How One Harvard Doc Is Astonishing the World by Curing Depression with Diet Alone; More Beginner Fasting Tips

This week I describe what inspired me to want to write about health, some incredible stories of nutritional healing, examine some food guidelines, & cover pushing through a tough spot for beginners.

Happy Tuesday! Today I discuss the impetus behind starting this Substack and then tie it in with research on how something as basic as a change in diet has radically transformed the lives of numerous people. If the stories I highlight today hadn’t been so carefully documented, I would have a hard time believing them—they’re that remarkable. I also have a bit of fun throwing a fit about some new nutrition guidelines. And finally, I give an explanation about why rough spots happen for beginner fasters. Enjoy!

New this week: a video version of this newsletter is at the bottom for those who would rather listen while walking, cleaning, driving, etc.

I was uber floored by my discovery last week of the study in the peer-reviewed journal Immunology showing that the pathogenic bacteria klebsiella is likely responsible for many autoimmune diseases and can be starved on a zero-carb diet!

So I thought surely this week’s newsletter was going to be a letdown in comparison. However, to my surprise, what I found this week is every bit as monumental as last week’s discovery. File this newsletter under “things you never in your wildest dreams thought you’d hear a Harvard professor and psychiatrist say.” If I sound crazy in some of my claims of what fasting can do, this guy has me beaten by a long shot.

But first, I want to give a brief explanation of the impetus behind this newsletter because it fits in so well with today’s main story.

Why I Wanted to Start this Substack

My dad passed away a year and a month ago, January 2022, from heart failure caused by type 2 diabetes. He was diagnosed with diabetes over 30 years before and spent those 3 decades under the care of physicians who helped him “manage” his disease.

However, as he was to later find out, as long as diabetes is merely managed with medication but not completely reversed by radical diet changes, it continues to damage the body, eventually in irreversible ways.

In 2017 (5 years before he died), my sister gave my dad a copy of Jason Fung’s Diabetes Code and Dad read it. Through intermittent fasting and greatly reducing carbs, my dad completely reversed his diabetes, went into full remission, and was taken off of every single diabetes medication. The remission he accomplished through his change in diet did what 30 years of medication failed to do.

BUT, the damage was done. For 30 years he received the wrong advice about how to treat his diabetes, so he permanently damaged his heart. There’s one thing that everyone in the diabetes field agrees on is that heart disease directly follows diabetes.

As I watched my dad’s story unfold, my mind began spinning with questions:

Why wasn’t my dad told the simple, lifesaving information in Fung’s book 30 years ago when he was first diagnosed with diabetes? Do specialists not know this crucial info?

If my dad had been told the correct information 30 years ago, or maybe even 10 years ago—that he needed to actually reverse his disease through fasting and super low carb consumption, and not just rely on medication and reducing a few carbs—he would have followed the advice then and probably still be alive. I know he would have followed it because when he finally got the right information, he did follow it.

Next, I started reading about how the vast majority of doctors are still telling their patients that diabetes is a progressive, lifelong disease and that medication is as effective as diet in treating it. According to Dr. Fung, who attends American Diabetes Association events, the vast majority of doctors don’t even believe diabetes can be completely reversed through fasting and diet changes. Most rely heavily on medications to treat their patients. It all hit home when I got into an argument with a real, live practitioner who insisted that medication and diet change are equally effective. (And if you were told that, why would anyone change their diet?)

However, in The Diabetes Code, Fung outlines the ways that diabetes destroys the body while the person is on medications that appear to manage symptoms:

• Heart disease progresses

• Plaque forms in the arteries

• Neuropathy develops (painful nerve damage)

• Vessels in the legs get clogged

• Wounds won’t heal

• Finally, amputations are needed

There are many more, but I highlighted those because every one of them happened to my dad exactly as Fung outlines. 

This premise that diabetes can’t be reversed and that medication is as effective as dietary changes is overwhelmingly contradicted in the medical literature.

For example, here’s one study from the journal Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases that put half their participants with prediabetes on a high-protein diet and half on a low-fat diet. 100% of the participants on the high-protein diet completely reversed all signs of prediabetes within 6 months (as compared to only 30% on the low-fat diet).

