Episode 32: Shifting Your Window, When to Have an Up Day, 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's Sherry doing wonderful?
The sun is shining, which is so good A when it's been really
close called in rainy here? Oh yeah here too? Oh yeah? You
had tornado warnings or was it a warning? Or why it was an actual
warning? And I was outside y'all, don't do it. I did.
I'm here at the condo. I was here, and I was like,
well, we got a tornado warning. Let me look outside and see if
I can see anything. And I noticed we had a little table out on
that little balcony and it had blown and also the closet door on that balcony
had blown open and stopped flying out of it like a pillow was coming out
of it like a cushion. And I'm like, oh no. So I
ran out there and flipped the table over so it couldn't get picked up by
the wind. It's like a little little side table, and closed the closet
door and secured it. It wasn't latched all the way. And then I
came inside and then I looked at the radar and then my blue dot was
right at the where that rotational curve exactly was. I was like, probably
shouldn't have gone outside anyway. Why I shout it to Eric, And he's
my weather expert. I don't know. Apparently he's just a lot of weather
channel. He said, Oh, she's fine, she's on the outskirts of
it. Okay, good, He wasn't worried at all. Well, my
dot is right there where the hook was. But the hook had already gone
over me, so I think that was the thing. It probably didn't touch
down. I was gonna have retament and the cloud no, so probably it
passed right over me and then but it was just above, so that's what
I think. And then the wind was enough to move the table and open
the door, but not to you know, it wasn't like touchdown there.
So anyway, everything was fine, but it was you know, people were
canceling things. My hair point out of trouble. My hair looks. I
was supposed to get my hair done yesterday and so I've got terrible roots.
There was a problem, you know, in November with my hair, and
so I've got a weird thing going on. Wrong formula used by accident.
So now I have like the gray followed by a stripe of the wrong color
followed by my blonde. It's like a look, you haven't seen what's that
word? When you do like the gradiation of collar on purpose? Oh?
Is it got a nag belage, got volage? I don't know, it's
whatever it is. I've got it. I didn't mean to. I'm gonna
have weird hair until the twentieth. You could see it, like how crazy
it looks anyway, missed my hair appointment the twentieth. Yeah, I'll just
have bad hair twenty now the twentieth. So oh, Will, it's all
right. I know when you're this sage and you're like, what, who
cares? The Trivia ladies don't care. Chad doesn't care. My sister and
her husband are here in town. They don't care. Will doesn't care.
So right, I didn't even notice it till you said it. Well,
it's pretty obvious. But oh well, now that you tell your head down,
I do see that. Yeah, oh well, I'll just tell people
I'm growing it out. I cut my husband's hair. I mean, I
say I cut it. I use clippers on his hair. It's not really
difficult. You just put a two guard on and Buzz's whole head. He
wears a hat unless he's sleeping. But he's got this big patch of gray
hair all of a sudden, and it was not there last time I cut
his hair. Oh god, it's like, honey, you have a little
patrick gray hair coming in. And he's like, he thought I was talking
about his beard, which is like very gray, and I said, no,
I'm talking about on your head. He's like on my head. I'm
like, yes, it happened. How'd that happen? I said, Well,
you are forty now. Time time time, it happens to the best
of us. Yep. Well, this week we have a weekly celebration.
That was sent in to us from Selene. She wrote, I am so
proud of me. I am two and a half months in and I am
down twenty two pounds and can I just say that is unusually aligned usually at
a large rate of weight loss in two and a half months. I'm very
happy for you, Selene. But if you are new and you are listening,
and you think you should have lost twenty pounds and two and a half
months, Nope, Selene is just very lucky. And I'm gonna guess she
had a lot of inflammation to get rid of. She said. For me,
if helped me to lose weight, regain energy to move and exercise every
day, do more in my life for me and my loved ones. Take
back control of my eating habits by eating more real food and listening slash hearing
my body time to focus on other important things, like spending real quality time
with friends and family. Get rid of inflammation in my body. Yeah,
you nailed it on now yep. Being more healthy overall, I've got great
blood work results, being inspiring for others. Focus on self coaching to become
a better version of me by reading more and listening to inspiring podcasts, meditating
and self hypnosis, practice every day, learning the superpower of DDD. My
diet brain is almost gone. I could probably listen more things, but I'm
sure you've got this. I am so grateful and happy to have started these
changes. What was I doing before? The list gets bigger every day.
IF was a real eye opener in my life, and the journey just started.
But I love the changes that I see, and so do my loved
ones. If I can inspire others by sharing my successes. It was not
always easy, but I want to age healthy for me and my loved ones.
