Episode 37: PCOS and ADF, Eating Windows While on Vacation, Autophagy, 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 it's 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,
I'm doing really well. It's your foot all better. I always say it's
all better. But I can wear a real shoe and that's good as long
as I don't do too much. I'm relatively pain free. Well, I'm
glad to hear it. You don't realize how much we take for granted just
moving around pain free, I know. So then you've got pain and it's
like what Yeah, And I'm not one that likes to be done and out.
I got to know me neither things to do, and I hate asking
for help, so too. It kept yelling at me because I'd be trying
to hobble somewhere to do something and he would be like, why don't you
just ask me? I'm like, yes, I just wanted to do it
for myself, right right well, asking for help is also a beautiful thing,
so I'm reaching to the choir right there. But also I'm bad at
it myself. So I can't remember if this happened before record last week,
I don't think I shared it. I got stuck on my bathroom floor,
and I don't I was just a few days out from surgery, and so
I've got a very large incision on the top of my foot, and I
got down on my hands and knees, and then I really I couldn't get
back up because I couldn't put my good leg up and put all my weight
on my bad foot, and I couldn't stand up with my bad foot and
I was literally on my hands and knees stuck on the bathroom floor and I
had to call my husband to help pick me up off the floor. And
I realized then I never ever, ever went to lose my mobility and my
ability to get up and down off the floor. Like I just had this
flash forward thirty years and I was like, I don't ever want that to
be me. Ye just made me see. It's a powerful lesson. You've
got to keep your strength and your mobility and your flexibility. You got to
keep it up because I mean, you don't even think, you just take
it for granted that once you get on the floor you're gonna get back up.
And then I couldn't get up, and I'm like, wow, wow,
very high. Yes. Well, this week we have a weekly celebration
from Sue in Canada and JD. And I know Sue, you know Sue.
I looked at the email Sue wrote. This year at our annual Cousin's
Weekend, I had a huge mental slash emotional victory. This is a three
day party weekend and this year we had thirty people in attendance. I usually
have to do some mental gymnastics around having very short fasts, over eating,
over drinking, etc. This year, I said to myself, I'm just
going to stick with my current fasting pattern, which is an uppish downish approach.
On uppish days, I have two meals with any foods I like,
and on downish days, I have just dinner with a protein, vegetables,
a fruit, and sometimes a homemade latte or just a clear tea so at
cousins. Weekend, I ate dinner on Friday. Saturday was breakfast, lunch,
dinner, and red wine. Then on Sunday I just date dinner again
with no alcohol, and on Monday, I had breakfast and lunch before we
left. I felt at peace and I did not feel deprived the whole time.
I did have a slight weight bump from the wine, but I knew
it was coming and it did not discourage me at all. It will take
me a week to lose the inflammation from it all, but I'm okay with
it because I only use alcohol as a social lubricant two or three times a
year. I just had my fifth year astiversary and this approach worked beautifully for
me, and it did not trigger any guilt or upset, and I am
so pleased and I'm so glad to here. Yeah, we can really struggle
with the whole idea of celebrations and vacations. And you know, if you've
been an intermittent faster for a long time, you know that you can flex
for vacations and holidays and celebrations, but you also know if you flex too
much, you're not going to feel your best and it's going to take you
a while to get back to feeling normal when you get back. So sue
having a plan to pop in those downish days, and you know, sometimes
you feel like, what does that explain the protocol to me? There is
no downish oppish protocol. It's a casual thing. The word ish implies that
it's not really there's not really a downish less than you normally eat window.
Yeah, an up ish upish for her, she's having two meals instead of
one, right, So it's not an official protocol that you're gonna find written
in the books. It's just it's those are words, really. I made
them up one day on a podcast talking to somebody on intermittent fasting story.
So we understand down and up. If you've read the alternate daily fasting chapter
or heard us talk about it. There are specific guidelines for what is down
and what is up if you're doing down day up day, but there are
no specific guidelines for down ish up ish. This is where you just apply
the Okay, well it's not exactly down and it's not exactly up, and
you get to define it yourself, right. So, and people will ask,
well, exactly how many calories is downish? We can't tell you that.
We can't tell you that. It's not a protocol, it's it's a
ish. Did you have a significantly light eating day that is not your norm?
Maybe you want to eat a little bit more the next day, have
a little bit longer window, have two small meals instead of one big meal,
and your body will direct you. You know. Somebody was just saying
they were kind of stressed out because they've been doing nineteen to twenty hour fasts
and one day they fasted extra long and they only had like a two or
three hour window, a three hour window I think. But then the next
day they opened two hours early because they were starving, right, And I'm
like, in the grand scheme of thing, over these two days, you
still fasted nineteen hours and had a five hour window, if you added up
and average it right. Then she admitted that she is getting ready for a
vacation, and so she has been probably significantly under eating in her window for
a week. And then her body said eat. He said, feed me
too much fasting, not enough feasting, And your body will let you know
so exactly. And you know that's the point of appetite correction is not just
that you eat less because you're fasting because you're not as hungry. Appetite correction
is also the time when your body tells you to eat more because you're hungrier.
