Ep. 51 - The 12 Days of Fasting (Part I), Simple Tips to Lose Fat, Lower Blood Sugar & Insulin Spikes | Intermittent Fasting & OMAD, Exercise to increase Insulin Sensitivity | Free OMAD Intermittent Fasting Plan

In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss the 12-Days of Fasting and how there are 12 simple ways to reduce the blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance that cause weight gain and retention, even when we are diligently counting calories and exercising regularly. These factors work together, either to support or impede our efforts, so they discuss how to stack them together to create immediate, positive effects.

https://www.levelshealth.com/blog/12-glucose-lowering-strategies-to-improve-metabolic-fitness

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Show Transcript: www.thefastingforlife.com/blog

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Fasting For Life Ep. 51

[00:00:01] 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.

[00:00:15] 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.

[00:00:25] 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.

[00:00:40] Everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Da Scott Watier. I'm here, as always, am a good friend and colleague, Tommy Welling. Good morning to you, sir. Hey, Scott. How are you doing? Fantastic. I we are we are firing on all cylinders today, my friend.

[00:00:54] I am, as always, super excited to talk about this really cool article that we came across from a company that uses CGM, which is constant glucose monitoring, and they put together this really robust research fact 12, Part 12, step kind of 12 topic list of things you can do to lower your glucose and which really means lowering your insulin spike and your insulin response. And it was extremely actionable, like there were so many things you could do, just like at the next meal or at the next fasting window. And we went over it in the ten day challenge, the ramp up challenge that we just finished up. And it was incredible to see the response from it.

[00:01:41] So we're going to go over our top three or four takeaways and then you can find the link in the show notes.

[00:01:47] Yeah, I thought these were really cool because like I said, you can you can really literally take them to your next eating opportunity. You can get started with them today. And they have a marked improvement on those things that are so important. The blood sugar spikes, the insulin spikes, which are going to ultimately lead to the control of of type two diabetes, blood sugar, metabolic issues, as well as as well as increasing fat loss as well. So just this really cool. And I thought it was it was it was nice that it's synched up with with things that we were we were talking about. And we're very actionable in the challenge as well.

[00:02:24] Yeah, it's and it's interesting because when I when I was reading it, I'm like, OK, right? No one. And I'm like, oh, wait, no one isn't what I thought no one was going to be. Number two is what I thought the number one was going to be. The number two on their list is explore intermittent fasting.

[00:02:38] Right. So you and I are big proponents of oh my God, give us our life back. Give us back control. Right. No more Knapp's the way it's gone. Better Dad better husband better just person all around, less angry, less hungry. All that stuff. Right.

[00:02:52] And I'm like surely the number one strategy but that's my biased opinion would be oh yeah let's it would be fasting but no one on their list which is eating earlier in the day I put it in the fasting category because it's something that we use personally and then also something we teach where it can be a tool if you're at a plateau, if you're not seeing the results with intermittent fasting, et cetera.

[00:03:19] Mm hmm. Yeah, and I thought that was that was really it hit me because, you know, you hear people say, well, don't eat late in the day and things like that. But a lot of times it's with the frame of the calories, like because you would tend to get more calories in if you're eating all throughout the day and you eat into the later part of the day.

[00:03:40] But when you when you dive into the research and they actually do controlled studies where you're taking in the same number of calories, but you put them earlier in the day, that leads to a lower glucose spike, lower insulin response, and thus supporting our fasting goals and our just overall health better just by just by eating earlier in the day.

[00:04:04] Yeah. And so that I mean, that really fits into the intermittent fasting kind of concept to where there was another case report. And there's studies, this one that showed the participants that the twenty four hour fast, three to four times a week, we're able to reverse their insulin resistance enough in seven months to reverse diabetes. So combining the concept of more time in between meals to allow your insulin to come down, which is one of the major benefits of fasting, you know, the weight loss, but never mind the metabolic and physiological things that happen along with that is literally addressing the cause of the problem, which is the insulin resistance.

[00:04:45] It was it was cool because you take the timing in between meals and then you add in the concept of, well, sometimes it is better to actually eat earlier in the day. Now you've got a couple of different levers you can pull on your journey as you start to figure out how the tool of fasting can be used on a day to day basis.

[00:05:05] Yeah, and I really like that because we had a specific example that came up where somebody asked us, OK, I'm trying to hit a I can't remember the time frame, but I think it was something like around a thirty to thirty two hour fast. And they said, OK, well, either I can I can make it to that fasting window or I can cut it off a couple hours shorter because in order to make it to that window, I'm going to have to eat dinner later than normal, like a nine or 10 p.m. dinner or something like that. And but the insulin response, it's exaggerated the later on that we go into the day. So it was actually we recommended for this person to break the fast a little earlier. So instead of a 30 hour fasting, may have been a twenty seven hour fast, but that means a better response. Better sleep that night and a lower insulin response and better supporting of the goals and then just start the next fast right then after the meal.

