Ep. 118 - Signs, Symptoms And Causes Of Leptin Resistance | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD

Uncategorized Mar 29, 2022

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In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss what leptin is, what leptin resistance is, and why it is a key component to getting the weight off, improving the quality of life, and being able to adapt to a fasting lifestyle that's going to get you the results that you've truly been looking for.

 

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Fasting For Life Ep. 118 Transcript

00;00;01;24 - 00;00;03;08
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I'm Dr. Scott Watier.

00;00;03;17 - 00;00;06;21
[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;25 - 00;00;24;10
[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;01 - 00;00;50;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. Hey, everyone want to hop on real quick before we get into today's episode and let everyone know that the next seven day fasting lifestyle challenge registration link is live, you can go

00;00;50;16 - 00;01;04;15
[Dr. Scott Watier]
to the show notes, click the link for more details or can go to the fasting for life. Dot com forward slash live wanted to speak directly to you? If you've been listening to the podcast, maybe your new and just getting started.

00;01;05;00 - 00;01;24;10
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or maybe you've been fasting for a while and really trying to adopt that lifestyle on the scale just won't move beyond that two to 43 to £5 each week. Or maybe you feel like you've hit that dreaded weight loss plateau or maybe the hunger or as my wife likes to say, the hangry ness has snuck up and

00;01;24;10 - 00;01;39;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
bit you on the backside, and you just can't seem to get away from those cravings or the consistency of your fasting schedule just isn't allowing you to get back on track. If you've fallen by the wayside, this seven day lifestyle challenge is exactly for you.

00;01;39;14 - 00;01;56;14
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's coming up in the near future. Please don't miss out on this opportunity. We are super excited to be leveling up this experience and leaving that diet baggage behind, giving you the confidence in the habits to build that long term weight loss and fasting lifestyle success.

00;01;56;24 - 00;02;11;29
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Go to the show notes you can click the link or the fasting for life dot com forward slash live. We will hope to see you on the inside. And now to today's episode. Hey, Ron, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast.

00;02;12;00 - 00;02;17;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
My name is Dr. Scott Waters and I'm here as always. I'm a good friend and colleague. Tell me Well, and good afternoon to you, sir.

00;02;17;14 - 00;02;19;06
[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you doing?

00;02;19;06 - 00;02;45;27
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fantastic today, my friend. We are going to have an in-depth conversation around one of the topics that is hard to nail down. And I'm being vague on purpose because that is a lot of what you will find and what you will read when we're talking about the category of things that fall into the resistance category, like insulin

00;02;45;27 - 00;03;05;21
[Dr. Scott Watier]
resistance, for instance. So we're going to talk about in-depth today what leptin is, what leptin resistance is and why it is a key component to getting the weight off, improving the quality of life and being able to adapt a fasting lifestyle that's going to get you the results that you've truly been looking for.

00;03;05;22 - 00;03;18;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I'm excited to dove into leptin resistance. It's something that we have not specifically talked about on this podcast. So if you're new, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. Feel free to hop back in the time machine.

00;03;18;03 - 00;03;35;27
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Go back a couple of years. Listen to the first couple of episodes that we recorded when Tommy and I were just getting our feet wet in figuring out how to tell our story of the success and how impactful fasting was on giving us our lives back.

00;03;36;20 - 00;03;51;24
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So feel free to go back those episodes. If you've joined in the last few months and have been listening with us, those first couple of episodes had vanished off of our podcast platform, so I'm inviting all of you since about Thanksgiving.

00;03;52;12 - 00;04;06;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Since then, if you found us since Thanksgiving or around Thanksgiving up until now, feel free to go back. Give those episodes a listen. We'll give you a little bit more insight into who we are and why we do this every single week.

00;04;06;00 - 00;04;28;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So Tommy, leptin resistance. So let's I think we're just going to run through it in a pretty logical way. And then as always, I'll give you guys an action step at the end on what you can do to find out if you have it and then ultimately how fasting and the fasting lifestyle on top, along with some

00;04;28;12 - 00;04;48;11
[Dr. Scott Watier]
other adjunct things that will recommend. So we'll go over what leptin resistance is. Is it good or bad? first of all, why it's important to know what the causes slash symptoms of it are. We'll talk a little bit about the crazy leptin life cycle and why you kind of get stuck in the weight loss.