I don't want to become a burden for anyone just because I did not
do the right thing. And IF is the right thing for me, and
I love the person I am becoming thanks to your guys's inspiring work. Life
is good. IF makes it powerful. That made me so happy. Love
that that is a powerful list And Wow, in two and a half months,
yeah, And what I really love is her focus on self coaching to
become a better version of me. You know, we think we need to
have an external coach, but you can be a self coach. I love
that idea. Coach yourself and tell yourself what you would tell your friend,
Like if you do something that you've now beating yourself up over, take a
step back, pause and say if my friend did this, what would I
tell her? And then tell yourself that you're self coaching. I know in
the community we have a lot of people who will admit like, oh,
I'm a lurker, I read post I don't ever post. And something that
I really try to explain to people and I found this very very true for
me, is when I got involved in Jen's community. Originally, you don't
have to have all the answers to coach other people. Just by commenting on
other people's posts, you start to learn a language of compassion and encouragement and
support. And when you start using those words to talk to other people and
to encourage and support them, I swear it translates to how you start to
talk to yourself. That is because for so long in our minds, when
we've been on diets and we've been overweight and diets have failed us. We
really don't say nice things to ourselves, but by supporting and encouraging others,
you start to learn a new way of speaking and thinking, and then you
start to use those words on yourself. Yeah, I think that's really powerful.
So for everybody who's listening, if you're a lurker, there's nothing wrong
with being a lurker. I get it, especially if you've been on social
media and you've felt like, you know, backed yeah, we're not going
to do that in our community, but it could be scary to put yourself
out there. But just start commenting, just start all to make a post,
just not commenting, and you know, like people will say, I
wish this community had a love button or I wish it had more, and
I'm like, I actually don't because you can put a like, you can
put a love, but it means more to type a few words, right,
there's so much more to I'm proud of you or anything versus a like
You're typing. A heart emoji is so much more powerful than like choosing a
heart emoji on a like button. So often people just need to be heard,
They need to share what happened to them, or share what they work
through, or share their difficult day. They just need to be heard and
they just need to know like they're not the only ones that have They need
validation. Yeah, and y'all can do that, even if you're a scared
lurker. Just break that seal, Just say something here and there to people,
and then it'll be easier. Then you'll find yourself doing it more.
And it's my really great friend there like yeah, Jenna and I, Well
that's true. We met on Facebook. All right. Now, we have
a question from a listener. This question is from Casey in Colorado. She
says, I've been doing sixteen eight for three years. I usually open my
window at eleven am and close it by six thirty or seven. I'm feeling
stuck and want to shake things up and move to a shorter eating window.
Five hours is my goal. I'm having such a hard time moving the opening
of my window to one pm. I usually make it until twelve ish,
but I'm so hungry. I eat everything in sight that I'm not hungry for
dinner, but I eat because I'm worried about being too hungry during my fast.
My question is how do I manage eating in this five hour window without
eating too much and not inhaling every everything in sight. Ideally I'd love to
break my fast with a green salad and veggies and then eat an early full
dinner. But I'm just so hungry that I sabotage myself. Please help,
Okay, Well, I have a few questions for you, Casey. Are
you absolutely sure that you are one hundred percent clean fasting? That's the bad
divers One question to do. I want you to check your coffee that you're
drinking, your tea that you're drinking, and see what's in it, because
if you are drinking a bottle beverage, whether it's cold brew coffee or iced
tea in a bottle, there's some sneaky additives in there that can break your
fast and make you hungry. We had someone in the community this week.
Did you remember did you see this stoak coffee? Yeah? It was someone
who was having a real challenge every single day and struggling, struggling and asking
for help. And then I was like, what are you drinking? And
then she said nothing but black coffee. I said what black coffee? And
it was the stoak with the natural flavorings and hopefully that will solve her problem.
Yeah, because I had actually read through like ten other people tried to
help her problem solve, and then I was like, what are you drinking?
Did you see my question? Yeah? Yeah, So, yes,
make one hundre percent sure that you're clean fasting, that you're not drinking earl
gray tea, that you're not drinking jasmine green tea. Make sure that it
is plain green or black tea. And make sure that you're drinking coffee that
does not have any additives, no coffee essence, no coffee extract, no
natural flavors, no citric acid. Bottled tea is There are very few bottled
teas that you can drink and that are clean fast. Very many bottled coffees
really yeah, I can never find one at a gas station bottle coffees.
Yeah, yeah, Well I've yet to find black coffee at a gas station
in a bottle. Oh. I've seen some, but it's always got additives.
