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In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss some of the common things they hear from people who've tried intermittent fasting in the past and have either gotten stuck in a plateau, never lost much weight, or regained after seeing good results. When the scale stops moving, it can be surprising, but understanding why this happens, what non-scale benefits are still taking place, and how to get unstuck help us to keep making progress.
Fasting For Life Ep. 62
[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 give 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 and 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 be Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Watier, and I'm here, as always, am a good friend and colleague, Tommy Welling. Good afternoon to you, sir.
[00:00:47] How are you doing? Well, how are you doing? Great, man. Let's rock and roll today. We're going to be talking about the dreaded plateau. The the I've tried IVF or I've tried that, and it doesn't seem to be working, and we're going to come at it from a real life perspective as well as a personal experience perspective. But then also we're going to bring in some research. So I'm super excited because this is one of the biggest cruxes of the diets in weight loss world. And why people come to fasting is because they want the weight loss benefits, never mind all the additional benefits that we're going to mention today as well. But I think this can be a really good conversation.
[00:01:31] Yeah, I think that's one of the most common things that we hear is about the plateau and and once you get started doing any sort of fasting, it can be it can be really surprising in the beginning when you start to see that that plateau happening or maybe the scale stops moving a little bit. That could be really surprising, especially if if you were seeing very, very quick results in the beginning. And that's what we hear sometimes.
[00:01:56] Now, one of the other situations, too, that sometimes comes up is, hey, I did fasting in the past, got some decent results. Pandemic happened. But all the way back on the quarantine, 15. However, all the catchy phrases are that are out there now and get right, man.
[00:02:14] Quarantine, quarantine. Twenty five.
[00:02:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's. Let's hear. No, thank you. And so you've done it before. It's worked before, but now you've gone back to it and it's not working as well or you've plateaued earlier in your weight loss or you just can't seem to get past this number. So this the study that we're going to be talking about is out of the Journal of Cell Metabolism. And it is early time, restricted feeding improves insulin sensitivity, blood pressure and oxidative stress. This is the cool part, even without weight loss in men with pre diabetes. So why are we why I'm pausing on that even without weight loss part?
[00:03:02] Because there's going to be a couple of cool applications for our fasting for life crew, our listeners that have been with us or that are new to fasting. There's going to be a couple of really cool takeaways from this.
[00:03:14] Yeah, I think that's a really important point to the whole without without weight loss, because, I mean, we talk about that in the challenge. We talk about that in group coaching sometimes where it's like, stick with it. Good things are happening. Things are happening in the background. Sometimes they don't reflect on the scale. And we'll get into some of the reasons why the scale may the scale may have stopped moving, but at the same time, restricting the timing of your meals is still doing amazing, beneficial things within the body.
[00:03:50] So you and I have been working on what we call a plateau breaker resource, so we a bunch of digital resources just came out and the recipe guides and, you know, a new physiology, benefits of fasting based on physiology, physiological effects, non weight loss related physiological effects. And, you know, it's once you once you get into the fasting or the insulin friendly lifestyle. You know where the focus is more on the insulin, the hormones, the the lifestyle side of it, rather than the calorie counting, eat less, move more side of it, and you shift into that lifestyle.
[00:04:25] You know, we we you start to just feel differently about the why you're doing it, but you can be doing great. And then all of a sudden the dreaded plateau comes. So when we're talking about we want to put this in is like one of the first things you can do, which is going to be one of the big takeaways from here to break through a plateau. We're going to dangle the carrot. We're not going to tell you what that is right now because we want to kind of set up the study and then some of the additional benefits as well. So the basic part of the study was looking at men with pre diabetes. It is a small sample size. So we'll come right out and say that there are, you know, when we're looking at the time restricted feeding window, there was the group that had a six hour feeding window and they finished by three p.m. So their last meal was at three p.m. and then the control group was a 12 hour feeding window. And we'll say this, the food was the same and it was designed to maintain their weight.
