Ep. 156 - The Healthy Heroes Study: Decreasing Cardio Metabolic Risks | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD

 

In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss decreasing cardiometabolic risks to frontline workers, the effects of shift working on the body, and much more.

 

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Fasting For Life Ep. 156 Transcript

 

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

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

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

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

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We started fasting for life because of how fasting has transformed our lives, and we hope to share the tools that we have learned along the way. Hey everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Water and I'm here as always, and my good friend and colleague, Tom Welling. Good afternoon to you, sir.

[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you doing?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fantastic, my friend. Excited for today's conversation. We are going to be talking about a subset of the population today out of the healthy Hero study. So shift workers, specifically physicians, nurses, police, pilots, firefighters, the frontline workers that we are so appreciative of. But you guys are subject to having increased cardio metabolic risk. So we're going to be talking in detail about a study that has recently come out, but that doesn't let the rest of us off the hook, because there is a large segment of the population that also has the same lifestyle disruptions as our frontline heroes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. As the people that are out there that have flipped their lives. Right. Because of their work outside of that standard 9 to 5. So today's episode, we feel is going to be applicable to all of us. We're going to talk about decreasing those cardio metabolic risks. And then also specifically for for those shift workers on how you guys can still incorporate a fasting lifestyle to lose the weight and get healthy, which is the whole point of fasting from from our perspective.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Tom, if you guys are new to the podcast, please go back. Listen, episode zero in episode one, if you feel so inclined. I went back and listened recently. We sound different. Not just technology wise, like microphone wise. Yeah, well, we sound different, but our story still stays the same. It is tried and true to why we are here almost three years later, still delivering weekly episodes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So if you want to learn more about who we are and why we do what we do, head back. Give us a listen with a little bit of grace. And I also want to give a shout out to Travis, who recently gave us a five star review. So if you are so inclined, we love reviews that tells the podcast gods that we're doing something good and providing value in this podcast space.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because we know today everybody has a podcast, but you guys are supporting this one specifically, and we just could never imagine now millions of people that have listened to us, so very grateful for all of you listeners, you longtime listeners as well. And Travis, we want to give you a shout out from the most recent review that we just saw coming through.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, Travis at Five Star, Great Fasting podcast. I've listened to quite a few fasting podcasts and this is by far my favorite. I don't mind you, I like how each episode completely dives into a topic. Clear explanations. Professional production. Oh, thank you. Binge listen while driving. And that little smiley, smiley laughing face. So thank you, Travis. Again, we appreciate that because we know, you know, it takes a few seconds.

[Tommy Welling]
Our time is valuable, right? And it takes a few seconds to do that. So we definitely do appreciate that. So thank you again.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So that's the segment, the self-aggrandizing segment of today's podcast episode. But I love that you said it. You know, I've listened to a lot, right. And the whole sound thing, I'm like, man, I went back and listened. Yeah, we have we have leveled up. So. Thank you, Travis. Thank you, guys.

[Tommy Welling]
Thanks for the grace from everybody.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yes. Yes. We're figuring out to sell. Yeah, we believe we've leveled up as we go through this. And we want to continue to provide you value each week. So let's get into today's conversation. Tommy Time Restricted Eating for improving cardio metabolic health in shift workers. So this is a randomized controlled trial. And as always, we find some things interesting in here.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But big picture, we want to start off with 27% of the U.S. workforce. So as we mentioned, the frontline workers are physicians, nurses, police, pilots, firefighters, truck drivers even fall into this category as well. We have a lot of y'all that listen on the road and you guys just came out of the Health Heroes study because you guys are the frontline heroes of our society, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I love that they named it this and shift workers are frequently subject to the erratic light, dark cycle sleep disturbances and sleep activity that's taking place outside of your standard circadian rhythm patterns. Eating and fasting patterns are all dysfunction because of when you're working right. And that leads to that chronic circadian rhythm disruption, which is at the crux of some of this, some of the stuff that comes out of this study.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And we'll break down the specifics here in just a minute. But it's important to know that it's not just the fact that you're operating outside of the 9 to 5, but it's what is it doing to your circadian rhythm and your metabolism and your body's normal circadian processes?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And even like your hormonal cycles that actually come along with those, those disturbances in the circadian rhythms are like they're such a major driver to a lot of those hormonal cascades that that we rely upon and that are going to come up in, in bloodwork and in our waistline and in our, our visceral fat and all of the things that matter.