That's a great time correction. It's listening to your body eating more when
you need to eat less when you're satisfied. Right. It's your hunger and
grella and your hungered satiety hormones that are getting rebalanced, and they're actually signaling
to you the way they're intended to signal to you. Yeah, being really
hungry because your body needs more food is not something bad. It's actually how
our bodies work, right, all right, So now we have a question
from a listener. This question is from Sarah Eula. Sarah says, Hijin
and Sherry love you guys so so much, and I'm happy to have finally
found a lifestyle that I love. I am thirty two, almost thirty three,
and have been intermittent fasting for over a year. Started in April of
twenty twenty two, mostly sticking to either a sixteen eight or twenty four schedule.
I've been trying to incorporate more whole or healthy foods, but I also
still enjoy some greasy fast food. I've been diagnosed with PCOS, have some
major hormonal imbalances and a lot of belly fat, probably insulin resistant. After
practicing intermittent fasting for a year, I have not lost a single pound.
I've actually gone from one ninety to two hundred and ten pounds. I have
also not been exercising at all, so I probably need to start some sort
of exercise protocol too. I'm disheartened and struggling to figure out what to do
first in order to tweak my intermittent fasting protocol to see the scale go down
and get my clothes to fit better. I'm so uncomfortable in my body,
but I love the freedom that comes with if so, I hope I can
adjust something to make intermittent fasting feel more successful in the weight lost section.
I honestly have not read Fast Feast Repeat yet, but have read Delay,
Don't Deny, and have listened to every single Intermittent Fasting Stories episode. But
I should probably hurry up and read Fast Feast Repeat since it's on my kindle.
I will take any advice you all all have, though, I also
have been dealing with a lot of infertility issues because of the pcos and hormonal
imbalance and would love to get pregnant one day. I've never ever gotten pregnant,
so I would love to know if you guys have heard any stories or
experiences like mine, and would gladly take any advice you have. Would love
to lose weight and get pregnant. Well, I'll just take your last question
first. Yes, we have heard through the years that people who previously were
unable to get pregnant were able to get pregnant once they started intermittent fasting.
And in fact, we've had a lot of surprise babies, women who just
absolutely were convinced that they were never going to get pregnant. They weren't taking
any precautions because they didn't think it was going to happen, And we've had
women in their early to mid forties who have gotten pregnant either after years of
infertility, you know, maybe they had babies when they were younger, and
then as they got older they had tried again and then they couldn't get pregnant
for whatever reason, and then they start fasting and next thing they know,
they're like, hey, I love fasting, but oops, I'm pregnant.
So we have heard this for years and years, so yes, it can
happen. As for your PCOS, you said you probably are insulin resistant.
If you have PCOS, then yes you are insulin resistant. There's really no
probably about it. They know that PCOS is a disease of insulin resistance.
And when your insulin is out of whack, your blood sugars are out of
whack, all that's out of whack. Then it causes you know, like
all your hormones to be out of whack. And you that's what you're experiencing
right now. You said that you've been intermittent fasting for over a year.
You're doing sixteen eight or twenty four and that's just not going to be enough
fasting to heal your body. And that's that's I noticed that as well.
Sharer when she said sixteen eight or twenty four. There's a lot of room
between sixteen eight and twenty four. So when you really dig in, are
you mostly do in sixteen eight? Right? Like, what is the average
window? Link? If you do a random sixteen eight and the rest of
the time you're doing a twenty four schedule, that's a lot different than fasting
anywhere from sixteen to twenty hours per day and having more six to eight hour
windows. I honestly, well, number one, I want you to read
Fast, Feast, Repeat, Do it now. You won't be sorry.
You'll learn a lot. I think you'll learn a lot about your body.
You're going to learn about how the fast is going to benefit you. And
there's also an entire chapter dedicated to the upday, down day approach. And
if you are really wanting to heal your body and your insulin resistance, I
really think that's gonna be the best protocol for you right now. Doctor Cecily
Ganhart, she is a physician in Kansas who is a fertility doctor and she
actually helps women with infertility and many of those women have pcos and she prescribes
fasting for her patients. So if you have any you know, questions,
about that. You can look her up online. I know she used to
be present on social media. I haven't really seen her as much lately,
but you know, you might look out for her information that's out there and
see what she has to share about PCOS and fasting and what she recommends.
But yeah, I think you're really going to need to do some more fasting
to heal that insulin resistance and food quality matters. And you said you're trying
to incorporate more whole and healthy foods, and so I applaud you for that
because food really can be medicine. Any other thoughts, jin, Yeah,
I was also going to recommend Cecily Ganhart's episode. It was Intermittent Fasting Stories,
episode thirty four, so go back and listen to that. And again
she does longer fasts like the Alternate Daily Fasting kind of fasts for her patients.
