Being hungry like a lion, enduring hunger for extended periods of time is not a bad thing. It is actually great for our health. It is also sometimes called – fasting. And including it to your healthy lifestyle will get you closer to becoming invincible.
I am not talking about the kind of hunger you get from eating some heavy carbohydrate processed meal, or after eating something loaded with sugar. That is a dangerous hungry feeling caused by your body being over drugged with empty calories, flour and sugar. By eating processed foods and too much sugar, your blood sugar levels and insulin levels will jump up and down. Making you very hungry at the process.
This is the state of being, you don’t want to be in at all. The interesting thing is, that people who eat more calorie dense foods get actually more hungry and more often. This is a bad, very unhealthy state for your body to be.
Have you ever seen a lion eating a big piece of chocolate cake or being aggravated by seeing a kid eating ice cream outside of the cage in ZOO. No, you don’t. He is more likely thinking: You can have it Kido, I would rather starve than eat that s**t.
Being hungry regularly while eating well
I had a rich breakfast at 7 AM today. 4 eggs fried on butter and 2 apples. It’s 1 PM now and beside having another 2 apples and spoon of peanut butter, I haven’t have anything else. And I feel hungry right now. But i feel hungry and great. My goal is to extend my hunger until 7 PM today.
The best way I handle this mildly uncomfortable hungry state of being is by sipping plain unsweetened green tea. Feel free to copy that. Green tea is good for your health and extra little bit of caffeine content will make you forget a little, that you are actually hungry.
While I’m in this good hungry state, I am going to get some important stuff done. I realize, that my brain and creativity works the best while I am starving this way. I never feel sleepy when I’m hungry. My mental performance is at it’s best. My brain neuron connections fire at it’s highest levels.
But, this increased mental creativity and better mental performance doesn’t work for me, when I eat garbage foods. And most probably won’t work for you either.
Remember, if you eat something that is carbohydrate heavy, eat or drink something sweet, you will suffer while being hungry. You will feel sleepy, sluggish, your stomach will probably hurt and your mind will be shut. So it is crucially important to eat right before enduring beneficial hunger. Having optimal amount of protein, fat and some carbohydrates from vegetables or fruits in your meal before enduring long lasting hunger works the best.
Health benefits of being hungry like a lion regularly
1. Due to the lack of incoming energy, the body must turn into it’s own resources, a function called autolysis. Autolysis is the breaking down of fat stores in the body in order to produce energy. That’s why one advantage of having lots of fat on your body will help you survive longer than the fit guy without food. Of course, the dangers of being fat far more outweigh this benefit. So, don’t get fat to hope to survive some day when facing brutal starvation caused by disaster. This will most likely never happen in you life, while diabetes or heart attack is very likely to happen to you when you are fat.
2. Detoxification of the body. When food is no longer entering the body, the body turns to fat reserves for energy. Certain toxic chemicals like DDT that body absorbs over time are stored in fat reserves, that might release during hungry like a lion periods.
3. Diversion of the energy from digestive system to the immune system. Healing process begins in body during hungry like a lion period. The energy is diverted away from digestive system due to it’s lack of use and towards the metabolism and immune system.
4. Greater growth hormone – hormone of youth production, due to greater efficiency in hormone production during the extended hunger.
5. Rejuvenation and extended life expectancy. A slower metabolic rate, more efficient protein production, improved immune system and increased production of hormones contributes to this long-term benefit of extended hunger. In addition to the human growth hormone, that is released more frequently during hunger, this anti – aging hormone is also produced more efficiently. As one scientific study states: “The only reliable way to extend the lifespan of a mammal is under-nutrition without malnutrition”.
That means, that you give your body everything it needs and nothing else.
Staying hungry and calorie restriction
Eating the right diet, the right way, with carefully chosen carbohydrates works already as a low calorie diet.
Calorie restriction is proven to be a major benefit for your overall health. And while extending your hunger for longer periods of time, you are restricting your calories even further.
Eating right healthy foods is already calorie restricted died, and I assume you have that already under control. If not, check my healthy performance diet here. And start eating well before adding extended huger periods to your day.
