Food Combining & Intermittent Fasting

These are tools to optimize your body's ability to digest and assimilate the food you eat so you get more bang for your buck and spend less energy on digestion. You will be healthier and potentially live longer when applying these principles around your eating habits.  Ideally you would do these two practises together. This might be more or less challenging depending on your life circumstances. 

Food combining made simple

For optimal digestion it’s good to keep it simple. Have as few different ingredients in every meal as possible, Ideally only one. Very Few of us are willing to go to this degree of asceticism. Below are some simple guidelines on how to get most out of the food you eat using the least amount of energy for digestion. If you get inspired and want to go deeper in to food combining there are plenty of theories available, these are the most basic guidelines that will give considerable benefit when applied.

1. Avoid eating starch and animal protein in the same meal. The digestion of these types of food in the same meal takes a lot of time and energy. Both types combine well with low starch veggies and greens such as broccoli, spinach, cauliflower, zucchini etc. You can also combine two different starches in the same meal with veggies and salad, ie. Rice & Sweet potato. Legumes go fairly good together with starch, and concentrated veg protein such as tofu and tempeh digest better together with starch than meat. Ideally you would also avoid eating concentrated veg protein together with starch and instead have it with greens and vegetables, and have another meal later on with starch and vegetables.

2.Always eat fruits alone, or with greens. One hour before, or three hours after a meal is advisable.

At first this way of eating may feel unsatisfying, you will not feel full after The meal and may have a sensation of something missing. You will however feel more energized and sharp after eating, and after some time you will get used to it. Less energy will be spent on digestion and more will be available for regeneration and creativity.

Intermittent fasting

This is the practice of having all your daily food intake within a certain time window, usually a 5-8 hour period. The benefits are similar to fasting for longer periods, but the practice is easier to integrate in to normal life and made into a  permanent way of life if so desired. Intermittent fasting will help your digestion and metabolism and tune up your endocrine system as well. You will feel more alert and your body composition will improve. Many people skip breakfast and have lunch and dinner. Personally I like to skip dinner so the body doesn’t need to run digestive processes at night, but can rather focus on repair, detox and restoration.  

What to expect

There will be a certain degree of emotional detox happening, especially if you tend to go to food for comfort and to avoid difficult emotions. 

When I started skipping dinner I would feel very lonely, sad and aloof in the evenings. A good thing I noticed immediately was the feeling of more time, so I started to make use of dinner time as my own special time to take care of myself or do something enjoyable.

It might take at least a few weeks to get used to the new way of living and eating, and probably months to really adjust. Your body will slowly adapt and you might feel starved from time to time. It’s important to focus on nutritionally dense foods, and to not be too hard on yourself if you have a snack or small meal outside your eating window from time to time. A ”relapse” done with self love and awareness will give you strength to carry on and make it less likely to overindulge in heavy binge eating. 
Before your metabolism fully adjust  to intermittent fasting there will be blood sugar issues and adrenal stress. Your body will go in to using reserves to give you the energy you need in the fasting window.  I find it's very good to use adaptogenic herbs such as ashwagandha,  reishi or ginseng to help the body cope with the stress of adaptation and over time you will find you don’t even really think about eating outside your eating window.

One aspect about Intermittent fasting I really love is the sense of feast and celebration when I brake my daily fast. I also love how sharp and ready to go i feel in the mornings, and how energized I feel after breakfast. My intention is to make intermittent fasting a permanent way of life if it keeps working out well for me.