Investigating Fasting with Patricia Kathleen

Chatting with Jimmy Moore; Bestselling Author, Podcaster, and Inspiring Speaker

Today I am chatting with Jimmy Moore. Jimmy is an internationally bestselling author, podcaster, and inspiring speaker who is a highly sought-after lecturer around the world. He catapulted onto the health scene in 2004 after a phenomenal 180-pound weight loss enabled him to come off prescription drugs for high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and respiratory problems. He is the energetic personality behind the uber-popular blog  Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb and the host of the longest-running and top-ranked health podcast, The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show, as well as Keto Talk with Jimmy Moore & Dr. Will Cole, The KetoHacking MD Podcast, and The Nutritional Pearls Podcast. He has interviewed well over 1,400 of the world’s top health experts and has dedicated his life to helping people get the best information possible about nutrition and lifestyle so they can make the right decisions for their health. He has authored or coauthored a series of books, including  Keto Clarity, The Keto Cure, The Ketogenic Cookbook, The Complete Guide to Fasting, and Cholesterol Clarity.

 

Key points addressed were  

• Jimmy’s extensive personal history with fasting and his personal narratives about the myths, struggles, and immense benefits from a fasting lifestyle
• We also discussed some of the important scientific and medical measurements involved in Intermittent fasting that were also covered in his book he co-authored with Dr Jason Fung titled “The Complete Guide to Fasting”

 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

 

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with bestselling author podcasts, our inspiring speaker, an enigmatic influencer, Jimmy Moore. Key points addressed where Jimmy's extensive personal history with fasting and his personal narratives about the myths, struggles and immense benefits from a fasting lifestyle. We also discussed some of the important scientific and medical measurements involved in intermittent fasting that were also covered in his book that he coauthored with Dr. Jason Fung titled The Complete Guide to Fasting. Stay tuned for my fascinating talk with Jimmy Moore.

 

[00:00:42] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen ARCOM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:34] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I am your host, Patricia. And today I am so excited to be sitting down with Jimmy Moore. Jimmy is a bestselling author, podcasters and an inspiring speaker. You can find out more on his Web site. L. L. V L.C dot com. It stands for Live in leveed. A low carb dot com. Again, it is l l v l.c dot com. Welcome, Jimmy.

 

[00:01:55] Hey. Hey. What's going on?

 

[00:01:57] Hi. I am excited to climb through things. I was just telling you off the air, I've listened to a bunch of your podcasts and gotten into some of your online lectures and things on YouTube and I can't wait to really climb through it. Our audience has really reached out to us and asked us to speak with people who have an in depth and really intimate knowledge of fasting. And I can't wait to ask you all of our questions today.

 

[00:02:16] Yeah, I've done quite a bit of different kinds of fasting when I was writing this book with Dr. Jason Fung. I actually had never done a really long fast. So I did some of those which we talked about in the book. So, yeah, happy to talk about this subject. That's a little taboo in some circles and it's really cool in other circles.

 

[00:02:33] Yeah, I think it's it's gaining popularity, to say the least, for everyone listening. A quick roadmap for today's podcast. For those of you that are new to our series, I will start by reading a quick bio on Jimmy, and then I will drop in to asking him about his own personal history. If he's got kind of a succinct elevator pitch story, he can let us know about himself and how he came into the fasting world. And then I'll drop straight into asking him to clarify some definitions and terms that we all think we know about, but we don't. And then we'll just kind of pepper our questions through. All of you have written in. I want to make sure we answer the rapid fire questions. Jimmy Gymea said that he's more than happy to just go off the cuff and answer everything that you guys have asked us. I'll make sure to get the bulk of those asked. And yeah, it'll be a fascinating half an hour. Forty five minutes for me, to say the least. Really quickly, before I start peppering Jimmy with all of our questions, a bio on him. Jimmy Moore is an internationally bestselling author. Podcasts are an inspiring speaker who is a highly sought after lecturer around the world. He could typic could you excuse me? He catapulted onto the health scene in 2004 after a phenomenal one hundred and eighty pound weight loss enabled him to come off prescription drugs for high cholesterol, high blood pressure and respiratory problems. He is the energetic personality behind the uber popular blog Live in Leveed, a low carb and the host of the longest running and top ranked health podcast live in lovely to low carb show, as well as Akito talk with Jimmy Moore and Dr. Wilko, he Iquito Hacking M.D. podcast and the Nutritional Pernell's podcast. So he's a podcast veteran. He has interviewed well over it with well over fourteen hundred of the world's top health experts and has dedicated his life to helping people to get the best information possible about nutrition and lifestyle so that they can make the right decisions for their health. He has authored or coauthored a series of books including Ketel Clarity, The Kitto Cure, The Ketogenic Cookbook and The Complete Guide to Fasting and Cholesterol Clarity. So we'll climb into some of those books, hopefully, while we're talking today, Jimmy, and things of that nature. But I want you to if you would just start off. We had a little bit of a teaser in that bio. But if you could talk to people a little bit about what brought you to investigating the fasting lifestyle and some of your own personal narrative with that.

 

[00:04:49] Well, it started not with fasting, but with changing the eating altogether. I used to be the junkiest of Junk Food Eater back in 2003. I weighed four or ten pounds. I was drinking six Kansa Coca-Cola a day. I was eating whole boxes of, like, little Debbie snack cakes. I was a junk food junkie and I was eating like there was no tomorrow. And what I started on to lose the hundred eighty pounds was the Atkins diet. Got a diet book for Christmas in 2003. And in 2004 was when I had to change my my diet. What was interesting about switching over to an Atkins diet from a sad diet is I found I wasn't as hungry during the day. Now, that was odd for me because I always used to eat and then like 30 minutes later, man, I'm hungry, eat again or just constantly eating all day. So I went from a heavy, heavy, constantly eater guy over to a few meals a day kind of guy. Like three meals a day with no snacks, no junk food, no nothing. Then that morphed into only two times a day. And of course, when you only eat that infrequently, what do you do? It your spontaneously intermittent fasting. I remember in the late 2000s, this was a few years after I did this for a while, somebody said you should try doing like an extended fast of like, I don't know, 24 to 36 hours. I'm going to do that. Like I enjoy the low carb. It's so easy to just eat this way. And I'm satiated and I feel good. My health markers are all great. Why would I do that? And so they're like, try it. I remember trying it. It horribly, like I dipped my toe in to trying to do it for 24 hours and I was drinking diet soda. Still at the time, that idea of you're trying to fast, by the way, and other things that were stoking hunger still. So it wasn't until I met Dr. Fung, who's my coauthor on The Complete Guide to Casting. When I met him at a conference. We shared the stage together in South Africa in 2015. And I heard him talking about fasting. And I was so fascinated by what he was sharing. I went up to him afterward and I'm like, dude, like, is there a book out there about extended fasting and trying to do this longer than just a, you know, a day or so? He's like, no, I said, I want to write one. And so that's how a complete guide to fasting came about. But I was like, I can't do this book and give it justice if I don't actually go through this. So I started experimenting with longer fasts. And even before that book came along, I did try a seven day fast that that again included bone broth and kombucha and different things that I thought I needed. If you have to add anything to water and salt to a fast, then it's not really going to help you. People think it will, but it really doesn't in the end. So I did several like seven day fast. I did three twenty one day fast, which is a really interesting thing. In fact, when we were coming out with the book and I went on a podcast speaking tour. I was full on in the midst of a 21 day fast and I'd go on a show, yeah, I'm on day twelve of my fast and they're like, Oh what? So it was kind of fun. Do that. And I was so energetic and I was so vibrant. I wasn't lacking in energy. It was just it was kind of fun and then a very loose sadness in my brain. So my curiosity was born out of a spontaneity because of my dietary choices made it easy. My continued curiosity is when I learned more of the benefits, things I called top vagy, things like resetting kind of some of the insulin sensitivity that you're looking for. Those were the things that got more exciting to make to me. Now, the major reason most people go on a on a fast is they think, oh, I'll lose weight. Well done. You don't eat food, you're going to lose weight. That's that's a no brainer. That should not ever be your primary reason for going on a fast, if anything, else. I think it's for the autophagy. It's for the brain health benefits. It's for kind of giving your pancreas a break for a little while. Those are all the reasons that I go on a fast today.

 

[00:09:09] Yeah, let's climate straight into that. You've dropped some terms and for everyone, his new to it are still kind of climbing into the fasting industry. I'd love to know how you'd personally define. I don't need it. You know, your health, that definition of it, just how you personally when you think of these words, what your brain is saying to you. So first, let's start off with fasting, because you have actually a very interesting take at this. I've listened to a lot of your other YouTube's and you talk about how come Bhutan and things that you've got flak for, you know, in other communities. What to you is fasting and what breaks a fast?

 

[00:09:43] So it's tricky because you have some people out there promoting bone broth while you fast promoting kombucha while you're fasting. God forbid, if you're one of those people that thinks you can have a big bullet proof coffee that has M.S. t oil and butter and all the rest, that is calories. And by definition, if you're fasting, you're having no calories. And so your drinking bulletproof coffee. Yes, it will keep your insulin low. But no, you most certainly are not fast things. I want to get that one out of the way first. To me, I'm a little more hard nosed about it than even I used to be. I think if you're gonna get the full benefits of fasting, you need to make it water and salt. And if you need to add other electrolytes, magnesium, potassium, that's fine. But water and salt are the primary things you need to be consuming.

 

[00:10:34] Sometimes there are people who need to take medications and we talk about this in our book that OK. That's one of that's you then have a little something, just very minuscule number of calories under 200 calories for sure. You go over two hundred. You're basically telling your body, OK, it's feasting time. All right. So you get four calories of that proof coffee. OK. The body's going OK. It's feasting to weight. Well, you're not. You're not feeding me. What. What's going on? And you're actually are more counterproductive when you're trying to fast with that limited amounts of calories. It's better to eat no calories at all than to eat a few hundred calories because your body will be in feasting mode when it should be in fasting mode. So my definition from nonclinical is just my definition is Warshel.

 

[00:11:27] Yeah, absolutely, and you talk a little bit about why and the bone broth, early on, it was doing that song. You felt like it was supplementing that sodium, MOEED Right.

 

[00:11:35] And you can get the sodium without the bone brought. The bone broth had about 15 grams of protein. And that protein, whether we like it or not, it actually can stoke a bit of an insulin response, which stokes hunger. I found I was getting really, really sick. And then sometimes I would drink so much of it that it came out the other end. It wasn't pleasant. So you kind of have to be mindful of that. Yeah, I know TMI. But we're talking about fasting. You've got to talk about the real stuff. Bring it.

 

[00:12:03] Absolutely. Bring it. And so, Autophagy, when you quickly hear that word, what is the first basic definition you think of?

 

[00:12:10] I remember when it first came out, I was like the auto Fiji. And so I said, no, it's autophagy. Oh, OK. Looks like autophagy. For me, it's cleaning up kind of dead proteins. There's like people don't realize this, but there's like protein gets recycled again and again and again in your body. And so this is why you don't need to constantly be loading up on protein, because the body has a lot of proteins that are in the body just floating around. What autophagy does is it like Rodo rooters them out of there, just sucks them up like a vacuum. Now, you can get some of that just in the day to day doing some intermittent fasting. The guy that won the Nobel Prize in medicine in 2016, the year that we came out with our book, just like the very same month the guy that won the Nobel Prize in medicine actually got it because of his work with fasting and autophagy. And he found that within about a 72 hour period, you've done a good, clean sweep of all those dead proteins that are just kind of floating around in your body and you don't want this excess junk in your body. So it's a good, easy way to get rid of it. You can do autophagy in other ways. Exercise gives you autophagy. Even a ketogenic diet can do it somewhat. But nothing is as effective as a good 72 hour fast to clean all that stuff up.

 

[00:13:29] Yeah. I like that definition. I haven't heard that before. And I had kind of a tweaked out, more complex definition, but I think I'll start using yours.

 

[00:13:37] The fasting in a diet definitely has become more popular. I'm a little bit not a fan of fasting mimicking because it's like why are you mimicking fasting when fasting is good enough? You don't have to mimic something that's not hard. It's almost like saying I want to do a ketogenic mimicking diet. So let me load people up with beta hydroxybutyrate salts. And they're in ketosis. And then let them eat whatever they want. It doesn't work the same way. So I like it. If you're going too fast, don't mimic the fast. Just fast.

 

[00:14:09] Yeah. And I want to get into pasta. I want to continue with the definitions just to get them out of the way. It helps clarify. I want to talk about how you define specific fast. So first define.

 

[00:14:19] Let's do 16. Eight.

 

[00:14:21] Yes, 16. Eight is probably the most popular intermittent fasting protocol. So it's 16 hours of not eating. You're eating within an eight hour window. So just imagine you have your first meal, eleven o'clock in the morning and then your second meal at seven o'clock at night. Then you don't eat again until 11:00 the next day. It's no big deal. That's a 16 eight. Very easy for a lot of people, especially when you're eating foods that aren't stoking hunger. It's why I think kind of a low carb ketogenic diet is a nice kind of ramp up. To go into a fast 16 eight should become very spontaneous and very easy for someone eating that way. OK. And what about mad? Oh, mad is an interesting one because some people I should I go mad every day. I'm like, I mean, if your body tells you don't eat for 24 hours. Fair enough. Oh, man. By the way, stands for one meal a day. So it's ostensibly it's about a twenty three and a half, 24 hour fast. And I've done a lot of that. I enjoy oh, mad a lot, especially days when I'm doing a lot of podcasts. I'm very busy and I don't have time to really stop and eat. It's just fun to just say, OK, I eat at eight o'clock yesterday I. And so I don't have to eat again till eight o'clock this morning. It's just it's just an easier kind of way. Now I don't think you need to. Oh, mad. Every single day. And with all these things that we're describing here, I think the more you mix up the fasting, the better. So if you're going to do, oh, mad one day tries sixteen eight, the next day after that do alternate day fasting, then go on to maybe twenty four fast and just kind of mix it up. Keep your body not knowing what's happening.

 

[00:15:59] OK. And then how excited we can get into longer terms. But I would just be listing off hours from days. Say you have. Oh man. And then you go into forty eight. Seventy two. Ninety six I've heard. And then you get into five, seven day. What are the most common types of fast are the ones that you in and and and and Jason explore in the book.

