Episode 45: Body Image, Finding Motivation, CGMs, 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 doing pretty well, much better than last week. Well, that
is good. We did not record last week because you were going through some
dog surgery. Yes, my Lulu had surgery last Tuesday and it has been
well. It has been a little stressful. Yeah, she either has to
be in a little pen or her crate, or attached to me with a
leash like I have a three foot late leash, so like she can I
can pick her up, her on the couch with me, but she has
to be attached with a leash. She can't go up and down the steps.
So I have been carrying a sixty pound dog around over last week.
I'll be strong. If nothing else there you get over who needs weightlifting?
You've got Lulu, I know, which is a good thing because I have.
I was doing so well with my workouts and stuff, and then this
kind of disrupted my routine a little bit. This is real world working out,
and this is yes, I'm doing functional workouts right now exactly. Well,
I'm glad she's doing well. I know it's hard for a dog.
They don't know what's going on. Oh I know, it just broke my
heart. Yeah, but she does have to stay on some sedation for the
first six weeks, which I mean, if they want to call this sedation,
I guess she still wants to chase squirrels and drag me around the yard.
She just doesn't even get it. No, Well, hope that she
continues to do well. Me too, Me too. You had a fun
weekend, though, I did. My friends from college came to visit,
four of them plus me. Chad clears out when people look up to visit,
as he knows. We had a really nice time. And I learned
a new phrase. My friend Melissa, who is my college roommatee, she
has not slowed down at all. Let's just say she's got the opposite circadian
rhythm of me and alcohol does not bother her. But she said there's a
new trend with like bridal parties and girls weekends called girls Gone Mild instead of
girls gone Wild. And I'm like, all right, I'm a big fan
of girls gone mild. That's my speed, you know. So it's gotten
really easy, though, to not drink when my friends are drinking. Like,
I don't even miss it. I'm just happy I'm driving them around and
I feel great and sleeping. All. Well, has it been since you
really had a drink last summer? Right? It was June? Yeah,
Okay, I was trying to remember because I was there in July and I
don't remember you drinking at all. I didn't And the last time I had
a really really big, too much to drink was the last time the girl
these girls were here. Last April, I drank too much and felt awful.
That was when I was like their college roommates, Well, well that's
what you go back to your college. And absolutely did. But I drank
way too much beer over a long period of time last April. Woke up.
See the problem is I can't sleep in. They can sleep in.
I can't. So I still wake up at you know, five point thirty,
no matter what time I went to bed. So I woke them and
I just felt awful. And your body's probably still trying to metabolize the alcohol
from the night before. It was I like, it takes my body a
long long time to metabolize alcohol now. So that was when I was like,
this just really isn't working for me. And then that one I didn't
drink again from that time until June. And then Chad and I went out
and I had a few glasses of wine and it wasn't even like I didn't
overdo it, but I woke up feeling awful and I'm like, all right,
I'm done, and that was it. I'm a slow learner. I
guess I don't know. Well, I mean, I don't know, I
think it's a new like you're really forming a new habit. Yeah, but
it's not one that you're like, I want to do this. It was
kind of like your body was coaxing you there, So yeah, I can
see you two years. Yeah, it took some time to kind of for
your mind and your body to get on the same page. I mean I
met these girls, not all of them the same year. But Melissa and
I have been friends since nineteen eighty six. Wow, and we were roommates.
We weren't roommates the first year we met. We weren't reads. The
first year, were roommates the last three, but the first year we were
just friends. But year right, So the habits die hard. It's been
a lot of years. I mean, yeah, you've known them longer than
you've known your husband. Absolutely. Yeah, I me them first love.
Well, now it's time to share with you a really a wonderful celebration.
And today's celebration comes from sk in the DDD community, and she wrote,
today I celebrate my forty fourth birthday, and in doing this, I celebrate
gratitude, Gratitude for finding if it has given me back my life, gratitude
for freedom from the shackles and constraints of the diet world. They don't control
me. Gratitude for my past, obess body as it has always told me
when things are out of balance, Gratitude for letting go of numbers they don't
define me. Gratitude for having choices they give me power. Gratitude for being
able to put myself first. It has taught me self love, Gratitude for
the mistakes I've made. They have kept me grounded. Gratitude for my experiences.
They have molded me. Gratitude for delay. It has taught me patience,
Gratitude for courage. It has given me strength, Gratitude for change.
It is the only constant. Gratitude for struggles because they have taught me kindness,
Gratitude for strength. It meant I never gave up. Life is about
choices, chances and changes. You must make the choice to take a chance
if you want anything in life to change. The only limit is you.
And I just loved that so much. Yeah, that's really really good,
and I love the way she's you know, I feel the very same way.