It's like the Starbucks, or it's flavored, or it's sweetened. There's
not ever any just plain black. Yeah. So then and also, if
you're taking any supplements, you move those to your window outside of that sixteen
eight. You say you've been doing for three years not knowing how you eat
and how much you eat, and if you exercise, or what other health
conditions you might have. It's really possible that you've been writing the edge of
fat adaptation for three years and know you're not shifting into ketosis. Again,
I don't have all the information here. I don't know what your weight loss
has been like, I don't know what your current weight is. I don't
know if you're trying to lose weight. So we're just kind of a shot
in the dark hair. But for me, if I ate within an eight
hour window every single day, I would not be flipping the metabolic switch.
And that is where fasting gets easy. So I know it sounds kind of
counterproductive or counter intuitive. I guess is the word we Shorter window is going
to be easier, longer fast, shorter window because it's going to allow your
body to flip that switch. Once that switch flips, hunger really goes away.
I mean it comes and goes, but it's not relentless hunger that makes
you want to inhale everything in sight. Once you open your window, you
can open your window in a much controlled manner. Because your hunger isn't so
persistent and your body is fueled. So if you're not flipping the switch,
your body's running out of fuel and that's why you're starving. So a couple
suggestions. I'm the kind of person that I would rather do something really hard
for a short period of time than drag it out. So I personally would
just force myself to delay that window opening, and after a couple of days,
I think you're going to notice a difference. Yeah, if you can
fast till eleven, you can fast till one. I promise you can.
Yeah, you can, just can't do that for some reason. Then shorten
your window and then move it. So if you feel like you absolutely have
to eat at new because you just cannot wait, then open your window at
noon, but then close it in like five hours. And then once you're
consistently doing a five hour window for a while, then you can start pushing
your window back later. Because again, once you're flipping the switch, it's
really easy to delay your window by hours. I say I do in nineteen
five, but really it just means I open anytime after nineteen and it could
be twenty one, it could be twenty three. It just depends on the
day. It's one of those things where I'm busy and I'm not thinking about
food because my body's fueled. Yeah, I'm at hour nineteen right now,
and I only just figured that out just because I happened to see what time
it was. But I also think you might be trying to do it opposite
of what will feel right for you, Meaning you're trying to open with the
salad and veggies and then eat your dinner, but you're too hungry, and
so it sounds like to me, maybe you're not going to be satisfied opening
with a green salad and veggies. And guess what, I wouldn't either if
I tried to open with a little salad and a few veggies, I would
just be so much hungrier I would keep going. So you might want to
open with a meal and then close with your green salad and veggies and see
if that helps. Not everybody does better with a snack and than a meal.
I mean, like, I know, I say I do a snack
and a meal, but I have a hearty snack. Like yesterday's show was
really funny. It was like podcast sponsor a perfect day of eating. I
opened with my daily Harvest ball and I had some toast with it, Like
I didn't just have my daily harvest bowl. I had toast also, and
then later when it was time for dinner. Last night was a green Chef
night. And then I closed with my daily Harvest bites and I'm like,
oh, look, I could be a commercial today. But that was what
I ate for the window. But it was hearty, and then I was
able to wait, and then it was hardy, and then I had something
sweet to close my window, and that worked really well. But if I
opened with something really, really light, I would not be able to do
that. I opened with a salad all the time. But I'm not eating
a little, a tiny salad. No. I have a six cup bull
that I make a s and it's full of it's got a full balad.
