OMYFAST AND “FASTING”

There is no doubt that fasting in its various forms has many effects on health, primarily good, but some potentially harmful. OMYfasting clears the decks of confusion about a pattern of eating that has gotten far too complicated. This post will make it simple.

Before getting started, though, I want to define fasting in OMYfast terms. This style is a water-only fast. Yes, you can have coffee, tea, and other drinks, including broth. Otherwise, that’s it. I know there are modified forms of fasting where small amounts of food are allowed, but is this fasting or just calorie restriction?

In the OMYworld, fasting is zero food. Outside of this, we start to run into grey areas that are hard to define and disruptive to the goals and effects of fasting. So to be clear, OMYfasting is water-only fasting.

OK, so we just eliminated half of the versions of fasting floating around in books and on the internet. Now we’re ready to go.

Caveats:

If you haven’t read this, check it out: DIET OMYGOALS AND PURPOSEFUL EATING.

And: DIET VALUES AND OMYZONES.

DON’T fast if you are both sick and hungry (your body’s telling you you need food). Don’t fast if you are pregnant. If you have cancer, diabetes, kidney failure, or any other potentially serious disease, don’t fast without your PHCP’s clearance. If, in fact, you have a medical issue that concerns you in any way, discuss your intentions to fast with your PHCP.

Be safe, not sorry.

OMYfast Benefits

Fasting variations:

Daily eating time windows:

This type of fasting is simple to do, and in fact, you’re doing it now. From tonight’s last food intake to your first bite of food tomorrow morning is a fasting period. For example, if you eat your last meal at 6:00 PM, don’t snack before going to bed, and then have breakfast at 6:00 AM, you’ve fasted for 12 hours.

Pretty easy. So a good idea is don’t eat anything after your evening meal. Make a habit of this, and you’re OMYfasting every day. Don’t snack, though. Snacking at night is one of the worst habits an OMY can develop; it’s self-defeating behavior and is responsible for many problems. However, the main issue for this post is that snacking prevents you from entering the fat-burning mode (which usually kicks in eight to ten hours after your last meal.)

Of course, you can easily extend this fast by skipping breakfast and making lunch your first meal of the day. This step extends your fast to eighteen hours. This change will get you in the fat-burning mode for several hours. Slipping in and out of the fat-burning mode improves metabolic flexibility.

Metabolic flexibility is one of those “use it or lose it” things, and you can think of purposefully getting in and out of this mode as an exercise similar to doing pushups. OMYfasting is like a metabolic pushup.

24 hour OMYfast.

This task is simple to do; don’t eat anything. This fast is usually done by eating your dinner meal at 6:00 PM (for example) and then not eating until 6:00 PM the following evening. This style of fasting is one of my favorites, and I do it quite often. Usually, I have a late afternoon meal and don’t eat anything until the same time the next day.

I discovered the one meal a day method reading Ori Hofmeckler’s book The Warrior Diet. This book came out about ten years ago. Hofmeckler lays out an excellent case for this diet. He goes deep into the physiological side and talks about the social side as well. You can get this book from any bookseller and can probably find it used.

In my opinion, Hofmeckler’s method is OMYfasting at its best – simple and easy. Right now, there are a lot of copycats praising the one meal a day diet as if it was something new, but Hofmeckler already explained it very well. He’s the original, and reading his book is well worth your time.

By the way, every other day fast and the two days a week fast (the 2/5 fast) are simple variations on the 24 hour fast (the Warrior Diet).

Long Term Fasting:

Unless you’re fasting for a reason other than your health and wellbeing, I would not and do not fast for more than 72 hours (three days). There are reasons for this that are complex, but to keep it simple, going past the three days starts to reset some of your body’s regulatory mechanisms. This re-setting can be good and possibly bad.

Once a year, I do a three-day fast. I can’t give you a good reason for this; it’s just something I do for the nebulous purpose of “renewal.” I feel like the fast puts me back on track with life because it forces me to do lots of serious thinking.

From a personal health point of view, not eating after 6:00 PM and not snacking before bedtime will do your physiological state lots of good. This outcome is especially true if you’re overweight and insulin-resistant. This move is not a risky eating pattern, and you shouldn’t need your PHCP’s OK to do it.

That said, the 16-18 hour overnight fast and the one meal a day fast are probably all you need to reap the benefits of OMYfasting. These extended times might require your PHCP’s approval. Use common sense, and follow your best judgment.

DO NOT go on a three-day fast without discussing this with your PHCP. Again, be safe, not sorry.

Balancing and Cleaning:

If you’re OMYfasting for your health, this post has all the information you need. There is no question about the benefits of fasting, and intermittent fasting using eating windows to time your fast is proven to be just as effective as 24-hour fasting or three-day fasting.

There are a lot of articles and books on fasting, and to fill a book, you’ve got to invent variations on plain old fasting. Be careful with your reading; there is a lot of fluff added to fill the pages. Consider this: going from doing fifty pushups a day to doing fifty-five a day isn’t going to get you much in return for your effort. It’s the same with fasting longer – the marginal gain on extended fasting is small.

The real benefits of OMYfasting are available to you from doing the fasts outlined in this post. Don’t complicate a good thing – keep it simple.

Let’s have a few words in closing about the overarching values of OMYfasting.

Balancing:

Your body works full-time at maintaining homeostasis. Or at staying in balance. When you’re in a three-meal-a-day plus snacks eating mode, your gastrointestinal system is constantly churning – it never gets to rest. The digestion process is energy-intensive; it takes a lot of work to digest food.

Depending on what you eat, how much you eat, and the efficiency of your digestive mechanisms, it takes about 8 to 12 hours to digest food. Of course, this does not include the elimination of what’s left after digestion.

Unbeknownst to you, your gastrointestinal system is doing a serious workout. The mouth to anus trip is an energy sinkhole. This under-the-radar hard work is why you often feel sleepy after a heavy meal. OMYfasting gives digestion a rest, time to recover, and re-set.

This food processing break is why you often feel energized after a fast. Your gastrointestinal system is giving you a big thank you.

Cleaning:

OMYfasting is the gateway to ramped-up autophagy. We talked about this in my last post. But it’s more than just autophagy. There are other cleaning systems to consider. Your stomach and your intestines move water-based fluids through their inner walls via osmosis. This fluid extrusion pushes debris out and away from cell walls and whisks it away.

This process is similar to your lungs moving debris from their inner lining and up into your mouth as mucus – this increases when you have a lung irritation or infection, and you cough up that green glob – it’s from your lungs cleaning themselves out. Your ears do the same thing with ear wax, and your sinuses do the same thing with snot.

To some extent, these things and more like them are going on constantly. Their intensity goes up or down with your body’s needs. It’s a similar situation with digestion. Historically, our gastrointestinal systems didn’t work full time; they took breaks. These were, in fact, involuntary fasts.

We moderns are not much different physiologically from humans who lived before recorded history. They feasted and fasted, gorged and starved. This roller coaster feeding pattern is in our nature, and our physical machinery reflects it. Running your digestive engine at full tilt, 24/7, is contrary to humanity’s design, and to its history

Human Nature:

Regular OMYfasting takes us back to our nature, at least when it comes to eating. Give your digestive system a break now and then. Let it re-set and clean itself. It’ll reward you for your kindness.

OMY1

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