Fasting Space

what is our personal reference point.
Fasting is an opportunity for us to really open up a beautiful, interesting space, contemplate our relationship with food in a deep, personal, emotional way.
And see what do we perceive as normal. We've been doing a lot of thinking through this book, thinking fast and slow. I finished the book, so I've been reading it. Kind of live as we go through it
finished up the book and I'm going to, give some thinking about, some of the concluding thoughts about what we see as normal.
How can we shift what we perceive as normal? One of the big things we've been trying to do on the channel, to do with that series, through that book, help us get into a flow state.
One of the concepts we discussed in that book is that we we in large measure, are very intuitive, emotional decision makers.
And we have these two systems.
That intuitive system is what can just flow through decisions. Do you ever have that you make decisions and they just happen.
And it's like we almost think about it after the fact. It's like, oh, I can't I didn't quite mean to do that. Or in the ideal scenario, we just flowed through it and
that's what we really want.
All the decisions that we really want to make are the ones that we just flow through. And it happened. It's we talked about the secondary system is what we really think of as our self, that system two very much more rational or at least having the potential to be rational and make thoughtful, informed, contemplative decisions, but that that system has a finite amount of capacity.
And so we need to use that budget
of mental capacity to its greatest extent possible to shape and mold is automatic decision making. That we do so in a dial in on that. That's how we shape what comes to feel normal. We want to get on a long term path of health across any domain of health, whether it's exercising or healthy eating.
Opening up a fasting space, making sure that we have habits and routines for self-care, checking in, with our mental health, putting that really is the top priority.
Anything like that has to feel normal in order to stick with it. If it's always a struggle to do it, that's how we end up in a space where we're forcing ourself toward health.
So many people in that space, especially who are getting on an exercise path, exercise, probably one of my favorite things. I'm a huge exerciser. I want to inspire everybody to get as active as they comfortably want to be.
So don't read me as saying, oh, don't exercise. But what I say, don't force it.
Exercise, like every path of health, should be a joyful exploration.
Moving our body is what the body is meant for. It's made to move
and so it should be beautiful. But so often we can take exercise and turn it into a punishment.
Fasting, even in a perverse way, could be taken in that direction. Say we want to stay far away from anything that fasting, just like I was describing, exercise a joyful exploration, a curious process, a path of health and wellness, openness.
If I had one word to summarize fasting, I just say openness. Fasting is openness.
The type of space that you can just sink into
and realize something very profound, which is that everything is okay
in the midst of a culture that wants to tell us everything is not okay. It's not hard to look around and say everything is not okay
to problems in the world. We say
specifically on the food front, so much marketing, so much social pressure, so much conditioning, telling everybody you are not okay if you don't stop consuming like whatever you do, don't stop the flow of energy into the body.
Bad things will happen.
Your energy will go down. So something, something might happen that is bad
to recognize under almost all circumstances, unless you have a specific medical condition, your blood sugar is dropping too low. Obviously, talk with your medical team about any concerns that you have with that.
But the normal physiology of the body, the space that we're trying to develop, the strength.
Should be seamless.
We have energy resources in. The body is there to serve us. It's there to power us forward. It's the normal physiology of the body.
And so opening up a fasting space is practicing using that, giving the body the opportunity to run these systems, that it has such a beautiful positive process.
To I call it a gift to the body. Fasting is a gift to the body.
If you have more energy in the system than you need, there's more blood sugar floating around than you wish was there. Okay, that's energy to serve you. You can fast through that and burn it off naturally.
You have more body fat stored in the system.
You say, this is not serving me right now. I don't want this. Fasting is opening up space for the body to use it. Body says, hey, I am hanging on and storing this prayer space where we don't have food. Now look at what we encounter. A fasting space body says, I know what this is for.
Fire up the system.
The energies there are people say, oh, if you're fasting, it'll be low energy only when you are not trained in it, only when you haven't practiced it
the first times. Absolutely. It will be the case
the first times you do anything. There's always a barrier. There's a learning curve.
