Episode 30: What is One Meal a Day?, Fasting for Weight Loss, and More

Welcome to Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life. I'm Jen Stevens, author
of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock,
longtime intermittent faster and health and wellness advocate. Please keep in mind that this
podcast is for educational and motivational purposes only and is not intended to provide medical
or diagnostic advice. Jen and I are not doctors, so make sure to
check with your trusted healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes to
any medical treatments or medications. Whether you're new to intermittent fasting or an experienced
intermittent faster, tune in each week to get inspired, to learn, and
to have some fun along the way. Hi, everybody, we are so
glad you're here today. Welcome to this week's episode of the Fast Feast Repeat
Intermittent Fasting for Life Podcast. How are you doing today, Sherry? I
am good. I'm very sleepy, cannot really wake up and on that.
Yeah, I've had painters at my house all week, painting the of my
house. Finally, I've only been trying to get it done since September.
They start very early in the morning, and you know, I'm not a
morning person. So I've had like five hours of sleep every night this week.
Oh no, I have to get up early and take care of all
the dogs and let them out and then let them back in before the painters
get here. And on that note, if you hear Lulu barking in the
background, it's because the painters are currently on break and if they come back
to the house, she will probably start barking. Yeah. Probably. They
tried to take her outside so that she could make friends with them, but
she's like new. Well, she actually is fine. She liked them both
outside. She just can't see what's happening outside and she's kind of a high
anxiety dog. Aw. I even went and bought these pheromones that you plug
into the wall to try to calm her down a little bit. I've tried
everything. Well, she just if they are who they are, it's just
my high strung girl. Yeah, she's like talk about the crazy biography someone
has written on Amazon. Oh my gosh. Someone in the community was like,
jin, I just saw on Amazon there's a biography about you. Why
didn't you he found out about it? Uh huh. Someone in the community
found it, and I'm like what. I was like, that can't be
right. So I went and looked, and I swear the whole thing.
I haven't ordered it or read it. I don't know anything about it.
Will looked at it, he Iburn, Virginia, and I'm like, look
at this. This isn't even a picture of me. He said, that's
a I Jin. And I'm like, well, I guess if you look
at it, I see she's prettier than me. Well, I said,
I said, it looks like Jin if Jin went in and had a bunch
of cosmetic surgery to like tweak and fine tune and accentuate. But you can
see me in there right like you can. So I'm scared. I'm scared
what it might say because no one has like said, tell us about your
life, we'd writing a biography about you. I laughed because it said learn
about Gen's early days, and I'm like, I know how deep did somebody
dig into Jen's early days? So now I'm kind of scared. Like when
you read the description of it, it sounds crazy. So I'm like,
am I flattered? Am I scared? What's what's the feeling to have about
this book? And I have this feeling in my just from reading it.
It feels like the whole thing was written by AI. You think, yeah,
and see, you know, I'm a member of a health and wellness
community that is learning about AI. They've been teaching us about it for the
past year, and it scares the heck out of me. It just reads
like a little off. If someone has used AI to generate a biography about
me, how do we know what's in there, if it's right, or
what they might have said. So then people are going to start reading these
AI generated books and think it's true to them. Yeah, Like the community
member thought it was something I should know about, Like I've been holding back,
and I'm like, no, I don't know about it. So I
guess my public service announcement is it's time for us to really really be cautious
about anything. I saw an interview somewhere I can't remember where. It was
about someone who was a writer in the space of like wildcrafting, like how
to go out and know what mushrooms or safety eat, you know, that
kind of a thing. And they said that there are like a whole bunch
of new books written by AI on the topic, and that's like super dangerous
in their field because it's not giving you accurate information. So I think we
have to learn to be more discerning. I mean, it's kind of sad
because you know, delayed on Deny my first book, and also Feast Without
Fear, my second book. They were both self published by me. They
say independently populished or whatever they say when you look on Amazon. But I
think we're going to have to be really really cautious of independently published books on
really hot topics because you don't know if they were written by AI. Like
somebody in my health and wellness community was like I wrote a whole book with
AI in one I'm like, oh my god, why would you do that?
