Episode 42: That Recent “Fasting Study”, IF While Eating Out, and More

Welcome to Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life. I'm Jen Stevens, author
of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock,
longtime intermittent faster and health and wellness advocate. Please keep in mind that this
podcast is for educational and motivational purposes only and is not intended to provide medical
or diagnostic advice. Jen and I are not doctors, so make sure to
check with your trusted healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes to
any medical treatments or medications. Whether you're new to intermittent fasting or an experienced
intermittent faster, tune in each week to get inspired, to learn, and
to have some fun along the way. Hi, everybody, we are so
glad you're here today. Welcome to this week's episode of the Fast Feast Repeat
Intermittent Fasting for Life Podcast. How are you doing today, Sherry, I'm
doing great. I'm so glad. Yeah. I just want to say we
in Birmingham had a little meetup of some fasters Saturday night. It was so
much fun, you know, like before COVID we would get together with people
and we had a little Birmingham group of ladies that would meet up, and
we'd meet up about every two or three months and have dinner and just chat.
And it's just really nice to meet with fasters in real life, and
especially to go out and eat with them. And it's so nice to go
out to eat with people who eat like you do and you're not having to
eat around anybody's preferences or whatever. So much so that we were supposed to
eat at one restaurant and it ended up not working out. They just like
kind of refused to see a party of thirteen after we called ahead and cleared
it with them. Anyways, weird deal. Jim and Nicks Barbecue was down
the road and I was like, you know what, let me just call
them. So I just called them up and said, hey, I've got
a party at thirteen standing outside the steakhouse up the road. They cannot seat
us. Would you be able to accommodate us? And they kind of looked
around and said, sure, no problem. When can you be here?
And I said in three minutes we are, We're leaving right now. And
I went down there and they were scurrying around putting tables together. They were
great. They were so accommodating and we had a great dinner, and it
was so nice just to meet people that I've talked to over the years,
you know, in the community and stuff, and get to know them in
person. And somebody called me Jin two point oh, I don't remember who.
I was like, no, she's Sherry one point Oh. That's so
funny. Two of the people that were there I've met in person, Amy
Joe and April, both of whom had been on the podcast. I met
them when I went to Little talked about event that was there there, and
they didn't know each other before the Little Rocket. They didn't know and now
they are fabulous friends. They sure, yep, yep. And then I
had to go to work afterwards, and then I think Amy Amy Joe texted
me some pictures that we had taken and she's like, yeah, we sat
around, talked, We got some more pictures outside the restaurant, and she's
like, and then we all drove a couple of blocks to Dairy Queen and
they sat around and had dessert and talked some more. And I'm so silly.
I didn't even know there was a Dairy Queen literally around the corner from
my work because I know, wow, explore yeah, And I said a
dairy queen and she's like yeah. She showed me the address and I was
like, probably did not need to know that there was a dairy queen within
walking distance of mine. I don't like dairy queen anymore. That's you know,
I used to it. I've never really liked dairy Oh I did.
I did like it prior to intermittent fasting when we lived in Carrollton. I
was teaching in Carrollton. Those were my diet pill days. But I mean,
it's just squeezed in some dairy queen blizzards. I don't know how I
did that, but I say, every once in a while, I crave
a good blizzard. I used to like the blizzards, like I had to
one of those little punch cards where every time you had ten you got one
free. Like I really liked them. But if someone handed me one right
now, I'd be like, no, thank you. I just don't like
them anymore. It's weird. I mean, it's not weird, it's innermantent
fasting. You know. I've spent a couple of years since I had one,
and I really the one called the Georgia mudfudge or something. It was
like chocolate and pecans and brownie bits and I loved it. Yeah, And
I got a little bitty one going through the drive through one day and I
was like, this isn't as delicious as I remember it being. Yeah,
the last time I had one, I was like, I just don't like
these anymore. And see, that's the beauty of intermittent fasting. You know,
we could tell you here are the rules of intermittent fasting. Do not
eat Dairy Queen blizzards. They are terrible for you, which we all know.
We know that, but we're not telling you that. But your body
just might tell you that like mine did, Like, don't eat that.
It's gross anyway, Sorry, dairy Queen. I used to be a frequent
flyer with my punch card, but they just don't appeal. That being said,
you know, high quality ice cream, it was a whole different story.