 

[00:16:18] Yes. So intermittent fasting is the most common. I think that's where most people are going to get the benefits from fasting. Is that intermittent fasting? So. Be 16 eight, it could be 18, six to be twenty four. Could be oh man. So those are all considered intermittent farts and I think the vast majority of people could probably get most of the benefits just by implementing one of those kinds of farce. We also in the book talk about alternate day fasting. So that means today you eat, tomorrow you don't eat. The day after that you eat, the next day you don't eat. So what it ends up being is about a thirty six ish hour fast. When you do it that way and when you're done with a very long, fast, like a seven day fast, for example, what we encourage people to do do encourage people to do to keep the benefits going is to do alternate day fasting when it's over. So and then there's people that are like fasting years and they go long term. And of course, consult with a physician or definitely someone like Dr. Fong who can help guide you. There's other people there's somebody on Instagram, the fasting doctor, Dr. Cecily. And she does a great job as well with fasting. There's fasting M.D. There's all kinds of people out there that can help you kind of do this the right way. But if you want to try a longer, fast, if you've never done longer than, say, 24 hours, don't go for a week unless you like pain. If you can make it 20 hours, then shoot for thirty six. See how you do. If you make it to thirty six and you're good. Keep going. But don't, don't make the unrealistic expectations. This is where a lot of people mess up. They say, oh man, I've heard Jimmy Moore talk about going on a seven day fast. I'm going to go and I've never done more than 16 hours of fast. Don't be the hero. This is like an incremental thing. You don't jump when you're in the gym. You don't jump right to the 500 pound deadlifts. No, you've got to work your way up. You got to work that muscle up. And so if you're not quite ready, if your strength isn't there, if you haven't prepared your mind and body for something like that, then you're not going to succeed. So work your way up, start eating Quito's, then ramp up to intermittent fasting, which will probably happen spontaneously. Then try. Oh, man. Then try 36 to 48 hours, then seventy two and then five to seven days. Let me let me say one more thing about longer. Fast. I think you get the law of diminishing returns after seven days. So you get great results. Up to seven days. But then once you go beyond that, OK, you're getting more benefits. But then you start to have fall off as well. You start to have the concerns about maybe having some muscle loss. You have concerns about other issues coming up. Of course, the hunger which then could make you try to bean. So if you're going to do a longer, fast and plus one more thing, when you do a shorter fast, like five to seven days, guess what? You can fast again next month. But if you do 14 days, 21 days, you can't fast again for maybe a couple of months. So it enables you to do more periods of fasting, which I think cumulatively leads to more benefits in the long term.

 

[00:19:33] Yeah. I want to climb into that a little bit more with you, because you've had a lot of rhetoric in your myriad of you teams and things like that with your different podcasts. But you do talk about also stress has been one of the big things is particularly in your 21 day ones, where even happy stress it was travel twice, I think, for you. But it was that the Sabbath tour of these longer fast. Do you find that there's less chance of getting the sabotage, effective stress or something that will prevent you from fasting on these sort of seven days? Or was it just accidental for you?

 

[00:20:05] Seven days is easy now. I can pretty much do seven days in my sleep. It's so stupid, easy now. But that's only because I've done this awhile, because I've ridden the bicycle a little while now and popping wheelies and that five to seven days. Yeah, I do think it becomes a matter of mind over body at that point. You're kind of willing yourself to make it to 21 days. The example you're referring to is, yeah, I had a trip to Myrtle Beach and it was day 17 of twenty one. And it was I was with friends. It was an enjoyable time as everything, but it just overwhelmed my body and my body's like, you know, and I was just hungry, just like ravenously hungry. So just be mindful to plan your fast around your life. Sometimes people sometimes people are like, well, I'm gonna fast, I'm going on vacation is the perfect time. And I'm like, no, don't do that to yourself. Enjoy your vacation. Come back and you've got a period of time when things are pretty chill. Then fast, I will tell you, in the midst of this, Kogure, 19, has been very challenging for a lot of people to be fasting because the stress of it and all the racial tensions and then just the everything and everybody's everyday lives. I have cautioned people don't get gung ho about going on a fast just because you have the time availability. Your body is going through some traumatic stuff right now. And no, it's not anything that you can necessarily deal with because we're all dealing with it right now. Other than doing meditation and all the things to try to relax yourself when you feel your body's in a good place, then try fasting. Don't just jump into it and say, well, I'll do this to jump start my weight loss because I gained fifteen pounds and quarantinable. No, no, no. You will save as your effort before you even begin speaking about sabotage.

 

[00:21:56] We've had a lot of people write in that wanted to know for you personally. Do you have a list of like the top five saboteurs like you talked about diet soda and a lot of your history and the stress aspect? You have things that people should watch out for when planning, say, their first five to seven day fast, say someone's gotten comfortable, they've done a forty eight, but then in 72, they're climbing into your kingdom and they want to do their first seven day. What are life markers to look out for.

 

[00:22:26] You better drink the crap out of this stuff because water people don't think about what's happening metabolically when you're fasting and same thing happens when you're Quito. But at an accelerated rate when you're fasting. Your body is dumping glycogen like crazy, and it really kicks in hard on the third day. So you're testing your blood sugar and you're testing your ketones maybe on the day you start. It's like eighty five for your blood sugar and it's like maybe point seven on your blood ketones. But then day two, you start getting all those ravenous feelings. Your body's like, okay dude, it's time to eat. Oh that. Did you not remember to eat black. And so day to your body kind of rebels against you. By day three, something pretty magical happens. And it happens because your body's making this shift. It has dumped the glycogen stores. Your blood sugar has fallen sometimes into a level that freaks people out. I had somebody tell me just just say I'm on a I'm on the third day of my fast and my blood sugar is fifty three. I'm like, congratulations. You feel good, right? She's. Oh yeah. Fifty three. I'm like, you feel good, right. She's like, yeah. I said, that's all that matters. Fifty three in the context of a farce. It's not hypoglycemia if you feel good. So people freak out about absolute numbers because look what happened to her blood ketones. She went from one point one on day two to three point nine. On day three. And so what happened was her body dumped the glycogen. Her body started using her own body fat stores as energy. She replenished the water to replenish the electrolytes with the salt, electrolytes and water are your friend. If you get hungry, drink and have electrolytes. If you get thirsty, drink, drink, drink. Like, I think we just we get so used to forgetting to drink that we don't drink enough. I keep water by me all day long, even when I'm Quito, just because it's helpful. That is the key. If you want to be successful on a longer, faster or even like an intermittent fasting, never done it before. If you get hungry, drink like people. They just. Oh should should I drink. Drink like don't. Don't hold back. That is like the the what was it. Weight Watchers. That's the zero points that cost you anything to drink. Water. So drink, drink, drink, drink, drink. And you're gonna be glad because it makes you feel good. Sometimes people will also put the salt underneath their tongue and so go underneath the tongue and just let it sit there and it kind of loses a little bit. You take you feel like you're having some chicken noodle soup. And sometimes when you have a hunger or craving in the midst of a fast you, that will salt trick under the tongue. It's amazing how quick it disappears. And so I think people also psych themselves out. Oh, I should be eating. Oh, I heard a little I heard a little gurgle. That must be hunger. Gerbils or not hunger. GURGLES It's just your body is just adjusting. And especially once you kind of get today three by day three, it's party time. Like if you make it to day three of a fast go five to seven, don't just stop at three because that's where the magic is. Just begin.

 

[00:25:37] Yeah, absolutely. What about diet soda? You have a personal relationship with this. Doesn't sabotage a fast what is it done for you in your body to respond to.

 

[00:25:46] Right. So some of the ones that will almost all of them, except for the ones sweetened with stevia. What's the name brand? ZB, I think is the only one that's really good. But yeah, I don't have any artificial sweeteners. And we talked about this again in our book as well, because when you have artificial sweeteners, people say, well, it's zero calories, so it's zero. No, it's not zero. You need to look at artificial sweeteners as a negative. It's taking away from you because what's it doing? In one of my other books, The Kito Cure, Dr. Nalley and I actually talked about that. The sweeteners, while they may not raise your blood sugar, that you will raise in some people their insulin. So the last thing you want to have happen when you're fasting. Is to raise your insulin, because what happens when you raise insulin levels and you have no food in your body? The body just screams at you and says it's time to eat. And it's not time to eat, but metabolically, your body's like you just gave me some kind of substance that said, it's party time. It's time to eat. And you're not eating, homeboy. Give us food or we're going to scream at you some more. And so just know that had that visual of me screaming at you that that's what diet soda is doing to your metabolism in the midst of a farce. It's why you're going to get so much more satiated in your thirst and in your hunger when you have just water and salt.

 

[00:27:13] You talk a lot about like the day three, you know, even in some of your other things because of this kind of lifting and this ability to go forward.

 

[00:27:21] What are some of the misperceptions or misconceptions that you running to most from people come to you to talk to you about fasting? You've mentioned just recently and in five minutes ago this this fear based people have their very hyped up in their heads about longer, fast. Are there other misconceptions that attached to fasting with working out or any of these things that you find very common in people who come to you? Going past two or three day fast?

 

[00:27:42] Oh, the biggest one is, am I starving myself? Is this an eating disorder? And that's kind of the funniest one to me, because people have this notion that fasting is starving. Starving is where you have food available and you're not allowed to have it. That's being starved. In this case, you're in complete control. Fasting is all about you being the boss and you're choosing not to eat for a period of time to get all the benefits that we're talking about here today. And if at any point it becomes overwhelming, guess what? You in the fast and you go eat. It's no big deal. So I think people psych themselves out thinking they're doing something harmful. So I'm leeching my muscles over my muscle. My my bones are going to deteriorate. So they have all these kind of psychological visuals in their head of what they think is happening when just the opposite is happening. There's really good things happening. I wish in real time we could have some device on us, like a CGM or something that would show like insulin, lowering blood sugar, lowering inflammation, lowering because you would see this magical effect, especially by day three of all these things happening. You could really see autophagy happening. That would be. Oh, my gosh. Like put an autophagy machine on me and let's see it all get eaten away. It would be awesome. But yeah, I think a lot of the barriers to people doing these longer, fast, it's all mental. They they allow themselves to get talked out of it. And plus, you've got family members. You're doing what you're not eating. Oh, my gosh. You know, you need to go into an eating disorder clinic and it's just like, no, don't tell anybody you're fasting. Just keep smiling, wash your face a little bit if you're not feeling good. Keep drinking water to keep having the salt. And in the end, you're the one that's going to have the last laugh because you have better health.

 

[00:29:27] Yeah, I agree. And I agree with you about the machine hook up. I would love to see that stuff play out as well. And to that end, we've had a lot of people write in and you have experience with, you know, going back and fasting, going back, having levels read in and out of a whole bunch of different things. But for the at home faster. Are there specific tools from Quito's strips to, you know, any any type of thing that you would recommend people pick up to kind of measure where they're at with their fast?

 

[00:29:54] Let me tell you one thing you don't need to do. Step on a scale. Can we just all agree we're going to smash the crap out of our scales because they're not really doing us any good. Obviously, you're going to lose weight in the midst of a fast, obviously. But the thing is, it's not going to be that total amount that you lose during the fast. People go on a seven day fast and they lose like five pounds. Oh, my gosh. Just wondered if I needed to lose five pounds. And they eat two meals and they're back up three. And I'm just like, don't do that to yourself. It's not about how much weight you lose during the fast. It's the cumulative effects that happen that you lose five pounds in seven days, but you gain back three. But you but you lost two net and then the next time you fast you lose seven pounds and you came back for it. You lost three neck. It builds up over time. Don't look at the absolute amount of weight that you're losing during a fast. Oh my gosh, this is wonderful. I can fit into the wedding dress. I can go to my high school. You and I'm just like, no, you're missing the point of fasting, so not the scale. Can we all agree on that one? Let's all take a sledgehammer to it. I want to go out in my driveway and do like a slow motion and just watch it shatter. But I'm that starts as far as schools. You can do it at home. Sorry. I have fun when I'm on podcasts. You going to definitely test your blood sugar like it's so stupid. Easy to go down to Walgreens, CBS, Wal-Mart and get a glucometer if you can get your doctor to prescribe you this thing called a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor. You can put it in your arm and you can on a whim know what your blood sugar is any time over a two week period. So pretty cool tool. And what that's showing you is your body's need for glucose going down, down, down, people like that. Maybe the other day that wrote me and had the fifty three, I'm like, where would you need glucose? You're not eating anything at all. And she's like. Oh, I guess I don't. It just it dawned on her. Oh, wow. That's true. When I when I'm not eating food, my body doesn't need glucose. Why would it have glucose? So you're having lower levels. Now, it still needs a few bits of glucose for the glucose dependent functions in the body. But it does that with various processes in the body to create that glucose. One thing that I do highly recommend, too, is testing your ketones. So there's various things out there. You pee on a stick. Don't think that's very accurate. By the by day three of a fast, you're going to see Deep Dark Purple and it's never going to change anything else. So it's not really helping you that much. Plus, if you don't stay hydrated enough, it's going to turn purple. But it's a false purple. Or if you over hydrate, it's going to take away. So it's just it's not accurate. I don't like urine ketones, breath ketones. I found this device recently here I'm going to show you on camera called the bio scents. And what it does is it lets you blow into it. And on your smartphone, it gives you a readout. And it's a 10 to one ratio to to the blood ketone, which, if you're going to test blood, is kind of the gold standard if you want to test. There's all kinds of meters out there. Kito, Mojo, precision, extra Quito coach, X-rays, a bunch of them out there. But test where you are. And what this is measuring is your body's ability to be burning sacks for fuel. So people that are on a ketogenic diet you're familiar with this ketogenic is kind of a lower end of nutritional ketosis, whereas when you get into fasting, you're going on a much higher end of like like the lower end would be somewhere between point five to like two and a half, three. When you go on a fast, it's about two and a half to six potentially. When I've been deep, deep, deep in a fast of like day 12, I've seen a six point eight on the blood ketones, which means all that stored body fat is being released. And it's actually getting in the bloodstream and it's actually serving as fuel for the body. So people I oh my gosh, I haven't eaten in X amount of days. No, you're eating every single day, even when you're fasting because you're tapping into those store body fat. The reason the body fat is there is for such a time as this, when there is famine and there's no food availability, you're able to survive because you have body fat on your body.

 

[00:34:14] So this really quickly, the bioscience, which I haven't heard about, I think I've seen them actually on different things. How accurate do you feel? Because you are testing your blood regularly? How what's the correlation? I don't like the stakes either. I think that they and they go over time. Who knows how long they've been sitting on the shelf. But I'm wondering, with the bio sense, the correlation, is it close enough for you or no?