00;04;49;00 - 00;05;00;15
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Can't just seem to get the weight off kind of vicious cycle. And then we'll talk about the things that you can do today to actually help undo some of the signs and symptoms of leptin resistance.

00;05;00;23 - 00;05;02;23
[Tommy Welling]
Well, we got a lot to unpack and.

00;05;03;09 - 00;05;11;10
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, I just feel like I talked for like seven minutes, so apologies. I just totally like ran through the entire kit and caboodle, but we are going to unpack it.

00;05;11;21 - 00;05;26;16
[Tommy Welling]
No, absolutely. And the interesting thing is, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of folks listening are saying, Well, what the heck is leptin? I've never even heard of that before. I mean, even going through, you know, a physiology program, we didn't talk a whole lot about leptin.

00;05;26;29 - 00;05;41;14
[Tommy Welling]
There was a long time where it was very misunderstood or it wasn't understood to be a a large contributing factor or an important component in what we're going to be talking about in weight and in overall health and overall balance for the body.

00;05;42;05 - 00;06;01;20
[Tommy Welling]
But if if you have any amount of weight to lose, this becomes a very important chemical signal because it's the fat cells that are actually producing the leptin, trying to get a signal to the rest of your body and to your brain as a hormonal feedback loop, that's going to be a very important component.

00;06;01;29 - 00;06;17;29
[Tommy Welling]
And when we get into the weight gaining camp like I was in for, for most of my my childhood and adult life, a leptin imbalance can have a very important contributing factor to that imbalance.

00;06;18;24 - 00;06;33;23
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And it's so really if we're just going to meet leptin for the first time, like it's really the hormone that regulates body weight. So leptin in its in its essence as a individual hormone, it's produced by your fat cells.

00;06;33;23 - 00;06;49;11
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So you just alluded to the fact that the more the bigger the fat cell, the more leptin that would be produced. And we'll share some numbers on some research that kind of gives you the ideal range. And it's a rolling average and it's something you want to take, you know, look at in the fasted state, et cetera

00;06;49;11 - 00;07;09;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
. But there's a correlation between increased BMI and the amount of leptin that's produced by your fat cells based on the amount of the size of that of the fat mass itself. So leptin is a good thing. It is supposed to tell your body that you have enough energy stored and that you should.

00;07;09;05 - 00;07;35;06
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Burn calories at a normal rate or sometimes even an increased rate. So we're talking like a positive metabolism support hormone switch that is telling your body, Hey, I've got what it needs. And that's why sometimes it's referred to as the satiety hormone or the starvation hormone, depending on which, you know, end of the spectrum you're looking at

00;07;35;06 - 00;07;53;09
[Dr. Scott Watier]
. And it focuses primarily in an area of the brain that is called the hypothalamus. OK. And what we want just as an overview is to know is that leptin is supposed to tell your brain that you have enough fat stored, right?

00;07;53;10 - 00;08;10;28
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's I'm gonna say it again. But it's also related to fertility. It's connected to the thyroid, which you're going to mention immunity and also overall brain function. So it's interesting of how of how much of a key player leptin is.

00;08;10;28 - 00;08;20;16
[Dr. Scott Watier]
But then it has a compadre in this. It has. It has an alter ego. It has an opposite in this equation called ghrelin. That's also important.

00;08;21;09 - 00;08;37;00
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And the crazy part about the Leptin two is that when it's trying to signal something, if we are resistant to that signal, just like if we're resistant to the insulin signal, then all of a sudden those important messages fall on deaf ears where we have trouble regulating those hormones.

00;08;37;00 - 00;08;50;10
[Tommy Welling]
We have trouble for the brain understanding how much fat is actually stored in the system. And that's where we start to get that question of, yeah, I'm gaining weight. I'm feeling full all the time, like whenever I eat.

00;08;50;10 - 00;09;04;06
[Tommy Welling]
But then I quickly feel hungry again. It feels like my body doesn't understand like that. I have these these fat stores that I have enough fuel to live off of and to go off of. It feels like I need to eat more.

00;09;04;10 - 00;09;12;20
[Tommy Welling]
Although I know intuitively I probably shouldn't be eating this much because the scale just keeps going up right, and it almost feels like I'm being painted into a corner here.