[00:05:26] Yeah, so they had the exact same meals, the same number of calories just within either a 12 hour window from eight a.m. to eight p.m. versus a six hour window from nine a.m. to three p.m..
[00:05:41] And the biggest takeaway was that the time restricted feeding, right, so that eating and stopping at 3:00 p.m..
[00:05:51] At the period of five weeks and later, the restricted group improved insulin sensitivity, which is the effectiveness of your insulin, which is the undoing of pre diabetes and diabetes, it increased your beta cell responsiveness. So the cells that actually produced the insulin, it decreased your blood pressure, it decreased your oxidative stress and appetite.
[00:06:17] Wow.
[00:06:19] So if I don't eat right, Tommy, if I don't eat, I'm going to get more hungry, right? All right, if I don't eat my metabolism, metabolism is going to slow down. No. What are the other benefits? So it's not just getting the weight off is always a benefit to the body. If you have weight to lose, if you've got other health related conditions, getting the weight off is always going to be beneficial. The weight is a stress on the body in and of itself. Right. Right. So I think your realization of the last challenge that we did when we filed the new challenge schedule eating earlier in the day was kind of an eye opener.
[00:06:59] Yeah. And we saw that reflected in the study, too, because shifting the meal, you know, we we get a lot of intake forms for people coming into the challenge and doing plans. And most people, probably 80 to 90 percent of people will say that dinner is their favorite meal. If they had to pick one of the three major meals of the day, which means most people, if they're doing a single meal, only add a one meal a day, they're doing dinner as as that. But what we find is that our circadian rhythms are actually they prefer a meal earlier in the day if you're going to choose one. And and this research study shines some some evidence towards that, too. And during our last challenge, you know, I was I was following along with with our protocol, our meal timing and what I realized it was that shifting my eating towards towards earlier in the day, focusing more on on a lunch or a very, very early dinner, being done eating by two or three o'clock in the afternoon as opposed to seven or eight o'clock in the evening. I was I was feeling much, much better at it. It's like I had enough time to to just start, actually. You know, not feeling the food anymore, not feeling the effect on much of an insulin response, just going to bed, feeling better and then waking up feeling better as well, and it was even making those longer fasts whenever we start stacking them up during the challenge that made those actually easier to do. So I just thought it was it was really cool. And and I see exactly why the study points towards some of those things, too.
[00:08:43] Yeah. And the cool thing was that one of the takeaways was that your hunger in the evening actually goes down. So compared to the eight a.m. to eight p.m. group, you actually had less hunger when you stopped eating earlier in the day, which I. Yeah, I believe it. Yeah. I never was like, oh, I'll, I'll pick my, my lunches, my meal. I'm usually by myself, I usually I'm working, you know. It's never my my first go to right and breakfast is my most favorite breakfast foods, but I like them at night. But it was really cool to see, you know, that the the actual study backed up, that the people reported their cravings to be much less.
[00:09:24] Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, it makes sense to because, you know, we always feel that that that really strong hunger paying just just within a couple of hours of eating usually maybe in that three to four hour kind of mark. So if it's been longer than that, those hunger pangs start to subside and we feel a lot less hungry. So it it it definitely made total sense to me to.
[00:09:49] So applying this to one of the plateau breaking kind of conversations, I guess is.
[00:09:58] If you are stuck and you are typically one of the 80 percent of the people that let's say eight out of 10 people that come to pick their one meal a day are there eating until later in the day and you've been stuck or you're just not seeing the results.
[00:10:09] One of the first things you can do is simply changing your time, changing your meal time, switch to a lunch or switch to something that we love to do, which is getting to that 30 hour window, which is doing a early lunch to a later dinner the following day, which helps you break through that twenty four hour plateau. We call it the springboard, but if this is the one of the first things is like if you're stuck or you're not seeing the results, then the easiest thing to do is either push the window. And if you're new to it, probably not something you're going to do readily or some people will. Some people won't. But you can simply just change the time of the meal that you eat.