 

[00:34:38] Yeah. The reason I've been impressed with it and the reason I like it. Number one, I don't finger anymore because it's that good. But they put it through some FDA trials. They've done many kinds of studies using it. It's a ten to one ratio. So when you see a ten show up on this meter, that's just like a one point. Oh, on the blood meter. And so breath is measuring this ketone called a CDO or acetone. In the breath, the blood is measuring this ketone body called Beda Hydroxybutyrate. You don't need to remember this for a test, but I might test you later and we'll see. But BHB is Beda hydroxybutyrate is the gold standard. But if you can find a breath device, that will translate 10 to one. So at twenty five on here would be a 2.5. So if you're in the midst of a fast and you blow at twenty five, you kind of know OK I'm starting to ramp up my ketones. I like this one too because it's a more efficient way is a less painful way. The device itself is a little bit expensive. It's a medical grade device and so it's up there in price, but it's a one time expense and you don't have to keep buying strips and have blood and all that stuff. So I think it's a good tradeoff. But yes, I love that meter and it's kind of new to the market with what I do for a living. I have all kinds of companies riding me all the time, and most of them are garbage. I just thrown to the side. OK. That was nice. But this one, when I got it, I was like, whoa. OK. Now we're seeing a real deal. This is something that I think moving forward we're going to see more of these kinds of like easy devices that will make it easier to track your biomarkers.

 

[00:36:11] Absolutely. And then really quickly, we kind of glazed over the glucometer. Hey, how are you using that to gauge? Is it using it to gauge as to whether or not your body is releasing or what are you having people look at those levels for?

 

[00:36:26] So when you get into let's say you're doing a five day fast, so you put it on or you test your blood sugar on day one and it's ninety five. By day two, it's down to eighty seven. But by day three, it's down to seventy one. You see in real time where your blood sugar is coming down, it shows you that the fasting is doing something metabolically. So sometimes people are like, wow, that day too was so. So bad. Just blow. I don't know if this is worth it. Check your blood sugar, because at that point you'll see, OK, my glucose is going down. I am doing good things in my body. And then you test along with the ketones and you see it going up as the blood sugars going down. It's just kind of a snapshot of what's going on metabolically inside your body. And sometimes that gives people confidence that maybe they don't feel well because it's the first time they try to fast like this. But they're doing good stuff. And so for me, it's a motivational factor more than anything.

 

[00:37:28] Yeah, absolutely. And it's a different measurement than that horrible scale as well, as you mentioned earlier. And what do you look out some of the you said because you're such a personality and such a brand with fasting. I'm curious what you think about some of the personalities and brands with fasting out there. You have you know, you've really extreme ones. And I don't know if you follow any of them. There's this snake juice guy, Cole, who people feel it's just crazy, you know, and he's he's been blacklisted by a lot of different groups that feel like he's coming at in a different way. He's got the snake juice where he talks about the salts and things like that that I think are necessary. But what is your personal take on some of the fasting personalities out there right now?

 

[00:38:10] It calls an interesting one. I've never met him in person. I've definitely never had him on my podcast before. I did hear him on McKayla Peterson's podcast recently. He's pretty reasonable. I think he plays this persona on YouTube because he feels like he needs that to get attention. Like, I've never really had to do anything like that to get attention. I get lots of attention. I think if you're compelling with information, you don't have to go to that extreme of using horrible language like he does. So, but I guess he has a crowd that loves that. So so be it. Go, go for coal. I do think Dr. Fong is compelling. He's he's just so good at explaining things and breaking things down. It was such a joy. I've had many coauthors on books. This was the funnest book to write with a coauthor because he and I have a very similar writing style. So I think he does a good job. But I'll tell you, his cohort in crime, Megan Ramos, I love that little lady to death. She is amazing. She's a bubbly personality. And she probably, other than Dr. Fong, has more fasting experience with patients and herself doing fasts than probably anybody else in the whole world. And so I really like her. And like Dr. Cecily and I mentioned earlier the fasting doctor. And then there's a fasting M.D. There's a few people out. There's not nearly enough people talking about what I like to refer to affectionately as the other F word. I think we need more people. People have kind of slipped it into their work here and there. Oh, yeah, intermittent fasting. I'm like, OK. Intermittent. But talk about some of the benefits of the longer as well. I think if you mix it up and we have educators doing that, we need more people doing that.

 

[00:39:52] I agree and I agree with when Megan Ramos and Jason Fung, they're very digestible as well. You know, it's it's difficult to have this a beautiful bridge between the scientific and the applicability.

 

[00:40:04] And I feel like you had the book and the complete guide to Farseeing that you wrote with Jason Fung. And a lot of what Megan Ramos writes on as well is digestible and applicable, which is nice with having that scientific backing. We have a lot of people write and ask you personally what your the hardest aspect of fasting is for you to date.

 

[00:40:22] Oh, it's still day to day to us. Because like, you wake up when you wake up one day, one of your kido. That's just on that, if you're going to fast the first day, it's just a mess. No big deal. Oh, man. Day two, the body's kind of gone. Hello, Jimmy. It's time to eat, dude. Hello. And it's like you get those subtle. It's just kind of like Jar's use. OK. It's over. OK. OK. And that's when on day two, it's so hard. That's probably my challenge. I'll tell you what I want to try. When I do, day two's from now on. I've been thinking a lot about this. Not wanting to add in things other than salt water. But I wonder I'm just thinking out loud here on your show today. I wonder if adding in on day to some exoticness key tumbles along with the water and the salt might mitigate some of that day to succubus? Of course, those of you that don't know what exhaustion is ketones are to these are drinkable beta hydroxybutyrate, ketones, all kinds of companies making them out there now. So I don't want to give any company a plug, but look them up. Exoticness ketones e case. So I wonder if on day two you sipped on e ks all day. Now, of course, at that point in the past, your body's also starting to make that switch over from dumping the glycogen stores and then running primarily on ketones by day three endogenous ketones. So I wonder if a stopgap measure between day one and three on day two is to take those E.K.. So I definitely want to experiment with that, because if you can lessen the severity of day two, you're gonna get more buy in factor for people to do longer. Fast.

 

[00:42:10] Yeah. I want to know that too. I'm desperate to find out. Now that you've said that I find day two to be a beast at night. I can't sleep on day two. I like if I've got an all nighter to pull, I should be fasting.

 

[00:42:24] Can we talk about sleep in the midst of a longer farce? Because I think this is a big topic that people have. Oh, my gosh. My sleep was wrecked when I went on a farce. The reason people say that is they don't sleep as long. Course, I wear a little tracking device. I will give them a plug or a range. They don't pay me anything, but I get to see the different phases of the sleep. Can I tell you when I'm fasting? And it's like day two, three of a fast. That is kind of the worst period for it. It does impact your sleep. But it's not in a negative way. What it does and I've talked to several sleep experts about this, when you get into a really deep state of ketosis.

 

[00:43:05] Your body does not need to do as much repair when you're sleeping. And so it stands to reason that if you're used to getting about seven and a half to eight hours of sleep and then you're fasting or you're going in a really deep state of ketosis on the ketogenic diet, that you might go from seven and a half to eight hours of sleep to about six and a half to seven hours of sleep.

 

[00:43:27] And yet the quality of the sleep, the rim cycle, the deep sleep cycle, all of that recovery is far better on the shorter term sleep than it is on the longer sleep when you're not in that good metabolic state. So shorter sleep as far as time in bed does not mean you had crappy or sleep. You had more efficient sleep. So I do know some people do have trouble because they start having the hunger and the hunger keeps them awake. OK. Those are real issues. But most people don't just see shorter period of time in bed, meaning that you had worse sleep. It might have been more efficient.

 

[00:44:03] Absolutely. And we've had a lot of people on this show talk about dreaming, you know, increasing. Oh, oh, that's over.

 

[00:44:09] And what I want to talk about next year, I'm the dreams and then the intensity and severity and all of that speaking to a greater sleep cycle itself.

 

[00:44:18] But I want to climb into you so I have people who listen to the show, know that I came to fasting for the mental benefits. And AM has academics of all have long since talked about tapping into this, you know, the clarity that happens with longer, fast and different kinds of fasting and utilizing fasting for mental acuity.

 

[00:44:39] And other people talk about lifting a fog that they've had and things of that nature. I want to know your personal experience with some of the mental benefits when you get into 48 hours all the way up to a week of fasting.

 

[00:44:49] Oh, my gosh. Like the mental health benefits. If I never lost a pound of I never got any other benefits whatsoever. There is no trip and drug quite like going over 48 hours of fasting. I promise you guys. Like if you've never pushed yourself to see if you could do this again, like we talked about earlier, work your way up to that. But if you get into that magical day three in today for beyond. This is never sharper. I mean, I'm a pretty quick witted kind of guy as it is, just naturally. That's just the way I am. But when I'm in a fast, it's like I'm on some kind of drug and stuff, you know, and I don't want to, like, oversell it. But the point is, you're clearing your brain of all of the things that we're inhibiting it from being completely clear. Think about this. 70 percent of your brain is fat. And so it stands out. Yes. I just call all called you all of fat Ed. So you're welcome. So am I. I'm a fat head as well. But we're fat heads, and that means we're ketone hits. So when you're ramping up your body's ability to tap into your body fat, which then translates into higher ketone levels, lower glucose.

 

[00:45:55] Guess what happens? Those ketones chew right into the brain and your body, your brain actually prefers to be fueled by ketones. This is why people get the energy boost. This is why people get very clear mind mood control. Like, can you imagine all the people that are so anxious right now with all the stuff happening in the world, how this is a calming effect? I. I read a story right after all this went down where mental health drugs are up. I like 36 percent. People are taking them more than ever before. No, no. Fast for a few days. Quito for a little while. And you won't need mental health drugs because you're going to start to be chill. Doesn't mean you're never anxious. Doesn't mean you're never depressed. But it means you're able to handle it better because your brain's being fueled properly. And I would say if you want to have a reason to do this more than any other. Is the mental health.

 

[00:46:52] Absolutely. I think people really play down, especially in our society, in the United States of America. What mental health really brings. And really a clear and not just mental health, meaning you're not taking Klonopin, but mental health, meaning, you know, that you wake up everyday feeling alive and your mind and your thoughts and those types of things. Able to function and how that affects the rest of our quality of life, life, happiness. And I wonder how we've had a lot of people reach in and say that they wanted me to ask someone who had had a lot of rhetoric with doctors. There are a lot of people that are timid about explaining to their health practitioners on any level that they're fasting for fear of judgment and not having all of the answers. Can you speak to either resources that you have that you plug into with people who are new to fasting or a way to get an M.D.? Or would you even tell people to tell their doctors that they're playing around fasting? Where do you stand with all of that?

 

[00:47:46] I'm going to be controversial. Cool. Don't tell your doctor. Just like don't tell your doctor. You're on the ketogenic diet. You're going to get a lecture because, see, here's the thing. Why would you tell your doctor about your fasting attempt or your ketogenic attempt? Why, when they've never been trained in nutrition and the metabolic effects of what happens when you eat or in this case not eat for a period of time, guys? They don't know they've been taught pharmacology and physiology. You break your arm, they know how to put it back together. You have some symptom. They have a pill for it. That's it. Like we have to stop for fine physicians, as if they're the be all end all. I think the physician, the traditional mainstream physician model is dying. I think they're going to be gone and obsolete within the next decade. And we're going to see more functional medicine doctors, natural pass people that look at the core issues of what's going on. And it's those people that are very interested that you're interested in ketosis and in fasting. So my short answer is don't tell. Just do it. And if you're type two diabetic, watch your rate once he drop. Watch your knee for now. The caveat there, if you are on some kind of medication, do tell your doctor that you're doing some things and you would like for him to monitor your insulin intake, your drug intake and that kind of thing. So he can adjust it. You might blow his mind and he might ask you, what are you doing? You're coming off of all your medications. And at that point, you could say, well, I read this book, I listened to this podcast, I listened to this lecture series. And it convinced me I needed to give this a go. Are you pleased with the results? Stop? No, of course they're gonna say yes. And he might say, I don't know. Want to know what you're doing, but keep doing whatever it is. And at that point, you're in.

 

[00:49:35] Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think that, you know, people are on statins. I mean, there's all sorts of it's limitless. You know, when you get into fasting. But I think that there has been a lot of people writing in who are of the same feather and that that that there's just been a lot of resistance talking to natural practitioners. And I think you're right. I think everyone has finally discovered that, you know, they're about disease and death and not about health and living.

 

[00:49:57] So something about mainstream medicine that we need to give them a little bit of a break. I give them a hard time because that's my job as influencer in this space. But I think they are trapped because there is this thing called standard of care. Patients don't understand standard of care. The standard of care requires a doctor that if you have certain numbers on a panel, like a cholesterol panel, for example, that hits some mark, they are required to push the drug or whatever the given protocol is on the patient. Now, the patient doesn't know any better. Oh, the doctor says I should take this step. And so they go fill it. They start taking it. They get all the joint pain and all the everything. And then the docs. Oh, you must be getting older. That's what happens when you get older. You get joint pain every minus the drug. They prescribe them for the cholesterol lowering. And so let's give the doctors a little bit of a benefit of the doubt that they're kind of stuck in a system that forces their hand to do things. And standard of care is a thing. Now, what you can do as a patient is play the game with them. OK, let them do their prescribing, because that's the standard of care. Just because you get a little sheet of paper that's got a little prescription on it doesn't mean you've got to go down to Walgreens and fill it. So I'm not telling you to do that. I'm just saying you at the end of the day, ask the patient you were the boss in that relationship. He's merely a consultant. He or she is merely a consultant in your health. At the end of the day, you're the CEO of you. Then you decide what's best for you.

 

[00:51:29] Yes, a thousand percent. And I think taking that kind of control and that clarity and and taking them for being I you know, I was like, what's what's the burden that you've had to bear since the 1950s as a doctor to carry around this godlike status is ridiculous. You know, and anyone who wants to rise to that challenge has issues anyway. So I think that clarifying that they're human beings studying a specific part. Our lifecycle or, you know, disease issues within that really clarifies things, as you're saying. Well, Jimmy, we're almost out of time and I'm bummed out because I couldn't listen to you forever. But I want to get to the final piece of what I want, because you're this prolific personality and you've said so much over the past few years. I'm wondering, do you have, like an elevator pitch? Do you have, like, a top three, a top five or just a top singular piece of advice that you give to people about fasting or how it's affected your life?

 

[00:52:19] Oh, my gosh. Like it. There's so many directions and we've hit on a bunch of them in today's show. I think just do it. I think what what causes people to hesitate is just a bunch of head stuff. Just do it like people like. I don't know where to start. I'm like, start. That's where you start. Start like. I 8:00 this morning, I had a ribeye steak this morning around eight o'clock. I'm still not hungry and it's almost eight hours later. It's you just start. You just do it. You don't even think about it. And so feed yourself. Well, when you are eating, feed yourself really good, high quality, real whole foods. You can be keto or definitely help, but you don't have to be Kitto. You can be paleo, whole 30, whatever your choice carnivore and do what you want. Vegetarian might be a little bit tricky, begin might be a little bit tricky because you do need some of that nutrition from the meat and the animal based foods. But you can start by kind of when you are eating, eating or when you are eating, eating really high quality food. That's a good basis. Then it's over. And let your body just go listen to your body, allow yourself to calm everything down and just methodically go through the process. I think, again, psyching yourself out is not going to help you because the stress of all that. Guess what's going to make you hungry because your body can't stay calm. So give this a go and do methodically. Let's check this out. You've never done more than 16 hours. You make a goal at 24. You made it 90 and a half. Guess what? You just made your longest fast ever. You tried to walk in and you make it. Twenty two. Guess what? You just made your longest fast ever. I think we're we're in this all or nothing mentality when it comes to things like fasting and oh, I fail to make, like I sometimes do seven day challenges on my Instagram, on Jimmy rants and people. Oh, I only made it three days. I'm like, what was your longest fast before that. Sixteen hours. I'm like, you just went three days. Congrats. You went more than three times as long as you ever have. So it's like putting things in perspective, keeping them in perspective and realizing this is a journey, not a race. And in the long run, if you get into the habit of doing this and it becomes a habit that makes you healthier, in the end, you win. Yeah, I agree too.

