Ep. 157 - The Fasting Wheel of Life | The Basic Benefits of Fasting | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD

In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the basic benefits of fasting, the fasting wheel of life, how to make fasting adaptable to become part of our lifestyle, a study about four and six hours fasting windows, and much more.

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Fasting For Life Ep. 157 Transcript

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I’m Dr. Scott Dr. Watier.

[Tommy Welling]
And I'm Tommy Welling. And you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health, achieve ultimate wellness, and live the life you truly deserve.

[Tommy Welling]
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.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
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'm a good friend and colleague. Tommy Welling. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. The end of the year is upon us, sir.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
What are you doing this afternoon?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, I'm doing great. How's it going, Scott?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Doing fantastic, my friend. I cannot believe that in just a few days, we're going to see a three in our four digit year, right? So 2023 is here. So the next few episodes, Sam, you're going to be really fun. We're going to talk about the overall benefits of fasting and we're going to talk about this new concept that we've been working on, which is the fasting we love life.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you guys have done some life coaching or some goal setting in the past, there's this exercise that you do called The Wheel of Life. We're going to apply it to the fasting life style, which is what this podcast is about and what we are doing week in, week out and day in and day out inside of our groups and challenges is how do you get fasting to create a quality of life and health level of health that hasn't been obtainable in other dieting and weight loss techniques?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So how do we make it adaptable to become part of our lifestyle? So we're going to talk about the benefits of the basic benefits of fasting, and then we're going to go into the conversation on what does it look like setting yourself up for having the best year, the best year yet. So how can 2023 be the best year?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And not just we're not just talking about the scale and those days, 20, 30, 40 or whatever, plus pounds that you've been meaning to get rid of, right? Yeah. And then we're going to do a year in review to so year interview episode and then then we're going to have a really cool conversation about a study about four and six hour of fasting windows and those effects on health.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But we're also going to be releasing a new, new brand new still in production. Brand new resource that is going to be about starting your fasting journey and building the necessary foundational habits up to a 24 hour fast and beyond. Yeah, so it's gonna be awesome. New resources loading new conversations happening today. Benefits of fasting for metabolic health.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yes. We're going to talk a little bit about the scale, but go a little bit deeper, how we're going to frame out what the start of 2023 can look like with fasting and your fasting goals, right? Insert the fasting wheel of life and then we'll have a cool year in review conversation after the first of the year. Be able to wish everybody a happy 2023 and a Happy New Year coming up next week as well as highlighting the most downloaded kind of episodes over the last year to really direct you all to the high notes, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because now that we've gotten 100 and I mean, I think 150, 960 episodes, we want to make sure we have these checkpoints right. That you can go back to refer back to if you're new, welcome. You're coming in at a perfect time. If you're an O.G., great. We got to get a place to send you for a reset.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then I'm super excited about that January 10th episode with that new resource that we've got coming.

[Tommy Welling]
So yeah, it's going to be cool. Yeah, put some put some like some guidepost in the sandbox, you know, like, yeah, go, go play over here. Some of these episodes are really cool over here and we've gotten some great feedback from, from this one over here. So it's going to be cool. I love I love closing out the year with some really good intention because I can't tell you like the diet and those pounds that I needed to lose.

[Tommy Welling]
It was always like the reason to do a New Year's resolution. For me, it was always the reason to like write some things down at the end of the year and it feels so much better, you know, now, having having the tools and having things arranged differently so that that's not that's not my focal point. Even if I want to lose £10 or £50 or whatever it might be, the thinking about it and the structure behind it, and then how I'm going to actually measure my progress and give myself feedback on how it's going feels completely like 180 degrees different from how I would have done it maybe five years ago and then kept going