And also she uses dietary approaches because with PCOS, your body is,
like Sherry said, it's insulin resistant. You've got to get your influin down
and that is through both the fasts and what you're eating. This is where
Sherry said she's right, food is medicine. I also want you to listen
to episode three hundred and five of Intermittent Fasting Stories, which is Leslie Taylor,
and that is a very powerful alternate daily fasting episode. So if you
listen to thirty four, which is Cicely Ganhart in episode three oh five,
which is Leslie Taylor, you'll hear from the medical side of things from doctor
Ganhart, and then you'll hear from someone who needed a DF to heal her
body, and that's Leslie Taylor. You know, I know that it's really
comfortable to have a daily eating window, but you know, fasting is an
intervention, you know. And Leslie said, she really what really was her
turning point is she was listening to I think it was the Fasting Method podcast
and they talked about fasting as a medical intervention that your body requires for healing,
and so that's such only shifted her mind to, oh, alternate daily
fasting is a medical intervention that my body needs. And I think they might
have I haven't heard of this epsis. I don't listen to that podcast,
but I think they might have compared it to like, if you had cancer
and you needed chemo, you would do it. You wouldn't. I'm not
feeling it today, right, I'm not feeling chemo. No, you would.
You would absolutely do it because you know that it's healing your body.
And the same thing with alternate daily fasting. When you're thinking about it therapeutically
as a medical intervention that your body needs so that you can reverse your pcos,
you can become fertile. You can also lose the weight that you would
like to lose, and sometimes we have to make changes. That my scare
is at first. So if you're already able to do intermittent fasting, you've
been doing it for a year, you can do ADF. I think ADF
is like eighty percent mental. It is you have to wrap your brain around
it. Once you get the first one done, you'll feel such a like
sense of accomplishment and kind of a relief. You're kind of like, okay,
like I got that monkey off my back. I've done it. I
didn't die. It wasn't that bad. And you can kind of just build
momentum from there. Even if you just start with like one a week,
go to two a week, and then you know, switch to like a
four to three, you can ease your way in. You don't have to
just suddenly go from a daily eating window to suddenly you're doing eightyf It doesn't
have to be that extreme. So ease your way in, get familiar with
how it feels, don't hesitate to use the down day meal if you need
it. And yeah, but start by reading that Fast Fee's Repeat book and
you can go straight to the Alternate Daily Fasting chapter. You know, I've
been saying more and more lately, if I could revise one thing in Fast
Feast to Repeat, it would be in the Alternate Daily Fasting chapter, to
emphasize that the upday really should be eight to twelve hours. I agree.
I remember debating it in my own head because we were running the Facebook groups
and people were doing alternate daily fasting and we had kind of been saying six
to eight hours as a rule of thumb, and I'm like, I really
feel like it should be longer, but this is what we've been saying.
I want to be consistent, and I didn't listen to my gut. And
so more time has passed because I wrote Fast Feat Repeat in twenty nineteen.
The more the time has passed, the more I have realized that you really
do need eight to twelve hours for your update. Yeah. I mean,
if you're just doing a random down day and you can sufficiently feed in six
hours, I don't think that's going to be you know, detrimental long term.
But if you are really settling into a four to three or an eightf
pattern, yep. We just don't see success with people who routinely keep a
really short up day. Yeah. And if you talk to successful alternate day
fasters or people who do four to three or even people who do like a
down day up day, eating window hybrid schedule, what you find is that
they may go in with this idea of oh, I'm going to keep my
eating window or my update as shore as possible, but what they find is
it's not sustainable, right, and it can actually get them into sort of
like a binge. It's really a binge restrict cycle because right because you're fasting,
you know, and then they feel like they really start to binge,
and then they start really getting to their down days and they get hard and
they can't do them, and they start getting hyper focused on food and they're
hungry, and those are all really signs that their body is needing a longer
update and you need that. You know, people think about electrolytes while you're
fasting and you think, oh, you know, do I need an electrolyte
solution or whatever. You know, most of your electrotics are coming from food.
So by having a good, long, you know, well rounded,
nutrientden upday, you're getting all those electrolytes that your body needs as well.
Yeah, that's really really important. And then again that just like Sherry said,
We've just seen so many people struggle, and you know, the advice
that we give is based on seeing people who are succeeding and seeing people who
are struggling. What do all the strugglers have in common? Will a lot
of them tend to have a really short update, or they will try to
wait to get to like forty two hours or something. They're like, I
always fast for forty two and then I open and then they're like, you
know, and then I binge and I can't stop eating, and then I
hate my down days. And so it's just been a matter of hearing from
so many people and knowing what works for people and also what causes struggling.
If it's getting harder and harder and harder over time, that's a signal to
you that something is not working, and that's when you listen to your body,
especially if you start having an increased urge to binge. Increased urge to
binge is related to over restricting and also food quality. Yes, if you
stop over restricting and improve your food quality, the urge to binge really does
improve. So and now it's time for our segment called What's Your Why?
And you know, one of the my favorite parts about my new book,
twenty eight day fast Start day by day is that I ask readers to craft
their why statements before beginning. And you know, it's fine for weight loss
to be a big part of that. If we have weight to lose,
we want to lose it, and that is important to us. But if
your why is deeper than weight loss alone, you're more likely to find long
term success and view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. Before I share somebody's why,
I do want to back up one second because I thought of something while
you were talking. Okay, for Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, I really
recommend getting a fasting insulin done. Oh yeah, you're really going to know
what your degree of insulin resistance is and it's going to be a really good
marker that you can look at over time to see if the protocol that you
are doing is healing you. Like, you don't know how much healing you've
already completed in the life last year of fasting. You know, insulin fasting.
