Episode 36: Hormones, Body Image, Food Quality, and More

Welcome to 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's Sherry? Well,
I have something exciting to share. Oh well, I want to hear
that. Well, I kind of shared it with you yesterday, so I
think y'all know. I live in a very small community about an hour northeast
of Birmingham, and we just have. We don't really have good dining options.
Like one of the reasons I love to travel is I mean, I'm
a foodie. I like good food. I like to go eat at restaurants
that I don't have access to my husband. I go out to eat on
Tuesdays. I've shared that before. I've not had good window worthy food out
in probably six months. Oh that's the point where I'm always like, why
don't I just cook at home? And he doesn't want me to spend his
day off in the kitchen cooking and cleaning, so he always wants to go
out or get takeout. But I just want to eat delicious food, right.
So anyway, we had to go to Birmingham yesterday. And a couple
of weeks ago, we were watching a football game and I saw an ad
for a restaurant that I had never heard of before, and the food looked
amazing. I looked it up. It's called walk Ons and it's partially owned
by a retired football player from Louisiana and it started in Baton Rouge. So
it's got a lot of like Cajun styled pastas and foods, blackened this and
that, red beans and rice gumbo that sort of thing. But when I
looked up their menu, I was like, that looks amazing. I don't
know where it's at, but if it's within two hours, we're driving to
one. And luckily we found when forty minutes from our house. We stopped
there yesterday. It was window worthy, it was amazing, the service was
great. My husband, who is not a foodie and will literally eat anything
you put in front of him, raved about his food. There were so
many good things on the menu that we were like, we could go back
every Tuesday for three months and try it all, and that may be the
plan. I had this amazing mango ah tuna bowl that was so fresh and
delicious, and my husband had these amazing grits and shrimp. And anyway,
we're not sponsored by not an ad. It's not an ad for wacons.
I'm just telling you I like good food. It was delicious, it was
fresh, it was amazing, and I had I was really inspired to make
my own like tunables at home. I can't buy ah tuna anywhere around me,
so well, thank you for sharing it. And there's one near me.
So there is one. I looked it up. If you like good
food, I think they're kind of a newer chain. They said, this
one had only been open like a month and a half. Look it up,
go for it, try it. Let me know what you think.
I thought it was amazing. Well I will take a look at that,
because you know, I'm always looking for someone great to go. Oh.
I just went to their website. Corn grits. Yeah, that's weird.
They have a hole as a side corn grits. I can't even explain these
grits. They are they They were white and airy, and yes, there
was corn in it. Eric's convinced that they make it with cream corn.
I don't know. I had a few bites. It was delicious. I
will definitely be getting grits next time. Well I would eat that, so
even though that's not having make grits. I just want to clarify. And
if anybody out there knows where I can order ah tuna and have it shipped
to my house, send me an email. I would love to know.
Give him your email address. Share at fast feusrepeat dot com. Very easy,
Yeah, share you with one our all right? Awesome. So for
our weekly celebration, we have new Adventures of Old Noel, she wrote,
reflecting this morning on the last year. Energy one hundred percent changes everything.
I look at the person that I was twelve months ago versus the person I
am now, wait aside, looks aside, hair aside, health aside,
Energy changes everything. I have so much energy now since I begin fasting,
and it has changed the person I am. And I just want you to
know. She wrote this in capital letters, that a whole sentence. She
feels very passionately about this. Without even realizing it. The old meat was
tired, lethargic, and maybe even a little depressed and always anxious. I
went about life with my kids and husband and dog, just doing the normal
wife and mom things, trying to keep the house together, work, create
a happy, healthy family life. But I was always trained and thought that
was par for the course. Isn't every mom like this? Of course,
finishing off every night with a professional sized glass of wine never helped either.
Now I have the energy to wake up super early, do my morning devotions,
make my kids a healthy breakfast, and not just throw cereal at them.
Well most of the time, wink wink. I have the energy to
quickly whip through my house cleaning so that when I get home at night,
I walk into a fresh clean space, not ravaged by the mess from the
day before or the morning of. At night, when I get home from
work, I have time and energy to make a healthy dinner for my family.
I have the energy to take care of things around the house that need
to be done, help my children with homework, do the sports, taxi
cab driving, and still enjoy a few favorite pastimes before bed because I'm not
completely passed out with exhaustion by eight pm. Anyway, Sorry this was so
long, but you need to know this. If you are new to fasting,
you will get a whole new life to live it if you keep it
up. Please don't quit. It is crazy how energy can make you feel
like a totally different person and give you a new lease on life. This
is so true. Absolutely, Yeah, Like I can remember before I remitt
and fasting. You know, I woke up at five point thirty to go
teach. You know, as a teacher, I had to get up and
I needed to shower before everybody else in my house and get myself ready and
before I would wake up the boys to go to school and all that.
