Episode 21: Blood Sugar Issues, Fasting for Health, Developing Consistency, and More

Welcome to Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life. I'm Jen Stevens, author
of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock,
longtime intermittent faster and health and wellness advocate. Please keep in mind that this
podcast is for educational and motivational purposes only and is not intended to provide medical
or diagnostic advice. Jen and I are not doctors, so make sure to
check with your trusted healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes to
any medical treatments or medications. Whether you're new to intermittent fasting or an experienced
intermittent faster, tune in each week to get inspired, to learn, and
to have some fun along the way. Hi, everybody, we are so
glad you're here today. Welcome to this week's episode of the Fast Feast Repeat,
Intermittent Fasting for Life Podcast. How are you doing today, Sherry?
I'm great. I don't know if you realized, but this episode comes out
the day before Thanksgiving? Oh does it? Yeah? You actually have the
wrong date on the preps. Okay, I have it written down, So
this is our Thanksgiving episode. Yeah, if you're listening everybody, this is
the day before Thanksgiving, and we can give them you want to give them
some Thanksgiving tips or holiday tips since we're about to go through the Yes,
well, I just I noticed when I was getting ready for the show that
this came out the day before Thanksgiving. But you know, we had our
Facebook groups for so many years, and now we have our other community.
But one of the common themes around the holidays is panic, like people who
overeat for the holidays and then want to overcompensate going in the other direction and
punitive fasting, Like, Okay, I overrate on Thanksgiving, so now I'm
gonna do a forty eight hour fast and then I'm whatever, And that is
not what we want you to do. I think probably everybody's gonna overat a
little bit on Thanksgiving, even me. It only happens once a year,
so it's not going to be the end of the world exactly. And then
the next day you wake up and you do not have to do any kind
of anything special to make up for Thanksgiving, and you probably are gonna have
a long window on Thanksgiving probably, And that's well. I have two thoughts.
Number one, just know, going in if this is your first big
holiday, and you're gonna be eating all of these holiday foods that everybody loves
on Thanksgiving, dressing, mashed potatoes, rolls, pump goodbye. I mean,
it is my favorite holiday for a reason. You may wake up the
next day and you may be really hungry. Just be aware. Yes,
you're gonna be very hungry after a day of eating Thanksgiving food because you are
not gonna wake up. You're gonna be as deeply fasted, but you're gonna
have more glaikogen. Your body's gonna have to burn through. You're not gonna
flip the switch as quickly. You're probably not going to sleep as well because
of all the food you eat that day, and when we don't sleep well,
we're extra hungry. Just be prepared for Black Friday to be a hungry
your day. But hunger is not emergencies, So just push through fast,
clean you drink your black coffee. Yep, don't say well now I feel
sluggish from Thanksgiving. I'm going to put the creamer in. No, don't
do that, and you'll get right back to feeling normal again by the next
day. Although the leftovers hang around for a few days and so at our
house. There's always a few days of eating the heavier food and then I'm
glad when it's gone right. Well, the other technique you can use if
you are a person that likes to dabble in mealis days. You know,
maybe you participate in meal is Monday. Maybe that week you want to do
a mealis Wednesday. Well, it's kind of late because it's today. Oh
that, well, that's true, it is today. Well that save that
tip for Christmas. Have a down day the day before and then and then
on the holiday it's an up day. And guess what. That works out
great, and then the next take it right back to whatever your normal schedule
is. But the main thing that I think sure and I want to communicate
is don't feel guilty or like you failed, or like you fell off the
wagon. Right because every single culture throughout history has feast days. Religions have
feast days. It is not bad or wrong to have a feast day.
That is actually how the world has worked from the beginning of when people knew
what they were doing, people had feast days, and so here we are,
we're having a feast day and you should not feel guilty for it because
I am not going to feel guilty. And here's what I also don't want
you to do. Don't have a feast day on Thursday and on Friday,
be sluggish and tired and feeling guilty about Thursday, and then think, well,
I already screwed up this week, so I'm just gonna eat whatever I
want all weekend and I'll start fasting again Monday. You will not feel good
on Monday, and then it will be harder than it was going to be.
