Ep. 203 - Is fasting “heart healthy?” | Improving longevity, brain health, & inflammation: best fasting windows & eating styles | Preventing heart disease, diabetes, & neurodegeneration | Why should you be excited to fast today? | Nutrisense CGM
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In today’s episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy explore the cardiovascular benefits of intermittent fasting, emphasizing its adaptability to various lifestyles. They discuss key mechanisms, such as oxidative stress reduction and circadian rhythm optimization, and highlight positive outcomes from studies on obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. They stress the sustainability of fasting benefits even after returning to a regular diet, encouraging listeners to view fasting as a long-term lifestyle choice.
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Fasting For Life Ep. 203 Transcript
Hello. I'm Dr. Scott Watier.
And I'm Tommy Welling.
And you're
listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.
This podcast is about using fasting
as a tool to regain
your health, achieve ultimate wellness,
and live the life you truly deserve.
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.
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.
When I start salt water
and I'm here as always,
and my good friend colleague Tom Welling,
good afternoon to you, sir.
Hey, Scott, how are you? Fantastic.
My friend.
Excited for two days. Conversation.
Intermittent fasting
colon, a heart healthy dietary pattern.
Question mark.
Maybe.
Yes, I believe it is. We know it is.
But this article is packed with 34
plus references
highlighting different points of interest.
And there's so much positivity
packed in into this article
that I was shocked and ran it through
so many different filters to make sure
that we hadn't talked about this one
before and it came up that we have it. So
today is the day, Tommy, and we're going
to get into that here in just a minute.
You can head to the show notes
and click the link.
If you're looking for the resources,
they're always there for you.
I want to welcome
any new listeners to the podcast.
Thanks for joining us today.
As you heard in our opener
that we want to give you an action step,
something discernible
that you can take away
from today's conversation
and put into your day to day life.
If you want to hear more about our story,
head back to episode one.
Give it a
listen and hear more about how fasting
transformed our lives
and why we bring these episodes.
And episodes like it to you
each and every week for the long term.
Listeners, thank you
for being on this journey with us.
Thank you for continuing to subscribe,
rate and review.
I don't know if that's
what it's called these days.
Followed download Resubscribe re rate,
rereview, whatever it is, we are grateful
for each and every one of those,
especially the five star kind,
because of course, who doesn't love
getting five gold stars, right, Tom?
Yeah.
they're the absolute best.
So I think getting into this one
this week, my overarching theme was like,
what could fasting potentially do for me
and why should I be excited
about fasting today,
whether it's my first day fasting
or my 100th or my thousandth day fasting,
Why should it matter? Why?
Why do I care?
And it turns out there's
a whole bunch of reasons
that we're going to get into
why you should care. Interesting.
I'd never thought of this.
So we count episodes, right?
We're up in the two hundreds now.
So I'm thinking, how many days
have I been living a fasting lifestyle?
yeah, that's right.
I mean, it's been years.
So now I'm like, Man,
I want to go back and calculate that.
So it's like it's over a thousand.
I think it's over a thousand. Yeah.
So that's pretty cool. Yeah.
I like your come from in framing out.
Today's conversation.
So when we set the stage
for this conversation today,
we're going to share a bunch of results
from a handful of different we set up.
I think there's 34
different research articles that are 39.
Excuse me.
Just want to double
check that in sound, Right.
Dietary patterns.
We're talking about dietary approaches,
long term sustainability.
Do you maintain changes, post
air quotes, diet and yeah,
I don't even like the word diet, Right.
The diet mindset.
The diet culture tells us a lot of things.
We like to say the lifestyle,
the adaptation of the lifestyle.
Fasting can fit any lifestyle
from shift workers to stay at home
moms, dads to CEOs to people
that love to eat meat, that people
that don't love me and only eat fish.
Right?
Pescatarian doesn't matter where you fall
rabbit from.
That's rabbit food. Yeah, right. Love it.
That's a lie. Don't love it. But you can.
So when we look
at this, I love their
come from in the beginning that they look
at different ways to stop hypertension
and cardiovascular issues.
So we know that heart
disease is the number one leading
cause of death
and all cause mortality here in the U.S.
We also know that diabetes and insulin,
blood sugar related issues
increase your chance of cardiovascular
risk and comorbidities drastically.
So we want to look at things
that we can control in terms
of improving our cardiac health.
So they say intermittent fasting, right?