Gratitude for mistakes, Gratitude for having been obese, Gratitude for the delay,
gratitude for change and struggle. You know, shifting your thinking to realize
that those experiences have shaped to your today is powerful. Yeah. I've heard
you say that before, and I always really struck a chord with me.
I think you experienced that feeling before I got there. Yeah, the gratitude
for yeah, the struggle, and for being obese. I really really do
feel that way, because you know, if I had just been let's say,
twenty pounds heavier than I am right now and just overweight, I would
have just I'm overweight, but I wouldn't appreciate the difference between being obese,
uh huh eighty pounds heavier than I am now versus how great it feels to
feel in a body that is strong and capable and healthy and no longer abese.
Yeah. I need it for me. I got to the gratitude,
but first I had to move past forgiveness, Like I had to forgive myself.
Yeah, for you know, all the horrible things I said to my
body and the things I put it through, and you know, for just
not knowing a better way. See that's the key. Though we were trying
really hard. You know. I look back to that older me or the
younger me, the old long time ago, the old me from before I
started fasting. And it's been you know, it's been ten years since I
went on that cruise and was two hundred and ten pounds. It's been ten
years since then, and I looked back at the meat that was trying really
hard and just didn't know better. I did everything. I tried everything,
and we were trying hard and working hard. So I forgave myself a long
time ago. But it was the industry I had to. I still mad
at the diet industry. Honestly, I get madder a little bit every year.
Well you know, it's funny because I was really angry. You know,
I've talked before about you know, I was put on way Watchers when
I was twelve years old, and you know, there's part of me that
was kind of angry at one point because I looked back at myself and I
wasn't OBEs so I really wasn't even overweight. I was just a big kid,
right, And you know, I was kind of angry about that because
I felt like I kind of set me up on this spiral of dieting and
whatever. But you know, I've been able to kind of move past that
and realize that, you know, I am grateful for that experience because if
nothing else, it taught me a lot about nutrition and you know what food
support weight loss for my body and that sort of thing. So really,
I just feel like, wherever you're at in your struggle, when you can
get to gratitude, it just it's like an exhale. It's true. And
I'm also a little mad still, or a lot mad still at the message
that our worth is tied up in our size and the way we look yep,
and having you know, unrealistic expectations for what like my fifty almost fifty
five year old body doesn't look the same as my twenty five year old body,
or right my thirty five year old body or my forty five year old
body. And I was looking at Instagram last night, laying in bed,
just you know how you do, and you're winding downs trying to go to
sleep, scroll and scrolling, and I started getting I don't know why,
I started getting these videos of these women and who've had the Brazilian butt lifts,
and like Instagram red Youromond and thought you needed to know about some of
these are just like, I mean, almost like exaggerated yes. And I'm
thinking to myself, Wow, these women are really going through this. I
don't know what it is, but an identity thing or is it? Well,
is it influence from other people that I need to look like that,
telling them to look that way? And there's this plastic surgeon and I don't
know where he is overseas somewhere he's doing a bunch of these maybe down like
in Brazil or something. And these transformations that he posts of these women,
they're crazy, but they're taking just regular women who have regular, normal bodies
and there he's just manipulating them in a way that doesn't even look real anymore.
And I thought to myself, then, how long before these girls growing
up think that is the body they're supposed to have it? And it's all
mind manipulation, right, and making us think that we should aspire to that.
And that is what is so sad, it really, it really is,
because we're that differently, right, Like my body shape and your body
shape are not the same, No, But the message that's being put out
there is like your body how it comes, whether you don't have a defined
waste or you have a flat butt me or your breasts are not large enough,
is somehow flawed, right, or maybe they're too large. I mean
just really everything when we start to yeah, yeah and I hate I think
the next the next thing we really need to do is just come to terms
with ourselves as genetically this is how my body is shaped, and I want
to keep my body healthy in this body, working with the body that we
have so well, I was talking about the gifts of imperfection today in the
community and that's you know, that's part of Brene Brown's message is like,
you know, we're all perfectly imperfect, and embrace those imperfections because we all
have them. And you know, trying to kill yourself to get the perfect
body and diet yourself to the perfect body and restrict to the perfect body,
you're you're never going to get there. Well, and the bar is going
to keep moving, right, And you said the word perfect, and you
know what, it's all a matter of what is in style right at that
moment. Exactly what is the perfect butt? Is it exactly any butt or
a Brazilian butt or I don't know, just the butt you were born with?
Is your perfect butt? Yeah? Exactly? Thank you for coming to
my TED talk Anyway, it's a it's a real challenge in society, and
I get it. So we've got to pull away from that toxic culture of
judging ourselves and other people don't judge them either, right yep. So now
we have a question from a listener. This question is from Pam in Toronto.