Let's dive into today's weekly celebration and Peter from Lake Orion. He has
both a valid question and a celebration, so I'm going to share both of
these. Peter wrote, it seems that most of your podcasts and submissions focus
on women. I came to if have done it before, but never clean
because I got sick of restrictive dieting keto et cetera, and I wanted a
way to work on my inflammation. I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
I'm curious why you don't focus on men in your podcast or are the
majority of your readers and listeners women? That is a great question, all
right, Well, you know, I think back to the Facebook days when
we had we actually had stats back then, the Facebook groups. It would
show you, and we did find that our Facebook groups, whether or no
matter how big they were, the big one that got up to three hundred
and fifty thousand members or the smaller advanced group, we ran about ninety ish
percent women and the other percent do the math was men. So that is
that's just really how it ended up being. I don't know if that just
reflects I would like to list all of the Facebook groups around health and wellness
that Chad is a member of. Okay, I just listed them. It's
none. Chad doesn't. Chad has never joined a health and wellness Facebook group.
The only thing he's ever joined on Facebook is like Surfside Beach buy and
Sell right or ocean side Village Neighbors whatever. I think men tend to be
sort of lone wolves, you know, just society wise, men often are
not taught to reach out for support from their friends and community and whatever,
and so I just think it's kind of the nature of the beast that men
don't immediately think, oh, I'm trying something new, I'm going to join
a support group. But we do have men in our community and more and
more, and I love to see the men participating. So, just like
in the Facebook days, we definitely had a higher percentage of women. But
I think there's a lot of men just out there in the world quietly doing
intermitten fact and not joining support groups and not writing in questions and not visible.
In our last episode, episode twenty, we had a question from a
man. Yeah, okay, yep, we sure did. You're out there,
Peter. It's just a matter of maybe not being as vocal. So
I think a lot of people who are having success with intermittent fasting and reading
fast Feast Repeat and listening to the podcast are men. You're just maybe,
like I said, not quite as vocal. We would love to hear from
you, male listeners. Write in with your questions, write in with your
celebrations, tell us your tweak. We definitely want to hear from you,
because intermint fasting is definitely not just for women, and neither is our podcast.
Our podcast is for everybody as well. Onto a celebration, he says,
I've been doing your clean fasting for three weeks now, and I recently
had my blood work done. As I mentioned, I have high blood pressure
in cholesterol. I've been keeping track of my cholesterol on a spreadsheet since two
thousand and six. I also have some memories of it when I used to
run marathons with my wife eons ago before kids, and never have I had
my LDL the bad cholesterol as low as it just was. I can one
hundred percent think clean fasting for this. I've generally been keeping my window open
for three to seven hours, give or take, with the majority of it
being four to five hours. Weekends. We go a little bit longer to
account for life. I'm forty nine, I'll be fifty in January, and
I weigh two hundred and twelve pounds and I was two hundred and twenty eight
pounds when I started bat in March and two hundred and eighteen pounds when I
started Clean fast. Well, congratulations, Peter. I know that's great,
and sometimes people actually see cholesterol go up a little bit when they first start,
as you're losing fat. But I'm glad to see that your LDL is
coming down already. Yeah, that's huge incentive. All right, So now
we have a question from a listener. This question is from Carolyn in Virginia.
She said, I found Jen and Melanie's podcast a few years ago.
And she's talking about the Intermittent Fasting podcast that I was on for five years
with co host Melanie, and I'm not on that one anymore, but she
said, I have followed Jen around with all the other podcasts, including this
one, and thank you so much, Carolyn, She said, I think
I enjoyed this one the most, and I know Sherry I like to hear
that as well, because we are really having fun doing it, aren't we.
She said, I've been fasting off and on for the last four years.
As of August of this year, I decided it was time to make
the full commitment because of some health issues I had at the beginning of this
year. I'm doing great, and I hope to be off all my medication
at some point. My question, though, is for my sister. She
also has some health issues and she wants to start fasting, and I think
that is wonderful, but she does have an issue with low blood sugar at
times. Is it safe for someone with low blood sugar to start fasting?
Thanks to both of you for all your great wisdom and everything you do.
My answer is yes, it's safe for her to start fasting. It's going
to depend on why she has low blood sugar. I just tend to run
low. I'm pretty sure it's just genetic. It's the way my body is.