It's a full tomato and you know several carrots that I agree, and it's
loaded with veggies and protein. It's a big salad. It's a big pro
salad. So I mean some people might call that lunch. That to me
is a window opener. And then I eat my meal because I can't just
eat a salad for my window. I would be starving after that. But
a big, hearty salad that works good. But I'm not having a little,
you know side salad. I tried to open in a dainty little way,
then I would be inhaling everything in sight also, right, So I
think that you might be thinking that the problem is you, and the problem
is actually what you're opening with is not satisfying enough. So it's not you,
it's that your body's ready for more food maybe at that time. And
again, I promise you, if you can fast till eleven, you can
fast toll one. And I'm not sure if where you are are you at
work? Yeah, Colorado is not a variable in this answer. If you're
at home and you're not at work, then maybe you could go run errands
right during that time or well, and if a project, take a walk,
Yeah, go get outside, get some sunshine, take a walk,
get away from the kitchen or the lunch room or whatever you normally do at
lunchtime. Because so much hunger is clock hunger too. Yeah, So if
you always eat at lunchtime and that's your habit, that's part of your body's
rhythm, then your body thinks it needs to eat at that time, So
you have to disrupt your schedule, so much is habit Like, I'm really
kind of than a two to seven window right now in general, if I'm
at home and nothing's going on. So if I was home right now,
I would probably be opening my window because the clock says it's after two,
and I could eat. But because I'm working, I'm here, I'm talking
to you, I'm not even thinking about boy I need to run get something
to eat, and I'm fine, and I wanted to talk about something,
and this is the perfect time to do it. And that is waiting till
you're hungry to eat. Because I have all of a sudden seen that in
the community this week, and maybe because we're just new in the year,
early in the year, but for some reason, and I can understand why
people might think this, because we tell you to listen to your body,
so people think, Okay, I need to listen to my body. I
need to wait until I'm hungry to eat. And I actually want to encourage
you not to do that. And that might sound crazy and counterintuitive, but
here's why. If you're sailing along in a fasted state and you are feeling
great and you're fat adapted, and you're running on your stored fat, if
you make a rule in your head, I'm not allowed to eat until I'm
hungry, Like what if you don't get hungry? What if it's nine pm
and you're still not hungry? So your body is so happy when you're fat
adapted that waiting until you're hungry is not required. Like I told you,
I might eat because it's two o'clock, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I never tell myself, Oh it's two o'clock, but I'm not feeling really
hungry, so I'm not allowed to eat yet. So once you open up
your window, it kind of gets your appetite going. You know they call
them appetizers, right, So give yourself permission to not have to wait for
wait until you're hungry. Now within your window, I want you to listen
to your body and only eat if you're hungry within your window. But now
you've woken up your appetite, your body is no longer in the fat burning
mode. Did that all make sense sharing, Yes? Because the problem too
with waiting too long to open your window is you may end up underfueling that
day. Right then you know your next day is you're going to feel like
you're struggling and you're like, why am I struggling well because your feast wasn't
sufficient the day before. With that said too, some other people have had
some questions about like, well, I opened my window because I was hungry,
but then this happened, This happened, and this happened, and my
window ended up being three hours longer than I wanted. And something I've shared
a lot in community this week and last week was look at your day in
advance, really plan and advance. Look at your schedule, and if you
know realistically that you are not going to be home for the evening and done
with your kids, sports or work meetings or whatever it is, you have
gone on that evening and you know that you're not gonna be able to get
home and eat and get your window closed until eight thirty pm when you normally
like to have it closed by five thirty pm. You may not want to
open your window when you normally open your window. That's a good point.
You may want to try to push that out, and you may not be
able to. If you're an early faster, you may not be able to
push it all the way to maintain your set window length, but you still
can push it a little bit and avoid having a really, really long window.
And if you are you know, fully fat adapted, that is a
great technique to use because I you know, there are people who are just
like oh, I inadvertently had a nine hour window today because life was busy.
But if you just at the beginning of your day, really take a
look at your schedule and see, okay, when can I close my window
today? Count back five hours? Now you know when you could realistically open
your window and still maintain your window goals. That's a really good tip.
All right. Now it's time for our segment called What's Your Why? And
you know, most of us start intermittent fasting because we want to lose weight,
and that is important, and I get it. It was my why.
Of course, my why has changed a lot over the years, and
it's a lot bigger than it used to be. But it's fine for weight
loss to be part of your why. But there's so much more to what
intermittent fasting can do for us beyond weight loss. And in my new book
twenty eight day fast Art Day by day, I ask readers to craft their
why statement before they begin, and when your why is deeper than weight loss
alone, you really are more likely to find the long term success and few
intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. So this week we have a wife from Sarah.
Sarah says why I'm committed to an intermittent fasting lifestyle is multifaceted. Like
many, I am committed to maintaining a body weight that is healthy for my
height and frame. But for me, that has less to do with how
my body looks and more about how my body functions. My current weight is
about eighty pounds less than my highest weight, and I am able to move
my body in ways now that I never could before. I can sit on
the floor for long periods of time and then get up with ease. I
can get out of a pool using my arms to lift my body weight.
