One of the most common questions from parents is centered on intermittent fasting and how it works. This is equally important as discussing mental health since our food intake affects our brain health too.What you put in your mouth has an impact, whether positive or negative, in both our mind and body. And so, it’s good that a lot of people hear about it because of articles and posts circulating online.Fasting is not something new but rather it’s been around for a long time. However, most people think otherwise. Thus, it’s best for us to shed more light on what you should do to maintain or reach a good health condition physically and mentally.How intermittent fasting is different from skipping breakfastAs mentioned, intermittent fasting has already been around for a long time. In fact, it dates back to Biblical times and it's part of all the major religions largely because it was incorporated into spiritual events but the easiest way to think about fasting is it's eating less often. People like to make things complicated but to make the discussion simple and concise, fasting is as simple as eating less often. It could be as simple as eating dinner at 6pm and then, you don't eat breakfast until 8am the next morning and that gives you 14 hours in a fasted state, which most of the time is spent sleeping so you're not even cognizant of it. This is a large departure from the kind of traditional methodology that we need to eat three meals a day and snacks. With the rise of the processed food industry coupled with a lot of ingredient changes, I would be the first to argue that these changes have lead to chronic diseases, inflammatory disorders, metabolic disease, and more. People eating too frequently is already a public health threat. We have to monitor our food intake and regard it as important and impactful because it also affects our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.If you think about it, intermittent fasting is sustainable and it can be flexible. It can shift from day to day and it can work around your lifestyle. It's not designed to be complicated; the more simple we can make it, the easier it is to make those changes and get more successful and effective results.What is the difference between fasting and caloric restriction?One of the important things for people to understand is that while you are in a fasted state, there are counter-regulatory mechanisms in the body that help get rid of things that don't belong. There’s this body process called autophagy which is similar to taking out the trash and the only time that it's potentiated or magnified is when we're in a fasted state. We also think about the fact that a lot of the benefits we get from fasting are direct reflections of better hormonal balance. When our insulin levels are low in response to when we're not eating, we are able to eventually get into a process where we can tap into fat stores for energy. We have these specific types of ketones that diffuse across the blood brain barrier and that's oftentimes what gives us a lot of mental clarity. To differentiate, fasting is what goes on in the body in a non-fed state. It is not as simple as calories in and calories out. Rather, it is something that's kind of a very reductionistic way of thinking. Typically, people on fasting are skipping meals. They're eating within a condensed feeding window. But with fasting, the beauty lies behind the scenes. That's where you can tap into some intrinsic survival mechanisms that are in the body.Alternatively, these mechanisms are blunted or not fully utilized in our chronically overfed state where we have access to hyperpalatable processed foods, and the overeating that most of us are doing. How do people best start with their fasting journey?If you're...