Ep. 33 - 7-day Extended Fast, Ketones on a longer fast, Trace minerals for light-headedness | Does fasting hurt your sleep? Adrenaline & Fasting Euphoria, Breaking a longer fast | Fat Loss & 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, and 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 on 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. Hey, everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast.

My name is Dr. Scott Watier. I'm here, as always, a good friend and colleague, Tommy Welling. Good evening to you, sir. Hey, Scott. How are you doing? Fantastic, man. I cannot wait to pick your brain tonight as you are the man on a seven day fast.

Well, you're not there yet. You're in the middle of it. But I want to break it down from start to finish. This is not your first long fast, but want to really kind of lay it out there for people that are wanting to kind of push the envelope.

They've done water fast. They've done Nomad's, they've done, let's say thirty six, forty eight, seventy twos.

But yeah, week mark, we want to really get them there. So I'm excited to to dive into that with you tonight.

Yeah, me too. I mean I feel like this was a huge milestone for me hitting my first seven day fast. I don't have the date but over a year ago now and every time I do it, it's always a little bit different because the schedule is different. What I ate beforehand is different, and the reasons behind why is is always different as well. So it's always an interesting experience and we thought it'd be good to talk about.

Yeah, I've done, I've done, let's see, three, seven days, a couple of five days and the rest are shorter. And I want to make sure that we compare and contrast your first to now to try to to try to talk through some of those differences. But I guess my first question to, I guess is going to be interview style tonight. So bear with me.

But my first question to you would be, why this fast now?

Why this fast by seven days now, if it's been a year or however long it's been since your last one? I know it was been a year since your first.

Yeah. Yeah. And my last seven day I don't remember exactly when it was I think I did one this year. If not, it was it was maybe right at the end of last year. But I want to say I did one maybe in February or March or something like that. Maybe it was around the twenty twenty vision challenge in February.

I was the I did them then. I think you might have done a little bit earlier than OK, because I think you would just come off before we started that. But so why why this length now really like what was the motivating factor?

I had a couple of them. I, I had spent the previous week kind of mapping out the next few weeks what I was going to look like, what what this round of weight and health goals look like and how it was going to get there. And I started putting some thought into it, trying to kind of optimize it to where I could I could design a repeatable week that that that got me into my goals and I could just kind of copy and paste. And by the time I put a little bit of thought into that, I said, well, I really want to just get the momentum started right now. I've been doing Omayyad and that's been great. Great for maintaining, great for kind of a slow melt. But there hasn't been a whole lot of momentum to push to my next round of goals here. And I said, you know what? Now's as good a time as any we had we had date night on a Wednesday, and so by the Thursday morning I just said, yep, now's the time. Seven day fast. I'll I'll come back. Actually, it was it was Thursday that I got pushed and I said, we're going to do it a seven day fast and I'll I'll come back online, break my fast next Thursday.

That's awesome. So when you were saying your framing out your kind of next set of goals, right. So you and I have talked about this where we have conversations about this, too, where people plateau, they'll kind of we had one one person that I got down to their maintenance course. You decide to move it, continue to do intermittent sideshow mad, felt really good scale, kind of kept ticking down a little bit and got below her ideal body weight for her, which is, you know, she feels good, she looks good. She you know, she's she's in a good place. So she's going to maintain. But there was a point like five to eight pounds above that where she was kind of just hanging out right where I've been there. Right. Lost a bunch of weight, kind of just been hanging out live in life and and not really pushing towards something, just kind of figuring it out, really acclimating to different clothes and different energy levels and all that. So I think it's a cool point where you're like, well, first of all, I mean, I feel like the first step for anybody would be to, like, reflect on it. So where are you at and where do you want to go? Because if you don't have those two answers and you don't really know what's going on.