[00:05:58] Yeah, and I believe the outcome of that was the scale started moving again for the first time in a while, so it's almost like it could be used as like a plateau breaker. I don't even like the word plateau because your body's probably at a set point or you're under overfeeding it or your stress is high or your sleep sucks or something else has happened right. Where it's like your body isn't able to be as metabolically flexible as it should or it's not processing the food or you're falling off track a little bit with your food choices. You've been on the road, all those types of things. So the cool part was moving that meal up, breaking the fast a little bit earlier, and then seeing the fact that that actually started. You know, I think this was on day five or six, maybe even day seven in the ramp up. And then right from then to the end, it was like, whoa, I can't believe I finally broke through.

[00:06:46] Yeah, yeah, that's cool. And I also don't like that word plateau because it implies that there's a long term issue and but oftentimes there's not oftentimes just regrouping, seeing what those what those moving parts have look like and what you've been eating and at what times lately can be enough to to break past that sticking point.

[00:07:07] One additional thing there, too, is sometimes just being impatient, right? Like you just really being impatient, like it took 30 years to put on those extra 30 pounds.

[00:07:21] The scale one point two doesn't matter, went up one point for it, it doesn't matter, it's that application consistently over time and that was one of the cool threads of the week of the ten days was consistency over perfection, you know, like consistency and then the greater than sine about 10 times and then the word perfection. Yeah. So staying consistent with it is way more important. So it was really cool just to see that realization. And it was it was a great reflection point for us. And then also cool to see people be able to just put it right into play like immediately.

[00:07:57] Yeah, it was. And then we started tweaking that and refining it, especially with with some tips like this, like the eating earlier in the day and and just watching that know be effective and and just the fact that you bring in the same number of calories. But earlier in the day or within a tightened eating window, like there's there's research cited here that talking about going from a 12 hour eating window, like an eight a.m. to eight p.m., taking that and shrinking it down into a six hour eating window, like from eight a.m. to two p.m., but taking in the same number of calories, but a significantly reduced glucose and insulin spike and just reversing the metabolic issues and and supporting the fat loss.

[00:08:41] And it's just it's amazing because before I started fasting, I would have I would have had a problem acknowledging that just on just on kind of a practical level without seeing the data, but because it just didn't feel like it should matter to me. It was like, well, it's counting it, right. If my macros are the same and I'm counting it, shouldn't it shouldn't it all come out in the wash, so to speak? Right. But the problem is that the insulin response that we have from our meal earlier in the day is still elevated by the time we get into the next eating opportunity. And that just leads to another further exaggerated insulin response. And so it just doesn't have the time to come down, which is what we need.

[00:09:22] So I love combining these two to land the plane, as we like to say. So, you know, just off this article, like it was really cool because we're like, oh, this is what we do.

[00:09:32] Twenty four hour fasting periods, three or four times a week, moving, pivoting, moving your meals earlier. If you're not seeing the results you want, get put it in play for a couple of weeks and then that results in the increased insulin sensitivity, which is the good side of insulin, where the opposite is the resistance.

[00:09:49] So it was it was really cool. And I, I like how easy it is. And yeah, with you, I was like, wait a minute, that's should that really matter? And apparently it does. So it's going to be cool to see that 30 hour fast, like the lunch to the following dinner to see kind of what the numbers look like with the people we're working with. And then I'm going to do it personally.

[00:10:13] I'm going to do it a few times, just kind of see the before and afters. OK, would be cool. If you do the tracking, then you can do the same thing. So that kind of leads into talking about the effect of eating right, which would be my second favorite one in this, which would be when we combine A and they use the term preloading so that plus protein or fat plus carb before a meal and what that showed on the back end in terms of a glucose and insulin spike.

[00:10:43] Yeah, and this one is interesting too, because basically carbohydrates by themselves were shown to have the greatest spike in blood sugar and the greatest insulin spike. But when we when we preloaded or combined fat and or protein with the carbohydrates, then it greatly reduced the amount of insulin response after or coming into that meal and and needing to be present to process that meal, which is which has huge implications for for keeping that storage to a minimum and supporting fat loss.

[00:11:19] Yeah. And I like so this was cool. One of the biggest hiccups, roadblocks.

