Ep. 176 - Sleep quality, insulin resistance, & body fat | Spiking Growth Hormone with Meal Timing & Sleep Hygiene | How perfectionism & burning the midnight oil can tank your hormones & weight loss efforts | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for Fat Loss
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In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the relationship between sleep and weight loss, sleep hygiene, the importance of the right sleep, optimizing your sleep, and much more.
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Reference Links to Articles:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688118/
Fasting For Life Ep. 176 Transcript
Hello. I’m Dr. Scott Watier.
And I'm Tommy Welling.
And you're
listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.
This podcast is about using fasting
as a tool to regain
your health, achieve ultimate wellness,
and live the life you truly deserve.
Each episode is a short conversation
on a single topic
with immediate, actionable steps.
We cover everything from fat loss
and health and wellness
to the science of lifestyle design.
We started fasting for life because of how
fasting has transformed our lives
and we hope to share the tools
that we have learned along the way.
Hey everyone,
welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast.
My name is Dr. Scott Water
and I'm here as always.
I am a good friend and colleague,
Tommy Welling.
Good afternoon to you, sir.
Hey, Scott, how are you doing?
Fantastic, my friend.
Hopefully you're listening to this
after you've gotten some good sunlight
into the eyeballs and you're wide awake
and you've had your coffee,
maybe you're at lunch
walking around in my sunny
black coffee, sunny filled park
because we're going to be talking about
sleep and weight loss today
and the underlying drivers
of how sleep and insulin resistance
are directly related.
You can click the link in the show
notes under linked articles and you'll see
the article that we are discussing
or where this conversation started from.
Then we're going to add
our additional insights as Sleep has been
one of my key areas to help uncover
my blood sugar issues, insulin resistance
and reverse it and get my life
and my health back.
So Tommy, as we welcome in
the new listeners, you want to hear more
about how Tommy and I transformed
through the Triad into art of fasting?
Head back, Listen to episode one.
Give us a little grace.
We ask because we were new and we just
we just had a story to share.
And that's why we do what we do each and
every week helping you guys, listeners
to integrate fasting into a lifestyle,
to get off of that dieting rollercoaster
and that on off
goodbye fad type dieting mindset.
We want to turn fasting
because never mind, is it just so powerful
in terms of getting the scale moving
and getting the weight off.
But there's so many other incredible
health benefits as well.
So as we welcome the new listeners in
and the old school OGs
that have been with us for a while,
thank you for continuing to join us
week to week.
We want to give you one or two
big takeaways from today's conversation
because sleep, Tommy
Especially in my world
when I was growing up and I believe it's
I know it's the same in yours,
just from the stories that we've shared,
it was always worn as a badge of honor
that, you know,
I watched my family up in cold, snowy,
rainy, chilly, damp, dark New England
that,
you know, sunlight was not as prevalent
as it is here in Texas or when I lived in
Florida because of the length of the day.
But everybody was stressed
and nobody slept.
And everybody was running around
doing a million things.
Right.
And I moved away and I went, Huh,
Not everybody's like this.
It's different.
It's a different way of life.
And one of the things I grew up with was
this I'll sleep with them when I'm dead
kind of mindset.
I said that a thousand times.
I can push through.
I was always a guy staying up late
watching, you know, the Monday Night
football games or Saturday Night
Live when I was probably too
young to be watching those things up
late with the little black and white TV.
Yes, I said black and white underneath
my comforter in my room to hide the light.
My parents knew,
but I was always like doing the homework
in the middle of the night, putting off
the term paper until the last minute.
So sleep was never a priority.
And I just didn't realize
for so many years what I was doing
to my metabolic health
and promotion of insulin resistance.
Yeah, you just hit on hit
on something there where I heard some
perfectionism too,
with that black and white on or off.
Also just the wearing of the badge.
If you've ever worn like not needing
all the sleep as a badge of honor,
then that means that you may
have been attracted to the idea
of getting more things done
or pushing a performer type personality.
Yeah, right.
And then and so that can really lean
into some perfectionist tendencies,
which can really backfire, especially on
a long term weight loss journey as well.
Heck, even a long
or maybe even a fasting schedule.
Oh, absolutely.
Thousand percent.
Like, oh, well, I didn't hit my
my 22 hour, 23 and a half hours, not 24.
I guess I'll just throw in the towel.
