Episode 29: Fasting and Weight Training, Is ADF Right for You?, 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 wonderful. I'm so glad, me too. I'm worn out. We're
recording this. It's almost Christmas, although it comes out in January. But
got a lot going on. Yeah, well, the new year's approaching and
actually your life's not going to settle down any well. By the time it
comes out, the new year will be here. Yes, your new book's
going to be coming out. And by the time it's extray out we are
recording this on December twentieth, or six days away. I'm so excited about
the new book. So yeah, by the time this episode comes out,
those who start the twenty eight day fast Start in our community will be finishing
their second week. Awesome, No more than that, No, because they
start in January fourth. Oh, yeah, they're finishing their second week.
Yeah, you're right. Math. Math is a good thing. Yep.
So, and anybody who's listening, you haven't started yet, the best time
to start is now, whatever day now, don't wait, start now.
But yeah, I'm so excited to see how that goes. Anyway, Time
will tell. But yeah, I'm ready for the holidays to be in the
rearview mirror this year. I've got a lot of traveling going on, a
lot of you know, family stuff. So that's the part I'm ready to
just be like, settle down and it'll all be worth it when it's it
will it will, And I'm always glad to travel when I get there and
see the family and all that. So it's just a lot. When it's
happening, it is a lot. There's a lot of stress. And you
know who's not stressed, Chad, Well, I guess that's a good thing,
better than both of you being stressed. Yeah, the holiday wouldn't even
happen if it wasn't for me, you know what I mean. It's the
same true at your house. Pretty much. Eric's focus on Thanksgiving and Christmas
is football. That's it. Ah. Yeah, he also miraculously wants a
holiday meal to appear right, And you know, I just decided that I
was not going to spend an entire day preparing food for the two of us.
We don't have any of the kids. His dad and stepmom are going
out of town, so it's really just going to be him and I.
I ordered a holiday meal from Honeybait Tam. I'm not sad about it at
all. I'm going to go pick it up tomorrow, the Thursday before Thanksgiving,
and it all just has to be reheat. It sounds perfectly festive.
My Kansas City Chiefs are playing at noon against Eric's Raiders, so we can
both enjoy football together that day and our teams are competing and no stress and
still have delicious food. Well, I have ordered a Hello Fresh Christmas meal.
I know you share that I told you about it, and I'm so
excited and it's like prime rib and like it's just like a regular Hello Fresh
meal, but it's like the holiday meal, right, And so it's got
like carrots that I turn into glazed girt. So I still have to cook
it and I don't have to think about it. So I'm like, why
have I not always done this? I will, We'll come over. It's
enough to beat for. And I'm like, oh my god, thank you
HelloFresh. This is not a Hello Fresh commercial. But maybe it is.
But next year everybody can think about that. But I certainly am going to
keep this in my mind because wow, it's just I'm not good at having
a play and figure it all out. I don't mind cooking it. I
just don't want to have to think about it. Well, and then,
honestly, you know, it's just Eric and I and so I started thinking
about if I have to buy all the ingredients to buy all the dishes that
we both enjoy, I mean, it was so much cheaper just to buy
already made meal comes with three sides. I ordered a dessert extra. We're
getting like a quarter of a spiral sliced honey baked hand. Did I tell
you I can't remember if I tell you know, I don't like orange vegetables.
I have this thing I forgot that you didn't. I like orange vegetables
like I like raw carrots. And that's the end of it. But I
don't eat any orange squash. Now. I do love pumpkin pie, but
raw carrots a pumpkin pie, those are the two orange things I eat.
However, I tried sweet potato castorle at Thanksgiving that my mother in law made,
and actually it was really amazing. Was it the kind that has the
marshmallows on the top. It did not have marshalls. We don't. I
don't like that kind either. That is behind I grew up with my sister.
I mayn't even know that they used sweet but potatoes. I think they're
yams in a can, and then it's got the marsh fellows on top.
That's how I grew up with. I don't like that dish, not doing
that. No, this was like mash sweet potatoes and it had potato and
then it had like pecanne. Yes, that's what my sper like, candied
pecan top in on top. Yeah, that's the way we have it.
It's really good. That's like dessert. It wasn't. Yeah, that's what.
I ate it last because I was like, Okay, if I don't
like it, I don't want it to get in my palette till i'm done.
And I ate it last, and then I was like, that was
like dessert. It's really good. It was very good. That's the way
I have it too, so good. I'm glad you're expanding your orange.
I always try, you know me, I always try. I'm like,
okay, well I don't really like that, but I'm gonna try it.
We need all the colors. So yeah, I always try things, and
sometimes i'm surprised. Several years ago I didn't like olives and now I love
green olives. I remember when you did Alma olives. Yeah, and he's
just still not a fan the black olives. Yeah, I love them.
Maybe one day I'll get there. Yeah. I used topose your palette to
things. Yeah. See, I started with like mild green olives when I
was a baby. That was one of the first things I would eat,
was green olives and that weird. I would stand at the refrigerator and say,
Alie, Ali corse courts but I here. But also my mother used
to give me the olives out of her Martini, so maybeh she would get
Martin and like, I'd be a kaday eaten the olives out of her Martini.
