Episode 0: Meet Gin and Sheri

Welcome to Fast Feast Repeat Intermitten Fasting for Life. I'm Jen Stevens, author
of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock,
longtime Intermitten Faster and health and wellness advocate. Please keep in mind that this
podcast is for educational and motivational purposes only, and it 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 Intermitten Fasting or
an experienced Intermitten Faster, or tune in each week to get inspired, to
learn, and to have some fun along the way. And here we go.
I am so excited to be here today. This podcast has been a
long time coming. I'm Jen Stevens, and I'm here with my co host,
Sherry Bullock. How are you doing today's Sherry? I am doing fabulous.
Yeah, I like I'll woke up excite, did like it was Christmas
Day? Well, I woke up like nervous excited, you know, like
the first day of school. Uh huh oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
even though you're fighting as the first day of school, you still have the
jitter. Something new. Yeah. Well, we are calling this episode zero
because we want to take some time to introduce ourselves to you and also let
you know what we have in store for this new podcast. And first we
want to share a bit about us. We're gonna each briefly tell you what
brought us to intermitten fasting. You might already know if you know my story,
but I don't know. Maybe you just searched intermitten fasting and it came
up and you don't know who we are. So I am Jim Stevens,
and I was a teacher for twenty eight years. But prior to that,
I was someone who struggled with my weight and I yo yoed up and down
literally for decades, reaching the highest weight I ever saw on the scale of
two hundred and ten pounds in the spring of twenty fourteen, and it was
that time that I realized I needed to do something to change my life.
So thankfully, intermittent fasting was something that I had heard about. I had
dabbled with it before, but I'd never really made it stick. But that
time in twenty fourteen, finally I made it stick. I went on to
lose eighty pounds with intermitten fasting. That was twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen,
and I have kept it off ever since. You know, I had lost
weight many times before, but intermitten fasting is the only time I ever have
managed to maintain a weight loss. And it's just been thrilling to season after
season pull up my wardrobe from the previous year and it all still fits.
So along the way, I wrote a book. My first self published book
was called Delay, Don't Deny Living in intermitten fasting Lifestyle. I started some
Facebook support groups they grew and grew over the years, and wrote my second
book, also self published, called Feast Without Fear. And then finally in
twenty twenty, I wrote a book called Fast Feast Repeat, and it was
a New York Times bestseller. And ever since then, you know, I've
been really excited to know that we're spreading the word of intermitten fasting all over
the globe. I've also been a podcaster since twenty seventeen. I have Intermitten
Fasting Stories, which comes out every single week. We have over three hundred
episodes by this point and you can listen to those every week and here from
real world Intermitten fasters. But here we are. We are here with our
new podcast, fast Feast Repeat, and I'm gonna let Sherry share her Intermitten
fasting story. Well, if you are a long time follower of the Intermitten
Fasting Stories podcast, I was episode number nine and that was that seems like
so long ago. I believe that was twenty eighteen. Yes, it was
twenty eighteen. So I came to fasting. I basically grew up. I'm
the big sister. Okay, So if all of you grew up in a
family full of other kids and you just weren't built like your siblings, you're
gonna know where I'm coming from. I grew up with two siblings, both
very thin, like waif like statures. And then there's me, Like they're
lanky and thin and yeah, just like my sister. I always said she
had bird bones. Yeah she is six foot one, but you know,
an average weight for hers about one hundred and thirty five pounds. She's very
thin, always has been naturally thin. And then there's me and I'm the
sturdy girl. I'm five foot ten and I am built like a brick house.
But the problem with that, I spent my whole childhood comparing myself to
them and being compared to them. And by the age of twelve, I
was enrolled in weight Watchers and that is when my dieting life began, really
in seventh grade, and basically I used that as a tool all through my
adult life. Anytime I put on a little weight, I would go back
on the program. I would take it back off. I had my kids,
I would put on weight, I would take it back off. Everything
was great until two thousand and fourteen when I moved from sunny Colorado, where
I was outside working out, exercising, walking, hiking, biking for hours
a day, to hot, humid Alabama, where, let's face it,
people just don't go outside and exercise because the weather is not conducive to well.
