Ep. 124 - The Food Compass | Identifying What a Healthy Food Truly Is | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD

In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the Food Compass, identifying what a healthy food truly is, how should you be eating when you break your fast and MORE!

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This week in the community we will be discussing some of your fav FOOD SWAPS! Fasting is powerful as we know but making better decisions during the nutrition/eating window can accelerate your results. Come share your favorite SWAP!

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References:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00381-y

https://sites.tufts.edu/foodcompass/

Fasting For Life Ep. 124 Transcript

00;00;01;23 - 00;00;03;08
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I'm Dr. Scott Dr. Watier.

00;00;03;16 - 00;00;06;20
[Tommy Welling]
And I'm Tommy Welling, and you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.

00;00;08;09 - 00;00;14;25
[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.

00;00;15;24 - 00;00;24;09
[Tommy Welling]
Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss on health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.

00;00;25;00 - 00;00;31;16
[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.

00;00;40;10 - 00;00;47;01
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hey everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Doc Scott Water and I'm here, as always, am a good friend and colleague, Tommy Whelan. Good afternoon to you, sir.

00;00;47;13 - 00;00;48;09
[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you?

00;00;48;19 - 00;01;04;18
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're fantastic. My friend. Today's conversation, I think, is going to be a good one. I'm excited about it. I want to welcome all the new listeners into the show. If you want to know a little bit more about who we are and why we started this podcast a couple of years ago, feel free to go back and listen with Grace.

00;01;04;18 - 00;01;33;13
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Of course, we ask to the first couple of episodes about the inception of the Fasting for Life Lifestyle Podcast challenges, all of that and more importantly here. Tommy, nice story. So yeah, as we dove into today's episode, Tommy, I really want to make sure that we have a clear action step for today as we try to make all of these conversations actionable to the point where you can listen to the episode 20, 30 minutes.

00;01;33;20 - 00;02;00;23
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can literally take what we're talking about, go get a question answered, keep it conversational, take an action step and continue to adopt the fasting lifestyle. And today I think it's going to be a fun one because we're going to expose some of the misinformed nation and confusion that can lead to the weight epidemic, metabolic health issues that we see, you know, in our country and not just in our country, but across the world.

00;02;01;17 - 00;02;29;16
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, you know, it's it's crazy because the more information we have, the more we try to put it together in new and more sophisticated ways and try to, you know, kind of explain what's out there as far as what we should eat and when we should eat it. And how much of it and especially if if, you know, like like ourselves, you've struggled with diet, weight loss, health issues, especially across years and then potentially decades.

00;02;29;23 - 00;02;49;19
[Tommy Welling]
It can be very confusing. It can start to get to a point where you almost like you start restricting more and more and more things and at a certain point feel like I really don't know what I should be eating right now or if if there's any good way to do this, like what what should I be eating when I sit down for my next meal?

00;02;49;29 - 00;02;55;26
[Tommy Welling]
And that can be a very disempowering, frustrating, confusing place to be.

00;02;56;21 - 00;03;18;25
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And so we're going to talk specifically about a new tool, a newer tool, at least to us. And there's some articles out there and we'll reference a couple of those and talk about, you know, overview of what it is. And yes, we're going to talk about food today. Yes. This is a fasting podcast, OK? This is a the fasting for Life podcast, right?

00;03;18;25 - 00;03;42;16
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We talk about the fasting lifestyle and how you can insert any standard diet into the fray. And it be in the question always at the end of the diet is either you're on it or you're off it, right? Or you're going to start it on Monday or you're counting your points right. And the problem with that is, is that it's not sustainable and it's very restrictive over the long term.

00;03;42;16 - 00;04;07;19
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's what we see in the research and that's absolutely what we see in the stats of, you know, at any given time, 50 to 60% of people are trying to lose weight and only 12% of the population's metabolically healthy, which has been more important recently than ever before. And only five, sometimes down to 2% of the population, can lose the weight they want and maintain it for for 12 to 24 months.

