Unhelpful Beliefs and Practices Discarded with Data-Driven Fasting

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As we learn, we continue to acquire a deeper understanding and new beliefs. But, at the same time, we also need to discard old beliefs that we have found inaccurate and no longer serving us.  

Unfortunately, once a community has taken on a core belief, it is hard for them to shake.  It takes a lot of courage for a guru to admit they were wrong and point their followers in a new direction.  Scientific truth does not always trump belief and ‘groupthink’.  Often, science progresses one funeral at a time.  But we don’t have to wait that long to find the truth that works for us.  

While more data is not always better, tracking key metrics (e.g. blood sugar, weight, waist) can be enlightening and help us cut through the noise and confusion prevalent in the health and nutrition arena.  

We asked the Data-Driven Fasting Community what unhelpful beliefs and practices they had discarded with DDF.  Here’s what they said, in their own words:

That I’m unable to lose weight at my age.  [Christina]

That I have to up my fat intake!  [Zsofia]

I am discarding the long as heck fasts.  [Cynthia]

That the longer the fast, the better or, the more weight you will lose.  [Debbie]

I am leaving behind the fear that if I eat one wrong thing, it will lead to a downward spiral.  I am substituting the confidence that my body has wisdom I can tap into. All I have to do is get back on the horse.  [Robin]

That my body doesn’t know what it’s doing and is sabotaging me.  I’m ready to have my body tell me what it needs to be the best I can be.  [Diane]

I’m leaving behind cookie-cutter diet solutions and working inside out to understand hunger and how food affects my body. Some years ago, I learned about intuitive eating, and I still believe in it. My problem is that I didn’t have the tools to do it correctly. I may be wrong, but I think DDF is the tool I was missing, and I hope it will help me eat intuitively after I learn to understand my hunger cues.  [Marian]

Eating windows and ALL carbs are evil.  I’ve been anti-carb for so, so long.  But I feel like I’m missing a lot of nutrients without them.  [Cheri]

Keto and IF. I’m embracing low fat, good carbs and adequate protein.  [Grace]

Trying to bend my body to fit a pre-specified paradigm, like IF by the clock or severe carb restriction (drastically limiting/ avoiding even whole food carbs).  [Diane]

No more deliberate restriction: “Long term fasting, OMAD, eating by the clock, drastically limiting or avoiding whole food groups & carbs.  Based on true hunger, I am now focusing on higher protein, some healthy veg, and playing with easing back on the fat for 2-3 meals a day.  [Christina]  

I left fasting behind. I hated every minute of it. I was ALWAYS hungry. I know DDF is called ‘fasting’, but I don’t feel like it is. I’m just waiting to eat a good meal, and there is none of that endless suffering.  [Karen]  

Timed eating. Eating windows. Long fasts.  Eating high-fat everything! I am also almost done checking my blood ketones!  

For so long, I wanted to discount one health theory in preference of another. It’s not calories; it’s carbs! Fat is the devil! Eat vegetarian & you’ll be thin & moral! Plants are toxic; eat Carnivore! Ancestral type eating is the only way! If it’s not clean Paleo, you’re just eating poison! Refined white sugar is worse than Heroin! Gluten is the devil!  Good Lord – how did we manage to navigate the last 20 years of this Obesity Epidemic?  So, as it turns out, how you eat doesn’t determine your worth as a human. No single nutritional outlook is “correct”. They ALL have merits, and they ALL have value & utility.  We just have to use some N=1 experimentation and a reliable measuring stick (BG) to figure out how different things work for us. Our nutrition is a ‘budget’, and we just need some empirical evidence to guide us. Maybe we’re going to a friend’s birthday – rather than being a pickle & refusing cake & putting moral judgement on it (party-pooper), eat the damn cake! But since you know how it hits you, you know what to do over the next few days.  In the end, I think my biggest “win” with this – is leaving behind the attitude of attaching morality to food choices.  [Lee]

We hope you’ve learned something valuable from these insights from our outstanding group members.  I wonder what unhelpful beliefs you will be able to discard on your Data-Driven Fasting journey?  

Data-Driven Fasting is not magic.  You just use the minimum effective dose of data to empower you to evaluate your beliefs against the data from your own body.   Feel free to leave a comment below about the dogma and beliefs you found to be unhelpful, untrue and later discarded.  

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