Ep. 171 - Fasting & Eating for optimal health, performance, & longevity | How weight, food choices, & calories affect lifespan | How to stop an on/off fasting mindset to gain consistency | CGM data to optimize your fasting | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan
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In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the "Done for you diet", long-term caloric restriction's connection with aging, how to gain consistency and more.
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Research Links:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.23568
Fasting For Life Ep. 171 Transcript
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Hello. I’m Dr. Scott Watier.
[Tommy Welling]
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, welcome to the Fasting for Life Podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Warner and I'm here as always. I'm a good friend, Colleague Tommy Welling. Good afternoon to you, sir.
[Tommy Welling]
Hey, Scott, how are you?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fantastic, as always. Excited for today's conversation. It is podcast episode day. Excited for what we're going to go over today, Tomorrow is the day Challenge number two of the 2023 calendar season. Seven day fasting at Lifestyle Challenge starts tomorrow. It is not too late for you. Last minute Larry's or last minute Lorraine's. It is okay. I am raising both my hands because that is me to head to the show notes, click the link for essay cues, dates, times, all that information get registered, don't miss out.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Don't worry, you'll get the email with all the information. It'll be in your inbox momentarily after you decide to jump in with us. I don't want you to miss out on that opportunity. So, Tommy, as we go into today's conversation, there's a couple of the research articles that we're going to use as a starting or a jumping off point for a conversation around the big picture of dieting and weight loss.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And if you're new to the podcast every episode we tried to go through a conversation or a situation or a listeners question or something that came up in the coaching group or during a challenge research, etc., and give you something actionable that you can take out and apply to your fasting lifestyle. Now, I didn't say your dieting lifestyle, which is why I think today's conversation is going to be fun.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
But to your fasting lifestyle, if you want to hear more about our story, head back. Listen to the first episode, Episode one, and how fasting has been just crucial in our journey and our weight loss and our health insurance forming our lives. So game.
[Tommy Welling]
Changer.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
One thing that you're going to be able to do today, maybe two, maybe three, maybe you'll get a couple of nuggets. But we want to make sure there's something actionable that you can take out each and every episode. So the two articles that we're going to talk about are which dietary patterns reduce, which kinds of mortality. Okay, So healthy eating pattern just came out just recently, February 1st, 2023, from Journal of American Medical Association Internal Medicine.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And it says, Healthy eating patterns and risk of total and cause specific mortality. So is what we're doing and what we're putting on our plate making us healthier and live longer? Or is it making us our quality of life decrease and die early? Not to be morbid. The second article there's little I'm going to put a little dangling kind of little foreshadowing in there.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The second article is a fact of long term caloric restriction on DNA methylation measures of biological aging in healthy adults from the calorie trial. Okay, that's a mouthful. But why we're talking about this is because dieting or caloric restriction, they go hand in hand and there is a lot of unsuccessful attempts. If we look at the statistics that 95% of mere mortals will not be able to sustain the weight loss that they have wanted or the quality of life or the health that comes with that.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
If we look at the State of the Union right now, the eight out of the top ten reasons for all cause mortality have some link back to insulin or blood sugar related issues cardiometabolic issues, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, diabetes, obesity. Yes, you heard that right. Diabetes, type three, diabetes, Alzheimer's, all of that stuff. So we all know that if you've got this feeling of, man, I just got to do something, I'm frustrated.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I haven't been focusing on my eating. I'm tired again. Oh, the doctor. Ha! The the yearly physicals coming up. Oh, you have a family member again. Here we go again. If you have that feeling, which is what you and I had in the very beginning. Before. Yes. Before diving in the doctor. Fun stuff and fasting and being like, well, this is pretty crazy and pretty powerful and this simplifies things for us.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So what we're putting on our plate and long term caloric restriction are things that come up even almost as hindrances or concerns during this weight, this weight loss journey, this health journey, Right? Yeah.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And any of those points along the way, if I run into a spot where I go, I'm just not sure what to do next or I just don't know if I'm doing this right, Whatever this might be, it might be what's on my plate or what kind of exercise I'm doing. Because for a lot of us it was like become a cardio junkie, you know, to get a little bit more of a caloric deficit, right?