[Tommy Welling]
on that same rollercoaster and kind of hitting my head up against the corner and frustration.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, there's I mean, there's so much research out there that shows the inefficiency of New Year's resolutions. Right. And that you stop and we're not going to talk about that. We've done episodes on that in the past. Right? Right. You know, we've talked about the weight gain and the truth about holiday weight gain and the scale and, you know, all of the pressure and angst and guilt and frustration that comes along with that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We're going to frame this in the next few episodes in a positive light of what you can do and what you can control. If you want to hear kind of what we did last year and how we're going to be leveling it up for this year, you know, you can go back and listen to the end of the year episodes through November and December of last year and kind of how we frame things out.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And this year we're bringing new energy, new focus, new skills, new tools to the forefront of this fasting for life journey. So I'm super pumped up about it, super excited about it as well. Thank you. So the start of today's conversation came out of an article from Level's Health.com, which is one of the main players in the CGM world, which is the continuous glucose monitoring world.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So there is a skewed kind of focus here on blood sugar, but I think it's really important when we can have the conversation about what truly matters and why do we want to lose weight right? So, yeah, why are you here? Well, you've probably had failed weight loss attempts in the past. Sure. Most people come to fasting like I did, to lose weight.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Me too. Right? Yeah. So what are. What are those benefits of fasting for health? Not for the scale. Right. So what is fasting? Why does it matter? What is it important? Well, I mean, we just recorded an episode, I believe was last week or two weeks ago where we talked about you know, the different fasting windows, but the importance of the cardio metabolic implications or what is that going to do in terms of decreasing our risk of becoming a statistic that has a disease process that is due to the carrying and the metabolic dysfunction of carrying the extra weight and having an imbalance, lifestyle or view of what health it is, whose responsibility is, and

[Dr. Scott Watier]
how I can obtain it. Well, that's a lot different than while my doctor said I need to lose £20 or man, I want to fit into that pair of jeans or man, I want to weigh what I did when I got married or that. Yeah, possibly unobtainable number from when you were in high school when the imbalance or just.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Started right. So fasting is a powerful tool to balance that metabolic health, reducing inflammation, improved cardiovascular health and not become one of those statistics that eight or nine reasons why people pass away here in the United States is because of blood sugar and weight related issues. So I want to start with what is fasting, the benefits of fasting, talk about insulin resistance and glucose, and then focus on talk a little bit about weight loss.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But then what we should be targeting for the best year yet in terms of 2023 when it comes to weight loss and this fasting lifestyle. And that's where the fasting wheel of life is going to come in play.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, because if all we have to look at is that number on the scale, is that weight, then how does that equate? Especially if it's if it was like doctor prescribed, you know, but like how does that equate to everything else that matters? Or like the overall health and, and the focal points of my motivation and my inspiration to keep going with, with something that's working, especially like during those tougher times, if it's just that number on the scale, that's oftentimes not enough that that has like limited power in my willpower and inspiration and like longevity to, to my process.

[Tommy Welling]
We're going to need, we need more tools than that to to kind of fuel the journey.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I think two things you just said that stood out to me. One was you talked about like more than the scale, right? So if that's all we have or if we only have bloodwork done once every 6 to 12 months.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, true.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You know, that's that's a tough like. All right, I'm going to drive to, I don't know, a certain town in North Dakota that I've never been to from Houston, Texas. And I'm only going to turn the GPS on twice. And then I have to shut it off in 30 seconds.

[Tommy Welling]
Good luck to me.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yes, I'm going to end up in Mexico. Okay? I am. I am. I mean, I've got my wife, I'm driving, I get the GPS on and I can still get lost. Right. So it's a running joke here in our family. I am not geographically aware, spatially aware in terms of that's I'm directionally challenged. Okay. With you. But the other thing you mentioned there was the personal journey piece or you know, when we're looking at, you know, what are those check points or what are those metrics or what are those things that we can the motivational pieces like where is our willpower lie and why we're doing it really matters as well.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But we've got to start somewhere with getting some consistent habits with our fasting and we talk all across different research articles, different conversations. You know, why is fasting worked to reverse my undiagnosed blood sugar issues and give me my life back and allow me to show up differently as a husband, as a father, to not become, you know, my family, the generational path of health and disease that I've watched all my grandparents go down in terms of dementia and diabetes and cancers and all that kind of stuff.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
How do we prevent that? Well, you got to start with fasting, and that's what we truly believe is that is the easiest, most simplest way to do it. But if you come to fasting and you Google fasting, you've got time restricted eating, time restricted windows, intermittent fasting, eating, window nutrition, window feast, fast famine, periodic fasting, alternate day fasting 24 hour fast extended fast warrior fasts.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
What is what are the definitions of all of those things? So simply fasting for us by definition is putting an intentional time restriction on when you have consumption of caloric intake. So you're going to have a window where you delay gratification or you delay food, and then you're going to have an intentional window to ingest good, nutritionally dense food choices that are going to support your body's ability to tap into those long term fat stores.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're going, Okay, that didn't sound any any more simple, right? So here it is, six, eight. Your typical intermittent fasting you fast for 16, you consume four eight, right? Periodic fasting, you've got your five two diet, you've got your ADF schedules, right? We've done episodes on all of these. So just go back search fasting for my podcast ADF Fasting for Life Podcast five to fasting.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, it's all that, right. We even did one on fast mimicking diet, right? Which is interesting to me because you consume food, but then it's fasting but it's not. Yeah. Then you've got your 24 hour fast. Yeah. The fast bar right.

