My 40-Day Journey with Fasting: Discovering Health, Focus, and Self-Mastery

Over the last number of years, I've heard many people talk about if intermittent fasting. I was interested, but I was also thinking, well, why would I need to do that? You know, I'm not overweight. I don't feel like it would benefit me. But for the last over 40 days, I have been doing consistent intermittent fasting. And I want to tell you why, and I want to tell you what I've learned. And I think you'll find that it could be very beneficial for you as well. So why did I do it? Well, a couple of things. In the afternoon, sometimes I start to feel a slump, start to feel a little sluggish. My focus and motivation, they dip pretty bad. I wanted to address that. Secondly, I really wanted to influence and upregulate my immune system. And from all the reading I've been doing and from the amazing guests that I've had on over the years, I know that it is actually possible to influence our gene expression, which means if we're susceptible to certain cancers because they've been handed down to us genetically, there are certain things that can turn those expressions on or off, which increases or decreases your chances of getting those autoimmune diseases. So when I started to look into intermittent fasting, I discovered it could actually help and assist me with both of those. But I'm not a big believer in just, hey, do what everyone tells you to do. I'm such a believer in experience. We've got to experience things for ourselves. I don't know about you, but as a kid, I could have been told a hundred times, look, if you do that, you're going to get hurt. And I did it anyway. I remember four or five years of age, and my dad had this tiny little gas stove, little gas cooker that we could put in the car, take with us, pull over on the side of the coastal highway, cook up some sausages on a Saturday morning. Great. Such a practical thing to have. Well, one time we cooked up our food, and dad was then taking the dishes in to wash them at the end. And he said, look, son, whatever you do, don't touch that. The metal part will still be hot. Even though the flame's not there, it's still going to be hot. I looked over my shoulder. As soon as he was gone, I thought, I need to figure this out for myself. I need to see if it's still hot. And I put my whole palm right down on it. And of course, that was followed by a massive scream. And my hand was burned to a crisp. Will I do that again, no. But I had to learn from experience. I'm still a bit like that. I do listen to others better now than I did then, but I like to learn from actually doing the thing. Often when I'm learning something and someone's telling me about it, I'm kind of nodding, but I don't get it. I need to feel it, do it, try it, experience it with the teacher or the coach, and then I go, okay, now I get it. This makes sense. That's just how I learn. Look, with intermittent fasting, it was no different. So I didn't want to just jump into it. I knew that there were some potential risks around doing it if I didn't do it right. So first of all, I would encourage you to do this. I checked in with my doctor. Is it okay for me to do intermittent fasting? Yes, James, it's fine. Secondly, I found a leading expert again, I think that's so important. This guy's called Ronan Diego. He's a global leading expert on intermittent fasting. He has a very in depth, step by step, super easy course on how to introduce yourself to intermittent fasting. Slowly and then level it up. So, as I said, I've been doing intermittent fasting for over 40 days. Not a long time, but long enough to start to see what is the difference? Am I actually feeling anything? So some of the things around intermittent fasting that it's used for, one, weight loss, two, weight gain. That's right, do it through extra protein, through fasting to build muscle, increasing focus and motivation. Another big one, and the last one that you may or may not have heard of is autophagy, or other people might pronounce it autophagy. So that's where the good cells, healthy cells in your body locate any bad cells or cancerous cells. And essentially our little cannibals, they eat them, they destroy them. So when your body goes into a state of temporary starvation, it starts to go into a state of autophagy where the good cells destroy the bad cells. So in fact, it can level up your energy, level up your immune system. But again, this has to be done very carefully. You need a tick of approval from your gp if you've had eating disorders or anything like that, please go and see a professional to make sure that it's okay for you to do this. So both Caroline and I, my partner and I stepped into this fasting journey together. And it was actually a lot easier initially than we thought. We started off with a 12:12 ratio. So 12 hours of eating, window and a 12 hour fasting window. Super simple. Now when you're fasting, what does that mean? Well, it means no caloric intake. So you can't have your coffee with milk in it. But you could have black, black coffee. You could have herbal tea, that's fine for me. Rooibos. Very happy for Caroline, coffee, very happy. So in the morning we could still do that. It means you can't have a piece of fruit in the evening or that bag of chips once your window has closed. It has closed. Now what did I feel initially? Honestly, Hunger. This physical in my stomach hunger. Sometimes I felt it in my arms, other times I got cranky. Do you know what I started to realize? And you might be the same. For the last decades I have not known what it is to truly be hungry because every time I feel it, I go and eat. That's just what I do. Now that is not healthy in terms of allowing my body to rest and recover. Essentially my body has a very, very small window, maybe six to eight hours there to recover, which is why I might experience inflammation, which was why I might have more susceptibility to certain things. So I was fascinated by this window and what it meant. Now each day we would up the window so it went from 12 hours of fasting to 13 and then to 14 and then to 15. Now for the last, let's say three, four weeks we've been on this window of 16, eight. 