Episode 12: Times of Stress, IF and ADHD, You Can Heal Your Life, and More

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 is not intended to provide
medical or diagnostic advice. Jen and I are not doctors, so make sure
to check with your trust and 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. Hi, everybody,
we are so glad you're here today. Welcome to this week's episode of the
Fast Feast Repeat, intermitt and Fasting for Life podcast. How are you doing
today's Sherry? I am doing great today. I'm so glad we're recording this
at the end of August. Are y'all having a day that felt like a
fall day today? Oh? No, we're in the middle of a heatwave.
Okay, See, we had such a hot day yesterday, but it
rained overnight. I woke up this morning, I was chilly on the porch.
It was overcast and dreary, but it was a surprise. It's ninety
two today right now, so no, it's been exceptionally hot today. Well,
yesterday I walked out to the water, and coming back from the water
to the house, I felt like I was walking through an oven. It
was like the hot it like it would have burned the salts of my feet
if I didn't have flip flops. It was so hot. I was like,
this is miserable. But then today when I woke up and it was
it was cool, I was like, all right, falls in the air.
It always feels like a miracle when fall is in the air after a
hot summer. But anyway, depending on where people are listening from, they
may be fully feeling like fall right now. Probably are well. I kind
of got sad yesterday because my lawn crew came and cut my yard, and
then in the evening I took Lulu outside and I have leaves falling, and
as I noticed them, because the yard was like freshly mode and stuff,
and I'm like, it's only August. It's too early for that. Oh,
and Chad and I have such a different idea of what it should be
because I like summer, you know, I like the summer and the sun.
Said this morning, I was like, it was a little chilly out
there. He's like, oh good. I'm like, no, not oh
good, not oh good. Like when I wake up at five thirty in
the morning and the sun it's still really really dark, and I don't like
that at all. Anyway. Well, the other night, it was like
seventy two degrees outside, and I took Lulu out and I came in and
I said, it's cold outside, and Eric's like, it's not cold outside.
I said, yeah, like I needed a sweatshirt and he said it's
seventy two And I'm like, exactly that sweatshirt weather. So I'm wearing like
jeans today. Well, do you think you're eating change when the weather changes?
It kind of I feel like it does, Like I got I'm not
gravitating towards kombucha, for example, when it gets cooler, and I think
I gravitate toward like I'm more likely to have hummus in the summer than in
the winter. I'm not feeling like having some hummus. I don't know.
I do think seasonally, I do crave different things. Yeah, I cannot
get enough salads this summer, but then the winter time comes and a salad
doesn't sound good to me. Yeah. I never make salads at home overally.
I'll get them when I'm out. Yeah, I just I never want
I love them. Yeah, I never make salads anyway. So we have
like some really interesting questions sent in this week, and we have a great
celebration from Darlene Stow in Ohio. She wrote, I began intermittent fasting in
January of twenty twenty, when I was sixty years old. At that time,
I weighed two hundred and two pounds and I was five foot five tall.
I was for sure a yo yo dieter, as many of you have
been. To date, I have lost forty four pounds. But the best
part is all of the health benefits and body recomposition. I am no longer
insulin resistant. I had an autoimmune skin rash that is completely gone. I
have more energy than I did even twenty years ago. In the course of
my interimitt and fasting journey, my husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. COVID
hit. My parents had to sell their home and move into assisted living.
Then my husband passed away in November of twenty twenty two. My dad died
in April of this year, and my mom died two weeks later. Oh
and I have two developmentally delayed adult sons who lived with me. But I
will say that intermitt and fasting was really helpful during all of this. It
gave me something that I could actually do and accomplish. It gave me the
energy for all of the caretaking. I have unbelievable mental clarity that helped me
to make all of the decisions I had to make during this time. All
of the researching and reading I was doing gave me something to think about besides
my circumstances. I felt better. I began cooking much healthier food for the
entire family, and a few of my close friends have begun their intermitt and
fasting journey as well. This is now my lifestyle. This takes some time
and it has a learning curve, but please be patient. Pay attention to
your body and notice how much better you feel. Even when the weight loss
is slow. Body recomposition is real as well as all of the health benefits.
I do tend to bury my eating window, and I also do alternate
day fasting when I want to lose some more pounds, but I love the
flexibility. I am looking to take off another ten to twelve pounds, but
I'm not really sweating it. It will come. Wow, Oh my gosh,
Darlene. I can't even imagine all that she's been through with her husband
and having pancreatic cancer and passing away, and then both of her parents losing
them within two weeks. But is a lot. It is a lot.
