A few years ago I came across a BBC documentary that genuinely unsettled me — in the best possible way.
It was called Eat, Fast and Live Longer, presented by journalist and doctor Michael Mosley. In it, Mosley goes on a personal mission to find natural ways to extend a healthy human life — without pills, procedures or anything artificial. What he discovers, after testing everything from caloric restriction to alternate day fasting, is something remarkably simple:
Fasting works. Consistently. Measurably. Profoundly.
Not crash dieting. Not starvation. Deliberate, structured, intentional fasting — two days a week of significantly reduced eating while living normally the rest of the time. The results he documents are striking — reduced IGF-1 levels, improved insulin sensitivity, better brain function, and a meaningful increase in the body’s ability to repair itself at a cellular level.
I watched the documentary twice. And then I sat quietly for a while.
Because somewhere in the middle of watching a British journalist rediscover what billions of people have practiced for thousands of years, I felt a quiet but persistent question forming in my mind:
We already had this. So what happened to us?
The Ancient Practice We Turned Into a Festival
Every major faith tradition in human history includes fasting. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism — and of course Islam. The practice is not incidental. It is central. It is repeated. It is considered purifying, clarifying and strengthening — for the body and the soul simultaneously.
In Islam, we have the month of Ramadan — twenty nine or thirty consecutive days of fasting from dawn to sunset. Not just food. Anger. Gossip. Distraction. Excess of every kind.
When you read about what Michael Mosley discovered scientifically and then read the purpose of Ramadan as it was originally intended — the alignment is not coincidental. It is almost exact.
Fasting lowers inflammation. Ramadan prescribes restraint. Fasting triggers cellular repair. Ramadan prescribes purification. Fasting clears mental fog. Ramadan prescribes reflection. Fasting reduces excess. Ramadan prescribes simplicity.
The science arrived recently. The wisdom arrived centuries ago.
And yet — and this is the part that I find genuinely painful to observe — in many parts of the Muslim world today, Ramadan has quietly transformed into something that looks almost opposite to its original intention.
The Iftar table grows more elaborate every year. Social media fills with food photography. Sleep patterns invert. Productivity collapses. And somehow the very month designed to teach the body restraint becomes the month the body is most indulged.
I say this not in judgment — I have been guilty of this myself at different points in my life. I say it as an honest observation from someone who has spent years thinking about the relationship between what we intend and what we actually do.
What Changed for Me
In 2013, at the age of 39, I started going to the gym seriously for the first time. My elder brother and my best friend Zaheer Uddin inspired me. I was not trying to look a certain way. I was trying to understand what my body was actually capable of.
What followed was years of learning — about nutrition, about rest, about the relationship between consistency and results. About how the body responds not to dramatic gestures but to quiet daily discipline.
Then in 2020 my daughter Ayesha introduced me to a home workout routine during COVID lock-down. I have followed it with near religious consistency ever since. In January 2026 — at 51 years old — I ran my first official half marathon.
None of that happened because I was naturally athletic or gifted. It happened because I stopped treating my body as something to be rewarded and started treating it as something to be respected.
Ramadan, at its core, is about exactly that. Respect. Not deprivation — respect. Not suffering — discipline. Not emptiness — space. Space for the body to recover. Space for the mind to clear. Space for something more important than appetite to take the foreground.
The Connection That Changes Everything
Here is what I have come to believe — and what Michael Mosley’s documentary helped crystallise for me:
The body already knows how to heal itself. It just needs the noise to stop.
Fasting is not something we do to the body. It is something we do for it. We step back. We reduce the constant demands. We allow ancient, built-in processes to run — processes that get crowded out by the relentless noise of modern eating habits.
Ramadan was never meant to be endured. It was meant to be used.
Used to reset. To reflect. To remember what actually matters. To prove to yourself — again, every year — that you are not a slave to your appetite. That you are capable of more than comfort demands of you.
That is a profoundly empowering realisation. One that a BBC documentary helped a Pakistani man rediscover about his own faith.
My Suggestion
If you have not watched Eat, Fast and Live Longer — watch it. It is available on YouTube and is genuinely one of the most quietly life-changing documentaries I have come across.
And if this Ramadan feels like it is slipping into familiar patterns — elaborate Iftars, inverted sleep schedules, and waiting for Eid — perhaps this is a good moment to ask what the month was originally designed to do for you.
Not for your social calendar. Not for your dining table.
For you.
What documentaries have changed the way you think? I would love to know — leave your comments below or write to me at hi@syedfasih.com.