When I was in college, my friend Devin died in my arms.

He didn’t actually die. But it certainly felt that way.

We were taking a nine day, 100 hour Wilderness Emergency Responder course in Portland, Oregon, and each of us took turns attempting rescues. Devin was the victim.

He was lodged in between two trees on a steep slope in the snow, and I was given three minutes to attempt to save his life. I was instructed to stabilize his spine, ensure his breathing, and move him to a safe location.

When I arrived on the scene, on a steep slope in wet snow, I panicked. Devin was an acting student. He struggled, then began to spam. Full of adrenaline, I attempted to pull him out from between two trees. He began frothing at the month and began to spasm.

By the time our wilderness survival teacher intervened, fifteen minutes had passed, I was crying, and Devin had “died.”

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast

There’s a phrase, coined by the Navy SEALs, that “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” When you slow down, you can operate more effectively. That results in fewer mistakes and better, faster outcomes.

When I first found Devin in the snow, I rushed in. Instead, had I taken an extra breath to assess the situation, I might have found a simpler, safer solution. It took our instructor showing me that I could have slid him downhill to realize my mistake which killed him.

Slow down to limit mistakes

Had I slowed down in those first pivotal moments with Devin, I might have been able to save him. Instead, I panicked because I had limited time and he was face down in the snow.

One moment of slowing down can make all the difference when it matters most.

Savoring

There are things you don’t want to do as quickly as possible:

• Making love.
• Eating a great meal.
• Holding a baby.

But in the pursuit of speed, it is easy to forget the value of savoring an experience.

Chunking

When we slow down, we can perceive more.

Slow allows us to bring more attention, which allows for chunking – the process of grouping small pieces of information together into larger chunks.

Chunking allows us to process information more quickly.

Slow is forward momentum

Slow is usually considered negative. Slow is associated with laziness, procrastination, and lack of clear priorities.

Actually, though, when we are going slowly, we aren’t – by definition – stopped or blocked.

Going slowly requires action; forward momentum. It isn’t possible to both go slowly and be frozen or indecisive.

Speed

In business and in life, speed is a competitive advantage. In Silicon Valley, there’s talk of a 10X engineer – someone who can do the work of 10 other employees by building more effectively, finding shortcuts, and making fewer mistakes. I opened my old restaurant Robin’s Cafe in 3 weeks, which is largely considered impossible within the industry.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Being able to do more in less time makes you more effective.

But to this day, I get adrenaline coursing through my body when I remember Devin on that snowy hillside. Devin “died” in my arms because I was in a rush and panicked.

Speed does matter, but so too does slowing down, assessing, and engaging strategically.

I carry a picture of Devin in my medical kit to this day.

Until next week,
Robin

In 2003, I broke my neck on a trampoline. That sounds extreme, but it is actually fairly common. Walk into any gymnastics gym in the world and someone will have had a similar injury. But that injury, and my journey since, have shaped my lifelong obsession with movement.

Shortly after the injury, I graduated from college. With my prestigious college degree, I proceeded to get a job bussing tables. I wanted to return to athletics – gymnastics, acrobatics, ballet – but first needed to get out of pain.

The mother of a college friend worked with special needs kids, and taught workshops about pain relief for adults. As it turned out, that woman would come to change my life.

Over the next few years, I began working with kids with autism and traveled around the world to teach parents how to help their children flourish.

Create conditions for learning

Much of what I learned and taught over those years was about creating the optimal conditions for learning.

Kids with autism, even more than the rest of us, respond to their environment – the emotions of people around them and the situations they are in. Even more than the rest of us, they don’t respond to pressure.

When you show up compassionate, loving, and nonjudgemental, you are more likely to foster an environment for learning.

Where are you in the learning process

I love the steepest parts of the learning curve – those phases where I go from nothing to something. In these earliest stages of learning something new, I forgive myself my mistakes and embrace “bigger’s mind.”

As Seth Godin describes in The Dip each phase of learning is different and comes with different experiences.

It is helpful to know where you are in the learning process. Knowing where you are and where to put your focus makes progress much easier.

Purpose @ work

I was in Puerto Rico earlier this month to spend time with my best friend, who’s managing lymphedema in the aftermath of breast cancer.

Among the many things my friend does each day to maintain their health, they receive manual lymph drainage massage.