I don’t know if you ever read studies about medications on PubMed like I do, but I have found zero, zip, nada, no medications that hold a candle to those kinds of results! So why is it a subject of debate among diabetes clinicians about whether diet or medication is more effective? 

After this experience with my dad, the questions just continued building until they culminated into one all-consuming question:

What if this experience my dad had with diabetes wasn’t an isolated incident? What if the same sort of thing is going on in other areas of medicine as well?

• What if there are other basic remedies that exist that many do not know about?

• What other ground-breaking, paradigm-shifting information is out there waiting to be discovered?

• Would I be able to find them?

• What would be the best way to share the info with others?

Although I guessed that the diabetes incident probably wasn’t unique, I had no idea how much I was going to uncover.

When I thought about the direction of this newsletter, I thought mainly about spreading awareness about reversing diabetes and health problems related to weight through fasting. I’m realizing there’s so much more to uncover than I ever expected.

Here’s a question I can’t seem to answer:

Why Aren’t Specialists Aware of the Studies in their Areas of Expertise?

I have a family member who’s been seeing a rheumatologist for over a decade for rheumatoid (autoimmune) arthritis. This specialist has never once mentioned to her any of the studies linking klebsiella to autoimmune that you now know about. (And for your reference, here’s a second study.)

Does this rheumatologist know about these studies? If he does know about them, when exactly was he going to tell her about them? Because recently, the drug she had been on for over a decade stopped working—as happens with immunosuppressants—so he put her on a different drug. But then he took her off that drug because some of his patients were having some serious side effects (good for him!) But now she has to wait to detox from that drug before starting another drug. 

All that to say, if this rheumatologist does know about the studies saying that cutting all carbs can reverse RA, now would be an awfully nice time to mention it. Eleven years ago would have been another nice time to mention it (seeing as the study was published in 2012), but now is still better than never.

Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that I read PubMed more often than most medical professionals who get paid 6 figures to treat people?

It’s one thing for a family practitioner to struggle to keep up with the latest research on a number of different fields. But why does a specialist not keep up with studies in his field of specialty? And if he does know, why is he not mentioning the non-drug options at least to the patients who are no longer responding to drugs?

And I’m sure this rheumatologist is a super nice guy who really wants to help his patients. But why does he seem to only have information about drugs?

This is a great mystery to me.

I don’t have many answers, only questions.

I want to remind everyone that the studies I find are from peer-reviewed medical journals such as Immunology, not from some dark corner of the Internet where no doctor ever strays. 

My married daughter came over the other day while I was finishing cooking, so she picked up my copy of The Diabetes Code and started reading. The book includes a quick start guide giving a short summary of the premise of the book. In a matter of about 15 minutes, she had read the quick start guide and she said to me: “Mom, this makes perfect sense. I now understand what causes diabetes and why fasting and a low-carb lifestyle can cure it.” You can read the quick start guide by scrolling below:

Fifteen minutes of reading and my daughter now understands some fundamental concepts that the majority of physicians who spent a gazillion hours in medical school are still unfamiliar with. There are just so many questions…

Back to this newsletter: My investigative mind wanted to know what other simple, drug-free, no-cost solutions are lurking out there to cure the diseases of our civilization, that one might never hear about, even if one went to the top specialist in the world for one’s problem? 

But as I wondered about what I might find, I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would write something like what I’m covering below. 

Healing Severe Schizophrenia with Diet Alone? Say What?

Meet Chris Palmer, MD

• He’s been a clinical psychiatrist at McLean Hospital for 27 years

• Director of the Department of Post Graduate and Continuing Education at McLean Hospital for over 20 years

• An Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School

• Has 15 years of experience as a neuroscience researcher

His private practice in psychiatry specializes in treatment-resistant patients. This means a patient comes to Dr. Palmer after they’ve seen five or more other psychiatrists, already tried dozens of medications, often have had electroconvulsive therapy, and nothing has worked.

He tells a fascinating story about something that happened to one of his patients that changed everything for him. 

Once upon a time, there was a man we’ll call Tom. Tom had severe schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression that persisted for years despite receiving top treatments. When he came to Dr. Palmer, he had daily delusions and was tormented by his disorder. He had tried 17 psychiatric medications and none of them helped even slightly to reduce his symptoms. But they caused him to gain over 100 lbs, bringing him up to 340 lbs. 

