Episode 53: Insulin, Blood Glucose, and Metabolic Flexibility, A Year of Self-Care, and More

Welcome the 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 I'm doing fine. I feel like I've been running a marathon the last
week. But yeah, it will settle down again. You know how life
goes. It's crazy, busy and then it settles. Well. You know
what I'm doing right? I on the podcast yet, but we are closing
on what I think is going to be our dream house tomorrow, our forever
house. I told my sister, I said, this is the last house
we're ever going to buy, and she said, yeah, right, I
really think it's true. I hope. So I don't want name ever again.
We are Shary knows this, but we are retiring the work condo because
we are buying a primary residence that we can live in for the rest of
our lives and work in exactly the little tiny beach cottage. I was like,
sure, we can live in this little, tiny, nine hundred and
something square foot house that sounds really fun. No, we cannot. And
we also learned it's not practical when you have storm surge and hurricanes coming,
so you need to be a little off the ocean, right. Yeah,
So the beach house is going to go back to being our vacation residence.
But the good news is it's a mile and a half from our other house.
That's great. That has room for Chad to work. I'll have a
full podcast studio. No neighbors that will be drilling next door or doing floor
remodeling. Yeah, the condo has not been great for recording. It has
not been great for recording. People be running down the hall. Also,
the wi fi is terrible journals I was gonna say, and you're at the
mercy of that building wide everybody's on the WiFi. So we we lived and
we learned, and it was a good solution for while we were looking for
our forever home, like, this is the house we can live in when
we're eighty, Like I really well, I mean, so it's not too
big, it's not too small, it's got good closets, it's flat.
You relocated permanently from Aguesta. Your plan was to have a house that you
lived in. You would have the beach house to visit and to you know,
hang out at and to have listeners come to. But then you know,
that house just didn't work out for various reasons, and so I hated
it. That's the main reason he hated it. And we've learned we don't
like a gated community. It was in a gated community. We don't really
care for that. And we were very very very close to neighbors, like
literally like very close to neighbors. So Chad was like, no, this
is not the one. So we have been trying to make it work.
But this house just popped on the market and we're like, there it is.
I think this is the one because we've been looking at real estate since
twenty twenty two trying to find something. But this checksaul Chad's boxes, Like
he's never been excited about a house, like he's excited about this one.
In a yard, it's got roses, it's got high ranges, and well,
I know Chad. He likes to put her around the yard use He
hasn't had that since he left Augusta, so he has gonna love that.
Like he's trying to landscape the dunes and I'm like, stop it. Oh
that man needs purpose? Does he does? But anyway, we're closing tomorrow
and we are moving everything out of the condo that is like work stuff,
like all my office and all of the kitchens, and we're having todn't move
everything again and it is a lot. So I really like to never move
again. But we're also at the same time getting the condo ready for renting.
Well that's going to be a learning curve. I mean, you did
it a little bit when you had your first condo, a little bit,
but we're not going to manage it. We're going to use surf Side Realty
because they know what they're doing. And that's people who want to come to
Surfside and rent they know to go to surf Side Realty and they rent through
there. They handle everything we don't have to worry about completely hands off.
Yes, yes, yeah, that's great. That's the way to do it.
You hear her stories. I know a lot of people like to manage
their own properties, but you know, we lived in the gated community a
lot of houses, and there were rental in the neighborhood community page. People
are always like, I got scammed by such and such, don't rent to
this person, they do not rent list and all sorts of crazy things.
So I was like, I don't want to do it deal with all of
that, right right anyhow, So so much going on, but it's exciting.
I really do think, like y'all just you know, punch me in
the face if I ever say we're moving. I don't ever want to move
again. Sherry, I think this is this is it. Well, I
kind of feel like you've been there now two full years. Yeah, two
years ago, yep, and so you have kind of a little bit been
in flux with like, you know, the first house didn't work out and
so you had to sell it, and then you got the beach condo for
your office, and so you've kind of just been in constant transition since she
moved there. So I think it'll be great to you know, be able
to wake up and and work and sleep in the same house and not have
to constantly be jetting over to the condo or whatever. It's gonna take some
stress off. It really really is. And I'm really excited about it as
well. And just you know, we had to figure out how we wanted
to live here, but the condo always had in the back of my mind.
One day we're going to probably rent this, but uh huh, I'm
just glad the house showed up. Is a great condo to rent. It's
a fabulous condo. Yeah. The people that we bought use are great.
Yeah, they kept good. It's in great shape, and it's it'll I
think it'll do really really well. So anyway, I'll be able to relax
soon. Awesome, And you'll have a place for your belicon rebounder and your
vibration plate. I win the house you live is so excited all right,
Well, now it's time for our weekly celebration from a listener. Today,
we have a question, a celebration, and a tweak all in one,
and it comes from Heather in Pennsylvania. She says, Hi, Jen and
Cherry. When I heard you read one of my questions on the podcast episode
forty seven, I went eke with us excitement. Thank you for the opportunity
to write. In question, Jin, what all natural deodorant and a perspriant
do you use? I stopped using antipresperant because I'm afraid of the cancer risks,
but everything I have tried doesn't keep the funk away. Well, I'm
glad to answer that. And they used to sponsor intermim and fasting stories,
but they don't anymore. But I'm now a fan, so I'll just tell
you Loomy is what I use, and it is not an anti perspriant.