00;09;13;07 - 00;09;29;06
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, leptin in a healthy state or a healthy balance with ghrelin is going to have natural hunger cues and natural satiety cues. So leptin by itself should be telling your brain to decrease your food intake, increase your metabolic rate, increase your activity level, increase your temperature.

00;09;29;24 - 00;09;49;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So some of the signs and symptoms of leptin resistance are exactly the opposite of those things. So like you just alluded to, it's that that that constant, you know, craving for foods that you may have just eaten, right?

00;09;49;14 - 00;10;05;04
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, it's you always crave a certain sweet or a certain future and you eat it and then boom, it comes right back. Or you've been inability to. So some of the other signs symptoms, inability to lose weight even with caloric restriction and extreme exercise.

00;10;05;04 - 00;10;19;03
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we did hear this a lot with people that come in there twelve hundred 1000 calories a day, and they're working out five or six days a week and they're not losing the weight. That's an indicator of leptin resistance.

00;10;19;03 - 00;10;35;09
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're that your brain is literally not getting those signals that your metabolism. You smell a carbohydrate. You put on £5, right? You're like, Oh, my metabolism must be tanked, right? You're putting on weight. Even though you've attempted to lose your body temperature is lower.

00;10;35;09 - 00;10;56;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Your resting heart rate is lower. Signs of hypothyroidism, estrogen dominance, low progesterone, low testosterone, high cortisol, which I want to come back to in a second. Because high cortisol is part of the inflammatory component of this that blocks those leptin signals.

00;10;56;09 - 00;11;16;24
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So leptin is attached to a lot of different processes in the body, but it is that thing that's going to tell your body that it's OK to shrink those fat cells. You know, it's it's it's in the process of regulating bone mass, increasing heart rate activation of the immune system, increasing blood pressure when these are when these

00;11;16;24 - 00;11;37;01
[Dr. Scott Watier]
are high levels that aren't being that your brain's not receiving the signals. It also is part of the process of regulating those thyroid hormones, regulating appetite and metabolism it decreases in. It's supposed to decrease insulin secretion, right? So when we talk about leptin resistance, we talk about insulin resistance.

00;11;37;01 - 00;11;54;27
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's connected to the takeaway message of that minute, minute and a half is that there are a lot of different causes, and it's also related to a lot of different things. So we're going to want to try to simplify it for you in OK, do.

00;11;54;29 - 00;12;09;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
What do I have it right? Mm-Hmm. And then obviously what to do about it? So. Some additional symptoms, really, the belly fat, the poor energy levels. A lot of this is going to be resonating with a lot of you.

00;12;09;00 - 00;12;15;02
[Dr. Scott Watier]
If you've had the inability to lose the weight that you've been trying to get off for for weeks to months to decades.

00;12;15;09 - 00;12;28;15
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And if you think about it, if if my fat cells are trying to tell my brain, Hey, there's a lot of us around, we there's a lot of fuel stored here and the brain should be like, OK, well, we're not that hungry.

00;12;28;15 - 00;12;45;11
[Tommy Welling]
We don't need to bring in a whole lot of extra food. But if that's if that signal is being muted right there, that can feel like exactly the phrase is my metabolism slowed down at this point because basically I can restrict my calories or I can control every one of them.

00;12;45;11 - 00;12;56;00
[Tommy Welling]
I can count every one of them. And this is exactly where I was just a few years back, counting every single one of them going. I don't understand how I could be bringing in X, and I know I'm burning Y.

00;12;56;04 - 00;13;03;24
[Tommy Welling]
And the scale is still going up and it's because of these. This just completely muted, imbalanced signaling system here.

00;13;04;16 - 00;13;19;27
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So just it. And it gets frustrating because if you go and you look and we're going to share some numbers in a minute, you too much leptin is just as bad as having no leptin, right? So like, we want that happy medium, and that's why I need it.

00;13;20;14 - 00;13;41;04
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We need it. Yeah, our body absolutely needs it. So the stress, the poor sleep, the chronic inflammation, the higher cortisol from the stress, which then leads to higher levels of inflammation. Insulin resistance is also a part of this, you know, toxicity issues in certain types of infections.

00;13;42;02 - 00;13;59;13
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You know, if you're someone that has a lot of digestive issues and food sensitivities and food allergies that that could be contributing to a leptin imbalance as well in your body not getting those proper signals. So when we're looking at determining whether or not you have it.

