Ep. 3 - Date Night & Fasting, Starvation Mode, Fasting while Traveling, Holiday Fasting | Visceral Fat, Type 2 Diabetes, Sleep Apnea, Metabolic Syndrome | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan

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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.

But everybody, and welcome back to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott. What are you? I'm here with my friend and colleague, as always, Tommy Welling. How are you, sir? I'm doing great, Scott. How are you? Awesome, man. Excited about today's episode? We've got some cool stuff. We're gonna be going over them. Recapping what we did last week.

I was hoping that you guys and gals out there put what we were reviewing in terms of getting this fabulous this tool of fasting into your day to day lives. We really encourage you to sit down and map out your week and figure out where this was going to fit in between the business meetings and the date nights and the lunches and the traveling and all those types of things. So I really hope that you did that. And just as a second of reflection, probably wasn't perfect, but that's a OK.

And today's episode really going to dive into the benefits of fasting and what they are, why we're doing it. And most importantly, how they can make a massive impact, you know, starting today, but also for the long run. So, yeah, that's what we're going to get started with, Tommy. You're telling me a funny kind of reflection or story that you had, and I'm looking forward to hearing it again.

Yeah. The other day I remember texting you and I was in there was about 10 a.m., I think. And from the night before, we had had some family over and we were drinking a few beers, having some barbecue, having some more barbecue, a little more beers. And. And, you know, by the end of the night, you know, we were all pretty full. We had had a lot of food, a lot of good fun. So I went to bed feeling great.

But by the time I woke up in the morning, it was it was sluggish and a lot more sluggish in the morning than it had been the night before. And I realized by about 10:00 a.m., like I feel most of the food like I feel like most of what I had eaten was not digested at that point. And I thought to myself, wow, like this is this is fine. This is fine. I I eat more calories than I needed at the time last night. Here I am. It's the morning. It's past breakfast time. But, you know, it's it's getting closer to lunchtime. And I remember in the past, I would have been thinking, OK, well, what am I going to eat? I got to you know, I may have skipped breakfast kind of accidentally, but lunch is coming up. And I don't want to slow down into that starvation mode. I don't want to make that boogey man. So what am I going to eat? Maybe I'll be a smaller meal, but I'm still gonna eat something. But I did not feel like eating at all. And over the last year. You know what? Well, you learn pretty quickly in the processes. You don't have to eat that next meal just because you're used to eating at a certain time. And that that was a very cool feeling. It even got us this far into the process. How the rest of the day planned for you then? Because that's just the dish. Yeah. Yesterday was was good. You know, energy was was coming up there throughout the day. And I feel like if I put more food on top of that, I would've felt worse and more tired and sluggish. But energy came up. That fullness feeling just went down steadily throughout the day. You know, an extra cup of coffee in there, some extra water. But I mean, by probably 6:00 p.m. just felt fantastic. I still skip dinner and just went to the next day, but I didn't have to. I could have even if I had a, you know, if I'd wanted to or had a social event or something like that.

That's awesome. And the more that, you know, you guys listen to this going, OK, well, yeah, that makes sense. You eat a lot. You're still kind of full, but it goes a little bit deeper than that, too. In for me anyway. And that, you know, physiologically, your body has all that short term stored energy. So it's that feeling of fullness. You know, we kind of get used to the psychological stimulus of it, the outside, the environment, the schedule, the time, the habit, habitual thing that we do at a certain time of day. And, you know, for me, it was always I used to almost fear dreading. I would I would I would have, you know, a little bit of angst going into a big birthday celebration or, you know, an anniversary, a car, a holiday, and we travel. And I would I would literally be like, OK. And I would say, this is my life. I can either eat or I can have some adult beverages. That's what we call them. So I couldn't eat or I can have a few drinks and enjoy myself because anytime that I did both. I felt exactly with what you just described. Right. Yeah.

And it's crazy because then you would you know, I'd get back on my workout regimen. I would start tracking my calories.