And I had to set an alarm every single day and I would snooze it.
I would set that alarm and I would hit snooze and I would hit
snooze. It got to the point, Cherie, that I actually had to
have it on the other side of the room, so I had to get
up and walk over to it. Knowing me. Now, can you imagine
me having to snooze and my alarming on the other side of the room.
No, that sounds crazy to me. And then I would, you know,
would have mid morning slump and I would need to have a latte to
pick me up. And then I would have the afternoon slump and be so
tired. I would get home from school and I would nap. H This
is all before intermitten fasting, and I cook a healthy meal, throw whatever,
drive few frozen whatever, microwave Stofer's family meals or whatever those were.
Oh my lord, and I just felt so tired and lethargic all the time.
And now my eyes pop open. I look at the clock, and
I'm always glad when it's anytime after five. If it's after five, I'm
like, yay. I could get up, and I get up and start
my day. And I don't have those energy slumps. I don't need to
take naps. I still like to go to bed early, but that's just
me. But the energy really is amazing. I fasted for so long that
I guess I just forgot how it felt to be fatigued all the time until
my hormones crashed and my testosterone crashed, and I had a year where it
was all I could do to move from bed to the couch and the couch
the bed, and I had no energy for anything, and I felt awful
that I think that must have been what I felt like when I started fasting.
I just don't remember it. But when I started on hormone advice with
therapy, that energy was back and I was clear headed and I was go,
go, go again. So I like, that was just a year
ago that happened for me. So I totally understand how exciting it is to
have energy and be able to run around and live your life fully. That's
so important, and said, that's just an important point I want to reiterate
for everybody listening. You can be an internet and faster and have amazing energy
and then have hormonal changes due to perimenopause, going through the menopausal transition,
and those symptoms that you were describing, Sherry are very common for women through
menopause, the brain fog, the low energy, and we've heard horror stories,
and especially when I'm with my health and wellness community, were a lot
of functional medicine doctors such as Tabitha, and they talk about how women will
come into their practice and they're like every other doctor driver went to just gave
me an antidepressant or something. Yep. They're like, oh, it's just
normal. You're a mom, now you're getting older, here's your antidepressant.
Yes, and that's not really the issue. And then they get the hormones
and then they feel better because it's it's the hormones. So yes, I
felt like they were life giving. Yeah. I know that sounds crazy,
but well, hormones literally are life giving. That's what they do. They
keep our body functioning. Well, yeah, we need them. So now
we have a question from a listener. This question is from Lisa Kay from
Minneapolis. Hello, Jen and Sherry. Thanks to you gals, I have
been successfully intermittent fasting since April of twenty twenty one. I'm sixty three years
old and five years postmenopausal. Again, thanks to you gals, I have
found a new obgi N who has me on HRS as of April twenty twenty
three, and I feel so good at my visit this week, she decreased
my thyroid medication from eighty eight to fifty micrograms. Is that the right bro
those micrograms? Okay? After discovering that my TSH level is low, she
said, I had been at the higher synthroid dose for forty years. Can
you please explain the science behind how intermitt and fasting has achieved this? Thank
you? Okay. Well, so for anybody listening, I just want to
say it might sound strange that her TSH was low and so they decreased her
meds. But a low TSH indicates that a person has too much thyroid hormone,
so you give less. It's kind of an inverse thing, and it's
kind of confusing if you don't understand that, because TSH stands for thyroid stimulating
hormone and it has too with your T four. Yeah, if you have
too much hormone, your body's going to stimulate you left right right. Yes,
So we hear this a lot. We've heard this for years. I
mean, we have a friend who doesn't have a thyroid. She had it
removed and after she started intermittent fasting, she started having crazy symptoms like heart
palpitations and not sleeping, and anyway, she went to our doctor and her
TSH was really low and they like more than half HERD dose, and then
she started feeling great again. So if you're listening and you take thyroid meds
and you're new to fasting, I would really go get that checked at like
your ninety daymark, or if you start noticing symptoms of hyperthyroidism. But it's
funny. The thyroid hormones are weird because a low functioning thyroid can negatively affect
your liver, but a poor functioning liver can also affect thyroid metabolism. And
all of that has to do with how your body uses all the other hormones
in your body, even your estrogen progesterone, like, it's all tied together.
So if you have we have one hormonal imbalance, it throws everything else
off. And so really I just credit it to when we fast, we
lower inflammation, We cure fatty livers. If our livers are sluggish, we
clear out all that stored fat and glycogen. Our livers get to work better.
