Episode 39: Making Dietary Changes That are Right for You, Fasting After Weight Loss Surgery, and More

Welcome the Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life. I'm Jen Stevens, author
of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock,
longtime intermittent faster and health and wellness advocate. Please keep in mind that this
podcast is for educational and motivational purposes only and is not intended to provide medical
or diagnostic advice. Jen and I are not doctors, so make sure to
check with your trusted healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes to
any medical treatments or medications. Whether you're new to intermittent fasting or an experienced
intermittent faster, tune in each week to get inspired, to learn, and
to have some fun along the way. Hi, everybody, we are so
glad you're here today. Welcome to this week's episode of the Fast Feast Repeat
Intermittent Fasting for Life Podcast. How are you doing today, Sherry, I'm
doing well. I'm glad. I'm worn out. I would say I'm worn
out too. I just got back from New York, which you know.
I was there for two nights to record an episode of the Zoe Podcast.
It was an amazing experience. And you were so nervous before you went,
but it was wonderful. Nervous. I mean, I could be on podcasts
all day long, but it's different to travel and it's a video podcast,
and what am I gonna wear? And I hadn't met any of the people
face to face before, but oh my gosh, it was so nice to
meet Tim Spector and Jonathan. I got to meet Will Bolschwitz. I think
I'm saying his last name wrong. Let's just call him doctor b. He's
an author of fiber Fuel. Well, he said it a little differently.
We had a dinner. Oh my gosh, Sherry, did I tell you
much about the place where we ate dinner? Well, I know it was
a Michelin Star restaurant. The chef is a Michelin Star chef. I'm not
sure if this restaurant has the Michelin Star and I just don't know. I'm
not sure. But it was really special. It was the place that was
There was a recent documentary that was about Christopher Gardner's work with wins and plant
based diets and all that. Because Christopher Gardner's plant based himself, and they
talked about this restaurant in the documentary that the chef went completely plant based and
it was such a big risk. That's where we had the dinner, and
it was absolutely amazing. It's like called eleven Madison Avenue or something like that.
That's really said, really hard to get in there. It was a
very special dinner. There were all sorts of members of the press were there.
I didn't know what was going to be like that, or I'd have
been extra normous. I met doctor William Lee, who wrote Eat to Beat
Disease. Anyway, so cool all these people at the dinner. Was it
a special event this week? Like, were they doing some sort of special
event this week. Well, they came to New York to record some podcast
episodes, but also they are really getting ready to launch big time in America.
So apparently they have not launched big in America yet. We are the
early adopters, apparently we us in our audience, and it was just so
funny. Tim Spector gave a talk, like a little speech at the beginning
of the dinner where he talked about his history and one thing he said,
such an interesting moment. You know, he's a research scientist, and he
talked about one of his early research studies that he did about coffee and his
conclusion was like coffee will give you cancer or something. He's like, now,
I look back on that research and it was terrible and it was wrong,
and now he's like a big coffee fan. But it just goes to
show he has a published study from way back, years ago, and he
does not agree with the way he interpreted the data from back then any longer.
So that's what I'm saying. We could go fine studies that have been
published and use them to support so many different sides of things, and maybe
the scientist who did that study no longer is like, well that changed my
mind, you know, oh there's better evidence now. I'm assuming they could
pull their own study and say, I don't really know how that works.
If it's once it's been published and it's in the journal. I mean it's
like been printed, it's literally in the journal. These things are in paper
copies. So I'm not sure. But I love talking to scientists who are
open minded enough, like he didn't like write that paper, and then for
the rest of his career he is going to defend that conclusion. However he
can get right right, Yeah, he's like, oh no, that wasn't
that wasn't true. Well, I think being open minded is a really good
thing for any scientist. I mean, if you've already like come to a
foregone the conclusion, yeah, then I feel like it'd be easy to interpret
the data the way you want to interpret it. Yeah. Whereas if you
go in curious and open minded and you really look at all the data and
form a conclusion based off with the data showing you rather than what you want
to to say exactly, that's going to be a more accurate study. Anyway.
There's some kind of book, and I don't know the title of it
exactly, I'm just paraphrasing out of my brain, but there's some book called
like how to Lie with Statistics or something like you can use statistics to create
false narratives that look true. Right. Well, I just saw something in
the news not very long ago about some research program at a very prominent university
hospital or research lab. They have found out somebody who's not even a scientist
really, but I don't know if they're a statitician. I don't know what
their thing was, but they basically take these research studies and they pick them
apart, like piece by piece, and they really analyze the data and they
basically look to see if what the conclusion is is what all the data said
the conclusion was, and they found, like lots of research done by this
one place, what the conclusion they reported is not what the data said.
