Ep. 141 - The Insulinogenic Effect of Certain Foods | The Effect of Periodic Ketogenic Diet and Low-carbohydrate, Ketogenic Diet | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD
***JOIN THE FASTING LIFESTYLE CHALLENGE THAT STARTS SEPTEMBER 7th, 2022!
-New to fasting or want to get back on track?
-Struggling to break through a plateau?
-Ready to finally stop obsessing about your diet?
We'll teach you how to finally LOSE weight for good and use 'fast cycling' to achieve uncommon results! Join us SEPT 7th for the Fasting Lifestyle Challenge! REGISTER HERE! Click the Link for DATES, DETAILS, and FAQ’s!
In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the insulinogenic effect of certain foods, the effect of periodic ketogenic diet on newly diagnosed overweight or obese patients with type 2 diabetes, and the effects of a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet on the polycystic ovary syndrome. Listen in and catch the conversation!
Let’s continue the conversation. Click the link below to JOIN the Fasting For Life Community, a group of likeminded, new and experienced fasters! The first two rules of fasting need not apply!
Fasting For Life Community - Join HERE
New to the podcast and wondering where to start? Head to the website and download our FREE Fast Start Guide, 6 simple steps to put One Meal a Day Fasting (OMAD) into practice!
Maybe you are an experienced faster and wondering about your results and IF they could be linked to INSULIN resistance? Head over to the website and download our FREE Insulin Resistance Assessment!
Or get both here at our website:
www.thefastingforlife.com/resources
If you enjoy the podcast, would you please tap on the stars below and consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it makes a difference in helping bring you the best original content each week. We also really enjoy reading them!
Sign up for the Fasting For Life newsletter at www.thefastingforlife.com
Follow Fasting For Life: www.facebook.com/thefastingforlife
www.instagram.com/thefastingforlife
Join the Community on Facebook!
Reference Articles:
https://nutritionandmetabolism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1743-7075-2-35#Sec2
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8811985/pdf/12902_2022_Article_947.pdf
Fasting For Life Ep. 141 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 w 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 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.
[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 is Scott Water and I'm here as always. Am a good friend and colleague, Tommy Welling. Good afternoon to you, sir.
[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott. How are you.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Doing? Fantastic, my friend. We are going to be diving into a great conversation today on the insulin and genic effect of certain foods and the keto diet and referencing you back to another conversation, powerful conversation that we had on Quito, but really focusing in on the insulin component. So if you are new to the podcast, first and foremost, welcome.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Thank you for giving us a shot. Hopefully you get some value out of today's episode. As you heard, we have a challenge coming up, which is actually starting tomorrow. So it is not too late to sign up. About 40 or 50% of our people come from these last 24 hours. You procrastinate like I do. The time is now.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We hope to see you on the inside. And if you are new again, we try to give you one actionable step or one or two things that you can take away from each individual episode. When it comes to weight loss, fasting, getting your health back and whatever your health goals are. So welcome, welcome, welcome to the OGs, to the listeners with us.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
For a while we really appreciate you continuing to listen and beyond this fasting journey with us. So Tommy, today's conversation, we're going to talk around Insulin and Quito and why insulin should be the focal point of your plan when you are trying to come up with a specific lifestyle. We don't like the word diet, right? Specific lifestyle for a specific purpose for you as an individual.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And why cookie cutter programs and weight loss techniques and hacks and all of those things don't work long term. So we're going to we're going to touch on a few of those different nuance points in there, and I think it's going to be a good combo. So I'm ready to dove in.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, yeah. As do I, because a lot of those things that we hear are so, so black and white, so, so distinctly defined sometimes that they just don't always work. And you find yourself oftentimes not knowing what you're allowed, quote unquote, to change or what you could effectively change and adjust to actually make a sustainable lifestyle shift. And so we're going to give some perspective on some of the most important factors when considering your insulin response and ketogenic diet application, specifically.
