Episode 1: Maintenance, Listening to Our Bodies, Atomic Habits, and More

Welcome to Fast Feast Repeat Intermitten Fasting for Life. I'm Jen Stevens, author
of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock,
longtime Intermitten 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 trust and healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes
to any medical treatments or medications. Whether you're new to Intermitten fasting or an
experienced Intermitten Faster, or 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, Intermitten Fasting for Life Podcast. How are you doing today's Sherry,
I am doing wonderful, even though it's raining outside. Oh yeah,
people might hear thunder. I just heard thunder in your background. It was
loud. So if anybody here's a loud boom, that's Sherry. Yeah,
it could probably go and come by here later tonight. So whatever weather y'all
have in Alabama, we get it here. And that's true. Well,
it's true. So you know, I want to take a minute. Let's
talk about the name of our podcast, fast Feast, Repeat, Intermittent Fasting
for Life. I think that's really what we want to share here. Wouldn't
you say that that's true? Absolutely? This is a lifestyle. It really
is a lifestyle. Let me just say, okay, so all of our
lives, we've been taught like, you know, you go on a diet
and you lose weight, and then people are like, well, I went
off the diet and I gained it all back, and then I gained you
know, even more back, and that happens with restrictive dieting. But this
isn't a diet. This is a way of living. And you know,
if some people ask, well, if I stopped fasting, am I gonna
gain the weight back? Well, I mean probably, because if you go
back to eating all day, you're going to undo all the healing you've done
in your body, and you're not giving your body digestive rest and you're missing
out on the benefits of the fast. So true, But my question is
why would you stop. I would not ever stop. I couldn't imagine stopping.
People give us all kinds of reasons for stopping, or they thought they'd
take a little break because they had this going on or that going on,
and then that they would come back to it, and then they're like,
well it wasn't as easy when I came back to it. Well there's a
reason why it's not as easy when you came back to it, and so
jents and our big goal is we want to help people make this a lifestyle
where you don't ever think I need to set fasting aside because my life is
stressful right now, or I'm going on vacation or x y Z. Because
we believe there is a way that you can fast every single day. I
can absolutely tell you I've been fasting since the fall of twenty fifteen. I
have never taken a day off. Okay, I'm not wonder woman. I'm
just a normal person. And this doesn't mean that you didn't have longer windows.
That's the thing, you know. I have never stopped doing intermitten fasting
since I started in twenty fourteen. But I mean there was like one day
when I was in Nashville with my friends from college, and I was eating
hot dogs on the street at three in the morning and we went to brunch
at noon the next day. That was a really short fast. But I
didn't like fall off the wagon. I didn't say, oh, I need
to start over on Monday. There was no starting over. There was no
wagon. You didn't sleep four hours and then get up and think, oh,
well, I'm gonna have a short fast anyway, so I might as
well go ahead and have a creamy milk coffee this morning. Nope, you
just went about your morning like you would any morning, drink your black coffee
until you ate at noon. And so we want people to know that it's
a lifestyle and that we're not starting and stopping, and we're not falling off
the wagon, and we're not starting over. You know my new book that's
coming out in December, the twenty eight Day Fast Start day by day.
I talk about this in one of the early chapters because it's for people who
are starting fresh and never have fasted before, but also for people who are
coming back to intermitt and fasting. And the subtitle is your guide to starting
or restarting intermitt and fasting. So it sticks. That is the goal.
We want it to stick. You know, there are a lot of people
who are like, oh, I'm starting again, I'm going to do another
fast start. I'm starting over, and I would like to encourage everyone to
get that diet thinking out of your mind. We don't want you starting over,
stopping and starting. We want you to stay to yourself. I'm an
intermitt and fasting faster. I do intermitt and fasting, and I think the
other thing too, is we really want to help you through this podcast with
mindsets because mindset is so so important and I feel fasting as a gift.
There's a gift I give myself every single day. I don't feel deprived,
I don't feel like I'm missing out, and we want to help you feel
that way. So with that, let's go into a faster celebration. And
today's celebration comes from Tracy in North Carolina. Tracy shared with US I recently
celebrated my one year fast adversary in May of twenty twenty three. I reached
my goal in October twenty twenty two, and I have been maintaining ever since.