00;14;00;18 - 00;14;19;02
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You mentioned a lot of different signs or symptoms. So what should that range really be? And this range, like I said, is very variable and I can speak from my to my own numbers. When I first went down this rabbit hole of it being, you know, blood sugar and maybe undiagnosed prediabetes when I was doing all of

00;14;19;02 - 00;14;40;09
[Dr. Scott Watier]
the right things but not seeing the right results. I remember my leptin levels. My BMI was above 30. I had 177 point something pounds of lean muscle. I was a big powerlifter type, body type and my leptin. When you look at some of the numbers that have been reported, this was a research article out of 1997 that

00;14;40;09 - 00;14;58;17
[Dr. Scott Watier]
looked at body mass index and the leptin levels, and it showed that when you get into those overweight category of BMI 25 or plus or obese category 30, you're plus. The high end of the leptin range was up in the fifties, sixties and even seventies.

00;14;58;17 - 00;15;17;07
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And when you get into the morbidly obese, the 35 plus we're talking all the way up into the 100 and twenties, right? So we're talking like high super high levels of leptin. And then when you get into the more healthy range, the 20 BMI, we're talking about a range anywhere between 2.4 to 13.

00;15;17;07 - 00;15;37;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So like three to 15 somewhere in that range. Right. So and the reason I'm bringing it up in this way is because we need some form of leptin. But the most important thing that we can do is get the weight off and shrink those fat cells to tell it to allow the balancing process to begin.

00;15;37;14 - 00;15;51;19
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, because it's so much like any other signaling mechanism in the body where when we have too much of the signal, we start to get numb to it. We start to like tone down our reception of that signal.

00;15;51;19 - 00;16;05;23
[Tommy Welling]
Just like if you walk into the same type of environment every single day, you get numb to, you know, whatever's on the wall or whatever the ambient noise is. We have a way to to kind of filter those things out, and the same thing happens with insulin.

00;16;05;23 - 00;16;26;09
[Tommy Welling]
And then in this case, leptin, where our receptors we have to to keep making more and more and more receptors. But at a certain point, we can't do that anymore. So we have so much leptin coming out, but we're not in taking the signal and that that leads to compounding problems over time, just like with insulin resistance

00;16;26;09 - 00;16;42;15
[Tommy Welling]
, but for slightly different reasons and with with different effects. But this is just overall part of what's happening in that weight gain cycle. But this is also why it can feel like it's harder and harder and harder to actually lose any of the weight as we get more overweight, as we accumulate more.

00;16;42;21 - 00;16;49;28
[Tommy Welling]
And then the problems just compounded with each year that we get older too, as our body gets a little bit less efficient each year, too.

00;16;50;12 - 00;17;05;14
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, that's a good point of actually what's happening physiologically is like, I always think of the family guy, Stewie, when he's trying to get Lois's attention or if we want to go back to the peanuts, where or the Muppet babies where it's like the want, want, want sound, right?

00;17;05;14 - 00;17;21;04
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we talked about inflammation at one point. And you know, stress can can cause chronic inflammation, high levels, elevated levels of cortisol. There's an episode that we're going to be doing on visceral adipose tissue, and there was a correlation statistically with its relationship to C-reactive protein.

00;17;21;04 - 00;17;33;18
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So what happens? Leptin resistance is your fat cells are producing it. You're at low levels of corrective protein go up and then they bind to the leptin. And that doesn't allow the leptin to get through the blood brain barrier.

00;17;33;18 - 00;17;50;19
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's literally like on the outside going womp, womp, womp, womp, womp. Hey, hello. Hello. I'm over here. And that's why we see these high elevated numbers in the higher BMI categories because your body is trying to produce more to get the same effect.

00;17;50;20 - 00;18;06;02
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's the same thing that happens with insulin resistance. It's not as effective. So if you eat a meal that has a certain blood sugar response in your insulin isn't as effective. It requires more insulin to shuttle that energy out of the bloodstream.

00;18;06;06 - 00;18;06;18
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

00;18;06;25 - 00;18;18;13
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's this mechanism of like, we've got this. I don't know how many pronged problem, right? Right? And it's like, Well, what do I do to balance it out? Like, I mean, leptin is good, right? But I have too much of it.