[Tommy Welling]
Fasting with food.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're fasting with food. Interesting. Your oman fasts. Right, your 24 hour fast, your warrior fast, your 20 hour fast. The reality is, is like you have to start somewhere and most people come to fasting. And we talk about the study with the shift workers last week about using a 14 hour open Yeah. Time restricted eating window and then they made a change all the way down to three hour change, all the way down to 11 hours.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So we're not even at the 68 model yet. So what I would recommend is you build on this as you go throughout the year, or if you've fallen off, then you haven't figured out a repeatable schedule that works for you long term. Yeah.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. So I mean, that's, that's one metric point like to hit a little bit higher of of a fast than you have in the past. Like that's that's one thing that's not just, hey, what's the number on the scale but have I been able to consistently.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I have.

[Tommy Welling]
Been able to consistently do like a 14 hour versus a 15 or a 16 or maybe an 18 hour. Right. Like pushing the boundary a little bit. Go ahead.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, I was just I totally derailed you there because I was pointing at you emphatically. So that was terrible. Podcasting one on one right there we are in a audio medium and I'm doing visual things that's disrupting your thought process. So apologies. But if you're waking up, you're fasting and you're waking up and you're the first thing you look at is the scale.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That scale is going to punch you in the face even when you do things well, or if you have a good day or a bad day or you have an expectation, a time related or scale related expectation. Yeah. Then you're going to be you're going to be thrust rated at some point. And enough of those frustrations, results in chips away, throwing out the plan, chips away at that willpower.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So weight loss is important. We know metabolic dysfunction is linked to obesity, which is also associated with diabetes and metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer. Now Type three diabetes, otherwise known as Alzheimer's and plaque development in the brain. And that you know, you can look just Google this right. And you'll see articles everywhere. You know, in articles like JAMA and New England Journal of Medicine and Mindset and Cell Metabolism.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you refuse to be called cell and advances in nutrition and all these different places. Right. But the simple reason why fasting works for weight loss is that it's immediately going to put you in a in a place where you can consume less and then it gives your body less time with insulin being high, which means your body can tap into and stay in fat burning mode.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But there's more at play here because there will be potential for caloric restriction regardless of your fasting or not daily long term calorie restriction, which can and will result potentially in both fat and muscle loss if you're not careful. So we don't want to damage our metabolic flexibility is the bigger point here. And if our scale is our starting point and you're only looking at the scale, you're likely to fail.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, yes, great points.

[Tommy Welling]
And I feel like just just that frustration piece and knowing where should I be targeting? Like should it be how often should I look at the scale? Right. Like that could be one of the things like going into 2023, if I feel like looking at the scale every single morning has been a derailing point, let's look at the average.

[Tommy Welling]
Let's look at the weekly, the moving average, you know, that kind of thing. And like, that's a that's a great way to zoom out just a little bit. We don't want to throw it out, right, because like we need, we need the input, but we also need it to not derail us on any given day when we have been doing everything right or most things right.

[Tommy Welling]
And then we only have one metric, one opportunity for feedback, and then it says, no, you haven't been doing the right thing. And then all of a sudden my brain goes, Okay, well, I guess we've been on the wrong track. Maybe this isn't working, but absolutely that may not be the case just because of the the fluctuations that come along with it.

