Intermittent Fasting and its dialectical conclusion…
You are walking down Kingsway, senses sharpened, taste-buds tingling. You meander past commuters with arcade skill. This is hard mode; fasting edition. The street beats with the transient city hum of ongoing traffic. Cars mechanically whizz past. You don’t notice any of that. Your mind is on red alert. Deep focus.
You haven’t eaten for several hours. You are used to this. But Dr Simon Hix did look particularly edible whilst lecturing on electoral reform. Your economics teacher’s pizza analogy also piqued your peckishness.
But now you made it; discipline and cold-hearted courage got you here. You arrive in halls, canteen time. You pile on the glorious goods on display. Majestic tomato soup, glistening in the dining room lights, curious curries- cascading simmering smoke, that cheeky seed mix that caught your fancy…
All can be consumed, cause in this theatre of food you have the lead role. Intermittent fasting gives you this power. This is the fasting path you’ve chosen. Does this make you a Spartan or a scrub? We’ll soon find out:
What’s the deal?
Intermittent fasting involves shortening your feasting periods to a set time of day- most commonly, an eight hour window between 12pm and 8pm. This window can be shifted, shortened- but the concept remains- and will lead to a serious shred. For serious spartan sensibility one can take IF to its dialectical conclusion; one meal a day.
IF and 1MD are not diets. You can consume just as many calories as before. In fact the increased shredding power allows you even more munching. This is a time-shift, a way of life, and with it comes:
Focus: From sport to studying, segmenting your day into fasting and periods creates deep focus. Fasting accelerates autophagy; the brain’s waste removal service for damaged molecules, while also spurring the growth of new brain cells through eurogenesis. It pushes the production of protein BDNF; preventing stressed neurons from dying. All provide unparalleled productivity.
Meal mindfulness: Most meals pass with little thought. The mind’s diverted; summative deadlines, looming lectures, lit nights on the horizon…we often forget the joy of merely eating that exemplary morsel. With intermittent fasting that first bite is indescribable. Bliss.
Super shred: After meals your body processes food for a few hours, burning the energy consumed in the form of your glucose and glycogen stores. These deplete when you fight foodless. Instead your body burns fat. Soon the shred prevails. The window of non-eating time you give yourself is central to your bodies burning ability. Greater fast equals greater shredding efficiency; all the while eating just as much as before.
Food range, bulking basis: As you metabolize your food much more efficiently you have a greater ability to choose what food you want to eat. One should not forgo healthiness, but you have greater wiggle room for that cheeky snack. This is especially salient for the bulking- the efficiency of your shredding system allows you to hit the holy double of being both able to put on weight and shred fat.
Total time control: Food eats away at our daily routines. Lazy lunches, boring breakfasts. This not only takes up valuable work time, but digestion itself adds to that sedate feeling. When you are IF or 1MDing your compressed eating hours lead to freedom; total time triumph, and your newfound fiery focus enables you to implement your beastly schedule even more effectively.
Spartan rating:
IF ⅗: tough to get started with at first, but soon your body gets used to the schedule as it becomes part of your daily routine.
1MD ⅘: not for the faint hearted, (or those with low blood sugar or diabetes who do require more consistent eating). But once you get used to the cycle there is no greater joy than that first bite. Nothing.
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