[00:10:50] Yeah, I think that's a that's a great point because it can definitely start the scale again. It can it can kind of reinvigorate and make it, just, like you said, a little easier. Because if you do if you do a lunch to lunch, a twenty four hour fast, that next day is going to be even that much easier to go lunch to dinner. So to do a 30 hour right on top of that. And I find those to be much easier to do than than going starting a longer fast after having a dinner as my as my last meal before a longer fast.
[00:11:25] One of the thing here that I that I found pretty interesting was their food makeup was definitely interesting to me. It was 50 percent carb. Thirty five percent fat and 15 percent protein. So any foodies out there, any nutritionists and dietitians, any weight loss Foch, any personal trainers or are you going to be something. Wait a minute. That is not nearly enough protein. Now they did this to maintain the weight. Right.
[00:11:52] But I would love to flip those numbers right. And put the protein on the 40 to 50 percent and put the carbs on the 15 to 20 percent. And and if they did that, I would hypothesize that people in the study would actually lose weight because they have less time with insulin elevated in their body. So their body has more opportunity to burn fat.
[00:12:10] Yeah, I think I think the numbers that we see and the results could even be a little more striking with a different macro nutrient breakdown for sure. So it just it goes to show you, though, that you don't add a one meal a day, you know, looking at something like that.
[00:12:27] This this was this was actually the six hour feeding window. It was still broken up into three different meals, but with within a six hour eating window, they were taking in the same number of calories in the same macronutrients. So to be getting these kind of benefits while seeing the scale. At the exact same number, I think it's just really, really powerful.
[00:12:54] Yeah, so if you're going OK, what's the takeaway here? Well, there's a couple different takeaways. One, we were to talk about the plateau breaker, right? Two would be just overall, keep your schedule, keep your fasting variable. So just like if you went in and did the same workout every single day for, you know, over 90 days, yeah. You're going to see some results, but eventually your body's going to adapt. So if you talk, you know, there's that concept out there always being varied and always like trying to stress the muscle fiber a different way to get a different result.
[00:13:27] Keep your flexibility open. You don't have to be strict with your one meal a day, only being dinner. Mix it up, putting your non negotiables put in your date nights, put in your family dinners, put in your work lunches, whatever it is, and know that you're still going to be getting all of these additional benefits that we mentioned in the beginning, all the while possibly breaking through a plateau or at least maintaining maybe after a more aggressive fat loss phase. So say you've lost 20 pounds and you're like, wow, OK, well, now you actually have a tool to know that you can maintain your weight and still get all these other physiological benefits of the decreased insulin, the increased insulin sensitivity, the increased beta cell function, the decreased blood pressure, the decrease oxidative stress, the decreased appetite in the evening. So the one thing that did come up that I did want to mention is that there was a short term increase in fasting triglycerides, which is something that we commonly see and that is theorized to be due to the fact that your body is breaking down more of those fatty acids. You have adeno pectin, which is a protein to help regulate glucose levels, but it also adds in the fatty acid breakdown. So you're going to have a short term spike in that. But for the long term benefit, I mean, I think it's going to outweigh 10 times over.
[00:14:58] Yeah, I agree with that. And I think it's also it's also good, for a matter of perspective, if you've if you've done it in the past or you've had variable results with it or you've you've lost some weight and then maybe you came back, some of the weight came back on as you try to get that weight back off again, you know, it's it's possible to restrict the time that you're eating, but also still be in, like you said, maintenance mode to be to be taking in the calories, to be maintaining your weight.
[00:15:30] So just because you're restricting the time doesn't necessarily mean the weight's just going to start melting off. You can you can take in enough calories to maintain your weight during a restricted time. And I think that's that's the answer to to some people's question about why why am I not losing weight?
[00:15:47] I'm doing I'm doing that or I'm doing 18 six or I'm doing two hour window, a four hour window.
