8 tips that help me fast for 20 or more hours

Today I’m in the middle of a 40 hours fasting; I’m hour 20 right now. Some friends ask me how I can do it, so I’m going to list a few things I do before and during my fast:

  1. Eat well the day before: I like to eat a lot of protein, green stuff. At the end of the day, I could add some carbs to get the extra energy.
  2. Plan ahead: I plan to have my last meal on Sunday at around 7pm. to have lunch at noon on Tuesday. This scheduling makes it easier because of the 20+ hours I sleep at least 8 hours.
  3. Reward yourself: I usually plan ahead how I’m going to break my fasting. This time I’ll reward myself with two double-double protein-style burgers from In ‘N Out (Yes, two!). This goes with planning ahead.
  4. Make it on a busy day: Mondays are my busiest day. This helps me make fasting easier because I have other things planned for that day.
  5. Drink a lot of water: Water has a lot of benefits. It keeps you energized during the day, which is essential when you’re not eating. Not drinking enough water can gives you headaches which can be confused with hunger. You should drink at least 2.8L of water per day or around 6 glasses. 
  6. Another hour: The most challenging hours lapse are between 20-25th hours. When I feel hungry, I usually drink a glass of water and tell myself… One more hour. Most times, hunger will pass after a few minutes. After the 25th hour, it becomes effortless. I’d say you won’t feel hungry anymore.
  7. Don’t be rude to yourself: Sometimes I plan to fast, but life happens: I get very starving, a good friend invites me to eat, family meetings, etc. Other days I will break my fast earlier. 
  8. Start slow: I started fasting more than 2 years ago and have been doing 16:8 almost every day since then. Some days I do OMAD (One mead a day) or 20:4. If you’re struggling with 20+ hours fasting, try with 16 or 18, do it a few times until this becomes easy, then go for the 20 or even 40 hours fasting.
  9. Bonus tip. Have a reason: Fasting has many benefits; Choose one that will be a strong motivator. My reason is Discipline–Fasting has tough to be disciplined. More importantly, I can do it even if it means going against something so primitive as eating or hunger.

What do you think about fasting? What has helps you keep fasting?

Mental model: Owning The Frame

We tend to decide between one option or another, and we believe that these are the only options, but the reality is that we have more options most times.
Today I want to talk to you about Owning The Frame. A mental model will help us see more options and make better decisions. How?

  • Vanishing options: let’s assume that one of the options is not there. What would I do? Can I make the other option work?
  • This AND that: Can I make both decisions work together?
  • Opportunity cost: What’s the cost of the decision(s)?
  • Gathering more information: Most times, I need to get more information before making a decision.

By implementing one or many of these tools, we can see better options and improve our outcomes.

How I built the habit of exercise

At 28 birthday, I made a promise to get as fit/slim as possible, but more than this, to become a healthy person, this included:

  1. Fasting
  2. Healthy dieting
  3. Excessive

It wasn’t about doing it until I hit a certain weight; I wanted to be sure that I created habits that would stick with me and be part of my life. I tried going to the gym a couple of times; I liked it but always found an excuse to just stopped going, this time, I didn’t want this to happen (easier said than done), I decided to focus on the first two until three months later the issue started to become more and more frequent on my thoughts.

When a problem or idea becomes too recurrent in my thoughts, it’s time to do (plan) something.

So sat a decided thought about it and made a plan. I needed to make exercising accessible, cheap, and took too much time and effort. These requirements made it irresistible, hard to avoid, or find an excuse not to do it. So I google:

What’s the minimum amount of exercise to be healthy?

The answer is 150min per week or about 21min per day, so I decided to made 30min per day, every day – Yes, every day. Next: It needs to be easy and doesn’t require too much equipment or money.

Jumping. I bought a jumping rope and mode 30min of jumping for one month without skipping. I needed to become used to move every day, and there was no excuse to miss it doesn’t require too much from me to do it. I didn’t have to commute (I did from my living room), pay, or commit a lot of my time.

Run Rommel Run

I decided to do something more fun after around six weeks. Thirty minutes walk/jogging/running; it didn’t matter; what was important is that I was moving and it started to feel natural, after a few more weeks as soon as I wake I put my tennis on and go out to run.

It’s never going to be perfect

After two months or so, I start missing days, one here, two there; this is something that I learned to accept and is very important because feeling bad doesn’t help. We’re humans and “fail, So I put a few rules:

  1. Never miss more than 1-2 days
  2. Walking is also an exercise

And that’s it. I made exercise irresistible, so irresistible that now is part of me.

In resume, if you want to accomplish something, focus on the behavior and systems you need to build to make it real: instead of focusing on the weight or goal, I focused on creating a healthy life and building healthy habits.

Make it easy, irresistible, simple.

Why I got the vaccine

I’m not worried about COVID itself but still decided to get the vaccine. Why?

  1. We’re making history; it’s incredible how fast we came with a vaccine. Kudos to humans
  2. I’ll be able to travel to more countries. I believe more countries will require vaccination proof to allow entry.
  3. I see why the government or companies would want to put something in us that will kill us.

These are the three main reasons why I decided to get vaccinated.

Better than a king

I’m sitting at a place that is not home, just a few blocks from the beach, waiting for my food to arrive. I ordered some Mexican food via uber because I didn’t want to walk today.

So what? 

It reminds me that I had a better life than a European king 200 years ago; that king couldn’t get a lot of options or the chance to be a king while traveling.

Today, most humans live better and have better opportunities than a king from the past—an outstanding achievement for us.

For today I wanted to share the good news. There is a lot of bad news out there already!

What I’m going to write about?

I want to be on this website about things I enjoy, this will help me understand, share and store thoughts.

  • Software architecture
  • Chess
  • Stock market
  • Wealth
  • Personal finance
  • Traveling
  • Food
  • Books
  • Sunsets
  • Mindset
  • Technology
  • Me

Eventually, I’ll move some of this topic to external blogs that will be specific and focus on a topic, and maybe write about these in Spanish. Hasta luego.

We are becoming a multi-planetary species

Something that has amazed me lately is where we are heading as humans race, in order to survive we need to move to space:

The idea makes a lot of sense, the earth is a dangerous place for species including us, we have had natural disasters, meteorites, and many species had died, we can be next so the next step for us is to colonize other planets (Terraforming).

Just watch this, this could become the future:

If you want to know more about why/how and when all of this is going to happen, I recommend you read https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html