00;18;18;13 - 00;18;33;21
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So how do I get off the crazy train? Or how do I get off the vicious cycle? And that's what I want to go into now. Time is unpacking some of those things that we can do to counteract this vicious weight loss cycle of craving overconsumption.

00;18;33;21 - 00;18;47;17
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Poor energy, want, want, want, want. Leptin is not being received in the leptin, ghrelin. The hunger cues are there, but but we need it to be more balanced so you can actually like feel in control again and continue to get that weight off.

00;18;47;17 - 00;18;56;07
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Not by doing the low and slow method, which is being in a chronic caloric deficit and trying to work off all of those extra calories.

00;18;56;15 - 00;19;13;23
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, especially when insulins high whenever we have more eating. Opportunities every single day, especially when we're doing like four or five, six smaller meals all throughout the day, especially when those are calorically restricted and adding on the exercise and other ways that we can expend more calories, right?

00;19;14;11 - 00;19;26;15
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yes. So I want to make one thing before we transition into that is just for clarity. So a couple of things to know. If you have insulin, let the resistance go hand in hand, right? So weight loss resistance, insulin.

00;19;26;21 - 00;19;41;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's why I started the episode by saying the word resistance, that category of thought process, right? So we have a guide. It's an insulin assessment, which is going to give you some insight into knowing whether or not you have insulin resistance is a subjective quiz.

00;19;41;12 - 00;19;52;07
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can find that on the website under the Resources tab. We'll zoom it over into your inbox and then a few other things. one of the things that's also in there is the weight circumference, right? So that's another metric that we look at.

00;19;52;17 - 00;20;11;20
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Mm-Hmm. The visceral adipose tissue. What's on? You know what, what, what fat you're carrying that's in between the organs that increase the risk of metabolic diseases and heart diseases and those types of things, but specifically for leptin, if you're testing, you want to get this tested in a fasted state and you should really see your number be

00;20;11;20 - 00;20;33;16
[Dr. Scott Watier]
ten or lower because this is something that will fluctuate throughout the day with feeding cycles and those types of things. But based on those ranges in a healthy BMI between 20 and 25, you're going to want to see a fasted leptin level of ten or lower, and that's going to give you just at least a baseline to

00;20;33;17 - 00;20;51;25
[Dr. Scott Watier]
know kind of where you're at and whether or not it's not your lack of willpower, your lack of exercise, your poor functioning thyroid kind of. It's it's it's that you have a resistance that we need to undo and we're going to show you how we're going to do that.

00;20;51;25 - 00;21;01;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And what we typically see is those hunger cues starting to balance out and people regaining control of those cravings.

00;21;01;10 - 00;21;21;02
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, we have a few of those those key points that we can take action on, like now, one step at a time, even it doesn't all have to to be changed overnight or all in one fell swoop. But things that help to control those insulin spikes tend to be rebalancing for leptin as well.

00;21;21;10 - 00;21;37;19
[Tommy Welling]
So like the fact that a leptin imbalance means more craving and more feeling like I just ate, but I'm hungry again, like super fast. Or it almost feels like that because the body's like missing the signal that I just brought in more energy.

00;21;37;26 - 00;21;50;26
[Tommy Welling]
first of all, it already missed the signal that I have extra fat cells or I have extra fat stores. I didn't really need to be bringing in more fuel. And then it continues to miss the mark because it's missing the signals from the new food that I just brought in.

00;21;51;04 - 00;22;10;12
[Tommy Welling]
So if I'm if I'm starting to remove or lower the number of times that I'm being exposed to these foods that are highly insulin hygienic that are like the highly processed foods, especially then that lowers the insulin levels, which is going to help balance out the cravings that helps to balance out the leptin levels as well.

00;22;10;12 - 00;22;12;13
[Tommy Welling]
So those do definitely go hand in hand, right?

00;22;13;13 - 00;22;36;02
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yes, so what I just heard there was was making better dietary dietary choices, right? Sure, yeah. And the main causes of leptin resistance are related to an array of lifestyle, dietary, environmental and health factors like we talked about the stress, the sleep, the inflammation, the resistance, the, you know, all of those different types of things.

00;22;36;02 - 00;22;52;26
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we're going to want to attack this from multiple different angles. But simply the best place to start is going to be staying consistent with your fasting windows because there is an article timing me that you had mentioned earlier that and I thought, that's where you're going.