Why However, what and how I eat does affect that. But if
you start fasting and you are a person that runs low, you may need
to just start with a slower, more moderate approach. But if you really
think about it, what causes your blood sugar to drop is insulin. So
if you're clean fasting and you're not having an insulin response while you're fasting,
there really is no reason for your blood sugar to get too low. Now,
it does happen a little bit in the beginning for some people, especially
if they take any medication for diabetes, So that is something that you're gonna
want to kind of clue your doctor into that you're wanting to do and have
them help you manage that. But yes, it's absolutely safe for somebody with
low blood sugar to do. One of the main causes of a person having
low blood sugar is insulin resistance. So once you heal the insulin resistance,
the low blood sugar problem goes away. And we've heard from so many people
over the years who would say things like, gosh, before it fasting.
I always had hypoglycemia throughout the day and I had to eat something so I
would get shaky. And now that's gone. And I want you to visualize
a roller coaster up and down and up and down, and that is the
blood sugar roller coaster that I totally lived on before intermittent fasting. I got
up, I ate something, My blood sugar went up, and then it
went back down, and then nobody something else, and it would go up
and back down. You're more likely to have those spikes and crashes if you're
actually eating. Whereas you know, I've worn a CGM multiple times now,
and when I wear a CGM, you know, I see what my blood
sugar is doing all the time. And during the fast, it does gently
go up and down, especially after coffee and my liberal pop out some glycogen.
My blood sugar goes up and then it gently comes back down. But
what it doesn't do is crash. It might go down to let's say the
seventies or even sixty eight. You know, I might during the fast,
I might look at my CGYM my blood sugar is sixty eight, but I
feel I don't feel like I'm crashing. And then it just kind of stays
around in that level. Is my body adjusts, you know, putting out
glycogen is needed, but it never crashes. I would encourage your sister to
try if she ever feels shaky or nauseous, that is a sign she needs
to eat. But she can also think what was she doing right before that,
and you know, maybe she accidentally broke her fast with something that can
happen. And then if you feel shaky or nauseous, you do need to
eat. But if you feel great, that's that's a good sign. And
like Jin said, there are little things that I do. If I feel
like my blood sugar is a little low in the morning when I wake up,
I know that if I have and I know this from wearing a CGM
as well, if I have my normal two cups of coffee that causes enough
glycogen to be released from my liver that it brings my blood glicose up to
a normal range where I feel great after that. Or you know, similarly,
if I feel like my blood sugar might be a little low for whatever
reason during my past, if I even stand up and just do a bunch
of jumping jack or get on my vibration plate or do a little bit of
rebounding. Again, I'm pushing some glycogen out of my muscles and that makes
me feel better. Like if I get super sleepy for some reason during the
fast and I get up and do a little exercise, it just makes me
feel better. And see, I never felt like that, Like I never
feel a low when I'm fasting, no matter what. Like no matter whether
I'm moving or exercising or swim into the ocean or whatever I'm doing, I
never get those low feelings. I will say, since starting on bioidentical hormone
replacement therapy, I no longer have those lows and crashes. And I think
a lot of it is just that due to the estrogen and progesterone, my
blood sugars and insulin is like way more balanced than it was. Yeah,
And I think that's important for us to keep mentioning. We just don't realize
how much of our blood sugar control is related to other hormones, not just
insulin, but the estrogen and the progesterone. Again, like you know,
I had had my blood work done periodically, but after I went through menopause,
my blood sugar was higher and my A and C actually was like right
there at that pre diabetic range, and I'm like, what, how could
this be true? I do intermittent fasting, like Lord knows what it would
have been had I not been doing intermittent fasting. But after bioidentical hormones,
it came right back down to normal. People discount your gut health, and
gut health can really affect your glucose and insulin live her health, all of
that comes into play. Tell her she can start any point, and I
guarantee you within three months she's going to feel better and stop having those crashes.