 

[00:54:46] Right. Well, thank you so much for meeting with me today, Jimi. I really appreciate I know you're wildly busy and I'm so happy that you came on. I know our audience is really going to appreciate it. And I love your candor and everything that you're saying.

 

[00:54:57] Thank you. This was a lot of fun.

 

[00:54:58] Absolutely. For everyone listening, we've been talking with Jimmy Moore. He's the best selling author, podcasts, inspiring speaker. You can find out more on his website. L l v L.C dot com. That's live in lavada low carb dot com. L l v l.c dot com. Thank you so much for tuning in and spending this hour with us. I appreciate all of you.

 

[00:55:17] And this is me reminding you to stay safe, stay kind to each other responsibly and clean when you do eat and always bet on yourself. Slainte.

 

Speaking with Vinay Bhambwani; Fitness Entrepreneur & Nutrition Expert, & Magazine Founder

Today I am speaking with Vinay Bhambwani. Vinay is a fitness entrepreneur and nutrition expert. His coaching portfolio includes celebrities, athletes, businessmen and regular joe. 

He aims to share the knowledge and science of fitness, and create awareness and education about the importance of well being and living a better quality of life through fitness. With this vision he launched Muscle Manual, the world’s first completely free digital magazine. The magazine has featured some of the world’s most successful fitness influencers, Olympia winners, and world record holding athletes. Muscle Manual has been read by over 400,000 people in over 45 countries and is going to be relaunched in August 2020.

Vinay is also a 3rd generation chocolatier, and rebranded his family dessert company to Lush Healthy Chocolates. He lives in Mumbai where he continues to learn and share his knowledge in the field of nutrition and training.

Key points addressed were  

• Vinay’s background in Nutrition and fitness as well as his personal history and study in regards to fasting
• We also discussed Vinay’s book: Intermittent Fasting: A Science-Based Approach and how it narrates the core principles of what Vinay believes to be the most important aspects of fasting as well as some of the most crucial points for those looking to start incorporating fasting into their lives

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

 

[00:00:00] With us from over in India. So we have a bit of a time delay, but we are all going to make do and I do appreciate everyone's patience as we get through the podcast. I know that the information will be well worth the time delay. For those of you that are new to this podcast, I will read a brief bio on Vinay to give you a platform before asking him to describe his own personal narrative himself prior to doing that. Quick roadmap for today's podcast. We will first look at Vinay's. As I said, his academic, professional and personal story as it relates to fasting and fitness and almost all of his endeavors that he has had with in and around those areas and subjects, we'll then look at.

 

[00:00:46] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen .Com, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:38] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I am your host, Patricia. And today I am excited to be sitting down with the Vinay Bhambwani. Vinay is a fitness expert, entrepreneur, nutrition expert and the founder of Fitness magazine. You can find out more about everything we talk about today, as well as all of the news endeavors on his Web site. One of his Web sites, w w w dot muscle manual mag, dot com. That is m u s c l e m a and u l m a g dot com. Welcome, Vinay.

 

[00:02:13] Thank you for having me.

 

[00:02:15] Absolutely. For everyone listening. Vinay has been so gracious as to speak with us from over in India. So we have a bit of a time delay, but we are all going to make do. And I do appreciate everyone's patience as we get through the podcast. I know that the information will be well worth the time delay. For those of you that are new to this podcast, I will read a brief bio on Vinay to give you a platform before asking him to describe his own personal narrative himself. Prior to doing that, a quick roadmap for today's podcast. We will first look at Vinay's. As I said, his academic, professional and personal story as it relates to fasting and fitness and almost all of his endeavors that he has had with in and around those areas and subjects. We'll then look at unpacking some of the terms that Vinay employs when he talks about fasting. These are areas that kind of differentiate everyone. And while we all think we know what one another talking about, I find that unpacking terms is a key and essential part when discussing the science of fasting and nutrition. We'll then look at his book that specifically speaks to fasting. It's titled Intermittent Fasting, a science based approach, which was also published under his online magazine Muscle Manual a few months ago. And so we'll first look at unpacking his book, namely the core kind of components of the information that it relays his audience that he had in mind, things of that nature. And then we'll turn straight to unpacking his online magazine, the Muslim manual mag, and all of the information that it has. It has an enormous following. It's worldwide and kind of unpack what it services and what it maintains, what it holds in any transitions that it may or may not be going through. We'll then turn our efforts towards unpacking any perceptions that Vinay himself has regarding the pandemic and societal conversation between health and fasting and some of the dialog that has been changing globally over the past few months. And then we'll wrap everything up with some rapid fire questions that everyone has written in who has asked us to ask fitness experts such as we need to kind of answer to and that will be everything. So as promised, prior to peppering him with questions, a quick bio Vinay Bhambwani is a fitness entrepreneur and nutrition expert. His coaching portfolio includes celebrities, athletes, businessmen and the regular Joe. He aims to share the knowledge and science of fitness and create awareness and education about the importance of wellbeing and living a better quality of life through fitness. With this vision, he launched Muscle Manual, The World's first completely free digital magazine. The magazine has featured some of the world's most successful fitness influencers. Olympia winners and world record holding athletes. Muscle Manual has been read by over 400000 people in over forty five countries and is going to be relaunched in August of 2020. I'll have him kind of draw that out for us in print, pushed back, I think, just by a month. And so it's exciting to be on the verge of talking about that. Vinay is also a third generation chocolatier and rebranded his family dessert company to lush, healthy chocolates. He lives in Mumbai, where he continues to learn and share his knowledge in the field of nutrition and training. Savani. I cannot wait to kind of climb through everything, you know, beginning with your book and kind of ending with this chocolatier wonderful endeavor that you have been born into. But before we get to all of that, I was hoping that you could briefly describe your professional, academic and personal story as it relates to nutrition and health and fasting and how everything kind of brought you to where we are going to be talking about today.

 

[00:05:54] Thanks for that introduction, Patricia. And once again, thanks for having me. So I started off my fitness junkie duty early. I grew up really skinny and I was absolutely horrible at sports, so I had a hard time dealing with that at school. And fortunately, my dad had the right role models. You know, he was looking out on all that, Sylvester. And so I grew up watching those kind of 80s action movies. Well, I'll go. And I violated some citizens. And so I knew that was kind of the direction in which I wanted to have. By the age of 14, I was the really, really good. Yeah. I almost got my black belt. I was on a national level. But it got kind of boring to the point that once, you know, at a national level like the age of 14, there's not much more to fill up.

 

[00:06:42] So I decided to. And what I realized was modern skating. I was enjoying the evening with others. So I said, let me just get into training. So diamonds and everything that nobody else could get. So I got into training. My dad gave me this book called The Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding. It was 800 pages. You had an audition in 1970. It's a copy of A Choice, but it's written by Arnold Schwarzenegger, S.I. So that's all I got. What I got up on. I've started training at the age of 18, basically, so stop using that. I only just met. By the age of 16, I started studying. S. I don't know all of people out the study for sports nutrition, also studying them by the age of 18, I have got my post nutrition, sex education, training. So I'm a little kid. But I was never really happy with academic sense to something that I dedicated in school, because when it comes to science and sickness in particular, I debate is up in the syllabus. And by all the science is going to be all you know. So by the time I'm studying this nutrition course, the syllabus is yours and the science is going to move on. So my approach has always kind of sense and you do want to be sick also, but it's Muslim and I think it times and research the. So that's kind of how my journey started. I was just a young, enthusiastic kid when you wanted to do something in the field of fitness, but I didn't know what I mean. I knew that switching was my thing, my initial I vls to launch an online fitness coach thing, which eight years ago it was too early for the Indian market for that kind of service, but it just wasn't happening and it just wasn't going anywhere.

 

[00:08:31] And I figured, let me stop watching people in person until then. And it turns out that was the best decision I ever made. That's the best way to become a good paunches of the experience. And unless you have that, you can't have the things in place. Female. Because you just don't have the experience and know what the kinds. Well, I started beating people up. At the age of 19, I was fortunate who I came across this getting, who's a bodybuilder from grilles and you can't be here. And you're doing a book about this battle. Yes.

 

[00:09:11] And he was holding eat and beat it. Where he was. And. Well, yet another influence I had growing up was this magazine. And I was always good at English and writing. I said, I'm knackered. So I'm inspired back to this getting at this point at the age of 19. And I go to his book signing, I put a copy of this book. I stand in Q4 and I use my sense. And when I get a chance to talk to him, I tell him that, you know you know, my role model is. I've known this man. And maybe when I do love you some. And he was kind enough to sign in the copy of the big. And the moment that happened, I was like, okay, now this has to happen and I'm gonna untangles going to go live to his words. So I found that just two weeks later, we were having the one of the largest expos ever. And it's gone. And we had athletes and bodybuilders all around the world attending this event. And I knew just getting to that, too. And at this point, I didn't still have a plan to launch a magazine. I was 19 years old going to college. I didn't really know what I'm doing. I have my basic nutrition. I'm training so patient. But, yeah, I still don't exactly have a business acumen to make sense of it. But I decided that it's a good idea. What does this mean that steeps? I mean, it's built up. I've had a few conversations I'm seeing with. So I said that with a friend, with your camera and my mobile phone, we just record and do interviews and introduce myself and things kind of take off over that. I suddenly I'm sitting and talking to some of the biggest athletes on the most successful names, industriousness in NASCAR all around the. And I get a lot of interviews, but does not plan on launching a magazine. That's not name. That's Brand. I don't really even know how to do it. And so I decide that within the next 20 days, because I was getting isn't. I've got e-mail ideas. It's fine. So from the day I met captain of the signing, it was the. And then two weeks later, we launched the first issue of. In where I just put it together, writing most of that is myself asking my science to teach me how to design it and if I don't get up and just a makeshift website which was not ready to be on, but that was like the spark in my head that showed me that this had some huge potential with you. And my goal was always to put all the magazines obsolete, because one of the things that I aspire to do is to transform at least one hundred thousand people with in my lifetime. To help answer this. And one other than a personal coaching one, we can do that by publishing on. Dandrige credible information. Shannon. Deal, because on Magazine Street, eventually. But then all of us and our readers at one point, one million views on it. And I got this young kid who doesn't know the licking his hand on the missiles.

 

[00:12:20] Right. But eventually I decided to take a break. And Lou Diamond watching. And just take a hiatus. I'm five years late, but I am ready to relaunch the. Big project, big of athletes and some huge names like.

 

[00:12:36] Nice. Absolutely. So here's what I'm curious about. You decided to launch the original version of the magazine online and you did it really quickly within this couple week timeframe. It sounds like at least the initial launch, even though it was clumsy. It was up. And you said that your direction was kind of being made up as you went along. But curious, in the original inception and the original launch, how what was your audience chip like? Because now you've been you know, it's been visited by over four hundred thousand people. It's a massive feat. Originally, when you launched. How did you garner or glean readership?

 

[00:13:16] Well, it was really hot, the first issue we had, maybe 20 does county and most of them are probably my friends and family. But after that, we launched our social media page. I was really good at that. You go to marketing and things all within one year we had, I think, 60000 followers just on. I found like we had a bunch of stuff biodata. So we buy a bit, forget thousands of views Web site within the last year. Other than that, because the magazine is free. All other models have been fairly kind. It must have been. I would be active on the social media and that because the kind of shared this vision that it's to educate the masses about living a. So can you be happy? I am. And all of these athletes that we go on O magazine, they have massive social former. So I'm grateful to them being happy. Authorities in Sudan did not eat any lunch.

 

[00:14:18] Yeah, absolutely. I want to climb into a couple of terms now before we get into your book. Your book does a good job of kind of laying out what you're going to be looking at and the title, indeed, you know, intermittent fasting, a science based approach, kind of spells out how you're coming at the subject. But I first want to get into how you personally define some things. So the first one is, it seems rote and transparent, although it's not. How do you yourself define fasting? Do you find. Do you define it as going without food? Food and liquids? Is there different ways of you know, people think I've spoke with someone that thought that even if you were drinking your nutrients, that was a form of fasting. So how do you personally define fasting?

 

[00:15:03] That's a good question, because it's going to be so contextualize on each person's individual level goes on what they're getting into it. But to give you a definition, for me, intermittent fasting is a specific timing program where you limit your book.

 

[00:15:19] The second to putting your own goals, whether that's for anti aging, whether that's what we've lost, where the ducks fall in growth, productivity goes just stamina. What about. Doesn't matter to me. Intermittent fasting is when you set a specific thing, Glenn. Personally, I don't believe in consuming.

 

[00:15:38] I mean, you new in Boston to me, if you're Tommaseo modern practicalities starting. Your source is as good as that's personally my opinion and what I have studied in science is that I want to give the maximum I'm going to consumers. Least you're probably just upsets me.

 

[00:15:59] It also talks about the maximum food intake that would allow during a fast I'm OK, give it as many drinks as you can consume, whether that's water, black eating. It was allowed during the fasting. But personally, I'm not a big believer of any liquid nutrition intake or anything during fasting have a more traditional approach.

 

[00:16:22] Yeah, absolutely. And what do you. Let's get into some of the forums and this is kind of unpacking one of your chapters in your book. But what are the most common forms of fasting that you employ or that you recommend your clients employ?

 

[00:16:35] So the top you have, you start off with a 12. I asked, I think.

 

[00:16:43] Yeah, there's a lot of different ways you can sum it up. The gold standard is 16 hours. The reason being that other than all the other benefits, you get so exhausting, it was the limited calorie intake. Their insulin levels that both hormone levels up and then all of those benefits at the 16 hour Mako fasting up and get for it and you stop to get all the health benefits.

 

[00:17:05] Also, getting rid of stock sense from your body and also MDH autophagy is a very good process, which only takes this one missile sting in the process where the body eliminates, stops, ends and gets rid of stops. It takes place when you're not eating, when you're asking for a long time. So generally autophagy kicks and the novel stops when sleep. But by extending that time period, by fasting, you're extending the amount of time or space in your body and maximizing the long of stocks enjoyed.