Oh, well, how many times And by the way,
I like that about myself for sure,
but for sure.
No. Yeah,
we're not we're not preaching here.
We we've done it.
We've said right,
we've wondered the same things.
But, but if you
if you zoom out for a second,
you take a look at even
just that question, which we get it a lot
like Ammad Omar is not 24 hours, right?
Like like and so then there's
this there's this major like, yeah,
what happens to dinner every day? Wouldn't
it be a 23?
Wouldn't I have to move my dinner
an hour later every day?
When when should I stop?
Should I stop that right.
Or should I say 11 p.m.
and just reset And I got No, no, no, no.
Like quiet the noise.
You got to write that noise.
So some of that perfectionist
noise is one of the things that
that we're going to have to turn down.
But that that can come back to
this idea of sleep is so important.
There's a reason why our body demands that
for every 3 hours of the day,
one of those hours is spent
sleeping, resting, recovering,
rejuvenating and
and restoring our body processes.
And like the more perfectionist
or the more driven we are, sometimes
it means that we're finding in the margin
this opportunity to get more stuff done.
But we don't even realize necessarily
that it's that I'm cutting my self off
at the ankles in order to optimize
my health, take control of my weight,
you know, reduce my medications
or get off something or
not worry about the quote unquote,
generational curse
that's been following me around,
whatever that that may be.
Yes. When we look at sleep
or we look at weight loss, let's say
a lot of people come to fasting for weight
loss.
Let's start there, right? Sure.
Mm hmm.
fasting, simplified day to day, right.
Simplified meal prep, simplified
planning, simplified my life.
Yeah.
As it has for so many others as well.
So anyone trying to lose weight typically
will focus on the diet and exercise.
That's what
we've been conditioned to do. Yeah.
So cut back on food intake,
make healthier choices
as kind of a subset, but kind of in
between the lines thought there as well.
Right.
And then ramping up
the workouts is going to increase my or
or bend the calorie in calorie out
equation to my favor.
Right. And that's
how you're going to shut the way.
But there is some critical
hormonal contributors to successful weight
loss, never mind
the societal familial support, peace
monitoring, peace, excitement, peace.
Right.
Like goal setting, all of these things
to the weight loss process.
So, yes, what we eat on our plate
also matters as well.
But what we're finding is that obesity
just simply isn't in a lot of cases.
And overconsumption issue
sleep has been shown
to be a vital component
because it is linked to several
of the hormonal and metabolic processes
that keep your body burning, a.k.a.
your metabolize them or your BMR
or your TDE
total daily energy expenditure imbalance.
So most adults,
I wonder we get this a lot when we do
our seven day challenges, the results
that we get when it comes to sleep.
There's a lot of less than happening,
right?
So adults typically need
about between seven and 8 hours
and there is a direct relationship between
your amount of sleep and the scale.
So for me, back in the day,
if I had a poor night's sleep
and I was up for, you know, multiple times
throughout the night or up for a while
during the evening,
now with kids, if I'm up,
I don't weigh every day anymore.
But if I'm up, you know, a few nights
ago, I was up for a couple of hours
in the middle of the night
taking care of a little one.
I knew that next day, even before kids
and if I was up in the middle night,
that that scale would not move down,
or most likely it would go up.
So frustrating you, right?
You're doing all the right things.
You're counting the calories,
tracking the macros,
hitting your fasting windows,
and you're going, Huh?
It was working.
Why is it not working anymore? Yeah.
So maybe I need to restrict my calories
a little bit more, you know?
Right, Right.
Maybe I need a little bit more.
Can I start eating salads again?
I thought if I fast that I could eat more.
What I wanted.
So frustrating.
So we want to talk about insulin, right?
So when we're talking about insulin,
insulin is the
major traffic controller
of whether or not your body's
going to burn the energy
that you've taken in or stored as fat.
And some of the large
epidemiological studies almost stumbled on
that one have repeatedly found
that people who are chronically sleep
deprived are at a higher risk of obesity.
Yeah, one of the models out there,
the carb insulin model of obesity,
is now taking into account sedentary
activity, genetic predisposition,
so something called epigenetics and
the environmental effects on our genes,
our sleep health,
so to speak, and our stress levels
and our cortisol levels
are all being kind of put
into the equation
of this insulin resistance driver.
So it's not just food
that can drive insulin resistance.
