The 8-Hour Diet

While I certainly don’t follow the eating schedule every day, I know that when I do, I feel sharper, more energetic, and even less hungry than I would otherwise. Indeed, if I’ve got a serious meeting or a looming deadline, I throw myself into the 8-Hour Diet with abandon, because I know it will sharpen my mind and amp my energy levels.

Whey protein is a good source of cysteine, which your body uses to build a cancer–fighting antioxidant called glutathione.

For a long time, eggs were considered pure evil—more likely to appear in the Most Wanted poster at the post office than in a healthy-eating chapter of a diet book. That’s because everybody—including food scientists and health editors—spent several decades in confusion over cholesterol. It was in food, and it was implicated in fatal blood clots in the heart. Same name, direct link. Right? Wrong. Five decades later it has become clear that food cholesterol and blood cholesterol are different animals and not really related to one another. In fact, we’ve now learned that most blood cholesterol is made by the body from dietary fat, not dietary cholesterol. And that’s why you should take advantage of eggs and their powerful dose of protein.

BE THE WARREN BUFFETT OF THE BUFFET. Consider each meal and snack to be an investment in your body. You want to create a balanced portfolio of investments that are going to perform well, and try to cut down on “junk” bonds—investments that aren’t a good value.

Intermittent fasting, however, isn’t based on deprivation. It’s a pattern of eating, not purgatory, and it reinforces to your body that it will get plenty of healthy calories every day so there’s no reason to store fat—in fact, it can start burning fat for energy. Studies show that it also causes a surge in hunger-limiting leptin.

Intermittent fasting has a profound effect on the hunger (ghrelin) and satiety (leptin) hormones.

Research shows that our bodies’ inner eat-and-sleep clocks have been thrown completely out of whack, thanks to all-day food cues and too much nighttime artificial light. The result: You’re caught in a “fat cycle”: a constant flow of hunger hormones that makes you prone to cravings.

THE 8-HOUR DIETcan lessen the effects of stress. Consider a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2007 that noted that people who kept their food intake to an 8-hour period experienced a “significant decrease in concentrations of cortisol.

Limiting your time period for caloric intake just seems to make the mind stay sharper as it grows older. “The effect was first shown in rats 30 years ago,

The reasoning behind it: A keen mind is more likely to find its way to the next meal. So the downside of not eating leads directly to the upside of clearer thinking.