i had another question what age can a child start fasting the answer is it depends
now let's say your child is younger let's say they're nine years old or eight years old
and they're overweight the first thing that you should do of course is do the low-carb diet
it's essential do keto that should handle the weight if it doesn't then you might want to do
a modification of intermittent fasting which i will explain but i first want to mention this
so many kids consume three meals with snacks this is the problem right here of these snacks
even if they're healthy because every time you eat you stimulate insulin so that child is getting
all these spikes of insulin all day long and the pancreas never has a chance to reset and so it's
going to convert a lot of that fuel to fat fuel it's going to affect their cognitive function
their ability to learn and study in school and their ability to focus and the other issue is that
let's say um a child is given something right before they go to bed you know like a cookies
and milk before they go to bed so let's say that's at 9 30 p.m and let's say they get up at
7:00 am and have their breakfast of course it's what is it cereal a muffin orange juice pancakes
terrible you only get like nine and a half hour fast that is just not enough fasting in
fact that child is going to be set up for a lot of problems down the road and so another point
that's interesting i would say about 30 maybe even 40 years ago children and even adults did
not do the snacking they do now so there's been a massive shift in snacking on all sorts of things i
think that right there is a huge culprit on why a lot of these kids are overweight not for calories
but just because you're spiking insulin so what i'm going to suggest at any age and there's
exceptions to the rule but generally speaking three meals is what you need to have your child
uh be on with no snacks if they're hungry between the meal all that means is they've their their
meals are too high in carbs and they don't have enough fat or they don't have enough nutrients
the child has the right meal that's nutrient dense which is always vital then they won't need a snack
i mean we've become literally obsessed about constantly having food there all the time to
prevent this drop in blood sugar and that's simply because everyone's running on their blood sugars
they're not running on fat fuel because their carbs are too high and so if your child is a
bit overweight um and you do this right here and then you do three meals no snacks well maybe you
can then do two meals a day just make sure that those meals are really sufficient in calories and
nutrient dense there's some really important nutrients to focus on with a growing child
dha which is omega-3 fatty acids essential trace minerals essential for the growth and development
of the brain and the endocrine system and the immune system and then the b vitamins vitamin
c vitamin d and vitamin e all very very important and so in the growth and development of that child
without these there's going to be problems and you never want to go low-fat with a child because we
need that fat for the brain and for the endocrine system as well now let's say your child is really
small let's say they're one or two or three years old and they're transitioning off breast milk
i wouldn't worry about the three meals and two snacks at that age you know just feed them when
they get hungry make sure it's nutrient dense but i would say when they start to become like
four or five or six years old you want to shoot for three meals no snacks as much as possible
and of course check with your doctor before taking any of these recommendations now the next point
i want to bring up is when that teenager stops growing roughly between 16 18 years old that's
when you can start to do a little bit more fasting depending on what you're trying to solve or if you
just want to be healthy and of course i want to emphasize when you're growing you know you need
more nutrients than when you stop growing now let's just talk about a child having epilepsy
researchers found that when you fast you lessen the incidence of epilepsy because of ketones
so the ketogenic diet especially one that's very high in fat and moderate protein and extremely low
in carbs that can mimic what occurs when you're fasting and so instead of having a young child
going on some type of long fast you can just put them on the ketogenic diet to mimic that
fast and so the reason i'm bringing it up is because i would always always recommend
the child to be on a low carb diet there's no real good reason to be on a high carb diet
regardless of the age but where fasting comes in is when you start having weight issues and maybe
you have blood sugar issues maybe your child's a pre-diabetic then you focus on this right here
all right so that's my opinion on when a child should start fasting before you go if you have
a question about a product or you're new to keto and you want to know how to begin keto or you're
on keto and you need a debug because it's not going as smooth i have a keto consultant standing
by to help you this is just for the people in the US hopefully in the future we'll be able
to answer everyone's call but i put the number down below so you can call and get some help