Oh my gosh, So please don't write books by eight anyway. Yeah,
if my name's gone on a book, I'd like it to be my
words, Yeah, and not just like A I write the first draft,
then you go in and like tweak it. I want to write the whole
thing. But I'm a writer, you know, I guess well, you
know, I question everything. So yeah, I think that maybe that helps
protect me from getting scammed by things like that. Well, there's so things
out there like it reminds you to keep questioning, Like, if something doesn't
seem quite right, questioning, you have to be really discerning, true question
It be really discerning on Amazon when you're looking for something, especially if it's
something like, you know, Fast Feast Repeat, which was a New York
Times bestseller. If you search Fast Feast Repeat on Amazon right now, you'll
find the real Fast Feast Repeat, but you will also find perfectly legal knockoffs
where it's like summary of Fast Feast Repeat, right, workbook to Fast Feast
Repeat, Blank, cookbook for Fast Feast Repeat. None of those are written
by me or sanctioned by me, and I can promise there will never be
a secret book that I endorse that I won't talk about. So if you
see something you're like, I've never heard Jen mention this, it's probably not
related to me. Yeah, well and me. You know, I think
we're all familiar with Cliff's notes, right. But at the same time,
when you take a book like what you've written and a person like this is
what bothers me is, somebody is like, oh, yeah, I know
all about Fast Feast Repeat. But if they haven't read the book and they've
read one of these synopsis or summary books, they're now relying on the person
who took your information and interpreted it in shorthand right, Like you don't know
what they have decided is or is not pertinent in the book. Somebody could
be missing like a huge piece of the possile. Maybe AI wrote it,
like I remember when I was playing with it that first day, I asked
it what the clean fast was, and it gave me the wrong answer.
AI talked about it was about like eating clean is what it said. It
was not the clean fast. So AI did not know how to define the
clean fast. And so if someone was like trying to write a book with
Ai, it would be wrong because AI didn't know. I'm gonna tell you
to eat lots of fruits and vegetables and during your fast. It's super frustrating.
At trivia a couple weeks ago, a friend of mine in the trivia
group, she's like, I was gonna buy fast Feast Repeat. And then
I couldn't get it. It was a work book. It was on Kindle.
I'm like, that is that's not fast Feast Repeat. She was fooled.
Yeah, she was trying to buy Fasteast Repeat. She's a very smart
person and she was almost fooled into buying the wrong thing. So it's really
really frustrating all authors, not just to me, any book that people are
buying. The people who make these knockoffs, they just go and see what's
at the top of the charts, and they try to get something that you'll
buy by accident. Like I got an email from someone one time. He
said, I bought Fast Feast Repeat all the pages were blank. Is it's
supposed to be like that. I'm like, no, you probably bought the
Fast Feast repeat blank cookbook by accident, and we can't stop it. That's
the thing that's so frustrating. I'm off my soapbox. But just be careful.
The word of the day is be cautious. That's two words. But
with everything everything. Oh and y'all, don't go buy that biography, by
the way, I do not. I'm not trying to like advertise for it.
I don't want people to buy it and read it because I don't know
what it says, and Lord only knows what it might say. Please don't
buy it. Maybe you should read it. You might learn something about your
life you didn't know. Jen Oh my god, I'm scared to read it.
I can see you calling me, going, did you know that I
did this when I was seventeen? The book says, so, well,
well, let's dive into this week's celebration. Today we have something from Let's
see Amanda in Oregon. Oh, I know who Amanda is. Amanda's in
community. She said, Hi, ladies. First, I want to tell
you both thank you. Thank you for this podcast and any other one you
have put out, as well as all of Jinn's books except Cleanish. I
own it, but I'm not yet ready to learn all that. I get
it, but you have helped myself and so many others tremendously. My success
story includes both weight loss of thirty to thirty five pounds since January of twenty
twenty three, depending on where I am in my cycle. And even more
awesome are my allergies. I have suffered from extreme seasonal allergies for years.
I took two prescriptions for them and two over the counter meds as well as
a Deterra allergy relief pill every day. This was just to keep me at
bay from suffering, which included eyes that would swell nearly shut and an inability
to breathe. Itchy, watery eyes as well as sore throat that would hinder
my sleeping. When I came to Aya for weight loss, I had zero
idea the relief I would gain from my allergies. I'm currently in my eleve
month in a year when people I know came to me experiencing the worst allergies
ever, I had zero symptoms. I have taken only five do Ta oil
pills for the entire year. I know beyond all doubt I have. Is
the reason why I cannot thank you both enough for putting this out to the
world every week, and Jin for changing my life with intermittent fasting. Bless
you both, sincerely, Amanda in the Pacific Northwest that historically tried to kill
me every year. You know, I get it. I used to have
such terrible allergies and they went away with intermittent fasting, so I wasn't expecting
that. That is awesome. So now we have a question from a listener.
