Fasting, Diet, Fitness, and Health

I don’t claim to know everything about health, nutrition, fitness, and fasting. First off, there’s always more to learn, and science (along with anecdotal evidence) is always changing. Secondly, I have much more to learn even from the available knowledge that is out there, and the results I’ve gotten in my own life from following what I’ve read have been good, but not perfect.

Having said that, I feel like I’ve read enough, experienced enough, applied enough of this knowledge to my own life, and gotten good enough results to be able to share this information with you and help you reach your own health goals, whether those goals include weight loss, getting fit, or treating any health issues you may have.

Following My Passion of Health, Nutrition, Fitness, and Fasting

As of this writing, I am 34 years old, 5’9, 125 pounds, with 4.3% body fat. I am in pretty great shape, despite not getting proper sleep for a long time, dealing with too much stress, and not even exercising at the level of intensity or time that I’d like to. What I am mostly doing right recently has been my diet, along with fasting.

I lived most of my life as a health and fitness nut. I’ve been doing daily formal exercise since the age of 12, in 1996. I’ve been following a fairly healthy diet, or at least paying attention to my diet, since the age of 16. From the early 2000s until now, I’ve read up on alternative and natural health news and done research online and offline through books on nutrition and fitness. As the years have gone by, I’ve gotten into it more and more. It became my clear cut passion in the late 2000s.

But it’s really the past month and a half, since early February, that I’ve made what I feel are the most important health discoveries of my life. These are findings that I’ve applied to my own life, and they are the reason I decided to start this blog to share with you. Although I’ve read many articles and watched many informational videos from many different alternative health experts in this timespan, including brilliant people like Dr. Jason Fung, Dr. Mercola, Mike Adams from Natural News, Dr. Benjamin Bikman, Dr. Shawn Baker, and others, I can attribute most of my current health knowledge and inspiration to Cole Robinson.

Finding Inspiration in the Snake Diet

Cole is a YouTube sensation and the founder of the Snake Diet. It’s basically a fasting-focused lifestyle, with extreme, extended fasts for people who are very overweight, and shorter fasts for those who just need to lose a little weight or cure some health condition. Cole trains very hard in the gym and usually does one 48 hour fast per week while eating only one meal a day each weekday, so he eats 6 meals a week on average. He’s also done many longer fasts, as well as other health experiments on his body, in terms of fasting, diet, and workouts. He believes in full-body workouts every day of the week. There is no such thing as a day off or a cheat meal in Cole’s world. He’s even a big believer in dry fasting and the incredible benefits and health miracles it can provide, as you can read about in the first post on this blog.

And although he’s very giving and helpful to his clients and listeners (he doesn’t even charge any money!), if you’re not at all familiar with Cole or the Snake Diet YouTube channel, he is extremely vulgar and not politically correct at all. I personally love it. He’s entertaining, hilarious, intense, motivational, and informative all at the same time. To put it simply, Cole speaks the truth, and he never holds anything back. In my opinion, he has the most important channel on YouTube and is doing the most important work on the Internet.

So as you can tell, I admire the hell out of this guy, even though I’ve never met him, he doesn’t know me, and I’ve only been familiar with the Snake Diet and his channel for about two months. But I say all this because I’ve already modeled my own healthy habits after him. As I said above, I was already pretty strict and well-disciplined with my health choices for most of my life, and in pretty good shape and in pretty good overall health. But I knew I could be better, and as you can read on my About page, I’m constantly dealing with skin issues, mainly rosacea, that I just knew could be solved with the right diet and lifestyle changes. I’m still in the process of healing that particular condition, but I feel I am on the right track with everything else, and in a position to share what I’ve learned, from Cole, other experts, and my own life experiences, with anyone who wants to improve their health too.

So what follows is not the exact teaching of Cole Robinson or anyone else you might read on the Internet besides myself. It is my own unique mix of everything I’ve learned and of the health rules I currently live my life by. I am confident that if you adopt these habits and make the necessary changes in your life, you will be much healthier and happier within the next few months. But this is a lifestyle that I believe you will want to continue forever, because once you see the results in yourself, you’ll become addicted to living like this, and drop unhealthy addictions, some of which I don’t even mention in my protocol below, but should be fairly obvious and include but are not limited to smoking, doing drugs (even soft drugs), drinking soda, and drinking too much alcohol.

My Health Protocol: What I believe Will Work For You Too – Follow a Fasting-Focused Lifestyle

So here is what I believe and how I live my life, and what I think you should do too if you want to lose weight and achieve optimal health…

By far, the number one thing you can do is fasting. Adopting a fasting-focused lifestyle can be very difficult, especially if you are accustomed to eating 3-6 meals per day, or even worse, snacking and grazing all day long. Doing this, and even eating more than two meals in a day (Cole would say more than one is bad) is very damaging to your body. It constantly spikes your insulin levels and causes inflammation in the body. It doesn’t give your digestive system enough time to heal from the last time you ate.

