‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,’ was an offhand comment made by Kate Moss 15 years ago, one that she is yet to live down and has had to repeatedly apologise for since. Ms Moss might not be Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s obvious role model, but the recent proclamation that he fasts for 36 consecutive hours is certainly more Vogue than Downing Street.
Fasting is good for the waist line but it also makes people irritable, erratic, and error prone
The Prime Minister has revealed that he doesn’t eat from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday morning. He is an intermittent faster, in other words, and intermittent fasting is a fad that has risen in popularity in recent years. As our attention spans have waned and our need for immediate gratification has heightened, intermittent fasting increasingly appears to be a more attractive solution than a long-term commitment to healthier living.
Perhaps Sunak, who doesn’t like smoking and vaping, believes that part of his job as PM is to lead by example and encourage the overweight, who costs the NHS some £6.5 billion a year, to lighten our collective load. But we can all see that Sunak isn’t over-weight. He’s as svelte as he is short. What, you wonder, is he hoping to achieve with his fasting regimen? Is it a show of strength? Resilience? Masculinity?
According to a source close to Mr Sunak quoted in the Sunday Times last week, his fasting is ‘a real testament to the discipline, focus and determination that he shows in all aspects of his life and work’. But we don’t need to know that the Prime Minister can go days without eating to be reassured that he is determined. You can understand why the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen might be committed to intermittent fasting or Gwenyth Paltrow. If you don’t have much more to do than wander barefoot around your organic garden, picking items you can later blend and consume under the guise of lunch, there is arguably no harm in fasting. But if you’re the Prime Minister facing a series of crises and on the cusp of a general election, it might be better to tackle them on a full stomach. Fasting is good for the waist line but it also makes people irritable, erratic, and error prone.
Sunak’s foodie fastidiousness also suggests a certain obsessive compulsiveness that is often found among West Coast Silicon Valley nerds, the people he adores the most. According to Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, he only ate one food group for weeks on-end. And he believed a raw vegan diet would improve his body odour. Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s founder, only eats one meal a day and fasts over the weekend. Jordan Peterson survives, just about, on a diet of beef, salt and water: ‘That’s it, and I never cheat’.
Self-imposed, rigid rules around eating habits is seen as worrisome in teenage girls, but lauded when well-known men partake. Rich and powerful like to convince us normies that they too are human in spite of their higher standing in society. Rishi wants us to know that, despite his freaky diet, he too gives in to temptation. ‘I’ve already had my second pastry today,’ Sunak reassured the hosts of This Morning when they questioned him on the topic, seemingly a more interesting conversation than, say, his decision to start bombing Yemen.
One would be concerned if a brain surgeon or a bus driver was to take the helm without having consumed anything for over 36 hours so I think it’s fair to question whether it’s healthy for the leader of our great nation.
I have always lacked the self control to follow any stringent diet but have toyed with the idea of intermittent fasting: the results are rapid and linear, first comes anger, then a weird hazy high, often followed by a crash once you finally break the fast. Perhaps Mr Sunak is paving the way for a career in Silicon Valley. Or perhaps some of the Prime Minister’s more questionable decisions are merely a result of him being peckish.
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