Episode 31: Weight Loss Expectations, Accidentally Over-Restricting, Switching Things Up, 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, Sherry,
I'm doing well. I already need that because we're recording to today. We've
just recleated U with thirty and now we're recording episode thirty one. But to
all of you and listener land, it will be two separate weeks so life
behind the scenes. It's cold. But you know what, I was just
in Virginia and it was really cold, and I kept complaining about how cold
it was, and so did Will and my Mom's like, it is not
cold. I'm like, yes, it is. So that's all I have
to say about that. Well, earlier this week, like Tuesday, and
on Wednesday, it's Friday. As we're recording, people kept telling me that
we were supposed to have snow today on Friday. And I kept looking at
the forecast on two different weather apps. Never saw snow, nothing, nothing
about snow at all. And then like people kept telling me over and over
again, O, we're supposed to have snow. Watch out, We're supposed
to have snow. And I'm just like, I don't know where these people
are getting their weather information. Not from the weather apps. I use no,
So I guess you hadn't had any snow. We have not had any
snow. No. I think it's like forty five degrees forty three degrees outside.
That math doesn't work out. It's been in the fifties, so I
don't think even if it's snowed, it's gonna melt instantly. I was never
worried. No, I'm sure others were stocking up on bread and milk.
Well, that's what we do in the South. People in the North don't
get it. It's okay, we do that in Kansas City even really okay.
They say flurries and you can't buy any more bread if you don't rush
right to the store. Bread and milk, Yeah, yep, yep.
Yeah. My husband calls them milk sandwiches. He's like, everybody's got to
get their milk sandwiches. Yeah. But it's true though. But in our
defense, everybody in the South, I'm defending us. We don't have the
right kind of tires, we don't have the right kind of driving skills,
and we're more likely to get icy rain, which means you really can't drive
anywhere and you are stuck and then the trees all fall down and you have
no power. I am way more worried about New Year's Day. We are
supposed to have ice that morning and some sleets, and I'll be driving home
from work. So oh, non't even looked that far ahead yet. No
ice is the worst. We had an ice storm in augusta one year that
we shut down the whole city for like almost a week, like no power.
It was like crazy, So no ice. Let's let's call it now.
Was that like twenty eleven or something? It was two It might have
been twenty fourteen because that we had I think it was twenty fourteen. And
then we also had an earthquake. It was around Valentine's Day. We had
the ice storm and it wasn't pretty hot because I lived here and we had
no power. And then at like eleven thirty PM. I don't know why
I was still awake. That's not like me, but I'm standing in the
bathroom going try getting ready to get in the bed, and the whole house
started shaking and it was an earthquake. So I'm like, what's next,
the plague of locusts. It just felt like the end of time. We
don't normally have earthquakes. This was an Augusta. So yeah, that was
my first winter living here, and I had some friends that lived in Philla,
Rica and they were literally iced into the house for almost a week.
They couldn't leave. Yeah, it was bad. Well, let's jump into
today's celebration from Jessica in Florida. She said, I wanted to share with
you that I have just finished the twenty eight day fast Art Challenge from fast
Fee's repeat. I did the rip off the band aid approach, and I
did the forbidden thing. I shouldn't have dunge gin. But I'll explain why
I weighed my I weighed myself every day during the challenge. I was reading
your book and I was so intrigued that our body weight could stay the same
or even go up while still losing inches. And it fascinated me and I
wanted to do an experiment with my own body. So I did, and
I loved the ups and downs on my weight chart. I did it because
I understood what was going on inside my body because of your book. That
comforted me not to mention I was fitting in clothes I couldn't fit in before
I knew it wouldn't discourage me. But I don't suggest others do this,
because even though we understand, we still tend to have high hopes in a
lower number on that scale. It's like it's embedded in our brain or something.
I have before and after pictures. I would love to show you if
I'm able to. Somehow I actually lost weight ten pounds, and it's amazing
how I look smaller at one hundred and seventy four pounds than I ever have
before at that same weight, I feel more like I'm at one fifty five
right now. I lost a lot of inflammation. I didn't even really work
out. I mainly just took walks with my dog, though I do plan
to be more active moving forwards. I'm just so grateful to have come across
your book because I have been fasting wrong until now. I have prayed to
God so many times to help me to stop abusing food. I really do
believe that he led me to your book. I really think that I had
a food addiction. I would eat myself sick, stuffing my face even when
I wasn't hungry. I would purposefully throw food away in the trash that I
was trying to avoid because I couldn't just let it sit there. I would
eat it, and later I'd go dig it out of the trash and eat
it anyway. I mean yuck. I was embarrassed to go out in public.