Insulin may not be sky high, but it doesn't mean it wasn't a
year ago. But it's really going to help you as you're trying to tailor
a healing eye of protocol to be able to check that in three months or
check it in six months and really see that it's coming down. And that
is really going to especially if the scale's not moving how you want it to
move, that's just really going to give you the reassurance that you are making
a difference with those fasts, and so I think that's really really important that
you do that. So anyway, I just felt I had to share that.
I'm glad that you thought of that that was important. All right,
what's your why? So, Jennifer shared initially in August twenty seventeen, it
was to lose weight because I was a bit overweight on the BMI scale.
I lost five kilograms in three months, but put it back on several months
later. During that three months, inflammation and swelling caused by osteo arthritis went
down, and for the first time since the early nineteen nineties, I did
not have pain in my fingers and I still fast about seventeen hours a day,
and I still don't have pain in my fingers or toes unless I do
something silly like wear high heels or tight shoes. I still have not lost
the weight I want, but my weight stopped going up and I have maintained
the same weight all these years. So you know, Jennifer, she's not
in a weight loss mode. It doesn't seem like she's stressed out about losing
weight right now. She's settled into a fast and a window link that's keeping
her inflammation at bay, which is huge. As we just talked about earlier,
pain really is exhausting and it just wears on you over time. So
being pain free is very important. I just interviewed somebody this morning, Sherry
Tammy, and that episode won't come out till April thirtieth, so because we're
a little bit ahead with this podcast versus the other one. But she did
sixteen eight for four years and didn't lose any weight at all, but she
felt so much better and then finally she began to push herself too. Now
she has like a three to five hour window and has lost weight. Love
it. But she settled into sixteen eight because she loved how she felt and
it wasn't a weight loss protocol for her, but she achieved appetite correction,
she felt physically better, she had emotional freedom, and then finally she was
ready to push her fast longer. And it was such a great illustration of
what we always say on this podcast, Like Jennifer here, she feels so
much better. She just really reminded me of Tammy. She's doing about a
seventeen hour daily fast. It's not enough for her to see weight loss.
So if she could push it to about a nineteen five, I bet she'd
see the weight loss that she wanted. And if you can do seventeen,
you can do nineteen. Yep, you can. It might take you a
week or two to really like settle in and feel good with it, but
you can push yourself. You can get there. And yeah, it's amazing
how just an extra two hours of fasting every day can make such a difference
with weight loss. But yeah, I'm curious the person you interviewed, like
she knew that wasn't her weight window, and she just wasn't mentally ready to
address it or did she think sixteen eight should result in a weight loss.
She just cruised along with sixteen eight and enjoyed all the benefits that she was.
Yep, she enjoyed the lifestyle. She had some things that went on,
you know, over at the time. You know, she lost some
family member. I mean just you know, things like that that were life
were going on. Life happened exactly, life happened, and it was challenging.
Also, the pandemic was all through out there, which we didn't really
talk about, but it was. The years were like twenty nineteen to twenty
twenty three, so it was a very challenging time for lots of people.
But she just felt so much better. She never considered quitting intermittent fasting through
all that time, but then she was finally ready to push herself a little
more and then the weight loss began. So there is a weight loss protocol
for everybody out there. It's just a matter of finding it and pushing yourself
a little bit out of your comfort zone. I was curious because I read
something this morning and it said sixteen eight is the most popular weight loss.
It's the easiest to do, and it's effective and people lose way and blah
blah, And I'm like, not not exactly. Well, apparently they said
okay, and it's effective for a lot of things. But if somebody heard
them say on the Zoe podcast that they said something like there's no evidence that
anything more than sixteen eight is better for help, And I'm like, well,
there might not be any studies that actually, you know, quote proved
that. But when you're talking about fat loss, we have so much evidence
anecdotally from people that those few more hours matter. So I guess it just
depends on what you're doing. When I have that one graph I share that
came from some research came from it was a fasting. Yep, I know
exactly where that shows that, you know, fat it is really mobilized at
around eighteen hours of fasting. Yeah, so that just depends on what your
goals are. It's like, I guess the Zoe people were looking at it
from like health and if you're doing intermittent fasting for help, they haven't been
able to find That doesn't mean there aren't any, but they hadn't found any
studies that proved to them that you needed to fast more than sixteen hours for
health benefits. That being said, we have so much markers they were using.
Well, I don't know, it's just you look at all the studies,
what they look at. I know, who knows. I know they
all picked different things, right. I think that's great that Jennifer has just
you know, she knows what she's up for and I know exactly she is.
She used to be in our DDD community when we are on Facebook.