00;04;08;00 - 00;04;39;08
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you know, we know more, like you said, more than ever before, we have more information and more access and more people trying but we have less results, we have more metabolic disease, we have more overweight or obese diabetes, blood sugar and all the other, you know, complications and co-morbidities that come in between. So I love it. I actually legitimately got excited when we saw this come through and I'm like, Oh, the food compass, I think I can get down on this.

00;04;39;08 - 00;05;06;17
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And it was a Tufts University brainchild and it talks about a it's it's something that's called a nutrient profiling system, OK? And it looks at foods across nine domains using a unique algorithm to determine a score. And we can assign an FCS, which is a food compass score between one and 100 with nearly any food. So from the get go, I'm like, ooh, food compass.

00;05;06;26 - 00;05;32;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I like it. Give me a list, check the box, simplify the process, get me off of my fitness, pal. And tracking and like, why does this matter to us? Well, why are we talking about it on a fasting podcast or a fasting lifestyle? Why are we on this journey? Well, the second most question we get other than how do I fast or how long or how should I fast is what should I eat?

00;05;32;16 - 00;05;42;01
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or does it matter what I eat or how do I eat? Yeah. Do you recommend insert how much should I eat when I break my fast? It is a dual edged sword.

00;05;42;16 - 00;06;03;04
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, true. And it's, it's cool because apparently there's a lot of these things, a lot of these, these types of tools or, you know, scoring systems and things like that. And so you know, I wasn't very familiar with it. And, and this one to me, it brought me back two years back, tracking calories, tracking macros, all that kind of stuff.

00;06;03;04 - 00;06;26;18
[Tommy Welling]
And, and being in between in between one diet and before I started another one going, OK, well, what kind of food should I be focused on? How do I know if what I'm eating is healthy? How do I how do I, like go about that decision making process? Because it feels like I don't like there's so much conflicting information out there like like we're going to talk about with the food compass.

00;06;26;18 - 00;06;46;00
[Tommy Welling]
Like, what about red meat? What about what about beef versus chicken? What about low fat versus low carb? What about, you know, processed versus natural foods? What if it's enriched with vitamins, all these kind of things? And again, it just kind of can bring you to like this analysis paralysis state.

00;06;46;21 - 00;07;07;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, and that's that. The idea behind this was, you know, identifying what a healthy food truly is. So we're going to highlight a couple of them. Just have fun with it. But the main idea here is like what the individuality of this journey of this sustainability piece is. You know, fasting is going to be the vehicle that gets us there.

00;07;07;00 - 00;07;33;22
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's going to inherently limit your consumption, balance your hormones, increase your energy, break the constructs of breakfast, lunch and dinner. And, you know, a certain amount of food pyramid that in our opinion should be flipped upside down in any given percentage in the low fat, you know, craze that we talked about that ended up in more cholesterol and heart related issues in the more recent decades and all of those swings and misses.

00;07;33;22 - 00;08;09;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So these NPC, NPS, these nutritional profiling systems exist to try to give people traction. And it's bad when and I think you used the the descriptor the compass is, is pointing in the wrong direction. The needle is it's swinging way, way, way far from due north. Like it's just it's not going to get you there and the idea behind it is to identify those healthy foods and, you know, healthfulness involved in those foods.

00;08;09;15 - 00;08;23;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And it's it's interesting because some of the things that are on here are like mind boggling in in in the fact that they have a healthy score. But in terms of an insulin index, or a metabolic effect, they're not great.

00;08;24;03 - 00;08;47;25
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Like just the fact that how do you put together, you know, something like this is NPS is profiling system and they're looking at the fiber and the protein, the vitamins, the minerals. But when you start getting into actually how the scores were produced and then you start to see, OK, well, they basically they start making decisions like sodium, is it good or is it bad?

00;08;47;25 - 00;09;11;08
[Tommy Welling]
So in this particular one, this compass points away from sodium, it gives a negative score to sodium within the food, which sodium is. You know, sodium is not to be demonized we all need sodium. We're we're we're comprised of lots and lots of sodium. We need it. And when we're fasting, we're actually not going to be getting it as often from our food.