I was unhappy and depressed. All I thought about was food. I
would go to parties just for the food. I would go to costume conventions
and after thirty minutes I'd want to get out of my costume so that I
could go put comfy clothes on and go eat. My life revolved around food.
I was a glutton. So I just wanted to say thank you for
putting emphasis on the importance of clean fasting and all the sciencey stuff you put
in your book telling us what fasting does. It got my attention. I
can now move faster, get up, sit down, and go down the
stairs withoutnee pain. The symptoms I was feeling in my body, especially my
feet, that I feared was the beginning of diabetes, are now gone.
And now I have a different relationship with food. Yes, even after twenty
eight days, I can feel that this is something I'm going to do for
a lifetime because I am in it for health reasons. Now, God bless
you well. I love that so very much that you've already changed your relationship
with food in just your first twenty eight days. Jessica, that is amazing,
and I totally get it because I remember before or fasting, it was
like obsessive thoughts about food all the time, all the time. I think
it's kind of that vicious cycle. It is like I need to go on
a diet, and you're thinking about need to go on a diet, which
kind of makes you miserable because you're like, I don't know what I'm gonna
do, and then you eat for comfort because you can't figure out how to
lose weight, right, You kind of get in that vicious cycle. It
was the decision fatigue of should I eat? Is it time to eat?
What can I eat? What will help me lose this weight that I need
to lose. That was always going through my mind back then. And with
fasting, you're not thinking about food or windows closed. It's not an option.
No more decision fatigue. All right, Now, I want to talk
about not weighing during the fast start and why, And I really really have
this as a point of emphasis in the new book twenty eight Day Fast Art
day by day, which Jessica had not had a chance to see yet because
it hadn't come out yet by the time she sent in this celebration. But
I actually have readers check off I did not get on the scale every single
day of the twenty eight day fast Art in the new book. And here's
why I don't want you to do it. The whole point of the new
book is the whole you're getting you psychologically, with the right mindset understanding,
you're not going to quit setting yourself up for success with your powerful why.
And I get that most of us come to this because we want weight loss.
I get it, and we're so used to the quick results on the
scale that if we don't see them and we're doing this new thing and it
feels hard and weight the scale is up and I'm not losing weight at all,
then you're going to feel so discouraged and you're going to be more likely
to quit before you can feel how much better you feel with fasting. Your
body's not adapted, so you're like, number one, this is hard and
I don't like it, and number two, I'm not losing any weight,
and so then you're like, this doesn't work. I quit well, And
then your focus is so much on that weight, and you get up in
the morning and you're thinking about that weight, and you're not even able to
appreciate the positives that fasting is bringing you to you in those twenty eight days
because you've got this like you're hyper focused on that scale and making that scale
move exactly. And that is why when I wrote Fast, Feast Repeat that
came out in twenty twenty. I already had years of coaching people through my
Facebook support groups by that point, and I knew what made people really discouraged
is that they didn't lose weight at first. And I understood why, you
know, when I read The Fast five book way back in the day that
doctor Burt Hearing wrote. He explains about something called compensatory overeating. That was
his wording, and it's because you're not fat adapted yet. So your body
is not well fueled during the fast, and so when your window opens,
you're really really hungry, so you're likely to actually overeat because your hunger signals
are so pronounced. Your body is telling you eat, eat, eat,
So we find that overeating is very common at first because your body is not
well fueled. And not to mention of that is mental too. There's that
whole thought of, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna eat until tomorrow afternoon.
I need to eat a lot to get me through the fast, and
that's just not the way the body works, right. So your body is
still adapting, you're not well fueled during the fast. Your body might be
sending you over eating signals at first. Those do get better, we promise,
and there are many, many reasons why you might not lose weight at
first, and so I really want you when I say trust the process.
This is part of it. The first twenty eight days. The process of
the first twenty eight days is not the weight loss time. It is the
adapting to fasting time and understanding you might overeat and you might gain weight during
the fast start. So like, for example, everybody who's listening, this
episode comes out on January thirty first, and if you've been going through the
twenty eight day fast start in our community that started on January fourth, today
is day twenty eight, and tomorrow is day twenty nine. When you have
my blessing to weigh yourself again, and every person is going to be hoping
to see a lower number and thinking they were going to want to see that
ten pounds down that Jessica saw, but they might feel weight that is up
or not down at all, or maybe it's only down one pound, and
then you're going to have that little bit of your brain saying, oh no.
