Episode 11: Choosing IF, Becoming Fat Adapted, Maintenance, Planning for Success, and More

Welcome to Fast Feast Repeat Intermitten Fasting for Life. I'm Jen Stevens, author
of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock,
longtime Intermitten 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 Intermitten Fasting or an experienced
Intermitten Faster, or 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 Intermitten Fasting for Live podcast. How are you doing today's Sherry? I
am doing fabulous, me too, And we were just talking before we started
that. We are now on Amazon Music and Audible for people who like to
listen to their podcasts through those platforms you can. It's so exciting, I
know, and we didn't know how to make that happen. We were like,
how do you get your podcast on Audible? We didn't know, but
I got an email from Amazon that said, we see you have a podcast.
Do you want it to be on Amazon Music and Audible? Here's how
you make that happen. So I just I was like, well, okay,
thank you, Universe. I wonder if it's because your other podcast was
already on there and they had a connection with you. Nope, Nope,
that's not why this was an autogenerated I think they just look for podcasts that
are doing well maybe and and like, you know, my email address was
affiliated with this podcast on like you have to send it out, and so
they just auto generated me an email. And that's awesome. I know.
I was always sad we couldn't get Life Lessons on it. So when you
told me we got this one on it, I was like, yes,
I bet it has to do with volume, because they probably don't want to
clutter it up with podcasts that are with all the two million podcasts out there,
there are a lot of podcasts. Yeah, And that makes me a
little sad that Life Lessons wasn't big enough to get an auto generated email from
Amazon. I loved doing that podcast. I loved it too, and I
do miss it a lot. I still think about one day, if I
find a great co host, maybe I'll bring it back. Well, I
will support that in any way possible. You can haven't bring it back.
I loved doing it too, But I'm really glad this one is doing well,
and I'm loving this one too. We could share, we talk about
anything, and we would have fun. I think, yeah, that's pretty
much true. Well, today we're just going to dive into our weekly celebration,
and today's celebration comes from Jessica in Denver. She wrote Intermit and fasting
has completely freed me from the terrible relationship that I had with food my whole
life. I completely understand that, Jessica, me too. Jessica, she
said, I grew up in the restaurant and hospitality business, as my parents
are restaurant owners. So I've been surrounded by food, and very good food
at that my entire life growing up and even now, all of the social
events that we've ever had revolved around one thing food, And I think that's
true for a lot of families. When I first found intermittent fasting, There
were so many things about the clean fast that sounded super easy for me to
do. I already loved black coffee. Check. I needed to save money
on food and groceries anyways. Check. I've never really been a breakfast person,
so I felt like I was already halfway there. Check. The hardest
thing for me when I began the twenty eight day fast start was the social
aspect of food, which was such a strong and permanent fixture in my world
for so long. It was so easy to tell myself that quote, this
is a special occasion, so I can be lenient today. But then that
saying turned into something I told myself at least once a week. I committed
and I recommitted to fasting a couple of different times, but my most recent
attempt is the one that finally stuck. I recommit it again back at the
beginning of May twenty twenty three, and in two months, I have already
lost close to ten pounds. My body is rapidly changing for the better.
My resting heart rate has gone down to a much more normal rate for people
my age. I have so much energy and I feel great. I have
finally learned to understand that my ability to have a good time in social settings
does not have to depend on whether I am eating or drinking with everyone else
or not. I have a much healthier relationship with food, and I feel
like I am not a prisoner to a meal schedule anymore. I fast,
I eat when I'm hungry, I don't eat when I'm not hungry, and
I am getting better every day at not letting external factors interfere with my lifestyle
anymore. The thing that helped the most for me was something that Jin mentioned
in her book Fast, Feast Repeat. That completely changed my mindset. It
is not that I can't eat like everyone else does. It's that I get
too fast. I get to feel good, and I choose to live the
way that I know makes me my happiest, best self. Thank you Jen
and Sherry, and thank you intermittent fasting. Oh that just gave me all
the goosebumps. Well, I'm reading freedom and everything that she's saying. She
felt so tied to food and now she's free from that tie. I actually
highlighted something in her celebration, and it was when she said that it was
so easy for her to tell herself this the special occasion, so I can
be lenient today. That was my biggest struggle for so long. And in
fact, when I wrote Delayed on Deny in twenty sixteen, I had a
chapter of Saturday is not a special occasion because it happens every week, and
that was my biggest thing. You know. I was a teacher and every
Friday we got to wear jeans and it felt like a party atmosphere at the
school. And so then we had the weekend, and literally every weekend felt
like a special occasion. And that was hardwired into me. So I had
to learn that, Okay, Saturday is not a special occasion. And even
if something is a special occasion, I'm not going to feel good if I
start eating first thing in the morning and eat all day long. So I
love that she shifted her thinking too. I get too fast, I get
to feel good. I choose to live this way. You know, I
was stuck in that deprivation mindset for so long. I have the fast like
your have to fast instead, now I can't eat what everybody else is eating,
right, yeah, I have that right now, it's my your voice.
