Intermittent Fasting Can Improve Your Health, Productivity, and Mindset
Did you know that your productivity can be correlated to when and what you eat? There is more and more evidence suggesting the benefits of time restricted eating. From cellular autophagy (a fancy word for anti-aging) to more productive and sharper mindsets, intermittent fasting can impact your life.
✔️ What if I told you that not only what you eat but how often you eat could influence your productivity?
✔️What if your life could be improved by simply skipping breakfast or lunch, leading to more focus and energy?
✔️ What if you could spend less time on cooking, cleaning, and meal prepping and more time on the things you want to get done?
All by eating less often.
THE BENEFITS OF TIME RESTRICTED EATING
Of course, weight management is an obvious benefit of intermittent fasting. If you only eat during certain windows of the day, your ability to overeat decreases. For most people, this leads to healthier life.
However, it’s important to note that it isn’t the only benefit. In fact, anti-aging, mental productivity, and steady energy levels are also conducive with a fasting regimen. In general, fasting allows you to:
Have more room to eat bigger meals (while keeping overall calories to a minimum) - this gives you lifestyle flexibility
Have steadier energy levels throughout the most important parts of the day (avoiding that insulin spike and subsequent crash)
Benefits associated with weight loss and calorie restrictions
Autophagy (anti-aging process)
A break in digestive processes, giving your system a chance to rest
You can read more bout the research to suggest that the body benefits from strict time restricted eating windows.
We are going to break down the benefits of these points below.
A NEW TOOL FOR PRODUCTIVITY
Perhaps the biggest benefit (and one most applicable here) is the productivity and mental clarity often associated with intermittent fasting. It helps eliminate distractions associated with snacking, saves time on cooking and cleanup, and keeps you from crashing part way through your day. All of those things impact overall productivity.
Not to mention, many people report a healthier mental state during periods of fasting. In fact, a long tradition of fasting in religious traditions has demonstrated the cultural benefit to fasting throughout time. The ancient understanding that fasting can be beneficial to them led to a cultural and religious correlation.
That’s why it’s no surprise that more businesses are adding it to their tool kit, now ,too. In fact, take this Silicon Valley startup for example here or this Facebook executives lifestyle that can be read here.
If you struggle with the midday crash, overeating, too much snacking, or lack of mental clarity - then fasting may be right for you.
HOW INTERMITTENT FASTING WORKS
It’s important to understanding fasting isn’t “starving” yourself as we traditionally like to think of it. Instead it’s just meant to restrict your time window of when you consume food. For example, say your recommended caloric intake is at 2,000 calories - then you should STILL consume that much food during your feeding window. However, the restricted time window helps give your digestive system a break, while helping you control unnecessary calories and weight gain. It makes it easier to stick to your recommended calorie amount.
Intermittent fasting simply consists of strict periods of eating followed by periods of fasting. This might initially seem extreme but it actually isn’t.
For example, almost everyone already fasts at night (without even realizing it). Intermittent fasting just takes this window of non-eating one step farther. Popular eating window examples include:
20:4: Consists of 20 hours of fasting followed by 4 hours of eating
16:8: Which is 16 hours of fasting followed by 8 hours of eating
Alternate Day Fasting: Eating 500 calories or less every other day, followed by eating freely.
5:2: 5 days of eating and 2 days of calorie restriction
These are just a few of the options people practice. However, there is not “right” or “wrong”. Find what works for you.
BENEFITS OF FASTING
1. Increase in Human Growth Hormone
If you aren't aware, human growth hormone is a key component in the development of children and adolescence, doing exactly what the name implies - growth. With age, human growth hormone decreases, and research suggests that the lower growth hormone, the higher the muscle loss, higher body fat and a loss of bone mass. Natural growth hormone's main feature may be that it plays a key role in nutrition partitioning, meaning that after a fast, growth hormone increases the amount of protein in your muscle and organs.
In fact, historically, some fitness fanatics would go as far as receiving human growth hormone shots from a practitioner in attempt to improve their strength and physique. However, they soon came to find out that synthetic growth hormone isn't the same as natural growth hormone, as the case with many synthetic substitutes.