It is just a deodorant and I don't stink, I don't smell funky.
It is amazing because no other natural deodorant ever worked for me. You know,
I liked back when Beauty Counter first came out. Of course Beauty Counter's
want a pause right now, but when they first came out with their natural
deadorant. I liked it at first, and then I noticed it was staining
my clothes. I was the same way. I was so excited that it
was really effective. Yeah, it just left horrible stains on your clothes.
So I recommending that, but Loomy doesn't do that. So I like Loomy.
Check them out. That's it's you know, And I'm gonna say too,
I haven't looked into it, but I just read something because I need
to place another order. Like I like their body wash. They do have
one that does have anti properersorin in it. Now, of course, you
know, anything that's going to stop the weat is probably not going to be
clean. White is clean, yeah, right right, and it's usually going
to have that aluminum whatever in it, whatever variety of aluminum they're choosing.
So if that's a concern for you, you want to make sure you stick
with the one that's just a deep odorant. And you know, I live
in the hot South and I'm outside and so I'm not you know, I'm
not suffering from it. It's it's working well. And I never thought I
would find one good. All right, So here's her tweak, she says,
I weigh every day and every two weeks, I do my measuring and
I calculate my average weight, as well as taking progress photos. By the
way, I need to pop in there that y'all might be able to hear
Lulu in the background. No, Sherry's dog. She's doing a little barking.
She just had surgery. She had surgery last week, and she's not
she's no. Her leg is very very swollen, which is normal after surgery.
About day four or five, it gets very swollen and bruised, and
she's very uncomfortable. So I'm sorry. She's not a happy girl today.
So she said, I wait every day, but every two weeks I do
my measuring and calculate my average weight. So she's doing her weight calculating every
other week instead of every and that works. She's just finding a trend with
fourteen measurements instead of seven now, and maybe that might be more inspiring.
Actually might Yeah, So she says. The tweak I made is I made
myself a chart for my measurements because I love Excel, and I keep it
in my bathroom drawer with a pen in my tape measure I also have a
reminder set in my phone for every two weeks. Everything is right there,
ready to go when I need it. Whenever I'm feeling bad about the scale
or i feel extra bloated, my chart is right there to prove to myself
that everything is going down little by little, inch by inch. So that's
a great tweak. And she said, and that brings me to my celebration.
I love seeing those inches come off. I have been intermitten fasting since
January of this year. I made it through my tummy troubles I was having
when opening my window also at night. I used to have such achy legs
just deep in my bones. I also would get bad Charlie horses. All
of that is gone now. I'm now fasting almost twenty one hours every day
with ease. I'm only down about sixty seven pounds of fat, but I
look so much thinner. I'm sure I'm gaining some muscle weight in there too,
so I'm not so worried about those pounds. Thank you again, ladies.
Well, I love that. That's all three in one, yep.
And that's just a really good testimony to why I always say you need more
than the scale to your progress. So pictures are great, measurements are great.
Pants sizes are great, But the thing's here's the one caveat with plant
sizes. If you're a person who carries your weight in your abdomen, it
might be a while before you see that pants size go down. But where
pictures come in in conjunction with that is you might be having huge changes in
your face, your neck, your shoulders, your arms. So I mean,
even people lose in their calves and they're so excited because every fall and
winter people said, oh my gosh, my boots that used to be skin
tight slide right on. So we lose everywhere, and unfortunately, if you're
not monitoring everywhere, we might be missing progress that's happening right before your eyes.
Yeah, always trust how things are fitting differently over what that scale is
doing, especially if you're weight training yep, and and share you're adding muscle
like Shary. You know this about my story back when I was trying to
get to my goal weight in twenty fifteen. It feels so dumb to say
this out, but I got a vibration plate. That was when I got
my first vibration plate, and I was like, ooh, I'm so excited
to use my vibration plate. I'm like, but it might make me build
muscle and then it'll take me longer to get to my goal weight. So
I'm gonna wait because I thought, if you were in diet, my mind
set, oh, I didn't want to build muscle and keep the scale from
going down. I wanted to see that magic number. It sounds so ridiculous
to say it out loud, but that was that was me before I really
understood. Really, I should have been building muscle the whole time, and
more worried about my pants, my goal clothes, and less worried about a
magic number. Yeah you're I mean, your body composition is going to go
so much further to making you feel good about yourself when you stand in front
of a mirror naked and look at yourself than any scale on the weight,
any scale, any weight on your scale, Because it doesn't matter. I
can be a hunt. I have a picture on the DDD community that I
share all the time, me at one hundred and seventy three pounds. I
had not been working out or doing anything. It was before clean and fasting,
and one hundred and seventy three pounds was my weight Watcher's leader weights.
But I was flabby. I was thick, and then you know, I
took a picture fifteen months later and I weighed one hundred and seventy five pounds
and it was a complete different body, So that we really have to let
go of that dumb number on the scale. Is the scale a great tool
to measure what's happening in your body and let you know if your tweaks are
working. Absolutely, but it's not the end all be all. Yep.