Well, something kind of stands out to me too, though I don't
know. I always just come back to the fact that we as humans in
the world right now, we run around overstressed, overscheduled, and we are
all just looking for that one thing that gets through that next day, and
all too often that becomes food, and it becomes the work is a drudge
this morning, But I'm gonna go to lunch and I'll get get free of
the office, and I'm gonna eat delicious food and then I'll feel better.
And all too often I don't even think people even realize it, but that
we use food as a coping mechanism. We use food to get happy.
If we're sad, we use food to get happy. If we're having a
bad day, we stress. Eat. If we're having a good day,
we celebrate with food exactly. And it even goes down to the scale.
If the scale is down one day, then you reward yourself with food.
If the scale is up, then sometimes you're like, well what I'm doing
is not working. To heck with it, I'm just going to eat.
And we really just have become a world where we use food for so many
reasons other than to nourish our body, and so fasting really gives us a
break from that, and it really helps us identify all the times that we
eat for reasons other than hunger. It's true, and we have to learn
to change those cycles. That was hard for me, you know, because
you just say used to reach in for it. If I walked over to
the back corner of my classroom, my kids knew I was going to make
a latte. That's how much I you know. It's like, oh,
I'm a little bored. I'm gonna gonna make a latte, you know.
And fasting changed all that. I'm still making black coffee, but anyway,
yeah, Well, and then Jessica learned a really powerful lesson here too,
this time when she recommitted to fasting, and that you can go out and
you can be social, you can be with family, you can be with
friends and you can have a good time without eating just because they're eating.
Or you can shift your window around it be at that time too. There's
there. That's where the flexibility and the empowerment comes in. You get to
choose. All right. Well, I sure did love that celebration. And
today we have several short questions from listeners. We thought it would be a
good way to knock some of these out. So Asa from Sweden asked what
is the longest time for adapting to internet and fasting you've heard of. I'm
six and a half weeks in and i think I'm finally adapted since fasting has
been easier for a few days. But I'm not sure I've felt that way
before, and then it got harder than ever. And what do you think
is the reason that some people adapt slower than others. I was a person
who had to eat six times a day when I was a frequent eater.
Could that be an explanation? Well, a couple thoughts here. The longest
time that people have taken to adapt to if I've heard of it taking people
months, like five months, And there's a lot of reasons that could be.
Number One, if you are a person who's insulin resistant and you've been
insulin resistant for any amount of time, it just makes you hungry. You're
okay, because that insulin is a hormone and it really affects like your hunger
hormone grillin. So when insulin's high, grillin is high. So if you're
insulin resistant and you're running around with a higher fasting insulin, you're gonna feel
hungry all the time. And if you're a person who was eating, you
know, six times a day, whether because you were following you know,
diet dogma or because you were just hungry all the time. You probably have
a lot of glycogen storage in your body and it's gonna take time to release
that. And you know how a person releases that. Again, that comes
down a lot to lifestyle eating style. How often do you exercise? How
is your sleep when you start fasting or have you changed your diet all?
Are you still having dessert and alcohol in your window every evening? So there
are ways you can get fat adapted faster if you're willing to restrict a little
bit, change your lifestyle a little bit. A lot of people don't want
to do that in the beginning, and that's perfectly okay, but it's going
to take you longer to get fat adapted. Also, can I add window
length can make a huge difference as well. You know, if someone is
doing sixteen eight, you might not ever get fat adapted. I'm just gonna
say that. And like today we're recording this on August sixteenth. Then apparently
I think it's the zero app has declared this world fasting day because it's eight
sixteen, and because they say sixteen eight is the most common intermittent fasting pattern.
They say, I don't know, I wouldn't say it. Maybe it
is, but sixteen eight we've talked about this before. You can be riding
the edge of being fat adapted with sixteen eight every single day and never flipping
that switch. Because eight hours is a long window. You can put more
in in eight hours than you're gonna put in in four or five hours,
right, and if you put more in, that's more your body can deposit
away in glycogen stores. And also sixteen hour fast you're only gonna burn so
much versus we know fat burning ramps up after hour eighteen typically, So someone
who's doing sixteen eight and really refilling glycogen stores during their eight hour window may
never quite flip that metabolic switch. So there's so many factors, and if
you're not flipping the metabolic switch, fasting is still going to feel hard every
day. And we do have people who join the community and they're like,
what am I doing wrong? I've been doing sixteen eight for a year and
i haven't lost any weight, and I'm still hungry, and I think I'm
gonna give up. And it's because they have been writing the Edge of fat
Adaptation for that entire time. So if you're a person who's like, Nope,
I want to do sixteen eight and that's all I want to do,
I'm going to be honest. You're making fasting harder than it needs to be.