Oh all right, Well we have another question this week from Judith in Newcastle
upon Tyne in the UK. Their little towns and stuff have like so key
romantic sounding names. She said, Hi, I'm very much a newbie at
intermittent fastings six weeks in, but I'm listening to your podcast NonStop for all
the tips. Like many people, I have tried different diets unsuccessfully. So
when I researched, if I had a light bulb moment, this could work
for me. I am seventy three years of age and I have been unhappy
with my weight for about ten years. I haven't under active thyroid, which
I take medication for, but I'm sure I have slow metabolism. I am
overweight, not obese, but I am hoping that IF will help me to
shift fifteen pounds, which would make me very happy, and of course the
health benefits are enormous. I am really getting to grips with it and realized
what clean fasting was only this week, but I am now on board with
that. I have not been able to find anything on how to manage IF
when on holiday, particularly on a cruise where there is lots of lovely food.
Not sure I could go very long fasting. I'm sure it's just common
sense and to play it by ear, but I would love to hear your
thoughts on this. I actually talk about this in Fast Feast Repeat, so
judas it sounds like you might not have read Fast Feast Repeat yet, but
you might want to start there. If you're someone who's more an auditory learner,
maybe you could listen to it on audible and I will go ahead and
tell you they answer, though I won't mean you find in the book,
but I actually talk about that because Sherry and I've been on a couple cruises
together back in the pre pandemic delayed on tonight cruise days, and it's really
important to have a plan and you're right. There is so much food on
a cruise. And I can remember being on a cruise in twenty fourteen with
my family when I was obese, and we literally like, I this is
back. I like Carnival a lot, and so back then, Carnival had
formal meals in the dining room three times a day. They had a breakfast
meal, a lunch meal, and a dinner meal with the menu and the
waiter and the multi courses they did. They changed all that over time.
Now you get like a C day brunch or whatever, right, but it
was really you had a sit down breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And
by golly, I enjoy a formal meal experience. I enjoyed the heck out
of every single day going and having a sit down breakfast, sit down lunch,
sit down dinner. I don't know how I did it. By the
time I got off that cruise, I felt awful, I felt miserable.
I was overly full. But I felt like I deserved it because it was
special. When I was on this cruise, I paid for it and it
was included. I paid for it and get all your f the book exactly.
I would order the eggs benedict and the fruit and I mean I literally
like soup all the courses. I don't know how I did it. It
sounds crazy, but I did it. But I felt terrible, and looking
at the pictures of me from the cruise, I looked miserable too. So
I realized after I started intermittent fasting, you know that really wasn't fun.
You can feel good on a cruise by eating less food and being more intentional
about it. So when I started cruising as an intermittent faster, I would
delay when I opened for the day, and usually I would have two meals
in a day on a cruise ship and not so much perhaps and not trying
to get it all in. And I also found that I did best at
dinner for me for my body, sticking to more vegetarian options. I didn't
get so overly full feeling if I would choose the vegetarian options. So I
eat very mindfully when I'm on vacation or on a cruise, and I don't
want to ever feel overly full. So I eat the foods that look good
and I just eat less of them. I don't overdo it, and I
never want to feel overly full and I just really enjoyed the trip so much
more well. And I think the benefit too, is like, if you're
getting off the ship for excursions and you're not eating breakfast, you're gonna have
so much more energy on the excursion. Yep, you're not gonna be weighed
down with breakfast. You're not gonna be having blood sugar highs and lows.
You just get off the boat. You're full of your facett energy. And
then you know, a lot of the excursions will have a lunch in the
afternoon, and so like for me, if I was on an excursion and
they offered lunch, I would go ahead and open my window for lunch,
and I would you know, usually it's got some fresh fruit and vegetables or
whatever. And I never, ever, I never thought twice about it.
I was just like, Okay, I'm gonna eat this light lunch they offer.
It's not usually big meals on the excursions. Then we would have the
latest dinner option at like eight o'clock, So I would not eat again until
we ate at eight o'clock. And then after dinner and after dinner, drink
or whatever, I'd close my window back up again. We can you can
eat at home. Don't spend your crew sitting in the dining room. Yep.
I mean people think I'm crazy, and I'm like, I've never eaten
at the buffet on a cruise ship. I walk through the buffet like area,
but I've never eaten there. I have like if it's lunchtime, I'll
go in and I like to like cheese, and I get the little things
and it just depends, like I'll get like the little salad stuff here and
there, and it was very nice. Usually as much it is overwhelming,
you're right, but there's also options, and I was like, this is
overwhelming. I just go out to the deck and get a hamburger from the
deck. Oh yeah, yeah, something out there and the little Mexican I
like those two. Yeah, yasta. Also here's something really really important.
Oh. I also want to share. I take the stairs the whole time
on the cruise ship as well, instead of the elevators are so sweet,
they take forever. I just I really go up and down the stairs because
it feels good to go up and down the stairs. I mean, I'm
not gonna say I would never take the elevator depends, but most of the
time I take the stairs when I can, and when you get off the
cruise ship, do not weigh yourself for a week. Yep. Let your
body settle down. And I also know that you're going to have maybe three
to five days of harder fasting because you have refilled your glycogen stores sufficiently,
like you might need some naps. Just push through, and I mean it's
worth it to enjoy yourself and relax on the cruise. But just know you're
going to have some harder days when you get back, and you'll feel like
yourself again. In a week, your body will be back to normal.