That's so interesting. These are just people, right, yes, and they
have pulled these research studies and they have taken them there no more. And
I found that that was really really interesting. It is really interesting, and
so it's just nice to know that we can take science with a grain of
salt because people are fallible. People interpret things based on the way they want
to interpret them. You know. That's one reason I really like Kevin Hall
so much. She did that study about ultra processed foods, and he had
a hypothesis that the study did not support. He thought that it wasn't going
to make any difference how processed the food was. He thought it was just
the macros and the calories that was all that mattered. And he was really
surprised by the results. And so you know, huh, that's pretty meaningful
if the scientists thought it would be something else, because so often it's just
human nature. You think something, you're going to do your best to make
the conclusion match what you thought it was going to, right, Yeah,
human nature. Anyway, it was so much fun to get to meet all
of those people and to be in the room with them and to hear that
they're really excited about bringing Zoe see And that's so weird because I thought it
started here and then it went to the UK afterwards, and they were trying
to think about you predict and all of that, the predicted studies. Right.
Well, No, I thought it was just Zoe. I thought Zoe
launched in America and people in the UK couldn't get until much later. It
might have I can't remember the timeline for that, but Tim and Jonathan are
both from the UK and their third investor is Greek. They really have been
focusing lately. It might have launched first United States, like you said,
I can't remember. I don't know, but they have been really pushing the
marketing in the UK and now they're ready for the They're really ready for the
US launch of it. That's gotcha. And I did have some time to
talk to I guess I was talking to Jonathan then, or I've been talking
to somebody who was sitting up. Jonathan was on my right at dinner,
and on the left was someone who works for Zoe, pretty high up,
and I gave them some feedback about the scores. I think it was the
guy whose name I can't think of, not Jonathan. How the way the
app shows scores makes people get diet brain because they want to get a hundred
because we're used to thinking we should get a hundred. They're listening, they're
interested in that feedback. I'm like, this is just what I've noticed.
They want to make it the best thing that it can be. And of
Sarah Barry, she was delightful. I got to beat her the whole idea
that they are making changes based on what they're learning. They're not the kind
of scientists that are like, here's what we think we're going to make it
all work fit like this. They're like, oh, that was adapt right.
Yeah. Program they are, they really really are. And it was
funny. He talked about Tim talked about the American Gut Project and he said
a number like seventeen thousand people went through it, and I'm like, I
am one of those few people that did it. It was twenty seventeen,
so I'm like, wow, I was really I'm an early adopter. Did
you learn anything significant though? So like when I did the American Guy pro
in New York, But with all these people you talked to, did you
learn something that you were like, Ah, I never knew that. No,
no, not no, it wasn't that kind of you had no aha
moments. No, I mean, it was just it was about getting to
know the people. Yeah, and it was also nice. Tim talked about
the new they call it the IF study, the Intermittent Fasting study that they
did, and it's really focused on health benefits. And I really think that
is what we need to drive the conversation to with intermittent fasting in general,
to the health benefits of intermittent fasting. Weight loss is one thing, right,
Intermittent fasting is the health plan with a side effect of weight loss.
And I think that is just what the science is showing over time, right.
I don't believe they've published their study yet, but it's about to be
published. But the things that they found just with a little bit of fasting,
they weren't doing a lot of fasting. Oh and one other thing,
Jonathan was not fast and clean. I know you said that to me.
That's because people are like I almost brought it up. I wasn't gonna say
his name, but he was drinking gay. He was drinking gray, which
is got yes, and he hated every minute of it. And I'm like,
well, let's talk about what you were drinking. And he's like,
well, I love earl Gray. I'm like, there it is. And
then I explained this a fault phase insulin response and the flavor, and I
talked about it from a blood sugar perspective, like insulin is released, is
going to luwer your blood sugar and make you feel terrible. Right, So
we didn't need to worry about insulin being anti lipolytic and causing it not being
able to tap into fat because Jonathan is very slim. He's not trying to
lose fat. Well. He's also the one that said that he realized that
he was carrying a lot of visceral fat that he didn't even realize he was
caring until he had like a Dexa scan or something done. Yeah. Anyway,
he said his weight hadn't changed a lot over the years, and so
he really thought he was healthy and then he did this Dexa scan and found
out he had all this visceral fat. Well, I just think it's super
interesting the message of the Clean Fast. And we have our theories as to
why the clean Fast matters and its insolent response and keeping us from tapping into
our fat and being well fueled and all of that, and it makes a
lot of sense anecdotally based on what everyone experiences. But we just know that
it matters. Maybe I have the mechanism all wrong and it's something else,
but whatever it is, if you're not fast and clean, it's harder,
yes, and we hear it every day. People who make the shift find
that it's a big difference. So anyway, I hope he gives it a
try, because I would love for Jonathan to say, oh I tried it
without their all great and it does matter. I would love that too.
Yeah, right, so we'll see. Anyway, it was a great experience,
and I'm just like, I can't believe that they invited me to come,
right me. I'm definitely a school teacher, yes, because they are
just pretty pretty amazing people. Anyway, that was an amazing experience. That's
something you're going to look back on for years to come. It really was.
And oh, I have good news for the people in New York they
are figuring out a way to work around the New York angle of why Zoe
can't be in New York. Uh huh, And it has to do New
York's laws. It's about, yeah, it has to do it'ming flight of
all the people in New York who are frustrated because I get it, but
there's always the undertone of like, it's Zoe's fault that they can't do it,
and it is, I promise you one hundred percent. Zoe does not
like have something against New York. And they're like, we'll give it to
everyone but New York. Yeah, And I don't think it's just New York.
