Ep. 139 - Fasting Frustrations and Your Fasting Identity | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD
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In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss fasting frustrations and your fasting identity, the struggle of long-term sustainability when it comes to weight loss, what is at the core of your health identity, sustainable long-term result, and much more.
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Fasting For Life Ep. 139 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. 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 to the show notes.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Click the link for more details or you can go to WW the fasting for life. Dot com forward slash live. Wanted to speak directly to you if you've been listening to the podcast, maybe you're new and just getting started 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 to to for 3 to £5 each week.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
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 bite you on the backside and you just can't seem to get away from those cravings or the consistent body of your fasting schedule just isn't allowing you to get back on track if you've fallen by the wayside.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
This seven day lifestyle challenge is exactly for you. 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 and the habits to build that long term weight loss and fasting lifestyle success. Go to the show notes.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can click the link or w WW D fasting for life. Dot com forward slash live. We will hope to see you on the inside. And now to today's episode. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name's Dr. Scott Water, and I'm here, as always, with my good friend and colleague, Tommy. Well, and good afternoon to you, sir.
[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Doing fantastic, my friend. As always, excited for today's episode. Want to welcome all of you new listeners in If You Are New to the Fasting for Life podcast or Tommy and I, please go back and listen to the first couple of episodes. Don't worry about 30 minutes or less, maybe 40 minutes total. You'll get a big picture of who we are, why we do this a little bit about our journey and why we keep recording episodes and continuing to help people adopt a fasting lifestyle.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I want to welcome all of y'all in. Go back, check it out if you'd like. And then for all of you. Oh, geez, you long term listeners. And thank you for continuing to give us the feedback and the encouragement that we need to continue to bring you content each and every week. If you want to drop a review, we prefer the five star kind of course that tells the podcasting gods wherever you get your podcast that we are delivering value and we don't plan on going anywhere.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So welcome in everybody. To today's episode we are going to be having, I think, a fun conversation today. Tell me about some fasting frustrations, but then also what we term your fasting identity and how those things are connected and why fasting can be so simple but not easy to sustain just like any other, dare I say the word?
[Tommy Welling]
No, don't say it. Die at home.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And disassociate from that and give you some action steps that you can take today to continue your fasting journey. We're also going to welcome you into the community group on Facebook. It is a place where you can come in break the first two rules of the Fasting for Life podcast and the fasting lifestyle, which is don't talk about fasting.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
If you're new to fasting first you rules. Don't talk about fasting. Well, guess what? This group, we've created it. It is moderated by us and our coaches. It is a cool place, positive encouragement, accountability. Come get your questions answered. We're going to invite you in as well. The link is in the show notes. All right, Tommy. Oh, that's out of the way.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Setting the stage here for the conversation of the fasting frustrations and your fasting identity. I want to open it up with this concept and this kind of storyline of the outside world, the forces at bay, the struggle of long term sustainability when it comes to weight loss, which then ends up relating directly to our health. And we talk a lot about these studies that have come out.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The 12% of us are metabolically flexible. 5% of people can maintain the weight loss that they've had for a span of two years. So that sustainability long term result piece so we're not consistently on this dieting roller coaster. Right? You're on you're off your on your off kind of stuff. Yeah. So the outside stuff, the world, social family, friends, all of that plays a big part in our success.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
When we feel if it's truly part of your identity, then you're able to defend that stuff off a lot better.
[Tommy Welling]
Wow. Yeah. You know what? Even backing it up from there, what is at the core of your health identity? Is it that I'm identifying as a diet or because I've dieted so many times in the past or I've been doing it since I was a kid or maybe a teenager or a young adult, that that feels like who I am.
[Tommy Welling]
So I'm I've almost doomed myself motivational and psychologically before I even regardless of how effective fasting is going to be, whether I have a lot of weight to lose or just a little bit, or I'm trying to sustain my results. If I've already identified myself as a long term diet, or then I might be expecting the failure point or the time when I stop this, because it's just another one of the things that I put into place rather than who I am.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, the expectation is not met by a certain timeline or a reality of your experience. Yeah. So specifically looking at the big picture, let's say you've got 20, 30, 40, £50 to lose, you've lost it and you've gained it back. There's a couple of things here that I want to unpack, one on the family and social side, but then also on the big picture like overwhelmed side.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you've got the weight to lose and taking what you just said and expounding on it, in that case, if you're looking at the gap between the end goal of where you want to be and how you're going to get there, and fasting as your vehicle to learn how to drive the fasting car. Okay. And the first thing you can do is if you're looking at this and you're getting back air quotes on track, you're like, hi, this is going to be my new plan.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's fasting. Why is it fasting? While fasting has all these additional benefits, it puts me in a deficit right off the bat. You know, I feel better. I sleep better. You've had some wins. But the frustration of the big picture or the stop and go, the hyper focus on the scale, right, or the wonder consuming nutrient dense foods and over fasting or your overconsuming and under fasting and you just can't put all the pieces together.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We really need to hone in, in narrow our focus and look at just the next few decisions that we're going to be making and then implement something that we like to talk about, which is the 5/2 rule, which is something that we came across from a mel Robbins talk. Yeah. Where we need to get at that feeling in the moment of the action you're about to take and be like, Okay, I'm not a bad person because I do X, Y or Z.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You have a habit of doing X, Y or Z.