00;09;11;15 - 00;09;22;19
[Tommy Welling]
And so that's going to be a good thing. Sometimes we need additional sodium when we're fasting. But this food compass is giving a negative score to that. And that's only one of these kind of like counterintuitive examples here.

00;09;23;06 - 00;09;37;28
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And for clarity there, too, we had this question come in recently was about, well, what about what's the difference between Himalayan or sea salt and like the sodium that my dog in the food that my doctor want, the stuff that's like on the RDA labels. Right, right. Like, what's the difference? Well, that type of sodium. Yeah, not great.

00;09;38;06 - 00;10;01;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
But we could still need it and use it and be fine. Right. Especially when you're fasting, you need that more therapeutic Himalayan or for profile mineral trace mineral content on balance, salt, which is more of like almost like a supplement, right. Or a nutraceutical. And that's actually the, you know, adding in things like Himalayan salt and those types of salt are good for you.

00;10;01;11 - 00;10;25;18
[Dr. Scott Watier]
They're going to lower your blood pressure and have positive, in fact, impacts on your kidneys, your hydration level, your digestion and all that kind of stuff. So just that just the one thing right there with sodium already opens up another rabbit hole level. Wait a minute. Aunt Sally's like on this. I can't have the, you know, corned beef at St Patty's Day because it has sodium in it, right?

00;10;25;18 - 00;10;41;24
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So, yeah, now there are some things in here that are good. It's like they're talking about hydrogenated oils and meds and food additives and they score all this stuff, right? So it's like, okay, what's the point? Well, they came up with the algorithm to come up the scoring principles. They looked at 8032 foods and beverages, which was pretty cool.

00;10;42;07 - 00;10;59;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then they went through the validity of it. And, you know, this is all like stats, you know, I took stats one on one. This is like stats 5000 for me, right? So the point is not to talk about that, but if we look at some of the FCC's scores to answer that question, how should I be eating when I break my fast?

00;10;59;21 - 00;11;14;04
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, the first question I think about is what's sustainable for you? Not Is this going to be on my point system. That's going to allow me to ingest it. And I feel like I'm not that I've done Weight Watchers formally, but that I'm back on a point system.

00;11;14;15 - 00;11;15;01
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

00;11;15;09 - 00;11;37;01
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like I just want to run and like bury my head in the sand, like thinking about that, like, no, absolutely no. Thank you. So there's some positives to how they scored, but there's also a lot of mis mis guided outcomes by if you were going to be using this as your guide to be like, OK, what's healthy versus non healthy?

00;11;37;14 - 00;12;11;11
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, that's a great point that you just brought up too, because that's one of those long term points of failure I feel like for a lot of folks. And you know, when you start talking about that two to 5%, that can maintain their long term weight loss, you know, over the one or two years plus going into the long term sustainability range of it, which if you're on, if you're trying to lose the weight, what's the point of just doing it temporarily like you want to be able to do hold on to do that progress even even through life something ups and downs and changing seasons and things like that.

00;12;11;11 - 00;12;46;19
[Tommy Welling]
But you want to maintain a level of control. You don't want to, you know, do that do do the work, make the progress and then find yourself, you know, six months, two years, five years later needing, you know, wanting to do it again. But so if if the vehicle that you use to get there was so regimented, so black and white, you had to follow the points on and off or whatever it may be, some sort of, you know, scoring system metric, then if that's not going to be close to what real life is, if it's not going to be adaptable to merge into what your real life lifestyle is going to look like, then

00;12;46;19 - 00;13;02;26
[Tommy Welling]
it's always going to feel like I'm either on it or I'm off of it. And when willpower or motivation goes down, then I'm off of it because it takes a lot to like mentally go through that gymnastics and you know it you know what it took to do it last time, and you don't really want to do it again.

00;13;02;26 - 00;13;11;04
[Tommy Welling]
So it takes a long it takes a lot of frustration to build up that that wants to kind of get the ball rolling again. And like that's not a sustainable model for you.