There's a few other states up kind of around there. Well New Jersey
was one of them. But I think they've solved that. But there solving
the problem. It has to do with the labs have to be licensed a
certain way. But they're working it out. They're figuring it out so New
York. Zoe feels confident they're going to figure it out so that they can
be compliant with New York because and also bring it to New Yorkers because I
know the treers ago when like a bunch of us were dabbling in genetic testing
and all of that. There were a lot of people who kind of lived
up in New York, maybe Connecticut or something up there, and they couldn't
do genetic testing at that point. Because they could now they mail their swab
back. So I haven't heard whether they can now or can do no.
I don't know. I feel like I don't know about that. But anyway,
that's good. I'm glad they're going to have the same options that the
rest of it. Anyway, It's never been Zoe's fault. It's New York
that was being difficult. Don't blame them. They would like to sell you
their products, right, But I just am so impressed by them and that
they are responding to what they're learning. They're not like, well this is
what we think. They're like, oh, we learned something different, so
now we need to do some changes. And their goal is to make it
as applicable for everyone as possible. They want to base them on what's going
to be really really useful. Anyway, that was it. I'm so happy
that you went. Had a great time. Yeah, And the people are
all so lovely. That's the thing. Genuine nice people who want to help
others help others. Yeah. Oh, and doctor B is connecting me with
Cyrus and Robbie. I might see if I can get them to come on
intermitt and fasting stories. Awesome, he's friends of That would be great,
Yeah, that would be their fasting journey. I know. I've been referring
a lot of people to his website just because he has a lot of self
guided studies people can do on healing their gut, health and doctor B food
intolerances and that sort of thing. He's even got a masterclass. But like
all of his little courses that he has, they're a little different. Some
are for like gurden heartburn, some are just like healing like leaky gut.
The other one I think is for I can't remember. He's got three that
pop up right away, oh, food intolerances, and they're very affordable programs.
Yeah. Well he's the real deal. He is just as nice as
you would think they really all are, and that's what has just struck me
about them. Well, I'm glad you had a great time. I'm jealous.
I would have loved time. I'm so tired of fly on the Wall.
Oh I wish you could have been there. Well, today we have
a celebration that comes from Stacy in Oregon, and Stacy recently celebrated her fourth
fastniversary, and she wrote, I think I finally get it. I can
refer everyone back to episode two fifty four of Intermittent Fasting Stories and my up
and down battle with weight driven by insulin resistance. I am fifty five years
old and I have been overweight my entire life. Looking back on my teenage
diagnosis of PCOS and my weight battle since childhood, there is no doubt that
I've been insulin resistant since the beginning of time. My starting weight was two
hundred and fifty pounds. My first goal weight was one ninety my current weight
is one hundred and eighty one, and my next goal weight is one sixty
nine. I'm five foot seven with a large frame, big feet, wrists
hands. You get the picture. I feel you, Stacy on the same
way, she said, I didn't fully understand fasting insulin until about eighteen months
ago. It was first measured at my request in November of twenty nineteen.
I'd been fasting for about three months, and it came back at twenty two
point one four. At the time, the AMA said anything under twenty five
was good, and I believed them. I just thought I was good.
In January of twenty twenty two, it dropped to fifteen point five. I
thought, yay me, but I still didn't have a clue. In August
twenty twenty two, it was up to forty two. I had been through
a pretty rough year and I was always fasting, but I was not making
good food choices. I knew I needed to get back on track, and
I now knew I should be closer to five, not twenty five. In
June of twenty twenty three, my weight had crept back up to two hundred
and ten and my fasted installin was forty six. I was eating a high
protein diet and fasting eighteen to twenty two hours a day. I wondered why
had fasting stop working for me? Fasting didn't stop working. My body was
telling me something. Fasting alone wasn't enough. I needed to look closer at
what I was eating. The AMA will tell you that my high protein,
low carb diabetic type diet was spot on. My body was telling me it
was not my science brain, and I went to work digging into what needed
to change in what I was eating. I learned that some bodies will have
increased insulin responses to protein, which was the core of my current diet,
and that some bodies respond well to a whole food, plant based which is
by definition high carb diet when trying to reduce insulin resistance. So I thought,
all I can do is try Can I pop in something here? Yes,
this is what's so interesting. When I was writing Feast Without Fear in
twenty seventeen, I learned about something called the insulin index, which showed insulin
response to foods. And if you just only listened to the low carb community,
because that was right at that time, you remember Sherry in our Facebook
groups, low carbon keto plus fasting was really really popular, and so the
Obesity Code had come out. Everyone was talking about insulin, and we all
know that our body releases insulin in response to carbohydrates and sugar and things like
that. But when I saw the insulin index, kind of like the glycemic
index, but about how much insulin our body releases. The insulin index showed
that certain proteins caused you to release more insulin than certain carbs, like,
for example, beef caused you to release a lot of insulin. I'm like,
what why are we thinking that only carbs caused your body to release insulin?
