Ep. 98 - Fasting and the Holidays | How to lose 5 lbs in the next 10 days | Minimizing weight regain post fasting | Burning fat long after the FAST | 5 Ways to Reduce Weight Gain After FASTING | Free Intermittent Fasting Plan for OMAD days
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In this episode, Dr. Scott and Tommy discuss a powerful framework that drives the results during the 7-Day challenges, as well as the best ways to minimize weight gain after a FAST. We discuss simple things that can be done to continue the weight loss momentum post fasting.
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Fasting For Life Ep. 98
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:00:00] Hey, everyone, welcome to the Fasting for Life podcast. My name is Dr. Scott Watier and I'm here as always and a good friend and colleague Tommy Welling. Good afternoon to you, sir.
Tommy Welling: [00:00:13] Hey, Scott, how are you doing?
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:00:15] Fantastic, my friend. We are rapidly approaching episode one hundred of the Fasting for Life podcast, and I just cannot believe that. I can't believe we're here. I know the first goal was one, and then it was 10, and then it was twenty five and now we're approaching one hundred. So shout out to all of you listeners for being on this journey with us. Just some really cool milestones coming up for us. Appreciate you guys listening. Feel free to drop us a review. We prefer the five star kind that tells Apple and all the podcast hosting sites that we are doing some good work and just so grateful for each and every one of you that show up each week and or, you know, come and go as you need. But we want to continue the conversation and today is going to be a good one. We hope, as always, but I have a really good feeling about today. There are so many different layers to the conversation that we are going to have. And Tommy, I'm just excited to see where it goes because we typically have a brief framework for these and then sometimes they take on a life of their own.
Tommy Welling: [00:01:23] Yeah, yeah. You never quite know whether they're going to go kind of like having a podcast. You know, it's just the goals keep getting bigger and bigger. And, you know, the conversation continues to evolve.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:01:35] Yeah, so today we're going to jump in to the deep end and we are going to talk about, you know, if you're new to fasting, if you're kind of been on your fasting journey and you're seeing some good results, but you might know a little bit of insulation from the outside non fasting world, the people that think you're crazy. And then we're going to talk about the end result of not getting the weight off and getting your health under control, which is the the end of the blood sugar, diabetes, heart disease. You know, health related issues that end up in us on medications and shortening our lifespan and decreasing our quality of life. So we're going to take and talk to you, hopefully all three of you as different groups today, and we want to jump in with a topic that it was an article. If you get on the Google machine or DuckDuckGo, which is what I prefer, or Yahoo or Bing or any of those search engines out there and you type in what you eat or when to you eat or how to eat for type two diabetes or for pre-diabetes, you are going to get an entire host of misinformation or conflicting information is probably the way I should first label it. Even if you go on the American Diabetes Association website or and we'll talk about a few of the changes they've made recently, or if you go to Europes recommendations or India's recommendations. There's a lot of conflicting information. And quite honestly, I already kind of I didn't bury the lead on this one.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:03:14] Some misinformation, too, which is where we're going to start with this Healthline article. Meal timing why when you eat matters for type two diabetes management and if you just go and do a little Wikipedia search, not saying that is the only place you should get your information, but just a little peek on Wikipedia. There's a storied history with Healthline and websites like WebMD, and the fact that they're sometimes not well cited conflict of interests. They're they're just hubs for other people's, you know, articles and and opinion pieces and things. So there's it's a very wide, tangled web trying to figure out if you end up in a situation where you've been carrying some extra weight through your 20s, 30s and your 40s. Or maybe now we're starting to see type two diabetes. It used to be called adult onset diabetes, but now it's called type two diabetes because we're seeing it in younger and younger generations. And you end up with this extra weight in your blood. Sugars are elevated slightly in your blood. Pressure's rising in your cholesterol's off and your blood work doesn't look great and you're tired and you're fatigued and you're figuring it out. You've got kids in life and you're living the dream, so to speak. And all of a sudden you walk into the doctor's office and it's like, Yeah, you need to make a change and you go, What do I do now, right? Where do I start, right? Where do I start? That's why this article is is a good starting point for us to have this conversation.