But when that happens, remind yourself the twenty eight day fastart is not
the time for weight loss. It is the time to adapt to the fasting
and now when you're done with it, now's the time to focus on what
your trend is doing to see what happens. Yeah, and I just want
to say, once you finished the twenty eight days, regardless of what the
scale starts on says on today twenty nine, it's time to extend your contract
with yourself. Take it out to ninety days. Because I was one of
those people that gained and I gained eight pounds during my first six weeks,
and had I got to a month and evaluated my weight and decided that that
day it wasn't working, I would have missed the last eight years of freedom
and weight loss and you know health that I have and just mental and emotional
healing around body, image and food. So give it time, even when
you weigh still give it time. Exactly do you have drastic changes in a
month? They do, And those people are generally carrying around a lot of
deadly inflammation and their body is ready to shed it and fasting helps us do
that. And so you know, people that don't carry around that much inflammation
for whatever reason, you may not see changes early on, and that's fine,
it doesn't mean they're not coming. Yeah. You know you mentioned stick
to it and guarantee that you're going to do it for ninety days. Promise
yourself that in the twenty eight day fast Art book. At the end of
the twenty eight days, I actually want you to make a commitment to yourself
to make it to your first fastiversary, commit to it the first year.
And so at the end of your twenty eight day fast start, you're already
one twelfth of the way to your first year. So just keep going,
don't stop, and that's when you can start figuring out what you need to
do for weight loss, not during the first twenty eight days, So don't
let that get in your head. So, Jessica, you're getting a little
scolding from me. I'm glad you didn't let it upset you. But also
you lost ten pounds, so of course it didn't upset you. But now
imagine you were somebody who gained ten pounds, how you would have felt it
would have felt completely different. So there's a reason why I don't want you
to weigh and so please just trust me here, because you know I've been
through this with a lot of people for a lot of years, and I
know why I kept quitting all those years too. I understand it, so
I couldn't let that pass without putting in my two cents. All right,
So now we have a question from a listener. This question is from Sarah
from Castre Valley, California. She said, I am forty five starting weight
one hundred and sixty current weight one forty two goal weight one thirty. I
started intermittent fasting nine months ago and lost the initial twenty pound in the first
three months. I have been plateaued since I work out daily. I started
with sixteen eight, then progressed to twenty four and frequently twenty two to two.
I have an evening window because I like to eat with my family,
but I don't think this is ideal for me. Lately, I've been trying
to work out later and eat earlier because of all the information to eat after
working out to replenish muscle development. I tried ADF, but it was really
hard for me. I couldn't sleep because I was so focused on waking up
to eat, Plus the upday was hard for me psychologically. My question is
how do I tweak to break through this plateau? Okay, a couple of
thoughts here. You work out daily. I don't know what you're doing for
workouts, but we should not be doing intense workouts every single day. That
is not what's best for our body, nor is it best for weight loss.
Now. Do you want to move your body daily, absolutely, but
you do need recovery days. Your body needs recovery days, So I hope
that you are taking that into mind when you are doing your workout schedule for
the week. Down days with exercise are important. Your body needs rest,
so add some restorative workouts if you don't already, some yoga, just some
light walking. And you don't want to be doing intense workouts that frequently because
it can really kind of backfire on you. Just exercise is healthy, but
too much exercise can be stressful on your body and it can have the opposite
results you are looking for in terms of weight loss, especially if you are
doing a lot of cardio. I'm not sure why you do not think an
evening window is ideal for you. You don't really say so, I can't
really help you work through that. Now, as far as eating for muscle
development, as long as you are eating within a twenty four hour time period,
you are eating enough to replenish any muscle break down that's occurring or whatever
you're getting that in. You know, there's this whole thing that came out
I don't know twenty some years ago, with this whole push to refuel within
like an hour whatever, thirty minutes to an hour or whatever. But research
really shows that that's not necessary. The antabolic period isn't super short like that.
So really, whether you eat at one hour or you eat six hours
after your workout, you're not going to notice a difference in muscle gains.
And also, other research has really showed that consuming protein, it doesn't matter
when you consume it, whether it's before your workout or after your workout,
one is not more beneficial than the other. So as long as you are
eating every day, you're not going to have a problem with muscle mass,
retention or development. I think that might be what she means by it not
being ideal for her because she likes to she thinks she works out. Yeah,
I think that's okay. I wasn't really sure if that's what she meant.
