Eat Less, Move More: The Benefits of Fasting

For the last few years my happiness levels have been directly proportional to the amount of time I spend outside, riding my bike. In the last few months I’ve been unable to exercise or socialise too much, so I’ve had to look for alternate ways of keeping my dopamine levels up. Allow me to explain the benefits of fasting.

Perhaps not the solution to all life’s problems, but definitely a way to provide a sharper mind, lower body fat, better quality sleep & generally, better overall health. After my head injury, I expected the next few months would been some of the most depressing & yet, despite the lack of exercise, I feel freer, healthier & happier than I can remember. Work that one out?!

I write this post about the benefits of fasting from a general health perspective, rather than specific to ultra-distance cycling. I’ll start by explaining the nature of my circumstances first & why I’m in this position. On a weekend trip to the US back in December I came off my bike, suffering a skull fracture & traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage. I was unconscious for 3 days & in a heavily medicated state for the following few weeks. I had barely any appetite for long periods, often only managing one small meal a day. I lost a lot of weight. Who manages to lose weight over Christmas?!

During 2022 I was training 6 days a week towards ultra-distance bike races. My aerobic fitness levels saw astronomical gains, I’d notched up a couple of impressive results in international level competition & had big plans to build on that going into 2023. It literally all came crashing down one Friday afternoon in Texas.

The accident affected my nervous system quite badly – brain surgery was discussed at one point in intensive care. My parents were called & flown out to the US whilst I was unconscious. When I came back around, I had no idea where I was or how I’d got there. I was incredibly volatile – often reacting to information in a bad way, without applying any thought or filter. My family, colleagues & hospital staff unfortunately experienced this first-hand. The medication I was taking initially calmed me down & suppressed my reactions. As the weeks went by, I became more stable & found the medication causing more problems than it was solving. I felt bloated, unable to sleep, limited appetite, unable to go to the toilet etc. I thought surely ‘just a headache’ is a better thing to deal with. At least that way I’m aware of the problem in its natural state. I threw it all away & thought I’ll deal with this on my own. I’m an engineer, obviously I know better than brain surgeons!

In early January, a month after the incident, I was still coming to terms with the extent of this injury; that a recovery would take months, not days. At 68kg & peak fitness, my initial worries were about loss in fitness, race plans & loss of muscle mass. The short-term fix was to force feed in an attempt to retain some weight – the other option was to accept shit happens, allow my body time to get weaker & then recover, rebuilding over a longer period of time but much more healthily. The short-term option felt like papering over cracks, like chasing goals & therefore unsustainable. Whereas the longer-term option, although it would prevent racing for a much longer period, seemed much more process oriented & therefore lead to better overall outcomes. One big decision seemed easier to make than lots of little short-term ones – racing against time to get ready for something only leads to taking shortcuts, or depression when you have to cancel as a result of not being ready. It was upon choosing the longer-term option that I discovered the benefits of fasting.

These last few months, I’ve found fasting for 14-16 hours incredibly beneficial.

This realisation that happiness can be generated from within, rather than external factors, has been life changing. As I stated earlier, my happiness has always come from the things I do, such as bikes, kayaking, skiing, travelling – conversely if I don’t do enough of those things to get my endorphins, I can be grumpy. Very grumpy – which then impacts every area of my life. Allowing your happiness to depend on these factors is all well and good till those dependencies become unattainable.

I’ve realised that you can generate this contentment from within; it all comes from your food, more specifically, what you don’t eat – and the timing at which you eat it. I’ve always vaguely known about the effects of certain types of food, but now I’ve scratched the surface a little deeper & begun to understand the effect of food on chemical balances, 2 + 2 starts adding up.

For context, I’m an engineer, I like to do tasks that require deep concentration & focussed application in the morning. I like to do it with coffee. I like to do it before I’ve eaten & before anyone rings me up, bothering me with other things. I find that once I’ve eaten, my focus & productivity wanders.

