Overview of Intermittent Fasting

​​Intermittent fasting is a technique that helps your body jump start itself out of disease, fatigue, inflammation and potential immune decline.  It is not a diet, but an understanding of how to help your body switch from solely relying on glucose and insulin for energy, to fat burning which is better “fuel” for your body. 
 
It’s hard to believe that fasting can actually increase energy, but that is exactly what it does by giving your body a break from high demand for glucose (insulin) in order to digest food.    In some ways we suffer from overabundance.  We can get foods from all over the world and the food industry comes up with more and more products that are convenient and seem to take some of the work out of food preparation and meal planning.  Truth is that we eat more than we need to and the processed food industry has created a monster in that those foods may be convenient but they have little nutritional value and cause sugar cravings as they break down into sugar; along with the added sugars in the rest of our foods. 
 
Intermittent fasting causes a physical body response to lack of glucose and causes it to go looking for defective and old cells that it can recycle for the proteins that are available and eliminate the rest.  That process called “autophagy” (auTOF-agee) triggers our stem cells to make brand new cells to replace the recycled ones.  That means as your body is recreating cells, it makes them from new vital cells not old, defective ones.  So any precancerous, autoimmune or diseased cells are eliminated before they take hold. 
 
There is another fuel source that our body uses when glucose is not readily available.  It is called fat.  Not only will your body eat it’s own fat stores (like belly fat) but it can function very well on good fats that you eat like avocados, olive oil, nuts and nut butters, full fat greek yogurt and others(we have food lists).  AND the real science is, contrary to public opinion created by the food gurus,  FAT DOESN’T MAKE YOU FAT, HEAVY STARCHY CARBS MAKE YOU FAT!
 
So the technique of intermittent fasting is to allow time for the body to go without glucose long enough to go looking for recyclable cells and fat to use for energy.  Once your body becomes used to using fat for energy, you can eat good fats with each meal, leave out the starchy carbs, eat plenty of vegetables and fruits and good proteins.  When that happens, you will find you no longer have sugar cravings.  And over a 15 day period of eliminating breakfast 3 days a week, you can begin to see and feel the difference in your energy and health. 

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