[Tommy Welling]
Right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. Same thing about the whole chronic diet or label or you're been an 800 calorie deficit for 20 years and you're £40 overweight. Like, sure, the frustration builds. So the first thing to free yourself from the frustration of fasting was a lot of illustration. There is to narrow your focus and in that moment what is that feeling and then use the 5/2 rule.
[Tommy Welling]
Well, and you know, the cool thing is if you you finding yourself telling yourself that I need to get back on track. Well, going back to that moment where you got off track is exactly where that 5/2 rule can come into play. And what it does is it helps remove the indecision point that comes from when we have a strong feeling and then we take a more automatic action that actually helps make us feel better in that moment.
[Tommy Welling]
So maybe it's like when I'm bored or stressed or something else like that, and then all of a sudden I find myself grazing in the pantry. Well, what am I supposed to be on a fast right here? Right. And so, like, that's a mistake in the moment, but if I can recognize the fact that, wait a minute, I'm doing something that I didn't want to do and implement that five, four, 3 to 1, that gives me just a few seconds to like mentally separate myself from the moment, from the feeling.
[Tommy Welling]
And now I can regain my mental bearings and make an actual decision rather than just an automatic behavior.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, you've interrupted that pattern. So we're going to come back to that and how it relates to the core values of the identity of lifestyle or of what you've been doing that hasn't been able to turn into a lifestyle. Yeah, but knowing those triggers or those things that pull you off track is super powerful. And you mentioned it, the heart beats so hungry, angry, lonely, tired, bored, stressed.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I don't know if anybody else out there can relate to this. You just spent $200. Maybe more nowadays on groceries. You have all this wonderful food in your kitchen and it's like, Oh, we're going to DoorDash.
[Tommy Welling]
Right? What?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Why? We've all done it. Why? What is that feeling in the moment? So, five, four, three, two, one. Set a timer. Ten, 15 minutes. Go for a walk, get out of the situation. And most likely you're not going to go back to it. And if that continues to happen, then have a plan for what you're going to do moving forward.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like if this happens, then I'm going to do this instead. And just that, five, four, three, two, one. To give you that ability to kind of stop the bus and out whole, let me get off this bus and I'm going in the same direction. Let me just take a breath here and identify what's going on. And that whole bus method really cool.
[Tommy Welling]
Each one of those times when we get off track, that can start to sink in to the identity piece too, because just like you said earlier, you're not someone who always gets off track. You're not a get off tracker. You have a history, especially a recent history of going off track. But each time that I'm able to catch myself a little quicker, a little quicker in the process, then that means that I can start to override those things and start to shift the identity to.
[Tommy Welling]
Right.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And a lot of our, our identity when it comes to weight starts at a very young age. So it's the chronic obsession with the scale. It's the, the I have a sugar addictions comments, all of the stuff that falls in that category label labels, right? So when we're taking this and putting this into an identity, I want to use the example of a vegetarian or vegan situation to tell the story here in just a second.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
But when we're looking at this, that constant fluctuation of putting your focus on the wrong things or the things that haven't served you well is where you get stuck. So I always joke around my kids. They're too young to know what the Eye of Sauron is, but if it's from The Lord of the Rings, you know that it's the eye that sees everything across all the realms.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? And my daughter, a big daddy. How did you know that? I'm like, because I'm you. And I've done that before, and I know you're sitting. You don't know that. I'm always listening and watching. Okay, so I just joke. Well, it's magic. What do you mean it's magic? I'm like, Well, I have Sauron is on you. Okay? I'm focused on you making sure that you're not going to do X, Y or Z, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So. Right. You're focusing on those things that haven't served your identity. And a lot of it comes from societal cultural constructs like the Struggle Bus, the episodes that we've done on that big research article that came out about why the sustainability is so difficult. I was looking at the external forces, the continuous monitoring, the self-monitoring, the goal setting, the goal hitting all of that stuff.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And there's intrinsic and extrinsic factors that go with all of those things. But if we're going to look at this and make it sustainable, then what is it that we want to track? What is it that serves us in our identity to be able to consistently make the right decision? We're not saying perfection, but maybe 60 to 70 or 80% of the time, which is going to get you the long term wins.
[Tommy Welling]
Well, yeah. And what do we need to do in order to actually make that happen and keep the momentum going? Well, we need to find those little pieces of the puzzle that can remove us from the situation when we're about to, quote, unquote, get off track. And then we also need to find those ways to keep winning in those those even small ways.