In the summer. I mean, people do go out in Alabama,
but it's a different kind of going out. We go to the pool in
the South. It's exactly you go to the beach, you go to the
pool, you float in the pool. So all my exers coupled with that,
I also live over an hour from my work, so then I was
doing long commuting, and all of a sudden, you know, despite counting
my points and throwing in some macro counting with my points and trying to keep
calorie counts with my points, and I mean, I was doing it all
and wait just kept piling on. And I think part of it was just
age. I think part of it was I had absolutely ruined my metabolism through
restrictive dieting. For I mean, at that point, we're talking what twenty
eight years, and I had relied so heavily on keeping my body in a
calorie deficit through just a really active lifestyle that when I stopped exercising, I
could no longer do that. My body just started packing on weight, and
within probably six months of living here, I had gained easily thirty pounds.
I got married in July of twenty fifteen, and I got my wedding pictures
back, and I think many of you know, you get a picture and
you look at it and you think, oh, gosh, is that what
I look like? That was, you know, my big moment twenty fourteen
cruise pictures. And I was so embarrassed and ashamed of what I looked like
in my pictures. It didn't feel like me. I was like, that's
not me, that's not my body. And it really felt like I had
this connect from my body at that point, like and anger towards my body
because I feel like it was failing me. So in the fall of twenty
fifteen, I really started looking for the answer, and that's when I found
intermittent fasting. I started out doing a program where you eat an eight hour
window and they call it fasting, but you could have diet SETAs and you
could have creamy coffee, and you could have Stevia in your coffee. And
I did that until twenty seventeen. When the spring of twenty seventeen, late
winter twenty seventeen, I found Delay Don't Deny on Facebook. I was really
looking for some support because I needed some community. It wasn't mainstream at that
time. There really wasn't anybody around me at work or home or you know,
my husband's family that understood what I was doing. And I just really
needed some you know, bolstering. I was also experiencing a little weight regain
and I couldn't figure out why, and so I found Jin's group and I'm
reading the covenant for her group was you had to agree to fast clean.
I love this part of the story, and I was like, what is
this person talking about? You know, this is silly, this is nonsense,
and I left her group. I was not willing to give up my
diet, doctor Pepper and my Stevia in my morning coffee. Well, I
started joining these other fasting groups, and I'm gonna use the word fasting very
loosely, and pretty much they were following the same philosophy I was. But
I started noticing how much people were struggling, and then the people weren't losing
weight, and I was like, you know, they were like really positive
and seeing great weight loss in that other group. And then somebody in one
of those groups started talking about cephalic phase insulin response, which is what happens
when you take in any food or sweet flavors while you're fasting. And being
a healthcare professional, I am all about the science and research. So I
did a deep dive into this and I found out that there is, yes,
definitely something to this. So I thought, Wow, that lady may
not be crazy after all. Crazy jin. So I rejoined her group,
and I think when I filled out my questionnaire to rejoin, I told her
then like I'm so sorry I left. I thought you were crazy, but
now I know you're not. And she let me back in, and I
just loved her group, and I just jumped in and got very active in
it and started trying to help support others because that's what I do. I
think I skipped the fact that I actually was a weight Watchers leader for many
years. I've had Facebook groups like health and wellness Facebook groups in the past,
and it's just really my passion to help people live healthy, long lives.
And it doesn't matter if you live a long life, it's not a
healthy life. And so you know, from there, Jen and I just
became friends online and then we became friends in real life. And that's actually
pretty funny how we got to be friends in real life, because you know,
Sherry came to my attention in the Facebook groups. I think it was
probably around twenty eighteen, because you know, I was very active, and
this is before I had any moderators. I was doing it all by myself
and teaching full time. I don't know how I was managing that, but
it was actually twenty seventeen, was it twenty seventeen, Okay, because she
reached out to me in January of twenty eighteen. Okay, all right,
well it was sometime around Ben and I loved the practical advice that Sherry gave
to the other members. So when it was time to have our first moderators
in the Facebook groups, I was so happy to have Sherry on board,
and I could tell that we were destined to be friends. And here's the
part that's funny. We had only ever, you know, talk behind the
scenes and Facebook Messenger or through the Facebook groups. And before we had even
gone on the first delayed on to Night cruise, which we the first one
was in twenty eighteen and was June of twenty eighteen, we had never met
in person before, but I could just tell that I liked you sharing.