And I know it sounds like counterintuitive, but if you actually shorten your
window, fasting is going to get easier, not harder. It might be
hard for like a week, and then you're gonna have some really hard days
once you finally deplete your likagen stores before your body flips the switch to fat
burning, but it's going to be worth it in the long run. And
when I see people who come back again in again and they say, yeah,
I'm just gonna ease in this time, and you know they're doing fourteen
ten and they're like, I'm just gonna do fourteen ten until that gets easy,
and then I'm gonna do sixteen eight until that gets easy. It may
not ever get easy. At some point you have to just white knuckle through
and get your body to flip the switch. And if you don't want to
do that, and I'm not a like pusher for low carb at all,
but if you do not want to white knuckle it. Then I really suggest
you go low carb. And I'm not saying make cloud bread and all that
crazy stuff. I'm saying, focus on some good veggie, omelets, some
meat, some veggies. Hold off on your potatoes, your starchy carbs,
that sort of thing, and just you know, primarily focus on protein veggies
and some you know, cheese, syre cream when there or whatever. And
that way you're not putting sugar into your body because carbs convert to sugar.
I mean, everything really converts to sugar, but it's going to help you
burn through. The sugar you have in storage doesn't convert to sugar. Fat
is not going to turn it. That's the only thing fat will never turn
into. She said, protein can convert to sugar. If you eat nothing
but protein, it's still going to convert to sugar. So yeah, that's
a really good point. Just I wish it were easy and we had like
a glycogen meter and you could tell when you were getting to the end of
it. You could see it on your liver loop. My liver glycogen is
low. That's good, But we don't well And that's the other thing too.
If you have fatty liver disease, and most people don't even know they
have it unless your doctor has said, hey, you know, your liver
enzymes are elevated once you've had an older sound that converts it. Most people
don't know that they're running around with a fatty liver. And if you have
fatty liver disease, it is going to take you longer to flip that switch
because your liver is full of glycogen. That's what makes it a fatty liver
because it gets verted into fat and then it's like congested. Like imagine just
thinking of it as a clogged up litter liver. Right, All that glycogen
that's been deposited your body converts it into fat. Now you've got fat and
your liver all piled in there. So we have several questions from various listeners
regarding fasting and breastfeeding, and the questions range from can it be done safely?
Why are we not? When can if be resumed? And how would
somebody jump back in? Who was a former faster prior to pregnancy. This
is a multifaceted answer, but do not resume fasting till baby is weaned.
That's the short answer. But let's talk about why you can get confused by
the goal. You know, why do you want to wait? Is it
because of milk supply? No, so like you could trick yourself into thinking
it was fine. You're like, well, I did fasting the whole time
I was breastfeeding, and my milk supply was fine, so therefore it was
safe for me to do intermittent fasting while I was breastfeeding. And unfortunately that's
just not the world we live in now, and it has to do with
our body's toxic load. And I talked about this in Cleanish and I actually
have a quote from a breastfeeding textbook. Did you know they had breastfeeding textbooks,
Sherry? Well, no, I did not, But I guess it
makes sense if you're trying to be someone like a lactation consult, gonna say
yes, I was gonna say there are lactation consults. So I got a
quote, and I have I shared this quote like I said in Cleanish,
and I don't have the whole word for word memorized, but basically, you
know, the whole point of Cleanish is that our world is increasingly toxic.
Now it's not our fault. I mean man's fault, Yes, but it's
not like Sherry's fault, Gen's fault. You're whoever's listening is not your fault.
It's the world has become toxic through multiple reasons of our man's actions,
let's just put it that way. And so our bodies are in a different
state than they naturally were. What do our body bodies do with all those
funky toxins that they can't process out, Well, they stash him in our
fat stores. So our bodies take in toxins, you know, from the
teflon pan that we've fried our eggs in, or from the toxic deodorant that
we're using, or from the packaging of your food. Yes, so,
and I'll talk about all this and cleanish not to scare you, but because
there's things we can do. I'm sitting here wearing my natural deodorant, by
the way, Sherry happily now that I've found one that works. But we
have all these toxins stored in our fat cells that naturally man you know,
a thousand years ago, two thousand years ago wouldn't have had, you know,
all these man made chemicals in the environment. So when you're losing fat,
your body releases whatever was in that fat cell, including all the junk
that it has stashed away, And so all that stuff that was in your
fat cells is going to come out throughout your body, and it can go
out in your breast milk. So the textbook I was referring to, they'd
and say don't do fasting while breastfeeding. They said, don't try to lose
a lot of fat while breastfeeding. And so we can apply that to fasting,
because why are we fasting, Well, we would like to tap into
our sword fat and burn it. So if the breastfeeding textbook doesn't even want
you to lose a lot of fat because of the toxins that might be released
in your breast milk, then why would we want to do fasting which is
going to stimulate our body to release more fat. And you know, we
are so careful as pregnant mothers and breastfeeding mothers about what we're taking in while
we're pregnant and breastfeeding, we forget about all that stuff we took in well
before we got pregnant that is dashed in our fat cells. And so,
you know, I don't want to be scaring everybody because I mean the world
is in the message, and it's there. It is. But when we
say please do not do intermittent fasting while you're breastfeeding, it's not just related
to your milk supply. I wish that it was, but it's not.
