Saturday was hot.
So I decided to escape the burning cobblestones of the center and go to a secret pool in the woods.
Well, about a thousand other people had the same idea, and my “secret” pool didn’t feel so secret.
Anyway, it was still fun. And at the end of the day, I asked the girl I was with where she wanted to eat and she said she didn’t. She had “missed her eating window.”
While I was counting all the money I would save with one half of my brain, with the other half I asked her what she was talking about.
It turns out, she does something called “intermittent fasting.”
This is when you fast (don’t eat) periodically during the week.
I checked it out online, and in fact the health benefits seem valid.
The interesting thing about it is, it’s very counter-intuitive.
We think that what we eat is going to make us healthy and live long.
This is the intuitive solution.
But in fact, when you don’t eat anything, when you trick your body into thinking that you’re starving and going to die, that’s healthier than eating ten salads.
It’s counter-intuitive.
It’s like when a student once told me she wanted to review her vocab more than once a day.
For her this was the intuitive solution for faster progress.
But I knew the counter-intuitive truth.
If you review on what’s called a “spaced repetition” schedule, you’ll remember about 20% more.
Do you think you’re making some counter intuitive mistakes with your English?