[00:11:28] I don't know how else you want to categorize it for people is oh I love carbs. Right. Going low carb. We did a whole episode on it going low carb. They did a study was a pretty big study and they looked at the efficacy of the weight loss and the diabetes reversal to HBO and see the numbers. And I don't remember all the specifics off the top of my head. But this is a few episodes ago where the outcome at six months, 12 months and two years to 12 months and two years showed a complete regression or actually an increase or a regression of the goal, which was to lower blood sugars and lose weight. Right. So sticking to the carb. Yeah, the maintenance part of it. So sticking to the carb thing is always is always a catch. And we know that carbs, like you just said, spike insulin and glucose the most especially like the things like maltodextrin and.

[00:12:21] Just all of the additional process side of things to do, but simply looking at this study like this was a non diabetic study and it was showing that. Twenty three grams of protein. So it's like a scoop of of a protein powder just for a visual representation and 17 grams of fat, which is like a pad and a half a butter dish. Right. So 20 eating that. I wouldn't eat protein powder and butter together, but just a visual representation. Twenty five to thirty minutes before ingesting carbohydrates, significantly decreased post meal blood sugar levels. Well, that had insulin resistance, so non diabetic individuals that had insulin resistance, combining the protein and the fat before ingesting the carbohydrate was huge. So I know growing up for me, it was always, well, we start with the bread on the table, right? Then we go to the salad, then we go to the meat. Well, I had it completely backwards. We were doing we we had it out of order. Right.

[00:13:23] Right. Yeah. Do the salad first with with maybe some oil and vinegar dressing with it, maybe a little bit of chicken and the salad or soup and then just just flip those around because it, it allows the processing to begin without just focusing on the carbohydrates, because the, the body tends to have an exaggerated carbohydrate response where the sugar starts to spike, especially with white bread or other fast acting carbohydrates, then. Yeah. It over. It over.

[00:13:54] Compensates on the insulin side, the other one in this category.

[00:13:59] So that was that's the fat and protein combination. Twenty five to 30 minutes before. And this was really cool because I had never done this or seen this or thought of this before. So this is eating fat alone in conjunction with the carbohydrate. So the example here and this is the research study that they cited and again, it will decrease the post meal sugar spike.

[00:14:25] Right. So we know that insulin and glucose kind of trend together. You can't really test her insulin at home. So we use glucose as the indicator.

[00:14:32] And this is eating three ounces of almonds with a meal of white bread. So this was the study. I'm not recommending you go out and eat white bread, OK? But, you know, growing up, baloney sandwiches on on the Wonder Bread, fried baloney sandwiches, a little bit of Helman's mayo, a little bit of Dijon mustard. Yeah, this was a real thing back in the day. So no more white bread, but three ounces of almonds with a meal of white bread. Combining those two. Right. Showed a significant decrease rather than eating just the white bread alone. So simply combining three ounces of almonds with carbohydrates.

[00:15:14] Yeah, can insulate you from the effect of the cards. Yeah, and, you know, one of the other one of the other points that we're not going to get into so much right now, but was was vinegar. Vinegar was mentioned as far as being able to blunt the glucose and the insulin spike, too, but like going into an Italian restaurant.

[00:15:31] Yeah, I said I couldn't just of like taking a shot of white vinegar, like, before I eat a bread, like I'm just like I don't think I can see that.

[00:15:40] Right. And that yeah, that that sounds terrible. But at the same time, if you if you go into some Italian restaurants, they put white bread in front of you, but they also may offer you olive oil and balsamic vinegar with it as well. So. So put the olive oil with it, put the vinegar with it, and then now you have a blood sugar stunting combination to to help with the white bread.

[00:16:02] That that's delicious. And you may have you may be eating anyway along with your meal. So you can you can blunt that response with it too.

[00:16:11] Yeah. So so for my my brain it's like. All right, well I'm going to you know, we have our holiday party coming up. And we talked a lot about this with people in the ten day, too. It was incredible that over 50 people went through it. And just, man, I'm just so fired up still. I'm like, what are we doing? The next one? So. Right, awesome. You know, protein and fat. I'm like, oh, yeah, I can handle protein and fat before carbs. Yeah, sure. Great. I can definitely do that. You know, we're having a homemade spaghetti and turkey meatball. We use the bonds of pasta. It's got high protein, high for fiber, still carbs. So I still get a, you know, the nasty effect of it, the sluggish kind of brain fog. And I don't feel great the next day. So this time I'm going right to the meatballs.

[00:16:52] You know, it's going to be ground grass, that ground beef and meatball mix that's going to give me my protein and my fat. And then I'll have the bonds of separate. I'll have it after. I'll just have my own little like dessert. And I'm going to I'm going to measure and see kind of what happens.

