Intermittent Fasting: The

Best Breakfast May Be Eating

Nothing At All
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

If you don’t eat cereal for breakfast, you will be overcome by

the greatest evil — masturbation.

Oh, and cereal will make you more efficient and productive,
too.

These were the beliefs that started the commercialization of

breakfast and breakfast cereals in the early 1900s. These
ideas were proposed by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, an early
Seventh-day Adventist and the inventor of corn flakes. With
the help of his credentials, his brother’s mass-marketing of
the corn flakes, and the magazine he edited called Good
Health, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was able to popularize his
idea that a “whole grain” breakfast is the most important meal
of the day.

Although most of us already know how bad cereal is for our

health, the idea that breakfast is an essential part of a
healthy lifestyle is still popular more than 100 years later.
This has been confirmed by that fact that — in 2011 — 9 out of
10 people in the United States reported eating a daily morning
meal. A plethora of scientific studies, on the other hand,
support the 10% of Americans who skip breakfast and provide
irrefutable evidence that breakfast is not the most important
meal of the day. We can start to uncover the reasons why with
a Nobel Prize.
How to Harness the Power of a Nobel
Prize Winning Discovery
Last year, the Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine was
awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi for discovering some of the
mechanisms of autophagy or — in layman’s terms — how the cell
devours itself. At first, this sounds like a horrendous
discovery, until you consider what is really happening.

When our cells undergo the process of autophagy, damaged

proteins are recycled and invading microorganisms and toxic
compounds are removed. This means that autophagy plays an
important role in stopping the aging process, reversing
disease, and preventing cancer, but it doesn’t happen all the
time. Fasting, protein restriction, and carbohydrate
restriction are the three main ways that can initiate
different autophagic processes — all of which are not the
same. This is part of the reason why skipping meals like
breakfast can be better for you than eating three or more
meals throughout the day.

Enter Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting is a fancy term that we use to describe
the process of skipping meals. The most popular intermittent
fasting strategy is fasting during a 16-hour window of time
and eating two meals during the remaining 8 hours. Let’s say,
for example, your last meal was at 6 pm last night, and you
ate nothing else after that. To start an intermittent fast,
simply restrict eating until 10 am the next morning.

There are many different variations of intermittent fasting.

Dr. Dom D’Agostino, the well-known ketogenic diet researcher,
suggests doing a longer intermittent fast for 3 days, 3 times
a year. This means not eating for 3 days, and eating normally
until the next fast.
Dr. D’Agostino also recommends daily intermittent fasts. He
says that it is ideal to have one or two meals after fasting
for most of the day to reap the benefits of intermittent
fasting every day.

Clean Your (Cell’s) Room

Part of the reason why intermittent fasting promotes health is
because you can use it to activate the processes of autophagy
that are brought about by carbohydrate restriction, protein
restriction, and fasting.

If this scientific jargon is throwing you off, think about

what you do when your room is dirty. You may clean it in your
spare time or have a set time on the weekend to clean it, but
what happens when the weekend comes and you are busy with
endless obligations? You spend so much of your time fixing the
car, helping your mother and doing everything else you have to
do that you have no time to clean your room. After a week
without cleaning, your room is just a bit dirtier than usual,
but after a month of being too busy to clean, your room is
filthy. Dirty, smelly clothes are all over the floor, dust is
everywhere, and you ran out of underwear (again).

This is what happens to our cells when we eat three or more

meals a day that completely fulfill our need for calories.
Even if you are eating the healthiest of foods, your cells
still can get backed up with inessential proteins and toxic
compounds. So what can you do?

To make sure that you clean your bedroom, you stop allowing
yourself to be consumed by other obligations – you free up
your time. To make sure that your cells can clean themselves,
you enter a fasted state.

Fasting will not only activate autophagy in your cells, it

will also increase your ketone levels — an alternative fuel
source for your body and brain. You can even boost ketone
levels and autophagy by adding in low-intensity exercise (like
walking and cycling).

Refeeding Syndrome — When Fasting

Goes Too Far
Health complications can arise when you fast for longer than 5
days. One of these complications is called refeeding syndrome,
which is caused by potentially fatal shifts in fluid and
electrolyte balance that can happen when we eat after a period
of undernourishment. Refeeding syndrome happens because the
concentration of fluids and minerals in our body relies
heavily on what we eat. For example, low carbohydrate diets,
like the ketogenic diet, increase the excretion of vital
minerals like sodium and potassium.

Fasts that are shorter than 5 days, however, aren’t likely to

cause issues — especially if you sip water with a pinch of
unrefined salt in it throughout each day and break your fast
with a low carbohydrate meal that is filled with mineral rich
foods. A meal with dark leafy greens, avocado, and salmon with
some unrefined salt, for example, would be an ideal way to
break a longer fast. But what about muscle? It’s only common
sense that consuming no protein and fewer calories will lead
to an unhealthy amount of muscle loss. That’s right — it is
only common sense.