Yeah, I you know, I do love my ice cream. And
I have found my little Klondike dark chocolate Klondike bars. That's my perfect little
ice cream tree. Yeah, the ice cream's kind of a nice. I
don't know that I've never had one of those, like literally ever, it's
portion controlled. After I eat one, it's nice and rich, it's not
too sweet, it's just perfect, and I don't want another one. Where
is that scoop ice cream? And you can just keep eating it, I
don't know, and go back and back and back. I actually recently did
have one of those little bitty bin and jeries, you know, the tiny
ones, the little tiny ones, And just out of curiosity, man,
I don't count calories. I'm not interested in I don't know how many calories
I eat, but just out of curiosity, I was like, oh,
I want to see what this is, like two hundred and forty calories,
So yeah, I think the Klondikes are like two twenty or something. It
wasn't, but I looked the ingredients were not that bad. I was really
surprised. I put on my reading glasses and read the ingredients. But it
was a little tiny bin and jeries and it was like it felt like a
lot of ice cream and that little tiny container. But it was just so
satisfying. But again, had I had a whole big container, I'm sure
I would have had more. I think the Klondike war is satisfying for me
because you have to concentrate to eat it cho like a sandwich kind of a
though, oh it's like that the hard one. I don't know, Okaya,
like a fudge, well, like a okay, I know what you
mean, like you covered ice cream bar, but it's just a little square
no, no popsicles, see, okay, but you have to pay attention
and you're gonna lose chocolate everywhere. Right, So right, you're really like
into eating it, and I swear that makes a difference than just mindlessly like
spooning it in your mouth. So for some reason, that's way more satisfying
for me. So that's kind of my food. That is always kind of
in the freezer. When I want a little something sweet, that's what I'll
get. It might change at some point, but well, for everybody who's
listening, if you struggle with your ice cream consumption, these are two great
strategies. The little tiny portion control of one Sheery has are the little tiny
one. I would just buy one one if I have one. If I
come home from the grocery door with one little bit of ice cream, I
can't eat too much ice cream. It's impossible. There's only that much anyway,
Yeah, because I'm never gonna live a life free of ice cream forever.
Yep, No, life's too short to live without ice cream. It's
true. Well, so are we ready to talk about the first item on
the agenda? So for everybody who's listening, we're recording this on March twenty
sixth, and exactly one week ago today, we started getting very very very
alarmed intermitten fasters in our community. Oh my gosh, have y'all seen this?
Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Over and over again?
Post in the community and they're like, oh my gosh, my sister
just sent me this, or my brother in law sent me this. And
there was a study and I'm using quotation marks with my fingers study that apparently
every single news outlet around the world picked up as if Moses had come down
from the mountaintop with the tablets of like the Commandments of life. I mean,
it was like treated like I have never seen something that just was like
got that much attentionated like that never. It was everywhere, like on every
news channel everything. And it's not a slow news day, so I don't
really know what's going on, but it was literally everywhere, and it was
something the American heart Association put out. They called it a study, but
it has not been peer reviewed. It has not been published. It was
like an abstract of a paper that they were sharing at a conference, right,
like at a poster session. You know, I'm married to a scientist.
Chad would go to conferences, organic chemistry conferences, heterocyclic chemistry conferences,
and they would do poster sessions, so I know what those look like.
They would just share something they found out. You would not typically take something
that's only been shared at a poster session and distribute it to every single news
outlet around the world with a headline such as intermittent fasting causes causes a ninety
one percent increase in cardiovascular disease. I mean that's what the headline said.
Well, we load sensational headline intermittent fasting causes a ninety increase in CARDI That
is highly specific. Any How, many people are going to click on that.
Everybody, And if you've ever known anybody who did intermittent fast if you
love intermittent fasting, you're going to click on it because you're freaked out.
If you hate intermittent fasting, you're going to click on it so you can
send it to everybody who likes intermittent fasting and say, see, I told
you it was bad. Look, and your mom, who's convinced that you
do need to eat six meals a day, she's going to send it to
you fly away. She's going to send it to you. My son,
who's twenty four, sent it to me, right, everybody sent it to
me. I immediately, look, there are some problems with this, and
he said, yeah, I figured there were. And he said, and
I don't really know what the details because I didn't really read it. He's
like, but I feel like being, you know, struggling with obesity and
having poor health because of that is probably more dangerous than skipping some meals.
And I said, yes, son, thank you. I'm glad I raised
a critical thinker. Yeah. Anyway, it was. It was absolutely it
was. It was crazy, and we're still getting like even today, a
week later, somebody still, you know, popped up in the community and
said, oh my god, Gen, have you seen this. I'm like,
why, yes, I have seen that. But you know, everyone
was alarmed, and it made me feel really good, Sherry that everyone who
read it or got it sent to them and felt alarmed immediately came to the
community because they knew that we would talk about it in a way that they
understood. But it was it was almost funny because it was literally like every
five minutes someone else said have you seen this? And I wanted to I
didn't because I'm a school teacher and I'm you know, used to people asking
the same questions over and over. I wanted to say, yes, scroll
down one inch in. But every time someone asked, I understand that was
their first time asking and they hadn't seen it, and so I treated it
like it was the first time, and I did come up with an answer
that I would paste every time. But anyhow, it was quite the talk
for a while, and I think people are still talking about it. But
what I love is how quickly people who are in the know about intermittent fastings
health benefits came up with videos and blog posts and their own news articles,
like we had one within the day. We had somebody that had a rebuttal
of it that analyzed, you know, all the the limited information that they
released about it. Since it's not a study, it hasn't been published anywhere.
I'm pretty sure that was the one that came out in the New York
Times and it was a great article. And I actually linked that article in
show notes. Oh good, so anybody can read that. And you know
something that I think is so important to like anytime research comes out, right,
you need to figure out, like how did they conduct the research?