Tom asked Dr. Palmer to help him lose weight. Dr. Palmer put him on the ketogenic diet, since Dr. Palmer had tried it himself and it had worked well for him.

Within two weeks of starting the keto diet, Dr. Palmer noticed a dramatic reduction in Tom’s psychiatric symptoms. Tom was noticeably less depressed, making eye contact, and talking more. Within 6 weeks, Tom reported that his long-standing hallucinations and paranoid delusions were going away.

One day he said to Dr. Palmer: “You know, maybe all these things I’ve been thinking aren’t actually true and have never been true like everyone has been trying to tell me.”

Tom eventually lost 160 lbs bringing him down to a healthy weight of 180. He has kept it off to this day (6 years now). But much more importantly, Tom is a normal person living a peaceful life, delusion-free and medication-free. 

This puts me in tears to think about how amazing the human body is when we allow it to work properly. But we still have so much to learn (or unlearn).

Tom’s story upended everything Dr. Palmer had been taught as a psychiatrist. One thing that there is an absolute consensus about in the field of psychiatry is that you don’t ever, ever get over schizophrenia. But Tom did.

That’s just one story, you say. Except it’s not.

A woman we’ll call Sue came to Dr. Palmer with schizophrenia so severe that she sat in a chair and stared at a wall all day wetting herself. She had been on over 30 medications, in and out of inpatient programs, had electroconvulsive therapy, and had tried every last standard of care treatment.

After seeing what happened to Tom, Dr. Palmer thought: why not put her on the ketogenic diet too? After a couple of weeks, she began to come out of her catatonic state. Within 3 months, her hallucinations were disappearing. She is now a completely healed patient who is in graduate school, at the top of her class, and speaks with Dr. Palmer on stage about her recovery.

Doris’ Story: Healed from Five Decades of Schizophrenia

Doris had a horrible childhood and suffered from PTSD and depression as a child. By the time she was 17, she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and had daily hallucinations. For five decades, she tried antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and various other medications. None of them helped her symptoms but they did cause her to gain massive amounts of weight.

From the age of 68-70, Doris tried to kill herself 6 times and was hospitalized for her suicide attempts. At the age of 70, she was referred to a weight loss clinic at Duke University and put on the ketogenic diet.

Within two weeks, she told the clinic that her auditory hallucinations, which had been present for 53 years, were disappearing. Within months, all of her symptoms of schizophrenia were gone. Within 6 months, her doctors had weaned her from every psychiatric medication. She was then able to lose 150 lbs.

Doris ended up living for 15 more years, remained symptom-free that entire time, never went back on psychiatric medication, and remained out of psychiatric hospitals. She never tried to kill herself again. (She passed away a year ago from pneumonia.)

When Dr. Palmer last spoke with her, she told him how happy she was to be alive and that she attributed her recovery primarily to God. She said her recovery was a miracle from God, and she asked Dr. Palmer to please tell her story to as many people as possible.

You can listen to Dr. Palmer tell Doris’ story in this 3-minute video:

Dr. Palmer is careful to note that the keto diet helped these people before he began weaning them off of his medications. This is important because one thing he admits in his book (another thing I never thought I’d hear a psychiatrist say) is that in his 27 years of clinical experience, long-term meds create long-term disorders.

People came to him with only depression and he put them on meds. But soon they became bipolar, then OCD, then they developed panic disorder, then sleep problems. Since all this progressed while on medications, it’d be easy to surmise that perhaps his patients got better simply by going off the meds. However, he didn’t start tapering until they first showed marked improvement from the keto diet. 

This week I asked Dr. Palmer the following question:

“What is the approximate number of people that have successfully responded to treatment on the ketogenic diet?”

He responded by saying:

“There's no official tally, but putting together the people that I've treated myself, along with people described in case reports and clinical trials, plus people who have reached out to me personally, I'm aware of at least 100 people who have responded.”

Dr. Palmer’s Premise in Brain Energy

Dr. Palmer wasn’t content to just watch the anecdotes pile up, he wanted to know why the ketogenic diet was helping so many of his patients when all other treatments had failed them. 

His quest to answer this question led him to write this book just released in November:

The basic premise of the book is that just as the kidneys or the heart can become damaged and sickly from the wrong diet, so can the brain. The brain is an organ and needs the correct nutrition to function properly.