This question is from Beck in Brisbane. High Ladies, I am so
excited by this new podcast. I have listened to all of intermittent fasting stories
and all of Jen's books. I have now been fasting for two and a
half years after discovering Gen's delayed on Deny Book. I have lost nineteen kilograms
and I'm feeling amazing. I fast clean and vary my fasts from sixteen eight
to one meal a day and forty hours. I still have ten kilograms to
lose to get to my goal. Is it okay to practice one meal a
day five days a week, such as Monday to Friday. I like how
I feel on one meal a day. It makes life so much easier without
having to prep lunches. However, I worry that I will not consume enough
protein and calories and lose muscle instead of fat. Thanks ladies. Okay,
well, I kind of have some questions about what you have written, Like
you ask is it okay to practice one meal a day five days a week.
I don't know what it is you're wanting to do on the weekends,
so I'm going to try to answer your question. But I could be off
base because I'm missing that little piece of the puzzle. The fact that you
vary your fast from sixteen to eight to one meal a day and forty hours
sounds like primarily you are not doing one meal a day, and maybe you're
eating two meals a day. Or on your up days, up to three
meals a day. So the first thing I would do is, I know
we talk a lot about flexing our schedule and not settling into a really short,
tight window, but you can really flex your schedule too much to the
point where you're not going to get the results you're looking for and not knowing
exactly what you're doing. My suggestion, if you really want to get this
last ten kilograms off, is definitely to shift into a one meal a day
rather than having multiple meals a day and a shorter eating window. And I
think it's important that one meal a day is not one play a day.
So yes, you can practice one meal a day five days a week.
You can practice one meal a day seven days a week. That's what I
do, that's what Jen does. Now we are not doing one play today.
We are having a window. With me. It's anywhere from usually three
and a half after five hours. I stop when I'm full, when I'm
satiated, when i'm done, I've had enough. It might be three and
a half hours. Some days I eat right up to that five hour mark,
and it's for me a window opener, call it a snack, call
it an appetizer. I don't really care what you call it. Eat a
little something, wake up your appetite, you know, whatever it is you
like. I like to get in like some veggies and beans and eat really
super healthy in that window opener. That's me. My body's primed to receive
that nutrition. It makes me feel good. And the better I open my
window, the better I close my window. I just make better choices throughout
my window if I choose really nutrient dense foods to open. So that could
be a salad, it could be soup, It could be a bowl of
beans. It could be hummus and a whole grain pita and some sakraut and
olives, you know, And then I just go about my day. And
then later I have my full meal and then I kind of us as from
there. If I'm satiated after my meal, I close my window. If
I think I might maybe didn't eat quiet enough, I might leave it open
a little bit later and have a little snack of some fruit and yogurt or
something to close my window. That is what we call one meal a day,
multi course meal over a few hours. That is sustainable to do long
term. And no, you did not have to worry about consuming enough protein
or calories. You're not going to lose muscle instead of fat, because why
would your body burn up your life preserving muscle and skip burning readily accessible fat
stores as long as you're clean fasting and I also want to pop in something
there. Yes, we definitely want to make sure that we're fast and clean
because that's how your body is able to get into your fat stores. We
know that with a typical low calorie diet where people are fat are not fasting,
there's eating all throughout the day, your body has high influin all the
time, you might not be able to get to all your fat, so
you might lose a muscle mass. But with a clean fast, you are
going to to preferentially tap into fat stores. And we also have increased autopogy
going on, so not all of our protein needs are going to be met
from what we're putting into our bodies. We've already got excess junkie proteins that
our body is recycling during the clean fast. We can't quantify that, so
some of our protein needs can be met through that recycling that's going on.
So if you don't want to lose muscle as you age. The way to
build muscle is not just by eating protein. I want to just keep reiterating
that because that's just a point of confusion for a lot of people. We
somehow think that eating protein equates to muscle building automatically, and it doesn't.
We build muscle in response to using our muscles. Jason fun has a great
blog post about protein and how much protein is excessive and what happens if you
eat too much protein and how much is enough, and he said that if
you look at the average protein consumption and Erica, and people are eating more
than the recommended daily allowance of protein, and if protein automatically equaled muscle,
we would have a muscle epidemic in America and not an obesity epidemic. And
that line just really stuck with me, because the protein you eat doesn't just
your body doesn't just process it and slap it on and build your muscle.
You have to do something to build that muscle. So if you don't want
to lose muscle as you get older, work your muscles. It doesn't have
to be fancy. I jump on my rebounder with weights in my hands.
Man, That works your muscles. You ever done that? Sherry, work,
jump on it with weights in your hands. I actually have the Melicon
weights that are levels and they got straps and you kind of hook them to
your hands. Really, I just have regular hand weights and I'm jumping them
on different positions. But I really think what Sherry said is key. It's
how you define one meal a day. And if you define one meal a
day is twenty three to one, I would not do that every day.