Tommy Welling: [00:04:43] Yeah. Then you then you start going looking at the different sources online, different websites, and then, you know, like a couple of the ones that you just mentioned, you go do a search on on some of those and you see ads right up at the top that also don't look like ads. Yeah, they don't look like ads, but they have conflicting information right there because we're talking, we're talking about a topic that has, you know, there's there's no shortage of opinions and data and research and, you know, just different blogs and all kinds of recommendations that are out there. So it's it's no doubt it's no wonder that that's so much of it is conflicting, but it can be hard to sift through sometimes to.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:05:22] And I want to zoom out to the 30000 foot view here for a second, and I alluded to this in the very beginning and the opening is that if you're new to fasting, you just need to start, right? Like just start. Most people come to fasting for weight loss. We've adopted the fasting and insulin friendly lifestyle for health and for balancing our our metrics and and getting healthy and undoing years of insulin resistance. If you're not familiar with insulin resistance is we've done pretty much every episode. Underlying tone has some reference back to the underlying cause of the weight loss, resistance and the fatigue and the brain fog and the the yo yo dieting and all of that stuff. We come back to the hormonal imbalances that cause the cravings and don't allow us to lose the weight and keep it off. So if you're new, you got to start. If you're having some success and you need some additional insulation, you know, breaking down why making sure you're getting your information in the right places is important. And then as we get into kind of the conflicting information, the nitty gritty is that a lot of these references and these articles were in here. You know, it does mention that meal timing is important and you're like, Oh, wow, like, this is going to be a good article. Maybe we can talk about it on the podcast, right? But what they actually say is going too long between meals and you'll feel a blood sugar dip. And it's like, good, that's what I want. I want my blood sugar to come down, and we're going to unpack that whole piece of prevention, excuse me, reversal rather rather than management of the condition once you walk in and you have that realization that day. But there's so many things in here, Tommy. I just want if you want to pick out a couple, we can mention a few and then we'll just keep talking through the different layers of nuance here.
Tommy Welling: [00:07:11] Yeah, just that. Just that that first point where it's like, go for the balance. Like if, if, if you were looking at your if your your blood sugar stayed balanced, if that was if that was your your end goal, you know, what is what does that mean? That means that they never they never dropped. So you never felt that that dip in your blood sugar, but you're going to need to feel it dip in order for the sugar to come down so the insulin can come down so the fat burning can take place so that the reversal process can begin. But if we're setting our goal towards balanced blood sugar, then that's that's we're already kind of starting off at a place where we've kind of negated the idea of reversal, right?
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:07:57] But if you're at an ideal weight, great keep balance. Sure, prevention, you're there. But the majority of us based on statistics, the majority of us aren't right. Seventy five percent of the population is overweight BMI 25 to 30. We're approaching 40 plus percent, heading towards 50, excuse me, approaching 40 plus percent by the year 2030 for obesity, right? So almost 40 percent of the population is going to be obese, and that's thirty thirty to thirty five BMI. We've broken down BMI and why we think it has some implications, but it's not the best tracking metric for health, but it does give you an indication of where you're at. So in this article like to your point, you know, what do I do? Where do I go? Your best meal timing for for type two diabetes. The five things they say is eat a big breakfast. Don't go more than five to six waking hours without food snack. Purposefully try to fast at night, which is the funniest one for me. And if you go to the ADA website and you look at some of their meal planning and they've actually made some changes recently, you know some decent changes in terms of their positioning on carbs and fats and things. Yeah. But the takeaway here is, you know, you're going to have three meals a day plus always having a snack on hand, so you're never going to be able to like you, said Tommy Reverse. By following these guidelines, which are eat a big breakfast, don't go more than five to six waking hours without food snack purposefully and try to fast at night. I mean, that's what got me in this position. Well, the old position two and a half years ago in the first place.