She says, I have been practicing dirty fasting since twenty fourteen, and
I started the Clean fast almost two years ago. I am thin and do
intermittent fasting for health and longevity benefits, especially preventing Parkinson's and dementia, which
run in my family. I have been diagnosed with a small hyattle hernia and
reflux slash gurd. My gastro enterologist suggested that I avoid certain foods and to
eat small meals and snacks throughout the day. I told him about my current
protocol, which is snack plus one meal, and he sort of shrugged and
repeated the suggestion of small, frequent meals. I can avoid his list of
foods, but I don't particularly want to give up if I know you don't
give me medical advice. But I'm wondering if you have heard of anyone with
these conditions who have managed to continue intermittent fasting. I have heard people in
the Intermittent Fasting Stories podcast talk about how they no longer have reflex or gird,
but I haven't heard anyone talk about a high addle hernia yet. Thanks
so much for putting out such great info and helping people to reach their health
goals. Well, so, I have not really heard any specific like success
stories from anybody about heidel hernias, but I can tell you what I know
about heidel hernias, And so for anybody who doesn't know what this is,
it's when the sphincter at the top of your stomach relaxes and your actual stomach
comes up through that sphincter kind of the stopagus. Well, yeah, we're
actually the actual stomach. Oh yes, Now it can start with just reflux
okay of food and stuff, but over time, the actual heidel hernias,
when the actual stomach starts to come up through that sphinx go and you can
it can have it be a very very small part of the stomach that has,
you know, come up through that and it's now kind of up in
your chest. So it causes some chest pain and pressure and reflux and it's
just not a comfortable feeling. For people, but I mean there are people
whose entire stomachs actually do end up going up through that. There's surgical intervention
that is done for that. So you know, what you want to do
is not make your hernia, you know, worse or bigger. So one
of the reasons they do suggest small frequent meals is so that you do not
overfill your stomach. And you know, I think with one meal a day,
I don't know anybody who is just sitting down and eating like a five
course meal in r yes, right, So I think it really depends on
how you're defining and how you're doing your one meal a day. If you're
doing one mail like Jen and I kind of describe one meal a day where
you're doing like a snack slash appetizer sized portion of something and then maybe a
little bit later a little salad or soup or beans or whatever. And then
a little bit later you're having your meat and your side or whatever it is
that you're eating, and a little bit later you might have a little snack
or a little dessert. And you're doing that over five or six hours,
seven hours, whatever it is that you're doing for the health benefits, you're
not going to be overfilling your stomach, So that's my best advice to you.
Don't sit down and just eat a huge meal. My other suggestion is
if you can walk after you eat, that just keeps that gets digestion going.
That's going to help things move out of your stomach. It also helps
with your black glucose. And then don't eat very close to bed. You
really want to have your stomach contents, you know, gone by the time
you lay down in bed. And then as far as the gird the reflux,
there are people who are healing that every day. And my best suggestion
for you is to read Fiber Fueled. I'm trying to remember doctor Bee's website
name, but he if you go look up doctor will Bolshowitz. I don't
I think is how you say his name. If he just search for Fiber
Fueled book, it'll help you find yes, but find his website because he
actually has little self guided classes you can take, and he has one on
healing reflux or kirt or one of those, and you know it might be
helpful for you to take that little class and see if you can't can't heal
that yourself. But that's that's my best advice for you just yeah, so
uh hyattle hernia is a mechanical Yeah, you've got a mechanical problem going on.
So that would be one of the things. I don't know if intermittent
fasting would would heal that? No, I don't think it's going to heal
it, so you no, So I would you know, you might want
to have a longer eating window than you've been having, right, yeah,
even she said, yeah, then she's doing intermittent fasting for health and longevity.
Well, Chad does intermittent fasting for health and longevity. He has about
an eight hour window. And so I would talk to your gas strove anddrologist
again and see if that would work, you know, if you could strut
ask for his advice on stretching it out within an eight hour period any frequently
in small meals throughout that time. Yeah. And the other thing I was
going to say as well, is you could potentially do a an ADF type
for three type protocol as well, where if it doesn't bother your reflex or
your you know, your gurd, if it doesn't bother it by not eating,
then one day you have a very small five hundred calorie meal and the
next day, you can spread your eating out across and have an entire day
on your update. That's I think would be, you know, if you're
doing it for health and longevity, that alternate daily fasting protocol not not suggesting
necessarily that you just do up down, up, down, up down forever.
You could even just throw in a couple of down days a week followed
by updays, and for your upday, eat throughout the day. So there
are a lot of ways to make it work. But I would really listen
if your gas tentrologist says that you should not eat a large amount snack plus
one meal in a short period of time might be more than your body can
process. Yeah, so I would definitely follow your doctor a window. Yeah,
yeah, all right. Our next question is from Dereka in Port Orchard,
Washington, and she said, my question is for when you first start
fasting, I am just having trouble sticking with it. How can I motivate
myself to stick with fasting. That's a great question, and that's the motivation
you really have to find within yourself. You have to want to do it.