Therefore, it just uses it can use our hormones more efficiently, so
we don't need as much because our body is using them better. And then
I'll think a lot of it just goes to balancing blood sugars and not having
that insulin release all day, because again, insulin's a hormone, and so
you know, if you have too much insulin, then it's throwing everything else
out of whack as well. So I really just think it comes down to
balancing hormones and lowering inflammation and really healing our livers. We don't give our
livers enough credit for all they do. Yeah, they're pretty hard working,
they are. They are, They're super important. Yeah yeah, and I
am definitely not a thyroid expert. Sherry, you just explained way more than
I ever could have. But it just goes to show what we were talking
about just before we had this question. Hormones are so important. They need
to be in balance. We need to have the right amounts for whatever our
bodies need, and this just illustrates that as we heal with intermittent fasting,
the amounts that we need may change over time. And if someone asked me
one time, they're like, now, you know you said that intermittent fasting
will help heal your hormones. What about after menopause, Well, intermittent fasting
is not going to bring back starting again. It's not. It's not.
So that's a whole different thing. But that's just a natural thing that happens
with age. That's what menopause is. Our bodies have stopped making those hormones.
But it can certainly help our bodies use all hormones better, like for
all the reasons that Sherry said, m h yeah. And you know even
after menopause, you know you can have estrogen dominance because your fat creates estrogen.
I mean, there's like three different forms of estrogen, but you want
a good balance of those estrogens and not too much of the quote bad estrogen.
And so would you say, can you balance your hormones and even your
estrogen estrogyle, estrone, all of that after menopause? Was fasting? Sure,
because as your body fat goes down, then that's going to balance.
It's not going to restart your ovaries though, like that book for so Fast,
you can do a lot of things, but it can't do everything.
So now it's time for our segment called what's your Why? And you know
when I started intermittent fasting, it was for weight loss. How about you,
Sherry, oh, one hundred percent. Back in the day when I
first heard about intermittent fasting, it was two thousand and nine, and nobody
even had any idea that intermint fastening did anything or other than allow you to
eat fewer calories. That was all the experts said. Well, this is
a way to eat fewer calories, and so weight loss was the only thing
in mind. But now we understand so much more about it. It's perfectly
appropriate for weight loss to be part of your why, and if you have
weight to lose, it should be, honestly, because we feel better when
we're at a healthy weight for our bodies. But there is so much more
to what intermittent fasting can do for us beyond weight loss. And in my
book twenty eight day fast start day by day, the first thing I want
you to do is craft your why statement before beginning, because I have really
noticed in all the years of working with intermittent fasters, when your why is
deeper than weight loss alone, you're more likely to find long term success and
view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. So today we have a why from Sam,
and I think many of us can relate. Sam wrote my why Firstly,
I bloody deserve to feel healthy, happy, and confident in my body
after years of dieting and grown up hearing that women need to do X to
look like why and that is what and how you should look and if you
don't, you're less worthy. All those years of dictation from professionals, I
believed I was less worthy because I didn't fit their ideal healthy. Despite years
of my best and sincerest efforts, I am worthy of a healthy body.
And because of intermitt fasting, I am finally able to breathe, listen to
my body, and do what feels right for me. If is such a
big, beautiful breath of fresh air, allowing me the freedom and finally learning
how to love my body and all of its imperfect perfection. Who knew all
along I had the power within and what it took to be healthy, just
not the belief. See that's so powerful. That's what I really feel like.
You know, our mission is shery. We have grown up with toxic
diet culture that made us feel like we were you. You've talked about how
when you were young, you didn't feel like you were in the right body
because you were different from your family peers, well, my peers and my
family, right. I mean, I have always been I was the big
kid, you know. I was always a head taller than anybody else.
And I'm these stocky European workhorse. I'm not the thin, long limbed ballerina
that was my sister, and so I was. I feel unfairly led to
believe that I was less than that if I just didn't eat bread at dinner,
or you know, if I ate less or I didn't have that snack
or whatever, that I could be as thin and beautiful as my sister.
And it honestly took until I was intermittent basting for several years to look back
at family pictures from when I was a young girl. Like I'm talking six
eight, twelve, fourteen. Yes, I was significantly larger and my siblings,
who were very frail, thin, they're just built tiny, yes,
yes, I mean my sister's six foot tall and weighs about one hundred and
thirty five pounds. That is not me. A healthy weight for me at
five nine and a half is about one hundred and seventy pounds, and I
would kill myself trying to be one hundred and thirty five pounds. Yeah,
and I shouldn't be because when you look at our bodies, you realize we're
not the same, We're not built the same. I have so much more
muscle mass on my body, my bones are bigger. So I wish I
could go back to my younger self and give her that knowledge that I don't
have to fit a cookie cutter. I just have to be healthy for me
and love my body that I was born into. Yeah, and we're taught
that, oh, you have to be this size or you have to be
this weight. That's not true, and healthy comes in different shapes and forms.