Here’s a succinct summary of his research from this podcast. The interviewer asks Dr. Palmer what his research found as to why the ketogenic diet heals patients with mental illness. Dr. Palmer says:

“The body has an innate ability to heal itself but we have to set the stage for that to happen, and fasting and fasting mimicking diets [keto diets] are one of many stages we can set to improve metabolism.

So tying in with the mitochondria connection, fasting and fasting mimicking diets do a lot of things to the body that change neurotransmitters, decrease inflammation, change the gut microbiome, promote autophagy. But they also promote mitochondrial repair and mitochondrial biogenesis which means that your cells end up with more healthy mitochondria after people fast or do a fast mimicking diet.” [43:00]

Just as a little refresher from high school biology, every cell has an organelle called a mitochondria that not only produces energy for the cell in the form of ATP, but has numerous other functions.

Dr. Palmer goes on to tell us how ketones heal the mitochondria when we fast and/or do keto:

“[Ketones are] a signaling molecule as well and they represent this dramatic shift in whole body and brain metabolism. 

Ketones change neurotransmitter systems and inflammation and actually changes gene expression in different cells…

That process appears to stimulate three things that I think are key: 

• It stimulates autophagy, which is this repair process that our cells use to get rid of old or defective parts and replace them with new ones.

• It stimulates mitophagy, which is a mitochondrial version of autophagy; so it means that you're getting rid of old and defective mitochondria and replacing them with new ones.

• And it stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis, which means that your cells will have more mitochondria and those mitochondria will be healthier. [46:32]

If any of this fascinates you, as it does me, you might enjoy listening to this podcast below that gave me a lot of insight into Dr. Palmer’s compassion for people suffering and his determination to help them:

Here’s one of my favorite quotes from this podcast:

“We prescribe medications that cause premature death. Read the package inserts. [It is] inhumane that they [keto haters] would let people suffer and writhe in mental pain and be disabled by their illness and not offer them an effective treatment [the ketogenic diet.] That is just inhumane!”

I just never thought I would ever hear any psychiatrist, much less a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, talk about how harmful psychiatric medications can be and how a ketogenic diet is a simple solution for many people.

I’m so excited about this research for a number of reasons!

Tying It Back to My Initial Question

Remember my question above that started this newsletter: what if there are other fields of medicine besides just diabetes where a simple, non-medical, solution can be found?

Dr. Palmer’s work is answering my question in a surprising way. It’s showing that non-drug solutions can be found in places where we never dared expect them.

The first interview I linked to ends by asking Dr. Palmer to list the best foods he would recommend for everyone and the foods that every person should avoid.

His best foods were fish, low-starch vegetables, and healthy oils such as olive oils.

The foods that he says everyone should avoid for optimal brain health are any and all forms of sugar and corn syrup, and all grains (even whole grains).

This advice makes an absolutely perfect segue into the next section of our newsletter, which is to discuss the recently published results of a study by Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy. (At the very bottom of this newsletter I have a footnote about how to think of mental health in terms of the soul/body connection.)

Astounding Food Guidelines

I sometimes get myself worked up into a little frenzy over food guidelines because of how they harm people. At times, people pat me on the head and say, “Simmer down there little missy; it’s just food.” 

But what if this overly-processed, high-sugar carbage is actually a slow poison, negatively affecting people’s brains? Dr. Palmer’s research appears to support this hypothesis for at least some people.

In light of that, let’s see what the astute researchers at Tufts University’s school of nutrition found. They developed a Compass Rating System that gives food scores enabling you to generate a graph comparing different foods. The generative data comes from here.

Let’s see what advice Tufts University has for some sweet little mom of toddlers who wants what’s best for her kids and so looks at the University dons with their degrees in nutrition to help her decide what would be the healthiest foods to give her children.

I went through various stages of the grief process after viewing this Food Compass rating system. 

My first stage of grief, as often happens, centered around denial. Perhaps this food rating system was supposed to premier on April Fool’s Day, but someone left the job and the new hire released it early not knowing it was a joke. 

But then it seemed like a lot of research to go into an April Fool’s joke so I next reasoned that perhaps after all the research was done, someone accidentally pushed the “reverse all data” button. Once this happened, it was too hard to undo the damage so they just published it with all the scores reversed because they didn’t have enough department funding to fix it. 