I have been fasting on and off since two thousand and nine. But
not clean fasting. I was doing paleo and keto since then as well,
and I never cheated from those until COVID hit and then I gained fifty pounds.
But I still could not do IF well because I was told I could
have cream in my coffee. And then I read Fast Feast, Repeat,
and I learned about the clean fast, and it was life changing. Thank
you gin Well. I love hearing stories like that, because really that's what
all day long we hear this in the community, right Sherry, from people
who tried intermitt and fasting. They dabbled in it, you know, like
you talked about if people go back to listen to episode zero of this podcast
with your own intermitt and fasting story and mind too back before you know,
I understood at about the clean fast. It was really hard. Fasting with
something creamy to make that coffee creamy, or something sweet in the coffee,
even if it's zero calories, Fasting with diet sodas, fastening with lemon in
the water, fasting with apple cider or vinegar or cinnamon in your coffee.
You know, you think it's helping you get through, but it actually makes
it so much harder that you just can't believe it. Somebody said it the
other day in the community that they're just restarting and they are new to the
clean fast, and they said they found that when they were fasting with cream,
it was so much easier. Well, when you're fasting with cream,
you're fueling your body with fat, so it is easier in the beginning.
Because when you're fasting clean and you're in the beginning phase is eventually you're going
to run out of energy and you're gonna feel kretty, and you're gonna be
hungry because your body is looking for energy, so it's prompting you to eat.
So when she was fasting with cream, she was eating food. She
was eating cream's food exactly. So if you coddled it or whatever, you
have cottage cheese right right. If if you fast with pizza, you're not
going to be hungry. I mean that's an extreme example, but I fast
with pizza and I'm not hungry at all. It takes hunger away. So
that's what I was Something you know, I was trying to explain to her
is that yes, it's going to be hard right now, but later,
like once she's fat adapted, it's going to be so much easier, as
so much more beneficial. Cream is you know, it's it's dairy. And
what is dairy. It is something every mammal produces milk to feed their babies.
So dairy is nature's perfect food for growing a mammal baby. And I'm
not saying that in the context of humans should never have dairy, because I
love dairy. It's delicious. I'm saying in the context of it is not
fasting. When I was feeding my own personals to sun babies, they had
milk and they were not fasting well. And must think about it this way.
If you were going in for fasted surgery, they would say, you
know, what have you had in the last eight hours, and if you
say anything besides water, they're going to give you the stink eye or black
coffee if you're getting fasted blood work, yeah, because it can't affect some
stuff. So really, if you know, treat it like you're going in
to have surgery and stick with water, black coffee, plain tea, no
flavors. We promise it matters. Yeah, And Tracy, thank you for
sharing that, and happy fast adversary to you. And you know, I
think Sherry and I both learned over the years. Tracy talked about how she
was trying to fund her answer through changing what she ate, but it wasn't
until she changed when she ate with intermittent fasting in the clean fast that it
really made it difference. All right, So now we have a question from
a listener. This question is from Stephanie from New York City. Stephanie asks,
HI, how can we become better at listening to our bodies when fasting?
As a former lifelong dieter, I struggle with trying to control my eating
time and letting my body guide me to better choices. Should you allow yourself
to eat more during PMS cravings or just rein it in. I've read a
book on intuitive eating and they did not like fasting. However, it's my
way of life and I know I feel better fasting. The only confusion is
that I still have no idea how to listen to my body properly. I
have several thoughts on this one. I guess we don't know how long Stephanie
has been fasting, because the longer you fast, your appetite switch is broken.