Baby who knows? Don't do that. People don't give your baby martini
olives. It was a different time. It was a different time. It's
definitely a different time back then. But I think it's kind of telling,
like my parents didn't eat olives, and I didn't like olives. Where I
think if you expose kids to things when they're younger, they have a more
developed palette for things like that. That is true. And you know what
I've read about that. I wrote about this in Cleenage. It takes a
certain number of exposures to a food before a child will accept it. But
here we are, you know, we're so used to picky eaters. I
mean, I look think back to when I was raising my boys when they
were little. You know, I joked about there was cow didn't like carrots
when he was a baby, and any baby food that had carrot in it.
He would spit it out. Like the baby food spaghetti actually had a
lot of carrot it, he would spit it out. So I just said,
oh, he doesn't like carrots, and I stopped offering. But that's
the wrong thing to do. You're not supposed to stop offering. You don't
just say, oh, he doesn't like carrots, we're not going to have
that. No, you keep offering it, and after repeated exposure, then
they eventually will eat it. So that's where I went wrong. Whenever ever
baby cow said no to something, I just took that as like gospel,
he didn't like that, right, Whereas really they just need repeated exposures.
Anyway, I wish I could do that with my husband. Well you could,
actually, like seriously, I think you probably could just but when you're
an adult, you have to be opened to it. I think it's the
same thing. Can't make an adult be open to try new things? They're
not. But the kid kids, you know, kids who grow up in
other cultures eat things we would never like. I wouldn't eat right because they
grew up eating them like scorpions. I don't know. Just keep hitting people
I don't know to be pleased scorpions people do yeah on a stick, like
scorpions on a skewer, But I think, really, I've seen images of
that. Yeah, if you grew up eating scorpion on a skewer, you'd
be like, yuh. I mean, I know lots of cultures eat bugs,
but they eat every people eat all around the world, eat whatever has
been there. It's only modern times when we don't do that. I get
squeamish when I just look at the bugs. Yeah, I'm not going to
eat you bugs. I'm not gonna eat any Nope. I'm a pretty adventurous
eater. But I draw the line there. Well, let's share a great
celebration today. And you know, I kind of briefly touched on her celebration
last week. I realized when we interviewed doctor Tabitha. But I'm going to
read what Lindsay shared with the d d D community because I think it's really
really important. She said, I've always had hormone issue since I was young,
and I would lose my menstrual cycle very easily due to over exercising and
not providing my body with the right nutrition. I was a competitive swimmer growing
up, and I swam division one in college, so I was training intensely
for twenty plus hours a week. In twenty twenty, I finally cut back
on the exercise and I started fueling my body properly. This mixed with COVID,
led to a huge weight gain. Unfortunately, but my hormones did level
out and I regained my period. Not shortly after that, I got an
IUD, and then I did not menstruate at all, which is common with
the IUD. I started fasting in twenty twenty one, and I lost thirty
pounds of COVID weight, and I've kept it off through if this fall.
I decided I wanted to regain a healthy cycle without birth control, and I
discontinued the IUD. I was honestly nervous about whether or not my cycle would
return because of all the rumors out there about fasting affecting your hornle. However,
I am thrilled to report that I finally regained a healthy, normal menstrual
cycle, and I accomplished it while fasting, So no need to fear.
If ladies see, I love that so much, and lindsay, I really
appreciate you sharing that because there is so much confusion. This is exactly what
Tabitha said in episode twenty eight. She said competitive athletes like Lindsay was a
competitive swimmer swimming division ie in college, lost her period with all that training
that was too much for her body, and then she cut back on the
exercise and started fueling her body properly. Then she had a period of weight
gain, which probably you know, we know over restriction through diet causes.
You know, if we've been overrestricting, our body's gone through some stress response
and then maybe slowed some things down to protect us. So weight gain after
that is normal. But then she's fueling her body properly. She's added in
the internet fasting and her cycle has returned after discontinuing the birth control. So
did fasting damage or hormones? No. Competitive swimming, however, it doesn't
sound like was good for hormones, And we never hear that. No one's
like, well, don't do athletics, girls, it's bad for your hormones.
And maybe they do, and I just haven't heard it, but well,
I think it's pretty well known in competitive sporting world that most athletes who
are training competitively, whether it's Olympic gymnasts or whatever, it's very very common
for them maintain their cycles. Yeah, I've definitely heard that, but why
no warnings? Right, So maybe there are warnings and I just don't know.
Well, because we look at exercises a good thing. Exercise is healthy.
But what we fail to really pay attention to is that too much exercise
is no longer healthy. You know, too much of a good thing can
be a bad thing. It is always is too much of anything. There's
that sweet spot in the middle, and we got the extremes on either end.
But I love this story and it goes back to really, like I
said, everything that Tabitha said. So fairbody, if you didn't hear that
episode, episode twenty eight, the one that came out right before this one
is the one and doctor Tabitha dispelled the myths of fasting being dangerous for women's
hormones. What is bad for women's hormones is overexertion, over restriction, and
probably overfasted. Well that's over restraint, I mean right, Yeah, if
you're one of those people who think you need to do three day fasts,
then yeah, you're gonna see some negative impacts with that. But you'll never
hear Jenna and I tell anybody you need to do a three day fast.