I knew we were going to be friends. And so I was like,
well, we're planning the next one for twenty nineteen, and I don't have
a roommate because my roommate for twenty eighteen is a teacher and we're going in
March. So would you be my roommate on the second cruise even though I've
never met you before? And thank goodness, Sherry said yes, and we've
been great friends ever since. Yeah, in twenty twenty, I was wanting
to start the Life Lessons podcast and I talked to Jen about it and she
was, Jin is my biggest supporter. Jen Is. That's the thing you
need know about Jen. It's not just me. She doesn't just support me,
She supports everybody. All she wants is for people to succeed. And
I kept talking to her about my dream of having my own podcast, and
I told her, you know what I wanted it to be like, and
she asked me who was going to be my co host? And I was
like, I don't know. And I would have never asked Jim because she's
busy. She, you know, was recording two other podcasts at that time,
and I just thought, I'm not going to ask her. This isn't
her thing, this is out of her wheelhouse. And it wasn't. Thirty
minutes after I talked to her and was telling her I was like solidifying my
plans that she called me and said, what if I was your co host?
And that was the beginning of the Life Lessons podcast. And we have
had so much fun over the last two and a half years doing that.
And then we were called to pivot and do this podcast and I'm so excited
to do it. Me too, And you know, people kept asking,
you know, yeah, we love life lessons. Life Lessons is great,
but we would like an intermitt and fasting related podcast with the two of you
as the co host. I mean, we got that question over and over
again. And you know, even in the Life Lessons community, which was
on Facebook and I left Facebook, but Sherry was still there and people wanted
it to be about intermitt and fasting because that's how they got to know me.
And also Sherry is very active in the community that we've got. So
we are giving people what they've asked for and I'm really excited to have a
second intermittent fasting related podcast back on the air. So now we're going to
tell you what we have in store for this podcast. Each week will begin
with a celebration from a listener, and actually we're gonna go ahead and do
one today. We're going to give you a sneak peek with a celebration that
was submitted by Michelle, who's a part of the Delayed on Toni community.
So Michelle wrote, every three months, I have been checking my fasting insulin,
my AWEC, and my fasting glucose through walk in Labs. And if
for anybody who does not know what in labs is, it's actually a company
I recommend all the time. It's where you can just order your own lab
work. So if you have a doctor that's resistant to order labs for you,
you can order them yourselves. They have doctors who approve your labs.
You just pay for it online and you just go to your local lab Quest
or Lab Core or Quest Diagnostics lab and you just get your own blood drawn
and they send you the results. And it's not expensive. It's like twenty
five bucks for a fasting insulin test. Yeah, I will tell you Quest
is cheaper than Lab Corps. And we're not sponsored by Walking Labs, but
we do love them because we do believe that you should be in charge of
your own health. So anyway, Michelle wrote last September, my hemoglobe and
A ONEC was five point five and my fasting insulin was forty four point four.
And you know, based on what I've read, and not everyone agrees
one hundred percent on what these numbers should be, but a lot of experts
are saying that the optimal fasting insulin level is somewhere around five or below,
right, I believe it's like two point five to five or something like that.
So if you follow conventional medical advice, I believe even the lab comes
back and tells you that anything under twenty or something is healthy. But we're
just finding out more and more that's really too high, and I suspect at
some point those parameters are going to change. So Michelle goes on to say,
I have had elevated himoglobin awenc's for about the last ten years, with
my AWEC being as high as five point seven, which makes me pre diabetic
range. During the time my AWNC was so elevated, I regularly checked my
fasting blood sugar, which always ranged from ninety to one hundreds. During those
years, I was paleo and I just could not understand how my blood sugars
and AWEC could be so elevated on a relatively low CARBD diet. My doctor
would tell me to exercise and eat healthy, which I already did, but
nothing I did seem to help. I also saw a functional medicine doctor during
this time who had me eat keto with no results. I say all of
this not because I'm against paleo or keto, but because of bioindividuality and how
what works for one person may not be the answer for another. Finally,
about two years ago, I went more whole food plant based and I actually
saw my AWENC drop down to five point five. However, I still had
no idea how to get my AC lower, and I had no idea to
check myself for insulin resistance. Then last September, i'd been fasting for about
a month and a half, I asked my doctor to check my fasting insulin
and that is when I received the result of forty four point four. Wow.