Yep, yep. I think if really gives us that ability to just
shut off all that diet noise, it's empowering. It gets us in touch
with our body. We really start to learn what our bodies need and what
our bodies are really good at. Yeah. And also we learned to appreciate,
like you have, the shape of our natural bodies, the way we're
made. I was made to cellulate. That's all right, you know,
we were made how we were made. And once you accept my body is
strong and amazing and this is how I made, it just changes the whole
journey do you know what I would love to see what advertising when we advertise
swimsuits and clothes and whatever whatever it may be. Stop air brushing people.
Oh yeah, stop the photoshop edits. I mean even celebrities on their Instagram
they have people who retouch their candid Instagram photos. I wish I don't know
how you would do it. I wish we could just make a stand.
If there was a company that just one hundred percent put unedited versions of women
and their ads, I would support that company. Yeah, I remember seeing
that. Did you ever see like a photoshop of celebrities comparison to what the
original photo was and then what the photoshop can look like? If you ever
seen like those on the internet, it's shocking. And the celebrities have just
the same issues that we do. Yep. Yeah, Well, you know
you ever see like the Inquiry and they're like, you know, Reese Witherspoon
was out caught out without makeup and they're zoomed in on our face and they're
talking about you know, well, I get the fascination with it. As
readers, we want to see, oh do they have flaws too? What
do their flaws look like? But what if we didn't look at them as
flaws, right, It's just how we are. We were made like that,
you know. I just always remember when I go to brook Green Gardens,
which is a botanical garden near me, and they have like sculptures everywhere.
I love going to brook Green Gardens, but there's this one like sculpture
gallery where they have like the naked women in there, and all the naked
women from the ancient sculptures. They're curvy, they have a belly, they
have a little pouch, and you know, sometimes people will come in d
our community, usually early in their journey, and they're like, am I
ever going to lose my little mom pouch. I'm like, no, because
that's how our bodies are after you've had pregnancies and it stretched it out.
I have a very eye opening experience when I was young. I had my
daughter when I was eighteen. I gained probably seventy pounds when I was pregnant
with her, and I was probably twenty one or twenty two, and i'd
gotten back down to the wight. I was in high school and I went
to the doctor and I was very sick and I could not get well,
and I kept getting sick and then at the time, I was like one
hundred and fifty eight pounds and she said, I don't know where you're hiding
one hundred and fifty eight pounds on your body. She said, you need
to eat a cheese. You had gotten too skinny for your body, thin
for my body, and my immunity was awful, and I had lost muscle
masks and I said, I can't stop dieting. I still have this fat
stomach. And it was a female doctor. I'm pretty sure she was an
ob G. I n and she looked at me and she said, okay,
we didn't have a serious talk. That is not fat. That is
skin. Yeah, you've had a baby, your body stretched out, it
has shrunk back, but that is skin and it's always going to be there,
and that is your badge of honor because you gave birth to a human.
And I really heard that good and I needed to hear that. But
I do think there's too many people who say, I can't stop I still
have this my mama pouch whatever. Yeah, and there gets a point where
it's just your body. It's just what it's done, so you just have
to embrace it, think about what it gave you. It's true. I
always think about a balloon. You ever like had a balloon and you blew
it up when you were a kid. Then you deflate the balloon and it
looks all saggy. That balloon that was blown up and deflates does not look
like it did before. I mean, let's think about it. You put
jeans on straight out of the dryer and they fit great, and after you've
worn them all day, they're sagging in places. Yeah, we can't put
our belly in the dryer. Okay, once it stretches out, it's just
stretched out there, you go. All right. So we have another question
this week. It's from Melissa in New Jersey. She wrote, Dear Jenny
Cherry, I have been an intermittent faster since September of twenty nineteen, when
a good friend recommended delay, don't deny. I was fifty one years old
and over two years went from one hundred and sixty pounds to one hundred and
forty pounds and drop three sizes. I'm five o' five and I was successful
on a nineteen to five protocol. I have consumed all of Jenn's books,
and I used to follow yours. I did the excode test and learned that
I'm a fast metabolizer of alcohol. Hello, Zoe, my ex coode could
not tell me how I metabolize Alcome okay, she said, I did,
Zoe. My blood sugar control is excellent, my blood fat control was good,
but my gut microbiome ratio was low. Twenty two twenty two was a
very stressful year for my family, and between the situations we were dealing with
and my perimenopause, I gained weight, and by December of twenty twenty three
I had found those twenty pounds I lost and I had gone back up in
clothing sizes. I kept clean fasting, but my windows were getting longer and
longer, and my food choices were less than ideal. With too much sugar
and alcohol creeping back in, Fasting became harder and harder, and I was
white knuckling it for even a sixteen hour fast. At the time, I
blamed the stress hormones, menopause, and the HRT I was on. But
I realized in December of twenty twenty three that I probably had spent the last
two years never really tapping into my fat stores, even though I was still
fasting. Then I found this podcast and I binge listened to all twenty six
episodes, where my suspicions were confirmed that for the last two years I was
probably never converting to fat burning So thank you for starting this podcast. I
love the format and I'm so grateful for the education and inspiration. So I
have three questions. Number one, does the type of food determine how full
your glicogen stares are or is it simply a function of amount of food?