Never, I've never told you I've never done one, No, have you
not? No. I think the longest I fasted was after we came off
of the second delayed Don't Deny cruise, the first time I really fought like
I was so miserable because I wasn't shifting into katosis for several days after that
cruise, and I thought, I am not going through that again. So
from when the time we had our last meal on the ship, I think
I fasted like something like fifty eight hours, maybe sixty two hours. You
depleted your gleikagen, just solely to deplete my glycogen and to shift into fat
burning and not go through those because I immediately left the shift and then had
to work that weekend, and I was like, I cannot have that fluish,
low energy, discombobulated head feeling, and so I just went into a
fast. And once I've really felt myself really charging along and ketosis, then
I shifted back into a daily eating window. But I mean I clearly I
had an update and probably two and then yeah, shifted back into my regular
eating window. And yeah, that makes sense. But you know, I
have eaten every day since twenty sixteen. You know, and there are some
situations that could arise where I might would do a longer fast, but it
would have to do with an illness and something therapeutic, and I would be
working with a practitioner. Like for example, if I were, you know,
to be diagnosed with cancer, I would one hundred percent look for somebody
who was trained in using fasting therapeutically with whatever I was going through, and
I would do it for that case. But that's it. That's you know.
Other than that, I don't think I'll ever do fast like that.
Are we ready to get into our question? Yeah, okay, we have
several questions from Heather in Illinois, so we're going to kind of go through
these, but let's start off with her introduction. She says, I have
so many questions, guys, but first let me say how grateful I am
to the both of you for this podcast. I look forward to it every
week, and thank you Jen for all you do for the intermittent fasting community
as a whole. I've benefited so much from your work and you are so
welcome. Heather. I'm so grateful to get to do this work. So
Heather says a little background on me. I'm five four and thirty years old
and have a nine, seven and a five year old. I've been intermittent
fasting for two years now. I first came across fasting from my friend who
had read Jen's book. Looking into it myself on the internet, I learned
that you could put that in quotation marks. I learned that you could have
a little cream during your fast. I didn't eat until twelve, but I
would have coffee with cream or tea with cream every morning. I thought I
was fasting and wasn't used to this new lifestyle, so I would have lots
of food right at twelve, thinking that I needed to refill myself from not
eating for so long. At this point, I was only fasting for about
twelve hours. Since then, it has been about a year and a half.
I've begun circuit strength training four to five days a week, tightening up
my window usually around eighteen six give or take, and I have eliminated alcohol
at the end of my windows. Now, I'm assuming she didn't say sherry,
but I'm assuming she also switched to the clean fast. Yeah, that's
what I'm assuming. Yeah, she didn't say specifically, so you know,
if somebody who's having cream. That's just a little aside from me. If
you're having cream, then literally you're opening your eating window with the cream.
But if you're not having the cream, that's when you're actually fasting, because
cream is food. Cream is not fasting, all right. So she said
she's eliminated alcohol at the end of her windows and that's made a world of
difference. She said, I've never done strength training like this before, so
I'm unsure where my ideal body weight will land. I began at the gym
at one hundred and sixty nine pounds, my heaviest since pregnancy. I've lost
roughly twenty five pounds since September of twenty twenty two. Currently I'm at one
hundred and forty four. I have a number in my head of one hundred
and twenty eight pounds from when I was first married, but that was ten
years and three babies ago. I also haven't heard y'all talk much about fasting
in combination with more intense fitness, and would love to hear more. Thanks
again for all you do. So, as I said, Heather has several
questions, so Sherry and I are going to take turns answering them, And
here is Heather's first question, number one. What does refilling your glycogen stores
entail? How long does it take to refill them? And how do you
know if you have refilled them? Kind of what you just touched I was
just gonna say, I kind of just touched on that. What does refill
in your licogen stores? Intel? It really entails consuming more in your window
then you're fast can sufficiently deplete. So I like to think of glycogen like
gas in a gas tank. We want our gas tank to remain empt like
empty as we at the end of our fast each day, our gas tank
should be empty because that's when we get into katosis, that's when we're fat
burning. And then when we eat, Yes, we put a little gas
in the gas tank, but we don't want to put more gas in.
Then we can use up and shift back into empty during the next fast.
So it requires sufficient fasting and then not overfeeding in your window. Kind of
a two end approach there. You want to balance those two things out.
So how long does it take to refill those That's going to be very independent.
It's going to depend on how you eat, what kinds of foods you
eat, how active you are, how long you fast each day, what
and how much you can see them in your window, and how long your
window is. So there's really no cut and dry answer. How do you
know if you've refilled your liggen stores, you are not going to shift into
katosis? And if you know what katosis feels like, you're going to feel
it. You're going to get into your you know your fast, you're not
going to get to that whatever mark. For me, I usually feel it
about fourteen and a half fifteen hours I can feel that shift. You're not
going to feel that shift. You're going to be hungry, You're gonna be
feeling like you're white knuckling. You're fast again. You might get that sort
of like shaky feeling late in your fast if your body's having a hard time
flipping the switch, Like if this is something that has kind of accumulated over
time, you might start feeling like you did when you were first fasting.