Tommy Welling: [00:09:31] Yeah, yeah. I was never letting those those blood sugars dip right, like like on accident, not on purpose, but right. But but that's the goal here is like, keep them, keep them balanced. But what what they don't say by by saying balanced is keep them, keep them higher than they than they need to be. Don't let them drop. But we're going to need to see him drop if we want to reverse something. And I think just understanding that when we're looking at these, these kind of sources and these broad recommendations that. There they they they erase that idea of of being able to reverse it or for most people for wanting to reverse it. So they're written in a way that's that's designed for balance and for maintaining which which can prolong the process of certain side effects and certain certain symptoms later on in life. But if you're looking to to actually do something different to actually reverse something, then the the message is aimed in a different direction. I think that's important to understand.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:10:40] Yeah. And there's usually this undertone of fear about the dip, right? But about the blood sugar dip, it's like, Oh, I don't want my blood sugars to get too low. Your body has unless, you know. And the other fear is that the term diabetic ketoacidosis you get into a state where your body's producing so many ketones that it becomes dangerous, right? Those are only going to happen in the extreme. So unless you're a type one diabetic and you're completely out of insulin or you don't have any right because your body is not making it or you're on blood sugar lowering medications that you need to ingest something so your medications don't push those numbers into abnormal, abnormally low areas. So we get comments all the all the all the time of all my blood sugars in the in the sixties, what do I do to never have this happen again? And I'm like, Do it again, right? Because normal 70 to 100, but I'd rather be below in a in a healthy, fat adapted physiological state where my numbers have dropped. Not just balance. So balancing isn't going to move the needle like you said, Tommy, in terms of getting the weight off and keeping it off. Or maybe it'll get you there a percentage of the way there, which is interesting that we talk about this often. You know, in terms of 12 percent, we did an episode on 12 percent of the population is metabolically healthy. Look, the different varying cardiovascular risk factors, you know, health outcomes, et cetera. And then we talk about the five percent of people that can keep the weight off, right? Ninety five percent of the people give it back. So when we're talking about these guidelines, the ADA has never talked about reversal.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:12:14] And even though they made some decent changes, they really have abdicated their responsibility by saying that the recommendation should be tailored individually. And this came from the the the British Medical Journal. And it was talking about optimal macronutrient, like, what is my meal plan? When should I eat? Like those types of recommendations, which is where the health the Healthline article started, right where we started this conversation really well. Wait a minute. This is not good for type two diabetes. Like, what are you talking about, right? So the numbers here and then we'll break it down. They looked at the different recommendations from Europe and then India, you know, 45 to 60 percent of total energy as carb 10 to 20 protein. Thirty five fat. Similar numbers for India, a little bit less fat, a little bit more carb up to 60 percent. But it says right here that a low carb diet for weight loss and glycemic control has gained popularity among experts and clinicians. Others conclude that low carb, combined with low saturated fat, is the best. But what the ADA is now saying is that, you know, the that everything needs to be tailored individually and that the quality matters more, which I agree with nutrient dense foods is important. Sure. We've just got all of this conflicting information where it's like, OK, yes, I agree. Your life plan of how you want to live your life to the fullest is individual, but we're still working inside the construct of How did I end up here and am I undoing that? Am I building new habits or am I just kind of stuck in the middle?
Tommy Welling: [00:13:49] Right? Yeah. And like that position right there where it's it's like everything should just be individually tailored. But not having any guidelines or guidance for how to actually do that means that if I'm in this situation, I'm reading this and I do want to reverse something. But I don't know how. Just the fact that I've read that it should be individually tailored means that's just another layer of confusion of analysis paralysis. Because I don't I don't know where to go from here.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:14:18] Yeah, the evidence shows that, you know, weight loss can delay the progression of of the blood sugar related issues, the cravings, the weight gain, the prediabetes, the diabetes to being on insulin, et cetera. And they even say in some of the articles that they reference, you know, prevention or delay of type two diabetes, you know, weight loss is beneficial and in obesity management for the treatment of or the management of diabetes. Right. So it looks at these caloric, these calorie restricted diets and these, but you're still eating a low calorie, high insulin diet by eating three meals a day and having three snacks a day, right? So you're never making the five percent has been shown in clinical trials to have some impact right on the management of the disease, but they're now starting to see that the clinical benefits of more intensive weight loss and we just did an episode on this recently, 15 percent might be appropriate to maximize the benefit. But how are you ever going to get there if you're still doing some of the same things that got you there in the first place?
