Sound the alarm! Happy news to share with you all today… Amid all of the perceived chaos that is taking over our screens and mainstream media, it’s always important to touch base on the good news that occurs. This week, Delaware has become the first official no-kill state for shelter animals, and I couldn’t be happier to hear and share this.

As not only a pet lover myself, but a cat-mom of 3 amazing shelter animals as well, I know and have seen the various traumas that can result from either life before being placed into a shelter or during their time there due to anxiety, etc. — and it doesn’t stop there. We’ve all heard the stories, and though I had yet to dive into the details myself personally due to not having the heart for it, it is a fact that some shelters rid themselves of ‘unwanted pets’ every cycle as the shelter seeks more room for new-coming potentials.

Photo courtesy of Brandywine Valley SPCA

With that said, this is very BIG news — not only has Delaware taken on the task to reevaluate how its shelters are run and deal with overcrowding, but Delaware has also taken initiative in the ‘no-kill’ movement.

Photo courtesy of Brandywine Valley SPCA — The work of staff and volunteers at rescue organizations across the country and public support have already helped drastically reduce the number of pets dying each year in shelters from an estimated 17 million in the 1980s to now around 733,000 dogs and cats. Photo courtesy of Best Friends Animal Society

The nonprofit Best Friends Animal Society, which is working with shelters, animal welfare organizations and government agencies across the country to make America a no-kill country by 2025, announced the news at their annual conference in Dallas, Texas.

Linda Torelli, director of marketing for the Brandywine Valley SPCA, which has three locations in Delaware and cares for more than 14,000 animals each year, credited a multipronged approach with helping the First State achieve no-kill status — and its citizens.

“The community in Delaware is very oriented to pet advocacy, so we had their support,” she told TODAY.

Brandywine Valley SPCA implemented numerous programs so that 95% of animals that enter the open-admission shelter find homes. Torelli said because cats are euthanized at twice the rate of dogs, the nonprofit instituted the practice called trap, neuter and return, aka TNR, to save the lives of feral or “community” cats that would otherwise be euthanized. In TNR, advocates humanely trap the felines, and veterinarians spay or neuter them before they are released back into the community.

Open adoptions — which don’t require time-intensive applications that involve things like home inspections but instead focus on matching a pet with a potential adopter’s lifestyle — help move animals more quickly through the shelters. – As reported by TODAY

The Takeaway

We all either know someone or are that someone who has gone to a shelter and adopted their best friend at some point. And while we all aim to do our part, it’s a HUGE step to know that shelters themselves are now also taking initiative so that there is ‘no pet left behind’ if you will.

So many wonderful pets, companions, and memories are birthed thanks to adoption and it is beautiful to see that more intention is being set on creating a community that is aware of a movement to aid in eliminating the need to kill for the lack of insufficient adoptees. As a personal thank you to all of you who have or will adopt and welcome a new friend into your lives & homes – a reminder to remember you are saving a life when doing so. So, THANK YOU! And thank you, Delaware, for being the shift!

Years ago, if a person withheld from eating for long periods of time in order to lose weight, it would work, but a common response from peers might have been, “Yeah, but you did it the unhealthy way.” Today, many more people are aware that caloric restriction and fasting are actually a great, safe, healthy and effective way to lose weight and shed fat from your body. In layman’s terms, when you fast, your body runs out of its glycogen (sugar) reserves, and when that happens it switches to fat burning mode. Fasting is now recognized as an effective tool to regenerate stem cells, kill cancer cells, repair damaged DNA, and help ward off and treat numerous age-related diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. It’s even been known to completely reverse type 2 diabetes. Every single study that has examined fasting or caloric restriction in living organisms has shown tremendous biological effects. Our biology is clearly built for it, and the ancients definitely knew what they were talking about. Modern day science has even confirmed it.

We don’t hear much from the mainstream medical industry regarding fasting, and the answer to that is simple, it’s because money can’t be made off of it. The science will only become popular when a pill, for example, is developed that mimics the effects of fasting. That would be unfortunate.

Long term fasts as well as intermittent fasting are, again, great ways to burn fat and lose weight, but that’s effective only when your eating periods are healthy. In my opinion, fasting combined with a whole foods, plant-based diet is what one needs to do if they want to optimize their health, and there is a tremendous amount of science to back that up.

A great place to start your research is at The Intensive Dietary Management. In addition to searching through all of the peer-reviewed literature that’s available online about fasting and caloric restriction, this blog is a great resource, which is primarily written by Dr. Jason Fung, a Toronto-based nephrologist who uses fasting to treat his diabetes patients.

On his blog, I came across some information that shows how important the times we choose to eat may be if you are looking to reduce fat and/or lose weight.

He points out an interesting study from Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk institute. The study examined current eating happens tracked via a smartphone app.

The 10% of people who ate the least frequently, ate 3.3 times per day. That is, 90% of people ate more than 3.3 times per day. The top 10% of people ate an astounding 10 times per day. Essentially, we started eating as soon as we got up, and didn’t stop until we went to bed.

The median daily intake duration (the amount of time people spent eating) was 14.75 hours per day. That is, if you started eating breakfast at 8 am, you didn’t, on average, stop eating until 10:45! Practically the only time people stopped eating was while sleeping. This contrasts with a 1970’s era style of eating at 8am breakfast and dinner at 6pm, giving a rough eating duration of only 10 hours. The  ‘feedogram’ shows no let up in eating until after 11pm. There was also a noticeable bias towards late night eating, as many people are not hungry in the morning. An estimated 25% of calories are taken before noon, but 35% after 6pm.

When those overweight individuals eating more than 14 hours per day were simply instructed to curtail their eating times to only 10-11 hours, they lost weight (average 7.2 pounds) and felt better even though they were not instructed to overtly change what they ate, only when they ate.

The circadian rhythm seems to suggest that late night eating is not good for weight loss since excessive insulin is the main driver of obesity, and eating the same food early in the day or late at night have different insulin effects. You can learn more about the circadian rhythm of fasting here.

You can find some strategies on how to go about this type of time-restricted eating here, and as Dr. Fung mentions: “It took participants 12 days on average to adjust to this way of eating, It can take up to 3 or 4 weeks to adjust. Most found the fasting period relatively easy to adhere to, but more difficult to adjust to the time restriction.”

The Takeaway

This is just a brief write up about fasting and the importance regarding what time of day you eat if you are trying to lose weight and shed fat from your body. Please follow the links within the article for more details and information. We’ve published a number of articles on our website regarding fasting and cited lots of science, so feel free to browse through there. Some of those articles are linked earlier in this article as well. It’s not that simple, but if you want to improve your health and lose weight, fasting combined with a healthy diet and perhaps some time-restricted eating is a guaranteed way to do so.