Physical and Mental Health
Here’s Why and How I Fasted, Moved, and Meditated Daily for Decades.
Three healthy lifestyle habits that contribute to cellular, metabolic, immune, endocrine, and mental health sustainably
Purpose of the Article
This article answers two questions: “why and how do I fast, meditate, and exercise daily?” I present the information in two main headings and multiple subheadings to make the story digestible. First, I answer the why and then the how question.
Inspiration for the Story
Subscribers keep asking me why I emphasize time-restricted eating, exercise, and meditation in my health and well-being articles so frequently. My quick answer to them is to regain and maintain homeostasis of the body and mind.
Some readers want to understand why I overstress my body and mind with these challenging lifestyle habits, which sound counterproductive to them. Some even think that they are too much for them and ask me to show practical ways to incorporate them into their daily lives in an accessible way.
Since I made these practices regular habits and added them to my lifestyle, my body and mind don’t see them as challenging at all. On the contrary, they together enrich my life and bring joy and meaning to my existence, which I explain in the subsequent sections.
1 — Five health reasons for fasting, meditating, and exercising every day
This part answers the why question of my title.
The short answer is to holistically, naturally, and sustainably improve my health and well-being, investing in my healthspan and lifespan goals.
Fasting, exercise, and meditation contribute to my goals of addressing the conditions at different layers of health.
As these regimens and their effects are comprehensive, I only focus on the crucial points. Next, I link relevant articles for readers interested in details for each regimen, protocol, and impact.
A — Cellular/Mitochondrial Health
Our cells create substantial waste products that require cleansing daily. These biological toxins may cause severe health conditions and lead to undesirable disorders if they pass the threshold.
Fasting and exercise are beneficial to keep the cells clean by contributing to the removal of toxins, pathogens, and damaged proteins.
Both fasting and exercise can initiate autophagy and mitophagy. These biological processes are cells’ self-healing and self-protecting mechanisms. Meditation can reduce the stress overload on the cells, especially neurons. So it contributes to homeostasis in the nervous system.
As I introduced both autophagy and mitophagy in previous articles, I won’t repeat the details here. Instead, interested readers might check the following two articles.
What Happened When I Experimentally Initiated Autophagy Decades Ago
How I Initiate Mitophagy and Make My Mitochondria Denser in 7 Steps
B — Metabolic Health
It was a wake-up call for me when I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes in my mid-20s. My condition reflected all factors of metabolic syndrome.
To gain my metabolic health back, I needed to get rid of insulin resistance and make my body insulin sensitive and leptin receptive.
The two viable options for me were time-restricted eating and regular exercise, which both contribute to insulin sensitivity.
Furthermore, regular fasting and personalized exercise made my body fat adapted, giving necessary energy to all cells and creating an alternative energy source for the brain, making a protective effect on the neurons and neural connections.
Meditation was supplementary to my metabolic health, reducing stress, regulating emotions, and balancing hormones that I will cover in item #4.
C — Immune Health
Experiencing immune and autoimmune conditions in my younger years encouraged me to focus on this domain.
Routine fasting, meditating, and exercising could improve our defense system. For example, we can reduce the risks of live cancer via exercise, fasting, and mindfulness practices. Regular exercise is effective in preventing numerous cancers.
Meditation can reduce emotional, physical, and oxidative stress. Fasting and exercise eliminate toxins and pathogens from the body. In addition, fasting gives the digestive system rest and improves gut health contributing to immune health.
The combined effects of these three lifestyle habits can significantly empower the immune system and support the defense system to protect the body.
D — Endocrine Health
Due to hormonal imbalance, my metabolic and mental health suffered in my younger years. One of the risk factors for metabolic syndrome was the imbalance of insulin, cortisol, and leptin hormones.
Fasting contributes to the balance of these hormones. In addition, fasting substantially increased the growth hormone and contributed to lean muscle gain and maintenance.
As I wrote numerous articles about hormones, I won’t repeat them here. Interested readers might check the following articles for details.
Lose Visceral Fat by Understanding the Intricacies of Six Critical Hormones
Adiponectin Matters for Fat Loss and Inflammatory Health Conditions
Fix Hormonal Sleep Issues and Improve Sleep Quality in 3 Easy Steps.
E — Neurological and Mental Health
Fasting and exercise have biological and physical effects contributing to neurological and mental health.