And that sounds very simple. It's both that simple and that complicated when
you have a powerful why and you are really motivated to live life as an
intermittent faster you do it. And I know that might sound like well duh
or you know, but I can't find it. That's the part you have
to find within you. If I could give everybody the motivation magically and just
say Bam, you've got it, I would do it a boy do.
I wish I could give everybody the motivation to want to stick with it.
Well, and you just nailed it well. If you're looking for extrinsic motivation,
if you're looking for motivation from outside of yourself, whether it be society
or you don't want your mom commenting on your way anymore or whatever, that's
not going to motivate you. That's not where you get motivation from. Motivation's
intrinsic. It comes from with inside you the best. So motivation has to
come from within and that is very simple, like I said, but it's
also that is the hard part, you know. And I dabbled with intermittent
fasting for a lot of years from two thousand and nine to twenty fourteen,
and finally I stuck with it in twenty fourteen because my motivation was huge.
I was obese. I saw photos of myself. I could barely walk round
with my family on a cruise. I couldn't climb them. Iyan ruins,
I was embarrassed in my bathing suit. I had a lot of things that
were making me not feel good in my body, and so I had all
of a sudden I had a lot of more motivation to stick with it.
So for somebody who might be considering themselves a dabbler and you've started and stopped
a bunch of times, that is one reason that I wrote twenty eight day
fast start day by day, because once you can develop the habit for those
twenty eight days, it can really help. And I would get the book,
I would get the paperback, and I would work through it every single
day. Take the time craft a powerful why. Yeah, you know.
And one thing I noticed when you did the community led twenty eight day fastart,
where there were several people who said, I really struggled with my why.
And at the beginning of the book, Jen asks you to write your
why, and there were people who said, you know, I really struggled
with that. I didn't really have a why. I just knew I needed
to do it. But over the course of that twenty eight days, they
found their why, right, whether it was because they started feeling so much
better, so much quickly, or whatever, or they suddenly felt like,
you know, this was possible, or their fear of fasting was gone,
or whatever it was. You know, by the end of the twenty eight
days, everybody had really powerful whys. And I also have to say that
if your mindset is not in the right place, and if you hate fasting,
you will not succeed. You have to find the beauty in the fast,
find the healing and the fast. You have to embrace the good that's
happening during the fast. I had to learn instead of thinking of the fast
as something I had to get through, I had to learn to appreciate it,
like when I started to realize how great I felt while fasting, when
I had the clarity and the energy and the no more afternoon slump. Right,
you really do have to learn to appreciate the fast. If you're still
in the point where you're like, I hate fasting, I just want to
lose the weight, then you don't have the motivation yet. Yeah, it's
well and true. Like anything that you don't enjoy, you're gonna resent It's
true. So, I mean, I love bacon, but if you tell
me I had to only eat bacon every day for the next month, I'm
gonna hate bacon. It's true, you know. So, I mean,
you have to figure out what you enjoy about fasting. And that might mean
that in the beginning, you just say, hey, I'm gonna make a
commitment. Maybe you're wise not there, and maybe you're not really super motivated,
but you know on one hand, and you know this is something you
need and want, Like, just make that commitment and then start to observe
how you feel and the benefits of the fast, right, and you're not
going to feel great the first twenty eight days the whole time, by the
way, So if anybody who's like starting and stopping and only making it a
few days at a time and then quitting and then starting again, like maybe
every Monday you start over, and then every Thursday you quit, and then
every Monday you start over, you're living in the hard part. And so
I would not be successful if I did that right now, I have to
be consistent, but you have to work your way up to it. So
the thing is is that if when you start, if it's hard. Know
that it gets better, or I would not still be doing it ten years
later if it was miserable. I promise. If it was miserable and I
hated it, I wouldn't do it, so and neither would Sherry. We
wouldn't do it. It feels good once you adapt and when you learn to
appreciate the fast, and we have a powerful one that will set you up
for success. Yep, all right, And on that note, it's time.
First segment called What's Your Why? And most of us begin with weight
loss in mind. I certainly did. It is perfectly fine for that to
be part of your why, But there is so much more that fasting can
do for us beyond weight loss. And that's why in the first part of
twenty eight day fast Art day by Day, I ask readers to craft their
why statement before beginning. When your why is deeper than weight loss alone,
I really believe you're more likely to find long term success and view intermittent fasting
as a lifestyle. So today we have a why from Jennifer and she titled
this Embracing my Inner ten year old. She wrote, one of my big
whys is that I want to feel the physical freedom. I felt as a
ten year old, that feeling when you put on a new pair of sneakers
and feel like you could dance on a cloud. I used to spend hours
playing double Dutch jump rope, moving for joy. Now that my emotions are
becoming separate from my hunger signals, I have hoped that the ten year old
will frolic again, and this time I will have the emotional maturity to tell
her that her feelings are valid and she does not need to disguise herself under
a blanket of fat. Oh yeah, embrace that ten year old you.