Tommy Welling: [00:15:25] Yeah, exactly. And to clarify, that's five or 15 percent of your total body weight, correct? To to be lost and then to actually see the benefit for the long term. And and yeah, exactly. To your point, it's kind of like painting yourself into a corner there, knowing that that recommendation is good and that's what we should be doing, but no guidance on on how to actually do it. And going back to a previous point that you made was that whole line about trying to fast at night and the recommendations for like when should you be eating and how to balance your blood sugars? And like just just the the paragraph about trying to fast at night is written with with such a tone that. Almost like it's a stretch goal just to remove snacks from like the 10 30 p.m. to eight 30 a.m. Kind of window like when we should be sleeping and resting and and rejuvenating, our physiology should be resetting for the day and. Trying to fast at night, it's almost like. This is going to be tough. This is going to be a stretch. And and almost like setting you up for for failure, even for like the first the first rung up the ladder to helping those insulin levels and and controlling the situation, let alone regaining control and reversing the situation.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:16:51] Yeah, it's interesting because the article goes on to say the takeaway know it's not about what you eat, but it's about when you eat, and I couldn't agree more with that, right? But then you start getting into the sources from the articles, and this is where it gets tricky is that they're all sourced from these a.d.a. European Indian guidelines where it's like, this is they don't really it's hard to see like the end result when you're in it, right, when you're in the middle of it and you don't really have the plan or know what to do. So when we're looking at the overall picture and again zooming out to the big picture of why? We feel that fasting and what it's done for us and what it's done for the thousands of people that that have gone through the program and reached out to us and comments and emails, we always wanted this to be conversational. You know, is like, All right, well, what do I what do I do now? Like, what do I do? How do I get the right information? If you're listening to this podcast, then you're in. You're in a better place than you were, right? But I know, you know, really the conversation for the middle group that we alluded to, which is the, you know, you've been doing some fasting, you've been seeing some results knowing that you're on the right path is important and almost forms like this, this insulation. But then for the diabetes group already, Tommy, there are a lot of medical professionals out there right now. And Dr. Fung being one of them that do something very interesting to kind of flip the script, so to speak, and invert the process. Let's unpack that.
Tommy Welling: [00:18:26] Yeah. You know, when I when I first read through the obesity code and then I saw what Dr. Fung had mentioned for, you know, bringing people into his clinic and what he does. And he mentioned a few things like doing a longer, fast like right from the beginning. Of course, these are these are medically supervised. And, you know, people, even when they're on high levels of blood sugar, lowering medications going into a longer fast. And then that being potentially the last time that they had to take one of those medications, they jumped into the longer fast and then kept going through the process after that. But allowing those insulin levels to get low enough to actually start the process, start seeing some changes on the scale and then continue with it like got the ball, got the ball rolling. But like, we don't we don't hear much about that process outside of like the obesity code and some very small circles, right?
