Episode 89: Breaking a Plateau, Balancing Fasting and Feasting, and More

<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life. I'm
<v Speaker 1>Jen Stevens, author of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast.
<v Speaker 2>Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock, longtime intermittent faster and health
<v Speaker 2>and wellness advocate. Please keep in mind that this podcast
<v Speaker 2>is for educational and motivational purposes only, and is not
<v Speaker 2>intended to provide medical or diagnostic advice. Jen and I
<v Speaker 2>are not doctors, so make sure to check with your
<v Speaker 2>trusted healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes
<v Speaker 2>to any medical treatments or medications.
<v Speaker 1>Whether you're new to intermittent fasting or an experienced intermittent faster,
<v Speaker 1>tune in each week to get inspired, to learn, and
<v Speaker 1>to have some fun along the way. Hi, everybody, we
<v Speaker 1>are so glad you're here today. Welcome to this week's
<v Speaker 1>episode of the Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life Podcast.
<v Speaker 2>How are you doing today's Sherry, I'm doing fairly well.
<v Speaker 1>How are you? I am great? Called Yeah, it's it's
<v Speaker 1>till February. We're recording this, so I'm so ready for spring.
<v Speaker 2>If y'all can't tell, Jenn and I are, We're not
<v Speaker 2>cold weather people.
<v Speaker 1>We like the fun.
<v Speaker 2>We just count down the days until it's warm and
<v Speaker 2>sunny again. Yeah, I do have something kind of fun
<v Speaker 2>to share. Y'all might think this is funny, But Eric
<v Speaker 2>and I.
<v Speaker 1>Watch cooking shows. Like that's what we watch.
<v Speaker 2>Paranormal and cooking shows. There are two genres, right, so
<v Speaker 2>we and Eric really loves anything that's competition because he's
<v Speaker 2>such a sports minded person, so he doesn't care what
<v Speaker 2>the competition is. I can't watch all the crazy baking shows.
<v Speaker 2>They don't appeal to me. I don't want to watch
<v Speaker 2>you make a sugar sculpture. That's not that's like, that's
<v Speaker 2>not fun to me. He loves it. So now that
<v Speaker 2>I know that he loves it, and I want him
<v Speaker 2>out of my hair, I'm like, wh't you go watch
<v Speaker 2>a baking show. So we watch like all the cooking shows,
<v Speaker 2>the competitions, whatever. And Scott Conant is a celebrity chef.
<v Speaker 2>He's got some restaurants in New York and in Arizona,
<v Speaker 2>and then I recently found out he had one in
<v Speaker 2>Atlanta and so it's called the Americano. And Eric told
<v Speaker 2>me that he knows one of the reasons I love
<v Speaker 2>to travel is to go eat delicious food like I
<v Speaker 2>want to eat delicious food. And he said, okay for
<v Speaker 2>Valentine's Day. I've been thinking. Now, you have to understand
<v Speaker 2>my husband. He's a homebody and our dog, Lulu is
<v Speaker 2>his whole life. Sometimes I'm not sure who he loves
<v Speaker 2>more and mere Lulu. So everything revolves around Lulu. And
<v Speaker 2>so he said, you can have ten hours anywhere that
<v Speaker 2>you can drive and be back home within ten hours.
<v Speaker 2>You can, and we can go anywhere you want to
<v Speaker 2>eat within like you know, a ten hour round trip.
<v Speaker 2>So I was looking at Nashville. There's a restaurant in Dothan, Alabama,
<v Speaker 2>which is south of US, where a celebrity chef actually
<v Speaker 2>has a restaurant there. And so I started looking around
<v Speaker 2>and I thought, you know, I know he said ten hours,
<v Speaker 2>but I also know he's going to start get antsy
<v Speaker 2>away from Lulu that long. So this is our first
<v Speaker 2>time ever trying. Let's let's go to Atlanta because it's
<v Speaker 2>about two and a half hours for me. So we
<v Speaker 2>went to Atlanta. We went to Scott Conan's restaurant. I
<v Speaker 2>am the person that when I taste delicious food, I
<v Speaker 2>dance a little bit in my seat, and I just
<v Speaker 2>get so happy. And Eric's always just like, food is
<v Speaker 2>not that delicious that you should be dancing, and I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>it just makes me like tingle and anyways, and he
<v Speaker 2>doesn't get it right. So he was really sweet. We
<v Speaker 2>each ordered like different appetizers and different dishes so that
<v Speaker 2>we could trade, and our waiter was amazing. He brought
<v Speaker 2>us like a plate so that we could replaate our
<v Speaker 2>food and combine our dishes. But every time Eric would
<v Speaker 2>get something set in front of him, I would get
<v Speaker 2>the first bite, and so he'd give me a bite
<v Speaker 2>of it. And I took a bite of these meatballs
<v Speaker 2>in pale palmadoro sauce, and I literally like my brain tingled.
<v Speaker 2>It was so delicious, and I did my little dance
<v Speaker 2>in my seat and I was like, oh my gosh,
<v Speaker 2>that was amazing. And Eric kind of looked at me
<v Speaker 2>and he was like, your brain tingled, and I said, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>like I got shivers in my brain.
<v Speaker 1>It was so delicious.
<v Speaker 2>And he just laughed at me, and then he took
<v Speaker 2>a bite and he said, oh my gosh, my brain
<v Speaker 2>just zinged.
<v Speaker 1>You're right, that's hilarious. I love it.
<v Speaker 2>So we're not sponsored by Scott Conant or The Americano Atlanta.
<v Speaker 2>But if you want to go eat the best Italian
<v Speaker 2>food you have ever put in your mouth, please go
<v Speaker 2>visit the Americano.
<v Speaker 1>It was so delicious. That does sound really good. What
<v Speaker 1>part of Atlanta is it in.
<v Speaker 2>It's in Buckhead Okay you say Atlanta, Yeah that could
<v Speaker 2>be like literally, yeah, it's north of downtown. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>wish it was on the other side, closer to us
<v Speaker 2>side of town. It did take us forever to get
<v Speaker 2>out of there.
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, like being in Atlanta can take like over
<v Speaker 1>an hour, and you're in Atlanta the whole time. I
<v Speaker 1>mean it is like such a big radius of what
<v Speaker 1>is considered Atlanta.
<v Speaker 2>Well, and we went for lunch. Our reservation was for
<v Speaker 2>two and if you live in Atlanta, they have what
<v Speaker 2>called an espresso lunch and it's like an appetizer your
<v Speaker 2>main meal and like a Piscattian.
<v Speaker 1>Espresso for dessert.
<v Speaker 2>And it's only twenty nine dollars.
<v Speaker 1>But you have to live in Atlanta. You have to
<v Speaker 1>like prove Okay, I'm just.
<v Speaker 2>Saying you've lived there and you want to go for
<v Speaker 2>a quick lunch.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I totally didn't get it.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but it's a limited menu.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so we ended up ordering off the main menu.
<v Speaker 1>But yeah, I want what I want exactly, my choices,
<v Speaker 1>exactly as much as I love a bargain.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I thought they might be tiny portions too, if
<v Speaker 2>you've ordered off that menu, which the portions were actually
<v Speaker 2>pretty sizable. We brought food home and I ate all
<v Speaker 2>the leftovers and I didn't share them, and I'm not
<v Speaker 2>even sorry.
<v Speaker 1>Funny Anyway, I'm glad. It was a wonderful experience. It was.
<v Speaker 1>It was.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, food should be joyful and delicious and yeah,
<v Speaker 2>all right, Well let's move on to a weekly celebration.
<v Speaker 2>And this is from E. Just the letter E from Malta.
<v Speaker 2>I wrote today, the twenty ninth of January is my
<v Speaker 2>first fastniversary, and I'm super proud of myself. I did
<v Speaker 2>not want to let this day go by without connecting
<v Speaker 2>with you. I'm immensely grateful for the universe to have
<v Speaker 2>brought me to your podcast. I've learned so much from
<v Speaker 2>listening and re listening to your episodes over and over
<v Speaker 2>during my commute. I needed to understand the science, physiology,
<v Speaker 2>and biology of why fasting works in order to be convinced,
<v Speaker 2>and you taught me all of that. Now I'm digging
<v Speaker 2>into your books for further reading. I am a forty
<v Speaker 2>seven year old female one hundred and seventy seven centimeters tall,
<v Speaker 2>with a very sedentary job. During the past twelve months,
<v Speaker 2>I went from my heaviest ever at one hundred and
<v Speaker 2>eleven kilograms to ninety one kilograms, a loss of twenty kilograms.
<v Speaker 2>So that's around roughly forty four forty six pounds.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, right around forty four, and that's at the rate
<v Speaker 1>of one half to one pound per week. That's a
<v Speaker 1>good rite of loss, she says to one.
