The EDIFYING economic biohack (that you may not be getting right...)

I’ve been fasting for years; in fact, it’s a major economic lifehack, so I decided to read Dave Asprey’s recent deep-dive book on the topic, Fast This Way. The book is a bit of a memoir, actually; it’s punctuated by vignettes from a grueling (and transformative) 4-day fast that the author did alone in a cave in the Arizona desert.

Why does fasting work?

How can fasting do so many good things for you? The answer is simple: your body is already packed full of repair and rejuvenation mechanisms. Thousands of years—no, millions of years—no, billions of years of evolution have shaped them inside of us. Your ancestors have run the gauntlet of death and extinction. You and I are the survivors of an inconceivably brutal winnowing process. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have all of those health-preserving cells and molecules. All that fasting does is remove the dietary impediments we put in our own way and allows us to take maximal advantage of the gifts evolution has given us. Fasting puts us in control of a 4-billion-year-old evolutionary process. (pp. 97-98)

there’s a fundamental difference between hunger and craving. Hunger is a biological message, and it is something that you can control. Craving is a psychological psychological need, and it is something that tries to control you. The truth is, you can go a long time without eating, and you won’t suffer for it. In fact, you will thrive. (p. 4)

Fasting is an amygdala hack

But as essential as the amygdala may be, it can also be a source of irrational, destructive fear. It’s a major contributor to that voice in your head that says you might just die if you do something you’re afraid of—such as going on a job interview, ending a bad relationship, speaking in public, or simply skipping a few meals. Intermittent fasting enables you to put the amygdala and the whole reptilian part of your brain in its place, so that you can be more fully human, more fully yourself, less burned by your fears. (p. 7)

Fasting is really the best spice!

When you end a fast from anything, it makes that substance or that experience much more appreciated. It causes heightened pleasure and brings easy gratitude into your life. (p. 13)

I’ll second this! Fasting is reliably a hedonism hack; before I eat a meal I know I’ll love, I’ll fast to multiply the pleasure.

Fasting for COVID resilience

Adrienne Barnosky, an endocrinologist at Duke University School of Medicine, and her colleagues confirmed that intermittent fasting helps prevent insulin resistance. (p. 16)

As explained in Dr. Mercola’s recent book, insulin resistance is a major risk factor that puts you in danger of a catastrophic case of the wu-flu.

Bulletproof coffee is recommended relentlessly throughout the book...

Which I don’t have a problem with; it can be a game-changer for fasting. I drink Bulletproof-style coffee almost every day, and it powers me through my intermittent fast.

Wake up in the morning and drink a cup of Bulletproof Coffee: black coffee, a dollop of grass-fed butter, and a teaspoon or more of C8 MCT oil. It’s the best latte you’ll ever drink. (p. 18)

And you don't have to buy Bulletproof products; just add butter and MCT oil to quality organic coffee, and your fast will be a whole lot less arduous.

On dieting

Are you addicted?

Two of the most common biological addictions are to wheat (gluten) and dairy products. You may think you don’t have to worry about them because you’re not allergic to either one. Truth is, you probably have no idea what effect they’re having on you. How many times have you gone three days without eating wheat or dairy protein? (Butter contains a negligible amount of protein.) Both gluten and dairy products have known inflammatory effects. (p. 48)

Fasting vs dieting

Here’s another example of the stark difference between dieting and fasting, based on an experiment I ran on myself. Ten years ago, while I was doing research for my 2014 book The Bulletproof Diet (the first big book that described ketosis with intermittent fasting), I decided to test my theory that the effects of fasting are more powerful than the effects of calorie consumption. I intentionally did everything wrong from the standpoint of the calorie-counting police. I ate a staggering 4,500 calories a day and kept doing it for a month, but for breakfast I had only Bulletproof Coffee with tons of butter to raise the number of calories in it. I cut my sleep to less than five hours a night, which triggers obesity. I stopped exercising. But I continued my program of intermittent fasting as I did all those things. By the straight, Ancel Keys–style accounting of the CICO diet, I should have gained about 20 pounds. I was hoping I’d gain only 3 pounds or so. That would have poked a big enough hole in CICO that I’d feel vindicated. The results were even more startling: I actually lost weight. I felt amazing. (p. 65)

CICO (Calories In, Calories Out) diets

The goal of diet culture is to make you feel as though a better you is just out of reach. That’s one of the many reasons why the “calories in, calories out” model, commonly abbreviated as CICO, should be relegated to the dustbin of failed science. This approach treats your body as though it’s a meat robot when in reality it’s a dynamic system that responds to calories differently based on their source, the time they’re consumed, and the unique physiological makeup of the person consuming them. Yet the myth lives on, leaving obesity, shame, and suffering in its wake. (p. 61)

The “eat small meals” myth

A great many diet plans advise you to eat every three hours to keep your metabolism humming along at warp speed so you can lose weight. If you follow that advice, the minute you hit the three-hour mark and you start feeling the slightest bit hungry, you answer the ghrelin response and eat something. If you don’t, cravings kick in, your blood sugar level starts to drop, and you yell at someone nearby because you feel like crap. (You are feeling hypogly-bitchy!) Your biggest question at three hours isn’t whether to wait a few more hours before eating but what type of calories you’ll be putting in your body for your next meal. This is a bad idea because your body never gets a break, and the constantly high blood sugar level created by constant snacking ages you. (p. 68)

Fasting is primal

The history of human evolution is also the history of food. Believe it or not, it’s the history of fasting, too. Our bodies and brains are inherently adapted to it. (p. 81)

Fasting—either with no food or with a vanishingly few calories from plants—was simply a part of our ancestors’ lifestyles. They had no choice. This habit of eating and then fasting continued for not just decades or centuries or even a few millennia; humans have lived a lifestyle of feasting and fasting for almost 290,000 years. (p. 82)

Interestingly...

The modern routine of breakfast, lunch, and dinner is less than two centuries old. (p. 85)

Starting in the early nineteenth century, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, people in the Western world all began eating more or less on the same schedule. Before that, the concept of time wasn’t as regimented. You didn’t need to know exactly what hour of the day it was; farmers just cared about when the sun rose and set. After th