[00:17:07] And then the second thing with the almonds, I'm like three ounces of almonds. That's forty grams of fat. So combining protein and fat negates the carb effect. Twenty and thirty five minutes before in simply just eating three ounces of almonds, which is about 40 grams of fat, like that's just seems too simple. And someone in the challenge actually did this and then reported back like I can't believe my numbers were lower after my meal.

[00:17:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like I can't believe this works. I'm like. I'm sad to say that me too, I had no idea this was a thing.

[00:17:36] Yeah, these are these are the kinds of things where they're easy to kind of write off. But when you start seeing the data, you start seeing the spikes and the numbers that go behind it that we're used in the study. And then and then for us personally and then in the challenge, using things like like a ketone monitor and taking a look at ketones and blood sugar before and after these meals and actually seeing it work is is powerful stuff.

[00:18:00] All right, so the last one that we want to highlight is the topic of exercise. So two of the biggest questions we get when people come to us and they find like, OK, you're just recommending fasting. OK, well, what do I eat? Well, what do you like to eat? OK. If it's not fast food every day, we're not going to be like, OK, you should probably stop eating that right? Like if you have a balanced meal plan, then just eat what you like. But no, the effects of what you're eating and then make changes as you go as you learn the process. Right. So what do I eat is one of the questions. And then what do I do with exercise, meaning when can I exercise fasted, etc., etc.. The answer is yes, and it depends on how you feel. There's this two week adaptation process that needs to happen for your body to get adapted to working out in the fasted state. And there's.

[00:18:51] Dozens of influencers and fasters and fasting gurus that I know, like if you just search it right now, will come up and they they actually recommend working out in a fasted state. Now we're talking for fat loss. We're not talking for, like, trying to bodybuilding hit pause every day in a powerlifting program. Right. So this was cool because there's two studies here and some of the people, you know. Have fifty eight hundred pounds to lose. Well, I don't think it's probably the best idea to get on the Biggest Loser and start doing these crazy, high, intense, like workouts with all the extra weight. Let's get some of the weight off first. And one of the things we recommend a lot is walking, right? Yeah. So it's easy if you're if you're not a big mover, especially in twenty twenty, we're home a lot more.

[00:19:37] Right.

[00:19:37] We're not out and about as much. So we're, we're missing our air quotes steps. Well the easiest thing you can do. I know I see this the wry smile on your face time. And we did it. We did it. We talked about the whole ten thousand steps to nowhere. So back in the day. But yeah.

[00:19:53] People like their steps, we encourage movement. So this was cool. There's two two different applications for what they talk about here in terms of exercise. So people doing 30 minutes of walking in one block. Right. So you take the dog for a walk, you do your afternoon walk, you walk at lunchtime. Right. Whatever. Compared to doing one minute and 40 seconds of walking every 30 minutes throughout waking hours up until that 30 minute mark. So 30 minutes of the exercise of walking in both study the participants doing the one minute and 40 second bursts like the little. I'm just going to go walk for a minute and 40 seconds, then I must stop. Every 30 minutes showed that the post meal, glucose and insulin levels were decreased in the first group. So the one minute and 40 second group compared to the 30 minute block of walking. And it was the same amount of walking, just the fact the the the glucose and insulin levels were much lower in that second group and. That's really thinking cool, because anybody can do a minute in 40 seconds of anything every 30 minutes, right?

[00:21:03] It's so easy to do. And that's just another one where that that would have been hard for me to understand before writing the data. And I probably would have just said, well, now it can't be that big of a deal. But again, these are these are all just really, really actionable tools. And if you put something like a continuous glucose monitor and you see the data and you see how this how all these things are are affecting that your blood sugar and your insulin spikes, it's it's incredible. And all these things add up, take take two or three, you know, start today even with just one and start stacking these on top of each other and know you're making a significant impact on the blood sugar and on the insulin resistance. And it's it's working. Even if the scale isn't moving just yet. It's working in the background. It's it's priming the machine for change. And I mean, these these things are incredible. That's extremely actionable.

[00:21:56] It's easy to do. Anybody can do it.

[00:21:57] And in full transparency, even even if, you know, tracking 10000 steps doesn't have a significant effect on on fat loss and other measurement outcomes. I put in tons and tons of steps, especially when I started fasting. I was I'd be listening to audiobooks about fasting and and just walking around the neighborhood and and in the back of our neighborhood just for miles and miles. And that took up a lot of the significant extra time that I had when I was, you know, just not eating and not thinking about what what the next thing was I was going to be eating.