Again, We've heard it so many times that it seems to be a
common thread, all right, So now it's time for our segment called What's
Your Why. Most of us begin intermittent fasting with weight loss in mind,
and it's fine for that to be part of your why, but we know
that there is so much more than intermittent fasting can do for us beyond weight
loss. So in my new book twenty eight day fast Start day by day,
I ask readers to craft their why statements before beginning, and when your
why is deeper than way loss alone, you're more likely to find long term
success and view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle. All right, So this week
our y is from Michelle Turner and she wrote health plan with a side effective
weight loss. Weight loss needed to help with a health plan. Type two
diabetes and high blood pressure has played an integral role in my family's health complications
resulting in death, amputations, strokes, et cetera. After gaining and losing
weight between my twenties through my late forties and reaching an all time high and
weight before my forty sixth birthday, I now had the displeasure of joining various
family members for being treated for high blood pressure. After many different protocols with
meds and eventually finding out about intermittent fasting, which was almost two years after
beginning the meds for high blood pressure, weight finally started to come off and
my blood pressure numbers started changing. A few blood tests before finding IF.
I also was revealed my numbers were creeping up for my A and C.
So I'm positive with the weight loss and the IF lifestyle that this completely reversed
that because my numbers are now in normal ranges. My blood pressure is now
controlled still through medication. But I honestly believe that it is the medication.
And if together and I am hoping that I can either reduce meds or completely
ditch the meds. My go to phrase is genetics loads the shotgun and lifestyle
pulls the trigger. If I can do anything to help from pulling the trigger,
then that is what I will do. So my why is to play
an important role in how I live and treat my body to the best of
my ability, and being an intermitt faster has helped me to do so.
Fast forward to five and a half years later, my last recorded total weight
loss was ninety nine pounds. I'm not quite in maintenance, but yet I'm
maintaining, feeling great and empowered. Yes, I'd like to lose fifteen to
twenty more pounds. So if it happens, it happens great. But if
it doesn't, intermittent fasting and I are joined at the hip, never do
us part. I love Michelle. I love that as well. I think
today she just posted in a community that she's on day what two thousand,
I don't remember something, And yeah, she's a very inspiring woman, she
is. And ninety nine pounds. We've talked about that before with her,
But ninety nine pounds. It's like her scale is like being mean showing her
ninety I mean, like, look, ninety nine pounds is so close to
one hundred, right, Like her scale is like, I'm just gonna show
you ninety nine, Michelle. It's an evil scale. Hind day scales are
evil. No, not, they don't really have a personality. But it
always felt like mine was messing with me. When I would get to like
a milestone, it would like stick there on purpose. But I love,
I love, love love what Michelle wrote here that is such a powerful why.
And you know, over the years of being part of the community,
she shared about her family members and their struggles with help, and you know
I've shared about my dad and my my personal genetics, right, and wow,
it's powerful to know that we're doing what we can to keep that from
happening. You know, my husband, he's a bit of a I'm going
to say pessimist, but I'm not sure that's the right word. Maybe a
fatalist. He feels like, if you were given these bad genes, that
that's just your lot in life and there's nothing you do about it. And
I'm constantly encouraging him. No, just because your dad has this, or
your cousin has this, or your aunt has this. Doesn't mean you have
to have this. Why not do what you can in your power to prevent
it, like it's not your destiny? But he and I don't know if
it's just because it's easier for him to pretend like he doesn't have control,
because then it's out of his hands. Right then he doesn't have to be
disappointed in himself if he doesn't make a change. But it took him turning
forty to finally be like, I think maybe I need to take better care
of myself. He's really starting and he's starting to see how you know,
some of his choices in his last twenty years have negatively impacted him. But
all that to say, it's not too late to really change your thinking and
to realize that you can control so much about your health and wellness. Maybe
she can't get off of high blood pressure medication because you know, her genes
are just what they are, but at least she's doing what she can to
control it while on the blood pressure medicine exactly. And I just think that
that's so important. In sharing about Eric and his thoughts of will, I'm
just going to get it anyway, not necessarily. We really can do a
lot to impact our future health. And that is my powerful why well.