Have you experienced this?
As you grow in a fasting practice, you work on it. You're practicing it
that you feel the energy increase. You see, you feel the experience. The body is getting better at moving toward it
gets easier over time. I try to never say off. Is fasting easy? For some people? It can be. We want to open up that space that it could be.
But for many people it is not. And certainly for myself, it wasn't. When I started
is much easier now than it was, and I enjoy it and I understand the process. But even now, sometimes I try to do it. I still over ten years I've been practicing it. Sometimes I say, oh, like I really feel hungry,
so that can be a barrier.
But then reinterpret what that means hunger mainly about patterns,
what we see as normal. We get used to eating at certain times. Body gets the whole digestive system ready to help power our system,
and then if we don't do that, body's like, what's going on? It's normal for us to be eating now. We got all the stomach, everything is ready to go.
But you say I now
move into a fasting space. I want to give you some of that autophagy space that is like, oh, we could use that. We can use that. Then you got it. You make it through that wave, you make it through that process. And then
if you experience that your experience, it calms back down, energize their body, cranks it up.
Then you feel better and you feel better than before. Refreshed.
This is what I want a fasting space to be for people to find that space a refreshing space, refreshing health. Refreshing the metabolism. Refreshing our energy physically and mentally. We could use that in a season like this that can become
stressful, that can already be overwhelming. So much to do, so much to think about.
This is the force that we're trying to create, to pull in the opposite direction
during this season, our little fasting challenge. So we're going to try to move 5 pounds in the other direction, giving tons of grace to our self. If we don't get we don't get there. No no no, no big deal. But it's helping us to do our best.
Just doing our best. That's all we can do
I want to be like the breeze blowing through a space.
Wind is not struggling. Wind is not tied down. Wind is free. Moving through space a natural flow.
That is definitely what we want.
Do what you can with what you have, where you are. This is where we're at. We're here in December. We're moving through a month. It is a difficult month for people to lose weight, a difficult month just to maintain.
And we're saying we are moving through this space
thoughtfully and gently with ourselves, doing our best, doing what we can,
where we are,
with what we have.
I like that with what we have. You know, I think.
That is dialing in.
Such a good way in this season. You know, a season to me, a holiday season. We just came through Thanksgiving about gratitude
for what we have,
the vibe that I want to communicate, the perspective on the channel that.
Consumerism, fasting, showing us
we're good with what we have so much of our day season about. Buy stuff, consume more,
and definitely much more on that Thanksgiving end of the spectrum, just finding gratitude for what we have and fasting showing us an incredible
portal to that.
That even in the midst all the food, all the things that actually body is powerful.
Body has immense energy, resources. What we have right here, we have everything we need. We don't need to buy anything else,
including like we don't need a StairMaster and an exercise bike and a home gym and, another subscription to, any sort of, service. All this stuff. It's great if you want to have it, if it brings joy and health to you, of course.
Wonderful things. But actually just a very simple process
fasting. You don't need to buy anything. You don't need to spend any money.
The energy is right here within us right now, in this moment and even in this very moment, in this very space where we're using it.
If you're watching, this with me in the morning, you know, grab a coffee, grab a T, just have some water
or just have an open space, a completely open space.
Don't even need anything at all.
Body is always using that energy. What we have is enough
and we are enough. We don't need anything else
like that talk we did yesterday, right? We're not seeking approval from anyone else. We don't need other people's opinions or thoughts. We have our path
and we are getting to know ourselves in a fasting space.
On a deeper level, I described learning to practice. Fasting is like learning to trust the body.
So many times in a health space we can feel alienated from our own body is like we have a health goal. We have a number on the scale we want to hit. It can be so frustrating not to be able to control the body.
And really, we are the body we think about, but we kind of can see ourselves mind body as separate in a way.
Think about how do we build a relationship with ourself.
Where we're feeling good in our own skin, in our own space, in our own presence?