So you were leaner and smaller at one seventy five than you were at one
seventy two. I just wanted to make sure everybody got that and I was
not I'm saying scale. Yeah, I wasn't doing any crazy workouts. I
was rebounding probably four or five days a week, and I was doing yoga
two or three days a week. That is all I was doing. I
was not doing anything crazy. I wasn't hitting the gym, I wasn't running
marathons. I was just doing workouts that felt good to me, that helped
me extend my fast and my body was changing in amazing ways. So I
can't believe how much my muscle is building just from one day of plates a
week. Yep, yep, yep. Thank you to intermittent fasting. All
right, So now we have a question from a listener. This question is
from Newby in Ohio, Jen and Sherry. I'm a sixty year old woman
who started intermittent fasting four months ago when I turned sixty and found out through
a blood test that I have a higher risk of heart disease and stroke because
of genetics. My lipoprotein A was elevated and no doctor had ever ordered the
test. My current doctor supports my move to a more Mediterranean diet, still
eating poultry and occasionally red meat, but lots more veget these beans, nuts,
and fruits. He also supports intermittent fasting. Yeah, she said that,
and I'm just reading it, but I agree. Yeah. It's always
great when a doctor understands intermittent fasting and recommends it, she said. And
so far, I feel really good with more energy. This is definitely a
good lifestyle choice for me. However, I keep losing weight and I don't
want to lose any more weight. I started slow with fourteen ten, moved
to sixteen eight, but I have moved back to fourteen ten because I just
couldn't eat enough in eight hours to maintain my weight. I am five eight
and weigh one hundred and twenty two pounds. I exercise five days a week
during the elliptical or walking outside, and weight training twice a week. I
believe my diet is very clean, and along with fasting, I feel healthier
than I ever have. But can I still get benefits from only fasting fourteen
ten? Even with that, I'm still losing weight. I'llbe it very slowly.
I'm not going to stop fasting, and I do fast clean. I've
learned to really love black coffee other than eat when I'm not hungry, which
I don't want to do. Do you have any suggestions on how to tweak
it till it's easy and I can fast yet still maintain my weight. I'm
so glad I found your podcast. You're a great source of help and inspiration.
Thank you so much for all you do. So I feel like we're
missing just a little bit of information because like you don't really tell us,
like one hundred and twenty two pounds at five to eight is that a normal
weight for you? Is that like where you've been or did you start fasting
four months ago and suddenly drop twenty pounds? Like? So, I'm kind
of missing that little piece of the puzzle there. One hundred and twenty two
pounds at five eight is very thin. So I I have a few things.
Number One, we've said this before. If you are fueling sufficiently in
your window, you know, the bought a healthy body will maintain a healthy
weight for you. Now, as we age, you're sixty, it's quite
likely that you have lost a lot of muscle mass since your perimenopause menopausal years.
So you know, you can't compare somebody who's five eight and one hundred
and twenty two pounds at sixty with a person who is that same height and
weight at twenty five, because your bodies are just not comparable. So if
you are fasting at sixteen eight, and you are fueling sufficiently and you are
not hungry, and you're still losing weights, I really want to tell you
that you need to have a conversation with your doctor and make sure that there's
nothing going on that is keeping your body from holding onto weights. And there
can be a lot of different things that can cause unintentional weight loss, but
really only a doctor can get to the bottom of that. Okay, with
that set, you are also doing cardio five days a week. And as
we get older, is it important to have cardiovascular exercise for cardiovascular health.
Yes, but what we don't want to be doing is cardio cardio cardio cardio
that is not adding to our muscle mass. So you can do strength training
in a way that is good for your heart that is cardiovascular. All you
have to do is get your heart rate up. So I really want to
encourage you to scale back on any type of you know what we call cardioactivity,
you're elliptical, you're you know, walking outside, that sort of thing,
and instead bump up your weight training. Right, And Serry is not
saying not to do the elliptical or not to walk outside. She said scale
back, right, that's important. Scale it back, Scale it back.
I mean, if you want to get on it and do a quick ten
minute warm up, what you don't want to do is to be over training
in the cardio state, because that's not going to help you build muscle.
I would really bump up your weight training. And you say you're doing weight
training twice a week, if you need to add muscle to your body,
I would slowly add to that and really start weight training like three to four
times a week, making sure you take rest days, doing it safely,
and you should be lifting those weights to muscle fatigue. So the one thing
that people do is they either don't lift heavy enough or they don't do enough
reps. So you need to be lifting to fatigue, and you need to
be progressing. So you need to be adding more sets or higher weights.
If you just lift the same weights every day, every day, every day,
you're not gonna be building more muscle. So, and I've been doing
a lot of research on this. The more muscle mass you have, the
better your It supports cardiovascular health, it supports good lipid p files. So
I mean, I just can't say enough about strength training. I feel like
maybe this is a message that should have been getting out there a long time
ago, and that is really really going to go a long way towards longevity.