But if you define it as a multi course meal over a period of time,
like Sherry's explain, that's what we're talking about. Like yesterday, Will
and I were driving back from Virginia. Long drive. Sherry, who Yeah,
he's good companion in the car. But we stopped in Conway. Have
you ever been to that little cheese shop in Conway? Did I take you
there? No? Huh? Well, I was like, I would like
to open my window with something. It was like three o'clock and he was
hungry, and so we stopped and we had some barrata. Oh my god,
it was so good. Three different little things of barrata on top of
like typingot and pesto and then something with I don't know, sun dried tomatoes.
So we ate that with some crostini, and we had one perfect piece
of spanic copaa. That's how I opened my window. I didn't call that
lunch. I didn't call that dinner. It was at three o'clock. Then
when I got home, Oh, blessed Chad's heart. I was so worn
out and we had like a million posts in the community while I was driving,
so I was like, I got to work, Chad, can you
make dinner? He made a pot of chili. It was a Hello fresh
pot of chili. He was able to make it. We didn't even have
a recipe card. Something happened to the recipe card this week. I don't
know. With the holidays, we're recording this since December. But he was
able to figure it out. He made the chili, and then I had
a bowl of chili with black beans and it had beef in there and sour
cream and cheese. And then we had we had a muffin. There was
this beautiful blueberry muffin. Will was eating breakfast at the hotel before we left,
and I said that muffin looks amazing. So I grabbed it, packed
it, took it home, delayed it, and Chad and I each ate
half of it. It was a really good blueberry muff and it looked good.
I don't know what it is, you know how when they wrap them
in the brown paper and it looks all rustic. Oh yeah, it looked
fan sea. It's like I would like that muffin, but I waited.
I delayed it till after my dinner. So that was my one meal a
day. And someone might argue, well, that obviously was not one meal,
but it's the way I structure it. I had an appetizer with Will
at the cheese shop, then like two and a half hours later, I
had the chili and the little bit of the muffin. So that's how I
won meal a day. And I could that every single day was no problem.
Now if all I had had was Hello, fresh chili, that would
not be enough and that would not be sustainable. Right. I used to
really be big into historical fiction, and you would read, you know,
those stories about way back in the day during the balls and stuff, and
you know in England or France or wherever, they would have these dinners,
and these dinners were you know, multi course cinners that took hours hours.
Yeah, it was a production, and so that's kind of what I think
of our one meal a day. It's you may not just sit there at
the table and eat, you know, one course after another. You're taking
those multiple courses and you're kind of breaking them up over the course of your
window. I also think of it as like a wedding reception. My nephew
just got married a couple of weeks ago, and we were at the wedding
reception and while the photographs were going on, there was like cocktail or hour.
There were no cocktails. It was a Baptist judge in the South,
but you know what I mean. We had tea and pun but appetizers right,
and then a what good while later we had the actual dinner, but
it was stretched out over a long period of time. And then la lading
cake we did we did, so it was stretched out over multiple hours.
And that's just you know, I really think of it like that. So
a wedding reception and multi course meal to restaurant, just whatever works. I
really don't think you need to define it one meal a day. Just eat
when you get home from work. Keep your window open as long as you
want, and this is back to Beck's question, keep your window open long
enough so that you're not just eating one little tiny plate of food. You're
eating enough to satisfy your body. If you're going to bed hungry or waking
up in the middle of the night hungry, that's your body telling you that
you're not eating enough. Your body will let you know. And then you
wanted to do that five days a week, and again you didn't specify you
wanted to do on the weekend. But if you are tending to have a
shorter window during the week, like when I was teaching, I didn't eat
till I got home from school. It was about fourth or or five most
days, and I would open then and then maybe in the window on the
weekend, my window might be slightly longer. So you probably weren't using a
full five hour window during the week. You were probably having a shorter like
three hour window and then two to three window a little bit on the week
maybe six hours on the weekend. Yeah, so like, I don't really
need eight hours pretty much ever, Like Christmas Day, I opened probably around
ten with sausage balls, and then it felt like we ate all day long,
and then finally I was like, I can't eat anymore. And then
I counted back and it was eight hours. It felt like I ate all
day, all day, it was eight hours, So I just can't do
it anymore. I think if your weekly average stays right around five hours,
so whether you know you have some windows that are shorter and a few that
are a little longer, you'll do really well. I think that's a very
good kind of window average link that results in weight loss for lots and lots
of people. Yep. And often when we see people that are struggling in
a plateau, they're eating keeping much shorter windows or they're keeping much longer windows,
right, So there's something there's something about that kind of sweet spot of
four to five hours that works really well for people. Yep. And then
the flexing it, you know, like slightly shorter dur in the week,
slightly longer on the weekend. There's that flex, your body's going to be
less likely to adapt. Yeah, So I would really settle into that and
do that for a good solid six weeks and just see how your body responds
to that. And if you're not really seeing a shift in your weight like
you're hoping to see, notice that you said you do some forty hour fasts.