[Tommy Welling]
And then later disease processes. Yeah. So, so if we can, if we can do things to, to mitigate and to compensate and to understand what's which levers can we pull to like do better than whatever the the status quo is or the path of least resistance is because you're doing shift work like overnight, you might have dinner at at 3 a.m. or something else, you know, like crazy.

[Tommy Welling]
But at the same time, even if you got enough sleep prior to that shift, your body is like freaking out right now because my, my insulin response is not matching up with the circadian rhythm with with the light dark cycle that's happening right now. It's just it's kind of like havoc. So what can we do to do better?

[Tommy Welling]
Because we know that shift workers are are at a higher risk for all of these things is cardio metabolic diseases and we need to get a handle on on some of that so that so that we can continue to perform our job functions and other things like that and still maintain control over our long term health outcomes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, and that's the thing with shift work. It's a necessary component of society, right? So we need feasible strategies to offset the negative effects of that shift work. Absolutely. To improve our overall health. Right. So already you're on the front line, but we don't need to be putting this group of people that keep our society going at a higher risk.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So we know that shift work elevates the risk for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. So in this study that we'll break down in just a second, I will say it is male dominated in this study. There was only a small subset of women that were that were in this randomized controlled trial. There was 137 shift workers total, and it was done in firefighters.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So age 23 to 59, there was no diagnosed diseases, right. Of these cardio metabolic diseases that we've mentioned. But 71% of these people had one of the risk factors. So something elevated on their bloodwork, some symptom of an underlying issue, which we know is specifically with blood sugar related issues, that eight or nine out of the top ten reasons why people die here in the United States are due to blood sugar related imbalances or insulin to some degree.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So when we're looking at this, some of you are hopefully still listening that aren't shift workers, because in addition to that, a large segment of the population also has a lifestyle or an outside influence that disrupts their circadian rhythms similar to a frontline shift worker.

[Tommy Welling]
Yes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So meaning individuals that have to stay awake for 2 to 3 hours between the time of 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. for at least 50 days a year. So this could be caring for a loved one. This could be scrolling tick tock for hours, blue light disruption, right? Staring at a screen. This could be your dogs, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Or your cat waking you up. This could for me just this week it was my son up on my newborns, babies, loved ones. Right. So a large proponent of the population also has this disruption and not due to the fact that they don't work a 9 to 5, but because of, you know, care responsibilities and even social jetlag.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So like, yeah, the social aspect of life going on for dinner, having drinks, etc., which is one of the big takeaways we'll talk about here now, we found interesting from the study regarding alcohol. We'll get to that in just a minute. Yeah, well, it's students, right?

[Tommy Welling]
Oh, that study and pulling all nighters and things like that or you know, you're you're a professional and then it comes to that part of the quarter or whatever it might be. And you're burning the midnight oil, you know.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Accountant, CPA during tax time. Yeah.

[Tommy Welling]
Oh, man, it's crazy.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
If I would have known I have an aunt who's a CPA and it's always like, I'll talk to you after tax season. It's like, okay, I can see.

[Tommy Welling]
You out of my cave.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, who knows? I wish I would have known all that wearing that is a badge of honor in the restaurant business for years. And then, you know, undergrad and grad school always being the guy pulling the all nighters. I wish I would have known that that was that was really building my issues that finally showed up in when I was running an office in my in my mid thirties.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like I had no idea that all of that stuff was, was a component of Yeah. Those just like these people, the shift workers in this study, these firefighters, 71% of them have one of the red flags raised about a future problem related to obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. So.

[Tommy Welling]
You know, building those those layers of resistance now yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Just one of those big Aha for me coming out of the study so it was really cool randomized control study. So I mean let's break down some of the the study and then we'll talk about some of the outcomes. Yes.

[Tommy Welling]
Can I interrupt you for for phrase?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So what were you.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, it's just it's just the fact that we've said shift workers a lot, but the fact of the matter is that it's that transition between like being on and being off that can be really, really tough. And we all have some component of that in our day to day life. I mean, like nobody if you're.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Especially if you're trying to like tiptoe around the word dieting.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
On, off. Yeah. I don't know if that's where you're going, but that's what just triggered.