Yeah, you know what data set was used? What were the parameters of
the study? The parameters of this? I mean, I don't even know
if you can call this. It was a study. It had twenty thousand
adults in this study. And but you know what this is there. It
wasn't a study. It was it's a collection of data. They collected some
data from two thousand and three to twenty eighteen. It's the NHA n EES
And I can't remember what that stands for, but people call it in Haines.
I think NHA n EES National. Hell, I can't remember something like
that. But they collected survey data from two thousand and three to twenty eighteen
just to collect the data of how people late. Right. It wasn't because
they wanted to study this. These people completed two interviews, yeah, less
than two weeks apart, yep, about what they what time they ate on
the previous day, and what they ate like everybody paused for just a minute.
And you're an intermittent fast so you probably are more in tune with what
and when you ate the average person. But go back to a period of
your life when you were not an intermittent faster and someone says, what did
you eat yesterday and exactly what time did you eat it? How are you
going to answer that question? Is it going to be one hundred percent accurate?
I mean no, no, it's not going to be accurate. And
who knows what happened the day before? It's true, like I mean,
I work in a busy, crazy er, so if I was working a
busy shift, I might have been like, well, I didn't really eat
anything till nin and then I grabbed a cookie in the lounge and then when
I got off I had dinner. Was I fasting? No? But the
thing is that this data set exists, and so this new study was people
who were like, let's look at this data set that already exists that we
did not have. We did not do it create this data set. The
United States government created this data set, and they linked what people said on
these two days to their health outcomes and then assumed that how they ate on
those two days is how they ate for the next eight years. By the
way, like the way you ate yesterday, that how you're going to eat
every day for eight years. But then these people went in and mined that
data and said, let's see what we can figure out from this data.
So that's like reverse engineering a data set to come up with a conclusion,
which is crazy. And as somebody in the community said something again, but
this was twenty thousand people. They the study included twenty thousand people, but
the survey data was collected with twenty thousand people over those two thousand and three
to twenty eighteen. Right, four hundred and fourteen people reported that they had
eaten within an eight hour let's call it a window the day before their interview.
Just by happened happenstance, right, They just happened. They're eating,
happened to be condensed on those days for whatever reason. Here's the other part
that's so funny, Sherry, four hundred and fourteen people eight within eight hours.
Ish in mitten fasting was not a thing in two thousand and three.
Nope, nobody would have said they were doing intermitten fasting. They just were
randomly eating. So think about the health advice from two thousand and three to
the twenty eighteen most people who were trying to live a healthy life, what
were they doing eating flood pens. Depends on what diet you were following,
But how often were they eating? If you were following the health advice from
two thousand and three, if you were eating six small meals a day,
that's what we were told to do, and breakfast was the most important meal
of the day. So the people who were healthy and trying to follow health
advice ate frequently small meals, got to keep that metabolism going, whereas the
people who were eating randomly were not following health advice because back then that was
not the help advice right right, right, And they're variable to look at
why were these people only eating for eight hours twice? Yeah? Why?
Yeah? Exactly. I mean there's a whole subset of people who don't have
a consistent eating schedule or who do not prioritize eating. And this could be
anybody who's already sick, people who have food in security, alcoholics tend to
not eat well rounded meals. They often drink their meals. So we have
no idea what these people were doing for the rest of their day when they
were eating, or what they were eating because they weren't fasting, yeah,
or what they're eating yeah. I mean they could have been drinking sugar free
coffee creamer in their coffee all day and living a high stress lifestyle, smoking
cigarettes and cramin and dinner at the end of a crazy work day. I
mean, like, you just don't know. So to me, it's like
a really big jump to go from to call the miniment faster. These four
hundred and fourteen people were eating in a shorter eating window than other people,
and fasting is and then call that fast intermittent fast, right right, that's
the thing, And it's a you know, I told this story that this
is the same data set, by the way that they used in that study
that I talked about in twenty eight day fast Start day by day in the
Negative Nelly's chapter. It was the same data set, So I was already
familiar with that data set, and they found the same exact thing to be
true. And this came out at the end of twenty nineteen. In that
data set, people who ate within a shorter period of time, they said,
were more likely to die. But then people really dug in since it
was actually published, and they found out that those people were more likely to
be smokers, more likely to use alcohol, and more likely to have food
and security like you just said. And so again, were they fasting,
No, they just reported it to skip meals like And I gave this example
in twenty eight day fast our day by day of my friend who told me
She's like, I do that fasting thing you do. And I'm like,
awesome, that's great. She's like, yeah, I wake up in the
morning and I have a green juice and I drink green juice and then I
have lemon water throughout the day because that's really good for you, and then
I only eat dinner. So she thinks she eats one meal a day and
that she's fasting. Is she fasting not at all? No, But if
she did a survey and filled it out, she was like, oh,
I only eat one meal a day. Well, she doesn't just eat one
meal a day. She's having green juice and lemon water and all of that.
And you know, I also think of my husband's aunt who was very,
very skinny all of her life, but she had early on set Alzheimer's
and was in really poor health at the end, very very skinny. But
you know, Alzheimer's type type three diabetes people call it. But she skipped
a lot of meals. But she would wake up in the morning and drink
a coke and have a key bar, and then later she would have another
coke and another candy bar, and so maybe she only ate one actual meal.