And then you also mentioned adyf is really hard for you because you can't
sleep because you're focused on a way camp to eat. Again, I don't
know if this is psychological or physical. Are you hungry. Is that why
you can't sleep? You can always use the down day, which again ensures
that you are eating every five four hours meal. Yeah, you can use
a down day meal. Then you're still eating every day. If you are
really that hungry that you're not sleeping on a down day, you could potentially
not be eating enough to fuel your body with all the workouts that you're doing.
Again, it's hard. We're not in your house. We don't know
how you eat or how much you eat. You say you frequently do twenty
two two. I don't recommend anybody frequently does twenty two two unless they're also
alternating that with some longer eating windows, especially somebody who is very, very
active. So I would really like to see you settle into more of a
you know, nineteen five or twenty four. Like I talk a lot,
that's just really a sweet spot for weight loss for so many many people.
Anything else that you can think of, jen, Oh, yeah, I
have lots of things to add. Again, we tend to think that,
well, if I'm plateaued, I need to shorten my window. So if
I do twenty two to two to twenty four, that's shorter. It's got
to be better. I'm gonna lose more weight. It's good. And especially
if I'm working out a lot. If you remember when we had doctor Tabatha
barber On, she's an obgin, she's a hormone expert. What is not
good for women's hormones over restriction coupled with over exercise. So that is not
what we want you to do. You need to fuel your body well.
And you know, if I had a twenty two two day or twenty three
one day here and there, nothing wrong with that. I'm usually a little
hunger the next day, so I eat more that day just naturally it happens.
But I'm also not doing really intense workouts every day. You know,
I dumput my rebounder again on my vibration plate. I walk a little bit.
That's that's what I do. So you want to make sure you're not
accident over restricting by having really really short windows and also over exercising by working
out too much. Like Sherry said, you got to balance it fast,
feast, repeat, right. We nourish our bodies well. That's so important.
As far as adf not being able to sleep, Like Sherry said,
the Downday meal can really really help with that, and I think that is
a legitimate option and preferable for a lot of people. Now, I also
want to define a plateau, and this is where it gets tricky, because
you are I don't know how tall you are, but your goal weight is
only twelve pounds away from where you are right now. So let's imagine that
you're working out and you're fueling your body well, and it's all just you've
settled into a routine that's really appropriate, which, of course you may need
to do some tweaking for that. But let's imagine that you find a routine
where you're working out just the right amount, eating the right amount, fueling
your body well. You're going to experience body recomposition, which means that while
you're fasting, you're going to burn fat. And because you're working out and
nourishing your body well, you're going to build muscle. So you may find
that your body shrinks over time and you may get to your goal size without
the scale changing. So it's time for you to start using other tools besides
just those last twelve pounds on the scale to measure your progress. My advice
for you is reread the scale shmail chapter of Fast East repeat, make sure
you're using all of those tools. Goal clothes, honesty pants, progress photos
were in the same outfit. You may find that you get to your goal
size and you still weigh one hundred and forty two pounds. Yeah. And
you know, as I was rereading this, as you were talking to Sarah,
mentions that the update is hard for her psychologically. And I think a
lot of this is you're not I don't think you're experiencing the freedom that so
many people feel with IF. Yet I feel like you're a little bit stuck
and maybe some restrictive mindset, keeping these short windows you're afraid to really embrace
eating on the other and so that is something that I would really suggest that
you work on, is you know, letting go of that diet brain that
I need to burn all these calories and eat as little as possible and the
shortest window as possible, because you're really missing so many of the benefits of
IF by kind of getting stuck in that mindset and kind of learning to let
that go and trust your body and trust Fasting to take care of you.
If you can work on being less restrictive, I think that's going to pay
off for you. Good catch there, Sherryff. I didn't notice that part,
But you're right. If the update is hard psychologically and you're working out
a lot and you're having really short windows, it does sound like what we've
been taught eat less, move more. So if the update is hard for
you psychologically because you're afraid to eat more, that is the sign you probably
need to eat more. So that's good good noticing that. I agree completely.
All right, So now it's time for our segment called What's Your Why.
