Consequently, hosting a lavish banquet or ordering lobster is no longer a sufficient signifier of status; today, a sign of true wealth is the ability to forgo food entirely. Eating essentially betrays a personās most basic human needs; in an era obsessed with āself-optimisationā, not eating suggests that a person is somehow ābeyondā needs and has achieved total mastery of their body with a heightened capacity for efficiency and focus.
āThere is a history in Judeo-Christian societies ā and likely in many other religions, hence the widespread practice of fasting ā where demonstrating a lack of need for material things, especially food, and being able to demonstrate self-control and discipline are signs of spiritual transcendence,ā Dr Woolhouse says. Famously, Italian saint Catherine of Siena would fast for prolonged periods of time as a means of demonstrating her devotion to God through extreme self-control. āBut thereās also a class dimension to this,ā Dr Woolhouse continues, ābecause being able to demonstrate a lack of need for material goods, like food, suggests social transcendence too; itās symbolic of living a life whereby our material needs arenāt a daily concern.ā She adds that āfad diets are very unlikely to take off in societies where there are food shortages or food insecurity.ā
Itās still jarring to watch celebrities openly admit to fasting for 23 hours a day or taking 14 different supplement pills in lieu of a balanced breakfast. āIt normalises and sanctions practises that in other contexts would be regarded as eating disordered,ā Dr Woolhouse says. āWhen eating practices are packaged as ādone in the name of healthā, they are more socially acceptable and difficult to contest.ā She points out that a normal teenage girl restricting her diet in the same way as Johnson would likely be regarded as ill and in need of medical intervention. āWhat we, as a society, regard as ānormalā and āabnormalā eating is contextual and largely rides on how those eating practices are framed.ā
Itās obvious but bears reiterating that extreme, fad diet trends are both ineffectual and dangerous. But this trend isnāt really about food or health. Itās about performance. Itās a way for the moneyed classes to signal their wealth and status and posture as above us mere mortals who debase ourselves by eating.
To be honest, no offense to you and im sure it works for your body, but im extremely skeptical of fasting as being a universally applicable āboosterā.
First of all, it appeals to this trend Iāve noticed that people seem to correlate indulgence with weakness, and abstinence with strength. It coincides with this tendency to believe our desires are naturally problematic, that they need to be repressed rather than listened to as a communication of our body.
Secondly, there have been studies associating this stuff with an increased chance of heart disease. That study was specifically about intermittent fasting, but if someone is already at risk it doesnāt seem like a good idea.
Finally, itās just not practical for everyone. Lots of people have gut issues or physical disorders that make fasting significantly more painful and impractical than it would be for others. I canāt go too long without eating - my body starts becoming extremely nauseous. I assume this is true for a lot of people and not just me.
Overall Iām sure it works for you but itās just too much of a āself-help-bookā āminimalistā-coded solution for me to see it as a universally good practice.
Long reply incoming.
Itās not universal, but it is broadly beneficial for most people, especially people with western diets. You can be skeptical of that, but it really is backed up by the science, with very clear physiological mechanisms explaining how and why itās beneficial. Anecdotally, almost everyone who gives it a try will also have positive things to say about it. Normally, I wouldnāt really count that anecdotal thing in, but Iām not just talking about people trying new internet trends here, weāre talking about something on a scale of (for example) hundreds of millions or more Muslims who do fasting as a spiritual practice and religious observance.
As far as coinciding with the tendencies you mentioned, once againā¦ fasting is not some new fad. It may have gained some mainstream popularity (as it has in the past since fads are often cyclic) and is recently getting discussed in the same rounds along with actual fad diets, but like I mentioned before, fasting is something that almost every major religion has incorporated in some way. You talk about listening to our bodies and the folly of trying to repress our desires but a major, even basic part of listening to our bodies is learning how to balance our desires. Iād agree that there has been a puritanical current especially in American culture that demonizes natural and healthy desires resulting in their repression in deeply unhealthy ways. But that doesnāt mean that overindulgence doesnāt exist or that it isnāt a major problem for a lot of people, or even that there isnāt also a precedent for overindulgence on a cultural level as well, given the capitalist emphasis on consumerism. Despite the bourgeois shitheads in the OP article, itās no secret that traditionally the way to show off wealth has been through flaunting excess.
As with most things, there is a healthy balance that needs to be found between short term desires and long term health. Iād hope that isnāt a controversial thing to say. The exact location of that balance varies with the individual, but to look at modern western diets along with all the severe health consequences they are known to be responsible for and conclude that the problem is the suppression of desire is justā¦ well, misguided to put it lightly. Like we know the addictive nature of the processed sugars that are pumped into food for the express purpose of getting people to keep eating long after theyāve had even ten times the amount that would be healthy to have in a day. It isnāt a personās fault for having the desire to eat more because it is literally a physiological addiction, that again, has been intentionally manufactured to drive consumption and therefore profits. But the immediate answer for someone suffering from that addiction is absolutely not to give in to the desire and just eat more. No more than the answer for someone with an opiate or alcohol addiction is to just indulge when the desire is felt, but rather to make an attempt to curb the consumption of opiates/alcohol/sugar despite the sometimes overwhelming desire to give into it. Listening to your body is much more about recognizing what itās telling you about its long-term well-being than it is about sating its immediate desires. And for the vast majority of people especially in the west/global north, fasting is a positive way to respond to the malaise their body is screaming at them with. Almost everyone who really tries fasting, including people in this thread, report that they feel much better as a result of doing so. That is listening to your body.
