Episode 145: Switching Things Up, Metabolic Flexibility, Over-Restricting, and More

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life. I'm
<v Speaker 1>Jen Stevens, author of the New York Times bestseller Fast
<v Speaker 1>Feast Repeat.
<v Speaker 2>And I'm Sherry Bullock, longtime intermittent faster and health and
<v Speaker 2>wellness advocate. Please keep in mind that this podcast is
<v Speaker 2>for educational and motivational purposes only and is not intended
<v Speaker 2>to provide medical or diagnostic advice. Jen and I are
<v Speaker 2>not doctors, so make sure to check with your trusted
<v Speaker 2>healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes to
<v Speaker 2>any medical treatments or medications.
<v Speaker 1>Whether you're new to intermittent fasting or an experienced intermittent faster,
<v Speaker 1>tune in each week to get inspired, to learn, and
<v Speaker 1>to have some fun along the way. Hi, everybody, we
<v Speaker 1>are so glad you're here today. Welcome to this week's
<v Speaker 1>episode of the Fast Feast Repeat, Intermittent Fasting for Life Podcast.
<v Speaker 3>How are you doing today, Sherry?
<v Speaker 4>I am doing pretty well.
<v Speaker 3>Well, that's good.
<v Speaker 2>I'd like to say fabulous, but I can't say fabulous today.
<v Speaker 2>I'm kind of in pain. And pain it does not
<v Speaker 2>make you well. Well, that's not good. I shared I
<v Speaker 2>think maybe six weeks ago I fell and I'm still
<v Speaker 2>having this aggravating shoulder neck pain, but I'm just getting
<v Speaker 2>it sorted out. I have a special MRI next week
<v Speaker 2>and we'll figure out what's going on.
<v Speaker 4>Yikes.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I hope that they find something that is easy,
<v Speaker 1>and I know that is hard.
<v Speaker 4>Me too, Me too. So anyway, how are you?
<v Speaker 3>I'm doing great.
<v Speaker 1>Had a lovely weekend in Winston Salem with Chris and
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of friends from college. It's baseball season. Like
<v Speaker 1>I said, I got to meet Stephanie, who's a listener.
<v Speaker 1>It was great to meet her.
<v Speaker 4>Oh that's fun and awake Forest Fyan.
<v Speaker 3>She's like, are you going to be at the baseball game.
<v Speaker 4>I'm like, yep, is she the Stephanie and our.
<v Speaker 1>No different Stephanie. Yeah, different Stephanie. But yeah, it was
<v Speaker 1>great to meet her. And it was just such a
<v Speaker 1>fun weekend because Chris is friends or my friends from college,
<v Speaker 1>so there are about nine of us that were at
<v Speaker 1>the baseball game, and then we went to hear someone
<v Speaker 1>play music afterwards. One of one of my friends who
<v Speaker 1>was in my sorority is married to one of his
<v Speaker 1>fraternity brothers and their daughter is dating a guy who's
<v Speaker 1>a musician. And funny story, both Chris and I were
<v Speaker 1>at their wedding in nineteen ninety one. I don't even
<v Speaker 1>think we spoke to each other, but yeah, and they
<v Speaker 1>stayed with us in Chris's Winston Salem condo.
<v Speaker 3>So it was really fun.
<v Speaker 4>That does sound fun.
<v Speaker 3>It was a great weekend.
<v Speaker 4>I love that you are just having a great time.
<v Speaker 3>I really am. And it just feels right.
<v Speaker 1>Like I said, our friend groups overlapped so much that
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I'm like looking around like I know all
<v Speaker 1>these people, they know me.
<v Speaker 2>I know that sometimes you've said that you really just
<v Speaker 2>like to be at home and you're kind of a homebody.
<v Speaker 2>But are you enjoying getting out more and doing a
<v Speaker 2>little bit of traveling and stuff.
<v Speaker 3>Well, I really am.
<v Speaker 1>And it helps that when we're in Winston Salem, we're
<v Speaker 1>in one place, right because we're at that condo, so.
<v Speaker 2>It's like home away from home exactly exactly.
<v Speaker 3>So that's really nice.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you don't have the stress of hotel living all
<v Speaker 2>the time exactly.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I don't love that, but I mean being a homebody, yes,
<v Speaker 1>but I'm now I'm enjoying. I mean, maybe once a homebody,
<v Speaker 1>not always a homebody, right, Well.
<v Speaker 2>I'm really kind of convinced that home is when wherever
<v Speaker 2>you are with somebody who you love.
<v Speaker 3>Well, I think that's a great way of looking at it.
<v Speaker 1>You're right, yeah, yeah, it's like not a the four
<v Speaker 1>hours away, but it's not a pain in the neck
<v Speaker 1>to travel back and forth.
<v Speaker 3>We're great in the car together. We just have a
<v Speaker 3>good time.
<v Speaker 4>So good.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I love it for you. Anyway, things are going
<v Speaker 3>really well, excellent.
<v Speaker 2>All right, Well, this week we are going to celebrate
<v Speaker 2>a listener in snowy northern Michigan. And I would love
<v Speaker 2>to say, let's see, it's March seventeenth today as we're recording.
<v Speaker 2>I would love to say that maybe your snow is over.
<v Speaker 2>But Iowa just had a blizzard ye weekend, so who
<v Speaker 2>knows what happened in Michigan. Anyway, She wrote, I began
<v Speaker 2>IF on November fourth, twenty twenty five, So just what's
<v Speaker 2>that five months ago? Yeah, and so she wrote it.
<v Speaker 2>She must have sent it in last month. Sorry, I
<v Speaker 2>should have read ahead. She said, this is my four
<v Speaker 2>month celebration. I made it through the first hurdle of
<v Speaker 2>embracing the clean fast. I love cream in my coffee,
<v Speaker 2>A pinch.
<v Speaker 4>Of salt and the Fast Feast Repeat book helped with that.
<v Speaker 4>The next hurdles were Thanksgiving, Christmas, a destination wedding in
<v Speaker 4>late January.
<v Speaker 3>Blah blah blah.
<v Speaker 2>Through all that, I lost fifteen pounds. I will be
<v Speaker 2>sixty and two weeks. I'm five foot seven and I
<v Speaker 2>currently weigh one hundred and eighty pounds. I will always
<v Speaker 2>be celebrating a holiday. So I'm happy that this new
<v Speaker 2>lifestyle allows me the best of both worlds health without sacrifice.
<v Speaker 2>My why is what keeps me motivated.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I love and this is just such an important
<v Speaker 1>concept that we have to keep reminding ourselves of. There
<v Speaker 1>will always be something around the corner. Right like right now,
<v Speaker 1>I'm having to learn to navigate wake Forest baseball season,
<v Speaker 1>where the games are like right in the middle of
<v Speaker 1>the window, and so we're having to think when are
<v Speaker 1>we going to eat, when are we going to open,
<v Speaker 1>when are we gonna But there's always something. There's always
<v Speaker 1>going to be like today Saint Patrick's Day, then we're
<v Speaker 1>going to have Easter. Then it's going to be whatever
<v Speaker 1>it is, right, and so we have to figure out
<v Speaker 1>a way to flex our intermittent and fasting lifestyle. So
<v Speaker 1>it works around the events, but not flex it so
<v Speaker 1>much that we are taking time off for events every
<v Speaker 1>time one comes up because there's another one. There's another
<v Speaker 1>one well.
<v Speaker 2>And add to that, there's so much celebratory events that
<v Speaker 2>are like around food, holidays, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, retirement parties,
<v Speaker 2>you name it. Then you throw in vacation. Then you
<v Speaker 2>throw in summer, which feels like an eight week vacation
<v Speaker 2>for a lot of people. And on the flip side,
<v Speaker 2>there's always going to be bad days.
<v Speaker 4>There's always gonna be hard days.
<v Speaker 2>There's gonna be days where you're tired, there's gonna be
<v Speaker 2>days where you're having a lot of stress in your life.
<v Speaker 2>But if you constantly wait for that season where you think,
<v Speaker 2>oh I can dial in a fasting lifestyle, it's never going.
<v Speaker 3>To come correct. Yeah, you just tried.