I love that. Yes, I love that as well. Somebody in the
community said something about skipping. I can't remember how I mentioned it. Yeah,
it had something to do with a study about osteoporosis. Oh and like
building your density. Yeah, two minutes a day of skipping or something can
help prevent osteoporosis or something. Wow. So I started skipping that day and
it was so much fun. When's the last time you skipped? Well,
actually, there was some like TikTok challenge maybe a year ago about skipping,
and they asked people if they could skip, and like people forgot how to
skip really and there was a video. Somebody actually asked me. It was
another day, way a long time ago. I think it was Nancy in
the community. He said, do you still remember how to skip? And
I'm like, of course I do, but I didn't skip that day,
but I didn't know people would forget. Yeah. Well, when when I
saw this, we started coming out at work and I was like, do
I know how to skip? And it took me a second because first I
started galloping and then I was like, nope, that's not skipping. Oh
my gosh, that's so funny. Yeah, galloping is totally different. I
imagine it would achieve the same result of skipping. Well, you'd have to
like alternate your legs like gallop to the right and gallop to the left.
I would want to be balanced. But yeah, I was able to skip,
so I must have looked like a ten year old. Like, like
Jennifer said, it was so much fun to skip. So everybody who's listening,
if you are not driving your car, don't do it. If you're
driving your car, But if you're stop and skip, pause, skip around,
just do it for thirty seconds and you can't help but smile like.
It totally brought me joy to skip. Let's normalize that again, skipping.
Do you know I bought a jump rope like a year to ago because I
was a jumping rope forever. Oh my gosh. I for like a minute
and I was like, my gosh, that's so hard. How did we
do this as kids for an entire thirty minute recess? Yeah, we did
it forever. That's hilarious. Well, this week we have another question from
Brandy in Texas. She said, I am brand new to intermint fasting and
it's still within my first twenty eight days and it's going surprisingly well. But
I have two questions. First, after a week, I wanted to try
a down day. By almost eight pm, I was pretty hungry, but
not miserable. My sister reminded me that I could have a five hundred calorie
meal if needed. I grabbed a few bites of cantlope and it's like my
hunger hormone went into overdrive. Needless to say, I did not successfully do
a down day. I just opened my window and fasted like normal until dinner
the next day. What kind of meal would you recommend? It will not
affect that hunger hormone like that? And my second question, is I normally
take Tom's for tommy irritation? If I've already closed my window, what could
I take or would a Tom's be? Okay? All right, let's talk
about the toms. First. If you have recently closed your window and your
meal is still digesting, take that Tom's. Yes, Tom's breaks a fast.
But if you just ate and you're having an upset stomach, your food
is still digesting, Tom's is not going to prolong how long it takes for
your body to get into the fasted state. Now, if you wake up
in the morning, you've already been fasting for fourteen hours. I would probably
not take a Tom's then, because you're deep into your fast. Do you
agree with that? Sharing? One hundred percent? Agree? Now? And
you ever take anything for anything? What would you tell her to take during
the fast? A teaspoon of baking soda in six to eight ounces of water.
All right, So all right, let's talk about there are two things
that we need to unpack from this. And first of all, you know,
if I could go back in time and make some changes to fast feast
repeat, it would be the eighty FI chapter. There would be two things
that I would say. First of all, we now know that the six
to eight hour minimum that I wrote about and Fast Feast Repeat for your upday.
Unfortunately, people have misinterpreted that as thinking six to eight hours is the
recommended length of the upday, when really a successful upday doesn't need a window
at all. So the research on alternate daily fasting, they didn't fast on
the upday, they got up, started eating, had a normal eating day.
But when I was writing the book, it was twenty nineteen and in
our community people were kind of doing their updays like at least six to eight
hours. That was kind of what we were doing. So that's what I
put in the book, but I would expand on the update needing to be
longer. The second thing is that I would be very very clear that you
should not start any sort of down day upday eightf protocol until you have built
your fasting muscle. In fact, we've been recommend that to people for a
while now, but we actually said that to somebody in the community just over
the weekend. Sherry. I don't know if you saw her comment to me.
She said, well, I don't remember reading that in Fast Feast Repeat.
I'm like, well, I didn't say that in fast feast repeat,
because I kind of didn't think anybody would jump right into ads. You know,
it's like you realize the information that I wish i'd said that in fastest
repeat, So Brandy, I would one hundred percent, and for everybody who's
listening, I would not try to have down days during your first twenty eight
days. And I also wouldn't try really for your first three to six months,
which sounds like a long time. But the reason that I would say
that now you have to think back to when I was running Facebook groups.