<v Speaker 2>I look at my weight graph. I see all the
<v Speaker 2>little daily ups and downs, but the downward trend is clear.
<v Speaker 2>This gives me the motivation to keep going. I do
<v Speaker 2>not feel deprived of my favorite food items. I know
<v Speaker 2>I can eat what I want later. I know I
<v Speaker 2>need to lose some more weight, but in the meantime
<v Speaker 2>I feel amazing. I have never felt this amount of
<v Speaker 2>mental clarity and energy, and I feel great in my clothes.
<v Speaker 2>The IF lifestyle for me means that I can relax
<v Speaker 2>about the weight and let fasting do its work. It
<v Speaker 2>feels like magic. Thank you and hugs from Malta. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>I love that relaxing and letting fasting do its work.
<v Speaker 1>That's a great way of putting it. For so long,
<v Speaker 1>we did things that required us to be like vigilant
<v Speaker 1>from the minute we woke up to the minute we
<v Speaker 1>went to bed.
<v Speaker 2>We see that in the community all the time, especially
<v Speaker 2>with new fasters, and they're they want so many parameters
<v Speaker 2>and you know rules, and we have like two rules, fast, clean,
<v Speaker 2>and eat delicious food to society.
<v Speaker 1>Right, that's it, really, it's true. And you know within
<v Speaker 1>those parameters, you there are a lot of tools in
<v Speaker 1>your toolbox that you can use to figure out what
<v Speaker 1>your body needs. And they aren't the same for everybody.
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes when I'm on podcasts as a guest, someone will say, so,
<v Speaker 1>what's the best weight loss approach? I'm like, I can
<v Speaker 1>there is one, and they look like flabbergasted them like,
<v Speaker 1>there's not one right exact weight loss approach, And it's
<v Speaker 1>just it's very very individual what your body needs. I
<v Speaker 1>wish it was like, here's exactly what you should do,
<v Speaker 1>everybody who's listening, and you wouldn't it be nice if
<v Speaker 1>it was like that? Lord, it would be nice.
<v Speaker 2>Even down to fasting protocols, like how long of a
<v Speaker 2>window people should have. I mean, that's just going to
<v Speaker 2>vary from people to people. Some people are like high
<v Speaker 2>volume eaters and they can eat a lot at one time,
<v Speaker 2>and other people, you know, don't eat a lot at
<v Speaker 2>one time. They're more of a like kind of a
<v Speaker 2>person that grazes through their window and they might need
<v Speaker 2>a little bit longer window than a person and that
<v Speaker 2>can you know, really get satiated quickly. And like just
<v Speaker 2>even down to eating styles. Some people in our community
<v Speaker 2>do eat keto with their intermittent fasting. They love it,
<v Speaker 2>they feel great, They're doing great. Jen and I do keto.
<v Speaker 2>We're not so great. We don't feel so great. It
<v Speaker 2>doesn't accelerate fat loss for us. So I think the
<v Speaker 2>reason that I have works is because it simplifies things
<v Speaker 2>so much that then you can really start to tune
<v Speaker 2>into your body and figure out what is working what isn't.
<v Speaker 2>And it's not like, oh, i'm doing this, it didn't work,
<v Speaker 2>I have to jump ship. It's like I'm doing this.
<v Speaker 2>This particular thing I've been doing for the last month
<v Speaker 2>isn't resulting in weight loss, But I can make this
<v Speaker 2>subtle shift and maybe go pivot to this and try
<v Speaker 2>this for a little bit, but you're still fasting. You're
<v Speaker 2>not jumping ship exactly.
<v Speaker 1>And so you know, when someone has been dieting for
<v Speaker 1>a long time and they try a certain intermittent fasting
<v Speaker 1>protocol and they do it for a while and they
<v Speaker 1>don't lose any weight doing it, that just means that
<v Speaker 1>that particular thing was not leading to weight loss. That
<v Speaker 1>doesn't mean there's no intermittent fastening approach that will lead
<v Speaker 1>to weight loss. And it really you've got the tools
<v Speaker 1>of all the different intermittent fasting approaches plus food choices. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and you know what a.
<v Speaker 2>True testimony to IF two is we get people that
<v Speaker 2>join the community and they've been fasting for two years,
<v Speaker 2>and they might join and they'll say, you know, I'm here,
<v Speaker 2>I've been fasting for two years, but I've only lost
<v Speaker 2>ten pounds, but I'm ready to figure out what I needed.
<v Speaker 1>To do to get the weight to shift.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, And like, to me, that's such a testimony to
<v Speaker 2>how effortlessly intermittent fasting works in our life and how
<v Speaker 2>great it makes people feel, because they'll say, you know,
<v Speaker 2>I feel great, you know, I'm sleeping great.
<v Speaker 1>I never want to stop doing it.
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to stop doing it, but I would
<v Speaker 2>like to see some weight loss now. Usually it's just
<v Speaker 2>a simple matter of you know, figuring out what they
<v Speaker 2>have been doing and offering some solutions for tweaks, and
<v Speaker 2>then you know, they'll incorporate them, and more often than not,
<v Speaker 2>within a month's time they're reporting back and they're like, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>it's working, the scales moving and so yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So now we have a question from a listener. This
<v Speaker 1>question is from Gina in New Jersey. Hi, Jen, and Sherry.
<v Speaker 1>I've been a longtime listener and even belonged to Jen's
<v Speaker 1>Facebook groups back in the day. Love this podcast and
<v Speaker 1>look forward to each week's episode. I heard about intermittent
<v Speaker 1>fasting in twenty eighteen, and I've been on a roller
<v Speaker 1>coaster with fasting ever since. I go through periods of
<v Speaker 1>consistent fasting, then a vacation, our holiday will derail my schedule.
<v Speaker 1>I'm fifty three, a ten year breast cancer survivor, and
<v Speaker 1>have always been very active my entire life. First with
<v Speaker 1>tap dancing, Jen, I always said we had that in common. Yes, Gina,
<v Speaker 1>I was a great tap dancer, ballet no tap yes,
<v Speaker 1>then with aerobics, yoga, pilates when I was in college,
<v Speaker 1>and then when I got married. Currently, I strength trained
<v Speaker 1>three times a week and walk and do yoga and pilates.
<v Speaker 1>I'm a former second grade teacher. Another thing we have
<v Speaker 1>in common gen I have a loving husband and two
<v Speaker 1>wonderful teen daughters. My question relates to thyroid medication. As
<v Speaker 1>I said, my IF journey has never been consistent and
<v Speaker 1>I've never really lost much weight. I have hypothyroidism since
<v Speaker 1>two thousand and four, and I'm now realizing that maybe
<v Speaker 1>this medication is breaking my fast. I take it first
<v Speaker 1>thing in the morning and can usually fast until one
<v Speaker 1>or two PM, but tend to get hungry around eleven thirty.
<v Speaker 1>I'm a black coffee and water only girl, and I
<v Speaker 1>can fast anywhere from sixteen to twenty hours, but I'm inconsistent.
<v Speaker 1>My last snack is around eight or nine pm the
<v Speaker 1>night prior, and I like a cup of peppermint tea
<v Speaker 1>as well. I tend to get hungry around eleven thirty
<v Speaker 1>to noon, but I try to push until one or two.
<v Speaker 1>Sometimes I'll just open at eleven thirty or twelve, especially
<v Speaker 1>on days I've worked out introduced intermittent fasting to several friends,
<v Speaker 1>and I know I need to be more consistent as
<v Speaker 1>I've seen their success. So back to my question, should
<v Speaker 1>I switch and start taking my medication an hour or
<v Speaker 1>so after my last meal at night? This medication is
<v Speaker 1>best taken on an empty stomach, and I've been taking
<v Speaker 1>it in the morning for so long. Should I try
<v Speaker 1>adf It seems scary to me, but maybe the five
<v Speaker 1>hundred calorie days may help. I'm five seven and weigh
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and sixty pounds. My ideal weight is one
<v Speaker 1>hundred and forty to one forty five, and that was
<v Speaker 1>over ten years ago prior to being diagnosed with breast cancer. Note,
<v Speaker 1>I was thrown into medical menopause due to chemo and medications.
<v Speaker 1>But now that I'm off the meds, I'm feeling even
<v Speaker 1>more bloated than I used to. I'm ninety five percent
<v Speaker 1>gluten free and eat mostly whole foods with occasional treats.
<v Speaker 1>I'm one hundred percent Italian. Don't let the last name
<v Speaker 1>fool you, so I grew up eating lots of good
<v Speaker 1>pasta and Italian foods. Thanks for listening. If there is
<v Speaker 1>any insight you can provide on the timing of this medication.
<v Speaker 1>I appreciate it. I listen to you ladies every week
<v Speaker 1>and I've even repeated episodes. Thanks for all you do.
<v Speaker 2>All right, So, first to answer your question, is your
<v Speaker 2>thiroim medicine breaking your fast?