And my kind of thing is is like, would I be satisfied allowing destinyes
unfold? I wouldn't be. I need to know that I did everything in
my power to do what's best for my body, and you know, what
happens happens. We can't control our outcomes, but we can certainly try to
shape them. Absolutely, yep. I love that. So this week we
have another question from a listener, and this this was sent in by Lauren
from San Mateo, California. She writes, Higen and Sherry. I am
a thirty six year old female who was five eight and two hundred and twenty
two pounds at my highest I weighed two hundred and sixty two. I have
tried every Waco diet out there, no shocker, and I could not stay
on anything for the life of me. The constant deprivation turned me into a
binge eater. In twenty eleven, my doctor put me on Fentermin and weight
watchers. I had a lot of success with the weight watcher's point plus and
I got down to one hundred and thirty two pounds. Life was good,
but I was starving. It was not sustainable, but it worked in the
past, so I thought I had to continue. Fast Forward to twenty eighteen,
I was still holding on to my points plus plan. I was at
about one hundred and eighty pounds and I was about to buy my wedding dress
for my wedding in Greece. I knew what I was doing for so long
was not working, and I really wanted to shed the excess weight and feel
good for my wedding. I decided to be bold and save up my points
for a full day so I could sploit urge on the next and not feel
deprived. Lo and behold, I was fasting and I didn't even know it.
However, I was chugging diet coke all day during my fasts, so
I was white knuckling it hard. Sometimes I felt like I was going to
die. I stuck with my alternate day fasting, and I almost got down
to the weight I wanted to be before my wedding. Anyway, after the
wedding, I thought I was onto something with my alternate day fasting. I
did some research and I discovered Gen's Facebook groups. I was hooked I started
clean fasting, but I have been on and off for years. Alternate day
fasting worked for me before, but I just can't stick with it anymore.
That motivation I had to be thin for my wedding doesn't exist anymore. I
try to do a daily window and I feel deprived and I long for my
ADF upday splurges and then given, figuring I'll just fast the next full day.
Then the next day hits and I choose to have a daily window because
ADF feels so difficult, and fasting as a lifestyle shouldn't feel hard. The
problem is during a daily window, I fear I'm going to eat way too
much. I'll even change my mind and let myself eat to my heart's content,
because I figure I'll just past a full thirty six hours the next day.
And it is a vicious cycle that goes on and on. I know
FASTI works, and I don't want to ever travel down the rabbit hole of
diets or weight loss pills ever again. I just need help figuring out how
I can stick to this. Please help, ladies, what should I do?
Thank you for all that you both do. I love the podcast in
the books they do help despite my conundrum. All Right, So Lauren,
I am going to forbid you from doing ADF for three months. Like I'm
not even kidding. Jen Stevens is telling you, Lauren, you are not
to do ADF for ninety days, and yeah, I'm a little bossy.
Sorry, Chatt, I'll tell you that I want you to take it off
the table because you are caught in that cycle, and you were caught in
that cycle of tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm going to do something different. Tomorrow,
I'm going to do this other thing, but today I'm not going to
do it today. Today I'm just gonna eat. So it sounds like you're
having endless up days without any down days. I want you to for the
next ninety days. I want you to consider yourself a nineteen fiver. That's
it. You're a nineteen fiver and I really just want you to focus on
that five hour boundary. I know, Sherry times are fast, but I
am going to suggest that you don't even look at your fast link. I
want you to wake up every morning and say, Okay, today I have
a five hour eating window. Bam. That's it. You open it when
you want to, and then you close it within five hours. That is
all. That's all you do. You're not trying to, Oh, well
today, I'm going to open it to and have an eight out. No,
whenever you open, have a five hour window and then close it.
And you just commit to that for ninety days and see what happens. Maybe
you're not going to lose any weight because your body's been through a lot of
craziness. Right, finner, mean, boy, that sure did a number
on me that made my metabolism be tank. She doesn't really maybe twenty eighteen,
Okay, she's been off and on for years, right, so gosh,
I wish it was December. I wish it was December twenty sixth already
and she could get twenty eight day fast start day by day. Because the
subtitle is the ultimate guide for starting or restarting your intermittent fasting lifestyle. So
it's stick. I mean, if you are so out of practice with the
cycle, you might need to do a twenty eight day fast start. You
go back to fast feast, repeat, pretend like you're brand new and you
have never ever fasted before, like you've never even dabbled in it, and
you're gonna start like beginner's mind, right, what religion is that that goes
with the beginner's mind, Buddhism, what is it? I can't remember anyway,
I'm sorry, it's coming to mind. Eddie used to talk about that,
remember Eddie and the Facebook group. But begin with a beginner's mind,
as if you don't even have this history of fasting, you've never done it.