Right The general person who when we're born as babies, we have great
appetite control. Okay, you can't force feed a baby that doesn't want to
eat. They're gonna spit that bottle nipple out. They're going to turn their
head when you bring a spoon to their mouth, because their bodies are working
correctly. They're hormones, they're hunger and society hormones, the lepton, and
they're grilling. They're working correctly. But through years and years and years of
eating around the clock, and we live in a society where food is plentiful,
and it is on every corner and there are places you can get food
twenty four seven, we are out of touch with what true hunger and satiety
is, and our hormones are out of whack, and fasting resets that so
that eventually you do get in touch with what true hunger and satiety is,
and then you do start to eat a little bit more intuitively, much more
easily. But I want to jump to the intuitive eating thing. I know
that intuitive eating practices discourage fasting, so intuitive eating it was founded by two
dietitians in the nineties and something we hear time and time again. As dietitians
don't like interment fasting. They are much more fans of eating all throughout the
day, which we know is going to drive up your insulin. So is
that healthy? No, we know it's not. And then one of the
principles I don't know. I think they have like ten covenants or principles,
I don't know what they call them of intuitive eating. One of them is
that you should never ignore hunger because they feel like you should keep your body
fueled at all times with the appropriate amounts of protein and carbs. And it's
almost kind of like they think that if you are hunger, you have no
control over your ability to eat the proper amount or make solid choices about food.
But I just disagree with that, especially once we are fasting and we
get our hormones corrected. What do you think about that, Jen, Yeah,
I agree completely with that. And you know, just like Sherry said
at the beginning, we're not really sure how long Stephanie has been fasting.
When you're new to intermit and fasting, you are not going to on day
one, have you know, be in touch with your hunger and sotiety signals.
Definitely not, And it can take a really long time because you know,
as Sherry mentioned, we train our kids from the time that they're little,
we're like, okay, just finish your plate, one more bite,
have a little more. You can't get up till you finish. So we
teach them ignore or whether you're full or not, and eat more because I
said to. And then eventually they're just eating more because they think they have
to clean their plate, or because it's snack time, or for all the
millions of reasons that we eat. We also lose touch with our hunger and
sotiety signals based on the food quality that we're eating. Like I could have
an entire bag of potato chips and eat the whole thing and feel really sick
to my stomach after eating them, but still not feel full and satisfied because
I didn't get any nutrients, you know, because our bodies are searching for
nutrients, just calories. A great book on listening to our bodies and understanding
you know, how can we trust ourselves like babies and like animals in the
wild which are not overweight, animals in the wild who are eating their natural
diet or not obese and animals Now you look at my cats, they got
issues. But you know, the book I was talking about is Appetite corrections
called the power of appetite correction by doctor Burt Hearing, and he invented the
phrase appetite correction. But it basically means you know when you're in tune with
your hunger and sotiety signals. That's what intuitive eating is founded upon. And
here's the problem with intuitive eating. For me, I read all the books.
This is when I was struggling so hard with my weight in the past,
and I bought into everything they said because I understand we should be able
to hear when we've had enough, just like the babies and the animals.
We should. They teach you to ask yourself, am I hungry? And
if the answer is yes, eat well. Unfortunately, every time I asked
myself, am I hungry? The answer was yes every time. Well,
and when your hormones are fluctuating and your blood glucost control is going up and
then it's plummeting lesson, you're gonna have a reactive hunger. So if I
eat something, especially if it's a high carbohydrate food, in two hours,
I'm going to be ravenous. That is not true hunger. That is reactive
hunger to what I ate before, And it's not an indication that I need
to eat more. It's an indication that what I ate was not the best
choice for my body. It crashed your blood sugar. Yeah, I'm wearing
a CGM right now, and I notice that exact thing. Like, I've
really learned that if what I eat, like let's say, when I open
my window, if it makes my blood sugar go up really fast, then
I'm more likely to be hungry soon because then it also comes down really fast.
Whereas that I eat something high in fiber, in plant foods, my
blood sugar grows up very silly. Like I might start off with a blood
sugar you know, at the end of my fast at I don't know,
let's just say eighty, and then I eat, and maybe two hours later
it's ninety five. It's barely budged. I'm still satisfied. But if it
shoots up to one fifty, then I'm like in the kitchen, that's the
reaction. And see that's me. I've always been the person that's like,
I love pasta as much as the next person. Okay, it's delicious,
it's hardy, it tastes good, it's you know, but I an hour
to an hour and a half after I eat a bowl of pasta with meat,
sauce or whatever it is, I am going to be ravenous and my
body does not react well to pasta. It's too many simple carbs for me.
Now I have found some ways and some hacks to enjoy pasta without that
extreme hunger, and I've changed up the type of pasta I use, so
I don't have to give up pasta forever. But I also don't have that
reactive hunger anymore, which makes it much more enjoyable to eat pasta. Then
one of the other thoughts I had too, is you were talking about do
you need to eat more around PMS? Well, I think it's time at
that point to stop and ask yourself some questions like are you having cravings?
