Results

Getting started with 16-hour fasting →

Published March 31  ·  All posts on Mar 31  ·  

This post is about ways to incrementally change when you are eating, to shift yourself from how you are eating today, to a particular time-pattern of fasting called 16:8 (pronounced “sixteen eight”.) 16:8 means every day you have a 16-hour fast (the “not eating” window,) and then an 8-hour eating window.

I’m going to start by assuming you already want to begin fasting. I’ve written more generally about fasting if you’d prefer to start with WHY you might want to try being more intentional about when you choose to eat.

Putting yourself into “intentional” mode

You SHOULD discuss your fasting with your primary care physician. Ask them what you should be aware of, or how it may affect you—they know the specifics of your body. You will discover they actually know all about fasting and diet. If you are proactively engaged in your own welfare, your physician will be happy to be a font of useful information.

For example: My primary care doctor is well aware of the beneficial effects of diet, exercise and fasting on my cholesterol markers. They are also convinced that my lifestyle changes will not be able to sufficiently improve those markers quickly enough. Thus, our discussions and my choices continue.

(And—yikes!—if your physician isn’t helpful, knowledgeable, and open to discussion, you should find a better physician.)

Fasting is about WHEN you eat

Fasting is easy to understand: It’s about WHEN you eat. Whether we use the word fasting, intermittent fasting (IF), or time restricted eating (TRE), we’re simply referring to when you eat versus when you don’t eat.

Fasting—here, and whenever I talk about it—is not about depriving yourself, nor about starvation or suffering. It is SIMPLY being intentional about WHEN you CHOOSE to eat.

I know, I know… 16 hours without eating probably sounds like a crazy-long time to not eat. But as I said at the top, I’m assuming you are motivated to try this.

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Part 5: Inflammation and Immune Renewal →

Published March 4  ·  All posts on Mar 4  ·  

I’ve been doing 16:8 intermittent fasting for years and recently started 48-hour fasts — dropping about three pounds each fast, gaining one or two back, and trending steadily downward. I wanted to understand what the research actually says about what I’m doing to myself, so I worked with Claude (Anthropic’s AI) to produce this series. I set the structure, chose the topics, pushed back on claims that felt hand-wavy, and guided the editorial tone. Claude did the writing and research synthesis. My curiosity driving Claude’s research and prose.

Inflammation and Immune Renewal

Research brief — how fasting reduces systemic inflammation and primes the immune system for regeneration. Two distinct but related mechanisms.

Inflammation Reduction

Jordan et al. 2019 — Stefan Jordan, Navpreet Tung, and colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, led by Miriam Merad. Published in Cell, 178:1102-1114. (1)

This study directly tied caloric intake to the circulating inflammatory monocyte pool — a key driver of systemic inflammation.

What they found:

  • Short-term fasting reduced monocyte metabolic and inflammatory activity and drastically reduced the number of circulating monocytes
  • The mechanism: fasting activates AMPK in hepatocytes (liver cells) and suppresses systemic CCL2 production via PPARα, which reduces monocyte mobilization from bone marrow
  • Fasting improved chronic inflammatory diseases without compromising emergency immune mobilization during acute infection — the immune system’s ability to respond to real threats remained intact
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Part 2: Getting Into Fasting →

Published March 4  ·  All posts on Mar 4  ·  

I’ve been doing 16:8 intermittent fasting for years and recently started 48-hour fasts — dropping about three pounds each fast, gaining one or two back, and trending steadily downward. I wanted to understand what the research actually says about what I’m doing to myself, so I worked with Claude (Anthropic’s AI) to produce this series. I set the structure, chose the topics, pushed back on claims that felt hand-wavy, and guided the editorial tone. Claude did the writing and research synthesis. My curiosity driving Claude’s research and prose.

Routines, Scenarios, and What to Expect

Research brief — the practical onramp. 16:8 IF as a starting point, Craig’s specific eating window, extended fasting scenarios anchored to a weekly rhythm, and what keto flu actually is.

Start With 16:8

You may want to start by getting into 16:8 intermittent fasting — an 8-hour eating window and 16-hour fast — before attempting anything longer.

Is this actually supported? Honestly, no one has studied whether practicing 16:8 first makes longer fasts easier. It’s conventional wisdom without a clinical trial behind it. But the physiological rationale is sound: regular time-restricted eating develops metabolic flexibility — the ability to switch between glucose and fat/ketone oxidation. Someone who does this daily would be expected to enter ketosis faster and with less discomfort during an extended fast. And the practical experience of managing hunger, learning your body’s signals, and knowing what electrolyte depletion feels like are real benefits of prior fasting experience, even if unstudied. (1)

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Undertake a journey →

Published January 7  ·  All posts on Jan 7  ·  ,

I took [Judith Wright’s] reply to mean that for certain kinds of knowledge you have to undertake a journey. It isn’t like pouring water into a bucket—a process by which neither water nor bucket is much changed—It seemed that if I took this journey I would be utterly changed. And before setting out, I couldn’t predict what that change would be.

~ John Tarrant, from Bring Me the Rhinoceros

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So much yak shaving even this post →

Published September 30  ·  All posts on Sep 30  ·  

So I was off talking about something, which was in fact a classic example of yak shaving. The person I was talking with is intimately familiar with the term. But in case you are not…

me: There was an old—sesame street maybe?—tv episode from the 70s or early 80s with a song, “There’s a hole in the bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza…” that describes that sort of recursion. Decades earlier than yak shaving.

You’re absolutely right! “There’s a Hole in the Bucket” is actually much older than that—it’s a traditional folk song that dates back to at least the 1700s in Germany (as “Lieder von der Zithermädchen”). The English version became popular in the 1800s.

