A little over 1 year ago I started to do intermittent fasting. I had read a lot of literature about it and my only motivation for starting was for the health benefits and longevity (when you’ll get there you’ll know that a certain age you better start planning on how to slow down the inexorable advancing of body decay and final self-destruction). I do also enjoy practising self-discipline, so I had no issues getting used to it and narrowing my eating window to 5 hours or less in just a couple of weeks.
Intermittent fasting per se is no longer considered so fringe and radical, but when people hear that I do intermittent fasting (IT) AND wfpb (whole food plant based diet) AND that my food can only be cooked without oil and in specific cookware (yes I’m weird and I don’t care), that’s when they give me the look they usually only reserve for jihadists.
However, I digress.
The reason why I’m writing this is because as soon as I started IT I noticed that my breath hold times increased quite considerably. It is well known that fasting is beneficial for static apnea but I feel that most people using this strategy are doing so on a temporary basis (e.g. a couple of days before a competition, but correct me if I’m wrong). Also, everyone I talked to (especially big manly men with hairy chests and lots of testosterone) believe that IT is not good for freediving performance that require physical movement (= both dynamic and depth disciplines) and that ideally you should eat 3/4 hours before a big dive or a max effort session to store enough energy. I beg to disagree. But of course I have no scientific proof for my theory, other than my own personal experience (and maybe it works for me because I’m not a big manly man with a hairy chest and high testosterone levels).
If you are in the market for some experimenting you can give it a try and let me know how it worked for you.
By the way, I’m looking for a good endocrinologist/sport doctor that has a holistic approach to health and who only prescribes pills just as a last resort. Must speak either english or italian and offers online consultations. If you have the contact for a good one, please send over! Thank you!
(Also, I do enjoy talking about my diet quirks, so if you have questions go ahead and shoot).