00;13;11;18 - 00;13;41;20
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I mean, that speaks directly to the big picture excuse me they looked at the in 2016 they looked at a review of 83 studies and they assess the methods that researchers use to determine the validity of the NPS is right. So those nutritional profiling systems and they looked at them to predict future health outcomes and most of the studies were identified to be at high risk of bias largely due to a lack of gold standard with which to classify the healthfulness of a food.

00;13;42;08 - 00;14;13;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The the construct validity within itself, the correlation between how the NPS ranks and the healthiness of the food in comparison to other measures was sometimes compared to another NPS out there in the market. You guys sitting on what the heck? Well a lot of these things in our opinion drives some of the recommendations and some of these air quotes, weight loss programs or 21 day fixes or, you know, this is why it's 100 and however many episodes we're out right now, millions of downloads, one point whatever million downloads we have and listens yeah.

00;14;13;20 - 00;14;36;14
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's like, well, why are we continuing the conversation? Well, because the conversation needs to be continued because this is the stuff that people are coming across and that Tufts University is funding and that the research is showing across 83 studies that a systemic review showed. While it's not really valid and you can move the reference point to make it kind of valid and then you can move it over here.

00;14;36;14 - 00;15;07;21
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And so we want to give you a couple of incidences where, you know, being a little, you know, having fun with it. Now I want to share a story with my dad about his journey of how he's reversing diabetes and lost £60 and come off 14 medications and no more insulin. But there's a really funny conversation around one of these foods we're going to highlight here and then we'll bring it back to simplifying this again using fasting and why it kind of renders a lot of this stuff useless, useful in perspective, but useless in action.

00;15;07;21 - 00;15;38;05
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So tell me, I know we had a couple that we wanted to highlight and the first one that I, you know, we picked one mine that really stuck out to me was the Cheerios. So if we look at General Mills Cheerios so anything on this KFC's right, the food compass is anything over a 70 should be consumed. Anything in the middle category should be moderation within moderation and everything in the 30 and under category should be minimally consume.

00;15;38;05 - 00;15;49;23
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So right. I want to make sure that I had those numbers right so it's greater than 70 should be encouraged 31 to 69 should be consumed in moderation and less than 30 should be minimized. Right.

00;15;50;07 - 00;15;50;16
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

00;15;51;06 - 00;16;25;28
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So General Mills, Cheerios. Right? Heart healthy Cheerios, by the way, that is a whole nother conversation. That little heart healthy label is paid for. It's actually not a nutritional construct. So misleading. Right. But General Mills, Cheerios is a 95. Now, if you're a pre-diabetic and you're starting your morning with a giant bowl of Cheerios, you are then spiking your insulin on the glucose index above 70, which is considered high like do not consume these foods like do not pass go do not collect $200.

00;16;26;07 - 00;16;54;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So this this is spitting out yeah general mills Cheerios based on our nine construction review of 83,000 studies and 8000 foods and all of this stuff it's a 95. Yeah go for it. Well anybody that's been in this fasting world or lifestyle that is, you know, decreasing their carbohydrates and increasing their fat and using time restricted eating or fasting windows knows starting your day with a bowl of Cheerios is not, is not a great plan.

00;16;55;15 - 00;17;18;01
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. It's one of those things like talk about the low fat lifestyle that whole movement and then that, that brought about like, like Cheerios. I remember growing up and Cheerios was, was always the go to the snack or one of the like healthy breakfast cereals. It was like, don't get the other ones because they're loaded with sugar. But the Cheerios, those those are OK.

00;17;18;01 - 00;17;53;19
[Tommy Welling]
Well, turns out it only takes about 12 seconds in the body for it to basically break down into the same exact thing and then have almost the same insulin spike. And so you're like that's a that's a very misleading problem where the compass that I'm looking for for a true north is actually pointed somewhere towards the South Pole and you know like like pushing me, you know, in the in the opposite direction of where I want to go and and similarly, like another one that that stood out to me was was the vegetable juice because this because the way that the score goes has got me thinking about the way that that sodium moves and some

00;17;53;19 - 00;18;23;22
[Tommy Welling]
of the counterintuitive nature of like, well, what is healthy and why why is it or isn't it well, like like the actual tomato juice or vegetable juice itself comes up as a 100 like like one of the perfect foods on here. But at the same time, when we look at the the insulin spikes that come along with with some of those processed like vegetable juices, they're they're marketed as sometimes a great snack or like a healthy way to consume vitamins.