[Tommy Welling]
And we need to find ways to kind of measure the progress that aren't just necessarily giving us all the negative feedback all the time. Right. That's why we talk about some of the things that are not on the scale and why those things matter, even though they're oftentimes not talked about.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, non scale victories like what's the journey look like, right? What motivates you to keep taking the many actions? So I want to use this example of a potential situation to highlight. If you are a person that continually says yes to the external meaning, Hey, this is going on this weekend. Hey, it's summertime up at the lake. It's come have drinks with me.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hey, I want to go here. Hey, this popped up or this opportunity? Yeah. You probably have a yes problem. And all the people that love you and appreciate you in your close circle are not doing it on purpose. But they also don't know that your goal is to obtain this level of health with this identity six months from now, because you want to prevent insert certain disease, you don't want to end up like a family member that's had a traumatic experience with health or you want to, you know, get off your medications and lose the weight and be healthy.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because if we look around, up to 60% of people are trying to lose weight and given time. But 75% of the population is overweight or obese. It's like, okay, well, you can't do what they're doing. You get the same result, but then they don't know that. So communicating that is difficult. In the beginning. It's really just keeping to yourself and figuring out how to defend those things, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I want to set the stage and if that is you, where you continually get pulled in a ton of different directions. Yeah. And let's say you get a call that says, hey, we're doing this, or you're the mom or dad that something's changed, right? That means the plan has changed. The external plan has changed for some reason, but that doesn't mean that your plan has changed the plan has changed.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
These people over here are deciding to do this thing this way from some external force. But that doesn't mean that your plan, the plan that you set out with the day I'm not going to DoorDash, I'm going to eat the food I bought at home. I'm not going to stop at Chick-Fil-A. I'm going to go home and make the steak.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I'm going to fast today and stick to my 24 hour timer and not break my fast early or graze off my kids plates or get even the like. Even though I got a message or stress happened or something, the plan changed. Your plan did not well.
[Tommy Welling]
And you might identify as a people pleaser. It can be really easy if you identify as such. You don't want to hurt people's feelings, right? Then you're taking these invitation or a little bit of pressure coming from the outside. And now I'm internalizing it. I'm saying, Well, I don't want to disappoint. I don't want to frustrate. Right. So let me go ahead and go along with that.
[Tommy Welling]
All of a sudden, my priorities have shifted in that moment from my own long term health to pleasing this outside party. But I add up enough of those. I'm not hitting that 60, 70, 80% success that point my momentum is going the other way, which is leading me away from the goals that are so important to me.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, we had a story of someone once who's in the challenges in the coaching group and he is like, Yeah, you know, I just can't seem to get traction. I'm on, I'm off, you know? And I said, okay, describe what happens when you're off. So he told me, owns a retirement home and has like ten or 12 people.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
He's the chef. His wife's the front management person. They're caring people, they're empathetic people. They're in home health, nursing their whole careers. And he's like, I'm in the kitchen. I'm like, Oh, so it must be the food you're around. He's like, No, I don't eat that food. It's after we're done. My wife and I want to take her to dinner.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we go to the local place around the corner. It's like an all you can eat place for 21, 99. It's like a golden corral or something, right?
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
He's like, Man, I just love the steak and blah blah blah. And I was like, okay, food, stop. Right? Honestly, 100%. Honestly. Do you really think it's the Golden Corral like 1899 steak? Yeah. That's driving this action continually. He's like, What do you mean? I'm like, Okay, well, why do you go to Golden Great Wall? I want to take my wife out.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I was like, Okay, hold on. So it's the experience and the connection with her that matters. Yeah, he's like Hall. So I was like, Okay, here's what you're going to do. You're going to go order your favorite takeout, you're going to pick it up and you're going to go somewhere to a park or a beach or a bridge or somewhere that you guys enjoy to go and you're going to eat together and create that experience.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the identity piece is, okay, people, your friends, your family, your external, they want you, they want the connection, they want the experience. The problem is it happens to be around their habits, their food and their ideas. So here's an example. You're a vegan or vegetarian, a pescatarian something, right? And you're going to an event and you've been told by the people putting on the event a birthday party, a wedding, whatever that they have, the chef is ready for you.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
They're going to prep you a meal that fits your identity and your lifestyle. Because Tommy, you mentioned is like I want to make sure you say what you said when we were talking about this earlier. So I'm hopefully going to lead it there right now. Okay. So you show up, you're excited, you like great. I'm going to be taking care of I'm going to have a meal.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's already set. And you show up. And for whatever reason, the ball was dropped and they don't have the ability to make something for you other than like a bowl of kale. And you're like, Well, I don't want kale. Okay, right. So if they only had steak and beef products and things, vegetarian, vegan things that you couldn't consume, they only had non acceptable things to you.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Would you sit down and just eat a 16 ounce ribeye at that point? Would you break your core identity as that individual and just start eating meat again because there's no food for you? The answer is no, absolutely not. You would not do that because it's part of your identity and you have morals and values and whatever else goes into that decision.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you wouldn't just break that because the plan has changed.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. So I mean, that's the difference between am I using fasting as just another diet tool or am I a faster? Because if I am going to use a vegetarian diet as a weight loss tool or something else, then I'm willing to break it. I'm willing to break from that at any given point. If temptation or an option comes in, that's a higher priority in that moment.
