The Food Lover’s Guide to Fasting

After dinner on Sunday evenings, Kay Wiggins pushes away from the table knowing she won’t enjoy another meal until Tuesday morning. That’s because every Monday she fasts. During her weekly 36-hour stint without food, she’ll sip water and, if she starts to feel weak, pop open a can of V8. Otherwise, the 56-year-old United Methodist minister goes about her normal routine of tending to her two small congregations in the towns of Cherokee Village and Hardy, Arkansas.

Wiggins started fasting as a means to connect with people in the world who don’t always have enough to eat. “Even though I know my fasting doesn’t change someone else’s portion of food, it connects me to the concept of sharing,” she says. “I’m a firm believer that when I use more than I need, someone else has less than they need.”

On the other side of the country—and at the far end of the fasting spectrum—Khurram Hashmi analyzes every calorie he consumes as if he were a supermodel gunning for the runways of Paris. The soft-spoken computer programmer from Gardena, California, is motivated by a physical, not spiritual, rationale. At 5 feet 11 inches and 117 pounds, Hashmi subsists on 1,800 calories a day—mostly from raw vegetables and nuts—because he wants to live to be 120.

Hashmi is a member of the Calorie Restriction Society, an international organization whose 2,000 members share a fixation on the longevity they hope to achieve by a lifetime of eating low-calorie, nutrient-rich foods.

Not long ago, physicians might have dismissed fasters as extremists—maybe even diagnosed someone like Hashmi with an eating disorder. But lately, a handful of researchers are discovering that folks who fast—either by permanently curtailing calories, like Hashmi, or by eating less for shorter, more manageable periods—may be on to something more healthful than previously believed. Research now suggests that fasters live longer, healthier lives than those who never go hungry.

Although the mechanism isn’t completely understood, scientists suspect that fasting imposes a mild stress on cells that ultimately fortifies the body to stave off chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease. Continual low-grade stress seems to make certain cells stronger, says Mark Mattson, chief of neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, therefore allowing them to better resist disease. “It’s analogous to physical exercise, which puts a stress on the system but over time helps your muscles and cardiovascular system grow stronger,” he says.

So far, the biggest benefits seem to go to the people who, like Hashmi, are willing to give their eating habits the most drastic overhaul—far beyond what most of us could stomach.

Luckily, though, there are reasons to think that even food-lovers who aren’t inclined to take draconian measures can benefit from fasting, too. Studies suggest that intermittent fasting—eating only every other day, for instance, or only during a three-hour segment of every 24-hour period—may reduce our risk of not just diabetes and heart disease but brain disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Other findings show that medically supervised water-only fasts of ten days or so can dramatically lower blood pressure. And while the research on short fasts like Kay Wiggins’ is scant, she and others who go this route say they experience physical as well as spiritual perks.

Ready to put down your fork? What follows is a guide to four different types of fasts: caloric restriction, in which you permanently cut back your food intake; intermittent fasts, in which you alter not what you eat, but when you eat it; medically supervised, water-only fasts; and brief, do-it-yourself water-and-juice fasts. Although the four have different degrees of evidence supporting their use, all of them are potentially healthful for the body and mind. Read on to find out which one might best mesh with your goals and lifestyle.

Caloric Restriction

• Potential benefits: longer life, drastically reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes It was back in the 1930s that scientists first noticed that animals live longer when fed less. Since then, researchers have proven that the theory holds true for creatures ranging from worms to rats to dogs. Time and again, underfed animals consistently outlive their well-fed peers.

Questions have lingered, though, about whether the same findings would hold true for human beings. But now, thanks to the Calorie Restriction Society, scientists have gotten a glimpse of how people fare after years of following a low-calorie, high-nutrient diet. The results may make you think twice about your dinner plans.

For a study on how caloric restriction might affect risk of heart disease and diabetes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis enrolled two groups of 18 people identical in age, gender, and socioeconomic status. One group consisted of members of the society, most of whom had followed a low-calorie (1,100 to 1,950 calories a day), high-nutrient diet for six years. In the control group were people who ate a typical Western diet, downing an average of 2,763 calories per day.

