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This is a guest post from WellnessFX practitioner, Ben Greenfield. Greenfield is an ex-bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, Spartan racer, coach, speaker and author of the New York Times Bestseller “Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health and Life.” Ben blogs and podcasts at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, and resides in Spokane, WA with his wife and twin boys. To learn more about Ben’s practice, education, and specialties, skip to the bottom!
While they are unlikely to be familiar with popular fasting acronyms such as CR, IF, DTRF, ADF or FMD, centenarians in Blue Zones like Nicoya, Sardinia and Okinawa tend to eat relatively small portions of whole foods, consuming a low to moderate calorie diet by being mindful of their hunger and avoiding calorie-dense, fat- and sugar-laden processed and packaged foods.
Okinawans practice the traditional cultural rule of hara hachi bu, which means eating only until they are about 80% full. Typically, most meals are consumed within an 8- to 12-hour feeding window throughout the day, referred to by researchers as a “compressed feeding window.” This is the same window observed in many of the new, Westernized forms of fasting- or caloric-restriction-based diets, most of which involve at least 12 to 16 hours of not consuming calories during a given 24-hour period.
So why do all these different forms of fasting seem to work so well? You’re about to discover why, along with a quick primer on fasting and the two methods of fasting that I’ve personally found to be most effective for me and my clients. Continue reading
The posts on this blog are for information only, and are not intended to substitute for a doctor-patient or other healthcare professional-patient relationship nor do they constitute medical or healthcare advice of any kind. Any information in these posts should not be acted upon without consideration of primary source material and professional input from one's own healthcare professionals.