[Tommy Welling]
Well, yeah, that, that's part of it for sure. And then, you know, but even like one or two late nights here, you know, a little less sleep over here or, you know, whatever it might be, it might be like nighttime lifestyle, like behavior patterns, whatever it might be. It leads to the same stuff. It's just like when we talked about sleep disturbances and how getting less than six and a half hours like just on just on one night leads to an insulin resistance spike the very next day.

[Tommy Welling]
Does it come back when I regulate my sleep? Absolutely. But the fact of the matter is that one night that the insulin resistance peaked, that that didn't do good things, that that deposited a little bit more visceral fat than than it should have been or it might have a small, tiny effect on the waistline that's just going to it's going to has.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
A huge effect for me on food choices. Yeah, if I ever I had a I had less than 3 hours a few nights ago and I had an afternoon planned of productivity. I was shot and all my brain could think about was, I'm hungry.

[Tommy Welling]
I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I'm hungry, I'm hungry because we know that that one night can disrupt your insulin sensitivity, like you said, and some resistance. And for me personally, those cravings. So yeah, imagine extrapolating that out, never mind just during this 12 week study, but two, 365 times a year. Then time's a decade didn't times a quarter of your life.

[Tommy Welling]
Right? Each one of those incidents is like I'm a shift worker tonight. Yeah. Think about yourself like that. Or when we're going through this study.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Now, we're not equating scrolling on your phone to tick tock to being a police officer on the front landscape. No, no, no. But physiologically speaking, there's a lot of overlap there in terms of what's happening to the disruption of the circadian rhythm. So I love that point. So the primary let's talk about the study, 137 shift workers, firefighters ages 23 to 59.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Interestingly enough, the control group was a 14 hour eating window. Right. And the time restricted eating or the tree group was 10 hours.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Okay. So maybe 11.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
To maybe 11. So we haven't even gotten to the in our world fasting.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Yeah we got three fasting. We're like yeah. Like knocking at the door of.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Their warm up fasting. Okay. Both groups ate a mediterranean diet. Okay. So it was interesting because there were some changes that took place and they say that in the big picture, some of those changes were probably directly related to, you know, the standard of care, which is the control intervention, which was a healthy Mediterranean diet because some parameters, including systolic blood pressure, fasting, blood glucose and CRP, which is inflammation.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We'll break these down individually here in a second. Also improved in the control group. So there was some overlap here because both groups reduce their caloric intake and their opportunity to.

[Tommy Welling]
Eat.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
By about 16% on average. And both groups increase fruits and vegetables. So we're not turning a blind eye to the fact that, oh, you're focusing on your health. Wow, things improve. But there were some cool discrepancies or improvements in the tree group that did not take place. So it's just kind of go through some of these, Tami, in the the control group versus the tree group.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So I'm going to list off primary and secondary. The primary and secondary metrics that they were tracking here. The primary study outcomes were the feasibility of tree and the adherence to tree. So speaking to our soul.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Yeah. Is it sustainable.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Actually. Do this.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Set your timer.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Stick to a fasting window. Right. And they were determined by how often participants ate within their self selected, which I thought was really cool because shift work, it changes that large population of so that we talked about that isn't on the front line but is also having the same circadian changes due to life stresses and kids and all the stuff we mentioned.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, it's a self-selection process so we don't believe in here's your meal plan, here's your solute long term solution.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's on you too. Kind of trial and error and figure out what's going to be a sustainable solution for you. That's why we don't like fasting as a diet. We like fasting as a last lifestyle habit, adaptation. And so the glucose regulation. So we're talking about fasting, blood glucose, HBA one C insulin and insulin sensitivity were also assessed as primary outcomes.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And the secondary outcomes were body weight, body mass index, body fat, percentage, quality of life, love it, sleep. And then the cardinal cardio metabolic mouthful disease risk factors including cholesterol, triglycerides and C-reactive protein as well as systolic and diastolic blood pressure numbers. So they were all assessed at baseline and then again at 12 weeks. It's a really cool design study.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, that is cool because we don't we don't see a lot that taking into account for like quality of life and some of those other markers like that's that's pretty comprehensive right there. You know as far as like painting an overall health picture. So it's cool whenever you start to look at the actual results of it and go, well, even even the control group had a few things like, you know, improve a little bit, little bit of blood pressure improvement, a little bit of HDL improvement, a slight CRB and a slight fasting blood glucose improvement.