I can keep up with my children. I can go on long walks with
my spouse. My body is a vehicle that I can maneuver and operate in
my life that allows me to live the life that I want. I know
that maintaining that vehicle with more muscle and less fat will allow that fully lived
life to continue. Another big part of my why is that I am on
active duty in the military. I am required to maintain height and weight standards,
as well as basic physical fitness in order to both keep and excel in
my job, good, bad or otherwise. The more I quote look the
part, the more I am respected by others. The more I'm respected by
others, the more good I can do. But those are about why I
am concerned about weight in general. That don't really answer the question of why
I'm committed to intermittent fasting specifically. I have ADHD, primarily inattentive type,
which was diagnosed as an adult. I literally cannot commit to anything that requires
a consistently high level of executive functioning. There are times that I can hyper
focus my attention on things that require a high level of detail and thought,
but I am not able to sustain that for long periods of time. At
the most basic level, intermittent fasting does not require much executive functioning. Is
my window open I can eat? Is my window closed? No eating,
fast, feast, repeat. Even at my worst, those ideas are simple
enough to stick in my brain. Intermittent fasting also just feels right for me.
It aligns with my personal values. The health benefits are clear and consistent.
It is self reinforcing. The more I do, the more I want
to do it. I can tweak it until it's easy, even with a
blindfold and my hands tied behind my back, because it's just not that hard.
It feels good. It's not the path of least resistance because I have
genetic loading for obesity in multiple related health conditions, and I live in a
world where there is constant messaging pulling me towards eating more frequently with bigger portions
and higher amounts of processed foods. But the eye of lifestyle is a path
where any resistance is easily overcome, especially with the support of the DDD community.
Oh, I love that so much, Sarah. Yes, there's so
much in there, Like I feel like everybody needs to rewind it and listen
to that again. That was powerful. A well lived life. You've got
to have a well functioning body to do that. That's true. Yeah,
So we have another question sent in from Kayla Joe and Texas. She said,
good morning, greetings from Texas. I am a forty year old mother
of two teens, and I have been overweight most of my adult life.
I have done every diet under the sun and found myself doing Atkins where I
was definitely successful During the Adkins process. I found myself literally crying because I
wanted to eat an apple, but I couldn't because it would set me over
my carb daily limit. I cried over not being able to eat an apple.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it. Well. I decided that day that I
was done with anything that restricted me from eating anything that God had made.
I found IF when I searched for non restrictive diet plans on Google, and
I quickly found Jen's book, Fast Fee's Repeat and all of her podcasts.
I read the book and I started IF while at church camp with my family.
It was then or never, and I decided it had to be then.
That was in June of twenty twenty one. I started fasting Clean and
Slow with sixteen eight and I am just now feeling healthy enough mentally to push
my window to twenty four consistently. It has taken me every bit of the
past two years to get out of that diet brain mindset, and that is
okay. I have got an IF to thank for that. I want this
to be my way of life. My question for you, I know we
are not really recommended to count calories or have restrictions during our eating window.
While trying to eat healthier foods, I still find myself mentally calculating the approximate
number of calories I might be consuming. How would you suggest that I stop
with the mental calculations. I don't know why I do this. I am
terrible at math anyway. Number two, can you give me a better understanding
of the hormones that come into play when I'm fasting and how they help me
to not have to worry about the caloric intake? Thank you for the help.
I'm an optimist at heart, and I truly believe in this process,
and I am thankful for the example of others that are willing to help me.
All Right, So that's a great question, and I don't know I'm
really trying to tell. I don't know if you're worried you're eating too much,
if you're worried you're not eating enough, or maybe both. I'm not
sure. But here's what I want everyone to really understand. I don't want
you to focus on naming the hormones that contribute to whether you're hungry or satisfied.
We don't need to know all that. Here's what we need to know.
We're designed with bodies that have signals that they send us. I want
you to think about animals in the wild, just living. They don't understand
calories. They don't count calories. They don't understand it at all. But
they know when to stop eating. Naturally, they just stop because they can
hear when their body tells them they've had enough. But if they're still hungry,
if they need to eat, they eat. They know that it's instinct
and we have to be able to trust that we can hear that too.
Now, when it comes to what stops you from hearing it, counting calories
is one of those things that stops you from hearing your signals because you might
mentally calculate it and say, oh, that wasn't enough, I need to
eat more, even though your body's telling you you've had enough. Now you're
ignoring that, or ooh, that was too much. I did a bad
job. That was too many calories, when really that is what your body
needed that day. So I really think counting calories is one of the most
destroys ways that we lose touch with our hunger and satiety signals because our body
doesn't count calories, that counts nutrients. Now, another thing that messes us
up. We see this with again. I'm going back to the animal example.
Animals that are fed by human, animals that are fed a processed diet,
those animals overeat and become overweight very very easily and quickly. Look at
our pets, right, So many pets are struggling. I have a diabetic
cat and O cow was home last week's sherry for around New Year's and he
like said, why is Ellie's so fat? Our Ellie is all chubby now
bo Yeah, anyway, they're eating you know, the higher quality but still
very ultra processed diet. If we just let her eat lizards outside, she'd
be fine. She wouldn't be overweight, she'd be able to regulate herself.