Are you craving something and that's why you think you need to eat? Or
is it true hunger like are you just truly extra hungry? Or is it
emotional hunger? Because we all know around PMS we get a little bit more
emotional, so I would stop and ask yourself, are you looking to soothe
or is your body looking for like true nutrition. The other thing, too,
is if it's a crazy like a craving like a strong craving. Are
you craving potato chips? Are you craving chocolate? There is a lot of
information out there on the web. Go to Google and you can help decipher
your cravings. Like I saw a scientific study I think it was it was
out of Texas, maybe Baler or something, and like, if you are
craving chocolate, for instance, your body may need magnesium and more and more
stuff is coming out saying that our bodies need women's bodies need more magnesium around
your period and that's why everybody has those chocolate cravings exactly. And if you're
craving potato chips, potatoes are high and potassium and salt, so maybe you're
a little dehydrated. So I just had like a like a huge aha moment,
Like I don't crave chocolate at all ever anymore. And you take magnesiums
every day every day. I used to crave chocolate constantly. I have no
interest in chocolate none. I mean, I enjoy the flavor of it in
my mouth, but I'm not searching for it, Like it can sit there
and get old and I don't even eat it. I have a whole cabinet
of organic, low sugar chocolate that I just just sits there, because once
I started on magnesium breakthrough, I no longer felt like I was never I
used to be. After I'd eat, I'd be like, all right,
I need that piece of chocolate. That's so funny. I never made that
connection till just now when you said it. I've heard that before. If
you're craving chocolate, you need magnesium, But I never thought about the fact.
Why don't I ever anymore? Our bodies are really smart, And I
think you know that goes back to we've all heard of what is it called
pika? Is that how you say it when pregnant women? We all know
pregnant women are like famous for wanting you know, pickles and ice cream,
right, or whatever their bodies need. But sometimes pregnant women start craving weird
things like laundry detergent or clay, or they want to eat chalk or something,
and that's because they're missing some kind of mineral and their body is driving
them to eat these non food things to get what they need. So our
bodies are really powerful and we can listen and you know, I talked about
the book Appetite Correction, Doctor Burt Hearing and some people think that that just
means that you you know when you've had enough, like your body tells you've
had enough and you can stop. But appetite correction works the other way too.
If you haven't had enough, your body will let you know. And
I like to think about that with PMS as well. You know you talked
about it might not be real hungery. It could be emotional, or it
could be you know, maybe you need like a magnesium or something like that.
But I always did have one legitimately hungrier day around my cycle, and
I was tracking my cycle. I was going through parianmenopause at the time,
and I had like a little period tracker app and I started tracking in maybe
twenty twelve, like all my data from twenty twelve through menopause on there.
But I realized that I would be starving one day and I would have no
idea why, like why am I so hungry today? And then the next
day, bam, my period would start. Well, I think it's important
too to really know how to identify true hunger and if you really if it's
true hunger, if you're fasting, and it's that hunger that just doesn't really
go away, you wake up with it, and you go about your day
and it's not going away, and you get to lunch and you're still starving.
It's distracting. You may just need a longer window that day, yep.
And that is also appetite correction. That is also listening to your body.
So the goal is not always to push through uncomfortable feelings, but you
got to figure out is this really a different feeling and my really really extra
hungry day is something going on and instead of just like boredom or emotional or
whatever. I had a hard day yesterday, Sherry, and it was totally
boredom and emotional eating and I had to watch the clock. I haven't had
a day like that for a while. I don't know what it was,
but I was like looking at the clock at noon thinking about eating, and
I'm like, I am not hungry, you know, And like even lack
of sleep and stress can really drive up your hunger. And something that I
realized for those that don't know me, I work weekend nights, and so
I get off work Monday morning, and I just hate to give up a
whole day sleeping, you know. And so I used to lay down and
I would take like a two two and a half hour nap, and I
would get up by like noon, and I would spend the rest of the
day ravenous watching the clock, just like couldn't wait until I could open my
window, and it was always felt miserable. Well, I've also been working
on prioritizing my sleep a little bit better. One of the things I noticed
is that I was kind of not recovering well all week because I was going
into the week sleep deprived. And so now I'm trying to sleep about four
or five hours on Mondays. And when I get up now, I'm not
ravenous. I'm easily getting to my twenty hours fasting. I'm easily doing down
days on Mondays now, and just more sleep has made it different. So
a lot of things can affect your hunger. It might have been sleep.