I was shocked. I had been a lifelong exerciser and I had always
eaten relatively healthy with a sweet tooth. Having a father with type two diabetes
really drove home the seriousness of my situation. I was extremely insulin resistant and
on the same road as my dad, despite my healthy lifestyle interventions. When
I received those lab reports last September, with an AWEC of five point five,
meaning my average blood goot close was around one eleven, I decided to
add in some longer fasts. By the time I rechecked it in December,
my fasting insulin was normal and my AWEC had dropped a five point four.
In March, I saw greater improvement with my AWNC at five point three.
Now in June, my AWNC is five point one. My fasting blood glucose
was sixty eight when I had it checked, and my fasting insulin was two
point five. After ten years of doing quote all the right things and not
being able to make a debt in my labs, in one year with fasting,
I have cured my insulin resistance. I am beyond ecstatic and so thankful
for this way of life. See that gives me like the chills and the
goose bumps and all the fields. Right, yes it does. But what's
so powerful about that is if you're eating right, but you're eating all day,
you're just not going to cure your insulin resistance. I mean, maybe
the random person can do it, but I just don't see it happening.
You can actually have a normal A one C and a really high fasting insulin
because your body is still managing to keep up by putting out more and more
insulin over time. But then eventually it's not going to be able to keep
up anymore. And that's what your blood sugar starts to go up. But
that's when most people start to find it, not until the blood sugar is
a red flag. But in the meantime, your insuluence has been a red
flag for I don't know years. I wish I had my fasting infuluence from
way back in twenty fourteen. That would be really fascinating. And I wish
I had mine too, I mean add zero clues to ask for well.
And you know, I recently saw something I should have saved it that said
that people probably have elevated fasting insulince for ten years before they're actually diagnosed as
diabetic. So diabetes doesn't happen overnight. It's something that's been building up for
a long time. I actually read a journal article written by a nurse practitioner
years ago. I can't remember exactly what article it was or find a link
to it anymore, but it talked about fasting insulin being the leading indicator and
that basically by relying on a ONEC and blood glucose only, we're missing the
leading indicator, which the fasting insulin. So in my newest book that's coming
out available for Pruder, it's The twenty eight Day fast Start Day by Day.
It comes out in December of twenty twenty three. But in that at
the beginning, before people are getting ready to start the twenty eight day fast
start, I suggest that they might want to go ahead, you have a
homework assignment. Yeah, yeah, I suggest they might want to go ahead
and get a fasting insulin test. I think that's great advice, just to
have that baseline, you know, before they get started. So anyway,
I love sharing Michelle's story, and every week we're going to have some sort
of weekly celebration like that, and then after the weekly celebration, we're going
to answer questions from listeners, and we also plan to share things like book
recommendations, and will also discuss interesting research findings that might be health and wellness
related or if anything comes out related to fasting, especially one of those I'm
quoting studies of the air quotes with my fingers, one of those studies that
makes people scared to do intermittent fasting and everybody freaks out. One came out
and Fall twenty twenty two, and it wasn't even a fasting study, but
all the headlines said it was about fasting and it wasn't. So anything like
that comes out, we're going to talk about it on this podcast. Yes,
I'm excited about that. So you know, we consider ourselves to be
a community driven podcast. What does that mean. It means we need you,
the listeners, to send in submissions and questions for us. And it's
very very easy to do that. You go to fast Feast, Repeat,
dot com slash submit and there you will find a very simple Google form.