All right. We have a question from Kevin in San Antonio. Kevin says,
hi, I am a fifty three year old male six' one and
I've been doing intermittent fasting since February, So I am imagining this. He
probably sent this in. We're recording this February twenty first, so I'm guessing
this was a slightly older question and he started doing intermittent fasting in February of
twenty twenty three. Does that sound right? I don't really think this was
that old of a question. I think it's come in in the last maybe
two months. Well, then if it came into the last two months.
Then the February would have been twenty twenty three, right, Okay, that's
what I was trying. Oh yeah, because it's February noway, okay,
yeah, we're recording this in February. It comes out in Mark. It
didn't even click on me that we are in February. It's February right now.
So he started intermittent fasting in February of twenty twenty three, just that
it wouldn't make sense of because we're recording this on February twenty first. So
right, all right, So he said, I've dropped from one hundred and
eighty to one hundred and fifty. If he had dropped thirty pounds since February,
since February in twenty one days, that would be remarkable. Okay,
so that makes a lot more sense, he says. So, I've dropped
from one hundred and eighty to one hundred and fifty, which is my goal
weight, or at least as low as I'm comfortable going, as it's at
the lower end of the smart BMI calculator. So my first question, I'm
still waiting for that body recomposition to kick in to help with my pot belly
and love handles. I'm pretty skinny elsewhere. I started intermittent fasting to do
this, but my body hasn't cooperated on where I've lost the fat so far.
Now that I'm at maintenance weight, I need to figure out how to
increase my calories but have the fat convert to muscle. By the way,
fat does not convert to muscle. We'll get into that in a minute,
but I wanted to pop that out. That's a common misconception that we see
all the time. We hear that all the time. Yeah, like fat,
fat does not convert to muscle, but you will lose fat and built
muscle. But those are two separate processes. All right. So I've started
some light yoga and do a fair amount of hiking, but not sure what
kind of exercise will help. I've had some back issues in the past,
so free weights are risky. Do we want to answer that and then get
to the second. All right, let's go ahead and sure that he says
that he feels like he's at a good weight and he thinks his overall fitness
is okay. But yeah, he has a pot belly and love handles.
So if you have a pot belly and love handles. You still have fat
to burn. Now you are six to one and you're one hundred and fifty
pounds, so that is very slim for somebody who's six y' one. But
you're right, you need to add some muscle mass because you're fifty three.
I hate to tell you, but in your thirties you start losing testosterone and
we start to lose muscle mass as we age. So if you still have
a big belly, you've got some visceral fat to burn your love handles that's
more subcutaneous fat, so your body does still have fat to burn. I
think what you need to focus on right now out is adding muscle masks while
you continue to fast sufficiently to burn through any fat storage you still have.
And yes, some yoga can help. I want to address your back issues.
Like you said, free weights are risky. I don't know what kind
of back injury you had, but I had a very severe back in pelvis
side joint injury in two thousand and eight, and what helped me more than
anything was rehab for my back. And what I did was go to a
gym with physical therapists and I spent four hours a day there, five days
a week, and they had me on a very intense training schedule, and
I lifted a lot of weights and I did a lot of mobility exercises.
But the best way to help your back is through core strength and just being
strong overall. And that's really going to reduce your risk of re injuring your
back. And so if you need help with that, I would really find
a trainer who has experience in having back injuries. You know, potentially you
can get a referral for physical therapy and they can get you set up on
a program of some sort. Because you're not going to be able to add
significant muscle mass without lifting heavy things. It's just not going to happen.
There are body weight resistance type exercises you can do, but if you're really
wanting to add muscle mass, you're gonna have to lift weights and it can
be done safely. And having a trainer, having somebody spot you watch your
form and that sort of thing can be really, really beneficial. And I
can tell you personally, when my back starts flaring up and I have to
go to the chiropractor, it's because I am not active enough and I'm not
paying attention to my core strengthening. In the minute I get back into strengthening
and moving my body the way our bodies are intended to be moved, my
back pain significantly reduces. So do you have anything to add to that?
Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate what you just said about that. You
know, I've had several instances of back pain. I know it's because,
just like you said, my core strength needed work. So now I'm going
to pilates. I'm really focusing on that. Oh my gosh, Ery,
I was so sore after this week pilates. I was like, this is
nothing. I'm enjoying good store though, right, but I didn't feel like
I was doing anything. And then I'm like, well, yeah it was
a good sore. It was totally a good sore. But I felt it
in places like around my all, through my core, and in my back.