Our hormones are naturally released in small bursts to stay sensitive to it. That may be why natural growth hormone is so beneficial where synthetic growth hormone can be linked to health issues. Getting a large dose in one shot influences many other hormones - such as insulin.
Thankfully, we can make growth hormone naturally through fasting (who would have thought). As your body enters a state of no eating, it gives us a good shot of HGH (human growth hormone) to prepare our bodies to burn fat (or stored food) and gain energy to "go find food." Your body is kicking into survival mode and operating at a higher efficiency. Your body is smart, it isn't going to burn its greatest assets in a time of need. No, it'll burn its storage (aka fat) and this hormone will help you and your muscles were at their highest capacity.
My brother is big into bodybuilding and he chooses to fast religiously. He swears by it, both for keeping him lean and fit, as well utilizing the release of growth hormone to sustain muscle mass. You can also look up body lifters such as Brad Pilon, Martin Beckham, or Sara Solomon (ladies) as they are all fantastic examples of intermittent fasting and bodybuilding success.
2. Lowers Insulin and Cholesterol Levels
This goes hand and hand with growth hormone. A fantastic way to combat pre-diabetes (Type 2 diabetes only) is to keep your insulin levels low and steady, therefore; staying sensitive to it. In a nutshell, insulin is a hormone released by the pancreas to aid in the absorption of glucose into the body (muscle, organs, etc). Glucose is simply sugar (take note that carbohydrates are sugar) that eventually getS stored in the body as glycogen. People who have diabetes (Type 2), or are on the verge of being diabetic, no longer have enough of a sensitivity to insulin to have it react properly with glucose. The more you continue to eat terrible food, the more your body becomes insulin resistant and the less your body is able to handle glucose. In latent terms, your body receives sugars and doesn't know what to do with it, or what to do with it fast enough. This leads to weight gain and a and subsequent health problems. That's why your practitioner usually recommends cleaning up the diet (likely losing weight as well) and increased physical exercise..
Essentially when you intermittent fast regularly, you become highly insulin sensitive and therefore when your body receives food, it partitions it appropriately.
Please note that type 1 diabetes is not represented in this post and always, always talk to a doctor before trying a new diet.
3. Weight Loss
All of that information that I just passed along about insulin and growth hormone? Well that all play a key in the weight loss. If you fast long enough your body will tap into fat. In addition, pushing your calories back to the end of the day is a fantastic tool in keeping your calories in check. The simplest way to understand weight loss is to know that calories out needs to be greater than calories in. Intermittent fasting helps naturally limit calories in.
It can take a lot of effort to eat your 2,000 calories in the span of 4 hours then it would be in 12.
Calories In < Calories Out = Weight Loss
4. Simplicity
One of the greatest benefits of fasting is the simplicity it can bring to your life, especially if you are an adult, living alone, or relatively independent. As a regular intermittent faster myself, I have found not dealing with meal planning, breakfast and packing a lunch has saved incredible time. Between meal prepping and eliminating the two designated meals, I have literally added hours onto my life.
5. Improve Your Brain and Productivity
Many people who intermittent fast do it for the increased productivity. I'm not suggesting this is for everyone... but many, many people who choose to do some version of intermittent fasting find this to be the case. However, from both personal experience and second-hand knowledge, many people need a "break in" phase.. but its well worth the initial discomfort and here is why:
Intermittent fasting promotes autophagy, which turns over damaged cells. It can almost be considered as a cellular cleansing that makes our body (at the cellular level) more efficient. In addition, this "recycling" not only benefits our aging process but has also been shown to benefit our brains. Finally, recent research has suggested it doubles as a defense against diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's.
Fasting (and vigorous exercise) has been shown to increase the ability of nerve cells to repair DNA... as well as promote the growth of neurons and strengthen synapses. Crazy huh? This information can be expanded upon in Mark Mattson's Ted Talk (Something I enjoy listening to on long drives). It is well worth the listen.
Final Thoughts
Intermittent fasting is great tool to try if you are looking for a lifestyle change. However, I always recommend that you talk to you health care provider first. This is not a diagnosis of what you should do with your life, it’s simply an idea to ponder.