And if that's happening, then you know you need to increase your fasting time,
decrease your creature way, decrease your window, tighten things up so that
you can get that switch flipping again. That's exactly right. You nailed it
so her next question, how do I know if I'm getting enough nutrition?
I have been in fear of messing up my metabolism by fasting for too long
while working out so hard. Though I have appreciated what you said in one
episode, Sherry, the hunger is not an emergency. How do I know
if I need a longer window? Well, this is where you learn to
listen to your body. If you suddenly start feeling hunger increasing, then that's
a sign that you probably need to eat some more food. Our bodies really
are designed to let us know. And you said that you're doing eighteen six,
that's a comfortable window. I would have a hard time thinking that you're
not getting sufficient nutrition in a six hour window unless you're really like dieting.
But if you find that you're feeling hungrier and hungrier as time goes on,
that's your body communicating to you that you need to fuel yourself a little better.
And you know, if you're building muscle, then you might be like,
hey, maybe I need to add just a little more protein than I
had been eating. Your body will let you know you want to eat till
you're satisfied, and trust that your body will tell you if you're not having
enough. Somebody in the community the other day was like, I am really
really hungry and why, and it was somebody who had increased their working out
recently and also is at goal weight, your body is not going to be
pulling from your stored fuel as much if you're at your goal weight. Now,
if you're not at your goal weight, you do want to be tapping
into your stored fuel, right, because if you're constantly putting food in,
you will never need to tap into the fuel that's already stored on your body.
So it becomes a different answer depending on where you are in the process.
If you are at your goal and you don't want to lose any more
fat, you're probably going to need to increase how much food you're eating.
But if you do still have fat you want to burn, you want to
give your body time to get to it, right. And I think her
question is probably coming from the fact that she said that she is just doing
a lot of training at the gym, and there's something that you need to
really you said you'd like to learn more about fasting combination with the tense fitness.
Well when you're in your weight loss stage. Personally, I don't think
you have to do anything different than a person who's not really working out,
other than really listen to your body, because your body is pulling fat to
fuel your workouts. So you don't specifically need to eat more because you're working
out now if you're really hungry, if you have your window, you close
your window and you're starving two hours later, then that's your sign that you
need to eat more in your window. If you wake up in the morning
and you're starving and you've got you know, eight hours left, you're fast,
and you're finding that all day, that that hunger is staying right there
with you and it's not coming and going and it's not going away, then
that's your sign that you need a longer window. But as long as you're
in your weight loss phase and you have fat to burn and your chap into
it because you're fast and clean, I don't think you need extra fuel to
work out that. I agree with that completely. So you know, nourish
your body well and you're eating window until you're satisfied. You don't have to
overcompensate again, just listen to your body. Like Sherry said, all right,
so here's a great question. Heather says, how do I know what
my new ideal body weight will be in this new season of my life?
You probably do not know. You do not know what your weight's going to
be. You don't because you're not going to have the same body with a
fasting lifestyle that you would with any other kind of diet you've ever done in
your life. Most conventional diets, people tend to drop weight pretty quickly,
and part of that weight that they lose really quickly is muscle mass. Unfortunately,
just with restrictive diets, that's just what happens, is you start to
lose muscle mass, not to mention a lot of water weight, usually in
the beginning. Just like with any diet, even in fasting, we see
people drop water weight pretty quickly, but you're going to have so much more
muscle mass, not only because you're working out, but just because we don't
lose it with fasting, because clean fasting is just really protective of your muscles.
Plus you are working out and you are strength training, so you're adding
muscles. We have increased human growth hormone while we're fasting, which means we
have the ability to really just add mass to our body without working too hard,
and so you may end up weighing more than one hundred and twenty eight
pounds, which you kind of have in your head as a goal. But
you may find that you are much smaller at say one hundred and thirty five
pounds than you were at a prior one hundred and twenty eight pound weight.
You're going to be leaner, you're going to be just so much more fit
and compact yep, And you might not lose any more weight on the scale,
like you could literally lose zero more pounds on the scale and shrink down
two sizes. Yes, so this is the time. I don't want you
to have a weight goal. I want you to have a size goal,
a size where you're going to feel good. If you have old clothes from
when you felt your best that you saved there, you go, that's a
good tool to use. When those clothes fit, it doesn't matter what the
scale says. You're at your goal body and that's what you should shoot for.
So if you're really working out like you are in fast and clean,
which you are size, it's gonna be such a better measure than what the
scale says. So I would get all numbers out of your head and just
focus on what your body's doing. I heard somebody talking on a podcast talking
about as we get older, instead of us trying to be as small as
we can, we need to be strong. We need to focus on building
muscle. And you said that you are thirty, and that this person was
a doctor who likes fasting. She's someone who recommends fasting. It that she
was talking about menopause, but she said she would go back to her thirty
year old self and say, stop trying to be skinny instead focus on being
strong as we age, and thirty is when the time to do it.