[Tommy Welling]
So I love taking the average right there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And I want to talk about metabolic flexibility or that idea of the ability to fluctuate between, you know, burning glucose versus fat and turning into ketones. Right. And giving your body energy and support that way. So, you know, with some of these things, we'll talk about that with the fasting, you know, the we look at the fasting for life.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We love life. I don't know we're going to call it, but we're going to put together some things that we want you guys to focus on starting off this year that will pull away from this. Just I only have the scales, my own metric things to think about, things to consider. Right. But, you know, one of the things with fasting that's great is that it can potentially stabilize your appetite and your hunger hormones in your hunger cues and, you know, all of those things.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we'll talk about that in a minute. But this idea of metabolic flexibility, right? So your body has two primary fuel sources and this is tapping into the conversation of the benefits of fasting. So you've got glucose, which is usually delivered through the carbohydrates you eat right and fat, which can also be stored and later converted into a fuel source in the form of ketones.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But you also have the body fat which can be converted to fuel, which is what we want to tap into, which is hard to do if you're constantly in a state of glucose, if you're constantly in a state of signaling in your body. Yeah. To having insulin in the bloodstream. Exactly. So when glucose concentrations rise, your body reduces insulin, which is the gatekeeper, which tells the cells primarily your skeletal muscle and your liver to begin with to to either burn or store that energy.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Or it gets, if there's excess, it gets converted into fat. So the metabolic benefits of fasting don't start until around that 12 hour mark in some of the research. We have also gone into some of the articles where it shows that your insulin is going to take longer to drop than you would typically expect. And the only way to really know that is by looking at your blood sugar numbers in the morning and then periodically throughout the day.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the scale isn't going to tell you, is insulin dropping enough? And that's why we're talking about some of these other signals in a minute or some of these other things you can look at, like energy, for instance, because you may not be switching into ketosis or you may not have depleted your glycogen enough or your body starts to turn on that fat burning ketone production.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And it's it's not black or white. It's a, it's a sliding scales. Yeah, right. There's a lot of sticking points along the way and that's what that metabolic flexibility refers to is your body's ability to toggle between the Fed, right, glucose, insulin, high state or the fasted state where your body can flip the switch to metabolize those carbohydrates, stored glycogen in glucose in your skeletal muscle and liver, and then allow your body to tap into the fat stores.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you know, you can also take into account exercise and rest periods as well because that's another way to increase your metabolic flexibility. But we want more toggling into the ketone fat burning state rather than the carbohydrate glucose, you know, glycogen state, which is where typically most of us live, especially if we had multiple failed attempts at trying to lose the same 20, 30, 40 plus £50.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That seemingly increases as we get older. Yeah.

[Tommy Welling]
Absolutely. And like the the longer or the larger the meal is, before the fast started, the more opportunity I had for glycogen stores, the more calories I brought in. So that that means the longer it's going to take to burn through those before my body actually needs to make that metabolic shift, which is which can also be a point of why aren't I in ketosis faster or why aren't I getting higher numbers on my ketone mojo?

[Tommy Welling]
Let's say like we hear that a lot.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or the maybe the strips or the breath. Yeah, right. Oh man. It's showing that I'm not in ketosis while you want to be doing what you just mentioned, Tommy, which is actually measuring the ketone levels. And we did a whole episode on on ketone monitoring. You can go search again for that and, and dove into it a little bit more.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But yeah, that's the point is that, that's what we want.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. What if you what if in 2023 instead of just jumping on the scale every day, what if you took your, your blood sugar numbers, like upon upon waking every day and you tracked that average along with the average on the scale for for something to to aim towards and to measure your progress rather than just the physical, mechanical scale to potentially smack me in the face and yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like derail me.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, negative or yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or how many years resolutions go out the window by the end of January. Right. Which is statistics show right.

[Tommy Welling]
If they lasted that long.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. If, if you even made them because you know they don't work like you could do a pole, go on the street and ask people, well, I don't make those. I know they don't work. Right.

[Tommy Welling]
Your brain's like, what are we wasting time for?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Consistent habits is where is where the magic happens. So when we talk about this metabolic flexibility to land the plane here and like really where fasting comes in, the flexibility can can help you burn more fat, right? Say like you're doing more of a Kito type diet. We did an entire episode just specifically around the benefit of a 90 day keto diet, terms of diabetes reversal, incredibly powerful.

[Tommy Welling]
Well, because then you don't have to shift so far over as often away from the fat burner. You don't have to go as far to the sugar burning.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So when your body's not good at it during this 90 days, consistently, yes. It's such an advantageous situation to put your body in from a metabolic standard.