By the time I left Facebook, we had about five hundred thousand members in
the groups combined, and so I didn't get to know people over time the
way I do now in the small community where I see every single post and
have a chance to comment on every single post. So I didn't see the
struggle. I didn't see, you know, the one person who tried to
do ADF too early and then posted about it and then I could follow up
later and because I knew them. Now I do. Now we have a
small enough group that we see the struggles, we see the long term,
we know what people are doing, so we have noticed now that we really
know our members. So much better that the people who try to do it
too early end up having more problems. Yep, And we hear from a
lot of people like, Wow, I tried to do ADF early on and
I hated it and it was terrible and I crashed and burned and it messed
me up. But then I waited a year and tried it again and now
I love it. Uh huh. So, just based on that, yep,
we would not recommend that you start earlier. So if I ever revised
fast FEAT, repeat that ADF chapter is going to get some revision up day
eight to twelve hours minimum. And please don't do any kind of ADF for
down days until you have really built up your fasting muscle. Now. The
other thing is what to eat for your day on day meal. Definitely not
something like a little bit of candlelope. That would be probably the worst thing
I could think of. Anything that's gonna cause a quick blood sugar spike and
crash is going to be a bad, bad choice. I couldn't open my
window with candlop. Of course, I hate candlop. Did you know that
about me, Sherry? I did not know. You hadn't like any coind
of melons, so cauliflower and candleover on Jin's no list or cucumber. I
don't like any of those mushy, watery I don't know what it is.
I get it. I don't like orange vegetables. Where's no kind of orange
squash or sweep potato or yam that you might taste something that's in that orange
coloring, something about that. Maybe pick it up. I don't know.
My tongue doesn't like. I don't know. I don't like all those watery
fruits and vegetables. But anyway, but when you're having a five hundred calorie
down day meal, I would one hundred percent. And this is going to
be for later, Brandy. Once you're really adapted to fastening, you've built
up that you know, quote fasting muscle. It's not really a muscle,
but you know what I mean, you're going to want to plan an intentionally
satisfying Downday meal. So you have to think what foods are going to lead
to great satiety, meaning they're going to activate your body stretch receptors and feel
filling. That's going to be high fiber food protein. It's going to digest
slowly enough. You're not just going to It's not just going to like go
straight through you know, like a protein shake would be one of the worst
things I could think of because it would be go go right through you and
then you'd be starving. Well, And as you were talking, you said
a five hundred date meal, and in my brain I was thinking a meal.
Meal, this is this is not a snack, Right, You're planning
a well balanced meal because it's that well balanced meal that's going to give you
lasting satiety. Right. You want a little fat, you want some fiber,
you want some protein, you know, all of that is what's going
to make you feel satisfied and not spike your blood glucose causing a crash which
is going to make you hungry later. Like for example, a big baked
potato is going to have a lot of satiety attached to it. It's going
to fill you up, it's going to feel satisfying. Just think about what
can you have with it that's going to also lead to long satiety. So
that's really what you want to do. So I hope that I hope that
that helps. Brandy. I think you answered that really well. All right,
we have another question from Toby in Ohio. Toby said, Hello.
I am a fifty two year old woman. I have dieted my whole life,
lost and gained forty to seventy five pounds a handful of times. I
started seriously fasting in April of twenty twenty three, and by October I had
lost twenty five pounds. My clean fasts always varied between sixteen to twenty hours.
I was so happy with the weight loss, but I still did not
feel good, extreme brain fog and just so tired. I signed up for
Zoe becase I really wanted to see if I could start avoiding foods that might
make me feel bad. Well, I got the CGM and it was eye
opening. My glucoase rarely gets above one hundred, and often it's below sixty
and has dipped as low as forty five a couple of times. This scared
me, so I quit fasting and I started eating about every three hours.
Well, this morning I got on the scale and I have gained back eight
pounds in a month. I feel even worse and bloated and just awful.
I truly feel fasting is the only way for me to keep my weight under
control. I do not think I'm eating more calories now than when I was
fasting, yet not fasting has resulted in this game. I feel like only
the two of you can help me. My doctor seems clueless. Can you
please help me figure out a way to steal fast? Can I talk real
quick about something I just saw, Yeah, on YouTube, Cyrus from Mastering
Diabetes. You've heard me talk about him before. I was on his podcast
recently, on the Mastering Diabetes podcast. It just came out, I think
last week, and his episode with me on my podcast is coming out I
think in June. But because you know that's on my radar now, YouTube
has began showing me the Mastering Diabetes podcast and he had an episode recently that
he did with his wife and someone else that works with them, and they
talked about cgms and Cyrus has been a type one diabetic for a while,
so type one diabetics it's super duper important to have a correct blood sugar reading.
