Intermittent fasting has become a popular way to improve one’s health on multiple levels, including losing weight, managing conditions worsened by inflammation, and achieving better focus and mental clarity. Learn from these two athletes who got in the best shape of their lives through intermittent fasting.

Do you want to follow in their footsteps? Check out these 31 daily activities that will get you into the habit of fasting. 

Phil Mickelson

Professional American golfer Phil Mickelson has won 45 events on the PGA Tour, including six major championships: three Masters titles, two PGA Championships, and one Open Championship. After taking charge of his health, he won the 2021 PGA Championship, becoming the oldest major championship winner in history at age 50 and beating golfer Julius Boros who held the record for 53 years. Part of his transformation came from educating himself on how to eat well. He didn’t always pay attention to the food he consumed, and he ended up being diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis in 2010. 

“I wasn’t educated,” Phil told Golf.com. “I either wasn’t aware or didn’t want to know the things I was putting in my body, whether it was diet soda and how toxic that is, or whether it was the amount of sugar and how much inflammation it causes, or whether it was the quantity; all of those things, I just kind of shut my eyes to.”

Phil implemented 2 new habits to get back in shape: Coffee and intermittent fasting. His nutrition specialist explained that coffee would fix the imbalance in his th1 and th2 cells, the cells of the immune system responsible for mediating and resolving inflammation, respectively. “I drink coffee all day long and in the last 10 years I have not been sick a single day,” he said in a previous interview

 He also made it a habit to do a 36-hour fast a week and a three-day fast every few months to reset his immune system. “I believe fasting has been a big part of my ability to recover, to get in better shape; to eat less and to not be held hostage by food,” Mickelson told GOLFTV. “I’ve always craved food and now I don’t. Now I feel better when I eat less and I eat healthy, and I have more energy and better focus and mental clarity.”

Georges St Pierre

Former professional mixed martial artist and a three-time UFC Welterweight Champion, Georges St Pierre got into fasting to manage his symptoms of ulcerative colitis. He eats his daily calories during an 8 hour window and does a 3-day fast 4 times a year. He finds he performs his best when he trains while fasting. “Because my stomach is empty, I feel I have more focus on what I am doing,” he told CQ sports in April 2021.  He has also seen reduced inflammation in his body and his colitis cramps are gone. “I feel so much better, and I’m much leaner,” he says. “ I’m retired now, I’m 39 years old, and physically, I look—in terms of a bodybuilding look—better than when I was 25.”