[Tommy Welling]
But if that's who I am at my core, if that's my identity, then that takes time to shift into that identity. But at the same time, when that's who I am, I'm not going to walk into an external situation and then all of a sudden just drop it. I'm not going to leave it at the doorstep right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's like that's one of the first rules of fasting. You don't talk about fasting. It's like, you know, if you're the carnivore, the vegan macchiato, the non drinker, like there's a whole comedic skit by Jim Gaffigan is like, drinking's the only thing you have to explain to people why you don't do it. It's like you don't drink.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
No y right? It's like you don't use mayo. Why. Nobody cares. Right? So you about it. Yeah, right. There's that identity piece. Right. So we want to encourage you that when it comes to fasting and you want to make this a lifestyle because you feel it is a sustainable solution for you. There's going to be a lot of bumps and bruises and some frustration on the way.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The first half of this conversation today was talking about little things you can do to get those winds right and stay consistent. You don't need to just throw everything out because the plan has changed or the external situation has changed, or someone has invited you to do something. Now, again, perfectionism is not obtainable. We want that consistency to say, okay, I can go and enjoy myself here, but then I have my boundaries here and that just takes repetition to find that out for you.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you're keto or low carb or predominantly protein, you're building muscle, whatever it is, whatever lifestyle that you are living, fasting fits it fits as long as you are putting those targets in place that speak to that piece of the identity part of the journey, which is why a lot of the weight loss stuff isn't sustainable. Who wants to do the lemon juice diet?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's not fun. Like you're not going to connect to that in a way. You just want to lose the damn weight. It's just a tool, right, to get you there.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it's just a tool. So we start to look at this as how is it going to serve me even when I'm beyond that weight loss goal or whatever else is like directly in front of me? Or maybe it's a part of my bloodwork that I want to find some balance for, and I feel like fasting is going to help me get there.
[Tommy Welling]
Okay, well, great. But what am I going to be doing after that? Because if I can start to think about that, then it's going to start to make more sense how this can become more of my identity rather than a short term tool, the short term tools, those are just so easy to walk away from and so easy to just kind of drop off in the moment.
[Tommy Welling]
And all of a sudden it feels like I can't get anywhere with this.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, there's no deeper attachment to it. It's just like Doc said, I got to lose £20. Okay, well, good luck, right? That's not a lot of motivation for me. Yeah, he's overweight. He has no nutrition counts, no nutrition, like. Yeah, training in the ten years of school that he or she went to, like. Great. You told me I need to lose weight.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Does that really move the needle for me? Mm hmm. Probably not. So that's why we talk. Big picture that identity piece, the long play. But that can be overwhelming. So we want to make sure that we can narrow focus and get down to the nitty gritty action steps of what we can do daily to get those consistent win.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So there's two things out of today's episode. One, you can come hang out in the community group, the links in the show notes, you can post your questions, post your struggles, ask for help, come in a like minded community and get some of that encouragement that you might be missing in defending all of the potential pivots that come up or the things that might pull you off track.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then the second thing to me is if you've been off track and you want to get back on is getting our mini masterclass in our Fast Start guide, which is the six simple steps to get and put one meal a day fasting into your day to day life. If you've been struggling with life or you just haven't been consistent, you go to the website, you can grab that download that.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can also get that via email. If you sign up, come to the Facebook group and give us your email. We'll get that to you in just a couple of ways. You can engage today about starting to build those building blocks, but I just love that the realization that if it's not serving, you stop doing it. If it's working, keep doing it.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like that's not complex. We get interrupted, our thought patterns get interrupted by all of the stuff around us. So really looking inward. 5/2 rule, looking at those list of things that put you off track is an absolute great place to start.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Protect yourself from getting overwhelmed and doubting yourself, especially when things are working. So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Love that. Keep it simple and start taking some action today. Don't wait, take action today.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
As Tommy always says. Happy fasting and set those timers. Tommy, thanks for the conversation today will see inside the group download the fast start guide drop five Star Review. Appreciate all of you listening Tommy. Great conversation, as always, and we'll talk to you.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, thank you. Bye. So you've heard today's episode, and you may be wondering, where do I start? Head on over to the fasting for life icon 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.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
While you're 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 and.