But this theory didn’t seem plausible when I found out that General Mills is a Silver Member supporter of the nutrition school and Pepsico (which owns subsidiaries such as Quaker), is a Platinum Member supporter. (For a full expose on this topic, read the excellent investigative journalism done by Nina Teicholz here). With such illustrious sponsors, surely the budget couldn’t be a problem.

But finally, I approached the acceptance phase of my grief and realized that it may actually be possible to be a researcher at a top school of nutrition in the “scientifically advanced” country of ‘Merica and believe that highly-processed grains sprayed in glyphosate and coated in thick layers of high-fructose corn syrup (such as Frosted Mini Wheats) are many times more healthy for a human being than an egg which contains vitally necessary protein and essential fats, and nearly every vitamin and mineral necessary for the human body. Did I mention this study found egg consumption lowers the risk for diabetes? 

It’s been a long process of full acceptance and I admit, and I have my relapses into denial. I often feel what C. S. Lewis describes in That Hideous Strength when Mark is subjected to the “objective room,” that a raucous round of laughter would have put the whole thing into perspective.

But I’m not able to have that round of laughter—yet. My dad’s life was cut short. Such guidelines, however well-meaning, trickle down and shape society’s imagination of what foods are healthy.

Here’s another chart generated from the Tufts guidelines:

Why is almond milk given a 95, and whole milk, which has vital fat, protein, and vitamins, given a 49? So many questions…Textured vegetable protein? Does anyone realize how highly processed that is?

Is this rating system based on something about saturated fat and cholesterol causing heart disease? Except wait, that has been debunked by countless studies such that even the American Heart Association has quietly removed the statements from its website. (It’s funny, though. The AHA somehow forgot to hold a press conference to tell the public that their last 60 years of recommendations about fat and cholesterol were based on false data. I guess someone just dropped the ball there. Meanwhile, the echo of the lie that fat and cholesterol cause heart disease continues to reverberate far and wide.)

Oh wait, are these guidelines based on the idea that meat causes colon cancer? But the poorly designed epidemiological studies that showed only a 1.1 statistical significance and were not repeatable when not funded by cereal companies have now been debunked. 

So what is the reason now that meat, butter, and eggs are scoring at the bottom of these charts?

I wouldn’t be so upset if this were some isolated gibberish. But this continues to be the dominant health info that most people, including mothers of children, receive. And such ideas become so embedded into people’s imaginations that they no longer need a medical explanation. It’s just, “Well everybody knows that cereal is good and meat is bad for you.” 

But recently it’s turned from, “Meat is bad for you” to “meat is just bad.” No explanation needed. But why is it bad, if it’s ethically sourced, and if it’s grass-fed? Other than hurting Bill Gates $50 million dollar investment into plant-based “meat” products, I can’t find any scientific data behind why the foods in red part of these charts do any harm.

This all comes home when you realize there are only 3 macronutrients in the world: fat, protein, and carbs.

The cereal companies pulled a fast one on us by demonizing fat and protein. If those two things are bad, all you have left is carbs. Go ahead and give those little children a bowl of Recess Puffs because it’s low in saturated fat and cholesterol (see Reese’s in green below, scoring a 71) even though the human brain is made of fat, and children desperately need the kind of fat found in eggs, butter, and milk for their brains to develop, and cholesterol is found in every cell of the human body and is vitally important for development. (See this study from the Journal of Pediatrics stating: “Deficiencies in the amounts of these long-chain fatty acids in the diet during infancy may affect the maturation of the central nervous system, including visual development and intelligence.”)

I just love how chocolate Lucky Charms gets a rating of 69. It just barely missed being green by one point! But that’s okay because chocolate cheerios is green and scored a 71.

From following these guidelines, you may get diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune diseases, and clinical depression, but Mmmm, the sweet taste of addiction. 

I read a great line yesterday. Someone wrote: “Any food that you’ve ever seen advertised is a food you shouldn’t eat.” It has a lot of truth to it, although there’s probably been a time or two that I’ve seen chicken, beef, and dairy advertised, but not often.

