Category: Mundane

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How I Fast for Longevity – It’s Not as Hard as You Think!

I’ve tried various diets over the years, but I always found them to be troublesome, expensive, and painful.

Most of the time, it was difficult to find diets which tasted good. When the food tasted good, it would be expensive and unsustainable. Hence, there were many layers of pain associated with complicated diets, and I hated it.

Diets == Pain To Me

Let me describe how I got on the path of fasting in 4 stages :-

Stage 1 – Make a Long-term Pact with Yourself

The first step to fasting is to have compassion for yourself. I recently wrote about how we all have a “Shadow Self” and to be successful at fasting, I needed to get mine, as I call him, fully aligned on the journey.

Me and my Shadow Self

What I did was make a pact with my Shadow Self, agreeing to allow him small breaks whenever he wanted. The goal was to develop the habit of fasting while allowing little breaks along the way.

Think of habits like the current of a river, constantly flowing in the same direction and steadily moving towards a destination. Individual actions are like rocks in the river, causing small ripples but not able to change the overall direction or force of the current. Just as a few rocks won’t divert the river from its course, a few counter-actions won’t break the power of a strong habit.

However, if enough rocks accumulate, they can create a dam that alters the flow of the river, just as consistent counter-actions can eventually weaken a habit’s hold. Ultimately, it’s the strength and direction of the current (or habit) that determines the destination, while individual rocks (or actions) have a limited impact on the final outcome.

For good habits, like exercising regularly or eating less sweet stuff, deviating once or twice and resting for one day out of the week from a regular run, or eating that ice cream cone that I crave once in a while, would not affect the result by much.

Conversely, bad actions are fine as long as you do not turn them into a habit. For example, I have smoked socially with friends before, but only once a month, and never again until one year later. Each time I smoke may not do good for my lungs, but it is not really that bad in the long run.

Stage 2 – “Three Meals a Day is Enough!”

At 42, I remember a time when our parents insisted that we ate only three meals a day. If we asked for snacks before dinner, our mom would say, “No! Dinner time already!” After dinner, she would say, “You just ate!” 

The only legal times we could snack were tea time, which would happen between 3-5 pm, a small window. Most of the time, we would just skip that.

Convenience stalls were not readily available in Singapore in the 60s

For our parents’ generation, it was even harder to get snacks due to families being less affluent then, and the fact that it wasn’t as easy to get food. There were no supermarkets or 7-11 then. Hence, people were slimmer and fitter back then.

Then, as we got more affluent, we started to eat more. And somehow, there was a trend of eating many smaller meals throughout the day. It was supposed to help us control our weight. That led to children being encouraged to snack often, especially before activities. And we were told, “How to study if you haven’t had a healthy snack?”

But little did we know, we were actually getting our bodies in a constant state of being fed. This means our body rarely needs to use fat as an alternate source of fuel. I will write more about ketosis in another post, but basically what happens is that our bodies would not switch primary source of fuel from glucose to fats unless we go through at least 12 hours of not eating.

Hence, step one is to just maintain having regular meals, 3 times a day as was the “original way”. Then, have a 12 hours of fasting in between, which is usually easy because we would be sleeping most of it.

We have our dinners, and end before 8pm, then have breakfast, literally, we break fast, 12 hours later, at around 8am.

So that was what I did first, which meant cutting Netflix snacks which I used to have with my wife. I must say, this wasn’t easy. But I did this with compassion again, which meant that I would indulge once in a while. When we go watch a movie in the theatres, we would still get pop corn, even soft drinks are allowed, so my roommate was kept happy and satisfied.

Stage 3 – “16:8”

After getting used to eating regular meals, I realized that sometimes, even when feeling hungry, I could delay breakfast enough to skip it and only have lunch. This meant breaking my fast at 12 pm and fasting again after dinner at 8 pm.

I was doing what is popularly known as the “16:8” fast, which is a 16 hour fasting period, followed by a window of 8 hours of eating.

It’s easy, you probably have skipped a meal when busy before

When I was busy at work and did this, I felt hungry, but it was bearable. I started doing this more regularly, but I only did it from Monday to Friday, then went back to regular meals during the weekends. I also allowed myself to eat anything I wanted within the 8-hour window of eating from 12 pm to 8 pm. That meant char kway teow, ice cream, ice kachang – you name it, I took it.