I'd been a little out of whack with my sleep. That might be wild.
It's having a hard day yesterday, But even Jim Stevens sometimes has a
day where I'm watching the clock. So yeah, do a little check in
with yourself and kind of, I mean, I think it's very helpful to
check in with ourselves. Sometimes we don't really we just kind of mind literally
do things like we have a feeling and then we want that feeling to go
away, so we just do what we have to do to make the feeling
go away. But sometimes it's really important to sit with that feeling and really
think and sort of be like, Okay, what's happening, what happened?
You know, how am I feeling? Why am I feeling this way?
And try to identify, you know, why are you hungry today? And
then not only is that going to help you decide how to approach the day.
You know, if it's stressed, you might just need to go take
a walk and let some stress off. Or if somebody's frustrating you, you
might need to pick up the phone and be like, hey, I'm really
upset by something you said to me and get it off your chest. And
there's often an answer besides just eating. If it's not true hunger absolutely,
And I want to go back to one more thing, and that is,
you know, reading the books on intuitive eating and they don't like fasting and
they discourage it. You know, I wish we could come together and talk
the intuitive eating community and the fasting community could sit down together and talk it
through because I am now what I would consider to be an intuitive eater,
and it's because of fasting resetting my hunger and stidy signals, so I couldn't
find it before. I do believe that fasting could be a very useful tool
in intuitive eating. It changed everything for me. So now I am an
intuitive eater and I totally get it. I understand now what they were talking
about before we talked about doing it well. And I've heard of so many
people who were like, yeah, I was intuitive eating for a year.
I gave up dieting and said I was just going intuitive eat, and I'm
heavier now than it ever was. From twenty and twelve to twenty fourteen,
I was intuitive. You can intuitively eat your way to obesity. I intuitively
ate my way to two hundred and ten pounds. That's what I was doing.
Prior to intermittent fasting. I was trying so hard to be an intuitive
eater. It was because I was just worn out from dieting. Well,
but I don't think it's not your fault if you've done this. If you
did this, it's not your fault your body. Your body is a little
broken, and fasting heals it. That is exactly true. My body was
broken and fasting has healed it. That's a great way of putting it all
right, So I think we did a good job answering Stephanie's questions. Just
you know, if you're new time, you will be able to listen to
your body better. First, you'll probably notice that you're hearing your signals.
You just also have to obey them. I wanted to pop that in there
because you can hear that you've had enough and keep eating past those signals and
that's not good. But also real food. The more real foods you eat,
the better you'll be able to hear your signals. So I wanted to
put that in there as well. Yeah, and then one last thing as
we move on to the next segment is if you're sending in a question like
this and you're wanting to help us to help you troubleshoot, it's really helpful
if you kind of let us know where you're at on your journey. Are
you a new faster. Have you been doing this for two years and you're
still struggling. If you're wanting us to help you tweak something, let us
know what you've already tried. That's very helpful for us, so like it
would have helped us with Stephanie's question, the context of how long she'd been
fasting would have been helpful. You know, if she's in her twenty eight
day fast start, that we would have a different answer versus someone who's been
fasting for four years and still can't listen to her body. So yeah,
the more information you can give us, the better. And again, if
you go to fast Feast repeat dot com slash submit, that's where you'll be
able to submit everything for the show. And again detail is important. So
this week we have a book recommendation to share and this book recommendation was sent
in by Maria from Brooklyn, And if you listen to episode zero, you'll
know that Jen and I love this book. We actually did an entire episode
when we did the Life Lessons podcast on this book. So Maria, she
recommends Atomic Habits and she said, this book fits nicely into our changing lifestyle
as I have freeze up our time, less food prep, less shopping,
more mental clarity. And I agree one Maria, I believe that when I
started fasting and I really got underway with it and it just became the way
I lived, it freed up. So much time and just mental energy where
I could start making other positive changes in other areas of my life. You
know, anytime we make changes, we are creating new habits, and Automic
Habits is a great book for helping you to adopt new habits. Yeah,
I'd love it. I also have feel like a soft spot in my heart
for it because when I was the week that Fast Feast Peak came out and
when I found out it was a New York Times bestseller, I actually was
reading Automic Habits at that time. I had it as my beach read.
