Episode 51: Protein and ADF, Fasting Insulin, When to Work Out, 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, I'm doing
wonderful. How are you well? I've had a sad week, as you
I know. My dad passed away a little bit over a week ago,
and I was in Augusta, well, North Augusta area, South Carolina,
to be with family and for the funeral. So I'm back home from that.
It's hard, It is very hard. Yeah. I was reading the
last report from he had just gone on hospice and during the visit from the
healthcare provider that was going to be working with him, I read the list
of everything that was wrong with him. It was a lot, really,
Yeah. The official cause of death was metastatic prostate cancer, but he had
kidneys, failing, heart disease, and dust of heart failure. It was
really it was a long list. So you know, my why is even
more powerful. I want to age well and I don't want to be sick.
You know, as long as I can be healthy, I want to
be healthy. So it's really really hard to watch someone. You know,
your dad, right, He's always been larger than life, and then the
past year has just been really it's been yeah. Yeah, Well, and
even when you're you sink, maybe you're mentally prepared, you know the end
is near or whatever, but nothing really prepares you for that phone call or
yeah, you know, well, when the phone ranging and it was my
brother, I knew what it was, but you know, my dad was
in a lot of pain, and it was really hard. But you know,
he was of the generation and of the belief the mindset that you just
took a pill, you took medicine, the doctor would just put you on
the medicine. And so he was not a big believer in lifestyle changes.
Unfortunately, that is my husband. Yeah, and he's like, well,
I mean they make pills for that, and I'm just like, oh my
gosh. He told me the other day that I've rubbed off on Seth.
His son, he's twenty one, twenty two, he'll be twenty two this
year. Goodness. He was in Greade school when I well became a stepmom.
That's crazy. I'm really funny, Like I don't take a tile and
all I have to have a headache for either several or it has to be
really an excruciating headache before I'll even take a tailanol. And of course,
anytime I say I have a headache, Eric's I like, take a Tilentol
and I'm like, dude, I'm not taking talent al. I just got
a headache. I'm just letting you know I'm not at my best today.
Well, he told me, he said, somehow, you've rubbed off on
Seth. And I said why, And he said, because he was here
this weekend. He said he had a headache and I said, you can
give a talent all and he said, no, thank you. I try
not to put medicine in my body if I don't have to. Yeah,
well I think I said that way too, if you don't have to,
if it's something that you can address with lifestyle and food and fasting. I
said, hey, if that's how I've rubbed off on him, then great,
Yeah, that's great. There are definitely times for medication. So don't
get me wrong. I'm definitely not in time medication when it's time for But
I mean, for me, if you can do anything in your power to
resolve whatever is happening through lifestyle or diet or whatever, that to me,
you try that first. Because my thought with medicine is like, once you
start on medicine, then what's next and all happens, what happened effects that
you needed on that adicated course. So that fact out was the big But
he was a wonderful man and the service at the church was great. You
know, so many people came up and talked about what a positive influence my
dad had been on them. So yeah, well, he was very active
in his church community. Oh yeah, right, and yeah, and I'm
sure you know he worked at the same place for decades. Well, he
worked at the hospital. He was CFO of a hospital in Augusta until he
retired from there, and then he worked for the church. He was there
bookkeeper. Well, it's good. I think it feels good when you have
a memorial service for somebody and people come and they share and they you know,
you get to see your loved one from other people's point of view,
and you get to see what an impact they made on other people, but
you may not have seen before. So that's exactly right. It really was
special. So thank you. All right, Well let's just pivot from there
to a celebration, And today celebration comes from Mary Anne in Maine. She
said, Hi, Jen and Sherry. My name is Mary Anne and I
have been an intermittent faster since September of twenty twenty when I read both DDD
Delayed the Tonight and Fast Fees Repeat. I had the pleasure of leading a
book club group on your new book, The twenty eight Day Fast Start,
day by day, and we started on January eighth, and we just finished
up this week. I expected our newer fasters to get a lot of help
from this new book. But what truly amazed me was how many seasoned fasters
and even many in maintenance found this book to be the reboot that they needed.
Myself included, I was very ill last summer with a very resistant strain
of pneumonia. I was on antibiotics from May until October, twice a day
with food, so I essentially wasn't fasting during that time. Even though I
did fast between my medication doses. I gained nine pounds and my size sixes
were very uncomfortable. I was back to my nineteen five schedule, but I
was over indulging in my window. We had a family wedding, a vacation,
the holidays, and then my sixty fifth birthday celebration. I fully embraced
the flexibility of IF and enjoyed those occasions. I had stopped gaining weight,
but I wasn't losing either. My brain was still in maintenance mode with too
much flexibility. While teaching your book to our group, I had an AHA
moment. I needed to shift back into a weight loss mindset. I got
back to basics. I made the tweaks I needed in my window. I
delayed the desserts and cocktails, and I started tuning back into my society signals.