I’ve been around a lot of massage therapists, physical therapists and bodyworkers of every stripe. But watching my friend’s practitioner do manual lymph drainage, I was in awe of the practitioner giving this unique form of massage.

Afterwards, my friend said that it was her calling.

Movement as a business

I’ve had more than a few different careers in movement: as a lifeguard, personal trainer, Feldenkrais practitioner, working hands-on with kids with autism, a hand model, as a professional dancer, acrobat, and more.

Years ago, I decided that there are better ways to make a living than selling my time by the hour, and compete with the thousands of other personal trainers selling bigger muscles, fat loss or pain relief. I’ve gone on to build three successful lifestyle businesses in industries that have nothing to do with movement.

I stopped pursuing movement as a professional calling because all of the different ways I’ve seen people do it as a profession don’t look appealing – or especially challenging – to me.

I don’t want to work as a personal trainer or “movement coach.” I dropped out of physical therapy school. I don’t want to “train the trainer,” offer online courses, or work with kids with autism anymore.

All the models I’ve seen have limited upside and don’t especially challenge my business-orientated brain.

But since hearing and watching this person practice her “calling,” I can’t stop thinking about it.

Ikigai

The Japanese have a word “Ikigai,” which translates loosely to your life’s purpose. The works that lies at the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.

I’ve never been happier between my work at Zander Media and Responsive Conference and my daily movement practice. But as the New Year approaches, I think it is worth considering this idea of “purpose,” our unique work.

This isn’t a call to arms, so much as a question to consider: What’s your ikigai, the work that you feel called to do?

Until next week,
Robin

I recently sat down with an entrepreneur who is nine months into building his business. He described the trials and tribulations of figuring out his business structure, landing his first few clients, and collecting invoices.

I don’t denigrate those challenges. Starting a business is hard! But having built four successful businesses over the last fifteen years, I’m very familiar with those early stages of building a business.

In 2021, I grew Zander Media to more than 10 full-time employees. We were booming! And during that growth, I went through an era of learning and challenge unlike anything I’d experienced before. We sold and delivered larger projects, I hired and fired more people, and I nearly burnt out.

Then, the economy changed and we had to downsize.

I went through a learning portal – a very intense trial of learning and growth. And then I backtracked – I stepped backwards and found myself at a smaller, more predictable stage of the business than I’d been at before.

I haven’t crossed a new portal of learning at Zander Media since 2022, and probably won’t until the business surpasses our previous metrics – in people, project scope, or sales.

Because that’s how learning works.

Every time we step through a portal we learn something new about ourselves. We become a new person. And we can’t step back.

Until next week,
Robin

There’s a social media account I like called Nature is Metal. Their content is not for the faint of heart. Regularly, I’ll open Instagram to see a beautiful bald eagle tearing out the guts of a snake, or a baby hippopotamus getting torn apart by a lion.

Nature is Metal documents the stunning absurdity and fragility of life.

That is the natural world I grew up in. As a child, I scaled alpine mountains in the Sierra. In high school, living in the cloud forest of Monteverde, Costa Rica, I would run miles into the forest at dusk, knowing that if I fell and hit my head, nobody would find my body.

Nature is metal. It is an unsympathetic universe. Though we don’t often consider it, life is that tenuous. That humans continue to strive is magnificent, absurd.

A decade ago, my best friend told me, somewhat brutally, “Nobody’s coming.” That’s shorthand for “Nobody is coming to save you.”

I’ve always wanted to believe that someone, somewhere would be there to support me. And I was fortunate enough to have people to support me early in life when that really mattered.

In 7th grade, in a deep depression, my parents took me out of middle school and homeschooled me for a year. Then, bored in high school, my sister found a Quaker school in the cloud forest of Monteverde and I spent a semester studying abroad.

Those two experiences came, in part, through the good graces of other people. At the time, it felt like someone literally saved me, but, of course, I also had agency in those experiences.

Self-reliance is complicated by the fact that humans are co-dependent. We need other people in order to survive.

But ultimately we are all responsible for ourselves. There isn’t anyone else. Ferocious self-reliance is a good thing. There isn’t anybody coming to save you – and there’s a lot of utility in that belief.

Nobody is coming in sales

I spent the last year selling, and writing about sales. In the months leading up to Responsive Conference I took several thousand meetings in order to sell out our summit.

There were many moments where I desperately wanted somebody else to solve the sales problem for me. At the end of a long day of 10 hours of meetings, I’d briefly wonder if someone would give me a magic bullet. (Hint: there isn’t one.)

