Who Benefits from Fasting?

Hi there, it's Dr. Jen Simmons from Real Health MD. Let's talk about the benefits of fasting because there's so much talk around fasting and there's probably a really good reason why, right. So I like to think about things from an evolutionary standpoint and certainly as a functional medicine doctor we are always thinking about how the body functions ideally. So if you think about us from an evolutionary standpoint, traditionally there were days when we did not have access to food, but our body still needed to function as well as it functioned in a feeding state. So we are essentially designed to fast. So there are many kinds of fasts. We can talk about intermittent fasting, we can talk about fasting mimicking. They're essentially the same thing, and time restricted eating. And the important thing is that all of these things are all of these plans allow your body, your digestive system to rest and repair. Remember, you can't fix a road with traffic on it. So we need our body, we need our digestive system, our gut, the center of our health. We need that to be able to rest and repair so that it can do the things that it needs to do and drive our health. Fasting leads to better sleep, more energy and weight loss and essentially effortless weight maintenance. It doesn't matter which method you use. You can use the eat normally for five days, fast for two. You can do time restricted eating where you fast over a period of time, ideally 16 hours and eat over 8 hours. But no matter what you do, try to adopt some fasting into your life because it will make you healthier, prevent chronic disease and keep you at that weight that you want to be at. So try some of these methods and remember that this is not a diet, it's a lifestyle. This is Dr. Jen Simmons from Real Health MD.