That's not true. Well, and I remember years ago doctor Fung,
in one of his blog posts, had shared that pounding protein while avoiding carbs
is not the way to lower your insulin and control your b but suggars because
too much protein is going to have the same effect as carbohydrates. That there's
the magic ratio that you need. Right. It's just so interesting because we
just think carbs equal insulin response when there are many proteins that cause just as
much of an insulin response, if not more than certain other carbs. So
I just thought that was interesting. It was twenty seventeen. Like I said,
the insulin index blew my mind. Well, so Stacey goes on to
say, I adopted a mostly whole food, plant based diet the beginning of
June of twenty twenty three. Once a week or so I would have a
small amount of meter eggs. This was a diet tweak, not a moral
steak in the ground. I was going on a crew the end of August
and my doctor agreed to run labs again. Just before I left, I
gave myself eleven weeks to make a difference, and what a difference it made.
My cholesterol went from two forty three to one seventy four, my triglycerides
went from two ninety one to one forty seven, my fasted insulin from forty
six point two to twenty point one, and my weight went from two ten
to one eighty nine point six. I'm back from a two and a half
week trip to Europe, where I walked a lot, I enjoyed all the
things. I fasted at least fourteen hours a day. I came home up
six pounds of travel bloat, which turned into an overall two and a half
pound loss a week later. I clearly still have work to do, so
I have re embraced eightyf using a four to three method for now, expecting
to do it through Christmas, with the goal of getting to one sixty nine
by year end. And if you're confused, this came in at the end
of twenty twenty three, So we have a lot been in the lineup for
a while. Yeah, yes, she says, I have new labs scheduled.
I cannot wait to see where my fast insulin is. I am trying
to be realistic in my goals and hoping for ten or better, but we
will see. I hope to feel a desire to reach out to Jen for
another episode of IF Stories in six months or so. It will be like
Mister Toad's wild Ride updates moral of the story. Fasting will continue to open
doors of wisdom to our bodies. Life changes, hormone changes, your body
changes. It tells us things if we listen. Initial success may be due
to one thing, but continued success may require a tweak you didn't know about.
Fasting always works. Just be willing to look at what your body needs
as time goes on, and that is the best advice. I mean,
I've been fasting for I'm in my ninth year, and what I was doing
nine years ago, what I was doing five years ago, is not what
I can do today at fifty in perimenopause. So I'm working with a different
body, in a different set of hormones, and so I have had to
continue to tweak and adjust and figure out what works for me now that I
didn't have to do before. Yeah, bodies change. We have to work
with the changes. We can't pretend like they haven't happened, because they have,
and we do. Yeah, so well, Stacy, thank you so
much for sharing all of that. And I just think that shows that you
can find the tweak that works for your body, and it might not be
what you expect. And people are very very persuasive about one size fits all
approaches, like here's the way everyone should eat, and they're telling you the
plan that worked for them. Right, I know one hundred percent the plan
that works best for my body is whole food, plant based lower fat.
Is that going to be the approach that works for every single body? Huh
huh. So it's a matter of figuring out what your body responds. It
has to do with your gut, microbiome, little genetics thrown in there,
all sorts of things, what your hormones are doing, what your stress off
is like, what your sleep is doing, what your amount of activity every
day is doing. Wouldn't it be nice if there was one size fits all?
We could just tell everybody here's exactly what to do and what to eat
and when to eat it. But we can't. You know, how to
plug cars into those analyzers that tell the night's wrong with the car. I
wouldn't it be grave if we just plug our body in and it tell us
it would be fantastic. Also, Tim Spector talked about that because he was
big on the twin studies and he really thought the Holy answer was going to
be genetics. He thought that was it. And he's like, oh,
that was less than we thought. It's less genetics than we were hoping.
And that's what God, I'm interested in the gut microbiome. He's like,
well, how are these twins different? They're identical twins. What's different?
Why are they getting different results if they had the exact same genetics? And
oh, one factory is the gut. So anyway, bodies are interesting,
So y'all. The moral of the story is, if you've been following a
certain approach that you thought was right because of all the people that were recommending
it, and you're not getting the right results for your body, trust that
and say, huh, wonder if the opposite of that might be the thing
that works well for my body? Right? Or if you've been going along
and fasting is great, and all of a sudden something's changing and you're either
no longer losing weight or you've been in maintenance and suddenly your labs start go
eating worse right, in a worse direction. I know, we see the
wet and people will be like, I'm fasting four years and all of a
sudden, my human go when anyone see is climbing. That really could just
be due to changes in your body and how your body is processing the foods
you eat, or maybe you have sort of gotten lax and choosing healthy foods
or whatever, and you might have to tweak your diet. It may not
be your fasting that needs to tweak. It might be your diet that needs
to wreak. But it doesn't mean that fasting isn't working. Fasting is always
working. Well, yeah, it's just exactly like when I went through menopause
and then my A one C and my fasting insulin were higher even though I
hadn't stopped fasting. Then I got my hormones under control, and then oh
everything went back to normal. So right, fasting hadn't stopped working, but
my hormones had changed. So anyway, so now we have a question from
a listener. This question is from Weekending in Indianapolis. I am a busy
mom with a full time career and a full time extracurricular schedule. I started
intermittent fasting on a sixteen to eight schedule a week ago. I'd be lying
if I didn't say my main goal right now is fat loss. I'm currently
a size twelve genes and would feel better as an eight. It was surprisingly
easy from day one. I used to wake up and start eating, but
I have been able to wait until about ten am every morning with just water
and black coffee. I prefer an earlier window and to stop eating early,
too, so my stomach has time to settle down completely before bed. My
question has to do with tips for closing that window on time During the weekend.