You were with me, we were here in the beach, you were visiting,
and I had the physical copy of Automic Habits. I was reading it.
But what was so cool as I found out Fast Feast Repeat was a
New York Times bestseller, but right next to me on the New York Times
best seller list there was Automic Habits. So I was reading it on the
beach and I'm like, oh my gosh, Automic Habits. It is right
beside me. And you know, the whole time I was reading it,
every bit of it. You just think about intermitten fasting and every all the
habits, all the things he talks about you can relate them to intermitt and
fasting. And really wasn't a surprised when I found out that James Clear,
the author, is an intermitt and vaster, because it seems like totally the
kind of thing that would be right up his alley. And it's a habit.
Intermittent fasting is a habit, you know, just like brushing your teeth
is a habit. You know, we just get up and we do it
every single day. So I thought we could share some of our favorite quotes
from atomic habits and also talk briefly about how they relate to intermitt and fasting.
And so I want to share this one first. All big things come
from small beginnings. The seed of every habit is a single tiny decision,
and you know, I think that relates really well to intermitten fasting. Because
you've decided you want to try intermitten fasting. You just make a single tiny
decision. I'm gonna get up in the morning and I'm gonna fast clean until
I open my window. That's it. It's a single tiny decision. You
wake up every single day and you make that same decision. Every action you
take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become, and
that is very powerful. If you want to be a person who fasts,
then your actions throughout the day need to be that of a person who fasts.
Absolutely, you don't go to the fridge, get out creamer, pour
it in your coffee. You don't do it. In fact, you probably
don't even buy creamer because you're like, I'm going to drink black coffee.
I'm always much better at making decisions like that. Like if I'm at the
grocery store and I choose not to buy the thing I don't want to consume,
then I am at home when it's right there in front of me,
I make the action. I make the vote in the grocery store, don't
even buy it if you know it's gonna be a problem. I'm taking the
vote for what I want to be. All Right, here's one that I
really really love because I think it can change your thinking. It says goals
are good for setting a direction, but systems are best for making progress.
You know, so many people will set a goal. They'll start as an
interment faster and they'll be like, Okay, I have a wedding coming up,
and maybe I'm mother of the broad or something and mother of the broad
and five months, my goal is I want to look beautiful and my Mother
of the Bride dress, which is a great goal. It is a great
goal. It's good for setting a direction. How are you going to get
there? You need a system in place for making that happen. You've got
to have something that's getting me there and fasting you'll do it. The next
quote is we are so focused on figuring out the best approach that we never
get around to taking action. And I see this time and time again.
People read and read, and they read and they read and they read and
they read, and now they're inundated with all this information and information overload is
a real thing. And then they're so confused they don't even know where to
start or what advice to follow, or so they don't don't take any action.
And you know, we've had people come to the community they say,
you know, I started dabbling and fasting a year ago, and then I
started reading this, this person said this, and this person said that,
and then I was trying to do this and then I added that and it
just didn't work, and so I gave up. I mean, I feel
like once you make a decision that you're going to fast. That's your decision,
right, take the action and then just start fasting. That's it.
Keep it simple and the best approach. What I think is important with fasting
is we're so used to people telling us exactly what to do. Here's the
only thing I'm going to tell you to do, fast, clean, and
then get up and do it again tomorrow. That's it. Fast, fast,
repeat, you know. But it has to be fast and clean.
I promise you it matters. But fast, clean, get up tomorrow and
do it again. But as far as the best approach, this is where
bioindividuality comes into play. And like your schedule, like what Sherry does with
her you know, work schedule and working nights and weekends. Yeah, I
guarantee you my fasting approach doesn't look like anybody else's, even other people who
work nights. It's all about figuring out what is the best approach for you
over time, and you don't have to have that figured out on day one.