Start completely fresh. Give yourself a twenty eight day fresh start. Follow
the plan in the chapter. If you need to start with whichever one,
don't assume you're gonna maybe don't start with nineteen five. Maybe ease in,
but you are not all try to do more than nineteen five for ninety days.
Let your body just settle in. And then once you're adapted, once
you're in the routine, once you're feeling better, you want to try a
down day, one down day, maybe maybe just a mealless Monday, try
a meal ass Monday, one fall by an update, and then go right
back to your nineteen five for the rest of the week. But you've got
to break the cycle. And the only way to break it is to do
something completely different. And if you're not in the community, join the community
and will remind me that I told you you're not allowed to do it.
I will watch you, I will tell roxy not to let you do it.
But you know you can do it. You know the sun will come
out tomorrow. Is you got to stop singing that song. The sun is
today, The sun's coming out today, and you've got to just do it
today. She doesn't ever really say that she ever did a daily eating window.
And if you've never done a daily eating window, I think there's a
lot to be said for giving it a try. Then you don't have that
all or nothing. It's not the like, here's a fast day, here's
a feast day. So you're not even in that whole cycle. Right.
Every day you get to eat. You get to eat to satiety, and
it's as simple as that. So just take the whole update down day out
of the equation and just get the daily fasting down again, and you're gonna
have to get fat adapted once that happens and you get some appetite correction back
then. I also think you're gonna feel more in control with a daily eating
window because you're not there now. You said during a daily window, you
fear you're going to eat too much. Your body's gonna let you know if
you eat too much. If you're miserable when you close your window, then
yes, you eat too much. But it doesn't take too many times of
doing that before you stop doing it because it's a yucky feeling and nobody likes
to feel like that. So we don't want to diet during our windows.
So as long as you're eating to satiety and you're not overly full when you
close your window, you're probably probably not going to eat too much in your
window. My other thing I want to bring up too, is you said
that the motivation that you had to be thin for your wedding does not exist
anymore. If you notice Jenna and I have started doing though, what's your
why? It's time for you to sit down and craft your why, because
there's a why there, and maybe it's not a wedding dress. It's something
much bigger than that. So figure out what your why is. Write it
on a piece of paper and tape it to your bathroom mirror, Tape it
to your refrigerator, put it as the home screen on your phone, whatever
it takes. Really be familiar with that. Remind yourself of that. Set
some goals, set some mini goals. You don't have to go down the
rabbit hole of diets or weight loss pills every again. You just need to
start fasting and build some consistency and get in your fasting groove. I wouldn't
even have weight loss on my mind. Your number one goal means to be
getting adapted the twenty eight day faster art. I don't want you to weigh
for the first twenty eight days like do that. Do not want for the
first twenty eight days of your consistent daily eating window. And then after that
if you want to start weighing daily and calculating your weekly average. You know,
I'm a big fan of that. But I don't want you to get
too much in your head and say, well, this isn't very fast.
I need to do ADF that will be faster. Don't do that. I
really really mean it when I say that you should not do that right now.
Alternate daily fasting is really not a strategy I would recommend anybody start with.
And so it's a beautiful strategy for many many reasons. It's great for
your metabolism needs to be boosted. It's great if you just love the rhythm
of it. It's great for if you're plateaued. It's great if you need
to lower your insulin. And it's funny too because just you know, we
don't all respond well the same type of eating or the exact same window link
or whatever. ADF works great for some people and it doesn't work great for
other people. For people who have really been down those diet rabbit holes like
you have, sometimes it can really set you up to fall back into that.
You start to think the fast days are good and the feast days are
bad. A lot of people don't eat enough on their up days because they're
worried about overeating, like you are in your window. If you worry about
overeating in a daily window, I'm really concerned that you're going to worry about
overeating on an up day, and then that's not going to serve you well,
not long term. I really think, like Jin said, settling into
a daily eating window, fast and clean every day, getting in the rhythm.
Really just becoming a faster again is your best bet. I get it.
It's that whole diet brain and even the wording. You get to eat
to your heart's content, and then the next day you'll just balance it out
with that their No, you want to break that cycle of that feeling.