It's a type of, they say, dietary pattern,
lifestyle pattern that's based on
upon time periods of fasting. Right.
So of course, if you've been fasting
while you know that you eat, stop, eat
right, you fast, eat fast, right.
So they look at ads,
which you've been doing
a whole bunch of episodes on this recently
because there's just a whole host
of new information
and new research are coming out about AIDS
we've been talking about for years
and time restrict eating, which is just
the compartmentalization of the hours,
like I just said
that you would either fast for
and then have a nutrition opportunity
or nutrition window for.
But there's no randomized controlled trial
examining the relationship
between IUS and cardiovascular outcomes.
So this study
is really taking an important
look at what are the benefits
that can possibly reduce the risk
for cardiovascular disease
with weight control,
hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes.
Right.
So there's three main pathways
that they go over.
We'll get into those in a minute.
But big picture, there's so many pieces
to the cardiovascular puzzle
and we know that the research is changing
on some of these certain things,
like LDL numbers
when compared to APOB or catch scores.
There's a lot shifting mindsets in the
medical community on what is important.
We're currently measuring blood sugar,
but we really should be measuring insulin
because that shows up, you know, insulin
resistance and weight issues
and all of these down the line
things show up years before
in certain labs and certain metrics.
So I don't want to bore you.
It's impossible to paint a clear picture
with all of those moving parts.
But the main takeaway for today is does
fasting
result in a heart healthy application?
Does it help the metrics
that drive cardiovascular disease?
Never mind.
We know fasting up blood sugar,
which then decreases the risk
but directly related to cardiac health.
Yeah.
And you know, you got me thinking
about that, that you just mentioned there.
There was no asked, you know,
looking at like a large fasting versus
non fasting kind of trial in a
in a very controlled environment.
I'm not sure exactly how how
they would set that up.
Maybe that might need to be true.
Yeah.
No it might need to be through like timed
IV nutrition where you really don't know
if something's coming in or not.
Or maybe there's there's like a saline
coming in during your actual fasting time.
You'd have to be hooked up
to a lot of different things.
I think they'd be pretty interesting,
though.
I'd love to see the results.
Obviously on a study like that,
but I'm not sure who would pay for it,
who would do it.
But the cool thing is in this powerful
overview of a study here
is that they're pulling research protocols
that were
that were used to look at different things
blood pressure, weight loss, fat loss,
actual inflammatory markers
all the way to like
how does a ketogenic state or markers
that affect neurodegenerative diseases,
how do these actually play out,
come into play, rather, And then they're
even even pulling out some of the studies
that were outside of humans.
So some in animals, some also in
just like a basic lab protocol
where they would actually take cells like
stem cells and see what they were doing
whenever they were actually fed
continuously versus
actually made to intermittently fast,
which was really, really interesting.
There's some of these conclusions
and some of those studies
they don't talk about.
They don't use the phrasing
intermittent fasting.
So they're not even necessarily easy
to find if you're going to look for things
like that, because they're
they're using different kinds of protocol
and and different kinds of terminology.
So it's incredible.
The branches, the the effects that time
restricted eating and different kinds
of protocols
like this actually have across various
body systems can be interesting
to get into. Yeah.
And I like how they frame it to where they
they look at caloric restriction
and intermittent fasting.
And you know,
they mentioned the Dash diet,
Mediterranean diet, which is decreased
cardiovascular risk, but
it says it's been linked to better
glucose control, both humans and animals.
However, long term
adherence to caloric restriction is low.
We know that we've heard the 95%
adherence.
We've heard
we've looked at some of the studies,
the Marist Berkeley study,
you know, about that.
At that three year
mark, only 5% of the population.
At the two year mark, it's like 98 to
back in terms of the weight loss, in terms
of keeping the weight off, I should say.
So I love that.
For me,
fasting was never about losing weight.
It was about the long term health benefit
path that I was on needed to be reversed.
I was turning following the path of my
father, diabetes and some resistance.
You know, asthma, they mentioned
has been here, which is really cool.
We've got a bunch of Alzheimer's
that runs in our family,
which are those neurodegenerative diseases
that you talk about, Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's, Right.
Which are becoming
seemingly more and more common. Yeah.
And so we're going to rat a tat tat
some of the results
from some from this review
of all these different studies,
which I think is going to be fun.
And now we're going to break down
a few that really stuck out to us.
But I want to frame first
and foremost the three proposed mechanisms
of how intermittent fasting could lead
to better cardiovascular outcomes.