So yeah, okay, So her last question is is alternate day fasting recommended
for those who strength train? Part of me wants to do this because I
still occasionally more not having my favorite meal so frequently, but the everyday window
has been working well. I would say that's not why I would start doing
ADF. You know, is ADF recommended for those who strength trained? Sure,
there's no reason why you couldn't do strength training coupled with ADF. You
would be nourishing your body well on your up days. Right, we get
our nutrition whether we're doing your daily eating window or whether you're doing it for
alternate daily fasting. But if you're enjoying your everyday window, I think that
just wanting to eat more frequently isn't what I would recommend. Like, I
don't know, what do you think, Sherry, Well, I mean that's
not why I would do ADF either, right, I mean you could,
you absolutely could. I don't want to say yeah, but I mean I'm
trying to fail what you're really gaining On an update, most people eat between
two and three meals. If you're eating daily, still eating a full meal,
I mean, yeah, you're just eating different. I think you just
need to plan to have your favorite meals across your week in your eating window.
Yep. To me, alternate day fasting is just a different animal and
it requires sort of a different dedication and mindset to it. And I think
you have to really know. I mean, I'm not talking down alternate day
fasting. There are people who love it. But if you love your daily
eating window and you're losing you know, body fat, and you're happy and
you're thriving right now, I honestly don't see a reason to throw a wrench
in that, right. And here's the thing that we hear from so many
people, the hardest part of ADF tends to be the updates. We hear
that all the times. They're like, Oh, I have to get up
and start eating first thing in the morning, and I have to eat all
day, which sounds bizarre for people who are not fasters. They're like,
like, think they would love that, But if you've been having a daily
eating window, then suddenly needing to have a full up day feels like a
chore and it's not as great as you think it might be. That's the
part people struggle with, or like the down day, I can do,
it's easy, but the update is hard. So I would just keep doing
what's working right. And I was going to say too, as far as
working out, once people work out fasted, they really find that they prefer
to work out fasted. So if you're somebody that works out several days a
week, you may really find that your workouts are better fasted. And if
you had to go work out in the fed state, you may not benefit
as much from working out in the fed state as you do from working out
in the fasted state, and you don't have that extra human growth hormone boost
that you get when you're fasted. So to me, I just don't see
why you would want to do that. I mean, if you do,
great, but I don't know that you're going to see any huge benefit from
it. If you feel like your metabolism has been slowed, that's a good
reason to try ADF if you know you need to get insulin down, or
honestly, if you just feel like you want to experiment with it, try
it. You could certainly do it, but it's not If you're wired SCRIBD
for some reason because you're fasting and having eating window, then I think you
need to approach your eating window a little different. That's what I was trying
to say. You said it better. Yeah, EIGHTYF is not the answer
to feeling deprived. That's a great way of putting it. You put your
finger on what I couldn't articulate. So thank you. All right, Well,
Heather, I hope that was helpful. Those are some great questions.
So now it's time for our segment called What's Your Why? And we know
that weight loss is a powerful reason to come to intermittent fasting, and that's
fine for it to be part of your why, but there's so much more
to what intermittent fasting can do for us beyond weight loss, and in my
new book twenty eight Day fast Start day by day, I ask readers to
craft their why statements before they even start fasting. When your why is deeper
than just weight loss, you're more likely to find long term success and view
intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. So today we have a wife from Sandy.
Sandy writes why, I'm fifty six years old and I lost my husband to
cancer six years ago. I have one daughter, and my son in law
lost his mother and father within one year. I'm it for them. They
have since had two children, so I have two beautiful granddaughters. One is
two and a half and one is one month old. These two grand babies
and my son in law and daughter are my why. When I lost my
husband, I told myself that I need to get healthy, as I've been
overweight my entire life. I started intermittent fasting in twenty twenty, and when
I do something, I go all in. Over the course of the last
three years, I lost approximately thirty pounds, but the extra benefits are just
as important as the weight loss. Every single person I see says, I
can't believe how young you're looking. Your face is so clear, your eyes
are so clear. I just overall feel one hundred percent better. I had
a speed bump and I put on about twenty of that thirty pounds, but
everyone still says I look fabulous. I'm not feeling as fabulous due to the
recent weight gain, but I feel like I'm just down on myself in regards
to that. I still feel one hundred percent better. So my why is
my grandchildren and my daughter and son in law, and now for myself.
Honestly, they need me here as I am the kid's only mom and grandma,
so I need to be here healthy and strong. Recently, I joined
the community platform as I needed a little boost. I still fast clean every
single day, but my choices in my window have become ridiculous. So I'm
back at it. I'm all in, and I'm hoping to take off that
twenty pounds I put on plus another twenty or thirty. But in the meantime,
I'm still feeling healthy and everyone says I look more fabulous than I've ever
looked. Well. Thank you for sharing that, Sandy, and Gosh,
I know it was hard to go through all that with your husband and your
daughter and all of that, and that's a powerful why wanting to be your
very much so. And you know, I think she said something that was
very critical. You know, her why was for other people, and since
putting on some weight, she has now made part of her why herself and
how she feels and how she looks. I think that's important because we can
only do something for somebody else for so long. At some point, I
mean it comes back to us. If we don't make ourself a priority,
then it loses its power. That's really true and such a good point.
Yeah, it's like putting your own oxygen mask on first on the plane.
