Here are exerpts from a few articles of those way smarter than me 
The Main Processes that Turn on Autophagy:
- Fasting
- Ketosis
- Exercise
- Acute Stress (which includes fasting and exercise)
Autophagy: The Real Way (Science-Backed Way)to Cleanse Your Body
First of all, autophagy is a response to stress, so you’re actually going to want to put your body through stress in order to drum up a little extra auto-cannibalism.
As is often the case, short-term discomfort can bring long-term benefits. Here are three main ways to boost your autophagy.
- Exercise
In case the sweating, grunting, and post-workout pain didn’t tip you off, here’s a reminder: Exercise puts stress on the body. Working out actually damages your muscles, causing tiny microscopic tears that the body then rushes to heal, making the muscles stronger and more resistant to any further “damage” you might put it through.
- Fast
Skipping meals, it turns out, is another stressful act that the body may not immediately love but ultimately benefits from.
- Lower Your Carb Intake
It’s called ketosis, and it’s an increasingly popular diet among bodybuilders and anyone seeking a longer lifespan. The idea is to reduce carbohydrates to such low levels that the body has no choice but to use fat as a fuel source instead. “Ketosis is like an autophagy hack,” Champ says. “You get a lot of the same metabolic changes and benefits of fasting without actually fasting.”
The Takeaway
There’s a pretty strong case to be made that stress and self-destruction lengthens your lifespan. “It’s our ancestral and evolutionary response to dealing with feast and famine in times of stress,”
The Power of Fasting: How it Fights Disease, Improves Health, and Builds Muscle
The process of autophagy and its importance in cleansing is the main reason why some researchers are speculating that intermittent fasting can improve neuronal function and overall health in a way that is unique from any other style of dieting or calorie restriction.[xv],[xvi]
The research on fasting and neuronal diseases such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s is also beginning to look very promising, as fasting has been found to cause a rapid and profound upregulation of autophagy in the brain.[xvii],[xviii],[xix] The translation: This has the potential to remove toxic molecules and damaged mitochondria from your neurons.[xx], [xxi],[xxii],[xxiii]
It is also the reason why some people think that intermittent fasting can help regulate and fight against the aging process.Broadly defined, ‘aging’ refers to the biological changes that occur during a lifetime that result in reduced resistance to stress, increased vulnerability to disease, and an increased probability of death. Autophagy can improve many of these areas.[xxiv]
And the benefits of understand how to turn authophagy “on and off” even extends into the health of your muscles. That is, when you have excess levels of autophagy, you can experience a loss of muscle mass, skeletal fiber degeneration, and weakness.[xxv] In other words, you wouldn’t want autophagy “on” all the time, but you do need a healthy balance of autophagy and growth for the optimal functioning of the human body.
Remember: It’s not just your workouts that break you down and build you back up - your diet does the same thing, and this break down is just as vital to your long term health as the building back up. Here’s what you need to remember:
By allowing for growth when we eat and the autophagic process of repair maintenance and cleansing when we are fasting, we help restore a balance in the cellular maintenance process, not to mention the possible prevention of muscle loss as we age.
The key is there needs to be a balance - You can’t overeat all the time or fast all the time without expecting some sort of negative repercussions. It is the optimal balance of these processes that allows for the breakdown of damaged pieces and their replacement with new well-functioning pieces.
By allowing for growth when we eat, and the autophagic process of repair, maintenance, and cleansing when we are fasting, we help restore a balance in the body that may be a missing link in the prevention of many of today’s deadly and debilitating diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease, liver disease, and even loss of muscle size and function.
Definitely - the secretion of some hormones and their regulation is instantly altered.
