I like to take control of my life, whenever possible. What about you?
The current coronavirus crisis makes us feel a bit helpless and vulnerable, but I would like to empower you to strengthen your body and resilience by providing you with easy, but effective strategies which you can do at home. Don't let yourself be swept away by panic, but get ready instead.
Everybody should be practising Intermittent Fasting now.
Intermittent Fasting (IF) is alternating between times of fasting and eating.
Studies show that it can reduce body weight, blood levels of triglycerides, increase the good cholesterol HDL, decrease inflammation, reduce insulin resistance, asthma, seasonal allergies, heart arrhythmias and menopausal hot flashes and improve learning and memory!
AND…it can help us to destroy viruses!
After fasting for 12-14 hours for women or 14-15 hours for men, the body enters autophagy.
Autophagy is the body’s way of cleaning out damaged cells, in order to regenerate newer, healthier cells. “Auto” means self and “phagy” means eat. So it literally means “self-eating.”
German researchers have recently found that during autophagy your body finds viruses and destroys them!
Our body is amazing a capable of doing many amazing things, given the right circumstances.
How to practise IF:
I recommend the 16:8 IF as it is the easiest for most people. This means that you fast for 16 hours and in the remaining 8 hours of your day you eat a normal, healthy diet. This does not mean that you have to eat a lot to make up for the fasting time.
Example: You could be having your last meal at 6pm, then your first meal at 10am the next day.
During the fasting time you can drink water, tea or coffee – but as soon as you add milk into your drink you are switching on the digestion, so get used to having your tea or coffee without any kind of milk. Some people say a bit of milk is fine, but I would avoid it to ensure that autophagy is taking place.
You might experience a bit of hunger in the beginning, but you should get used to this new eating habit within days. If you find it difficult, start with 12 hours fasting and then increase slowly to 16 hours.
I encourage you to try IF for a couple of weeks. There are many reasons why to eat this way, but to support your body’s capacity to find and destroy viruses is definitely the most important one right now.