<v Speaker 2>To jump in, commit and get to where you're fat adapted,
<v Speaker 2>which makes it really easy to flex where you put
<v Speaker 2>your window at on any given day. And yeah, occasionally
<v Speaker 2>you may decide it's worth having a longer window and
<v Speaker 2>you're gonna eat more because of whatever you're doing that day.
<v Speaker 4>But as long as you.
<v Speaker 2>Don't do that every day or most of the time
<v Speaker 2>you're gonna find success.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, or just even like every weekend. If you flex
<v Speaker 1>too much every weekend, right, it will keep you stuck.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, we do hear that a lot, and
<v Speaker 1>then people will say, yeah, but I thought it was
<v Speaker 1>good to switch things up.
<v Speaker 3>And that's where you have to figure out.
<v Speaker 1>When we say switch things up, that would be like
<v Speaker 1>if every day you have a two hour window every
<v Speaker 1>single day, you may not want to do that. There's
<v Speaker 1>a balance where it's a good window length, not too short,
<v Speaker 1>not too long. And we have variety of how much
<v Speaker 1>we eat just naturally from day to day. So it's
<v Speaker 1>a lot of nuance that you figure out over time
<v Speaker 1>and you let your results be your guide.
<v Speaker 3>If you're not losing weight, there's something yeah.
<v Speaker 2>And I've noticed too, there's some people who maybe they're
<v Speaker 2>three months in and they say, oh, I'm just not
<v Speaker 2>feeling the energy that.
<v Speaker 4>People talk about or whatever.
<v Speaker 2>And when I dig and say, like, well, tell me
<v Speaker 2>about your windows, what do you do? Well, I don't
<v Speaker 2>want to get into a plateau. So I've been switching
<v Speaker 2>things up, and so like one day they're having a
<v Speaker 2>three hour window and one day they're having an eight
<v Speaker 2>and one day they're having a six, But when you
<v Speaker 2>average that out, their average daily eating window is too
<v Speaker 2>long for them to be getting into fat burning every day.
<v Speaker 2>So if you're not feeling the energy, I mean, that's
<v Speaker 2>where I've said before, you can flex yourself out of
<v Speaker 2>metabolic adaptation or even prevent getting there. So there's no
<v Speaker 2>reason to flex that drastically. I mean, I can tell
<v Speaker 2>you I just looked back at my last week. I
<v Speaker 2>had a good weight loss week, and I was like,
<v Speaker 2>what did I do different? And I went and I
<v Speaker 2>looked back. My fast re varying in length anywhere from
<v Speaker 2>about eighteen and a half to twenty four, but my windows.
<v Speaker 4>Averaged four and a half hours, right, And.
<v Speaker 2>So I know for me, I've got to keep my
<v Speaker 2>window right around four and a half hours on average
<v Speaker 2>and I'll see weight loss.
<v Speaker 4>Right.
<v Speaker 1>And when we say switching things up, you can switch
<v Speaker 1>things up and never have a window longer than five hours.
<v Speaker 3>It's the same time.
<v Speaker 1>Like, for example, I could eat lightly within five hours
<v Speaker 1>one day and then have heavier meals within that same
<v Speaker 1>five hour window. So switching things up doesn't mean you
<v Speaker 1>have to change the link, right, it's just what you're
<v Speaker 1>doing within it. Like one day or maybe I accidentally
<v Speaker 1>eat lightly because I'm busy, and the next day I'm
<v Speaker 1>a little hungrier, so I eat more that doesn't eat
<v Speaker 1>on me and I need eight.
<v Speaker 2>Hours, right, if you just tune into your body. And
<v Speaker 2>the other thing I think people forget too is flexing the.
<v Speaker 4>Foods you eat in the window.
<v Speaker 2>Because if you always open every single day with a
<v Speaker 2>handful of nuts and a piece of fruit, and then
<v Speaker 2>you eat the same dinner that's roughly the same coloric
<v Speaker 2>intake every day, and then you always close with a
<v Speaker 2>piece of chocolate, then you're not having a lot of
<v Speaker 2>flex within that window, right, And you're also not getting
<v Speaker 2>nutrient ability. You want to vary what you're eating so
<v Speaker 2>that you get different micronutrients, antioxidants, polyphenols, like all of
<v Speaker 2>that stuff is coming from the feed you eat. So
<v Speaker 2>if you're eating a very rigid diet where you're like, well,
<v Speaker 2>this is what's worked for me, so I'm just going
<v Speaker 2>to lock in, your body will adapt to that as well.
<v Speaker 4>Right.
<v Speaker 1>It's the locking in that's that homeostasis. Our bodies like
<v Speaker 1>to have a constant body temperature. Our bodies like to
<v Speaker 1>have just homeostasis with so many things, and it can
<v Speaker 1>happen with our fasting and eating as well. Then naturally
<v Speaker 1>switching things up is important, but you don't want to
<v Speaker 1>switch it too much. That's right, And I know, like
<v Speaker 1>I said, this is so much nuance. And then sometimes
<v Speaker 1>we talking about ADF, which is intentionally five hundred calories
<v Speaker 1>balanced by a twelve hour day. But everything is intentional
<v Speaker 1>and there's a time and a place for it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So now we have a question from a listener. This
<v Speaker 1>question is from Donna in Lexington, Kentucky. Donna says I
<v Speaker 1>initially lost thirty five pounds with fasting. I mostly did
<v Speaker 1>a one meal a day approach with some time for
<v Speaker 1>wine after dinner, and it worked. But then I plateaued
<v Speaker 1>and was frustrated for a while, but I kept off
<v Speaker 1>the weight. I've tried to get back to my twenty
<v Speaker 1>four schedule, but I'm lifting heavy weights on Tuesday and
<v Speaker 1>Thursday with a trainer, and I find that I have
<v Speaker 1>to eat before my noon workouts or I can't really
<v Speaker 1>do what I need to do. Then I like to
<v Speaker 1>loosen up my window on weekends to have fun with
<v Speaker 1>my husband. So I guess I'm just looking for suggestions
<v Speaker 1>as to how to fit this all into a fasting lifestyle.
<v Speaker 1>I really enjoy my workouts, but they're interfering with my
<v Speaker 1>day of fasting. I look forward to hearing from you.
<v Speaker 3>Thanks.
<v Speaker 2>All right, Well, I cannot say with certainty one hundred
<v Speaker 2>percent that what I'm going to tell you is God's truth.
<v Speaker 2>But if you are having looser windows on the weekends,
<v Speaker 2>if wine is part of your life several days a week,
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to guess that you are struggling with if
<v Speaker 2>you're weight training at noon two days a week, because
<v Speaker 2>your body is not flipping the switch.
<v Speaker 3>That's my same exact thought, Sherry.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Now, I'm not gonna say it's not ever flipping the switch.
<v Speaker 2>It could be flipping the switch later in the day.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know when you close your windows. So if
<v Speaker 2>you're only, say sixteen hours fasted at noon, your body
<v Speaker 2>may not flip the switch at sixteen hours, and so
<v Speaker 2>you are running out of energy stores like during your workout,
<v Speaker 2>and you're not feeling the power and the endurance that
<v Speaker 2>you would if your body was flipping the switch into
<v Speaker 2>metabolic or in sycatosis.
<v Speaker 4>Because that is.
<v Speaker 2>A steady state energy supply, it's not going to dwindle.
<v Speaker 2>Down and go away like your glycogen store is. So
<v Speaker 2>it really sounds to me like your loose windows on
<v Speaker 2>the weekend are impacting your fasting and your workouts during
<v Speaker 2>the week.
<v Speaker 4>So what can you do? Tighten your windows back up.
<v Speaker 2>And maybe skip a Tuesday workout and have a tighten
<v Speaker 2>your windows up. If you finish working out Thursday, tighten
<v Speaker 2>your windows up by the next Thursday, you're gonna be
<v Speaker 2>solidly into katosis. I would bet by noon. The other
<v Speaker 2>thing you can do is close your window earlier. If
<v Speaker 2>you're a late window person and you close your window
<v Speaker 2>at eight or nine o'clock, back your window up a
<v Speaker 2>little bit and get your window closed a little bit
<v Speaker 2>earlier to help your body flip the switch before your workout.
<v Speaker 4>Yep, I would say.
<v Speaker 2>The only other thing, one little caveat the only other thing.
<v Speaker 2>If that does not help you would be you could
<v Speaker 2>potentially be a person who needs some electrolytes in your window.