It's really we shouldn't be trying to lose weight while we're us feeding. And
I know every single one of us if we want to lose the pregnancy weight
we want to, So not to scare anybody, well, and not to
say that that means you just throw in the towel and say I'm going to
eat whatever I want and you know, I'll just worry about this later.
You know, if you were fasting prior to getting pregnant, I'm going to
assume that you were still very conscious while you were eating for growing a baby.
About just not eating with wild abandon. I mean, I think anytime
any buddy spends any amount of time fasting, they get really in touch with
their satiety hormones, and they're what true hunger is. I think it's always
smart, no matter who you are or where you're at in your life too.
Don't eat for future hunger. Don't snack because it's two o'clock and everybody
else is snacking, like still, just tune into your hunger. Stop when
you're full, focus on nutritious foods. And if you do that, then
when you're done and you've weaned your baby and you want to resume eating in
a in an eating window or you know, move back into your prior ADF
protocol or whatever it was that you did and you want to do, then
your body's going to be more primed to jump back into that. Listen to
your body. Don't fast and say I'm fasting, but eat when you're hungry
and nourish. Your body will. And remember that our goal is to not
try to lose a lot of fat while we're pregnant and breastfeeding. Think of
breastfeeding as the fourth trimester, right. Yeah, that's I mean, that's
really great advice. So Angie in Colorado, we have a lot of people
from Colorado today, She says, does intermitt and fasting have to be combined
with low carb for weight loss? I am making intermitt and fasting my lifestyle.
I do want to lose weight. I've lost sixteen pounds on one meal
a day and ADF over the last four months. It seems like most folks
that share weight loss stories have also reduced carbs. I'm losing weight on alternate
day fasting, but I cannot imagine tracking carbs or calories again in my lifetime.
All right now, I have to say that, Angie, that is
not true. I would not say that most people who share their weight loss
stories have also reduced carbs. I don't think so either. I mean it
depends on where you're here. I mean, if you're listening to Internet and
fasting stories, there are definitely people who have reduced carbs with Internet, you
know, and tell their story on interimet and fasting stories. But we also
have people who are whole food, plant based or vegan, and you know,
almost mostly a lot of carbs. And like, if you know my
story, you'll know that I started off as keto prior to doing Internet and
fasting in twenty fourteen. I did Keto for the entire summer of twenty fourteen
and lost zero pounds, literally zero. But I do think it made me
fat adapted, which is like when Sherry said earlier about going low carved to
become fat adapted. And it's also why in the twenty eight day fast start,
if you choose the gentlest Eason plan. You can do some low carb
breakfast and lunch before you actually start skipping the breakfast to just help you become
fat adapted. But for me, I didn't start losing weight until I started
doing interimitt and fasting. I added the carbs all back in and finally started
losing a pound a week. So I lost over eighty pounds, and one
hundred percent of those pounds lost had nothing to do with lowcarb. When we
actually had a moderator and our delayed on the NI Facebook group who was very
like anti carb, had been doing lowcarb forever and her weight was very stalled
when she started intermitten fasting, and Jin actually told her start adding some whole
grains and high fiber carbs back to your diet, and she did and immediately
her body started releasing weight. I mean, some of us are just if
you're not eating carbs, you're replacing those carbs with something else, and usually
it's fat. And some of us our bodies are just not designed to lose
fat if we're eating extra fats. Even diet Doctor, the guy who runs
the low carb website Diet Doctor, he has started saying I've watched him.
I'll tak a video on YouTube where he said, oh, I no longer
add fat to my morning coffee because if that's not a good thing to do.
I mean, years and years ago, doctor Jason Fung had a blog
post about fat bombs and all these people who were trying to eat low carb,
but then they were adding fat bombs to their diet because they wanted a
sweet dessert. So they were making these chocolate and peanut butter cream cheese fat
bombs eating them. And doctor Fung was like, why are you adding this
fat to your diet if you're trying to burn fat? Why would your body
burn your fat in your body if you're eating extra fat Because extra fat that
we eat does get to positive It's the easiest thing for our body to store
in our fat cells is extra fats. So Angie, No, I don't
think it's accurate that most of the people who have lost weight have also reduced
carb. Now. I do think that a lot of us end up reducing
ultra processed foods, but I wouldn't call those carbs because like, for example,
a potato chip is an ultra processed food, and a lot of people
might think a potato chip is carbs. But it's also fat. It's very
high carb and high fat. And the problem with that potato chip is less
about the macronutrient content and more about the fact that it's ultra processed and it's
highly palatable and you eat a ton of it. Right, your body doesn't
recognize a potato chip the same way it recognizes some chopped, roasted potatoes.
If I had a baked potato with butter that had the exact same macronutrient profile
as a potato chip, I would get so full and satisfied from the baked
potato with butter versus the potato chip fried in oil. Now, if you
have like severe insulin resistance or diabetes that you're trying to reverse, you may
want to reduce carbs, you know, all carbs for a while, just
to you know, drive that insulin down and you know, to start to
heal your body. But even the people that we know who have had success
losing you know, hundreds of pounds who have reversed their diabetes, who went
low carb to start with. After they started losing weight and they started to
heal their body, they did start introducing whole food carbs back into their diets.
