Kyle Boelte was in his early thirties and was constantly tired. Even though he was pretty active, running three times a week, lifting weights, eating decently healthy, and getting a good night’s sleep he was still fatigued in the late afternoon into the evening. So bad that he felt the urge to take a nap, and if he didn’t get a nap he was extremely irritable. He didn’t understand why he felt this way even though he was fit and healthy. So, Boelte decided to seek medical health.
After seeing two naturopathic doctors and one traditional, he still did not have a reason as to why he felt this way. He know he wasn’t depressed, and that he did not have a chronic illness. Now, looking back to that man a few years ago he realizes that a big problem was his sugar levels being out of whack. After years of what he never thought were bad habits, Boelte had trained his body to crave simple carbohydrates, causing him to crash for a constant sugar fix. What was his solution? Fasting for at least 12 hours a day.
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Intermittent fasting helps to slow the aging process, and it enhances not only cardiovascular but also brain function. The chief of the laboratory of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, Mark Mattson, supports intermittent fasting. He has written many articles on the subject. Consuming breakfast, lunch and dinner is not how humans have eaten historically. That has only been a new habit for the last couple of hundred years. When you fast for at least 12 hours your body switches from a glucose metabolism to a fat metabolism.
Intermittent fasting can cause short term stress on the body. But, the key is to make a gradual change to your eating habits for a slow build up. Even though it can be hard the benefits are worth it. This type of fasting has been proven to protect the neurons in our brains from many different stressors such as strokes, oxidative stress. Seizures and neurotoxins.
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Boelte decided to do an intermittent fasting diet called 5:2 diet. This is 5 days of eating normally, but still healthy. Normally during this diet you reduce your calorie intake to below 600 for two days. This promotes weight loss which Boelte did not need. So, instead he did not restrict calories. Be sure not to forget the time-restricted eating with four-to-eight hour windows between meals.
Now, after changing his lifestyle Boelte feels great and healthy. Before he was running about 10 miles a week. Now he is fully charged and running anywhere from 40-60 miles a week. His change was harder at first but gradually became easier. Now he doesn’t even crave or want things like bedtime snacks like he did in the past.
Curated article from OutsideOnline.