Right?
So we've got the oxidative stress
hypothesis which says
you've got a decreased oxidative
insult to the body,
which means fasting reduces
the stress leading to fewer free radicals
with less mitochondrial energy production,
ultimately lowering the body's
level of stress. Right.
Okay.
And we've got the circadian rhythm,
which we've talked a little bit about this
before with eating your meals earlier
in the day versus later in the day.
This is something
that's made a huge impact for me,
getting my circadian rhythm,
natural sunlight.
Go get our sleep guide. It's in the show
notes, right? Yeah.
Because sleep was yeah, Chronotype
sleep was a huge problem for me.
So as stress.
So I kind of like these first two.
They kind of resonate with me.
But the circadian rhythm component
focuses on thinking, eating periods
to the organs, circadian rhythms,
so optimizing glucose and fat utilization
based on your hormonal cycle,
based on educated rhythm.
So that's number two.
And then the third one
is the ketogenic state, right?
So carbohydrate metabolism,
ketogenic says decreased LDL,
increased HDL, reduce fat.
And the fact that all of these regardless
of the mechanism.
Right. We're not going to get into each
individual mechanism.
But regardless of the theory,
the outcome is what we want to see.
Yeah,
yeah.
It's kind of like even just the fact
that they're implying
that we need to figure out
which one of these theories is correct
and then maybe the other two aren't
correct at that point.
I have such a strong feeling
that you have a gold star, right?
I mean, I think that these are all three
really, really important understanding,
really important
to understand as explanations of of,
you know, just a combination
of what's going on here,
because there's a lot of evidence
for each one of them.
So which ones are most important?
I don't know if that's even necessary
for us to try to figure out,
but just to understand, there are reasons
why we can see such varying degrees
of of effects, mostly beneficial effects
from implementing
and consistently
applying a fasting lifestyle.
You know, so
part of me wants to act like my toddler
and be like absolute the researchers
end of that. The why? But why? Why?
But why? And the problem is like
now that's not really what we do.
We'll just we'll just interpret
it and apply it.
And then I go for why. But why?
Because I kind of want to know, right?
But when we look at the results,
the results speak for themselves.
So I just want to go through
a few of these studies.
So for obesity specifically,
you just go through them real quick to me
and then we'll highlight the actual ones,
some of the key components to these
that really stood out to us.
And there's a study, 12 week duration.
This is an overweight diabetes
type to the intervention
was adverse
and the mean weight loss was 6.4 kilos.
So wow.
Yeah. Alternate day fasting, right.
Crushing it. Yeah.
Reduction of waist circumference,
eight centimeters.
So about three inches.
Yeah. 2% loss in body fat.
Okay, great.
Another one, Harvey 2011
Premenopausal women only great sample size
So the five two is what I'm hearing.
Yes. 75% caloric restriction
lost 6.4 kilos.
Total pounds topless pounds.
Nice. Right.
Okay. Awesome.
Another one, an obesity ADF decrease
in body fat, 2.5% of initial body weight,
Three weeks.
Yeah, that's pretty.
That's pretty astounding.
Here's one eight weeks
ADF lunch, ADF dinner, ADF small meals.
Which one is it?
And 74 pretty decent sized study rate.
Obese, middle aged male and females
three down
Pick your poison.
Which one do you want to choose?
They all work, right? Yeah.
Kilos, by the way. Not pounds.
Ten hour fast. I know us Imperial.
So go over here in the US
using pounds and all this other stuff.
So we'll just keep it international today.
I honestly didn't feel like doing
all the conversions. Not great.
It's nice on the fly, as you'll know
if you've been listening long enough.
Ten hour fast, three for three. Ten hour.
Which Yeah,
you blinked, you took a nap and like,
you just you go to bed for a minute.
Yeah.
Ten hour fast, I don't know.
Interesting to find it as a fast but.
But what I call that is sleeping.
Yeah. So.
So you didn't snack after dinner
and you didn't eat right when you woke up.
Okay, Got it.
Yeah, I didn't wake up with food
on the nightstand.
Yeah, I didn't finish.
So pizza.
And I say,
All right, so weight reduction, 3.3 kilos.
BMI reduction, 1.1, waist circumference
down four and a half centimeters. Wow.
Study, hypertension, systolic blood
pressure drop ten points.
Diastolic blood
pressure dropped eight points
in six weeks with three days
a week of a fast 75% caloric restriction.
That doesn't really sound like fasting.