[Tommy Welling]
Like my appetite to go.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Burn off those wings.
[Tommy Welling]
I can I can I can eat a little bit more or I'm making up for for what I already ate a little bit faster. Right. So if I run into those spots where I don't have as much confidence or I'm not really sure what the answer is, it can slow me down or it can even get me off track.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Very disarming.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, but before you even know it, you can start going like. Like just reverting back to old habit patterns or old comfort zones, because the path ahead, if I don't know exactly where I'm going, it can be like that. That's a little scary, right? And subconsciously I start to turn back, head back to the safe zone where I came from, right?
[Tommy Welling]
Even if it wasn't serving me or the scale.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. And this is exactly why we don't subscribe to eating a certain way, right? So more high carb, low carb. Now when it comes to refined processed foods and chemicals and the food supply and in engineered stuff. Yeah. We're not fans of that. Like less is more more natural.
[Tommy Welling]
I don't like it Yeah I'd rather.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
More natural foods and stuff and you know artificial sweetener conversation and all of that right. So we don't subscribe to the done for you type of health or weight loss journey where okay, just tell me what to eat. I can't right now. Now recently the GLP one agonist those MPIX right are a big thing. There's review that's done for you.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. But now there's actually some I just saw a research article yesterday that I have not looked at in detail, so I won't comment in terms of what it was saying. But the takeaway from the messaging that I saw was there might have been a big side effect that was missed during the trials. And I'm like, Oh, let me save that.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I need to come back to that because the reality is it's done for you. It's an external thing that is going to create weight loss and my question always is, well, what do you do after that? Where is that sustainability piece? What is it? What is it doing? Yeah, everything has risk and reward with it. No matter if we're talking about a weight loss drug or a lifestyle intervention.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. But sure, there's a concern of, okay, well, what do you do after, Right. What do you do after weight loss in a box? What do you.
[Tommy Welling]
Do? What about after the gastric sleeve?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Exactly. What about after my diet? The diet. After the diet. Right. Well, goodness gracious. So the done for you doesn't work. The DIY version of going and figuring this all out on your own can be a little overwhelming, especially when the expectations of the results don't match the actions right. Doing everything right and the scales just not moving.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Maybe you got some weight loss resistance. You've got some old habits, right? Some things that you've been bringing with you through the repeated cycles of dieting.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. What about that growing list of foods that are that are all bad foods, bad foods going from one diet to another, like especially like growing up eighties, nineties, seventies, eighties, nineties, all through the low fat right And then and then so every diet you know from back of the day from when I first started dieting they they were all low fat so then to to see the pendulum swing a few decades later over to well Kito or Carnivore or extremely low carb is you know essentially the only way you know, is is some of the dogma and some of what's talked about out there is really crazy because I still have a subconscious list
[Tommy Welling]
of all these high fat foods that I'm not supposed to be eating. Right. What's it going to do to my cholesterol and all this stuff and all those little pieces of doubt? I mean, yeah, cholesterol. They followed me with each one of my eating decisions and now my fasting decisions do. I can be like, Oh, man. But I thought, oh, wait, wait a minute.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, But I was told that that was wrong. Right? I think I'm I think I'm doing the right thing right now. And you just bounce back and forth with that doubt and that self-talk.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's crazy. We now know that the cholesterol you eat your food is not bio chemically available and does not create cholesterol in your body. Yeah, it's like it's physically impossible. That's not how it works, Right. But that's been the great cholesterol myth. Great book. If you want to go read it and learn more about cholesterol than you ever need to in your entire life.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's an easy read, but it's incredibly eye opening. So this study gained our kind of it caught our eye because the indices or the actual the how do I say this? The USDA, the government, the the guidelines that are out there for us, the American Diabetes Association guidelines, etc., you can poke holes in all of them, some bigger holes, some smaller holes, some things that we agree, some things that we don't rewrite.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