Eventually, I came back to the realization that nobody was coming. I could ask for advice, but the solutions and work had to be my own.

This is always true in sales, and in business. There is nobody coming to help you build your business or to earn your money. Nobody will ever care as much about your business as you do.

The work remains yours to do.

Nobody can find you a great partner

I’m in an exciting, new relationship. But over the last 20 years, I’ve gone on a lot of first dates! I’ve tried hundreds of creative ways to meet potential partners.

I’ve tried new sports, asked business associates for personal introductions, hired professional matchmakers, and even paid for advertising.

Once, to win a bet, I went on 13 first dates in 48 hours!

Hearing about my new relationship, a friend recently asked me for dating advice. I told him that, as with business, there is no guarantee of a successful outcome. Continue becoming the best version of yourself and just keep striving.

Nobody else can solve this problem for you.

Eat what you kill

I suspect that Nature is Metal is popular not just because it shows stunning, graphic imagery from the natural world. The content highlights how harsh the world is and how insignificant we all are.

Nature is Metal is a reminder that nobody is coming.

May we be so fortunate as to have people to support us when we are too young or too frail to support ourselves. And may we all have the compassion to do the same for others.

When you believe that nobody is coming, you are forced to stop hoping that life will be fair. Entitlement falls aside. In the natural world, in business, and in life, you eat what you kill.

I stumbled into the phrase SNAFU by accident. Last winter, my father and a close friend both asked me, quite out of the blue, if I knew what SNFU means.

I’d thought “snafu” was an English word that means a small mistake. SNAFU is an acronym that originated during World War II, coined by soldiers to describe the commonplace messiness of war, military bureaucracy, and the human experience. It stands for Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

I embraced the word for three of reasons:

• the original military dark humor
• my own somewhat mistaken interpretation meaning small mistake or misstep
• A reminder of two people I love

When we’re learning something new, everything comes as the result of trial and error – though baby steps, through small mistakes.

For me, Snafu – the word, not the acronym – has come to mean the small mistakes that result in learning. And the challenging, oftentimes hilarious, lessons we learn along the way.

I’ve been writing this newsletter for 18 months and haven’t missed a single week of publishing! The time has come to reevaluate the purpose of the newsletter, what I’m trying to accomplish with it, why I write it, and what it means.

Origin stories

I’m fascinated by origin stories because it is during those periods that character gets made.

I’m less interested in T.E. Lawrence’s exploits in Arabia, and more about how he came to become the world-changing character he was.

I’ve been a longtime fan of Tim Ferriss. But then the podcast and books he’s known for, though I’m intrigued by his come up – by who he was during his most difficult times.

​Starting Robin’s Cafe in 3 weeks, and then selling it on Craigslist is one of my origin stories. Those early days of building my brick-and-mortal business made me who I am today.

Snafu is my attempt to document lessons learned over the last decade I would have enjoyed reading 5 and 10 years ago.

Advice I wish I’d had

Years ago, as a member of his Behavior Design lab at Stanford, BJ Fogg told me not to try to persuade the unpersuadeable. That is a moment I’ll never forget.

Snafu is my attempt to document lessons learned for myself, so that I remember them.

Sitting down to write each day forces me to clarify my thinking, to articulate my beliefs.

Snafu is my effort to document my own and other people’s learnings, to learn from the mistakes that make us who we are.

The crafts of writing & teaching

I’ve always loved the craft of writing. But up until recent years I was too ashamed of the potential of a typo to publish most of what I wrote. I still cringe when someone points out grammatical mistakes in my work, but I’ve learned to also say “Thank you.”

Snafu is my attempt to train myself to write. Maybe not John McPhee quality of writer, but someone who can assemble words in a way that might impact people.

I’ve been very fortunate in my life, and met a lot of people along the way who’ve shaped my learning. Teachers and friends have turned up at just the right time, when I needed a lesson or a next step.

Sometimes the right nudge at just the right time is all someone needs to transform their life or work. Change comes through minuscule steps – right up until those changes transform your trajectory. This newsletter is my attempt to offer small steps, and to make those steps smaller.

My hope is that Snafu might be a platform for some of those lessons for others.

What it all means

Life is short, and then we die.

We are tiny, insignificant on a large globe, and our Earth is insignificant against the scope of the universe.