[Tommy Welling]
So I love this conversation that we're going to get into.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So first and foremost for insulin, right. So we talk a lot about calorie and calorie. Albert Carb insulin model of obesity. Why do we have 75% of the population overweight or obese? Why do we have all of this metabolic disease and heart disease and never before. Yet we have more modern medicine than any before. We have this convenience issue, we have this hedonic food pyramid.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We have the modification of our foods to have a certain mouthfeel and a palatability and an attractiveness to them. And, you know, willpower. We talk about all of these things throughout the 100 and whatever episode we're on, right? And the conversations that we have of insulin is a key component as well as a calorie component to the equation.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
They both matter and they both matter at different times for different reasons. But insulin sometimes gets a bad rap in low carb circles or low carb diets or carbs are bad type mentality and restricting, you know, emitting, as we can see in the diabetic studies for weight loss and for optimal health outcomes, meaning less medications, more health, right, right.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Better numbers, they don't equate. Right. So long term restriction and omission, the weight comes back. You know, the study on 12% of people and we've referenced couple of podcast episodes on this are metabolically healthy and only 5% of people keep the weight off after two or three years. Sure. So we have more information, more stuff than ever before.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And insulin sometimes gets a bad rap in certain circles and it can be oversimplified. So there's more to weight gain than insulin, a lot more. Okay. And for general health, insulin isn't necessarily bad, right? I mean, it's actually necessary for certain, you know, health related goals like gaining muscle.
[Tommy Welling]
Right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So you do. Yeah, you have to have it. It's not just cut it out and get it as low as possible. We want our bodies to be able to balance the hormones over time. And keto isn't just about general health. Quito is about a very specific metabolic shift where you go from burning glucose as a sugar supply or the breakdown of glycogen in the liver or a energy dumped from your muscles, your skeletal muscles, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or it's a metabolic shift where if your goal is ketosis specifically, then yes, insulin is bad. But overall we want balance and that's where the sustainability piece comes in because insulin does suppress ketone production. But the ketogenic diet is a slippery, tricky little beast. Right? And we did a whole episode on that and we'll reference out here in just a minute.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the first thing that we want to talk about is eating for low insulin, but then also the protein component.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, I think that was a great point too, because if if we got onto a ketogenic diet without a plan for for actually what we were going to do as the weight starts to come off or what to do for long term sustainability, then we might be overfocus on keeping insulin at artificially low levels for too long. And that's that's really not a good thing.
[Tommy Welling]
Just like you alluded to like we we need the balance. However, if we're on a a fat loss phase of our of our journey of our health, journey of our weight, journey here, then we are going to need those insulin levels to come down and to stay down for longer periods of time so that we can actually get into the ketosis metabolic shift and that we can stay there so that we can burn through some of those long term fat stores.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, I think that's important to note.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. One of the things that comes through a lot of the questions is, you know, tomorrow I'm monitoring my levels or I can't seem to get my ketones into the ideal range or oh, you know, my ketones are 1.5 and I felt like icky. Why is that? Or Oh, I tested them in the morning and I've been fasting for 24 hours and there's a lot of variability and moving parts when it comes to tracking this type of stuff.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So first, well, experience with ketosis or keto diet is being on the the more strict keto where it was 5 to 10% carbs, 20% protein and the remaining percent coming from your fat sources. It got me to a certain amount of weight loss initially, but then it was really hard to sustain and doing body scan testing. There was a loss of muscle mass as well because I wasn't getting enough protein.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
But then on the other side of this sticky situation is that protein like a whey protein supplement or a protein isolate in a protein bar can spike insulin dramatically more than a whole food source. So if you're doing a high protein kido, you're got about 30% of your protein in terms of your total breakdown for the day. And so it's like, okay, what is the best fit for who and why?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So again, that's why we started today's conversation with if you are coming to the keto diet, if your goal is ketosis specifically, excuse me, then insulin is bad news. But we want to talk and zoom out about a bigger picture of balance.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And so, you know, for that balance and speaking of those nutritional sources and what your breakdown is of how much protein you're actually getting versus your fat and your carbohydrates, I think it's important to note that that whole food sources, rather than those supplements that you just you just mentioned, even like the distinction between eat the whole egg versus like a prior egg, white, you know, like a bodybuilding mentality sometimes or a fat loss mentality sometimes of like just the egg whites, egg white, egg white, egg white.