When you're starting off with the twenty eight day fast art day by day,
one of the first things I want you to do is craft your why
statement. It's perfectly appropriate for weight loss to be a big part of your
why, but when your why is deeper than weight loss alone, you're more
likely to find long term success and view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. So
today we have a wife from Lisa. Lisa wrote, my wife started out
hoping to find something new that would work for weight loss and turned into striving
for lifelong health. I've struggled with weight problems my entire life. I was
overweight in elementary school. My mom bought me chubby sized clothes at Sears me
too, Lisa. My mom bought me tough skin jeans, and she bought
them in the boys department, and I was a husky. She said,
So I feel you're pain Lisa, She says. My pediatrician put me on
diet pills when I was in third grade. From sixth grade through high school,
maybe from the diet pills or after my final gross burt. I weighed
one hundred and thirty five to one hundred and forty pounds, which was a
normal weight for my five h seven height, but I always felt overweight like
most everyone. I gained weight in college and just kept on gaining. By
my mid twenties, I weighed over two hundred pounds. I joined weight watchers
and got back down to the ideal weight of one thirty five in less than
a year. However, I gained most of the weight back by the time
I was thirty, and after that nothing I tried worked or I could not
stick with it. That's thirty years of being overweight and trying to lose,
bouncing up and down from my highest weight of two thirty two to the lowest
I remember being in recent years of oneint eighty. I'm an intelligent, successful
woman, I solve complicated problems in my job. I can afford to pay
for a weight loss program within reason. I once paid fifteen hundred dollars for
a healthy lifestyle eating program and coach. It worked until it didn't, just
like every other diet. In March twenty twenty one, coming out of the
pandemic, I saw a number on the scale I had promised myself I would
never go back to again, and that is when I found IF. I'm
pretty sure I've been insulin resistant my entire life, and I had been basically
been on a calorie restrictive diet my entire adult life. My metabolism was shot.
My weight loss was really slow, but in two years I lost about
forty pounds. I started IF at two hundred and I'm maintaining at one hundred
and sixty. I'll be sixty three on October tenth, and smart BMI says
one sixty is a good weight for my age. IF was the easiest weight
loss program I've ever done, but many other things motivate me to continue.
I can enjoy wonderful food without guilt. I no longer feel guilty about quote
bad foods or calories. I mostly eat whole foods and avoid ultra processed because
I feel better. But I can splurge if I want. I can practice
IF for the rest of my life. I never felt like that about a
diet before. IF. I was always hungry, whether it was on a
diet or not. Intermittent fasting corrected my society signals, and it's wonderful.
I've had hypogli episode since I was twelve. I've only had one since I
started IF, and that was after I ate a high card meal followed by
pecan pie. I want to avoid the health issues that run long and deep
in my family diabetes, Alzheimer's, aphib heart disease, and chronic kidney disease.
Keeping insulin and weight low gives me a better chance. I have the
BRCA two breast cancer genetic mutation. I had breast cancer in twenty seventeen,
a double mistectomy, reconstruction, chemo, and took an estrogen inhibitor for five
years. My incologist agrees that fasting and keeping insulin low may decrease my recurrent
risk. I hope fat burning and autophogy will eventually whittle my waist to a
healthy size. I still have central obesity from lifelong insulin resistance and the estrogen
inhibitor. Trying ADF isn't practical right now, even though I know it might
help me achieve a healthier body composition. But I'm the caregiver for both elderly
parents. I'm happy that through distress, with no effort at all, I'm
maintaining and even losing a pound or two now and then, well, that
is awesome. Lisa and I want to highlight the smart BMI. We've talked
about this before. You can google Smart Bmi and put in your your age,
your height, and your weight, and it will give you an indication
of where you fall on the smart BMI. This is not the same as
the standard BMI that we're used to. It takes your age into consideration,
and you know, we don't want to be too thin as we get older.
We want to that Studies show that it's actually healthy to maintain a little
extra weight, right, and some people have been confused. They'll use the
calculator and they'll come back community and give their BMI score because it does tell
you you're conventional BMI score, so it's not the first score because that'll just
be a BMI. But then it's going to say you're smart b ANDI score
and it's like a fraction, so it'd be like thirty five over seventy or
something like that. And that's kind of like there's a range in there what
they consider hell healthy and it's right around I want to say, it's right
in the thirties. So read the work and they'll tell you, Yeah,
there's a whole blurb about it. And then they'll tell you like do they
recommend that you lose some weight and why or are you at a healthy weight?
And what do you need to do to maintain your weight? So it's
really it's I think it's a very helpful tool to look at. Yeah,
I think so too, because it helps you with realistic expectations for what is
a healthy weight for you, because we've been conditioned to have a number in
our head and the regular BMI is just a very flawed calculation. Yes,
it doesn't take it. If you are an elite athlete and you have a
lot of muscle mass, you can have a very high BMI and be very
very healthy. Well this one too, This one could do that too,
same thing, but it also takes your agent a yeah, right, all
right, we have another question from new in New Jersey. Hi, I'm
trying IF for the second time. About a year ago, I started IF
and lost about ten hounds very slowly. I got impatient and quit. I
want to do it right this time. My question is this, Can I
choose a fasting time nineteen five, for example, and do that every day?