I extended my fast a couple of hours to help deplete those glycogen stores
that I had filled back up. I knew the minute my switch flipped.
I had an abundance of energy and a clear mind. I felt like my
old IF self was back at last. I lost five inches and I was
back into my goal weight range again. My size sixes were comfortable again.
This is all because of your new book, The twenty eight day Fast Start
Day by day. It got me back to IF. So many season fasters
had similar results. Plateaus were being left behind, and excitement about IF was
resurfacing in so many of them. This new book has helped to solve jin.
Thank you so very much. And you know it's right. We do
kind of go into a maintenance like my body's great at maintaining and once I
get to a weight, my body is happy to sit there. But shifting
it into getting to losing weight, that's a whole different mindset, and it
takes a little bit more dedication in work, a little more discipline. Yeah,
it's not coasting, it's a little bit more peddling uphill. Yep,
exactly. And I really appreciate you sharing that, Maryanne, because I think
that that happens to a lot of people. You know, I've been doing
intermittent fasting now for ten years. It's hard to believe. Can't even imagine
not doing it. And throughout that time, throughout maintenance, I've had seasons
where my honesty pants have gotten tight and then I have to tighten things back
up again. So you know, for anybody who's listening, if you've been
intermittent fasting for a while, you know, ask yourself, do I need
a refresh? And twenty eight day fast art day by day. We found
that in our community as well, that the seasoned fasters who just wanted to
be part of the excitement, they got allowed out of it too. And
if you're asking yourself do you need a refresh? Then so you have I
gotten a little sloppy with my windows? Am I treating every day like the
vacation? That's usually what happens for me. It will be summertime or the
holidays or something, and you have more for me. It's like more desserts,
or more cheese and crackers, or a little bit wilder. You at
maintenance, so you thought, you know what, I can let a little
cream slide into my coffee during my fast because we hear that a lot too.
We do hear that. Yeah, and then suddenly you're not fasting anymore
because your windows all day, right, And that definitely happened, so you
twenty eight day fast art day by day is not just for people who are
brand new, and you don't have to have quit completely to get some benefit
from it. It is a great way to get back to the basics,
remember your why, and have a structure. You know. I'm working on
revising the delay don't deny Life Journal as well, because a lot of people
you've heard me talk about this before, shear they finished twenty eight day fast
Art day by day and then they missed the journaling. They miss the day
by structure structure exactly. So I'm working on revising that. The Life Journal.
It's going to be updated to reflect the style of twenty eight day fast
art day by day a little bit more with the tools that people need.
Yeah, and I do think too a lot of times like we start our
intermittent fasting lifestyle, and maybe it was three years ago, four years ago
or nine years ago, and we had a why then, and then you
know, we got to our maintenance way and we just started going along and
we're just living our intermittent fasting lifestyle. We don't think that much about it,
and I think we often kind of get out of touch with a why.
And so if your why it was weight loss, and then you've lost
the weight, you've maintained the weight. I think without really identifying a new
why, you kind of start to lose the purpose of your fast. It
suddenly kind of just becomes something you do, but you're not thinking about why
are you doing it? What are the benefits you're trying to get from it?
And then you have thing else to be Stopping and recrafting your why is
so important and then you know, learning to structure your fasts to benefit that
why right and be really helpful. Well, you know, we learned from
reading Benjamin Bickman's book Why We Get Sick that having high infuluin is related to
so many of our modern day diseases, from cancer to diabetes to predy vascular
disease. The entire laundry list of things that my dad was suffering from.
I mean, he drank a lot of diet soda, and he snacked and
he didn't change what he ate and he had type two diabetes. And so
keeping insulin low is going to help us. It's not just about your weight,
right, And that's where that powerful why comes into play. So and
I see how easy it is to drift away. You know. When I
was there, you know, my stepmother and my brother were home, we
were getting ready to go do some hard things. And I made lunch at
noon and ate it. And when we were all done with all the family
events and the eating, you know, more meals than usual, I had
a couple of days where I had to push through well. And you know,
just like we learned from atomic habits, anything that you do a series
of days becomes a new habit. That's how habits are created. So first
day I ate at noon, my body was probably surprised. The second day
I ate at noon, my body was like, now we eat at noon.
The third day, my stomach growled at ten ten. My stomach said,
well, I know you've been eating at noon, but what about ten
We could eat now. And so I was like, no, I'm not
eating today at ten. And it would be really easy to justify like,
well, I'm hungry, right, I'm here with family. It's just one
more day. It's just one day. It's just one extra day. It's
a hard meat. I'll get back to it next week. But yeah,
it really can be that easy to lose your path, right, and just
expect you're going to have some hard days when you get back, even if
it's just been five days, and then you're like, all right, today,
I'm just going to push through this weird hunger my body is sending me.
