Intermediate Fasting

Happy New Decade, my friends!

Just finished the first round of chemo this week, way to welcome a new year, huh? 😉 Things are so much easier now that my body is getting use to the regular treatments. It’s still an “event”, but I feel much better and recovering faster at each cycle.

I also started intermediate fasting about a month ago. There was a Japanese biologist that won the 2016 Nobel Prize for the discovery of cellular self-repair benefits during intermediate fasting. When we eat constantly, the body is busy digesting food, absorbing nutrients, handling waste, etc.. It’s a never ending job. When we fast, our body goes into a self repair mode. It repairs the cellular damage that occurs and cleans up any tissues, fat or storage that’s not needed… like tumors. 🙂

I started fasting 16-hours a day everyday since I got back from FL. I eat from 12-8pm and I don’t eat from 8-12pm… basically skipping breakfast and no snacking before noon each day. My stomach complaint loudly for a few days and then got quiet. lol! I didn’t expect much from it at first, but noticed my body was a lot happier inside. My digestion is much easier. I feel lighter. I lost a few pounds initially, but not much. After 2 weeks or so, I stopped losing weight which is good because I didn’t want to lose weight. I started sleeping through the night which hasn’t happened in almost a year! I use to joke about cancer doesn’t sleep so it wouldn’t let me sleep either. I would sleep for a few hours initially then wake up in the middle of the night for a few hours before falling back to sleep. Now, more often than not, I would sleep through the night. My energy is so much better. I stopped needing to take naps in the afternoon (after taking daily naps for more than a year). More than that, I stopped snacking on impulse naturally. That’s a side benefit came as a surprise. Now that I know what hunger feels like, I know it when I am eating out of bad habits. I never had a weight problem so I didn’t realize I had any food problems until I started fasting. All of a sudden I realized how often I was eating emotionally. It turns out most of the time I snack out of boredom instead of hunger. I snacked just because I was bored and I wanted to experience something or I am out at a gathering with food and I didn’t want to miss an experience… so my body paid for it. Even if I was eating healthy snacks… the snacks might have been healthy, but my eating habits certainly were not. Just as simple as skipping breakfast daily, I discovered all kinds of things about myself!

I don’t know if it would make any difference in my scan results next time, but I feel better than I have been in a long time! My oncologist thinks I look good too so he scheduled the next set of scans in mid-February. I will keep everyone posted.