The easiest type of intermittent fasting to do is to drink a decent amount of water with salt during the fast. This is far and away the top health choice you can make, and it’s the first thing I’d start with before you even get into making any other changes.

You can learn a lot more about intermittent fasting, dry fasting, and extended fasting (with salt-water aka Snake Juice) in other posts on this blog, including a wealth of information on dry fasting in my first post, but for now, just know that it’s vitally important that you shrink your eating window down to as small as a time as possible, preferably between 4-8 hours, but even as small as one hour if you’re doing OMAD (one meal a day). This can be tough for a newcomer to fasting, so ease into it. After a while, it won’t be very challenging at all, and you may feel ready to do longer fasts, where true healing, autophagy, and more intense burning of body fat can really take place.

But what do you eat during that eating window, when you’re not intermittent fasting?

What Should You Eat (And Not Eat)?

Here’s a percentage breakdown of how I’d eat the major categories of food groups (real, unprocessed, whole food groups)

Meat – 80%
Vegetables – 15%
Fruit – 5%

That might seem crazy at first glance but do your research. Follow this blog, follow Dr. Jason Fung, Cole Robinson, Dr. Shawn Baker, and others on YouTube and elsewhere. Be open-minded. Almost everything you’ve ever been told is a lie, and the opposite is often true. This has been done on purpose, to keep the population fat and sick, but that’s a whole separate blog post for another day…

Anyway, the best meat to eat is red meat. It’s the most nutrient-dense food on the planet and has just about everything we need to function properly. Your best options in this order are beef, veal, pork, and lamb.

Seafood and fish are next, mostly due to their high omega 3 content.

A quick aside here: Remember, this should all be done in one or two meals per day, preferably one if you can work your way up to that, along with periodic longer 48-hour fasts.

Next is lean meat like turkey and chicken.

Eggs are a healthy option and can be eaten daily.

Low-carb fruits and vegetables are preferable to higher-carb fruits and vegetables. I would severely limit nightshade vegetables and fruits, especially if you have any kind of skin condition like rosacea, eczema, or psoriasis. Some popular nightshades include white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, and bell peppers. But most other fruits and vegetables should be fine in moderation.

However, I am doing more and more research on the benefits, at least in the short-term, of the carnivore diet, and there are many promising anecdotal results online. I will be following up on this way of eating more in future blog posts, but for now, I think it is healthy to consume some fruits and vegetables, even though there is emerging evidence that things like fiber and antioxidants are highly overrated, and in some cases, harmful if too much is consumed.

I would limit your intake of dairy, including any type of cheese. This can be a hard addiction to break, but I would even recommend cutting it out altogether if you can stand it. So I would avoid milk. And as far as almond milk goes, along with any other type of milk with added sugar or that’s sourced from things like nuts or soy, I would stay away from them altogether.

Limit rice and potatoes. They do spike your insulin levels and raise blood sugar, but they have some health benefits too and they can be consumed in moderation.

This one is controversial, but limit nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, peanuts, and peanut butter. These are all high in Omega 6 fatty acids, as well as antinutrients, such as phytates, lectins, and more.

Antinutrients are a huge problem with most people’s diets, yet they are not well known among the general population and not often thought about by even most “health-conscious” people. They not only block the absorption of the other good nutrients contained in a certain food (for example, the zinc in almonds or cashews is poorly absorbed because of antinutrients), but they also block the absorption of nutrients from other foods you may be eating at the same time.

The over-consumption of foods high in antinutrients, combined with not eating enough nutrient-dense foods (like beef liver), is one of the biggest health crises in the world today, and it’s barely talked about, mainly due to the rise in popularity of the vegetarian and vegan agenda. It’s no wonder why so many people are deficient in so many vitamins and minerals and in such poor health around the United States and the world. This way of eating, combined with not fasting, is causing a health crisis for most people, especially those that are actually trying to do something about their diet, ironically.

Sadly, people who are eating a diet full of antinutrients and avoiding red meat, or meat altogether, are severely damaging their health and well-being over time…

Continuing on with “foods” that are even more damaging to the human body, the following items should be avoided altogether. This stuff wasn’t made for the human body. Our systems can’t process it, and they will cause nothing but disease and inflammation:

-Sugar

-Grains of any kind, including wheat, bread, cereals, pasta, baked goods, anything with white flour, etc.

-Processed foods of any kind

-Vegetable oils and Seed oils

-This one is controversial too, and I don’t necessarily recommend it for everyone, but I personally don’t consume caffeine from ANY source: This means no coffee or tea, including decaf coffee and tea, because even decaf contains a little caffeine. Also, no chocolate, soda, energy drinks with caffeine, supplements with caffeine, or even pain relievers that contain it. Cutting out caffeine is one of the best changes I’ve made, and one that I’d highly recommend to you. Caffeine is a drug, and it comes with many more negative health effects than positive health benefits, so I’d cut it out altogether as soon as you can.

More General Health Tips

You can liberally salt your food with pink Himalayan salt or organic sea salt.

