Fasting was a common way of life for health and spiritual reasons that seems foreign to many people. In this quick post called “Fasting and Keto, should you fast,” I will show you some simple truths that I have discovered.
When we Eat Is Just as Important as what and how much we eat.
When I was growing up, you did not just go into the kitchen and grab something to eat or snack whenever you wanted to. As a kid, we ate at specific times in my home, and we never missed a meal because that was not optional. After eating, we stayed out of the kitchen or faced the wrath of mama.
Eating fewer times adding more time between the last meal and the first meal of the next day is how Americans ate for many years.
People didn`t snack all day and night like we do today. They had no refrigerators or microwave ovens, and as hard as it is to believe, no vending machines.
Many people ate once per day. The choices were what was killed or raised in your garden, which every home had. There were no grocery stores like today, and people had to learn to make what they needed and preserve it or starve to death in the winter. In just the last hundred plus years, the way people eat has changed as dramatically as everything else. As a result, we have convenience, supply, variety, and the ability to store and preserve food like never before in history.
Our eating habits also created significant problems with people becoming overweight, not getting nutrition due to all additives and preservatives. The biggest problem is an epidemic of diabetes.
People did not always have big refrigerators, freezers, and cupboards stocked full of food year-round. As a result, the last meal at 6 pm until the following day at 7 am was a 13 hour period where most people did not eat.
Even if it was from 7 pm till 6 am, that’s still an eleven-hour break from food. Prolonged periods without food give your digestive system time to rest, and your body can take stored fat and use it for energy. There were famines and food shortages and families who struggled to put food on the table throughout history. They may have only eaten one meal, and it was the fattiest meat and food they could find. They did not consume a bunch of wheat and sugar.
Families had to conserve and be careful about how they consumed food. Today, most people eat as much as they want.
What is the Keto Diet?
What About fasting?
The truth is you fast every night when you sleep.
Hence, we get the word breakfast, which means “break your fast.”
If you slowly increase the time between your last meal at the end of today and the first meal tomorrow, you can reduce your weight and blood sugar levels.
And you can accomplish this with no money and little effort as opposed to getting more pills.
Store it or Use it
Allow your body to have a chance to use the fat stored in its stores.
We need to stop cramming food in our pie hole, around the clock, with snacks.
When the body is not trying to keep up with all of the carbs and sugar we give it, it must now store in various places. Then, the results can come quickly.
If we lengthen the time, we fast each night. Then, our bodies will remember that they can use fat as fuel, take the fat stored in our liver and kidneys, and burn it up as energy.
As a result, we will be healthier and lose weight.
How Much Can I Eat On The Keto Diet?
Eating whatever and whenever we want out of habit is normal for many.
An even bigger problem is the consumption of large amounts of sugar and carbohydrates.
A coke ( northern interpretation, soda) or something with many carbs and sugar, such as candy bars or junk cereal right before bed, are the kinds of habits many people develop.
(not that I have any personal experience with such irresponsible behavior. Not in the last few weeks anyway.)
If you eat right centralize and contain the times you eat, you should be able to eat as much as you like.
Fasting and Keto are two words I previously would have preferred to avoid altogether.
When lousy health problems result from carbs and sugar, our views quickly change.
The Keto diet is not about starving yourself to death, and if you make the changes in what and when you eat, you should be able to eat just as much and still lose weight if that is a problem for you.
What does not work is the average American diet that is currently destroying people’s lives we all know and care about, or maybe even you.
Our bodies cannot handle taking in copious amounts of sugar and carbs around the clock and work the way they should.
Type 1 And Type 2 Are Very Different
If we keep consuming the same amount of carbs and sugar, eventually, the body stops producing insulin, and we have to receive it from the doctor or die.
But if you have type 2, you should never be on insulin because, with type 2, your body still produces it in varying amounts.
They should have different names because it confuses us to call them both diabetes.
Just as we call a sprain one thing and a break, treat one with a cast and the other with ice and elevation; type 1 and type diabetes are not the same things.
Treatment Without Keto Diet
Many doctors keep their patients on a steady diet of pills that treat the symptoms and are not treating the cause.
Just as Tylenol does not cure the flu but may help with the symptoms by reducing the fever, pills for type 2 diabetes may reduce the blood sugar levels, but they do not fix the problem.
Pills do not eliminate the damage done through your eating habits, nor do they remove the risk of experiencing much worse issues over time if we don`t change them.
However, when the pills stop having the desired effects and no longer control blood sugar levels, many doctors place their type 2 diabetic patients on insulin and treat them as having type 1.
If your body is already producing insulin, why would you need to inject more insulin? That makes things worse.
The body will shut down its production over time, and now you must stay on insulin for the rest of your life.
While drugs and medications may be necessary initially, they are not the long-term solution or the cure.
Who Do You Trust?
For far too long, we have trusted our health to the giant pharmaceutical companies whose sole purpose is to sell more drugs.
They solicit the doctors and produce deceptive and incomplete testing results, then fill the local pharmacy and store with their products, so they must be good for us, right?
Wrong! And they have lawyers and government officials all making sure it’s legal to mislead the public, all for monetary gain.
On our end, we believe that when we visit the doctor’s office, we should always leave with a stack of prescriptions and head straight to the pharmacy.
I have been in the doctor’s offices where the physician walked in with their script pad and started writing before even looking at me.
They were going from room to room and handing out scripts like they were magic pills.
In their defense, it is what so many in society have demanded from the doctors.
Keto Diet, Fasting and Taking Personal Responsibility
We have to take more responsibility for our health and stop expecting that a three-minute exam with a physician is the solution to all our medical issues.
In fairness to doctors, unless they have magical powers of perception, a few minutes is not enough time to even ask all the questions needed to determine what condition you may have, not to mention the cause.
A Keto diet is suitable for those with sugar issues and what the body wants and needs to stay healthy, keep us from becoming obese, and allow us to live our time on this earth in a healthy, active way.
If you can increase the time that you fast each night, fasting can help you. If you can then add fasting for extended periods or even one meal, this can help.
Talk to your doctor about your specific situation but never accept the status quo or assume your health.
After all, it is your life and well-being that hang in the balance, and you are the only one who can make the decisions necessary to improve it.
Extreme changes in Fasting and Keto
I would caution anyone who has never fasted for a day or two to talk to their doctor and take it slow. Jesus fasted for 40 days, but you are not Jesus, and neither am I.
Baby steps and progress are much better than doing nothing.
Just gain some small victories and do not put off taking this diet and its benefits, along with intermittent fasting and meal fasting, as a natural way to improve your health.
Not the same for everyone
Would you please keep in mind that everyone has a different body with different issues and conditions? So like anything else concerning your health, it’s not a one size fits all solution. However, intermittent fasting and cutting out sugar and carbs has been the most successful way to reverse diabetes.
You likely will not hear that from your doctor if he is like most. They were not taught this in medical school, and even today, the diabetes association ignores these natural ways to reverse this disease. It would rather profit along with the pharmaceutical companies than promote this life-saving information.
Are we surprised? That is the greedy, hypocritical world in which we live. Thanks for reading, and make sure to talk to your doctor about your specific condition. Find another doctor if they only want to give you pills and not talk about diet and fasting. Pills and shots have never cured anyone of diabetes.