And one study found that people sleeping
less than five and a half hours
a night lost more nonfat mass.
So more of the good stuff,
more of the lean tissue, bone mass, etc.
Then sat five and a half hours
a night on a mildly,
mildly calorically restricted diet.
They lost more nonfat mass than fat.
Meanwhile, people who got eight
and a half hours of sleep shed more fat.
Nice.
Some of you got eight and a half hours.
I'm going eight and a half hours. How?
My woop tells me I need eight
and a half hours.
I don't get eight and a half hours.
What the heck? Sure.
Yeah, but I saw I was looking at Sleep
Foundation dot org and basically
that's, that's 7 hours, that's 7 hours
a night is is pretty magical.
Little light is
but more than one third of U.S.
adults
and we know the rest of the world is
is probably going to be you know
fairly similar in developed areas.
More than one third of U.S.
adults sleep less than 7 hours
per night on average.
Well, you know, don't we have about one
third of of adults being
being obese and then, you know, more much
more than that being in the overweight
category, the correlations
start to really kind of stack up.
Obviously, that's not causation,
but I know that the less that I slept,
that the more the scale was ticking up,
just like you mentioned for you.
And it makes sense when when I'm like, oh,
well,
I was spending so much time in the gym
and I was lifting all these heavy weights
and I was tracking the macros
and supplemented with my protein.
But at the same time it was like
your body doesn't have the time to recover
from the normal processes,
let alone worry about gaining muscle mass
or putting on more lean tissue
or rev up the liver for fat burning
when I just ingested, you know, my last
meal at 8:00, 9:00 at night, especially
if it was a higher insulin inducing meal,
even if my overall calories were
were within the
the field goal post post for the day.
Right.
And if you look at sleep in relation
to some of those decisions
that you were
just kind of outlining there,
there are some hormonal undercurrents
that we'll unpack here in a minute
that are driving those decisions.
So 4 to 6 hours
a night can play havoc on your metabolic
and endocrine functions,
simply just looking at blood glucose.
So glucose levels after, let's say,
a high carb meal, a later high carb meal
a later me on the day with higher carbs
can reduce the rate of glucose
clearance by 40%
and the acute insulin response by 30%.
So your immediately already shutting down
just by the night before
having a lack of sleep
and then even a single night of 4 hours
of sleep, reduced insulin sensitivity
in healthy men and women up to 25%.
So you're going to have higher blood
glucose levels, worse blood sugar control
and you're going to have more
of those feelings that lead
to those decisions
that you make during your waking windows
or during your fasting windows
or during your nutrition opportunities,
during your eating opportunities or your
one meal a day are going to be directly
related to the quality of sleep
and the consistency of sleep that you get.
You know, I didn't want to believe this.
Okay, That's almost a sectarian well,
whenever you go to make those decisions,
it's like if you know
that they're going to lead to longer
elevations in your blood sugar,
you can start to make some sense.
Where we go, we feel the delta,
we feel the difference, we feel the
the spike in the blood sugar.
But what we feel more
is the drop in the blood sugar.
If you've ever
the same donuts or something, you know,
you feel the whoosh, like, oh man, I'm
coming down off this just sugar high.
I feel the crash now.
I feel lethargic.
Well, guess what?
Insulin compounds that lethargic feeling.
But the thing about making those late
night decisions
where I'm getting
a lot more of my calories
on my insulin response later at night,
it's leading to the longer
elevated blood sugar.
Well, the problem is now I'm going to feel
that in the morning, too.
And so I'm going to I'm going
to be waking up
coming off of this like blood sugar crash
that should have been long stabilized.
If I had better foods
earlier in the day.
And now coming off of the lower,
the the lack of sleep
that's leading to more of that problem.
And it's like I could wake up,
I could be having the right calories,
the right macros,
doing all the right things,
and then I'm waking up and now I'm just
feeling just starving or I feel this
crash and energy early in the day, like,
what the heck is going on?
I'm just trying to
I'm just trying to get going here.
I guess I need some more coffee,
you know, and then I'm chasing it
and that can be just detrimental.
So something you just mentioned,
there was there was this one study,
It was elevated.
Ghrelin predicts food intake
during experimental sleep restriction.
And they looked at the study group,
people who reduced their calories
by 6 to 700 calories a day.
Right.
So moderate to high caloric restriction
every extra hour of sleep
during this study was associated with one
and a half pounds more of fat loss.