I like gallows humor inherent in the acronym SNAFU because that humor recognizes our insignificance against the backdrop of the universe, and laughs, anyway.

That Snafu means “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up” is hilarious. Even more funny to me is that I’ve used the phrase “snafu” all my life without even knowing that acronym.

As Maya Angelou said, “When you know better, you do better.” That’s how learning works. We make the same mistakes until we learn to outgrow them, and then we make different mistakes until we outgrow those.

Life is a process of making mistakes again and again. Until we learn better. Hopefully, those mistakes are small enough that we don’t die, learn, and grow.

Until next week,
Robin

I’m frequently doing ridiculous self-experiments like eating just three ingredients for six months, sitting in freezing cold water, or selling a cafe on Craigslist.

When I first read the Respnsive.org manifesto and started talking about the “future of work,” someone offered me the question: “Is this experiment safe to try?”

That phrase has become a guiding principle for my personal or professional experiments since.

​As I wrote about recently, experiments can feel risky. “What if we tried…” feels like going out on a limb. That’s true for personal experiments like my cold plunge and for professional experiments like hiring a new employee or implementing a new process.

Change often feels scary, expensive, and difficult.

We think of change as a permanent state; experiments are big efforts that take a lot of work to get moving. And once an experiment has been started, it can’t be changed.

But actually, the opposite is true. Real change occurs through the small, day-to-day moments. Experiments can be tiny habits; tests in a slightly new direction.

Next time you’re trying out something new, ask yourself, “Is this safe to try?” Not for the rest of the year, or the rest of your life, but in this moment. Then try one small test at a time.

Until next week,
Robin

When I first walked into a gymnastics gym, I had zero experience with gymnastics or acrobatics of any kind. Nor did anyone else I knew! I’d never seen gymnastics in the Olympics or otherwise. But the moment I walked into that gymnastics warehouse and saw someone doing giants on the high bar, my life changed.

I’ve spent thousands of hours and most days of my life since practicing some form of acrobatics.

Life isn’t binary. I didn’t decide in that moment to spend the rest of my life practicing and performing acrobatics. But I also didn’t need more evidence than that initial moment to know I had to pursue the sport.

Speed matters. In business, being able to execute quickly is a competitive advantage – the difference between success and failure. In the most severe cases, the speed of decision making is the difference between life and death.

You’re always collecting evidence

We are always collecting evidence. I didn’t realize it before opening Robin’s Cafe, but I’d been assessing neighborhoods for decades. Was a neighborhood getting better or getting worse? What makes a great coffee shop? I’d lived within a few blocks of Robin’s Cafe for years, and knew – without needing to think about it – the ins and outs of my neighborhood.

When it comes to making fast decisions, we’ve already collected a lot of the evidence we need.

Take a small step, and see

I’m all for jumping into the deep end. I’ve been accused of taking big risks. But it is possible to do so without diving head first into tge metaphorical pool without first knowing how deep the water is. (I’ve had enough concussions, thank you.)

When you’re starting a new business, writing an article, entering a new relationship, working with a new client, begin.

Once you decide to act, the only recourse is to take a small step and see what happens.

Skepticism = brakes

People say that a healthy dose of skepticism is important. They’re wrong.

Don’t confuse skepticism with caution. Proceed with enough caution that you don’t get hurt, or that if you do, the injury is recoverable.

I don’t want anyone to be taken in by scammers. But skepticism is unnecessary.

Skepticism is a way of slowing yourself down. It clouds your perspective; makes what you are seeing and evaluating less clear. Don’t use skepticism as brakes when simply slowing down will do.

Protect the downside

When Richard Branson started Virgin Airlines, he negotiated a deal to protect the downside.

Starting an airline is capital-intensive. The industry is notoriously difficult. But Branson persuaded Boeing to lease him a second-hand 747 airplane with an unusual stipulation. If Virgin Atlantic failed to become profitable, Boeing would buy back the aircraft.

When you’re doing something new, fast, or risky for the first time, consider how to protect yourself in the worst case scenario.

Be all in

Once you’ve decided to attempt something audacious, be all in. Instead of considering what might go wrong, look for things that might go right.

Don’t disregard the risks. Don’t speed up just because you’re excited. But also don’t nay-say your own conviction.

Once you’ve committed, be all in.

