Eat, Fast, Feast by Jay W. Richards

Author:Jay W. Richards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

Week Five

18

The 4/3 Fasting-Mimicking Diet

Two weeks ago, we introduced time-restricted eating or intermittent fasting. If you’ve kept up, then last week you did three non-consecutive twenty-three-hour fasts with one big meal near the end of the day. Perhaps you’ve never gone twenty-three hours without eating anything in your entire life. But if you’re following our plan, I bet these fasts were a lot easier than you would have guessed when you started.

You’ve also had one mini-feast day per week—and may have enjoyed them more than giant feasts you’ve had in the past.

This week, we’ll follow the lead of Michael Mosley. Our routine is a hybrid of the 5/2 diet and the alternating-day fast, which we can call the 4/3 fasting-mimicking diet. This is the first week when you’ll need to keep an eye on your calories. On each of your three, non-consecutive fasting days, you should eat no more than four hundred to six hundred calories—depending on your size.

Like last week, pick three non-consecutive fast days, such as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On these days, you’ll fast from food for twenty-three hours of the day and then eat only a small amount of keto-friendly foods during one hour later in the day. This isn’t quite a full day fast. It’s a fasting-mimicking diet combined with the alternate-day, one-meal-a-day routine that we introduced last week. Both of these methods have been developed for scientific reasons. But as we’ll discover, they fit nicely with some common fasts in Christian history.

What should you eat on fast days? To keep protein low and the details simple, you can just eat two avocados with salt and lime juice (a little less if you’re on the small side). You can eat the slices or make guacamole with them. We add a lot of fresh garlic and some pico de gallo. Avocados are high in fat, and almost all their carbs are fiber, so they do a nice job of filling your stomach and feeding your healthy gut bacteria. If you go this route, you’ll be eating a vegan diet on fast days.

Another option: Take bone broth, which is mostly protein and gelatin, and boil it with lots of cabbage, celery, and spices. You might also try bone broth with collard greens, but be sure to boil the greens until they’re soft. Pressure cooking them (especially with an Instant Pot) is the fastest way to do this. You can add some chicken, Italian sausage, and homemade meatballs (without filler); just don’t overdo it. You need to keep calories and protein down. This option does a good job of filling up your otherwise empty stomach.

On days when I do a fasting-mimicking diet, I often combine the two options above. I eat guacamole made with one avocado; some cucumber slices; and a few bowls of the bone broth veggie soup. Not quite vegan, but pretty close.

It’s great news to learn that we can get many of the health benefits of a longer fast while still eating a little bit during the day.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.