00;22;52;27 - 00;23;14;25
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Just a second ago was that when we looked at the 72 hour fasting window, what happened to leptin levels? And then conversely, what we see during our challenges and our continuity membership in our our group coaching that we do and kind of what we see over the timeline of about 30, 60 and 90 days, we really use

00;23;14;25 - 00;23;21;29
[Dr. Scott Watier]
those those those fasting windows from 18 all the way up to 72 hours. And that seems to be the magic sweet spot.

00;23;22;17 - 00;23;38;24
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it does. And it was interesting because there's not a whole lot of data out there on 72 hour and an even longer fast. But what they were where they were looking for in this particular study was to see what effect did a 72 hour fast have on leptin levels.

00;23;38;24 - 00;23;59;15
[Tommy Welling]
So as they got into the fast, those leptin levels began to drop substantially and they kept dropping all the way to basically near zero levels over that 72 hours. But what was also interesting was they had a couple of different treatment groups where they actually injected back leptin into those subjects.

00;23;59;26 - 00;24;12;15
[Tommy Welling]
And so it was it was interesting because at 72 hours, you saw this decrease. But that decrease also went along with a decrease in other hormone hormone production as well, and not in the way that we'd like to see.

00;24;12;16 - 00;24;29;05
[Tommy Welling]
So we see a 40% drop in testosterone, for example. But that gets back to to the fact that leptin is a key regulator in the synthesis of multiple hormones throughout the body. So that's not necessarily the ideal way to do it to your point.

00;24;29;13 - 00;24;34;26
[Tommy Welling]
It's not always about pushing to the next longest fast. Let me just go ahead and do a a five day fast.

00;24;35;04 - 00;24;47;18
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or let me do a two week fast. Let me do a 21 day fast, right? Yeah, that's yeah. first of all, it doesn't seem fun or sustainable. And yeah, so let's let's not veer off the path into the extreme.

00;24;48;02 - 00;25;04;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You know, some most of the time it falls, the answer falls somewhere in the middle. So for perspective, you know, if you're someone who's 30, 40, £50 overweight and you're fasting serum leptin is 45, then it's a good idea to get your leptin down ten or 15 points in order for weight loss to occur.

00;25;04;24 - 00;25;23;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hmm. Well, guess what? Fasting up until that 72 hour mark. If you're in that higher level beginning starting point is going to drop probably around ten, 15, maybe even 20 points. Yeah. And then you're going to be in a place where your body can actually receive the signal and then start that fat burning process.

00;25;23;12 - 00;25;48;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's one of the takeaways or one of the things you can do to help this is stay consistent with those fasting windows. But secondly is really veer move towards the lifestyle eating or the dietary recommendation of more of the getting into ketosis and staying in ketosis because ketones will will actually accelerate that.

00;25;48;12 - 00;26;04;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That balancing process and staying in ketosis will allow you to stay in fat, burning longer with your leptin levels being lower. So I've done kiddo with short term results. I had a whole nother host of things that I screwed up along the way.

00;26;04;18 - 00;26;17;25
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So, yeah, getting ketones produced, which you don't have to do a keto diet, you can get there through consistent fasting windows. But it's not a bad idea to add in some of those higher fat foods as well.

00;26;18;10 - 00;26;40;15
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, and that's that's part of this whole like poor signaling problem that we have going on is that when we stay consistently in sugar burning mode and then we're fueling the fire every three or four hours with more processed carbohydrates, more things that are highly insulin hygienic, we're just wreaking more havoc on these signals within the body

00;26;40;16 - 00;26;58;02
[Tommy Welling]
. So should we cut out carbs completely? Absolutely not. There's no reason we don't need to do that, and we have multiple episodes where we discuss that topic right there. But at the same time, if we can work towards, you know, one better meal at a time and one better, more consistent fast at a time, then now we

00;26;58;02 - 00;27;11;16
[Tommy Welling]
get to start making substantial progress on multiple fronts here, where we can start seeing the scale move in the right direction and start to see balancing on the insulin side on the leptin side. And then a whole host of other factors to.

00;27;12;11 - 00;27;23;01
[Dr. Scott Watier]
A couple of things for clarity there is you said sugar burner, right? So what we mean by that is not that you're ingesting all of the sodas and the sugary drinks and the processed foods and the refined sugar, right?