I would log everything I had, you know, all sixteen hundred calories of barbecue and however many IPD and glass of wine or a little after dinner, I'm right. Or whatever it was. And I would look out of the car right back on track and then it would take me so much time to get back to where I where I felt like I hadn't lost that ground just from a night or two. And, you know, everybody no, it might not be at that exact position now where they have that same, you know, afterburner after effect. But it builds over time for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. You could I mean, if you're if you're cutting calories by three, four or five, six hundred in a day, which is standard. Yeah. Right. And then but then you have a meal like that or you know you you have kind of a festive day, you know you could easily tack on an extra twelve fifteen hundred plus additional calories and so that's multiple days worth of undoing that small margin. And it's tough psychologically, especially like holiday weekend. God forbid a cruise. Don't get me started. You know, I mean how are you going to undo a 17 day cruise. You know, it's just a small calorie deficit.

It's gonna be mentally it's going to feel like you're climbing Mount Everest and there are people out there listening, will have some willpower, have some self-control. Sure. Yeah. On a day to day basis, you do that. But, you know, year after year of struggling with it and having those ups and downs and being diligent and not getting the long term results you're looking for, you know, eventually it takes a toll where you kind of get to appointments like. Right. You know what? I'm just gonna go enjoy it.

Right. I can't seem to beat it. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I can't seem to beat it.

Well, join it. It's a it's interesting because you had text me that. And then I traveled for work working on special projects up in the Midwest side, flown out relatively early. And my parents actually flown in and then I was flying out a couple days after. And you know, the airport experience this time around, I was sitting there, I had a delayed flight due to the brain numbing cold that was in the Midwest. And I'm just sitting there thinking and my stomach growled. And I was like. It's interesting. You know, I don't drink as much water when I travel because I want to be the guy getting up four times on a three hour flight. Chicago. So I was timing water.

And I figured when I landed, I'd, you know, get 30 to 60 ounces enemy right back to where I normally feel good. But I was sitting there in my stomach, growled, and normally when I traveled, it was always OK. When I get to the airport, I'll get a coffee and I'll get a snack. I'll go to the store, I'll pack snacks. I'll have my protein powder with me. I'll pick up the cashews. But then you sometimes, you know, you're like, all right. Well, if it's not just work and there is some play planned on the trip, it's like, all right, well, maybe I get to indulge a little bit. So you start the process of. Right. Well, normally we get these cashews, but this time I'm going to get the ones that have the dark chocolate fun stuff. Right.

And then, you know, so then you land and it's like, all right. While meeting in an airport. So I can't get exactly what I would typically get. So maybe I'll indulge a little instead of getting the side salad.

I'll get the curly fries.

And, you know, then you have a you know, anyone who travels a lot will say, yeah, the airport bars are there for a reason. You know, you get a downtime, you'll have a drink and three or four days of business travel and you try to do your best. And then, you know, next thing happens in your back to a point where you get home and you're like, man, I just. What happened? It kind of spiraled out of control. And that airport realization this time was like, well, no, I'm fine. And we trained and had, you know, a corporate meeting and a training all day on little sleep on Friday. And by the end of the day, I was focused. I was energized. I didn't feel sluggish. I didn't get as much sleep that next night because I had some work I had to get done. So I worked into the wee hours of the morning and I didn't eat, you know, the doughnuts and bagels that were provided. I waited until dinner again. And then I flew home and waited till dinner again. And I came home and was actually in a better place than when I left. Nice. You pretty much stuck to one meal a day.

Well, yeah, yeah. One meal. And I. And I even had a couple of meals, which I typically wouldn't have. We went on to Mexican. I tried a whole bowl of chips in case with the Glock. Like it was amazing. Normally I'd try to limit that stuff.

But, you know, the ability to that realization, the airport, I was like, wait, this trip can be different, you know? Yeah. And I just hadn't traveled much since since I'd started fasting because we have two little ones and whatnot. So it was really cool to know in the future that'll be a lot different. So that's cool. Yeah. Yep. Yep.

