 Fasting has exploded in popularity over the past year, but what is fasting? Are we talking about intermittent fasting, eating one meal per day or in a several hour window? Are we not eating for several days? Are we drinking water? Regardless, you should not consider fasting if you have not addressed nutrient deficiencies and inflammation in your diet. So many people go straight from a standard American diet into fasting and then they refeed on apple bees going straight back to fasting. Most people will see far more health benefits and weight loss on a ketogenic diet, especially a carnivore diet without the need to restrict calories. Why would you starve yourself if you are lacking vitamins, minerals, elements and fatty acids that your body needs? I consider the replenishment of nutrients and the adherence to a ketogenic or low carbohydrate diet that is high in quality animal foods, something that should be done for several months before even considering fasting. Keep in mind, even most people consuming a ketogenic or carnivore diet don't replenish their nutrients, specifically because of low quality meat. How are you supposed to do that while fasting? You're not eating anything. The main reason I think this and feel so strongly against fasting for most people is because the main benefit of fasting is autophagy. Whenever autophagy is brought up, people are like, oh my god, autophagy is so great. Autophagy is the body's way of cleaning out damaged cells and regenerating newer healthier cells. At least that's what people believe. But people aren't experiencing autophagy. It's more likely they are just experiencing the removal of inflammatory foods that they were consuming on a daily basis. You really have to keep in mind that autophagy is not an on and off switch. Fasting simply speeds it up. And I believe that a high nutrient diet will warrant more benefits to this process than fasting ever will. Without these nutrients, your body cannot perform basic cell functions as it wants to. So if we can't build and create cells in the first place, why are we trying to recycle and regenerate them through fasting? Personally, I've been fasting for the past seven years on and off following a carnivore diet, usually eating one meal per day. Sometimes I've had meals in an intermittent fasting schedule, you know, within a several hour window. But for the majority of the past seven years, I have fasted for one quarter of the time. What I mean by this is 25% of the days out of the year I am not eating, whether that means fasting for a day or two each week, or fasting for two weeks at a time once every few months, and every single time this was a water fast. I've never actually been able to do a dry fast, which is simply fasting without water. I have an impaired liver function from taking a drug called Accutane in the past, and I get dehydrated within an hour. You know, my mouth is literally dried out, and I've been talking to you guys for a few minutes. People say that dry fasting is multiple times more effective than wet fasting. I haven't really seen proof of that, and as much as I would love to experiment with it, it's not something I see myself ever being able to do. The main benefits that I've noticed from fasting are obviously giving your digestive system a rest, as well as increased mental clarity. Now, the increased mental clarity that someone would experience coming from a standard American diet is drastically different than what I experience. I always have very acute mental clarity. Sometimes when I fast, though, I get a little bit euphoric, and I feel like I can almost see everything. That being said, I do have an incredibly hard time sleeping because of increased cortisol levels. This typically goes away in a few days, so for a day or two, I won't be able to sleep, which is pretty detrimental. That's why I haven't been fasting lately, but three, four, five days into the fast, I start feeling fatigued and physically tired, and then I am able to sleep. Cortisol also lowers testosterone, so fasting is definitely a way of telling the body to conserve everything from both an energy and sexual standpoint. One thing to consider is that if you eat a meal, it's going to stay in your digestive system for four, five, six days before it's mostly digested. Your body slowly absorbing nutrients over the course of several days from that last meal. So I'm led to believe that short-term fasts of several days are drastically different from longer fasts of like seven days, one and a half weeks, two weeks long, almost to the extent where I wouldn't bother for a short-term fast of less than two days. We really have to draw a line and categorize fasting into two separate camps. One would be the regular fasting, eating once per day, intermittent fasting, short-term fasts that might be two or three days long. The other would be a fast exceeding three days where I think you will see the most drastic health changes and effects of what fasting really is. So keep in mind, when you get to that three-day mark, that's when your fast truly starts. In regards to studies, caloric restriction and fasting have always been shown to improve lifespan and it makes sense, but it's hard to know if in the context of a very healthy, high-nutrient, minimally inflammatory diet, it truly matters, as just about all of this research is not done on the natural diet of whatever animal they are studying. So we don't really know if fasting is beneficial on a nutrient-dense carnivore diet, but for other people, it obviously is. Just about everyone, even people following a ketogenic