The contrast between the two groups was stark: Cholesterol levels among members of the caloric-restriction group mimicked those of healthy 20-year-olds, and their blood pressure resembled that of ten-year-olds. On the flip side, the control group’s measurements resembled…well, those of the average Joe or Jane. Their cholesterol landed squarely in the 50th percentile for middle-aged Americans and their blood pressure levels were typical, too. Meanwhile, members of the Calorie Restriction Society had insulin levels that were 65 percent lower than their counterparts’, meaning their risk of diabetes was almost nil.

In light of these results, Khurram Hashmi’s longevity plans don’t seem so far-fetched. “It’s very clear from these findings that calorie restriction has a powerful, protective effect against diseases associated with aging,” says John Holloszy, professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and the study’s lead investigator. “These people have a much longer life expectancy than average because they’re most likely not going to die from a heart attack, stroke, or diabetes.”

Thanks to Holloszy’s findings, more mainstream scientists are finally being attracted to the field. The National Institute on Aging recently launched a three-site project to test not only the health benefits of fasting, but also the practicality of getting people to eat a long-term calorie-restricted diet.

How to do it: Following this type of diet is not for the fainthearted. Ideally, you would permanently curtail your daily caloric intake by 10 to 20 percent while maintaining a perfect balance of protein, vitamins, and minerals. To achieve this, you need to fill your plate first with heaping helpings of vegetables, particularly green ones. Then add a measured amount of lean protein (1 to 2 ounces for a 135-pound woman, about 2 ounces for a 180-pound man). You’re allowed a small helping of healthy fats each day in the form of olive oil, almonds, hazelnuts, or avocados. For the occasional splurge, you can treat yourself to a piece of salmon. You should minimize your intake of pro-cessed foods and foods high in saturated fat. More details about the diet can be found in the writings of caloric restriction pioneer Roy Walford. His books include Beyond the 120-Year Diet: How to Double Your Vital Years and The Anti-Aging Plan: Strategies and Recipes for Extending Your Healthy Years.

What to expect: Cravings for particular foods are more likely to bother you than hunger itself. “The diet isn’t painful,” says Warren Taylor, the Calorie Restriction Society’s secretary. “The pain comes from forgoing the delicacies.” Taylor waxes poetic over ice cream, but he says that his cravings have diminished with time.

What to watch out for: Optimal nutrient intake is just as important as curtailing calories. Out-of-whack nutrients may spark malnutrition, anemia, bone loss, and menstrual irregularities. And other side effects may include fatigue, rapid weight loss, and loss of libido. So it’s best to check with your physician before jumping in feet first. He or she may want to monitor your blood for adequate levels of iron as well as track your weight. Since physical and neurological growth spurts may be impeded by curbing calories, the diet isn’t recommended for anyone under age 21.

INTERMITTENT FASTING
• Potential benefits: a healthier brain, lower risk of diabetes and heart disease

Mark Mattson, the National Institute on Aging’s chief of neurosciences, has dedicated much of his 20-year career to examining how diet affects brain cells. And based on what he’s seen, he’s jumped on the fasting bandwagon himself. Most recently, Mattson and his colleagues studied the salubrious effects of intermittent fasting, practiced either every other day or 21 hours each day.

Mattson started with three groups of identical mice. Animals in one group ate as much as they wanted. The second group ate a calorie-restriction diet, held to just 60 percent of their normal calorie intake. And the third group ate their fill one day and fasted the next—rinse and repeat. At the end of the experiment, Mattson compared the brains of all the mice. The animals who fared best were those who followed the intermittent regimen.

Mattson believes the mild stress fasting puts on cells increases production of proteins in the brain. These additional proteins foster the growth of new nerve cells as well as shield cells from oxidative damage, both factors that contribute to dysfunction and disease. Early research suggests that intermittent fasting may help brain cells stave off disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s diseases; it may also ward off diabetes and heart disease.