I made it just fine, pushing my first meal, even made it
past twelve, which is noon, knowing i'd want to eat later dinners with
my family. But the wine was flowing, and even though I didn't feel
like eating, it seemed weird and not fun to be done drinking so early
into the evening. I know all the ways and reasons alcohol sabotages my efforts.
How do you make intermittent fasting part of your weekend fun? I don't
want to be mad at myself in two months when I've realized I undermined good
weeks with sloppy weekends. But I'm hesitant to put diet mentality restrictions on myself,
because I feel that's what's helped put the weight on me in the first
place. Too much restriction and not enough balance. Any advice on how to
ease into weakending effectively, thank you. Well. A lot of this just
comes down to time. When you're first starting fasting, it's going to be
harder to really like flex and adjust your windows until you're fat adapted, really,
But I think a lot of this comes down to to getting your windows
a little bit shorter than eight hours. That's going to allow you a little
bit more flexibility. It's going to make it easier to move your window around,
and if you're having shorter windows during the week it is going to allow
you a little bit more leeway with having a little bit more freedom on the
weekends. Now, this doesn't mean every weekend you want to be loosey goosey,
because that is not going to serve you well either. But if you
was to settle into a five hour eating window and then the weekend comes and
you've got a social event and you want to keep it open for six or
seven hours on a Saturday night every once in a while, that's not really
going to be detrimental to you. But the best way to do it for
me is to really look at the clock and determine when do I realistically think
I'm going to close my window, and then I do not open it until,
however many hours prior to that. So if you know weekends are going
to be later and that you're going to want a later window on the weekend,
but you prefer an earlier window, that's fine. You can move it,
have an earlier window during the week on the weekends, delay opening until
afternoon, and then you can have your later window. You can make it
work for you. Yeah, the whole idea of what I always talk about
keeping your eye on the boundary of your eating window and you just shift it
around throughout the day as needed. I also really want to point out that
weekending in Indianapolis, who's said in this question is one weekend, So when
you're one weekend, you don't know what you're going to want to do six
weeks, ten weeks from now. If you try to judge intermittent fasting based
on the first few weeks, then you're not getting the true picture because your
body's not adapted yet. So right now, maybe you're waiting till ten,
and you're opening and you think, I can't possibly wait till after ten.
I can't delay till the afternoon, there's no way. Well, you're going
to be surprised at how you feel after your body's adapted. So my biggest
advice is to follow the plan in the twenty eight Day Fast Art day by
day. And this question may have come into us before that book came out,
but there's a reason why I have the schedule that I do in twenty
eight Day Fast Art Day by day, and that is not because the schedule
I want you to follow is like your goal for life, Like this is
what you're We're not all trying to have a four hour window, for example,
every single day with dinner only and a snack and dinner. But the
point is that you're trying to become fat adapted. You're trying to shorten your
window over the first four weeks and push it later to teach your body how
to become fat adapted. Once you're fat adapted, you're going to feel different.
So that's just really important to know about fat adaptation too. That was
the other thing that was really coming to mind. Our big goal is to
get you fat adapted. Because when that happens, that is when fasting really
clicks. That's when you're going to feel great. That's when you're not going
to be feeling like you're struggling through the day. You're going to stop thinking
about food all the time. I mean that is just really when things fall
into place and people are no longer struggling, they get their energy back,
their hunger gets controlled. So that is like during your first month or two
like that is your goal is to get fat adapted. That's it, and
we say, don't change up where you're eating during that time. Whatever.
I do want to just say, if you feel it's within your power to
abstain from alcohol during that fat adaptation period, I think it's going to help
you get there so much faster. That is true. We all love to
have a drink in social times and whatever, but it can really prolong that
fat adaptation period and just make you feel worse longer than you need to.
So that's just my too sense. And in my early fasting days, I
didn't really understand how alcohol was affecting my fasting and all of that. I
didn't really think anything about it. But the more I learned about it,
and how our bodies prioritize burning alcohol. It makes sense if you can delay
that and get your body to the easy part. Yeah, that's really true.
But I just want to reiterate that you're not going to recognize yourself down
the road once you get adapted. When we went out to that great dinner,
that was the day that I recorded with them. We recorded starting at
three. So did I or did I not eat before we recorded? You
know the answer to that, Sherry, No, I didn't. And so
then we got done and after talking it was about four point thirty and then
we were supposed to meet for dinner at six. I didn't eat anything until
we got there. That was easy, peasy, though I wasn't like angry
or starving. I was absolutely fine, and it was no sweat and it
wasn't a big deal. Then I had a really long window yesterday because,
oh my gosh, Serry. The Uber ride to the airport, it was
one of those cars that was full of like air freshener sense. Oh no,
and the New York traffic. I don't know how y'all do it,
people who live up there. It was crazy. I don't know how we
don't have car wrecks every minute driving around to that, I thought Atlanta was
bad. These professional drivers who drive through to New York. I mean,
they're pretty impressive that they're not smashing into each other, but they're not.
