I am watching the movie, “Fasting” on Amazon Prime. I chose this movie because I couldn’t find anything else to watch. I started watching it passively but was blown away by the benefits the doctors discovered in themselves and their patients.

If you haven’t already heard about Intermittent Fasting well, I will tell you.

Intermittent fasting is eating within a specific time period, while fasting during the rest. The fasting period can be between 12-36 hours on a regular basis. There are numerous documented benefits, here are a few of them from https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/10-health-benefits-of-intermittent-fasting.

1. Improvements in Cell Functioning, Genes, Hormones “When you fast, insulin levels drop and human growth hormone increases. Your cells also initiate important cellular repair processes and change which genes they express.

2. Lose Weight and Belly Fat
“Intermittent fasting helps you eat fewer calories, while boosting metabolism slightly. It is a very effective tool to lose weight and belly fat.”

3. Reduces Insulin Resistance and Lowers Risk of Type 2 Diabetes 

4. Reduces Inflammation, Oxidative Stress, and is Anti-Aging    

5. Improves Heart Health
“Studies show that intermittent fasting can improve numerous risk factors for heart disease such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels, triglycerides and inflammatory markers. “

  6. Induces Cellular Repair Processes

7. Helps Prevent Cancer

8. Good for your Brain
 “It may increase growth of new neurons and protect the brain from damage.”

9. Prevent Alzheimer’s Disease

10. Extend Lifespan

I am interested in the anti-inflammatory benefits, increased energy, mental clarity, and increase in HGH.

The history of my relationship with food is…pretty dicey. I struggled with disordered eating from the ripe age of 12 years old. It became a blend of bulimia, restriction, binge eating, and food addiction. It never got serious enough to where it was taking over my life, and I didn’t get life threateningly thin, but I think it could have gone down that route back then. My relationship with food now, is great! Doing A LOT of inner work including mindfulness, therapy, learning to feel my feelings, radical self love and compassion, has led me to this beautiful state in which I reside where I am at peace with my body and with food. Unbeknownst to me I was doing self-led immersion therapy with food. I got used to having “trigger” foods near me, without devouring them completely. I then got to the point where I could have just some of the food, and feeling my feelings of fullness I chose to stop before bingeing. Because it felt better to do that than to overindulge. I can go into more detail with this in another post but that’s an overview of my relationship with food. That being said, I don’t like to restrict myself with food in any way. I don’t like to have “rules”. If I set up rules, I tend to rebel with a vengeance (due to my history of forced restriction). BUT I do have Scleroderma, an auto-immune disease and I want to feel better in general. Without putting pressure on myself I’m going to try intermittent fasting. I’m going to do a gentle attempt at this, if I have too hard of a time with it, then I will know it’s not for me, but I am excited about the findings in this movie…

I have been doing this for 2 days, the first day I fasted for 13.5 hours and the second day, not so much. My plan is to do 12 hours of fasting a day. I want to see if I can get used to that. If my body gets used to this, and is okay with it, then maybe I’ll increase the time. My schedule is that I fall asleep anywhere between 11 pm and about midnight. I wake up at 7:30 or 7:40 am. Now, I like to eat late, I CANNOT sleep if I have an empty stomach. Even during the day food makes me feel like I could fall asleep. I call it a food coma. Every meal makes me tired, even if it’s super healthy. My plan is to stop eating at 9 pm and not eat breakfast until 9 am. Seems doable to me, but my body did not like it last night. I didn’t eat enough before 9 pm so when it came time to sleep, my stomach was so hungry that I couldn’t sleep. I stayed awake until 3 am because of this and today I have been so tired. But I know this is part of the process of teaching my body a new trick, it will get used to a new eating pattern. I want to keep it consistent day to day so I can get in a rhythm. Last night I ended up eating in the middle of the night because I knew it was my hunger keeping me up. So, jumping back on the horse-wagon and going to eat my last meal of the day and see how it goes tonight!