The only beverage you consume should be water with occasional salt (sodium chloride) in the water. Other options to put in the water include potassium chloride, baking soda, and magnesium sulfate. This is basically what the Snake Juice is composed of in the Snake Diet.

Apple Cider Vinegar is also good to add in every once in awhile, as it aids in digestion and treats a number of ailments. I’d recommend reading about it and many other health cures on the Earth Clinic website. As you’ll see on that site, Apple Cider Vinegar can also be used in combination with baking soda for certain health issues. Personally, I have an aversion to the smell and taste of apple cider vinegar, and I don’t use it as much as I should, but I would not let that bias turn others away from using it. It’s definitely a healing substance and is very versatile in the ways it can be used to treat many ailments.

Lemon juice is also a good thing to put in warm water in the morning especially. Among other things, it’s good for the skin, digestion, and to speed up weight loss.

Coconut water is also fine to drink in moderation.

Here’s another controversial point, and one that I’ve definitely shifted my viewpoint on recently. This is especially shocking because I’m a guy who has sold vitamins and supplements and believed in taking them myself, for years. But following a meat-based diet, along with some fruits and vegetables, and centered around fasting, you should need very few vitamins or supplements. Many things like superfood drinks, protein powders, and many other type of health or weight loss products that are so popular on the Internet nowadays are not really necessary to lose weight, build muscle, and achieve optimal health. There are a few exceptions though, as you’ll read below.

Save Money and Time with a More Simple, Healthy Lifestyle

This should actually save you some money too if you’re a supplement pill addict like so many people are. Actually, this whole lifestyle should save you some money, despite the fact that quality meat can be expensive, as can organic fruits and vegetables. But eating one or two meals a day, and cutting back on your supplement budget, while only drinking water and occasionally doing longer fasts, you should save a ton of money in the long run.

This type of lifestyle is also good for saving you time and should be popular with people who are into minimalism and leading a simple life, as Cole Robinson so often talks about in his videos.

Are There Any Worthwhile Supplements to Take?

There are a few vitamins and supplements that I would recommend. As Cole has suggested (and experienced in his own life), opening a capsule of cayenne pepper and consuming it in water or on your food could really aid in the treatment of stomach ulcers, other stomach problems, and even other health issues. Also, many herbs and spices, including but not limited to ginger, turmeric, Rhodiola rosea, ginkgo biloba, cistanche (a potent Chinese herb) and others are great to use as medicine, in short-term therapeutic doses, or even for a string of weeks at a time, but I also feel these are unnecessary to rely on as a daily supplement or habit that you must do for the rest of your life. They should be used in moderation.

I’ve also had some success with glucosamine and chondroitin for joint health, as well as MSM sulfur, Boswellia, and boron, which is particularly effective for boosting testosterone among other benefits.

As far as daily supplements are concerned, zinc, vitamin D3 (with vitamin K2 for absorption), and vitamin C are the most important nutrients for your immune system. They don’t necessarily have to be taken every day as isolated nutrients, but they are important in times when you feel your immune system might need an extra boost.

I also feel that if you can find a premium, high-quality multivitamin, it’s not a bad idea to take one every day just to make sure you are filling in any nutritional gaps that might arise in your diet. There’s even emerging evidence that collagen supplements can be extremely beneficial to multiple aspects of your health. As with everything when it comes to taking in nutrients though, I recommend food first, supplements second. If you are able to fast and eat nutrient-dense food when you break your fast, you will be giving yourself the best chance to look and feel great, and increase your well-being and longevity.

However, the most important thing of all when it comes to your eating habits and overall health is living a fasting focused lifestyle, and keeping your blood sugar and insulin spikes consistently low.

Finally, a few quick notes on some other lifestyle choices you can make to better your health that will be expanded on much more in future blog posts but are nonetheless extremely important to complement your nutrition and fasting-focused lifestyle:

Other Tips to Support Your New Healthy Diet and Fasting-Focused Lifestyle

I recommend a full-body workout every day, no days off ever unless you’re sick or doing a long fast. I currently only work out 25-35 minutes per day, and around an hour on Saturdays, but what I recommend, and what I plan on doing in the near future, is at least 40 minutes per day, and up to 75 minutes a couple of times per week.

I would recommend not sitting for more than an hour at a time. Every 60-70 minutes, try to get up and move around a little and even take a short walk if possible.

Try to get at least 7 hours of sleep per night, and more optimally 8-9. I need to greatly improve on this, and also on my last piece of advice in this post, and that’s to greatly reduce your stress level.

Many of these topics and pieces of advice will be explained in more detail, added to, and commented on in future blog posts, so be sure to bookmark this website and return often to follow the most honest and hopefully useful and impactful health advice available online.

Thanks for reading this post and joining me on this health journey, and I hope you got something out of this. Remember, this all starts with a decision to change your life for the better, for your own happiness. In my opinion, that first decision should be to practice daily intermittent fasting. Start today and never look back.