<v Speaker 1>No, it is not. However, I will.
<v Speaker 2>Just point out something I recently learned, and that is
<v Speaker 2>you should not take leabothyroxine, which is a thyroid hormone.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not sure which one you're on.
<v Speaker 2>With coffee, because it affects your body's ability to absorb it. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>and so they do say that you should wait thirty
<v Speaker 2>minutes after taking it before you drink coffee. I just
<v Speaker 2>recently started on the medication. I have sort of diagnosed
<v Speaker 2>myself with some subclinical hypothyroidism. I've tracking my body temperature
<v Speaker 2>for several months and my doctor agreed to start me
<v Speaker 2>on a low dose and see how that makes me
<v Speaker 2>feel and see if I can get my body temperature up.
<v Speaker 2>So I learned this because I wanted to make sure
<v Speaker 2>I knew there were some specific instructions around taking it
<v Speaker 2>and I am not going to wait thirty minutes after
<v Speaker 2>waking up to drink coffee. It's just not going to happen.
<v Speaker 2>So I am taking mine at bedtime, and there's research
<v Speaker 2>that says that it actually for some people works better
<v Speaker 2>at bedtime. So are you going to remember to take
<v Speaker 2>it at bedtime? You also are supposed to have been
<v Speaker 2>two hours from your last meal when you take it.
<v Speaker 2>For me, that's not an issue, So you know, I
<v Speaker 2>did want to just point that out because I did
<v Speaker 2>notice that you say you'd drink black coffee. I think
<v Speaker 2>your problem is you're inconsistency. Yeah, if you've closed your
<v Speaker 2>window every night around I think you said eight thirty
<v Speaker 2>or nine.
<v Speaker 1>I was trying to scan back through here. Yeah, she
<v Speaker 1>said her last snack is around eight or nine, and
<v Speaker 1>she likes the cup of peppermint tea. Okay, yeah, peppermint
<v Speaker 1>tea is in your window. I just want to just
<v Speaker 1>reiterate that would not be part of a clean fast.
<v Speaker 1>You probably will if you've been.
<v Speaker 2>I think she said she's having it with her last Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it wasn't completely clear.
<v Speaker 1>She just said my last knack is around eight or nine,
<v Speaker 1>and I like a cup of peppermint tea as well.
<v Speaker 1>So they're linked together in the sentence. But I didn't
<v Speaker 1>know if she meant, I don't know when she likes
<v Speaker 1>the peppermint too. I'm assuming it's during the window.
<v Speaker 2>But like, if you just look at this from a
<v Speaker 2>clock standpoint, if you close your window at nine o'clock
<v Speaker 2>eleven thirty am, is fourteen and a half hours later,
<v Speaker 2>that's about the time I get hungry in my fast
<v Speaker 2>That's about the time that my body is really using
<v Speaker 2>up any glycogen leftover from my last window and it's
<v Speaker 2>trying to flip the switch into fat burning. It really
<v Speaker 2>just depends on how much I ate the day before.
<v Speaker 2>There are days I can taste ketosis in my mouth
<v Speaker 2>at around fifteen hours. There are days that I don't
<v Speaker 2>taste that until about seventeen hours. So it's really kind
<v Speaker 2>of knowing your body and knowing how you eat in
<v Speaker 2>your window, how much you eat your window. The other
<v Speaker 2>thing is is if you've been really inconsistent with fasting
<v Speaker 2>and you're not maintaining a consistent fasting schedule, your body
<v Speaker 2>may just be really struggling to flip the switch. So
<v Speaker 2>the best thing I can tell you is push through.
<v Speaker 2>You may want to close your window a little bit earlier,
<v Speaker 2>and this way you know when you that kind of
<v Speaker 2>hungry time comes earlier in the morning, and for me,
<v Speaker 2>once I have some black coffee, that hunger kind of
<v Speaker 2>goes away. So maybe if you're hunger coincides like kind
<v Speaker 2>of with when you're drinking coffee, it won't be so
<v Speaker 2>bothersome to you. So even just shifting it maybe like
<v Speaker 2>to seven thirty or eight and see if that helps
<v Speaker 2>you with that sort of late morning hunger that you're
<v Speaker 2>having a hard time fighting. Just because you're hungry doesn't
<v Speaker 2>mean you need to eat. You might think you do,
<v Speaker 2>but you don't need to. So if you'll push through
<v Speaker 2>that hunger and hold off until two o'clock, you're gonna
<v Speaker 2>do better. You said, you have anywhere from sixteen to
<v Speaker 2>twenty hour fasts, So rather than looking at your fasting,
<v Speaker 2>just focus on your window. I would encourage you to
<v Speaker 2>shift to a five hour window. Really nail that five
<v Speaker 2>hour window. Look at when you plan on closing your window,
<v Speaker 2>and then don't open until five hours prior to that,
<v Speaker 2>and be really rigid with that for about a month,
<v Speaker 2>and I bet you're going to see a difference.
<v Speaker 1>And I would.
<v Speaker 2>Until you can do that consistently, I wouldn't even think
<v Speaker 2>about eightf absolutely.
<v Speaker 1>I was going to say the same exact thing. If
<v Speaker 1>you're having a hard time pushing past the hunger of
<v Speaker 1>eleven thirty or noon, then downdays are going to be
<v Speaker 1>really miserable. And so I wouldn't do that at all,
<v Speaker 1>because remember, we want you to enjoy what you're doing.
<v Speaker 1>And I really think that what Sherry said is what
<v Speaker 1>I would also recommend you commit yourself to a daily
<v Speaker 1>five hour eating window. And see, here's the conversation you
<v Speaker 1>can have at eleven thirty in your head. Hmmm, I'm
<v Speaker 1>feeling some hunger. I don't want to feel this hunger.
<v Speaker 1>I could eat now, Yes, you can. You can choose
<v Speaker 1>to eat now. Then you say, all right, five hours
<v Speaker 1>from now is when I have to close? Do I
<v Speaker 1>really want to close by five thirty? Wait, no, eleven thirty,
<v Speaker 1>five hours That would be four four thirty. My mouth
<v Speaker 1>was off. If you don't want to close at four thirty,
<v Speaker 1>don't open at eleven thirty. You get to decide that minute. Huh.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want to close at four thirty. I can
<v Speaker 1>wait to open my windows some more and then get
<v Speaker 1>busy and see what happens, because there's gonna be some
<v Speaker 1>trade off that's the thing about intermittent fasting. You've got
<v Speaker 1>to delay. You can either delay or you can deny.
<v Speaker 1>That's talked about this and I think I first said
<v Speaker 1>that in twenty eight day Faster Art. Day by day,
<v Speaker 1>you got to pick one delay or deny. So we
<v Speaker 1>don't want to deny, so we got to master the delay.
<v Speaker 1>And if you're having a hard time delaying, then that's
<v Speaker 1>where the trade off comes in. You got to pick
<v Speaker 1>what do I want to do today? Do I want
<v Speaker 1>to delay my window? Do I want to wait? Or
<v Speaker 1>do I want to eat now? And that means I'm
<v Speaker 1>going to be done earlier for the day and you
<v Speaker 1>get to decide. Alternately, you could say, you know what,
<v Speaker 1>I'm happy at one hundred and sixty pounds at five seven,
<v Speaker 1>and that would also be a legitimate choice. It's like
<v Speaker 1>we've been trained not like our bodies to the point
<v Speaker 1>that you feel like you have to be one forty
<v Speaker 1>one forty five, and maybe it really is worth it
<v Speaker 1>to get there and you'll feel so much better, But
<v Speaker 1>maybe one sixty and just being a little more relaxed
<v Speaker 1>like you're doing and maintaining is really what you would
<v Speaker 1>like the most. That's where you get to decide what
<v Speaker 1>do you want the most? Is the thing you want
<v Speaker 1>the most to get down to that one forty five
<v Speaker 1>range again? If so, then you're going to have to
<v Speaker 1>decide how am I going to get the discipline of
<v Speaker 1>the daily eating window. What's going to nail that for me?
<v Speaker 1>Is it going to be making sure that whenever I open,
<v Speaker 1>I close within five hours?
<v Speaker 2>Well, and I want to challenge you to Gina, I
<v Speaker 2>bet you don't need that last snack of the.
<v Speaker 1>Way, I think so too. Yeah, So I bet if.
<v Speaker 2>You moved back your window closing, close a little earlier,
<v Speaker 2>close a little earlier, and open later. You said you
<v Speaker 2>try to push off till two, So a two to
<v Speaker 2>seven window might really be ideal for you. Eat plenty
<v Speaker 2>of nutritious, you know, nutrient dense foods from two to seven,
<v Speaker 2>and you really don't need that last snack. It's not
<v Speaker 2>going to make fasting easier the next day. It could
<v Speaker 2>make it harder. And if you think about it, if
<v Speaker 2>you close your window it's seven fourteen hours, which is
<v Speaker 2>about when you're having a struggle, it's going to be
<v Speaker 2>nine o'clock in the morning, and you can sit there
<v Speaker 2>and stip your black coffee and get busy with your day,
<v Speaker 2>and I promise it'll get to a point where you
<v Speaker 2>just next thing, you know, it's two o'clock and you
<v Speaker 2>can open your window absolutely.
