Intermittent Fasting and Bio-Hacking

In recent months, I’ve become a big fan of the podcasts from The Fat Burning Man. Abel James hosts the show, and has various wellness experts on the show. The common thread I really like about all the interviews is that the guests are providing alternative sources of information on optimal nutrition, fitness and lifestyle to help you PERFORM at your best. It’s not just about losing weight, it’s about total mind/body performance. And YOU are in control of your destiny instead of falling into the diabetes/cancer/heart disease trap of our extremely flawed “health care” and food distribution systems.

I listen to a great deal of related podcasts, and the main nutrition takeaways have been: eat mostly veggies, some animal protein (may or may not include dairy), cut way back on carbs and sugar, eliminate gluten (and possibly all grains–some people are ok with limited whole grains), cook your own food acquired from grass-fed, local, organic sources. Supplement with fish oil, vitamin D, probiotics and some other misc things like MSM, Hyaluronic acid, Vitamin K and Magnesium if you really want to go crazy. That’s it in a nutshell a far as I can tell. I’ve listened to people talk about losing 100+ pounds, overcoming depression, multiple sclerosis, menopause…you name it.

Recently, Abel had a guest on who talked about Carb Backloading: John Kiefer.

Kiefer basically says if you can go really low carb all day, workout in afternoon/early evening, you can potentially load up with some carbs at night…or even go crazy and do a carb pig out once every few weeks. That sounds so extreme to me but I’d love to have a TON of pizza twice a month! 🙂 I do tend to load up some carbs at night but nothing extreme (it’s like: dried mango or nutritious stuff)

Some people said when they was too low carb for too long they stopped burning fat, so they added back in some and starting losing weight again. So it’s an individual experimentation or dance to some extent.

I think you have to do a little testing for overall health markers (make sure you’re healthy enough to even try this stuff) and some prep work for a few weeks to get into a fat burning mode.

On these podcasts these guys talk a lot about “intermittent fasting” within a daily period, where they will skip breakfast and even lunch sometimes and eat a big dinner and their bodies just burn it all up. Sounds counterintuitive to what we are told all the time about eating a proper breakfast and keeping our insulin levels nice and steady. Basically these guys are doing what’s called “bio hacking”, and tapping into or exploiting biological responses humans have always had to burn fat when their bodies sense famine, etc.

You have to be someone who is pretty efficient/healthy in the first place, without any of the markers for pre-diabetes, etc. And I don’t think this kind of thing is good for people who have compulsive/binge eating tendencies.

What do you think about this approach? Have you tried it? What has been your experience?