Overall, it was a sweet deal for my “Shadow Friend”, and we easily got used to the 16:8 schedule without any pain at all.

Stage 4 – 80-hour fast

After watching the documentary by Chris Hemsworth, I wondered if I could fast for four full days like he did since I could already fast for 16 hours without any problems.

So I tried it, and it was an interesting experience, to say the least. Although I made it through safely, I did have to overcome some difficulties, which I’ll share in a future post.

However, I can say with certainty that the only reason it worked was because I fasted with compassion for myself.

Thank you for following me through this long post! It is much longer than I expected! As usual, however, I need to qualify that I am not a medical doctor, but merely following up with the research I read and heard about, and then testing these on myself. Do check with your doctor, especially if you have any health conditions before embarking on this exciting journey of fasting!

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The Science Behind Fasting – Science Alert

What you see here is a plate of my favourite food in the whole wide world, wanton noodles from Ho Seng Kee, a one-of-a-kind, hand-made duck egg noodle dish from Johor Bahru that has had their recipe passed down three generations. This bowl of noodles bring me back to my childhood, instantly. This bowl of noodles can’t be too healthy, what with the oil, and the meat, and the lack of vegetables.

It is not being able to eat food like this that made my life a living hell when I tried to stick to low-carbs diet, and high-fat, high protein diets. I’ve tried them all. At one point in time, I replaced carbs with beans. Beans are rich in fiber and protein and produce a lower insulin response than noodles or rice, so with my fatty liver result from my blood test, I thought that this was something I had to do.

I would rather be fat … than have to put myself through THIS

In a previous post, I shared why I started fasting. To recap, fasting is not a diet; while diets control what you eat, fasting controls when you eat. I will continue to use the word “fasting,” which includes intermittent fasting, to describe an eating pattern that involves alternating periods of eating and fasting. The length of your fast definitely affects the results, but more on that later.

Thor, or rather, the actor Chris Hemsworth’s documentary “Limitless,” taught me that fasting has several benefits. In essence, it boils down to two magic words, Ketosis, and Autophagy.

1. ketosis (i.e. use fat for fuel rather than glucose)

Ketosis is a metabolic state in which your body uses fat as its main fuel source instead of glucose¹. If this doesn’t sound new, it might be because you might have heard of people following high-fat ketogenic diets (“Keto diet”), they are essentially trying to do the same thing.

The difference is that Keto diet requires you to follow a diet which are very specific, including Fatty fish like salmon, full-fat cheese, low-carb vegetables like spinach and cauliflower, and NO food with carbohydrates like noodles and rice! (Bye bye Ho Seng Kee noodles! Bye bye sweet childhood!)

Fasting, however, triggers ketosis regardless of WHAT you eat, just because you choose WHEN to eat.

So how does ketosis work?

When we eat, our stomach produces glucose, and our liver stores excess glucose (by default, 20% is stored, regardless of how much we eat!) as glycogen. When glucose levels drop with fasting, the liver converts glycogen into glucose and releases it. After the stored glucose is depleted, the liver breaks down fat to make a substance known as ketones to provide energy. This process is known as ketosis.

Ketosis may have benefits for weight loss, blood sugar management, and epilepsy. However, ketosis can also have negative side effects, especially at the start, and may not be suitable for everyone. Another caveat, is that the long-term effects of ketosis are unclear¹.

However, one side effect is increased autophagy.

Niji-Midjourney’s interpretation of the word “autophagy”

2. autophagy (i.e. getting rid of old cells and dysfunctional cell parts)

Autophagy comes from ancient greek words, meaning “self-devouring”.

This is a natural process where your body cleans out damaged cells and generates new ones. Our body is doing this all the time, but research suggests that fasting for 12-24 hours could make it occur more.

So if you recall, the liver usually releases glucose when you are not fasting? When fasting, the liver would have to break down fat for energy?

What happens for the rest of the body? Imagine your blood stream happily filled with glucose all the time, your cells in your entire body do not need to work very hard to be “happy”. When we apply stress to the entire system by not providing food, your body is triggered into a “survival mode” and would draw down its resources. So ketosis occurs, your body starts using fats as the main fuel source, and then eventually autophagy, useless parts are recycled for rebuilding.