So she's like, oh, I rarely eat. I just don't eat.
I just eat like one time. But was she fasting? Absolutely not.
No, So you can't you can't say someone is fasting if they're not
fasting, and if you don't really know and dietary recall two times and then
say that's how you eat every day for eight years. Right, that makes
no sense at all. You know when I taught my fourth graders or that
habitual, No, when my fourth graders were learning how to do the scientific
method, my gifted fourth graders I had into a science project one hundred percent
at school. I taught them the scientific method. They had to control their
variables. I read some methodologies to them of real studies and they could find
the flaws. Fourth graders. I'm pretty sure fourth graders would say, how
do you know that's how they ate every day for eight years. Anyway,
this makes me mack. Listen, if a the bear is chasing me down
the street and I run to safety, does that make me a runner?
Well? You know if you did on the survey that you ran, did
you exercise yesterday? And I would say, yes, I ran yesterday,
Right, Okay, this person is a runner. That's exactly the way to
look at it. But the part that's so disappointing is you would think that
people would not publish that in every single news outlet as a study and just
those headlines. You would think that they would like have someone who said,
we can't put this out there, that's not what this is. But nope,
they just published it. Yeah. I'm really I kind of expected the
American Heart Association to come back and release a statement or something. Yeah,
me too, Ill know you and I haven't seen that yet. No,
but I really think they just said, no, that is not what That's
really not what this study says. You can't you cannot you can't draw those
conclusions. You you can't based on the data that they have. You can't
draw the conclusions that all of the headlines said. And to purport that that's
the position of the American Heart Association is what is so disappointing. Well,
it's funny because in twenty nineteen they reported that regular fasting could lead to a
longer and healthier life, the same American Heart Association, and that came from
two studies that showed and when they followed two thousand patients who had undergone cardiac
catheterization for an average of four point four years, the routine fasters in that
group had a forty five percent lower mortality rate than the non fasters during that
follow up period. And then another study using that same data set, they
found that routine fasters had a seventy one percent lower rate of developing heart failure
than non fasters. And so it's like, on one hand, they have
all this information, yeah, but on the other hand, they have this
like new little subset of information. And this big blanket statement has been made
that if you do Internet fascinating, you're gonna you know, you only nine
percent people are going to be able to escape without cardiovast disease. And also
that ninety one percent increase is very misleading because it didn't show that ninety one
percent of people who do that are going to have heart disease. It was
one of those statistical things, Oh yeah, yeah, where it's like a
tiny number of people, just like in that hormonal Yeah, you know,
the Women's Health Initiative, how they said they said twenty five percent increase in
breast cancer, but the difference was one more person out of one thousand.
One person more out of a thousand was a twenty five percent increase. So
you know, you there's a book out there called how to Lie with Statistics.
That's a real book, and you can you can make these claims and
based on the difference of one person out of a thousand, four people versus
five people is a twenty five percent difference out of a thousand, and so
yeah, because you're looking at four versus five. When you see information like
this, I think it's really you know, it's good to really read it,
really look at what they're analyzing. What are the numbers, what it
was the data, where's it coming from, How's it reported? And there
was a great video somebody shared and I'm going to link it in show notes
as well. It's from a doctor sten Ekberg, and the name of the
video was Intermittent fasting destroying your heart and He pretty much just breaks down the
job with this quote study. And you know, one of my big takeaways
from him was be your own study of one. You know, I love
that too. Is your inflammation, you know getting better? Is your insulin
resistance, your blood sugar, is your blood pressure? All those improving with
fasting, you know, because those are all drivers of coronary artery disease.
So if all of that is improving, there's your answer. Yeah. And
you know, I know for a fact that two hundred and ten pound gin
was more likely to have problems of all types than healthy gin. Right,
I mean, there's no question. Right, All my numbers are excellent.
I have regular blood work, Everything looks good. I don't have insulin resistance,
I have a slin waist is great because I eat healthy food. Yeah,
So it just doesn't It just doesn't make any sense. Anyway, we
said we would talk about it in the in the podcast, and we did.
And so everybody, you've just really don't panic when this this will happen
again. It'll happen again, but don't panic and look critically at it and
say what did they do? How did they figure this out? Right?
Yep? I agree? So yeah, that's if it's kind of been it's
been entertaining in a way. But you know, I've also learned a lot
just because I I went and started doing my own research and found some fascinating
stuff out there that I hadn't seen or read before. Yeah, there's a
lot of good stuff out there. You know. Everything that we look at
is pretty much available to you as well. So if you're ever curious about
something, put in some Google search terms, put in PubMed you can find
so much information. Yeah, the key is using the word PubMed with it.
And also you have to look at the preponderance of evidence, right,
not just one isolated random something right, you know. And a really good
place to look if you really want to see the best collection of evidence for
intermittent fasting doctor Mark Matson's book Let's See the Intermittent Fasting Revolution. I had
to look over and see the name of it. I haven't on my shelf.