But the part that's really made my heart feel warm was knowing that Darlene was
able to lean into intermitt and fasting during the challenging time and letting it be
one fewer things she had to worry about. She didn't have to think about
eating all the time and what's she's gonna cook and getting the meals and when
you're caregiving for other people and you know, all the things that are going
on in your life that are hard, Internet and fasting can help you,
like it did with Darlene. Here, I find the same thing and to
me too, when life is just unpredictable and you know you don't really have
any control of what's happening from day to day. Like internet, fasting is
just that constant, like you wake up in the morning, you know you're
gonna fast. You know at some point you're gonna have an eating window.
But you don't have to think about it all day. And it's not like
some restrictive diet where if you're out and about, if you're at the hospital
with a loved one, you know you don't have to be like, oh,
well, they don't have anything I can eat today for my diet,
so I'm just going to blow my diet today. It's not like that.
You just eat the food that's available to you. Sometimes it's really great and
nourishing food. Sometimes it's not based off circumstances, but you're still fasting,
and once you close your window, you're going into another fast And that predictability
I think takes a lot of stress out of life. And you can even
wait. You don't have to eat right that minute. It's not an emergency.
You don't have to settle for what's in the vending machine. You can
say, well, you know what, I don't want any of that.
I'm gonna wait. So I think Darlene, your lesson is so powerful because
it teaches us that just because we're going through I mean, I can't think
of anybody who can name anything more stressful than what Darlene has just gone through.
And you know, she did not quit intermittent fasting. She leaned into
it and let it make her life easier. So that is such an inspiration
for me as well to read what Darlene said, and you know, then
she's had the health benefits and the body recomposition, she's no longer insulin resistant,
she's lost her autoimmune skin rash, she has more energy than she had
twenty years ago. And that is why we do it so well, you
know, and I talk a lot too like when life is stressful and you're
caretaking for other people, the worst thing you can do is not take care
of yourself because that's going to wear you down so much faster, and you're
not going to have the energy and even the mental energy to take care of
everything that's going on in your life. Where if you can just stick with
your fasting lifestyle and not set it aside just because life is stressful, it's
only going to help you handle the challenges in life. And for everybody who's
listening, you're going to go through something stressful in your life coming up.
It's just life. Life has got the we all do. We all face
loved ones getting sick, loved ones passing away, and we just have to
go ahead, Nail, decide before you're in the stressful time, decide,
you know what. I'm going to remember the story when my own life takes
the stressful turn, and I'm going to care for myself as a priority.
All right. So now we have a question from a listener. The question
is from McKenna in Iowa. She says, I am still relatively new to
intermittent fasting. I started at the beginning of June and so far have seen
some weight loss, but have noticed more non scale victories than shedding pounds,
which is great. A little backstory. I had my first baby in March
of this year, and it was not an easy road. I was told
constantly during my checkups that I was high risk due to my BMI. I
had a high BMI before pregnancy, but during pregnancy I only gained twenty pounds.
This really affected me mentally and I'm not sure why doctors think it's a
good idea to tell a pregnant lady, she is fat ha ha. You
know that's true, McKenna. Why you know that does not seem productive to
just keep saying like anyhow, I am with you on that, she said.
I dealt with a traumatic birth as well as serious postpartum depression and postpartum
anxiety. It was during my time of seeking treatment that my psychiatrist actually diagnosed
me with pretty severe ADHD. No one had ever suggested this might be an
issue for me. But the more I learn about ADHD, the more I
can relate to and make sense of my symptoms. I am taking medication now
and am in the process of finding what dosage works best for me. Where
I struggle with IF is that I cannot seem to stick to a schedule.
I tried ADF, but my issue was that on my up days, I
would find myself focused and lost in a project, and I would forget to
eat and then have almost two down days. Or I would start my up
day and have coffee and breakfast, then forget to eat the rest of the
day until my husband came home to remind me to eat. I've recently been
trying the window approach. Some days I'll get lost in thought and fast for
twenty three hours. On my other days, my impulse control can be zero.
I've always been an emotional eater, and I also will hyper focus on
a food once I think about it. For instance, yesterday I was on
our ten of my fast and a co worker was eating a peanut butter sandwich.
All of a sudden, I could not get peanut butter off my mind
and felt the need to have some. All my attention and thoughts were on
peanut butter until I've finally opened my window three hours later to satisfy my so
I could get back to focusing on work. I know there's a link between
ADHD and obesity. I know ADHD is severely underdiagnosed and not talked about in
women. So I'm curious if there are other people you know of that have
had success with IF and ADHD. What did they do to be successful?