00;27;23;18 - 00;27;39;23
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're saying that when the food breaks down into the glucose molecule, which is the the energy right that either needs to be burned or stored, the juxtaposition of that was ketones, where ketones actually can get into the mitochondria and create energy quick more quickly.

00;27;40;29 - 00;28;01;27
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So when we're making that transition, the last dietary recommendation I would make is be removing those inflammatory foods that we just mentioned, as well as the refined oils, the artificial processed, ultra processed stuff and then really focusing more on the nutrient dense, rich diet like greens, vegetables, low glycemic fruits, berries are always great.

00;28;01;27 - 00;28;16;05
[Dr. Scott Watier]
They got a good fiber content to healthy fats and then a good, lean source of protein, which really kind of sum up how we can get that inflammation down and then allow the leptin to be more effective without having to elevate the levels, right?

00;28;16;24 - 00;28;36;22
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So just for recap, we've talked about fasting Windows eight to 72 hours. one meal a day is a great place to start. We have a resource on the website de fasting for Life Gqom on the resources. It is the fast start guide, but we've just leveled it up and brought back a redone version, a leveled up version

00;28;36;22 - 00;28;55;29
[Dr. Scott Watier]
in our opinion of the one page PDF guide. We now have 20 minutes of step by step videos broken down step one through step six and how to put more consistent one meal a day fasting windows in. And I just didn't want to forget to mention that because this is something we did way back when and then

00;28;55;29 - 00;29;04;10
[Dr. Scott Watier]
it kind of went away and we're like, Wait a minute, we have this resource that is like. Incredibly user friendly and powerful, so we're bringing it back.

00;29;05;02 - 00;29;21;21
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, absolutely, because it's all about the consistency here. So if you're if you're kind of knocking at the door or you've been doing maybe 16 hour with eight hour eating windows or something else like that along the intermittent side, but you're still not seeing any results on the scale or any of these balance points coming back in

00;29;21;21 - 00;29;41;27
[Tommy Welling]
like we're talking about. You might just need to push for a little bit more consistency and a little bit longer of a fasting window to give yourself the opportunity to start undoing some of those, what for most of us is years of accumulation of, you know, maybe just a few grams to a few pounds per year here

00;29;41;27 - 00;29;54;19
[Tommy Welling]
and there. And then that really start to add up over time. So building in some more of that consistency, getting the ball rolling is is where you want to begin. And if you're already past that level and looking for a little bit more of a push.

00;29;54;26 - 00;30;15;01
[Tommy Welling]
That's why we have another challenge coming up here, April 13 that we we take we we use one meal a day as a launching off point, and we keep pushing into further and further balance and more movement on the scale and better results so we can really, really get the results that we're looking for.

00;30;15;13 - 00;30;29;28
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So listen, you guys heard the intro earlier about the challenge April 13. We're not going to go into a, you know, a diatribe on that in the moment. The reality is, is that we've leveled it up. It is now the seven day fasting lifestyle challenge.

00;30;29;28 - 00;30;41;26
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you just alluded to it, Tommy. We ramp you up into an ideal fat burning state. We're going to give it all to you. You get everything we have. You get us every single day. You get question and answer periods.

00;30;41;26 - 00;30;57;08
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Every single day you get all of the resources that we have. You get access to our Continuity Membership Group. We call it the fasting tree of trust, where you know everything fasting related is discussed from from diet, from digestive changes to struggles to wins.

00;30;57;16 - 00;31;10;15
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's all there. So you get everything. And that's coming up on April 13, like you mentioned. So to wrap up today's episode, tell me I want to make sure that we give clear, concise action steps. We've mentioned the resources to help with fasting.

00;31;11;00 - 00;31;27;29
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We've talked about the nutrition changes, the dietary changes right, removing those inflammatory foods and improving the quality and nutrient density of the foods, as well as the the clean animal proteins. The ketosis portion trying to get into ketosis fasting will get you there.

00;31;28;00 - 00;31;41;20
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can do increasing your fats like the keto diet can work. Does the fasting windows. The two things we haven't mentioned yet is really improving the sleep and focusing on sleep and then reducing stress. And those two typically go hand-in-hand.