Iād take a look at that study then, but with an extremely skeptical eye, considering there have been literally scores of studies saying the exact opposite. Thee major lifestyle element that most strongly predicts longevity is restricted caloric intake. In other words, of all the factors that we have been able to find that correlate with people living longer lives, is people who have taken in fewer calories over their life. This is well known as any quick search can quickly confirm for you. As another obvious example, again, we know through countless studies with overwhelming evidence how bad a high intake of sugar is, how it directly leads to heart disease and of course diabetes. Diabetes (specifically type II), as you may know, is epidemic in the US. Diabetes essentially is insulin resistance, and the way to fix insulin resistance is to stop all consumption of sugars/carbohydrates for a time, ie, to fast. Iād recommend looking up āfasting + insulin resistance.ā This is all stuff well known to science and medicine, but there is so much more I could get into. Like what we now know about autophagy and how fasting massively speeds it up, the role of mTOR signaling pathway in fasting, or the evolutionary reasons that fasting is good for a species that through most of its existence experienced famines where it had to cope with surviving without food for lengths of time. (The ā3 square meals a dayā thing is a very recent phenomenon). Iād post links of the many many studies that back all this up if itās absolutely necessary, but it can all be easily confirmed with a web search. Whatever studies youāre talking about, if they are as you say, are in complete contradiction of well-established consensus.
Fasting is not appropriate for everyone in every circumstance and I never implied otherwise. There are absolutely people who should not do long fasts, and though fewer, there are even people who shouldnāt do intermittent fasting. Definitely. But they are in the minority. Itās funny that you mention gut issues because one of the first and most successful methods for treating the most common gut issues (I know a number of people with colitis and IBS, the latter I used to have myself) is fasting and elimination diets. This is what gets recommended by doctors, and for good reason. I have no idea what your issues are, so I wouldnāt presume to tell you that fasting would be the answer for you, but something to consider is that almost every treatment for an ailment will cause initial discomfort. For many people who experience that normal nausea upon forgoing food longer than theyāre used to, including me, itās because itās literally a type of withdrawal. Your body has adapted to having food at the frequent intervals we usually eat, particularly carbohydrates which can be quickly converted to energy. Fat can also be used as a source of energy but your body wonāt tap into that longer-term energy storage mechanism until the carbohydrates have been used up. If your body is not used to doing that, it will be uncomfortable. But so too is it uncomfortable for a brain used to a steady supply of external opioids to go without them until it adapts to using the endogenous ones again.
As for practicality, sure. Thatās a different issue. Fasting takes a commitment and very likely will include that initial discomfort. For people barely scraping by and having to work multiple jobs and keep their energy constantly up, taking the downtime that one would need for (as an example) a 3-day fast just isnāt feasible. That said, if they had some respite for a while and some time to tend to their health, most of them would find that fasting would help them. The same way someone who needs coffee to function and go to work but gets no sleep would find that if they could quit caffeine and get better sleep, it would help them cope with work in the long term, but quitting coffee just isnāt feasible in order to keep up with the necessary grind. On the other hand, someone who is in a relatively easy position to give up coffee and get better sleep would not be listening to their body or doing themselves any favors by using the excuse āugh, I just feel like crap when I donāt get my caffeine.ā Iām not implying thatās you, but it definitely is some people who would pooh-pooh something genuinely positive because it seems uncomfortable at first.
It seems like rather black-and-white thinking to keep referring to it as being either a universally good practice or typical self-help-book bunkum. It is not universal. But to view it through the lens of being āminimalistā or worse, JP-esque self-help bullshit is a very narrow and inaccurate way to look at something that has such a long history, cultural significance, established medical use, and overwhelming scientific consensus.
I actually disagree with the notion that our goal is to ābalanceā our desires. I genuinely think every single moment we have to repress our short-term desires is a systemic failure. From both a society-wide and a general systemic perspective, I donāt think itās sustainable to rely on willpower as a band-aid for things that are fundamentally social issues. Alcoholism and addiction do generally require short-term ignorance of oneās desires and self-control, but, there has been a decent amount of support for the theory that a lot of those tendencies are caused by social issues and lack in other areas. Or in other words, the desire is (sometimes) entirely genuine- Itās just that indulging it directly isnāt a good idea. This is why I have such significant skepticism of any treatment that requires immense will-power over a long period. Yes, some things do require will-power to accomplish, but the fact it takes so much often indicates a separate issue on top of it. Or, in other words, I am skeptical of overindulgence, but I am far more skeptical of the will as a solution to it.
The idea that diabetes can in any way be ācuredā by simply reversing what the general social impression of what causes diabetes (overindulge and overeat), is something I view with immense suspicion. I honestly donāt really care if thereās a lot of āscienceā behind it or even fasting in general- Plenty of extremely bullshit ideas were considered genuine science for a while and viewed uncritically because of social norms and values. I would consider a lot of what youāre suggesting to be extremely at risk of being in a similar situation.
No, Iām saying that the idea itās universally helpful is self-help-book bunkum, not the idea itās helpful AT ALL. Itās not the idea that itās helpful for some people that Iām skeptical of, but itās status as something that can just fix a lot of physiological issues. It smacks too much of the bias most doctors have of blaming every issue a fat person experiences on their weight when the majority of the time it has nothing to do with it.
Edit: I want to be very clear, I think it (fasting) has a lot of uses. It wouldnāt be a common practice in so many religions if it was pointless. Basically all pushback I give is really only being given because Iām suspicious in general of the tendency to associate health and numerous health practices both with universal applicability and moral value. Iād probably give fasting a go myself, probably once I have time to do it without being distracted during work or study due to it, but I think being overly pessimistic about this stuff about itās likely uses is kind of a good idea in general because it ENSURES that, when we do it, it isnāt because of our protestant work ethic based culture, but because it works for us and our own goals.
Edit 2: Removed disrespectful statement