So it really comes down to two things. Nourish your body with food that
is real food and satisfying. Just like you said, you're not going to
restrict anything. You worded it as anything that God has made. I agree
with that eat food, and don't calculate Have I had too much? Have
I not had enough? Check them with your body? Am I still hungry?
Okay? Then I need to eat some more. Do I feel satisfied?
Okay? That's enough, And you may have to like reopen a window
every now and then because you realize you didn't quite eat enough and now you're
hungry. But it's not an emergency. If I didn't eat enough dinner and
two hours later I'm starving, I have two choices. I can be miserable
and push through that, or I can eat. I always just choose to
eat. I listen to my body because I don't like to do anything that
feels bad, and starving and going to bed hungry and feeling starving doesn't feel
good to me. So I can wake up in the morning, delay my
eating window till it's time to open. Then I eat until I'm satisfied.
Do I sometimes go past that? Yeah? Is there an occasion when I
realize, oh gosh, I'm still hungry and I normally would have closed my
window by now, but I'm really hungry, and then I eat little more.
Yeah. So I just want you to not have to know all the
biological ends and out to just know that we've got them. We've got those
signals, and we can learn to listen when we're eating real food. Yeah.
And I have a couple things that I want to add to. If
you're sitting there doing mental calculations of calories in your head, whether it's calories,
whether it's macros or whatever. There is nobody, no formula, No
person sitting making up a diet plan knows your body more than you know your
body. So for me, I know that if I do not eat enough
fiber and protein, I'm going to be hungry, and I mean deep in
my soul hungry. While the amounts might vary, I bet all of us
need to eat enough fiber and protein. Wouldn't you say that's a universal whatever
that like for you, probably pretty universal? Yeah, And you know,
like my protein needs are higher than Gin's protein needs. We know this.
We know this from dining together. We can eat the same meal and she
can be perfectly satisfied, and I'm in their kitchens grounds around making chicken tenders,
like that time I made you that vegetarian meal. I didn't even think
about it and then you were starving and I was fine. Well, Chad
and I were like not fine, And she's like, are you guys not
satisfied? And we were like, oh, we're not. So you know
your body best, and so if you can just like tune out all that
noise about like what you should be eating and really figure out what you need
to eat that makes you satisfied. You brought up hormones and I actually there's
a hormone specialist I follow on social media and she had a whole post the
other day that I thought was wonderful, and she talked about the fact that
on any given day, our caloric needs, our macro and micro nutrient needs
are going to be different. They're never the same from day to day.
It has to do with your body's fluctuations and your own hormones. It has
to do a stress, it has to do a sleep, It has to
do with how active you are, whether you worked out that day or didn't
work out that day, and that no two days in your week are your
caloric and needs ever going to be the same. So that when you try
to follow some program that you're basically not supporting your health and you're not supporting
your own hormones. Someday you're eating too much and the next day you're not
eating enough because you're doing exactly what the plan tells you to do. Yep,
I completely believe that's very very powerful. All right, So we have
another question. This is from Christy in Spokane Washington. She says, my
question is about meal less. Mondays, a repeated struggle that I hear on
a lot of your podcasts has to do with ADF and the up day following.
I am five feet, three inches and three quarters and at my highest
I weigh one hundred and sixty three pounds. I just didn't feel like myself
or like my body could keep up with all the things I wanted it to
do. I'm fifty one and still perimental pausal. Thanks to discovering IF stories
and reading Gen's books, I've been practicing IF with a one meal a day
approach going on seven months now. I love the flexibility since my work and
home life is often very unscared, I focus on my eating window rather than
how long I have fasted, and slid it around to fit my often busy
day. It's never the same day to day, but I usually have a
snack when I break my fast, try to get a lot of good nutrition
in because that's what my body wants, and I have dinner with my family.
I've lost about twenty pounds and I'm feeling fantastic. I know I still
have more weight to lose. Although the non scale victories and body recomposition have
been far more important to me. I have thrown in a couple of full
fast days or have tried down days with the nutritious five hundred calorie meal,
and I love the way I feel doing that. Like many other listeners,
I do not enjoy the upday. I love the idea of meal as Mondays,
but I really do not like having to pack a lunch on Tuesday or
let my friends and family know why I am suddenly eating a lot more but
just for one day. I have listened to enough of your podcasts to know
all of the reasons why it is important to have an up day after a
down day. My question, what is this? Would you foresee any problems
with doing it in reverse? Meaning have an up day, say on a
Sunday, when it would be totally easy and natural to have a day of
healthy eating with my family, then have my down day Monday, returning to
one meal a day on Tuesday. Short answer, No, don't do that.
