Ep. 9 - Fasting Growth Hormone Boost, Metabolism, Muscle Building | Fat Burning, Ketosis, Thyroid, Natural Intermittent Fasting in Children | One Meal a Day Fasting Plan

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Hello, I'm Dr. Scott Watier. And I'm Tommy Welling. And you're listening to the Fasting for Life podcast.

This podcast is about using fasting as a tool to regain your health. Achieve ultimate wellness and live the life you truly deserve.

Each episode is a short conversation on a single topic with immediate, actionable steps. We cover everything from fat loss and health and wellness to the science of lifestyle design.

We started fasting for life because of how fasting has transformed our lives and we hope to share the tools that we have learned along the way.

Hey, everyone, good evening and welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott and I am here, as always, with my good friend and colleague Tommy Wellin. Good evening, sir.

How are you, Scott?

Doing great. I heard a little birdie say that my introduction is pretty repetitive, but I like consistency. We've been pretty good about recording on Tuesday evenings. The energy is good. The mind is clear. It's just been amazing. After the last challenge that we did and the feedback we've been getting so super excited about tonight.

Yeah, me too. Me too. We're gonna go over some good stuff. Got some good feedback from everybody. Got some responses in some reviews and some direct questions that we're gonna start addressing them to night.

So I'm excited about dangle dangle a little a little tidbit there. I like it. It's called a tease. I believe in the radio industry, which I am not part of. So recap from last week, we talked about the industry of tracking steps and calories and calorie counting. In the ten thousand steps to nowhere study that doesn't really exist. And just all of these different things that I don't find to be enjoyable long term that are great for a 30 day challenge, but not great for consistency over time. So we dispelled a lot of things there. Hopefully there is some encouragement and also and then the easiest way to exercise, which I actually heard from a couple of people that are already doing this kind of 15 to 20 minute thing every every day with just resistance bands or just body weight. And they've seen better results with this than in the past, with gym memberships and trainers and all that kind of thing.

So predictable. I believe it. So, so much more motivating to it. So much. I mean, you think about what you get into with a New Year's resolution. You start you know, you go in, you buy a whole bunch of equipment, you start going to the gym, you put a lot of time into it. You come back and then you're still not getting the results and you're not sure why. And you've put a lot of time and money into it. Of course, that's going to be frustrating, whereas minimal preparation and money and you start getting results.

That's extremely motivating. Simplicity, control, simplicity and control. Simplicity and control. You know, so definitely, you know, we started out on this with the four, you know, the mindset, the motivation, the method and the mastery. You know, we wanted to deliver on a promise of simple simplification and giving back control to the individual, which we've been able to do, too. And it's just it's amazing. And every topic and every different situation, it's it's just like those two things just keep jumping out at me. So, yeah, I ride that wave for as long as possible. We also had a great feedback from last week over all it to a bunch of testimonials from the challenge that we did. The 20/20 vision challenge was a seven day fasting challenge and just amazing feedback and go to the at the Fasting for Life Facebook page. You can see a lot of those testimonies there. I believe Tommys, give me a look like that. May they may not be there. I hope they're there. We started believing, you know, there you go. More to come. Yep, absolutely. And then we've got a couple of direct questions, Thomas. That's we're gonna go over those tonight. Also, the main topic for tonight's episode, though, is gonna be the topic of growth hormone, which was a question that question. Good. And why it's why fasting is a great way to boost it. And how important it is in the relationship to insulin. So we're gonna get into that and kind of dispelling some of the. Oh, it's my thyroid. Oh, it's my age. Oh, it's my estrogen levels. Menopausal time period of life. Oh, it's my low t o. It's my cortisol. Well, let's start with the two main players, which is growth hormone and insulin. So that's we're going to go in.

They are really like physiological nemeses, and that's why when we got this question, we said, yes, this is the one. This is the one we have to address tonight. You know, less than 10 episodes in we have to we have to go here. We have to go down this road.

Growth hormone is often called the anti insulin. So we need to talk about it because we talk about how insulin is the main culprit for. Weight gain over time for insulin resistance for diabetes and a host of other health concerns. Growth hormone is the anti insulin.

Perfect way to put it. And when we really look at it.