But it made me so queasy, so I, oh, yeah, really
early, I had a really long window. I had something to eat at
nine thirty in the morning because I got to the airport and I was so
sick from it had smell. The smell plus the weaving in and out of
the traffic in the back seat, and I was like, I am going
to be sick. So I went to the Delta sky Lounge and I had
some eggs and it settled my stomach, and I had a coke, a
real coke because I needed that when I'm sick. Anyway, it's a really
really long window. Yeah, so you know, I almost had a down
day the day that I ate really really late, and it was all plant
based, tiny little portions. So then then they sound like, you know
what, I think you need an upday to day, so I just into
it. It was an up day, no big deal, and it was
easy because I'm fat adapted anyway. All right, now it's time for our
segment called What's Your Why. Most of us start intermittent fasting with weight loss
in mind. It is absolutely fine and realistic for that to be part of
your why, but we know there is so much more that intermittent fasting can
do for us beyond weight loss. So when your why is deeper than weight
loss alone, you are more likely to find long term success and view intermittent
fasting as a lifestyle. So today we have a wife from Lisa. Lisa
wrote my why like others here, I started for weight loss, but it
has become so much more. My father was diagnosed with congestive heart failure,
and my mother has had three different types of cancer from uterine to breast cancer
and skin cancer, and we are now waiting on biopsy results that could be
colon cancer. They are both in their eighties but have been battling these diseases
since their early sixties. Their dining room table looks like a pharmacy when it's
time to refill their pillboxes. I turned sixty one this week, and I
don't want this to be my future. I currently have no real health issues,
and my numbers are all within the upper normal range, and I am
not on any medications. I would like to get those numbers to the middle
of the normal range, and I want to stay as far away from disease
as I can. My goal is to live as healthy as possible for as
long as possible. Thank you, Jen and everyone in our community for all
that you do. I've gained so much knowledge from this group, the podcast,
books, etc. Yeah, that's a powerful why. Again that comes
back to fasting for health. Health is priceless. So we have another question
from a listener. This is from Terry and Omaha. She wants to know
and we do get this question a lot. Is it okay to reverse the
order of the upday and down day? She says, several times I found
myself in a situation where I would like to spontaneously join a friend for brunch
and would really like to eat and know that I have dinner play with the
family. I know I could just choose to skip dinner, but to be
honest, this almost never works for me, as I'm usually hungry later in
the day if I open my window early. This is why I raally do
it. My window usually opens between two and four for the day. But
I'm wondering if I could follow this unplanned up day with a down day and
then resume my normal pattern the following day. What are your thoughts on this?
The answer to that is no, we have very few guidelines and rules
about what we want you to do. We want you to fast clean and
every downday should be followed by an up day, and we really think that
those are important. And why why does the downday need to be followed by
an upday? We could think about it. Over restriction is what we want
to avoid, and you don't want to have a down day that's restrictive and
then another short eating window like with your regular fasting. So that just is
a slippery slope. Right. The purpose of the upday is the metabolic boost
after the down day, right, it's following. So now this is something
some people do. They have a very like indulgent weekend. They've eaten a
lot of rich foods, maybe they were traveling, and they'll come in and
they'll take advantage of meal us Monday. On Monday, not because they're trying
to like undo the damage from the weekend. They just think, I've had
a lot of really delicious, rich food I'd like to take a break from
eating today and then they have an up day to follow on Tuesday. So
you want to have a down day after a day of full eating, sure
if you want to do yeah, and then have enough hath to have another
upday. Right, So now you're going to have an update, a down
day and an up day and then you could go back into your daily eating
window. But you can't just do an upday down day eating window, right.
We want you to follow every down day with an up day. And
again, like I said, I have very few rules for you, very
few guidelines that I think that you should follow, but this is one of
them that I think is really important. The research on ADF they weren't doing
any kind of window on their eating day. They had the down day and
then they had eat normally which was like all day eating honestly, and they
just followed that one after the other. But what they didn't do is have
restrictive day restrictive day. So I think that's super important. All Right.
We have a question from Christy from Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire in the UK.
She says, Hi, lovely ladies. I found Jen's Fast Feast Repeat
book earlier this year and started intermittent fasting in May of twenty twenty three.
So far I have lost over two stone. I'm currently weighing in at two
hundred pounds, have dropped several dress sizes, and only wish I'd found intermittent
fasting sooner. My question today is regarding weight loss surgery. I had a
gastric bypass ten years ago, and wow, what a ride that was.
I lost eight stone very rapidly, and it was all great until it wasn't
because my food demons were still there, so I put half that weight back
on. It's only since finding you it's finally coming off again. But I
wonder whether there is any published literature or studies you've come across in regards to
fasting and bypass surgery. For reference, my surgery means that the first part
of my small intestine is literally bypassed, so food gets into my bottles quicker
and the effect on my blood sugar slash insulin levels can be uncomfortable. It's
a condition, unfortunately termed dumping syndrome. I feel perfectly fine doing fasting so
far, and I'm definitely well past the point of my surgery giving me any
kind of advantage over anyone else. I don't tend to have restriction now as
my stomach, which was made very small, has stretched again. I just
wonder if you know of anything I need to consider in the long term,
or anything I should be careful of. And she said, PS, for
anyone considered surgery, please know it's not a fix, a useful reset button.