<v Speaker 1>And I also want to talk about that peppermint tea again.
<v Speaker 1>I have a feeling that that is a soothing nighttime
<v Speaker 1>ritual for you, and that also might be part of
<v Speaker 1>the reason you're keeping your window open until nine, in
<v Speaker 1>which case I want you to think about a little
<v Speaker 1>mt which is hot water and a mug, and that
<v Speaker 1>is surprisingly soothing. I know people are like, no, that
<v Speaker 1>sounds crazy, but once you really get into it, you
<v Speaker 1>know you just need that warm, nighttime soothing drink hot
<v Speaker 1>water in a mug, sip it, let it feel good,
<v Speaker 1>feels cozy, and that might be exactly what you need.
<v Speaker 1>Let us know how you do.
<v Speaker 2>Give it a try, all right, So our next question
<v Speaker 2>is from frustrated in Oregon. I am sixty four, one
<v Speaker 2>hundred and seventy three pounds, five toot five and a half.
<v Speaker 2>I started if January of twenty twenty four, and I
<v Speaker 2>lost about fifteen pounds in the first two to three months,
<v Speaker 2>and then I stalled. The scale did not budge for
<v Speaker 2>the next six months. I was injured in mid June,
<v Speaker 2>but the plateau had established itself before that. When I
<v Speaker 2>was able to start exercising again in September, I read
<v Speaker 2>that people, especially women over a certain age, should get
<v Speaker 2>much more protein than our younger selves, and if you
<v Speaker 2>were weightlifting, as I had started to do, you should
<v Speaker 2>not fast. So I stopped iya for about three months
<v Speaker 2>and subsequently gained back all I had lost. I realized
<v Speaker 2>that I was not an Olympic athlete and could indeed fast,
<v Speaker 2>so I went back to intermittent fasting in November. I
<v Speaker 2>tightened things up in January of twenty twenty five, and
<v Speaker 2>now I'm just feelings just as stuck. I know I've
<v Speaker 2>only been back to regular if for a month or so,
<v Speaker 2>but I don't want to get discouraged with another plateau
<v Speaker 2>like last year. My happy scale is in the orange.
<v Speaker 2>I would like to get to around one hundred and
<v Speaker 2>forty five, but mainly want to feel good in my
<v Speaker 2>clothes again. I was a skinny kid up until menopause.
<v Speaker 2>What if anything made me plateau last year and what
<v Speaker 2>tools can I utilize if it happens again. I eat
<v Speaker 2>mostly at home and very healthy. I do have a
<v Speaker 2>cocktail or wine most nights. My IF protocol from the
<v Speaker 2>end of January to September of twenty twenty four when
<v Speaker 2>I stepped away was twenty hours of fasting and four
<v Speaker 2>hour window, with the exception of the month I tried ADF,
<v Speaker 2>which was twenty four hours of fasting with a five
<v Speaker 2>hundred calorie down day followed by an upday. I did
<v Speaker 2>try ADF for a month last May, and it didn't
<v Speaker 2>move to scale throughout the holidays. It was difficult, but
<v Speaker 2>I tried to get back to nineteen five and now
<v Speaker 2>I'm back between fourty five hours eating window starting around
<v Speaker 2>three or four pm and closing at eight pm. I have,
<v Speaker 2>for the most part, been weighing every day and recording
<v Speaker 2>weights and measurements monthly. Now I'm using the Happy scale
<v Speaker 2>and it calculates the averages. I just took measurements again
<v Speaker 2>this morning and I have regained all of the inches
<v Speaker 2>I lost Initially. I am weightlifting heavy about four to
<v Speaker 2>five days a week, walking the dog most days, and
<v Speaker 2>doing additional cardio a few days a week.
<v Speaker 1>Plus.
<v Speaker 2>I tried to do bar once a week. When I
<v Speaker 2>started this journey, I ate whatever I liked and in
<v Speaker 2>the first seventy five days or so, lost fifteen pounds.
<v Speaker 2>Then this weight stayed about the same, varying only about
<v Speaker 2>a couple pounds up or down each month, hence the plateau.
<v Speaker 2>I have tried many different diets in the past, locale,
<v Speaker 2>low carb, keto, Mediterranean, and now I tried to stick
<v Speaker 2>to mostly Mediterranean with lots of veggies. I was still
<v Speaker 2>trying to get around one hundred grams of protein a
<v Speaker 2>day because of my weightlifting and my age. But I'm
<v Speaker 2>thinking maybe I don't need to do that. I hope
<v Speaker 2>this is enough information. Sorry, if it's too much, I do.
<v Speaker 2>I hope you have some insights for me so that
<v Speaker 2>I can be successful in intermittent fasting. My weight goal
<v Speaker 2>is one hundred and forty five, but I would be
<v Speaker 2>happy around one point fifty, and today I weighed one
<v Speaker 2>seventy four.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you for your help in advance. All right, so
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot to unpack here, and let's dig in
<v Speaker 1>a bit. When you first started at one hundred and
<v Speaker 1>seventy three pounds, you were doing twenty four with a
<v Speaker 1>four hour eating window. You lost fifteen pounds right away,
<v Speaker 1>and then you got stuck with a daily four hour
<v Speaker 1>eating window. You can plateau if you're being very, very
<v Speaker 1>consistent from day to day, and your body can adapt
<v Speaker 1>to what you're doing, and so when that happens, you're
<v Speaker 1>right that ADF is a good option. So you said
<v Speaker 1>that you tried ADF, and I'm a little confused about
<v Speaker 1>the way you described it, because you said that you
<v Speaker 1>were doing twenty four hours fasting and then a down
<v Speaker 1>day followed by an up day, So I'm not sure
<v Speaker 1>if you were really doing ADF the way we recommend.
<v Speaker 1>It sounds like perhaps you were weighing twenty five four
<v Speaker 1>hours to have your Downday meal and then having your
<v Speaker 1>down day and then the update. I'm not really sure
<v Speaker 1>what your upday looked like. And you really don't have
<v Speaker 1>to wait twenty four hours before you have a Downday meal.
<v Speaker 1>I want you to think about ADF as thirty six twelve,
<v Speaker 1>but within that thirty six hours you can have your
<v Speaker 1>Downday meal anywhere in there that makes sense. So technically
<v Speaker 1>you're not doing a full thirty six hour fast, but
<v Speaker 1>I want you to think of the down day as
<v Speaker 1>a thirty six hour period, and you can either completely
<v Speaker 1>fast for thirty six hours or at some point in
<v Speaker 1>that thirty six hours you can have your downday meal.
<v Speaker 1>My advice is to have the downday meal close enough
<v Speaker 1>to the end of the day so that you don't
<v Speaker 1>have time to be hungry again before you go to bed.
<v Speaker 1>And then the next day you wake up and it's
<v Speaker 1>your upday, and you need to allow eight to twelve hours.
<v Speaker 1>If you are plateaued because of what you've been doing,
<v Speaker 1>and your body's adapted to your four hour window, your
<v Speaker 1>low calorie intake, whatever that might be, then you really
<v Speaker 1>need to focus on having a full upday with eight
<v Speaker 1>to twelve hours, three full meals in there. That that
<v Speaker 1>would be a great way of thinking about it. And
<v Speaker 1>also it says you did that for a month, you
<v Speaker 1>might need a little more time than that to see
<v Speaker 1>the weight loss begin. And here's why. If you've been
<v Speaker 1>dieting for a long, long time, decades, and your metabolic
<v Speaker 1>rate might already be slowed a bit. Like we think
<v Speaker 1>about the Biggest Loser research. The people that had been
<v Speaker 1>through the Biggest Loser competition and lost a lot of weight,
<v Speaker 1>their metabolic rate was five hundred calories below what their
<v Speaker 1>calorie formula would suggest. Like their metabolic rate had gotten
<v Speaker 1>lowered over time to five hundred calories below what would
<v Speaker 1>have been predicted. You do not reverse that in a month.
<v Speaker 1>And I know that's annoying because weight loss culture has
<v Speaker 1>taught us you start doing something and your weight starts
<v Speaker 1>to go down immediately. So eightyf is a different kind
<v Speaker 1>of animal because now you are purposefully trying to boost
<v Speaker 1>your metabolic rate. And if your body has a slowed
<v Speaker 1>to metabolic rate and you start eating more, you could
<v Speaker 1>gain a little weight at first, actually before your metabolism
<v Speaker 1>starts to heal, and you might see some upward movement
<v Speaker 1>and then we're like, oh my gosh, this is not working.