Until next week,
Robin

I first heard the term “self-experimentation” as an undergraduate in behavioral psychology

My professor gave a few examples of his own. He went a month with no sugar, which made carrots taste unbearably sweet. He tried sleeping with his head lower than his feet, which felt miserable and his wife refused to continue. And more.

I think he would have enjoyed teaching an entire seminar about self-experimentation, but he only introduced the concept, and we were left to explore for ourselves.

Which I did.

First through athletics, but then across diet, romance, work, and every other domain, I’ve run thousands of self-experiments.

In 2023, I went more than a month without food. In 2024, I ate three ingredients for five months. I sit in freezing water for several minutes every morning. All from an insatiable desire to answer the question, “What if…?”

In work and throughout our lives, experiments can feel like big endeavors. To lose fat, you need to Diet with a capital D. Gaining muscle is assumed to be hard, with a side of suffering. (For the record, I put on 15 pounds of muscle during my bison and zucchini diet earlier this year.)

In our workplaces, experiments are even harder. As an employee, you might get fired. As a boss, I might get sued.

Experimentation requires enough space to try something new. You have to be able to consider whether this experiment is worth trying, evaluate the potential outcomes, and survive the impact.

But the truth about running an experiment – whether self-experimenting with diet or implementing a new process at work – has huge potential upside.

Start small

Every time I think I’ve fully grokked this idea, I find new dimensions of “starting small.”

Popularized by BJ Fogg and discussed in his book Tiny Habits, the smaller you can make an experiment, the easier it is to try.

Progress comes through small steps that eventually create dramatic change.

As Buckminster Fuller said, “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”

Make it reversible

In physical movement, there’s a concept of “reversibility.” A well-executed roll in Brazilian jiu-jitsu can be paused midway through and reversed. All non-dynamic movement can be assessed for quality by whether it can be reversed at any time.

Whenever we changed the menu at Robin’s Cafe, that experiment created some new challenges for my employees who had to learn the new recipes.

But a new menu that is rolled out can also be rolled back, and I could talk to each employee in advance to see how they feel about the new concepts.

In running experiments, ask yourself “Is this reversible?”

Measure impact over the long term

When trying a new diet or implementing a new process, it is natural to want to see changes immediately.

But lasting change doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over weeks, months, and years.

The quicker something is to implement, the more likely it is to flip back to its previous homeostatic state. The longer the period, the more you’re likely to see lasting change.

Measure in decades, not in days.

What did you learn?

Throughout each experiment, ask yourself “What did I learn?”

When experiments fail – like the first and fiftieth time I tried to give up sugar– this is a question that kept me going. And when you are making progress, this is a way to celebrate and expedite progress.

I always want to remain capable of change and reinvention. In business, I aspire to build a learning organization that can equally adapt to our rapidly changing world.

To succeed in the world today, you need to be able to constantly reinvent yourself and your work. That starts with the question, “What did I learn?”

Until next week,
Robin

Three days before the election, I went on a first date.

I go on a lot of first dates. But I was enthusiastic enough for this one that I vacuumed my car, thinking that I might drive her home after dinner.

In the week since that first date, we’ve since spent more time together than we have apart, and I’m not certain I’ll need to go on a first date again.

There was also an election this last week. Perhaps the most significant election of this generation.

The morning after the election, November 6th, my neighborhood in Oakland was unusually quiet. A little like New Year’s day; everyone sleeping off a bad hangover.

My last meeting of the day with a stranger – the sort I often take for Responsive Conference – who turned out to have served as Chief Digital Officer during the Obama administration. She was unofficially tapped for a role in a Harris Administration.

When I asked what she was doing to process the results of the election, she said she’d be spending a week wallowing, but that next week she’d be back to work.

While buying flowers for my new beau, I phoned my mother. She’d attended her regular yoga class, enjoyed the autumnal day, watched the birds, and also spent a day in mourning. But tomorrow, she said, “I get back to work.”

That evening, between cute moments that don’t bear mentioning, I said that while I’d have preferred to be celebrating a different election outcome together, I was nonetheless grateful to be falling in love.

Welcome to Your Silo

Hugh Howey, author of the Silo trilogy, just published a great article about our cultural silos. In it, he shares the story of his loving father who became indoctrinated in a certain type of right wing hatred. I’ve never had a family member succumb to QAnon conspiracies, but my grandfather was a loving man who also loved Rush Limbaugh’s vitriol.