Yeah, absolutely, and like you said, those are those can be moving goalposts sometimes, but I think it's important to realize that as we you know, you set an initial goal, especially when you start fasting and you start moving towards it. There are points along the way where you may have said, oh, I want to get down to high school weight or college weight or something in my twenties or something like that is a really common thing that we hear as you move towards it. You can you can feel yourself heavily improved from where you started and things can get a little comfortable sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. We can we can become a little complacent there. But also it can take some time for self-image to adjust and for us to kind of get comfortable, like you said, with those new energy levels. And you know what? What type of clothes can I fit into and all that kind of stuff? There's some adjustment that happens. So this this definitely tends to be a journey, especially when you have significant weight to lose.

Well, when when we talk about comparing your first seven day fast to this seven day fast, I feel like there's going to be some pitfall avoidance. There's going to be some tips and tricks and how to prep, how to go into it, how to break that fast. So I kind of want to go into these things now and really pick apart what it looks like, because if you've never done a longer fast, there's some things that can really be daunting, right?

Yeah. And I think step one is figuring out how you're going to go into it. Now, for me, like I said, it was kind of spur of the moment the next morning after a good sized meal, like nothing too crazy, but that's when I decided. So there was a little bit of planning before that because I knew I was about to start a fast. But I was thinking more along the lines of a thirty six hour, not a seven day when I had that that meal right before I started. The longer fast. So but I definitely reduced some carbohydrates. Their alcohol intake was, was moderate and you know, it wasn't like an overtly large meal. I avoided sweets leading up to it as well, just so I didn't have as much of a crash or feel the volatility going into it as much. But but within a couple of days, I definitely felt that switching to ketosis, I did have that that window, that six to eight hours, that was kind of rough. It was pretty low energy. That was that was in between day two and day three. That was maybe around, I don't know, somewhere around the thirty six hour mark. Forty well maybe, maybe forty eight hour mark, something like that. It was a little later than I was expecting. So I probably had some, some pretty fuel full glycogen stores at that point. And I really started to see the ketones tick up as well because this is the first longer fast where I'm measuring ketones as well.

Yeah, you just said something that really that reminded me of when I do my longer ones. Is that going into it, knowing how you're going to start? It helps because even if you come out of Nomad's and you do intermittent or Nomad's, if you have a higher carb or more indulgent or alcohol or the bad sleep, high stress, all of those things combined, but specifically with the drugs and alcohol, if you do that the night before and then you start a longer fasts the next day, those first twelve, twenty four hours can be pretty rough. Yeah. For me it's that, that forty to forty eight hour mark where I just don't feel great. But after that then what happens. Because I think it was day was a day three or four. Because you're on day five now right.

Yeah I am. So somewhere around like 60 to 70 hours in is where that, that kind of more euphoric. It's kind of an adrenaline surge. It's it's this high energy because your body's really tapped into those those fat stores, which is basically like an unlimited fuel supply at that point. And so there's no more volatility in the energy levels. It's steady, but it's it's much higher. I mean, that's where that that metabolic boost, 15, 20 percent boost our energy levels comes from and brain fog goes away. And you just you feel fantastic at that point. It's great.

So you mentioned glycogen, which is short term glucose or sugar restores in our skeletal muscle, in our liver.

And then you mentioned ketones, which is our bodies prefer a fuel source, but it takes some time to get there sometimes with our standard American diet and frequent eating. Right. But the ketones is the first time you've used the Ketel Monitor. So you said your ketones got up into the mid 2s.

Yeah, two point six, yeah, that that's the highest reading that I've seen so far and then a couple of other times I saw two point two and two point four. And it's interesting to see how that how that number changes, too, because I thought it was going to be a more linear progression, as if you're kind of doing a slow drip of sugar intake and you'd kind of watch the blood sugar tick up to a certain point. But the ketones are really, really sensitive to activity level as well. So just going for a walk with the dogs or or doing a workout and wake up. They vary with your sleep cycle as well. So it's been interesting to see how those move around.