 

[00:17:39] So and you also talk about a twenty four, right? So it's a 24 hour out, 20 hour fast and a four. Is that the same for you as, oh, MADD, which is a lot of times that's an acronym one meal a day or from dinner to dinner. There's a lot of ways of saying this, but do you feel like a 24 is the same approach or is it slightly different from MADD in that people could eat potentially twice within those four hours?

 

[00:18:03] That's going to deter us from person to person and what your capacity is like. Personally, when I do my 24 hour fast, I need two meals. I feel like if I don't eat meals, I'm going to wake up really hungry that next day. And I'm going to feel really unproductive and destructive because I knew fast, what, 24 hours. All you have is like a night. Eat your meal before you put your. And I been in the morning, I need to be a little more fuel for my book.

 

[00:18:30] That's my personal preference. If somebody is able to get obesity on me, let that's exceptional. Well, if you can do that. That is some all I one solution for us. If you're eating full meals on a. OK.

 

[00:18:47] Do you personally. I'm wondering how often you employ eating 24 hour or twenty, slash four fast. Do you do it regularly? Is it a constant? Do you do it occasionally for weight management? Health increase bodybuilding world. Are you employing your fasting for personally?

 

[00:19:09] I generally employ like a 16 to 20 hour source, depending on what time I start working the day to be transparent with you, I don't have the best relationship with food.

 

[00:19:18] I really don't like eating. I grew up in that kind of a spiral. And the problem with being skinny quite a while I put on a good amount of muscle. I used to be 40 pounds heavier than I am, I suppose. But I've since dropped on my feet and I've just done a little simple, comfortable life.

 

[00:19:38] So for me right now, 16 to 20 hours can be good. It makes it convenient. And on my walk, on my bike in the morning, I'll be forceful and then have my skills. Yeah. Personally, I find that productive. My insulin levels are stable. When you eat, your blood sugar levels fluctuate with fasting. Those levels are really stable. Plus, most people like my sense, well, Austin, probably few lessons with a caffeine flow, a good living. So we generally don't have any energy deficiencies or any weakness or exhaustion.

 

[00:20:16] Good enough. Once the whole season that frosting your body only adapt fairly well and you become a high.

 

[00:20:25] Mm hmm.

 

[00:20:26] Yeah. A 24 hour fast one sale question is something I'd buy once in two weeks or maybe once a month just to get some of them off and using benefits.

 

[00:20:35] I'm a little confused in that sense of how I look. So once in a while. And you still us. Just why aren't you doing better?

 

[00:20:42] But it does make desiccant district.

 

[00:20:45] You know, I know somebody can do it even just once a week.

 

[00:20:51] Yeah. What are your what's the longest fast you personally have ever engaged in?

 

[00:20:57] Probably took you 6000. That was by mistake because I had like it was just said, ask me. I had to it was during this time dynamic and I could go out, get groceries at my parents house and have them out. I've woken up and one after the other, you know, one.

 

[00:21:12] Dusko, I was one bloke. I mean, one. Yeah. And then I had my client obligations later on. So it dawned out that my 16 hour foskett extended. It was because of all these woke up. And I said, you know, I've got 22 guys, I might as well push a little bit longer H20.

 

[00:21:29] So Berlusconi backs the accident. I honestly, I think it was I thought I would see under the stuff, but it turns out that you can overcome any obstacle and. So it was by accident that I did thank you for lost, lost for the first time. And then one week later, same thing happens. And I said this time. I know it's easy. So let me just push through. Thirty six thousand seehofer.

 

[00:21:56] Yeah, absolutely, I think that a lot of people experienced the mental component of fasting, you know, early on and then again revisit it as they continue their fasting. I'm wondering, you mentioned earlier about, you know, that the anti aging benefits and things of that nature that you really have tapped into. And I like talking to fasters who employ it personally, such as yourself, who don't have an issue with weight management and aren't currently employing it for that reason, because the universe of fasting, you know, historically has been used for thousands of years, mainly for disease fighting and prevention, as well as, you know, mental clarification, skills and things of that nature. And this is a huge school fasters that's still kind of run around with the physical benefits that exceed weight loss and management, as well as tapping into some of the intellectual benefits from it that philosophers from thousands of years ago have, you know, employed. And I'm curious for you yourself personally, have you looked at using fast in these other aspects? You talk about anti aging aspects and things of that nature. Can you talk to some of the specifics? Is it just for the, you know, the regenerate generation of the cells? Are you talking about autophagy or what what areas for you personally, are you engaging with fasting when you get into the health benefits?

 

[00:23:16] Yeah, yeah, absolutely right. I don't have any issue with weight management. I'm doing this only because of the convenience and the health benefits it brings into my life.

 

[00:23:24] You know what I needed? I was all using it for weight management to drop some of the excess muscle, but I had. But after a while, I realized that the longer you start, the more you would just see more and more benefits. Right. And I saw the amount of convenience that this was bringing into my life by finishing all of my adult swim store and then relaxing. That's only. Increased productivity being based.

 

[00:23:50] The energy levels, it became more and more clear to me that the longer you fast, the more health benefits you see and as compared with a million Helfant from any reason security us. Look at it this way it is. Go in wasting your time and energy in asking how much are you getting compared to that? And to be real, you're not really interesting any time in which you're saving time by fasting, if anything. And the amount of help that.

 

[00:24:19] Under. So my ideal way to look at it is why wouldn't I?

 

[00:24:26] As it was, I'm sure. Yeah, I agree. It's funny that you say that, though. I think a lot of people there's still a great deal of hypertension around it. Even people who are excited about the idea of fasting, there's an emotional relationship. It sounds you personally lack, you know, with this hyper focus on food and and for good reason and a lot of countries in people's lives. I'm wondering, when you apply fasting, have you ever prescribed it for clients? And if so, what's the top reason? Is it weight loss and management or is it you know, there's a lot to be told with there a great deal of athletes that I'm sure you featured on your site, then employ fasting for their muscle healing and rejuvenation and the anti swelling properties they're getting into fasting can have with muscle healing, particularly biathletes and things like that. So whom have you kind of prescribed it to as you've been coaching people in health and fitness with fasting?

 

[00:25:24] The brief answer would be anyone and everyone. Do you want to gain weight, lose weight? I recommend fasting for everyone. I'm not very pushy with any of my claims on any kind of chinstrap. What I like to boost generally understand the Slainte an assessment. Folks who understand this line's preconceived notions about fasting because so many of us have been conditioned to believe it. For instance, on unhealthy, it means a lot of people are really ambition who believe that it's really outdated science. New science is really showing me the drawbacks of fasting. So I really recommend anyone what I like, where they a sense. Question on. Not Austin, whether they had mission in mind busting. Then I explain some aspects that are going to add to your previous question, which I'm sorry. Other than the weight management of Betty, what do you boss? Number one is that you get by. Studies have shown that fasting and stem cell regeneration as we grow older are endurance stimulus and so stuff. But flossing kind of. And even though in the University of South. So this is one of the benefits of doing that, like I mentioned, just the increased productivity and energy levels is something that everyone with. But the. Again, some people have that chance when it comes to what he's put in mind in terms when Vegan us. Look good. It'll be fine. And it's Kofman oh oh. But this was just your body adjusting it well, it's like like I'm getting used to a different. Another is that a love potion that by fasting, they're going to lose Musson, but they're going to see it. So I they don't do it. But by stopping them, they held off us. Just anybody. You're probably sleeping eight hours out of. Slainte. Knock them off, my son, slow, gradual, build up over your weeks and be doing Atheel asking. I want a bus. I'm actually allowed in. Yes. Yes. Some people say it's an. Dizziness, headaches, dehydration like symptoms in the first two days of fasting. Again, your body takes time to adapt to any kind of nutrition programs. Fasting is not the maximum. I see us in just asking, is it? No one's had any scandals. It last longer than days.

 

[00:28:26] I see. Yeah, I think that. And it can vary, as you're saying, individual to individual.

 

[00:28:30] Your book does a good job of kind of covering some of those myths and things like that that, you know, and and actual real attributes. You have a section where you talk about before you start fasting about kind of debunking some myths. I'm curious when you talk about how to break your fast. Did you personally weigh into that? Did you research things when you advised. This is a big thing for a lot of, you know, experienced fasters is what to do as you're breaking a fast because the body does not receive all things as equal. And it can kind of alleviate symptoms that were happening during fasting or fight them. Can you speak to a little bit to the section and how you researched for it and why you included the information you included in how to break your fast?

 

[00:29:21] Right. So I think one of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming that fasting is just skipping a couple of meals and then you're not done. You know, everything. It's like a natural way. All of a sudden you're in a day. But, yes, fasting does make a limited impact. And the. But there's a lot more science to it. You know, it's not just skipping. There's a lot of concern. But before you add up your phosphine, maximize the radius and make it expedients. So when it comes to breaking your fast, I did a lot of research online on Google. I just go on really. I have a couple of subscriptions to some research magazines. So that gives me the latest information on my source. To be honest. So CBI, the government, is my secret medical publication when it student and fasting are being. Through these sources, I learned that when you do when you bust, there's a lot more to lose. Internally, you know why? No. There's a bunch of. That might be bestowed on smoothen busting. One example is when you're fasting your kidney stone to expel a lot. But what you should do is add it is a half of salt. I know Fosdick. And this is gonna keep thousands. And I did. Well, it's a. Another thing you could do before your fasting is if a lot of people say it's on the banks, you are in the stinky. They could eat a high fiber meal before they stop that you your last meal, before you start your boss could a hypermedia puts some vegetables or anything that provides high dose security. And we'll keep you. And you're going to notice less cravings and fangs the next day. No. I could write another one on this if I could be honest. But there's a ton of records that you should I could employ more than your fasting experience on the head.

 

[00:31:26] But, you know, when you talk about breaking your fast, you have a part where you talk about never mixing carbs and fats when you break your fast food and insulin. And you kind of speak to that. You have this very it's it's a very, you know, exclamatory, you know, point in the book where you talk about how out antithetical that is to the fast, sir.

 

[00:31:49] Yes. So when it comes to eating, cooking on dogs and cats together, this is will be another. You are learning that from science, that eating dogs and facts together, especially when you break the fast. What it does is it promotes fat. You see, what happens is when you haven't eaten for a long period of time and you're fasting, your insulin levels are a lot more sensitive. But even having a small line of food is going to lead a larger insulin response. Now, high insulin promotes fat storage. When you are in your fasting, your body's fight or flight state. Right. So your titles like a higher stress threshold and your cortisol levels, which is that stressful one is really high. Now, insulin last high. Cortisol is a terrible disaster for fat storage. But what you want to do is get your cortisol levels down a little bit, get your insulin levels up to allow your. Right. Right. And why do you think jobs and that were used to prop it up? And you have. That's OK. Well, that's still the Jews.

 

[00:32:58] And because anything that's among those stats. And that's one reason why you. Dobbs on facts. But why do you think dogs and cats together as a Lou? Yeah, OK, I'm wondering.

 

[00:33:14] I want to kind of switch gears really quickly and get into I know that you are having kind of a reboot of the muscle manual mag. I want to talk about what we can expect your audience can expect from that. And do you have any information on your Web site from Muscle Manual? The online magazine. Do you do you cross pollinate with the your fasting information? You know, can people access the book on their. And also, do you share information about fasting on there or is it solely dedicated to health and fitness, excluding fasting?

 

[00:33:53] I know the frosting is definitely one of the things you cover on the magazines from time to time, we give it just as much importance as we do with any other scientifically engrained nutrition technique.

 

[00:34:05] So from time to time, you.

 

[00:34:07] As us now, not a single doctor is on it exclusively, but it will be on the massive market. When it comes to what people can expect with this magazine, it's going to be 20 pages of pitch information when it comes to training, nutrition, lifestyle, motivation and athletes sharing their experience on an average in. Are some of the big names for the upcoming issues?

 

[00:34:37] I don't know how much of this I should be talking about, but one of the big names we have, a strange scene is alleging something. The easy time was stolen. One of the only people on this panel, and he's really a legend, and he was kind enough to do a quick interview.

 

[00:34:56] And so Tomaso Manual magazine again off the list of the magazine issue. Yeah. Bhima with the goal of eating again. Is that you? Ice on ice and. And other groups lost along with a bunch of other techniques. I know you're just imagining there are a lot of people in the United States where I'm located right now and the health and nutrition enterprises and as well as them in fasting, it's all been kind of conglomerated into specific dietary regimens like you're doing at a focus on body building and things of that nature. But there is frequently like a cross platform dialog about, say, Vegan diets or paleo and fasting and body building. And, you know, everybody's got their own secret formula as to what's going to achieve what and things like that. Will your will the new site also explore different areas like that with different diets? Are those things spoken about or is it all mainly under the lens of bodybuilding? And also, do you look at any of the female athletes out there or is it mainly under the purview of the like the male gender?

 

[00:36:09] Oh, no. We have no restriction that such scholar female athletes in the past. In fact, one of our most successful magazine issues was with Oksana Grishin, on the other hand. She's a nine misselling figure. So does that. Oh, we don't limit ourselves on any kind of end times. Well, I wouldn't hit on a bodybuilding focused magazine model on chair.

 

[00:36:31] Yes. And it just so happens that a lot of bodybuilders. When it comes to on best and. We don't have a lot of competitions in this, you know, films or the buildings and in sickness, you have credible names. Athletes who are it's hard to explain. But a book by a magazine called A Bodybuilder is ideal. You know, as a. On by bus, by style, on general.

 

[00:37:09] OK. Interesting. I'm wondering where how do you how are you going to curate it moving forward? How will you decide the direction in which the magazine's headed after the kind of reboot? Do you have plans for the next one to three years? And if so, has it changed with the wake of the pandemic? Has any of that narrative kind of taken change with this kind of global re conversation and meditation that everyone, it seems, on Earth has had with nutrition and health and fitness and all of those things?

 

[00:37:41] To be honest. There's no change in our business model or. You think is in being. Oh, we're following the same business model as this all, which is that we have a Web site and every month we're going to publish a magazine and she walk free. I have the next YODO. So planned out this act of this pandemic hasn't shown us any setbacks other than a few time delays. But people are also consuming more content because of the pandemic, citing it's a very quick. And he launched this kind of.

 

[00:38:11] Yeah, absolutely. I want to turn now to one of my more favorite aspects about your bio and profile, which is your family's chocolate company, Lush Chocolates. I am. And I want to get into your third generation chocolatier, which is ironic for someone is, you know, not maybe ironic anymore, but back in the days. Unorthodox. Yeah. And I love that. And I think that there's actually been a huge change in the sweets industry, you know, and for a lot of reason, I'm wondering what you can tell us about what does it mean anymore to be a third generation chocolatier? Have things changed? Are there sugar free chocolates? Is there, you know, Monck fruit chocolates? Is there Vegan chocolates? Have you kept the same age old recipes? How is all that looked for you?