Sorry, all right, chry I'll will let you take it first.
That was my answer one d percent. So first of all, I'm just
going to back up real quick. And you say you don't enjoy letting people
know why you're eating more for just one day. I'm gonna tell you right
now, you're way more worried about what you're eating than anybody else is worried
about what you're eating. I guarantee it. Why would it be okay to
have an updow on Sunday but not Tuesday. So that's something that you've got
going in your mind that you're hung up on. So maybe take a look
and try to analyze that a little bit. Now, do you have the
up day after the down day? Because okay, so you have this day
with no or little calories, and the upday is what lets your body know,
like this fast is over. We're not a famine. We don't need
to like lock down burn fat, We don't need to downregulate the metabolism.
We don't need to do any of that. Okay, we do know that
about thirty six hours into a longer fast like adyf that our metabolism does start
to downregulate a little bit. So the upday is what tells your body not
to do that. And it's that one hundred and twenty five percent of your
normal daily eating your like your normal calories, that is what boosts the metabolism.
That's where the metabolism boost comes from. You're not gonna get any of
that if you fuel and then have a down day, right, You're missing
that it's coming here, You're missing all the benefits of it. So it's
not going to work that way. The upday follows the down day for a
reason. I understand not wanting to pack a lunch, now that's a whole
different issue. Not wanting to pack lunch is a completely different issue. But
you could have your down day on Saturday and your up day on Sunday.
You'd have your down day on Friday and your upday on Saturday. Either would
be fine, but always follow the down day with the upday because, as
Sherry said, the upday helps your body recover from the down day, and
so that has to happen afterward. And then we have one quick question here
from Christy in Myrtle Beach. She says, I've been living the iFly style
for one and a half years. Can you please clarify the difference between flexibility
and window creep. Flexibility means that when you have a special occasion or something
going on, or today you want to eat lunch, you do that.
But I might be flexible, like Okay, For example, my sister is
in town visiting. She and her husband run in a house here for the
month. I'm so excited to have them. I didn't know that. Oh
I didn't tell you that. No, I knew they'd been there, but
I didn't. They've rented the house for the whole month. I'm so excited,
be I know. So this weekend, me and Alison, my sister,
and Will, my son, went down to looking. He's an artist
and he's figuring out what to do with his art because he's new at this
and wanting it to be his career. So we went down to Paully's Island
to see what all the different art places down there. But in the meantime,
we wanted to eat at Local, which is my favorite little brunt restaurant
in Paully's Island, and we ate at noon. And so here's an example
of flexibility. I opened at noon, but because I don't want to have
window creep, I did not keep my window all the way open as long
perhaps as I normally do. You just shift it, so window creep would
be if I open at noon and then keep it open until seven. And
I do that a lot because I'm being flexible. So being flexible can lead
to window creep. Right, you can be flexible with or without window creep,
so that's the key. Flexible without window creep is opening at a different
time and then keeping an eye still on when you're closing it. Flexible with
window creep is just kind of doing everything and the next thing you know,
you're average eating when is eight hours a day because you're overly flexing and now
your window's long. Right, Flexibility for me, I work night shift,
So flexibility for me means I move my window where I want it. So
I normally keep a late afternoon evening window when I'm not working. When I'm
working, I keep a late night window, like eight or nine pm,
and I keep it open for four or five hours still, so I'm maintaining
my same window length. I'm not extending my window just because I'm working and
moving it. My windows are flexible, and then I move them back when
I'm off work. Window creep would be, oh, well, it's five
o'clock and I'm hungry because I normally am eating dinner at this time, so
I'm going to open it five. But I know I can't really close it
until one am, and I did that every single weekend. That wouldn't serve
me well. That would have a flexible window with window creep. Like when
I first ended up moving here full time, I had window creep because I
was like in vacation mode. I was opening early because it felt like a
party because I was at the beach, and then I was keeping my window
open later. So I ended up with a really long window. That's window
creep. So I had to tighten it up. I had to be intentional.
I had to make myself out like, all right, I'm not going
to open my window until X time because I was always opening early and always
keeping it open later, so that that's window creep, all right. Before
we get to our tweak of the week, I want to take a minute
to talk about all of my books and which ones you need. If you're
new to intermittent fasting, if you're restarting after a break, or if you're
just in need of a refresh, you are going to want twenty eight day
fast Start, day by day, the ultimate guide to starting or restarting your
intermittent fasting lifestyle. So it sticks and you really do probably want the paperback.