We want to come at it from a conceptual standpoint. And one of the studies that we're looking at and I appreciate your willingness to go back into the pathophysiology textbooks and to make sure that the pathways that we're looking at are real and not just that they're real like growth hormones or real thing, but that there is a relationship there. And one of the studies that we were we were kind of digesting was from nineteen eighty eight. And it was so powerful in that the. So what are we talking, 30 years old? Right. Thirty. I'm not giving calendars, but. Yeah. Plus years old. And it's looking at the relationship of growth hormone on day one and fasting compared to day five and relating that back to, as you said, its arch nemesis, which is insulin in the body, they act and tag mystically and there's other pathways involved. But there are two main players in metabolism also. So it's it's just important to look at that. There's so much of a boost when you fast and it's it has so many more positive things going on than before than I could even realize like I was like, oh, yeah. Growth hormone goes up. That's a good thing. You know, you get a metabolism boost by day three fifteen percent by day three, blah, blah, blah. And I just keep spitting that out and then I forget it. Michael, wait a minute. Let's dive into this a little bit more in kind of. No, don't go to science nerdy but like. Okay, why is this important? If we're gonna be fast and like, where is the maximum benefit and how do we get the best simplistic result?

Right. Well, you want to start with the basics as far as why growth hormone matters. Sure. OK. So so let's just talk about the basics for a minute.

So growth hormone is a protein and it is made and released from the pituitary gland, which is deep in the brain.

Ok, so we're talking about in in the central part of the nervous system here, controlling all outer lying functions in the body. All right. Especially growth and metabolism. OK, so growth hormone is the main controller of growth and metabolism. So if we can affect it or if we do something to affect it, it's going to have major consequences in our body and in our day to day lives. OK. So it has a couple of different kinds of effects. But one of the main direct effects where growth hormone actually circulates through the body and next directly on a cell is with regard to fat cells. So fat cells have hormone receptors for growth hormone and it will stimulate them to break down the fats inside of those cells and also suppresses their ability to accumulate more fat. So it literally flips a switch on the fat cells to turn them on and get them to start burning and releasing the fat that's stored inside.

And that's a perfect. Application to real life. So when your growth hormone is at its highest. Which is typically in a lower insulin state. So let's say in the morning if if your other hormones are not out of whack. But in regards to these two, your growth hormone is higher in the morning. So your body is breaking down fat molecules or it's causing your liver. Because short term 12 to 24 hours, it's causing your liver to actually clear out its short term glucose stores. So you're getting that energy source there as well, which then accelerates into at the same time because it's kind of like almost like a transition. It can't just be like on and off. And so that's happening while the growth hormone is acting on those fat cells and cause them to break down, which then gives your body energy. So as a warning, you're not as hungry.

But yes, so you're talking about, well, we switch over from sugar metabolism, burn through the glycogen stores that we have over those first maybe 24, 36 hours or so. And then as we get into ketosis, right? Yeah.

But even just in the morning when your growth hormones at its highest it's. Yeah it's it's having these physiological effects on the body. So yes you're going to be less hungry, you're gonna be more satiated. And I think you're a good example in kids to prove the point. Yeah. Through growth spurts. Right.

Yeah. I mean so kids if you guys notice if you have kids or if you've been around them, sometimes they'll become really, really picky eaters or they'll go through these times where they're really not hungry or they're not eating per their normal schedule. And it's usually around a a heavy growth spurt. So a lot of times what you'll see is they'll pile on calories maybe for a few days where you say, wow, they just eat everything in sight and then all of a sudden they just kind of stop. It's like the the appetite goes down. Pickiness food goes up. And all of a sudden they're just they might only eat one big meal a day instead of throughout the day, like normal or like you you just got through noticing. Well, in the body that that's stop that that cessation of eating and shifting over to just a a bigger meal and less frequent frequency triggers the release of growth hormone in the body. That is the definition of a growth spurt for for a child.

And it's interesting because like I'll notice and it took me a while until I started doing this myself. A brilliant man must make him adored his lunch and she was crushing it. And then all of a sudden she wasn't touching it. And then all of a sudden she wasn't eating breakfast. I'm like, what is going on? She used to love this and then she didn't really like it anymore. And then next thing we know, her footie pajamas don't fit. And my God, cash. And then like she goes through a month or two or three of like just massive consumption, like she just wants to eat all the time. So it's like we just blow through watermelons and fresh fruit and we've got healthy homemade snacks. It just it's just like in like shoot sat down one night and eight coconut oil chips like these natural chips that only have three ingredients. Coconut oil, potatoes and sea salt and an entire medium sized container of avocados spread. So like an organic guacamole like and just sat there and crushed the entire thing. And then she you know. So if you look back, it makes sense. You know, she's. Her body is, you know, building up energy stores and then burning them off. Well, the growth hormone goes up. So natural cycles, the body knows what it's doing. And we just need to get out of the way. So one of the biggest. Frustrations of being in practice and doing all these metabolic coaching sessions and challenges and nutritional consults. On day one, day twelve day thirty day 90 day always came back to this conversation of.

