Time for Another 48 Hour Fast.
With fasting part of my health protocol, I will regularly fast for 22 hours. How often is dependent on how hard I’m training. I like how it makes me feel, especially if I have mentally taxing tasks to focus on. My brain feels more focused and stimulated when my digestive system is allowed to rest.
Being a strong believer in evolutionary nutrition, meaning I always like to think about how our ancestors lived hundreds/thousands of years ago, I feel it’s important to regularly challenge myself further when it comes to fasting. For sure our ancestors were not able to have 3 meals per day which came to them without any particular effort.
They would have been hunting and gathering to find as much as they could to sustain their food requirements, with regular periods where food was extremely scarce. Hunters in particular could spend days tracking and killing an animal to feed the tribe, and would surely have gone long periods without food.
In the work of David Sinclair, he proves that fasting is extremely good for your body and mind. It helps cell regeneration and boost mitochondria amongst many other benefits. Eating less frequently is the cornerstone to his work, which seems to strongly suggest this is the key to a longer life.
This is new science we are only now discovering, but our ancestors have seemingly always known this. Fasting has been used in every religious group, and across all civilisations for millennia.
For a clear disclaimer, I am not a person with religious beliefs. I respect all religions as believe in the majority, they are good for humanity. This can be argued many ways, as we all know most wars are somehow based around religious dogma. But this is the minority who interpret religious writings incorrectly, and turn them into words to fight wars with.
This is why I use the timing of religious festivals to coincide with extended fasts.
Being in the international melting pot that is Hong Kong, you get to have experience with a variety of different religions. Being raised in the western world I am obviously familiar with Christmas and Easter. But I also have connections to friends who celebrate Diwala and Ramadan, and am aware of their beliefs and festivities also.
So this Easter, which is also in the middle of Ramadan, is when I have decided to have my next extended fast. This one will be 48 hours which I will begin on Thursday 14th April lunch time, through to Saturday afternoon/evening, depending when I decide to break my fast.
This is not a religious experience for me per se. But it does become a spiritual experience. A time for gratitude. A time for reflection. A time to appreciate what I have, and how lucky I am compared to many others in this world. Time to experience real hunger, even though it can never compare to those who genuinely do not have enough food.
Happy Easter, and Ramadan Mubarak everybody!