<v Speaker 2>And if your sodium or in your yeah in your
<v Speaker 2>fast I'm sorry. If you're sodium depleted, for instance, then
<v Speaker 2>that can make you feel even calcium depleted, that can
<v Speaker 2>make your muscles feel week But I'm going to guess
<v Speaker 2>it's your windows.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that part loosening up windows on weekends to have
<v Speaker 1>fun with your husband. And it depends on what you
<v Speaker 1>mean by that. If you're loosening a four hour window
<v Speaker 1>into a six hour window just one day a week,
<v Speaker 1>that's not a giant deal. But if every Saturday and
<v Speaker 1>Sunday you're having eight hour windows and lots of eating out, alcohol,
<v Speaker 1>that sort of thing, those are the things that'll keep
<v Speaker 1>you from flipping that metabolic switch. And I do want
<v Speaker 1>to go back to the line just because back in
<v Speaker 1>the day, when Sherry and I were experimenting with a
<v Speaker 1>key tone breath analyzer, and I'm not recommending to everybody
<v Speaker 1>do this. You don't need to go get one. We
<v Speaker 1>never have found one that we felt like was reliable.
<v Speaker 1>And also measuring breath keytones is sometimes an exercise and futility.
<v Speaker 1>That being said, we did and also ours were wildly
<v Speaker 1>different accurate.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Like I would blow.
<v Speaker 1>Into Sherri's and get a different number than when I
<v Speaker 1>blew into mind, So I mean you shouldn't be getting
<v Speaker 1>different numbers. But that being set, I found when I
<v Speaker 1>was just like using mine, I would get certain like
<v Speaker 1>I could feel when I'm shifting into fat burning or
<v Speaker 1>shifting into katosis, and so I would verify with the
<v Speaker 1>meaner just to see. But when I had wine or alcohol,
<v Speaker 1>it absolutely took longer for me to flip the switch
<v Speaker 1>the next day. So if part of your lifestyle is
<v Speaker 1>you like to have wine every single day after dinner,
<v Speaker 1>that is probably why you were not shifting into fat
<v Speaker 1>burning by noon the next day.
<v Speaker 2>And correct me if I'm wrong, But I seem to
<v Speaker 2>remember that if you had wine the night before, you
<v Speaker 2>would wake up in the morning and you would blow
<v Speaker 2>really high.
<v Speaker 4>It's because your body was still using up the alcohol.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, that you had drunk the night because alcohol registered
<v Speaker 1>the same way keytones dick on that breathalyzer. Yeah right, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and then it would gradually diminish as my body was done.
<v Speaker 1>I'm a slow alcohol metabolizer, that is still true. I
<v Speaker 1>can't and don't want to drink a lot at one time,
<v Speaker 1>but I would probably have felt draggy every you know,
<v Speaker 1>and around noon if I were trying to work out.
<v Speaker 1>And so what I really wanted to emphasize, Donna, is
<v Speaker 1>that we have heard from lots and lots and lots
<v Speaker 1>of experienced intermittent fasters who have no trouble with endurance
<v Speaker 1>before workouts in the fasted state. So if it's a
<v Speaker 1>challenge for you, there's probably a reason in that. The
<v Speaker 1>clues are there, like sure, and I said the loose
<v Speaker 1>weekends and the wine, those are the things that I
<v Speaker 1>would focus on. And it's all about finding the lifestyle
<v Speaker 1>that feels good to you and experimenting and switching it
<v Speaker 1>around till you find what helps you meet your goals
<v Speaker 1>and feels like a lifestyle. That's the balance because you
<v Speaker 1>can decide. You know, you mentioned you were plateaued and frustrated.
<v Speaker 1>It's okay to be plateaued at a weight because I
<v Speaker 1>mean we all plaateau.
<v Speaker 3>It await eventually, and that's called maintenance.
<v Speaker 1>And your goal is to find a lifestyle that feel
<v Speaker 1>like the lifestyle you want to live and works with
<v Speaker 1>what you want to do. If you want to have
<v Speaker 1>loose windows every weekend and that allows you to maintain
<v Speaker 1>your weight and you're happy with where you are, there's
<v Speaker 1>nothing wrong with that. If you want to drink wine
<v Speaker 1>every night and that allows you to meet your goals,
<v Speaker 1>there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're not meeting
<v Speaker 1>your goals, then you have to find that balance of
<v Speaker 1>what am I willing to switch up?
<v Speaker 3>So balancing goal lifestyle with balancing weight goals is the
<v Speaker 3>real trick. And only you can decide what balance works
<v Speaker 3>for you, because most of us can't have the flexibility
<v Speaker 3>of flexing as much as we might want to and
<v Speaker 3>maintaining at a lower weight, right, you got to decide for.
<v Speaker 4>Most of us, there's a compromise somewhere, yep.
<v Speaker 1>And that's what you have to decide. What do you prioritize?
<v Speaker 1>Like this weekend, our friends all went out to brunch
<v Speaker 1>on Sunday. We did not go with them. They ate
<v Speaker 1>brunch at eleven o'clock or ten o'clock. I think we
<v Speaker 1>would at ten o'clock. We're like, we're not eating bunch
<v Speaker 1>at ten o'clock. Could see, I'll see you later.
<v Speaker 2>When Jin I are together and we eat brunch, we
<v Speaker 2>go at like.
<v Speaker 1>One exactly, We're not not going to eat lunch, eat
<v Speaker 1>brunch at ten am just because my friends are all
<v Speaker 1>going and so we you know, Chris is an intermittent
<v Speaker 1>faster that helps a lot. We didn't choose to do that,
<v Speaker 1>but you know, if you decide we'll eating brunch at
<v Speaker 1>ten o'clock is really important to me. Maybe you maintain
<v Speaker 1>a little higher and that's the trade off that you have.
<v Speaker 1>You get to decide, feel empowered to pick, and you
<v Speaker 1>might feel grumpy about it. Well, I want to have
<v Speaker 1>a brunch and I want to waitless, but sometimes it doesn't.
<v Speaker 2>All work like that, right, Yes, yep, And you know
<v Speaker 2>I was going to say two. While we were talking,
<v Speaker 2>I literally just like felt my body shift.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and it's almost twelve thirty Eastern time, you're at
<v Speaker 1>eleven thirty.
<v Speaker 2>I just looked when I felt it, and I was
<v Speaker 2>at sixteen and a half hours perfect.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, and yesterday I had a shorter fast because
<v Speaker 2>I was like coming off of night shift, so I
<v Speaker 2>only ended up fasting I think like fifteen and a
<v Speaker 2>half hours and then I had like a two and
<v Speaker 2>a half hour window.
<v Speaker 4>But yeah, so.
<v Speaker 2>Tune into your body because you'll know when you're flipping
<v Speaker 2>this switch. Somebody asked me the other day what does it
<v Speaker 2>feel like, and I said, well, it's gonna feel different
<v Speaker 2>for every For me, I am sort of draggy feeling,
<v Speaker 2>and then all of a sudden, it's like somebody opened
<v Speaker 2>the shades, like everything's just brighter. I feel more alive, awake.
<v Speaker 2>My brain's clicking faster, like it's almost like I finally wake.
<v Speaker 4>Up for the day.
<v Speaker 3>You want to hear something really funny? What sometimes Chris
<v Speaker 3>burps when he's flipping the switch?
<v Speaker 4>Really? Yes, that is so interesting.
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, are you flipping the switch? She's like, yep.
<v Speaker 4>It reminds me of I don't know why.
<v Speaker 3>I can't explain it.
<v Speaker 4>I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>I think maybe it's some sort of frontic nerve response
<v Speaker 2>or vagual nerve response or something.
<v Speaker 4>And me think of people when they're satiated.
<v Speaker 3>They sneezeya, that's what it's called.
<v Speaker 4>Yep, So he has some sort of kotosis.
<v Speaker 3>Burp, pop, burp.
<v Speaker 1>It doesn't Fortunately, it doesn't continue repeatedly the entire time.
<v Speaker 4>That's so funny.
<v Speaker 3>It really is funny. I love that bodies are weird.
<v Speaker 4>Yep. All right, Well we.
<v Speaker 2>Have a question now from Linn in Australia. She wrote,
<v Speaker 2>I am borderline pre diabetic. I rarely eat any carbs,
<v Speaker 2>but do eat plenty of vegetables, some of what are carrots,
<v Speaker 2>occasionally pumpkin, sweet potatoes, and lots of cabbage and bock CHOI.