That's the part that's so important. Like some people will start with the
fast start and they'll be on let's say day twelve, and they're like I
one day twelve and I've learned that my body likes to eat at ten am,
so that's my window. I'm like, no, No, what you're
learning on day twelve is not what you're going to feel like on day twenty
two, thirty two, forty two, fifty two. And even what you're
doing at six months may not be what you end up doing. You know,
that may not be what's working for you and your life and your lifestyle
at twelve months. So I mean, the idea isn't like, this is
what I'm doing and this is it, and this is what I'm doing forever.
So take action, but then be flexible exactly and your body will let
you know. All right. Here's another quote from James Clear. He says,
some people spend their entire loves waiting for the time to be right to
make an improvement. And I thought this fits so well with intermitten fasting,
because so many people want to wait till Monday, or till the first of
the month, or till after their vacation to start. And you know,
a friend of mine, Michelle Singletary is her name. I interviewed her on
an episode of Intermitten Fasting Stories several years ago. Yeah, she was a
moderator in our Facebook groups. You met her at my house when y'all were
there in twenty nineteen, and she started Intermitten fasting on Christmas Day. She
heard about it the day before her and said, well, I'm going to
wake up and do that tomorrow. She started on Christmas Day. She didn't
say I'm going to wait till January first. She started on Christmas Day.
Bail. We have a girl in the community right now who started fasting on
like a Friday and went on a week long vacation with family on Saturday.
And I was like, you are my hero. I mean, what does
that seize the day? Yeah, the time to make your improvement is now,
don't wait for the thing. And the next quote is success is the
product of daily habits, not once in a lifetime transformations. So successful people
they don't just like wake up one morning and become successful. They have a
series of daily habits that fuel their success. Yeah, that's so important,
and it's not a once in a lifetime transformation. Again, like that quote
says, it is the product of those daily habits. Another one of those
quotes that I don't have right in front of me, But it's like habits
or the compounding interest of our lives, or something like, it's just what
you keep doing over and over again, you will have that transformation over time.
So I have my own James Clear quote that I would like to share.
Okay, Jen doesn't know this, I don't know it. The person
who focuses on one task and sees it through to completion, even if they
work in a somewhat slow or outdated manner, beats the endless optimizer who jumps
from tool to tool and always hopes a new piece of information or technology will
help them finish what they start. Oh, I love that. That to
me is all about consistency, sticktuitiveness. You know that. We know the
people who are like, I'm doing this, and in two weeks they're not
feeling like like they're getting the progress that they want. So now they're going
to do this, and they're gonna do this. Sometimes they'll give it like
one week and then they're like, well that didn't work. And let me
just tell you, there's no secret weapon out there. You just keep fasting,
Just keep fasting. There's no secret supplement, there's no secret drink you're
going to add to your water that's gonna break your fast. It's gonna make
it better. There's no piece of technology out there that is going to do
any more for you than just waking up in the morning and fast and clean.
And yes, it may not be the fastest way you know, weight
loss that you've ever had, but it's happening. And if you jump around,
here's what happens to my body when I jump around. When I jump
around, it creates stress in my body. Anytime I've ever really changed up
my fasting drastically, I have gained a weight. Actually, when I started
fasting, I gained weight. It took me several weeks to lose that weight
and then go on to lose more week weight. When I switched the clean
fast, I gained weight. When I went from an eight hour window to
a five hour window, I gained weight. When I tried to do ADF
for a couple of weeks, I gained weight. So what is happening is
you're creating all this change and stress and worry and whatever, and your body
is it's not wired to run optimally under those conditions. So just settle in,
do what you know needs to be done, and give it time.
Yeah, you can't judge what's happening over a short period of time. It's
what happens over the long haul that matters. So before we get to our
tweak of the week, I want to take a minute to tell you about
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and I'll also have links in show notes. And now it's time for our
tweak of the week. You know, I always say tweak it till it's
easy, but it's important to understand that the tweak that works for me might
not be the one that works for you. That's why it's super helpful to
hear how other intermitten fasters are making intermitten fasting work for them, and so
anybody who wants to send in a tweak of the week. Just like we
mentioned earlier, the more detail you can give, the better, like why
did you try the tweak? How did it solve a problem for you.