This is a companion book for Fast Feast Repeat, so you're going to
want to have that one as well. Fast Feast Repeat is the comprehensive guide
for delayed on Tonight intermittent fasting, So it has everything you need when you
have a question or if you need a refresher onto a certain topic at any
point. And if you're a settled intermittent faster and you know that you want
to clean up what you're eating, your personal care products, the cleaning products
you use in your home, then I think you'll enjoy cleanish. I wrote
it so that the process of cleaning up would feel less daunting with a step
by step approach that you control every step of the way. And do you
know what's made me really happy this week, Sherry? What's that we're recording
this? It's January tenth right now, on the day that we're recording it,
and we're doing a community twenty eight day fast art day by day.
Today is day seven, and I am loving all of the experienced intermittent fasters
who did not need to restart, but they just decided to have a refresh
with all the new intermittent fasters because the new book was coming out and they
wanted to just be part of the excitement, and they are working their way
through the Fast Start book as a refresh and they're getting value out of it.
Well, I think we always have room to improve or pick up pieces
of information that we missed before. You know, things are relative at different
times in our life. Maybe when they started they didn't want to work through
something, and now they have the mental space to do it. Well.
You know, if someone had asked me, do I need this book if
I've been fasting all that, and I would have said I probably don't.
But now I think, well, yeah, if you feel like a refresh
would help you refocus. By the time this episode comes out, it'll be
February, then March, and then spring, which is my favorite. You
know, maybe a spring refreshed with twenty eight day Fast Start day by day,
maybe you guess he'd be reinspired. Yeah, that's what's happening. We
just feel new and freshing. Yeah, all the experienced interment and fasters.
I'm just so grateful that they came along with us on this fun twenty eight
day fast start as a community, and the fact that they are getting value
out of it as well, that's just really surprised me and made me happy.
So now it's time for our tweak of the week. This tweak was
submitted by Sarah in Hawaii. She said, right now I am enjoying a
two to five hour daily eating window after almost a year of consistant intermittent fasting,
but I still usually want a dessert also known as a carby sweet thing
in order to feel satisfied. My tweak it until it's easy, is that
I have moved when in my window, I enjoy it. If I try
to save it for the end like a traditional dessert, the first bite pushes
the mute button on my satiety signals I can really overdo it and still not
even feel that satisfied. If I eat it too early in my window,
forget it, the whole window will be a dopamine driven disaster. So I
make sure that it's as close to the middle as possible. This includes the
middle of my window and the middle of the meal. For example, yesterday
I opened my window with a savory bean and lentil mix with butter and some
zucchini spirals with parmesan cheese, both so good. I was actually thinking that
sherry that sounded delicious. She said, then when I was seventy five percent
satisfied, I ate a couple of short bread cookies and I really savored them.
Then I returned to my savory dishes and ate until I felt the sigh.
A few hours later, I had a small portion of chicken with roasted
root veggies. Total window was about four hours. I find that the first
and last bites should be savory and plant based for me. I have noticed
big differences in my behavior, for example easily recognizing and stopping at satiety,
big differences in the scale and even how hungry I am the next day.
I have always had a huge wave of hunger at nine am that I had
to diligently push through, but I've just noticed that I haven't had to do
that in a while. Sweet bonus, I love that. That really is
cool. I never thought of that. But yeah, it's like you're having
a you're sweet in the middle, like a little sweet sandwich, not really
sandwich, but you know what I mean, savory, sweet, savory.
Doctor Herring would suggest that people, if they want to desert, open their
window with it. Really yes, And I was always like, that sounds
like an awful plan, because that would be awful for your blood sugar.
Yeah, it wouldn't work for me, but eating it in the middle of
your window actually is not a bad plan because you're sandwiching it in between meals
and that's probably gonna help your blood sugar stay way more controlled. Yeah.
Well, we love to leave y'all with inspirational or motivational quotes or a message
to just get you through your next week, and this one comes from Judy.
She says, I'm very excited for my twenty eight day restart. I've
been doing a lot of reading and I came across a quote that, to
me, makes a very powerful statement about if it is the win is coming,
don't let the when orry you. This is a great mantra to keep
in mind as we start or restart our internet fasting lifestyle. I love that.
All right, thanks so much for listening today. We would love to
have you join us in the Delay Don't Deny 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're 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,