[Tommy Welling]
But it went well beyond that for the you know, for the more strict, deliberate group that was doing 10 to 11 hours of time restricted feeding where you had some additional benefits coming into play. But I just thought a cool point right there was is just the fact that going from not thinking about the time or the compartmentalization of your actual eating to to just compartmentalizing it with, with some intentionality over time equals some, some really good normalization going on, especially within this increased risk group, because everyone who was in this study who already had like elevated numbers, their numbers improved more.

[Tommy Welling]
So you had you had a lot of folks who maintained kind of a baseline, especially in the control group, but they didn't have any elevation. They didn't have anything like out of whack already. But if they had something that was was disregulated or uncontrolled, there was improvement.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
If they were. So what you're saying there is if they were 70, if they were one of the 71% of the the study that had one of those abnormal markers indicating a future problem. Right. Like regarding metabolic relationship that they saw the biggest change compared to the control group, even though the control groups still saw that change. So the windows here are so contradictory to my brain, but it reminds me of the restaurant business, you know, at the restaurant, two, three, am going to bed waking up, you know, getting that meal in before I go to bed in the morning, right.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Morning.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So dinner, right. Dinner. Yeah. So in the control group, the 14 hour window was 7 a.m. to about 10 p.m. and my dad used to work Saturday nights and he would go to bed around one, two, sometimes 3:00 in the afternoon on a Saturday. But then he'd get up at ten and then he would eat dinner and then go to work, and then he'd have his lunch and meal the night, and then he would come home and eat a meal and then go to bed so that it was around those same timelines.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You would get home on Sunday, you know, between ten and 11 and he would eat, right? So it really like real life application like oh yeah, that makes sense. I remember that happening when I was growing up in the TR group. Their window was a couple of hours later in the morning, so 9 a.m. and they stop at 7 p.m. so that three hour window, a little bit of variability self-selected by the way, which I really love me.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Interestingly enough, the TRT group adhered to their ten hour eating window on approximately five days of the week and then consumed food or beverages outside of their eating window one or two days a week. So about 25% of the time.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
That remains the same for five to or.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
The Monday through Friday or the three or four days on. Three or four days off. If you're in the medical field, right, you're on call. You're not on call. Firefighters on call. You're not on call. So Monday through Friday. Oh, I got the weekend. 5 to 8 air quotes diet. Oh yeah normal and five days fasting on two days.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
It was cool just to see that kind of inherently came out without being directed to do so.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, even even if you went about your week and you lit up a little bit, I'm not talking going like full on Weekend Warrior or anything else like that, but if it was just kind of like a more on a more deliberate about it or I have tighter windows, tighter boundaries maybe during the week and then on the weekend I, I loosening up just a little bit, a little bit more flexibility, just for real life purposes.

[Tommy Welling]
You know, of course, if if that's working if that's not working, maybe I need to tighten it up some more. But just the fact that they weren't they weren't looking for perfection in the study is a is a really cool I think, takeaway. That's kind of what I heard there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, no, I love that. It just inherently came out and it matches so much of the other stuff that we hear so often, right. The struggle of like long term sustainability. So I love that this, first of all, was the results were so incredible just in a 14 hour window, like without any like other than, hey, you know, metro training today.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Here you go. And then the ten hour window, just 3 hours, what was 11, three hour difference, rat a tat tat. Over 12 weeks, the control group saw a decrease in systolic blood pressure, decrease in fasting blood glucose, decrease in CRP, which is an inflammatory marker that messes with your hunger signals and your effectiveness of your insulin and your leptin.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And a slight increase in the good air quotes. Good cholesterol.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Now the tree group. Right. So the 3 hours last year. Yeah. Decreased weight and BMI increased insulin sensitivity. So the effectiveness of the insulin decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressure, decreased fasting blood glucose decreased A1 C decreased the LDL particle size, decreased sleep disturbances big especially. Right, right. And again, decreased CRP. So there's a couple of little things you want to highlight here and that in that in that list.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But a lot of the times, people come and say, okay, how do I start fasting? What do I do?

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, ideally, you want to get to that 18, 20, 24 hour mark as quickly as possible. Yes. Because never mind if you're going to see the benefits here, man. You're going to see some dramatic changes in the scale and in your insulin resistance when you push those windows. But there is some cool things in here, especially related to the sleep and the alcohol that we want to highlight.