The best contribution of fasting and exercise is to improve hormonal and neurotransmitter balance. Both fasting and exercise can change brain chemistry positively.
In addition to the cleansing aspect of fasting and movement, as mentioned in the cellular health section, they also can increase BDNF and give the brain alternative energy by initiating ketosis.
2 — My Fasting, Exercise, and Meditation Protocols
This section answers the how questions of my title. I introduce my fasting, meditating, and exercising protocol to give helpful perspectives to those who plan to customize these regimens.
A — My Time Restricted Eating and Dietary Regimens
I started time-restricted eating by skipping a meal decades ago. Not eating breakfast brought me many benefits. I documented my experience in an article titled When I Skipped Breakfasts for Two Decades, I Gained Copious Benefits.
However, when I skipped another meal (lunch), I improved my health from the five angles mentioned in section #1. I documented my experience in an article titled Here’s What Happened on One-Meal-a-Day After 15 Years. This lifestyle approach allowed me to fast every day effortlessly.
My dietary regimen contributed to making my fasting sustainable. Consuming bioavailable proteins and healthy fats via a keto-carnivore diet made fasting effortless. In addition, this unique diet made my body leptin-sensitive preventing unnecessary hunger.
Refraining from carbs and replacing them with healthy fats gave me an excellent blood glucose profile and made my body insulin sensitive. In addition, this approach allowed me to enter ketosis quickly and maintain it sustainably.
Before a well-formulated keto diet, it was tough for me to fast when I was eating only plant-based food. I felt hungry frequently and had to eat multiple snacks daily. Eating too often, like six times a day, put my body in a metabolically disadvantaged position.
Eating just one nutrition meal a day made the just adverse effects putting me in a metabolically advantaged position. From my observations and experience, Keto Diets and Intermittent Fasting Lifestyle Tick the Boxes of Health Goals.
B — My Exercise Regimen
In my younger years, I used to do wrong exercises, causing unnecessary stress, not supporting my muscles, and preventing visceral fat burning due to elevated cortisol levels.
When I reduced cardio and increased resistance training, my metabolism improved, I gained more muscles, and consequently, I burned more visceral fat as an energy source. So, while achieving a better physique, I also gained more energy and never ran out of power for exercising.
In addition to weekly heavy lifting, I do daily calisthenics, around 10,000 steps barefoot walking on grass or the beach sand, and jump on the trampoline for 30 minutes.
C — My Mindfulness and Meditation Protocols
As I have an overreactive and anxious mind, my stress levels reached a chronic level. I needed to find practical solutions.
The best solution was mindfulness practices. Living in the moment with acceptance and positive curiosity, I reduce my anxiety, fear, and stress.
When I started meditating 20 minutes a day, I gained significant mental health benefits. I gradually increased it. Finally, I decided to meditate three times a day in 20-minute sessions. This protocol allowed me to balance my hormones and neurotransmitters effortlessly.
In addition, I use other mindfulness techniques such as self-talk, therapeutic writing, listening to music, dancing, working in a flow state, and performing yoga and pilates to reduce my anxiety and stress.
I focus on emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility to gain a better mental and emotional profile for health and well-being.
Conclusions and Takeaways
Too much prolonged and uncontrollable stress is harmful to the body. However, intentional and well-controlled pressure is essential for the growth and maintenance requirements of the body.
Fasting, exercise, and meditation provide controlled stress to the body. The physical stress of training and fasting allows the body to grow. Our muscles need stress to grow, and hormones need to balance.
The mental stress of meditation can strengthen the brain, especially the neocortex, to function better. Paradoxically the stress induced by meditation can reduce oxidative stress in the brain and the body. Therefore, meditation can contribute to better sleep by reducing stress and anxiety.
The benefits of fasting and meditation were understood by humans intuitively centuries ago. Therefore, many religions made them mandatory for the cultural practices of followers. Recently, scientific studies started understanding the reasons our ancestors intuitively knew.
Our ancestors also evolved by constantly moving. Only after getting comfort through new civilization did we adapt to sedentary life. Suddenly food became abundant, accessible 24/7, and delivered to our homes.
