“On Pinterest there was a post about intermittent fasting, and it interested me.”
What interested you?
“All the benefits.”
Go on.
“Well, before I do, let me say that on Pinterest I also saw a thing about the benefits of taking cold showers. I don’t know which to try first.”
I do both. I have taken cold showers for about three years. I have done intermittent fasting a bit longer than that.
This year, I have been fasting on Mondays and Thursdays – in the sense of not eating from bedtime, Sunday night, till breakfast time, Tuesday morning. Generally it’s a stetch of 32 or so hours.
Let me add a third thing you might bump into on Pinterest: Cacao ceremonies. I break my fast on Tuesdays and Fridays with a cacao ceremony followed by Kundalini Tantra yoga.
“Which one’s best?”
No idea. I never really drop breadcrumbs with these things. All of them have helped me with contentment, as currently I’m wonderfully content, but I couldn’t say which has had the outsized effect. Frankly, I’m doubtful any of their effects has been outsized.
“I totally get that. You read about these things, and the authors make it sound like a hundrefold change is coming. And then it turns out to be, like, five percent.”
So long as it does some good and no harm, like taking vitamins for healthy people, though, why not?
Some combination of an empty stomach and the arrival of cacao, too, brings a palpable boost on Tuesdays and Fridays. And cold showers, quite surprisingly, help with staying warm in the wintertime.
It also seems like that same self-regulating effect gives you a one-hour warning on coming sickness; you notice the scratchy throat a touch earlier, allowing you to blast it with Airborne and echinacea.
“No scientific studies to share?”
Only my own experience. Which, with these things, it seems, is laboratory enough.