I’ve since learned this is to do with glucose/insulin cycles. In simple terms, you eat food, blood sugar goes up, insulin responds with an increase to bring glucose back down. Glucose downward trajectory then dips below equilibrium, causing hunger pangs – causing you to eat again & the cycle repeats. The higher the sugar content, the higher the spike and subsequently, the bigger the crash – commonly referred to as the afternoon crash, you know the one where you think ‘just a chocolate bar to get me through the afternoon’. That right there is the problem; you’ve created the problem by eating too much & then think eating more ‘to get through’ is the solution. The reality is you’re adding more fuel to the fire.

Once the blood glucose level is saturated, your body stores this excess as glycogen in the muscles & liver – which is OK, if you’re going to use it through exercise, not so much if you aren’t! Clearly the amount of sugar absorbed into the blood is directly related to what you eat. Processed sugar, simple carbs etc. are high in sugar content. The answer to this is foods high in fibre, complex carbs – the type of things that take longer to digest. These foods leave you feeling fuller for longer & not craving more food. Rhiannon Lambert is much more qualified than I – her book Science of Nutrition explains in more detail.

I digress. Point I wanted to make is that fasting from my last evening meal, usually around 7-8pm till 12noon the next day allows my body to bring these chemical levels back to equilibrium. Once the body has used its glycogen stores, it turns to fat, beyond that the body goes into autophagy, effectively eating fat reserves & recycling dead cells – cleansing itself.

The benefits of fasting being that I wake up clear minded & able to focus so much more in the morning – again, maybe assisted by coffee! I write this as someone who has experienced all the health benefits recently whilst recovering from this injury & seen first-hand the benefits of a disciplined diet. Not gaining weight, no cravings, no sugar/carb cycles & improved sleep quality/quantity. The benefits of fasting have been a bit of a lightbulb moment. Not only do I feel sharper, I feel in a better position to make better choices throughout the day. It becomes clear that food is fuel the body needs, so give it what it needs. I’m still learning here, but once things sink in & resonate with you, it’s so easy to act on it.

How often do we read things, think yeah that’s cool, only to carry on & forget about it. More often than not people are ‘busy’ with unimportant shit that they prioritise over health. I’m not saying everyone should crack their head open & suffer brain traumas, but my god have I learnt some things in this recovery period. It’s given me the space to make good choices that aren’t influenced by time pressures associated with work or training or anything else; my only priority has been health. And now I’m seeing the benefits of it, I feel so sharp, I feel content, radiant, happy & free.

I think the other important aspect to consider is not thinking of it as what you can’t have, but instead think of it as getting to choose the healthier option. Apply a positive perspective rather than negative. Think of the ‘why’, then think of the benefits you get to have because you made a good choice. Its so liberating. The more you think about something you can’t have, the more the thought manifests itself & eventually leads to binge style craving.

It’s got to the point where I will not compromise my health now. I’ve never felt so content with making decisions that only benefit me. Declining things I would’ve always previously said yes to, pleasing others rather than putting me & what I want to do first. I ask myself at every turn, ‘what would the person I aspire to be do here?’ knowing that the decision I make will put me one step closer to that.

I understand this is harder in certain circumstances. A lot of people, for their own reasons, choose convenience over health. The workplace; taking lunch in the canteen with your friends, or bring your own & go for a walk. Its these little choices that stack up & eventually begin compounding. We get too caught up in irrelevant and unimportant things, often in a rush to get to the next thing. Health has to be a number one priority & it’s taken a massive whack to my head for the penny to drop – you’d think it would’ve done after breaking my back in New Zealand 5 years ago, but, never too late to learn. 

Knowledge of the benefits of fasting is one thing, application is another. How does this work with ultra-distance training? Good question, that’s my next step. But right now, I feel enlightened, like I’m learning more about myself, what works for me & how I feel this has helped with recovery.