And so you definitely need to work your core. So, just like
Sherry said, you've got to work your muscles to build the muscles. So
you're going to continue to lose fat as you build muscle, and you'll probably
see your scale weight go up. That is what you want. Your goal
is to not stay at one fifty. See if you can get yourself up
to one sixty by increasing your muscle mass and losing the fat so and then
you'll have your love handles and your potbelly will be gone. So that would
be we're not just thinking about adding more calories to stop losing weight, or
we're intentionally building muscle. Great, all right, So the second part of
his question said, my second question is about autophogy. As I've listened to
or read more about intermittent fasting, I'm become hopeful that I'll be able to
reduce or eliminate my cholesterol and blood pressure medications. How do I increase the
odds of that happening? Do you get any autopogy with sixteen eight eating one
pm to nine pm, which is what I've been doing during the weight loss
phase. I've tried a couple of down days five hundred calorie dinner, but
that's been pretty rough for me. I'm still reading through fast Feast repeat,
So sorry, if the answers are in there, and that is okay,
we don't mind answering. So can I really quick answer that part about the
autopogy? Absolutely, we get that all the time because there's so much confusing
information about autology, and people think that autology like begins to certain like at
a certain time, like autopogy begins at twenty. No, autoplogy is not
something that begins. It's actually think of it like ammer switch on a light
switch. It ramps up, it goes down. It's not like a light
switch that flicks on and flicks off. So we want to have increased autopogy.
I think Jason fun might have written it in The Obesity Code where he
talks about autoplogy like starting at whatever time. But some of the stuff that
he's talking about is if you are starting from never having fasted before, and
if you're on day one and you've never fasted before, you might not you
know, start katosis or have increased autopogy until maybe like thirty six hours in
because you're burning through full glycogen stores all of that. But if you're an
Internet and faster, you're not having full liver glycogen stores every single day.
And I do talk about this in Fast Feast Repeat in the Flipping Your Metabolic
Switch chapter. So there is a study that I'll pop it in the show
notes, and it was a mouse study, so I know that we can't.
You know, mice in people are not exactly the same. But they
did find that time restricted eating, which is the daily eating window approach,
did lead to increased autopogy. Mark Mattson says the same thing when he talks
about in his paper flipping the metabolic switch, and some of these changes start
happening around twelve hours. Of course, it does depend on how metabolically flexible
you are. Someone on day one is not going to have the same benefits
as someone who is a year in, for example. It's something that does
build up over time. As we love our fasting lifestyle, so time restricted
eating is sufficient to have increased autopogy. You do not need to do alternate
day fasting to have increased autopogy. And at least in mice, time restricted
eating gave them increased autopogy. Right. I actually saw a study that's set
around twelve also, I think with mice, but they found increased autology around
our twelve I don't know that I have ever been how long I've been fasting
now I can't do the math eight and a half years. Never once have
I fasted for atophagy me neither. That is just a side benefit of the
fasting lifestyle, and I know it's doing its work to clean up junkie proteins
in my body and old cells and keep my detox pathways open. And I'm
convinced that's why, like fasters really start to see a difference, like in
their skin, they get this healthy, you know, healthier skin. Dry
patches start to go away on their knees and elbows and that sort of thing.
And I think that's that's coupled with decreased insulin resistance, those dry patches
going away. But I mean, I just to me that autophic is just
something in the background doing its work. It's like the little mouse on the
wheelback and we can't we don't have an autopicy a manipulator control it. If
you're fasting, let it is happening. Yes, if you're fasting that clean,
let's put it that way. Yeah. So yeah, that's something that
people ask us a lot or the say, well, how long do I
need a fast for autopogy. There's no magic answer, It's true, and
I don't really feel like that should be the focus of fast I agree.
Now, I also want to pop in there. Sometimes people will say something
and there's a misconception about what autoplogy does and doesn't do, Like they'll have
a benefit and they'll like say thanks autophogy, and I'm like, well,
autopogy is amazing, but that is not what caused that specific benefit that you
are explaining. So, like, for example, when Kevin asked about cholesterol
issues and blood pressure medication, autopogy is not doing those things for you.
Cholesterol and blood pressure. You could be related to other factors that are that
fasting will help you with over time, but not everything that goes on in
our bodies is because of autopogy, right, I mean, could it be
potentially eating up some atherosclerootic plaques, maybe yeah, But is it going to
magically make your cholesterol go down? No, No, that's really going to
come from your fasting. And for a lot, I'm not even going to
say this is for all people. Some people, their dietary choices absolutely affect
their cholesterol. So people do not have that result. And I think a
lot of it's genetic because I personally do have to really watch how and what
I eat if I do not want my LDL to be sky high. Dietary
cholesterol absolutely drives up my LDL so eating lots of fiber, getting my daily
cardio exercise in that's helpful for reducing that. But yeah, I mean,
can you get off your cholesterol medicine. It's possible, but it also depends
on you know, why do you have high cholesterol? Is it familial?
We can't really answer that or predict that. And as for your blood pressure
medications, again, we see a lot of people come off their blood pressure
medications. You know, a lot of blood pressure issues are caused just from
inflammation in the body. So as we dial down in animation in the body,
our blood pressure gets better. And food and diet can also affect blood
pressure. Lifestyle, stress, sleep, all that's going to affect your blood
pressure. So if you've been fasting for a year to sixteen eight and you
know your blood pressure has not come down, is it going to happen Potentially?
Is it going to require maybe a shorter eat you we know, maybe,
is it gonna require changing the way you eat? Possibly? And if
that's you know, if you're motivated to do that, that's something you can
play with. So yeah, that's really all I have to say, I
think. But yeah, weight training is going to be your friend. Yep.
