I Love Intermittent Fasting!

I have always loved breakfast foods, but I’ve never liked eating during typical breakfast hours. Going back to my school years from when I was growing up, the thought of eating first thing in the morning before going to the place I loathed made me sick to my stomach. I remember, once upon a time, trying to eat breakfast before school. My mom would fry or scramble a few eggs and prepare a couple slices of toast for me. Even to this day, while I like toast and all, the smell of toast distresses me just a tiny bit because it reminds me of those times I tried to force myself to eat breakfast. Y’know, “most important meal of the day and all.”

Most important meal of the day… what a crock of shit. Some still believe it and may do so forever, and that is fine if they feel it true in the depths of their little hearts, but as far as I know that statement was concocted back in the 1950s and 1960s by cereal companies trying to increase the sales of their products.

I have never liked eating within 3-5 hours after getting out of bed. Bacon, eggs, sausage, hashbrowns and toast are fantastic, but I don’t want ’em during those hours. You know what’s way better than breakfast? Breakfast for dinner, that’s what! Trying to be productive when my stomach is full has always been a challenge for me. Furthermore, when I eat, I become sleepy. Now, you might say that I should check into the possibility that I’m a diabetic, but it has been that way my entire life when it comes to food! I have a theory as to why it happens that I’ll get to in a little while. Anywho, as far as diabetes goes, while it runs in my family, I just checked my blood sugar about a week ago and it was sitting pretty at 81.

I have always been way more productive completing work or even working out on an empty stomach. Now, if you are talking long workouts or long, strenuous hikes up in the mountains here in the heart of the Appalachia (southwest Virginia), then I do enjoy having a bag of fruit and/or almonds with me or a sugary drink, but that is only in such times like that.

I went from being a night owl to a morning person, and I never thought that would happen, but I feel fantastic in the mornings, asides from the grogginess upon waking up. I love, love, love waking up at 5 a.m., consuming a bit of caffeine with forskolin (a lot of people believe the con artist Dr. Oz’s claims that forskolin is a potent fat burner, which it is not; I take it to increase cAMP, which indirectly increases testosterone through sensitizing androgen receptors) and popping a 4mg nicotine lozenge. That’s my daily routine, along with chugging a 16oz bottle of water. Eating food at such times would make me want to go back to bed!

Here’s the kicker, however. If you have been following my blog (I thank you if you have been keeping up with my nonsense), you would have saw my first couple of posts that mention Ray Peat, the Ray Peat diet and the forum that is dedicated to such matters. Followers of the RP diet believe that fasting of any kind is a detriment to one’s health because they surmise that the body is running on cortisol. One of the key principles of the RP diet is mitigating stress hormones as much as possible; many of the members on the forum claim they consume orange juice, a pinch of salt and gelatin every morning immediately upon waking to blunt the cortisol response they feel.

Followers of the RP diet also surmise that the keto diet is a ‘stressful’ diet due to the absence of carbohydrates/sugar, which are things that naturally lowers one’s cortisol. When proposed with the idea that people feel great whether they are involved in intermittent fasting or ‘doing’ a keto diet, members have produced valid studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals that suggest that these ‘great’ feelings come from high stress in the body, even though it isn’t something one typically thinks about when they think of the word ‘stress’.

I believe them. Hell, the studies show it.

I don’t care, though.

I gave the RP diet a shot as a form of experimentation once upon a time, and I just felt so damn fatigued and bloated.

I’m all about mitigating stress because chronic cortisol spikes will eventually cause you to age faster, but for me, on an individual level in regards to how I feel, I love intermittent fasting because I feel I’m the most productive when I’m working on an empty stomach.

I also apparently ‘do’ another ‘no-no’ which is consuming caffeine upon waking, and I can understand the reasoning behind that, too, because when you awake in the morning, your cortisol will peak at the highest it should be all day long, as it is your body’s response to waking up for the day and getting one’s day going, and that caffeine intake first thing in the morning only yields higher cortisol production. Followers of the RP diet only recommend caffeine intake in conjunction with a high carbohydrate meal in order to blunt the cortisol-related side effects from caffeine intake.

Still, I’ll insert my personal bias in saying that I enjoy my routine because it works for me and yields positive net results for what I want, which is being more productive, especially in the mornings when I feel like I’m at my best.

You know how I mentioned that eating breakfast would make me feel tired, and that eating in general induces fatigue? I believe that is from my cortisol levels lowering after a meal, inducing a relaxed, fatigued state. It can be annoying, but I power through it by walking around 10-15 minutes if my time allows me to do so.

Intermittent fasting works for me, too, because I’m a big eater. I would rather eat a big meal than snack around. I’m glad that the ‘you must consume six meals a day’ bullshit was debunked long ago, because I would be in trouble if that was a fact! What works for me is that I will consume a small meal around lunchtime followed by a big dinner. If I eat a big lunch, not only do I feel extra tired, but I’ll often not be hungry at dinnertime and feel famished by 8 p.m.

I started ‘doing’ intermittent fasting without realizing what the hell it even was back in high school when I stopped going to lunch and instead was hanging out with my friends in one of my favorite teacher’s classrooms. I wouldn’t eat until after school, and I would feel great, asides from experiencing hunger in the afternoons.

I still remember my very last day of high school. June 4, 2009. I drank a lo-carb Monster energy drink that morning and headed to school. That day, I had a huge final exam for my government class. That government class was the most difficult class I took during my school years because the instructor decided to make it difficult. Mrs. Vance was her name, and guess what? She was one of the best instructors I ever had because she was so involved and invested in making sure we learned the material. She cared about her students getting the most out of that class, because she genuinely wanted us to learn. She didn’t believe in multiple choice tests; she also didn’t believe in word banks. The tests involved ‘fill in the blank’ questions where you would have to recall the answer from your own studying. They also involved mini essay-like questions where you would have to answer fully. I passed the exam, and the class, with an A. I can only imagine taking that final exam with food in my gut, because the fatigue would have wrecked my memory and ability to perform as well as I had.

Going forward about six years to May 2015. I was completing my first year back in college, heading over to the local community college I attended, getting ready to take the final exam for my geology class. All I had on my stomach was a SPIKE Shooter energy drink which features 300mg of caffeine, a ton of the methylcobalamin form of vitamin B12 (the most bioavailable B12 that exists), 500mg of L-Tyrosine and the herb Yohimbine HCl. I felt ready to kick ass, and I did.

Those two moments, six years apart, stand out to me because it backs up my personal, anecdotal bias about how much better I feel while performing on an empty stomach. The same thing happened seven months later when, during my second year back in college, I took a really excruciatingly stressful final chemistry exam in a computer lab that took me almost three hours to complete, and I did so on an empty stomach with trusty caffeine involved.

It doesn’t work for everyone.

My ex-girlfriend had to have something to eat within 30 minutes to an hour after waking up or else she felt famished. I personally don’t feel hungry until several hours after I wake. If I ate early in the day, I’m sure I would weigh 50-75 more pounds than what I already do.

I’ll continue to ‘do’ intermittent fasting for as long as I feel good doing so. Why shouldn’t I?