All right, We have a question from a listener. This question is
from Jamie from Beautiful British Columbia, Canada. She says, Hello, ladies,
I first need to express my utmost gratitude for the countless and selfless hours
you dedicate to helping, encourage and inspire the delay don't deny community. I
know that you have made such an impact on thousands of lives, myself included.
You are so wonderful at keeping us all informed and educated. Not to
mention inspired to my question, I have been intermittent fasting since twenty nineteen and
could not imagine any other way of life. That being said, I have
experimented over the years with different intermittent fasting protocols. Recently, I've been trying
an ADF approach, but I I have also been trying to increase my protein
intake as I am a pyramid apausal woman and really want to work on preserving
my muscle mass. I am regularly physically active in my day to day life
at work and at home, and I work out three times a week,
including strength training. My question is, if I am doing an ADF approach,
should I try and increase the protein I eat on my upday to above
and beyond the higher recommended daily intake to make up for the down day and
lack of protein on those days. Is it possible to overdo the protein on
your upday? Thank you for your valuable wisdom and endless encouragement. Keep up
the good work, and again, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Okay, is it possible to overdo protein on your update? Yes,
it is possible to overdo anything. And so here's the thing. Protein's not
free and anything you eat above and beyond what your body needs, it's going
to STOs fat. In addition, your body does not stockpile protein, it
doesn't store protein, so you can't over consume protein on your upday and put
it in a protein closet so that your body can use it on your down
day. The body just doesn't work like that, So anything you eat above
and beyond what your body can use that day, your body will store as
fat. So the short answer is, yes, you can overdo protein on
your upday. There's no reason to eat above and beyond what you need on
any given day. With that said, if your heart is set on ADF
personally, this is me and just from what I have read on this subject.
If you're going to stick with an ad OF approach while trying to actively
grow muscle mass, you say preserve, I don't know if you're preserving or
trying to add muscle mass. If you're trying to preserve muscle mass, I
would still probably have a down day meal with some protein. And that's just
based off of all the reading I've done. If you're trying to actually add
significant muscle mass, I honestly, again this is just from my reading and
my interpretation of data, I would not use ADF as an approach while trying
to add muscle mass. Significant muscle mass, like, if you're really trying
to increase your muscle mass, not just tone up. I personally would have
a daily eating one. Right. If you're in a building phase, you're
trying to build muscle, right right, because you do not want to be
in a deficit while trying to build muscle. So I guess, just know
what your goals are you do, say preserve muscle, so you know to
do that, I personally would have a down day meal with some quality protein
in it. What do you think, Jen, Well, it made me
think of an email that I got this weekend from Bioptimizers, who we love
so much. You know, Matt Gallant. One of the found of Bioptimizers
is Vegan. Yes, one reason I love this company is was Keto.
One's Keto on the Carnivore and then the other's Deacon. Right. So Matt
Gallant is like a bodybuilder. Okay, so he's like Vegan and the bodybuilder
and has won awards. And something stuck out to me from the email.
It was about they have a digestive enzymes and we never talk about that,
but it's called mass zymes. And he only eats eighty five grams of protein
to day, vegetarian protein to day, and he is and he's yeah,
he is, He's very buff. So he utilizes his first of all,
the mass zymes, which is a digestive enzyme that helps break down the protein
so that your body can use can use it, so instead of like the
protein going straight through you undigested, this helps break it down, so it's
more bioavailable. Is that the right word to use? But anyhow, and
you can absorb the pieces better. But eighty five grams of vegetarian protein a
day is all he gets, and he is ripped in super super muscular.