So after you've settled into a shorter eating window, eating you know,
one meal over several hours, like we explained. If you're not seeing a
change, then consider maybe doing like a four to three program. And she
did mention that she doesn't like to prep lunches. You might want to do
something like you know, we have meal less Monday in the community with the
longer fast on Monday that a lot of people do. But you could do
that on Friday. You could just Friday, have your meal u S Day
on Friday and then donate and then Saturday is an up day and you're at
home and you wake up Saturday morning with breakfast. I think I have great
a strategy. Especially there's a lot of people I've recommended that too, who
know that they're going to have brunch on Saturdays, but they also want to
have dinner on Saturdays, and you know, so I've always you know,
told them to really consider just making Friday a down day and then Saturday you
have an unrestricted up day. You can eat whatever whenever and you don't have
to prep lunch to take to work or whatever. So I like that.
So now it's time for our segment called What's Your Why? And you know,
most of us start with weight loss as our why, but we want
our why to be deeper than that. In my new book twenty eight day
fast Start day by day, I ask readers to craft their why statement before
they even begin. When your why is deeper than weight loss alone, I
think you're more likely to find long term success and view intermittent fasting as a
lifestyle. And again, like I said, there is nothing wrong with wanting
weight loss to be a big part of your why. That's totally reasonable.
It's why I came to intermittent fasting, but we want to have more to
it than that. So today's why is from Gail. She wrote, I
don't ever want to be on another diet, no counting anything. I am
so ready to retire my lifelong obsession with food and allowing my choices to be
dictated by anything other than my desire to be healthy and fit. I've already
noticed a market change and the pain I have experienced in the past due to
arthritis just after approximately a month of IF, and I am so encouraged by
the way I feel. Up until this past April of twenty twenty three,
I was very proud of the fact that I was on no medication and then
my doctor suggested a mild blood pressure medicine. I want to go off of
it when I revisit him in twenty twenty four. I managed to lose forty
pounds in four months about five years ago, on an extremely low calorie about
nine hundred calorie a day, five snacks a day, and one meal plan.
And I gave away about ten large trash bags full of clothes and got
a new wardrobe. And as you might have guessed, I've gained most all
of the weight back. I've been living on a very limited wardrobe since because
I refuse to replenish and have been determined unsuccessfully before I f to get back
into the smaller sized wardrobe. Besides the obvious reasons, I have a few
personal goals. To get into a kayak without ending up on America's Funniest Home
videos. To be able to hike a mountain with my husband without him having
to stop way more frequently than he normally would so that his wife can catch
her ever waiting breath. To not have to say some of my loved ones
when they take a picture of me, please do not post that anywhere.
I think you get the idea. One more thing, I would love to
be able to sleep at night rather than take a series of naps which constantly
vary in length and duration. I am extremely hopeful if is my answer,
and I'm so encouraged in help by chapter twenty five of Fast Feast repeat,
thank you well. I'm so excited to hear about all your powerful list of
why you're interested and excited about intermittent fasting Gale, and I totally get it.
I remember walking up the steps of the Empire State Building, which had
when we were there, and it was before I lost the weight. It
was I don't know, two thousands. I think I weigh about one seventy
five. I don't remember what year it was, but I remember what I
was wearing, and I think I weighed one seventy five ish, because that's
when those clothes fit. And oh my god, I could barely walk up
those steps. And when we were you know, you know the story of
when I was at the Mayan Ruins on that cruise in twenty fourteen and I
could barely get to the top. So it feels really really good to be
able to move around and not worry about pictures and all of those things.
Yeah, and something that people I don't think really think about is yes,
you're carrying more weight, but all that visceral fat is packed up underneath your
diaphragm, and it really does keep your lungs from expanding all the way I
thought of that. You're right, though, I never thought of that.
That's why you're huffing and puffing. I remember that. Yeah, I was
huffing and puffing. Wow, Well, we have another question this week.
Donna says, First, I want to thank you for this podcast. I've
been wishing for it for a year. Thank you, thank you, thank
you for your books and for changing my life. I am a sixty year
old Cushings syndrome survivor, and that has to do with your adrenal glands.