As far as you know, eating you don't want to eat when you're
not hungry. Just make sure that your meals are really well rounded. You
can add more fats to your meals, and you know, choose your healthy
fats, your olive oil bed, adding at olive oil to you to your
dishes. Add some nuts to your dishes, you know, add in some
seeds, hemp seeds are great, So you know, start adding to your
meals little things that are going to really bump up the nutrition. Add more
fat, add more calories to your day. And that's really about all I
have for you. What do you think, Jen, Do you have any
more suggestionsions? I agree with all of that. I was going to say
weight training. That was going to be my number one. She asked if
she can still get the if it's from fourteen ten. Yes, yes,
you know fourteen ten is going to be better than twelve twelve for example,
for the health benefits. So yes, I would stick with fourteen ten.
And you're right, you do not want to lose you don't want to lose
any more muscle, you don't want to lose any more fat. But if
you build muscle, then you can get that weight going back up a little
bit. And that's definitely what I would recommend. We don't want to be
too small as we're aging. You know, we we find like we talk
about the smart BMI all the time, and the smart BMI actually recommends,
based on you know, research on aging, that we have a little more
weight cushion as we age. Yes, just because you know, we want
to have that in case of illness and that sort of thing. But we
definitely even muscle mass. Yes, if you have injury. Oh you know,
when my dad went into the hospital for the first time in August,
when we first allized how sick he was, he lost so much strength in
like one week. Yes, it was, it was. I mean you
want to have you want to have that built up before anything happens. I
think that's that's you know that really, that's of course, it really reinforced
for me. What we're doing now makes a difference. Well, and having
more muscles around your bones, around your joints, and even a layer of
subcutaneous fat around all of that is protective if you fall, and you know,
think about you have a glass and it's in bubble wrap and you drop
it, it may not break. But if you have a glass and it's
in a plastic bag and you drop it, it's going to break. And
your bones are the same way. So think of that as some protect as
a protective covering for your bones. And you know, as we age,
one of the biggest risks for you know, an early death is to hit
fracture. If your too then you're more like yeah, so yeah, but
I really do. If you are losing weight and you're eating fourteen ten and
you think you're eating plenty and you're not dieting in your window and you can't
keep your weight on, I really do want to encourage you to have a
discussion with a doctor because there could be something going on, whether it's a
hormonal issue, an endocrine issue, or you know, God forbid, you
know, cancer or something. So don't don't ignore that, you know.
Just as an example, I have a friend. I've told this story on
intermittent fasting stories. You've probably I don't know if I've told it to you
or not, Sherry, But my friend that had gut issues, she had
food poisoning. When she went to South America. She got a really bad
bout of food poisoning, some sort of parasite or something that she picked up.
She started losing weight, like just uncontrollably. She couldn't eat enough to
keep the weight on. I mean, she was eating so much and the
weight was just falling off of her because she had, you know, something
was wrong with her gut. She couldn't get the nutrients from the food.
She couldn't. She lost so much weight and she had to heal her gut
in order to put the weight back on the she needed. But that was
completely out of our control. And it just lets us know there's so many
factors at play. Yeah, it's funny. You know, adrenal health gets
blamed for weight gain all the time. But what's interesting is if your adrenals
aren't working properly, rapid weight gain is actually a symptom of that. So,
you know, our bodies are such a network of this. It's a
system that needs to be imbalanced, and if something's out of balance, you
know, then all things start to get out of balance. And so you
know, I fourteen ten should be a great weight maintenance protocol, and if
it's not for you, please look into that. So we have another question
from a clueless in New Jersey. She says, Hi, I've been listening
to this and the intermitt and Fasting Stories podcast, and I've also read Gen's
book Fast Piece Repeat. I cannot seem to grasp the connection when you mentioned
blood sugar. For example, one time Sherry mentioned having an iced tea and
her blood sugar, and then Jen mentioned having an appetizer and that made her
become really hungry. I think I think what she's talking about is when you
mentioned were you sipping iced tea before eating and it caused an insulin response because
it was sweetened it. Yeah, it was like I had a like I
will order half and half tea at a restaurant, so it's part of sweet
tea, or I'll add a package of sugar to it, and then it
might like an hour for my meal to come out. So I think she's
talking about blood sugar drops. Yep. And for me, it was not
an appetizer. It was lime in my water. Yeah, it was a
lime lime in my club soda. It was club soda and lime that made
me really hungry. Anyway, keep reading our we'll kind of talk about this
sometimes too, because somebody will say, you know, I opened up with
a latte and I felt awful the rest of the afternoon until I could eat.
And it's the same sort of thing. Adding milk, adding you know,
the surfy sweeteners in your in your latte that is going to crash your
blood sugar and you're gonna feel really bad. Yes, So I think that's
really what she's talking about. She says, I understand the reasoning behind it
clean fast, and it's so it's to not release any insulin, which then
tells the body to store fat. So to break that down, if insulin
is high your body, you know, it prevents it from burning fat.
That is correct? Is it that when your body releases insulin, it grabs
up all the blood sugar and then that's when you have this drop in blood
sugar, which then makes you feel hungry or even angry and with if you're
trying to prevent this drop in blood sugar, because why all right, let's
just stop with that because the next one's a little bit a different question and
we can dig into that. So, yes, clueless in New Jersey,
you are. You're not as clueless as you think. You have just figured
it out. You're almost there, that's right. So let's go back to
imagine me and Sherry, who are experienced ditermitten fasters, and we're at the
end of our fast and just about to open our eating window. Both of
us have worn a CGM in the past, so we know that our blood
sugar right before we open the fast. Mind might be, let's imagine that
it's seventy nine. Let's just say I'm mine's along, mine's even lower in
the like sixties usually okay, So I'm cruising along. My blood sugar let's
just say, is seventy nine and I'm getting ready to open my window.