But the reality is, is that this study looked at healthy eating index, The alternate healthy eating index, which is the alternate health eating index, actually gives a positive rating to moderate alcohol consumption or the healthy index does not. And then we have our alternate Mediterranean diet, which most people know the Mediterranean diet. Right? But the alternate Mediterranean diet removes potatoes, separates fruit and nuts into two groups, eliminating the dairy group, including whole grain products only in the grain group, and then red and processed meats in the meat group.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So then you have the healthful plant based diet index, the HPI. And if you go Google HPI, which is the first one I mentioned, the healthy eating index that brings you to my plate dot gov, and that is the plate that we all see. If you ever Google, what should my plate look like if I'm trying to lose weight or what macroeconomic.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
If you just go to Google images and put in what you might look like or what should I eat and go to images, it's going to pop up. It's the one that has the little pies. The little charts look like little. What's that game of trivia that I'm terrible at? Trivial Pursuit. Yeah, the little triangles of different colors.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And this is what you should eat. And. Right. And the reality is, is that the solution, the long term solution to become that 5%? The solution is what works for you. What is sustainable? What type of foods do you like to eat? And the good news is, is across all four of these different ways of eating the AGI, the AGI, the AMD, the Medi and the PDI.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right, That's a mouthful. Don't go Google any of this stuff. We're going to land the plane here in a second. It looked at thousands and thousands and thousands of participants from the Nurses Health Study from 1984 to 2020. Now it is a cohort study, so it's not a randomized controlled double blind placebo study, it's not a meta analysis.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's a cohort study. We know what it is. But the cool thing is, is that each index was associated with a reduced cardiovascular cancer and respiratory mortality risk. So all cause mortality was decreased. 14 to 20% in the AGI and the M.ED, the alternate indices were associated with reduced neurodegenerative mortality, and this was consistent across all different ethnic groups.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Here's the message we have to get off of this mindset of the diet is on the diet is off the weight losses on the weight losses off. My fasting is on. My fasting is off. What are those lifestyle things that you're going to apply?
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, you know what? You know what just just struck me right now is the fact that you can start thinking about this very differently when you take away the outcome measure of weight, you stop saying like, well, how much did the weight decline over the three months or the two years or whatever it is?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Just don't get me wrong, we want to focus on two. Yeah.
[Tommy Welling]
I know, but it's two separate questions. It's almost like what kind of exercise should I do? What's the intention behind the exercise? So in my training for a certain event, do I want to be physically able to do something else, or am I just looking for a little additional caloric burn? Like, well, then just do whatever.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Maybe we should be building some lean muscles. So as you age, you don't end up with fragile bones and not being able to pick up your grandkids.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It's a great question. The question behind the question.
[Tommy Welling]
I mean, I love anything that brings the whole body into it. And I love something with a functional movement and something I can really enjoy. I want to put my endorphins, my dopamine, my enjoyment of my leisure time, along with, you know, health, muscle building optimization and things like that. Like like recently. I love rock climbing, you know, And that's something I never did.
[Tommy Welling]
I never would have even considered when I'm.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
[Tommy Welling]
I don't want to. A plus. You know what my only thought would have been? How many calories are my burning right now? What an awful what an awful lot like trying to learn something, you know fun and natural like we're naturally built to climb things. So it's really cool. Like, like put your body into work in action. But so getting back to it here, I'll off of the tangent, what I, what I got here was if you're not thinking about how many, how many pounds did I lose over that given period of time, what I just saw was four, four different eating plans, arrangements, macro nutrient profiles is are four different plates here.
[Tommy Welling]
They all lead to decreased risk in all cause mortality. Guess what? Guess what wasn't on most of those plates? Most of the time, like a bunch of food that was going to keep my insulin and my blood sugar high more of the time artificially. And just the fact that there was there was intention and consistent.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Intention and consistency.