I've always struggled with my weight, but about fifteen years ago I started gaining
weight so fast that it was terrifying. I remember gaining ten pounds over a
weekend. It wasn't a fun weekend either. Over the course of nine months,
I gained one hundred pounds. I feverishly tried every diet I could get
my hands on. I was already a pro at dieting. I'd done that
all my life. I'd even tried quote intermittent fasting, but I drank cream
in my coffee, drink diet, so does all day, and I saw
no benefit from it. I saw doctors, both in network doctors and out
of pocket specialists. They all shrugged their shoulders and said eat less, exercise
more. I gave up after twelve years. I had a medical situation that
required a CT scan of my abdominal area, which picked up a tumor on
my adrenal gland. After another year of testing, they finally caught my high
cortisol level and agreed to remove the cortisol producing tumor and adrenal gland that left
me with a lazy, underproducing loan adrenal gland. I was steroid dependent for
nine months, and until I started intermittent fasting a year ago, I was
sluggish, sick, and required daily naps just to make it through the afternoon
evening. A friend read your f FR book Fast Feees Repeat and told me
about it, and I started IF that day, and then I read Fast
Fees Repeat and DDD. Within one week, my knees felt better, I
could stand up easily, which was a challenge before IF. I immediately knew
I had found the Golden ticket. I followed the sixteen to eight protocol for
ten months. During that time, I noticed I had more energy, improved
moods, miraculously, no need for a nap, although it's a nice to
have luxury now instead of a medical necessity. I wouldn't drive past three pm
because I'd get and that was scary. While I still evaluate how I'm feeling
before I drive, I'm able to do most anything now. Thanks to IF
and particularly you and your books and the idea of the clean fast, I
have a better quality of life. I can almost keep up with my five
grandkids, the youngest of which her three year old twin boys. But these
stubborn pounds are still with me. I'm sure I'm insulin resistant. For the
last two months, I've been switching my fasting schedule daily and I vary it
from fifteen to twenty four hours. I don't feel great at twenty four,
so I hesitate to go beyond that to do ADF. So my question is
what schedule protocol do you recommend to start losing these very stubborn pounds. And
I just want to emphasize what Donna explained. I mean, she gained one
hundred pounds and nine months something was wrong in her body hormonially, she had
a tumor. She was having excess hormonal production by that tumor on her adrenal
gland. Her body responded by packing on the weight. And that just lets
you know that the math of eat less, move more is missing all the
things that might be going on in our bodies. Like she was not eating
so much more food that she should have gained one hundred pounds, right,
And now you're way more complicated than that. Yeah, yeah, So you
know anyone who's struggling and like, if your body suddenly starts doing something different
out of the blue, it's not because you suddenly lost all your willpower.
It's something something's going on. This really really illustrates that. I'm glad you're
feeling better with intermittent fasting. That's really exciting and I'm glad to hear it.
So you mentioned that you were doing sixteen eight for ten months and you
felt better, but you didn't lose any weight, And that does make sense
because an eight hour window is not a weight loss protocol for many of us.
It wasn't for me either, So I'm really interested in what you've been
doing varying. You're fasting from fifteen to two twenty four, because that's kind
of I don't know what your goal is with that. I wouldn't shorten your
fast, definitely not. I think you need to lengthen your fast and shorten
your window. Have you ever tried I wonder doing like a consistent nineteen five,
just that, like we were talking about a minute ago with the one
meal a day question, just to nineteen five, see how that goes.
And you mentioned that you don't feel great at twenty four, which also makes
me wonder if you have not flipped your metabolic switch yet, because if you've
been doing sixteen eight, that sixteen hour mark might be exactly where your body
would would want to switch over to fat burning, but you're eating there.
And so if you've been doing that for a long long time and then some
days you're fifteen and then you're trying to push to twenty four, but you
feel bad, that's why your body's just not quite making that metabolic switch flip.
So you might want to just try nineteen five, like I said,
for consistently, give yourself some time to do that and see, you know,
if you start to feel that sluggish feeling between hours sixteen and nineteen,
that's your body trying to make that switch to fat burning. See what happens.
And when we're talking about ADF, you never have to fast twenty four
hours on ADF if you do the down day meal version of ADF, So
for example, you could fast for twenty hours, have your five hundred calorie
down day meal, then you start a second fast, and then the next
day is your update. So a five hundred calorie down day is two fasts.
You fast, you eat the meal, you have a second fast.
It's not one long fast, so you could still eat every day and you
don't have to fast beyond twenty four hours, So think about that. I
do think that you are going to need more fasting, especially if you're feeling
sluggish still at hour twenty four. It makes me think you're not quite fat
at day apted right, and just especially with her history of being on steroids
for such a long period of time. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure
you are insulin resistant. So more fasting is going to provide more healing as
well. Yep. So before we get to the tweak of the week,
I would like to talk about my books, and you know, what are
they? Which ones do you need? Where do you start? Because I
know now that I have so many books out there that can be confusing to
people. They're like, well, what do I read? Do I read
delayed on tonight? Do I read fast east repeate? Where do I begin?
