10 Life-Changing Benefits of Fasting You Need to Know

Fasting is the most powerful way to take control of your health.

When I was in my 30's with 2 kids, my body was falling apart. I started grasping for ways to improve my health. I did all the things: cutting out processed foods, going to a naturopath and taking supplements, eating nutrient dense foods, eating probiotic foods, cutting out gluten...

It worked, but sloooowly. It took years for my gut to heal and for my body to feel healthy and strong. And I spent thousands of dollars on natural healers and supplements to get there.

I wish I had known then what I know now, that fasting kicks your body's self healing into high gear. I could have saved myself so much time and money if I had started fasting years sooner.

If you think that you can't fast, think again. After this 10 Benefits list, I am going to share ways to fast that almost anyone can achieve. You can do this!

Here are 10 benefits you will see if you implement fasting into your routine:

1. Lose Weight

The magic of fasting is that it's not about reducing calories--it's about reducing blood sugar. Extra blood sugar is what turns into fat. When you practice even the most basic level of fasting, your blood sugar decreases at night and this means that you lose weight.

Many people worry that they will lose muscle mass if they fast. I assure you that your body prioritizes burning fat over muscle. As long as you have fat to burn, you will burn fat and not muscle. Fasting actually helps preserve lean muscle mass.

2. Heal Your Gut

Do you think it would be a good idea to spend all waking hours (and maybe some sleeping hours) working out at a gym? Of course not! Your muscles need a chance to rest and rebuild. You would quickly wear yourself out doing that.

The same thing is true of your gut, and yet, most people nibble during all waking hours and sometimes even during the night.

Your gut works super hard digesting food. Not only does your gut work hard every time you eat, but it sends nutrients out to the rest of your cells and they work hard to metabolize those nutrients every time you eat. You may have heard that the best way to keep your metabolism up is to eat throughout the day--but that is actually very bad for you. When your gut and every cell in your body is constantly bombarded by food, it falls behind on other critical house keeping tasks. Limiting how often you eat gives your body time to rest, repair, and work on other things that it needs to do to stay healthy.

Fasting starves microbes that thrive on sugary, processed food, while the good microbes hang on. Fasting is a great way to reboot your microbiome.

3. Lower Cholesterol Levels

Because fasting causes your body to burn fat, LDL cholesterol (the bad stuff) might temporarily mobilize and increase in the blood stream, but over a longer period of a fasting lifestyle, LDL will decrease and HDL (the good type) will increase. Fasting is one of the best ways to lose weight, and this directly contributes to healthy cholesterol levels.

4. Decrease Inflammation

Inflammation is your body's response to injury and it can be beneficial in cases of acute illness or trauma. However, the modern western lifestyle causes chronic inflammation, and that is very detrimental.

Chronic inflammation causes autoimmune diseases, heart disease, damaged organs, cognitive decline, and chronic illness.

Fasting turns off inflammation in specific immune cells. Fasting boosts your body's natural anti-inflammatory compounds and modulates inflammatory pathways. Fasting produces ketones which are more than fuel: they regulate genes, modify proteins, reduce oxidative stress and increase cell growth. Fasting boosts levels of arachidonic acid which inhibits the body's inflammatory alarm system.

5. Heal Old Injuries (Autophagy)

Did you know that there are zombie cells in your body? You have old, damaged cells that are no longer functioning, but they take up space and nutrients and slow you down.

Fasting causes something called autophagy (ah-tah-fa-gee), which means that your body breaks down disfunctional cells and uses the materials to build new, healthy cells.

I have had several acute injuries heal from fasting, injuries that had lasted for years before I began to fast.

6. Boosts Human Growth Hormone and Stem Cell Production

Our bodies naturally produce less HGH and stem cells as we age, but fasting gives you a boost of these important self healing mechanisms. Fasting slows down the aging process and helps you to age gracefully. I feel younger now than when I began fasting several years ago.

7. Brain Fog

Maybe you know that you have brain fog--it's hard to come up with the right word, or you have trouble remembering things, or you just aren't as sharp as you used to be.

I never even realized that I had brain fog, until I fasted and experienced a clarity that I had never known before.

Whether you know that you have brain fog or not, fasting sharpens your brain and helps you think more clearly. Part of the reason it does this is because your gut, also known as the second brain, is greatly benefitted by fasting. Also, fasting cleans toxins out of the brain, it supports new neuron growth, switches the brain's fuel source to health promoting ketones, and makes neurons resilient to stress and inflammation.

Eating in a window (my form of daily fasting) helps eliminate the afternoon brain fog many people experience. Longer fasts contribute to even greater cognitive clarity.

Living a fasting lifestyle reduces the risk of degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and dementia.

8. Fights Chronic Disease and Cancer

Here's a useful analogy: when I eat all the time, I'm constantly taking time to prepare food, eat food, and clean up from eating. However, when I fast, all the time and energy that normally gets spent preparing, eating, and cleaning up food is free and I can spend it getting to other items of house work I've been meaning to do. I can finally dust that shelf or clean the bathroom.

The same thing happens inside of your body when you fast. There's a lot of maintenance work your body needs to do, but doesn't have time for if you are constantly eating. When you fast, your organs and cells are able to clean up and repair. This helps you avoid diseases that are common in societies of over-abundance.

Cancer cells thrive on sugar. When you fast, you are starving the cancer calls of glucose while your body is cruising happily along on ketones. Fasting 5 consecutive days per month for several months in a row has been effective in curing people of cancer.

9. Decrease Insulin Resistance

Every time you eat, your body produces insulin to transport sugar into your cells, When you eat frequently, your cells become resistant to insulin and they need more and more to get the job done. Allowing your blood sugar to come down between meals, during the night, and for several days if you do a long fast, all help restore your body's insulin sensitivity. This helps you avoid type 2 diabetes.

10. Like More Exercise but with Less Exercise

I used to exercise all the time. I enjoy exercise, but it was my only way of staying thin and it caused me inflammation and injuries.

You should still exercise even if you fast, but fasting is more effective at maintaining a healthy weight than exercise. Fasting does not cause inflammation, it heals it. Fasting maintains lean muscle mass with less exercise. Fasting gives you that clean, light weight feeling that you hope to get from hours and hours of exercise, but is often so hard to achieve.

Fasting is a perfect compliment to exercise to stay healthy and fit.

My three types of fasting are:

Eating in a window (aka intermittent fasting). If you are intimidated by the idea of fasting, you can totally do this one! You eat every day, just in a restricted time span. Out of the three types of fasting, this is the one I recommend the most.

Day long fasts. Great to practice once a week. Keeps the weight off, makes you feel like a rock star.

Multi day fasts. Super effective for deep healing. Practice once or twice a year.

Women need to fast according to their cycles to keep hormones balanced.

Who shouldn't fast:

Please note that fasting is not recommended for people who are pregnant, breast feeding, are underweight, or have a history of eating disorders. (Actually, fasting might be a very good way to reboot your relationship with food if you have a history of eating disorders, but please do so cautiously and with the help of a doctor.)

What health problems have you been dealing with that you hope could be healed by fasting?