You advise the listener in episode twenty nine that her window was probably too long,
and describe the feeling of switching to fat burning mode. I think you
mentioned something about sugar filling up the glicogen stores, so I'm curious if sugary
things fills it up more than foods without added sugar. Can we take these
questions one by one, because she has a few, Let's answer that one,
all right. Question number one, I'm so glad to hear that you
love the podcast. We love doing it, all right. So does the
amount of food determine how full your glicogen stores are? Or is it a
function of amount of food? It's both, and it's what you're eating.
Like for example, let's imagine you never ate anything with carbs and you only
ate butter like that's all you y. I'm not recommending that, but you're
only eating butter, and you know, your glicogen stores are going to get
really, really low because you're not putting anything in that your body needs to
put into glycogen stores, right, So I would not recommend that. But
how full your glycogen stores are is related to how much and what you're eating.
And the more processed and refined what you're eating might be, the easier
it is for your body to store it away because your body doesn't have to
do any work, like, for example, I'm just gonna use carbs foods
that have carbs in them, like let's say broccoli. Broccoli is a vegetable.
Vegetables are predominantly carbs. There's some protein, some fat, and even
in vegetables, but you know, broccoli is not high protein or high fat
food. It's you know, a lot of carbs, but it's also got
a lot of fiber. So when your body is digesting that broccoli, it's
not going to store a ton of it in glycogen stores, whereas if I
ate a chocolate chip cookie, it's going to be a lot easier for my
body to put that away and store it. If you can, like pour
water on a food and it dissolves, then that just tells you your body
doesn't have to do a lot of work to process that food, right,
But if you have to cook it for a long long time to soften it
up, like broccoli, then you know your body's going to have to do
more work with that food as well. So I would focus on real food,
high quality food. You know, like if you eat a whole baked
potato, your body's not gonna Yeah, your body's going to store some of
that excess in glycogen as it breaks it down, but it's also going to
have to do a lot of work to break that down. And the fiber
of that baked potato is going to feed your gut microbiome. Well, I
see, And I want to say too, you have to really look at
do calories matter? Yes? And no. I mean, if you eat
a one hundred and eighty calorie baked potato, you're gonna feel satisfied. If
you eat one hundred and eighty calorie cookie, you're not gonna be satisfied at
all. Right, So food quality actually is really going to affect food quantity
in your window. It's true. So, I mean the more real food,
high fiber food, foods that feed your gut biome, the more of
those foods you include in your window, you're naturally going to eat. You're
going to consume less calories in your window. It's just going to work out
that way because you're not going to be satisfied eating less than healthy foods in
your window, So you're gonna end up eating more, which means you are
going to end up storing more. So is it because it was a cookie
and not a potato that you stored? I mean without doing some sort of
scientific analysis, we're not going to know that. How does your body use
it? But are you going to end up eating something else after that cookie?
Yes? Yes, because you can't live on cookies and your body's looking
for nutrients and you're going to be hungry, so it all works together.
Yep, very true. All right, you're ready to read the question too.
Yes. In an earlier episode, Jen mentioned that what you open your
window with matters because it can keep your blood sugar lower. She mentioned that
since she opened with something that kept her blood sugar low, she was able
to have a dessert after dinner and it didn't spike her blood sugar because of
what she had eaten earlier. She was wearing her CGM, which is how
she knew. What are the practical implications of keeping your blood sugar low in
your eating window? I have this Zoe app so I can figure out what
foods are better for my blood sugar, and I've been trying to open my
window with those that have no impact or good impact on my blood sugar.
But I'm not sure why this may be good for me or how it impacts
my overall goal of weight loss. This is such a good question. I'm
so glad that you asked, because we tend to look at things that we
can measure easily, and we're in a CGM. Your blood sugar you can
measure that easily, and then you like make all these conclusions about that that
may not even really be that important. Right. For example, let's talk
about your blood sugar going up after you eat. That is physiologically normal.
Blood sugar goes up after we eat, and what we eat does matter.
We've talked before, I've talked about this. I'm pretty sure in fast feast
repeat, think about your blood sugar. What you want is like a little
kitty roller coaster, like the little Caterpillar roller coaster that they have at the
at the amusement park. You got ups, you got downs. It goes
up, it goes down. Now that Caterpillar roller coaster is not flat.
You know. Our goal is not to have a flat blood sugar that never
goes up or down. We want it to go up and then back down,
and then back up and then back down. But what we don't want
our blood sugar to do is like that scary roller coaster that I'm not going
to get on right right, it goes way up and then it crashed.