Fasting 21 hours a day is often easier for people than fasting every other day, says Mattson, and the physical benefits are similar. So when it comes to his own diet, he skips breakfast and sometimes lunch too. While he takes in as many calories as he ever did, he does most of his eating between 6 and 8 p.m. each day.

It took him about a month, he says, to adjust to the change. Now, he says, he doesn’t find the regimen difficult.

But unlike many members of the Calorie Restriction Society, Mattson isn’t betting on living an abnormally long time; his hope is simply to have a healthy old age. The best-case scenario as he sees it? “That we could all live to be a healthy 90, then die in our sleep.”

How to do it: Begin by skipping breakfast for a couple of weeks, then slowly begin to skip lunch as well. You can eat as much as you want, but only during a two- to three-hour window in the early evening.

You’ll still need to eat healthy foods—fruits, veggies, and lean meats or other proteins—and be sure to eat until you’re full. Leave a few hours between your meal and bedtime to avoid lying down with a full stomach, which can cause acid reflux and keep you awake.

What to expect: The side effects of intermittent fasting can include low blood sugar, low energy, and irritability; neither should be a major problem if you’re healthy. Stay hydrated by drinking plenty of water throughout the day.

What to watch out for: Children, teens, and pregnant women should not fast intermittently. Also, if you are on prescription drugs that must be taken with food or if you have a chronic illness, such as diabetes, be sure to talk with your doctor first.

SUPERVISED MULTIDAY FASTS
• Potential benefits: lower blood pressure, a respite for your gut that can promote overall wellness

Six years ago, stabbing abdominal pains sent Laurie Carvalho racing to the doctor, certain her appendix had burst. Hours later she was shocked when emergency room physicians found nothing amiss. When the sharp pain refused to surrender to the doctor’s prescription of time and bed rest, Carvalho followed the advice of a friend and visited Alan Goldhamer, a chiropractor and founder of TrueNorth Health Education Center, a medically supervised fasting facility in Penngrove, California.

Goldhamer diagnosed leaky gut syndrome, a painful inflammatory condition that occurs when food particles pass through the gut’s porous membrane. To allow the gut time to heal, he recommended Carvalho try a medically supervised, water-only fast.

Carvalho initially thought Goldhamer was nuts. But desperate for relief, she agreed to give it a try. Today the 34-year-old mother of two has completed three medically supervised, water-only fasts, each lasting 7 to 14 days, at Goldhamer’s clinic. Her stomach pain has subsided, and problems with chronic neck pain and recurring fatigue are now under control, too.

Much of the evidence behind water-only fasting is anecdotal. In the 20 years since he founded TrueNorth, Goldhamer claims to have successfully “fasted” 5,000 people and seen improvements in everything from Type 2 diabetes to rheumatoid arthritis to cancer. Most illness, he says, is a result of poor food choices. “Fasting allows the body to undo the consequences of dietary excess.”

Such grandiose claims are easier made than proven. So to shore up the practice’s credibility, Goldhamer recruited other fasting experts to devise a study on medically supervised, water-only fasting and hypertension. The results were recently published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics.

For the study, researchers enrolled 174 adults with blood pressure levels of 140/90 or above and put them on a water-only fast for an average of ten days. By the end of the study, 89 percent of participants had lowered their blood pressure into the normal range.

“This study represents the largest effect that’s ever been shown in the scientific literature in the treatment of high blood pressure in human beings,” says Goldhamer. “Fasting is a safe and effective means of allowing the body to do what it does best—heal itself.”

It might seem counterintuitive to deny nourishment during the healing process. But fasting advocates argue that deprivation holds the key to recovery. Without needing to handle incoming food, the stomach, intestines, pancreas, gallbladder, and liver enjoy a hiatus. Cells freed from their daily chores of nutrient intake can use energy for repair and maintenance.

