In this segment, Lara Logan shares her personal experience with intermittent fasting as a busy mother of three, describing how her lifestyle unintentionally led to regular fasting periods. She outlines the short‑term benefits she felt—weight loss and increased energy—when she limited eating to a 16‑hour window and later to a single dinner. However, she also details the negative side effects that emerged after extended daily fasts, including disrupted sleep, irregular menstrual cycles, and thinning hair. Drawing on research that highlights women’s greater biological sensitivity to prolonged calorie restriction, Logan emphasizes that women should avoid fasting the same length every day. Instead, she advocates a flexible approach: varying fasting windows, occasionally eating breakfast or lunch, and allowing more liberal eating on weekends. The overarching message is that sustainable fasting for women hinges on adaptability rather than rigid, daily deprivation, making the practice accessible to those who aren’t dedicated biohackers.
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I think just being a working mom with three kids, living in the country and, you know, and having to do most things for myself, I think I've been accidentally intermittent fasting because the number of times when, you know, I will get to the end of the day and I haven't had a chance to eat anything, haven't had breakfast or lunch, you know, is often. So at least now I can tell myself that there's some health benefit to that.
There are. As long as you're not drinking a diet soda or you're not picking up some sort of a juice, just no sugar, no protein, as long as you're, you're not drinking those things, you're going to be probably better off if you do it some of the time. But if, like some moms, you got to the point where I'm just gonna do that every day. There's a chapter specifically for women looking at studies of women versus men for fasting. And it's possible to over fast for women and men because you fall into this trap. Well, I actually lost weight and I felt really good when I did intermitt intermittent fasting. And I did it for 16 hours a day. So I'm going to go to 24 hours a day. I'm only going to have dinner. And since it works, I'm just always going to do that. And that's going to be my new habit. And then six weeks later, well, I don't feel hungry during the day, but my sleep quality is gone and my cycle is not regular anymore. And then you do it another two, four weeks. My hair is getting thin. What's going on? But I know that I feel so good when I only have dinner. And the answer for that is sometimes have breakfast. So you don't have to do it the same way every day. In fact, I encourage everyone to not fast the same length every single day because that also tells the body. Oh, you're in a place where there actually isn't enough food because you're only finding it once a day. So sometimes I have lunch, sometimes I have dinner, sometimes I have only lunch, sometimes I go all day. And on weekends, Saturday morning I'm probably going to have the bacon from our own farm and, and I'll have it for breakfast. I might even have some carbs with breakfast and it's just fine. I'm not going to have ice cream and pie for breakfast, but I am going to say, hey buddy, you can handle whatever. And so it's okay. Sometimes there's a lot of food. Sometimes there's not. I need to be resilient, but I don't need to be afraid and start conserving resources as if there's actually a famine. Women are more susceptible to biological stress from starvation than men are. That's why they hit the wall first. But with the fasting hacks and with this idea that it's okay to mix it up, and sometimes it's okay, have as much food as you want at any time you want today, just don't do it every day. That's what creates the most flexible humans. And I just wanted to write it in a readable way in the book so that we can reach people who probably aren't biohackers with this book. Sam.
