How Does Fasting with Food Work?

Fast mimicking diet is one of the concepts that our Advanced Reset is based on. But how does fasting work while you are eating food? I will break this down for you in this article.

When we look at fasting in a behavioural sense it is fasting with no food, just water. But there is another way to define fasting. You can be fasting in a cellular level.

Every cell has receptors that sense if the nutrients and energy are coming in or not. When there is food these receptors will tell the cells that it is time to grow in size. We talked about this in our last posts about autophagy. (benefits of autophagy, what is autophagy?) The main receptor that we are switching on while in the fasting state is AMPK.

When AMPK is activated, the cells know it is time to recycle, and take out all the old worn-out cell parts and make new ones.

This recycling is fundamental for our cell health.

On fasting-mimicking diet, you are giving the nutrients in such a way that leads these receptors to believe that you are in a fasted state, and it is time to clear away damage, while you are still providing essential nutrients.

Although I believe that water fasting for 5 days is the surest and quickist way to trigger autophagy and rejuvenate in the cellular level. However it can be challening for most of us and it can also be quite dangerous without a medical supervision. Fast mimicking diet is as effective way to gain the benefits of fasting.

• Day 1: This is your transitional day. Your body will beging to transition into a fasting state. By 14th hour the majority of blood glucose will have been used up and hunger hormones such as ghrelin may spike to give you a hunger signals. It may be challenging to resist this first wave of hunger but your insulin levels will remain low and the body will start switching the energy source to fat reserves instead.
• Day 2: After using up the glucose supplies your body will start the production of ketones through ketogenesis. 48 hours is usually when ketosis begins. You may start seeing the begging of weight loss. The stress hormone, cortisol starts to increase so it is important to add activities that can modulate this, including meditation, Breathwork, going for a walk and stretching. Ghrelin starts to decrease and this mormonal shift can improe alertness and mental clarity. If you feel dizzy or lightheaded at this point make sure you are hydrated as you are not absorbing as much as water from food as you used to. Increase your water and herbal tea intake and you may decide to add a little bit of salt to the water.
• Day 3: Autophagy is triggered by dietary stress and fasting. It is a process that stimulates cell rejuvenation adn metabolic healing. Exercise can keep your lymph working, distract from hunger but keep your exercise light and save any strenuous exercise after fasting.
• Day 4: Autophagy reaches a peak and you may start to experiece the feeling of calm and euphoria, further reducing feelings of hunger. It may be related to increased level of BDNF (brain0derived neurotrophic factor), a chemical in the brain and central nervous system that inproves mood, cognitive function and eating habit.
• Day 5: The cellular renewal process continues beyond day five. make sure you are eating balanced meals to nourish your body and resist overeating. Clean and easy to digest proteins are useful now that you are switching to anabolic state. Post-fast your body weight may creep back up a little but it is usually the water that was lost during fasting, not regaining fat.