Any tips or tricks or suggestions to help me when I'm struggling. What might
be the best IF approach for me? Well? I can answer this directly
because I am very ADHD. I also was not diagnosed until I was in
my mid thirties. Once I was diagnosed, to answered so many questions like
I mean, just explain so much about struggles I had, you know,
ongoing in my life. Tell them the story you were telling me before we
recorded about Eric and the questionnaire. Well, so it came about because I
was actually talking to Eric about this person's contribution to the podcast, this person's
question and I said that I learned quite a lot because I'm going to be
honest, I did not know that there was a link between ADHD and obesity,
and so I had to do some research while I was getting this podcast
together because I was quite surprised. So anyways, I'm talking to him about
that, and my husband is also very ADHD, so you can imagine our
household sometimes is chaotic. We try to keep each other in line. But
he had me take a test that he had run across recently where it helps
you like identify your trouble areas and it helps identify of the medication that you're
on, is you know, working for you and that sort of thing.
So I sat down last night and did it, and one of the questions
was how often do you misplace or lose things that you need? Hey,
listen, y'all, I've known Sherry for a lot of years now, and
the first time I think we were on a cruise and Sherry like lost something
and I'm like frantically trying to help her look for it. But now when
Sherry loses something, I don't even like blink my eyes because I know she's
going to fuck. Jen literally just says, you'll find it, and she
will. She'll find it. But I've learned that because it's true. The
funny thing is is I never know where my stuff is, but I can
tell you exactly where my husband's stuff is, and he can tell me where
my stuff is. So isn't that funny? I guess because we're kind of
both caretakers and we're taking a care of each other, and so I put
more thought into him than me. Maybe I don't know, Or I just
randomly set stuff down on mine somewhere and I he sees it. He sees
it, That's what I think it might be. Why did she leave that
here? So I sometimes I'll be looking for it and he'll be like,
oh, that's over there, and I'm like, well, why didn't you
put it? He's like, I thought you maybe you wanted it there,
and I'd be like, why would I want that there? It's funny,
I would like to say, I have had success with ADHD, so I
absolutely believe that you can do this. McKenna. You have tools that work
for me, that help me. And I really want to say, I
do think the medicine is going to help you a lot. I used to
not take my medicine every day. I would take it like if I was
at work or if I had a lot of stuff to do that day.
And I did notice that on the days I did not take my medicine,
I was clockwatching, I was waiting for my window to open. I was
hyper focused on food. I would be like you. I would think,
I'm the kind of person that foods pop in my brain randomly, and I'll
be like, cheese, It's oh, cheese, its would be good,
and then I cannot stop thinking about cheese. It's the rest of the day.
So I get that hyper focus is something that ADHD people do struggle with.
So a lot of it's just kind of self talk. And I will
say, okay, well, if you want cheese, its when your window
opens, you can have cheesets. You know. I do tend to keep
like snack bags of things in my house, like cheese. It's so if
I have a sudden craving. I have one little package of them in my
window and I move on. But a fasting timer really helped me because you
have to really start the habit of it. But a fasting timer helped me
because it kept me from constantly looking at the clock, looking at the clock,
Look is it time? Is it time? Is it time? Now?
My timer goes off and it tells me my window time could be open,
because I do have a goal of fasting nineteen hours every day. Now,
if I'm not hungry at nineteen hours, I don't open my window.
But at least I know that it's there. And once I started using it,
it just took that idea of when's my window going to open? It
just took it out of my brain. Right. It is just something I
don't worry about anymore. So that was really helpful for me. I also
get very distracted and I can forget to close my window, and it's not
uncommon for me to open with a snack and then look down in six hours
has passed and I never ate. So I also often set a timer on
my phone, and if I know I want to keep a five hour window,
I set the timer on my phone for four hours to go off,
and the timer literally says eat. And when my timer goes off and says
eat. And I'm talking about like a regular alarm timer, like you know,
like you said an alarm to wake up on your phone or whatever.
I have one that says eat and it's set for and I when I opened
my window, I turn on my thatt alarm and it reminds me like,
okay, you have an hour to eat. Sharing get that window closed and
just using timers and stuff is very helpful for me. It helps me,
you know, not forget to eat or whatever. Another thing that can be
really helpful is knowing what I'm going to eat having a plan, because then
you're not being impulsive and just grabbing whatever and eating it and then later being
like why did I eat that? That's not what I wanted? So I
do. I am very intentional about what I eat, and I make a
plan and I have an idea for usually like three or four days in advance
of what I'm going to eat over the next three or four days. So
that's very helpful to have kind of a meal plan, purchase your food in
advance, you know, don't be the day of not having any food in
your house because your poor impulse control kicks in and then you're just like going
around, you know, with whatever exactly. So that's really really important I
did for those of you listening, if you have ADHD, this is a
new concept to you. I did look this up and there's a lot of
research actually that's been done on it. So something that came up that I
learned was a person with ADHD is four times more likely to become obese than
someone without ADHD. Basically it's because of brain chemistry, poor impulse control,
difficulty organizing shopping and preparing meals, as well as erratic sleeping habits, and
so all of that kind of like encourages unhealthy eating, and that can make
you feel overwhelmed. And if you have ADHD and you feel overwhelmed, often
what you do is the opposite of what you should do. You know,
what you just said really strikes you, know me, is so very true.
