You can’t drive a car when the gas tank is on empty. Therefore, you have to fuel up your body.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It breaks the fast! It should be the largest meal of the day. Lunch should be eaten four to five hours later. This meal should be smaller than your breakfast. Dinner should be eaten before seven in the evening and must be the smallest meal of the day.

Did you recognize these “truths” of nutrition? However, is this thought process correct? Who came up with the rules we take as “gospel”? But, where is the evidence?

Fasting – Good or Bad?

I stopped eating by the clock. Yes, I learned to listen to my appetite. It isn’t easy to learn to pay attention to your body as it tells you what it needs. It takes practice to hear what your body is telling you.

I recently experienced an outside resistance to my fasting. Actually, I’m surprised by the resistance to my eating habits. I normally eat one meal a day. Usually I eat that meal between six and seven in the evening. It varies. My energy level is high and I feel better by not eating by the clock.

What are the negative impacts of fasting?

The list of negative side effects is long. The list tells us that we feel tired, you become hypoglycemia, you are grumpy, now there’s brain fog, and on it goes.

The problem with reading the list is that we now have set ourselves up for failure. When you read or listen to the negative effects on anything, you plant this seed into your mind and therefore, you manifest this checklist into your life.

On the other hand, you can take fasting too far. How long is too long? I don’t know. Really, I don’t. The “rules” aren’t the same for everyone. For instance, high blood pressure is not the same numbers for Caucasians as it is for people from Indian or China. Medicine tends to want to box people into “one size” fits all. That’s not the way it is in real life.

You decide you’re going to fast for a week or possibly longer. Why? In other words, ask yourself what is the reason you are fasting? What goal do you want to reach?

Benefits of fasting

I just told you that list can set you up for failure, however, sometimes it just easier to make a list. In other words, there are times when list can be helpful.

1. Fasting resets the gut environment.
2. Reframing from eating helps your body to detox.
3. To deny yourself food is to help reduce inflammation.
4. Weight loss, lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure are great benefits.
5. Blood glucose is reduced and your body resets the insulin produced by over eating.
6. Increases the function of the brain.
7. Improves the immune system.

The list is long on the benefits of fasting. So, to clarify, eating by the clock isn’t healthy for us. Eat when you are truly hunger. Eating by the clock can cause you to become addicted to food. Food addiction is just as dangerous as drug addiction.

In Conclusion

As with anything else in life, research the pros and cons of fasting. Moderation is important. Avoid the extreme measures in eating. Therefore, fasting has benefits in supporting the body.

Above all, think about why you are eating. Are you really hungry? Remember to eat whole foods not processed foods. Eat as much organic foods as possible.

So, “Eat to live, not live to eat.”