 

[00:39:00] Right. So the chocolate business is definitely is something unique. So the story behind it was that my grandmother was a dessert chef years and she used to supply his arms to some of the biggest restaurants and caterers in Mumbai. So I kind of. But she got those who just stuck us with chocolates and aches and had this decided to having an office every evening. I grew up eating a lot of chocolate. And what happened was at one of my events, we had this event in college where every college under the snoots and stuff. But I had fitness business there and I said, I want to promote my food drink business or move my magazine. So I got a one. Something brought attention by Stone in my home state by. So I asked my grandmother she would use some of her talents to make use healthy chocolates that will attract customers. And she did. And it was a big hit. So I decided that maybe this is something I should look into because my mom's been doing it on me. Yes. And there's definitely a market for a healthier direction. Wish chocolates and desserts. So what I did was I took the family, business and family. And now what we do is it'll be only two individuals Slaínte just it and the husband of Job Bowl while managing that way. So it's it's an entire range of products. We do veto sugar shop stuff. So we turn it on us. Yeah. Yeah. We do chocolates which are high in. Oh I got the anti-tax I in sibo much higher in antioxidants. So if you look at our website, almost Omine ingredients are going to find much of a healthy Boxey or even undergoing anything that's good for your health. I'm unsure, but it's primarily a B2B business. We do a large audience of eating weddings on a special occasion. But Betaworks, OK? Individuals, actually US democracy actually go to the IMF and find something you are looking for. We do also call it as a Bustamonte. Fantastic. He's long a question about the chocolate industry. Yes, there is a lot of interest in healthy chocolate help, especially with people becoming more and more upbeat about the health benefits. And I think we're going to see a trend retrofitting stock and dockett shock and milk. Chocolate is going to eventually be so exclusively for children. But the health benefits are all going to come from the doctor shop unless the sugar. And the less milk you you're going to get much higher yield signals. And like, you know, doctors are recommending declines of chocolate undies or at least once a week for adequate and adequate antioxidants to keep a hot.

 

[00:41:54] Yeah, absolutely. I concur. I think that's where the trends are headed and it seems to already be well on its way, at least in the United States. I want to turn now to our rapid fire questions. We have a lot of people that write in with questions that they'd love to ask health and fitness experts and nutritional coaches like yourself. And I want to get into with fasting. People are wondering what the number one misconception that your clients are, people you run into have about fasting.

 

[00:42:23] I think the biggest ordeal that my clients have about when it comes to fasting is really just getting over the fact that you have two stops skipping meals and breaking all of these habits that you have of eating a heavy breakfast.

 

[00:42:35] And I'm not skipping meals where you just condition who believe these old times and old lifestyles and old science. You know, science has proven that breakfast is actually an. Without Jack, you can bet opens up, but the biggest difficulty I have isn't just on mixing my time. It's costing, you know, give it a shot. Don't worry about all. Your body is going to survive. Do it, guy.

 

[00:43:01] I went like this without, you know, being a couple of hours without, you know. Yeah, absolutely. What do you think the the easiest thing about fasting has been for your clients who have tried it? Have there been any kind of things that they didn't realize we're going to be easier than they kind of thought?

 

[00:43:23] I think a lot of people always say to me how difficult, how how to deal with the hunger pains, and then once they get into it, they realize that it's certainly not that hard to control young guys to keep us busy. And you have the right to antibiotics and a couple of beverages. One of them is lying in water. That's going to keep your acidity low. Another is a black a black Gosta. You have to eat something to just get some instinct into your mouth who, if you can satisfy, satisfied and not get you anything. Thanks. So there are a bunch of different things that you do to make fasting a smooth experience for you, like I've discussed.

 

[00:44:02] I'm sorry. Just give me a second. I want to get to my thoughts and tie this all in together really nicely. Yes. Can you repeat the question once more?

 

[00:44:10] I'm wondering what some of the easier things that people hadn't anticipated would be, you know, in the benefits of fasting or even just the easiest thing is how easy it is to really control your high hunger and hollering, please, fasting wrinkle, because a lot of people just struggle with getting into a 16 hour fast because it's kind of a big change initiative began by breaking that down.

 

[00:44:33] What? Well, us. And then every week asking them to fast for one hour more density of protein, just eating them 16 hours. They realize that with that I lose with all offie with lime. I'm locked out of these beverages that are allowed during your fasting if outsourcing is not stopping your sentence. It does not mean you're going to say yes and you get. That's the biggest problem that people associate Austin with starvation.

 

[00:45:01] Yeah, agreed, and I think that there is a lot of lack of information and the lack of history with it. Right. A lot of people don't have a history with it. The body is an incredible learning machine. So I think it adapts to more than we recognize because we don't make it to a depth that much anymore. I'm wondering, everyone, we have had a lot of people write in and ask for you. What is the number one benefit of fasting for yourself and for your clients?

 

[00:45:30] Personally, I noticed my energy levels on our productivity improvement lock mind, that's the main benefit that I got equal. Because that's all much easier get just mix might be and how much time it saves me during my working hours and eating, preparing my meals and all of those things, you know. So that's really the biggest benefit that I got. Another thing that I look by is antiaging. And maximizing the hormones like human growth hormone is something that's involved in fasting. And the longer you force, the higher the level of. Six, eight.

 

[00:46:01] Now, the more growth hormone you have, the more anti aging benefits are get inside. Growth hormone is also something that a lot of small celebrities are not. Get themselves together. And you can just get some. So my top defense minister, Austin, would be increased productivity. And just looking at ceiling by slope that they actually get lights.

 

[00:46:23] Excellent.

 

[00:46:24] Well, Vinay, we are out of time, but I wanted to say thank you so much for taking the time today and speaking with us from all the way across the world and giving us all of your information about fasting and all of your expertize.

 

[00:46:38] Thank you for having me. A pleasure to speak to you.

 

[00:46:40] Absolutely. For everyone listening, we've been speaking with Vinay Bhambwani. And you can find out more. He's a fitness entrepreneur, our nutrition expert and the founder of the fitness magazine to find out more about his book, his magazine, everything online at W w w dot to muscle manual mag, dot com. And until we speak again next time, thank you for giving us your time. And this is a reminder to stay safe, eat well when you do eat and always bet on yourself. Slainte.

 

Talking with Marisa Moon; Speaker, Certified Health Coach, & Intermittent Fasting Instructor

Today I sit down with Marisa Moon; Speaker, Certified Health Coach and Intermittent Fasting Instructor. Marisa is a Certified Primal Health Coach and creator of the online course “Intermittent Fasting Freedom”. Marisa teaches the most flexible intermittent fasting lifestyle to help busy adults forget the rules and put an end to the confusion around what’s healthy. Named 1 of 10 influential health coaches to follow in 2020, she is also a fasting coach for LIFE mobile apps, the host of the Foundation of Wellness podcast, and writer for The Primal Health Coach Institute blog.

 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with speaker, certified health coach and intermittent fasting instructor Marisa Moon, key points addressed were the core tenants of her one on one health coaching, as well as Marisa's online course called intermittent fasting freedom. We also discussed Marisa's opinions and advice regarding the fasting communities and some of the pitfalls she feels many people new to fasting suffer with. Stay tuned for my fascinating talk with Marisa Moon.

 

[00:00:37] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen .COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today I'm excited to be sitting down with Marisa Moon. Marisa is a speaker, certified health coach and intermittent fasting instructor. You can find out more about her. Everything we talk about today, as was Marisa herself on her Web site, w w w dot Marisa moon dot com. That is m a r i s a m o o n dot com. Welcome, Marisa.

 

[00:01:52] Hey, it's great to be here, Patricia. Thank you for having me.

 

[00:01:55] Absolutely. And for everyone listening, I will give you a quick bio on Marisa before I start peppering her with questions. But before we do that, a quick roadmap for today's podcast. We'll first ask Marisa to kind of unpack her personal fasting history and narrative before she begins to unpack the work that she does regarding fasting. And we'll then look towards her online course that she has called intermittent fasting freedom. We will also discuss elements of her podcast that she does based on the Foundation of Wellness podcast, which is discusses a lot of elements of fasting. And we'll get into the nuts and bolts, the logistics, as well as the ethos of that. I also want to discuss some of her philosophies that she has on her website, based around five elements of the approach that she looks at and kind of walks her clients through. And then I'll get into some of the specifics. I'll ask about if there's client profiles and things of that nature will wrap up the entire podcast with our Rapid Fire Questions section based on everybody who is listening and writing in in honor of letting you know that we hear you. We're going to ask Marisa some direct questions that you had for her and people of her expertize. So, as promised, a quick bio on Marisa share. Marisa Moon is a certified primal health coach and creator of the online course, Intermittent Fasting Freedom. Marisa teaches the most flexible, intermittent fasting lifestyle to help busy adults forget the rules and put an end to the confusion around what's healthy. Named one of 10 influential health coaches to follow in 2020, she is also a fasting coach for life. Mobile Apps and the host of Foundation Wellness Podcast and a writer for the Primal Health Koch Institute blog. So that's Marisa. I know that that is a very, very condensed version of what you do with your bio. And before we unpack everything that you're doing and all of the resources that you have, I'm Marisa Moon .COM. I'm hoping you can kind of tell us a little bit about your journey, your your personal history with fasting and kind of what brought you to launching your company?

 

[00:04:04] Yeah, I was probably in my late twenties, around twenty nine years old, and I had terrible IBS. I didn't know it was IBS at the time. I was just like, what the heck is going on in my gut? And it's really embarrassing. And I was determined to find answers and I somehow I don't know how far of looking to podcast's and I found a nutrition podcast dishing up nutrition. I think they're still in production led by these amazing dietitians and nutritionists telling me things I had never heard before about, you know, gluten sensitivities, your microbiome eating healthy fats like butter. I was like, wait a minute, because I did not eat fat and I did not even know what gluten was and I didn't know I had a microbiome, etc. They just sent me down this beautiful rabbit hole and gave me the confidence to attempt a gluten free diet to see if that was what was causing my IBS. And sure enough, it was. And all that brought me to the paleo ancestral world. And I learned while the way that I am eating now are trying to eat now is like a paleo diet. And it was just kind of like a match made in heaven for me and all made so much sense. And I was like, why is nobody talking about this and why are we not waking up to the fact that our food system has changed so much that it's destroying us. And that passion led me to blogging about my gluten free journey, my longevity kitchen dot com. And I started collaborating with some really incredible companies like Hi Vibe Superfood Usery in Chicago and my six method of really incredible weight loss program. And over time, I realized, wow, I could make this into a career. At first it was really for fun. And I became a certified health coach with the Primary Health Coach Institute. And fasting came into my life early in that journey because I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late 20s. And when I kept learning about it in the paleo literature and ancestral health literature, at first I was like, I would never do that.

 

[00:06:18] I love eating. Like, why would I ever skip a meal? That's crazy. Food means so much to me. I mean, I know it means a lot to everyone, but I'm like, that's like my hobby is food, you know, cooking.

 

[00:06:28] Cooking shows, reading cooking magazines. I went to culinary school just for fun. That's how much I love it. So I was like, OK. I don't think I'm going to skip meals on purpose. But then I started connecting the dots and I was like, wow, this is really tremendous for the brain. And I was always looking for natural remedies for my EGD brain. And I was like, I really skipped breakfast anyways on accident. So let me just try this thing out. And it was like perfect for me. It was exactly what I needed. Gave me that extra edge, that extra available mental energy so that I can be noticeably more productive. And now I really believe that this is an unspoken therapy or natural remedy or support. Like vehicle for ADHD reigns and no one's talking about it.

 

[00:07:16] Yeah, and it's interesting that it affected you in that way. I think a lot of people come at fasting from a myriad of different ways. But I think that the top one is health and exercising things. Did the paleo diet have a relationship with fasting or did it just. It was that just your gateway into kind of exploring diet as it is, as it helped your IBS and and at the subsequent, like, gluten sensitivity, like, did this go hand in hand or did one lead to the other?

 

[00:07:46] Well, some of the earliest works in the paleo diet kind of area of health and nutrition, like Mark Sissons Primal Blueprint or NORGAARD Goddesses, primal body, primal mind. They all mention the importance of intermittent fasting and how we are just constantly eating in modern times. And our body is not prepared for this constant, laborious process of digestion all day long. And how do we expect to burn body fat if we never allow our body to go without food like our ancestors always have? So even though it made logical sense to me when I was reading it at the time, I just it was kind of intimidating. I didn't even think find it appealing, you know.

 

[00:08:33] Yeah. I mean, I ended fasting. I think you've spoken on a few of your podcasts about like, you know, it's a very abrasive term. You know, it speaks of like deprivation and punishment to a lot of people. You know, it just doesn't have the most positive connotation.

 

[00:08:48] Whereas when you look at it as resting and allowing your body to take care of these other forums, it seems much more genteel, I think. And what you do in educating, you know, your clients for fasting when you personally started out, do you recall your favorite form? And I also want to get into the different fast that you personally have experienced. Have you done. Oh, Mad's 24 16. Like what? Which ones did you start out with and which ones have you experimented with?

 

[00:09:14] Well, in the beginning I just didn't care about the rules then, and I don't care about them now. And I think that's how I ended up in my own lane and this whole fasting arena. I just it didn't. It was never going to work for me. If I had strict rules, it wouldn't. And I didn't understand why there needed to be rules anyway. I was like, I feel great now. I'm doing it at a different time every day. I feel great. Some days I'm not doing it. Some days I am. Why does all that other stuff matter? And it just worked for me because 80 years we like novelty. We don't like routine. We don't like anything too ritualistic or predictable. And perhaps that's why I realized maybe that's not the key to it. And so to answer your question, I have and I still do. Changed my fasting routine constantly based on my needs, my social circumstances, my mood, my energy levels. The food that's in my fridge doesn't doesn't really matter. I've the longest I've gone without any food at all. Our 24 hour fast. And I've done five day low sugar juice cleanses. And those are awesome, too. They included bone broth. They were with high vibe Chicago. And I really I don't find it appealing to do longer fancy. No, I know it's the results are tremendous. And I have clients who like doing them. It's just perhaps for me, something I don't want to do when I'm older and I really want to experience that almost like spiritual or personal challenging kind of thing. I mean, right now I'm like, dude, 24 hour fast. I feel like a champ on me. Yeah. You know, you feel great. But then you're also like, wow, I don't need food. That's amazing. Like, I really don't need food. Right.