00;31;42;04 - 00;32;00;04
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And those are two components that will feed insulin resistance and leptin resistance. So simply getting outside and getting some sunshine earlier in the day is also another one like a lower level. Hey, get some vitamin D in your life and get moving, right?

00;32;00;04 - 00;32;22;08
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So sleep, stress movement, vitamin D, get outside. Try to shut the TV off, get it out of your bedroom. Get the blue light out of your face before bed. Everybody has technology all around us now. Maybe try reading or journaling or Premiere or gratitude, or take a take an absent salt bath, something that you can start working

00;32;22;22 - 00;32;39;05
[Dr. Scott Watier]
on your sleep, as well as putting something in that can help you de-stress from this. This just chronically stressed out world that we live in, and it's hard to give like specific recommendations for this stuff because everyone's a little bit different, right?

00;32;39;05 - 00;32;52;00
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I know for me, walking was a big change. When I just when I felt like my things at my stress was rising, I would just go for a walk outside 30 minutes and it would literally change my state by simple.

00;32;52;00 - 00;33;11;12
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I didn't have to go get ready for CrossFit and pump myself up and go to the bootcamp class. Or I just needed to get my body moving, right? So if you're dealing with these types of symptoms and you feel like you might have some leptin resistance, don't forget about the sleep and the stress and also get

00;33;11;12 - 00;33;12;24
[Dr. Scott Watier]
outside and get your body moving.

00;33;13;06 - 00;33;32;02
[Tommy Welling]
The cool thing is how well all of those factors work together, because if I spend a little bit more time moving, especially like later in the day when my insulin spike is the highest after a meal, like if dinner is my favorite meal and I usually have maybe like a 2:00 p.m. to two 8:00 p.m. eating window or something

00;33;32;02 - 00;33;42;03
[Tommy Welling]
like that, if I get moving, it keeps me out of the kitchen. A little bit longer during the day also makes me feel a little bit better. It drops my insulin of my blood sugar a little bit more.

00;33;42;10 - 00;33;58;17
[Tommy Welling]
It helps me get a little bit better sleep. And then now we start to see how all of these things are like small little dominoes that really once I once I do one or two of these things, they all start to line up in place and I I start to get the balancing effect much, much faster.

00;33;58;24 - 00;34;12;05
[Tommy Welling]
And this can be all the difference. Between feeling like I'm just bumping my head up against the wall, not seeing the scale move versus everything starts to feel a little bit a little bit more intuitive and a little easier to make the right decisions each day, that's support my health goals.

00;34;12;26 - 00;34;27;15
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, and there's so much in this episode, so I want you guys. So just to recap, you can go to the website to the resources, get the fast start guide with the new video support. So 20 plus minutes of video to go with that, we have the insulin assessment that's in there.

00;34;27;25 - 00;34;43;20
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We've talked about the signs and symptoms and causes of leptin and leptin resistance. And my recommendation, if you're listening to this episode and you're driving or you're walking going, Oh my God, there's so much here. Go to the show notes and get the research articles.

00;34;43;20 - 00;34;56;16
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Get some of the talking points. Click the link. Go to the website. You can read the transcript. We have the resources there for you. I just don't want anyone to be listening on overload, overload, overload. That's the opposite of what we want.

00;34;57;01 - 00;35;09;19
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then if you're looking for that additional support and a couple of weeks on April 30th, we have that next challenge coming up. That link is also in the show notes. Go click it. Get more details. Ask us any question, shoot us a message.

00;35;09;19 - 00;35;19;07
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We are absolutely here for, for, for you. And we're going to be gearing up for that next challenge coming up in a couple of weeks, Tommy. So lots of information in this episode will probably have to do a follow up.

00;35;19;08 - 00;35;28;06
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We'll get a bunch of questions, but that's why we are here. We are in it to win it. As always, sir. Appreciate the conversation and we'll talk soon. Thank you. Bye.

00;35;30;16 - 00;35;38;12
[Tommy Welling]
So you've heard today's episode, and you may be wondering, where do I start? Head on over to be fasting for life dot com and sign up for our newsletter, where you'll.

00;35;38;12 - 00;35;39;13
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Receive fasting tips.

00;35;39;13 - 00;35;43;03
[Tommy Welling]
And strategies to maximize results and fit fasting into your day to day life.

00;35;43;26 - 00;35;57;09
[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.

 

 

 

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