So I want to explain how the ecosystem kind of goes together. So
right now, at this point, if you're brand new, or if you've
quit intermittent fasting and you've taken a step away and you're ready to get back
started, you need twenty eight day Fast Start, day by day, the
ultimate guide to starting or restarting your intermittent fasting lifestyle. So it sticks.
That book came out December twenty sixth, and it is a day by day
guide to your first twenty eight days. I mean it's not full of,
like, you know, amazing new information you've never heard before about intermittent fasting.
That's not what this book is. This book is a step by step
what you need every day. You know. I talk about becoming fat adapted,
I talk about how you might feel. I talk about the science of
habit creation. I do talk about the clean fast early on because that's really
really important. But it's what you need every day as you're starting or as
you are restarting, to get your mindset in the right place and to kind
of like hold your hand as you go day to day. Imagine me beside
you, you're like setting intentions. It's also got a workbook component, which
I think is really really important. It's a book that you write in.
You're gonna want the paperback, so you check off, like what your plan
is for the day, and and your goals, you identify, you know,
challenges that you had that day. So it is a writing book and
share it. I don't know if you saw one of the early reviews that
came in right after it ca out give it a two, and it said
I bought this on Kindle and this is a workbook. Like like that was
I'm like, no, you should say this is a work book. Whoo,
Like that's exciting. That's I designed it. Look, the teacher in
me came out. I'm excited about the fact that this is something you work
through. This is a day by day work book. It does have new
stuff in it that's not in the other books, or I wouldn't have done
it. I wouldn't have written a book with no new information in it.
But it's not just fast Feast Repeat all over again. It is what you
need day by day for twenty eight days. So that's what you need to
start off with. And then you also need Fast Feast Repeat. And this
is not just so I can sell you two books. You may not realize
this. I do not make a lot of money based on one book purchase
or two book purchases. Books are not you know, yeah, they cost
a lot to buy them, but the author gets like the tiniest little bit
from each book. So I'm not trying to sell you two books because I
want to sell you two books because I'm getting rich on you buy two books.
I want you to buy the books that are going to support you along
your way, and I think that's really important. I want you to have
the twenty eight day fast art to support you day by day. That's why
I wrote it. And then Fast Feast Repeat is the one you need to
have on hand as you like go through the lifestyle. You know, like
six months from now, you might have some questions about exercise you didn't have
at the beginning, and that's when you want to turn to that chapter in
Fast Feast Repeat, or maybe nine months from now you're on a plateau and
then the plateau chapter will really be meaningful for you in Fast Feast Repeat.
So you really do need both books. If you're new, would you add
anything to that, Sherry, Yeah, I had two thoughts. Number One,
I'm the person who always reads ahead, so as I'm reading the new
book, I'm thinking in my brain as if I'm a brand new faster and
then I have all these questions and I'm impatient. So I'm the kind of
person if you're like me, I'm the kind of person I want to have
them both in hand together because if I suddenly have a pressing question that I'm
not going to sleep at night without the answer, because that's the way I
work, I want that resource to turn to to get the answer to my
question. But then I was thinking to you know, some people don't and
they really underestimate the power of writing stuff down. And if you think back
to when you were a kid in school and you had to go to the
end of the chapter and you had to answer the questions at the end of
the chapter of your social studies book, there's a reason why you have to
do that, and taking your thoughts and putting them into words and complete sentences
and writing them, getting them out of your head onto paper is a learning
process, but it's also can be very therapeutic as well. I think that's
a really important piece to the puzzle. That's why I designed it the way
that I did, because never forget, I'm a teacher, so I designed
the new book from my degrees are in delivering content to people and instructing people
so that they will remember the information. That's really what twenty eight Day Fast
Art, day by day is all about. And I want to be very
very clear. It is a companion book to Fast Feast Repeat. Someone from
Publishers Weekly read it and gave it up, you know they do that with
new books. Gave it a review and she's like, she talks about Fast
Feust Repeat so much, you should just buy that one. I'm like,
she missed the part where I said, if you're only going to buy one,
fast Feast Repeat is the one to buy. Fast Feast Repeat is the
comprehensive book. But twenty eight Day Fast Art is, like I said,
it's a companion. You know, like you know how when you were in
school, did you have a math book and a mathwork book. Like when
I was a teacher, my third graders had a math book and they had
a math work book. They used them both. They wrote in the mathwork
book and they it was just they had a different purpose. So while you're
doing twenty eight day fast art day by day, I will refer you to
fast Feast Repeat to read more. If fast Feast Repeat is the how to,
the how to hant well, the handbook and the kind of how to
guide book. It's the text and the why right, it's everything. Is
the com apprehensive book that's your bible of fasting, but the new day by
day that is teaching you how to get your mind and body right to make
this a permanent, to cement your fasting foundation. Exactly, that's what it's
all about. Because I the end of that subtitle is so it sticks,
because that's what I want for everyone listening. I want it to stick.
