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Show Notes:

  • Michael shares insights he recently learned from a 3-day fast – 0:15
  • Consult a nutritionist if you have never fasted before – 02:45
  • Studies indicate that a 3 day fast can reset the immune system – 06:52

Link from this Episode: 3 Day Fast May Reset Immune System

Good morning everyone! Today we will be talking about top things that I learned recently from a 3-day fast. I just finished it last night and  I found some insightful things I thought I would share with you. It sounds kind of crazy but let me give you a little bit of my background. I was raised in a Mormon church. Every first Sunday of the month, traditionally in the Mormon church you do not eat food or drink water for a full day. This is something I was kind of raised into. Most religions have some kind of fast. Something I have continued to do since college was I just extended it to every weekend. So Saturday night, I’ll have my final meal, I would go to bed, wake up and have my regular Sunday routine and then I would eat dinner again on a Sunday night. This is typically how it works 24 hours. I’ve been doing this for a while I’ve been doing it weekly and there was an article published in 2014 that basically says when you don’t eat food for 3 days, your immune system resets itself. Your white blood cells for whatever reasons are killed off and new ones are created which is really fascinating.

Now, something I will talk about at some point is the fact that I use a machine called a Beemer Matt which is an electromagnetic field that increases the circulation of your capillaries. I’ve been using it for a couple of months now. A good friend of mine Paul Romero introduced it to me. He’s an ultra marathon runner and he runs 200 miles races and wins. He is older than me. I think he is 46 or 47, incredible athlete! But if you could reset your immune system and increase the circulation of your capillaries to 10 or 15 percent, this would be a great healing mechanism. I have a bunch of aches and pains that I’m trying to get over. There is that aspect of it, the part that I wanted to see is what would happen when I fasted for 3 days in terms of resetting my immune system. There is also the psychological part of it. In the Efficiency Playbook, we talked about prestressing your mind or body in a training type situation. You overload yourself, stress yourself out in some way and when you have these moments of truth and battle, you take that weight off and you are able to perform at a higher level than your competition because you were trained for it.

There are many aspects of it and the way I did it was being careful. If you have not fasted before, if you do not have experience, definitely consult a nutritionist or doctor before you try to do this. Some people hurt themselves fasting and there are even reports of people dying from fasting because they’re not being mindful of their electrolytes. So what happened was, I decided that I do a regular fast on the first day. No food or water for 24 hours. And then starting on the second day, I would drink water with electrolytes. When I say electrolytes, I’m talking about things like salt. I just pour some salt in the water. I have a potassium pill, a magnesium pill and some of the regular vitamins that I normally take. I just told myself, I’ll drink as much water as I feel I need. I’ll just make sure there is some salt in it and I’m getting my electrolytes.

The second day was a little bit easier in terms of the hunger pains. It just got easier as time went on and it felt really good! Surprisingly! As time went on, it got easier and easier. But the thing that I learned, the thing that was most important was that when my mind is engaged with something I enjoyed doing. If I was busy thinking about something or reading something or working on something, I didn’t notice that I was hungry. It wasn’t a problem at all. With this comes a very sharp clarity of mind. For whatever reason, it feels like you could think more clearly. As this continues to go on, it got more and more so. By the third day, I felt like I was thinking very very clearly! I did have a couple of dizzy spells that kind of felt like. “Oh, am I gonna faint?” Two of those but I didn’t faint. It was no problem and my productivity in terms of what I do went through the roof! I felt like I got another 3-4 hour of production time because I wasn’t eating and making these transitions between preparing food, eating the food, cleaning the food up. It was basically ” Yeah, I am hungry and I am going to work through this.” It really wasn’t that hard. I actually wanted to continue to go on but one thing that I learned is that if our minds are hungry, our stomachs go to sleep. And it sort of feels like we eat when we are bored and we are not engaged in something. If you are doing something that you really love, you are going to forget how hungry you are! I personally may over eat sometimes because I’m bored. Not because I’m hungry, it’s because I’m not engaged doing the things that I truly love!  It’s sort of like the ultimate diet is just do things you love or you’re crazy about, things that you can’t get your mind away from. I think I spent 4 hours on Sunday just reading because I was really into a certain book.

If you struggle with weight loss, hopefully, I have one of the nutritionists that I consult with. He is a Photographer. He is the owner of Ketology.co. He is very knowledgeable as a nutritionist in terms of all the things that you need to do if you decide to do the ketosis type diet. It worked for me. I’ve lost about 25-30 pounds in 2-3 months of doing it.

Going back to the fast stuff, it was a very enjoyable experience. I look forward to doing it again. I probably go a little bit longer next time, maybe 4 or 5 days because of the mental clarity and everything that comes with it… the productivity, the weight loss. There’s a lot of studies out there that kind of indicate that fasting is a good and healthy thing to try if you are physically able or healthy enough to do it. I would definitely recommend at least the one day fast to anybody who has not tried it and for those of you that have,  give the 3 days fast, basically called the water fast if you are drinking water with electrolytes, consideration because it changed the way how I feel about food, concentration, and dieting. I was sad to end it. I wanted to go another couple of days. In any event, that is what I learned from my 3-day fast. Basically, when our minds are engaged, our hunger goes away. Thank you guys for listening! I’ll see you next time.