[Tommy Welling]
Like, I know so many people who just order egg white omelets. Right. That's kind of a relic sometimes from the eighties and the nineties and the low fat freeze. Some of that remember when when eggs were demonized for a lot of that time, too, and that can kind of carry over and more of the low carb kind of habits if those are, you know, seeping into the ketogenic side, then those can be kind of hidden insulin spikes that you weren't expecting that can slow or stall progress to.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, we know that protein can stimulate insulin production, right? Yeah. And you know, when we're looking at that exact pathway, you're going to take an M Tau and GLP one pathways and all that kind of stuff. But ideally the main driver here is what we want to focus on is getting that carbohydrate content to a natural food source and a healthy source and a moderate to low amount.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
If you are trying to lose weight and prefer that way of living is the most important part. So carbohydrates spike, insulin the most. So that's what we need to focus on, right? Key does a really good job of that sustainability wise. When we did the podcast episode previously talking about the effects of a 90 day keto diet keto program on newly diagnosed diabetics or people that were overweight, the compliance piece was really hard, and we saw another study that we talked about here in a second about polycystic ovarian syndrome PCOS, where keto has been shown to have really great results with that as well.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
We're talking like a 70% reduction in fasting insulin, right? Like massive change, but only like a small, tiny little handful of people were able to make it to the six month mark.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we saw an attrition rate that was really high from a sustainability standpoint. And that's why the specific diet lifestyle excuse me, I caught myself for a specific purpose, for a specific designated amount of time. So that 90 day keto study that we talked about really showed that cycling on and off of the keto diet is really beneficial.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And then what you can do in the interim is keep your carbs moderate to low if that's the way you choose to eat, and then you can increase that protein to stimulate that muscle synthesis and not always having to live in this one tiny little box of, well, I'm just going to do it this way because it gets me this result.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, personally. And then in the research, it shows that that's not sustainable for a lot of people.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, great points because you see that big inflection point where that that big drop off between like after the 90 day mark because we've seen several studies that tried to take this out to about like the 4 to 6 month range and where compliance just went to 20, 25% across that, you know, that bridge right there. But in the first 90 days, much, much higher compliance, so much easier to stick with.
[Tommy Welling]
And I always feel like if I go into something like strategic, like a a major diet shift or some sort of plan like this, if I went into it thinking, okay, if ketogenic is going to be effective for me, then that means I'm going to have to maintain it for the rest of my life. If I'm kind of like mentally ticking off the things that I don't like while I'm undoing it, it's like the frustration is kind of just slowly building where I don't see myself doing this long term.
[Tommy Welling]
And eventually that may be the point where I just go, Okay, well, it may be working for me, but it's kind of slowing down. Plus, I don't see it working for me long term sustainability wise. That's like that's my drop off point. But if I know, Hey, I'm doing this for a strategic amount of time, like you said, maybe it's 60 days or 90 days.