You know, I've I've never been diagnosed with ADHD. But did I
ever tell you that I was? You know, we had our senior superlatives,
and everybody got a senior superlative of some sort. Do you know what
mine was? Did I ever tell you no, most hyperactive. That was
my senior superlative most hyperactive. Thank you. I don't know if that was
a compliment or what, but I was never diagnosed, but I've always been,
you know, like that. So when you were talking about, you
know, the poor impulse control, difficulty organizing shopping and preparing meals, that
just really I was like, that might be why I like the Meal Kids
so much. It very well could be. Because if I'm at a grocery
store, I'm literally wandering around from place to place. I don't I don't
know why I'm there, and I'm buying everything that looks good like, and
so I'll walk out with like forty dollars worth of cheese. Chats like,
how much should you spend? I'm like, I gotta know. Even if
I go to the store with a list, it can take me two hours
because I'm looking at this and reading this, and then it's like, oh,
what's that package over there. That's why I like when it just comes
in the mail. I tell them what I want, I click my meals,
it comes in the mail to all in there. I don't have to
wander around the store. I do a lot of grocery delivery because then I
know make my meal plan. I write out my list of everything I need,
I put it in my phone, I shoot off my grocery delivery,
and yes it's a little bit more expensive, but it gets it done and
I'm not wasting two hours at the grocery store. That's you know, that
would be a suggestion McKenna might could use one of the meal kit delivery companies
just because you got it there, and see that also makes me cook it.
You know, if I didn't have it there, I might be like,
let's just go out because it's easy. I don't have to think about
it. But if I've got a meal there, I am not going to
waste it. I am going to cook that for dinner. So that really
helps me stay on track because I've got it, already paid for it,
it's there. So the other thing that came up is that people with ADHD
also have like weaker internal signals. So your body is telling you you're full,
but like it takes a while for your brain to connect that because part
of it is just that your brain is distracted as somewhere else. So I
think, really this is important for me eating without distraction. So no phone
no tablet at the table, no TV on. When I eat, I'm
very present with my food. I try to really taste my food. I
just immersed myself in that food experience because if I'm distracted, then you're just
eating mindlessly and next thing you know, you're overly full. So I think
McKenna, you know, you said that you're getting lost in thought and you
overfast. So again, I think a fasting timer would be really helpful for
you. Impulse control. Again, once you get your medicine lined out and
you figure out a medication that works for you, I think that's really going
to help with impulse control. And a lot of it's just awareness, you
know, just being aware that you can have what you want you can't have
it now, it's that whole delay concept. You might have to work a
little harder at it. I mean, but for me learning that I was
ADHD and you're learning this too, it's so helpful. And I mean,
I'm the person that when a person's talking and I have to work very hard
at this, I have to let them finish talking before I jump in.
That is hard for me. It has taken me lots and lots and lots
of practice and I literally have to bite my tongue sometimes. Part of it
is I'm afraid that I'm going to forget what my response was to them.
I'm like, oh my gosh, yes, I'm so excited about what they're
talking about, and i want to respond to them, and I'm afraid I'm
gonna lose it if I don't say it right now. But I have had
to really really practice at that, and I've gotten so much better at it.
I remember back when I was a kid, I was always in trouble
for interrupting people or finishing people sentences for them. But now that I'm aware
that I do it, I'm aware of why I do it's I'm able to
work on that, and so I think it's the same with food. Being
aware, having a strategy, having a plan, and just really working at
it, you can create new habits that override your natural brain chemistry. You
know one thing I want to pop in there, any of you that are
diagnosed with ADHD, Like I said, I never was, but I know
that. I mean, I went to school in the seventies. I was
born in nineteen sixty nine. If they were diagnosing a lot of girls with
ADHD back then, which they weren't. I definitely would have gotten a diagnosis
handed to me because of the way I was all over the place. Even
my schoolmates saw it. But see now I've forgotten where I was going with
that. No, not really, but the thing that I wanted to point
out. You know, I have a doctorate and gifted education, and in
Georgia, part of a gifted diagnosis we test people for creative Because there's a
guy, Paul Torrence was his name. He studied creativity. He worked at
the University of Georgia. There are a lot of times that a creative mind
can be misdiagnosed as ADHD, and the two also tend to go together.
So if you were diagnosed with ADHD, you're probably also highly creative, like
a lot of people are. Not everybody, but share you're highly creative,
and a lot of people who are just very very highly creative with brains that
move quickly, it looks like ADHD. So it's they're a lot like that.