Think about the relationship we have with food. So many times we're using food in an emotional context. We have a relationship with food. We have a relationship with ourselves. It's can be strained, just like our human relationships can be strained. There can be tension.
It can be experiencing tension in our relationships with these things,
we open up space
for that,
sink into that space.
Understand? Hey, there's energy here. This is enough. I have everything I need. This is why I say fasting can become so empowering.
Don't need anything else.
Okay, here's the quote that I really wanted to share today.
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Norman Vincent Peale.
This is where I really want to dive in, changing the thoughts.
Of changing the thoughts and changing our experience of the thoughts that we have.
Shifting the reference point, I called it.
When we change our thinking, change our whole experience, I want to help you change your experience for the better. I am working, along with you to change my experience for the better.
Helping to bring ourselves into a more centered, focused, calm, peaceful, effective, mindset.
So I think you find this really interesting. I found this, really interesting. This is at the end of our book, Thinking Fast and Slow.
The chapter is this the very last chapter thinking about life?
Thinking about life. Something we should all do deeply.
It was, tasked.
With studying. Two questions. Are people who live in California happier than others? And what are the popular beliefs about the relative happiness of Californians?
Okay, something wonderful for us to contemplate as we're gazing out across our icy lake.
We recruited large samples.
Of students from major state universities in California, Ohio and Michigan.
And some of them we obtained a detailed report of their satisfaction with various aspects of their lives from others. We obtained a prediction of how someone with your interests and values who lived elsewhere would complete the same questionnaire.
As expected, students
in a two regions differed greatly in their attitude toward their climate.
Californians enjoyed their climate and the Midwesterners not so much.
But climate was not an important determinant of well-being. Indeed, there was no difference whatsoever between the life satisfaction of students in California and in the Midwest.
Despite the widely held view that Californians enjoy greater well-being than others, the students in both regions shared the same mistaken view,
and we were able to trace their exaggerated belief in the importance of climate,
describing the error as a focusing illusion.
People focus on climate, and the climate, we say is nicer in California. And since since you're being asked questions about it, you tend to think it's important, right?
But it turns out it's not.
We give too much weight to the climate, too little to all the other determinants of well-being.
This bias distorts the judgments of happiness of Californians. When asked about the happiness
of people living in California, you probably conjure an image of someone attending to a distinctive aspect of the California experience, such as hiking in the summer or admiring the mild winter weather. The focusing illusion arises because Californians actually spend little of their time attending to these aspects of life.
Moreover, long term Californians are unlikely to be reminded of the climate when asked for a global evaluation of their life. If you have been there all your life and you don't travel much living in California, it's much like having ten toes nice, but not something one thinks about much.
That's of any aspect of life are more likely to be salient once a contrasting alternative is highly available.
It's a matter of perspective.
It's what we would say, a matter of perspective, a matter of thinking, or of thoughts. And you can see when you change those thoughts,
you can change your experience of the world. That's this quote.
So this is what
we're we're starting to get into the mindset. You realize, oh, everybody thinks people in California be so much happier when you're asked,
especially when you're primed with ideas about the climate, say, well, who doesn't? Who doesn't want to be in sunny San Diego on a seven degree day when your lake is frozen over?
That's kind of the default thought. Now. I mean, I'm somebody who loves to cross-country ski, so I actually and, you know, I think about this, I actually love living, in a place with seasons,
so people feel differently about it, but kind of a cliche to say, oh, wouldn't it be nice? Live by the beach, eternal spring.
But listen to this. This is where we really want to get in to thinking about how we frame things in our own life,
how our experience comes to feel normal. Listen to this question he asks.
What proportion of the day do paraplegics spend in a bad mood?
How would you answer that?
This question almost certainly made you think of a paraplegic who is currently thinking about some aspect of their condition.
You guess about,
person's mood.
It is therefore likely to be accurate. In the early days, after a crippling accident and for some time after the accident,
victims do think of little else. But over time, with few exceptions, attention is withdrawn from the new situation as it becomes familiar.