Hence autophagy can help reduce inflammation (i.e. natural immune response to diseases), and clears out protein aggregates, which may be associated with several neurodegenerative diseases.

What this might mean is that autophagy might lower the rates of cancer, heart disease, and brain diseases like Alzheimer’s!

Some caveats are that only a handful of studies measuring fasting and autophagy exist in humans, probably because it is not easy to measure the effects of autophagy. (You probably need to extract cells to observe and compare with a control group. Sounds like a painful experiment when done on humans!)

So there you have it. The reason for this post was my being triggered when questioned if the science was sound behind fasting on social media. In truth, the effects of fasting sound like magic even now. I am still screaming “Why did NO ONE TELL ME!!??” in my head every time.

However, I am fully convinced, not only because Chris Hemsworth says so, or National Geographic says so, or even because a lot of doctors on YouTube say so, but because I went and did my due diligence by tracing their sources down first before being fully convinced. The sources are found at the end of the article! Moreover, I tested this on myself! 16kg lighter, and still perfectly happy, is that not enough evidence?

Even so, I still need to state that I am not a doctor, and you should only follow what I did if you have checked with your doctor that fasting is safe for you first!

Sources :

Ketosis: Definition, Benefits, Downsides, and More – Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/what-is-ketosis Accessed 28/04/2023.
Is Ketosis Safe and Does It Have Side Effects? – Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ketosis-safety-and-side-effects Accessed 28/04/2023.
Is It Good for Your Body to Be in Ketosis? – MedicineNet. https://www.medicinenet.com/is_it_good_for_your_body_to_be_in_ketosis/article.htm Accessed 28/04/2023.
A Keto Diet for Beginners: The #1 Ketogenic Guide – Diet Doctor. https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/keto Accessed 28/04/2023.
Ketosis: Definition, Benefits & Side Effects – Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.orghealth/articles/24003-ketosis Accessed 28/04/2023.
Neuronal Autophagy: Characteristic Features and Roles in … – PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33875624/ Accessed 28/04/2023.
Autophagy in Neurons – PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31340124/ Accessed 28/04/2023.
Autophagy in Neuronal Development and Plasticity – ScienceDirect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166223620301673 Accessed 28/04/2023.
The contribution of altered neuronal autophagy to neurodegeneration …. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163725822000729 Accessed 28/04/2023.
How Long Do You Have To Fast Before You Reach Autophagy.
Autophagy: What You Should Know Before Starting Your Fast – InsideTracker. https://blog.insidetracker.com/autophagy-know-before-starting-fast Accessed 28/04/2023.
The effect of fasting or calorie restriction on autophagy … – PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30172870/ Accessed 28/04/2023.
Research on intermittent fasting shows health benefits. https://www.nia.nih.gov/news/research-intermittent-fasting-shows-health-benefits Accessed 28/04/2023.

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3 Word Game With My Kids – ChatGPT powered

It was late at night, and my kids found it difficult to sleep. I was taking improv lessons (at The Improv Company!) so I thought, why not create something for them to challenge myself?

The game was simple – my kids would give me three words, one thing, one place, and one person, and I would come up with a totally original story using those words on the spot. The game allowed for endless possibilities and creativity, making each bedtime story a bit more unique and exciting (for me, because it was quite stressful! But the story was sometimes exciting, but sometimes fizzled to a disappointing end. Sometimes, it was so beautiful that I am shocked with what I managed to come up with.)

Today, Feynman came to ask me if I could do one for him on the spot. I said, “Why not?” but also realised that I was doing something similar to what ChatGPT is doing, forming something with concepts I know to come up with something original. As I was putting everything together, I felt a bit of pride at coming up with something original. It was something that I thought was beautiful.

So here it is!

Of course, I typed it out after I was done with my ‘generation’, and got ChatGPT to flesh out the rest of the details. The words were “a cute cat”, “with “a powerful crystal” and “a volcano” Want to try? What would you come up with?

“Mr. Cottonsworth! Oh Mr. Cottonsworth!” The old lady’s voice echoed through the narrow corridors of her HDB apartment. She shuffled through the cluttered living room, calling out for her beloved pet, but he was nowhere to be found. Little did she know, the grey feline had been waiting for this moment for years – an escape from the mundane life of a domestic cat.