So I love looking at examples ofody builders who are doing amazing things without he's
not founding one grammar protein per pound of body weight, and he's all the
other. Yeah, and you know something you've said about that too. If
your gut is not in good health, it really doesn't matter how much you're
eating if your body can't break it down and use it. So you know,
that's why we talk a lot about gut health. But I don't think
we talk enough about gut health. Well, it's true, and you need
to be able to put the nutrients in your mouth, but you have to
be able to break the food down and absorb the nutrients. Are they just
literally pass right through that tube? That goes straight through your body and out
the other side. So bioptimizer says all sorts of different things. That's just
one of them, the mass zombs that he uses. So I wanted to
put that out in here. But you know, also don't forget that when
you're fasting, your body is recycling old junkie proteins. You know, Cherry
said, we don't store protein, Well we don't. We store glycogen in
our liver. We start and the fat stells, but we don't have a
protein storage depot right like cells full of protein, they're just waiting they're to
be used again. But we do have junkie proteins that the clean fast encourages
our body to break down. So not all of your protein needs have to
come from outside your body. If you've got increased autophogy, you're fast and
clean, but when you're eating, you want to make sure you get sufficient
protein. But I love his example of eighty five grams a day because that's
like so low. I know what people think they have. He's a fairly
tall man too, you see pictures man he is. Yeah, like I
said, he has gotten so much muscle mass and so it can be done
yep. All right, So we have another question from Jersey Mama. She
said, could you please go in depth about the benefits of testing your fasting
insulin and what exactly do those numbers meet. Well, when I talked before
about why we get sick by doctor Benjamin Bickman and the the fact that having
chronic high levels of insulin all the time are linked to literally more things than
I had any idea about, Like so many things are linked to having chronic
high levels of insulin. You know, to read more or read his book,
but you need to know, you know, what is our fasting insulin
doing? So what are the different levels? Here's the thing. If you
go to a lab and get your fasting insulin result, anything is like twenty
four or something like that, they call that normal. You can have a
fast twenty four somewhere between twenty and twenty five is something like that, and
they'll be like normal. But we know that normal is not necessarily optimal because
people are running around with higher insulin than they should. So optimal is probably
somewhere around two point five to five. So that's just you know, good
range to think about. It's maybe shooting for is a goal and all if
you have like a seven, you're not like terrible, you know, you're
very very close. And here's one thing we know about glucose levels, for
example, from wearing a CGM, we have learned that your blood glucose levels
go up and down a lot throughout the day, like a lot depending on
the time of day. Your blood gluecoase might be a seventy, it might
be one hundred and five, all in the fasted state, and your blood
glucose just going up and down, up and down. Well, your body
is also going to have changing amounts of insulin even while you're fasting in response.
It's theatory hormone to exactly exactly. So you know, we'll hear from
people sometimes who are really like upset because they've had their fasting insulin tested a
second time and it's higher than it was the first time, but it's not
like crazy higher. Like if you got it tested and it was a seven,
then you went back and you got it tested it was an eight.
Is that a meaningful rise? We don't know. That's not enough data.
If you got it tested and it was a seven and you went back it
was a twenty four, that would be something to be concerned about. But
just as glucose goes up and down within arrange, we would expect that insulin
does. It's just that no one is continuously testing insulin. We can't do
that. Wouldn't that be nice? It would be used to have a continuous
influence monitor, but we didn't. There's no technology for that, And it
would be ideal if when testing your insulin, if you because everything fluctuates so
much, so ideally it would be you would meet all the exact same variables
that you had the first time. So if the first time you tested and
it was eight am, and you slept wonderfully the night before and you weren't
stressed out, life was great, It's a sunny day, you had no
bad traffic on the way to the lab, and you have a fasting insulin
of five, that's great. That's what your body does when life is wonderful.
The next time you go, you slept awful, you're stressed out,
and you have road rage on the way there, your fasting insulin could be
an eleven, just because of stress and lack of sleep in your life.
So I know, people get really upset when their number fluctuates a little bit
between you know one time and the next time, But really what you want
to look at is it's kind of like when we say, do your weight
and average it over time. It'd be the same with your insulin. Where
did you start. This is why I think it's really important to get a
starting insulin when you start, because if you're eight months in and you're upset
that it's a fourteen, you have no idea what it was eight months ago.
It could have been thirty. But then you know, six months or
a year done, the line tested again, and you just want to see
it coming down over time. Don't get tied up on those little individual results
exactly exactly. You know, mine was, you know, right around that,
just below five. Then I went through menopause and it was higher.
Then I had hormone replacement therapy and it went back down. Then I used
wold drops not knowing I was about to have a blood draw and my insuluin
was a tin. I'm like, ooh, peppermint oil does make my body
release influid. Not enough that I felt it, but there was that ten
that I'm like, Okay, maybe that's not benign after all. All right,
now it's time for our segment called what's your why? You know,
most of us begin with weight loss in mind. I certainly did, Sherry
certainly did. But there's so much more to what intermittent fasting can do for
us beyond weight loss. In the book twenty eight Day fast Art Day by
Day, I asked readers to craft their why statements before beginning, because when
your why is deeper than weight loss alone, you're more likely to find long
term success and view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. So today we have a
wife from Starlene. Intermittent fasting is all the rave nowadays. It was that
comment on a Facebook post that sent me down the rabbit hole of researching.
I had posted about my son's sixth period lunch in high school, and his
basketball coach is the one who made this comment. It just so happened that
I had been actively trying to lose the baby weight from my son. You'll
know calorie counting, exercise, my fitness pal, et cetera. I started
at one hundred ninety pounds in May of twenty seventeen. By November, I
had lost fifteen pounds. I was tired and frustrated. I had my son
at thirty five. I was newly sober in recovery, I now have eight
years in which leads to weight gain as well. That comment led me to
finding my forever way of life. What is my why? I wanted to
love myself again. It had been years since I had loved myself. I
had a two year relapse in my sobriety that led to self hatred. I
overcame that storm, only to land and a body I didn't recognize. I
had control over my life in every area that had been chaos for so long,
except for my body. That one comment led me to a Facebook group
that led me to delay. Don't deny. My why is self love and
self care. Fasting as a way I showed my self love, respect and
trust in it. My why is to live in harmony with my body.