<v Speaker 2>I don't eat potatoes rarely eat bread other than one
<v Speaker 2>thin slice of ezekiel bread with breakfast.
<v Speaker 1>Can I jump in for a minute, yes, all right,
<v Speaker 1>this is something that is very very common. What Lynn said,
<v Speaker 1>She said she doesn't eat carbs, but then she just
<v Speaker 1>named a ton of carbs vegetables or carbs, carrots or carbs, pumpkin,
<v Speaker 1>sweet potatoes, cabbage, bock, choy ezekiel bread.
<v Speaker 3>Those are all carbs.
<v Speaker 1>And I think people sometimes say carbs when they mean
<v Speaker 1>ultra processed foods. So I want everybody to really think
<v Speaker 1>about that for a second. Most of us don't have
<v Speaker 1>trouble with those real food carbs, vegetables, carrots, pumpkins, sweet potato, cabbage,
<v Speaker 1>bockchoy ezekiel bread, high fiber, real food carbs, real foods.
<v Speaker 1>What we do have universal trouble with is ultra processed foods.
<v Speaker 1>And sometimes I'll ask one of the community, I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>clarify what you mean by carbs, and they'll say things like, well,
<v Speaker 1>you know, ice cream or cookies, those are either ultra
<v Speaker 1>processed foods or desserts. They're high in sugar, they're all
<v Speaker 1>so high in fat. So I really want people to
<v Speaker 1>change their thoughts about carbs. Like when Cal went off
<v Speaker 1>to Georgia Tech and he had to take his classes.
<v Speaker 1>He took a nutrition class and he's like, oh my gosh,
<v Speaker 1>I didn't know vegetables were carbs, Like it blew his mind.
<v Speaker 1>So carbs are not the enemy. It's really it's those
<v Speaker 1>ultra processed food. So change the way you talk to
<v Speaker 1>yourself about the word carbs just a little. That's my
<v Speaker 1>soapbox about it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So she says, I eat three meals per day
<v Speaker 2>and I am quite underweight. I am not opposed to
<v Speaker 2>intermittent fasting, but in all honesty, I'm already thin and
<v Speaker 2>I'm very concerned that I will lose even more weight.
<v Speaker 2>I tried to cut down to two meals per day,
<v Speaker 2>but within a week I was already losing more weight weight.
<v Speaker 2>I am five foot eight inches and I weigh under
<v Speaker 2>fifty kilograms before cutting carbs, I was happy with my
<v Speaker 2>weight at around fifty eight kilograms. I would appreciate any
<v Speaker 2>suggestions you may have.
<v Speaker 4>Thank you, all.
<v Speaker 3>Right, Lynn.
<v Speaker 1>So I just looked and fifty kilograms is one hundred
<v Speaker 1>and ten pounds, and you are right that at five
<v Speaker 1>foot eight inches, one hundred and ten pounds is underweight.
<v Speaker 1>So I am going to tell you something that might
<v Speaker 1>be disappointing, and that is intermittent fasting is not right
<v Speaker 1>for you when you are underweight. Intermittent fasting is not
<v Speaker 1>the thing that you want to do. Now, when we
<v Speaker 1>look at the fact that you're pre diabetic, that would
<v Speaker 1>be something to think about, and it would be related
<v Speaker 1>to generally what's going on in your body with the
<v Speaker 1>food choices.
<v Speaker 3>It sounds like you eat healthy foods.
<v Speaker 1>I wonder if you need to add sources of high
<v Speaker 1>quality fat and maybe some more protein you know you're
<v Speaker 1>eating and even like I would add maybe real potatoes.
<v Speaker 1>But if you're pre diabetic, I would absolutely not fast
<v Speaker 1>because you're underweight. But I would perhaps think about getting
<v Speaker 1>a glucose monitor and check your blood sugar and see
<v Speaker 1>we've learned through research that not everyone has the same
<v Speaker 1>blood sugar response to the same foods. You can't just
<v Speaker 1>go buy the glycemic index because that's like assuming we're
<v Speaker 1>all universally the same. You need to monitor your blood
<v Speaker 1>sugar and figure out how to keep your blood sugar
<v Speaker 1>more steady. You also may want your doctor to run
<v Speaker 1>a fast ding insulin because it's possible that your insulin
<v Speaker 1>levels are low to the point that it's not controlling
<v Speaker 1>your blood sugar like you may be. You may have
<v Speaker 1>something wrong with your pancras. I am not a doctor
<v Speaker 1>or Sherry is not a doctor. But with your low
<v Speaker 1>low weight and you know, I assume you must have
<v Speaker 1>higher blood sugar. Since you're saying you're pre diabetic, you
<v Speaker 1>may not be producing enough insulin. I would have this
<v Speaker 1>conversation with your doctor. You may be like, like type
<v Speaker 1>one diabetic, what are some?
<v Speaker 4>There are other there's type one and a half too.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know much about that.
<v Speaker 2>It's sort of I read about this years ago, and
<v Speaker 2>from my memory I could be wrong. It's like an
<v Speaker 2>almost like a later in life sort of autoimmune maybe
<v Speaker 2>type diabetes, And now I just have to look at it.
<v Speaker 4>To look at this, I don't want to tell y'all
<v Speaker 4>the wrong thing. Here we go, what do we say?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's a slow progressing autoimmune form of diabetes, right,
<v Speaker 2>thin mistake and for type two that typically appears in
<v Speaker 2>adults over thirty. It's also known as laytent autoimmune diabetes
<v Speaker 2>and adults. And my other thought too, is you, at
<v Speaker 2>five foot eight, one hundred and ten pounds, you are
<v Speaker 2>very thin, right, and that means you do not have
<v Speaker 2>a lot of muscle mass on your body. So the
<v Speaker 2>more muscle mass you have on the body, the more
<v Speaker 2>insulin sensitive you become. So barring any disability or reason
<v Speaker 2>that you cannot do weight training, you might want to
<v Speaker 2>consider working with a trainer to increase your muscle mass because,
<v Speaker 2>as I said, muscle mass is going to help your
<v Speaker 2>body handle the food that you eat better. It's going
<v Speaker 2>to make you more insulin sensitive and give you better
<v Speaker 2>blood glucose control.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, but I would really encourage you, Limb.
<v Speaker 1>I can't emphasize enough that you may have something that
<v Speaker 1>needs medical attention, which you know, having high blood glue
<v Speaker 1>coast levels while eating a healthy diet and losing weight,
<v Speaker 1>those are all signs of maybe your body is not
<v Speaker 1>producing sufficient insulin. We don't want to have too much influence,
<v Speaker 1>but we need to have a certain amount, and so
<v Speaker 1>you may need something there, So definitely talk.
<v Speaker 3>To your doctor about all of that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and now it's time for our segment called What's
<v Speaker 1>Your Why.
<v Speaker 3>Most of us begins intermittent fastening with weight loss in mind,
<v Speaker 3>and that is a great reason to begin, but there
<v Speaker 3>is so much more to what intermittent fasting can do
<v Speaker 3>for us beyond weight loss. That's why in twenty eight
<v Speaker 3>day fast Start day by day, I ask readers to
<v Speaker 3>craft their why statements before getting started. You may already
<v Speaker 3>be started, maybe you haven't crafted a WY statement. Takes
<v Speaker 3>some time to do it today. I genuinely believe that
<v Speaker 3>when your why is deeper than weight loss alone, you're
<v Speaker 3>more likely to find long term success and view intermittent
<v Speaker 3>fasting as a lifestyle.
<v Speaker 4>So this week we have.
<v Speaker 2>A wife from Happy in Ohio. My why is the
<v Speaker 2>freedom from food noise, freedom from.
<v Speaker 4>Diets, et cetera.
<v Speaker 2>Knowing that what I'm doing with my daily clean fasting
<v Speaker 2>is helping my body internally is my powerful why every day.
<v Speaker 2>The I'm alive and feeling healthy physically and mentally, and
<v Speaker 2>feeling better now at age fifty than I did ten
<v Speaker 2>years ago is my why. I only have this life
<v Speaker 2>and body, and it's my responsibility to take care of
<v Speaker 2>it with love, grace and clean fasting.