So I'm sitting at this restaurant and I go ahead and I order my club
soda with lime, but I haven't eaten yet. So I start drinking it,
and my brain tastes the lime and says, oh, fruit flavor.
We know what fruit is. Fruit is going to cause a blood sugar response.
Blood sugar rays because fruit has sugar, right, but it makes your
blood sugar gow up. You eat the fruit, it goes into your bloodstream,
your blood sugar goes up. My brain knows this, but I'm just
drinking my club soda with lime. So in response to the fact that my
brain is sensing something sweet is coming in, my pancreas pulses out some insulin.
Well, what is insulin. Insulin is a storage hormone. Insulin causes
your body to store some of that blood sugar, takes it out of your
blood, and yes, that can lead to your blood sugar going down.
Now Here, I am cruising along at seventy nine, feeling good. If
my blood sugar goes down too much because Remember I didn't actually put any more
sugar in. I'm just drinking a little flavor of the line. There.
My blood sugar can crash to a point that now suddenly I'm shaky from that.
And you know the same thing with sherry and the tea. It's just
that taste of the sweet. The insulin response bam drops it too low.
Now, if your blood sugar was high, you wouldn't feel it necessarily,
right, Yeah, it's just a matter of where you are to do it
exactly exactly if you're And but even with that said, people who run around
with high blood sugar all the time, they will often think that their blood
sugar is low and they need to eat. But if you check their blood
sugar, it's not low at all. It's high. But they are so
used to their body is so used to having a normal what's normal for them,
their normal blood sugar, that when it starts to come down, they
don't feel well. So it really just depends on how insulin sensitive you are,
how what your blood sugar kind of really normally runs at. Since mine
runs pretty low, little things can really make me kind of nauseous in my
fast and I feel it more and I have little tricks that I do to
get it back up again, like doing some junkie jacks, marching in place,
because that's going to push any remaining stored glicogen in my muscles or whatever,
get it out in the bloodstring, get my blood sugar back up again.
I do know that some people will say, I ate this, this,
and this to open my window, and then I didn't eat for four
hours and I I fell awful the rest of the afternoon. So yes,
your body can even when you open your window. If you don't choose foods
that support a good blood sugar balance for you, then you could have a
blood sugar drop between your window opener and your meal and not feel great.
Right, And she said, you know, why do you not want to
have a drop in blood sugar because you don't feel good and you know there's
there comes a point when it can drop too much and make you shaky,
nauseous. It can be dangerous, right, you know, And if someone's
a diabetic, they really have to be more careful. Like I was listening
to Cyrus of Mastering Diabetes Sherry when he was explaining about CGM. Then I
was just listening to him tell a story about one time he took the wrong
insulin. There's like two kinds of insulin checked the wrong kind and he just
had like a I mean, it could have killed him if his wife hadn't
been there and they hadn't had the alert or whatever. Yeah, So you
don't want your blood sugar to drop too low, and so just be cause
she said that, you'll know if you suddenly feel shaky, you're nauseous,
you may have had something that caused an insulin response and your blood sugars dropped.
Yep. So she says, I'd love it if you would go in
deeper and talk about when you know you have turned on the metabolg switch.
Does it happen every day? So, as Jason Thung explained it, after
the switch has turned on, does that mean my freezer is empty and I'm
only refilling the fridge each day and then eating out of the fridge each day,
or is my freezer still have stuff inside and as I'm losing weight,
the freezer starts to get emptier and emptier each day. Sorry if this is
confusing, I feel like I understand most of the reasoning behind internet fasting and
why we should do it for our health. With a side of weight loss.
But when I try to explain it to my family members, they ask
me questions and then I'm not able to connect all the dots to explain it
fully, especially when I mention atophagy. All right, and autology is a
completely different topic. Yes, which, believe it or not, is not
related to your blood sugar, although they things like all happen at the same
time. All right, So let's talk about that Jason Fung analogy. So
someone listening might not have heard it before, so I want to make sure
everybody understands and is on the same page. So Jason Fung has a great
analogy for explaining your stored fuel that's harder to get to, and that is
like imagine that you have a deep freezer in the basement or out in the
garage, and that deep freezer is packed with lots and lots of food,
but you don't want to walk all the way to the basement. You don't
want to go out to the garage, so you're living out of your fridge
in your kitchen and even your little kitchen freezer. So it's everything you need
right there. You get it out of your fridge, you get it out
of the little kitchen freezer. You're good to go. Now. Eventually,
Let's imagine I live in a hurricane area. Let's imagine we've had a hurricane
and we can't get to the store. I'm gonna use up everything that's in
that fridge in the kitchen, and I'm gonna need to take the effort to
go out to that deep freeze in the garage or in the basement and get
what I have stored away. Well, that's like your body. If you're
somebody who is just eating the typical way, multiple small meals during the day,
you're not fasting at all. You're on that blood sugar roller coaster.