Wow.
I'm still mad about this. Okay.
Because I still I mean, I got three kids.
Sleep is a commodity.
Yeah, right. It's not valuable.
Resource adds a valuable resource
for everyone involved.
Everyone's happier
when we all sleep, right?
So that ghrelin increase.
I always think of ghrelin is like the
growl, like her growling stomach right.
That ghrelin is happens mechanistically
when you don't fast
your stomach empties and ghrelin goes up.
It also happens when your sleep sucks.
Let's just be honest.
And another study from Mayo
Clinic connects
sleep loss to the accumulation
of the worse type of fat.
That visceral adiposity.
Right. So one.
Yeah, right.
An 11%
increase in visceral fat accumulation
when subjects were sleep deprived
compared to getting a full 9 hours.
You No 9 hours.
Yeah. Okay. Get out of here with 9 hours.
So we're just going to keep coming.
Yeah, we're going to keep.
Yeah. Come on. Are you alive? Hello?
I think is the mean with, like,
the stick figure. With the stick.
Oh, yeah.
Like poke poking, whatever it is
that it's like do something right.
Doing what you're doing.
If you're getting 9 hours though,
shout out. Yeah.
And so this a note.
How are you doing that. Yeah.
Please tell me what your day to day
schedule looks like,
especially if you have three kids.
So let's just keep going back to that
focus point of that 7 hours a night.
Okay, Let's
let's get to the seven hour mark and
we'll see Some pretty cool things change.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then if you're already at seven,
like, let's style it up just a little bit,
right?
Like, like there's, there's some cool
things we can do to be proactive,
to get better sleep, to compartmentalize
it a little bit better.
Because like in a previous episode,
we talked about just time
restricted feeding
and the fact that even with the same
calories coming in, we're doing better
just by putting some some guardrails,
some guidelines around that.
But we can do the same thing.
It's called sleep hygiene,
where we literally clean up our habits
just a little bit.
And it comes down to things like,
okay, turning off devices
just a little bit earlier or going like,
okay, what time
in my actually getting
into like sleep mode
because some interesting information
has been coming out recently, right?
They started looking at actual
like things like growth hormone and other
major endocrine markers,
things that are completely contributed
or completely determined
by the quality of our sleep
and how much we're getting
or were not getting.
So so one thing was like
delta wave sleep is determinant in that
that essential growth hormone release
that we need every single night.
Well, the thing is those delta waves
come between when we start to feel drowsy
and that first solid hour of sleep.
So if we're doing things, if we're not
protecting that initial part of sleep
and we're going like now,
I'll just stay up a little bit longer.
Another episode of Netflix.
David Another game on the phone,
another app to scroll, another ad, Man,
I really don't want to, you know,
I don't want to harp on the kids
to get to bed tonight, right?
Like, I'm just tired. It's Friday.
Let's just let him stay up.
Sure. Any of this resonating now?
We don't do that in this house.
Okay. Yeah.
It's not good for anybody, right?
Oh, man.
I mean, these kind of things
come up all the time, but then so it's
it's in that our like to protect that our
if we don't
we missed it when you missed the window
of hormone release.
Yeah. Has anyone ever had this happen.
We're like, man, I'm tired
And then you stay up a little bit later,
you do one more of the thing, right?
Yeah.
And then you go out.
Crikey, I missed my window.
This happens with my son. Sure.
If we are not leaving his room by 815,
he's up.
He's up till nine in there.
Rolling around, squawking,
talking to himself.
Right.
But if we can get out of that room
by 815, he's asleep.
And I don't remember where
it was coming from,
but I know you'd pulled up the research
right on those delta waves, that initial
growth hormone spike.
If you miss it in the evening,
you don't get it back.
Nope, Not so tomorrow.
You've you've missed
the restorative opportunity for that day.
Yeah, It's like, All right,
how many swings and misses
do you want to get out of? 365.
Now I am 100% pot meat.
Kettle on this right now.
Okay.
Yeah.
Speaking to myself in the mirror because
right now we're speaking to ourselves.
If you look at my work, it's horrible.
It's like a recovery watch, right now.
I need to go to Recovery Watch.
It's like you need 9 hours of sleep.
You need to go to bed at 7:58 p.m.
and get up at 9 a.m.. And I'm like, Huh?
