Fasting for Fitness

Hello fellow humans,

as much as I love enjoying good food, at the time of writing, I haven’t eaten for three days – and I will not start eating before another two days have passed.

Why I think this is a good idea, how fasting affects me, and what this has to do with martial arts and history is the subject of this newsletter. I hope you will find it interesting. However, keep in mind that I am not a doctor. I am only sharing my personal insights and experience here.

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Prepared for Shortage

Fighting arts are designed to use the human body to its optimum. Thus caring for your body and health is an essential part of the pursuit of martial arts.

My personal interest in therapeutic fasting was triggered about thirty years ago. At the time I was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart which was well-known for, amongst other things, its wild parties. At one point I could not recall when last I had a day without cigarettes and alcohol. So when I heard about fasting cures, I was instantly thrilled. I read a book about it, and was intrigued by the idea that a healthy human being should be capable of doing okay without food for about six weeks! This equates to the 40 day duration of cultic fasting in catholicism and Islam, even though therapeutic fasting works quite differently than these religious customs. Anyway, I was hooked and determined to try it.

For the most part of history, humans regularly had to endure times of shortage. Only a few generations ago, it was normal to experience seasonal scarcity of certain edibles over the course of a year. Our genetic make-up is prepared for such fluctuations. Usually, our body generates energy by digesting food. However, if required, we can live of our reserves for weeks.

The latter system of energy generation is switched on by fasting. The more often you do it, the more easily you can switch from one to the other, as I can confirm after 30 years of twice-annual, and later annual fasting.

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The Age of Abundance

The true challenge that we face in our societies these days is not scarcity but abundance. This is something that evolution did not prepare us for. Against unlimited supplies of the unnatural combo of sugar and fat our organism is defenseless. Historically, the first victims were amongst the rich who could afford endless culinary delights. Henry VIII’s obesity hastened his death at the age of 55. Having had unlimited access to food including sweets certainly did not help. In fact, various medical studies have suggested that caloric reduction may extend lifespan and delay the onset of age-related disorders, while consuming a diet high in added sugars does the opposite.

Interesting side note: therapeutic fasting was well established in the Soviet Union in 1960–1990. Fasting clinics were funded by the state, and Russian doctors successfully treated thousands of patients suffering from various conditions by using therapeutic fasting based on the pioneering work of Dr. Yuri Nikolayev, a psychiatrist. His work only became known in the West after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

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A Global Effort

A few years ago, I visited the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand where I saw the Māori portraits created by painter Gottfried Lindauer in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Looking at them, it struck me that they bear testament to how a people’s general bodily condition changes when their traditional diet is replaced by, well, what we see in supermarkets today: plenty of cheap products with lots of added sugars. Sugar is contained in every kind of processed food, and it is cheap. Thus today, its victims often come from the lower strata of society. In fact, the producers of sugar drinks think strategically and, with their marketing, specifically target low to middle income countries.

When it comes to food, it gets political quite quickly. The good news is that fighting back can succeed. Rigid front-of-package labelling turned out to be a good means to fight back against the junk food industry, in particular when coupled with education campaigns. Chile, Uruguay, Peru, and more recently Mexico and Argentina issued respective legislation, and there are comparable initiatives elsewhere. They have already yielded encouraging results.

It is important to understand that this is a structural problem, not a private one.

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My Private Effort

Never-the-less, returning to the very private level of my fasting, you might like to know about its actual effects. Well, despite not eating I can do everything I always do, including workout and training. 40% of the energy generated from food goes into digestion. So when living of your reserves, you only need 60 %.

Fasting can impact you on many levels. For example, I used to get grumpy and moody on day 4, but I do not anymore. I sleep well but I tend to get cold far more easily.

The first days can indeed be a struggle. The process of switching from digestion to living of your fat reserves takes two to three days. This is why a fasting cure should never be shorter than five days of actual fasting, or else there is no real healing and cleansing effect. However, hunger should not be an issue anymore after day 2. The trick is to shut down your digestion by purging the bowels. The more accustomed to fasting my body became over the years, the more easily I could switch. These days, I do not experience any hunger at all. Alas, I neither feel the kind of euphoria that I experienced when I first stopped eating for a week. It felt like a super power!

The by far most challenging and sensitive part is starting to eat again. I take it easy and slow, and I make sure I can lie down and take a rest when I feel like it. I find the switch in this direction more demanding for my system.

The part I like best is the reset of habits and the renewed appreciation of food and taste. As I eat much slower after a fast, I get satiated sooner, which really helps with achieving and maintaining a healthy physique.

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So, that's it for today. If you have questions or other feedback, feel free to get in touch. If you want to try a fasting cure yourself, get sound and in-depth information first, and when in doubt, consult a doctor.

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please recommend it to your friends. They can sign up here. If you wish to read more, find hundreds of related posts on my Patreon. Also, if you feel like dropping a coin into my tip jar, you can do so here. Thank you for your time and your interest.

Yours,

Roland

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