And I think we've been stuck on the wrong thing. We've been using
the words carbs, fats, and protein as if that is the most important
thing, But it's really the degree of processing that's the most important thing.
So for anybody who's listening, you could eat a low carb junk food diet
and be really unhealthy from your low carb junk food versus a whole food diet
of whatever macros make you feel full and satisfied. And so instead of demonizing
carbs or fat or protein, let's decide that we want to eat fewer ultraprocessed
foods because that's going to be a healthier way for everybody to live. You
could be junk food vegan, you could be junk food low carb. You
can be junk food gluten free. I mean, we see that a lot
a lot of people are like, I'm gluten free, but I can't lose
weight. And there's i mean a lot of gluten free foods or ultra processed
foods, and they're not going to serve you well if you're trying to lose
weight. But another gluten free food would be a potato chicken. And you
know, gluten free brownie mix is no better than regular brownie mix. I
mean, unless you're trying to avoid gluten because you have Celiac disease, than
obviously one is a better choice for your particular gut. But gluten free brownie
mix is not a health food. It's the ultra processed so Pablo from Buenos
Aires, he says, can I drink your bamante during the fast? This
one is tricky because I pretty much say avoid all herbal teas during the fast
because we want to stick to things that have a bitter flavor profile, and
almost every single thing on the teisle that is not made from actual tea is
going to have some kind of sweet or fruity or food flavor in it.
You know, camomeal has a sweetness to it all. The peppermint tea is
a food flavor. Erba Mattae is the one herbal tea that I think actually
does have a bitter flavor profile that might be okay for the Clean Fast,
And so that one I'm not gonna, like, say, one hundred percent
urba Mattae is perfectly fine for the Clean Fast, But I'm more likely to
say that one is likely to be okay compared to any of the others.
I've ever seen. I wouldn't do it right at the beginning. I would
make sure you are one hundred percent certain of how you felt during the clean
fast. Stick to plain water, plain, sparkling water, black coffee,
plain, actual regular tea. Then after you are completely certain that you're fat,
adapted and adapted, you can try urba matta. You know, don't
get any flavored erba mattae. I used to back in the day, well
before fast saying there was like a chi yourbo matta that I would drink.
You definitely don't want that. But a plane yourba mattae that is brewed the
same way we brew regular tea does tend to have a bitter flavor profile,
so it might be fine. Yeah, avoid those canned ones and that sort
of thing. I do know that as a very popular drink in South America,
Central America, and it is a very bitter drink. But yeah,
I'm with you. I feel like anytime you're new to fasting, stick with
the basics so that you can really understand how a clean fast feels. And
then if you introduce something you know, kind of outside of your water,
coffee, black tea, you're gonna know right away whether or not it's it's
working for you, all right. Darcy from Colorado asks, when going to
the doctor, what tests do you recommend asking for? I hear you discussing,
fasting, gluecoast and stuff like that, but have no clue what it
all means or what I should and should not be looking at. Well,
you can get a fasting gluecoast, but I'm gonna be honest with you,
it's kind of worthless. For really, I wouldn't get a fasting glucose.
Yeah, I agree. I mean, most doctors are going to tell you
they're going to do it. It's just part of a panel. It's part
of a basic metabolic or comprehensive metabolic panel that is like a simple, very
one little snapshot in time of your blood glucose, and so much can affect
it, from whether or not you took a hot shower before you had your
blood glucose drawn, I mean, to whether or not you're stressed out because
you're at the doctor, to whether or not you slept well last night.
So so much can affect that. What you really want as a human glow
at anc because that gives you a snapshot in time of what your average blood
glucose has been over like a three month period, so that is going to
give you a much better indication of your metabolic health than just a random fastening
glucose. I also really recommend that you get a fasting insulin that's going to
let you know what your degree of insulin resistance is. It might help you
tailor your fasting protocol, and it also gives you a really good baseline.
It gives you a unit of measure that you can look for improvement over time.
You can with a hemogob in A ANDC, but insulin is so powerful
and most your doctors don't understand this. I'm going to be honest. We're
just learning more and more about how powerful it is to know you're fasting insulin.
You're in the United States and you're not in New York or New Jersey,
Sorry New York. Talk to your lawmakers. You know. You can
go to a company online. I think there's several of them. We like
one called walk in Labs. You can order your own fasting insulin. You
do not have to have your doctor's permission, You just order it. Depending
on which lab you choose, whether you choose Quest or Lab Corp, it
affects the priced quest is cheaper. Just order it yourself and see what it
is. Ideal is really like two and a half to five, even though
the lab will tell you usually anything under twenty they say is ideal, but
they call it norm normal. Yes, we don't want to be normal,
we want to be optimal. The lower it is, you know, close
between two and half and five, the better you are. And if it's
fifteen, don't freak out now, you know, keep fasting. Reevaluate.