We had been going back and forth about doing this kind of segment as we roll out the episodes in terms of a research based topic and maybe some current events, some social events. You know, people that are having successes with fasting with their name and fasting, you know, if you look up Terry Crews and tournament and fasting, you'll see how shredded and ripped he is at like forty eight. And he definitely does intermittent fasting. So those types of things, you want to weave them in and out of the episodes and kind of the teaching that we're gonna go into in terms of the benefits of fasting. But the article's a mouthful. And I know you and I have already talked about it, but it's visceral and ectopic fat. Arthur Sclerosis and cardio Mel about metabolic disease, that is. Yeah, said otherwise. And it's a position statement. So it's a big review that's in the Lancet Diabetes Journal then technology in Two Thousand and nineteen. This is from July 10th of two thousand nineteen.

It was pretty eye-opening in terms of, you know what the visceral adipose tissue and in layman's terms that just means the fat in between your organs and typically it's found deposited around the midsection. Right. Right. And it is dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. And.

You know, I hate to bring up my dad again, but, you know, we typically see things through the values in the lenses of the people and the experiences that we had that are closest to us. So the first thing that the paper talks about, you know, it talks a lot about. BMI and cardiovascular risk and those types of things, but there's already a list or a picture on the third page that lists the negative effects of having visceral adipose tissue or that fat in between the organs and the fat that's centrally located around your body.

And I was blown away with it about it. I mean, I didn't really think it could have all of these different implications. But like, I don't know what your thoughts were on when you read it.

You know, it's scary because you start seeing all the downside of having that extra fat in the midsection as opposed to, you know, out in the periphery, you know, on the arms and the hips on the legs. And that midsection fat. It really just starts to hamper every organ that it's around. And it starts to basically just clog up everything that should be working smoothly in the body. So you really start to kind of visualize each one of those little fat cells in the middle of your body like that shouldn't be that. I need less of those. You really start to put a face to each one of it.

It's an interesting perspective, too. And when you say it that way, I'm like, oh, man. Happy little fat cells like our body wants to store.

You know, it wants to bring us back to homeostasis. It doesn't want us to have go into a starvation mode, which is a conversation on metabolism that we will have in the future, you know. But just looking at, you know, terms like insulin resistance and impaired glucose tolerance and type 2 diabetes, which is so common these days, and I don't think it carries the same weight in terms of long term health outcomes that it used to hypertension and heart failure and coronary artery disease and valve diseases and arrhythmias and sleep apnea and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD stroke. Reduce brain size dementia, decreased cognitive function, reduce bone density. So on. So on. So on and so on.

Well, so you know what we're talking about, you know, how do we take this information and disseminate it and make it actionable? It really comes down to the the thought process of, you know, when we started rolling these episodes out and it was looking at your goals for 2020, kind of what you want to achieve. And I know you and I talked about it a lot of the times. People say, well, you know, if you get to the first layer or level, layer is actually kind of a good parallel there. But level of desire or motivation or mindset on how to do this or why you want to lose weight.

Typically, it's more superficial that the first layer would be, you know, I've got a wedding coming up or I've got an end or 25th anniversary, I've got family photos or I've got a trip that I'm going to be in a bikini or you know, that those types of things when really it's much, much more than that.

Yeah. It typically starts there and that's a fun place to start. I mean, we all see it. We walk by the mirrors, mirrors everywhere. And that's a good place to start. There's nothing wrong with that. It should just be part of the story. And if you really give it a little bit of thought. You know, take a look at articles like this and see what's out there, what's really kind of looming behind having those additional pounds.

You know, no matter how long you've had them for. It really makes you start to kind of build the argument against keeping those extra pounds around.

