So I decided to try intermittent fasting. Not for religious reasons, but to see if all the beneficial things I had read about limiting your food intake to a restricted number of hours per day were true. Depending on who you ask, this alternative eating pattern will decrease your blood pressure and cholesterol, increase the efficiency of your metabolism, and even invigorate you on a cellular level. Now I have no way of knowing if all this is true, but I do know Hugh Jackman claimed intermittent fasting was an integral part in his transformation to play Wolverine, and the evidence there is pretty good…!

I’ve done it for a month now. Eating between noon and eight in the evening, and nothing but water the rest of the time. So how did it feel? I was afraid it was going to be incapacitating and overall horrible, but it wasn’t. Turns out you can function quite well on an empty stomach. You can even go running for two hours on a hot day with high humidity and feel none the worse for wear (well, in terms of hunger and stamina – don’t ask me about my Achilles’ tendon!). If anything I felt a lot better for skipping breakfast. You feel sharper, less prone to carb-induced lows (since you haven’t had any!).  There was suddenly a lot of free time in the morning, but that never seemed to be a problem, and quite apart from that, the fact that I was genuinely hungry by the time noon came around meant that I really appreciated what I ate – hunger really is the best condiment.

What about all the health benefits? I don’t know. I didn’t lose any weight (and that wasn’t the purpose of the experiment anyway) but I feel slimmer. Researchers have shown that what will happen when you fast is that you’re depleting the liver of glucose, which means your organism will have to start burning fat instead. This is known as ketosis, and since this happens within 16-24 hours of your last meal pretty much regardless of what or how much you eat, maybe I achieved ketosis in spite of eating lots of carbs. That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it. 

More to the point tho, will I be sticking with this new eating regime? In as far as it is practical, I think I will. Like other changes to my diet – notably giving up coffee and alcohol – people around me seem to think it a little weird, but just because we have been brought up to take three meals a day as a given doesn’t mean it should be. Our ancestors certainly couldn’t count on that kind of regular food intake, and – as is the case with the paleo diet – I think there are strong arguments for trying to emulate the way nature intended for us to live. That’s not to say I won’t have the occasional all-out breakfasts occasionally – after all, what’s the point of evolution if you cannot have American pancakes with butter and maple syrup every now and then?