As BBK, or Bad Bad Kitty, slipped out of the apartment, memories flooded his mind. He wasn’t always a house cat; in fact, he was over 3000 years old, hailing from an ancient tribe of cats with magical abilities. BBK had been one of the council members tasked with guarding the powerful crystals that granted them their powers, until the fateful day when the tribe decided to destroy them. The crystals, while providing immense power, had corrupted the tribe with their greed.

BBK’s crystal was the one that gave him infinite lives, and as the other crystals were thrown into the boiling volcano of Timbuktu, he succumbed to their evil influence and jumped into the fiery pit, activating his crystal in mid-air. For 100 years, he died and came back to life repeatedly, until he emerged from the volcano, the only survivor. His family and friends were long gone, and he was left to wander the world, watching as civilizations rose and fell, and time marched on.

For 3000 years, BBK had seen everything there was to see, and yet he couldn’t shake the loneliness that gnawed at his soul. So he embarked on a dangerous journey, trekking from Singapore to Timbuktu, hopping on planes, trains, and buses, and hiding in the shadows. Finally, he arrived at the top of the volcano, where he spotted the other half of the crystal lying at the bottom, its power still intact.

Without a moment’s hesitation, BBK leapt into the molten lava, and as he held the crystal halves together, the power surged through him, one last time. The heat was unbearable, and his body was consumed by the fiery inferno, but he didn’t care. He was finally at peace, reunited with his family and friends in the afterlife.

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Be Water, My Friend – AI and How It Will Affect You

I have written about how we are adapting to use solutions provided that are powered by AI at Brandcore, now I am going to discuss how it looks like as a creative in the field.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is undoubtedly going to change the way we live and work, and it’s only going to become more prevalent in the future. As a layperson, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and unsure of how AI will affect you personally. Here are a few ways you can prepare for the changes that are coming, in short, as Bruce Lee said, “Be water, my friend” even if we are now dealing with a massive teapot and the pressure is higher than ever before :-

1. Be open to change :

AI is a disruptive technology, meaning it has the potential to fundamentally change the way we work and live. This can be both exciting and scary, but it’s important to be open to the changes that are coming. Don’t hold on to romantic ideals about what your job was or what experience you had. An example would be a photographer holding on to using film for his work even as the world moved to digital. There are examples of photographers who are still able to survive, but these are usually very good at what they do, or excellent at marketing to the niche market. In actual fact, 99% of professional film photographers would disappear if they cannot change their ways.

Those who are willing to learn new skills and adapt to new technologies survive to fight for another day.

2. Be more efficient :

As AI becomes more prevalent, it’s likely that your work scope will change. In the short run, you’re competing against humans with AI in your own field, not AI directly. It’s important to be more efficient at using AI tools and learning, and adapting fast.

As tools start to get built, there will be transitional gaps that professionals can fill. For example, tools like Midjourney can produce work, but it’s up to professionals to adapt and make it something that serves their clients’ needs. This means being adaptable, creative, and always looking for ways to improve your skills.

Some Photoshop work had to be done to adapt an image generated by Midjourney

3. Be one step ahead :

Try to predict how AI will affect your industry, and be proactive about adapting.

Some industries will disappear completely, and it’s important to pivot quickly before that happens. Look at the example of Blockbuster Video, which was completely destroyed by the rise of streaming services like Netflix. However, some companies, like Kodak, were able to adapt and pivot while phasing out their old products. They moved from film to digital cameras, and now they’re involved in a variety of industries like printing, packaging, and functional printing.

In conclusion, AI is going to change the world as we know it, but it doesn’t have to be a scary thing. By being open to change, being more efficient, and being one step ahead, you can prepare yourself for the future and thrive in a world where AI is everywhere.

Will we survive in the long run? We are looking at global trends, and only time will tell, but in the meantime, we best move fast to stay in the game.


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Intermittent Fasting – Why fast?

“Siao ah!?
I love good food so much, how can I fast?” 

This was my response when I saw how effective fasting was for a master photographer friend of mine, Wesley. This was likely 3 or 4 years back when I witnessed how he went from being rounder than me to becoming fit and lean in a year. I am a ‘live to eat’ person, so it seemed impossible for me to ever get on a plan like this.