Is it necessary to switch up the fasting times to keep my body guessing?
Thanks for any insight you can provide. My answer is yes and no.
Yes, you can absolute choose a fasting time and you can do that
every day. I will tell you I'm a nineteen five girl. Do I
eat exactly for five hours every single day? No, because part of that
comes in. What comes into play is listening to your body and honoring satiety.
So if you have a nineteen hour fasting goal and a five hour window
goal, that's great. Does that mean you have to open your window at
nineteen hours Nope. If you're not hungry openly, yeah, open your window
an hour later. Whatever. So I don't know very many people who say,
yes, I'm a nineteen five baster who exactly nineteen hours and open on
the dot at nineteen hours and close on the diet at five hours every day,
So you're gonna automatically have some variability in there, and you're not going
to eat the same exact foods every day, so your intake's not gonna be
the same. Your nutritional intake's gonna change, Your chloric inhake's gonna change.
Some days you're gonna be hunger than others. Some days you're gonna have,
you know, little hunger, and you might eat really lightly and the next
day you might naturally eat more and you might find that you need a five
and a half hour window that day. So yes, you can absolutely choose
a fasting protocol and do it every single day. Is it necessarily switch up
the fasting times? You're going to do that? Naturally? When would you
make a change? If you settle into nineteen five and you know, a
couple months go by and you're just not seeing weight loss at all, that's
when you would want to look at it and just pick a new protocol,
or change something you're doing, or address your windows. So we don't want
you to set it and forget it. You definitely you need to settle in,
give it time, give your body time to adjust, and then adjust
as needed. And again this is a really good question to ask yourself.
And how do you know when to switch things up? Is based on results,
what's happening like. For example, if you do a share is suggested
and you have a flexible nineteen to five and you naturally switch it up day
to day based on your hunger and society cues and you're reaching your goals,
there is no reason to switch anything up to keep your body guessing. You
are seeing the results you want. But let's imagine that you do it for
three months. You're rolling along, then all of a sudden, you get
to a plateau that doesn't budge for a month. Well, now it might
be time to switch something up to get your body guessing again. Throw in
a little adf here and there so your body will tell you if you need
to switch things up, and use your results to guide you when it comes
to that. Right. Yeah, I think the big problem that we run
into is people who want to switch it up continuously, and that can really
derail people. Like I've said before, you can flex yourself out of fat
burning. I don't think people have to be worried about settling into a protocol
and their body adapting. That's not something I would worry about. It's not
something I've ever worried about. And if it does, if you do adapt,
you just tweak it. That's when you switch it up. It's not
There should be no fear because you've got the tools, right, you got
the tools. Whatever happens, you say, all right, what's happening?
Why is this happening? If you're not sure why it's happening, and ask
us a question that will help you figure it out. The more details you
can give us the better, of course. But you know there's no reason
to ever be like like worried and scared and upset. Instead you just respond
to what's happening, like, all right, let's see, this is what's
happening. Why could this be happening? And what would be the thing to
do in result of this happening. So this week we also have a book
recommendation to share and this was sent in by Patricia Cherry and Plymouth, UK.
She said, I'm passionate about all things diets, so there are many
books I could recommend, but the latest has been Ultra Processed People. I'm
presently reading Excited Toxins, which is about the damage that toxins such as aspertame
and MSG can do. I'm pretty certain that my lifelong use of sacharin aspartame
and other sweeteners is what has caused my liver damage. Oh yeah, and
you know, I Ultra Process People is a great book. It explains so
very much. And the part that Patricia added about the artificial sweeteners. You
know, I think about Tim Spector and he used to not caution against the
use of them, like there was like some words like what was I wrong
about? One of the things he said he was wrong about was artificial sweeteners
and the damage they can do to our gut microbiome. So I really do
think that that's one thing too. If if you're wanting to make some changes,
getting artificial sweeteners out of your diet can really help. Of course,
we don't have them while we're fasting, but in your eating window you can
choose whatever you want. Obviously, and you're eating window. If you would
like to have artificial sweeteners, you absolutely can. But if you're concerned,
that would be a good place to start with taking things out here and there.