The field is still missing the large, placebo-controlled studies that represent Western medicine’s gold standard. But that doesn’t mean the process can’t be life altering, in ways that go beyond a boost to physical health. Just ask Carvalho.

“I wanted to use the clarity that comes with fasting to make some important life choices,” she says. During her fast, she wrote a letter announcing her resignation from a job she was unhappy with. “By removing so many of life’s distractions, I was finally able to do what I needed to do to take care of myself.”

How to do it: A water-only fast should only be conducted under the direct guidance of a physician. The International Association of Hygienic Physicians (IAHP) certifies primary care doctors to supervise fasters. If you’d prefer to check into a fasting clinic, your best bet is to choose one with a small (1-to-10) doctor-to-patient ratio to ensure individualized attention and daily monitoring. (To find doctors and clinics in your area, visit iahp.com.)

What to expect: In the first couple of days, you may experience muscle aches, nausea, stomach pains, and bad breath. And the hunger itself won’t dissipate until after 72 hours or so. Drink at least 1 quart of water per day. The supervising doctor should conduct daily physical exams and weekly blood and urine tests to ensure things are going smoothly.

What to watch out for: Some medications shouldn’t be taken when you’re fasting, so be sure to give your doctor a full list of your prescriptions before giving it a try. Pregnant women as well as people with heart arrhythmias, serious kidney or liver disease, or a wasting disease, such as HIV, shouldn’t fast.

DO-IT-YOURSELF WATER/JUICE FASTS
• Potential benefits: feeling cleansed, spiritual clarity

During her Monday fasts, Kay Wiggins still observes mealtimes, but instead of going to the kitchen or joining friends at a restaurant, she passes the time sitting quietly or meditating. “Fasting is a wonderful way of going to a deeper level and seeing what’s really important in your life,” she says.

Of course, fasting is a tradition within many of the world’s religions. Muslims fast during Ramadan; Catholics fast during Lent and Advent; Jews fast on Yom Kippur. But the physical benefits of short fasts like these are less backed by science than more intensive types are.

Still, Wiggins and other “lite” fasters say that even a one-day fast brings palpable benefits. “Fasting is cleansing for me,” Wiggins says. “I feel better about my body when it’s less filled with sugar and carbs.”

The best part, she says, is that when she breaks her fast on Tuesday, she can’t help but gravitate toward wholesome food. “I rarely reach for a doughnut. I have a much greater awareness of what I put in my body. That usually lasts until Tuesday night,” she says with a laugh.

If you’re a healthy adult, like Wiggins, a short fast may be the most practical place to start. You needn’t commit to a daily change or check into an expensive fasting center. And fasting for even such a short time, according to Goldhamer, can help heal problems in the gut, lower insulin resistance, and eliminate sodium and excess fluids from the blood. While a chronically ill person may need up to three weeks to see results, someone who’s healthy might see gains after just one to three days, he says.

How to do it: A one- to three-day juice fast is a good way to acclimate yourself to the idea of fasting without going cold turkey (or rather, no turkey). The day before you plan to start your fast, eat only fruits and vegetables, which are easy to digest. During each day of the fast, drink three to four “meals” of 8 to 12 ounces of fresh, organic fruit or vegetable juice. If straight juice feels too heavy, dilute with equal parts water.

Along with the juice meals, drink at least four 8-ounce glasses of water daily, and take a multivitamin to get any nutrients you may be missing. To avoid stomach upset when breaking your fast, reintroduce food slowly for about half as long a period as you spent in the fast (i.e., 12 hours for a 24-hour fast). Start with fresh fruits and vegetables. Eat small portions and chew well.

What to expect: The calories and nutrients in juice can ease the side effects associated with a water-only fast, like light-headedness, fatigue, and headaches. Still, you can expect to be tired, so plan to rest as much as possible.

What to watch out for: If your energy suddenly plummets, end your fast early. As with other types of fasts, people on prescription medications or with chronic illness should check with their doctors before fasting. For otherwise healthy adults, a short juice fast isn’t a health risk.