<v Speaker 1>I'm gaining weight. But the key is that the down
<v Speaker 1>day will give your body time to tap into some fat.
<v Speaker 1>The upday boosts your metabolic rate. At first, you might
<v Speaker 1>see a jump up on the scale, especially just because
<v Speaker 1>of the weight of the food. Think about this for
<v Speaker 1>a minute. You know, if you've been eating in a
<v Speaker 1>four hour window every single day for let's just say
<v Speaker 1>six months, I'm just going to throw that out there
<v Speaker 1>for it first, money, who's listening. If you've had a
<v Speaker 1>four hour window every day for six months, your body
<v Speaker 1>is adapted to whatever you're eating in that four hour window.
<v Speaker 1>Now you're going to eat more intentionally on your update.
<v Speaker 1>That food has weight, So you're weighing yourself, you know,
<v Speaker 1>every single day, let's say, after eating in your for
<v Speaker 1>our window, and now you've had a twelve hour window.
<v Speaker 1>On an up day, you're gonna get on the scale.
<v Speaker 1>Your weight's going to be up. You know, we don't
<v Speaker 1>gain or lose a lot of fat quickly like overnight.
<v Speaker 1>So now you're taking your weekly averages and you've got
<v Speaker 1>the added extra weight from the food and water retention
<v Speaker 1>from your update in there, so it might make it
<v Speaker 1>look like your weight is jumped up. So there are
<v Speaker 1>a lot of things that can come into play. I
<v Speaker 1>would definitely give it more time than a month if
<v Speaker 1>you think you might have adapted due to metabolic adaptation.
<v Speaker 1>So you've got another added wrinkle in there too, and
<v Speaker 1>that is that you're very active and you're doing weightlifting.
<v Speaker 1>So with weightlifting, you're very likely to be building muscle
<v Speaker 1>because that is the goal, and so that can also
<v Speaker 1>make the scale stall. And that is where things like
<v Speaker 1>measurements and progress photos can make a lot of difference. Now,
<v Speaker 1>if you're really building substantial muscle, you might actually have
<v Speaker 1>measurements going up in certain areas. Maybe keep your eye
<v Speaker 1>on your waist measurement. If you're doing a lot of weightlifting,
<v Speaker 1>your waste could be going down, whereas maybe you're bulking
<v Speaker 1>up around your thighs or your arms, depending on what
<v Speaker 1>you're doing. So I wouldn't you know, track those but
<v Speaker 1>use your your goal pants or just just measure around
<v Speaker 1>your waist. Take some photos see how you look from
<v Speaker 1>from one month to the next month. So I know
<v Speaker 1>that's a lot. And you also mentioned the recommendation to
<v Speaker 1>you know, one hundred grams of protein because of it's
<v Speaker 1>what people are saying right now. But a lot of
<v Speaker 1>people who start to add protein because they think they
<v Speaker 1>need to, they actually start to gain weight and not
<v Speaker 1>just muscle, because excess protein can be stored as fat
<v Speaker 1>as well. So what would you like to add to that, Sherry.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I just want to say too, as active as
<v Speaker 2>you are, and I know when we're in a plateau
<v Speaker 2>that often we think, oh my gosh, I really need
<v Speaker 2>to tighten up what I'm eating.
<v Speaker 1>I need to eat less, eat less, let's move more.
<v Speaker 2>But that maybe not what you need you know, you
<v Speaker 2>are working out a lot, and you do need to
<v Speaker 2>fuel well to sustain those workouts because you know, if not,
<v Speaker 2>you really could potentially be under eating. And we talk
<v Speaker 2>about intermittent fasting is metabolically protective, but if you are
<v Speaker 2>working out a lot and you're not fueling enough to
<v Speaker 2>support that, then yeah, your metabolism can down regulate. So
<v Speaker 2>the thing you need to do is that's why we
<v Speaker 2>say fasting and feasting need to be in balance. And
<v Speaker 2>when a person is working out a lot, you know
<v Speaker 2>you've got to throw that in there too. So you know,
<v Speaker 2>once you start adding a bunch of workouts, you really
<v Speaker 2>do need to eat more than you did before you
<v Speaker 2>were working out because your body is using substantially more energy.
<v Speaker 1>Through the day. So yeah, really look at that.
<v Speaker 2>Make sure that you're not unnecessarily restricting in your window.
<v Speaker 2>You know, if you decide you don't want to do
<v Speaker 2>ADF again, really focus on fueling well. Listen to trucidiety
<v Speaker 2>and is getting quality protein and important? Yes, it is
<v Speaker 2>very important for longevity. Do you need the pound per protein? No,
<v Speaker 2>your body's going to let you know if you need
<v Speaker 2>more protein. Protein is a very satiating macro and so
<v Speaker 2>if you're not eating a lot and you're extra hungry,
<v Speaker 2>you might need to increase your protein needs. So anyway,
<v Speaker 2>definitely play around. You know, I'm happy that you reached out.
<v Speaker 2>I you know, I do think you can shift your weight.
<v Speaker 2>But like Jen said, if you don't have a lot
<v Speaker 2>of muscle mass and you're working on building muscle mass,
<v Speaker 2>that really can affect your measurements too. So just give
<v Speaker 2>it time. Because like you said, you just kind of
<v Speaker 2>came back to fasting in November. Just tighten your window
<v Speaker 2>back up in January. So give it time. Make some tweaks.
<v Speaker 2>You might tweak your food choice a little bit. You
<v Speaker 2>might decide to delay alcohol while you're trying to get
<v Speaker 2>your weight down. But keep pushing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and I know this can be really, really confusing,
<v Speaker 1>Like we were talking about before, if there was just
<v Speaker 1>one thing we could say to everybody, do this exactly
<v Speaker 1>and it will work. You want to eat enough but
<v Speaker 1>not too much. How do you know? So we think, well,
<v Speaker 1>you know, you tell me not to count calories, then
<v Speaker 1>you tell me to eat enough, then you tell me
<v Speaker 1>not to eat too much, And how do I know
<v Speaker 1>what to do? And that's just the whole confusion, that is,
<v Speaker 1>we've been programmed to think that there's a formula or
<v Speaker 1>that we have to do a certain thing or count
<v Speaker 1>a certain number of calories, and our bodies just are
<v Speaker 1>so many variables. And so have an honest talk with yourself.
<v Speaker 1>Am I nourishing my body well? Or am I eating
<v Speaker 1>in a way that someone else would think is dieting?
<v Speaker 1>In my window? You could probably figure that out. Am
<v Speaker 1>I eating way more in my window than I need?
<v Speaker 1>And I'm over eating? When you really had that honest
<v Speaker 1>look at what you're doing, you probably could figure that
<v Speaker 1>out when you think about it. And you know, I
<v Speaker 1>actually suggested to somebody in the community yesterday that she
<v Speaker 1>count her calories just as in hindsight, not eating to
<v Speaker 1>a calorie target, and not because I think counting calories
<v Speaker 1>is the way that Yeah, I don't think weight loss
<v Speaker 1>is a math formula, but it was someone that I
<v Speaker 1>suspect is under eating, And so I said, how about
<v Speaker 1>go back and count all those calories up because she
<v Speaker 1>thinks she's overeating, but it seems like underreating to me.
<v Speaker 1>Because diet culture can really mess with our mind and
<v Speaker 1>make think we're supposed to eat like a tiny little
<v Speaker 1>bird when really we need satisfying meals. Something that keeps
<v Speaker 1>coming back to me is the research on weight of
<v Speaker 1>food and how much food we need, Like, like they
<v Speaker 1>found that we tend to eat a certain weight of food.
<v Speaker 1>We require a certain weight of food for satiety, and
<v Speaker 1>that's a lot, like it might be more than you think.
<v Speaker 1>You know, we think we should be eating like a bird,
<v Speaker 1>and we think we should be extremely dieting. So really
<v Speaker 1>look honestly at what you're doing. And like I said,
<v Speaker 1>even though I don't think that calorie counting is you know,
<v Speaker 1>I don't think our weight loss is a math formula
<v Speaker 1>because Calori County has flaws, you know, just like we
<v Speaker 1>use the smart BMI. There are a lot of flaws
<v Speaker 1>in BMI. An Olympic athlete is going to be heavier
<v Speaker 1>because of all muscle, and they might look show up
<v Speaker 1>as obese when they're really very very lean and don't
<v Speaker 1>have a lot of fat. The same with calorie counting.
<v Speaker 1>But if you realize, oh my gosh, I'm only eating
<v Speaker 1>eight hundred calories a day, then you could be like, oh,
<v Speaker 1>I'm accidentally under eating, and that is a very powerful
<v Speaker 1>thing to realize, or well I'm eating twenty five hundred
<v Speaker 1>calories a day, that could be part of my problem.