[Tommy Welling]
Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's incredible. We start to get off of the starting block, off of like that, that 14, 16 hour, you know, where we're a lot of folks, especially when we have more weight to lose or we have more insulin resistance, it can feel like it's really not working. But I'm not really sure how to get to the next step, like just the fact that that this compartmentalizing into this ten hour eating window and getting that that lower sleep disturbances right there, I feel like that that probably led to a lot of the beneficial effect on the insulin sensitivity because we know the to work hand-in-hand.

[Tommy Welling]
And when you're a shift worker, you are fighting those sleep disturbances right there. And just like when you were talking about your dad coming home and like, oh.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
We had to go outside, we had to go upstairs. It was like Dad's got the fan on, he's got the door closed, the towel at the bottom of the door. We were in a tiny little apartment, but like. Right, don't wake him up.

[Tommy Welling]
Sleep, quarantine. Yes, yes. Protected it, but probably before that sleep ensued. Like you said, he had to get that meal in, right like that. That dinner meal, which is like maybe just an hour or two whenever I can squeeze it in before I need to get that. That's so important. Sleep right there that I need to protect, however, counterintuitively, that that meal so close to when I actually need that sleep is going to be disturbing of that sleep, too.

[Tommy Welling]
So if I can compartmentalize that a little bit more and and don't have that meal so close to when I need that, that sleep, I need to protect that sleep. I'm going to have better results right there. And that's that seem to be displayed here. You know, in in the results of the study. And the alcohol portion was was crazy, too, because this was kind of like kind of like an afterthought here.

[Tommy Welling]
They didn't they didn't tell the participants to control their alcohol at all. There was nothing there. But the the decrease in alcohol consumption that just naturally occurred within both of these groups. It was a small decrease in the control group, but it was two and a half times larger of a decrease within the tri group, the one that was at that ten or 11 hours compartmentalize there.

[Tommy Welling]
And I got a couple theories on that.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I was going to say I didn't see anything in there that really stood out. So I'm interested. I'm interested to hear this.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. You know, because like that that goes hand in hand with the sleep disturbances, with the insulin resistance, as well. So like it's an important factor at the same time, like not being told to actually decrease your alcohol consumption, but then seeing a decrease that speaks to me to like nighttime behavior patterns and like, you know, slippage.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And just so you can't see me because we're on a podcast, but I'm raising both of my hands. This was one of my big problems for years.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Not necessarily the effect of alcohol and what it does to your fat burning, which completely shuts down. Yeah, but like those behaviors in those time periods, right? Yeah. For sure, man. That's so huge.

[Tommy Welling]
This the sleep badge of honor that goes along with, well, I'm awake and I'm doing other things and maybe they're productive things, but either way, like, I'm not asleep and I'm not compartmentalizing. I'm not focused on like the sleep discipline, let's call it right now. And then it's like, okay, well, alcohol, I might I might have a drink with me if if I have the drink, I might have something to snack on, too, especially something salty or crunchy or something like that.

[Tommy Welling]
Or it could go in reverse to where I have like a late, late night snack. Maybe a drink goes along with it. Either way, it's going to lead to sleep disturbances, let alone like more calorie intake coming in as well. But when we start to compartmentalize, having better controls on like when is it that I'm actually stopping my consumption time and then it leads to better sleep, which leads to less sleep disturbances and the in the upcoming days too.

[Tommy Welling]
Like I feel better, I have better better boundaries. And then all of a sudden, like I'm consuming less alcohol to go with it and then the health effects are there. Like I'm, I'm reducing some of the stress on my liver. That's the key component to fat burning and metabolism, too. So like, it's amazing how synergistically all of these things are like working working in tandem hand-in-hand here.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
I want to talk about that quality of life piece for a second, too, because one of the the quality of life and sleep category, which is one of the things that I really loved about this, was, yes, there were no changes in duration, quality, daytime sleepiness in either group. But the disturbances so I wear a woop and I, I can tell you my recovery is going to be better when I have less disturbances.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
This isn't rocket science. It's like, does my body can recover better. But the quality of life piece was really cool. They looked at the SF 36, which is a 36 item short form survey subcategories for both physical and mental health scores, which I thought was really cool because we did see some improvements in the physical ability to perform, which if you're a firefighter in this study that's not trying to be cheeky here, life or death performance on the job for you.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, right. So nurses, doctors making decisions.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Like huge implications, right. Mental acuity. Right. So I love the idea that because if we look at this for a sustainability standpoint, because one of the things that I liked about this is, is Terry is now being looked at time, restricted eating or fasting. It's been around since the dawn of time, right? Upton Sinclair, 1911, the fasting cure.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You know, I came across it by Dr. Fong because you were doing it and it was working. And then I started reading his stuff and getting his books and looking at the research, and this is what podcast came from, because our lives are transformed from it.