[Tommy Welling]
Absolutely.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It is the reason we're talking about this is metabolic syndrome in itself. Right. Which is three of the five medical conditions of abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides and low HDL, a.k.a. air quotes, the good cholesterol. Right. So the metabolic syndrome. So when your body is less efficient at burning fat and gets accustomed to persistent glucose intake, which results in high insulin, then metabolic syndrome Type two diabetes and chronic inflammation are associated with this exact inflexibility of your body to be able to flip that switch, which is where fasting essentially comes in and forces your body to practice this over time.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, this process of switching between carb glucose when you eat and burning fat for energy. So I already mentioned this just alluded to it is exercise is another way to do this as well, right? So we're not saying don't exercise, but walking is a powerful tool. Multiple times we talk about walking post-meal even just putting walking in a few days a week can be a huge stimulator for this metabolic flexibility.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So fasting is going to literally force your body and I don't mean painfully, but like it's going to stack the deck in your favor by putting yourself in this period of your body to get better at decreasing the insulin and turning on that ketone burning ability or that fat burning ability.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. What really helped me when when understanding that is, is the idea that if I've been accumulating weight for four months, two years, two, even decades, and I really haven't consistently like been staying at a stable, healthy weight for a long period of time, like the history of failed diets and things like that. It doesn't it doesn't have to be like all doom and gloom in the history.

[Tommy Welling]
But at the same time, if I've been accumulating weight, then that means on average, I haven't had to be in a ketogenic or a ketone producing state. So that means that I haven't been transcribing the genes that lead to the enzymes that put me in a in a ketosis state. So that's something that has to be ramped up.

[Tommy Welling]
It's a practice for the body that gets more efficient. You get better at it over time. And that's why this metabolic flexibility can get better and easier and more efficient over time. But that's that's why that that ketogenic phase, that ketogenic diet phase can be such a powerful thing, especially with a lot of insulin resistance, because you don't have to be very good at it just yet.

[Tommy Welling]
And it allows the body a chance to to actually adapt to that, get better over time and still, you know, still see good results with fasting and with your nutrition, too.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And I was going to go right to insulin resistance and you led me right there. So yeah, you know, regardless of all the fasting types that I rattled off in the beginning, it shows, research shows and suggests that you can improve insulin sensitivity with any of those types of fasting quickly. This means that cells, they're smart, they can take in glucose efficiently, allowing blood sugar to return to normal after eating the data shows you know even in a which we don't do often right but a 48 hour fast a two day fast.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Your insulin sensitivity which is a good effectiveness of insulin, remains improved through the days you eat post the two day fast. So it's not just during your fasting windows, but it's post fast. You're creating that body's ability, those new neural pathways that you can stimulate these things to become more routine. Which is why once you get through those first few stumbling blocks with hydration and electrolytes and sometimes you get the dizziness and the headaches when you transition, the sleep disturbances, when you transition from sugar burner to fat burner or from, you know, glucose glycogen into ketone production, you're going to see that playing around with those fasting windows can actually have a better impact on

[Dr. Scott Watier]
your circadian rhythms, which is the hormone driver of your body. So not just insulin, but also the circadian impacts as well, which is really cool. We saw on that shift work study that we talked about last week.

[Tommy Welling]
So it's huge for long term right there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, right. Because we want to reduce risk and not become the statistic. Right. And we share the stats often and we know sometimes it can be heavy, but the reality is that's the path I was on. That's the path that we're all on unless we do something different, right? So yeah, when we transition here, Tommy, and we, we want to talk about sustainability, how we're going to set ourselves up for success in 2023.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This new concept of this fasting wheel of life has come about right? And I've had coaching throughout most of my personal and professional life and it's always when I'm at my best, I usually have some encouragement and accountability, right? Some target setting along the way. So yeah, we do goals, training, right, where you set smart goals, but we actually make it smarter goals and we apply it to the personal realm.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This is all stuff that I used to do inside of clinics a lot where we get together and do a year in review. But the smart goals is like sustainable, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely. There's other words you can swap in and out of there depends on who's spend you put on it. But then the E in the hour is the most important part for us, which is you evaluate and you realign or you evaluate in your review or you you look at the experience and then you redesign those goals.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like there's a period where you're going to sit there and actually go, okay, well, is this working for me? And is this something that I can see being sustainable? So if we're ahead.

