Sit and Reflect Part V
Hi there and welcome to my blog posts. Time has genuinely flown by for me, my goal was to try and post once a week and make it into a routinely — but that clearly was not the case here. Regardless, I’m writing now and that’s all that matters. Today’s post was at first going to be about routine and how important routine is for me but something else peaked my interest. Today I’m going to write about fasting, I’ve tried different types of fasting throughout the years and it has always interested me.
I’m currently in a 24 hour fast that I wanted to try out on a whim. It may end up turning into a 48 hour fast depending on how I feel at the end of this 24 hour period. I luckily have had a friend who has done 48–72 hour fasts before and has some experiences on the topic. He has kindly sent me a link to an article that essentially breaks down the different types of fasting, what to expect, how to fast, etc.
Just to provide some insight on the benefits that may occur during these fasts here is a quick list:
- Improved gut health, an increase microbial diversity and elevated rates of fermentation. Leading to a healthier, stronger gut.
- Stronger and healthier immune system. Fasting will prompt the body to remove damaged cells as well as replace already damaged tissue within the body.
- Brain/heart health. Fasting will induce autophagy which will protect nerve cells from degeneration. As well as improving the number of blood lipid markers to increase heart health.
- Improvement of self-control/willpower. Fasting is essentially depriving yourself from a desire to eat. This takes self-control/willpower in order to do.
The list can go on.
For me personally, I’m currently fasting to work on my self-discipline and self-control. I believe that’s personally an area where I struggle with simply because I truly have a bad habit of indulging in a lot of food in a very short amount of time. If you know me personally, you will know that I have a really bad sweet tooth, and as much as I would love to reap all the benefits of fasting. This is more of a self-discipline practice to me to show myself that I’m capable of sustaining away from food and carry on with the other tasks in my day.
SO YEAH, that’s where I’m currently at with my life right now. My goal is to hopefully hit a 48 hour fast, the minimum I’m attempting to fast for is 24 hours. My ultimate goal is to attempt what Zack Marchy did and do a 72 hour fast, but that’s something that I’ll have to prepare my body for. There’s a lot of really cool benefits to fasting that I think everyone should look into; whether it’s body composition, mental clarity, gut health, spiritual discipline, longevity and cellular health etc,. If I do choose to go for a 72 hour long fast, I will make sure to keep everyone updated on the journey because it’ll definitely be a unique one.
As a final goodbye, I’m currently 22 hours in my fast and I’m so far feeling really good in all honesty — I finished one of the best workouts I’ve had in the past few days and I wrote a blog post so I mean those are two good things. I AM currently thinking of food quite frequently but doing my best to keep my mind off of it by doing other productive things.
I hope you’re all staying safe and healthy, and thank you for reading my post today. If any of you would like to ask me any questions, or would like to read the article yourself, I would gladly help. Until next time!