My grandfather grew up in the Great Depression and sold vacuums door-to-door. I knew him as a old man who loved his three children, fawned over his grandkids, worked with his hands. He also listened to a lot of AM radio and would talk about “these damn immigrants” over dinner. Even while tipping the Mexican laborers who helped keep up his yard.

There’s a fair bit of cognitive dissonance going around right now. Several of my gay friends are preparing to leave the United States, while other people I know – and know to be good and decent humans – could not be more excited.

Multiple things can be true. We are in a climate crisis. Federal abortion rights have already been overturned, and gay marriage could follow. But that doesn’t mean the “other side” is evil.

There is something discordant about falling in love while grieving for my country. It also requires some mental agility to lovingly remember my grandfather and recall the same man espousing the hate he heard on AM radio.

Whether depressed about the election result or recently in love, whether you are joyful or struggling, the only recourse is to take next action. Celebrate. Grieve. Do what you need to do. And then, when you are ready, get back to work.

Until next week,
Robin

A friend of mine is embarking on his first 4-day water only fast, so I sent him a voice memo with all of my lessons learned from fasting over the last few years. Then, I realized it’d be useful to write this up.

First, my bonafides.

In 2024, I didn’t eat for a total of 46 days. I did those fasts for between 1 and 6 days throughout the year, and learned a lot in the process.

This is an article about how to do a long term fast, not about why you should. But first I’ll articulate a few of the benefits I’ve found.

Caveats: I’m not a doctor and don’t play one on the Internet. This isn’t medical advice. Please consult with your medical provider. And please don’t sue me.

Why I fast

Autophagy

​Autophagy is the state in the body where the body recycles cells. This happens during any fast – even just not eating for twelve hours overnight results in mild autophagy.

We’re built this way – to break down the most unhealthy cells in the body so that healthy cells predominate and to decrease the chance of them turning into cancer or causing other harm.

Cancer prevention

I first came to learn about fasting because my best friend, having been diagnosed with breast cancer, was doing multiple water fasts every month.

By creating a context in the body inhospitable to cancer cells, the theory – and a great deal of evidence – suggests you decrease the chance of cancer growing or metastasizing.

It is, of course, a much longer conversation, but three books I recommend about cancer are:

• ​The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer​
• ​Cancer as a Metabolic Disease​
• ​The Cancer Resolution?: Cancer reinterpreted through another lens​

The absolute maximum that most bodies can sustain is not eating one day for every two days of eating. I wouldn’t recommend even that much for anyone not combating cancer.

A caffeine reset

I’m a lifelong caffeine drinker.

I love nothing more than green tea or pu-erh first thing in the morning. (I also love coffee, but gave it up when I sold Robin’s Cafe.)

I’ve tried many times over the years, to cut caffeine entirely, and suffered caffeine headaches and even nausea.

During a 5 day water-only fast – during which I don’t drink anything but water – not only don’t I suffer caffeine withdrawal, but I come through the experience feeling as if I haven’t had my regular green tea or coffee for many months.

Fasting provides a great reset.

Our bodies are made to fast

I don’t believe much about “paleo” or the paleolithic diet, but I do think it is useful to consider how our ancient ancestors ate. And it is abundantly clear that humans did not have food as readily available as we do today.

Our bodies, it turns out, are built to be able to fast. Physically, we can do a couple of days without food without adverse effects. (Psychologically, of course, is another matter.)

If we can fast with ease, it makes intuitive sense to me that there might be some benefits to doing so every so often.

Get comfortable with heightened adrenaline

The psychology of fasting is difficult. And managing the heightened adrenaline that comes with a fasted state is my least favorite element.

After the first day or two, the body kicks into a state of heightened energy and lethargy. You’re either on or off!

But intense adrenaline, which most of us don’t experience outside of extreme experiences like competition or a car crash, is also a useful state to get familiar with.

Getting comfortable with high adrenaline is good practice for when the world gives you something really worth freaking out about.

Reevaluate your relationship with food

I love food! And to my detriment, I’ve been known to eat, for flavor, even when I’m not hungry.

The most useful element of fasting I’ve discovered is the forcing function of having to re-evaluate my relationship with food.

Practice being hungry, wanting to eat, and not eating. Being hungry, wanting food, and not eating. The definition of delayed gratification.

Tactics for fasting

Electrolytes

The worst moments during my longer fasts have come from not having enough water and electrolytes.