<v Speaker 3>I love it all, right.
<v Speaker 2>So we have a question from Christy from Sacramento, California.
<v Speaker 2>She said, Hi, Jen and Cherry, I am a fifty
<v Speaker 2>one year old in perimenopause and I've been practicing IF
<v Speaker 2>since June twenty twenty two. I haven't missed a day
<v Speaker 2>at fasting, typically maintaining a three to five hour window
<v Speaker 2>with one main meal and healthy snacks. While I eat
<v Speaker 2>quote clean and avoid dairy, sugar and gluten during the
<v Speaker 2>week I am more flexible on the weekends, even though
<v Speaker 2>I notice I feel worse when I consume those items.
<v Speaker 2>I started at two hundred and five pounds, and I
<v Speaker 2>currently weigh one hundred and eighty. Although I briefly reached
<v Speaker 2>one sixty two three, it was difficult to maintain. I
<v Speaker 2>stayed in the one seventies for a long time, but
<v Speaker 2>as I progressed through perimenopause, weight maintenance has become increasingly
<v Speaker 2>challenging and my progress has stalled. I am five foot
<v Speaker 2>five with a muscular build and stay active with pickleball,
<v Speaker 2>walking and weight lightweights. I'm writing because something mentioned in
<v Speaker 2>episode one twenty five caught my attention. You noted that
<v Speaker 2>a listener might not be flipping the switch. I often
<v Speaker 2>experience a point near the end of my fast where
<v Speaker 2>I feel cloudy headed and unable to think straight, which
<v Speaker 2>I take as a sign to eat. Could this be
<v Speaker 2>related to not flipping the metabolic switch, and could that
<v Speaker 2>be why I am struggling to lose further weight. I
<v Speaker 2>would appreciate any clarity or advice you can provide on
<v Speaker 2>how I might tweak my routine. I love this lifestyle
<v Speaker 2>and feel much better overall, but I would love to
<v Speaker 2>reach the one sixties again.
<v Speaker 1>All right, that is a great question, Christy, and you're right,
<v Speaker 1>will have a sign from our bodies, like think about
<v Speaker 1>it like this. Okay, You've got glycogen in your liver, right,
<v Speaker 1>and your body can dump out some of that glycogen
<v Speaker 1>as you're going along and keeping your blood sugar at
<v Speaker 1>a steady level. And then it gets to the point
<v Speaker 1>where your glycogen liver tank is getting low, and then
<v Speaker 1>your blood sugar may briefly start going down. It's not
<v Speaker 1>going to like crash all the way down. I've watched
<v Speaker 1>my blood sugar during this transition on a CGM and
<v Speaker 1>it goes down to a certain point and it stabilizes there.
<v Speaker 1>But I noticed for me that coinciding with when my
<v Speaker 1>blood sugar would go down, showing that I was, you know,
<v Speaker 1>pretty much running out of that glycogen that my liver
<v Speaker 1>had readily to let go. Of I would fill some
<v Speaker 1>waves of hunger at that time, and I would ignore it,
<v Speaker 1>and then my blood sugar would just stay steady, and
<v Speaker 1>then I could feel that mental clarity, the signs of ketosis,
<v Speaker 1>the burping, if your if that's what happens for you,
<v Speaker 1>whatever it is. And like Sherry said, she got that
<v Speaker 1>mental clarity just while we were recording today. But if
<v Speaker 1>every time I felt that hunger, I thought, oh, it's
<v Speaker 1>my body telling me I need to eat, then I
<v Speaker 1>wouldn't be flipping the switch. So my advice would be
<v Speaker 1>push through that for thirty minutes to an hour and
<v Speaker 1>see what happens. Maybe go take a walk. If you
<v Speaker 1>can take a walk, give yourself thirty minutes to an hour.
<v Speaker 1>If you still feel cloudy headed and unable to think straight,
<v Speaker 1>that would be a different kind of sign. You might
<v Speaker 1>want to see what is my blood sugar doing? Is
<v Speaker 1>it going low? But I bet you will find that
<v Speaker 1>you get the sharpness back, mental clarity, and you feel
<v Speaker 1>better and you're able to keep fasting. What do you think, Sherry, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I agree with that. We've actually heard this before.
<v Speaker 2>Sometimes people community will talk about this a little bit
<v Speaker 2>and or like some people expec verience this as a
<v Speaker 2>wave of nausea, and so they are like, oh, well,
<v Speaker 2>anytime you say you feel if you feel in well,
<v Speaker 2>you should break your fast, and so they immediately go
<v Speaker 2>break their fast. Where if they were just to push
<v Speaker 2>through that sort of wave of nausea, I am convinced
<v Speaker 2>that their body would then flip the switch. They would
<v Speaker 2>start accessing their fat stores, they'd start producing key tones,
<v Speaker 2>and all of that would go away. So I agree
<v Speaker 2>with Jen, if you can push through, taking a walk
<v Speaker 2>is really helpful because it's really going to pump out
<v Speaker 2>any reserves of glycogen, kind of gets your blood sugar
<v Speaker 2>up a little bit, which is going to make you
<v Speaker 2>feel better. And then once you're tapped out again, you're
<v Speaker 2>going to flip the switch.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, because your body's going to start making key tones
<v Speaker 1>and it just might take a little transition for your
<v Speaker 1>body to flip that switch. That's that metabolic flexibility that
<v Speaker 1>we're all born with and then we lose as we
<v Speaker 1>go through life with our regular meals and our regular snacks.
<v Speaker 1>Metabolic flexibility is really important. You could think about back
<v Speaker 1>in the day when we didn't have food available and
<v Speaker 1>you might have to go hunting and gathering and nothing
<v Speaker 1>was available and your body. You couldn't just be cloudy
<v Speaker 1>headed and not able to think straight from that point on,
<v Speaker 1>or you wouldn't have survived. We have to be able
<v Speaker 1>to find another store of fuel, and that's what our
<v Speaker 1>fat stores are there for. If you are overweight, your
<v Speaker 1>body has plenty of stored fat that you can access,
<v Speaker 1>and so recognize that. Say hmm, I'm feeling a little
<v Speaker 1>cloudy and my head feels weird. I'm going to give
<v Speaker 1>it time so my body can switch to another fuel tank.
<v Speaker 1>The fuel that I have stored on my body. We
<v Speaker 1>have to give our body time to tap into that
<v Speaker 1>fuel if we want to use it up. So just
<v Speaker 1>remind yourself of that, say ooh, there's my metabolic flexibility
<v Speaker 1>about to kick in. My body is able to use
<v Speaker 1>that fuel. That's what it's there for, rather than feeling
<v Speaker 1>like we have to put more in. Because if you've
<v Speaker 1>got a lot of stored fuel on your body, your
<v Speaker 1>body doesn't need you to put some in.
<v Speaker 3>It just needs you to give it time to use
<v Speaker 3>that fuel. All right.
<v Speaker 1>We have a question from refocused in Lakinta. Is that
<v Speaker 1>how you would say it?
<v Speaker 3>Lakitta, Yeah, I think that's kind of like the hotel chain. Lakinta.
<v Speaker 1>All right, hi ladies, and if I hear an answer
<v Speaker 1>to this, thank you for taking your time to give
<v Speaker 1>me some advice. We love to answer your question, so
<v Speaker 1>everybody don't forget to send them in.
<v Speaker 3>She says.
<v Speaker 1>I am forty seven years old, five foot seven, and
<v Speaker 1>I currently weigh one hundred and fifty pounds. I've been
<v Speaker 1>practicing intermittent fasting for about five years, and I've also
<v Speaker 1>done some extended fasting as well as several rounds of
<v Speaker 1>the fasting mimicking diet. So I'm not a newbeat of
<v Speaker 1>fasting and I love it. I'm fat adapted, and my
<v Speaker 1>homa IR is zero point eighty seven. I wait train
<v Speaker 1>every and that's a very healthy range, if I'm not
<v Speaker 1>mistaken to share it.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, like under point nine I believe is optimal.
<v Speaker 1>I weight train every other day, and I do high
<v Speaker 1>intensity interval training rowing workouts every alternating day. I also
<v Speaker 1>walk my dog daily for about an hour, but it's
<v Speaker 1>pretty slow, so I don't think that really counts.
<v Speaker 3>Lol. It does count, by the way, It does count.