No, we don't want that. We don't want huge spikes and huge crashes.
But then we can get in our mind when we're wearing a CGM,
we can get in our mind that having it go up slowly and stay up
higher is what we want. But I've realized some interesting things about my own
blood sugar. And I learned this from reading Mastering Diabetes. There's some books
out there that you could read the talk about preventing the spike, and then
you get so caught up on what your blood sugar is doing in the hour
to two hours after you eat. That you don't look farther down the road,
and so you can prevent a spike. Like, for example, if
I ate a lot of fat with my carbs, maybe my blood sugar doesn't
go up as quickly because the fat slows it down. Maybe it doesn't go
quite as high. But when I when I read Mastering Diabetes, then I
started looking downstream further. I realized, Oh, but it stays up higher
all night and I wake up and it's still higher. So what do they
call that? The area under the curve? Sherry, It's like the blood
sugar is still there. It's just coming out over a longer period of time
and it might not go as high, but it's still there. Like the
blood sugar is still there. It's just different. So who's to say what
is better? I mean, I wasn't having giant spikes like. It wasn't
like it shot up to three hundred and then crashed down to eighty. It
wasn't doing any of that. You also don't want it to go up and
hang out and stay high elevated for a long time, like two hours after
eating. You really want your blood sugar to return to baseline, right and
that's what I was trying to explain and maybe missing the mark. So it's
not just what your blood sugar is doing. So everybody who might be experimenting
with it CGM or reading the book that talks about not spiking, you might
think I'm nailing it. I'm not spiking. But if your blood sugar is
staying elevated for hours and hours and hours and not returning to baseline, that's
also not good for you. So for me, if I wanted to have
the best blood sugar for me, whole food, plant based, low fat,
that's what gave it to me. I learned that where in my CGM,
but that also gave me die of brain and realizing that my blood sugar,
no matter when I eat real foods, no matter what the macros are,
when I eat real foods, my blood sugar is within a healthy range.
Could it be more optimal? It sure could if I did whole food,
plant based low fat. I don't want to do that, so I'm
not doing it. So it's all a matter of understanding the data and knowing
what you're trying to do, and knowing that sometimes we can get if we
zoom in too close, like on that two hours after you eat and only
look at that, you could be missing a bigger picture that's also important.
Yep, yep, I agree, And you know so I was trying to
game the system with a CGM about fifteen months ago. For three months,
I was having really unstable blood sugars, not in big spikes, but I
was having like reactive hypoglycemia, and anything I ate, I would bottom out
afterwards. And the only way I could permit that was to eat pretty much
keto ish. But I didn't feel good and I wasn't satisfied. I was
hungry, and I gained ten pounds in three months, and worse than that,
when I went to my doctor, my cholesterol was really high. Not
everybody's cholesterol gets high when they do keto, but my body does. I
think I'm a bit of a hyper responder, and my LDL was concerning to
me. So just to summarize that, Sherry was gaining the CGM and eating
in a way that kept her blood sugar steady, but she gained ten pounds.
And so if you're just looking at the blood sugar like, well,
I'm nailing it, and I was nailing it. I was not. I
was not nailing it at all and doing Zoe. I know that my body
processes fat. I'm a good fat processor. I don't have as good glucose
control. I would kind of love to do it again now that I'm on
hormone replacement and see how it is. So I thought I was good,
right, but then when my labs came back, my labs weren't looking good.
I was inflamed. I was gaining weight. That's not healthy. So
you really have to look at the big picture. How do you feel I
wasn't supporting my gut microbiome, which I knew was a mess from doing Zoe
by eating that way. So it's really a balancing act of what makes you
feel well, what keeps you feeling well after you eat, what results in
weight loss if you're trying to lose weight, what keeps inflammation low? And
so you really have to tune into your body and really pay attention to what
it's doing after you eat, and how do you feel all right? And
then number three, she says alcohol. I've heard from you both that the
liver prioritizes metabolizing alcohol over food. I take this to mean that I've I
had wine in my window and I close it at eight pm, for example,
that my body may not start metabolizing the food I've consumed for another hour
or two because it's processing the wine. The practical implication of this is that
my fasting time is essentially reduced because of my body's delay in processing food.
Is that true? And is this why alcohol can be problematic when trying to
lose weight? Beyond the extra calories and the extra eating that can come from
drinking, does it matter where in your window you have wine? Does it
matter how much one glass can delay metabolizing food less than when you have two
glasses. Thank you so much for your education in the community have created.
I am recommitted to my fasting lifestyle, and I'm tracking my windows now,
not my fasting for a nineteen to five protocol for the month of January,
and I hope to get to twenty four to rev up weight loss and lose
the menopausal spare tire around my waist. Yeah. And also I wanted to
say if you haven't talked to your doctor yet about hormone replacement therapy, because
Sherry, that was one I think she said she did start hormone well and
said she therapy. It was the HRT that she was on. You're right,
she said that. And the type of HRT you're on matters the time.
