Guest Post: Intermittent Fasting, Focus And Productivity - A Personal Journey
Featuring Guest Writer Dr Ellen Britt from Intermittent Fasting Insider
Hey all - Welcome to this second Guest Writer post on 30,000 Days.
Guest writers will be sharing stories from their 30,000 days so far. Today, I am so pleased to share this space with Dr Ellen Britt.
Ellen uses her experience, education and two decades of medical practice to showcase and explain the latest research findings and innovation in intermittent fasting.
I hope you’ll join me in welcoming her, and both she and I will be really keen to hear how you relate to the story she shares today.
I didn’t ask for the fasting life. The fasting life found me.
When anyone asks me how I found intermittent fasting, I often say it found me, as I literally stumbled into it nearly five years ago while doing research for a client's health-related writing project. Time and again, while working on this project I would bump into another compelling piece of research on fasting. At first, like many people, I was very resistant, but after seeing yet another piece of evidence, I decided to try it for a couple of weeks. At the time, I had no idea what this practice would come to mean in my life in terms of not only weight loss, but a renewal of energy.
But perhaps the most surprising benefit that came to me because of IF was a restoration in focus and my ability to concentrate, and a subsequent skyrocketing of my productivity. This was extremely important to me, as I make my living as a freelance medical writer, an occupation that requires the ability for me to concentrate and focus for long periods of time. As someone who is intensely curious about the world, I wanted to know if this was true for everyone, or was it just me. If IF really does increase focus and productivity, what is the mechanism behind it, and could I fine tune my fasting practice to maximize this effect? At the time, there was not a lot published in the mainstream media about IF and very little guidance.
First, it was the Tech Bros…
One of the first things I discovered is that the current popularity of intermittent fasting owes a lot to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, who embraced intermittent fasting as a tool to increase…you guessed it…focus and productivity.
In December of 2016, Kevin Rose, a serial entrepreneur, technology investor, and one of the original co-founders of Digg, launched a new iPhone app called Zero to help users fast. Inspired by the actor Hugh Jackman, who is a fan of fasting, Rose initially kept track of his fasts using a Google spreadsheet but was frustrated that he couldn’t find an organized way to keep track of his starting and ending fast times. Zero was launched, but not without a flurry of somewhat predictable criticism, as some complained Rose should be building apps to better the lives of others, instead of focusing his resources on himself and his little band of fellow biohacking Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and others called his app “ridiculous.”
As is so often the case with concepts people don’t at first understand, there was an initial wave of early adoption, followed by an ever-accumulating body of positive research around the topic, and then widespread public acceptance. Today Zero is the world’s most popular fasting app and is the one I use to track my fasts. Most people use IF as a way to lose weight and some stay with the practice because of research that correlates IF with better blood pressure, and improvements in such conditions as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancers and even neurological disorders. There is still not much talk about increased focus and productivity.
Widening the focus
So back to my own experience. I asked my colleagues and friends, many of whom had taken up IF after seeing my rather spectacular weight loss results, if they had noticed an increase in their ability to focus and concentrate while fasting. The answer was a resounding yes and also confirmed they noticed this only as a sort of side-effect of their practice, as they were not expecting this to happen.
If you feel like you have somehow lost your ability to focus, you are not alone. Research done at the University of California, Irvine, showed office workers were able to focus on a single task for just three minutes before breaking concentration. There are a variety of reasons for this, many that you would not suspect. Johann Hari, a British-Swiss writer and journalist, contends you have not lost your focus, it’s been stolen! Hari the author of Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. He took a deep dive into the research looking at why we are unable to focus and uncovered these reasons:
Exhaustion - People are sleeping less than ever, and an alarming number are not waking up feeling refreshed. Stress brought on by the feeling you need to be always connected, and increasing exposure to blue light from electronic screens is feeding an epidemic of sleeplessness.
Bad Food Choices - Fueling your brain with a load of sugary carbs in the form of a muffin, doughnut or sugary cereal in the morning gives your brain a rush of energy. Until it doesn’t. An hour or so after you eat, you are very likely to go into a sugar slump, along with brain fog.
Slaves to Techology - Many people are never without their smartphones. Apps are purposely designed to interrupt you with a barrage of alerts that trigger an almost impossible to resist urge to check your phone. Your attention, which is a finite resource, is constantly drained, and your ability to focus on a task for any length of time is severely compromised. Plus the constant exposure to blue light wreaks havoc on your circadian rhythm, your natural body clock.
So what does all this have to do with intermittent fasting?
In terms of sleep, one study found sleep quality in the participants improved on several levels after just one week of intermittent fasting. The research participants woke up less during the night, got more restful sleep and spent more time in REM sleep, the stage of sleep associated with emotional and mental processing. Participants also reported they felt they were sleeping better, they were in a better mood and had better focus as they went about their day.
Plus, when you practice IF, you’ll likely have higher levels of human growth hormone which is produced during sleep. This hormone helps your body repair itself, as well as burns fat and restores your muscles. Another hormone that is increased by IF is orexin-A, a neurotransmitter associated with alertness. People who fast tend to have increased levels of this hormone during the day, when alertness is called for, and lower levels at night, which helps them to sleep better.
People who practice intermittent fasting are often seduced by the idea that it’s not what you eat but when you eat it. They quickly find out bad food choices negate many of the beneficial effects of IF, and become quite motivated to eat healthier. These better choices lead to feeling better and get rid of the brain fog after effects of too much sugary food. Stable blood sugar without the whiplash of up and down glucose levels are conducive to improved concentration and focus.
Transferable discipline
When you practice IF, you also are building discipline around food and eating, and this carries over to other areas of life. Since beginning IF, I’ve found it much easier to resist the temptation to constantly check my phone for alerts and messages. This is not too surprising, as IF has widespread effects on brain function, with research showing improved cognitive function, as well as gains in memory, learning and alertness, all benefiting from periods of fasting.
One of the things I have learned after nearly five years of daily intermittent fasting, as well as talking with colleagues and friends who fast, is that each person is completely different and that you have to learn to listen to your own body. I fast for 19 to 22 hours each day, but some people do equally well fasting 16, 14 or even 12 hours. I also eat just one meal a day (known as OMAD) with an eating “window” of about two hours. I settled into this routine over many, many months, and have come to consider this combination of the length of my fast and OMAD as my fasting “sweet spot.” My concentration is best when I am fasting, so I tend to get most of my writing work done in the morning, as I usually break my fast around 1 pm or so. In the “fed” state, I do other things that don’t require so much attention, such as laundry, cooking or going for a walk. Later, after my window has closed and I have gone several hours without eating, my ability to focus and concentrate returns, and I’ll often have another period of intense productivity in the early evening.
What works for me is highly unlikely to work for you. So you’ll need to experiment until you find your own sweet spot. When it comes to improving focus and concentration, as well as an increase in productivity, I highly recommend giving intermittent fasting a try!
So grateful to be able to do a guest post for Sarb's Noise Reduction! If any readers have questions at all about my fasting practice, I would be delighted to address them. Just post your question in the comments.
Hello Ellen
A fascinating read Thank you. I am curious to know in your research if you came across a body type where intermittent fasting would be more of a challenge? I appreciate people do IF for a variety of reasons including mental clarity, but keen to hear your thoughts on people slightly overweight or with a higher BMI than their body should be presenting. Are there any pitfalls that you are aware of?
Lovely
Paul