The Intermittent Fasting Revolution, written by doctor Mark Matson, worked for National
Institutes of Help. It reads like you're reading a medical journal. He's not
an entertaining writer like Jason Fung. He doesn't write like I do. He
writes like he is writing for the New England Journal of Medicine. But he's
got it in there with no hype. It's just here's everything that I found
everything, And so really good researchers don't look at one thing in isolation.
A really good researcher would never have written that headline and sent that out to
all the news media because they would know that is not much information. Yeah,
and even the people that are doing research and working with air MANI Pasting,
they all have said, you know, look, more research. We're
controlled, dedicated research needs to be done, you know, rather than just
observational studies, so where you go back and look at data that already existed
and say what can we pull out of this? Right, Jason Fund's analogy,
we haven't talked about this about his ice cream analogy. Oh right,
we haven't talked about He had a he write a rebottle. Jason Fung wrote
a rebuttal immediately as well a blog post, and he said, there's a
correlation between eating ice cream and drowning. Someone who has drowned, eating ice
cream causes drowning. I mean, yeah, no, but people who drown
are more likely to have eaten ice cream because it's the summertime, right,
So anyway, what do you do when it's hot? You eat ice cream
and you go swimming. Yeah, anyway, same kind of information. If
we said eating ice cream will make you drown, everyone would know that was
crazy. All right, Well, let's move on to some good news.
We have celebration from Tim in Nashville today. Tim wrote, I'm a thirty
one year old male and I have been an almost daily listener of Fast Feast
Repeat for the past few months now. If I wasn't broke, I would
have bought the book already too. Haha. It's so nice to hear the
celebrations. I think that's great. He's just read listening to it. I
love it. And also I would like to say you can join Audible for
a free trial. Do a free trial of Audible, get the book for
free, and then camful if they still offer that that like Audible often has
like a free trial, and you get to keep whatever you try, and
you can get your library to get it for you. There are lots of
ways to get Fast East Repeat legally for free. Please do the legal ones.
Yeah, he says, it's so nice to hear the celebrations, concerns
and questions from my fellow fasters on this podcast. Also, the genuine care
and support from gen and Cherry has been such a positive and uplifting part of
my day. I've been fasting on and off since a little before quarantine.
Some days were absolutely brutal. That was until I found your podcast I learned
about the Clean Fast. It has been such a game changer. My depression
is almost gone without therapy. My ADHD and OCD have become something I work
through, not against. The skin tags around my armpits have all nearly disappeared.
My sleep is unbelievable. I actually wake up before my kids now.
The focus and mindfulness I'm able to achieve with IF has given me so much
more control of my life and has made me a better husband, father,
and manager at work. And that is my biggest victory. I'm in the
best shape of my life. All of my coworkers and regulars can't help but
remark on how much weight of lost. I always just reply, it's wild
how much weight you can lose cutting out beer. Because I'd rather not have
to explain the nuances of IF. I had a coworker claim I had disordered
eating, so I chose moving forward to just keep the details to myself.
I find it easier that way to anyone who is listening and is struggling keep
pushing. I'm huge on bailing on commitments to myself. I'm quite lazy.
I'm not going to lie, but this lifestyle work for me because of just
how easy it gets once you're settled in. Thank you Jen and Cherry,
y'all are doing good work and I appreciate you both, as well as the
DDD online community. Well, thank you so much, Tim, and I
appreciate that. And that's just a testament to the power of intermittent fasting and
how it frees our mind. But it also I mean, he's in the
best shape of his life, and he's healthy and he's less likely to have
heart disease. Sorry, I had to well. I love that he feels
like fasting has just really made him a better husband. I think the true
worker. I mean, just even balancing our blood sugars like throughout the day
just can improve our mood and our attitude. And I know, when you're
successful with something and you feel good about what you're doing, it just carries
over to everything else that you do. I think so too so now we
have a question from a listener. This question is from Heather from Northern New
York. Heather says, Hey, Jen and Cherie. I have been living
the intermittent fasting lifestyle for eighteen plus months and love, love, love it,
and I like to have vegetables before all the other food in my meal.
I'm having trouble with eating out with my family as I find the food
options available difficult to navigate. There seems to be a focus on large meat
portions and lots of poorer quality carbs and fried foods, which makes me feel
poorly for days post meal. I would love to load on the vegetables and
real foods and find the options limiting depending on the restaurant. My last trip
out, I tried doing a salad but found it disappointing. Is they used
lower quality lettuce and not as much of the other veggies in the salads description
on the menu. Do you have any strategies to share on finding window worthy
foods when you go out to eat. I love this question. Well,
yes I do. First of all, you say you find food options.