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:19:25] All right, fine. I'll say it. Here comes the medical disclaimer. We're not giving medical advice if you are on medications and you want to do a longer fast because we're going to give you the specifics here and go ahead and make sure that you have a plan and know that you're taking your numbers and that you're tuned in to what your blood sugar is actually doing. But what you just alluded to is Dr. Fung will do a and there's tons of people in this space now in the low carb keto carnivore world. And there's you can just get on the social platforms and search for this stuff. And you see these doctors that there's actually accounts called like insulin lifestyle, diabetes reversal like groups. And there's all these different stuff out there. And there's all these testimonies of like, yeah, I did a seven day fast. And sometimes Dr. Fong, you know, where we started is with him as the guide before we started really unpacking this stuff for ourselves was, you know, maybe it's a thirty six hour fast to start to decrease those cravings, to get insulin down and then you take a break for a couple of days and then you do another thirty six hour hour or a little bit longer, and then you jump into a three to seven day all the way up to a twenty one day to completely undo. The oxidative damage in the body and like start the healing process and then you you build in the plan after where we've always focused on is getting the winds first, getting comfortable with how your body feels and how it reacts to fasting and then building up to the eventual reversal, which we've gotten probably over hundreds of comments and testimonials and feedback. Now that fasting, not us, but fasting has been what's gotten the result and undone that damage?
Tommy Welling: [00:21:07] Yeah. And that can be tough when, like if you're if you're on those, those those medications and then and then you actually went down that path to rip the Band-Aid off and then you know that that's super vision, that that can be key because some different things are happening. You get a lot of moving parts here, but like without medication to to just kind of jump into like a twenty one day fast that that's going to sound pretty drastic to a lot of people. I think I don't I don't think I would have been, you know, ready, you know, getting into my fasting journey to just say, you know what? Like now it's time to do a twenty one day fast. I've never gone that long,
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:21:43] And I have a feeling that a lot of those situations are more medically necessary, like if we go back to the old school longest ever recorded fast, it was three hundred and eighty eighty plus days. Eighty two days lost two hundred and seventy six pounds. The math works out like, you know, and he added twenty. They estimate about 20 years to his lifespan. He was literally like on his deathbed and you need to do something and he's like, OK. And he just did it right. So that is not the status quo of the normal pattern here. But really, you know, as we were thinking through this conversation of where do you get your information? Can it be trusted? What is the actual plan, you know, going forward following the guidelines, even if you change the nutrient density of the food and you decrease some of your carbs, we know there are studies out there that show that after two years, the low carb diet for diabetics doesn't seem to get you the results. You actually have a little bit of a regain. So is the omission and restriction of an entire food group. The answer for everybody and the answer is no, it's not. The answer is truly individualized, but working within the old framework isn't going to get you there. It might maintain it for a little bit. But what we need to do is we need to dive into the fact that we know. So if you're new, you're going to get started and you're going to start figuring out if you're in the middle, you're going to have some insulation, right? The worst thing a crab can do is try to climb to the top of the bucket. And then if you are in the in the group where you do have some already established, you know, blood sugar related conditions, you know it's time to start putting those longer fasts in and start pushing the window.
Tommy Welling: [00:23:29] Yeah. And, you know, in order to actually make that happen, one of the simplest ways to get started with with that thirty six hour fast, because that can be a really, really powerful interval. So if that sounds intimidating, the and you've been doing, let's say you've been you've you've gotten the fast start guide and you know, you've been doing one meal a day. You've been doing maybe lunch to lunch or dinner to dinner. The easiest way to get to that thirty six hour mark is actually to do breakfast one day to dinner the next. Even if the breakfast is kind of like it's not the norm for you, just just do that. Like, you could do it tomorrow and then and then just wait until dinner the very next day. And then you hit your first thirty six hour fast and and see how you feel that it might open up. Some might open up your eyes a bit.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:24:18] Yeah, one of the things that I want to make sure is we're talking about how to implement the fasting, if that seems too much, I have another one. Maybe we want to mention it, which is my favorite. It's the 30 hour, but I'll get there in a second. One of the overarching things in conversation. So the Healthline article is like Eat a huge breakfast, right? Right? Ok, so you're the time of the day when insulin is is low and blood sugar is normally at its highest. Because your body is waking up for the day, you're just going to flood some more insulin and blood sugar into the system. It's like, Oh, OK, that's that's a good plan is, you know, contradicting that article, of course, is skipping eating the breakfast with intention to go that longer time. So you have food on both days and it makes it easier. But the realization in, you know, reading some of these these linked articles to the Healthline article and the resources where it's coming from, it all points to those places that we mentioned and reading them. You know, the realization is, is that when you look at weight loss studies, the way that people got there or the type of diet that they they implemented all hinge on one thing which was adherence to the lifestyle change. They call it adherence to the diet, right? They all had similar, almost negligible results, comparing very low carb, low carb, high protein, low fat. You can you can break it down into do the just meat diet, call it whatever you want, right? There's something out there called carnivore, right? And people get great results on it for certain people because it fits their lifestyle and it allows them to adhere to it.