I know. Yeah. When I was the ketone and the blood sugar tracking is so powerful and not many people do that in the beginning. But if you have access to that, would definitely recommend doing it. And as you've been doing this longer now, someone is new to fasting. What are some of the things that you would or you have done? I know for me, I've done a couple of things in terms of, you know, getting through those fuzzy periods of those down energy periods in the first couple of days when you're transitioning from sugar to fat burning. What is it specifically? And I don't think I've heard you mentioned that you did, um, this time, but what have you done in the past to kind of help through those periods?

Well, you know, there's there's a couple of different kinds of periods that I've felt so far during this fast. And so so the one was, like I mentioned, in that kind of forty eight hour ish mark where where my energy was just really, really low for for probably about eight hours. And I remember spending about five to ten minutes on the couch two or three times during that period where, you know, my my daughter said, Daddy, what are you doing? And I said, I'm just I'm just hanging out for a second. Just give me a second and I'll be back on line here. So I don't think I ever actually fell asleep during any of those times. Maybe I did for a minute or two. Not off, but but felt pretty good. You can kind of feel the energy kind of come back over a short period of time. But that was pretty fuzzy, but that was really, really low energy. But once once that eight hour kind of window was was done, it was it was smooth. It's been smooth sailing after that.

Today, though, I did feel one other thing, which was went on a longer walk with the kids and the dogs. And when I came back in, I felt just a little bit like just a slight nausea for a couple minutes. And then with with just a slight fuzziness, almost like almost lightheaded. I'm hesitant to use that word because there was no dizziness or anything else involved. But so I think I was a little dehydrated at that point. And so what I did, again, we went on a longer walks. This is probably four or five miles and came back and it's about nine degrees out right there. And five heat index. Yeah. So so when I came back, I said, OK, I think this is going to be a good time for a little bit of trace minerals. In the past I had done like a pickle spear, but we were out of pickles right now. So I picked up the trace minerals. I put about 30 drops in, maybe twenty four ounces of water. And within less than five minutes I felt fantastic like back actually better than I did before the walk. So again, I think that was a hydration thing and and a little bit of salt and minerals go a long way.

Yeah, those trace minerals are powerful men, especially for like people that work out just in the Houston heat and, you know, the Houston sweat shop of my garage where I work out like those those trace minerals like it within minutes. You just feel better now.

It was a lifesaver today. I was surprised at how quickly it worked, too.

That's great. That's great. I know the six and seven were my favorite. Both, both. All three times. I've done a seven seven day fast. But what do you think it looks like for the next couple of days here? And then how are you going to break your fast? How would you recommend you break your fast.

Yeah. Next couple of days here. I'm not worried about it at all. You're sleeping. Go to sleep. It's been great. I've woken up refreshed. Sleep's been easy to get into. It's just just everything run smoother because like, my body's not trying to figure out how to digest everything so it doesn't have a whole lot else to think about. And so everything just feels like it's just running smooth, which is which is really, really nice. And I kind of forgot how how nice it feels going into your day four plus of a longer fast since it has been probably six, eight months since I've done it. But to answer your question, what I'd recommend doing and what I plan to do to break the fast is I'm not going to eat anything before the meal, which we've talked about before and, you know, kind of easing in and kind of breaking the fast with something. I don't plan on doing that just because we're going to be celebrating an anniversary. So we're going to be going to a restaurant. And I'm not going to take up any of my my storage room for anything free meal. But I am going to be slow with the meal and I'm going to front loaded with some good vegetables for sure, because I want to take up some of that volume without just bringing on loads of calories and loads of carbohydrates. So definitely some good veggies beforehand and give it some time. I plan on having an extended meal that's that's not any bigger than usual. So kind of controlling the portion size, too.

Yeah, that's by day seven. In my experience. You actually the the three times I've done it, I didn't really want to eat like so it was it was enjoyable to to kind of just sit there and be like, you know what, yeah.

I'll have a little bit of this, I'll have a little bit of that. Just kind of hang out and enjoy.

And we weren't celebrating anything but.