00;18;23;22 - 00;18;30;23
[Tommy Welling]
But a lot of times those are added back into those foods anyway. So I thought that was that was just crazy where it comes up.

00;18;31;14 - 00;18;56;02
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So yeah, there's a main, you know, big, big company out there, right? That that everybody knows that I won't I won't name. But there's two of them. There's one that's really taken the green juice industry by storm comes in little bottles. You can get them at all the convenience stores, right? Sure. Flip one of those suckers over and you got anywhere from 30 to 70 grams of carbs in a tiny little bottle.

00;18;56;18 - 00;19;19;09
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. And then you've got your tomato juice, right. So we all know the brand there that is going to be low in sodium because that a positive right but then the sugar content and the insulin spike associated with that is not going to be ideal we'll put it that way. It's in liquid form it's got so an eight ounce serve it can have anywhere yeah it's going to be quick right.

00;19;19;09 - 00;19;40;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So when we're looking at that there's a I have a funny anecdote about this is when my dad started eight months ago, he he hopped on the fast train and once you were one of our challenges and we were just starting those back then. And so he got like the he got like the beta test, right? Like he was using the test group and he joint jumped in and he started doing it.

00;19;40;12 - 00;19;59;21
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So every day we had a shared spreadsheet and he would take his numbers, he would track his numbers. He'd send me his blood sugar readings multiple times throughout the day. And then I would give him some guidance on this is one, we're still figuring out the lifestyle and the programs and the systems and, you know, all the stuff that we have used.

00;19;59;21 - 00;20;18;15
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And now we've taught everybody, you know, everyone that's come through, listen to the podcast, et cetera, start adopting some of these things. And these, these principles. And we're and I was just like, all right, well, give me the data and we'll figure it out. So I'm starting to notice and I'm like looking at the numbers, and I'm like, Man, something just isn't making sense.

00;20;18;21 - 00;20;19;01
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

00;20;19;15 - 00;20;43;11
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I'm like, What are you doing? Tell me about your day. And I just because I can't ask him a direct question because then I don't get a direct answer. So I was like, What are you? I'm missing something because you're mid-morning. Reading was always really high. And I'm like, you know, we talk about Don phenomenon in the circadian rhythm and and how insulin, you know, has a has an ebb and flow throughout the day with your cortisone, circadian rhythm, whatnot.

00;20;43;11 - 00;21;02;19
[Dr. Scott Watier]
All the hormones in between the three hormones on that cascade. Right. But it's like I'm like, OK, wait a minute. Don't phenomenon diabetes. You're still like he he lowered his medication pretty quickly, like right out the gate came off. Insulin is off now like 14 medications. Right. But in the beginning he was stuck. And I'm like, why are you stuck?

00;21;02;19 - 00;21;07;24
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like this should be working. Like I started doubting myself. I'm like, yeah, no, I'm just he's the boss.

00;21;07;24 - 00;21;09;11
[Tommy Welling]
We're good. Yeah, right.

00;21;09;15 - 00;21;37;13
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fast were good. He wasn't cheat like he was doing well. He his hunger was gone. He had better energy medications. Were decreasing. And I'm like, why are your darn blood sugars not changing? I'm like, this is this is weird. Well, come to find out that every morning, even though he was fasting, he would have a glass of tomato juice and I'm like, whoa, what do you mean that's not fasting?

00;21;38;08 - 00;21;52;10
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I mean, go ahead, brush your teeth, have a flavored, you know, have a bubbly water or eat a pickle spear every now and then. Fine. But like, so every morning, you're having coffee. And for me, coffee is just like Spike my my blood sugar as well.