<v Speaker 3>Even if it's slow, it counts. She says. I eat
<v Speaker 3>pretty well. Focusing on whole foods.
<v Speaker 1>Primarily, I cook from scratch pretty much every night, and
<v Speaker 1>I have massively reduced my consumption of alcohol, now only
<v Speaker 1>for celebrations. Additionally, I avoid added sugars ninety percent of
<v Speaker 1>the time, primarily enjoying fruits, a dessert, or occasionally some
<v Speaker 1>low sugar dark chocolate. Through twenty twenty five, there were
<v Speaker 1>some pretty dramatic changes with my job, and as my
<v Speaker 1>roles shifted, I found myself working a ton more. I
<v Speaker 1>work from home but sit to work, and I suffered
<v Speaker 1>from a several month period of serious window creep. I
<v Speaker 1>gained some weight, but as I was lifting weights, I
<v Speaker 1>told myself that I was gaining muscle and that was
<v Speaker 1>the cause for being heavier. I do have a scale,
<v Speaker 1>but I wasn't weighing frequently. However, I knew I had
<v Speaker 1>gone up a bit as my clothes were getting tighter,
<v Speaker 1>but as my clothes mostly still fit, I was letting
<v Speaker 1>it ride. But by the end of twenty twenty five
<v Speaker 1>I knew it was time to make changes. The clothes
<v Speaker 1>were getting really tight. I decided to start an alternate
<v Speaker 1>daily nineteen five or twenty four hour fasting protocol to
<v Speaker 1>jump myself back to where I want to be. So
<v Speaker 1>Monday was nineteen five Tuesday twenty four hours, et cetera.
<v Speaker 1>I started this December twenty sixth of twenty twenty five,
<v Speaker 1>flashed you today February twenty third, twenty twenty six. I've
<v Speaker 1>lost fourteen pounds. I started at one sixty four and
<v Speaker 1>I'm now in one point fifty and I'm back in
<v Speaker 1>all my clothes.
<v Speaker 3>Yay, I'm feeling good and losing body fat.
<v Speaker 1>I use a human body pod to measure so I
<v Speaker 1>can watch my trends in this area.
<v Speaker 3>But my question is this.
<v Speaker 1>I think I've either plaied toad or my body is
<v Speaker 1>digging into a set point, or this is my new
<v Speaker 1>baseline weight. My goal was to get to one forty five,
<v Speaker 1>as that was my weight through most of my later thirties.
<v Speaker 1>But it seems like my body does not want to budge,
<v Speaker 1>at least not yet.
<v Speaker 4>Now.
<v Speaker 1>I recognize that as I am lifting weights now and
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't in my thirties at all. I was a
<v Speaker 1>cardio bunny. Maybe one point fifty is my new one
<v Speaker 1>forty five, but I'm just not sure. So what are
<v Speaker 1>your thoughts on this? I'm tempted to do a round
<v Speaker 1>of ADF. I usually do the five hundred calorie down
<v Speaker 1>day approach, but I'm not sure it's hugely necessary, as
<v Speaker 1>maybe I just need to ride this out a little
<v Speaker 1>longer and see where it goes. I've been at this
<v Speaker 1>weight for almost a solid month, or am I too
<v Speaker 1>comfortable with the alternating nineteen five and twenty four hour fast.
<v Speaker 1>I realize it's only been two months and my initial
<v Speaker 1>weight loss was big, so I feel like I'm acting
<v Speaker 1>like a spoiled brat. But I really want to get
<v Speaker 1>to maintenance planning on either eighteen six or nineteen five
<v Speaker 1>for that, and I don't feel like I can mentally
<v Speaker 1>go there until I get to one hundred and forty
<v Speaker 1>five pound? Is this just diet brain leftovers? Any advice
<v Speaker 1>you can give me would be appreciated.
<v Speaker 3>Thank you.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, Well, I have a few thoughts.
<v Speaker 2>Me. Let's go to the idea that you need to
<v Speaker 2>be one hundred and forty five because that's what you
<v Speaker 2>were in your thirties, and you recognize that you were
<v Speaker 2>a cardio bunny, you were not weight training. And there's
<v Speaker 2>a lot of mixed research out there and information out
<v Speaker 2>there regarding like steady state cardio. Some indicate that when
<v Speaker 2>you just do steady state cardio day after day and
<v Speaker 2>you are not doing any kind of strength training, that
<v Speaker 2>you compromise muscle mass. Other research does not support that theory,
<v Speaker 2>so it's kind of a mixed thing. But let's just
<v Speaker 2>say you were dieting or you were maybe restricting and
<v Speaker 2>you were running a lot or whatever cardio and you
<v Speaker 2>had some compromised muscle mass. So yeah, you were at
<v Speaker 2>one forty five. Now you're weight training, you're intermittent fasting.
<v Speaker 2>We see people end up at a smaller size, weighing more.
<v Speaker 2>This happened to me. I have some pretty drastic photos
<v Speaker 2>that show it, so I would get the one forty
<v Speaker 2>five out of your mind. You have a Hume body
<v Speaker 2>Pod scale, so that's going to show you like your
<v Speaker 2>lean body mass, your muscle mass, your fat percentage. If
<v Speaker 2>you really feel like you have fat to continue to
<v Speaker 2>burn one, I would just give it time because body
<v Speaker 2>recomposition happens pretty slowly once you lose most of your fat,
<v Speaker 2>your excess fat, keep training, keep with the protocol that
<v Speaker 2>feels good and that is working for you. Right now,
<v Speaker 2>when I ran your numbers through smart BMI, you are
<v Speaker 2>are right in the middle of a healthy body range.
<v Speaker 2>Take a look at your body fat percentage for women
<v Speaker 2>that are forty to forty nine years old, a healthy
<v Speaker 2>body fat's going to fall somewhere between twenty five to
<v Speaker 2>thirty one percent. I've saw other figures that said twenty
<v Speaker 2>six to thirty two, so somewhere in then there. If
<v Speaker 2>your body fat is over that percentage, then you may
<v Speaker 2>still have some fat to burn, just because different body
<v Speaker 2>compositions are going to make a difference in that. But
<v Speaker 2>I think you just need time. It's been a month.
<v Speaker 2>You lost what.
<v Speaker 1>Was it, fourteen went down fourteen pounds. I would not
<v Speaker 1>creak that fly fourteen pounds of fat though. We don't
<v Speaker 1>lose fat that quickly.
<v Speaker 2>When did she tighten things up? December? From December to
<v Speaker 2>the end of February, so two months. In two months,
<v Speaker 2>you lost fourteen pounds. So you should have the data
<v Speaker 2>from your scale, So take a look at that, see
<v Speaker 2>what's happening with your body.
<v Speaker 4>I would give it time. If, say, by the end.
<v Speaker 2>Of April, you don't feel like you're making any progress
<v Speaker 2>and this is really important to you, then sure doing
<v Speaker 2>a little round of ADF isn't going to hurt you.
<v Speaker 2>The thing is if ADF gets your weight down more,
<v Speaker 2>but your body can't maintain that lower weight and then
<v Speaker 2>you want to shift to a different protocol for maintenance,
<v Speaker 2>are you going to be frustrated if your weight bounces
<v Speaker 2>back up?
<v Speaker 4>Right?
<v Speaker 2>So, I'm not going to do anything in the short
<v Speaker 2>term to give me some sort of satisfaction of seeing
<v Speaker 2>a load number if it's not something I'm willing to
<v Speaker 2>do long term, because then I'm just going to be
<v Speaker 2>disappointed in myself. So I think mental peace is priceless.
<v Speaker 2>So that's my thoughts on that. You have any other thoughts, gin.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I'm really a little bit unsure as to what
<v Speaker 1>she's doing, simply because the way she describes that, she's
<v Speaker 1>doing a nineteen to five alternated with a twenty four
<v Speaker 1>hour fasting protocol.
<v Speaker 2>Usually when I see people do this and I ask
<v Speaker 2>them what they're doing, they fast nineteen hours, they have
<v Speaker 2>a five hour window, and then they'll swap and they'll
<v Speaker 2>do a twenty four hour fast followed by like a
<v Speaker 2>one hour eating window, right, And that's what I don't know. See,
<v Speaker 2>I thought about that too. I don't really know what
<v Speaker 2>she's doing. Under restricted and under.