It was just really cool to know that, like, you're at this point, you feel good, you've done all this hard work and you're like, I mean, it'd be different if you've got a birthday meal or celebratory meal like an anniversary to go to. But then I was just kind of like, I guess I'll break the fast because you really do feel better and it's cool. I've been wanting to talk about the specific study with the safety of fasting because some people might be on this right now thinking like, wait, what? What do you weigh this dude's doing what and this other dude's interviewing him, like, what do you mean you're doing a seven day? Well, there's a big back story. If you want to hear more about it, go back to the first few episodes of our podcast. Bear with us. We're still new at this, so I think we're better now than we are that we were then. And I can't go back. Yeah, I can't go back and listen to. I just I haven't done it yet. People say they like them, so it's good. Still getting downloads on them. So that's all good. But you want to hear more about the stories and the reasons why we do this. It's really comes down to the insulin resistance and promoting health long term. So there's a lot of safety and efficacy.

And in doing these longer extended fast in terms of cellular healing and weight loss and energy and just almost like a master reset. So there's a really cool study out there that looked at people fasting over an observational study every a year or doing four to twenty one day fasts. So just really cool that, you know, at this point you've been experienced enough around it. We're doing a seven day fast is more about the planning and the execution. Do you agree with that?

Yeah, I would. Execution feels just pretty, pretty easy at this point. But what I would say is that one of the really cool things about tracking Ketones that I'm going to do differently with this farce that I had never even thought about before was, you know, once you once you break that fast, like you said, you're almost like, well, OK, I guess now is when I'll I'll eat, because they're in that first maybe forty eight to even even 72 hours, you feel like, wow, I really want to eat like where's dinner, when's my next meal coming. Until you can feel like that. But like after day four I don't, I don't feel like that at all and I don't think I will. And even if I was ten days and I don't, I don't think I would, because once you tap into the fat stores, there's not really a reason for your body to be sending those signals to you anymore. So so you just don't feel like that. But what I'm going to do with the ketones is. Keep tracking them throughout the seven days and then after I break my fast, keep an eye on them then too, and then use that to quickly get into my next longer fast. It might just be a thirty six or forty eight, but I'm not going to do what I done it what I've done in the past, which would be get right back onto an ad schedule right afterwards. So I'm going to continue with some more intermediate and maybe even a longer fast here in the in the near future too.

That's awesome. So if we want to and I'm trying to think if there's anything else, you know, if you're new to fasting, start with our Fast Start guide.

If you've been with us for a while, maybe it's time to push the envelope.

But trying to wrap it up with, like, one actionable thing, you know, people can take away for a seven day fast.

Yeah, I think if you're new to this, your action stuff is go download the fast start. The Free Fast Guide from the Fasting for Life Dotcom. Take the free mini master class with it, go into the deep dive and get started. Because if you're just getting started, that's a really, really great way to do it. Kind of a pain free way to get going, feel the benefits and and get the momentum started. But if you're not new to it, then, you know, take this and plan, get your calendar out and write down when your next longer fast is going to be.

If you've never done a 70 to do it, if you're just feeling like I'm ready to go, then then do your next five or seven day fast and put it on the calendar, stick to it and reap the benefits because it's fantastic. It's awesome. Awesome, awesome. Awesome. You're making me.

Well, nothing more than a proof of concept during an eight week, you know, food and exercise transformation challenge, then to prove our concept with a seven day fastest drop rate medal. So, yeah, maybe we can time up the celebration when you come off your second fast after this, and then maybe we can time up that seven day where we can celebrate the all the new data that we have never won the experience and the knowledge. But cool.

What's it to that we call it Woeser. So we could post it to that. Be cool. Oh yeah. See our ketones tracked and things like that. Yeah. Yep, yep.

The ketones. So powerful. So powerful. I love it. I love it. I love it. I don't wanna go down that rabbit hole right now though. So cool. Tommy, appreciate you sharing next 48 hours is going to be awesome. And congratulations on knocking this another seven day fast out of the park and we'll talk soon. All right. Thank you, sir.

Bye. So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering where do I start?

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