I just drink, like, I don't drink any kind of sweetened beverage
during my eating window. I drink water, I drink sparkling water. I
might if my window's open, put a lome wedge on a club soda if
I'm at a restaurant, But I'm not drinking sweetened or artificially sweetened beverages very
often. How about you, I'm more of a ad fruit. You like
a diet Mountain or no, no, you drink diet doctor pepper or every
now is to drink diet Doc pepper now and then. But I'll tell you
what. I just made a decision, like maybe in September that I wasn't
going to buy them anymore. I didn't know that. Now there are occasions
while I'm out and about and you know, my windows open and I might
grab one, But I don't buy them and bring them to the house anymore.
Okay, And again that's the whole part about like my book clean Ish,
Right, we'd choose what we would do and the choices. If you
want to have a little artificial sweetener in your window, or if that's something
you don't want to give up, you get to make that choice. But
if you're thinking about what could I give up, that might be a place
to start. I would drink like a real coke. I really changed to
drinking coldbrew coffee. In the afternoon. When I want something to drink besides
water, I have switched to a coldbrea coffee. I actually found a really
great organic decaf coldbrew coffee that's amazing and clean, fast, compliant, and
I'll mix it with some sparkling water and make a little coffee soda. And
then when I want something besides water in my window, I have a new
favorite window closer and that is a decaf coffee with some whipped cream and cinnamon.
Ooh, that's amazing, delicious dessert coffee. Yeah, for your window.
It feels fancy and it feels like dessert and that cinnamon is delicious,
and so that's yeah, that's kind of been my new evening tree. Well,
I do drink kombucha. I forgot to mention. Now, you know,
if I want something in a wine glass that feels like a celebration,
I'll put some kombucha in there, and that's always yummy. But anyway,
ultra process people suggested by Patricia that's a good choice. And again in your
eating window cleanish that's my goal. Perfection not required. You just decide what's
important to you. Listen, I ate some cheetahs yesterday and they were delicious.
Yeah, I'm definitely cleanish. Yeah. But before we get to the
tweak of the week, I do want to take a minute tell you about
beauty Counter, which is a clean which is a clean product that I really
know about it. When eating cleanish, I thought, you know, there's
a lot of things I can't control, and there are a lot of things
I can control, and I can control what I put on my skin.
I believe that what we put on our body is just as important as what
we put in our body. I feel good knowing that the beauty and bath
and body products I use are free of dangerous chemicals and toxins that have been
shown to contribute to disease such as cancer, dementia, autoimmune diseases, as
well as those that contribute to endocrine disruption leading to hormonal imbalances, weight gain,
and insulin resistance. I will be forever grateful to beauty Counter for working
hard to research and remove these ingredients from their products, as well as working
to pass regulation in both the US and Canada to make the beauty industry safer
for all. So not only do I not have to shop around for the
cleanest products. I just go right to the beauty Counter website. I also
do not have to be on the constant search for an effective skincare routine.
I love the countertime an all bright sea line. My sun damaged skin is
bright and my dark spots are nearly all gone or considerably lightened. It's a
no brainer and it really simplifies my life so much. My skin has truly
never looked better. If you want to learn more or need help deciding how
to start, visit my website at beautycounter dot com slash Sherry Bullock, or
you can email me at Sherry at fastpiecerepeat dot com and I will get you
started. Yeah, Sherry is great answering questions when anybody asks me, I
don't know, like what do you recommend it? Like, I don't know.
I use very few things, but I love the ones that I use.
The shampoo, the conditioner, well, I definitely have Karen and it
absolutely reversed. I've never been someone who used like a bunch of regimen like
I own all of it all the and I just never used the strawser.
No, I never use any of it. I'm just very I do.
That's my little form of self care every morning and evening, and my skin
thanks me. So now it's time for our tweak of the week. And
this tweak was submitted by bunny Mom Karen. And I love Karen bunny Mom.
She is in our community and she will show us her bunnies frequently.
They're so cute as a mom. And I had to think for a minute
and then I was like, this is bunny mom. So I changed bun
to bunny. So she says bun. I know she does on the buns,
but yeah, in my head I thought of like a bun, like
a bun on the head. We might not have recommend the female address,
and I realized it was hers. It was Karen. Oh, I love
it. Karen has care little bunnies she does, and Karen has an amazing
transformation story. Does she really really does? Never stop sharing that, Karen,
she said. A tweak that has proved great for me is to alternate
between fasting links to achieve higher average fasts as well as giving me more time
in my fat burning phase on the longer days, but also helps me prevent
over restriction. I do twenty plus hours some days, usually end up twenty
twoish in sixteen nine other days. My body doesn't react well to all twenty
plus hour fasts or even nineteen every day. So if I was all or
nothing and said a hard guide for each day, I'd only be around seventeen
to nineteen. But my body does react well to throwing the twenty two ish
hour fasts in as long as it's not multiple days. In our rope,
unlearning the all or nothing mentality has been game changing and helped me to find
which tweaks really suit my body and helps me achieve my goals. So,
you know, we just talked about there's no need to flex. But Karen
has fasted for long enough that she has figured out what she really needs to
do to make this sustainable for her, and she likes the extra fat burning
of the longer fast, but she knows she doesn't feel great that way.