Intermittent Fasting and Muscle

Two paradigm-shifting studies have recently been published on
the effects of intermittent fasting. One group of researchers
studied the effects that 16 hours of intermittent fasting had
on resistance-trained males. They found that muscle mass
stayed the same, fat mass decreased significantly, and the
males who fasted for 16 hours a day burned more fat for fuel
compared to the control group that only fasted for 12 hours.
This suggests that intermittent fasting can help us rely more
on our fat stores for fuel rather than carbohydrates from
food.

Another study showed that combining 20 hours of fasting with

resistance training resulted in an increase in muscle mass,
strength, and endurance, and all of this was achieved by
eating ~650 fewer calories per day than normal.

The benefits of intermittent fasting translate to untrained

overweight and obese individuals as well. One study published
in Obesity Reviews found that eating fewer calories is
effective for fat loss, but it does come with some muscle
loss. However, if the subjects fasted for 24 hours and ate as
much as they wanted on the next day for a period of 12 weeks,
they lost significantly less muscle mass.

Yes — you read that correctly — 24 hours of intermittent

fasting without any resistance training and these subjects
were able to preserve more muscle mass than the subjects who
ate fewer calories every day without fasting at all. This
finding contradicts our common sense, but when we dig deeper
into autophagy we can find the mechanism behind this result.

Autophagy and Muscle Loss

Prevention
Before a Nobel Prize was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi in 2016,
other researchers were discovering wonderful things about
autophagy. In 2009, an article entitled “Autophagy Is Required
to Maintain Muscle Mass” was published in Cell Metabolism that
described how deactivating an important autophagy gene
resulted in a profound loss of muscle mass and strength. This
happened because autophagy is an essential process that the
muscle cell uses to clean up damaged proteins and mitochondria
before they reach the point where they can’t function any
longer and die.
At first glance, this seems counter-intuitive because we tend
to assume that the nutrients we eat will repair the damage,
but this is not how things work in reality. Think about it
like this — if you want to refurbish a room, it is best to
clean the room and remove the old furniture before you put the
new furniture in. The same thought process applies to your
cells. We must use intermittent fasting to let autophagy clean
the cell before we put in new furniture, and if we don’t, our
cells can become cancerous.

Intermittent Fasting and Cancer

Although there is little to no literature on the effects of 2
or 3-day fasts on muscle loss in humans, many clinical trials
are currently being conducted on the effects that fasting has
on cancer patients.

In initial case studies, patients who were going through

chemotherapy treatment voluntarily fasted for anywhere between
48 to 140 hours. Each patient reported fewer side effects and
an improved quality of life regardless of how long they
fasted. This implies that fasting for 2 to 7 days can have a
protective effect on the cells in the body while they are
undergoing intense bouts of toxicity.

Other studies have shown that fasting was as effective as

chemotherapeutic agents in delaying the progression of
different tumors, and it increased the effectiveness of
chemotherapeutic drugs against melanoma, glioma, and breast
cancer cells. Although this research may not directly apply to
your life, it confirms that intermittent fasting can help
prevent cancer and help support your body in times of toxic
stress.

The Takeaway
It’s okay to skip breakfast. In fact, you may experience more
health benefits by doing so. Although you will feel hungry at
first, your body will adjust by activating autophagy and using
more fat and ketones for fuel.

Dr. Dom D’Agostino, a popular ketogenic diet researcher,

suggests doing a longer intermittent fast followed by shorter
daily intermittent fasts. His fasting protocol includes
fasting for up to 3 days, 3 times a year with a shorter 16 to
20 hour fast on the days before and after the longer 3-day
fasts.

However, you can still get the benefits of intermittent

fasting by fitting different methods into your lifestyle. For
example, Dr. Krista Varaday — a researcher who has conducted
many research studies on fasting — suggests using alternate
day fasting, which consists of eating less than 500 calories
on fasting days and eating normally on non-fasting days. Dr.
Mercola, on the other hand, proposes a less strict approach to
fasting — consisting of a 13 to 18 hour fast a couple days a
week or more.

Whether you are fasting for 16 hours or 3 days, it is

important to stay hydrated with distilled water that includes
a pinch of mineral-rich unrefined salts. Break your fasts with
vitamin and mineral rich foods like organic vegetables, leafy
greens, nuts, seeds, pastured animal products like eggs, and
wild caught seafood like salmon and sardines.