[Tommy Welling]
Over time. Right. That's amazing, though. That means I could I could use the plan that that works for me, that works for my family, that I enjoy, that I look forward to. And I can put that in. But that only works mentally in the equation if I'm if I'm not just going like how many pounds at the at the end of it, because I'm just I'm just dialing it for that.
[Tommy Welling]
But that's a key piece for that long term confidence right there. I love that.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, it's it also speaks to me in a different way is like if you're looking for guidance on fasting, then go grab our blueprint, the blueprint to fasting for fat loss, it's in the show notes. It talks about the why behind the weight loss, why does it matter? And it gives you some idea on how to structure your fast.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
But as a lot of people do in the early stages or as they go on or off their diet, a.k.a they're fasting and have not turned it into a sustainable lifestyle yet, then it's it's the good and bad food list. It's the I'm going to cut out all alcohol, all carbs. I'm going to just become a hermit for six months.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Okay, great. What happens after those six months? What happens on the momentum wears off, right? So if you're looking for guidance, go grab the blueprint. If you want to accelerate your results, then come join the challenge. Right. Like, just just do it. Jump in. Come join us. The sustainability piece is so interesting because I've been doing this for a long time now, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Multiple years. And the initial weight loss was simpler than I expected. It went faster than I expected. The difficulty has been the maintaining of it and adapting it into a lifestyle, and most recently, Tommy, I want to bring up nutrition because I've had a an eye opening experience and we've mentioned nutrition. It's a few times here recently. We've officially partnered with them and it couldn't have come at a better time because Nurture sense combines the cutting edge technology and the human expertise and the human side of it as well.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So it's showing you in real time your different foods, exercise, stress and sleep. And those last two S's are going to highlight here in just a second. So it compares the CGM, which is the continuous glucose monitor, which is the biosensor, the thing that you apply to your arm. It's completely painless. I hate needles. It does not hurt.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I could not feel it. I was trying to feel it. My brain was telling me I was going to feel it, didn't feel it. And then the neutral sense, you know, is a health and wellness, long term sustainability type program. It is going to give you real time data on your blood sugar levels and the decisions you're making around how your body responds to food, exercise, stress and sleep.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And I noticed a few about two months ago, I was like, All right, let me do some testing. I started looking at my blood sugar numbers and they were elevated again, and I couldn't figure out why. I've been eating consistently, doing a lot of dinners, more carnivore type, lower carb. I feel better that way. Less alcohol, not drinking nearly as often as I used to.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. Why am I numbers up and I couldn't figure it out. And I've I've been using the CGM and it's been really eye opening to the point where now I'm actually going to change my approach. I'm going to be doing more earlier time, especially after the most recent podcast episodes about eating earlier in the day. So I'm going to move my own ads to lunchtime and I'm not going to eat dinner anymore because my numbers were staying elevated in the morning.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Even with going into a seven and a half day fast, it took to day five for my numbers to come down, which showed me that I had other drivers of insulin resistance. So my stress and my sleep have not been where they should be. And guess what? That's what got me into trouble all of those years ago that then transpired over the last 10 to 12 years before fasting was an undiagnosed prediabetic.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I'm not back to that stage, but I caught it earlier and the CGM and sense has been incredibly important for that. So what I want you to do is if you're looking for that real time, that real time info, you need that motivation, you need that to smack in the face. A little head to the show notes, nutrition Scott EO Forward slash Fasting for life.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I would recommend doing a multiple month subscription, commit to it just like I did, just like you did to me. The code is fasting for life. You're going to get 30 bucks off and you're going to get one month free of dietitian support. I'm going to tell you that Patrick is up my backside and I am very grateful because I've been doing this a while and I'm actually learning more about the variability and what the numbers are doing and what that indicates.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So I can make better decisions about my long term health. So head to the show Notes Nutrition Start IO forward slash fasting for life. I highly recommend it. It's been incredibly eye opening and I'll report back here. You know, in the few weeks, two months after kind of moving my meals and my fasting times to middle of the day.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So cool time in the second half of today's conversation is going to be around this study on the effect of long term caloric restriction on DNA methylation, measures of biological aging in healthy adults from the calorie trial. Wow. All right, sir, 20 minutes. Go ahead. It's all yours.
