What Is Fasting?

Our customer service department frequently gets asked, “What can I eat while I’m fasting?” Now you wonder, did they Google anything? The answer is no. Or maybe they did and didn’t understand it, which I can kinda sympathize with because there’s a lot of weird articles out there that are nonsensical, so we’re going to straighten everything out right here.

Now, fasting means you’re not consuming anything. Now, there’s also evidence that you can get away with throughout, let’s say an entire day, get away with putting 50 calories in your body and you won’t break the fast. It’s not like you’re intending to go on a six-day fasted period and if you accidentally swallow a bug you have to say, “Well, that’s ruined.” No, it’s not. There’s a very minimum amount of calories that you can take in. It’s 50.

Part of the reason why a dose of Fortagen is four usable calories. We have that situation where we can get away with a few certain things without breaking the fast, but primarily you’re drinking like black coffee or maybe black coffee with a little bit of medium-chain triglyceride to just keep the fast, the fasted period, as efficient as possible and not introducing anything that’s going to stop the fasted benefits.

Keep in mind a lot of the fasted benefits come on after 24 hours or even after 48 hours.

Autophagy, it takes a long time for this to start. There have been different hour numbers assigned to autophagy, but this is cellular recycling. Old cells are being metabolized to create new cells. But you have to be void of food for a long period for this. You have to keep that in mind. So you’re not looking for breaks, you’re not looking for ways to screw it up.

Now, here’s the big question, why is fasting better than caloric restriction? Now, the truth is you can do both at the same time. It’s not like some religious war like you would maybe see on the internet where somebody’s advocating for one way versus the other way. You can have both of these things.

Now, the difference is made crystal clear in an animal-based study done with mice. They have a very fast metabolism so it’s very easy to see what’s going on in a mouse. Also, mice are not filling out a survey like humans do so sometimes somebody answers a question in the way they would like to view themselves, not in reality. But a mouse in a cage is not going to go out drinking at night or maybe have a pizza and then forget he had the pizza.

In the study that I’m discussing there are two groups of mice, a control group and a test group. The control group was allowed access to food all day long of a specific calorie amount. The other group was given that same amount of calories in a given period. They all consumed the same amount of calories. So one group of mice was one meal a day, the other group could eat throughout the day. There was a dramatic difference in fat loss and insulin sensitivity in the test group. So the fasted group did much better.

So when somebody says the caloric restriction is the same thing as fasting, they could not be more wrong. Keep that in mind. Remember this because I want you to link back to this video so if somebody wants to argue, they can argue with me.

You’ll also want to experiment with longer fasted periods. The longer the period of the fast, the more benefits you’re going to get and they get amplified over time. I think three days is fantastic. I enjoy a three-day fasted period, so that’s 72 hours.

There are even apps that’ll time your fasted period. I don’t know if those are great because you keep looking at the app thinking about when you’re going to eat. No, you don’t want to focus on when you’re going to eat. You want to focus on how good you feel by not eating anything because you get that amplification of brain activity. Basically, your blood is not flowing to the intestines, it’s available for everything else, for optimal training, brain function.

I know that when I was doing work on the book, Weight Lifting Is a Waste of Time: So Is Cardio, and There’s a Better Way to Have the Body You Want, my most productive days were the fasted days. That’s something to keep in mind. But I hope all this helps and feel free to ask more questions about time-restricted eating periods.