Everything in life is about timing. We know this intuitively - we can have the right credentials, but if we present ourself to a potential business opportunity at the wrong time, we lose out. We can meet “the right person” at “the wrong time” - and we miss out.
I’d say the most important thing in life is neither talent nor hard work, but mastering the art of timing.
This essentially means we can get away with working smarter rather than harder in life at whatever goal it is we want. This doesn’t mean lazy, it just means understanding how to roll with resistance and surf on the waves, rather than swim against them and end up utterly burnt out. Which is, inevitable what many A-type personalities do: they keep at it til they are completely beyond exhaustion. While hard work can be admirable, there is nothing admirable about working yourself through to the bone. Life is supposed to be fun and we want to thrive.
And if we want that, the single most important thing to learn is how everything in life revolves around timing.
This applies especially to our body - how it secretes digestive enzymes and hormones at certain times throughout the day. How eating too much too late can interfere with proper detoxification at night and deep sleep. These are proven today to be irrefutable facts according to modern science and its study in circadian rhythm. Ironically this advice has been around since ancient time according to Ayurvedic teachings.
Today we have a misunderstood concept of fasting which is being highly misused.
People eat sporadically and skip meals and claim that this is “fasting”. Fasting is something which should be done according to the individual’s current health needs along with taking into account their gender and hormone balance.
Some people say they are following fasting according to OMAD. Sounds fancy but truth is, it is a very bad idea to eat One Meal A Day, if you want to support adrenals, hormones and lean body mass. Especially as most people following this are eating their big meal at nighttime - straight before bed just like sumo wrestlers, who have historically eaten this way to GAIN a lot of fat as fast as possible.
Quite a few following this fasting pattern have a history of disordered eating and feel that the only way they can control their eating disorder is by only allowing eating/ binging once a day. While it is an understandable desperate approach to try to break the chains of constant “food control”, this is not how you break a toxic relationship with food. This keeps the cravings alive, and enhances the excessive reward feedback loop when you finally eat - keeping food and addiction in a tight knot, but limiting “the damage” to once a day.
Fasting can be beneficial, but it is not meant to result in episodes of overeating, and it is not meant to be done as a daily practice (aside from the natural 12-14 hour fast we experience every night, considering we don’t engage in nighttime eating, which is not ideal for health).
Fasting is a stressor for the body, which is beneficial if done occasionally, depending on where the person is at - both mentally and physically. I am, however, seeing far too many clients who are abusing the term fasting to keep to a disordered and irregular eating pattern, which is not healthy for the mind or body.
The ideal time to eat a larger meal is middle of the day where hormones and digestive enzymes peak - this means that, YES, eating lunch between 12-1PM is a VERY good idea to work with the body instead of against it.
And we want to work with our body for that effortless sense of thriving in a healthy body without all sorts of ridiculous and unneeded restrictions. However, if our body, digestion and blood sugar is totally amok, we want to understand causes of that and address that, before we can fully benefit from eating according to circadian rhythm.