diet, especially a standard American diet, vegan diets, all of these people see benefits to fasting on a carnivore diet, especially if you're consuming quality animal foods, I'm led to believe it's not as important. Electrolytes are a topic frequently discussed and I have made several videos in the past, which I will link at the end here. I will say that you probably need to have some salt several days into the fast to keep your energy levels up. The amount is very anecdotal and subjective, depending on the individual person, what their electrolyte intake was beforehand. And some people also drink coffee, broths, flavored water. And I don't think anything should be consumed outside of water or mineral water, maybe even just a little salt added as we mentioned. What's the point of restricting yourself to fasting and then every morning you're dousing your stomach with rotten roasted plant seeds every morning, aka coffee? You've gone so far to restrict your calories, lose weight, see the benefits of fasting, but you don't want to drop that one little thing of coffee. What about refeeding? Refeeding is a term people use as in breaking their fast. And usually it's very light foods, like small amounts of fruit, broths, salads, which I think is ridiculous. All of my long-term fasts have been broken with large amounts of quality animal foods. I have literally sat down and eaten pounds and pounds of steak and animal fat after not eating for two weeks. The best food to break a fast with would be meat or fish. Dairy and eggs can cause issues for some people. Raw meat and lighter cooked meat and fat are even easier on digestion compared to cooked meat. I'll show you guys an example meal in the future. And there might be some videos that are like a year old of me breaking a fast. Just keep in mind that a lot of the conventional ideas around fasting are very wrong. And we can look to our indigenous ancestors to see what they would have done. And you can imagine the only way you can really break a fast in nature is to hunt an animal. And if you really were starving, you would have probably eaten some of that animal raw, usually the higher caloric parts such as the bone marrow and the fat. What people take for granted drives me crazy. You don't have to use five different electrolyte powders. You don't have to measure your ketones. You don't need to refeed on crackers. But most importantly, you don't even have to fast. If you have not fixed your nutrient deficiencies. There are so many things you have to do to improve your health before fasting that it's ridiculous that people are even considering fasting if someone like myself isn't doing it on a regular basis. Even our indigenous ancestors didn't fast unless it was necessary. At periods of the year, they did have to restrict calories. They could only store so many grains, so many animal foods for the winter. So it was really out of necessity. And keep in mind, a lot of these indigenous groups were very physically active and they weren't in a highly polluted environment. So if you're not hiking for 10, 12 hours a day, you probably shouldn't be eating large amounts of sourdough bread. If you're in a high EMF environment, if you're under a lot of stress, maybe you want to fast a day or two out of the week to not add that extra stress on your digestive system to everything else that's going on in your life. I forgot to touch on a few important points. When people follow a standard American diet or any modern diet, you're literally consuming inflammatory foods every few hours the entire day. You're waking up, you're drinking coffee, that's inflammatory. You're having an Egg McMuffin for breakfast or croissant, that's inflammatory. You're having some crappy refined bread, sandwich, salad for lunch. And then for dinner, you're having pizza, snacks throughout the day, potato chips, whatever it may be. The constant person is always in a state of inflammation because of their intake of low quality foods that cause inflammation as well as not giving their body the nutrients it needs throughout the day. Therefore, when you start fasting, this absence of inflammatory foods really becomes apparent. But if you're following a ketogenic diet or a carnivore diet and that inflammation is not present because you're only consuming quality foods, you're not going to notice as much of a difference. Think about how much stress the average person puts on their body, on themselves every single day by consuming completely shit food every few hours. It's really amazing the difference between someone that follows a standard American diet versus someone that is mindful of their food choices. It's a constant state of inflammation versus a constant state of how we're supposed to be. And if you were to actually measure the amount of inflammation in someone following a carnivore diet or a keto diet versus someone that was fasting coming from a standard American diet, I'm sure that person following keto or carnivore would look way better. Thank you guys for joining me today. If you could please like the video, subscribe, hit that bell icon. Definitely check out some of the videos I'm going to link at the end here. Frankie's free-range meat is providing you with high quality nutrient-dead animal foods at an affordable price. Go to frankiesfreerangemeet.com. We're going to be running a few more sales this week as well as getting brains and liver back in stock. You can also check out Frankie's Naturals for minimal ingredients, minimally processed hygiene and cosmetic products. Thanks again for joining me guys and enjoy the rest of your day.