 

[00:11:03] The relationship and I think a lot of what you're talking about with your own personal journey is it's it's an interpersonal dialog. Right. It's not just on paper. It's not just something written out. I think you start to have a very different conversation with yourself, you know, over fasting and what we have been taught, you know, inadvertently or straight up about diet and eating and, you know, and how those were all fueled by industries that had no business talking to us about her family, things of that nature. So I think that that is it's a key point. I'm curious about that. When you get into. I want to kind of unpack your site and things like that. And a lot of what you do is, you know, this consultancy and coaching. Do you have a narrative where you begin talking with your clients about, like, you know, having an interpersonal dialog? I kind of I feel like there should be an intake form. Like, how do you feel about food, like all of these different things so you can kind of gauge and measure wherever one is at. Can you talk to us a little bit about that process?

 

[00:12:02] Well, there's always an intake form, even when someone just wants to hop on a quick strategy call, which is what I call them. It's like a quick consultation. They're not sure if they want a health coach. They think they want a health coach. They don't even know what the health coaches and. So just a brief form that I asked them for that call is what's not working in your life right now regarding your health and well-being? What's your vision for health and well-being? What top three things you want to change in your life regarding your health and well-being? And do you cook? And just a couple other questions. And then that kind of gives me an idea. Are there goals, like really pressing for them? Are there goals like really clearly defined? Are they ready to commit to such a change? And. Are they are they dealing with challenges that I can help them with? Because I can't help everybody. I'm not even qualified to help certain people. I know what I can do. And the whole point of that strategy calls to see if we're a match. And then if they do decide to work with me as their coach, there's a way, a longer intake form, because I need to know so many details about their life, their support system, what motivates them was worked in the past. What hasn't the the things that they crave, the foods that they miss or love, what their food experiences were like growing up. If they have any negative thoughts around food or ever had negative body image issues or things that they feel like are standing in their way of progress with their health goals. There's so many things that I get into on that form so that when it's time for the sessions and I'm working with them one on one, I already know which things from the intake form would be nice to discuss and go deeper on. But actually coaching calls are really led by the client because I want to know what you want to work on. When we get on the phone, I want to know. So, Patricia, what are you looking forward to talking about today or working on this week? Because you know what you need to do or what's weighing on your shoulders or what you think about every single day when you wake up and when you go to bed. And that's what we need to work on first, because it will be the most rewarding and it will be the most motivating and we can start moving forward in it in a more confident direction.

 

[00:14:12] Nice. Yeah. And to that end, you have. I like your your site actually really does a great job of describing your philosophy and the nature. I think a lot of coaches struggle ironically with really conveying like the parameters in which they'll be functioning under and on your side. You have these five elements. You've got diet, gut, brain, sleep, mobility and stress. And within those, you've passed out even further terms. But you present it as this kind of, you know, harmonious environment, all of which affects each other and things of that nature. And I like that because it seems very holistic. It seems like your piece of the individual out when you start advising people and helping them and coaching them and talking with them about fasting, whatever version that looks like for them. What area of those five do you find fasting affects most quickly?

 

[00:15:03] Well, that's a good question. First, I just want to say I don't tell my clients to fast unless they want to fast. So you would think that because I'm a fasting coach, I would be telling everyone to fast. But I really don't know. It just depends if they're dropping the bread crumbs that make me think that's ideal for them or will work well for them. Otherwise, you know, some people just come to me for fasting, coaching, and I love that. Now, how that affects which areas regarding sleep, brain function, gut diet, stress is so hard to say because it depends on the individual. Almost everyone feels freer right away, which is crazy.

 

[00:15:48] You would never think that you feel freer when someone's telling you you can't have something. But it's like one less thing to do in the morning, one less thing to worry about if you're doing it right.

 

[00:15:57] And it's kind of like, good. There's no decision making there. I don't have to worry. Like, should I have this or should I have that? Do I need to cook? Do I need to go shopping? It's like so much easier. And then from that, you get the confidence boost, you get the energy boost, and it makes you start thinking about other things like, wow, what I thought about food or eating or breakfast was wrong or. You know, misguided. What else do I need to learn? What else can we do? Let's do more.

 

[00:16:24] And a lot of people aren't even ready for fasting more than 12 hours a day until they fix their stress, until they fix their sleep. And I personally went through a bout of chronic fatigue that was so debilitating I couldn't even, like, stand up for longer than five minutes without feeling like I got to put my arm and body weight on the countertop to support me and constantly taking naps throughout the day. It was great. I thought I was losing my mind. I thought there was some Romi and I mean, there was something wrong with me. But ultimately, if you don't have your sleep figured out, that is already such a huge burden on the body in so many ways, it just affects everything that you do.

 

[00:17:09] And without that being something that you prioritize or start to improve, your diet is not going to be giving you the changes that you hear everybody else is experiencing. Your exercise program is not going to be giving you the results that everybody else is getting. And your stress is going to be worse. Your gut is going to be worse. Your brain's going to be worse. And so that's why those things are all on one holistic kind of graph. It's it's inevitable that one will always suffer because of the way our lives are in the modern world. But they all need your attention at one point in your life or another. Otherwise, you're wasting your time and energy on things that we'll never really realize. Right.

 

[00:17:56] Yeah, absolutely. I'm wondering the online course. So you've got this health focus for clients. It's interpersonal, this coaching. But the online course with intermittent fasting freedom. Can you give us, like, some of the core tenants? First of all, how long does it last? Is it is it based on live episodes like the structure of it? And then also kind of the core tenants that it's meant to deliver to the recipient?

 

[00:18:22] Yeah, well, I called it intermittent fasting freedom because the whole purpose is to free someone from dieting that sucks. And just finally create a lifestyle that makes sense for you, helps you achieve the life you imagined and feels like it makes sense and something you want to continue. And the course is a multimedia course. It's got videos, slideshows, and it's got text based modules and tons of worksheets.

 

[00:18:51] For me, worksheets are so important because I'm not there with you to kind of personalize this journey and understand your personal challenges necessarily because I'm not coaching you one on one.

 

[00:19:03] You're taking this online, although you do have contact with me throughout the course and can leave comments and questions for me, etc.. The worksheets help you kind of work through a lot of these things, like, for instance, in the very beginning, everyone goes on a 21 day carbohydrate reduction phase. It's nothing like low carb. It's nothing like HITO. It's just more realistic for the body so that you're not requiring so much insulin production and you're not addicted to carbohydrates.

 

[00:19:31] So everyone goes under one hundred thirty grams of carbs for 21 days. And in that process, we have to talk about a lot of things, the worksheets, rock walking through foods that spin you out of control, foods that you feel like you can eat in moderation. We go through circumstances in your life, places that you go or people that you're around that trigger those cravings, an appetite that are out of control. And slowly together, we learn a lot about fasting. In the meantime, we start twelve hour fast just to see how that feels, because if you can't do twelve hours, it's a sign that your metabolism needs a little while to fix the mess that you've made over the years. And everyone starts experimenting with 14 to 16 hours to kind of find their sweet spot, because I don't think anyone should be trying a 16 eight or an 18 six if they don't already feel really good at the 15 hour mark or the 14 hour mark.

 

[00:20:25] And there's just no rush that we're talking about, something that could pay off for the rest of your life. And it is already going to be paying off when you're doing twelve hours, when you're doing 13 hours, when you're doing 14 hours, you're gonna feel it. And that's why you're going to want to jump in. All matter. Jump in the 18 six. But I teach everyone really the signs to look for. I mean, even just as women, some of us can't do that so fast. It just doesn't come naturally to us as it does to managers jumping sixteen, eight or 18, six. And if it's affecting your menstrual cycle or if you're especially hungry during your ovulation phase, these are important biological signals that are happening to remind you of what really matters. And if we don't have that intuitive relationship with fasting, it'll be just like every other diet we've tried that we quit in the end.

 

[00:21:12] Right. Miserably, too. I think that, though, the worst part about failed diets are ways of trying to obtain health for any reason, weight loss, you know, disease, abrasion, things of that nature is that when you lose it, something you kind of leave more dejected than you ever came into it. There's that added horrifying aspect.

 

[00:21:35] And I'm sorry. I just want to say that I think the fasting industry does that to a lot of people, too, because you join a Facebook group that's for mad or you see everybody says you got to do 18 six or you're not going to get autophagy and you can't do it. And you feel like a failure or you feel like you're not doing a good enough or you want to have some cream in your coffee and everyone's telling you you're not really lose weight. Is that going to happen? And that's not true. I see it all the time. You will still lose weight if you might have a different route, a different path to get there. It might take longer.

 

[00:22:06] I mean, there are just so there is so much flexibility and fasting. I wish more people were talking about it because that's what will help us share it with the world.

 

[00:22:15] Yeah, I agree. I think that that's true. And it's funny to talk about flexibility and fasting because, again, even with my what I think is a storied history with it, you know, my initial thought is black and white, open or closed.

 

[00:22:29] You know, you're fasting. You're not. And I think you're right there. If there isn't flexibility, then it won't be appropriate for the masses. It will only be for a very Taipei, you know, individuals like myself who are aren't scared at that prospect. And I don't think that it should exist that way because not just between genders and and all of those things, but we're all so varied and storied, you know, lifestyle, ethnicity, gender, all of these things vary from every single person to the next. And there's got to be flexibility within it.

 

[00:22:57] You know, all black or white thinkers, like we're all all or nothing. So many of us are like, if I can't do it the best, I'm not going to do it at all. Or people just don't fast on the weekends because they can't do the 18 six on the weekends. And I'm like, what about 14?

 

[00:23:12] What's the other one, 10, 14 time? What about Pat? That's still good. It's better than not fasting at all. Because trust me, Monday is going to be a lot harder when all you've been doing is eating and drinking on weekend. Oh.

 

[00:23:24] Absolutely. And that actually ties into a lot of what I want to discuss about trends and things that you've seen over your clients and things of that nature going back into a fasting lifestyle after not, as you mentioned, being difficult. But before we get to that, I want to look at your podcast.

 

[00:23:41] And I just want it unpacked for everyone listening. It's called the Foundation Wellness Podcast. And really quickly, just some logistics. When was it started? What was the impetus and how many do you release a month or a week?

 

[00:23:55] Well, the foundation of wellness is something I created just about three years ago. I can't believe it's been that long and I've wanted to do one forever. But I knew that I wouldn't be consistent with it or have like the ongoing motivation or confidence to really realize this dream. If I didn't have a co-host and through working with High, I met a registered dietitian, Jessica Doga, who I adore and is still my best friend today. And she helped me in the first couple years of the podcast co-host it. And it was a great dynamic because we each offered something the other didn't. We have opposite personalities and voices and it was just such a great way to kick off the show. And the concept of the show was something I always wanted. The Foundation of Wellness is really about offering listeners a refreshing take on diet and lifestyle that helps to diffuse the intimidation factors about so many things around dieting and wellness. And then also just being really relatable. That's so important because so many of the nutrition and wellness podcasts are like sometimes even over my head and I'm in the field and it's like sounds like everyone's got something to prove. And I'm like, well, who are we really talking to? I want to talk to people who might need a health coach one day. I want to talk to people who are frustrated and but they're still looking for answers because they're on the edge, man. They're like this cause they're like, I know something is out there that can make me feel better. I just haven't found it yet. But, you know, they could give up at any time. So many people do. And so I hope the foundation of wellness makes learning about health and wellness fun and also feels relatable. And I think we've we've begun to achieve that. We published shows every single week until I got to run the 80th episode or or something. And now I'm just trying to keep up do it all myself. I finally hired an editor and so that helps a lot. I was doing all the production myself and the promotions, graphics, everything. And it's hard. It's hard when you have a business that you're running to because I wasn't making any money on the park, as it were. I was literally just to provide a library of content for my audience, followers and clients.

 

[00:26:08] Nice. Yeah, it is. It's a lot of work. I think that people are discovering that somewhere. I feel like about a year ago it got advised on some massive Tony Robbins kind of platform where everyone was advised that everyone started podcast because 90 percent of the people that bring me on their podcast, you know, are talking about, you know, how difficult it is and and asking me to speak to it. And I was like, yeah, I never thought it was going to be easy. But I think that a lot of people go into it thinking it's just this very simple platform. There's so much post-production work and preproduction. If you're doing one well with research and things of that nature, it is. It's a labor of love, even if you're making money off of it. I've never heard there's very few that are actually making like parts of America, like these kinds of, you know, massive figures off of it. And that's what I love about it. It's, you know, it's information sharing and things of that nature. How many do you so do you shoot to release one a week or is it just kind of varied? Given your business schedule?

 

[00:27:03] Well, right before the pandemic, it was still once a week. And I slowly had to figure out, you know, how am I going to keep managing everything like I'm in school right now for the second level certification at the Private Health Coach Institute to qualify for the board certification exam. And I realize I just can't keep doing it all. And so now, you know, I've told my listeners a couple times through the pandemic, like it's been hard for me. I even went through a stage of depression. I didn't know what was going on. My husband's an emergency room physician. I didn't know what to expect and I had to work from home. All of a sudden, my Internet sucks at home. It was just too many changes, like for me too fast and too many unknowns. And in that I told my podcast listeners, like, the only thing like I truly have control over is the podcast. And I feel like I need to be more reasonable with my expectations regarding that. And so now I'm just kind of there's always gonna be at least one or two a month, always right now, even while I'm in school. But if I feel like I need to be satisfied with two a month right now, because once a week is just not going to happen. And I just went through like my long advance booking of guests. And so if I'm creating the content myself or I have to find, I guess there's like this whole nother, you know, amount of work that needs to happen. So right now, the. Expect to hear from me once or twice a month.

 

[00:28:24] Yeah, and it's great. I like how candid you are. I've listened to several of your podcasts and you mentioned, you know, this depression. And one of your episodes very, very candidly lays out this feeling of depression and and, you know, kind of working through that moment with your husband and things like that. And I think it's important because particularly with fasting and all dietary research, it doesn't exist on paper. It exists in a living organism. You know, that we call human beings. And so when you when you go to correlate or translate something that's being studied on paper, I theorized on paper and you apply it to a living creature, you have to have the flexibility that you're talking about and the authenticity to experience, you know, depression or anxiety which the world over, you know, has been suffering through these things. And so I really appreciate that you have that very transparent lens for your audience. You're able to kind of walk through it. It's I think it's very unique and really necessary. I'm wondering as you've gone along. So we had a lot of move. Rapid fire questions are coming up and we have a lot of people that really want coaches to be asked with fasting coaches and things like that. A lot of what you speak to, which is the particulars of someone being an individual. And so I want to start off with a couple of my questions and then we'll get into the rapid fire. But you've had because you deal with people on this very level, you have, you know, your podcast where you advise you have this consultancy and coaching with one on one. And then you also have these online resources and classes. So you've come across people on a myriad of different platforms. And I'm wondering if you yourself have kind of recognized trends or anything like that that you can speak to different client profiles like, you know, people who prior to the pandemic, of course, work nine to five struggle in these areas, more with fasting as opposed to those that don't front that women and fathers of mothers and fathers of young children. You know, the fasting can vary for them. Do you have any, like, kind of summaries of different client profiles for fasting that you can proffer up for us today?