Yeah. We Actually I've had people in the community who've been fasting for a
while and they'll finally get their fasting insulin and then they're like, I'm so
disappointed. My fasting insulin is twenty and I've been fasting for a year,
and we're like, but you don't know what it was when you started.
It might have been forty. So the reason I say that is because you
just have that baseline information. Whenever you get it, that's the first day
you know, so you don't know what it used to be. I wish
I knew what mine used to be in the past because I could see how
far I have come. But if whenever you get it, you don't know
what it was just go from there and see if it improves. Maybe four
months you can try again and see what it is six months and two.
We see a lot of people who are like, I did it, and
then I had it tested three months later and it was five and now it's
seven point three, and they're kind of freaked out. They think they're going
in the wrong direction. But I think there's it's a range, kind of
like your maintenance. Wait, it might be one fifty one day, it
might be one fifty three, the next it might be one forty seven the
next week. It's kind of a range. And again, your insulin is
going to be determined again by the same things of random. Blood glucose is
a shower stress. We don't know how variable it is. That's another thing,
you know. It's not like you have a fasting insulin level. Like
let's say you go in and your score was four point nine. That doesn't
mean that twenty four hours a day your insulin level is four point nine,
right, It's not an absolute, just like blood glucose goes up and down,
up and down. I mean, we don't have continuous insulin monitors,
but I wish we did, because then we could see how much that varies.
But you know, maybe your natural range is between three and ten,
and all throughout the day your range goes between three and ten, three and
ten. I have no idea. I just made those numbers up, but
we don't know. You're just getting that snapshot in time. But did I
talk about here what happened when I got my fasting insulin done after I'd used
the Wild Drops? If I ever said this on the podcast yet, I
can't remember if you did or not. I don't think I did. You
know, I have always in the gray area. There are very few things
in the gray area, but one of them was peppermint drops for breath freshening,
and wild Drops or the brand, they don't have anything else added that
would interfere with the fast They just have that peppermint taste. I got a
fasting insulin test done in maybe January or something at a new doctor's office,
and I didn't know they were going to do my blood work while I was
there. So it was like eleven o'clock in the morning, and I had
already had my black coffee and so I've been drinking that and I used Wild
Drops right before I saw them at the the physician's assistant because I wasn't expecting
fasting blood work, so I had the coffee and the wild drops, which
I normally wouldn't have done either of those things prior to blood work. I
would just have had water. But they drew my blood. My fasting insulin
was tin, and I freaked out. I'm like, oh my god,
my fastining insulin is worse. And then I'm like, wait a minute,
calmed out like Sherry, I like texted then and I'm like and then I'm
like, oh, wait a minute. I used wild drops right before,
and you had coffee, Earl. I had coffee, but I had had
coffee before a fasting insulin test before before I realized not two and it wasn't
ten. So that taught me that wild drops, I believe, did cause
my body to have an insulin response that I mean ten is still not horrible.
But I haven't used wild drops during the fast since. So there we
go. If we had fasting insulin monitors that told us all the time,
I probably wouldn't end that a long time ago. But bad breath isn't an
issue, and so I would these days just brush my tongue with plain water.
If I needed to during the day, so I just thought that was
super interesting and I wanted to share it somewhere. Well Robin from Oahu.
She says, can you please talk about maintenance with if? And that's a
question we get a lot. What do you do when you get to gold?
How do you structure maintenance? All right, Sherry, this is way
too complicated to talk about it in a short period of time, but I'm
going to try. You know, there's a maintenance chapter of Fast Feast Repeat,
you know talking there. Maintenance is not like you get to a number
and there you are. Like for me, when my initial goal was to
get to one hundred and thirty five pounds, and when I got to one
hundred and thirty five pounds, there I was. But you're not like going
to stay at whatever that goal is and just like be at that weight.
So I want you to think of maintenance as a range, a weight range.
Think about you know, your goal weight is like some maybe smack in
the middle. So like maybe if if my goal is to be one thirty
five, I really need to get down to one thirty so I can like
flex around that one thirty point or something whatever it might be. I actually
would encourage you to maybe not even have a goal weight and think of like
the way you want to feel in your body. And as long as you
have like goal pants, like get some goal pants. When your goal pants
fit it, you're there. If your goal pants don't fit, you got
some work to do. So for me, maintenance has been seasons of a
little bit loosers, seasons of a little bit tighter. So maintenance is not
a time to get all upset. If you see that your honesty pants are
getting tighter, you got the tools to do something about that, and you
just work on. Ope, I've had you think, Okay, why am
I honesty pants a little tighter? Whenever I've asked myself that, I always
know the answer to that. It's like, you know, in July,
I ate at restaurants probably as many nights as I ate at home. So
it was anyone surprised that at the end of July my honesty pants were a
little tight. Nope. Well, last night, funny story, Sherry.