I love. That is beautiful and congratulations Darlinge on your eight years of sobriety.
That is a big deal. It really is. Hey, I am
one year in. I know all France because we're recording this on June fourth.
I feel like it was right around my mother's birthday. So she's our
birthday's June tenth, so right around there. She wasn't here, but I
think it was right around then last year. So it's been a year and
I don't even think about it. Yeah, because I was thinking zero in
July, you'll have over a year. Over a year, yeah, yeah,
being alcohol free. Did I tell you this story about the server who
accidentally served me a real Heinecken uhuh No. This was a few months ago,
but I was at a restaurant and I was like, I would like
a Heineken zero point zero and he's like, okay, and he came back
and gave it to me, and I drank a sub event and I'm like,
this tastes weird. I don't like this one. I drank another stuff
and I'm looking it was real Heineck and not zero zero. And he came
back and I'm like, hey, you gave me the wrong thing. You
gave me the regular one and I don't drink, so could you swap it
out? And he was like so panicked because he was actually an alcoholic.
Oh my gosh, and so like if I had been, you know,
an alcoholic, I couldn't drink and I was in like recovery, that would
have been terrible. I probably would have checked more careful, but oh my
gosh. Anyway, I was like, no, it is okay. I
just choose to not drink but two steps, no problem did not affect me
in any way anyhouse. Good. Yeah, well, I'm glad they made
that mistake on you. I am too. If you're going to make that
mistake, make that mistake on me, because you know I am not in
recovery. Like I said, I just feel better when I don't drink.
Yeah. Well, we have another question this week, and it was sent
in by Gail in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She says, Hi, I've
been in IF for since September first, twenty twenty two. I'm currently sixty
five years of age, five foot tall, weighing in at one hundred and
nineteen pounds. I have always clean, fasted water only since the beginning.
I walk ten thousand steps every day. I bowl at least three games once
a week, and I play pickleball at least one hour once per week.
I started with a seventeen hour fasting and seven hour feasting, but within a
month or two I was nineteen five. I used to have dessert and bread
every day, but for about two months, bread or dessert once on most
days. Also, for about two months, I've been doing a two hour
eating window followed by an eight hour eating window followed by a five hour eating
window. So a week looks like this two eight five five two eight five.
Those are her windows she's talking about. I've been eating healthy. I
use a lot of daily harvest, plus I make my own bowls with sweet
potatoes, wild rice, and mixed veggies. If I eat an English muffin,
I count that as my bread for the day. If I have dessert
instead, it's usually one mini peppermint patty. Here's my question. While the
scale is going down from starting at one hundred and forty one pounds to now
one hundred and nineteen pounds, my clothing size is going up. When I
recently got bathing suits out for a cruise, I tried them on first,
thankfully, because while I expected the size eights to be loose, I actually
felt most comfortable in the size twelves. This is frustrating to me. Don't
worry, not giving up, but please advice. And you know, I've
actually heard this from a few different people. In fact, there is a
very similar question from a different person sitting in our question queue, and interesting
enough, she's also right around the same age Okay, so it's someone at
the age of sixty five. The scale is going down, but measurements and
clothing, clothing getting tighter, measurements getting larger. That's the same. That's
what you're going out. Yeah, that was kind of their question as well.
Okay, Well, one thing about as we get older, we have
to be really intentional about building muscle, and so we tend to lose muscle
just with age. Just in general, women tend to lose muscle mento,
as we age, we'd lose muscle. And it does sound like you're active.
You walk a lot, and you play pickleball, but I'm not sure
you're doing anything that's specifically for muscle building. So I would get intentions about
that, you know, like I'm building muscle with pilates. You could go
to a gym, do weight training at home, just something like that.
I would work on building muscle, and so you may see the scale go
up and the clothing size go back down. Because muscle mass is like gold.
As we get older, we want to preserve it. So if you
are losing weight on the scale but getting bigger in size, muscle mass is
what I would think about. Now. I also want to look at your
windows throughout the week you were doing nineteen five, and I feel like maybe
switching it up has not worked well for you. You know, those eight
hour windows might not be working well for you. You have two eight hour
windows in there that might be more than you need, So you may want
to stick to just five hours as your baseline and stop having those eight hour
windows. I feel like maybe she's trying to do the kind of downish,
uppish approach and then he makes like a five hour eating window thrown in there,
But just depending on how you eat, you know, that approach may
not work for you. You might be better off either doing a true down
day and up day or just settling back into your five hour eating window.