[00:22:33] So, yeah, that's a cool void filler. I didn't think of it that way. Like, yeah, you're not going to eat. OK, well walk instead.

[00:22:41] Yeah. Yeah. Especially as you start getting through your household projects and it's like, well OK, well what else do this extra time there. Yeah.

[00:22:48] Yeah, yeah I like it. Yeah. And I would, I would have a hard time thinking that was, it would have been the same kind of outcome looking at those numbers ahead of time. But if the goal is to reduce insulin resistance and to get the weight to move again, then I like how simple it is. And then the other part of the exercise piece was they looked at. So overall, we know that exercise 30, 30 plus minutes, three times a week, eight weeks. Tons of research also shows it improves insulin resistance and glycemic control. So blood sugar control and fasting glucose levels. Right. So we know exercise is a benefit, but high intensity training actually improves glucose and insulin sensitivity in as little as two weeks like that first concept. So this other study that they talk about, which is really cool, it's three different exercise regimens, all added up to 60 minutes of exercise. So 20 minutes of jogging, 30 minutes before meals, and that's repeated three times a day. So they're eating three meals a day and then 20 minutes of jogging, 30 minutes after meals repeated three times a day, and then multiple short bursts of exercise throughout the day. So three minutes of jogging every 30 minutes repeated 20 times a day.

[00:23:56] So three minutes of jogging.

[00:23:58] Right, 20 times, so that gets you your 20, 40, 60 minutes, right? And it found that the short regular bursts done by the third group were most effective at reducing your body's response to eating in terms of blood sugar.

[00:24:16] Wow. Right. Like, I'm like, wait a minute, hold on, like, can it be.

[00:24:22] And that's cool to me because three minutes of jogging or three minutes of like push ups or three minutes of doing jumping jacks in my office is way easier for me right now in the at home office with two kids, three dogs, the wife who's in practice, you got the UPS guy coming and knocking on the door. The dogs are barking. We're trying to record a podcast. I'm like, all right, well, set a timer. I literally can get up in the office right now, which is under construction, and I can just do jumping jacks, get my heart rate up and go sit back down.

[00:24:50] Right. I mean, that that's so easy to find all those those those little small windows. And I love just setting a timer. And you can use like a pomodoro timer app or something else like that and then do it once every every 20, 30 minutes and and just take a minute or two and do something to get your heart rate up. And and then you don't have to look for these big extended blocks of time, because when we do that, we tend not to find them and then we push it to the next window. And then those just those just slip away anyway as as missed opportunities. But even if we found the opportunities, they weren't as effective as as just those little small bursts.

[00:25:24] So I think that's incredibly empowering. What we're not saying is stop doing the workout regiment that you're doing. If you're already working out, great. But if you're at a plateau, pick something and mix it up. If you're doing the the long, hot, hot, hot works workouts or the forty five workouts or the cost for workouts might not be as you might be getting the results you're looking for. But combining the fasting with one of these things or two of these things that we've talked about is really going to be the action step for me today. Tell me it's these are really easy things you can put in. So if it's combining the fat and protein before a meal or doing the almonds before a meal, if you know you're going to have carbs and carbs are a problem for you. You're trying to break the cycle, right, of having that carb addiction. Right. You know, using the three twenty four, three to four days a week, the twenty four hour window with eating earlier in the day, maybe doing a lunch to the thirty hours to the following dinner would be a good thing. Or putting in one of these new walking regimens if you're a walker or one of these exercise first regimens for a couple of weeks and see what happens, see how you feel, see what the scale says. So I pick one or two of these things, put them in, and I don't really think there could be anything more actual than that. Right. Tell me as we wrap this up.

[00:26:33] No, I think that's I think that's great. I think I think these are really easy to put into place today. So today. Yeah, just one go for it.

[00:26:43] Love it. If you got questions, choose the message. The link will be in the show notes. If you're new to the podcast, go to the website. You can learn about who we are, what we do. You'll see the Fast Start guide, which is how to put twenty four hour fast or one meal a day fast into your day to day. There's a small, short twenty minute video training called the Mini Master Class that comes with that fast our guide and put in your email. Download it, you'll get the access to the mini master class. That would be the best place to start. If you have questions for us, reach out info at fasting for life, dotcom info at the Fasting for Life Dotcom. And stay tuned as we ramp close out this year and ramp up for twenty twenty one.

[00:27:23] We are working on a lot of cool tools, a lot of cool resources and stay tuned for the update on the next challenge. Tumi, as always, thank you, sir. And we'll talk to you. Thank you.

[00:27:33] Bye. So you've heard today's episode and you may be wondering where do I start? Head on over to the Fasting for Life Dotcom 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.

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