3 Eating Strategies That Will Transform Your Health (Doctor Explains)

Cut Out Snacking and Eat Three Meals a Day00:00

Cut out snacking immediately. Snacking is highly problematic. Become more grown up and learn to cut out snacking. Work your way into eating three meals a day without snacks in between. This will be easier for some than others, but avoid all snacking.

Expand Time Between Meals with Intermittent Fasting00:31

Expand the time between meals through intermittent fasting. Ancestors went extensive periods without food, sometimes weeks or months. Slowly challenge yourself to increase the time between meals at a comfortable pace to avoid discouragement. Go at the speed you can successfully increase the interval.

Gradually Delay Meals

Marginally expand the time between breakfast and lunch over time for a later lunch every day. Do the same with dinner.

Caution: Avoid Late-Night and Nocturnal Eating02:01

Do not push dinner late at night. A study on breast cancer recurrence showed 40% lower rates if women did not eat after 7:00 p.m. The specific time is less important than avoiding nighttime eating. Nocturnal eating when it's dark, sun is down, and melatonin is present is problematic. Beta cells in the pancreas that secrete insulin have melatonin receptors and are in tune with melatonin signaling sleep, not eating. Do not eat when it's dark. Try to cut out eating after the sun goes down.

Build Up to One Meal a Day (OMAD) and Longer Fasts03:02

Slowly increase your ability to go longer without food. Work up over weeks to one meal a day, going 23 hours without food. How long it takes is individual; increase gradually to avoid discouragement. Leverage your body's ability to extract energy from fat stores. Most have significant fat reserves to access ketones as an alternative energy source to glucose. If you adopt fasting too aggressively without accessing ketones, you risk fatigue, tiredness, and discouragement. Back off if you feel too weak or tired. Slowly advance to harness the power of fasting, which ancestors used for disease reversal, optimization, tissue reconditioning, and autophagy.