Maybe you'll certainly drop some weight, but you may feel quite unwell with
it, and it will not cure your poor relationship with food. I wish
I had found intermittent fasting first. Thanks in advance. We do hear that
quite often from people in the communities. So do I know of any studies
or published literature regarding this. No, I don't. However, I can't
tell you we have a lot of successful intermittent fasters who have had this surgery.
And as far as the dumping syndrome, this is a concern. I
mean, this is where you're really going to have to look at the foods
you eat and the volume of the foods you eat to open your window.
So as far as what you need to really be concerned about, it is
known that people who have these types of surgeries they can develop nutritional deficiencies.
That is a concern for anybody you had these surgeries, So that's something you
want to stay on with your doctor and make sure that your vitamin D and
your B twelve and all of that is staying where it needs to stay.
But that's for anybody who's had the surgery. So my best advice is to
sometimes people who've had these surgeries, they cannot keep really short windows because they
just cannot eat a lot of volume at once, and with the dumping syndrome,
you don't want to eat a lot of volume at once. Anyways,
you're the kind of person who may sort of need to like quote, snack
your way through your window. When I say snack, I don't mean eat
snacks. I mean eat some very small meals, or eat part of your
meal, set it aside, come back and eat the rest of your meal.
Just give your body time and that's going to help you keep your blood
sugars more stable so that you don't have the issues with the dumping syndrome.
And then just really really focus on nutrient dense foods so that you're really fueling
your body. Well, that's really my best advice. Yeah, that really
think No, I think that that is that's really important information, and we
do have members of our community who are successful with intermittent fasting post weight loss
surgery, so it absolutely can be done. I wish that we had all
sorts of research for everything, but we just don't. So you have to
be your own study of one anecdotally. Like we said, you have seen
people be very successful with that, but you do have a changed biology and
so you have to work with it. You have to work with the body
you've got and feed it the way that's going to work for your biology to
prevent the dumping. Right, all right, So we have one last question,
and this one's come up a couple of times as well. This was
sent in by Sam. She says, Hi, there, I've been an
intermittent faster doing one meal a day for a little over a year and it
has changed my life. Thank you for all you do. I do have
a pretty specific question that I would love to hear your thoughts on. I
recently came across a product on Instagram called the air Up that is a water
bottle with a little scent patch where your nose goes. The idea is that
you drink regular plain water and your brain makes it seem as though the water
is flavor based off of what you're smelling. Do you think this would break
a fast slash raise insulin levels? I'm sure it would activate your grillin if
your body perceives flavor. But since you're not actually having anything other than plain
water, would this affect the clean fast? So remember, the whole point
of the cephalic phase insulin response is because it's based on what your brain thinks
is happening. The research they did with the rats and the artificial sweeteners,
the rats weren't swallowing any kind of sweetener. They just tasted it and the
brain said, oh, sweetness coming in. Release the insulin. Then when
they cut the nerve from the tongue to the brain repeated it, they no
longer perceived it in their brain. They no longer had the insulin response.
Now, smell and taste are connected. So yeah, if your brain thinks
that you are having fruity water, your brain doesn't know, Oh, this's
just that cool product that Sam found on Instagram. Nothing's really coming in.
We don't need insulin. No, your brain goes, well, fruit,
we know what that is. So no, please do not use the air
up water bottle. And why does it seem like the world is making it
harder and harder for us to just Oh my lord, I can't think of
a worse idea of Sherry than making your brain think that fruit is coming in.
All the time we have lost our minds. Yeah, I'm not talking
about Sam here or criticizing Sam, because Sam, it's like the fire or
something. Yes, I think about you walking to grandma's house and she's got
cookies or an apple pie baking, and you literally salivate and you feel angry.
Your body is producing extra saliva because it thinks you're gonna eat something delicious.
So it's gonna be the same thing. Smelling something fruity repeatedly like this
is not different than if you were actually tasting the fruit infused water. Yep,
your brain is not gonna know the difference. If something is designed to
make your brain think that something fruit's coming in, your brain is gonna think
something fruity's coming in. So anyway, Also, if you have children,
let them drink plain water. Train your children to drink plain water. It
does not need to be infused or flavored. We do not need constant mouth
entertainment. We need less stimulation, not more. Honestly, well, I
mean, there's my poor husband who never drink water growing up. He is
now forty years old and he refuses to drink water. He would literally rather
thirst to death in the desert than take a drink of my water bottle.
I don't get it. He thinks water tastes like poison. I don't understand.
I don't. But there are a lot of people like that, a
lot of adults, and so that's why we need to teach our kids to
drink water from the beginning. That weird parent who makes your kid drink water,
You just offer them water and be glad that you're not drinking water out
of the creek, like be plad do a long time ago. Well,
before we get to our tweeg of the week, I want to take a
minute to talk about the importance of sunscreen. Spring is coming up, yay
yay. Actually, by the time this episode comes out, it will be
spring. I'm so excited. But I really want to talk about natural barrier
mineral sunscreen, especially if you are interested in helping prevent signs of aging.