You got to take care of yourself so that you can be there for other
people. So we have another question this week that was sent in for Michelle
in Surrey. She says, Hi, I'm forty five and I started IF
eight weeks ago. I focus on my eating window being five to six hours,
usually one pm to six pm, but my window moves around depending on
family life. I try to always eat with my family at supper time six
pm, and a Sunday roast at lunchtime. Usually then I'm so stuffed and
I close my window at three and fast until Monday at two. This has
suited me easily, and the weight fell off from seventy eight kilograms to seventy
two kilograms. My skin as smooth and clear, and my eyes sparkle as
my sleep is so good. I feel that my hormones are more settled with
if I can't remember the last time I shouted a lot, or cried a
lot, or fell overwhelmed in a work or family situation. I love the
wardrobe freedom I get every morning, and that sets me up for the day
to be more positive version of myself. It's only been eight weeks, but
even the husband commented that I'm happier and ready to take on anything. For
the past week, however, and I'm not having my cycle. I've gained
weight and I'm terrified it's going back up. My BMI is now twenty four,
so I'm heading in the right direction, but the shift in the scale
has worried me. I think I'm overeating in my window, but I don't
seem to have much self control without counting calories and prepping meals, which I
feel reluctant to go back to doing. So my question how do I start
ADF Do I literally stop eating at six pm and then don't eat anything the
whole of the next day. When do I open up my window again,
it's usually one pm. Is ADF something I have to keep doing? Or
will twice a week be okay? I want to be a positive role model
to my fifteen year old daughter, and I worry that not eating a single
thing the whole day will negatively influence her. Plus I don't want to be
grumpy with food envy. I welcome your tips for a beginner intermittent faster and
ADF explorer. All right, I am going to say, Michelle, do
not do ADF right now? Do not? I forbid you. I forbid
you for doing okay, Sorry, Here's why you do not have a weight
gaining problem. You have a measurement problem and maybe an expectations problem. And
here's why you started eight weeks ago. And look the reason I can say
this with such confidence because I've been around a long time. I've been in
the intermittent fasting world. I was a dieter for so many years. You
know that about me, and I see people you are just brand new to
intermittent fasting eight weeks in and you are just used to the scale and all
of that. This is a whole different thing that you're doing now. So
you are down. I did some math from seventy eight kilograms to seventy two
kilograms. You are down thirteen point two pounds in eight weeks. So number
one, that is a remarkable fast rate of loss. We don't expect any
weight lost during the first four weeks, so in eight weeks you should be
down four pounds, but you're down thirteen point two pounds. Probably some of
that was inflammation and the wush that happens when we first start and we lose
some of that water weight, so I wouldn't think that you're down thirteen point
two pounds of fat. But still that is a lot of scale weight to
be down. So now you said, I'm going to quote this. You
said, for the past week, I've gained weight, and I'm terrified it's
going to go back up. So we can absolutely, never, never,
never use one week of what our fluctuations are doing to make any decisions about
what to do next. I have homework for Michelle. I want you to
get out your copy of Fast Feast Repeat, and I want you to turn
to the scale Schmail chapter and I want you to read it again and I
want you to really pay attention to what I talk about. With daily weighing
and weekly averaging, all sorts of things cause our weight to go up and
down. Like we're recording this in December, and it's the holidays. Of
course this comes out in January. But when we're recording this in the community,
we have a lot of people who are all of a sudden like,
oh no, my weight just went up. Yeah, it's the holidays.
That tends to happen certain times of the year. We eat richer foods,
we our weight does different things. So this if your weight fluctuation has to
do with seasonal eating, that's to be totally expected. But what you need
to do is look at your overall trend. So if you have one week
where your weight does anything, that is not significant, So you weigh daily
and every seven days, you do the math, calculate your weekly average,
ignore fluctuations, and you just look from one trend to the next trend and
that's it and don't freak out. Maybe even if you have three weeks with
slight increase, then you're like, okay, I need to tweak something.
That's when you know you need to tweak. But fluctuations over one week,
That is no time to panic. It could be just you didn't poop very
well that week, or something you retained some water. Yeah, she said
it wasn't the week of her cycle. But we still some people fluctuate upward
when they ovulate, right, So you might think, well, it's not
when I'm having my period, but you will. You will maybe notice over
time that when you ovulate, you have a slight, little bump of your
weight every single month. You'll start to notice that over time. That's why
I wrote it down on paper. I had a chart. It was paper.
I wrote it down, I circled when I had my period on it,
I highlighted. I mean, I really started to get to know my
patterns. But it took me a few months to really see what my patterns
were. And then when you see, oh that's my ovulation two pound weight
gain and it comes right back off, you start to learn that it's not
anything to panic about. And really it's never something to panic about because you've
got the tools in your toolbox. But now is not the time for the
ADF tool. Now is the time for you're just now settling in. You've
got to see what your trend is doing. And you know the examples that
I give in Fast Feast Repeat are those are my literal weights from when I
was losing weight. Those are the real numbers. I didn't make them up,
I didn't monkey around with them. I just put them in like they
were, and you can see every Friday, I calculated my weekly average and
saw what it was doing, and it might have had some upward fluctuations over
the week. Maybe my Friday weight was higher one Friday than it was the
Friday before. If I just was weighing on Friday, I would have thought
I'd gained weight that week. But because I found my average, I found
that my trend was actually slightly down. So I cannot encourage this enough.
