Fasting

An interesting topic with a lousy execution. There were too many head cases and weirdos in this for me to take it seriously, from pukey-anorexic girl, to muscle-OCD-put a shirt on-boy, to the Jesus freaks. Just the facts, ma'am.

The woman with the headaches had a good story.

I was expecting to see Dr. Nick Riviera from The Simpsons give his take on the subject. They tried to cover too much territory in this to be clear and accurate.

First, I was hoping to find something that spoke more clearly about the science of fasting. Instead you get a few testimonials from doctors who had some of their patients turn their health around, and a lot of time is spent on that. Autophagy isn't even mentioned until nearly the end. I also was totally thrown by the section about the Donner Party, which seems completely out of place. I skipped half of it as it was repulsing me and not why I was watching a documentary about fasting. There are not seven methods discussed, it is more anecdotes about different people who used fasting in different ways. The information feels incomplete, and scattered. This documentary is awful.

While I'm quite familiar with the works of Drs. Longo and Panda -- very legit and well-respected scientists -- the journalism involved in this documentary was far from balanced.

The information was presented in a way to give the viewer dual sides of the story, without taking sides. I love the way the true stories of real people were juxtaposed against the scientific pros and cons of fasting. The filmmakers chose to present this information in a different way -- much better than a "fly on the wall" perspective. I prefer this over just running around with a camera filming folks. Viewers have a chance to hear actual issues, remedies, results and problems.

I didn't find the information confusing at all. In fact, I stopped halfway through and came back 1 hour later and picked right up where I left off. Also, the film is not a plug or advertisement for any fasting product or service. They quiet often remark how fasting is the the most free form of weightloss you can ever attempt.

After watching this documentary i immediately started my own fast. I lost 8 pounds (3.63 kilos) my first week.

Lots of people running on beaches like a sanitary towel commercial, meandering, chatting about random medical health numbers, personal ancedotes and 2nd hand anecdotes, drone shots, random yoga 'how this worked for me - miracle' 'my hob-o-diba-doblin is down from 300 to 25'. (I made that last bit up).

This film really does little to push forward the science of fasting - all that is being said is a similar thing some of the recent vegan documentaries are saying. Like the makers just watched 'What the Health' and decided to put out a fasting version.

There is a lot to fasting, as there is to plant based diets. Essentially you are eating less and eating better quality foods- cutting out the terrible junk processed food. What is the difference in effect to a plant based diet? What different types of fasting are there? Fast Mimicking? Water fasting? Fruit fasting? Intermittent fasting? How long for? Hours? Days? Weeks? What are the dangers of each one? Do you need medical supervision? Which could be done safely on your own? And for whom? That could have been covered in much more detail, they have an interview Dr Valter Longo, an expert who could shed real insight but he needed more screen time. Like the makers left out the hard bits that might confuse the intellectually weak in the audience or not get sued - fasting is great, but don't do it as it couldbe dangerous for some people.

I think this documentary could be re-edited, and actually be much better. An opportunity missed.