It's that vende restrict cycle is a slippery slope, and you don't want to
feel like that. So yeah, you want food freedom exactly. Well,
before we get to the tweak of the week, I want to take a
minute to talk about clean skincare. Have you been meaning to switch up your
skin and beauty products to cleaner options free of toxic chemicals and endocrine disruptors,
but maybe you're just not sure where to start. Maybe you have Regens book
Cleanish and you've been meaning to make an action plan, but you were overwhelmed.
Jen and I love Beauty Counter for clean beauty. I switched over nearly
three years ago, and I have never been happier with my skin or makeup
routine. The easiest way to start to make the switch is just to pick
a few products that you use most often and start there. As you run
out of your current products, replace them with Beauty Counter products. Perhaps you
wash and condition your hair daily, you might start there. Or maybe you
were a makeup every single day. Start by switching out your morning moisturizer,
foundation, and concealer. If you wear it, it does not have to
be overwhelming, and I am always happy to help you make the switch if
you share with me your skin and beauty needs. Right now is the perfect
time to get started with beauty Counter. There's holiday sets out right now,
which is an amazing way to try smaller products. They come in special smaller
sizes. There is the Band of Beauty that you can sign up for where
you get free shipping. If you spend so much, you get free gifts,
you earn bonus points that you can use on future shipments. So there's
a lot of ways to make beauty Counter work for you and make it affordable.
If you visit beautycounter dot com slash Sherry Bullock, you can reach out
to me for guidance, and I am going to drop a direct link to
reach out to me in show notes for this episode as well. I don't
know what I would do without beauty Counter, who just takes the work out
of it having to figure out what to try right. I was just admiring
my skin while we were talking today. I've been feeling drab lately. I
think because the Winner's coming, Winter's coming. You know, you start to
feel a little drab because you lose your tan, your summer tan. I
was like, you know, my hair looks pretty good. My skin looks
beautiful. Fifty's okay, I'm working fifty. You're doing great. No one
would ever think you're fifty. So now it's time for our tweak of the
week. You know, I always say tweak it till it's easy. But
the tweak that works for me might not be the one that works for you.
And that is why it is super helpful to hear how other intermittent fasts
are making intermittent fasting work for them. So don't forget to submit your tweek
of the week, or your questions, or your all of the other stuff
that we talk about in each episode. Fast Feast Repeat dot com slash submit
is where you find those, all right, So this tweek was submitted by
Kim in Western New York. She said, I like to stick to a
schedule and the life app as it keeps me accountable. I also like to
eat somewhere between noon and six pm, but want to incorporate some twenty two
to two with my nineteen to five schedule. What I do is I have
a two hour window from around two pm to four pm, then fast for
twenty two hours. The next day, I'll open at two pm and have
a four to five hour window and then start a nineteen hour fast. It's
been so much easier to stay committed to that longer fast while still staying in
the timeframe that I like to eat. I like that she's doing this.
She likes the longer fast with a shorter window, but she's faring it with
a longer window as well. So that's really advisable for anybody who wants to
know. The Life app is a fast app. I don't use it.
I can't speak for it. Yeah, it's out there for you to use
if you want to use it. I like the way she's switching it up
as well, because she doesn't always have the same exact window. Sometimes it's
two, sometimes it's five, and you don't want to get into the trap
of twenty two to two every single day. Switch it up a little bit,
pretty much what Kim does. I do naturally, Like today we're recording,
it's three o'clock. I haven't eaten yet. By the time I eat,
it'll be after four, so I'll have had a slightly longer fast today.
I kind of naturally do that too, just because of my night shift.
I get off night shift Monday morning, so I usually close my window.
I've been closing it earlier, sometime between eleven thirty and midnight usually,
so that means on Monday night, when I'm home and I don't work.
I was always having shorter fasts. But even though I have a shorter fast,
I don't have a longer window. So I just fast as long as
I feel comfortable fasting. Sometimes I'll do a meals Monday, or I'll do
a down day on Monday. I just fast as long as I can,
and then because I'm opening my window later, I just usually have like one
meal close it up. It's a really short window for me, but then
that gets me back in a good rhythm where I get a good, regular
long fast on Tuesday. Like what do you mean by that? Like?