00;21;52;20 - 00;21;53;00
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

00;21;53;19 - 00;22;18;17
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So now he had was having coffee and tomato juice, so I'm like, well, no kidding. So he simply cut out the tomato juice and like within the next 30 or 45 days, it was another like 15 or £20. Medications dropping, cravings even got better. And it was just that little piece of, oh, this is fruit juice. This is to me, this is high on the FCC's score.

00;22;18;17 - 00;22;39;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
He didn't know what the FCC focus was then, right? We didn't know about it until it just came across, you know, our purview recently. And I'm sitting there going, Well, Dan, I like you were doing something you thought that was good. Yeah. But it was completely undermining your progress. And that's a small little thing. So we like to talk about, you know, the paper cut in the house fire.

00;22;39;09 - 00;22;58;21
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So how do we simplify this and remove the CFCs and the and the, you know, the other pieces that are out there and insert any type of diet, lifestyle, diet, change right. Short term, I'm going to I'm going to stick to it. I'm going to be on it. I'm going to start on Monday type mindset. And the way we do that is through keeping the main thing.

00;22;58;21 - 00;23;18;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The main thing is we like to say which is through fasting. And in the beginning with fasting, you know, it really doesn't matter what you eat. And that's not going to land well with some people out there. But fasting is going to stack the deck in your favor where you're going to get results and you're going to feel different, which is then going to change your actions and increase that and improve the decision making when it comes to food.

00;23;19;02 - 00;23;19;13
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

00;23;20;03 - 00;23;21;23
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Can take some minute. Yeah, it does.

00;23;22;00 - 00;23;42;10
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. You know, what's crazy is like he was he was making that decision in the morning and I bet he went through years and years and years of going like, I'm making a really good, smart, healthy choice each morning. Like let me do tomato juice. Like anybody who I know who consistently drinks tomato juice will consider it a very healthy option.

00;23;42;10 - 00;24;22;04
[Tommy Welling]
I mean, it's, it sounds good. There's, there's lots of vitamins involved, but we start to look at what the actual physiological effect is and then we start to compound that with, well, hey, I got £50, I'm £50 overweight, I have diabetes or I have blood sugar issues. The, the actually what's happening and, and what it's doing, even if we are fasting and how it stop the scale from moving for him and and probably a load of other things that that he had to kind of work through after he removed that from his daily routine is like is exactly why we look to things like this food compass for for answers or from for some directionality

00;24;22;11 - 00;24;32;13
[Tommy Welling]
because there's so much uncertainty like I just walk into a grocery store and all of a sudden I'm hit with OK well I got a billion choices here, you know, how do I know how do I know what's what's healthier, what's not right.

00;24;32;20 - 00;24;47;22
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's great transition. So how do what are the action steps? You're like, what can you do to simplify this process? Right. Well, don't go look at the food compass. If you want to call, have fun with it. But the insulin index are foods really matter. So people always ask like, so what? What should my plate look like? OK, well, what are my macros?

00;24;47;22 - 00;25;07;10
[Dr. Scott Watier]
What should I do? I need to count calories. And at the beginning, the answer is probably no. Once you hit a plateau track for a couple of weeks, you know, we recommend that. Get some data, figure out what's going on, how the long term play here is fasting is going to get the weight off, which is going to help decrease the cravings and balance the hormones and regain some of that control and simplicity and simplicity for you.

00;25;07;21 - 00;25;35;21
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then as you go through the journey, depending on if you got £20 to lose and maintain or 100, you're going to hit those check points along the way where then you get more repetitions around different types of foods. And if I eat the dreaded P word now, I feel worse than when I was eating it. More frequently because now I feel the effects and the insulin load and the brain fog and the digestive changes of eating, of eating that.

00;25;35;21 - 00;25;52;09
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And it's that's why we do pizza nights at home. That's why we do them with the family. That's why we control the ingredients. That's why we've played with different recipes. Same thing with pasta, right? So we have our kids. We have kids. Some days they're picky. Some days are not. Some days eat dirt off the ground and other days they won't eat their favorite food.