Okay. One of the things that I do before I ever go out to
eat is I research restaurants and I look at their menus, and I make
sure that the restaurant I'm going to has food that I want to eat,
because my window is important and I'm not going to go sacrifice it for food
that I don't love. Jen and I have been known to sit on the
beach in the morning and research where we're going to eat dinner when we're together,
and we look at the menu and we make a plan in the morning
for later that day, and my husband knows if we're going out to eat,
I have to look at the menu in advance. And if we end
up someplace and it's not probably what I am going to considered to be window
worthy, I wouldn't hesitate to eat at home. Before you go eat a
home, go, you know, maybe get a little appetizer or something while
you're there, find maybe research if you really loved your veggies, research restaurants
in the area that have good vegetarian options, and sometimes they'll have like a
veggie platter or something like that that you can get. But I think really
if you really explore restaurant options, you can find better options out there,
and staying away from kind of the chain restaurants is usually helpful, but yeah,
I get it. I also get really disappointed when they use low quality
lettuce and a salad. Oh yeah, I mean that's the first thing I
ask a waitrus is kind of let us do you have? So yeah,
I was going to say the same thing that you said, Sherryan, that
is researching the restaurant beforehand and be your best advocate if there's nothing there that
you would like. Here's an example of that. My daughter in law,
Kate is a lovely vegetarian who is very willing to speak up on her behalf.
And when she's been here with us, staying with us, and we're
going to go out to eat, she and col look at the restaurant menu's
ahead of time and she's like, no, there's nothing there I want to
eat. I don't want to go there. And she's she's not hesitant to
let us know that that restaurant is not going to meet her needs. And
you know, like you mentioned, Heather, that you don't want to have
just a large meat portion with poor quality carbs. You know. Chad and
I went out to eat last weekend and we went to this fancy restaurant in
North Mortle Beach that he picked out and he's like, what about this one?
And I knew before we went that I wasn't going to have an entree
because every single entree was a giant hunk of meat that was it thought that
with like you know, potato or something, and I didn't want that.
I don't didn't we need a giant hunk of meat at that time of the
night when we were going. But they had a beautiful beet salad and it
was like red beets and golden beets and goat cheese sprinkled on there and it
was so delicious. And they had like a banana's foster dessert that I wanted
to try, and so I just and I ordered like fingerling potatoes as a
side, and had like we created our own, our own meal. I
had a bowl of soup, right, and that was what. Chad didn't
have an entree either. Neither of us had an entree. He had an
appetizer portion of scallops with bacon wrapped around them, and we had the potatoes
that we shared, and he also had a caesar salad. So you don't
have to get an entree. You can make them whole meal, lot of
appetizers and sides. And I find that's often where the best foods are located.
Yep, I agree, yes, and even like the cheesecake Factory.
I that's where I fell in love with Brussels sprouts. Do you know where
I found the Brussels sprouts on the appetizer menu? Right, they're like so
yeah, really, and just pick and choose, and whether it's on the
appetizer menu, whether you get you know, an appetizer and a soup and
salad or whatever, make it, make it work for you. Yeah,
but don't go to a restaurant that doesn't have anything you'll like. Last night,
we went out to eat and he wanted to go to this one restaurant
that was very highly recommended people love. Its hard to get reservations. It's
down in merles Inlet. I don't like it. I didn't want to go.
I was like, I don't want to go to that restaurant. I
don't like it. And luckily they were closed on Monday, so we couldn't
go anyway. Yeah, we ended up at Lee's in Lit Kitchen, which
I like. And the thing is, though, you know you don't want
to go somewhere that's just say no, I don't want to go there.
You know where else is always easy to go Mexican restaurants. Yes, you
can find a lot of good vegetab a a Mexican restaurant. You don't have
to eat the chips if you don't want to beans beans. Yes, Okay,
So we're gonna do another quick question before we move on from Belinda in
Orlando. And she said, I'm just restarting using the twenty eight Day Fast
Art day by day book. And in the book, Jen, you write
two questions that I feel are asking the same thing in the daily journal entries.
I'm wondering if you can please clarify the difference. One is I ate
until I was satisfied and then stopped, versus I honored my I have had
enough signals. They seem the same to me, and I'm a bit confused.
Thanks in advance. Yeah, I can see how that might be a
little bit confusing, But they're subtly different, right, And so think about
your whole entire window satisfaction for the day, Like we want to be satisfied
within our eating window. And that's more than just like the sum of that
one eating experience. Like if you're early in the twenty eight Day Fast art.
You may be having two meals, right, and I instruct you to
eat until you're satisfied within your window and then stop. And to me,
satisfaction is like the sum of the whole day, like not just what I'm
eating at that particular moment, like what I open my window with, and
then I'm not eating anymore for a while, and then I'm eating again later
and at the very end of the day, I need to be satisfied.
Like with Shechery, I've been out to eat with Sherry. Spend a lot
of time with Sheary. She might realize I hadn't had enough protein for the
day. My body is not satisfied until I eat more protein. I got
to have more protein. So being satisfied to me is a little bit different
than your I have had enough signals, your satiety signals, because those happen
at each event, like when I'm having my opening, you know, and
my body's like rhight, You've had enough of that, and then I stop.
