I just got to Singapore for Neoteny Singapore Camp 1 and wanted to post my initial findings on this jet lag hack I’m trying out. A few months back Joi pointed me towards this study which suggested that fasting for 16 hours prior to traveling, and then eating when it would be breakfast in the timezone you are traveling to can force reset your internal clock. I thought Los Angeles to Singapore was a pretty good time to try this out given the 16 hour time difference.

A few months back I made a similar trip, LA to Hong Kong and was wrecked for days. Granted I’m only a day into this but so far I’m feeling great and not at all like I have with lengthy/multi-timezone trips in the past. It’s 10PM right now and I’m just starting to get sleepy, right about the same time I did yesterday when I was in Japan (1 hour difference) for a layover. I woke up this morning at 6am which is about the same time I start to wake up on a normal day when I’m home.

So here’s what I did:
• Stopped eating 16 hours before my flight
• Changed my clock to Singapore time and ate when it would be breakfast time. (in practice this worked out to be about 18 hours with no food)
• Ate again when it would be lunch & dinner in Singapore regardless of when food was served to me.
• Forced sleep with melatonin around 11PM Singapore time (even though I was in Tokyo at this point).

I woke up briefly around 2am, but feel back asleep right away and woke up for real closer to 6am. With the exception of a brief 40 minute nap around noon I didn’t sleep all day long and now at 10PM I’m just starting to feel sleepy. So far this seems like a huge win to me, it’s definitely a serious improvement to say the least. I’ll report back in a few days to see if anything caught up to me, but right now I’m thinking this is legit.