Ep. 6 - Hunger, Energy Levels, Fasting FAQs | Fatigue, Hormones, Fasting Physiology, Medications, Insulin | Brain Fog, Headaches, Dizziness, Trace Minerals, Food Addiction | Free Intermittent Fasting Eating 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.

Everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Doc Scott Watier and I am here with my good friend and colleague, Tommy Welling. How are you this evening, sir? Hey, I'm doing great, Scott. How's it going? Awesome, man. I cannot believe we are on Episode 6. It is flying by. I know it's crazy. It just. I mean, as we keep going through the content, keep going through, you know, what we want to talk about and the reaction and the feedback we're getting. You know, just like last week, we talked about Upton Sinclair and his works from 1911 and how fasting is timeless. And it's just crazy how fast time is going.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Getting a lot of good feedback. A lot of people just really relating to some of the stories that we're talking about. You know, people at different offices on the part of just saying how it's kind of getting them going and getting past the initial hurdles. And and I've asked a couple of people, hey, what do you think about the podcasts? They said, yeah, sounds just like the conversations that we've already had. So that was the whole point because those conversations are so important to get started. And we really wanted to be able to just expand the media for it.

Yeah, it's so true, man. I mean, just with, you know, us, you know, over the last few months leading up to when I started fasting. Now, if you were to told me what you did on Father's Day and say, just stop eating, I would've been like, no, but it was the months leading up to it or where the conversations were kind of building and the understanding and the trust and all that.

So, yeah, it's a comfort level, the comfort level. And these conversations can just work wonders for that. It's so-call.

Absolutely, so today we're going to talk about some of the feedback that we've been getting and some of the most common frequently asked questions, concerns, little hiccups that people experience when you tell them, you know, for instance, right now I'm on going on ninety five hours. Wow. And people are like, excuse excuse me. Well, what do you mean in my day? You know, I had a date night Friday night and then decided Saturday morning that I was going to go for a while. And they're like, what do you mean? So the thoughts that pop up in the reaction to that and those conversations that we have daily now, what are the most common things that we hear frequently ask questions and things like that. So we're just going to jump right in. Yeah. And tell me, what is the number one thing that you hear?

Number one thing. Probably. OK. What do you mean fasting? And I even got this question today. Somebody was listening to the podcast and said, hey, what what did you mean by drive fast? And so basically, what can I have on a fasting day? Like we've said before, we do not advocate drive fast. We know some people do that. But that's not something that we do. We're always wanting to stay completely hydrated and make sure that we always are. So what can we have on fasting days? What we typically say is water, black coffee, tea. And if you use creamer or something else that you normally put into your coffee or tea, you know, don't don't restrict it, keep your sanity and keep your enjoyment of that, especially if that's one of the few things you're going to have during the day. You're going to be pretty much calorie free.

And that's a huge point. You know, when you first told that to me, because I've done, you know, whole 30s and challenges and, you know, super low carb and, you know, strict Kito and all these different things in the past, which all did not work long term because of the restriction. When you're like if you use coconut milk creamer, just just keep it. And I'm like, really? You're like, yeah, I'm like, OK. Well, how does that work in it? It doesn't cause you to derail the process. I mean, if you're gonna be putting, you know, a cup of creamer and a couple spoonfuls of sugar or something, yeah, that's different. But if you put a splash of creamer in it, it just you enjoy it. You can work towards going to straight black coffee. And some people that are, you know, in the fasting world that teach this stuff might not agree with that, but that's what's worked well for us. And it's definitely sustainable. So now I don't even. Most days I don't even use it.

But yeah, I mean, it's starting point. Yeah. Black coffee started to taste better and better. I mean, as you kind of get used to less sugar coming in and unless things just throughout the day, even a little bit more or a little a little creamer or a little milk in your coffee, you're going to taste it more because you're not tasting other things all throughout the day. So you'll be surprised how your taste buds kind of adjust. You get much more sensitive to salt and sugar and everything else for sure, 100 percent.

And I believe it at first. I'll just throw that in there. But you were right. The second thing, which is I hear it all the time when I see patients and have these conversations is I don't think I could ever do that because I would get way too hungry. What? How can I do that? What can I do? Like how I'm just going to be hungry all day.

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's coming from. Just assuming that if I'm hungry at four hours between a meal or I'm really hungry. Six or seven hours between a meal. Then I'll be twice as hungry at 12 or 14 hours and I'll be three times as hungry if I fasted for twenty four hours. And I just can't see myself living through those hunger pangs. And just I get you know, I'm not myself when I'm hungry, I get hungry. All those kind of things. But we only get hungry up to a certain point. And we're used to all of the cues around eating. So where when we're driving past our favorite restaurant or we're on our way home, if there's somewhere that we normally stop to pick up food whenever the time strikes, whether it's noon or 7:00 p.m. or or whatever your normal meal times are, those are going to create psychological cues, at least at first. But it doesn't take very long to deconditioned those for those to have less of an impact.