Well, it's my metabolism, it's my thyroid, it's my stress, my cortisol, it's my estrogen levels, you know, approaching menopause, it's my low t. Well, guess what? Probably low in vitamin B. Yeah. Out here, there's a good one outside of the estrogen issue as I am male. I had checked all of those pathways because I thought it was my cortisol in my adrenals and I thought it was my thyroid and I thought it was my testosterone and I thought it was my gut.

And then it came back to it being my fate, my my liver. Phase two liver.

Which. And insulin, which was showing up normal my blood sugar tests. So the growth hormone component of this is just massively important because it is the opposite. Just in generalities speaking here, it acts opposite of insulin. So the best way to spike your growth hormone in the best way to boost your metabolism in your metabolic rate.

I should say I don't like the term metabolism, but your metabolic rate is through increasing your your or utilizing your lean muscle or your fat fruit. Scuse me, your fat free mass or your muscle mass and your body, which is where most of the energy in terms of your metabolic rate comes from. So to make this really simple, because I just went down a rabbit hole and confused myself, is using growth hormone to your advantage by decreasing insulin as often as possible, then allows your body to have a boost in your in your overall metabolic rate because that's where the majority of the energy is used when you have higher growth hormone levels. Tommy, did that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah. This makes perfect sense. And before we tell you guys how much fasting can boost your growth hormone levels, because I'm sure at this point you're wondering, OK. Growth hormone sounds great, but how much does it go up? In fasting? Stay tuned. OK. Couple more benefits of growth hormone and we'll get to that, I promise. So growth hormone has another type of effect. It's called an indirect effect through another protein hormone. We'll call IGF 1 insulin like growth factor 1. So the reason why I mentioned it is because it's a key player in muscle growth. OK, this is acting on the muscles to stimulate amino acids. Bring them into the muscles and turn them into actual proteins. Protein synthesis. OK, so higher growth hormone levels means more muscle growth. Protein synthesis. And that's what we want. That's that fat free mass. That's what's helping to control our metabolic rate.

Right. And better body composition. So you have higher visceral fat, higher, you know, centrally located fat. You don't you're not diagnosed with diabetes, but you do have some signs of insulin resistance. Well, guess what? Your risk of cardiovascular disease and obesity and co-morbidities or other conditions that you might have related to in some resistance just went up. So you're literally having a long term negative effect on your overall health profile, which is not what we want.

So if we can stimulate this process, like Tom is talking about that IGF 1 as well as that amino acid and protein synthesis, which is muscle building, then why wouldn't we be doing this? So can I tell him the number? Because I really want to.

Yeah, yeah, I think we're ready. Let's I love this near Tommy, Tommy, that you're up and teases throughout because I'm just like, boom. Let's get to it.

So the study from 88, it's crazy. So on the first day, you know, in that 24 hour timeframe, there is a fourfold increase of growth hormone. So four times just in that first day. Wow. So day five is ten times. Ten times, ten times. So we're talking ten times on day ani's 10 times. It's fun to say ten times, ten times.

So it's just amazing because now we're definitely switched from glucose sugar burning into fat burning, which is what we want to increase all health metrics and make us feel and look better and fit into those old jeans.

Again, like all the positive stuff is coming from those because we are now just going directly to those fat molecules and going like, OK. Break down, give me energy. Break down. Give me energy. Break down. Give me a yes. So what do we have? Hours of thousands of calories? Have the power in the longer fast, the extended fast for increased health and rapid weight loss is not a negative. The study also shows that it actually another benefit of this is it promotes and protects your your protein. It it spares your body's protein. So one of the things we hear is, oh, yeah, you know. Well, I'm gonna go into starvation mode. I'm going to break down muscle. Well, no, you're not, man. Yeah. No. Because your body has almost set about weird mechanism in it to protect. Told you I was gonna get fired up tonight to protect itself because the body always wants to go back to balance. There's teach one and teach two immune systems. There's systolic and diastolic blood pressure. There's so many things in the body that are balanced growth hormone and insulin. Yes.