00;25;52;27 - 00;26;15;07
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And we you know, we look at food swap and we'll talk about that in a minute. But like, yeah, we can we can slowly move into the more comfortable long term position after we get some of these repetitions. Under our belt. And that's why fasting so powerful because it stacks the deck in your favor. And with the fruit juice thing, I mean, with the tomato juice, you know, some of you might say, well, I can drink tomato juice and it does nothing to my blood sugar.

00;26;15;07 - 00;26;36;19
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Great. But if you're a pre-diabetic or a diabetic that's on blood sugar medication or insulin, then you're in a much more disregulated metabolic state. So it's going to be more detrimental. So the more weight you have to lose in the longer you've been there, the more important it is to simplify it by, you know, like you said, Tommy, before we hopped on you know, the grocery store, like where do we shop in the grocery store?

00;26;36;19 - 00;26;39;06
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And how to read a label like less is more.

00;26;39;27 - 00;27;03;23
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, less really is more. Because even that that fruit juice right there, that tomato juice example is like if I'm if I'm taking that in every single morning, whether I'm fasting intentional or I'm not, it's going to affect that next fast. It's going to affect my blood sugar. It's going to affect the cravings that I have during my next fast and over time.

00;27;03;23 - 00;27;32;23
[Tommy Welling]
It's going to affect the results on the scale as well. So so a little bit of an intentionality, right? There could be de-motivating somewhere further along the line. So, you know, it's like, well, are you saying that I can never have my favorite glass of tomato juice? No, absolutely not. But it is important to know what it might be doing to the scale, to your blood sugar and to the cravings or the likelihood of for you to stick to your next fast because again, like less is more.

00;27;32;23 - 00;27;33;27
[Tommy Welling]
That's an important part of the puzzle.

00;27;34;29 - 00;28;03;02
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So specifically with the less is more like for instance, ingredients farm to market, right? Less processing, less refining. Less enriching, right. More natural shop the outside of the store and really operate from the construct that nothing is off limits. Long term. So when people ask like, how should I set? What should I begin with? All right. Well, first of all, start with setting your timer, sticking to your timer, opening up your eating window being intentional.

00;28;03;02 - 00;28;04;02
[Tommy Welling]
During that window and then.

00;28;04;02 - 00;28;25;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse and repeat. Right? And then you're going to notice some trends. You're going to notice some cravings. You notice some energy swings, right? So it's like, all right, well, if you start from the place of a 40, 40, 20 split carb, fat, fat, carb and excuse me, fat protein and carb, 40, 40, 20 it's a good place to start to give you variability in your day.

00;28;25;14 - 00;28;47;05
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We did a whole episode on protein and why we did a whole episode on losing weight too fast and does it matter or what's the cost benefit of getting the weight off first and then building the body composition after we've talked through all of those different conversations. So 4020 gives you variability. One day it might be 50 in the fat or protein category and one day it might be 30.

00;28;47;15 - 00;29;20;28
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? And for the most for most people to begin with, keeping the carbs lower, it makes it easier to see the result due to the scale changes and the cravings and the heaviness in the way you feel with the insulin load. So really, if we're looking at it big picture from where we started, it's like, all right, the FCC's allowed us to have a conversation around the the how did you word it, Tommy, the compass needle being pointed towards the South Pole we want to be going due north.

00;29;21;08 - 00;29;47;26
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? Right. We want to be going in that direction. So staying consistent with that, the fasting is the vehicle that's going to get you there. And then over the weeks, the months, you're going to be able to still enjoy those foods and those special occasions and those, you know, family nights and those, you know, whatever, insert vacation, whatever else, life event here over time, because you're going to have you're going to have the confidence and the experience to do it.

00;29;47;26 - 00;30;02;07
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I just love the conversation that, yes, it's a fasting lifestyle. But there's the other half of the equation of the of the misinformation and mis guidance of and like you said, the paralysis by analysis can get in the way also.