In addition, we made our food so tasty with unnatural flavors that we wanted to eat constantly without giving a break to our digestive system. However, as our ancient genes were not adapted to a sedentary life and consuming excessively processed food, many metabolic and mental diseases like type II diabetes, heart attacks, cancers, and neurodegenerative disorders like dementia emerged and skyrocketed.
We mocked our neurotransmitters, especially dopamine, by intensifying pleasure and losing focus on natural activities. As our brain cannot cope with orders of magnitude dopamine, it gives us addiction problems leading to more anxiety and depression. However, we can regain our mental abilities with meditation and other mindfulness practices.
In addition to fasting, exercise, and meditation, I add another controlled stress via thermogenesis using cold and heat therapy, as explained in an article titled Here’s What Happened When I Experimented with Thermogenesis for Decades.
Takeaways
1 — Understand that the body needs some stress to grow and maintain resources.
2 — Regular exercise is critical. However, we need to personalize our workouts based on our needs and goals.
3 — We can reduce the risks of metabolic and mental health conditions by using time-restricted eating with support from qualified professionals.
4 — Benefits of meditation are well-understood by cultures and now by science. Thus, introducing mindfulness practices to our lives can enhance our health and well-being.
5 — A customized combination of fasting, exercise, and meditation might enhance our healthspan and lifespan.
Even though healthy adults can perform fasting, exercise, and meditation, they might cause some problems for people with underlying health conditions. Therefore, seeking guidance and support from qualified healthcare professionals who have access to our medical history is necessary.
My fervent wish is to find ways to package fasting, exercise, and meditation, which might eradicate many diseases from this problematic planet.
I witnessed that these protocols help people to reverse their metabolic disorders. For example, Here’s How a Mature-Age Couple Reversed Diabetes and Trimmed Their Bodies with Lifestyle Habits.
I documented many more inspiring cases covering the benefits of fasting, meditation, and workouts compiled in a collection titled Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.
Like millions of others, I greatly benefited from these accessible, natural, and efficient practices. Therefore, I am keen to pass along my tacit knowledge and inspire others to consider them with support from loved ones, friends, and professionals.
In another story, I further elaborated on details giving a broader perspective on eliminating loose skin.
Here’s How I Got Healthier and Smoother Skin via 5 Lifestyle and Holistic Health Methods.
Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.
As a new reader, please check my holistic health and well-being stories reflecting my reviews, observations, and decades of experiments optimizing my hormones and neurotransmitters. I write about health as it matters. I believe health is all about homeostasis.
ALS, Metabolic Syndrome, Type II Diabetes, Fatty Liver Disease, Heart Disease, Strokes, Obesity, Liver Cancer, Autoimmune Disorders, Homocysteine, Lungs Health, Pancreas Health, Kidneys Health, NCDs, Infectious Diseases, Brain Health, Dementia, Depression, Brain Atrophy, Neonatal Disorders, Skin Health, Dental Health, Bone Health, Leaky Gut, Leaky Brain, Brain Fog, Chronic Inflammation, Insulin Resistance, Elevated Cortisol, Leptin Resistance, Anabolic Resistance, Cholesterol, High Triglycerides, Metabolic Disorders, Gastrointestinal Disorders, Thyroid Disorders, Anemia, Dysautonomia, cardiac output, and urinary track disorders.
I also wrote about valuable nutrients. Here are the links for easy access:
Lutein/Zeaxanthin, Phosphatidylserine, Boron, Urolithin, taurine, citrulline malate, biotin, lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, CoQ10, PQQ, NADH, TMG, creatine, choline, digestive enzymes, magnesium, zinc, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, N-Acetyl L-Tyrosine, and other nutrients.
Disclaimer: My posts do not include professional or health advice. I only document my reviews, observations, experience, and perspectives to provide information and create awareness.
As part of my creative non-fiction writing goals, I’d like to share a few stories that might warm our hearts with a bit of humor into weighty topics.
Sample Humorous Stories
Finally, After Burning Her House, Georgia Found Enlightenment
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8 Psychological Points I Had to Unlearn and Relearn the Opposite
Based on my writing experience and observations, I documented findings and strategies that might help you amplify your voice, engage your audience, and achieve your desired outcomes in your writing journey.
I publish my lifestyle, health, and well-being stories on EUPHORIA. My focus is on cellular, mitochondrial, metabolic, and mental health. Here is my collection of Insightful Life Lessons from Personal Stories.
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