It is estimated that ninety percent of visible skin changes as we age are caused
from repeated exposure to the sun. The sun can contribute to reduce skin elasticity,
changes in the texture of your skin, dark spots, and even fine
lines and wrinkles. It is never too late to start protecting your skin from
the sun. I've worked hard to improve my skin and reverse signs of sun
damage, mainly hyperpigmentation on my face, and now I want to protect my
skin as much as possible moving forward. For most of my life, I
was unable to use the chemmical sunscreens. I was very sensitive to them.
They burned my skin, and now that I know how toxic they are,
I'm kind of glad. One study showed that weeks after chemical sunscreen was applied,
the chemicals were present in the blood and breast milk weeks later. They
are known to be endocrine disruptors as well as harmful to the gut microbiome.
Mineral sunscreens, on the other hand, they are all natural. They don't
absorb the sun's rays like chemical sunscreens. Rather, they reflect the sunlight away
from the skin, which it can actually make your skin temperature cooler and it
reduces skin irritation from the extra heat alone. My go to mineral sunscreen is
beauty Counter's counter sun products. I apply their Counter Sun Daily Sheer Defense under
my makeup daily. It provides protection from UVA, UVB and HTV blue light
rays. It's lightweight, fast absorbing, and easy to blend. Formula is
designed for all skin tones with no white cast. It also has ingredients to
support the skin's moid barrier and keep it moisturized without it being greasy. And
I also keep a tube of their Mineral sunscreen stick think Giant lip Bomb in
my truck for times when I might get caught outdoors and need to quickly apply
sunscreen. It's great for the under eyes and eyelids is you don't have to
worry about it running into your eyes. It's the only thing I can use
on my lips that doesn't cause my lips to burn and sting. For my
body, I like the ease of the mist, but there is a lotion
as well, and if you're going to be on the ocean, it's ocean
friendly and reef safe. Best of all, it is EWG verified, so
you know it's safe. Check it out as well as all of beauty Counter's
clean beauty and skinncare products at beautycounter dot com. Slash Sherry Bullock or email
me with questions at Sherry at Fastbeasrepeat dot com. All right, so now
it's time for our tweak of the week. And you know, I always
say tweak it till it's easy. But the tweak that works for me might
not be the one that works for you. And that's why it's super helpful
to hear how other intermittent fasters are making intermittent fasting work for them. This
tweak was submitted by Diana. Diana said this tweek comes from the book The
Oldest Cure in the World, The Art and Science of Fasting by Stephen Hendrix.
When he gets hungry, that irritating hunger when your window isn't open yet,
Hendrix thinks of it like an athlete. Sometimes you have to push through,
not to the point of pain, of course, but when you feel
like stopping and you need to hang on for a few more seconds like that.
This works for me because I can relate to that feeling, So I
like that. So, yeah, hunger is not an emergency. You check
in and you think, is my body commanding me to eat right now?
Because physically I absolutely need to If so, eat right like if you were
running in a marathon, and you had an injury and you could not keep
running, you would stop. If it was a really bad injury. You
wouldn't run with a broken leg. You wouldn't heal right, you'd stop let
your body had time to recover. The same with fasting. But if you
just have like the little Charlie horse, maybe you shake it off for a
minute and you can keep back running, right, same with fasting. Some
people kind of think, especially when they first start fasting, that they will
never have hunger once they're fat adapted, or it will never be uncomfortable,
right. I have waves of hunger all the time daily, you know.
I have a wave of hunger at seven o'clock in the morning when I wake
up, and then I might have another wave of hunger at eleven o'clock in
the morning. But if I ate just because I had a wave of hunger,
I would be missing out on so much fat burning. And it goes
away. It's not persistent, it's not nagging. It's one of those things
you kind of feel and you go about your life and it goes away again.
Well, and you know I talked about how yesterday I ate because I
was queasy from the scent plus the car all of that. Then I was
so tired. I didn't regret it because I felt so sick, and I
was like, my body just needs a little food to settle my stomach.
But I went home. When I got home from the airport, when I
got back to my house, I was like, I'm gonna take a nap
now, even a nap in the afternoon, Like two o'clock. I took
a nap I don't normally need to have at two o'clock. So it definitely
reminds you felt bad. I would have preferred to not eat at that time.
But it's not an emergency unless sometimes it is. And then you'll listen
and you'll know, you'll know. Well. This week we have a motivational
quote that comes from Norwen. The quote is, if I cannot find peace
within myself, I will never find it anywhere else. And that is so
profound, it really is. Thanks so much for listening today. We would
love to have you join us in the Delayed on Tonight community, where you
can interact with both me and Sherry, plus the most supportive bunch of intermittent
fasters you'll find anywhere. Go to Jenstevens dot com slash community to join us,
don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to your favorite podcast app, and
if you haven't already, please leave us a five star review that helps new
listeners find the show and we really appreciate. We are a community driven podcast,
so to submit your success stories, your questions, your favorite tweak it
till It's Easy, moments, or anything else you want us to share on
the podcast, go to fast Feast Repeat dot com, slash submit and then
listen each week to see if we share your submission or answer your question until
next week. Thanks for listening,