In conclusion: I have to admit, the Tufts’ Food Compass does offer the public some value—if you pretend that it’s opposite day. This strategy also works well with the government food pyramid: turn it upside down and everything starts to make a whole lot of sense. Maybe that’s what they intended all along—just checking to see if you were paying attention. If you’re not, that’s okay, because Big Pharm’s got a pile of pills with your name on it. Mmmmmm, pills. Mmmmm, textured vegetable protein.

Beginner Fasters Tip: Pushing through a Tough Spot

Here’s a common pattern I see in beginner fasters. Many people who start slow with something like 16:8 find the first week of fasting relatively easy. However, as they near the end of their first month and they are increasing their fasting a little more, they often hit a rough patch.

There’s a biological reason for this. I’ve mentioned before that the liver can store between 12-24 hours worth (depending on factors such as how active you are) of temporary, easy-access glucose in the form of glycogen. As you transition to eating two large meals instead of three and focus on high protein instead of high carb, your liver glycogen will slowly decrease and you will eventually run out.

So let’s suppose that in week one you start out with your liver glycogen at 100% and each day you fast for 16 hours, you’re burning through about 60% of what’s available during the fast. Then when you eat on day one, you only have enough carbs to go back to about 90% capacity. By the end of week one, your liver glycogen right before you eat is now dropping to 30% and you’re refilling to only 75%.

If this trend continues and you keep eating fewer carbs (fat and protein do not contribute to liver glycogen), you’ll eventually run out of liver glycogen during your fasts. When happens, you will feel it and usually fasting will get a harder for a time.

I want to assure you that if it stayed as hard as it feels during that transition, then nobody would do it long term. But after you conquer this adjustment phase, everything begins to get easier.

Think about a butler at a large estate who is walking slowly down to the basement to where the deep freezers are kept, and he’s taking his time because it’s been so long since he last took anything out of that freezer. The people in charge of shopping have been stuffing food down their daily for years and kept buying more and more freezers to store it all. But now there’s no food in the kitchen, so he has to begin a new habit: pulling food out of deep storage.

The more weight you need to lose around your middle, the more painful this transition process will be. Abdominal obesity indicates insulin resistance (there’s that insulin word again) and high insulin is the enemy of fat burning. A transition period is needed. Two people could both need to lose 20 lbs, but the person who needs to lose a little everywhere will likely have an easier time than the person who carries all their weight in the waist.

But if that’s you, never fear, just know that your battle will feel a bit fierce for awhile. Support yourself by drinking plenty water with some added salt since the body locks toxins away in fat stores. Part of this initial discomfort is also the toxins released as you burn through fat stores, so make sure to flush them out constantly.

The worst advice that anyone can give you as you transition to being a fat burner for the first time since—well, a very long time—is to listen to your intuition. Being an intuitive eater is something that most experienced fasters eventually do achieve, but only after a lot of hard work. Some of us may never be able to be intuitive eaters when it comes to highly palatable foods. I’m to the point where I’m definitely intuitive about meat and cheese—my appetite tells me how much to eat. I will probably never be able to rely on my intuition when it comes to ice cream. That doesn’t mean I’ll never eat it again, but if I do add it back in, it won’t work to “follow my heart” on the appropriate amount.

In a similar way, if your body is really ramping up the hunger signals and throwing a little fit, caving only encourages the tantrum. Give it some water and tell it to go rummage around in the deep freeze. It’ll eventually figure it out.

I’ll use weightlifting as an example. Suppose you go to your doc and find out that you have sarcopenia (muscle wasting) as well as osteoporosis (loss of bone density). He will prescribe lifting weights and dramatically increasing protein. So you get a coach because you’ve never lifted before and you want someone to show you the ropes. After a couple of weeks of giving you low weights and few reps so you can work on form, the lifting starts getting harder.

Your coach tells you to do 10 reps. Do you say, “No, I’m going to follow my intuition here on how many I want to do?” If you have a good coach, she is not going to ask you to do more reps than is safe. If you stop at 7 instead of 10 because you feel like that’s all you want to do for now, you’re defeating the whole reason you got on your workout clothes, drove to the gym, and did the first 7 reps. All the results come in you pushing yourself beyond what you feel like doing. If following your intuition resulted in muscle loss and weak bones, it’s time to submit yourself to something hard.

Fasting is the same way. We may have to push ourselves a little beyond what’s comfortable. And if you’re feeling a bit uncomfortable that’s a really good sign that something positive is happening.