You know who Daniel Aman is. Yes, I had a book about
brains and ADHD, and he talked about different types of ADHD brains from the
brain scans that he was doing. So there's different ways it can show up
in your brain. But I bet a lot of us share me. Maybe
McKenna, I don't know, but a lot of us are just very creative
and our brains work really fast, so they're all over the place. That's
the kind of brain that I've got. Also, guess what doctor Amen said
was good for brains like that, like for weight loss. He said,
oh, fintermine works really well for that type of brain. That was the
diet pill that my doctor always would prescribe to me. Honey, that you
should say that. I was just thinking this. This is how I figured
out I was ADHD. In two thousand, probably four or five, a
doctor I worked with give me fintermin and I went back to him. I
did not lose any weight. I went back to him and he said,
how's it working. And I'm like, well, I'm not losing any weight.
But you should see my house. It's so clean. I'm like,
I can actually set out to clean my house and get it cleaned, and
I can sit down to pay bills, and I can pay bills. I
was so on top of my life for the first time as an adult that
like, so much stress went away in my life. And that's when I
was like, I think I might be ADHD, and so then he sent
me to a psychiatrist. Let me ask you this, what does ben a
Jil do to you? Makes me go to sleep? I mean it makes
it does and I saw it perks you up. It perks me up.
It makes me like clean grout with a toothbrush. Yeah, it makes me
feel crazy. Anyway, That's just I wanted to say that because it's,
you know, like coffee. You know, we know from research that stimulants
can call them the ADHD brain. So like coffee gives me calmness and mental
clarity versus you know, other people that it might hype you up. Anyway,
I just wanted to pop that in there because I understand all of that
as well. But I was on a podcast called ADHD for Smartass Women with
Tracy Otsuka. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing her name and correctly or not,
but Tracy Otsuka episode two hundred and four of ADHD for Smartass Women.
So anybody who you know, if you're a smartass woman and you are have
ADHD, you may find you know, you can find me on our podcasts,
but you can also find other topics it's not an intermittent fasting podcasting.
My episode was, but you can find lots of different topics that might help
you with other areas of your life by listening to that podcasts. I wanted
to pop that in there. But you know, I never had thought about
shopping and meal planning before. But I really think that's why I like the
meal kits so much. It's one more decision I don't have to think about.
It's also why intermittent fasting works so well. So McKenna, you're going
to figure it out. I know one thing about some of the medications that
it can affect your appetite. You can literally forget to eat, because that
was something we saw with children that would be on medication for ADHD. We
would like they would forget to eat their lunch, right, and we don't
want to forget to eat. So you may need to, like Sherry said,
set some timers. I think that's really good. You know, it's
like make an official schedule. You know, we always say listen to your
body. You may need to actually not do that. You may need to
listen to some more structure, give yourself structure. And I was going to
say too, I really think until you get your medication dosage correct. I
would avoid ADF right now, and that's for two reasons. Number One,
the update is so important, and if you're not doing an update appropriately,
you're doing more harm than good. So really settle in and nail down eating
in an eating window, okay. And then my other reason I'm going to
sell you to not do right now while you're trying to nail down a medication
dosage is I don't know if it's because I'm ADHD. I'm going to assume
it is. Katosis amps me up so much that it almost makes me more
scattered. So if I'm in a really deep katosis, like thirty six hours
fasted, I literally feel cracked out. I have all the ideas in the
world, all of them. I'm like, oh, I could do this
and this, and I should do this, and I should paint my house
and I should like I mean, like it's crazy. The problem is I
have no ability to execute any of it because my brain is racing so fast.
And this is me on my normal medication that works really well. So
it's so interesting, Sherry, because you know you remember in Delay on Tony
I talked about how the down days gave me like like I couldn't fleep.
Yes, I think that's why I can't sleep. I haven't done all ADF
since twenty sixteen, and I never thought about the fact that it could be
my ADHD brain because I feel fabulous in the daily eating window approach, even
if it's like twenty four, twenty five, twenty six hours on a rare
day. I'm okay, but that's so interesting. I never thought about that.
Yeah, so, I mean, and I experienced that too when I
was doing some really strict keto for a while. I was doing keto with
ADF for a while, and I was experiencing that, And again I had
all these great ideas, I had no ability to implement them because my brain
just was so it was just too much. It was too much. And
I actually told Jin during that time, I said, you know, I
could see there are a lot of people who love to be in deep ketosis.