Every time your body needs energy, it goes to the fridge and you're putting
a new fuel every time. It's like opening the fridge getting somewhere out.
You know, you're just having that quick to access fuel. But if you
start fasting, that's going to force your body to go to the deep freeze.
What is your body's deep freeze. It's all that stored fuel that you've
got, and we've all got it. Even someone you know, like in
the question where she is really really lean and doesn't want to lose any more.
Weight. She still got fat on her body, She's still got stuff
in her freezer. However, she and you don't want to use it all
of you. You don't want to have like zero percent body fat. That's
you wouldn't be able to survive. So we do need to keep stuff in
our freezer. But we all have stored fuel in our bodies. And you
know, Serry mentioned it. You know, we've got glycogen stored in our
muscles, We've got glycogen stored in our liver, We've got fat stored in
our fat cells. Some people have fat stored in their liver. You might
have a faty liver. And so it's all about your body is going to
use whatever's easiest to get to. That's really the the crux of it.
Your body is going to use whatever is easiest for it to get to.
And that you know, if you're fasting, you're fast and clean, that's
going to be the glycogen that's in your liver. It might be the fat
that's in your liver. It might be you know, you're you're working out,
you're using some glycogen from your muscles, all that stored fuel. But
eventually your body's going to say, huh, there's no new fuel coming in.
The glycogen's getting low, running out of fuel. That's when you become
fat adapted and your body is skilled at going to that deep freeze, going
to the stored fat, going to the freezer, and getting that stored fat
out. It's there for a reason and you can get to it. But
that's what the clean fast does. So I hope that that really helped.
You know, when we think about someone doing a typical diet all day long,
because you talked about insulin, we don't want to have high insulin because
in fast feast repeat, I explained that it is anti lipolytic, meaning it
keeps your body from tapping into your your fat stores. Insulin's a storage hormone.
So if you're eating tiny little meals all the time or drinking diet soda
all day long, your insulin remains high. You can't get to the freezer.
The freezer is locked. Insulin keeps the freezer locked. So by fast
and clean now the freezer is unlocked, so you never empty your freezer completely,
and when you do eat, your body stores whatever's left over from your
meal somewhere. It stores in glycogen. It stores in fat. You're constantly
putting it in, taking out, putting in, taking out because you don't
use all the food that you ate, like right at that immediately right some
of it gets stored away. You need it to do that, You need
to have it where you can get to it. Anyway, it's a very
complicated process and we're oversimplifying it a bit. But what do you want to
add to that, Sherry, No, I think you did a great job
of explaining it. But while you were talking, it reminded me of this
is sort of like the same but different. So a couple of weeks ago,
somebody in the delayed on DNI community was asking about how to do long
distance running while fasting, and I did a little research for her and I
just pulled up this little screenshot that I shared with her, and this was
kind of more aimed at a ketogenic diet. But we all know that when
we're fasting that we're shifting into katosis, that's that fat burning mode. And
some people think, well, how if I get to my goal weight,
how will what fat will my body have to burn? How is it going
to support How's it going to give me energy? How's it going to support
me, whatever. This was very fascinating to me. Studies have shown that
the leanest athlete, so we're talking to somebody who's an athlete and they are
lean, they still have about forty thousand calories of fat on board in their
body to use as fuel. So yeah, so even people are like,
how can I work out fast and how can I do this? How do
that? Even if you are very, very lean, the leanest person has
forty thousand calories of fat on board to use as fuel. And I just
that blew my mind. That is I mean, that is a lot of
days of eating that you've got, you know, on board. So yeah,
that's why we want to be metabolically flexible because we can tap into that
fuel. That's why we fast clean, so we can tap into that fuel.
You want to be able to access that fat. And if you're spiking
insulin because you know your blake lucose is raising during the fast, then you're
not able to access that fat. And I have something that I want to
share and I just popped it into the show notes while you were talking.
This is perfect timing for that. Someone shared this in the community the other
day and I had not read it. You know, I wrote Fast Fees
Repeat in twenty nineteen for it to be released in twenty twenty, and this
came out March eleventh of twenty twenty two. I've just linked it in show
notes. It's in the Mayo Clinic online journal called Mayo Clinic Proceedings, and
it's called Metabolic Flexibility and Its Impact on Health Outcomes. And it is fantastic.
Man, I learned stuff reading it, but I didn't read a single
thing that made me think, oh, I didn't understand that before. I
got it wrong. Everything I read match what I already knew, but took
it even deeper. So, like from the abstract, and so it's in
the show notes, you can go to it. But again the title is
Metabolic Flexibility and its Impact on Health Outcomes. Guess what they recommend to become
metabolically flexible, Sherry, what do they recommend? It's intermittent fasting. So,
like the abstract says, a metabolically flexible state exists when there is a
rapid switch between glucose and fatty acids during the transition between the fed and fasting
state. The flexibility and fuel choice serves to prevent hyperglycemia following a meal and
simultaneously ensures an adequate amount of blood glucose is available for delivery to the brain
and exclusively glycol what's that, I have to say, the glycolytic. Yeah,
glycolytic shoes during fasting. The the modern era is characterized by chronic over
nutrition, in which a mixture of fuels is delivered to the mitochondria in an
unabated manner, thereby uncoupling the feast and famine situation. Like that right,
theortary bam. Chronic over nutrition. That is really what's wrong. In a
nutshell, we have chronic and so mitochondrial dysfunction. Yeah, and it really
goes deep. In this article, it says the continuous influx of fuel leads
to an accumulation of reducing equivalents in the mitochondria and an increase in the mitochondrial
membrane potential. I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound good.