So in this season of life
that we're in, it's
very alarming to me,
which is why I've been much more diligent
with my fasting windows
and with my carbohydrate
sweet salty intake,
because that's a slippery slope for me.
Stress, sleep
and the macro calorie counting eat less,
move more mindset is what backed me
into a corner metabolically speaking.
So when we look
at some of the epidemiological studies,
people that are chronically sleep.
So here are some stats that can kind of
increase the Hey, I'm doing everything
right during during the waking hours,
but my sleep needs to improve
because it affects my hormones
and my metabolic markers.
And I don't want to undo all the hard
work of the fasting that I've been doing.
Type conversation.
Yeah, this is me right now in real life,
this is a very timely episode for me.
People who are chronically sleep
deprived are at a higher risk of obesity.
Okay, makes sense.
Yeah.
Likely for all the hormonal and metabolic
shifts discussed here in that mental
analysis of studies,
the risk of obesity went up
Fewer of sleep
from the baseline of 7 to 8 hours.
Wow. 30%.
If you're getting 5 hours versus
H, that's hard to hear.
And why does that matter?
Because obesity
then comes with the increased risk of
metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular
disease, type two diabetes, etc..
So the more limited the sleep duration,
the greater the risk.
Then there were studies
that showed the relationship
between curtailed sleep and type
two diabetes
found that those who sleep 5 to 6 hours
a day have double the odds of prediabetes
and type two diabetes, compared with 7
to 8 hours in some studies.
Short sleep was a more significant risk
factor than lack of physical activity.
Is one more last study to awaken you.
So what I did there to take some action
on getting your sleep habits under wraps
because of the effect
that it can have on your waking decisions
and your fasting times
and your fasting hours too.
So a study of short sleepers who receive
personalized tips for sleep improvement,
they increased their slumber time from 5.6
to 7.1 hours.
Nice experience.
They signify frequent decrease
in overall appetite and their desire
for sweet and salty foods over
just a two week period.
This is me when I don't sleep,
I am hungry all the day time.
My fasting timer
and my fasting windows are more difficult
and I want all of the salty foods.
I want them all. I want everything.
Yeah, just crunch.
Just something to crunch on.
Give it to me.
Like I don't care what it is.
I don't even like pork
rinds. I'll eat them. But.
Okay. Yeah.
I mean, that speaks to the indulgence,
but you know what I mean.
Yeah, self-control, discipline.
I mean, throw them out the window,
like the cravings and the thing.
The the actual inhibitions.
I mean, cravings are up,
inhibitions are down.
It is tough
because every little piece of fasting,
you know, between like, like you mentioned
setting the timer, your food decisions,
what time I go to bed.
Am I exercising some of that sleep hygiene
that I heard the guys talk about?
Right.
All of these things can.
I didn't say no Netflix.
I just said half less of an episode.
Yeah, just half an episode less.
I just like being being cognizant
of the time
or like making that because, man,
what an important decision.
But think about it.
Like your inhibitions are at their lowest
the later it gets, right?
And so every little bit further,
it's a little tougher
to make that next best decision.
But like that
last decision that you make for the day
is one of the most important ones for
for your recovery going into the next day.
But then that also determines
how that next fast is going to feel too,
and how effective it is, too,
and what the scale
is going to do the next day
and then the day after that as well.
So you're talking about a cycle
here, momentum.
So we just had a question
come in recently or a comment
come in recently about someone
who was in a fasting window.
They were doing an overnight fast
like a lunch to the following day
dinner, Right.
You know, breaking that 30 hour mark.
And they said, yeah, I was fasting
and I took the dog for a walk
and I decided to stop and have one bourbon
or one tequila or whatever,
and then went home, drink
didn't, didn't go down the rabbit
hole, went home, went to bed.
What did that do to my fast.
Well it broke it obviously.
But the next morning for me,
if I did that, I would be ravenous
in the morning
and you could insert one slice of,
I don't know, high fat food,
like a pizza.
One piece of pizza. I was going to say,
are you trying not to say pizza? Right.
I was the next morning for me, like,
I know when we go out to date night
to very occasionally
to this one special restaurant,
I know what I'm getting and I know the
local draft craft beer I'm going to have.
But I know the next morning
on that Saturday morning or Sunday morning
when we go out on a Friday or Saturday,
I know that I'm going to need to be
more focused and hyper vigilant
or else the old me comes back, right?