[Tommy Welling]
Absolutely.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
But Terry is promising as a dietary intervention because it may be a more feasible way to improve metabolic health compared to low and slow long term chronic calorie restriction. Right, due to adherence. Right. But there's long term studies recently that have and we've talked about them that have failed to support the idea that time restricted eating or fasting is more effective than traditional diets when calories are equated.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
However, it seems that when the study participants were given in a limited daily eating window, they're going to naturally restrict. That's the beauty of fasting. Then you get all of those additional physiological benefits, right? Because the people at the end of the study said the Terry group improved their overall health health change at the end of the 12 hour convention.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So what that is saying is that they actually saw themselves being healthier, their view of their health at the end of the intervention.

[Tommy Welling]
Well, why?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because the needle moved. They saw the result and they're like, wow, they felt it. They saw it, they experienced. And they're like, Whoa. But I didn't make that big of a change, right? So that's why at the beginning, we're like, Yeah, it's 11 hours. Okay, imagine if you did if.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You've got considerable weight to lose, you've got considerable metabolic markers to reverse. The power lies in that whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I love that. One of the outcomes here was, wow, yeah, this could be sustainable. And for some of you, it's not. Some of you need to track, you need to weigh in, you need to do the exercise 60 minutes a day, seven days a week. Like it's not for everybody. The fasting lifestyle isn't for everyone, but it has the potential to be a long term solution.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And if it can be a long term solution in this group, then I mean the rest of us that have the life stuff that comes up being woken up by the dogs, the kids to care for loved ones, whatever the scrolling on TikTok, I think it could probably work for us too.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, yeah. They'll a lot less frequent, lot less to battle there. You know, I, I feel like, you know, your previous statement is so true like this. This could be a lifestyle, but not for everybody. But at the same time, like, if you if you are tracking you are weighing and, you know, doing the extra cardio like I was, you know, to to build a little bit more of a caloric deficit right there.

[Tommy Welling]
Ask yourself honestly, like, is it working? Like, is it is it getting me the results that I'm looking for? So because if it's not, then now it'd be a heck of a good time to like, you know, try something a little bit different, right? Like, like it's always uncomfortable to try something new, but. But that's where new growth happens.

[Tommy Welling]
Like right on the edge of our comfort zone. So like pushing yourself a little bit beyond that comfort zone right here. Like you said, it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be drastically different. Right. I have to like set the world on fire to do something better and get a better result from it.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And that's where I love some people. This is quoted from the text. Some people just find it easier to restrict when they eat rather than what they eat. And that is a great starting point because in shift work, the misalignment of food intake with circadian rhythms in metabolic processes is the reason, the contributing factor to chronic disruption, which that disruption is characterized by impaired metabolism, can lead to overconsumption, they say, over nutrition, which I find interesting.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Appetite, dysregulation, sedentary behaviors, all of which are associated with the weight gain and the metabolic disease that kind of grows over time. Right. So, yeah, just the fact a starting point of just changing the time, never mind what you eat. And again, it wasn't a huge, drastic change here. Right. But a 60% reduction, right. Between the two groups overall.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Overall in both groups of control in the tree. But the time studying improving the metabolic health improving regulating the daily rhythms of the liver, of the insulin effectiveness, of the glucagon signaling of the fatty acid oxidation, burning your literal fat stores to lose weight right? Improving the digestion and health of the gut microbiome and regulating the appetite hormones including leptin ghrelin from a three hour just from focusing on moving the window just a little bit.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
So powerful for everyone that's listening.

[Tommy Welling]
Wow. You know, I want to I want to go practical again here because one of one of the original objections to fasting or questions that we got when when we first started the podcast was from some shift workers who were like, this sounds awesome. I need this. I've been I'm sedentary, but having a yeah, I'm in a truck or I'm at the hospital, whatever it might be.