<v Speaker 1>And so while calorie counting is very very rough, just
<v Speaker 1>as BMI is rough, it can give you a sense of, oh, no,
<v Speaker 1>I'm accidentally not eating very much. I need to purposefully
<v Speaker 1>try to eat more. Not to confuse everybody, but it's
<v Speaker 1>really really complicated, and we have such a skewed sense
<v Speaker 1>based on our dieting of what we should be doing.
<v Speaker 1>And I just want everybody to understand that it is complicated.
<v Speaker 1>And if things sound contradictory, like you might need to
<v Speaker 1>eat more, you might need to eat less, the key
<v Speaker 1>is balancing right and you're feasting, and we can't tell
<v Speaker 1>you what that looks like because, like I said before,
<v Speaker 1>there are too many variables. We're not a math formula,
<v Speaker 1>and that's where the trial and error and the experiment
<v Speaker 1>of one comes in. Thank you for coming to my
<v Speaker 1>TED talk. Well it's interesting too.
<v Speaker 2>I read this article the other day that said when
<v Speaker 2>women are asked to estimate how many calories that they've
<v Speaker 2>eaten in a day, that they're usually off by five
<v Speaker 2>hundred calories on the low side.
<v Speaker 1>They think they have more than they've had.
<v Speaker 2>They think they had less than they they think they've
<v Speaker 2>had less than they had, right, Okay, except when it
<v Speaker 2>comes to long term dieters. Ah, So if you take
<v Speaker 2>just general people off the street who have never really dieted,
<v Speaker 2>they don't have any comprehension of how many calories is
<v Speaker 2>in an egg and a slice of bread and take
<v Speaker 2>dress exactly.
<v Speaker 1>I can tell you seventy for an egg long term
<v Speaker 1>calorie counter way back in the day, not anymore.
<v Speaker 2>Right, So if you take a person who does know that,
<v Speaker 2>and then they have this skewed perception of how much
<v Speaker 2>they should be eating because they've been low calorie dyeing
<v Speaker 2>throughout their whole life, but then you you know, it's
<v Speaker 2>like so different. What we don't understand is all through
<v Speaker 2>our life we're learning these lessons and they get cemented
<v Speaker 2>in our head. So yeah, jin's right. Some people will
<v Speaker 2>show us what they eat and I think they're overeating,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm like, your meal looked like my snack, right,
<v Speaker 2>I would be starving. Right, But see that here's the thing.
<v Speaker 2>When you are used to slipping on a substantially less
<v Speaker 2>amount of food than your body really needs, you're not
<v Speaker 2>going to feel hunger. What you may feel are like
<v Speaker 2>you may be satiated sooner because your body's used to that,
<v Speaker 2>but then you might have these BINGI days where you
<v Speaker 2>like significantly overeat, but then you feel guilty, so you
<v Speaker 2>go back to restrict and restricting your food. So I mean,
<v Speaker 2>it's so nuanced, and we're not in your house. We
<v Speaker 2>don't see how you make your plates or how you
<v Speaker 2>eat exactly, but really eat smartly. And if you think
<v Speaker 2>you might be under eating, track your calories for a
<v Speaker 2>week and see, yeah, you know, if you're significantly under eating.
<v Speaker 2>And I'm gonna say, if you're eating less than like
<v Speaker 2>fourteen fifteen hundred calories a day as a five foot
<v Speaker 2>five woman, and you're probably under eating.
<v Speaker 1>See I'm just so lucky that I tend to just
<v Speaker 1>vary it naturally. I haven't you know, I've not been
<v Speaker 1>the person who accidentally over restricted because my window naturally varies.
<v Speaker 1>Like the other day. Oh, this was so fun. Sherry
<v Speaker 1>Will has a new job that he's been doing since November,
<v Speaker 1>and he's doing very very well at his job. He's
<v Speaker 1>working at a local campground and landscaping, Like he's learning
<v Speaker 1>how to prune trees and he's learning how to do irrigation.
<v Speaker 1>But anyway, someone that he works with invited him to
<v Speaker 1>come to this thing, and he wasn't really sure what
<v Speaker 1>it was, didn't really know. He's like, would you come
<v Speaker 1>with me? Because he's kind of shy, Like okay. It
<v Speaker 1>was line dancing. Oh my god, Sunday afternoon at noon,
<v Speaker 1>line dancing in this like I know this all. It
<v Speaker 1>was like everybody was like in their fifties and then
<v Speaker 1>there's will you are older? Older than that?
<v Speaker 2>This was at the campground.
<v Speaker 1>No, it was at a local fitness studio. But someone
<v Speaker 1>that worked with him, a man that worked with him
<v Speaker 1>who's more like my age, invited him to calm and
<v Speaker 1>so I came with them and we did some mind dancing.
<v Speaker 1>But after that we were done. It was one o'clock
<v Speaker 1>and I'm like, let's go eat some brunch. It was
<v Speaker 1>time with my boy, right. I went and ate some brunch.
<v Speaker 1>So I'd just naturally thrown in day. So I had
<v Speaker 1>two full meals that day. We went to Tuplow Honey,
<v Speaker 1>one of our favorite places. I had a full brunch
<v Speaker 1>and then me six hours later, I had a full dinner.
<v Speaker 1>I just naturally have thrown in days like that, Like
<v Speaker 1>even when I was trying really hard to have a
<v Speaker 1>daily five hour window. I never made a month where
<v Speaker 1>every day was five hours. There was always something that
<v Speaker 1>came up where I was like, I'm going to eat
<v Speaker 1>in a longer window today. So I was lucky that
<v Speaker 1>I didn't accidentally settle into an overly restrictive window. But
<v Speaker 1>people who really like routine and who will are like
<v Speaker 1>I did twenty four every single day for six months,
<v Speaker 1>that could lead to plateauing. Right. But on the flip side,
<v Speaker 1>you know, we told Gina to be consistent, so that's
<v Speaker 1>where the balance comes in again, finding the balance. You know,
<v Speaker 1>think about Goldilocks. This bed is too hard, this bed
<v Speaker 1>is too soft, this bed is just right, And so
<v Speaker 1>it's nuanced. Signing your own Goldilocks spot, you're your own
<v Speaker 1>study of one. You know, you don't want to be
<v Speaker 1>overly restrictive and too rigid and consistent, but you also
<v Speaker 1>don't want to be too loosey goosey. You need to
<v Speaker 1>find the balance. And like I said, it's not something
<v Speaker 1>we could say here's exactly the balance that is right
<v Speaker 1>for everybody, because it doesn't work that way. Oh if
<v Speaker 1>only it was man. I like procedures that are the
<v Speaker 1>same for everybody. I wish we could just tell you.
<v Speaker 1>I wish we could. And now it's time for our
<v Speaker 1>segment called What's Your Why. Most of us begin intermittent
<v Speaker 1>fasting with weight loss in mind, and that is a
<v Speaker 1>really great reason to begin, But there's so much more
<v Speaker 1>to what intermittent fasting can do for us beyond weight loss.
<v Speaker 1>I genuinely believe that when your why is deeper than
<v Speaker 1>weight loss alone, you're more likely to find long term
<v Speaker 1>success and view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. Well.
<v Speaker 2>This week we have a wife from Jen's new best
<v Speaker 2>friend eating the taters in item love It. My why
<v Speaker 2>is to keep up with my handsome hobby and.
<v Speaker 1>Five beautiful daughters.
<v Speaker 2>My four year old has so much energy, and I
<v Speaker 2>want to keep up with her as long as I
<v Speaker 2>can and be healthy. And I'd like to be a
<v Speaker 2>cool grandma eventually too. Love it eat those vaters.
<v Speaker 1>There's no food in the world more satisfying to me
<v Speaker 1>than a bait p totato. You'll probably know that, all right.
<v Speaker 2>So we have a question from Alona from the little
<v Speaker 2>Mediterranean island of Malta.
<v Speaker 1>This is too from Malta.