[Tommy Welling]
Those that are is where you took it from a two dimensional thing to a three dimensional thing. That's where you took it from a screenshot to a roadmap like you're actually you're you're taking the action on it. So if you've set smart goals in the past but never done the air that that can be the missing link right there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So how do we translate that into a fasting lifestyle? And that's where this idea of the fasting wheel of life has come in. So if you're only using the scale. Right, and we're going to encourage you to maybe you don't have to start doing ketones, but knowing what your blood sugar is doing on a day to day basis, and this doesn't mean you have to finger prick yourself for the rest of your life or sign up for an expensive CGM for the rest of your life.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But you're getting some feedback to know physiologically what's going on is important. Like there was an example of someone I saw on social media where they ingested a it was one of the fast food burgers with a small fry. Okay? And it took almost 48 hours for those blood sugar numbers to come back down to normal.

[Tommy Welling]
Holy smokes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
What if you had woken up the next day? Because that's the only thing you ate and you woke up the next day and you're like, Man, the scale went down. I'm doing great. And then you said, Oh, well, today was supposed to be a one meal a day, but now I'm going to make it. And if when no, because there's an event that's come up or an opportunity to go get lunch or something.

[Tommy Welling]
And because the scale gave me good.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Feedback and because now you're like, okay, well, your insulin levels in your blood sugar levels are still high. Yeah, they haven't recovered because of the lack of metabolic flexibility. So blood sugar is a peak behind the curtain into what's what's happening. And it's a skill set. It's not something you can just do once and be like, Oh yeah, this makes sense, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So that's where this okay, what else can we look at? What are their signs or symptoms or positive reinforcement? Can we get outside of the scale which could also undermine our progress in that example that I just gave you? Wow.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. One of the first ones that that comes to my mind is, is also like energy. So if I'm looking at my my actual blood sugar numbers in the morning, I can I can also take take account of what does my energy feel like in the morning to like upon waking. And then my next favorite marker for energy is after my biggest meal of the day too.

[Tommy Welling]
Because the less metabolically flexible I am, the more I'm going to smack me right in the face. Like after a larger meal, I'm going to feel it. I might feel lethargic a little more Thanksgiving like than I would like, you know, those kind of things like, Oh, do I need to rest?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Apropos for the season. Yeah, yeah, right.

[Tommy Welling]
But, but like that's a big one. So just a little bit of like just writing it down, maybe putting a note in my phone where I'm just going to make two quick notes each day for one of these one of these markers that's kind of like resonating with me right now is going to be a way to like track something that really matters, that can give me really, really good feedback as I go along, whether or not the scale is kind of agreeing with me or giving me positive feedback.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, we had someone in the group say, Well, the scale hasn't changed much this past year and you know, they've been with us for a few months. Yeah, yeah. Fasting like, man, I feel like I wasted a whole year. And yeah, as we started to pray in a little bit more, some of the important things started to rise to the surface.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like, How's your energy been? Right? Not just on a day to day basis like you were talking about, but overall. How do you feel? Yeah, in the moment she felt bad because it was like, well, the scale hasn't really changed, but okay, how is your energy on a day to day basis? Mm hmm. Direct relation to that is, how's your sleep?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Do you feel more rested in the morning? Do you feel you have more energy? Do you still have have two air quotes? Nap. Yeah, right. Have you been looking at things outside of the scale? You may have seen that your body composition has changed when you take measurements in your waistline or around your arms or around your hips or around your thighs, because the height to waist ratio or that waistline indication is powerful as an indicator of metabolic dysfunction.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Huge. So not necessarily. I mean, you can be thin everywhere else and have a big old belly full of visceral fat and you're not healthy. Right. Right. So we need to look elsewhere. So that waistline measurement is another powerful kind of thing that we can be looking at. What if we set this year up differently where we start taking note of our daily energy, of our daily sleep and taking some measurements, let's say once a month.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It doesn't have to be every day. Do it. Do it every couple of weeks. Do it monthly. Do it quarterly. If you're not a if it doesn't seem to resonate with you. But it is something that we can look at.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And that's, that's also where it reminds me of the air portion of the smarter goals because if I'm going to do something like monthly or quarterly like planning going into the beginning of 2023 right now, then let's, let's take the next step to insulate ourselves from our monkey brain that likes to forget. Like, you know, all, all well-laid plans are all like, you know, forgotten and toss out the window sometimes despite our best intentions and effort.

