#325 22 Years of One Meal a Day - Ori Hofmekler the Godfather of Intermittent Fasting

Ori Hofmekler (0:00)

That stress can benefit you up to a certain point. Benefit you by triggering mechanism in your body and system which are extremely powerful to preserve your body, to keep you great.

Siim Land (0:12)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land, and today our guest is Ori Hofmekler. Ori is the author of The Warrior Diet, which is the first intermittent fasting book online made over 22 years ago. Basically, The Warrior Diet is one meal a day, but you're allowed to snack on some berries and nuts during the day. Ori is a pioneer in everything related to hormesis, stress adaptation, and longevity. He's written multiple books including The Warrior Diet, The Seven Principles of Stress, Maximum Muscle Minimum Fat, and the Anti-Estrogenic Diet. Now although Ori has been a huge influence on my own journey as an author and an independent fasting practitioner, I do and I do agree with the main ideas.

There are still some things that we obviously disagree with, and it's also important to note that Ori isn't like an active researcher anymore.

He doesn't write any more notebooks, he hasn't done so in the past several years, and yeah there are some things that new research and new studies have talked about, hormesis and even fasting, that aren't necessarily the same as his ideas. Although the main general principle of stress adaptation and hormesis, that is still fundamentally rooted in our human biology. That's why I've compiled my own ideas about hormesis and innovative fasting in my own books, Metabolic Autophagy and Stronger by Stress, that are based on the latest research. But nevertheless it was still an honor to have him as one of the godfathers of innovative fasting on my podcast and talk with him, which the first time we did was five years ago, but now we have another conversation. Ori, welcome back to the show.

Ori Hofmekler (1:44)

My pleasure.

Siim Land (1:46)

Yeah, we just talked that the first time I had you on my podcast, which was actually one of the first episodes of the podcast, was five years ago. And it's been a very long time. You know, you look actually, I think you've been better than before, or you know, still very young and youthful.

Mind if I ask how old are you right now?

Ori Hofmekler (2:06)

I'm over 70

Siim Land (2:08)

Okay, so yeah, you look excellent for your age. And I think that you are very like, you know, still fit and healthy in that sense. So yeah, like you as an author have been like a pretty huge influence and inspiration in terms of my interest in intermittent fasting and how it relates to, you know, stress adaptation and resilience in general. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of your books and read all of them.

And we'll basically, yes, for people who might have not heard about you before, then we'll, you know, delve into all of them. And, you know, funny enough, I think that you are one of the, I don't know, the first people online to even start to talk about intermittent fasting or popularize it at least than one of the first books, the first books that I definitely read about it. And that was definitely like over like 20 years ago, if I'm not mistaken.

Ori Hofmekler (3:01)

Yeah, 22 years ago.

Siim Land (3:04)

Yeah, and how long have you been doing intermittent fasting yourself? Like, when did you start?

Ori Hofmekler (3:10)

You know what, I don't even remember most of my life for sure. And it has through, I went through phases and still am. It's evolving.

As you move to the future, you constantly need to adapt to your situation and your needs as a young person changes as you reach the age of 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 or 120 It will still evolve, but the principle do not change. So in my mind, it was always the warrior diet was created on the concept of intermittent fasting, which I early on realized it's kind of stress or hardship that we biologically evolved to strive upon and benefit from that. So the whole idea is to trigger mechanism within you that keep you in shape, not in shape muscle wise, in shape to better survive, less age, keep your brain always young until the end. There is no reason, in my opinion, to suffer from dementia. People should not die from dementia.

I put the serious research about it and explanation in my last book, The Seven Principles of Stress.

Siim Land (4:40)

Yeah, I think it's very true in the sense that in the modern world, we are very easy to kill. Most people wouldn't be able to survive in nature for a long time. They're very fragile in that sense.