<v Speaker 2>I know, so as I've said before. You guys have
<v Speaker 2>heard me say before, like it's so weird. We'll get
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of submissions, and I don't look at the
<v Speaker 2>names until, like I've already. When I prep the podcast,
<v Speaker 2>I pull out their questions and then I go back
<v Speaker 2>and I add their name because it's in a different
<v Speaker 2>segment of the spreadsheet that I use. And so I
<v Speaker 2>dropped these questions in and then I went to put
<v Speaker 2>the name in. I was like, oh my gosh, two
<v Speaker 2>submissions from Malta in this same week. And I had
<v Speaker 2>to look it up on it to look it up,
<v Speaker 2>because you know, so if you don't know where Malta is,
<v Speaker 2>it's a little island off Sicily. So she says, hi, ladies,
<v Speaker 2>I'm forty six years old, five foot six and weigh
<v Speaker 2>one hundred and twenty six pounds. I've been weight training
<v Speaker 2>for over ten years, so I'm quite lean with good
<v Speaker 2>muscle mass. I'm extremely new to fasting, and I started
<v Speaker 2>my journey with a seventy two hour fast with water
<v Speaker 2>and pure herbal tea between the sixth and eighth of January,
<v Speaker 2>as I had put on extra weight over the Christmas
<v Speaker 2>period and I wanted to kickstart my fasting journey the
<v Speaker 2>hard way, even though it was easier than I imagined. The
<v Speaker 2>following week, I tried sixteen eight, but found I was
<v Speaker 2>really over eating during the eight hour window. So the
<v Speaker 2>past two weeks I changed to eating between six pm
<v Speaker 2>and nine pm a three hour window on Mondays, Wednesdays
<v Speaker 2>and Fridays, while eating regularly the other four days. I
<v Speaker 2>have a few questions, as I only just discovered you
<v Speaker 2>and ordered your book, so maybe you can help me
<v Speaker 2>in other bees till I get through the whole book.
<v Speaker 2>One is pure herbal tea such as green tea, cambermeal,
<v Speaker 2>peppermint tea not permitted during a clean fast, and why start?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, let's do them one by one. Yep, all right.
<v Speaker 1>So green tea is actually real tea, so that is fine.
<v Speaker 1>Any kind of real tea, green tea, black tea, white tea,
<v Speaker 1>if it's like the way it's processed. I'm not talking
<v Speaker 1>about white tea where you're putting milk in it. I
<v Speaker 1>think they call it that in Australia. But any kind
<v Speaker 1>of tea that's just tea is fine. You do not
<v Speaker 1>want to have cambermeal, peppermint all of that, and the
<v Speaker 1>reason why is going to be explained in the book
<v Speaker 1>that you are now reading, so you will see it.
<v Speaker 1>Go to the clean fast chapter to fully understand why
<v Speaker 1>we don't want any kind of tea, any kind of
<v Speaker 1>herbal tea that has a hint of sweetness or food
<v Speaker 1>flavor in them.
<v Speaker 2>All Right, the next question, I take many supplement just
<v Speaker 2>as iron, vitamin C, zinc, full eight, vitamin D three,
<v Speaker 2>magnesium and B six, and probiotics, How and when would
<v Speaker 2>these be taken during fasting days?
<v Speaker 1>So some things can not do well on an empty stomach, like,
<v Speaker 1>for example, iron and zinc are minerals and magnesium. But
<v Speaker 1>technically any minerals should be fine on an empty stomach.
<v Speaker 1>But both iron and zinc would make me super super
<v Speaker 1>queasy on an empty stomach. So I would not recommend
<v Speaker 1>taking anything that's going to make you super queasy. And
<v Speaker 1>if it's food like, you want to keep that in
<v Speaker 1>your eating window. So we recommend that you take all
<v Speaker 1>supplements that are possibly kept to your eating window in
<v Speaker 1>your eating window, like probiotics are definitely food like. I
<v Speaker 1>actually years ago saw a study that indicated that probiotics
<v Speaker 1>are most effective when taken with food, So wouldn't want
<v Speaker 1>to take them on their own, even if they were fine.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you want to take them when they're going
<v Speaker 1>to have the most benefit.
<v Speaker 2>And also, vitamin D three is a fat soluble vitamin,
<v Speaker 2>so your body can't obsorb and use it without fat,
<v Speaker 2>so that one you would definitely want to take it
<v Speaker 2>with food, all right. Next question is how can I
<v Speaker 2>take electrolytes without breaking the fast? Is Himlayan salt the
<v Speaker 2>only solution, as all other over the counter electrote seem
<v Speaker 2>to contain some form of sugar.
<v Speaker 1>I have actually never once recommended Himalayan salt specifically. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's out there, people say it all the time, but
<v Speaker 1>I don't know how Himalayan salt got like this sheen
<v Speaker 1>of the magical or perfect thing to take. So I
<v Speaker 1>actually would not choose Himalayan salt for multiple reasons. One
<v Speaker 1>is there's so much of it out there that you
<v Speaker 1>know how olive oil is counterfeit. I'm pretty sure Himalayan
<v Speaker 1>salt is too, so I don't trust it. I just don't.
<v Speaker 1>That's just me. If olive oil is fake, then I'm
<v Speaker 1>sure Himalayan salt once it got really popular, now it's
<v Speaker 1>at TJ Max. There was an article about that. Wasn't
<v Speaker 1>there that My intuition always told me not to trust it.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know, you know, I don't use Himalayan salt
<v Speaker 1>in my home. I use Redman's Real Salt because it's
<v Speaker 1>like one company and it comes from a certain place.
<v Speaker 1>But there are definitely electrolyte supplements out there that only
<v Speaker 1>have minerals. Yeah, there's one that. Look, I'm going to
<v Speaker 1>say one constant Trace is one that's available on Amazon,
<v Speaker 1>and the last time I looked at it, it was minerals only.
<v Speaker 1>That change any time, and they're not sponsoring us. They
<v Speaker 1>don't know if we exist. But it's a liquid mineral drops,
<v Speaker 1>so you don't want one with flavors or sugars or
<v Speaker 1>citric acid. It shouldn't taste like kool aid or anything
<v Speaker 1>like that. And you just want minerals if you need them.
<v Speaker 1>I also wouldn't assume you need them. Yeah, I don't
<v Speaker 1>need them. Sheery does need them, So don't assume you
<v Speaker 1>need them. But if you do need them, look for
<v Speaker 1>one that's minerals only.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, And actually, you know, there's a lot of do
<v Speaker 2>it yourself recipes out there where you can make your
<v Speaker 2>own electrolyte solution that is completely fast safe. It's what
<v Speaker 2>I've been doing, and you can just buy the components
<v Speaker 2>and make it yourself. I just buy potassium citrate and
<v Speaker 2>I use a salt called Baja Gold Salt. It's lab
<v Speaker 2>tested for impurities and stuff, and it actually has lower
<v Speaker 2>sodium in it than regular salt because it has more
<v Speaker 2>minerals in it, more potassium or magnesium, bor on, that
<v Speaker 2>kind of stuff. And I've recently just discovered it, so
<v Speaker 2>I switched to it. But so you can make your own.
<v Speaker 2>If you cannot find anything that's fast safe, just make
<v Speaker 2>it yourself.
<v Speaker 1>And not to confuse anybody, but you know, we always
<v Speaker 1>say to avoid citric acid, and then you just said
<v Speaker 1>potassium citrate, and so people might say, wait, sitrate citric
<v Speaker 1>That sounds like the thing you said to avoid. They're
<v Speaker 1>completely different. Potassium citrate is just a mineral. It's not
<v Speaker 1>the same as citric acid, which has a tangy flavor.
<v Speaker 2>All right, So she fourth question. I exercised four days
<v Speaker 2>a week in the morning, and I worry about losing
<v Speaker 2>muscle mass since on fasting days I wouldn't eat until dinner.
<v Speaker 2>How can I make sure I'm not losing muscle masks.
<v Speaker 1>Why would your body tear up your own muscle mass
<v Speaker 1>But when you're exercised, think about that just a minute.
<v Speaker 1>Jason Fung has a great analogy and it has to
<v Speaker 1>do with if you needed to burn fire fuel of
<v Speaker 1>fire in your living room because it was a cold day,
<v Speaker 1>would you chop up your sofa or would you go
<v Speaker 1>to the woodpile and get some logs from the wood pile.
<v Speaker 1>So imagine that your muscle tissue is your The muscle
<v Speaker 1>tissue is your sofa. It's valuable, valuable tissue, whereas your
<v Speaker 1>fat stores are your logs, which is your body going
<v Speaker 1>to choose to use for fuel. Your body is not
<v Speaker 1>going to burn up valuable muscle tissue if it can
<v Speaker 1>get to your fat stores. Now, in a minute, we're
<v Speaker 1>going to talk about you specifically and how lean you are,
<v Speaker 1>because there's a caveat there for you question number five
<v Speaker 1>coming up. But for someone who has plenty of storage
<v Speaker 1>fat on their body and you're working out, your body
<v Speaker 1>is going to use the stored fuel that's there, the fat,
<v Speaker 1>the log pile, that's why it's there. It's not gonna
<v Speaker 1>chop up the sofa. Your valuable muscle tissue. All right,
<v Speaker 1>go ahead and read question five though, because this is
<v Speaker 1>where it's going to change a little bit. For this
<v Speaker 1>particular question.
<v Speaker 2>I have not lost any weight post to seventy two
<v Speaker 2>hour fast. In fact, sometimes I'm even increasing in weight.