And the frustrating thing is, you know, you and I hadn't been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, but based off my bloodwork, you know, I was still getting positive results, meeting my numbers were normal. Yet there was some indication of that. You know, type 3 diabetes, that metabolic syndrome, that insulin resistance, kind of these words that you hear a lot. And, you know, I've gotten to the point where I just didn't realize that that was the problem. Yeah. And you know. The long term effect of it was my realization, you guys knows when I looked at my dad as I go now, I'm turning into him. He's got a lot of great attributes, but, you know, his midsection is not one of them in terms of, you know, the problem that I just found out, he's you know, there's there's now no medications involved that can cause people, people that are listening to this right now that think they're doing the right thing, that are having medical personnel, doctors and people tell them that they need to lose weight. The problem is the medications they're on, like insulin itself, is the hormone that regulates fat controls. So they're doing all the right things. Yet the source of the problem is the problem itself is that you have the insulin resistance and you can't get off the merry go round. Right. You know, when we look at the benefits of fasting, I mean, I mean, just the list is innumerable, but we want to go over a few that really kind of stand out that are directly related to the issues that we're kind of in that research article that we're reading.

Yeah. I mean, you start there with the insulin that you just talked about. Insulin is being prescribed. It's it's the problem is that it's circulating too high for too much of the time over years and years and years. And then it's being prescribed because it makes the numbers look better that we're typically the physicians are looking at as as those key markers for the insulin or for the diabetes, rather.

But it's they're not looking at the actual insulin resistance, which is piling on the pounds and then the extra exaggerates insulin given to the patient, which is forcing the body to pile on more pounds. And then every time you go to the doctor, you go, well, doc, yeah, I know I'm getting bigger, but I'm doing everything you're you're saying to do and then you're looking at the bloodwork. Oh, well, your A1C is coming down, so that's good, right? Not necessarily, because if you if you can't take off, you know, the extra visceral fat and those extra pounds and you can't bring the insulin levels down and get off the medication. The only other way it's going to go is you're going to have to keep doing more and more insulin because your resistance is getting worse over time.

So that's where we start, right.

And that I mean, that's the that's the you know, the worst case scenario, you know, where you're in that situation. And now you have that external, like you said, insulin. That is that is there's almost accelerating the process. It's like putting gas on the on the camp fire. The fire gets bigger. So when we look at benefits of fasting and, you know, the whole idea is to lose weight and that the docs in the medical system are not taught to teach patients how to do that. It's it's more it's even less, I should say, now where depending on where you look at it could be as little as 1 hour, up to 10 hours over a course of four to five years of schooling. That's just on nutritional protocols and nutrition itself. So that's the beauty of the world we live in today is I used to joke when I was in full time practice that it would be Dr. Google. So get on Dr. Google and do some research. Not saying everything that you read on the Internet is true, but when you couple it with the research, like the stuff that we've been talking about today, the benefits of fasting are like there's just so many.

But the first one is it removes the insulin response to when you eat food or ingest and try to digest something, you by fasting, you're removing that insulin response, which then is as the hormone. It's the hormone that controls fat burning versus fat storing. And it allows your numbers to improve rather than the opposite, which is giving it more insulin and trying to force that blood sugar into the cells that are already being, you know.

Way down to us, blood at that time without food intake is the only thing that can bring the body's insulin level down to basically as low as it can possibly go near zero levels over an extended period of time. And this is even if if you're just expanding your eating window, I'm not even talking about longer fast necessarily, although that that will take that insulin and keep it at those zero levels for even longer, obviously. But that's the only way to do it.

That's powerful, too, because if you look at the more severe situation, which is that I'd be diabetic, who's on insulin. And if you are on insulin. Talk to your provider. Have a plan when you walk into the appointment. Don't just stop taking your medication. That's not what we're saying. We're saying to outline the underst, the understanding of what the problem truly is. So then you can go ahead and put a plan in place.