But for everybody listening, never never panic. I get it though. You
know, if we've had a diet history, we can just panic that I'm
just going to gain it all back like I did every other time. But
with intermittent fasting, that's not going to happen unless you have something that really
changes dramatically with your health or if you stop, or if your windows get
really really long, and if you're continuing to fast, then you can tweak
what you need to as time goes on, but first, really know what
your trend is doing. All right, do you have anything else to add?
Shering, Well, I did just want to add just a couple of
things. Well, Number one, I think it's great that you said you
haven't shouted, cried, or felt overwhelmed. That's awesome. That is that
is huge, and that really shows that your hormones like are balancing out your
You're not having your blood sugar highs and lows, which can make your emotions
more volatile. That's something a lot of people notice when they start fasting is
that they're just more even keeled. They don't have those highs and lows.
They just take everything and stride much better. So that's huge. You've already
got positive things happening. Anybody can throw a down day in anywhere. You
asked if ADF is something you have to keep doing. ADF is truly when
you alternate every other day, right, you have upday down, day upday
down. That's what ADF is. Anybody can do a longer fast here or
there if they want to do that. We do Mealis Monday in the DDD
community that a lot of people participate in. It's something people like to do
help them clear out some glicogen. They like the little extra long fast.
They like to work a upday in sometimes due to social situations or whatever.
Is that something you have to keep doing. No, you can. You
can throw in a down day anyway where you want. You just simply have
to follow it with an up day. And then I want to kind of
address the wanting to be a positive role model for your fifteen year old daughter,
because this comes up a lot, and we hear this a lot,
and that you're worried that not eating a single thing the day with negatively influence
her. I think that's when it's important. And I don't care what age
your kid is. I don't care if they're five or they're fifteen. I
think it's important for them to understand that a child's body is not the same
as an adult's body. A child's body is still growing, bones, tissues,
I mean everything. So how an adult treats their body and how a
child treats their body are not the same. And I think it's really important
for them to understand that. And fasting for adults is you explain it as
your body is taking digestive rest, that it's helping to lower deadly inflammation in
your body. That is helping you balance out your hormones that you have fat
to burn. Therefore, your body is getting energy from the fat on your
body. You don't have to fuel your body with food. And when you
explain it kind of in that way, most kids understand it pretty easily,
even young kids. So you can be a positive role model by fasting,
and then down the road when your daughter is an adult, she'll have that
experience that you have showed her if she ever needs to fast for her health
or her weight issues down the road or whatever. I think fasting is a
positive if you portray it to be a positive, right, I think so
too, And I just want to reiterate the bottom line is alternate daily fasting
for you. I don't want anyone to ever panic adf like That is not
the reason. I don't want anyone to choose alternate daily fasting out of panic
or like desperation. That is not a good reason to do it. Alternate
daily fasting is an approach a lot of people really enjoy. It is an
approach that's great for the metabolic boost, it's great for lowering insulin levels.
If you're insulin resistant. But if you approach it from a panic point of
view, like well, I gotta lose weight faster I have to do.
Oh no, i'm gaining weight. I better start fasting Longer's that's toxic diet
thinking that we're trying to get rid of. I want every person to choose
alternate daily fasting from a place of empowerment, not a place of oh no,
my weight went up this week, I better fast longer. Graham Curry
said something he calls fasting after a celebration or a holiday, revenge fasting if
you're fasting a long time because you are like trying to make up for the
holiday. But I think panic fasting is also another thing. We don't want
to do, revenge fasting or panic fasting because that's that toxic diet mentality coming
in there. Again. We fast in a way that feels good, that
feels powerful, that feels empowering, and we know why we're doing it,
And I think that's important. So ADF might be right for her, but
maybe not right now. Well, And I also think it's really important too
when you see the scale go up a little bit, We're not always going
to have losses on the scale every week. It's just not going to happen.
The body's too complicated. And I mean something as little as extra stress
or lack of sleep one week can affect your weight loss. It could be
down to the foods you chose that week. The bodies complicated, hormones are
complicated. If you have a period of weight gain, and when I say
a period, I mean like two to three weeks, then yes it's time
to stop and assess what's happening. But it doesn't necessarily mean you have to
pivot and go to a whole new protocol. Usually the answer is in your
windows or not enough fasting. Like if you were doing sixteen eight and you
were seeing weight gain, then you would know, yes, you need to
shift your protocol, But that doesn't mean you have to shift it all the
way over to ADF. It just means you adjust your windows. So I
think we need to get away from thinking like one week two weeks of weight
plateau or even a small gain means something's not working. No, it could
just be your body sort of recalibrating and if you continue to do what you've
been doing, it'll shift back into weight loss mode again. For me,
it's always food choices. Like literally, every time anytime I have had my
honesty pants get tight over the years, it's my tenth holiday season is an
irmitt and faster. I keep saying, I'm so proud of that number.