How long might that be? If I open my window at a normal time
I would open, I might only be fifteen hours fasted on Monday. I
don't say, oh, it's three o'clock, it's time I normally open my
window. I really just I do make myself wait until later. Maybe I
go seventeen eighteen hours, I open at six, or I might go nineteen
and open at seven. If I left it opened for too long, it
would be hard then to fast as long as I want to on Tuesday.
My husband's off on Tuesdays, he wants to go to lunch mid afternoon,
So I really try to fall back into a nineteen hour fast if I can
by Tuesday, so I can get my rhythm the rest of the week.
But the other thing too, that is really helpful. If I know that
I have something coming up and I want to sort of start adjusting my windows
rather than looking at the fast, I'm like, Eugen, I look at
the window. I know, like, okay, Well, in order to
fast sufficiently for what I have coming up on Tuesday, I need to have
my window closed by eight pm. I count backwards and I'll be like,
okay, I want a four to five hour window. I definitely don't want
to open my window before three because this is going on and I can't close
it till eight. It makes a lot of sense now when you really explain
it like that about why you need to keep your eye on both the fast
and the eating window. Your your schedule is different than like for me,
I never had to worry about my fast link because it took care of itself.
But when you work overnight, you really do have to keep both in
mind. Well, I just have like an aha moment. I'm like,
well, of course, so if you're a shift worker, then you have
to kind of keep your eye on both of them. And it's really easy
too, because I don't have a set schedule like you. And I'm also
really I'm not a clock watcher. I'm not a person who lives by a
clock. I did come up recently, you know, I had a feeling
like maybe my windows have gotten a little long, maybe because I'm really bad
about opening my window. And then I look and I'm like, oh my
gosh, I opened my window five hours ago and I haven't eaten. I
have recently started calculating my windows watching. So like when you say that you
opened your window and had something, but you didn't eat like a meal yet.
I had a snack. I had a window opener snack like maybe some
homics and sierkraut. And then I just get busy working. My evenings are
super busy, and I get busy working and doing stuff and whatever, and
then I hate to say I forget to eat, but yes, I sometimes
forget to eat, and then I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got
to close my window, and I was frequently getting to six hours because it
got to five and I realized I hadn't cooked dinner. It is helpful to
pay attention to both if you have a schedule that varies. I know we
have a lot of people that work long twelve hour shifts. They you know,
might work seven to seven. Yeah, as you're changing your windows based
off of life and your work schedules or whatever, I think it's very important
to don't short shift your fasts consecutively because you don't want to do that.
But then also don't have too long a windows either, So you kind of
got to look at both. For me, I don't need to. I
can just look at my eating window boundary. My schedule is a lot less
complicated than yours. Like I literally wake up pretty much clockwork around the same
time of the day every day, and nine o'clock pm, I'm like,
all right, I'm ready to go to bed. Oh, an Elle knows
it's bedtime. T she'll start to get antsy. She's like, all right,
mama, it's a time to go to bed. Yes, my cat
calls me mama in my head. Everybody does that with their pets, so
right, sure they do well. We love to leave you guys with inspiration
or a motivational quote to carry you through your next week. And this week's
message comes from Freedom from Fasting Lisa in Ontario. She says, most of
my eye of success has been mental and emotional. I'm looking forward to sharing
on intermittent fasting stories. In November, I went to a wonderful workshop and
heard this quote and it has resonated with me. Instead of saying have I
done enough to deserve a rest? I now say have I rested enough to
share or serve others? We cannot pour from an empty cup, and if
has helped me with clearing my mind and guiding me and finding my true purpose
as well as being more present. It's amazing when you don't constantly think of
food or meal prepping or working out how much time you have for all of
the other amazing things in life. Have I rested enough to share or serve
others? That's huge? Thanks so much for listening today. We would love
to have you join us in the Delay Don't Tonight community, where you can
interact with both me and Sherry, plus the most supportive bunch of intermittent fasters
you'll find anywhere. Go to Jenstevens dot com slash community to join us.
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to your favorite podcast app, and if
you haven't already, please leave us a five star review that helps new listeners
find the show and we really appreciate it. We are a community driven podcast,
so to submit your success stories, your questions, your favorite tweak it
till It's Easy, moments, or anything else you want us to share on
the podcast, go to fast Feast Repeat dot com slash Submit and then listen
each week to see if we share your submission or answer your question Until next
week, Thanks for listening,