And it's it's the removal of that that stimulus. So the longer you can go, the better you can be in terms of getting those numbers down faster and getting control of the situation. And, you know, the in some of the research that we've been looking at and things that we, you know, we've come across is that, you know, 36 hour fast, a couple times a week can do the trick in most cases. So you're thinking, well, I can't eat for 36 hours. Yeah. There's some things that need to be addressed in figuring out how you're going to do that. But. That's why we always talk about the motivation. The mindset, the motivation, the method. And then you figure out how to master it. You know, over the weeks to months rather than, you know, sliding down that slippery slope of just watching you get worse and people that aren't in that situation. It's easier for you because you just stop eating, right, Tommy? As you would say.

Yeah. Right. Just at least for a time. Yeah. Yeah. Not forever.

So other benefits because you know, when you say stop eating people, I got about my metabolism while fasting has been shown to increase the metabolism.

It's also been shown to decrease your risk of heart disease by lowering cholesterol and triglycerides, lowering your blood sugar. It increases growth hormone, which increases your body's ability to build lean muscle and and use those fat stores.

I mean, there's a few more. It normalizes ghrelin. Ghrelin is the hunger hormone that you want to get that hormone under control fast. You'll actually get hungry less, which is something that's hard for people to kind of digest. Pun intended. And, you know, it can also help with things as simple as is simple. It can also help with things such as stress and depression.

You know, food can be used for comfort. I know when I'm super stressed, my cravings do go up and there is a correlation there also. So. Just looking at that listing in totality, you know, counteracting the list of disease processes that are related to visceral fat or visceral adipose tissue that is around your midsection. I know which way we're gonna go and we're gonna go with the way of reducing that insulin response as quickly as possible and simplifying that process, which is really kind of. Just removing the source, which is planning out your week and sticking to your timing. So the action stuff this week, Tom, if you want to go over that. Yes, you should tie everything together.

So we want to reiterate what you did last week. OK. So. So take a look. We were talking last week about planning out your week, working it around and preplanning for those special occasions and whatever else you had during the week, business meetings or what have you. Go back. Take a look. Where were your wins? Where were you lost? This is what tweaks you wanna make for this coming week. What were those things that kind of threw you off? And where did you have those successes? Especially if you were a little worried about something being thrown at you. A wrench in the in the situation. Tie in your goals to those weekly habits. Pick a couple of habits that you want to put into your day to day so that you can measure it. You're going to value what you measure and. You'll be less likely to fall into that, hey, go join me for lunch or or, you know, all the things that can come up and then review, review at night. How did I do today? And review in the morning? How you want to plan your day. Review an evening. Review in the morning. You're you're much more likely to have a plan for the day and stick with it. Holding yourself accountable.

That's huge for me. If I plan or if I look at my day right before I go to bed and then I look at what's coming up for tomorrow, it totally removes those traps that you're talking about. I fell into it yesterday with the whole I'm going to get lunch thing. It wasn't on my plan. I thought, oh, I have this time, you know. And now I have a date night tonight, which I had forgotten about. Don't tell my wife, but she'll probably hear it now that I said it out loud. And now I'm like, all right, well, now I'm gonna eat within a 24 hour window. And that's not ideal for me.

So that planning piece for me is huge. So hopefully that adds value to y'all's days as well as well. The only thing the only last thing that we'd ask is we are getting really close to being ready to roll out that challenge, which is gonna be a seven day challenge on needing you daily through this process. It's it's gonna be amazing. We're ironing out the details. But in order to get the updates on that, two things you can do. One, you can go to our Web site, the fasting for Life.com. You can click on the download button for getting the fast start guide, which would give you an overview of how to get started. And then also, if you go to a podcast, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, if you leave us a review and you subscribe, then you will be getting the updates and the notices on when we let that drop. Anything else? Lutely?

No, that's it. Looking forward to to the next step. Also, have you guys with us. Appreciate you and have an awesome day.

You, too.

So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering where do I start? Head on over to be fasting for Life.com and sign up for our newsletter where you'll receive fasting tips and strategies to maximize results and fit fasting for your day to day life while you're there, download your free fast-start guide to get started today.

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