They love that like amped up feeling. And I said, you know,
I could really see how a person who is not normally supercharged like that
could really get addicted to that feeling because it is I mean, you do
feel really happy and excited and capable. But for me, it's not a
comfortable feeling and it's not a productive feeling. And so, you know,
if you're trying to figure out what medication works for you, I don't think
you want to be feeling like that because it's going to make it hard for
you to discern, you know, what's medication and what's deep ketosis. All
right, Well, this week we have a book recommendation to share and it
was sent in by Terry and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Hi. Terry, you're
my neighbor. I've never been to Tuscaloosa, though, she said, I
would like to recommend the book You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hey.
She wrote, this book transformed my life in so many positive ways. I
used to suffer from debilitating panic disorder and obsessive compulsive thoughts, but this book
taught me how to reverse this through positive thinking affirmations and by addressing some childhood
traumas that led to constant thoughts of not being good enough. I count this
among the five books that have had a major transformative effect on my life.
The others are The Secret by Rohnda Burne, The Obesity Code by doctor Jason
Fung, Atomic Habits by James Clare and of course Fast Fees Repeat by Jen
Stevens. The description for this book reads, In this inspirational book by the
late world renowned best selling author and self help pioneer Louise Hay, you'll find
profound insight into the relationship between the mind and the body, exploring the way
that limiting thoughts and ideas control and constricts us. She offers us a powerful
key to understanding the roots of our physical diseases and discomforts. Full of positive
affirmations, this practical guide book will change the way you think forever. And
I love this suggestion because so many people come into a delay don't deny community,
and they're really down on themselves, whether they don't believe that they can
lose weight, or they don't believe they deserve to be in a thin and
healthy body, or whatever it is. They don't like their looks, they
don't like their you know, mom belly, after having four kids, whatever
it is, you can totally re program your brain. You can. It's
science. It sounds woo woo, and you know, the woo woo community
and the science community are coming together and finding that, hey, there's science
in the woo woo. That's what I love. So yeah, I think
this is a great recommendation for fasters because I've learned, and I think Jen
have learned that, you know, once you start to heal your relationship with
food and diet, there's so much time left in your body in your life
to heal your relationship with your body, to he'll you know, hurts and
pass traumas from your life and really change your life in so many other positive
ways. Yeah, it's that spillover effect and we find ourselves like completely transformed
in ways we weren't even expecting. So yeah, I want to share a
resource and that we're not sponsored by this resource. It's just something I'm throwing
out there. I actually have, you know, hey House Sharry the publishing
company hay House. Louise hay started it. They have an app that you
can get. It's like a subscription app. If there's something you can subscribe
to. I'm just pretty much subscribed to it. You can just pretty much
know tom subscribe to everything because there's so much out there. But they have
an app called empower You, and you have access through that app to every
audio resource hay House has. It's like just you got them all the time.
Really, yes, it is such a good app. I really really
like it. And you know, going from someone who never listened to podcasts
ever or audio books, and then you know, I started dabbling with audible
and I still use AUTI so I have that one too. I have them
all, but the empower You app. I like that one because it has
it has like meditations on there, and it has things for you to discover
that you might not have ever thought of, but you can get You can
Heal your Life by Louise Hey. I'm certain I haven't looked at it.
Supposedly everything that you can get from hay House. If they've got an audiobook,
well that would be great because there are so many different authors and different
topics I know that are published by hay House. Let's say I'm searching it
now just to see you can Heal your Life. I'm looking in the app
up there it is the audiobook. There's you can Heal your Life from Louise
Hey, but also you can Heal your Heart from somebody else. And anyway,
the Spanish version it looks like maybe I don't know. Anyway, they
have summits in there. They have all sorts of resources that you can get.
So if you like them, I say, I just download. It
says you can create a free account. It looks like there's some free stuff
in there. Maybe, so I don't know. I just went ahead and
subscribe. There was something I wanted to find it was on there, and
so it was like some it's content you can't necessarily get just from other places.
But if you like hey House and you like this kind of thing,
I would highly suggest it, you can play around with it and see what
you think. But thank you so much for that recommendation, Terry. All
right, before we get to our tweak of the week, I want to
take a minute to remind you about my new book, twenty eight Day Fast
Start, Day by Day, the ultimate guide to starting or restarting your intermitt
and fasting lifestyle. So it sticks. It's a companion book for Fast Feast
Repeat. And you know, I told my editor that I was not going
to write any more books about intermitt and fasting. This is back in right
after a Fast Feast Repeat came out, and I was serious. I meant
it, but then I realized that we needed one more thing. I'm a
teacher, and so I realized there were a lot of people who did not
want, you know, to start Fast Feast repeat their way straight through it.