Yeah, it's again, it just once you do it a few times, you start to realize that, wow, I'm only eating because this is habit. Or I'm only eating because I'm in the car and this is typically on the way to pick up the kids, and this is when I snack on something. It really, you know, give it 30 minutes as my role. You know, give it 30 minutes, drink some water in it. Done and it goes away it. So lutely goes away. So really, there's no work around for that one. I mean, yes, there's things like cinnamon in green tea that have effects, short term effects on blood sugar and metabolism. But just we're trying to keep this as simple as possible. So drink some water and give it some time because it's it's not really hunger. Your body has plenty of fuel and it's typically around the midsection, so.

Right. Yeah, sure of that. Yeah. Yeah. Was the next one you want to go over.

So.

Energy levels. A lot of people will say, I feel like I'm going to get tired. If, you know, they're thinking about their time between the meals. I get tired. If I went for an entire day, I'd just be exhausted. I would collapse. They fit in. Because they've never gone more than a meal or two without eating.

It's where people try to complicate it, too, you know. So I have a good friend, colleague, best man at my wedding. He when I told him what I was doing. He's like, oh, man, I can't do that. I see patients all day from like 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Wednesdays. And I'm like, OK, first of all, don't pick Wednesday then if that's concern. And secondly, no, you'll be fine. So I just tried to explain it to him. The whole fatigue thing, really, if you look at the research, the basal metabolism or what your body burns as a baseline does not decrease with fasting. It actually does the opposite. It increases. So when you have those moments of fatigue or tiredness, it's again, a lot of the times you're gonna hear I say this in the next few minutes.

It's it could be hydration or your body's hormone levels are telling you that it's time to eat when it really isn't time to eat. It's those outside stresses. It's the routine. Your mind starts. You smell something, the olfactory nerve, the particular activity system, all these different things can be playing tricks on you. And you're not actually going to feel fatigue. Your basal metabolism is going to increase, which is absolutely what we want in the opposite effect. What long term calorie restriction does.

And so and. And the reason why we're thinking that we will become tired is because we're used to feeling those insulin spikes. OK. So we have we have lunch. It's higher carbohydrate. We feel like our energy goes up. We're enjoying lunch. And then at some point a couple hours or maybe an hour or so later, our energy starts to dip. Well, we have an insulin response. High insulin levels tend to make us more tired. That's where most of the Thanksgiving lethargy comes from. And then also, as we're going throughout the day, we feel those ups and downs in those insulin levels. And we're we're feeling which age. But when we start to fast and we start to integrate fasting into our normal day to day life, whether it's a smaller eating window or one meal a day or extended fasting, what you realize is as the insulin levels come down and they stay lower, we don't feel those that volatility, those insulin spikes the same way we as we get more insulin sensitive than the energy levels don't fluctuate like they did when we were on this carbohydrate insulin rollercoaster.

I love that you just talked about that. And sometimes I forget that you have your masters degree in this stuff because I sit here and I'm thinking, how am I going to explain this? And then it's just like, boom.

And I'm like, Oh, yeah, I even forget that stuff. It's like, no, this is the physiology of it. And then you have to perceive it and interpret it for your individual, you know, your individual situation and yourself. So I feel I could've painted the picture more perfect than I was sitting here scribbling down notes while you're doing it. So I appreciate the re-affirmation for my brain. Also breaking down those old molds of how we're thinking and, you know, going back to the old thought processes. But it's just clear, you know, once again, once you start doing it more, you know, it gets less and less so.

Yeah. Because if you if you are overweight now before you start fasting, you may have never gone more than just a meal or two without eating. So you've never had or in in what you can remember, you haven't had insulin levels low enough for long enough to get off of that roller coaster.

Makes sense. I saw Friday night, date night, right? And full transparency. We had, you know, a couple of adult beverages, had a couple of appetizers, things I typically wouldn't eat, but I had been fasting up until.

So it gave me more flexibility. We're back in the day. It was a completely derailed meat, you know, eating a normal routine and then going out and adding that stuff. You know, the weekend diet, the weekend warrior diet stuff, you know, and usually centered around social or sports-related things in my past. And, you know, I woke up on Saturday morning and I could feel it like I didn't if I would have been in a coma and woken up from the night before. Right. Or drank way too much not to remember, I would have woken up not only feeling the hangover, I would have felt the insulin fog getting back on that roller coaster being like.

Wow. I'm warm. I'm uncomfortable, like I feel like almost bloated, like all of those feelings come back so quickly. Yeah.

And when you do a longer fast and the first one or two times, you start to eat again. We've talked about this in previous episodes of What Not to Do. It's the same effect where you need to give your body the opportunity to adapt to it. And that's that transition process.