[Tommy Welling]
And then I don't have to worry about those pieces that I don't love because it's a temporary thing. I'm doing it for a specific purpose and I know how I'm going to transition out of it. That's like the healthy balance. Like the mental balance that I find is is really important in a process like this.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And you just said something there too, about the sustainability of it, right? So if you look at the two year, 18 months to year diabetic studies for low carb, the HBA, once he comes back, the jugs come back, the medications come back, the weight comes back. And ultimately, you're farther from your goal and the frustration comes back and the episode that we specifically spoke on that research article about the periodic ketogenic diet, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That was episode 135. So if you haven't heard it, go back and listen to it because there's there's more specific in there on kind of how to really put that into action. So the second component of this is that that off ramp. Okay, now you've done it. So we have the study. There's multiple studies on there about the benefits of the keto diet for polycystic ovarian syndrome.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And you can get tremendous improvements in body weight luteinizing, hormone, FSA, hormone ratio, fasting, insulin, glucose, blood pressure, triglycerides, you know, body hair like there are, you know, women getting pregnant in some of these studies that have previously been unable to. Right. Yeah. So there's a whole nother category here of the benefits of the ketogenic diet for PCOS, never mind all the other health metrics that improve right on a low carb ketogenic diet.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So we're specifically talking about, you know, ramping out of these things or cycling through them. It's really going to come down to making making sure that you're putting foods that you enjoy into your day to day eating lifestyle, not completely restricting and permitting, but getting natural food sources, less refined processed foods, and really looking at it where as you can start to decrease the Kito portion, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The fat portion is switching over to more fattier cuts of meat like a rib on. Yeah, right. So you're going to be upping your protein, keep your carbs low to moderate, which is very common, especially if you're trying to undo, you know, diabetes pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, blood sugar related issues. We recommend sticking there. Yeah. Now, if you're a lean athlete and you've you've got performance and things you're working on and building muscle and gains and that kind of thing, then you're obviously going to want to as the leaner you get, the less visceral fat you get, the more more carbohydrates you can safely have.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Not the refined, processed stuff, again, the stuff, the natural whole food sources. But as you're starting to look at ramping out is you're going to want to increase your protein. You want to be adding in that second chicken breast. You're going to want to add in the bigger cut of meat. You're going to want to open up your fasting window, you know, as the weight is coming off or maybe when you hit a plateau, it's good to take a break from it and open up your fasting windows a little bit.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Give yourself more opportunity to get that good nutrition in, but always start from the place where we started this conversation, which was specificity, individualization. What is that? Sustainability look like for you in the long term?
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And what I really like about what you just said was thinking about it as how are you going to exit out of it? Which is going to include How do I work this into my fasting lifestyle as well? And which is a big part of how you implement your ketogenic diet cycle as well. Because if I'm going to bring in this this ketogenic, these kind of macro profiles to lower my insulin response, well, like what's my superpower against my insulin response?
[Tommy Welling]
Well, it's my it's my fasting, too, right? It's my consistency with my fasting. And so as I can bring up my consistency within my fasting lifestyle, then I can put that together with something like a strategic short to mid-term ketogenic diet. And then now I have superpowers where I can, I can lower my insulin response. I can tap into my long term fat stores.
[Tommy Welling]
Right? And I can start doing this in a way that I was not personally able to do before understanding fasting, because just bring in ketogenic foods and a ketogenic lifestyle. I was at a point of insulin resistance that I wasn't able to move the needle even with very, very strict compliance going into multiple months of eating a ketogenic lifestyle.
[Tommy Welling]
And I was only able to move the scale, you know, just by a few pounds and then quickly plateaued from there. And I remember talking to you about, you know, the fat bombs and the other things like that. They kind of come into the ketogenic world that are really, really popular, but not necessarily helping if you're you're looking to actually move the scale, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. One of the pitfalls you just alluded to there is making sure that you don't have too little protein. Right. But you want moderate protein. So really, ketones should be lowered if this is the lifestyle that you choose. Right. This is something that you can see that's going to work for you. So if you're not in the all I'm going to cycle on and then go back to a more moderate balanced plate, then if you want to live the keto lifestyle, then make sure that you're keeping the carbs low.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right, but you have moderate protein, so you're still going to get insulin reducing benefits, but you're also going to have adequate protein to allow you to keep your lean body tissue, stay metabolically healthy, stay satiated because fat and protein have satiating effects. But specifically making sure that you're going to be able to cycle in and out of ketosis and also have options or availability of different foods.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because I don't know about you, but sustainability gets boring after a while. Like you got to mix it up, right? Like, okay, so while I can't have that, that, that or that, so what can I have? What do you need to make sure that you have enough things to pull from your list in terms of the different macro breakdowns?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So really, you know, ketones going to get you significantly reducing the fasting insulin, but making sure that we're having moderate enough protein for that sustainability satiety piece.