16 hours of fasting and eight hours of eating window. Okay, super simple. So 10am right through to 6pm, that's our eating window. The thing about this window is you can shift it any which way you want. You could start at 6:00am and have your eight hours from there. You could start at 9 and have your eight hours from there. You could start at midday and go right up to 8pm but the 16, 8 window is giving our body 16 hours to recover. So I know at 6 o' clock I've stopped eating. I know after that I can have a cup of tea with no additives, no honey, no, none of that. And the first three or four, maybe even a week I would say rather than three or four days, a whole week, I felt like I was missing out. I wanted some of the omah rusks. I love these little South African kind of biscuits that I can't have those. Sometimes we would have some roasted peanuts in the evening. I can't have those. I felt like I was missing out. I started to feel hungry, but I just drank water during that instead. And all of a sudden I started to welcome that feeling of hunger. It wasn't weird. I wasn't dying, right? My body wasn't starving, but it was going into a different state. And this, when you look at the science behind it, it starts to regulate things like insulin, it regulates blood cells, and intermittent fasting is proven to be very healthy. One of the big things I hear a lot is it's not good for women. It's not good for women at all. But actually, when you look at the one study that has driven that sentiment, it was done on rats or mice. And in fact, when you look below it, it doesn't apply. And many, many GPs and scientists have debunked that. So that actually they've proved intermittent fasting is good for the majority of women. But again, your situation might be unique. Please take the time and look into it. But certainly Caroline and I have experienced increased energy. My afternoon slumps a lot less. Here's something that has been amazing. In the mornings, I am so focused and motivated, like so focused to do work. So I'm writing. So I write a lot. And I find I'm way more creative now that I'm fasting. Also, 10am is breaking the fast time. My granddad Jimmy used to talk about breakfast means break your fast. But I always had that at like 6am I didn't really even fast, I was just eating constantly. So now when it gets to 10am I'm starting to feel hunger pangs. And you know what? I'm ready to eat. But it's not this ravenous eating. It's deeply grateful. I feel more grateful for my food. I'm eating slower. I'm actually eating more. So I've been weighing myself because the last thing I want to do is lose weight. Some people do use this to lose weight, but for me, that's not why I want to do this specifically. My goal is different and my weight has actually stayed the same. It's been consistent through it. So during my eight hour eating window, I eat and you know, let's say at 10 o' clock I have a breakfast one, I shall have lunch, five, I'll have dinner. Anytime in between that where I feel a hunger, I go and eat. I don't hold back. Now the other thing to think about is your electrolytes, your sodium and your potassium. So when you're fasting, those can drop. It's really, really important that we maintain good sodium and potassium levels. So during my fasting window, our health practitioner has suggested in our clean water, as in filtered water, in our clean water, put in some rock salt, not table salt, rock salt that has all the goodies, has that full spectrum of minerals. So just a pinch. If you taste it, you've put too much in. It's just a pinch, you cannot test it. But at a cellular level it's topping up those key electrolytes. So those are some of the things that I've been learning and I'm very excited to continue the journey and do some longer fasts that'll be controlled and measured. Do some 24 or 48 hour. I want to experience more of that autophagy where I start to get my good cells cannibalizing, eating those bad cells, cancerous cells, dead cells, because that's what lifts our immunity. And I just wanted to share the journey with you and if it's something you're thinking about doing, hopefully some of what I've shared today has been helpful. But you've got to have a reason to do intermittent fasting. This is not about starvation. This is for me anyway. It's not about vanity. If you're doing things that just look good, you probably won't stick at it. There's got to be a deeper reason to why you want to do something like this. Otherwise when those moments come and you want to eat in the evenings, you will. And just a little caveat, when there's special occasions, maybe it's a date night, maybe it's rounding your friends for dinner, maybe it's a wedding you're attending. You can have a little cheat night where you eat later or drink later and then you get back straight onto the same course the next day. But it's not about being in a prison. It's about creating a lifestyle of giving your body time to rest, recover, digest. So look, I really hope this has served you in a positive way. If you have fasted or you've got any resources or you've got anybody that you think would be great for me to interview around this topic, please let the team know or put it in the comments below. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, drop us a message on LinkedIn or over on Instagram. It would be great to hear from you. But for people who want to really be self masters and master their energy, their focus, I firmly believe intermittent fasting is a tool in the many different tools that we can use in our toolkit. It's a tool that can support us on that journey. So folks, if you haven't already, please grab that free toolkit I have in the description below and I and that is the insights for personal development for you from some of my top guests from last year. You'll love it, it's free, it's for you, so please enjoy it. And also my keynote calendar for this first two or three months is Chaka. It's jam packed, but middle of the year and end of the year I've still got some opening. So if you know of anyone who's looking for a keynote speaker to focus on self mastery or leadership, particularly high performance leadership and mindset, please send them my way. But for now, please get out there and lead your life on purpose.

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