Yes. And it is easy to do. But you you'll be amazed if you if you're listening and you've never fasted before, you will be amazed how quickly you come off of that insulin rollercoaster. How the fog starts to lift. And you may have never felt this before. It feels amazing. And then when you break it fast, if you overdo it or, you know, just over time, you will at some point feel that fall. Come back for whatever reason, whatever the circumstances work. And you will hate it because it is great to have that fog. Dawn, get off that roller coaster.

Sometimes you don't even realize it. Like when I moved to Florida from cold, snowy, rainy, short days of New England after twenty seven years of living there. And then I moved to Florida to go to grad school.

And I just I moved in a couple weeks later. I'm like, I just feel different. And it didn't really sink in right away. But it's sunny every day. And I just felt better. And the same similar thing happened with fasting for me. I didn't realize how normal my abnormality of being in that insulin cycle was until I came out of it. And like the heavens opened. I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, I feel like normal. I feel clear. I can focus. I can, you know, tackle a project in a morning rather than something that would have taken me, you know, a week to do. And I still have energy to go play with the kids at night. So it's been yeah, it's just been amazing. So absolutely it is real. And you will experience the transformation. That's why we're sure we keep harping on the fact you just have to start so the next to kind of go hand in hand. And it's you know, I tend to get dizzy when I don't eat and I tend to get headaches when I don't eat.

Yeah. So, you know, these are interesting because if if you've ever had a headache or you ever felt dizzy when you stood up, you may have attributed it to to eating or not eating and may have been a few hours since your last meal. And and then you might go around thinking, OK, I need to keep eating, I need to eat, because if I miss a meal or it's been too long, I start to feel like I might get dizzy or might get a headache. And then you get concerned about that. But in actuality, we're so sensitive to small fluctuations in our hydration, our electrolytes and our blood pressure that as soon as those things start to change even just a little bit, which is normal during the fasting process, that we might perceive that as, oh, I'm going to get one of those hunger headaches or I'm going to feel dizzy. So. So the fear of it is, is what can hold people back sometimes. So we'll want to let you guys know it's it's a normal part of the process.

Let's spent one hundred percent. Yeah, I didn't I was I was like you could see me wanting to contribute that the salt really is the big thing. Right. So it's I mean, for me, I like to use trace minerals. So it's something you get off Amazon. It's a full spectrum. Trace minerals like 20 drops. When I notice, I'd start to feel a little like that lightheaded moodiness. I just dropped that in the water. Drink fifteen twenty ounces of water, a glass of water with it. And it goes right away because you're not consuming all of those high sodium foods, especially if you are typically in someone that eats out or buys, you know, pre prepped foods.

You're going to have that that big drop off. So it is going to affect your blood volume, which like you were talking about, is going to feel those fluctuations in blood pressure. The one other thing that is related to this is, you know, when you have your decreased insulin, your hormone aldosterone goes down, which then cause your body's fluid levels to decrease so your kidneys will not retain water anymore. Yeah, and that will be that fluctuation. And then the one other complicating factor could be, you know, thyroid and blood pressure medication. So if you are on them, you need to be monitoring your numbers. So same thing with if you have diabetes and your fasting and you're on medication, you need to be monitoring your numbers consistently and make sure that you discuss this with your primary care physician. So those going back to the headaches and dizziness, typically most of the time, those fluctuations, hydration, salt, electrolytes. And I know, Tommy, you go to something that I never would have thought of.

Which is like a pickle spear. Yeah. Just the typical beer.

Grab a pickle spear or maybe like a little shot of pickle juice. If I don't have any pickles around.

Yeah. And typically that will do it. And testimonial here. Woman then I've been working with. She's done a number of one meal a day fasts, so anywhere between 20 to 24 hours she limits herself to that one hour window most days and sometimes a two hour window. And she was finally able to break through the headache window. And it it's because I believe and I haven't followed up with her on this, but I believe, you know, once you start losing weight and your hormones start balancing and all of the other benefits of fasting, that things will start to function more normally. So if you're on meds, you need to, you know, have them. The dosage is changed. So if you're on a certain level of medication and now you weigh 60 pounds less, well, your body's now 60 pounds less.

I'd be like giving an adult aspirin to a child, you know. So definitely some things to keep in consideration. But the majority of the time, if you feel a little woozy, get a headache, come in, hydration, electrolytes, sea salt, pickles, beer. And typically, you know, that'll turn right around for you. If you ever do feel like it's not getting better than just, you know, eat something. Have a little juice. But we don't hear that very often at all.

Yeah. If you're if you're feeling terrible, you don't get off the fast, especially if this is your first one or you have a lot of weight to lose or you feel you have a lot of symptoms and you're dealing with and things like that, you don't get off the fast and then you'll you'll normalise and get back on when when you're ready.