The song became widely known in America in 1961 when Harry Belafonte and Odessa Turner recorded it, and yes, it was performed on various children’s shows including Sesame Street in later years.

The song is the perfect example of circular dependency/yak shaving! The structure is that Henry needs to fix the bucket, but to do that he needs to sharpen the axe, but to sharpen the axe he needs to wet the stone, but to wet the stone he needs water, but to get water he needs… the bucket. It’s an endless loop of prerequisites that circles back to the original problem.

So you’re totally right—this concept of getting stuck in recursive task dependencies has been around in folk culture for centuries! The MIT folks just gave it a modern, absurdist name with “yak shaving.” The bucket song might be one of the earliest comedic explorations of dependency hell.

It’s funny how the same human experience—whether it’s 18th century peasants or 21st century sysadmins—keeps rediscovering this frustrating pattern and finding ways to laugh about it.

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Consider: If you were starting a brand-new podcast today, what would you do differently? →

Published March 7, 2025  ·  All posts on Mar 7  ·  

With everything you’ve learned from running multiple shows, what are the biggest mistakes or inefficiencies you’d avoid if you were launching a new podcast from scratch? Would you approach production, audience growth, or personal mindset differently?

~ Asked by the LLM(1)

Picture me smiling and chuckling nervously because, for more than a year, I have been trying to restart one of my shows. Certainly a big part of my 2024 was reallocated for health reasons, but my attempted restart of the Open + Curious podcast has had many months available to me before, and since. Still, there’s no new show. It’s all about the mindset, for me. I have a too-grand vision of what it should be. I can’t stop seeing all the things it could possibly become, and fixating on getting everything right (my vision of what it should be) from launch day.

However, the best wisdom that I have here for others, is just a repackaging of Heraclitus’s “no one steps in the same river twice” (the flowing water implies the river is different, and the person is also different.)

If someone is actually starting their first show: Once you understand how to do a podcast (it takes perhaps 10 minutes to learn that?) then do not spend more time asking people about starting. That’s hiding from the work. Rather, start. The experience of the doing is what you are actually seeking.

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(1) I’m working with an LLM instance which has access to everything I’ve written about podcasting, and all the episodes I’ve published. It prompts me by asking me these questions.

Archeology and music →

Published January 16, 2025  ·  All posts on Jan 16  ·  

Simply sound-related things today: An image of a babbling brook and archeology…

It is possible that some 8,000 years ago, in this acoustically resonant haven, people not only hid from passing coastal thunderstorms, they may have used this place to commune with their dead—using music. That’s a possibility hinted at in the work of archaeologist Joshua Kumbani, of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and his colleagues.

~ Sarah Wild, from What Did the Stone Age Sound Like?

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Seems obvious that archeology would be interested in sound— but I’d never thought of that aspect of it before.

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Redemption →

Published December 4, 2024  ·  All posts on Dec 4  ·  ,

Because it’s elitist, an initiation into arcana. Because it’s nostalgic, rowing being a skill not much in demand in the industrial world. Because it’s fragile: The boat club is run on a shoestring, and the beat-up old boats held together by spit. Because it’s dangerous, and exercises the wits against the wind and the water. Because it’s a ritual. Because it’s redemption.

~ Barry Strauss

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Lake Seneca →

Published October 11, 2024  ·  All posts on Oct 11

Just a lake-shore.

During a short camping stay, I had the delightful chance to sit between paddling around.

Words don’t really do the feeling justice. I spent decades sailing (beginning in the womb). For many years we went every weekend to the nearest lakes. Lakes, rivers, the Caribbean even. My dad was really into it. Once, my father excitedly got us to the lake for the first, Spring-sailing outing of a season (think: fr-fr-fr-frigid water, rubber wetsuits, die-hard sailors) only to discover the entire lake was STILL FROZEN. Too soon, dad. Too soon. Much fun. Endless stories.

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Filed and lost →

Published August 12, 2024  ·  All posts on Aug 12  ·  ,

Taking notes on the books I read was a great start, but it wasn’t enough. It did me no good to leave those notes sitting in a software program like a musty filing cabinet in the basement, never to see the light of day again.

I realized if I wanted to benefit from my reading, I needed to engage with the books I read on a much deeper level. I needed to make something out of them. Otherwise, I would continue to passively consume information with no lasting memory of what I learned.

~ Tiago Forte, from The Ultimate Guide to Summarizing Books

Has anyone noticed that’s what I’m attempting to do with all my blogging and writing? Shirley, that’s obvious. (It’s not obvious, and don’t call me Shirley.)

I’ve always deeply loved movies. I was raised (on hose water and neglect) in the era when going to a movie was special. Remember when you had to use the phone (with a rotary dial, mounted on the wall) to call the theatre and listen to a looooong recording detailing what was playing and when? I could tell you so so so many stories about going to the movies. In more recent issues of 7 for Sunday, I’m feeling less inclined to stomp down the inside-joke movie references. If you find them even half as enjoyable to read, as I do to write them, then we’re both better off. I’m pretty sure that my recalling and retelling of all those stories about and around movies makes the entire movie experience more fun; yes the experience during the movie, but also all the stuff around it too.

No, I’ve not lost my own plot. Forte’s point about how to benefit from what one reads is the same thing. If you want to hold on to whatever it was that you’ve gotten from a book… you have to integrate it with the rest of your ongoing, lived experience. You have to go around telling the story of who gave you the book, what the book means to you in the context of your entire life, and what you think your interlocutor might get from it (like this, this, this, this, this, this or… you get my point.)

And as soon as you realize that’s fun for movies, and great for books, you should wonder if it could be a super-power for self-improvement if you could share the contents of your mind, with yourself, in that same fashion. Two suggestions: Start journaling immediately after reading this issue of 7 for Sunday, so you can then begin in a year, to regularly review your journals.

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