So I turn from Bruce Banner into the Hulk
and I'm like, Give me all of the food.
And next thing I know,
I'm in a coma on Monday
because Sunday turned into an all
you can eat grace fast.
So yeah, in
chronic sleep deprivation hours.
Yeah.
Insulin's just up like it's
just all the way up right
So sleep deprivation, decreased
insulin sensitivity, right?
So it's not as effective.
You have a stress response, right.
Which increases cortisol.
Your appetite, your hunger and satiety
hormones are all messed up.
Your brain isn't as clear.
More brain fog, right?
And then you've got increasing insulin,
blood glucose.
Your liver produces its own energy
when you're like, I don't need more.
I've got enough floating around.
The cortisol is up.
You make poorer food choices so less
nutrient dense food consumption and then
you've got the imbalance in your burning
and storing of that energy.
So you get more fat mass
and then impaired weight loss.
So these hormones, like we talked about
growth hormone, right?
It's that non-REM sleep, it's that
initial sleep portion of your sleep cycle.
It literally regulates glucose
and the breakdown of fats and protein.
It is it is lean muscle protective.
It protects your lean muscle tissue,
which is what we want.
We want more lean mass production
and more fat burning cortisol.
It manages
your body's use of macronutrients,
so it increases your blood sugar
and controls your sleep cycle.
And other activities.
So increased cortisol, increased stress
response, increases your fat storage
and decreases your insulin sensitivity
the following day.
And then timing, there's leptin, ghrelin
and then erections as well.
Yeah, I mean we talking about like
throwing a wrench into the whole system.
So if we can get the right sleep,
if we get fasting, Tommy
that's, that's like the, hey, I'm fasting,
can't I just eat whatever I want?
You know, it's like, right, well,
you can for a short period of time
you could probably that is
probably not going to be nearly
as effective as you'd like for it to be.
Yeah, right.
But it's at least it's
at least a good place to start
saying of course, with same thing
with the sleep, but I'm fasting.
Okay, well, that's good. So.
But this is circling back
to where we started this conversation
with some of the black and white on
and off perfectionist
subconscious tendencies that
a lot of us have, especially if you're
if you like to get things done
or you where sleep or lack thereof
as a badge of honor sometimes then
then you might find yourself
being all or nothing in the fact that,
hey, if I, if I got the diet right,
I don't need to get everything else right
or it's not going to matter
as much as the diet.
But what you put on
your plate is part of the equation.
How often
you're eating or you're restricting
your eating is also part of the equation.
The amount and the quality of your sleep
is is also a big part of the equation.
So like between those three things,
I mean, that's probably going to account
for the majority of your weight
loss or weight control efforts.
In one of those three buckets,
it's going to be the majority of it.
So if we if we gave equal equal weight
to those things, then let's call them each
like let's say they're each
about a third of of what matters here.
So if you can if you can get two of them
right and one of them still suffering,
you're still likely to get the majority
of the results you're looking for.
You know, like not
every day is going to be a ten, right?
So give yourself permission that,
hey, it's not going to be perfect,
but it is worth working on my sleep
and my sleep hygiene,
even if I'm getting my plate right
or even if my last pass
was, quote unquote, perfect,
or I've been hitting my fasting
consistently, That's that's great.
It's still worth putting some
deliberate effort into your sleep quality.
So I'm going to encourage
everybody, like take take a step in in
each one or at least
or in two of those buckets, right.
Like next time you go to break your fast,
like, okay, so pull up the blueprint
to fasting for fat loss.
If you don't know what I'm talking about,
get it, download it free guide
and you know it's going to help you
kind of outline what your next fast
could look like. Right.
And so that's
going to take some of the tactical
thinking out of the equation, correct?
Okay. Yeah.
So so tactical check, check that box.
And then so I'm
setting my fasting timer right?
And when I go to break that fast,
then there's going to be some decisions
to make.
Those decisions are going to affect
the scale, obviously,
but they're also going to affect
the quality of my sleep that night.
And so if you're having trouble
like closing your window
or having a meal instead of it
becoming a slippery slope
or a graze fast window
because my cravings are up, maybe because
it was a poor night of sleep yesterday.
Okay, then
let's make one or two better decisions
when you go to break that next fast.
Maybe it's reducing the process.
Carbohydrates on that next meal
so I can sleep a little bit better.