Mitochondria is not going to work as well basically. So then it says
these changes create a micro environment fostering the generation of reactive oxygen species and other
metabolites leaving anyway, it goes on and on and on. Cell injury and
ultimately clinical disease. It talks about insulin resistance. It says that there's imbalance
between mitochondrial energy delivery and use is made worse with a sedentary lifestyle. So
anything that's going to restore energy balance, I'm just kind of skimming through that
abstract. It's talking about exercise, and you know they say calorie restriction or
chloric restriction, which intermittent fasting does because it allows you to go between the
fasting and the fed state and so forth and so on and what have you.
Anyway, and if you don't remember from science class as a kid,
your mitochondria is the powerhouse of every single millions of cells, billions of cells
in your body. And so when you start to have mitochondria and dysfunction,
that's what causes cell death, that's what leads to diseases. And so we
don't often go through life saying, oh, I want healthy mitochondria, but
we do, But we do. We want healthy mitochondria. The sense that
I stumbled over means too much coming in are my yochondria can't function properly.
So over nutrition is the problem. And you know, having an intermittent fasting
lifestyle that allows us. To be metabolically flexible is so important. So again
the title of that metabolic flexibility and its impact on health outcomes, and you
know, it talks about all sorts of things including there's some sections about,
like one of the first sections, fuel switching in the absorptive and post absorptive
states. These are words I read but don't say very often. But it
talks all about, you know, what's happening between the fastest state and the
fed state if you want a deep dive. It said some interesting things about
branch chain and you know, acids. It also talked about some very interesting
differences between someone he has obese and someone who is lean. I think that's
really important. An obese body is not functioning the same way a lean body
is at the root of it, and it's not you know, don't blame
yourself because now you're doing better, you know better. And I was obese,
so I'm certainly not pointing angers than anyone for being a beste because I
was a beese. My obese body was not working the same way that my
now lean body work exactly, And that just takes me back to the whole.
You know, for so long doctors have said, you know, move
more or eat less, and you should build lose weight or whatever. But
what I don't even think most doctors understand is that once you're already in a
state where you're overweight and you're metabolically unhealthy and you have all this stored calycogen
all over your body and your liver and your muscles, you know, even
in your fat you have glycogen stored in your fast cells. Once you're in
that state, you have got to get healthy, which is going to be
harder than a person who is not in that state. But you've got to
get your body healthy so that it will release the weights. And that is
why, you know, some people come in and they get really frustrated because
they have been metabolically unhealthy for a long time and they're doing this fasting and
they're you know, they're doing everything they're supposed to do, and they're three
months in and they've only lost nine pounds and they're very upset by that.
But you've got to set your body up for success, and that is what
fasting and getting your body metabogically flexible does. And you know, I keep
trying to remind people people like maybe yet this doesn't work maybe I should do
something different, But I keep trying to remind people that fasting is it's a
journey. It's a long path, right, and on that path, you're
gonna go up some hills and you're gonna go to valleys and some days you'll
be coasting and everything's gonna be great, and then you're gonna hit another mountain
you have to climb. And the important thing is to stay on that path.
Is when we divert off the path and we start causing you know,
our insulin to go back up, and we start causing inflammation back in our
body, that when you're suddenly like, oh shoot, well that's not working
either. I'm gonna go back to fasting, and you're not gonna just be
able to jump back in where you left off because you're gonna have to go
through that whole kind of healing process again. So that's my path I talked
to say, the course like, get in there fasting. Nothing, nothing
is going to cause you to become metabolically flexible better than fasting and also choosing
good foods. But this is such a great article. It goes you know,
impaired fuel switching with chronic over nutrition. That's another one of the headings,
you do have things you have to reverse, you know, cellular adverse
metabolic consequence of nutrient excess. That's another heading again, it's it's it's because
we followed bad advice for so long. We were told to eat multiple small
meals, told to do that, and then when we struggled with it,
we blamed ourselves. And we were also told to eat these diet bars,
and then when we struggled with that, we blamed ourselves. So anyway,
definitely take a look at this article for anybody wants to dig in deeper.
And now it's time for our segment called What's Your Why? And you know,
I'm a big believer that if your why is deeper than weight loss alone,
and you're more likely to find long term success and view intermittent fasting as
a lifestyle. So today we have a wife from Patty. She says,
my why began when I retired from the school system in twenty twenty one.