Cyrus does not like cgms even a little bit, and I after watching
him talk about them, Sherry, I don't like them either. They are
too variable. He said that they're allowed to be twenty percent variable. They
are allowed to be twenty percent off what your blood sugar really is. Twenty
percent is huge, It's huge. So when Toby is talking about her blood
glucose rarely getting above one hundred and often being below sixty and as low as
forty five, that could be totally not even what's really happening exactly. It
could be off. That CGM could be miscalibrated. And when I said they're
allowed to be twenty percent off, that is just in general. You could
find one that's even worse off miscalibrated. Well direct when they talk about it
being twenty percent off, I think that's a variability of your of that seat,
like between one CGM and another. Comparison to reality, a real what
it really is, That's what I because a CGM is not measuring your blood,
No, it's not. It's your interstial interstitial interstitial fluid, interstellar slow
space travel, yeah, interstitial fluid. Yeah, it's not going to equal
your if you did a fingerstick at the exact same time, it's not going
to be the exact same right, And in fact, did you know I
didn't know this until I heard Cyrus talk about it. But again he's type
one diabetic. He said that they are told in the type one community not
to treat blood sugar based on a CGM number that you must do a fingerstick
to verify. So if something's gonna have that much variability and not be accurate,
that doesn't sound like a useful tool that So anyway, well about that
two, I mean, like so much affects your blood glucose. So like
if you are super well hydrated, you're gonna have a lower blood glucose level.
If you have an insulin response, whether it's because you just ran up
a flight of stairs or you were in the sauna, you took a hot
shower, you're really mad, or you didn't sleep well, you know,
insulin's released, blood sugar is gonna come down. Are you men apozzle?
Are you having some reactive reactive hypoglycemia? You have that right? What was
it from going from being the PM? Your blood sugar got low? Yep,
yep yep. So I you said you had extreme brain foot fog and
you were really tired. I guess my question is can you correlate that with
low blood sugar? And did you ever do a fingerstick? Because brain fog
and being tired, I mean that can be perimenopause and menopause. That could
be electrolytes. Have you ever, you might be a person like me who
just needs more electrolytes well. And your your blood sugar issues also stemmed from
the hormonal changes your body was going through. So that again was menopause.
Yep, yep, So I get. I think my thing is, don't
put all your faith in that CGM whatsoever. Like I would really be exploring
why do you have brain fog? And why are you so tired right now?
If when you're eating all day long and you've you know, over this
month where you gained the eight pounds and you suddenly felt better, then I
mean, I guess that's something you're going to have to figure out. I
have more brain fog if I eat frequently during the day. Yeah, I
mean, if I eat during the day, I am so tired. I
just want to lay down the couch and lay there the rest of the day.
I'm very you know, non productive for after I eat my big meal.
So I mean, it's really hard to know what's going on in your
body, but I just really want, you know, I see people that
we see this all the time. They're sign up for Zoe or they can't
get Zoe where they live, so they just get a CGM and then they
start really stressing over their blood glucose changes or how low they perceive their blood
glucose to be. And you know, something else that you really need to
think about too, is like blood glucose is a range. Right, the
range that we've declared of normal is like sixty to one hundred. That's a
pretty broad rain fast right during faster fasting. Right, Okay, so say
you want they say, you know, you want your target bloody clothes after
you eat to be you know, maybe thirty points higher. Well, if
your normal fasting blood glucose is in the sixties, it's not going to get
over one hundred. If you're eating a healthy diet, it's not normal,
yeah, but it might. If your normal runs ninety, you might get
up to one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty. So I just don't.
I am like, I'm kind of like you guys, I don't.
After wearing a CGM for three months and really trying to manipulate the data on
it and changing the way I was eating to try to manipulate the data for
my CGM, I gained weight. I gained weight. I felt awful I
was sluggish and my cholesterol skyrocketed. I have never put another CGM on.
Well, you were tried to keep it from going up by adding more fat,
right, correct, Yeah, because that's one train of thought and just
reducing, reducing, reducing, reducing carbs, right. And for me,
when I did that exact same thing, I noticed that it might not go
up as quickly after I ate, but it stayed up for twelve hours after
I ate. The adding the fat did, right, And so having less
fat and whole food plant based eating kept my blood sugar lower and steadier for
me. But all in all, for anybody who's listening, if I ever
wanted to wear a CGM again, I would also get a fingerstick to have
along beside it so that if anything looks weird, you could test it and
compare it and see, because your fingerstick is going to give you a much
better accurate number than the CGM. But that just shocked me hearing Cyrus talk
about it, and I just really didn't know there could be that off.
If it seemed like it's not right, it might not be right. Yeah,
I agree, I agree. Well, before we get to the tweak
of the week, I just want to take a minute to tell you about
Beauty Counter as I saw my health start to change after starting inter basting back
in twenty fifteen, and you know, I stopped chasing the latest diet information
and I was no longer on a continual search for lasting weight loss. My
focus really started turning towards just overall health and wellness and learning what I could
do to support my body's detox pathways and balance my hormones. And this became
especially true after learning that I have the MTA to farm mutations and that hinders
my body's ability to detox easily. And it was then that I really started
to learn about forever chemicals and other indocrine disruptors that we are exposed to daily.