Sounds like I'm eating 75%
of what I need to eat.
Right?
For weeks.
Ramadan study Small decreases, start
blood pressure and four weeks, five weeks
study 18 hour fast. All right.
ten point decrease in diastolic.
There we go. 12 week study, ten hour fast.
Here we go again,
five point decrease, seven point decrease,
systolic and diastolic, respectively.
Right.
With people that have metabolic syndrome,
age 59 years old,
dyslipidemia, 12% decrease in LDL.
Wow. 18% increase in HDL.
Wow. Doing AIDS
with a 75% caloric reduction
and then the second one was combined
with exercise.
Talk about fixing your ratio.
Right. Right.
And that's a huge swing,
which is much more important.
Yeah, exactly.
And just mentioned your ratio. Right.
And you just mentioned Ramadan, too.
And so the interesting thing
about Ramadan,
going back
to those the three branches of the,
you know, the hypotheses
where these main effects
come from for intermittent fasting
when you go back to
the circuit, are getting rhythm.
The circadian part of that Ramadan
is actually not optimal
for linking up
with the circadian aspect of that
because then you're
you're waiting all throughout the day
and then all of the calories add
libido are coming.
At the end of the day when we know
we actually have the worst response
as far as insulin, liver
processing time to actually process
through the food metabolic rate starts
to come down later on in the day.
All of these things are kind
of are working against us.
So the beneficial effects that we see in
Ramadan could actually be more optimal
if we if we brought that in a little bit
earlier.
I'm not saying,
you know, to change the rules
for the religious fasting, of course,
but if we're going to apply this
on a day to day basis,
we can shift it around
and optimize the results
even a little bit more.
Yeah, because some of these
when we get to the blood sugar
ones, we'll see
that the circadian approach
may not be the best due to the eating
the meal late.
Right.
In terms of insulin response
and actually a huge driver for me.
Yeah.
So another four week trial, LDL down
for another study, 12 week study, ADF, 75%
caloric reduction on your fasting days.
So you get a minimal right.
So anytime I say 75% Clark reduction with
ADF, what I mean is on your fasting days
you get 25%, so you get a little minimal
five, 600 calories, right?
So we're not talking about doing
every other day with 30 to 40 hour fast.
If you're doing a normal feeding day
versus a normal fasting day,
I think most people don't do that.
So, you know,
typically most people are talking
about a modified, modified idea, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This one's down, LDL down
ten triglycerides down, 17
HDL up 16 diabetes.
If we're looking at an eight week
study, fasting
glucose down 6.6
milligrams per deciliter, right?
What? Yeah. Okay, I'll take it.
Right. It's great.
In a short period of time,
I can do it because it as those blood
sugar numbers start to come down,
that means I don't need quite
as much insulin
the next time I go to break that fast
either.
So that means insulin comes down.
Okay, great.
So that means that I'm able to tap
into some of those long term fat stores
a bit faster.
So I absolutely want that.
Even if it doesn't sound like just super,
super high effect, that kind of thing.
Right, Right.
And then this one, eight weeks,
this one's crazy total fast.
is 70% liquid intake total fast,
What?
I don't even know what that means
when you even pull that study up.
Yeah, like, okay, great.
But the insulin and glucose went down.
Okay, cool.
All right.
Fasting. Yeah. So what?
I'm being a little cheeky here,
but when we look at this, so oftentimes
we hear what's the best schedule?
What should I be?
What is. Yeah, it's a perfect schedule.
What about me?
How does my situation fit in?
And the reality is if we're really do
can never make this work for me
for health metrics,
the good news is you can
because there's so much variability
in all of these studies
and all of the caloric intakes
and all of the fasting times from 10 hours
all the way up to 24 hour plus with liquid
intake, I don't even know what I mean.
It's like I said, right,
It doesn't really matter.
The application here is,
is that we are driving down, regardless
of the three mechanisms
that they proposed, oxidative stress,
circadian rhythm or the ketogenic one,
the ketosis hypothesis,
they all, all different
forms of fasting have been shown
to decrease that cardiovascular risk.
Yeah, I love the fact that they even
pulled studies that actually looked at
this was
there's very limited data on this, but
people who actually had a coronary event
and then brought about some intermittent
fasting
to see
if it had any cardioprotective effects.
And they actually did see
a cardioprotective effect.
Even during a short term,
they actually reduced the hazard ratio
or the odds ratio
of having an additional cardiovascular
event by up to 35% or even up to 65%.