Detailed observations show
people with a paralyzing injury are in a fairly good mood, more than half the time. As early as one month following the accident,
although their mood is certainly somber when they think about their situation most of the time,
people in this situation work, read, enjoy jokes, and friends get angry when they read about politics in the newspaper.
When they're involved in any of these activities, they're not much different than anyone else, and we can expect the experience. Well, being
of paraplegics to be near normal much of the time. Adaptation to a new situation, whether good or bad, consists in large part of thinking less and less about it.
In that sense, most long term circumstances of life.
Are part time states that one inhabits only when we attend to them.
I
thought this was so interesting. Such an interesting
thing to get in a state of mind to get in.
Do you think that's true? I'll tell you. I've worked with quite a few people.
Who have had paralyzing injuries and situations and medical conditions of many times. I can just tell you that it is true.
And this is a type of thing that has been,
hard for me, you know, in my career as a primary care doctor, people coming in when I am feeling overwhelmed or discouraged to say, I'm having a bad day. Someone comes here.
Who's had a paralyzing injury and is in a good mood.
I'm like, oh, man, here I am, you know?
And then my situation say, I wouldn't want to trade places with someone in this situation. Yet here this person is happy and I am seemingly not.
Oh boy,
we.
What kind of insight can we glean from this observation?
Adaptation to a new situation, whether good or bad.
Can come to feel normal. You can find happiness. Do you think that's true for you? If you had a paralyzing injury, could you come to find happiness, joy and meaning in life?
You probably could.
How much more can you find it if you don't have to go through that?
Whatever obstacle, whatever path we're dealing with right now, you say if it's short of that, hopefully it is.
Lasting to me, where we're going on this health path,
this is what we want to see, that it fades into the background.
I don't ever call fasting a diet. I say fasting is like a lifestyle. Fasting is something you do because you find value from it. It's leading you down a path of health.
It's the type of thing that you can think about less and less as it fades into the background, just becomes a normal part of life, something that is a normal part of life is not a struggle to do.
That's the sort of space that you can just flow through anything that you're flowing through that has been primed as part of this system. Automatic decision making, not the sort of thing
it is. A struggle.
Thinking less and less about it. I just loved that phrase in particular.
One of the great difficulties in moving down a weight loss path is that we're surrounded by food all the time,
and as we have seen in this book,
we have limited willpower. We have a certain amount of cognitive, mental currency that we can use at any point in time.
And if we we have to keep saying no, no, we have to keep making the decision that can wear us down.
Fasting, opening up a big food free space where we think less and less about food. It's diminishing the importance of it. It's diminishing the intensity of it as like a presence throughout our day. It's focusing it and concentrating it.
And then because of course, we need to eat, we need nutrition. We're not fasting forever. Simple fasting, a process of just bringing small amounts of fasting into our life.
Recognizing fasting doesn't have to be an extremely long period of time. An extended fast can be a small amount of fasting we bring into our life. Just the amount of it that feels good,
and we can build that up just to the point where we say maybe we're getting a result that we want, or having an experience that we want doesn't have to be anything more than that.
It's like roping off an area saying, hey, we don't have to worry about food in this space. Body's got our back in this space. Everything's going to be okay here.
And that can give us the space, the ability to truly appreciate food in that window when we're eating it.
Now, we've roped off all this space free of concern and worry about food. Then we can focus it. In the experience, there was a really interesting section in here. I wonder if I can find it for you if I just paraphrase it?
They did a study where they were comparing
well-being between women in France and women in America, and one of the observations they made.
Was that women in France had much more enjoyment of food. And as they were studying it, seeing
people in America tend to do food plus something else, whereas women in France just ate and they were more present with food. I thought it was an interesting observation. This is what I really want for people. When we think about how do we build a practice of enjoying food, of of increasing our total well-being?
I want people to see that fasting as a path they can, far from being something you struggle through that is actually opening up a space of enjoyment, peace, satisfaction, contentment, both inner fasting space where say, hey, this is opening up space where we can be totally dialed in on some other thing, don't have to be worried about food in this space, and then it's creating the balance.