<v Speaker 2>My target weight is one hundred and eighteen pounds, which
<v Speaker 2>is what I weighed last summer. It is not my
<v Speaker 2>only why however, I want to know whether this method
<v Speaker 2>of IF should help shift some weight or not.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So now we're going to get to the part
<v Speaker 1>where I'm going to be super deeper honest with you,
<v Speaker 1>and that is that you are all ready at a
<v Speaker 1>very very low weight for your height. Okay, five six
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and twenty six pounds, And you said that
<v Speaker 1>you are quite lean with good muscle mass. So if
<v Speaker 1>you are quite lean with good muscle mass, and you're
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and twenty six pounds, I ran it through
<v Speaker 1>the smart BMI, which I said earlier is just going
<v Speaker 1>to be a rough estimate. But you actually err to
<v Speaker 1>the side of less fat because you're so muscular. You said,
<v Speaker 1>so one hundred and twenty six pounds is on the
<v Speaker 1>lowest end of the healthy weight range for your height.
<v Speaker 1>So now let's imagine if you did get down to
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and eighteen pounds, I ran that through. That
<v Speaker 1>is actually right there at the underweight area. So I
<v Speaker 1>want you to reconsider whether you actually have some fat
<v Speaker 1>to lose. I think you don't probably have fat to lose,
<v Speaker 1>and so that goes back to the prior question. If
<v Speaker 1>you don't have sufficient fat to fuel your body, then
<v Speaker 1>you might lose some muscle masks because your body has
<v Speaker 1>to have something to burn. So things change when you
<v Speaker 1>have you know, when you're when you're underweight, when you're
<v Speaker 1>approaching underweight, when you have less fat. So I hate
<v Speaker 1>to tell you that internet and fasting is going to
<v Speaker 1>help you shift some weight, because it doesn't seem like
<v Speaker 1>you need to lose any more fat. Your female does
<v Speaker 1>she say female? Okay? Well no she didn't. Well, I
<v Speaker 1>own know her name is like a female name. Okay okay.
<v Speaker 1>As a female, we need to have a certain amount
<v Speaker 1>of fat on our bodies to be considered healthy. You
<v Speaker 1>may want to look into that and just see see
<v Speaker 1>if you can figure out your percentage of body fat
<v Speaker 1>and where you fall in the range. We do not
<v Speaker 1>want to have too low body fat stores on our bodies,
<v Speaker 1>and you know you're forty six, and so just be
<v Speaker 1>cognizant of that. When we start getting to too low
<v Speaker 1>body fat percentage, that is not good for us. And
<v Speaker 1>so you know, I hate to tell somebody not to
<v Speaker 1>lose weight if losing weight is what you want to do,
<v Speaker 1>but sometimes losing weight is not what you should do.
<v Speaker 1>So I would not do any more long fasts. I
<v Speaker 1>would absolutely have a daily eating window every single day.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe you do an eight hour daily eating window every
<v Speaker 1>single day for the health benefits. And your goal is
<v Speaker 1>not to lose any more weight on the scale, and
<v Speaker 1>you may even go up some more on the scale
<v Speaker 1>because you're building muscle and that would be a good thing.
<v Speaker 1>So I would not focus on trying to lower the
<v Speaker 1>scale weight anymore. From where you are now, do you
<v Speaker 1>have anything to add to that callory?
<v Speaker 2>And what she didn't talk about is she did a
<v Speaker 2>seventy two hour fast, so a three day fast. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>And then she said the following week that she tried
<v Speaker 2>sixteen eight but she found she was overeating during the
<v Speaker 2>eight hour window, so then she changed things up. But
<v Speaker 2>here's what's important to understand. I don't know what you
<v Speaker 2>did following your seventy two hour fast. So if you
<v Speaker 2>did not have a three day refeed period, three up days,
<v Speaker 2>three solid days of you know, eating all day unrestricted,
<v Speaker 2>then your body really may have been asking for more
<v Speaker 2>food during that eight hour eating window. And you know,
<v Speaker 2>you're also just adapting to fasting. And as we're adapting
<v Speaker 2>to fasting, you know, overeating in the window is quite normal.
<v Speaker 2>Your body's trying to adapt to anuaid eating your mind,
<v Speaker 2>it's a lot of it's psychological, and so it takes
<v Speaker 2>time to get acclimated fasting, which is you know, one
<v Speaker 2>of the reasons why Jen wrote the twenty eight Day
<v Speaker 2>Fast Start book because it helps walk you through that process.
<v Speaker 1>It walks you through.
<v Speaker 2>Your hard days, and then at the end of those
<v Speaker 2>twenty eight days, you know you have a pretty solid
<v Speaker 2>foundation for a fasting lifestyle. And most people feel way
<v Speaker 2>more confident and more comfortable with what they're doing at
<v Speaker 2>the end of that twenty eight days. So I would
<v Speaker 2>encourage you to, you know, go through the process, settle
<v Speaker 2>into one thing. Fuel well in your window. And like
<v Speaker 2>Jen said, you're already very very lean, so you may
<v Speaker 2>notice some body recomposition, but you may not get to
<v Speaker 2>that target weight One of the things that we see
<v Speaker 2>with intermint fasting is that people don't get to their
<v Speaker 2>target weight sometimes. So before we get to the tweak
<v Speaker 2>of the week, I want to take a minute to
<v Speaker 2>tell you about Crunchy Non Toxic Skincare. One of the
<v Speaker 2>many reasons that I practice internment fasting for going on
<v Speaker 2>ten years now is to age gracefully. Aging is inevitable, Aging.
<v Speaker 1>Gracefully is up to us.
<v Speaker 2>We all want to feel great, move with ease and strength,
<v Speaker 2>and I know that I'm not the only one who
<v Speaker 2>wants youthful, supple skin. For way too many years, I've
<v Speaker 2>used my skin with too much sun, not enough sleep,
<v Speaker 2>and blue light exposure. And if I could go back,
<v Speaker 2>I would counsel my younger self to take better care
<v Speaker 2>of my skin with quality skincare and addressing my specific
<v Speaker 2>skincare concerns. I can do that. I can't go back
<v Speaker 2>in time, but I can improve my skin every day
<v Speaker 2>with a dedicated routine just for my skincare needs. Using
<v Speaker 2>Crunchy's non toxic skincare routine. They've recently made it easier
<v Speaker 2>than ever to start on your path to better skin
<v Speaker 2>with a new simplified skincare quiz on their website and
<v Speaker 2>as always, you can use that quiz figure out what
<v Speaker 2>you need or reach out to me and I can
<v Speaker 2>help you decide. Visit my website at crunchy dot com
<v Speaker 2>slash Sherry Bullock to learn more, or visit the link
<v Speaker 2>in show notes.
<v Speaker 1>And now it's time for our tweak of the week.
<v Speaker 1>Lindsey from Boston says a maintenance tweak I've been loving.
<v Speaker 1>I know a lot of people have a maintenance range,
<v Speaker 1>but I just have a scale number I want to
<v Speaker 1>stay below since I I don't want to be in
<v Speaker 1>any danger of losing too much weight. As I've hummed
<v Speaker 1>along in maintenance weighing every day, I've stopped recording my
<v Speaker 1>weight unless it is less than my stay below number.
<v Speaker 1>If I happen to be above that number, I don't panic,
<v Speaker 1>but I make a mental note if it stays above
<v Speaker 1>that number for more than a day or two, I
<v Speaker 1>may tweak a bit. In addition to keeping me honest,
<v Speaker 1>that gives me some little winds and keeps me motivated
<v Speaker 1>in maintenance. Well, they have to leave you with inspiration
<v Speaker 1>or motivational quotes. This week we have a quote from Apple.
<v Speaker 1>The quote is I recently learned that butterflies can't see
<v Speaker 1>their own wings, and it made me wonder how many
<v Speaker 1>of us are walking through life without truly seeing the
<v Speaker 1>beauty we carry or realizing how much we've grown. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>I love that. Thanks so much for listening today. We
<v Speaker 1>would love to have you join us in the Delay
<v Speaker 1>Don't Tonight community, where you can interact with both me
<v Speaker 1>and Sherry, plus the most supportive bunch of intermittent fasters
<v Speaker 1>you'll find anywhere. Go to Jenstevens dot com slash community
<v Speaker 1>to join us.
<v Speaker 2>Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to your favorite
<v Speaker 2>podcast app, and if you haven't already, please leave us
<v Speaker 2>a five star review that helps new listeners find the
<v Speaker 2>show and we really appreciate it.
<v Speaker 1>We are a community driven podcast, so to submit your
<v Speaker 1>success stories, your questions, your favorite tweak it till It's Easy, moments,
<v Speaker 1>or anything else you want us to share on the podcast,
<v Speaker 1>go to Fast Feast Repeat dot com slash submit and
<v Speaker 1>then listen each week to see if we share your
<v Speaker 1>submission or answer your question.
<v Speaker 2>Until next week. Thanks for listening,