Photo by Lachlan Gowen on Unsplash

In the second month of 2018, I spent a month practicing intermittent fasting (IF) during weekdays. I fasted through breakfast. I only drank water and coffee (black) until about 12 pm for lunch.

There’s a lot of research and commentary on IF. Some say it has benefits to mind, body, and spirit. For example, apparently, the most effective cell reproduction takes place after 12 to 16 hours without food. Others are skeptical. I decided to try it for one month.

At first, it was hard to say “no” to my aching stomach. But with disciplined practice, I separated myself from my hunger. I still felt the aches of hunger. But I simply ignored it as best I could. I focused on higher objectives: fasting till 12 pm. Athletes feel pain as we do when training, but they can look past it.

As a result, I lost 6 pounds in a month. I gained energy while eating fewer calories. I ate fewer calories in two large meals than if I had eaten breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My mood, which usually wavered throughout the day, stayed consistently calm while I was fasting.

The process of living through IF further reinforced in me that I could tweak my habits to improve my well-being.

I learned many things in that month. I internalized one.

1. Place trust in an external structure to guide you forward into the unknown to become better.

If we listened to our bodies, we would eat whenever we are hungry. Listening to this hunger was good when we were pre-agricultural animals who relied on bodily drives to motivate us to hunt, eat, and survive.

Now that many humans have an abundance of food, those of us who do must surpass our hunger habits to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Fasting as a structure of being is outside of ourselves because it goes against our bodily hunger. Similarly, saying “no” to dessert as a structure of being also goes beyond ourselves.

We can choose to trust in intermittent fasting. We should trust in such an external structure of being because we believe that we will benefit more by adhering to it rather than to the structure of being that is driven by our own desires. Specifically, if we fast, then we believe we can achieve something: weight loss, energy increase, mood stabilization. Anecdotally, I achieved these things. Maybe not everyone can; maybe I wouldn’t again. But believing in this external structure of intermittent fasting was good to me and seems good for many others.