Fasting: What It Is, How People Do It, and What It Actually Does

Tomorrow morning I'm starting a four-day fast.

No food. Water, tea, black coffee, electrolytes. Four days.

And every time I mention this to someone, I get one of two reactions. Either "oh, that's amazing, I've heard so much about autophagy" or the face. You know the face. The one that says she's finally lost it.

So today I want to do something useful with that. Not sell you on fasting. Not scare you off it. Just tell you what fasting actually is, the different ways people do it, what the research genuinely supports, and this is the part most people skip — who should not be doing it at all.