[Tommy Welling]
So, you know, the cool thing here is, well, like, where to start, but so DNA methylation is basically like we have we have accumulated DNA or accumulated methylated DNA over time. So it's kind of a biomarker for aging. Is where I kind of start with that. And so what we know about some of the long term observational studies, especially in in the.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Animal studies.
[Tommy Welling]
You have animal studies too, but you also have observations in some of the like what were the centenarians are like.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Centenarians.
[Tommy Welling]
Plus centenarians. Thank you. Yeah. So what we know is that typically lower caloric intake means potentially longer lifespan and sometimes increased health during a longer lifespan. So but then we start to go, okay, well, what does that mean? How do we put it into action? Is there something actionable? You know, there a lot of us are on caloric restriction lifestyles or diets for a long period of time, but it's not because we're looking to extend the life.
[Tommy Welling]
It's because we're we're trying to optimize health or trying to get the weight off short.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Term to lose weight. Let's just be honest.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah, I know. We just have.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Thinking about my eighties right now. I'm just trying to fit into that suit again.
[Tommy Welling]
Right head still going to be embarrassed at the beach. I want to show up for the Christmas party. Right. But when we start looking at this stuff going from animals into humans, this was a cool study because this is one of the first ones that started rigorously looking at humans using a few different measurements. So there's there's a few different companies out there that have developed like serious, rigorous like bio aging and bio pacing.
[Tommy Welling]
So biological age, pacing measurements. And so as we as as they kind of start to put humans into trials like this over this this particular one was over a two year period. And then looking at what what are those biological age markers doing during a two year period of like, let's say in this study it was 25% caloric restriction.
[Tommy Welling]
So if you had a maintenance calorie need of 2000 calories per day, then this would be doing 1500 calories. Instead. And not being really overweight or very overweight and like, no, the average person was not looking to lose any weight during this study. So putting just kind of healthy individuals and then just dropping the calories by 25% and then seeing seeing what it does to their their pacing of their biological age.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So kind of and it was cool because we know that calorie restriction, right, that 25% is the most reliable method of extending lifespan in animals. So this is the first one to your point is can it affect the rate of aging in humans? Right. So it was like, well, that's kind of a cool story, like cool potential outcome, right?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So the the different test you had mentioned and we'll go into all the details, right? Because it's it's newer technology, right? So there's a couple of cool takeaways though. The clock's word developed to predict mortality risk based on biological age. Right. So chronologically, if you're a six year old person and your biological age of 48, then you're mortality risk is similar to that of a 48 year old rather than a 60 year old right now and the default age one of the other tests.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
The reason the default rate of aging is one year per calendar year. The pace of aging less than one means someone is biologically aging, slower than the normal rate. Why does this matter? I know for me, someone who wants to change the generational health of parts of my family, I don't want to end up having dementia as three of my four grandparents did, or my dad, who was, thank God, no longer a severe diabetic on 17 medications, multiple forms of insulin, three or four blood pressure medications, just incredibly chemically laden with the dependency, but not getting healthier, literally, like watching him fall asleep at the dinner table, not being able to, like, pick up his
[Dr. Scott Watier]
grandkids. Right. So, yeah, the point here is it's as we started the conversation today, it's not about the scale, it's about the lifestyle and the health and the longevity. But it's hard to see that when we're always focused on the diet. Right? So it's interesting because this caloric restriction reduced the biological aging by 2 to 3% in one of the biological test markers.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, one of those biological clocks that we mentioned and it didn't in the others, but that's not really the takeaway I want to focus on. The takeaway is we had a question come in from one of the listeners about long term caloric restriction and how it causes your body to down regulate and get used to that restriction. But being in a chronically caloric restricted state long term can have some, some, some non sustainable long term effects that we want to potentially avoid.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
And the question came in about optimal. He was asking about what is the optimal level. And it's interesting because optimal can be subject dev to the individual, Right. Yeah. And some people will say well I've, I've been restricting calories forever but I can't understand why the scale doesn't move or I can't get the weight off. That's where insulin and hunger hormones and that resistance, that weight loss resistance piece comes into play.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So long term, right. Caloric restriction, 25% reduction. The study didn't show that most of the people actually got to 25%. They got to 12, 12%.