What we put on our bodies is just as important as what we put
in our bodies. Since the skin is the body's largest organ, it makes
sense that we need to treat it with care. And in twenty twenty,
I transitioned all my skin and beauty care and needs over to Beauty Counter.
I've never looked back. Not only do I know that I'm using a quality
product that is free from over twenty eight hundred ingredients and chemicals that are own
or suspected of causing lasting harm, but the company continually pushes for government legislation
to clean up the beauty industry. Best of all, my skin has never
looked better, and I just want to say there is a change. Right
before we recorded this where April, Yeah, founder of beauty Counter, her
name is greg She had sold my understanding is a majority of the company to
an investment group. She did not like the direction they were taking this company.
She believes in clean beauty so much that she just bought the company back
so that she can continue to put clean beauty in the hands of consumers and
make sure that it is you know, the quality that she is comfortable with.
So if you are interested in learning how to get started with beauty Counter,
please do not hesitate to reach out to me. I feel very passionate
about this. You can reach me at Sherry at fast fees repeat dot com
and you can also just visit my website at beautycounter dot com slash Sherry Bullock.
That's s H E R I b U l O c K. Yeah,
that was quite a surprise for beauty Counter customers, because definitely was,
and it was a surprise for us too. So the website. By the
time this episode comes out, it'll all be up and running again. But
the website was down for a couple of weeks at the end of April,
coming back up May first. So if you looked at it prior to May
first and you're like, what's happening, it's time to go back, you
can look at it again. So if you had any credits, they're gonna
They're all still gonna be there. They just needed to make some changes for
her to take back leadership of the company again. So you know, that
would have to be hard to sell your company and then not like with the
way it was going with Cal and the fasting app. For example, calsl
this fasting app and I still feel it was never mine. It was always
Cals, But I still feel maternal about it. But I would like to
buy it back. I wish I'd bought it instead of letting him sell it
to a company. Yeah, anyway, you feel very much like, no,
that's mine anyway. So now it's time for our tweak of the week.
You know, I always say tweak it till it's easy, But the
tweak that works for me might not be the one that works for you.
And That's why it's super helpful to hear how other intermittent fasters are making intermittent
fasting work for them. This tweak was submitted by Mimi. She said,
my tweak is to avoid snacking or grazing during my eating window, even though
it is open. I do eighteen six opening with a real lunch around one
pm, followed by a real dinner around six pm. No snacking means that
my eating is focused on real food, seated at the table. Dinner includes
dessert if I want it. Do I occasionally break the no snacking policy,
sure, but my normal pattern is two satisfying meals. And Sherry knows what
we call all that in our community. Sometimes too mad. No, the
chad Fast. Oh, the Chad Fast. Yeah, okay, people call
it the Chad fast because that's what Chad does. He Oh, there's no
snacking. Well, yeah, I was thinking about the two I've seen about
her two meals, but you think you're talking about the open up eat,
stop eating. Yeah, the Chad Fast, that's what It's what we call
it. Chad opens around eleven, eats his lunch until he's had enough,
and he's very intuitive about It's interesting watching him wander around the kitchen until he's
had just thrown a mountain heat. Then he stops like he just you can
tell he's not satisfied yet, and he has one more thing than he quits,
and then he does not eat another bite of food until five pm.
If it's four fifty eight, he's not eating another bite. I know,
I've seen him. He waits still five and then he has a little bit
of a grazing to open his window. And then we have dinner around seven.
So he calls it two windows, even though it's not. That's not
really hope, but he thinks of it as two windows. Yeah, Like
he actually will say my window is closed between the two, and I just
don't I don't correct him, but it works for him. Well, yeah,
as long as it works. He can visualize our bound closed. It's
like a mini close, a chad close. Well, it's like closing the
screen door, yeah, exactly, and then at seven you close the whole
class door, right. Yeah. Well, we'd love to leave you with
inspirational motivational quotes. And this week we have a message from Jamie. In
the blink of an eye, another week is gone. In the blink of
an eye, another month is gone. In the blink of an eye,
another year is gone, and in the blink of an eye, I'll be
gone too, and not just me, but also you. So maybe we
should be wishing and hoping that we could just keep our eyes open and see
and appreciate all that we can see and learn how we can be the best
that we can be before or it's too late. Time flies, So let's
not wait. Whether we have just one life or many, one thing is
true. We should try to enjoy every moment we can. It's the wisest
thing to do. And that is the author of that poem is unknown,
But I just really liked that. Yeah, I think so too. Time
really does fly. 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 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,