I didn’t know about the science behind it, and I think I was confused about what it all was. I thought I knew what fasting was, so I rejected it before even finding out more until I came across a series of videos by Dr. Jason Fung, a medical doctor advocating fasting on YouTube. 

After realizing what fasting was all about, I gave it a try, and I never looked back since. If you remember what I have mentioned in my previous posts, I have lost 16 kg over the course of a year, but specifically, over the past 6 months due to fasting.

Not a Diet

Firstly, intermittent fasting is not a diet, as in you do not restrict what you eat but of restricting when you are eating. You eat only during certain hours of the day, and fast for the rest.

Not a Weight Loss Program

Secondly, let me share what I found out about the benefits for our bodies and brains beyond just weight loss.

Intermittent fasting helps us burn fat faster, lower our blood pressure and cholesterol levels, enhance our cognitive function and memory, and even protect us from diseases like diabetes and cancer(but I will share more about this next time when I talk about the next level of fasting, prolonged fasting).

How?

Well, it’s all about metabolic switching.

Metabolic switching is when our body switches from using glucose (sugar which is stored in our liver) as its main source of energy to using ketones (which is stored in fat). (Reference : NIH)

Basically, this should sound familiar, we learnt this in school during science classes.

But there are some aspects that have only been discovered relatively recently. 

The theory is that metabolic switching isn’t done easily. An analogy I heard used was that our bodies can be described as massive factories. Imagine that the factories can use two sources of power, glucose and ketones. The problem is that when the factory is using one source of power, it cannot switch easily.

“The problem is that when the factory is using one source of power, it cannot switch easily.”

It needs a few hours to switch fuel sources. Picture having the entire factory’s workers having to move heavy machinery around whenever a switch is required.

So you can picture how reluctant the factory’s supervisors are to order a switch, and would delay as much as possible.

So, in this analogy, your body is in the glucose processing mode whenever you are eating. And if you are eating every few hours or so, no matter how much, your body would prefer to keep in this mode.

One major problem is that the body also would keep 20% of whatever you eat as fats by default. So even if you only ate ONE cookie when you are hungry in between lunch and dinner, your body would turn 20% of that to storage, AND keep the system at the glucose processing mode.

Research shows that ketone processing mode is never reached if you do not fast for at least 12 hours. What this means is, that additional 20% you stored earlier in fat storage? It will never get used up.

One of the top experts on intermittent fasting is a guy named Mark Mattson, a brain scientist at Johns Hopkins, and he’s been studying this stuff for 25 years. He says that our bodies are actually designed to go without food for a long time. Even for days.

Think about it. Back in the old days, before humans had farms and supermarkets, we had to hunt and gather our food. And that was not easy. It took hours and hours of walking, running, climbing, digging, and fighting. Sometimes we found a lot of food, sometimes we found nothing. So we had to adapt to survive on whatever we could get. Our bodies are designed to keep running lean, hence going for days in the ketones processing mode until we get food.

And you know what? We were healthier back then. We were leaner, stronger, and smarter.

But things have changed a lot since then.

Nowadays, we have food everywhere. And not just any food. Processed food. Junk food. Fast food. Food that makes us fat and sick.

And we don’t stop eating. Ever.

We eat when we wake up, when we work, when we watch TV, when we go online, when we go to bed. We eat all day and all night.

And you know what? We’re not healthier now. We’re now fatter, weaker, and dumber.

The reason for this is that our modern lifestyles make it such that our bodies would NEVER touch fats as a source of fuel unless we stop eating, i.e. fast from 3-18 hours depending on what we ate.

(Reference : https://www.physiciansplan.com/blog/the-science-behind-intermittent-fasting)

“… before humans had farms and supermarkets…
sometimes we found a lot of food, sometimes we found nothing.

So how do we do this?

I would share more about what I did next time, but for now, research has shown that even doing a 12 hour fast is better than nothing. Simply put, you can just start by not snacking after dinner, and have your breakfast only after 12 hours.

As usual, even though 12 hours is super safe, I have to state again that I am not your doctor, so before you start, make sure you check with your doctor first.