So the last one that I want to talk about, which I don't get much anymore other than after date night last Friday, was heartburn. When you start fasting, things start to balance out and your body doesn't have the same amount of food supply in your GI tract that it used to. And some people will say, yeah, I get some bad heartburn. So my go to I'm not sure what yours is, Tommy, don't think we've ever talked about this, but mine is the digestive enzymes. So a super digestive enzyme. So it's papaya brumley and all those natural digestive enzymes. And then a couple of times and I've been traveling, I've popped a couple of Tums. But the more you do it, you know, you got to give yourself a period here to get acclimated. So for me, Harbourmaster really bad in the beginning. But now, you know, I typically I can't remember the last time I had it other than this past Friday where, you know, eight some things that I typically don't eat. So a couple notes there would be give yourself 30 days to get acclimated to all of this.

Just like if you go to the gym, you need to give yourself time. You can't get off the couch and go run a marathon. You know, you got to build up to it. So give yourself like 30 days to get acclimated, work through some of these things, figure out what works for you. It doesn't work for you.

And then food choices, you know, you got to make better food choices when you start doing this because you will feel the difference.

You will and you'll you'll want to make better food choices, there'll be so much easier to because fasting naturally starts to break those connections that we have with food or a lot of us do. The whole reason why you may find yourself wanting to fast because you have some extra weight to lose, you have other symptoms, you're pre-diabetic or diabetic, you have other other things going on. Well, that means over time you probably develop some habits with food, some connections. So some associations that will naturally start to break. You will feel less dependent when you realize you can make the choice about the timing and the frequency of your of your meals that you never have before. So. So to answer your question, you about the harbour. Yeah. I was a big heartburn guy before, but probably my favorite food was pizza. So that's that's known as one of the big heartburn causes anyway.

Tomato sauce. Yeah. Processed carbs, cheese, dairy. You got it.

Basically, carbohydrates just sit on my stomach and they just burn a hole anyway. That's what it feels like. And so I was pretty used to, you know, doing a couple of Tums. Pretty much, you know, once a day. I would do that not every day, but a lot of times. So during fasting, I did feel some heartburn once in awhile. And I would usually do one or two times, maybe once or twice a week during some of those just, you know, kind of intense, Bernie, rumbly kind of times. But probably my my intake of Tums is probably about 90 percent less than it used to be.

Yeah. I mean, I don't even know. Yeah. It's it's it's amazing how quickly it changes, too, I can ever remember.

And that's one thing that I've kind of tie up the FAA cues here is, you know, make sure you drink a lot of water. So when I started, this process was almost 250 pounds. So I need to be drinking, you know, like a gallon a day. And there was the, you know, the mass exodus of water from my body. The first few times I fasted, that diarists takes place and it just flushes everything out, you know, that goes back to decreased insulin and aldosterone and allowing your kidneys down to retain water and decrease salt. Now that so really you need to focus on hydration. So simple equation that I've always used is half your body weight and ounces. So if you weigh 200 pounds, try to drink 100. If you're just starting fasting, I would actually try to drink a little bit more and drink it more in the morning because that is when your body is burning, your growth hormone is elevated.

And, you know, we have an intake and any water in the last eight to 10 hours and you're up and you're typically more dehydrated. So that was the last kind of piece I wanted to touch on to wrap things up in terms of frequently asked questions. I'm ready to move on to the challenge, Tommy.

Yeah, absolutely. We have about three days left until Elon's on Saturday. So if you guys are hearing this, this will be released on Friday. So it's either right before the challenge or we may have we may be just about to begin. So if you're listening to this, go ahead. Go to the pay register for the challenge. Because even if we have filled up all the spots, we will start a waitlist for the next one because we're getting some great feedback on it. And we will definitely be doing the challenge very soon.

Absolutely. We're about half full as of Tuesday night. And we've done no promoting other than what you hear on this podcast. So it's going to fill up and we're doing it purposely to keep it small, intimate. Lot of feedback. So definitely go to the website. Click the button, go to the Facebook page at the fasting for life or W W W V fasting for Life.com, get signed up. Don't miss the opportunity. We are super excited. We're putting together the final touches. I just told Tommy tonight before we hopped on this podcast to record it that I've got a surprise coming for Saturday so he doesn't even know what it is. Yeah, I'm rockin Bryan or dogs. Yeah. Yeah, I am not going to ruin it and tell you so. Yeah. We'll wrap up. We appreciate your coming along with us on this journey. And we just want to keep giving you as much value as we can. We're enjoying the process and just super excited for Saturday the 15th for the 20/20 Vision Challenge. All right. It's going to be great. Good timing. Thank you so much for hopping on tonight, sir. It's as always, been a pleasure. And we will talk soon. Well, see you.

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