A doctor told me to look into intermittent fasting. Not for weight loss, but for ADHD. There’s some new data that suggests a link between ADHD and insulin in the brain. Based on that science, intermittent fasting or a ketogenic diet –which can help improve insulin resistance– might help my brain. I’m a week into it and am seeing some weight loss, but it’s hard to tell with the ADHD without measuring my brainflorps per second. I might be more focused, but hunger and “hangry” bring their own distractions.
I’m skeptical, to say the least. Intermittent fasting makes frequent appearances in my YouTube shorts with balding Joe Rogan clones dressed in all black selling workout supplements. It has a whiff of being a cure-all. To counter that skepticism, I read a book called Life in the Fasting Lane co-authored by Dr Jason Fung, who was specifically recommended to me. It’s a mix of doctorly advice and testimonials from advocates who have had success with fasting. As scientific as the book tries to be, it undoes its own credibility pitching intermittent fasting with all the hallmarks of a fad elimination diet:
- Lose weight in 30 days
- Reduce cravings
- Live longer
- Reverse diseases
- Helps you focus at work
- Improves your sex life
- Big pharma doesn’t want you to know about this one weird trick!
- Used by ancient civilizations. Ugh. The appeal to history (ancient, therefore good!) is a major pet peeve of mine.
- And my least favorite: It doesn’t cure cancer, but it cures obesity, which causes all different kinds of cancer… so we’re not gonna say it cures cancer because that’s a douchebag thing to say, but it doesn’t not cure cancer if you catch our drift (wink).
I do appreciate that the book calls out “Calories-In/Calories-Out” as a myth that works 1% of the time. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that eliminating meals or days worth of food isn’t a macro-version of calories-in/calories-out, where you measure calories in weeks instead of per meal. I suppose the key difference is the duration between meals allows my body to enter ketosis (read: a starving state) which will consume my excess fat stores instead of my morning breakfast tacos adding to those fat stores.
To be honest, I’m a good candidate for this fad diet. I can sustain myself on a couple meals a day. I could skip lunch most days. Skipping breakfast though is hard. Not putting creamer in my morning coffee is hard. Not having a little after dinner snack with the kids is hard. Not eating is not my favorite, but I’m going to trust the process for a bit and hopefully it’ll help a weary brain like mine.