102219 Health Fasting

MetCon//

In 10:00, make it as far as possible 155/95

3 Front Squats- 2 Pull-Ups- 3 Front squats- 4 Pull-ups- 3 Front Squats- 6 Pull-Ups- 3 Front Squats- 8 Pull-ups

3 FS- 2 C2B- 3 FS- 4 C2B- 3 FS- 6 C2B- 3 FS- 8 C2B

3 FS- 2 Bar Muscle Up- 3 FS- 4 BMU- 3 FS- 6 BMU- 3 FS 8 BMU

“I know you and MacLarin are doing intermittent fasting, could you write a blog post about that?”

I’m not an expert by any means on fasting, but I have been doing it now for about 4 months, as well as researching it. CrossFit.com had been releasing lectures about Keto and fasting that were given at a health summit they held at the CrossFit Games. These were mainly from a fighting chronic disease standpoint and not necessarily for performance or being better at CrossFit. I’m the type to hear of something and experiment with it on myself.

Fasting, intermittent fasting, or time restricted eating is a practice that’s been recommended and practiced for thousands of years as a spiritual exercise, but in our 2019 secular world, the merits have been studied extensively. I have and do practice spiritual fasting, but I’m careful to separate the two, being intentional with my devotional fasting and not allowing my desire for health benefits to creep into my time with God.

Intermittent fasting is a really simple concept. If you have 24 hours in a day, you set aside a large continuous chunk of time that where you don’t ingest any sort of calories. For me, when intermittent fasting, I allow myself to eat from 1-7, which is a 18/6 split. That’s a pretty tight window, but I’ve worked up to that and It’s probably only 4-6 times a week. The prevailing wisdom says that you can benefit from time restricted eating doing it as little as 1 or 2 times a week, and even without such an aggressive split. Time restricted eating is also made easier if you’re ‘fat adapted’ (which I am). And that just means that I pretty efficiently utilize fats as energy (the fat I eat as well as the fat from my muffin top!)

There’s plenty of debate as to what mechanism makes intermittent fasting effective for specifically fat loss. The Keto/Hormone crowd will tell you that regulating insulin and blood sugar is the magic. The calories in/ calories out people will tell you that it works just because it’s hard to fit your needed calories into just 6 or 8 hours. It’s certainly both though. I typically eat 1 big meal, and have a protein shake later in the afternoon and rarely snack— I’m certainly in a caloric deficit. The research shows though that intermittent fasting greatly improves resting blood glucose and is a very effective intervention for T2 Diabetes, which supports the hormone hypothesis.

It’s pretty hard for me to pinpoint what I’m doing that has been most beneficial for leaning out. I would have to spend some long seasons choosing one strategy at a time, but I’m currently eating Keto, Fasting, and doing some other things I might blog about or recommend in the future. So I can’t with any confidence say I’m getting lean because of this or that. But I will speak to the other benefits that have intrigued me in this process.

Autophagy (Ah-tof-ajee) is the mechanism where our cells clean out damaged cells and replace themselves with new ones. Its turned on by a lot of things in different parts of our body. Just exercising prompts autophagy. I happens in our sleep. For thousands of years fasting has been used as a healing practice and it’s been confirmed through modern science. Metabolic autophagy happens really only in the absence of insulin, so there is some autophagy when eating keto which mimics parts of fasting, but it really kicks in during actual fasting. The bro-sciency way to explain it is, the cells in your stomach, intestines, liver, and kidneys aren’t likely to regenerate unless you give them a break. They will regenerate, all cells do, but it’ll happen slower. Whenever you read reports that claim that calorie restriction can increase longevity, its likely that they’re referring to autophagy.

The other interesting benefit I’ve found is increased morning productivity. We try to be diligent with our mornings and I’ve found that I’m very sharp before I eat and especially as that fast extends. I’m always a little worthless after eating anything so I enjoy feeling lazer sharp mentally when I need to be. If you’re used to CrossFit, working out fasted shouldn’t be an issue. Someone new to CrossFit can get a bit hypoglycemic working out on an empty stomach, but if you train regularly, you’ve adjusted and can likely manage your blood glucose just fine without the added food.

To sum it up, traditional morning breakfast is not necessary, and a lot of benefit can be had from skipping it. Your mom, bless her heart, who preaches “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” fell victim to the persuasive breakfast food companies Kelloggs and General Mills! If you want to give it a try, just start with skipping breakfast a couple times a week and self experiment until you figure out if you want to fit it into your life!