Yeah, because if you're a volumeter like me, two hours would not be
downish. I could eat a lot in two hours, and then I could
eat a whole lot in eight hours, and then I could eat a lot
in five hours. You know, I could gain weight eating in a five
hour daily eating window every single day depending on what I choose, Like if
I eat as much ice cream as I could eat. And I'm certainly not
saying Gail's doing that, knowing myself knowing Jen Stevens, my love of ice
cream. You know, I could gain weight in a five hour eating window.
Cheese, cream, ice cream. Those are the things that would do
it for me. So window link matters. What you're having in your window
also matters, and especially as we get older. Right, Yeah, and
then my another question is are you honoring society while you're eating? Are you
feeling good? She said she doesn't need a lot of dessert one mini peppermint
patty. I mean that's not the reason, That's not what it knows.
I don't think that's it at all. I guess you know, you describe
how you eat. Is this how you've always eaten? And then like,
I don't know, you say that the scale has gone down and you've been
doing this September of twenty twenty two, so it is now June of twenty
twenty four, so you're over eighteen months in. Like when did you notice
your size going up? Is this something that has happened since you've kind of
started tweaking your windows and you know, doing this alternating window, Because if
that's what's happening, then I think it's pretty clear that that alternating eating window
probably isn't working ideally for you. Her food looks great. I'm the one
with the ice cream, not Gale. Gale's doing it looks like she's doing
a great job with her food choices. Yeah, so it's kind of hard
to know. I'd love to tell you exactly what's going on. And I
don't know where you're expanding either. Like you said, you're more comfortable in
size twelves. Is your waist size going up? That's something that you would
want to look at. Also, bathing suit sizes or nuts because they are
weird. We're in a size two pair of jeans and fitting into a size
eight bathing suit. Yeah, I like my bathing suits to not be tight.
Well. And I remember when you went to the Soma store on the
way to the cruise in twenty nineteen and you bought a swimsuit off the clearance
rack and I don't remember what size it was, but I was like,
there's no way you could wear that, and it fit you fine because you
at the time you were like a size zero. Maybe that was when you
bought the size eight or ten and I can't remember you Yeah, and it
fit me perfectly. So yeah, all right, we have another question from
Dawn and Florida. She said, I am fasting and fasting for three months.
I am five six fifty three years old. Started at one hundred and
sixty two pounds. I'm down to one hundred and fifty with a goal of
one hundred and forty to one hundred and forty five. I drink loads of
water during my clean fast, and I am always thirsty with a dry mouth.
I fast eighteen to nineteen hours per day. Any idea why I am
so thirsty these days? And I bet Sherry has an idea, you say
theatic. I know what, you'reking loads of water during your clean fast.
You could be overhydrating, and then you're flushing out your electrolytes. Your magnesium,
potassium, sodium balance is getting out of whack, and you're going to
feel thirsty, and you think that the solution is to drink more. But
really that's just going to make the problem worse. Now, I do want
to say some people need more mineral support than others. I am one of
those. I used to be chronically thirsty. I drank so much. Knows
how much I used to drink. I used to drink it. Yes,
that's true. I mean we're talking. I probably drink four liters of water
a day on top of my coffee, tea or anything else I was drinking.
But I found out that I have a potassium deficiency. My body doesn't
hold on to potassium. So my doctor started me on a potassium medication and
I take a potassium supplement. We track my potassium levels. Interesting enough,
the minute we addressed my potassium, that chronic thirst I had completely went away.
I am no longer thirsty all the time. I used to really really
avoid sodium because I'm a person that gets really, really puffy, and that
can also be a sign of being low on potassium. Is if you have
really puffy hands and feet, if you get like a dima at the end
of the day, that can be a sign of electric light balance. So
I would just you know, if this continues, have your doctor run some
labs on you check your potassium level. There's really no good way to check
magnesium levels. But really, also during your feast, focus on good mineral
rich foods that are high in magnesium potassium. These are gonna be your leafy
greens, legumes, avocados, tomatoes, even shellfish, fish, salmon,
that sort of thing. Nuts are good so make sure that when you are
planning your daily eating windows that you get in some of these really good whole
foods. The more foods you eat like that, the more you can help
support your body naturally. Do anything you want to add in. I knew
you were going to say all of that. I'm not someone who ever has
needed mineral support during the vast so it's not for everybody. Not everybody needs
to, but if you do, you do. And I just want to
reiterate. You know Sherry said, get your levels tested from your doctor.
You do not want to willy nilly supplement with potassium. You can overdo it,
you can. The more I do research on that, you would really
have to be trying hard to overdo it. Well, you know how people
can be. People can do it, And I would you want to say,
if you have a kidney, your heart conditions, you do want any
and your doctor's ever told you to be on a potassium sparing diet. That
is something you want to pay attention to. Certain medications can actually make your
electrolytes be more off balance, such as diuretics and some blood pressure medications contain
diuretics, so that coupled with katosis which actually is a natural diuretic, can
make you deplete too many minerals. So that's why I say, work with
a doctor or practitioner, a natural path, work with somebody on that to
balance your electrolytes. Because there's a lot of electrolyte containing products out there.
