Gotta Go Fast!

John Connerton, • advicehealthfitness
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There's something I've been doing since December 28th, 2019. Intermittent fasting. Fad for some, religion for others. Some people like cold showers. Others, like to temporarily starve themselves. It's not as bad as it sounds. I'll tell you why I think it's a lifehack.

Glossary

Note

There are plenty of articles out there talking about the health benefits of IF, so I won't really talk about those here. If you want to hear more about fasting and it's potential affects on your health, I recommend checking out David Sinclair's Lifespan Podcast or The Peter Attia Drive Podcast. Both of these medical experts opened the doors for a lot of longevity and healthspan focused topics for me. Maybe you'll like them too. These are by no means the only experts out there, so feel free to share any interesting people you know of or find in your own research.

Why did I start going fast?

Initially, I became interested in the topic of longevity after hearing some speakers talk about potentially increasing health and lifespan. Fasting was a topic brought up by nearly every source I read or listened to, with it being a somewhat low risk change that might have impressive effects later on in my life, I tried it out! You know, wanting to live long and have a long healthspan is pretty alright goal to have and I hope that health functions like wealth and compounds over time.

I used an app called Zero, which was co-founded by Peter Attia, one of the guys I mentioned earlier. Zero allows you to methodically track the amount of hours you're fasting and shows you how your progress and consistency in different graphs. It also allows you to journal your moods during your fast and has an achievement system. I found it really helpful to have something that kept me mindful of just how long I was fasting, gave me stats over time, and allowed me to compete against myself. I started with 13:11. That's 13 hours of not eating plus an 11 hour window where I can eat whatever my heart desires. After I worked on that schedule for a few weeks, I decided to push it further. I moved onto 14 hour fasting windows and occasionally pushed it to 16 or 17. It was NOT easy. I felt hungry hungry HUNGRY around early lunch time, 10:30-11 AM. However, I stuck through. I'm glad I did too. There were some... benefits from fasting that I did not expect during my initial experience. Not only am I fasting and getting the psychological and psychological benefits of doing so but I also feel so... fast!

Note

I also moved away from consuming coffee and turned instead to brewing loose leaf green tea. That habit also sticks with me to this day, but I do enjoy a shot of coffee sometimes too!

Another note: my current eating schedule is between 12:30 PM and 9:30 PM. I often push it forward a little bit because I find that I get deep work done around lunch time and eating a little later often fits better into my schedule when I'm out with others.

Sonic meme. There is a high quality sonic on top that says 'I will go on this IF fad diet I read in the news', a lower quality sonic beneath him that says 'I will avoid partaking in fine cuisine occasionally in order to better appreciate the things that I do eat', another lower quality one beneath him that says 'I wish to extend my life and to live every moment focused on what matters so I will schedule my feeding windows to align myself with an evolutionary biological feeding mechanism. My focus, my life, and my gratitude matters to me', and a low quality 3d sonic beneath the last one that says 'GOTTA GO FAST'

Why am I still going so fast?

I started to think about the focus problems we have. In the digital age we have endless notifications, people to talk to (or just look at online, sadly), and information to consume. Many people know the dangers of the digital world hi-jacking our reward mechanisms in our brains. See this random article from Harvard's website that I just looked up to prove my point or check out the Social Dilemma for a popular documentary on social media's affect on brains. Post-industrial age, we have endless luxurious foods to eat. We always have food on the mind and food at the tips of our fingers. All we have to do is tap an app, hit the town, or open a package and we can be happy. It's wonderful. Our ancestors are envious our society's capability of delivering on-demand calorie dense delicacies to our breadbaskets in an instant.

Our ancestors are something I think about often. I imagine myself as a hunter-gatherer waking up in the morning and beginning my day by searching for food. In this case, I will consider myself a hunter. Would you feel driven towards your goal if you were already full? Probably not. I think of fasting as the same thing now. When we are hungry, we're incentivized to 'get this bread'. But at this point, we aren't hunters, we're most likely writing, researching, or calculating. Those things result in us getting fed too. The slight bit of hunger drives us to accomplish our goal, just like it did for our ancestors.

Aside from hunger leading to an incentive to be productive, 9-12 AM is simply an excellent time in the morning. You have less distractions... No need to prepare breakfast. No need to look at your phone. Just a clear head, clean energy, and pure focus. When I fast, I have one goal: "Get this bread". That pushes me to focus heavily on solving the problems in front of me. I write down the problems I want to solve the night before, then upon waking get into a clean focus onto the problems I wrote down. There's no breaking my fast to distract me that early in the day.

Baskin Robins Mascot taking a bathroom selfie. A quote on top of the image reads: 'Wake up hustlers, let's get this bread. No days off.'

Woah man, how do you feel when you go so fast?

Well I'll be honest, at first it felt like suffering. My body would scream out "EAT BREAKFAST DAMN YOU". However, it's now habitual. I don't feel hungry like I did before. In fact, my relationship with hunger has dramatically changed: it's more of an awareness than a compulsion. I am comfortable being hungry for a little while and less apt to become hangry. Not only have I become more in control of when I eat but I've also become more in control about what I eat. I think this is the kind of thing that meditation does to the mind. I guess fasting could be considered meditative then.

Overall, I feel GREAT. That sounds disingenuous but I'm serious.

I feel like IF resulted in a few benefits:

  1. I don't have to think about food in the morning.
    • It's just me, a quiet morning, and taking steps to accomplish goals I have set for the day. Less distractions.
  2. I feel like I have clean, clear focus when I'm fasted.
    • I think this is the result of the "hunt" my body thinks I'm partaking in.
  3. I feel like I have more control over my relationship with food: when and what I eat.
    • No more cravings, much less hangry.

Are you going to sell me something?

Nope. Nothing. That's right. (I hate when people try to sell me stuff too) My favorite thing about this lifehack is that you don't need anything to do it. It's minimalist in nature. You just change your behavior a little bit and you get those benefits listed above. Absolutely based.

If you decide to try out some IF, fasting, or just want to share how your heart feels today, leave a comment, shoot me an email, or contact me however else you want to contact me!

You might not have any benefits. If that's the case let me know too. Maybe you might need a different fasting schedule or some other variable needs to be changed. I'd love to hear your experiments.

I want to you to sell me something please!

No.

Let's chat instead. Maybe we can build something together?

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