So it's it's really,
really, really promising.
Some of the
the studies that have been done,
there needs to be more done and hopefully
they will do more in the future.
But at the same time, we can we can take
some of these things going almost any way
we we slice it, we're finding benefits
going in the right direction.
And that's that's what I keep
taking away is like an overarching theme
of all of these different,
like kind of scattered studies that looked
at, you know, different outcomes over
different periods of time
with different fasting protocols.
There was the neurodegenerative
one neuro degenerative man,
I tried to say that fast
and it did not come out fast,
which I thought was really cool.
And then there was this longevity
piece as well
where they were looking at they took human
skin, fibroblasts in vitro.
So cool, right?
Stimulating if protocols.
And they had longer lifespans
in the control cells.
Right.
And then they these groups
retain their youthful morphology
while the controls
developed a senescent morphology
which is associated with a smaller,
thinner appearance.
So like setting skin as we age, right?
The ex vivo study in human fibroblasts
just in vascular
delay, aging at a cellular level.
So that's we're going to have
that conversation about autophagy. Right.
And the regeneration
and the proliferation of stem cells.
So when we look
at all of these different variations,
we're
the article goes on to talk about like,
okay, well, what's the real difference
or similarities between intermittent
fasting and caloric restriction?
Right.
And is this something
that you can stick to in terms
of intermittent fasting long term?
And they openly admit that that's where
because it hasn't been around or
studied as often or as much, it seems like
there's that gap in the research.
But I'll tell you, from taking 5000
plus people through our challenges and
however many million downloads
and messages
we've gotten now
right from doing the podcast,
that people that get the results,
regardless of what you stick to.
But fasting seems to simplify the equation
for so many people,
even though we just described a situation
where there's so many different
moving parts and what window do I choose
or how long do I fast
or how do I break my fast?
Yeah, it's it's really key to know in
terms
of how your body is responding. Right.
And one of these things
that really hit for me was the circadian
hypothesis, right? Yeah.
On timing up your meals.
So before and this before.
I know we talk a lot about this,
but before I had my nutritionist, CGM,
which is Nutri Sense is the company
that we've partnered with, and it's
been game changing for so many of our VIP
coaching clients as well.
yeah.
But it combines
the biases that you wear on your arm
and these are much more common.
You see people
with these little sticky pads
on the back of their arms
a lot more frequently.
Now a lot of it's not a lot of face.
Yeah, area
right there, all over the place. Right.
And it's it's because it gives you
that cutting edge technology
combined with the human expertise.
So with their app and the biosensor itself
you're going to be able
to get the full Nutrition's program.
And what it did for me was
it allowed me to see how the same foods
I was eating at different times of day
had an effect
on how I felt my hunger,
my sleep and my blood sugar.
So you can see in real time
how your body responds to different foods,
exercise stress and sleep right.
So your blood sugar levels
then can significantly impact
how your body feels and functions.
So if we're talking about health,
just like this
review of these of these research
articles is doing is whether or not
and intermittent
fasting decrease cardiovascular risk.
We want to know what our body is doing
in real time.
So it lets you analyze your response
to those things,
allowing you to make better decisions
and identify what you're doing well
and what you're not doing so well.
So just like fasting definitely decreases
cardiovascular risk.
Having this in your corner
as part of your tool set
allows people and allows me
had allowed myself to see better outcomes
with my fasting, with my weight loss,
with my energy levels.
Right.
What foods and what cravings
I was causing myself to have.
And ultimately that's where
the sustainable change comes into play.
So when I was eating the same meal
at 8 a.m.
versus 8 p.m.
or at 12 noon versus 8 p.m., my blood
sugar would stay elevated for much longer.
And I truly believe
it was because of my stress levels
and because of my circadian rhythm,
because of my insulin response is greater
in the evening, or I should say it's less
effective in the evening requiring more.
Right.
So my blood sugar was not responding
the way it normally should.
So I want to encourage
all if you're trying to figure this puzzle
out for yourself, you want a way to know
what's happening in real time.
Commit to doing a six or 12 month
subscription.
It does save on the cost.
And that's what I've done in the past.
And you can add to nutrition
Scott EO forward slash fasting for life
and you'll get a $30 off code
and you'll also get one month
of free dietitian support.
So now as you figure out what fasting
schedules are going to work for you,
this could be a tool
that can really level up that experience
and accelerate those results.