That's my satiety signal at that eating opportunity, Right, So you have
multiple eating opportunities throughout your window, perhaps, and each time you want to
honor your I have had enough signals, But you also want to make sure
that you eat until you're satisfied within your whole window. So perhaps I could
have worded that better. Looking back, you're right, you know, how
did that make it through the whole editing process? But not one person saying
these seem a little similar? Do you want to maybe reword them a little
bit? Nobody mentioned that? Well, And I think when you look at
whether or not you're satisfied, like I could look back on my entire window
and be like, yes, I've had enough to eat, But if I
ignore what my body's telling me, then it's not gonna work out. Well,
I'm gonna go to bed hungry, I'm gonna wake up hungry. The
next day might be hard. But if I think, am I truly satisfied
before closing my window, and I realize I'm not, and rather than you
know, using some preconceived idea that I've already eaten enough and I've really listened
to my body, then to me, that's the difference. You know,
Yes, I might have had an open window opener and been so you know,
had enough, I stopped eating, a paused, then I had a
meal, I was no longer hungry. I stopped eating, But then I
go to close my window and I'm like, hmm, I'm just not there.
Yeah, And eating until satisfied can also go the other direction, like
it doesn't have to mean eating till you've had enough. Sometimes you stop eating
because you're a lifelong dieter, and you stop eating because you think you've had
enough, Like you're like, well, I should stop with this tiny little
meal, but you're not really satisfied. So part of eating until you're satisfied
is making sure you're satisfied. And so if you have a long dietary history,
then you could be used to eating a tiny diet meal because that's just
what you're used to. And then when you reflect on that, I ate
until I was satisfied, Actually no, I didn't. I stopped because I
thought that's how much I should eat, and then I stopped. So that's
really different from having enough, and that example, it's like the opposite.
You were aren't satisfied, you didn't have enough. So they suddenly mean different
things. But I can see how I might could have worded them a little
bit better. But I want you to ask yourself both questions. Did you
eat until you were satisfied and then you stopped right and did you hear your
I've had enough signals. Think about those as two different things. All right,
there we go. I hope that that helped. And now it's time
for our segment called what's your Why. Most of us have weight loss in
mind, and it is great for that to be part of your why,
but there is so much more to what intermittent fasting can do for us beyond
weight loss. And in my book twenty eight Day fast Art Day by day,
I ask readers to craft their why statement before beginning. 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
Kristen. She wrote, I had been feeling tired, suffering from right sided
abdominal pain and acid reflux, and just an overall blaw feeling. My doctor
told me I had a fatty liver, and not just a little fatty,
greater than sixty six percent fatty. She gave me a goal of losing twenty
pounds in a year. My liver health is what made me get serious about
taking care of myself. It was not just about looking good. I needed
to reverse a fatty liver. Searching the Internet for weight loss information led me
to Intermittent Fasting and Jenn's book. It has been six months and I've lost
twenty two pounds. My fasting insulin has gone down from fifteen to seven,
and I've reduced my relex medication by half. My doctor says she will rescan
my liver in a year to see if it's improved, but I know that
it is already improving. I am feeling so much better. So whenever I'm
fasting and I feel a hunger pain, I like to think about my liver
and how my body is using the fat there to feed my body. This
mind shift from weight loss to health has made all the difference for me.
I love that, And Kristin, You're exactly right. When we are fast
and clean, our body clears out the fat from a fatty liver. Our
friend Roxy had that happen for her. She lost no weight when she started
or written fasting for months, no weight lost at all, but she cleared
up her fatty liver completely. And so you know, I know we all
want to lose weight and fit into smaller clothes and see a lower number on
the scale, but truthfully, if we could look inside our liver and see
fat inside there, that is the most important fat that we want to lose
for health purposes. And I think that we're learning more and more that a
healthy liver, you know, that's really helps all your detox pathways, and
it supports healthy metabolism, and it supports you know, a healthy thyroid.
And so I don't think we talk enough about liver health. So I think
that's fabulous that she found fasting and she's working on improving her liver health.
I think so. And Kristen, here's what I'd love for you to do.
Please send us a celebration when you get your liver recheck and tell us
that you wrote in about this before with your why and that we asked you
to follow up because we would love to feature you as a success after you
have your Livery scand yes, all right, we have another question from rox
c Inn in Summerset UK. She says, I've been Airman fasting on and
off for a few years, but recently I've really committed and I'm sticking to
a strict four hour eating window. This podcast has helped me greatly and reaffirmed
why I love a fasting lifestyle. But my question is one that my husband
posed to me while we were chatting about fasting and I was gently trying to
encourage him to give it a go. We were discussing how when you fast,
your body burns stored fat and that's what keeps you going with throughout your
fast and he pipes up and he asks, but when you have lost all
the weight and you don't have much body fat anymore, then surely you have
to stop. If puzzled, I asked why, he said, because if
you've already burned through all your stored body fat and you are only eating in
a four hour window, maybe one meal and a snack, that cannot be
enough to sustain you for the next twenty hours. How would I go mountain
biking for the day or hike up a mountain that would be enough fuel?
And I would feel starving all the time. And his question kind of stopped
me because I didn't have an answer. I know that it would does sustain
you, and that if is a lifestyle. I know your body doesn't carry
on losing weight forever either, it settles when it reaches its new set weight.
But I didn't know the how or the why to be able to explain
it to him. I'd love to know your thoughts on this so I can
talk it through with him again and explain why you don't stop if when you
reach your goal weight, and how your body sustains you through the fasts once
you don't have a ton of stored body fat anymore. Thank you, ladies.