[Tommy Welling]
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So that is 180 calories, approximately about two tablespoons of peanut butter.
[Tommy Welling]
Oh, man.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
So you're telling.
[Tommy Welling]
Me margin for error right there.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
That my two tablespoons of peanut butter a day, let's just call it two tablespoons of peanut butter. Could be completely messing up my results. Yeah, well, thank God for fasting. Right. Right.
[Tommy Welling]
That's tough to check the box. Like, did I win today? Oh, man. And I'm not really sure if I can check the box or there's. There's such a slim room for for any error. I mean, that's that that's not exactly setting myself up for success, you know? So the cool thing was that 2 to 3% that they found in one of those metrics was associated with a decreased mortality risk.
[Tommy Welling]
So that's that's cool.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah, I lost 10 to 15% mortality. Risk reduction.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. Huge. Yeah. And so it started making me think about like, okay, so when we talk about optimal, we talk about, you know, this question that we got in, how does, how does this apply? Because a lot of times if we're on a fasting journey and I believe he said he had he had lost like about 80.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
£8 I think.
[Tommy Welling]
Already, you know.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Your your body is going to be in a completely different state metabolically speaking. You lost £80. Congratulations.
[Tommy Welling]
Congratulations.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Fasting, by the way, consistently over three years. And then most recently over the last one and a half years, being very intentional with the eating windows.
[Tommy Welling]
Random loss.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right.
[Tommy Welling]
That's that's that's awesome. Incredible work. So so it's really cool. So, you know, when we think about, you know, information that comes out like this and we go, okay, how do we apply it? What is optimal? Does this does this 25% reduction in calories actually like apply?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Well, just sustainable. What should I put on my plate? Right. All the stuff I'm talking about today.
[Tommy Welling]
When I when I apply fasting consistently, especially for fat loss, it tends to naturally put me in a caloric deficit, but it does so in a really cool way that actually allows insulin to come down versus if I'm calculating out 1500 calories a day, but I'm putting it at three, four or five different eating opportunities like we talked about the.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Meals plus snacks, you know, So I'm always hungry and hungry.
[Tommy Welling]
Yeah. And I could see the spikes all day long, too. I can see exactly what's happened.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
My spike never comes down. So you guys aren't familiar with what we mean. We're talking about the blood sugar spike seen on graph. It climbs the mountain and then it stays at the top of the mountain. It doesn't come back down to a normal range like it should.
[Tommy Welling]
You start, you start seeing it. It doesn't it doesn't leave my mental map. You know, I think about it throughout the day. And whenever I make those eating decisions, you know, it's really cool. But so when we're talking about optimal here, you know, it sounds like he's he's consistent with the fasting. And so as as he starts to bring in those calories because, you know, going from 1500 up to probably 2220, 400, 2500, you know, like something more maintenance level, you know, for him, it's also that like, what is my feedback?
[Tommy Welling]
Am I getting it from the scale? What about body composition? So when you talk optimal, is it is it really a weight range?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Because there's there's it a feeling?
[Tommy Welling]
Sure. There's definitely been times where, you know, I took in the same amount of calories but in a different way like structured throughout the day, you know, one or two hour window versus like two or three different meals. I feel very different. The scale does something very different to and like you can add those up over time and those do start to change body composition too.
[Tommy Welling]
So, so defining the optimal for yourself, I think is one of the things that you need to do or go back to that intention piece of it. What am I trying to define here? What's optimal for me? Because if I have if I'm not really sure where I'm aiming, then I don't know how to tell if I'm moving in the right direction and that like that.