That's awesome because what you get
is a visual way to see what's going on
more under the hood,
because as you're making
your food decisions and fasting decisions
and hey, what's my most important goal?
Is it my blood pressure
or is it getting control of the scale?
Is it fixing my relationships with food?
You know, just building new, better habits
so I can work on body
composition and strength or cardiovascular
health goals, all of these kind of things
we see in the data here.
Even within this study, things
like a quote, late dinners are associated
with higher postprandial glucose levels
than daytime meals, increasing the risk.
Hey, that is say that in layman's terms.
Well, whenever we eat late meals,
we have higher blood sugar levels
than when we eat earlier in the day,
which increases
our risk of developing blood sugar
related issues and pre-diabetes.
And then ultimately potentially diabetes.
So the thing about that is we also know
because we asked thousands of
and thousands of people
what their favorite meal of the day was,
if they were just going to do
one meal a day. man.
And it's invariably almost dinner.
Right?
And if you're gaining weight,
you tend to have a substantial
amount of calories
usually coming in later on in the day.
You don't tend to be like a clear cut,
Hey, I already had lunch
or I had an early dinner
and then that's it.
Like a lot of times there's snacking
and grazing and other things involved
and you don't have to be perfect with it
to start to get a handle on that.
But those habits are very, very strong.
And what's something like having a CGM
and seeing the seeing the visual
of what's happening
under the hood, that helped me change
some of those really,
really hard to break habits.
That was like something that I needed
to finally solidify and be like,
okay, I'm going to do something
a little bit different
because it was so comfortable,
so tempting to do those things right.
So what I just heard
is that the only lever, the only option
isn't always let me just go do a longer
me extend my fast, let me eat a little bit
less, let me go more low carb.
Let me know for longevity.
We need to figure out those key pieces
and that behavioral change
is going to come
with that visual representation.
Yeah. To time.
Yeah, right. For sure.
And we're still working on it.
I'm still working on my visceral
fat level, right?
I had a lot of it.
It's taken a while, right?
And that's
why we talk a lot about visceral fat.
So I like I like this takeaway too
in there.
Limitations and directions, conversation.
And, you know, certain regimens
may be easier to hear than others.
You know,
if you're looking for more guidance,
you can head to the show notes and click
the blueprint fasting for fat loss.
And that's our PDF.
It gives you different
schedules, gives you
the who, what, when, where and why
behind fasting.
You can grab that, that'll give you
some different ideas on like what
regimens may work better for you.
And it really does talk about
the differences and different populations.
And we looked at,
you know, obesity versus type two
diabetics versus metabolic syndrome
versus healthy individuals, etc.,
But there was a really cool takeaway here
because if we're going to be wanting
to move the life style metrics,
the cardiovascular metrics, the blood lab
metrics long term,
then it said, however, for
and I know we talked about this
mentioning this time in this way,
but I think we can frame it in a way
that will create enhancement
or encouragement to the process.
Not to say, yeah, you can be rewarded
for not sticking to your fasting.
So however it says for obese adults
who are on intermittent fasting for eight
weeks, so great results then transition
back to their regular diet for 24 weeks.
They still maintain their lower
cholesterol and glucose levels.
Nice.
Wow, that's huge because we hear that.
I mean, how often do we hear that?
Why do I need to start
intermittent fasting?
Because when I go back to quote unquote
regular life or regular eating patterns,
like then I'm just even if it's
beneficial, I'm going to give those back.
Like as soon as I open up
that eating window, I'm
just going to give back those those gains.
If you will, right?
Yeah. We want to get you off the diet
rollercoaster.
You want to apply fasting as a lifestyle,
right?
So beat the on and off
black and white, eat less, move more.
Right. Pass it however you want.
Tracking, not tracking calorie counting
not extended fast,
rotating your fast whatever.
However you piece the puzzle together,
you need the reps
to figure out what's going to work.
And if if you don't see it
as being a long term solution,
or at least you can't, you may not have
all the answers of how it's going to look
when you're at your maintenance
weight right shoulder, different night
full of vitality and in lean, mean,
like fitting into the clothes
you want feeling good, right? Confident.
Maybe you're just there. Yeah.
Yeah, right. Like the Kool-Aid guy.
yeah. Coming through the wall. Right.
So. Well, that be the opposite.
Yeah.
His confidence level is as high
as the liquid level, right?
Yeah.
You may not know all those pieces yet,
but if you can't see fasting
as being part of your long term solution,
that it is just another diet.