And maybe I don't have all the cravings
that lead to the,
you know, the additional episode,
you know, on Netflix that night.
So I can get a little bit better
sleep. Okay, great.
And then when I when
I go to make my next fasting decision,
I can also do that and go, all right,
maybe I'm going to set a deliberate timer
for that next meal going into a particular
time of day that I already planned out
when I'm when I set the fasting timer
rather than freelancing it
going into that fast.
Okay.
So now I've made two very, very good,
deliberate choices
that I could do and continue to do
and see results on the scale from there.
That make sense? Yeah, don't do
because we're in a rat a tat tat.
A few more things
you can do with your sleep
to optimize your fasting windows,
the ease of your fast in your weight loss.
But what I'm hearing there is
is don't try like in the matrix
to learn how to to like install an entire
you know how to fly a Blackhawk program
like just don't try to digest it all
and put it all in one like all of these
morning routine gurus out there.
And I've, I've probably bought
and purchased and watched and taken
lots of their courses
like a 72 step morning routine.
Yeah.
I have a three hour morning routine.
No, you don't.
Okay.
We need effective, we need repeatable.
So don't try to build the pyramid
all in one or two names.
Yeah, Rome was a start.
Start slow.
I love all the cliches. It's great. Yeah.
All right, start slow.
My wife actually just said to me
the day she's like, So I've been working.
A little bit later
in the evenings again, she's like,
So what's going on with that, huh?
How are you doing?
And it's a direct correlation.
My C performance is decreased
and she's like,
So yeah, what you can do about that?
I was like, Thank you.
Like, that wasn't an answer.
I'm like, That was thank you.
Well, I'm going to start to pull back
because I have a bedtime reminder,
my phone.
I must start to pull back.
Not just
I've been staying up an hour and a half
right 90 minutes later than I should.
Yeah.
So I can't just go back
to laying back down 90 minutes, surely,
or every night, because I'm literally
just going to lay there.
Is it
because you want to get more done? It's.
It's been a necessity lately, right? Yeah.
So I'm not there's been some changes
in our day to day and our schedules
and it's just been like,
all right, well, I got to get it done
somehow and I still want to see
my wife and be a husband.
And so it's like, All right, I'll
just stick these few against the margin.
Yeah, I'll just stick it in here.
Everybody out. Sleep. None of it. Deal.
Quiet. Puts music on my headphones. Boom.
Get it done.
Yeah.
So what I'm going to start to do
is I'm going to pull back that bedtime
by about ten or 15 minutes over
the course of the next couple of weeks.
You know, couple of nights
I'll move it back 15 minutes,
move it back 15 minutes, and I won't
I'm not allowed myself
to sit down and do that
every single night,
so I'm going to decrease
the frequency of it happening.
Then I'm also going to pull back
the average bedtime.
So what I think I want to do time
is I want to give away the sleep
guide that we have
because it's six categories of things.
Small things. Yeah, that you can do.
But overall, big picture,
as we wrap up today's conversation,
head to the show notes.
You can grab the fasting blueprint.
If you're newer to fasting,
it's the blueprint fasting for fat loss.
So to give you an idea of like
how to ramp up,
what kind of set your schedule talks
about some of the how,
who, what, when, where and why is fasting.
Yeah, the importance of it,
getting the weight off, etc.
Then also the sleep guide
is going to just simplify the process.
The sleep science is very robust,
especially now,
and it's very overwhelming.
Yeah, if you
if you're that type of personality,
speaking to myself again,
feel like I'm on the couch this week, so
I want more data, like I want to see it.
But big picture here,
aim for at least 7 hours.
So either set your alarm
a little later in the morning,
move your bedtime
a little bit earlier in the evening.
But let's aim for that.
Let's not go for the my groups
telling me 9 hours and 18 minutes
is what I need tonight. Right.
Okay.
Unless the wife and kids go away for
a couple of days, that's not happening.
But what can I do? Okay.
I can aim for seven yards.
Doable, right?
Set a regular bedtime and wake up time.
Yeah, because inconsistency
can also raise the insulin resistance,
not just the night to night time,
but inconsistency and post weight loss.
Having a consistent bedtime helps you
keep the weight off consistency right?
So avoid time.
You already mentioned this.
Avoid eating dinner close to bedtime,
close your window earlier
and put in those
better food decisions later in the day,
especially if you're doing Nomad dinner
right now.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
If you're going to make a poor food
decision, make it earlier in the day.