And she also works out a lot. I do know that about her,
So I know she said on the days that she has heavier workouts, she
does have longer windows, you know, And I think that's really her listening
to her body. She knows what her body needs from day to day.
Really, if we put all three of these together, all three are our
question that we had from Sarah that she's doing twenty to two a lot of
days in working out, and then we had the question from New in New
Jersey about nineteen five every day, And if we roll all that together,
then we have Karen with the way that she does a little bit of both
and fly. I will say, I think when you're an experience faster,
it makes flexing it just natural. It's not something you have to really think
about. It's natural and it doesn't derail you. But if you have a
person that's struggled with consistency or maintaining a fasting lifestyle, there is a lot
to be said for consistency. That's an excellent part. So build the consistency
and get to where fasting is something you do every day without having to think
about, and then you can start flexing your schedule some because it's going to
be really easy to do at that point exactly. And if you go back
to the question, you know when New and New Jersey asked if you could
do nineteen five every day and we said that, you could notice that Sherry
said, you're going to naturally flex it based on your appetite, whether you're
not as hungry that day, you might have a shorter window, or if
you're a little hunger, it might be a little longer. Let the flexing
happen naturally. You don't have to work so hard at it or like like
devise complicated schedules. You let your body tell you, like Karen has done.
So. When Karen explains how, you know, some days she fasts
for twenty plus hours and some days she does sixteen, it really is based
on her body telling her because she's been doing this for a long time,
and she knows she worked out that day and she's hungrier, says she eats
more. So your body really does guide you. Over time, you learn
how to do all that something that people used to like to do back in
the DDD Facebook group days, and we see it some in the community here
and there is people will like to come up with these complicated fasting schedules and
you'll be like, I used to do it. This is what I think
I'm gonna do. I'm gonna fast this much on this day and then have
this long of a window on this day. And then they're like, what
do you think? Yeah, And you know what I think. I think
keeping it as simple as possible, letting your body guide you. There's a
lot to be said for that. You can write whatever you want on a
piece of paper, but that doesn't mean that your body's going to like what
you wrote on a paper. It doesn't mean that that's going to make you
feel your best. You might have a really hungrier day that day, but
you wrote down you were going to have a two hour window, and now
you're like forcing yourself to stick to this two hour window goal you had.
But your body needs you to eat more that day, and you're hungry and
you're cranky, and then fasting feels hard, and then you get you know,
then you become a disgruntled faster. We don't want discruntled faster to your
body is important. Yeah, you know, if your body's hungry or one
day, a two hour window is not going to serve you well. And
if you planned it, now you feel like you're failing. Fasting should never
feel hard once you're fat adapted. It's true, that doesn't mean you won't
have a hard day. You will have hard days. You might have emotional
days or you want to eat. But we tweak it till it's easy,
right, that's the goal. That doesn't mean every minute is easy. I
talk about that in the new book. You know, when we say tweak
it till it's easy, does that mean every second's going to be easy.
No, because there are many reasons that life is just hard in general.
Yeah, but if you're like dreading fasting, if you wake up in the
morning you're like, oh no, I'm dreading fasting, is gonna be a
hard day, blah blah. And that is happening to you a lot.
There's a reason why, and it's time to figure that out. Don't give
up. Yeah, figure it out, because you've got some tweaking to do.
And it could be something as simple as you're drinking a prepared coffee.
They has additives that are breaking your fast. It could be that simple.
Well, we love to leave you with inspirational or motivational quotes to get you
through your next week, and this week we have a message from Sonia and
Italian living in England. The quote is if you keep doing things halfway,
you will always have half results. She says, I've told myself this when
I discovered the Clean Fast and understood that until that moment, I was not
one hundred percent fasting. Yeah, that's a really good way of looking at
it. You can't fast halfway. You're either fast and clean or you're not.
So that's a very good point. But I know sousnya is I've talked
to her before. She's awesome. 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. S