If then when we're eating, we can be extra mindful, totally present with food.
We've opened up other space. We've gotten our other work done. We don't have to be multitasking.
We can totally dive in.
Totally dive in with a food
truly experience and bring as much joy, meaning, and satisfaction from it as we can.
That is also how we bring contentment and happiness into our life. Talk about fasting is finding contentment without food.
And then when we have food, we want to find deep satisfaction. Enjoyment with food. This is bringing everything into balance.
One of the biggest problems in a dieting space
is
say we can. People can never eat as much as you want.
Never feeling satisfied. Creating an animosity with food like you can end up guilt tripping yourself for everything that you're eating, because you could always be eating less. That is a really twisted psychology.
Fasting. Solving that psychological problem can't be more aggressive than eating nothing. You open up a big
space without food
you feel pretty good about that. Can eat less than nothing. Doing something very strong for the body, helping to align the hormonal structure of the body so that you can access body fat to power the system. And then when you're eating already done the hard work.
They seem not restricted in this space.
Kind of like that mindset, like fasting, the discipline that brings freedom. That's the paradox in a dieting space. This is how we get these words. Restricting. Were just restricting all the time. Fasting about openness, fasting, open space without food. Voluntary process actually can open up the freedom just to have a normal meal, to not have any guilt or pressure about it.
We bring so much judgment on ourselves,
fasting, showing us we don't need any of that, don't need any of that.
Flowing through a space just like the wind flowing through this winter is seen flowing through a space.
So it doesn't have to be the same every day. I'll tell you.
Sunday you. Maybe I flow more in the fasting space than some other days.
Can be seasons do these things. This is, I think, one of the real reasons I like. I love living here in Wisconsin. We got all the seasons, seasons showing us the natural cycle of change that is happening in the world, giving us incredible metaphors about seasons of our life that we can lean into certain things at certain times.
Winter, I will say, is the most, pertinent metaphor for a fasting space.
Trees are fasting, right? The leaves are gone. No energy coming in.
Trees are sleeping like winter is like the sleep cycle.
We're fasting overnight while we're sleeping. Spring is coming. Spring for the trees
is like our fasting space in the morning. They're getting up, they're working. They're making their leaves. But no energy. Still coming in yet. That's like we're getting up.
We're having our coffee,
we're getting some stuff done, but we haven't eaten yet. So we can see these next natural cycles. We try to mirror in our body. And so here we're sitting in this winter space.
Maybe this is a time you really want to lean into it.
And be the way to create that counterbalancing force from this holiday season.
The society is pushing in a certain direction. Society is saying, oh, hey.
This is the season you have to consume. Like you're not going to be able to enjoy yourself if you are not consuming all of these good things
fasting, saying, let's have some balance here, the rope off and protect us. Space for our body, protect the body.
So much processed foods and sugar, carbs, things that it doesn't need too much energy pushing us off our path, weighing us down.
The nature showing us the cycle. Look at what nature is doing. Nature is resting. Nature is not consuming. Nature is open space. Enjoying the open space,
bringing lightness to the body. Using the storage and the reserve,
we will pay off a big space like that in our life.
And then balance that out. Find the appropriate space in the holiday space
where you can find joy in connection with good food.
These would be ways of changing our thoughts, changing our thinking.
And that is the path toward changing our world.
I really enjoyed this book. Check out a copy yourself if you want to read through it. I, you know, I probably took out just a quarter of the thoughts out of this book. There's a lot of other stuff in the book that are interesting, but I didn't
feel it was directly related to what we're doing. A lot of economic stuff, a lot of, other decision making sort of things.
But, I hoped you, I hoped you liked, are thinking on that. I know I will be referring, back to that,
quite a lot in my own thinking and probably will revisit, many of the concepts, here together
as we are walking forward in health together.
Really great to share this space with you.
I hope you have a great day. I see you back here tomorrow.