It was just too much information all at one time. So they also
have you know, friends and family who might want to get started, but
they're not going to read Fast Feast Repeat right now. Maybe they're not ready
for it yet. So that's why I wrote twenty eight day Fast Start day
by day. I wanted it to guide you day by day literally, so
every day you have a framework to focus on for that day only a quick
check in or you set your intentions for the day. What approach are you
following for your fast Start day? You have a short daily lesson from me
and also a short inspirational story from a past intermitten fasting stories guest with their
best advice for new intermitten fasters. And you know, someone asked me in
the community the other day, They're like, do I need this if I'm
an experienced intermitten faster. No, but yes, you know, it's got
content in there you haven't seen before from me. But it's the one you're
going to want to have on hand to hand to somebody or you might find
yourself even if you're an experienced intermitten faster, you might find yourself suddenly lost
the plot. You need a little bit of something to get you back on
track, and so this is something you could use for that. You know,
have it to give to somebody in your life who's interested in intermittent fasting
but needs more structure than fast feast Repeat gives them. And if you're someone
who dabbles an intermittent fasting and you have trouble making it stick, this is
the book that you absolutely need. So go to your favorite bookstore today,
online or even your local bookstore. I love supporting local bookstores. You can
go in there and ask them to preorder it for you and they'll have it
for you on release day twenty eight day fast Art day by day. It
should arrive on December twenty six, twenty twenty three, just in time for
the new year. And now it's time for our tweak of the week.
You know I always say tweak it till it's easy, And this week we
have advice from several listeners for those who are new or if you're struggling to
create a successful fasting lifestyle. Elaine from Canada says it's helpful for me to
plan what to break fast with beforehand. And I really think that's true.
When I have a plan and I know there's something I can eat, to
open my window, my fridge is stocked, my pantry stock, my freezer
stocked, whatever it is, I am much more likely to be successful instead
of wandering around the kitchen shoving things into my mouth. What about ju Sharry,
That's very true. Planning can make such a difference. Fasting from the
Shore and Revere, Massachusetts, says My advice would be keep your fasts truly
clean, be very choosy about what you put into your body. Give intermittent
fasting a solid chance you won't be disappointed. And that is true as well.
Keeping your fast clean is I think a non negotiable. And you know,
if you start introducing things back in, it is such a slippery slope.
You're like, well, you know, today I feel I'm not feeling
the clean fast. I'm going to have a little cream in my coffee.
We hear this so often in the community, don't we share it. We
just had somebody came back to the community. I'm starting over, They'll say,
and they tell the story of what stopped them, and it often is
a stressful life event. You know, we talked at the beginning of this
episode about not letting that happen to you. But they'll have a stressful life
event. They'll start gradually putting in a tablespoon of this and a little bit
of that, and before they know it, they're not fasting anymore. So
keeping your fast clean is one of the best things you can do. What
do you think, Sherry, I was gonna say, somebody recently just returned
to the community. They had been successful for years, and they were in
maintenance, and they thought, you know, I'm in maintenance. I'm not
trying to lose weight anymore. I must start adding a little cream to my
coffee. Well, cream in your coffee is going to make you hungrier.
And the next thing they knew, they were opening for lunch, and then
pretty soon they were having really long windows and they were having extra meals.
And then pretty soon that slipped to where they weren't having any windows, and
they regained a lot of weight and they're back and they're like, you know,
I should have just kept stuck with what worked. That's the thing is
think of it as a very slippery slope, and it can happen. We've
seen it happen, all right. Lynn Houston from Savannah, Georgia. She's
on Intermitten Fasting Stories two times, by the way, and I also have
met her. She had coffee with me on my front porch or my back
porch, which is the one that overlooks theation. She was on that one.
She said, one of the biggest helps for me to stay committed during
the fasting period is the idea that I can have it later. I'm not
saying no to myself. I'm saying just wait a little while. If there's
a craving that's just making me crazy, I'll probably get some wrap it up
and set it aside for later, then enjoy it during the window. So
simple and yet so powerful. That's the delay in action, right, That's
a really powerful one. Rebecca from Youngstown, Ohio. She says advice I
would give to intermittent fastors would be to keep in mind that help is a
journey and it may take some time to get better. And I'm going to
change that word and there, Rebecca, not may take some time. It
will take some time, and you know understanding that intermitt and fasting is not
a quick fix, and so you know, we've been sold a lie from
the health and wellness industry, and there's a six out there for anything.