“Drink plenty of water” is the most common advice articles and YouTube videos give. And it is true: during a long fast, you have to drink more water than during your normal life.

Because you aren’t absorbing any liquid through food and to get into a fasted state, the body dumps a lot of water, it is really important to stay hydrated. But the advice of “drink water” falls flat when I’m pumping full of adrenaline, have a splitting headache, am cold, and – in short – feel miserable.

The secret, in addition to drinking water before you feel like that is consuming enough electrolytes.

The advice I was given is to eat pinches of salt through my fast. That’s terrible advice. Salt on the tongue isn’t great at the best of times, but when you haven’t tasted flavor for days, straight salt is the last thing I’d recommend.

Similarly, LMNT, while a useful tool, is much too strongly flavored and contains Stevia, both of which interfere with a fast. Chalk full of sugar, you absolutely must avoid Gatorade. Anything with sugar negates a fast, and consumed during a fast can result in refeeding syndrome, which is quite serious.

My preferred form of fasting supplement is Trace Minerals tablets. While they aren’t small, and a serving size is 6(!), you can take these with just a sip of water, down a lot in a short period, and they contain the sodium, magnesium, potassium, and trace minerals you need for a complete electrolyte balance.

Random aside: I’ve always struggled with high altitude acclimatization, which is unfortunate because I love climbing big mountains. Taking these Trace Mineral supplements has, in recent years, completely eliminated my challenges with acclimatization.

Start and end with keto

This is a little hack that I have only discovered recently and that I wish I had known prior to my earliest and most difficult fasting.

“Keto,” or the ketogenic diet is, essentially, a modified fast. The body enters autophagy and burns fat for fuel like during a deeper water-only fast.

“Keto flu” is a term ascribed to the state of discomfort, and sometimes even nausea, that sometimes accompanies entering ketosis if you are unaccustomed to keto. It is much easy to deal with the symptoms of keto flu before enter a full fast with it’s heightened adrenaline, sleep deprivation, and other challenges.

Like fasting, the body gets accustomed to ketosis. With practice, you can enter ketosis more readily and more gently over time. When you begin a longer fast with a few days of eating a keto diet, you short circuit that challenged state by entering it prior to fuller demands of a full fast.

Start with 24 hours

As with most things worth doing, start small.

My friend is considering a four day fast, never having done even as much as 24 hours previously. That’s going to be difficult because there is a lot to learn about your own body through the process of fasting.

Instead, start small. Fast for 24 hours before trying 36 hours, 48 hours days, or longer.

During a 24 hour fast you won’t enter a state of deep ketosis, but you will get a sense of your relationship with food and hunger. For me it was a revelation that you can go to bed hungry and wake up the following morning feeling just fine.

I did my first 24 hour fast in early 2023, and by the end of the year had done multiple 5 and 6 day fasts.

Start small. Your gains will compound.

Beware the witching hour

I call the hours of 6-9pm each evening my witching hour. This is the period during which the human body is most able to put on calories and retain weight.

If we trace the time back to prehistory, this is when humans were most likely to eat large meals and then be able to rest, so our bodies have learned that this is the time to signal hunger, and also to store calories.

This is the most difficult time during a fast.

In the morning, I wake up – and while I might miss my caffeine rituals – generally feel fine.

During the day, there are short bouts of hunger, but if I keep busy – it helps to remain busy with relatively unimportant tasks – they are easily passed by.

But in the evening my body is ready to eat. This is the time that I don’t allow myself into the kitchen or around other people eating food. Sitting with someone at breakfast? No problem. But joining someone for dinner is a miserable experience.

The best advice I have to get through the witching hours is to distract yourself. (I suggest The Chef and other movies depicting food.)

Go to bed early. Find something that you can do to make that time pass.

The wrap

If all of this sounds difficult, it is.

Long term water-only fasting is probably the most difficult thing I do on a regular basis. (My current cadence is two 5-6 days fasts each year.)

But, like most difficult things, it is among the most rewarding.

Not only have I re-evaluated my relationship to food (among other things, cutting out sugar and alcohol from my diet), but the knowledge that I can delay gratification and take small steps into doing something that previous was impossible gives me the confidence to attempt future hard things.

I hope this is useful, and inspires you to try something new and difficult.

Start small, listen to yourself, and as ever, let me know if you ever need anything.

Until Next Week,
Robin