EAT SMART
CAN INTERMITTENT FASTING REALLY MAKE YOU LIVE LONGER? GABRIELA PEACOCK TELLS BRIGID MOSS HOW IT CAN HELP YOU TO AGE WELL – AS WELL AS BOOSTING ENERGY AND WELLBEING
How do you know that someone does intermittent fasting (IF)? The answer is that they usually tell you. In the past decade, IF – which means switching between less and more food – has gained a lot of airtime as a weight-loss or maintenance method. So, you may not know that the original reason scientists began to investigate IF wasn’t for weight loss but for longevity. But that’s what prompted nutritionist Gabriela Peacock, the founder of GP Nutrition, to make her method into a new book, 2 Weeks To A Younger You.
Her client list reads like a Who’s Who of people who seem younger than they are. There’s Dame Joan Collins, recently pictured partying at her 90th birthday. Then Charlotte Tilbury, Yasmin Le Bon and Eva Herzigová, all the epitome of beautiful ageing. Peacock, who has three children (including six-year-old twins), appears a lot younger than her 43 years when we meet over Zoom.
‘The science of longevity is fascinating,’ she says. ‘We used to think that the older you got, the worse your health would become, but there’s really no reason for that.’ She’s not anti-ageing; she’s pro-ageing. ‘People are living longer than ever, but what’s important is quality of life, how we feel as we’re ageing. To age is to live. We should embrace it.’ Your age is irrelevant, she says. Her aim is to help you ‘truly live and feel great for as long as possible’.
Taking a deep dive into the science of longevity, Peacock became increasingly convinced that we can learn to age well, ‘with just a few lifestyle and dietary changes’, she says.
And IF has a very strong scientific base of evidence, she says, ‘especially when it comes to prevention of chronic diseases. Weight loss is just a side-effect.’ For one, IF is known to be anti-inflammatory – and inflammation is a huge factor in both ageing and chronic disease.
Secondly, fasting reduces biological age because of how it affects cells. ‘When you fast, the body looks into new ways of getting energy and calories, and that includes proteins that are no longer needed, that are malfunctioning or dying, cluttering up the cells,’ says Peacock. This process is called autophagy. ‘You could also describe it as cell self-cleansing,’ she says. ‘It’s clearing up the damaged cells and stimulating their repair.’
In fact, autophagy is provoked by anything that stresses the body in a short-term, controlled way, also called a hormetic stress. As well as IF, the book extols the virtues of other hormetic stresses, too: intense hot and cold temperatures, such as saunas and cold-water showers; and exercise, which works by damaging and stressing the body, which then promotes repair. ‘All of these horme