<v Speaker 1>Eating gently doing eightyf but without any up days, Like
<v Speaker 1>what does she do after the twenty four hours is
<v Speaker 1>super important, right, So if you're fasting twenty four hours,
<v Speaker 1>that tells me nothing about what you're doing afterwards. You
<v Speaker 1>could fast for twenty four hours and eat for eight hours.
<v Speaker 1>You could fast for twenty four hours and eat for
<v Speaker 1>five minutes. Those are two very different things. So the
<v Speaker 1>link the fast is not the only factor here. It's
<v Speaker 1>what you're doing afterwards. So if you're fasting for twenty
<v Speaker 1>four hours, then you're eating a really small meal, then
<v Speaker 1>you're doing down days, but you're only having five hours
<v Speaker 1>the following day and instead you need an upday, and
<v Speaker 1>that would explain why you're plateaued. So what you're eating
<v Speaker 1>in your window makes a big difference as far as
<v Speaker 1>that goes. If we accidentally over restrict our bodies, like oops,
<v Speaker 1>something's happening, time to downregulate metabolism. Fasting is protective of metabolism,
<v Speaker 1>but not one hundred percent to the point that overrestriction
<v Speaker 1>doesn't affect us. Eventually, it does. Over restriction overfasting is
<v Speaker 1>assigned to our bodies that it needs to conserve energy,
<v Speaker 1>so especially if you're doing a lot of exercising work.
<v Speaker 3>It just sounds like she is.
<v Speaker 1>It sounds like she is even walking the dog for
<v Speaker 1>an hour that does count as activity for your body.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe your body's like, oh gosh, now we're out foraging
<v Speaker 1>for food and we only get to eat a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>We really need to conserve energy, So make sure you're
<v Speaker 1>not accidentally over restricting. If you are having a really
<v Speaker 1>short window, then you need to add in up days
<v Speaker 1>rather than go back to a hour window the day
<v Speaker 1>after that. And if you've had some metabolic slow down,
<v Speaker 1>there maybe a slight period of weight gain before you
<v Speaker 1>level back off and your body starts to trust that
<v Speaker 1>things are well and can upregulate your metabolism again. So
<v Speaker 1>you know, really really quick weight loss might mean that
<v Speaker 1>you've been kind of accidentally over restricting on those days
<v Speaker 1>after a twenty four hour fast.
<v Speaker 3>There's so many variables here, it's hard for us to
<v Speaker 3>know for sure.
<v Speaker 2>Right and not knowing how she eats in her window exactly,
<v Speaker 2>is she doing sort of an uppish downish Is she
<v Speaker 2>eating one full meal after her twenty four hour fast
<v Speaker 2>and it's not a five hundred casts.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe just having a twelve hundred calories or fifteen hundred calories.
<v Speaker 4>I was going to say the exact right thing.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, if she's doing that and then the next day
<v Speaker 2>having two meals, one at the beginning and one at
<v Speaker 2>the end of her five hour window, then she may
<v Speaker 2>not be under right, over eating, under eating over restricting, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>So it's hard for us to know because we're not
<v Speaker 2>there watching you eat, but really tune into what you're eating,
<v Speaker 2>how you're eating.
<v Speaker 4>And making sure that you're not over restricting.
<v Speaker 3>Yep, all right.
<v Speaker 2>Well, our next question is from Patty from Oh Well,
<v Speaker 2>I just read ahead a sentence and I think this
<v Speaker 2>is going to fall right into our conversation, and I
<v Speaker 2>promise I do not plan this when I put the
<v Speaker 2>podcast together. Patty from Michigan and a member of the
<v Speaker 2>DDD community, said, Hi, friends, when you say someone might
<v Speaker 2>be over restricting in their daily window, what would be
<v Speaker 2>a ballpark number of calories you would consider to be
<v Speaker 2>proper for say, a sixty eight year old dog foot
<v Speaker 2>four female who is pretty close to maintenance and may
<v Speaker 2>already be there. I know we don't count calories, but
<v Speaker 2>I mostly do my mail a day, and I wonder
<v Speaker 2>if I might be over restricting. Sometimes that window is
<v Speaker 2>only an hour and sometimes five hours, but generally I
<v Speaker 2>lean towards fewer than five. I can honestly say I'm
<v Speaker 2>pretty tuned into my body as far as hunger and
<v Speaker 2>satiety signals go. I am rarely hungry. Would this indicate
<v Speaker 2>that I am not over restricting? If it matters, I
<v Speaker 2>generally open my window with sour kraut, thanks doctor B,
<v Speaker 2>and then move on to vegetables some form of protein,
<v Speaker 2>potatoes and or bread. Dessert is not a daily thing,
<v Speaker 2>but I try to use fresh fruit with something when
<v Speaker 2>I can. Today I close my window with a dessert
<v Speaker 2>of oatmeal with a cooked apple and cinnamon. I've moved
<v Speaker 2>away from beef, finding myself eating more shrimped chicken and
<v Speaker 2>fish the last couple of years. I do not do
<v Speaker 2>strenuous exercise, but I do take a daily morning walk,
<v Speaker 2>which includes occasional sets of squats and a daily routine
<v Speaker 2>of leg lifts a minimum of one hundred setups. Wow, Patty,
<v Speaker 2>I'm impressed. Two minutes of planks and free weights for
<v Speaker 2>my arms. In case any of this might figure into
<v Speaker 2>your response, I have been clean fasting since July of
<v Speaker 2>twenty nineteen, and I'm so grateful to have found the
<v Speaker 2>DDD way of life. I find reinforcement, encouragement through your
<v Speaker 2>podcast and the comput community, and simply cannot imagine what
<v Speaker 2>I would look and feel like if I were eating
<v Speaker 2>three meals every day. I have has been a true blessing,
<v Speaker 2>as are the two of you. Thank you for your thoughts.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Patty, we cannot give you a ballpark number
<v Speaker 1>of calories because there's so many variables, so many possibilities.
<v Speaker 1>I do remember when I was writing my second book,
<v Speaker 1>Feast Without Fear. I wrote it after delayed on Denia,
<v Speaker 1>but before I wrote Fast Feast Repeat. It was about
<v Speaker 1>eating in the Blue zones, people around the world who
<v Speaker 1>are healthy, that sort of thing. I remember being surprised
<v Speaker 1>at how few calories.
<v Speaker 3>Some of the women in the Blue zones. Is based on.
<v Speaker 1>Epidemiological research where they survey and do different things to
<v Speaker 1>kind of get a ballpark of how many calories people
<v Speaker 1>in a country or eating.
<v Speaker 3>It also has to do the food supply. I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not an epidemiologist, but I was surprised that these women,
<v Speaker 1>like in Okinawa, Japan, for example, I can't recall the
<v Speaker 1>number they I ate a smaller number of calories than I.
<v Speaker 1>It just surprised me. So here's the thing. If you
<v Speaker 1>are at a maintenance weight you mentioned, you're pretty close
<v Speaker 1>to maintenance, are already there. If you feel good, if
<v Speaker 1>you are able to be active and feel good. I
<v Speaker 1>wish I knew what your weight was. That would help
<v Speaker 1>me a lot give you advice. But if you feel
<v Speaker 1>good in your body, you feel energetic, you feel healthy,
<v Speaker 1>you like what you're doing, you like the way you're living,
<v Speaker 1>and you don't have like massive more fat you would
<v Speaker 1>like to lose, then I don't think you're over restricting.
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of research on something called calorie restriction, especially.
<v Speaker 3>In the animal world.