Without a strong foundation, your house is going to fall down. And you
know, you know I do have other books out there, you know,
delayed on Tony. If I just wanted to sell you a book, that's
the one I would have you buy because I make a whole lot more money
for every copy people buy of that because it's self published, you know.
But I want you to buy the books that are going to not give me
the most money but help you the most, and that is twenty eight Day,
Fast Art Day by Day and Fast Feast Repeat. Those are the ones
that you want. And you know, do you need to read Delayed on
tonight if you've read those? No, but you can if you want to,
because it's also got some different stuff in there. I wrote that a
long time ago, twenty sixteen. It's been a long time. But the
two that you really need twenty eight Day, Fast Art Day by Day and
Fast Feast Repeat. And then you know Cleanish, as was mentioned before at
the beginning by Amanda. When you're ready to really clean things up, you
might want to read Cleanish as well. Or maybe you never want to read
Cleanish. That's okay too. So anyway, I'm not just trying to sell
you these two books because I want to sell you two books. I want
to help you with your intermittent fasting lifestyle. All right, So now it's
time for our tweak of the week. And you know, I always say
tweak it till it's easy. But the tweak that works for me might not
be the one that works for you. And that's why it is super helpful
to hear how other intermittent fasters are making intermittent fasting work for them. This
tweek was submitted by Donna in Hamilton, Ontario, which is in Canada,
and she said, I found a tweak that points my mindset towards a positive
direction. I listened to a powerful podcast a while back of Gins when she
spoke with Leslie Taylor. Leslie said how ADF down days were therapeutic. Hence
she claimed them as spa days. My down days on Monday, Wednesday,
Friday of the week are giving my body the much needed autophagy, the inner
cleansing. So I went one step further and coined the phrase spa taphagy.
I picture my metabolism getting pampered on Monday, Wednesday and Friday while I outwardly
maybe getting a pedicure or taking in some yoga. I now look forward to
my spa taphagy days with excitement and relief. Great for my psyche. I
love that. I love that something to dread, it's something to embrace.
And we were just talking about that today and we have a little message thread
me and Sherry and Roxy and we talk about things, and we were talking
about, you know, the whole idea of fasting is you need to enjoy
the fasting too. Donna has found a way to enjoy the fasting instead of
just we're not just living for our eating windows. We're not just living for
the upday. We have to figure out a way to enjoy and embrace the
fast as well. If you hate every minute of the fast, it will
not ever be a lifestyle, right. So I also think that if you
hate every minute of the fast, there's probably a reason why, and that
problem can be solved. Yeah, and you can learn to love the fast.
But I really do think what Donna said is right. Thinking about all
the great stuff that's going on, it's a reason to not cut it short.
Yeah, well, if you take the time to really listen to your
body too. And a lot of people in the community learn this over the
holidays, was they kind of went off their normal fasting protocol. They had
really long windows, they eat foods they don't normally eat, and a few
people even just stopped fasting for the holidays. And now they're like, oh
my gosh, I feel awful. Why did I do that? And when
you really can appreciate how good you truly feel why you're fasting compared to all
day eating, it really does make you enjoy the fast more. It's true.
And you know, like I said yes esterday, I saw that blueberry
muffin. It looked really good. I could have chosen to open my window
early and eat a blueberry muffin at you know, nine in the morning,
but I would have felt foggy while I was driving. I would have been
hungry. Instead, I drove with a clear head, I had great energy,
I had good reaction time, I made it home safely, and I
had the muffin at the end of dinner. And I didn't miss out on
a thing except for some sluggishness that I would have felt. So you just
have to learn to shift your thinking about it. And I was grateful to
get to drive in the fasted state. You know, we're driving. Will's
eating a burger and I'm driving, you know, so it's not a big
deal. I just know how I feel best. So well, we love
to leave you with inspirational or motivational quotes, and this week we have a
message from Leslie and Idaho The quote is humans live on one quarter of what
they eat, and on the other three quarters lives their doctor. And that
was an inscription and an Egyptian pyramid from thirty eight hundred BC, quoted in
doctor Mark Mattson's Intermittent Fasting Revolution book. You see, we've known this for
a long time. This is not new information. Yeah, thirty eight hundred
BC. I think we can say that we've known the diseases of excess and
excess eating, or we could work on that and fasting as part of it,
a big part of it. 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.