Being a little hungry is not a feeling that most Americans ever experience. It takes time to learn how to be productive in spite of some stomach rumblings. Part of the trick lies in learning to ignore it. Drink some water or black coffee and wait 20 minutes. I’ve personally found that true hunger is much easier to overcome than the munchies. I define the munchies as that feeling you have when you’ve eaten just one warm chocolate chip cookie. Once you’ve had one, you really want another.

But that’s not how I feel fasted. As I type this, it’s been 22 hours since I last ate. My stomach has a slightly hollow sort of feeling but I don’t mind that because it keeps me alert. There’s plenty of stored fuel on the system, my body knows how to utilize it, so there’s no feeling of panic or emergency. I could continue like this for days, but I’m looking forward to eating tomorrow.

You will know you’ve crossed to the other side when:

• You find yourself reading twice as fast as you used to and no longer needing to reread sentences.

• When you start listening to everything on 1.25 or 1.5 speed but are still able to follow no matter how complicated the material is.

• When you have tons of energy to do things like clean and no longer suffer from decision fatigue.

That, my friend, is the magic of ketones: upgrading the mitochondria in your cells, and giving your brain a boost. If it can bring someone out of a catatonic state, it can surely do something for you. But you’ll never know unless you try.

Final Note:

If you have started fasting and then quit and then keep saying you’ll start again tomorrow, don’t give up. It takes a long time to relearn a lifetime of input telling you to eat processed junk around the clock. Not only is your body learning a new trick, to burn its own fat, your mind is still figuring out if you believe this stuff or not. It’s a long process, and that’s okay. Tomorrow is a new day so keep trying and upgrading yourself to the new 2.0.

Until Next Week, Fast Well and then Feast Well,

Leslie Taylor

Video Version Below (what an awkward thumbnail, but on well.😆)

[This newsletter is for informational purposes only and is not designed as a substitute for medical advice or to treat, diagnose, or cure a medical disease. Talk to your doctor before beginning any dietary changes, especially if you are on medications for diabetes. Fasting while taking certain medications such as Metformin and especially insulin can lead to dangerously low blood sugars. If your doctor does not support fasting, search for a physician who will support your fasting journey. Fasting is not recommended for those pregnant, breastfeeding, or for children and teens still growing and developing. For those with diabetes, personal fasting coaches are available through TheFastingMethod.com. I receive no compensation or ad revenue for anything in this newsletter including links to books, videos, websites, coaching services, podcasts, or supplements.]

Footnote: A Word about Mental Health in General

Dr. Palmer’s work reminds us that humans are embodied souls. Although we are more than merely biological, our souls are affected by our physical bodies. The interaction between the body and the soul is complex. By positing that a simple solution such as a change in diet could transform someone’s life is not to downplay the work that a human soul needs to do in various difficult situations. Instead, his premise can put a person in a position to do the necessary soul work.

Let’s say, for example, that someone’s schizophrenia was triggered by some terrible trauma. I can imagine someone saying, “Are you implying that if that person goes on a completely different diet, that’s going to fix what happened in their life?”

Of course not. However, if their brain is in a diseased state, one tool to help that person on the road to recovery may be to remove the brain toxin. That could potentially put the person in a position to do the necessary soul work to move on.

The simple example of sleep illustrates this well. We all know that choosing to watch Netflix until 2 am every night would not just affect our physical body, it would make it harder to be a kind person too.

People might be tempted to think that I believe that fasting can cure everything. I want to go on record as saying that I most emphatically do not believe that.

If someone refuses to give up drinking a 12-pack of beer each day, fasting for 16:8 isn’t going to do much for them. If someone plays video games and only gets 2 hours of sleep, fasting isn’t going to solve their problem. But fasting can help solve many other problems.

Dr. Palmer is claiming something similar in Brain Energy. He’s found a tool that can give people a fighting chance to move forward in life. It’s not a cure all. There are no cure-alls. Conditions still apply. People have to want to get better, want to forgive, want to move on. But if they do, he has a way to make it easier for them to do it by potentially healing their diseased brain.

If you find his work offensive, take it up with him, not me. But please read his book first. It’s fascinating! (Note: I haven’t yet received any rude messages, but I’m just bracing myself for the first one.)