Staying hungry and physical performance
Staying hungry doesn’t help my physical performance. That’s why I never schedule my hungry periods before workout or any other heavy physical activities, like helping a friend to move and others. It would not hurt me, but I would certainly suffer. As with anything else, you have to plan these periods in advance.
For example today, after I had great nutritious breakfast, I went surfing right away. Stayed in the ocean for 3 hours, had a great intensive workout over there, got out, ate 2 apples with some peanut butter, and now I am hungry. And that’s fine, because I don’t plan to do anything physically hard anymore. If I had a tennis game or soccer game later in the afternoon, I would be already filling my energy reserves now with some tofu, sardines, nuts, vegetables and fruits.
This is why planing your staying hungry periods is very important. It won’ help you physically, but it will keep you very alert mentally, and will give great boost to your health.
Being hungry is natural
We live in the world of plenty. Plenty of everything, everywhere. But few hundred years ago, it wasn’t like that. People would go throughout some festive periods, when they manage to find plenty of food. And than, they stayed hungry for some periods when there was not enough food.
Nature knows it and it worked very well. But these days, people eat all the time, they have always something in their mouths. Munching on chips and snicker bars between meals, having that bowl of ice cream before going to bed, some cheese here and some salami there.
People can’t stand being hungry and they fix the problem immediately by eating something. This way, years go by without out bodies experiencing the beneficial hungry state of being, when the immunity system recharges and stored reserves from the waist line can be used.
Staying hungry and immunity system
When you’re hungry, your immunity system is working at it’s best. There is certain protective mechanism in the our bodies that turns on when famine is here. Immunity system at this state is fired to the maximum.
Just imagine, that you’re living 10 000 years ago. It’s winter and you are traveling (walking) across the country and staying in a cave you managed to find on your way. You haven’t eaten anything for 2 days now and you are very hungry. It’s dark outside and very, very cold. You have to wait until the morning light to get out and find something to eat, so you can survive. And there is a big chance, that you will not find anything the next day either, because everything is covered by snow.
Your immunity system now has to work at it’s maximum. Because if you get sick now, you will have to stay in the cave, tired and with high fewer. You will not have any strength to go hunting so you can eat. And you’ll most likely die from hunger.
Nature has it figured out very well. Hunger signals, bad times. And in bad times, we need to be protected, because the death is close. So the highly protective mechanism sets in. Nature doesn’t know, that you have a Chinese restaurant just down the block from your house. And by being hungry you are playing little tricks with it. Your body thinks that bad times are here, with not enough food and it’s time to stay very healthy and invincible.
Schedule your hungry periods like you schedule your workout
Plan ahead. Schedule at least 2 long hungry periods in your week. The best time to do this is after workout, and after having something small to eat after it. Have very healthy protein rich breakfast, get your workout done, have something small after, like apple and some nuts and than starve! Try to starve for at least 5 hours. I usually go up to 9 hours without eating anything, just sipping green tea. But that all depends on my schedule.
It takes discipline to do this and it is not easy. Quite frankly, only a small percentage of people will ever try it and only few will stick with it. But if you do, the benefits are incredible.
Being hungry like a lion regularly and loss of muscle mass
You will not lose your muscle mass if you stay hungry regularly unless you are a competitive body builder who is 5′ 4″, and you managed to pack 230 lb of muscle on your skeleton.
I starve myself regularly. And I actually managed to gain some muscle mass lately. With about 195 lb, 6’3″ tall and 9% of body fat, that is a lot of lean muscle. The reason I don’t loose muscle mass is my protein rich diet and diligent, regular, heavy and intensive weight training.
So if you thought that I look like anorexia suffering guy with my being hungry regiment, you are wrong. I am actually quite a big guy, and it’s all muscles and very little fat.
My last advice is: Get in love with being hungry like a lion, and get closer to becoming invincible.
These are the real secrets of a healthy body and a healthy mind.
But the greatest problem is how to control hunger?
I do it everyday too. But, didn’t know these benefits until now. It was just because it takes time and me to get up off my bed. I’m lazy and don’t crave for taste.