[Tommy Welling]
That's part of what we address in the challenge too, is is kind of like defining what I'm looking for here so that I know how to judge and how to gain confidence as I kind of move forward in the process. That makes sense.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Yeah. So the interesting thing with the calorie trial, when it comes to caloric restriction, regardless of the 2 to 3% decrease in biological aging, which is cool, new technology, probably still figuring it out. Right? 10 to 15% decrease all cause mortality. Yes. I don't want to end up like my family or I don't want to end up sick and suffering.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
I want a good quality of life. I want to end up like the centenarian studies, right? If we look at Japan, the quality of life as they age increases. Right. And that Centenarian Group, where they've got thousands and thousands and thousands of folks. Right. So the calorie study in itself had some incredible outcomes despite not achieving the 25% restriction.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So we talked about that that 11% and it was at 180 calories of those two tablespoons of peanut butter. So decreased cholesterol, decreased systolic and diastolic blood pressure, decrease inflammation, decrease chance of metabolic syndrome, the score of the metabolic syndrome score, increase insulin sensitivity in the calorie study they lost. And we've done an episode on this in itself, seven and a half kilograms decreased waist circumference and preferential loss of visceral adipose tissue, which is something that I've been working on recently with the CGM and all that.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Right. So if we're going to begin with the end in mind, but you're always focused on a target, a result based goal and you don't have the smaller action based goals to get you there the sustainability, the repeatability, the trial and error, though what's optimal? Am I at my maintenance? While should I increase my calories now and should I even be tracking?
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Do I have to track? What do I put in my eating window? How do I make fasting work? Because I just know I feel better when I fast right? But I don't know. I don't know what else to do. I don't know what I'm doing right. Don't go back to the indexes that we started this conversation with. Don't do it.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Don't do it.
[Tommy Welling]
Right. Yeah, that's the wrong direction.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
No, we need to make this work for you. We want to invite you to come in and join us on this upcoming.
[Tommy Welling]
Challenge for me. Yes. Yes. I love a good challenge. Like tomorrow. Let me just shake things up a little bit. Yeah. I'm so excited about tomorrow. I'll do it. Literally. Helps me just shake things up, get a little bit outside of my comfort zone and go, okay, let me try something new, get a new result, and then see how that responds.
[Tommy Welling]
And then keep building the pieces from there, because it's all these small little decisions we think we can like map out just this one plan. And I know exactly what I'm going to do every single time. Just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. That's what I was always looking for. Well, turns out it's just a lot of small decisions that I keep taking one step forward and then the next one.
[Tommy Welling]
But it actually like accelerates as I get confidence with the with the previous step. So it's a really cool process. I just invite you to come in. Yes. Join with us and be part of the process, because it is it is really cool. And we are we are so excited about it, too.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
You said accelerate the process right? So if you want to accelerate your results and doesn't matter if you're a beginner, if you're experienced, if you've done longer, more fast than we have you, and fasting doesn't matter. The lifestyle challenge is designed to accelerate that experience, to get the scale moving, to break through that plateau, to give you the confidence we talked science, we talk application, we talk about a lot of different things about the why and how we're going to build this sustainable lifestyle and how we're going to close that gap from this big, hairy, audacious goal of losing this weight and keeping it off and becoming part of the 5%.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
Reality is time. If you and I can do it, anyone can do it right. Metabolically broken and stressed to the gills, kids, family, you name it, right? We did it. It worked for us. Science is tried and true and we want to encourage you to come along with us on this journey time. So I did the Shownotes click the link for the challenge that begins tomorrow.
[Dr. Scott Watier]
It is not too late. Don't worry. We've got you step outside of your comfort zone like Tom, he said, We are excited to see you on the inside. If you're looking for the nutrition link, you can head to the show notes as well. Tommy, as always, thank you for the conversation. Sure. And we'll talk next week.
[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 V fastening for life dot com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive fasting tips and strategies to maximize results and fit fasting into your day to day life.
[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.