[Tommy Welling]
So let me put it on my calendar, just like I will to, like, change my air filters in my house or something. Like I need to do that measurement on the first of the month or on the first of the quarter or whatever it may be. So I can put that build in that accountability when I'm thinking about this right now, because let me not expect myself three months from now to still be excited about the idea that I need to take my measurements again.

[Tommy Welling]
But I know it's important, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, for sure. And another one that always you know about the day to day stuff that I that I always think about is the pain level inflammation. No matter what study you look at fasting or what type of fasting you choose that we just mentioned in the beginning when I was just rattling them off and made it sound really confusing.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Is your daily pain level right, and your daily inflammation level, excuse me, a lot of the studies where you see CRP, which is C-reactive protein as a marker for a secondary outcome in a lot of the the fasting studies and we're talking about like not even long term windows like we're going to do the study in a couple of weeks on the four and six hour time restricted eating windows.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So some of the stuff that we use to help people lose the weight and reverse the diabetes and metabolic syndrome and improve their blood work. Yeah, but that pain level or that inflammation is one that is commonly seen to change really quickly when you start a fasting regiment. So start taking note of if you are using things for pain like NSAIDs and over-the-counter stuff, what is your pain level?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
What is your inflammation? Do you feel puffy, your rings fit better, right? Do you do you have less water retention, etc., etc., which can also be seen and which is one of the other categories on this wheel of life that we're developing is what does your blood work look like? Like, maybe you should do another series of bloodwork at 90 days following a an intentional fasting regiment rather than waiting the next year until it's doctor recommended right that you go and look at your bloodwork so I would I would recommend adding in your CRP level taking a look at your full cholesterol panel, taking a look at what your fasting insulin level looks like.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. Because now you're talking about some of the things just like the blood work compared to the blood sugar number compared to the scale on a day to day basis. Right. You know, looking at those markers are really going to be where the secret lies to that long term improvement or that long term success, rather than just waiting until the next yearly physical comes up.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then you're like, oh, there goes another year. Yeah.

[Tommy Welling]
So, so and that might involve like a conversation with your doc about Yeah, yeah. That you want to do that blood work again in 90 days, right. Or if you, if you can't get that approved or, you know, get the stamp that you need, maybe that means getting your own blood work done in that time. Yeah. Like you can always walk into a place and do that, like, but.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Don't buy the next meal plan off off of Facebook. Go. And I've done it 21 day. Yeah, 21 day fix. Right. Don't do that. Go take them. Go pay for the blood work to see where you're at and see what's changed over the last night or DEXA or body scan, even rolodexes. A body composition scan if you are farther down the advanced level or maybe you're getting closer to maintenance and you want to see what changes have taken place.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, I love that. And you know, like because along with the pain level might come along with like you were talking about swelling, so maybe swelling in the ankles or swelling in your feet and like and even even like a little bit of swelling in the feet goes a long way for for lack of being able like proprioception and like understanding where I am in space.

[Tommy Welling]
And it makes me want to not move around as much. I don't want to be as active if I have a little bit extra swelling like in my feet niggles. Right, is like it's hard to balance at that point. So you can kind of feel those things kind of coming down potentially as, as a potential marker, you know, for for what you're doing with your fasting.

[Tommy Welling]
And then when you when you do go to actually break those fast too, you have another opportunity for feedback there because you have your cravings and relationship with food, which is a huge portion of that long term sustainability portion. And that's where a big shift happens between going from diet over to lifestyle. Because when I start to look at what my cravings in my relationship with foods, what those look like, that's going to determine a lot of the being to enjoy the process, being able to stick with it, especially when it's like it's not as exciting.