Anything else. No, I think that was it all right. Well,
we have a recommendation from a listener this week. Cynthia and Tennessee wrote,
I just finished watching ten episodes of the Inflammation Solution Masterclass series and it
supported all of the science Jin has in Fast Peace Repeat, as well as
guests on the podcast, and I was greatly encouraged by it. I actually
looked it up. It looks like a pretty great class. I shared it
with my parents and so I put a link in show notes if you want
to learn more about it. It's completely free, awesome, thank you.
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reiterate that these deals that you described might not still be the deals that right
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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 also, as we go
through different seasons of our intermittent fasting lifestyle, sometimes we need a different tweak
for the summer than we did for you know, March. You just never
know. So that's why it's super helpful to hear how other intermittent fasters are
making intermittent fasting work for them. You really do have a lot of tools
in your toolbox, right Sherry m hm yep. This tweak was submitted by
DF regarding eating sweets, and DF said, I would like to suggest that
maybe just for a while, delay those foods and beverages for a bit and
see if the scale moves. You know what they are. You can still
enjoy delicious and healthy meals with some minor tweaking. When I write these comments
out, I am speaking to myself too. I have to delay, delay,
delay, just for a while, no longer forever. That's the best
part of intermittent fasting as a lifestyle, and I do love that sometimes we
do have to delay. And she's right, you know what they are.
Yeah, it's not the same for everybody, the same foods. We have
people that come to the community and they're like, Okay, I've been doing
this for this long and this is what I eat, and yes, I
eat sweets every day, and yes I do this, and yes I do
that. Do you think I need to stop? They know they need to
stop. If you're asking if you should, probably then you probably should cut
down on desserts. And here's the thing. When I eat a delicioussert,
I feel no guilt, but I don't eat it every day. Yep,
I delay maybe till next week when I'm going to have it again, you
know whatever. So the foods that make your body gain weight, intermittent fauthing
does not negate that some foods are more likely to cause weight gain than others.
It does help us balance compared to when you're doing a you know,
traditional diet. Plan where you can never have those things again. But we
still have to be mindful well, and I encourage everybody to be, like
she said, do some minor tweaking. I like to have dessert every day.
I like it. Do I do it? Nope? But I have
foods that take the place of dessert that make me happy, and so figure
out what those are for you. I like overnight oats. There's an overnight
oat that I just learned about. I had it shipped me from Hungry Roots,
and I fell in love with it. And I found out all these
has it. Oh, and so I made a trip over to all these
and stalked up on some and they have like an apple cinnamon and a vanilla
cinnamon. There's a chocolate one and a strawberry one's my favorite. They're not
very expensive. They're made with like all real foods. You can read the
ingredient list. I think there's maybe like five or six ingredients. It's got
flax and chia seeds and oats and some kind of whole grain. I can't
think of which one it's in it, and yeah, just all very clean.
It's delicious. It fills my little spot that I need something sweet.
It's filling, it's high in fiber. So yep, there's treats quote tweet
treats out there that you can treat yourself to that are not going to derail
your progress. Yep. Well, we love to leave you with inspiration or
motivational quotes, and this week we have a message from sus in Pinehurst,
North Carolina. Susan wrote, doctor Andrea, I should have looked to her
name bon walo in io R looks French. It looks French, and I
didn't take French. I did. That was terrible? My husband did.
I'll ask him all the time. I'll no say, I don't know.
That was in high school. So yeah, it's b o n io R.
Her book is called Detox Your Thoughts, and she said it gave me
so many aha moments, but one of the biggest ones was on an episode
of her podcast titled is the Myth of a Rival Getting in Your Way?
It discussed how we mistakenly put our life on hold, waiting for that perfect
moment when we reach the goal we've been working towards so that our real life
can begin. But then we get there, we realize it's not the perfection
we expected. And so we set another goal in place, and that's when
real life will begin, and our continual push for perfection we miss out on
living the life we're in. This was most of my life. When I
lose the weight, that's when someone will want to be with me. When
I lose the weight, I'll be more acceptable for that job. When I
lose the weight, I'll be able to wear a bikini, I'll be comfortable
at the beach, live life without having to feel like I need to cover
up and hide from the camera. When I lose weight, life will begin.
Now I've lost the weight and my body isn't perfect, but I'm not
waiting for it to be. I'm living life now. That is beautiful.
I just think that is a very powerful thing. I think we often get
caught up in the seeking perfection or you know, when this happens, then
I'll do this or whatever. And I really do think that sometimes people get
to goal and they'll tell us they start to sell sabotage. I think it
kind of has to do with this. You got to goal, and your
life didn't become this fairy tale that you told yourself it would be, so
be realistic, except Liver it is live with your life. Don't wait until
XYZ live it now. That's just such beautiful advice. Thank you, Susan,
Thanks so much for listening today. We would love to have you join
us in the Delayed On Tonight community, where you can interact with both me
and Sherry plus the most supportive bunch of intermittent fasters you'll find anywhere. Go
to Jenstevens dot com slash community to join us. Don't forget to subscribe to
this podcast to your favorite podcast app, and if you haven't already, please
leave us a five star review that helps new listeners find the show and we
really appreciate 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.