Right.
So how do you make it a long term
solution?
You need repetitions, you need practice
and you need to personalize this for you.
And along the way you can get
all of these additional benefits, right?
But 10 hours gives you benefits.
Not saying go do a bunch of ten hour
fasts.
I'm going to say fast
is better than no fast.
Right? Tell me. All right. Yeah.
And just the fact that I love the fact
that they looked at the intermittent
fasting versus caloric restriction,
because when we started off
this conversation,
I said, like, why should
I still be excited about fasting?
Why should I get up today?
Whether whether yesterday was a ten
or it wasn't,
whether I've just started fasting
or I've been doing this for a long time,
why should I be excited about fasting
today?
Well, the benefits of what
we're talking about here
have been looked at in study after study
framed out in the way of if I just brought
in the same number of calories,
it wouldn't matter.
My timing of those calories
wouldn't matter.
And this was a big objection that I had
before I started
consistently applying fasting.
Well, turns out that's a big subject
of the research, but it's pretty clear
that the benefits that you get while
fasting are independent of the calories.
So if you're looking to tap into long term
fat stores,
of course
there needs to be a calorie deficit.
But as far as blood pressure, inflammatory
markers, a whole host of things
that lead to fasting glucose
and insulin sensitivity versus resistance,
if we take the same number of calories
and compartmentalize them
in a time restricted manner,
we get a benefit to them.
That's why I should be excited to fast
today, not necessarily
excited to skip a meal or skip calories
or whatever the case may be.
Those are all independent,
Those are all goal dependent things.
But I should be excited to fast
and to compartmentalize
my actual ingestion of these calories
because the benefits are absolutely black
and white. They're clear cut.
Even if I'm bringing in the same foods,
the same calories,
if I compare it throughout the day
versus compartmentalized,
there is a clear cut benefit
that's worth doing day in and day out
most days of the year, regardless
if it's the oxidative stress hypothesis,
the circadian rhythm hypothesis,
or does this hypothesis
because I believe for me
it was all through stress
relief, better sleep
and getting in and out of flipping
that metabolic switch
more frequently, being able to get in
and out of ketosis more regularly.
So yeah, that is my hypothesis
for a future research study.
Anybody with pea out
there wants to fund that.
You let us know.
We'll find the research team
and we'll get that done.
But I love that point there.
To wrap up today's conversation.
It does. I'd even be a test subject.
Well,
I don't know what category I'd fall into
now, what group
I don't know
if I'd where I'd be in the control group.
Yeah, we'd need like a fasting success
group, you know,
that's like been on fasting and then Yeah,
a sustainable fasting group.
I love it. I love it, I love it.
Okay, so as we wrap up today,
head to the show notes.
Grabbed the blueprint to fasting fat loss,
the nutrition that I opposed,
fasting for life for the CGM.
If you want to join our Facebook community
as well, the links in there,
the link to this article is in there.
All of the information
is there for you all to digest.
I want to encourage you guys
to take one different action today.
So after listening to this, right,
I love Tommy's framing there.
It's like,
okay, it all can benefit, right?
There is a benefit.
We should be excited about it.
We want to push it.
We want to get more consistent with it.
And we do that by taking action.
So I hope you guys, Tommy, as always,
appreciate the conversation,
but I hope that there is hope instilled
in this conversation
that regardless of the path
you choose of fasting, there is an outcome
on the other side of it you want
and that we should all be striving for.
So yeah, yeah, set that ten hour fasting
timer rather than no fasting timer.
Even if you, you know, it's
just going to be 10 hours, right.
Like even just that overnight,
like take that
one small action and then remind yourself
that you know what?
Yeah, I'm fasting today.
Even if it's not a 20 hour fast
or a 30 hour fast.
Hey, it's ten. Well,
guess what? Ten is better than zero.
Ten is better than not setting that timer,
because that was an intention
and a decision that you made and there's
going to be a benefit at the other end
that's going to be even easier
to take the next decision after that.
So get the ball rolling today. Don't wait.
There's no reason to wait.
So funny in my life is like I am fasting
and did a 12 hour fast.
I'm like, cool,
good for you.
Hurt yourself.
She's been doing it more consistently,
so I'm proud of her.
But that's also she started with 12.
Got to start somewhere, right?
Absolutely.
So I love it. I love it. I love it.
All right, Tommy,
thank you for the conversation.
We'll talk soon.
Thank you. Bye.
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