[Tommy Welling]
Like it's not the beginning of the year. Motivation kind of comes down a little bit, but I still have these important long term goals, right? And so, so that's that's a big part of the.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Equation, too. Yeah. You said something there about breaking the fast, right? So if we're thinking about blood sugar levels, right. And metabolic flexibility, breaking the fast is important. So you might be used to your body getting fed at certain times of day, triggering your hunger hormones. You know, the the hunger cues that are from your five senses and not actually related to hunger or maybe it's an electrolyte imbalance, a.k.a people will say you're dehydrated, it's not the water, it's the trace minerals and electrolytes that you need, which is stimulating that hunger.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the hunger content you to break your fast and then again send your blood sugar often interaction. You don't want to be hot. So the intense swings in the blood sugar is what can also, you know, food cravings, irritability that that dependance or that relationship with food because you're accustomed to doing it a certain way, right? So when you break your fast, you want to ease into it.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Eating a meal with intention that doesn't send your glucose soaring. And you may not be good at this in the beginning. You may not be great every time you break your fast because people say, Oh, I thought if you fasted, you could just eat whatever you want in the short you probably can. But eventually you're going to get to a point where you've lost some weight, and now it's time to hone in on those those nutrient dense foods that are going to satiate your body protein and fat, primarily when you're when you're in a weight loss phase.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then it's going to have less effect on your blood sugar, which is going to have less less ramifications in terms of food choices and those blood sugar swings. So that's a big component we feel if you're listening going, okay, I thought they said they were going to give me a wheel of life here. Right? So I want to rattle these off and then wrap up today, Tommy and then I'm really excited about the next two episodes coming up as well.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But the fact that Wheel of Life exercise would be draw a circle on your page, right? And draw for like draw pie. So like you're cutting a pie into eight pieces. So draw one, two, three, four lines, right?

[Tommy Welling]
Like a homemade pizza, you know, like go.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right, so, so cut it. You got to circle. Yeah. Vertical line, horizontal line. Then two other lines. Right. So you got eight pieces now and then you're going to put in your eight things that you're going to write yourself. On a scale of 0 to 10 zeros in the middle, draw nine little dashes out, and then ten is the best out at the outside of the wheel.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Okay. And you're going to do this is what we propose, daily energy, how you feel on a day to day basis, sleep quality, your waistline or measurements category and your bloodwork, your pain levels, your inflammation levels, your swelling, your weight. Yes, but your weight as a category. Let's not pretend it doesn't exist. Gotcha. Yeah. And then your relationship with food on a 1 to 10 and then the last category you put here is that personal relationship category.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Or, you know, your social circle, your friends and family, the ones that we tell you not to talk about fasting with when you're starting out right. And you're going to rate yourself and you're going to draw a line, put a little dot, and then you're going to draw a line and connect those dots and see what your real looks like.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, if it's anything like me in the past, my will could not get me from here to the mailbox because my real was dysfunction. It was broken. Yeah, and it was. It was not a real. Okay, this is not a real I'd want to travel anywhere on because it would be very wobbly and uncomfortable.

[Tommy Welling]
It's a caveman block, you know.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right, right. We need to shave down some things and improve some areas, but you're going to need to do this for you. So rather than setting these goals in these new your New Year's resolutions at the beginning of the year, let's try a different approach. This year we're going to use fasting to stack the deck in our favor to improve our metabolic flexibility.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We're going to put a little bit of intention in the beginning into what we're going to eat when we break our fast after we set our timers. And then we're going to look at other things outside of the scale to put together our fasting wheel of life, which is going to feed our sustainability and positive reinforcement as we go on throughout the year.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, I love that. And one note about the personal relationships. I know you've said it in the past, like your wife said when you started fasting, like you just seem you just seem happier.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You just. Yeah. Wasn't as angry.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, right. And I mean that that emotional stability that comes off of getting away from like the hunger and the blood sugar, insulin volatility that that comes along with with not fasting and not being intentional with with eating times like that that's a big component, but you add that up over time, it seeps into every one of our relationships, personal, professional and otherwise.

[Tommy Welling]
So it's, it's really cool to be taking stock of like how how are those relationships doing and how are they affected by my fasting? Because I have all of these things, these like tools in my tool belt and now it's eight rather than just the one looking at the scale. I mean, now I have a have a much more comprehensive picture about how this is going.

[Tommy Welling]
And do I feel like I'm doing what I need to do? Do I need to do more of it or less of something over here because it's not working? I'm getting a much better visual picture of that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? Yeah. And I just love so one of the and we've talked as we wrap up today a lot over the weeks and months since that research came out in the middle of 2021 about looking at the sustainability of weight loss and how only 5% of people can keep off the weight. And it's not about the weight. I didn't come to fasting to lose the weight.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I came to fasting because I was tired and miserable and my blood work was off. And my wife looked at me and said, Hey, whatever you need to do to get healthy, we need you. Like we're a couple of years into marriage. We both have businesses. You're in clinic, I'm pregnant. Babies come in like I need your help.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like, so whatever you need to do, like, let's figure this out. And luckily, we had the experience, the wherewithal and the ability.