I do this every week. I pick one fasting day. What I have noticed is that on the days I fast, I have greater mental clarity and more energy. The days after the fast, I have very little hunger. In fact, my hunger and cravings have gone completely away since I introduced these fasting strategies into my life. So much so that I often have to remind myself to eat.

So what do the studies say fasting does to your body? And why are so many people trying these fasting techniques?

Fasting accelerates healing and gets your body to repair itself

  • Normalize your insulin and leptin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health
  • Improve biomarkers of disease
  • Normalize ghrelin levels, also known as “the hunger hormone”
  • Reduce inflammation and lessen free radical damage
  • Lower triglyceride levels
  • Preserve memory function and learning
  • Increase your growth hormone (a fat-burning hormone) secretion by 1300%
  • Boost your brain power by stimulating BDNF (a brain-boosting hormone) by 400%

If you haven’t tried fasting, I highly recommend it.

So where do you begin?

Start with intermittent fasting daily. Try to go 15 hours without food. You may only be able to do 13 hours to start, but with repetition, your body will get more and more used to fasting and will comfortably go for 15 hours.

The one warning I have is that people with adrenal fatigue can really struggle with fasting. They can find themselves feeling dizzy and ready to pass out. If this is you, be sure that you are doing everything you can to strengthen your adrenals. There are two supplements I love for strengthen adrenals, Ga by Systemic Formulas and Loving Energy by Bioray.

You can also reach out to my office at 408-298-8092 and my staff will walk you through my adrenal repair protocol.

I would love to hear how you are doing with these fasting tools. Shoot me an email and give me an update when you try them out.

Happy fasting!