Well, that is a great question, and I'm really glad that you
asked it because we've heard this before. This is definitely something people have asked
in our community and our Facebook groups over the years. So here's something that's
super interesting. We have a lot of stored energy on our bodies, even
if you are at a healthy weight. I just pulled up real quick to
a quick Google search and just in one little age range, if you're a
woman ages twenty to thirty nine, for example, a healthy percentage of body
fat would be twenty one to thirty two percent body fat For a woman that's
healthy, twenty one to thirty two percent of your body is still fat and
you're healthy. We carry a good bit of stored fat on our bodies.
That's not the only stored energy that we have, though. We also have
glycogen in our liver. We have glycogen in our muscles, and all of
that is there to fuel us. So when you are exerting energy in the
facted state, your body is going to take out glycogen from your liver.
It's going to take out glycogen from within your muscles. It might need to
tap into a little fat. But here's the thing. When you eat,
you put it back. When you eat your meal, your body doesn't just
burn up all that whole meal right that minute that you're eating it. It
stores some away. It stores some of the fat away, It stores glycogen
in your liver, It puts glycogen back into your mud, and it just
it's always putting in and taking out. So when we're eating, it's storing
it away. When we're fasting, it's taking it back out. So when
you are hoping to lose weight, you have to take out more than you
put in or you will not burn your fat. That's that's the weight loss
process. But when you are maintaining your weight, that's homeostasis. That's where
we're balancing it and you're putting in enough to balance how much you take out
during the fast. What happened for me when I got to maintenance, and
my body was happy. Is that I had a slightly increased appetite, not
a ton, but a little bit. So I eat more in my eating
window now as a maintainer than I did when I was losing weight, and
my appetite spurred me on because I'm not burning, you know, I'm not
depleting fat lower and lower and lower every day. I'm in balance. Yeah,
and I've too that when I, you know, am at a healthy
weight and I'm in a maintenance, you know, lifestyle. I maintained.
I still maintained like a five hour eating window, but my body, naturally,
about once per week would let me know I needed sort of a refueling
day, and I would end up opening my window early. I would have
two meals that day, and it let me know that I had a true
hunger day, and I would eat that day. I would have, you
know, a longer window, eat more food that day, and then I
would be good again for about a week, and then my body would sort
of encourage me to have another refueling day. And so your body is very
smart, and if you're in tune with it, you know, you can
really hear what it's directing you. To do. Yep, that's exactly right.
So that's a great question, and I appreciate you asking it because a
lot of people do wonder this. But our body's not gonna let us get
to an unhealthy weight. It will ramp up the hunger hormones for us.
Yep, if it senses that we need more fuel, all right. Before
we get to our tweak of the week, I want to take a minute
to talk about my books and which ones you need if you are new to
internet and fasting, if you are restarting after a break, or if you
are just in need of a refresh, maybe your window has gotten a little
loosey goosey and you haven't been fasting consistently, you're going to want twenty eight
day Fast Start, day by day, the ultimate guide to starting or restarting
your intermittent fasting lifestyle. So it sticks. This is a companion book for
fast Feast Repeat, So you also want to have that one on hand as
a reference. You're going to want to go back to it over time when
you have questions, they're all answered in there. If you're a seasoned intermittent
faster and you know you're ready to clean up, what you're eating, or
your personal care products, your cleaning products in your home. Then I think
you'll enjoy cleanish. I wrote it so that the process of cleaning up would
feel a little less daunting. You would know where to begin, and I
have a step by step approach. You can start wherever you want. You
don't have to get of anything you're not ready to get rid of. There's
that ish in there. I only switched to clean the ownant this year recently,
you know, and it was a struggle for me for a long time.
I wasn't ready till I found one that worked. So you can clean
up things at the pace that works for you, and every change that we
make helps. So now it's time for our tweak of the week. You
know, I always say tweak it till it's easy. But the tweak that
works for me might not be the one that works for you. And that's
why it's super helpful to hear how other intermittent fasters are making intermittent fasting work
for them. This tweak was submitted by Mary Ann from Singer Island, Florida.
She says, when I first started and I felt like I was hungry
and my window was closed, I told myself, if you don't eat now,
you can eat anything you want when you open your window tomorrow. I
mostly ended up breaking my fast in a healthy way, but letting go of
the mindset of this is my last cupcake mentality made a huge difference. I
gave up drinking during the week, and I allow myself a drink on Friday
evening if I even want it. I love the delay. Don't deny mentality.
Yeah, delay it. You can have it when your window comes around.
Maybe you won't even want it. I find that happens all the time.
Yep. Sometimes our brain thinks we want things that our body just doesn't
really want. Well, we'd love to leave you with some inspiration to carry
you through the next week and this week we have a thought provoking message from
Arless in New Jersey. She wrote, I know my validation does not come
from people or things. People and things won't leave you feeling empty. Find
joy, not happiness. Happiness is a moment. Joy is comfort, contentment
and peace. Your life has a purpose. Be still in those moments and
reflect on the goodness of your life. Life is hills and valleys. When
I'm in the valley, I don't sit in fear, I rejoice in the
hill that's around the corner. I love that. 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, Sa