<v Speaker 1>Humans have a longer lifespan, so the research obviously it's
<v Speaker 1>different with humans, but in the animal kingdom, calorie restriction,
<v Speaker 1>which is erring on the side of eating less, tends
<v Speaker 1>to promote longevity. So if you are eating to the
<v Speaker 1>point that you easily maintain a weight that feels good
<v Speaker 1>and you're satisfied, then I wouldn't worry about it. It's
<v Speaker 1>just if you have a whole lot of fat on
<v Speaker 1>your body still that you know you need to lose
<v Speaker 1>and you don't feel good in your body. That's when
<v Speaker 1>you're like, Okay, I might need to switch things up
<v Speaker 1>to rub up my metabolism.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Well, and I had two other thoughts as well. You know,
<v Speaker 2>you can go online and you can figure out based
<v Speaker 2>off your height, your weight, your age, a rough idea
<v Speaker 2>of how many calories should be like prescribed for you. Right,
<v Speaker 2>But that's in a perfect world. That's if you have
<v Speaker 2>a good amount of muscle mass. That's if you have
<v Speaker 2>never compromised your metabolism through low calorie dieting. So there's
<v Speaker 2>no without going there are tests you can do through
<v Speaker 2>a lot of universities have programs where you can go
<v Speaker 2>in and there are tests where you can do where
<v Speaker 2>they analyze your breath and they can tell you basically
<v Speaker 2>what your resting metabolic rate is and how well your
<v Speaker 2>body uses protein and carbohydrates. Most people aren't going to
<v Speaker 2>do that, So tuning into your body and seeing how
<v Speaker 2>you feel, how you sleep, how your energy levels are,
<v Speaker 2>what your body composition is doing, is really the best.
<v Speaker 4>Way to do it.
<v Speaker 1>By the way, I did just do a real quick
<v Speaker 1>Google search and I found women in the Okanawa Blue zones.
<v Speaker 1>Traditionally consume approximately seventeen hundred and nineteen calories a day.
<v Speaker 1>This relatively low caloric intake is driven by a cultural
<v Speaker 1>practice called Harahachi boo, which you may have heard before.
<v Speaker 1>It's eating until eighty percent full. This practice contributes to
<v Speaker 1>their high longevity and lower BMI. So they have a
<v Speaker 1>very nutrient dense diet, and historically, when like back in
<v Speaker 1>the nineteen fifties, it was even a lower amount than that.
<v Speaker 1>So it's just really a matter of how you feel
<v Speaker 1>and what your goals are and if you're there and
<v Speaker 1>not having distress about it, right, Yeah, all.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Well, before we get to tweak of the Week,
<v Speaker 2>I just want to take a minute to tell you
<v Speaker 2>about the Crunchy Clean Beauty mascara. And somebody asked somebody
<v Speaker 2>actually emailed me and asked me to share this. They
<v Speaker 2>were looking for Crunchy online, but they were spewing at
<v Speaker 2>crunchy like a crunchy snack. It's cru ncchi. So anyway,
<v Speaker 2>I've had people email me and to ask me if
<v Speaker 2>I like their mascara. Well, I stocked up on a
<v Speaker 2>bunch of the other brand I was using, and so
<v Speaker 2>i'd never tried it, and I am never going to
<v Speaker 2>recommend something that I haven't tried. So last week I
<v Speaker 2>received my order of Crunchy Shattered mascara. I've been using
<v Speaker 2>it for a week now and I really love it,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm actually wishing I hadn't waited so long because
<v Speaker 2>the other brand was really difficult to remove, and even
<v Speaker 2>after using like I Make a remover and facial cleanser,
<v Speaker 2>I still had mascara residue and I felt like recently
<v Speaker 2>my lashes have been compromise. They were getting sparse and shorter.
<v Speaker 2>This new brand, the Crunchy, It lasts through a twelve thirteen,
<v Speaker 2>fourteen hour shift. It does not flake, it does not run,
<v Speaker 2>yet it removes easily with my facial cleanser, so I
<v Speaker 2>have high hopes that my eyelashes will start to grow
<v Speaker 2>back longer. But if you'd like to give it a try,
<v Speaker 2>click the link that you'll find in our show notes
<v Speaker 2>or visit Fastpiesrepeat dot com slash Sherry for a link
<v Speaker 2>to my Crunchy Clean beauty website, and as always, if
<v Speaker 2>you have any questions, reach out to me at Sherry
<v Speaker 2>at Fastpiesrepeat dot com. And remember Sherry is only one
<v Speaker 2>R s H E R.
<v Speaker 3>I well, that's interesting.
<v Speaker 1>I would like to try it, because you're right that
<v Speaker 1>other brand is a little hard to get off. It
<v Speaker 1>really all wake up with like like, I'll take it
<v Speaker 1>off and I'll wake up with still black smudges the
<v Speaker 1>end day.
<v Speaker 4>All right, you.
<v Speaker 1>Convinced me to give it a tra So now it's
<v Speaker 1>time for our tweak of the week. You know, I
<v Speaker 1>always say tweak it till it's easy. But the tweak
<v Speaker 1>that works for me might not be the one that
<v Speaker 1>works for you. And that's why it's super helpful to
<v Speaker 1>hear how other intermittent fasters are making intermittent fasting work
<v Speaker 1>for them. We really are all our study of one,
<v Speaker 1>our own study of one. I use the word nuance before.
<v Speaker 1>There's so many nuances that we have to just try
<v Speaker 1>different things and see what works. And also we have
<v Speaker 1>different seasons in our life and it might not be
<v Speaker 1>the same. What I'm doing now in twenty twenty six
<v Speaker 1>is not exactly what I was doing when I was
<v Speaker 1>a teacher in twenty seventeen. It's a different season. So
<v Speaker 1>here's our tweek of the week. I'm not sure who
<v Speaker 1>it is from, but it says my mantra when I
<v Speaker 1>have hunger pains has changed from I'm hungry to I'm healing.
<v Speaker 1>I am a big believer in the power of words,
<v Speaker 1>and I often hear the phrase I'm starving. First of all,
<v Speaker 1>it's not true. Thankfully most of us have access to
<v Speaker 1>plenty of food. Second of all, I don't want my
<v Speaker 1>mind or body to believe it needs to store up.
<v Speaker 1>I have reserves. I do believe now that I have
<v Speaker 1>read fast Us to Repeat, and listened to several podcasts
<v Speaker 1>and experienced intermittent fasting results, that I am healing, and
<v Speaker 1>I love that.
<v Speaker 4>I do love that. I do believe that our body.
<v Speaker 4>Here's the words we.
<v Speaker 3>Say, Well, it's true.
<v Speaker 1>Research has shown that it might sound hippy dippy or
<v Speaker 1>woo woo, but it's true.
<v Speaker 2>All right. Well, we love to leave our listeners with
<v Speaker 2>inspiration our motivational quotes, and this week we have a
<v Speaker 2>quote shared from Virginia. From Virginia, I know you'll correct
<v Speaker 2>me if I say this wrong in community, I would say,
<v Speaker 2>would you say Geelong Australia.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know, or is it Gee Long I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I would just say Australia, Virginia, Well, Australia.
<v Speaker 2>That is what I did last time, she shared, I
<v Speaker 2>just said Australia. But you know me, I like, yes,
<v Speaker 2>so you can when you hear this, tell me how
<v Speaker 2>to pronounce it. She said, I saw this quote recently
<v Speaker 2>and I wanted to share. The quote is when we
<v Speaker 2>understand it's not just one more day, it's actually one less,
<v Speaker 2>we truly take a look around and see and appreciate
<v Speaker 2>what's important.
<v Speaker 1>That really smacks you in the face, doesn't it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>every day is one day less.
<v Speaker 4>And I think it really fits with if, Like we
<v Speaker 4>can wake.
<v Speaker 2>Up and choose to fast or not to fast, but
<v Speaker 2>the day is going to pass regardless. So do we
<v Speaker 2>want our choice that day to move us closer to
<v Speaker 2>our goals?
<v Speaker 4>Are further away?
<v Speaker 1>Thanks so much for listening today. We would love to
<v Speaker 1>have you join us in the Delayed on Tonight community,
<v Speaker 1>where you can interact with both me and Sherry, plus
<v Speaker 1>the most supportive bunch of intermittent fasters you'll find anywhere.
<v Speaker 1>Go to Jenstevens dot com slash community to join us.
<v Speaker 2>Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to your favorite
<v Speaker 2>podcast app, and if you haven't already, please leave us
<v Speaker 2>a five star review that helps new listeners find the
<v Speaker 2>show and we really appreciate it.
<v Speaker 1>We are a community driven podcast, so to submit your
<v Speaker 1>success stories, your questions, your favorite tweak it till It's Easy, moments,
<v Speaker 1>or anything else you want us to share on the
<v Speaker 1>go to fast Feast, repeat dot com, slash submit and
<v Speaker 1>then listen each week to see if we share your
<v Speaker 1>submission or answer your question.
<v Speaker 2>Until next week, Thanks for listening.
<v Speaker 4>This podcast was edited by Resonate Recordings