00;30;02;25 - 00;30;26;03
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, I think it's it's really important to to understand what those two sides of the equation are. And so that you can start to actually get the reps, get the fasting reps and then start to see how you feel and how easy or difficult that fast was based on what you broke your previous fast with or what you what you ate just before you started this fast.

00;30;26;03 - 00;30;45;22
[Tommy Welling]
Like that's going to matter and that's going to matter for how motivated you are during the next fast, how much you look forward to it and how much you enjoy the process along the way. Because depending on, you know, how many pounds you're looking to lose, that's going to determine how long that that that fat loss cycle is going to be for you.

00;30;46;05 - 00;30;58;09
[Tommy Welling]
You know, along with a host of other factors. But but then the sustainability pieces is how to how to adapt this into a lifestyle like and I feel like that there's going to be some ongoing questions there with.

00;30;58;18 - 00;30;59;02
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Choices.

00;30;59;02 - 00;30;59;14
[Tommy Welling]
Et cetera.

00;30;59;24 - 00;31;16;14
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And that's exactly why for for the action set for today is when we started this podcast full transparency we wanted it to be conversational because you and I were having conversations, we read the books, we've done the research, we've gone through our own journeys. Right. And I was like, all right, where can we continue this conversation and full transparency.

00;31;16;14 - 00;31;41;10
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's been very one sided. A podcast is great. We've had great feedback. We love our, our OG listeners, right? And it's, it's so thankful for all of you that tune in and listen and find value in the different conversations that we have around the fasting lifestyle. But it's hard to keep up with the conversation when it's a one off email or a one off message or a review or a comment.

00;31;41;10 - 00;32;08;05
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. And it's, it's difficult to continue that conversation. So we've transitioned into a new let's continue the conversation. So yeah, simply for today, we want you guys to be able to continue this conversation, get your questions answered. And we're also going to do a cool food swap conversation inside of the Free Fasting for Life Community Group. So we have a community group where the first two rules of fasting do not apply.

00;32;08;14 - 00;32;44;10
[Dr. Scott Watier]
This group is specifically designed to talk about fasting and to get answers for your questions. That that relate specifically to you and your situation. So you're going to go to the show notes, click the link for the Fasting for Life Community. The group's been growing quickly. It's it's incredible engagement every single day. We've got great moderators. Tommy, you and I are in there answering questions, but you're going to go to the show notes, click the link, answer the three questions, please, at the beginning, get into the group and then go to the discussion that we're going to continue to have this week.

00;32;44;22 - 00;33;05;05
[Dr. Scott Watier]
On the food compass and, and some of those those healthier decisions and food swaps that we can make. So as you wrap up today's episode, Tommy, I'm excited to see how we can continue to further bring value and clarity or more importantly, results to everybody. That's on this journey with us.

00;33;05;17 - 00;33;21;01
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it's gonna be super cool because, you know, at those different stages in your journey, those questions change and like keeping the conversation going is, is really a big part of, of understanding what to do, when to do and how to do it. And so it's, it's, it's going be cool. I'm really excited about this.

00;33;21;21 - 00;33;38;15
[Dr. Scott Watier]
All right, Tommy, as always, thank you for the conversation. Sure. Everybody, you know what to do. Head to the show notes, click the link, get into the community group. If you are already there and you are a long listener, then head to the discussion thread. You will see the pin post for the weekly conversation around this podcast episode.

00;33;38;26 - 00;33;43;10
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And we thank you all for listening. Tommy, as always, great conversation. Had a lot of fun and we'll talk soon.

00;33;43;19 - 00;33;44;22
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Thank you. Bye.

00;33;46;25 - 00;33;59;13
[Tommy Welling]
So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering where do I start? Head on over to the Fasting for Life dot com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive fasting tips and strategies to maximize results and fit fasting into your day to day life.

00;34;00;08 - 00;34;13;21
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Why are you there? Download your free fast start guide to get started today. Don't forget to subscribe on iTunes. Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to leave us a five star review and we'll be back next week with another episode of Fasting for Life.