Several years prior to that, I was trying to find something to help me
take weight off because the doctor said that that would help the diabetes. But
I'd never heard him say that I could reverse it. I had just dational
diabetes with all three of my children, but I didn't know the extent of
this disease or how bad it is on your body. I desperately wanted and
needed to get my blood sugar under control. My father had Type two before
he passed in two thousand and two. My mom had Type three when she
passed in twenty twenty one. I also have osteoarthritis and my feet really bad
and it's painful to walk most of the time. So I need something to
help me take weight off without having to walk a lot. And that goes
back to that you know, move more to lose weight, and you know,
we already know you cannot out, walk, outrun out extra size on
a healthy lifestyle. So kudos to you, Patty for choosing fasting. So
this week we have a book recommendation to share. This was sent in from
Nancy Perry in fair Play, Colorado. The book is called A Year of
Self Care, Daily Practices and Inspiration for Caring for Yourself, A Year of
Daily Reflections. It's by doctor Zoe Shaw. Nancy wrote a small group of
seasoned community intermittent fasters did the fast start together as a group in February finishing
up on February twenty eighth, and as a group, we decided that we
really liked working together, supporting each other, and sharing our trials and celebrations.
We all wanted to continue the camaraderie and did so moving forward after our
fast Start, we decided to continue as a refresher group, and we liked
the daily reading slash teaching format that Jin had set up in the fast Start
space, and we thought the best way to continue this would be to use
a daily devotional type book. We looked at a number of books and decided
that we liked the idea of a year long focus on self care. We
landed on this book and I put the book in show notes. The format
of the book is to present a self care theme each month. So far
we've had renewal, motivation, simplicity, and currently encouragement. Each day is
a short reading, activity, quote or affirmation that lends itself nicely to our
open journaling format. I post a little blurb daily that sparkspot into our own
self care. In addition, I add another random prop for anyone who wants
to participate but they haven't bought the book. Our group members are so fluid,
meaning they come and go as life allows. We support, challenge,
encourage, and help celebrate each other as we journal together. We also have
some lurkers who prefer to read along but not participate, and that's okay because
everyone is welcome in any mode that is comfortable for them. The benefits we
as fellow journalers have felt and seen are MANI personally, and it's a safe
place to bear my soul to the friends I've come to know in the community.
The comments I received from other members often present different viewpoints, ideas suggestions
I hadn't and likely wouldn't have thought of. I often get hung up in
my own perceptions and I get kind of stuck, but this group helps me
to be unstuck. I feel I have grown a lot, and participating has
really helped my intermittent fasting journey. Using this awesome little book as our daily
guidepost has been fabulous. When I asked for input from others about the book,
here are a few quotes from them. One person said, this group
helps to keep me on track. I have enjoyed the book prompt so much.
These are all thoughts that run through my head and then run away.
Seeing the prompt really helps me to focus and think through what is being asked.
Somebody else said, I've appreciated the way the author works through monthly themes,
for example, motivation, simplicity, encouragement. I am helped by this
theme approach, so I can hear it echoing from different perspectives throughout the month.
Nancy's this little book has been awesome and it's a perfect format for our
little group. It comes and kindle and paperback in Amazon. It has a
rating of four point six stars from over twelve hundred readers. The Little Self
Book is a gem. Investing in our own self care can only help us
in our individual intermittent fasting journeys. I so recommend everybody check it out.
And I love that Nancy took charge of this because you know, the teacher
in me loves for people to take leadership roles, right. I mean,
she's she's a community member who is very active in the community, and I
consider her to be a friend. And she said, can I do this?
And I was like yes, And so she took that leadership role and
they've been you know, I pop in and out. But I love when
people want to make the community your own. That's what it's for I'm not
like the boss of the community, it's your community. I'm just there.
I'm a teacher. And I love that they are focusing on self care because
I think so many times people get off track with intermittent fasting because they don't
make self care priority. Especially as women, we are so focused on taking
care of everybody else and put in all the fires and that our self care
really suffers. So I love that. So before we get to the tweak
of the week, I want to take a minute to tell you about how
impactful having a meal plan is in my life. If I don't have a
plan, my windows never go the way I want them to. One of
the easiest ways I can ensure that I'm eating for my health and weight goals
is to use meal kit delivery services. For the last nine months, I
really just keep coming back to Hunger and Green Chef. I love that both
of these companies are simple and affordable. They both send me the freshest produce
way fresher than I can get at my local store. They have amazing coal
grain options, a variety of fruits and veggies. Whether I have a busier
than normal week and I want pre cooked meats where all I have to do
is throw the meal together with minimal cooking and prep. Or I want to
cook my meals from scratch. Both companies offer that option. I love that.
Of one week i'm not inspired by the menu for Green Chef, I
can turn to Himehrude. Sometimes I get both in the same week. So
if you want to explore these options that help me so much, check out
my shopping page at Fastpeasrepeat dot com, Slash Sherry one R sat Ri I
And now it's time for our tweak of the week. And you know I
always say tweak it till it's easy. So this tweak was submitted by Althea
from Hartford, Connecticut. She said, save progress photos. Today, while
listening to the podcast, I was scrolling Facebook memories and found a picture from
six years ago when I was at my previous lowest weight. I downloaded that
picture and added it to my before and after photo album. I will be
very interested when I get to that weight again to see how I look with
body recomposition. And I love that idea. All right. We love to
leave you guys with listeners or inspirational metivnotional quotes, and this week we have
a simple but profound message from Tracy in Morgantown, Indiana. The quote is
keep it simple, otherwise it gets overwhelming, and you can is your way
and that is so true. Absolutely, 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, he Sa