Jasinda Wilder - You Can Do It: Fasting

Copyright 2018 by Jasinda Wilder

All rights reserved.

Cover art and Worksheet Graphics by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations. Cover art 2018 by Sarah Hansen.

Formatting by Champagne Book Design

For printable versions of these graphics, along with other useful resources, go to www.biggirlsdoitrunning.com

Table of Contents

This book is dedicated to Karri:

My sister, my friendthank you for always being my wog partner, my cooking buddy, and my best friend. I couldnt do it without you!

A Note from the Author

This book represents real-life experience gained through my own personal health journey; these are stories from my real life, and there are things here that are deeply personal. This is not a medical book written by a medical professional, so if youre seeking professional medical advice, you should keep looking.

Some of my health practices may not be right for you. As Ive said before, in my previous non-fiction books, please discuss all personal health issues with your medical professional. I repeat, I am not in any way, shape, or form a medical professional. Comments, suggestions, and advice contained herein is intended for inspirational and motivational purposes only, and does not constitute medical diagnosis or treatment.

I am simply a mom, wife, author, chronic health failure, and curious health investigator. I have been on a lifelong quest to become healthy, and the information Im sharing in this book outlines my practical findings after using myself as a guinea pig. Ive been successful and I want to share that success with the whole world.

I do believe from my personal research that Type 2 Diabetes is completely and totally curable, and I am living proof that you can improve insulin resistance. I believe traditional medicines response to this disease, and the disease of obesity, is failing us, and we owe it to ourselves and our kids to look for alternative curative options. We must do whatever we can to save our kids from a fate that can only end in pain, suffering, and premature death.

I encourage you to look through the list of additional reading materials shown in the back of this book. I think it will prove extremely helpful on your journey to healing your body. My prayer for you is that whatever path you take, you find a way to free yourself from the vicious cycle of disease, pain, and suffering. I believe we all write our own story, and that each day is a new page and a new opportunity to create the life we want. I hope that by sharing my own personal health experiences with you that you will gain some insights, knowledge, and inspiration to make positive changes in your own health.

If I can do it, YOU CAN DO IT!

All my love to you,

Jasinda Wilder

March 2018

You cant go back and change the beginning but you can start where you are and change the ending. CS Lewis

Introduction

When I was pregnant with my sixth child my body began speaking to me, but it wasnt just speaking, it was screaming: sugar was making me sicksugar was killing me. I would eat breakfast and then attempt to take a shower. I would stand up and then have to sit back down. My head would spin and I would shake. My body was finally forcing me to listen to it after putting it through so many years of crazy diets, surgeries, shakes, pills, and potions. It took the worry of impending motherhood, trying to protect the little life inside of me, for me to finally listen. It was one of those come-to-Jesus moments, shaking me out of the decades of craziness and abuse of my body.

Who or what was the villain? What had caused all the scarring and damage? The answer was SUGAR! If anyone tries to tell you that sugar is good for you, slap them and tell them it was from methere is absolutely nothing about sugar that is good for your body. In fact, I liken it to poison, and that is no exaggeration.

Those scary days when I was four months pregnant were the days when my little life-saver baby demanded my attention, sending me on a health journey that led me to where I am nowhealthy, happy, and strong. Three years later Im still learning, still figuring things out, but I know Ive changed my life for the better.

I promised you at the beginning of my first self-health book, You Can Do It, that we would do this together, and I meant it! In this book well remind ourselves about where weve been and where were headed. So, sit back and relax as we explore our health together.

I promise it will be a fun ride.

NO BIG GIRL LEFT BEHIND!

Enough introductionlets get into it!

Running for My Life

I dont remember ever weighing less than 200 pounds. I asked my mom about this recently and she thinks I may have been over 200 pounds by fourth grade. So, it never occurred to me that my goal weight would ever be less than that. Remember, Im nearly six feet tall and I wear a size 12 womens shoe, so Im a big girl, but even my doctor thought a good goal weight for me would be around 215 pounds. Yes, that would still put me in the overweight range, but after looking at my fat percentage we were cool with 215 as a nice, solid goal for me. That being said, I always maintained that I just wanted my body to end up where it wanted to be; I was done fighting with it. Even when one of the OG Wilder Way ladies suggested that with her 510 frame, 180 lbs would be a solid goal, I couldnt fathom my body at that weight. It just wasnt something I could picture, or even consider. Despite this, I kept my mind open and focused on improving my health.

AUTOPHAGY

I like to keep up on health trends, and stay abreast of new studies on health and nutrition. A relatively new advancement that really got me excited was autophagy.

I was always worried about the long-term effects of living with so much excess weight for so long, and what it was doing to my body. Would I get cancer? Would I have so much old fat that it would cause me long-term harm? These are issues I often thought about, becauselets be honestmy health history aside, being morbidly obese for most of your life doesnt exactly set you up for great health as you ageits hard on your heart, lungs, and joints, and I had many nutritional issues as a result. I really wanted to find a way to reverse some of the damage the years of unhealthy living had done, and autophagy really seemed like something that would help me achieve that.

What is autophagy exactly? Well, its essentially your body eating itself your body becomes a zombie. I know, I know, that sounds horrible, but its the laymans version of what happens on a cellular level. Fasting brings on autophagy, and it helps the body clear out all of the junk that builds up. Autophagy has been in the health spotlight very recently because the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine went to Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi and his research of autophagy.

Ill have more on this later, but it really got me into a whole new world, which ultimately led me to the focus of this book: medical and therapeutic fasting.

Yes, the f word.

I want to be very clearfasting wasnt something I was doing regularly prior to Easter of 2017; I had done a little fasting before, but it was always for spiritual and religious reasons rather than for my physical health.

When I began reading about and researching fasting for health, and specifically autophagy, at the beginning of 2017, I didnt really have the nerve to try it until Holy Week. Go figure! I guess I thought that since I already had some experience with religious fasting, Holy Week would be a good time to try fasting with the idea of initiating autophagy. I mean, if you cant fast for Jesus, who can you fast for? I figured Id kill two birds with one stone, hopefully improving both my physical health