But anytime my honesty pants got tight, it's always been my food choices,
right or length of eating, window window creep well, and day in and
day out in the community, when people come in, they're like, oh
my gosh, I don't know the skill's going up, and we say,
well, what did you do different? And I cannot tell you. I'm
going to tell you nine times out of ten it's well, I have been
eating more sweets than normal. If you really look at your window, you
know, and if you fuel with straight sugar, that's filling up that gas
tank I was talking about, and it's making it harder for your body to
shift into katosis. Yep. And if you're losing weight and having dessert every
day and you're cruising along and losing weight, great, no problem. If
you're having dessert every day and your weight loss is stuck and your maybe it's
going your weight's even going up a little bit, then maybe the dessert is
the thing. To take a look at right right, that's how you know.
All right. Well, before we get to the tweak of the week,
I just want to take a minute tell you about Hungry Root. So
I pretty much use HelloFresh and their sister company, Green Chef exclusively these days
for my bill planning and I am loving it. It makes my life so
much easier and I get in so many different vegetables. But I still need
things like window opening snacks, organic salad kits, and high quality sauces and
condiments, and my local grocery store just doesn't have the types of things I'm
looking for, so that is where I still continue to order from Hungry Root.
And my husband really likes some of their convenience foods as well. He
is not going to cook a meal kit ever, it's not going to happen.
I do have to leave and go to work sometimes, so I do
try to still have some healthy food that he can throw together, and Hungry
Root helps me out with that. I personally just got a giant box of
nothing but condiments and pantry items, some good clean mustards and mayos. They
have ready to heat beans and soups. They have whole weeat ironcorn, pasta,
and they have some great brown rices that are ready to cook. These
are items that I just can't really source locally. I would have to bulk
order them on Amazon. But I can do some picking and choosing and stock
my pantry with some good, healthy foods. All Hungry Food meets a three
point standard, and their primary concern is that it has to be nutritious and
made from whole, trusted ingredients. All the food they carry is free from
partially hydrogenated oils, artificial sweeteners, high fruit toast, corn syrup. There
are no artificial colors, and they are free of artificial preservatives. So Hungry
Root is kind of like a cross between milkit delivery and grocery delivery. I
can order entire meals or individual grocery items like I shared today. The choice
is mine. Each week, you can check out my Lincoln Show notes and
say fifty dollars on your first trial week. All right, now, it's
time for our tweak of the week. And you know, I always say
tweak it till it's easy. But the tweak that works for me may not
be the one that works for you. And that's why it's super helpful to
hear how other intermitten fasters are making intermittent fasting work for them. So this
tweak was submitted by Martin in the DDD community, and he says, here
is a simple little exercise that is kind of interesting, educational, and fun
to do. Take a walk through the grocery store and locate a vegetable or
fruit you have never eaten or have not eaten in a long time. Take
one home with you, and analyze it with your four senses. So Martin
says, I do not eat much fruit, but I used to eat apples
when I was in grade school. So I picked out the prettiest apple at
the grocery store, and it was a honeycrisp apple. I bought it and
took it home. I spent ten minutes with it and journaled my experience.
The first thing I did was to google it and get the nutritional information sight.
I liked how it looked. I turned it over very slowly and looked
at it from different angles. It was red with some yellow areas. The
red color was very bright and shiny touch. It was very smooth, round,
hard and firm. How did nature make such a beautiful fruit? I
threw it up and down for a little bit. It was heavier than I
thought smell. I picked it up and I smelled it. It barely had
any smell at all. I assumed the peel kept the smell inside, or
maybe I had some sin of trouble that day. Taste, I took a
bite. It was really firm. It took some effort and energy to take
that bite. I liked that I had to work at it a bit.
This was my first bite of anything for the day. I was twenty one
hours into my fast. The apple was absolutely delicious. It was a great
way to break the fast for the day. I made it a habit to
break my fast with an apple for a few weeks. And then I tried
a cucumber. Martin says, I suggest giving it a whirl. Have you
ever tried avocados, bluebearer, different kinds of tomatoes, mushrooms, cucumbers,
leaks, dates, or figs. For just a buck or two and ten
minutes of our time, we might find an enjoyable, whole, healthy,
nutritious food to enhance our life and our help. I love that I did
too, and it's such a fun experience. Now I want to go try
some things like that. Thank you, Martin. Well, we love to
leave you with something inspiring to carry you through this next week. And this
week's message is a poem shared by Amanda in Lexington, Kentucky. Make peace
with all the women you once were. Lay flowers at their feet, offer
them incense and honey and forgiveness. Honor them and give them your silence.
Listen, bless them, and let them be. For they are the bones
at the temple you sit in now, For they are the rivers of wisdom
leading you towards the sea. I have been a thousand different women, and
Amanda wrote, I love this poem by Emery Hall so very much. My
favorite part is for they are the bones of the temple, you see,
and now through if I am learning to forgive my former selves, and I'm
working towards loving those versions of myself as well. It is a journey,
but poems like this one help. And if you'd like that, I actually
put a link in show notes where you can pull it up. I love
that too. It's true, make peace with all the women you once were.
You know, sometimes you can look back at your old self and think
ooh, like you cringe a little bit. But those cringe moments the mistakes
you made in the past have made you who you are now. It's true.
Thanks so much for listening today. We would love to have you join
us and the Delayed On Tonight community, where you can interact with both me
and Sherry, plus the most supportive bunch of 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.