But Remember — All Intermittent

Fasts Are Not The Same
Before you start fasting, it is important to know that each
method will have different effects on different people. In
general, longer fasts — like a 3-day fast — tend to increase
autophagy and ketone levels much more than a shorter fast.
Shorter fasts — like a 16-hour daily fast — have a smaller
impact on ketone levels and autophagy, but they tend to do a
great job at decreasing your daily caloric intake and
increasing the likelihood that your body will burn fat for
fuel.

The shorter fast is simple and easy enough to implement, but

the 3-day fast seems daunting and difficult (at first). This
is why I provided you with an example of one of my favorite 3-
day fasting protocols that make it simple and easy.

Practical Protocol: Tim Ferris’s 3

Day Fast
If you want a simple guide to boost your ketone levels and
activate autophagy, try this 3-day “fasting” protocol that Tim
Ferris adapted from Dr. D’Agostino and wrote about it his book
Tools of Titans:

Thursday Evening

Eat a normal dinner and make that the last meal of the
day. Go to bed as normal.

Friday Morning

Get out the door and walk within 30 minutes of waking.

Bring at least 1 liter or more of water with some added
unrefined salt in it, and sip as you walk to avoid
cramping.
Walk for 3 to 4 hours, sipping water as needed.
Arrange phone calls for your walk to make the time
productive.
The idea behind the walk is that you use up your
glycogen stores, forcing your body to move more quickly
into deep ketosis (when your body is burning ketones for
fuel). The quicker you get into ketosis, the less time
you spend feeling tired and starved.

Friday Day (post walk)

 Consume MCT oil 2-3 times throughout the day.
Tim suggests C8 (Caprylic Acid) Quest Nutrition MCT
Powder. This provides you with energy until you reach
ketosis.

Saturday Morning

Upon waking, Tim suggests testing your blood ketones

with a ketone blood testing kit like the Precision Xtra.
Your ketones should be at 0.7mmol or greater.
If you’re at 0.7mmol, proceed with your fast.
If you’re under 0.7mmol, consider going for another
extended walk, and then re-test.

Saturday & Sunday Day

Add further MCT oil or coconut oil if you need a boost,

but do your best to only have water throughout the day.
Incorporate some salts in your water throughout the day.
This can either be in the form of table salts, or via a
specially formulated solution such as
SaltStick electrolyte replacement pills.

Sunday Evening

Tim suggests breaking the fast with whatever meal you

choose.

This process can be used as a way to get you into ketosis more
quickly so that fasting is much easier. Each time you do an
intermittent fast, your body will get better and better at
using fat and ketones for fuel, which will lead to less
hunger, more fat loss, and less muscle loss. If you can’t go
without fat for the full 3-day fast, it’s okay, you will
still reap many of the benefits of fasting by not having any
carbohydrates or protein.

Recommended Reading:

Detox Cheap and Easy Without Fasting – Recipes Included

 How to Detoxify and Heal the Lymphatic System
Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and
Balancing Our Hormones
Candida, Gut Flora, Allergies, and Disease
How to Cure Lyme Disease and Virtually Any Other
Bacterial Infection, Naturally

Sources:

Corn Flakes Were Part of an Anti-Masturbation Crusade –

Mental Floss
Tim Ferriss – 3 Day Fast Protocol Details – Get into
Ketosis Quicker and Easier — Eat. Move. Hack.
How long can a person survive without food? — Scientific
American
Top 10 Foods Highest in Phosphorus — Healthaliciousness
Neuroprotective and disease-modifying effects of the
ketogenic diet — NCBI
Refeeding syndrome: what it is, and how to prevent and
treat it — NCBI
Discoveries of Mechanisms for Autophagy — Nobel Prize
Effects of eight weeks of time-restricted feeding (16/8)
on basal metabolism, maximal strength, body composition,
inflammation, and cardiovascular risk factors in
resistance-trained males — BioMed Central
Time-restricted feeding in young men performing
resistance training: A randomized controlled trial. —
NCBI
Intermittent versus daily calorie restriction: which
diet regimen is more effective for weight loss? — NCBI
Autophagy Is Required to Maintain Muscle Mass — Cell
Fasting Cycles Retard Growth of Tumors and Sensitize a
Range of Cancer Cell Types to Chemotherapy — NCBI
Fasting and cancer treatment in humans: A case series
report — NCBI
What if you got cancer today? Here’s how Tim Ferriss’
podcast guest, Dom D’Agostino, responded — Eat. Move.
Hack.
Physical exercise increases autophagic signaling through
ULK1 in human skeletal muscle — American Physiological
Society
Acute nutritional ketosis: implications for exercise
performance and metabolism — BioMed Central
How lobbyists made breakfast ‘the most important meal of
the day’ — The Guardian
Does anybody eat cereal for breakfast anymore? — CNN
Money
Peak Fasting — How Long Should You Intermittently Fast?
— Mercola
31 Million U.S. Consumers Skip Breakfast Each Day,
Reports NPD — NPD