Some of them are really really high in sodium, where most people already get
enough sodium, yet they don't have enough potassium magnesium support. So you know,
that's why I really say, I think it's really best to work with
somebody and know what you have going on. And interesting enough too, this
is crazy and I didn't even know this. So you hear all the time
that magnesium is great for keeping your bowels regular. I still, even after
suppling magnesium, had chronic constipation. Well that went away when I got my
potassium levels. H that's so interesting, Yes, because your entire body's fluid
levels are controlled by your electrolytes, and your body cannot use sodium without potassium.
It unlocks your sodium channels. So it all works together. So it's
not like throw a little of this at it and throw a little of that
at it. You've got to have it all in balance. So and somebody
might say, oh, just put pink salt in your water. That might
not be what you need exactly exactly. I definitely explore that if that thirst
doesn't go away. But I also want to say too, if you're new
to fasting and you're getting into katosis for the first time, you are going
to feel thirsty for a while until your body adapts. It is a sign
that you're shifting a toasis. If suddenly you're really really thirsty and you're peeing
a lot, that's a pretty good sign that your body's shifting into katosis.
But once you're there and it's happy every day, your body should adjust,
and if it's not, you're probably drinking too much water. We have time
for one more question this week, and this is from Gina in Houston.
She says, I am new to intermittent fasting, but I am a longtime
fitness and nutrition enthusiast, so I have moderate knowledge in the science of all
three. Now that I have started clean fasting with an eating window between noon
and six PM, I have a question about exercise. If the goal of
the clean fast is to keep our bodies in autophagy, then we theoretically want
to avoid anything that triggers MTR, such as ingesting protein or amino acids.
Since mTOR halts autophagy. However, doesn't strength training exercise trigger MTR as part
of the muscle building process. I know that some forms of exercise stimulate or
deepen autopogy, So I'm unclear as to which types are appropriate to do during
my fasting window. Should I avoid strength training during my fasting or is it
okay as long as I am fasting. I think this question gets into a
little bit of the paralysis of analysis situation, where you could like really go
down too many deep rabbit holes and then you don't know what to do because
we're trying to optimize everything, right, what would be optimal? Is it
optimal here? Is it optimal there? Like we could make a case for
it being optimal for different reasons different exactly right, Like, well, if
you do it in the fastest state, then you're going to be optimizing this,
But if you were in the fed state, maybe this will be optimized.
So I will always, always, always say the best time to do
any kind of exercise is the time that fits into your schedule and that feels
right to your body. Like, for example, I go to pilates at
noon, and I don't usually eat before I go because I don't usually eat
till the afternoon. So I am doing pilates in the fasted state. It
feels good to me. I'm building muscle. It's not you know, kicking
me out of the fasted state. I feel fine. I probably would feel
terrible if I try to do pilates after eating a big meal. That wouldn't
work well for my body. So I exercise when it's convenient, when it
works for me, when it feels good, And so that's what I encourage
everyone to do. Like you know, if you like to eat in the
middle of the day and then you want to go run ten miles, you
might feel sick if you ran ten miles after eating a big meal. So
you just have to figure out what feels good, what works for my schedule,
and that's where you're your own study of one. So, like I
said, there are a lot of theoretical rabbit holes you could go down where
well, this might be superior. And if you're trying to train for a
fitness competition or if you're a bodybuilder, then you know, those little tiny
things could make a difference. But if you're just a I know you said
you're a longtime fitness and nutrition enthusiast. It doesn't sound like you're a competitor.
If you're just you know, wanting to be healthy, then fast,
clean exercise, including weight training when it fits into your schedule, eat in
a window that feels good to you. I want to say too, I
don't think we should be chasing autophagy one hundred percent. I'm glad you said
that, So that stands out to me. To me, when I fast,
my goal is not so that I can have increased autology. To me,
that's a side effect of the clean fast, right, I get that
benefit, but I'm not fasting for that purpose alone. My fasts are multi
purpose fasts. And then, like you said, you are trying to build
muscle, So I mean the flip side, you're worried about mto R halting
autophagy, but fasted weight training you're also have increased human growth hormone which is
going to help the muscle building process. So it's one of those things,
like nothing in life is free, there's always a trade off. So with
the idea in mind that we want to be strong and healthy and fit,
I'm not worried about autophagy during that same equation. To me, that's something
that's happening at other times in my fast and while I'm sleeping and Tophege's kind
of an ongoing process. You know. We all like, it's not like
it's a switch. Yes, now doctor fun has come out and he said,
you know, amino acids haul tautophagy? Is it putting the brakes on
it? Yes? For how long? I don't know. Do we want
to have those things during our past? No, we don't. But am
I gonna say exercise is not part of a clean fast? No, exactly.