[00:15:54] Yeah, it's very possible and like you said, the body loves to find balance, so, you know, we can we can find these points where we find ways to add in a few additional calories here and there. Our body as as our our weight and our waistline shrink. We don't need quite as many calories anymore so we can find a balance point without even realizing it. And that can be a frustrating thing if we don't if we don't realize why we're maintaining when we think we should be losing.
[00:16:22] Yeah. Personal anecdote is when I lost a bunch of the weight back back in the beginning of my fasting journey, my insulin friendly lifestyle transformation, it was, oh yeah, I'm going to stick with man. And I started doing Nomad's and there was a point in time where I just started feeling kind of icky again.
[00:16:42] I just wasn't feeling great and I wasn't as strict with my window. And then I tightened it up again and I really wasn't seeing the scale change. I kind of had just plateaued. Then I realized that, you know, having my insulin test done and showing that my insulin had lowered, I still wasn't at the place where I wanted to be at a healthy level, metabolically speaking. So I kind of hung out with Mohmad for a little bit and we became friends. And then it was like, all right, well, I know at least what's going on and where I'm at. And now I can push through. I can change my schedule. I can, you know, increase or decrease my exercise. My sleep varies depending on stress. Know we have two kids under the age of four. Like it's always a moving target, but it's not always it's almost like that progress without pressure mindset where I had that realization. And now it's cool to see that there's actually research out there that shows, you know, my biggest take away to kind of land the plane here and then give a couple of just overview action steps. So everybody is intermittent. Fasting can improve health even in the absence of weight loss. Like there's so many benefits. If you're not losing weight, you're still getting a health benefit, especially in terms of the cardiometabolic kind of effects.
[00:17:59] Think that's huge because the things that are happening in the background, you may not even see on on a standard blood profile, but there's there's amazing benefits that are happening that will continue to happen. The body is you know, it it it thrives on keeping insulin levels lower longer than than what a lot of us have become accustomed to. And kind of a standard American diet, if you will. Know, one of the one of the benefits that I don't remember if we mentioned it or not yet, but just the quick decrease in the blood pressure. And maybe you did, but just the blood pressure changes that happened quickly I thought was big. And we hear that a lot in the challenges, too, as people kind of get into into fasting even just over a few days. It can be kind of surprising. And, you know, it's just another amazing benefit. I just I just love seeing the stuff and seeing the research support what what we're seeing to.
[00:18:57] Yeah. And what we're seeing, what we're experiencing, what we're hearing from people. So when we talk about all these different physiological things are taking place, I mean, it's really reducing your ectopic fat accumulation, reducing your chance of stroke, reducing your chance of diabetes, which are I mean, I don't know if you guys have seen recently, but the insulin costs have gone through the roof lately where people are having trouble. If you've gotten to that point where you need insulin, like you have an opportunity here to to change your path.
[00:19:26] Right. And it's just so cool to see that it can be done so simply. And you can still enjoy your life, you can still have a life, you're not always dieting, right. And you still have the ability to, like, live and still be getting health benefits. So if you are new to fasting, if you've been with us for a while, we have a resource on the website, the fasting for life dotcom, the fasting for life dotcom. You can go. We will send you an email, you a one page fast start guide on how to put one meal a day fasting into your day to day life. That PDF actually applies to any fasting window you'd like to use.
[00:20:07] And then just a couple of announcements. We have another challenge actually. Already some people asking for a time. I don't know if you saw that in our email asking for the registration page for the next to us. Yeah, I know. We just finished the last one. Right. It just feels that way anyway. Maybe it's because we were off the grid for a week and had no cell service and couldn't drive anywhere because the roads were icy and just completely had a loss of connection with the outside world for a week. But oh, remind me yet. Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to bring that up. So that is coming up on March 18th. So keep a lookout for that. And as always, Tommy. Thank you, sir. Appreciate the conversation. Hopefully we landed the plane for some people today.
[00:20:48] I know for me it was reassuring. And again, always eye opening, enlightening as we kind of continue on this fasting journey. And with that, we'll talk to you soon. Yeah, thanks. Bye.
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