Actually, last night Chad said, we haven't eaten out in a long time,
and I'm like, yeah, we haven't eaten out since July. It's
now August sixteenth. I've been cooking at home because I needed to tighten some
things up. And so that's what maintenance looks like. Maintenance looks like you
need to have a way to keep track of what's happening. For me,
it is not the scale, but I did lay the entire first year of
maintenance. That was helpful, and then I stopped. Now I just roll
on my clothes to let me know. You may need the scale all throughout
maintenance. Maybe you don't, but you have to have some sort of accountability
for me. Like I said, it's my clothes, things that don't stretch.
I put on my Honesty's squirt every now and then to see can I
still zip it up? And I know how my muffin top looks, and
I get up. That's a little more muffin than I want. And I'm
like, all right, time to tighten things up a little bit. So
that's really what maintenance is well. And so a lot of people though they
have a question about Okay, I've gotten to my goal. What do I
do now? You mean as far as like protocol, as far as protocol,
and or they think, okay, well, I can't keep doing what
I'm doing because I don't want to get any thinner. Okay, so I
kind of want to address that a healthy body is going to stop losing weight
when it gets to what it perceives as a healthy ideal weight for you,
you're not going to waste away. If you're wasting away, you are not
eating enough in your window because your body or there's something wrong with you healthwise.
Okay, because let's think about people who are sick. They do start
to have muscle wasting, they do start to you know, lose weight and
start to look frail, but they're not healthy. There's something going on in
their body. So a healthy body is not going to just waste away.
Now if your body is choosing to be thinner than you want it to be.
Because I have had people say this, well, like I don't mind,
but everybody says I'm too thin, and that really bothers me. And
I don't want to look thin or I really like my curves. I want
to keep my curves. Yeah, that's perfectly fine. You may just want
to have you know, a little bit longer window, throw an extras neck
in there, you know whatever. But for I think most people that I've
ever run across that has done if they maintain their same window once they hit
maintenance as they did while they were losing. And the people who come back
and say, I was in maintenance for a year and I don't know what's
going on, and all of a sudden, I've put on twelve pounds.
I need help getting it off, And you really start asking what they're doing.
Well, they're having window creep. Well, they're having two meals a
day more often than not now because they got a little lax with their fasting.
They thought they'd arrived and they felt like that gave them permission to really
extend their windows and have more quote special occasions. But again, that's not
leading to a healthy body. There's more flexibility and maintenance, but not a
ton more, right. So it's like, yes, you can be more
flexible than when you were really trying to lose weight, but you can't be
so flexible that you start to gain again. So it's all just a matter
of dialing it in. Well, and I was gonna say, if you're
too flexible too often, what's going to happen is you're gonna start to refill
your glycogen stores and you're not getting into fat burning every day. So of
course you're going to start putting somewhere fat on, that's right, But it's
doable. Look here we are in twenty twenty three. I hit my goal
in twenty fifteen. And if I could do it, the queen of never
maintaining all weight my entire life until now, if I can do it,
you can do it. But it does take discipline. You can't stop fasting.
You can't quit fasting, you can't take all the weekends off right.
Yeah, we say it's a lifestyle for a reason. Yeah, you can
find it, you can find the rhythm that works for you. But again,
some seasons you're gonna have slight weight increase, maybe over Christmas. I
bet every year, if I weighed myself January first, it would probably be
slightly higher than it was November first. I don't weigh anymore, but it
wouldn't surprise me because that's a season of where we have a little more indulgences.
But it's not a big deal. Yeah. Well, and I think
most people do tend to put on a little bit more wait through the cold
weather months, whether you're in the northern hemisphere and that's during the wintertime,
or you're in the southern hemisphere and that summertime for you. During the colder
months, the body just naturally, you know, you crave different foods,
and most people generally put on a little bit of weight during the cold weather
months and then your bodies naturally start to shed it during the warm weather months
and people's cravings change. I mean, there's been studies that show like,
during summer months, people eat lighter, they eat more fruits and vegetables,
and during the cold weather months they tend to eat heavier foods. Well,
those were some great questions, so hopefully that helped some of you out there
who had similar questions. Before we get to the tweak of the week,
I want to tell you about a company that I really love called Wild Pastures.
And if you've been and I'm in Faster for any amount of time,
you know you've probably come to realize that window worthy food really matters. And
for me, part of what makes a food window worthy is quality. So
about a year ago I started buying bulk meat from Wild Pastures. And I
had used another bulk meat company for years. You know, it was okay,
it was fine, But when I switched to Wild Pastures, I was
immediately oppressed, not only with the quality and the packaging, but just the
way they run the company. The taste is exceptional. I can get quality
grass fed and finished beef, pasture raised chicken, and park and wildcot not
farmed seafood for substantially less than I can buy it at my local store.