I love the way you said, though, don't chase autophogy because we
hear that a lot a lot of it is through the lens of alternate daily
fasting or ADF. People are like, I don't want to have the five
hundred calorie down day because I want more autophagy, And they're like, I
said, trade offs, right, you know, maybe you sleep way better
after you've had a five hundred calorie down day meal and sleep is really important
too. You could theoretically, and you change one thing, it changes something
else. No such thing as a free lunch, Like you said, the
variables are all interconnected, and so you just need to do what we're for
you and feels good right, And you know in high levels of topagy,
you don't want that all the time either, Yeah, constant high anything we
want, right, I'll again we want we would want feast exactly exactly.
So it's all about find your balance, find what works for you, and
create a lifestyle that works for you. Well, before we get to the
tweak of the week, I want to tell you about an amazing new product
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you go to bed freezing and then you wake up with them all of the
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and I started looking for an affordable solution and I found the bedjet system.
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percent, click on the link in show notes or visit Fastfeast repeat dot com
slash Sherry Shtri And 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 Heather in Illinois. She says this
is more of a mindset tweak to help you achieve your goals. If you're
waiting to open your wind until a goal time frame, just tell yourself that
that's only X amount of hours until then and you're almost there. Already,
You're already how many hours into your fast? A few more is nothing.
Often I will even begin to creatively dream up what food would fill my soul
when my window opens, which makes for a more delicious meal. Sometimes I
will think of the other fasters in this community doing the same thing, and
it encourages me to keep going since I'm not alone. Do something to pass
the time, and it will be here before you know it, and maybe
even you'll be past your goal. I love that she thinks of other faster
and that you have your inspiration to keep fasting. It is important not to
feel alone. Somebody just said that in the community the today they hadn't checked
in in a while and they'd been really struggling. And one of the reasons
they said they were struggling is because they didn't know anybody who fasted. Their
husband didn't fast, their daughter didn't fast, like it was just her and
she was feeling kind of and I challenged her to check into the community every
single day, because it really makes a difference when you have support from people
who know exactly what you're going through and what your struggle is. Yeah,
and just make a post and say I'm having a hard time today, and
then people will encourage you. Some people might think, no, I can't
make a post like that. Nobody. Yes, everyone cares about Everyone wants
to encourage you. Yep. And I've seen people post before and then somebody
will comment and say, I'm so glad you said that because I've been struggling
with that as well, or whatever. Somebody out there is struggling with the
same thing you're struggling whatever you're struggling with, whatever, whatever it is somebody
else is doing and just turned out loud as cathartic, right, you know,
just saying I'm having a hard time with this, just putting it out
there. Also, sometime I'm just putting it out to the universe. Like
if I say I'm having a hard day to day, I really need some
help. Somewhere along the line, something's going to come my way that's going
to help me get through that day. Yeah, are sometimes just writing it
out makes the struggle go away, or it helps you see the solution,
Like by the time you finish writing your post, you know what the answer
is for yourself. Yeah, it's true. Sometimes we do get mired in
the problem and we can't get past the problem. But once you put the
problem out there and you get it like, okay, there's the problem,
now you can move on to the solution step exactly. All right. Well,
we'd love to leave you guys with inspiration or motivational quotes, and this
week we have a message from Julie in Texas. Julie started by saying,
after taking collagen out of my fast, I am starting to lose the weight
I regained after feeling like yet another diet failed me. My faith is now
restored and fasting and fasting it's not a diet. It is a kindness to
my body to give it a time to rest and restore. Unlike a diet,
you can never mess up. You might just have a longer window some
days. And I think that's very true. You can't really mess it fasting
unless you're not drafting collagen. And you're right, once you're fasting clean,
If you're fasting clean, then you can be like, oops, I didn't
know that wasn't part of a clean fast. And then once you fix that,
you're good to go. So thank you for sharing that, Julie,
because we get that question all the time, because so many people are out
there are pushing collagen. Yeah, well, it sounds to me like she
was clean fasting and then collagen found her way into her coffee. Yeah,
and then she started to lose her faith in IF, and then she took
the collagen out of her coffee, and now her faith is restoring FAST.
That's how I right reads. Well, but what I love what she said.
It's not a diet. It's a kindness to my body to give it
time to risk and restore. Words are powerful. Yeah, 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 Jen Stevens
dot com slash community to join us. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast
to your favorite podcast app, and if you haven't already, please leave us
a five star review that helps new listeners find the show and we really appreciate
it. We are a community driven podcast, so to submit your success stories,
your questions, your favorite tweak it till It's Easy moments, or anything
else you want us to share on the podcast, go to Fast feast repeat
dot com slash submit and then listen each week to see if we share your
submission or answer your question until next week. Thanks for listening.