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:25:51] So I just want to make sure that as we're zooming out a little bit and probably talking to multiple different groups on groups of people in terms of experience on this call, in different groups, in terms of the reasons why you came to fasting, the easiest way to get to that thirty six hour, if you're at 16 or 18 and you're getting to that 20 for maybe the next stop for you is 30, which is my favorite, which is starting eating lunch one day, going to dinner the following day, and then you can go ahead and jump to what Tommy said, which is, you know, starting breakfast to the following dinner. And this is really going to accelerate those results and also helps break through plateaus. But it allows you to feel what the consistency looks like and the more reps you get, which is a conversation we had recently inside of our continuity group is the more reps you get, the better you get at it, the more confidence you have, which directly goes into the adherence piece, which is like, Yeah, choose your own adventure. Like which? What is sustainable for you long term? But underneath that fasting is the powerful tool to get you there.
Tommy Welling: [00:26:55] Yeah. And you know, it reminds me of something I've been noticing lately on different posts and different articles and things like that. It's like, it's like there's two different things going on here. So we if we've gained weight, then we have we have, you know, lifestyle choices and things like that that that we need to to work on. And it might be long term relationship with food. There's multiple pieces to that equation, but then there's also the additional weight that I've gained. That's that's putting a stress on my body, on my physiology that that is, you know, causing other other issues like long term problems that are that are going to arise or maybe arising right now. So there's there's at least two different pieces to that puzzle. So we can't we can't really just correct one and ignore the other and expect to have long term sustainable results. So so getting started, and that's why I love fasting, because we we have the method that can reverse the problems and it can be tailored to a long term, sustainable lifestyle solution as well. We can just start closing that eating window. We don't have to use, you know, a twenty one day fast when we're at a at a maintenance weight, right? But but we can tweak the windows so that so that it's it's adaptable for us long term. So if you're if you're listening, you're ready to get started and just go ahead and get started. And if you're ready to push it a little bit, then then use one of the tips and tricks that that we put in this episode to go ahead and do that and and start start looking at things from from a from a new place and new energy. Just keep the ball rolling, keep pushing forward
Dr. Scott Watier: [00:28:33] And zooming back out to the beginning where we started this conversation, Tommy and I didn't know we were going to talk about some of the things that just came up. Full transparency peek behind the curtain if you've been with us for a while. There's a lot of those same sayings that we say over and over again, consistency is the key to the long lasting result. But when we mention when mentioned in the beginning, it was, you know, the zooming out, looking at the big picture, you know, we're we started this podcast and we started the challenges to help people because fasting is transform our lives. And if you want more information, you can go to the website WW. Fasting for life. You can download the fast start guide. If you're on the newer side of things you've been doing intermittent fasting, you want to get to that mat or one meal a day. There's the insulin assessment to help you give you some perspective on some key health metrics that can build out. Potentially your health journey and your weight loss journey. And then, as always, we're always working on new things. New Next Challenge is coming up in November, November 17th, so just excited for that. It's the last one of the year, but we're all going to be working on some maintenance schedules and just a lot of cool stuff to continue to move the needle and continue to have these type of conversations. As always, we want you guys to leave with an action step. So push your window, start fasting, or maybe it's time to step back and just reassess where you're at. And sometimes that's that's the way to even get more momentum and move forward again. So Tommy, as always, appreciate the conversation, sir, and we'll talk soon.
Tommy Welling: [00:29:59] Thank you.