And you know, I recommended someone try a little something that in the community
the other day and they were trying it. And the book I recommended was
for one purpose, but it also I forgot it had like some weight loss
claims where it was like, I saw that lose Jerry knows what I'm talking
about. I don't want to throw the author of this book under the bus,
but the book said lose blank pounds in blank days. And I did
not recommend this book to the person as a diet book. I recommended it
for a purpose that this person was struggling with and this book might help you
with your struggle. But the person read that and thought, oh, I'm
gonna lose x pounds and X days, and then a week into it says,
I'm very disappointed I did not lose x pounds and X days. And
I'm like, no, no, no, that is not what I wanted
you to do. That we had to have a chat about that. But
you know, we can't help that we have these unrealist expectations. And because
literally was on the cover of this book, and I forgot that was on
there. I wouldn't have recommended that part of it. You know, next
time I recommended, I will say, now, look, you're not doing
this for a loss, You're doing it for the healing potential, and this
can help you fund you know what's causing your problem. It was like an
elimination kind of protocol. But you know we had we're programmed in with these
quick, fixed ideas and so then we that sets us up to fail.
When you think it's going to be quick and it isn't. Then you're and
you see the people around you that are havn't you think everyone's had, Like
if you just listen to interimant and fasting stories, the people who self select
for that and email me are the people who have had the best results,
often if they lost weight really quickly and it was easy, And they're the
ones who are like excitedly sending me an email, whereas the person who's struggling
is not, like, please can I come on your show? I haven't
lost any weight at all. So you get a skewed perspective of this should
be super easy, and you just start doing it and it works. And
so while I want intermitt and fasting stories to inspire you because there's hope.
You know, there are stories where people it took them a while and they
had to struggle, but we don't hear those in our excitement for being the
one who lost one hundred and thirty pounds and you know, alf months or
something. That's not your typical results. It's a journey. It's well and
even in the community, and people will finish their twenty eight days and they'll
be really like disappointed. They'll be like, well, I'm really disappointed because
I only lost five pounds in my twenty eight day fast start. And we're
like whoa, whoa, Like why are you disappointed? That's more than we
expected you to lose? Like right, And but they're like, yeah,
but other people are losing twelve pounds. Well, Number one, you cannot
compare your body to anybody else's. If a person lost twelve pounds, that
person was carrying so much deadly inflammation that their body was ready to shed.
Did I tell you how much white my dad lost in a hospital in two
days, like forty pounds or something. Fluid. Yeah, he was at
the hospital. He was retaining a whole lot of fluid due to some problems.
He had some kidney issues and he was obviously you know, it was
hard, a lot, a lot of problems. He was so swollen and
puffy. He lost forty pounds of fluid into days because but he did not
lose forty pounds of fat. So, yeah, we don't lose fat that
quickly. But yeah, so don't compare your journey to anybody else's comparison is
the thief of joy. That's one of my favorite sayings in all regards,
because we're all going to be so different. Anyway, these were some really
good little tweaks of the week, and thank you everybody for sending them in,
and you know, send some stuff in go to fast Feast, repeat
dot com, slash submit. We want to hear from you with all of
that. Well, at the end of each week, we really love to
leave you as some sort of motivational quote or inspirational message to carry you through
the next week. And this week's message comes from Sarah Wilbo, who is
a member of the Delay Don't a Knife community on Circle and she's also an
author. You know the book she wrote, Oh that's right, she wrote
The Skinny Spell. Yeah, she also just came on Intermit and Fasting Stories.
I'm not sure if the podcast will be out yet. I just talked
to her recently that her podcast may have already come out by the time this
episode comes out, but if not, it'll be coming out soon. Sarah
Wilbo The Skinny spell Have you read it? I'm glad you said that,
because I keep wanting to download it and then I forget the name of it.
So I just wrote it down. Good. It's such a cute book.
I would encourage everybody to read it. The Skinny Spells. I got
intermittent fasting in it. But it's such a cute premise, all right.
So she said, I saw this quote on Twitter and I just loved it.
The quote is, don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks,
the weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself
a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days choke
him down to nothing. And that is credited to Tom Waits. And Tom
Waits was he a singer? I don't know. Anyway, She said,
this really resonated with me. If I have a bad fasting day or eating
day that is not in alignment with my intentions for that day. I feel
a temptation to say what the heck and lean into that failure. Instead,
I would like to show myself some compassion, try to work out why I
made those unhelpful choices, and reset the next day. Just don't quit.
Yeah, I really think the only way to, you know, fail with
intermittent fasting is to stop. You know, we all have days that don't
go according to plan, even me, even Sheery, even everybody, but
you know, you just don't stop. Stop stopping. Every day is a
new fast, every day is a fresh beginning well, and you know so
many people will be like, oh, I had an awful day to day
I did, I didn't fast as long as I wanted to, and my
window is open longer than I went too. But tomorrow is gonna be better.
And I always tell them, Actually, a minute you closed your window
tonight, you've already started your next fast. It's already getting better, Like
that's already behind you. The minute you close your window, that is behind
you and you are starting fresh. Absolutely I love that. Thanks so much
for listening today. We would love to have you join us and the delay
don't tonight community. You can interact with both me and Sharry, plus the
most supportive bunch of intermittent fasters 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,