Let's just be real. Please. Yeah.
I'm helping you here for your sleep
hygiene. Okay?
It does matter. Yes, it does.
The timing of it matters. Yeah.
So to things like caffeine,
My wife can't sniff caffeine past noon.
I can eat, I can have a coffee at 3 p.m.
and go to bed on time. It's fine.
It's not fine, but yes.
Yep, yep, it's okay. Alcohol. Optimal.
Dual, right?
Optimal.
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Alcohol is another one.
It completely messes with your REM sleep.
Dramatically decreases your REM sleep,
which is going to have a direct effect
on your next day
and your cravings and your hormone levels
and your insulin resistance.
So your liver activity overnight too,
which is just so important for fat loss.
Yeah.
So you're literally hijacking some of the
fat loss potential right there.
Yep. Get out.
Even if it's cloudy like it's
been here in Houston.
Hazy right as we're as we're exiting
spring into summer.
It'll be here before we know it.
Get some light routine.
Get some some light into your eyeballs
without some sunglasses
early in the morning.
And then as the sun is setting that dawn
and dusk light, don't exercise late.
Make sure room is dark and cool.
Okay. Just put up a tapestry.
Old school
dorm room style spray, paint your window
without your wife or husband knowing.
One of the first things we did
when we moved in
this house
was I ordered blackout curtains.
My wife found the curtain rod
for the for the window
because it's
kind of like a four part window.
It's like a bevel out in our
in our master bedroom.
Oh, yeah.
Those are cool.
Horrible to try to make good sleep
hygiene, though,
because it's like all these angles.
And I got a four piece
curtain rod with a thing and a thing,
and then we got cellular shades, right?
These pull down shades that are black out,
they look really great.
That was literally the first thing
other than making sure that the internet
and the water was turned on
when we moved into this house,
this is the first thing we did.
I go to hotels,
I literally bring electrical tape with me.
It's in my back
like I am blocking out all of the light.
So make sure it's cool and dark and just
start with one or two of these things.
And then in the sleep guy,
we have a couple others
like decreasing your blue light exposure,
shutting the TV off,
you know, those types of things,
decreasing your hydration
later in the day,
getting most of your water
in earlier in the day.
So you're not a peeing all night.
But sleep is such like you said,
if we want to break it up into thirds
and for me it's more it's
probably more like 40% of the problem
of the long term problem.
It's just so important.
And we are we want to make your fasting
lifestyle easier.
So just picking one or two of these
things can be incredibly powerful.
Yeah, I can.
So like, do that starting today.
Don't try to change everything
all at once,
but grab one or two things that, that you,
you really want to to work on
and then do those like do those tonight.
Yeah. Don't wait,
put it into action right now.
Get your first rep tonight
and then going into your next fast,
make one more decision,
especially if it was a little bit easier
because your sleep was a little bit better
and get the momentum
going 100% because that's when we start
to see the scale start to move.
That's where we start
to gain the confidence in the long term
sustainability of this as a lifestyle,
because it really does all work together.
It's not just,
Oh man, if I just get the calories right,
then everything else is going to fall
into place. No, absolutely not.
So but but we can
we can optimize one step at a time.
So Absolutely. Get started.
No time to waste.
I'm going to say this to myself.
Okay?
If you're tired, go to bed.
Yeah, that's a message to everybody,
including me. I need to hear it.
It needs to be everywhere.
Don't miss that opportunity.
If you're drowsy, if you can go, go do it
and take a nap if you need to.
It's okay.
No shame. It's okay.
Some of it. It's okay.
Moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas out there,
friends, family, just coworkers.
Go take a nap in the car.
You're tired. Go to sleep. Sleep.
Is that important?
I don't care
if you're sleeping in the car.
I'm not going to bang on your window
or try to rob you.
Just going to look at that guy.
Sleep hygiene. It's important.
All right. I'm going to be jealous.
I am going to be jealous.
I'm going to be like, pull up on the spot
next to me underneath the tree.
Once you show it.
Show notes Blueprint Fasting for fat loss.
Grab our sleep guide.
I've never given away the sleep guide
before, so I'm really excited about that.
See the response for it?
Set those FaceTime. Yes.
Tommy, appreciate the conversation
as always.
We'll talk next week.
Yeah, Sweet dreams. It.
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