You click on the link, you open it up and it's got different categories
for submissions and you can just fill out all of them one of them,
it doesn't matter. Give us your questions, anything, you have to contribute,
your success stories, anything you celebrate, and then listen each week and
listen for us to share your contribution or answer your question. And I want
to point out you'll notice that in Michelle's story, she included a good bit
of detail. So you know, the more detail you can share, the
better because that's something that will be very helpful for listeners as we read your
submission. So again that was details are important because I tell my husband that
is fast Feast, Repeat, dot com slash submit and it's really easy to
do. So. Also, each week we're going to share our tweak of
the week, which I'm excited about You've probably heard me tell you to tweak
it till it's easy. I have that a whole chapter named that and my
book Fast Feast Repeat. But I talk about that all the time on Intermit
and Fasting stories. So what does that look like in practice? You know,
tweaking it till it's easy. You know, if you've listened to me
or read my books, you know that I believe we are all different and
what works for one person may not be what works for someone else. So
by sharing our successful tweaks, we end up with a whole toolbox of strategies
to try. And finally, each week we will leave you with some sort
of weekly motivation to wrap things up. I'm a big fan of inspirational quotes,
messages, or sometimes people in our community just share some really like thought
provoking, like realizations that they have come to and they share them with our
community, and it's just a lot of it's just around mindset and you know,
tweaks that they've made to their mindset, like mantras they repeat to themselves.
So if you have anything like that, something that has helped you along
the way, or something that you stumble across, that's just really powerful to
you jump over there to fast fees, repeat dot com, slash submit and
drop it in that form for us. And we want to leave you guys
with some inspiration to go into your next week. Absolutely, and remember,
as I said before, elaborate, give us as much detail instead of just
sharing the quote. Tell us why it's meaningful, you know, tell us
enough information to really that's how it helped you exactly. We want to know
again, remember what we said already, we're a community driven podcast, and
so we really look forward to sharing your questions, your successes, your tweaks
of the weeks, your book recommendations. And you know, when I say
book recommendations, these do not have to be intermitt and fasting books, right
because we're all here because we're interested in intermitt and fasting. But some of
the most powerful books that have helped me along the way are not intermitt and
fasting books like Mindset by Carol Dweck, fiber Fueled by Doctor b and things
like that. Anything that has helped you along the way of your health and
wellness journey. And I'm talking physical health, emotional health, mental health,
all the ways. We're well rounded people. You know, we're not just
people who do intermitten fasting. We want to hear all of that, So
go to fast Feast repeat dot com slash submit. Now go ahead and make
your first submission. We hope that you're as excited as we both are for
this new podcast. I'm so excited. I am too. I have absolutely
loved meeting with Jin each week. This is our fun time. Really,
we get to see each other because Jim lives in South Carolina and I live
in Alabama, so we only see each other live in person like once maybe
twice a year, and this is our fun time. We get to see
each other. We like we can see each other on screen as we record.
We just love talking about fascinating subjects and I mean we spend research,
articles and stuff back to each other daily and so we love to see what
you guys have to bring to the table that we can share you with the
rest of y'all. So yeah, we're just excited to get this going.
We hope that you'll tune in each week and listen. We're gonna close out
today with a motivational quote from one of Jin's and my favorite books, which
is amazing and if you have not read it yet, you should it's Atomic
Habits and the author is James Claire, who is an intimate faster is he
not? He is? Yeah, that's what I thought. So the quote
is how long will you put off what you are capable of doing just to
continue what you are comfortable doing? Yeah? That makes you really think,
doesn't it. It really does. And I've said before like success comes from
doing things that are uncomfortable. You have to get out of your comfort zone
to get something different. Everything worth doing is on the other end of your
comfort zone or something or something like something. Yeah, it's true. I
mean honestly, everything that I've done that has changed my life the most was
out of my comfort zone. If it's scary, if it's hard, push
yourself to do it. You have it within yourself to do it. We
are creatures of comfort, but growth comes from change. Absolutely. Thanks so
much for listening today. We would love to have you join us and the
delayed on Tonight community, where you can interact with both me and Sherry plus
the most supportive bunch of inter and faster as you'll find anywhere. Go to
Jen Stevens 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 it. 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,