They're not directly like no other players involved, but they operate opposite of one another. So it's just awesome to look at those and be like, OK, well, I guess I could like last week, you know, put on my little tracker on my wrist and count my calories and do my macros and stuff. Yeah, that's great. That works for a small percentage of people. But guess what that is to me, that's a living hell. That is just awful. Like, oh, my gosh. Like, I just want nothing to do with it. So somebody get thousand steps to nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds if you listen to last week's Episode 8, we are now in Episode 9. Go back and listen to it. Let's applaud for last week's podcast and also leave us a five star review and leave a question just like this one. You guys talk a lot about growth hormone, but what does it actually mean? So hopefully great. Yeah. It was very quiet. Thank you. Yeah, it just amazing. So I'm going to get off my little rant box over here and pass it back over.

I love the wrap box. So speaking of plugs for previous episodes, if you guys didn't listen to the one on sleep.

Check this out. One of my favorite things that growth hormone does its most intense period of release is shortly after the onset of deep sleep. OK.

So you guys go back to your your sleep lessons when we go when we start to go into deep sleep. That's what correlates with all of that refreshing capabilities that sleep has. So we can get nine hours of sleep. But if we didn't hit much as far as deep sleep, it's not going to feel like nine hours of sleep. Whereas if we got six, six and a half and we got into a lot of deep sleep, more than the nine, it's going to feel a lot better. And there there's those growth hormone levels like Scott was talking about. They are highest. You know, after we after we wake up just our natural cycle, which I think has a lot to do with the fact that we are fasting overnight.

They are going to be even higher with more deep sleep.

Their highest right after the onset of deep sleep. So make sure you're getting good sleep. And if you need a lesson on that, go check out a couple episodes ago.

You I can't keep track of the episodes, Tommy. I'm terrible with stuff like that. So. OK. We've talked about sleep, but let's let's just. Yeah. Just just look for the one that says sleep.

So I was going to change gears, but I'm going to bring it back. So before you or whoever is listening in, before you did what I did, which is due years of tracking and. Just everything possible. And people are telling me what, you must be missing something, I'm like, oh, yeah, I am. Yeah, I know I'm getting heavier and I feel worse every year. Yeah, I don't understand. But, you know, the stubbornness kicks in. I'm a provider and I've helped so many other people get results. And, you know, I know what I'm talking. You know, I feel confident in my knowledge base after so many years of studying this stuff and whatnot. And by no means, you know, re pulling research articles out and saying, OK, we are the end all be all experts on it. But the life application is the most important thing to me. So before you hop on thyroid medication or before you really dive into cortisol levels and thinking and blaming your stress and before you start taking bioidentical hormones or t injections or pellets in the backside, hormone pellets like let's try this first.

And this is going to be today. I just had this moment of realization sitting here that the people that get good results with with what we've been doing so far are doing, you know, intermittent with some no longer fast. Here, there. Twenty four, thirty six. Seventy two. But the people that are getting like crazy results are the one meal a day plus people, the 24 hour mark and the growth hormone is four times the level that it normally is at that 24 hour mark. So if you're listening to this and you're like, OK, where do I start? I would start I would start with an 18 hour eating window. Right. Excuse me. I always mess that up. Six. Yeah. Sixteen a six, which is typical intermittent fasting. You know, starting point, if you just Google fasting that you'll probably see a sixty eight when sixteen hours fasted, eight hours eating when. So between twelve and eight. Right. So I would say probably start with a six hour window. So don't eat breakfast. Push your lunch till 2:00 and then eat dinner. You know, stop eating by 8:00.

But really if the goal would be to get to 24 hours as quickly as possible, you now know that your body's not going to break down muscle. It has mechanisms to protect that. You know, you're going to get the benefits of growth hormone, which is what every guy in the gym wants. You know, and not to just make it stereotypically male, but like it's good for women to like. Absolutely.

Hundred percent of females taking growth hormone and lots of anti-aging clinics prescribing it. Yeah, overprescribing it.

You know, we want to look good and feel good. So men, women, whatever. Just start here before you start doing all that other stuff, because I've tried a lot of it outside of, you know, medications and injections and stuff. I've tried to do this stuff naturally. And it wasn't the problem. The problem was insulin. So, yeah, I know. I know you have a story here, Tommy, that you want to get in.