[Tommy Welling]
But I feel like I'm really sedentary a lot of the time and I don't really know how to do this because I'm on again, off again, that kind of thing. The schedules are always moving. So I, I always feel like I'm playing catch up between my sleep and the nutrition that I need to get in and and all these other kind of variables, you know.

[Tommy Welling]
So the permission for yourself to have, like to pick at least like two different ways that you're going to implement, you know, some of these like compartmentalization for time restricted eating, I feel like is a really important starting point because for a lot of us, especially, like if you have perfectionist tendencies or you're, you know, very analytical, it can feel like I can't do the same thing every day.

[Tommy Welling]
So I really haven't found the perfect solution. Well, you might just need a flip side.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Of the coin. Ain't that.

[Tommy Welling]
Life, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, it's always like that, but that doesn't mean that you or your health have to suffer because of it. You may just need, you know, literally like you're doing shift work. You might need to have a a plan shift. You might need an EP and a plan and a B plan when.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You're on or when you're off. Yeah. And when.

[Tommy Welling]
You're off. Yeah. And that's okay. And like maybe one's a little bit like there's, there's somebody in the group. You mentioned that just the other day about like when they're, when they're on the rig, it's it's a very different like fasting schedule versus when they're off the rig. And it was like one is like maintenance mode. I'm just like maintaining my results.

[Tommy Welling]
And then the other one is, is I'm a little bit more like aggressive or vigilant with my fasting, my, my eating window is, is a bit shorter. My fasting window's a bit longer. That's okay to switch back and forth like that. That's real life and that, that, that equals long term success right there.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So for shift workers specifically and I want to mention one thing, it was a wrap up today. Tell me for everyone, is that what you just said was so powerful, pick your schedule went on and went off and it's 14 hours to 11 hours had all of these drastic changes. Yeah. So the magic is in the consistency.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. No matter then if we go zoom out to the population, general population. Right. What about your weekends.

[Tommy Welling]
Mm.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Just like in the study, one out of two days were off compared to what the other five days were. That sounds like a weekday weekend situation to me, which if you've heard our fasting types conversation, then, you know, the majority of people identify with the weekend warrior, which is I do great during the week and then the weekend the wheels fall off.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right.

[Tommy Welling]
So yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Just putting some intention on the weekend of moving that window a few hours. Can get you dramatic benefit and keep that momentum going from the week. Just like the shift workers, your on or off, what is your weekday plan? What is your weekend plan? What is your when you're on call plan, what is when you're off when you're off plan.

[Tommy Welling]
Right? Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
And the power is in that simplicity, in that consistency. So I just really love this shout out again to all the frontline workers. I love that they name once again that they named the study, the healthy heroes study. Right? Yeah. And we the risk factors, the circadian rhythm disruptions and all that stuff that comes with that. So I just love this conversation today.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Tell me if you want to continue the conversation and get support for situations like this. Two things you can do. One is you can go to the website, the fasting for life, icon, forward slash resources, and you can grab our one meal a day fasting guide. If you've been doing some fasting already past that 14 hour, you're that intermittent window, right?

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fasting 16, eight hour window. You're still not seeing the results. It's still not consistent. Well, the one meal a day fat loss starting guide. Right. The fast start guide can get you some to kind of level up your fasting skills. And then.

[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can also come and join the conversation in our Fasting for Life Community Group on Facebook, which is a really cool group. I love the conversations that come in. We got new people joining organically, just coming in, finding us. We created that group because it is different than a lot of the other fasting groups that I was a part of and I'm still a part of a few, but we want you to come and get the support and be around like minded individuals that are on the same journey as you are.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because one of the things that this article said was, Well, we need to look at whether or not this is sustainable long term. And I'm like, okay, well, we're seeing inside of our group, we're living proof that it is sustainable and the thousands of people that we've taken through our challenges now. So come join the conversation, Tommy. Be around like minded individuals.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
You can talk about fasting because that's all we do, 24 seven inside of that group and pretty much in our life. So excited to appreciate the true story. Right. Appreciate the conversation today. Thank you all for listening and time we we'll talk to you.

[Tommy Welling]
Cool 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 dot com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive.

[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fasting.

[Tommy Welling]
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.