[Tommy Welling]
It's yeah, I think that that's a really important part too, because even just looking at the recipes that you normally go to, like, like during a keto cycle, let's say if you want to call it that, just kind of swapping out one of those food swaps that I can make, right? One of those, those things where I don't have to necessarily feel like, oh, well, I've cut out all these different foods because let me make some strategic swaps here, and then I can feel like I'm still able to have some of those foods, like there's some really cool pizza swaps like chicken crust pizza and other cool things like that.
[Tommy Welling]
You can get really creative with it and not really just feel like you've stopped some of those foods that you have a connection to or, you know, maybe they led to some of the weight gain in the past. You know, you don't necessarily have to feel like you just block yourself off from everything that you enjoyed, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. And it's so key. Like there's so many little ahas that can happen as you start to, like, stumble through this stuff and figure out you don't have to be 100% perfect on your plan, especially frustrating if you're not getting the result right. So as we kind of wrap up today's conversation, go back and listen to the previous episode on the periodic ketogenic diet for newly diagnosed diabetics or overweight individuals.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That's episode 135. Make sure that if you are going to be using Quito long term, that you're going to be making sure that you have a moderate amount of protein, which is still going to give you the insulin genic decrease the insulin decrease to get the weight off and increase your metabolic health overall. Watch out for those low fat dairy options.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right? The egg white versus the whole egg. Eat the whole egg. Right. Make sure you're increasing some of those fattier cuts of meat so you can get both the protein and the fat and just beware of the supplementation like the whey protein to try to get your stuff from. Yeah, the bars try to get your stuff from the whole food supply, a whole food source.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And as we wrap up today is really, you know, dialing in your fasting windows. The easiest way to reduce insulin is not worrying about Quito. It's to stop eating anything and is too fast.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The fastest decrease in insulin. And for some people you're going to hit a wall around 1618 hours or you're going to have to build up your resistance. You're gonna have to build up those those fasting muscles as the cravings tend to balance out, etc.. And then maybe you're at a plateau and you're at that 24 hour mark. Okay, I can do one meal a day, but it doesn't excite me any more.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Okay, it's time for a change. It's not time to push past time to do a 30 hour fast. If you're trying to reverse blood sugar issues, make sure you're getting in one of those 36 hour fast at least once a week to get your blood sugar numbers to come down. You can combine that with keto and then see the fasting insulin come down like we referenced in a couple of articles that we referenced today.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, but it's that give and take, it's that constant reflection on what's working and what's not. But there should be an excitement to it. Which leads us into the challenge of starting tomorrow because we are super pumped man. An incredible group of people signed up already. It's not too late if you're listening to this going okay now more confused than ever.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
If the plane didn't land for you this episode, come on in, click the show notes, get the information, sign up. And as we exit today's conversation. Tommy, final thoughts as we wrap up. I really think that again, where we started today, which was the purpose of today's conversation, which is putting some intention into why you're making the decisions you're making.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And are they sustainable for me as an individual?
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And just the fact that there are other levers, even if you haven't pulled them just yet, there are other things that that you can do to take your your journey to the next level right here. So I just love this conversation. Ketogenic can be a powerful, powerful tool, especially when combined with solid, consistent fasting. So, so get your ketogenic skills up and get your fasting skills up and watch the new results come.
[Tommy Welling]
So it's awesome. I love this conversation. Thank you.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Awesome, awesome, awesome. All right, you guys know where to find us. Go to the shownotes, click the link. If you want to sign up for the challenge, you can also join the Facebook community. That link is also in the show notes as well. That hero episode that I referenced on the earlier the episode. 135 In the Facebook group, we actually have our keto recipe back.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you want to get that, you can go and grab that as well. If you want all of our recipe packs, you get those when you join the challenge and they are yours to keep. So we'll dangle a carrot just a little bit there at the end. Tomi, as always, thank you for the conversation, sir. And we will talk soon.
[Tommy Welling]
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.