Yeah. You know. Well, you know, you mentioned you mentioned one meal a day and getting there. And so I wanted to just kind of give an update so you can see my wife, Jen on the Web site to go to the fasting for Life.com. And, you know, she's one of the testimonials there. So she's been fasting. Let's see, I started around February of last year. So I think by May she started and she pretty much she she tried some longer, some forty eight and some 72 hour fast. But that wasn't really her thing. But she didn't have that much to lose. She just had some baby weight. I think she was basically at like around 40 pounds. Forty forty five. That she wanted to lose. And so she quickly settled in to a one meal a day routine with a couple of 48s here and there. And then, yes, she pretty much just stuck with one meal a day. And then that one meal, she didn't restricted too much, but she did focus on good vegetables and minimizing processed carbs. You know, she had some pizza here and there. And, you know, the hamburger here and there and things like that. So she wasn't she wasn't like 100 percent strict, but she was she was good with those meals, plenty of salads. You know, intuitive eating, almost like just. Yeah. Yeah. Focusing on Whole Foods and, you know, just keeping it keeping it clean most of the time. And and so she she was it was just kind of melting off those pounds. You know, a couple of pounds a week at a good rate just consistently felt fantastic. And she was hesitant from the beginning because I was jumping into longer fast right from the beginning. And, you know, she was just worried about starvation mode and just the same stuff that we always talk about. And yeah, she feels fantastic. And she's pretty much at her goal weight now. So she does one meal a day during the week and two meals a day during the weekend. That is her maintenance plan. So just a little update on her.

That's awesome. I thought you're going to go with the other other one that you had. So I was I was excited that. On that one, because I did the other time, yeah, I didn't know the most recent update.

So that's awesome. Yeah, it's that's so great. We're gonna talk more about that too, so. In all transparency, to wrap up the episode, a little peek behind the curtain here, because I wasn't keeping track of the time or typically I am. So we're going to wrap up this week and we're going to ask you to do. Keep the conversation going. So we really want more questions because we didn't realize that the growth hormone question was going to lead to such a deep dive and, you know, just realization of of the benefit. So like we knew it. But once we started looking at it again, like, man, this is such a great question, because it just opened up this ability to have another conversation about the benefits and another that we're like, everybody needs to hear this. They need it here. At least just hear it. So what do you want to do is go to wherever you get your podcast? If it's an app, Apple, Spotify. And we want you to give us a review. We preferred stock, five star reviews. I'm not going to be shameful because I am confident in the value and the information that we're delivering. So five, start up and also drop a question in the review. We want to answer more questions. We have so many. We like map. I have so many things. You know, we get on the calls on Tuesdays to prep for the recording. I'm just I can we talk this topic that I've got like a whole running list of things. And like a general layout of what we're going to be putting in our courses and then what the questions really give us, you know, feedback. And we want to make sure that we're talking about things that people are concerned about. But we also wanted to be conversational. So for now, you know, get on there. Leave us a review. Drop a question. And if you don't know how to do any of these things, email info at the fasting for Life.com, right? Tommy? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And Tommy will send you some guidelines. Yeah.

I'm not sure I'd be yel recorded video where it where Scott does a tutorial. I will. We'll post it for you.

Fantastic. So great, Tom. Anything else to add before we before we wrap this up?

No, that's it. I hope we didn't get too deep into these science for you guys. But but I hope you followed along and found some good, good information in there and some actionable stuff, because that's what we're looking to bring to you every week.

So I'm I'm really happy that you dropped that pathophysiology document right in my lap right before we hopped on this tonight. So thank you for your welcome. Bring me back to you. Had to stay sharp. Appreciate that. And then one last thing is I was just thinking here.

I share this with a family friend that needs to hear it. I know in my professional life and even in my personal life, in my relationships, third party authority is oposite is a is a is a very positive thing. So when I was practicing hundreds of patients a week, I would get this all the time. All my co-worker needs to come here.

Oh, my my mom needs to do this test all my dad. And then they just tell me the struggles of them trying to get them to do something that they don't really understand or don't want to do because they're looking at the individual mind or you're the crazy one that's doing this fasting thing. Why am I going to do that right now or it was a mean it could have been any of the nutritional programs or protocols that we did in the clinic or even the physical therapy, rehab and alternative pain relief that we used to do. Like people would be like, what?

You'll get a cortisone shot. My the end of the patient will get so frustrated. And then in my personal life, same thing. I just know it's, you know, relationally. So it's great to have that third party input to help, you know, friends, family, pastors, whatever, just to be like, hey, this is what I see is happening. So maybe this can help you. So share it with somebody that you think may need it.

I know I finally got my dad's pot phone working so we can listen to these damn things because he plays the old I'm an old dog new tricks khadem like. Well, I want you to be here for your great grandkids. So let's get this thing working. So now he's got it. So he was my one that I like. Made sure that we finally check. That also is this week. So we appreciate if you guys would do the same. We love and appreciate you guys keep giving us feedback.

Go to our page. Just stay up to date. We have some big things coming and we'll call tonight. Thank you, sir.

Yes. Thank you. See you.

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