I have access to way more meats than I could ever get locally and one
of the most notable benefits of grass fed beef, and a lot of people
don't understand what the importance of grass fed beef is. It has an ideal
ratio of omega's and you want your omega fatty acids to be balanced. And
as a whole, Americans tend to eat way too many Omega sixes and not
enough omega three's. So meat from the grass fed animals has two to four
times more a meat three fatty acid then meat from grain fed animals. Grass
fed beef has an Amoga six to three ratio of point one six to one,
while grain fed beef has an amega to three ratio higher than twenty to
one. So you do need some amega sixes. But we have an imbalance
in our diet today which leads to inflammation and heart disease and all sorts of
other things. So grass fed beef is really important for your health if you
can afford it. There meet is the highest quality and it comes from regenerative
American family farms that's sent right to your doorstep at whatever frequency you prefer.
And if you'd like to try them out, check out my Lincoln show notes
and save twenty dollars on your first box. And now I've 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 may not be the one that
works for you. And that's why it's super helpful to hear how other intermittent
fastors are making intermitten fasting work for them. This tweak was submitted by Wanda
in Virginia. Wanda says, hi, I just had my one year fasting
anniversary in June. I feel amazing and I know this is my new way
of life. It's been life changing for me. I have a little tweak
or tool for those who are new to fasting. When I was new to
IF and trying to lengthen my window, but I was afraid of getting hungry
and not having something to eat. I packed a snack or lunch but left
it in my lunchbox in the car. That helped me tell myself there was
a way out if I could not wait until time to open my window.
But it also helped because I didn't have easy access to my lunchbox and it
was a little more inconvenient to walk to my car. Also, it kept
me from going to fast food just because I was hungry and couldn't wait till
I got home to eat. This really helped me to lengthen my window,
and now I'm mostly one meal a day. Thank you Jen and Sherry for
all you do to help get good information out to the world. Well,
I always say a person with a plan is unstoppable. When I go into
the hospital at night, I'm stuck there. I cannot leave. I don't
have access to a cafeteria. I'm gonna get hungry. All that there is
is vending machines. So I actually kind of do the same thing. I
pack a giant bag of food and take it to work with me on the
weekends, and more often than not, I bring more at home, more
food than I eat. But I like knowing that if I have time to
eat and i'm hungry, I have good food available to me. You know,
a lot of times I'll go into work and think, oh, I'm
going to try to do a down day, you know, today at work.
But I also don't want to get to work and be starving and go
rate a vending machine or send my coworker to the gas station at two am.
So I just take my food with me and I know it's there.
It's not a temptation, but it's there if I need it. So I
think that's a good tweak. What Wanda does by leaving it in the lunch
box in the car is smart because for me, like when I was a
teacher, if I had something in my desk drawer, I was more likely
to eat it because it's right there. Like, you know, if I'm
hungry later, I'll eat this piece of cheese that I have in my desk
drawer later I was probably going to be hungry, Versus if it was way
out in my car, I wasn't gonna go eat it. It's a little
harder to get out there and get a little more effort involved. So I
think that's a really important part of that tweak. Yeah, don't bring that
snack in and stick at your desk. Dars Well, it's like you know,
when I was a teacher, if the kids said, my mom said,
if I don't feel good later, I can call her and she'll come
get me. But you know what, moms of the world, your child
is going to call you if you say, if you don't feel well,
call me and I'll come get you. They are going to do. They're
gonna want to call you, Like as soon as they walk in the door.
They're like, my mom said, if I don't feel good, she'll
call her. I don't feel good. So I had a strategy for delaying
when they got to call her mom because I could always tell if they were
really sick. If they were really sick, we went ahead and called.
But you can tell delay. That's my number one tactor. Well, we'd
love to leave our listeners with inspirational or motivational quotes, and this week we
have an inspirational message from me. I want to remind you all that and
how you think is what you come to believe. Do not speak into existence
things you do not want, because what you put out into the universe is
what you get back. I firmly believe this mindset matters. The words you
use when you talk to yourself and about yourself matter. You can shape your
success and your future by choosing your words carefully and then learning to believe them.
You know that whole fake it till you make it. If you believe,
you will fail. You will fail. If you believe the intermittent fasting
is not the answer, it will not be the answer. I want to
encourage you to start hearing the thoughts in your head and replacing negativity and self
deprecating comments with positivity and self love, because if you don't believe in you,
who will replace I can't what I can replace I hate my body with
I love my body because and over time, with practice, you will start
to feel and see yourself and such a much more positive lights. I love
that so much, Sherry. I just all day in community, I see
the way people talk about themselves and the way they think about themselves. And
they come to the community and they've had a bad day and they're feeling down
on themselves, and they are truly believing the words that they are saying in
their heads, and it's just really time to flip that script and start speaking
positively to yourself. Well, I know you've probably heard the saying you can't
heal a body you hate, and so you know when you said it at
the end, replace I hate my body with I love my body, because
you know, when we love our bodies, we're working with our bodies and
that's the way to heal you know, mind, body, and spirit.
So I think that's powerful and thank you for sharing it. Thanks so much
for listening today. We would love to have you join us and the Delayed
on Tonight community, where you can interact with both me and Sherry plus the
most supportive bunch of intermittent fasters you'll find anywhere. Go to Jen Stevens 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.