Will intermittent Fasting Restore Your Energy

Let's talk about intermittent fasting.

 

I would say outside of Keto, intermittent fasting is probably the second most prevalent health technique people are employing on their own now. There's a good case to be made for the benefits of caloric restriction at least based on mice studies. However, if we and look at cultures who have extremely long lives and vibrant health, we do not find persistent ongoing caloric restriction as part of their cultural pattern. In fact, we find higher caloric intake than even most Americans. However, we do find nutrient-dense foods of high quality and zero packaged, premade, toxic food intake.  It should also be noted, that mice studies may not be entirely quotable because of our obvious physiological differences, looking for corollaries between mice and humans is a bit challenging.

 

Now, there are those who ascribe that their health history radically improved by intermittent fasting, and there can be a possibility for benefit there if it is applied to systems with sufficient strength, balance, and mindset to gain those benefits.  However, the most prevalent problem is that 90 percent of the women that I have spoken to who are using intermittent fasting are doing so as a form of body control, and from a place of fatigue.

 

Consequently, what I have observed bears more resemblance to thought processes associated with conditions like anorexia than those of health enhancement.

 

See, the belief of why we do something is often as important as what we do and if we are controlling food because we believe that it will force our body to release stored energy and therefore fat to give us what we want it, regardless of the reason why our body had extra weight in the first place...that's a problem.

 

Intentionally not eating specifically to try to FORCE the body to let go of extra weight is the main reason every woman I have ever spoken to tries intermittent fasting.  They don't cite to me studies on longevity, they don't cite to me studies indicating it might cause telomere lengthening and therefore DNA resiliency.

 

They site the caloric restriction and intentional not eating as their goal to cause weight loss.

 

Force doesn’t work with life issues and it doesn’t work with our cells either.  Much of the time, force ends up causing stress, and stress is the predictor of every disease out there.

 

What I know is this, our bodies live in service to us, every single day you wake up and whether you recognize it or not, your body says, “oh my gosh, how can I give you the best possible day?”

 

Now you may be thinking that's not true, if that's true, I wouldn't carry this 30 pounds,  I wouldn't carry this 50 pounds or 100 pounds, I wouldn't ache all over, or be so tired. But those things are the consequences of not regarding what your body has done, because you weren't taught to do so.

 

This isn't something you set in motion out of a contentious relationship with your body in most cases. What is true, we were never given the template for honoring what our body does as a divine structure every single day.  Consequently, we tend to diminish the true needs of our cells and systems based on our perception of a particular problem. But it takes a lot just to run our beautiful heart, liver and kidneys, to move our muscles, digest food and even to sleep and run the brain. All of which are incredibly energy dense activities, but then on top of it, we want to multitask and over-commit and we want to go from 7:00 AM till 8:00 PM without stopping, to the point where that schedule is now totally normal.

 

Then, under the guise of intermittent fasting, we add to that burden….” now I'm not going to eat from eight PM till 12 noon the next day because someone told me that that is an extremely healthy way for me to lose weight.”

 

Well, here's what's true. The odds are that you, like everyone I've ever worked with lives in a dramatically fatigued system and all you've done by taking this path is to tell your beautiful body:

 

“I want you to do exactly the same amount of work, but I'm going to feed you less often and when I do feed you, it's going to be for a concentrated amount of time and so I expect you to digest all of that. Grab all the energy and get ready for the next day.”

 

It's not fair.

 

What is missing here is body wisdom….there is wisdom to spacing our feedings over hours eating something in the morning, something in the middle of the day, something in the evening because there's an alchemy to digestion.  Ideally, we put food in and then we allow our body to restfully grab the life force out of that food and then send it off to the organ systems and then we rest those organ systems and we turn our attention to the other parts of our body or our life and then again we nourish ourselves and we send the alchemy and the life force out again, and then we rest that system.

 

When we're already deficient and our body is grasping for the tiniest bit of information because our cells are actually shut down, and then we limit the incoming information under a guise of control, we do more to limit body alchemy than grow it.

 

Now, there can be a case made for supervised clinical fasting in a quiet space.

 

There's a clinic in California that does that, where you go and you water fast, but you do nothing except sit in nature and rest and relax so you match the low energy state with the ability of your body to rest and that's why they get a good repair.

 

But when people want to say, well, I'm going to fast more than half my day, which is a resting state, but I'm going to work just as hard and expect my body to keep up...we end up asking our system to move in opposite directions. It is taxing to the body. It is rude and it is a form of control and it will lead to illness because eventually, the body will crash into an exhausted state.

 

I do not fast the people I work with, I provide them a means to be fed in a gentle, kind, soft, slow, conscious way that tells their cells it's okay,  I know how hard you've been working and I'm here for you. This puts in nutrient-dense foods that are all about the alchemy of the body and the spleen and the liver and the lungs and the kidneys and the heart, thus freeing energy and restoring body processes allowing our body to reach its most brilliant, and reach a restoration that lasts.

 

In this place, they learn how to take the risk of every chronic disease away, and in the process, they also learn how to work with their body rather than trying to control it.

 

If that's what you want, a relationship with your body rather than just trying to subdue it at every turn, you should schedule a call with us. Let us see if we can help you, because what I know is... more control is not what's needed.

 

We've lived that path.

 

It hasn't worked thus far.  After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

 

Blessings

Dr. Julie and the Thriving Health team