What were the results like after you tried the tweak that sort of thing and
fast feast repeat dot com slash submit is where you'll go to submit this or
anything else for the podcast. So this week's tweak was submitted by Martin in
Birmingham, and he said, the hungrier I am, the slower I eat.
It's a tool that can be practiced and perfected with tiny habits. And
you know, I think that's really a really powerful tweak because so many times,
you know, we're intermittent faster as we've been waiting to open our window.
Our window opens, and it's like, what's that song? Who Let
the Dogs Out? Who Let the Dogs Out? Yeah, we're like,
our windows open, we start eating and we're just like shoveling it in because
we're so excited that we're eating. It's not even that we're that hungry,
it's just that we're just eating, eating, eating. So Martin says,
the hunger he is, the slower he eats. That's a really good strategy
because it gives your stomach and your brain time to start talking to each other.
And I actually just read this fascinating research article they have done imaging of
the brain on people after they eat, and you know, they can actually
see chemical changes in the brain with eating, and they know that, you
know, there's a dopamine release and there's a part of the brain that lights
up, but it takes time. The brain and the gut is connected.
And they did this by using a nasogastric tube, so the people didn't eat
with their mouth right, they put nutrition in straight to their stomach. But
and then they were watching to see, you know, like how long did
it take for these areas to light up? And something that was really interesting
that they found was that people who are have had been overweight for most of
their life are long, you know, longer than others naturally thin people.
That area lights up so much faster, so they get the sensation that they're
full faster than a person who's been overweight, and it takes much longer for
that area in their brain to light up. And that part of that is
sort of your pleasure reward center. And so you know, there's this ongoing
research now into how that can be what will correct that so that you can
feel full faster. But one of the things we know is that when you
eat slower than your brain and your gut has time to communicate, and you'll
recognize that you're full if you eat slower. I think that's such an important
research to be aware of. I'm glad you brought it up, because you
know, all of us who have struggled with our weight had a feeling there
was something different about us. Yeah, and that's really what they were saying.
There really is. Physically, there's something different. It takes your body
long or you know. I always think about, you know, the normal
district u curve also known as the bell curve of any characteristic, whether we're
talking about your eyelash length, or how tall you are, or how many
fraunds are on a palm tree, things follow the normal distribution curve. So
people who are on the upper end of how long it takes for your body
to hear about I've had enough or we're going to be more likely to probably
also be overeating and overweight. So if we've ever struggled with our weight,
file away in the back of your mind, huh, I probably take longer
to hear my signals than my annoyingly skinny husband, and so I need to
have some tools and strategies like Martin shared, I need to eat slower.
I need to step away and pause and give my body time to register that
I've had enough, and let your brain catch up that you've eaten that's really
really good. And now we see why scientifically why that matters. So,
as we shared in episode zero, we love to end our podcast with inspiration
to take you into your next week, and each week we'll be giving you
an inspiration or motivational quote from a listener, and this week's message comes from
Julie sep in Oregon. The quote is ten years from now, make sure
you can say that you chose your life, you didn't settle for it.
And that is from Mandy Hale, the author of the single woman, Life
Love and a Dash of Sas. I like the sound of Life, Love
and a Dash of Sas. I'm not familiar with me Andy Hale, but
I like her just from that. I think that's important. Though. You
know, if you're listening right now and you haven't started your interment and fasting
journey, or if you're going along slowly, you're not yet where you want
to be, think about ten years from now. Ten years from now,
you can say that you chose your life. You can be a completely different
person ten years from now than you are today. Your life is yours for
the taking. Never settle. Absolutely, Thanks so much for listening today.
We would love to have you join us in the Delayed on Tonight community,
where you can interact with both me and Sharry, plus the most supportive bunch
of intermittent fasters you'll find anywhere. Go to Jen Stevens dot com slash community
to join us. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to your favorite podcast
app, and if you haven't already, please leave us a five star review
that helps new listeners find the show, and we really appreciate it. We
are a community driven podcast, so to submit your success stories, your questions,
your favorite tweak it till It's Easy, moments, or anything else you
want us to share on the podcast, go to Fast Feast Repeat dot com
slash submit and then listen each week to see if we share your submission or
answer your question Until next week. Thanks for listening.