Like someone in the community they're using sharetic, they were using synthetic.
They were using the synthetic stuff, and so it does matter what you're using.
That makes such a big difference. And also there's a obg my end
that's in the health and wellness community that I'm a part of, sharing when
I was in Arizona recently and he has a Instagram and so I've started following
him, and he said, some doctors put you on birth control pills after
menopause and think they're doing HRT h thcause they're like, oh, here you
go, And I'm like what anyway, Yeah, And when women go to
their doctors when they turn forty and suddenly start having horrible period, they just
put them on a pill. They're having hormonal imbalances. They give them the
pill I didn't even which is masking the problem and making it worse. And
so you know, it depends on what you get. So I would relate,
don't just assume HRT didn't work for me. I would really dig in
and see what you were having for that now all those questions about alcohol and
food, that's really really complicated stuff. And I can't tell you that.
Serry can't tell you that. I don't know if anybody could really tell you
that exactly. So you know, you can't like say, well, now
my body is a metabolising wine and it's not working on the food at all,
because it's all your body metabolizes ethanol. First. It has to process
that because it's a poison. Is exactly your body sees alcohol is a poison.
That is its priority. It has to burn through that alcohol before it
starts burning glycogen. But it's still processing your food. So it's not like
digestion comes to a halt because your body is dealing with the alcohol, but
your glycogen goes into storage. Right, It's story because it's it's dealing with
the alcohol. Yes, so as your body is digesting your fod, So
it's not like you stopped eating your food and now your body is just focusing
on the wine and the food's just sitting there and you haven't really started,
you know, quote fasting yet. You know it takes our bodies a long
time to process anything we put in. So is your question, does it
delay your body flipping the switch the next day. The answer is yes,
yeah, yes it does, and that is all you really need to know.
Yeah, and Sherry and I measured that when we had our breath ketone
meters that we got and we experimented with them several years ago. I would
not recommend it, do not get one, but I did notice that it
took me longer to flip the metabolic switch after drinking. That was very interesting.
Yep, yep. So and if you are somebody that drinks nightly,
then absolutely that's affecting your body's ability to get into fat burning and really burn
through your fat stores while fasting. So it's not that your body isn't metabolizing
your food. That's just important to understand the process of digestion is still going
along. It just is what your liver is busy doing and what it's tackling
burning all if it's burning off that alcohol, Yeah, are you burning glycogen
when you stop fasting and go to bed, No, you're burning alcohol.
So that's important. I think you know, I'm reading your questions and I
think you really kind of want to understand how it all works. But I
also wonder how much you want to game your body. Don't game your body.
Don't hate me for saying that I've done that. Though we have,
we've done it. Your body is smart and you can't game your body.
We've both done it in different ways. And really it just comes down to
moderation and eating really good quality food and nourishing your body well. Fuel it
well. It will do you well. You also asked about alcohol. Just
throw this out there. Alcohol is estrogenic and that actually can lead to abdominal
weight gain. And you said you wanted to lose your spare tire in your
waist. So Jen and I are not anti wine. Listen, I don't
drink wine anymore. I don't drink anymore. I'm not anti wine, rarely
drink anymore. There is nothing better than a nice glass of prosecco. I
still think about it sometimes and think, oh, I'd love a glass of
prosecco. But you know what I don't want. I don't want to struggle
through my fast the next day. And I don't want my sleep impacted because
when my sleep's impacted, then my fast are harder. I like easy fasting,
so I like to set myself up for success, but it can lead
to awake gan And it also a lot of people don't know this lowers testosterone,
which affects muscle protein synthesis, affecting your muscle mass. And if you're
post metal puzzle, you want to hold onto that muscle mass because that is
really going to help your metabolic health. So just thought i'd throw that out
there. You know, that makes me think of a member of my family
that's no longer alive, not like a really close family member, but it
was an alcoholic and big beer belly and also very very low muscle tone,
So that just really goes along with that, right, the lower lower testosterone.
That's interesting the hormonal effects as well, because we all have heard of
the beer belly, but the very spindly arms and legs and no muscle tone.
I never thought about that. So I've just learned something. Thank you
sharing, all right, Before we get to our tweak of the week,
I want to talk about my books and which ones you need and which ones
will help you wherever you are along your journey. If you are new to
intermittent fasting, if you are restarting after a break, or if you just
feel like you are struggling and you're in need of a refresh, then you're
going to want to get twenty eight day Fast Start day by day, and
it is the ultimate guide to starting or restarting your intermittent fasting lifestyle. So
it sticks. I didn't realize when I wrote it how beneficial it would be
for people who just feel like they'd gotten kind of sloppy with their intermittent fasting
lifestyle. And they never quit, but they just felt sloppy with it.
