What I Learned From My First 24hr Fast
I’ve been implementing intermittent fasting over the last few weeks and on Wednesday I’ll be attempting my first 24 hour fast. I plan on documenting everything that I experience and sharing it with you here. My plan is to show you what I expect to learn, how I feel it’s going during, and then recap how it all went down. By the end you can have a solid understanding of what I went through and decide if this is a challenge you want to take on yourself. I’ve been flirting with the idea of this for a few weeks now and here's what I'm hoping to get out of this experience.
1. Discipline
2. Delayed gratification
3. An internal body reset
4. A better relationship with food
1. Discipline
A lot of people say they want to do things, but the ability to follow through on those things is a skill. I believe that learning to fast can be a great way to build that discipline muscle. Forcing myself to avoid food for 24 hours will take discipline to go against my normal habits.
Another thing that will happen is as time passes my brain is going to tell me that I need food. Learning to be strong in situations where my brain is telling me one, but I want another is a powerful weapon. My body won’t need food in that 24 hour period, but I’ll be fighting the urge and comfort of food. The habit of grabbing meals and snacks.
Training myself to ignore all of the impulses of my brain is a great way to develop discipline. This is a powerful tool in preparing me to take on tasks in the future that I don’t want to do, but need to in order to be successful. That’s the challenge of pursuing greatness; the tasks we have to do become mundane and tedious. Discipline is required to be successful in those situations.
2. Delayed gratification
Learning to wait for something I want is a powerful tool. We live in a world that wants everything as fast as possible. We all want things to happen for us now. Learning how to delay gratification in anything we do is a great skill to develop. Especially with how much I love food.
Knowing that I can't cheat the hours away and I must wait to enjoy the meal at the end of the day is powerful. There’s no shortcut to 24 hours. I’m going to have to ignore my impulses to grab food and wait until the time passes. Learning how to be patient and delay what we want in the moment is a skill that can serve me into the future.
3. An internal body reset
As I've gotten closer to 40 I've noticed changes in my body. A fast is a great way to improve many internal functions:
boosts metabolism
fights inflammation
regulates hormones
cardiovascular health
boosts immune system
improves brain function
I've been doing intermittent fasting for a few weeks now and have felt some great changes starting. I've noticed better focus, reduced gut inflammation, more consistent digestive process. I feel more consistent energy. I haven’t been fasting long enough to notice any weight changes, but my body composition appears to be better. I believe this is just the next step in my journey.
P.S. I recommend doing a few shorter fasts before jumping into a 24 hour one.
4. Better relationship with food
I'm a bored eater. I find myself grabbing food and munching even when I'm not hungry during times when my mind isn't stimulated. This is especially true when I’m watching sports or after dinner in the evening before bed. My mind is in a relaxed state, and before I know it, I find myself roaming the kitchen for a snack.
I want to train my body to figure out other ways to handle those situations. Forcing myself into an extended fast allows me to face those moments without the option of snacking. Food should be our fuel source, not our crutch to keep us occupied. I want to get back to a healthier relationship with how I use food for fuel, not to fill downtime.
My Experience with the fast:
The beginning of a fast is always pretty easy. I usually experience a small sensation of being hungry an hour after my normal breakfast time as my mind tries to regulate what’s happening. After that short period, where I usually drink a little water, I’m good.
Today I was prepared for my normal lunch break to be a challenge for me. I knew I’d be coming home and with my usual routine being grabbing food and relaxing before the back half of the day. However, knowing before I got home that I wasn’t going to be eating made that time not as challenging as I thought.
As I returned to work I was at 18 hours and here’s where I stood:
-Made it through my normal lunch time without too much difficulty.
-I feel empty, but not hungry yet.
-I’ve drank 100 ounces of water.
-Energy and mental focus feel good.
-Tonight’s dinner cooking in the crockpot was a cruel move by my wife.
-Knowing I’m not eating until 8:30 tonight made ignoring snacks easier.
-I’m back to work now and have a steady next 4.5 hours of work.
-I expect the last 90 minutes of my fast to test me.
I felt good at work for the next two hours, but at the 20 hour mark things started to shift. I’m not sure if it was the coffee, the dead period between clients, or actually getting depleted, but my head was getting a little fuzzy and my stomach had its first real rumblings of the day. I still have 4 hours left until I eat, but at this point I know that I just have to survive these next thirty minutes before my training will distract me for the last two hours of work. Then I’ll have 90 minutes at home before I can eat, which I still expect to be extremely challenging.
The final hour was definitely the most challenging of the 24 hours. It was in that window that I started to think about eating more and my mind began to play tricks on me. It was during this hour that my mind kept telling myself that it’s ok if I eat a little early. Nobody will know. You’ve gone 23 hours, that’s enough. Until that last hour I knew I wasn’t in a place I could eat or far enough away from the end it was easy to be strong.
Ultimately, 24 hours was not as hard as I anticipated. My mind proved stronger than I initially thought it was. There were only a few moments of discomfort out of the entire 24 hours, but those moments were easily squashed with a little water and finding something to keep my mind busy. I’m looking forward to taking this challenge to the next level in the future. I’m already planning an extended fast after my 40th birthday.
What I learned:
1. The discipline required to resist food is the same that is required to achieve greatness.
No matter how you choose to develop discipline, it's critical for achieving greatness. Without discipline we lose our ability to stick with things when it gets hard. And pursuing greatness is ultimately very hard. Find ways to develop your discipline muscle and give yourself an advantage and ability to stick things through.
This was just another challenge to test my discipline. Surprisingly, it wasn't as tough as I thought it would be. I only suffered at a few moments that actually tested my discipline. Sure, it takes discipline to go 24 hours without food, but I wasn’t super tempted to stray from my task.
I'm excited to continue to test my discipline by extending my fasting time in the future. I want to see what happens when I’m really tested by hunger. Tested by my mind and the fatigue that hits from lack of food. Will I still think it’s easy? I don’t think so, but that’s the point of testing ourselves. If all our tests were easy, is it really a test?
2. Our minds are our greatest weapon.
Training our minds to work for us is a superpower. We don't appreciate just how powerful our mind is when it comes to deciding how we live our life. Learning how to delay what we want now for what we want most is a way of becoming unstoppable. Delaying gratification is an extremely difficult challenge we face today.
We often give in to temptation because our mind isn't strong enough to fight its initial urges. We choose the path of least resistance. We choose easy over hard. I want to train my mind like I train my body. Using my mind to tell me that I don't need food allowed me to withstand the few hunger urges I had throughout the day. And for that I got stronger.
Turning your mind into your ally will give you the ability to resist many things:
food
bad habits
bad decisions
becoming a sheep
emotional responses
Train your mind to work for you, not control you.
3. We must get uncomfortable to grow.
As we get older we tend to stay in our safety bubble more and more. We take less risks both physically and mentally. But without this discomfort we stop ourselves from reaching our full potential. This is why our growth begins to slow as we get older.
Early on we take risks
We get uncomfortable.
We try difficult things.
We must continue to challenge our minds and our bodies. We need to maintain our youthful willingness to get uncomfortable. Keep striving for more. Never let yourself get comfortable with where you are. Keep searching for new ways to challenge your growth. We can always improve, it’s up to us to take the leap into the uncomfortable to make it happen.