So it's really been beneficial. The people in the community that have been using
it, they're like, well, I never quit fasting, but wow,
this book has really like reinvigorated me. So if you're listening and you're someone
who feels like you need to be reinvigorated, twenty eight day Fast Art day
by day, give yourself a refresh. It's a companion book for Fast Feast
Repeat, so you also need to have a copy of that as well.
And that's a book, you know, is we hear from people that have
been fasting for years. They'll be fasting for years, they'll go back and
re listen or reread Fast Feast Repeat, and they learn things they never picked
up the first time. So it's a book you'll want to have to go
back to later. I would probably learn something if I've read it, because
it's been so long since I wrote it, I'd be like, Wow,
that's amazing. I can't remember that I wrote that. Anyway, It's got
a lot of information in there. Also, if you're a settled, intermittent
faster and you know you want to clean up what you're eating, your personal
care products, the cleaning products you use in your home, then I think
you'll enjoy cleanish. I wrote it so that the process of cleaning up would
feel less daunting, and it's got a step by step approach that you control
every step of the way. I'm not going to make you use natural deodorant
until you're ready. It took me till twenty twenty three to finally find one
I liked, but you always get to decide, and you can find all
those by going to Jen Stevens dot com. There's a place to get the
books, or just go to your favorite book retailer. All right, now
it's time for our tweak of the week. 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 is why it is always
helpful to hear how other intermittent fasters are making intermittent fasting work for them.
So this tweak was submitted by Steve in Michigan. Steve says, I have
struggled with closing my window. I keep wanting to have a bedtime snack.
I don't need it and I'm not hungry. So I have leaned into a
bedtime routine. When I close my window, I immediately brush my teeth.
I wear a d so I take it out. Then at bedtime I lean
into some self care. I washed my face, put on some moisturizer.
Then I get out the twenty eight day fast Start and review the day.
At that point I'm ready to sleep. So I love that. So he's
using the twenty eight day fast Art book and at the end of the day
there's a reflection and you know what shearing people at the end of the twenty
eight day Fastart. I'm sure you saw them. They're like, where am
I going to reflect? Now? I don't have that anymore, Like,
yes, I'm a seen that. Get a note, well, I did
recommend your DV life journal delayed onto my life journal. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's a great resource that we don't recommend enough. Yeah, for
everybody who's listening. I wrote that in Gosh eight twenty eighteen something like that.
I think it was somewhere around in there, and it was the delayed
on tonight Life Journal. My school teacher hat was really on when I wrote
that. It looks like a school teacher wrote it, and I did.
But it's got like so many bits and pieces that you can use. It's
good for it has like a daily reflection every day for six months, but
other sections you can use, so you can find it only on Amazon.
It's a paperback delayed. Don't deny Life Journal. I recommend it all the
time. Well good. Some people like never talk about it. They like
that daily check in and that little self accountability piece and write I think too,
if you're really trying to tune into what foods work for you or whatever,
it's a great place to kind of do that, or even just start
a new habit like exercise or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's
a great resource. And I love that Steve is doing a little self care
before it did. That is like a perfect habit stack. And they say
those that actually have a bedtime routine sleep better. So, oh, well
I have a bedtime instead of just yeah, if you just like get up
and go to bed, like it takes you a while to wind down.
But if you actually have a little bedtime routine and you take some time to
like, you know, like he's doing a little face wash and moisturizing or
whatever, whether it's a little stretching before bed or whatever, that it can
really help you go to sleep. Well. We'd love to leave you with
inspirational or motivational messages to carry you through the next week. And today we
have a quote shared by Layla in Fort Dodge, Iowa. She has a
quote by James Clear who is the author of Atomic Habits. And you heard
me talk about habit stacking. I learned that from James Claire and he's an
intermittent faster. The quote is, every action you take is a vote for
the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your
beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your
new identity. That is such a good quote. I literally think we could
just open Atomic Habits at random, put our finger on the page and read
a sentence and it would be inspiring. It's such a good book, but
I really love that quote. Everything you do is a vote for the type
of person you wish to become. You know, when I wake up in
the more and make my bed, I want to be someone who's tidy.
Well, it just goes to the habit. Everything you do is the start
of a habit. Really, anything you do more than twice is the start
of a habit. So if you want different habits, you just take different
actions. Think of who you want to be in twenty years and ask yourself
what would that person have been doing to get to be that person? And
then do those things? Well, And I just thought too, like it
says, as the votes build up, you know, every action you take,
so does the evidence of your new identity. And I've often said for
years that people are practicing intermittent fasting and then one day they're an intermittent faster.
Yeah, their entire identity shifts. And it's true. We see it
all the time. Yep, we are intermittent fasters. We're not trying intermittent
fasting. We are intermittent fasters. 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 sharing, 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 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,