 

[00:30:27] Yeah, you know, I kind of wish I took a minute to gather these thoughts because it's such a great question and I need to work on that. But I just hear you give a couple examples was perfect because it triggered a few memories for me, like people with small children that have a really hard time with fasting because they're constantly around children snacks, which are often not even the foods they usually will eat like goldfish crackers, pretzels and just cookies and things that they know are not really going to contribute well to their goals.

 

[00:31:00] But they can't help themselves. They're always around and they're always preparing their children's food and all these snacks in between. And, you know, I've I've learned that if it takes some real determination to make the changes at home that support your fasting goals, because you can have all of that stuff already prepared for your kids the day before while you're in your eating window.

 

[00:31:26] And you can also get the kids involved once they're at a certain age. I mean, they don't have to be very old to grab their own goldfish crackers and put them in a baggie. And I don't have children, so I'm not usually giving a lot of ice in that area. But over time, I have seen like, hey, there are certain things where we need to put our foot down. Like if your family doesn't want, you stop buying ice cream and donuts and Doritos, but you need that in order to move in the right direction and just kind of get through this phase of breaking those bad habits.

 

[00:31:56] Then you either need to put those foods in a separate part of the pantry, your own food on a different shelf, put their stuff in that weird cabinet above the fridge that nobody uses and, you know, get it out of the house if you can.

 

[00:32:09] I mean, if you're the one who buys the groceries and does all the cooking and I say you're the one who makes all the rules. And I think you can put up with your family being annoyed with you for like two weeks. And anytime they want Doritos or pizza or donuts, they can just go get it. You're asking them to please support you in these one or two weeks while you help break the habit. I think that's one of the hardest things. And the people that come to me, I'm starting to notice, have a history of disordered eating in a way where they're like obsessive around dieting and trying to do everything right and feeling like they have to be careful of every single thing. And it starts to become like this fear based relationship with food. And they come to me because I'm so like laidback or flexible in my approach that they're like, I need to get some of that. And then together we start to achieve that somehow.

 

[00:32:58] I honestly, I can't give you the formula, but all I can say is when you're working with a coach, they start to make you more self-aware and you start to just realize the things that you are doing without any real reason. Besides that, it became a habit. And together they we realized that fasting actually gives them more.

 

[00:33:21] Um, because like I said earlier, they don't have to think about if they're doing it right or wrong, if they're eating at the right time in the morning or having too much carbs or too much protein or whatever, it's like they're free. Then they can just eat whatever they want within reason when the eating window opens.

 

[00:33:40] And I think that's surprised me. I didn't imagine that someone with a history of disordered eating would take to fasting in such a healthy way. Well, I'm starting to see that more and more is the case.

 

[00:33:52] Yeah, absolutely. And I think you're right. I think it could be nothing more than a long novel about, you know, the different observations to be made among those groups of people. There you go. That's your next assignment. Write a book for us. All right. Well, we're back down to our Rapid Fire section of the podcast. And for everyone listening, I want everyone to know that I love you writing in. I adore our audience. Feisty and calm as they come. And I want you to know that I will continue asking your questions to the experts that we have on in the areas that they pertain. So the first question we have is what what for you? What is the most unexpected benefit that you personally received from fasting that you hadn't anticipated?

 

[00:34:39] My appetite decreases. I didn't even think that was possible.

 

[00:34:43] I was already kind of achieving that. With the paleo type diet. But food was just always on my mind. Like, that's all I ever wanted was to eat. Even if I had just eight, I wanted to eat again. If somebody else was eating around me and nowadays, I don't remember the last time I said, I'm starving, like, you know how that's just kind of part of our language casually today. Like we're just having eat and we're like, I'm starving. And really, you you just eat lunch like five hours ago, like you're fine. But I don't even get that feeling anymore.

 

[00:35:11] That was probably the biggest shock to me was that food became less of a, I don't know, dictator of my my day to day mood and appetite. It's just incredible.

 

[00:35:26] Yeah, it is. And it's crazy how beholden we are to it on so many levels. You can say it, but it feels like the words just put out there don't really convey, you know, what a slave. I think that the majority of people, at least in the United States, are to it. What are the top triggers that for you that you advise, that you find for yourself or for CLY and clients that make fasting difficult?

 

[00:35:50] So social or it wasn't really clarified, but that the triggers of their delineate fasting.

 

[00:35:57] Well, honestly, if you haven't slept on a biological level, you're getting hormones that signal for you to eat.

 

[00:36:05] And for you to eat carbs. And for you eat them very soon. And so you might not even usually crave carbs. But all of a sudden, you find yourself like you just got to have something or you've just got to eat. And that's because you don't sleep.

 

[00:36:18] And so that's number one. Number two, if you're smelling somebody heat up, their like tacos at work.

 

[00:36:25] It's going to make you want to eat. If you're scrolling social media and there's food pictures, all in your feed is going to make you want to eat and being extremely emotional or for women,

 

[00:36:35] Those few days leading up to our period, the day that it actually starts, I mean, we are seeing like a huge plummet in our hormones right before that happens. And it can be such a shock to you emotionally and hormonally in a way that really affects your appetite. And if you don't give into that a little bit and really understand what's going on there, it can even happen in the ovulation phase. Then you start thinking that you screwed up or you just can't do it or you're not good enough. And really what's going on is your brain logy is like, hey, excuse me. Now is not the time for this whole 18 six thing. Can you relax a little bit?

 

[00:37:11] Yeah, exactly. We had people right in asking the things that enable fasting. So I guess, conversely, the other side of that, do you find that there are techniques that people can easily implement that kind of enable them to do a daily fast?

 

[00:37:28] Yeah, you have to eat more nutrient dense foods and bring your carbohydrate intake down to something more reasonable for the human body. I mean, never before in history did humans have so much access to readily available shelf stable carbohydrates made from flour and that we could eat anytime day or night.

 

[00:37:47] And if you're eating those carbohydrates at night, especially, you can have 25 to 50 percent more of an insulin response to the same exact food. If you eat it at night than if you were to eat it during the day. And that means you're packing on more weight and you're gonna crave more food fast, there's going to be more difficult the next day. And fasting come so much easier when you start to cut out some of those flowerings foods and some of the sugar sugary drinks especially. That is a tough habit to break. But man, does it pay off.

 

[00:38:17] Yeah, there. And this goes along with we had several questions to this train of thought. So we'll I'll ask further. We had people ask if you recommend a specific diet or lifestyle. And also can fasting in European humble opinion, can it be done in this? You know, there's there's people writing in who are vegans. There are people who are trying the paleo. Do you feel like fasting is better suited to one of them? Can it be done under all diets?

 

[00:38:47] I'm starting to see that it can't be done under all diets, although I just. I guess I don't really get it, so I don't understand how fruitarian is for innocent people who only eat fruit. Are fasting like I just don't get it. But it's not like I really care to get it. It's not my area is not my arena. I believe in an ancestral diet and an ancestral diet is focused on eating the foods that have been available to humans for tens of thousands of years and before civilization. So before we were farming for the masses, before we had refrigeration, grocery stores, convenience. Before that, humans diet consisted of things that you could hunter-gatherer or grow or catch. And that's important because our genes have adapted or evolved to expect certain nutrients and to you know, they can't necessarily deal with the onslaught of toxins and sugar and carbs that we have now. And so I think that that's one of the most important things, is eating a well-rounded, diverse, like variety packed plant heavy. But digestion, friendly diet that is filled with adequate fats from healthy animals so that you can feed the myelin around your cells, especially the brain cells. Man, we really need that. That healthy cholesterol. Cholesterol. We've all been so afraid for so long of eating healthy fats or eating saturated fats or eating cholesterol or animal products. And I believe it's all misguided. And the science has really misled us in a direction that just goes so far from commonsense and human wisdom. And we can really look at all of these time tested lifestyle factors and dietary influences that that are right there for the taking. Like if we just sit and think for a moment what has always worked for humankind. I really believe it's a Whole Foods diet that includes a huge variety of plants and wild or pastured animal foods. Yeah, we have people asking, what is the most common misperception regarding fasting that you come into contact with, that you have to do it perfectly, that it has to be clean and can't be dirty, that you have to do it longer. And that's why you're not losing weight. Like, there's just the rules are let me say this. The people who are screaming the rules are usually one of two things that are really, really science driven people who are just looking at the research. And so they're like, this is what the research says. So this is the way you have to do it. But nutrition research sucks. It's just hard to to consider all the variables that really affect our bodies, reaction to nutrition. And then there's also the other group of people are people who are in the minority.

 

[00:41:45] They're the two percent of people who can't have stevia during a fast or it's going to trigger insulin. They're the people who can't have any dairy in their coffee because it's going to make them hungrier and make fasting harder. But we're talking about a small percentage of the population or if people have to lose over 100 pounds. Those aren't the people that I work with. Again, I usually don't attract people like that, probably because I didn't get into fasting for my weight loss journey. And I've helped plenty of people lose 40 pounds, 50 pounds. And that's pretty remarkable.

 

[00:42:15] But I think it might change when your metabolism, you know, your whole metabolic health history is so far from optimal because of years and years of damage or living with obesity or Type two diabetes. I think that really takes a different, more strict approach than the type that I and I believe in. Right.

 

[00:42:37] Yeah. And finally, we had people talk. You you speak a lot about this as well. Breaking habits of sugar and refined carbohydrates and things like that. Do you have a set group of time that you advise people to break these habits with people like inquire like is it one week away from it? Is it two days away from it? And can fasting help speed that up?

 

[00:43:03] It depends where it is. I mean, I love this concept by Gretchen Rubin, she calls it abstainer or moderator and what she's getting at. She's habits. And happiness expert. And she explored that some people can eat certain things in moderation. And that's what we've all been taught, like Jews in moderation. You can have it in moderation, but some of us can't.

 

[00:43:22] It depends on the food. So I teach my clients to go through this whole abstainer moderator worksheet that makes them think like which things actually spinning out of control and make you like have an eating frenzy and dream about the food every single day from that point forward. Or which ones do you feel better when you have just a bite or just a piece? And just having that permission makes you have more control. And that is moderation.

 

[00:43:46] Now, for me, I can't eat French fries in moderation. You got to be kidding me. I can not. OK. So I just don't eat them. I'm better off abstaining from French fries personally, like I'll have them on my birthday or like for a big celebration. You know, every few months. But the day that I have those fries grama be dreaming about those fries the next day, I want to every single day that follows. And so I know I can't have them my reason, but I can have ice cream in moderation. I can have, you know, like a sweet drink in moderation. Now, once you figure that out about yourself, you can see where you find the freedom.

 

[00:44:24] Do you find the freedom from abstaining or do you find the freedom for moderation? And then you really have to probably go at least two weeks of breaking a habit that is so ingrained.

 

[00:44:35] And it's easier than you think because it's not always just about getting rid of it. It's like what triggers the habit? Where are you when you do that habit? Are you eating popcorn every single night after dinner because you go sit on the couch and you watch your show, just go watch your show in a different room, use your phones that you have to use both hands and your hands aren't free to eat popcorn. Do that for two weeks. Go for a walk instead.

 

[00:44:57] And before you know it, you broke that habit. And is it gonna be harder? Someone's eating popcorn right next to you. Yeah. But I mean, within reason, it's totally doable and easier than people think.

 

[00:45:08] Yeah, I agree. And I think you're right, it's an interpersonal dialog. Along with this theorist about, you know, moderation versus abstaining. I agree. Well, Marisa, so we're out of time. But I want to say thank you so much for giving us your time and your expertize today. I really appreciate it.

 

[00:45:23] Oh, yeah. It's been a blast. Thank you for letting me go on and on about the things that I'm passionate about. It's really nice being here always.

 

[00:45:31] I appreciate it as well. Your transparency and just your honest rhetoric is is so wonderful and necessary in these areas, in these times and for everyone listening. Thank you for giving us your time today. We've been speaking with Marisa Moon. She's speaker, certified health coach and intermittent fasting instructor. You can find out more and contact her on her Web site. W w w dot Marisa moon dot com.

 

[00:45:52] And until we speak again next time. Remember to stay safe, eat responsibly and clean when you do eat and always bet on yourself. Slainte.

 

Speaking with Ivor Cummins; Author & Chief Program Officer for Irish Heart Disease Awareness

Today I speak with Ivor Cummins. Ivor Cummins BE(Chem) CEng MIEI PMP completed a Biochemical Engineering degree in 1990. He has since spent over 25 years in corporate technical leadership and management positions. His career specialty has been leading large worldwide teams in complex problem-solving activity. 

 

Since 2012 Ivor has been intensively researching the root causes of modern chronic disease. A particular focus has been on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. 

 

He shares his research insights at public speaking engagements around the world, revealing the key nutritional and lifestyle interventions which will deliver excellent health and personal productivity. He has recently presented on heart disease primary root causes at the British Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation (BACPR). He has also debated Irish Professors of Medicine on stage, at the annual conference of the Irish National Institute of Preventative Cardiology (NIPC).

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with biochemical engineer, author and international speaker Ivor Cummins, key points addressed were core tenants of his book, Eat Rich, Live Long, in which Ivor enumerates the scientifically backed health benefits of eating a low carb diet. We also talked on aspects of fasting and how both his book and Ivor himself have engaged in fasting practices in order to facilitate and enhance benefits received from a low carbohydrate diet. Stay tuned for my informative talk with Ivor Cummins.

 

[00:00:39] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen .COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:31] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia.

 

[00:01:34] And today, I am very excited to be sitting down with Ivor Cummins. He is an author and chief program officer for Irish Heart Disease Awareness. You can find out more about Ivor and all of his work on the Fat Emperor, or dot com, which is his website. And we will be climbing through that as well as his book today. Welcome, Ivor.

 

[00:01:55] Thanks a lot, Patricia. Great to be here.

 

[00:01:57] Absolutely. For those of you that are new to this podcast, I will read a brief bio on Ivor. But before I do that, I want to give everyone an overview of the road map of which our trajectory, the inquiry will be based out of. We took a large part of our podcast inquiry today from you. Public as we reached out and asked everyone what they would like to hear from Ivor on. So I will first spend the first part of it unpacking, Eat Rich, Live Long, which is the book that Ivor has released in tandem with Dr. Jeffrey Gerber. I'll have him unpack the three main sections of that book and some of the core axiomatic details. And then we'll turn straight to the inquiry that all of you have put out there. Namely, we'll look at areas of emphasis that he has in the book and then outside of that, on fasting in general, different types of fasting, fasting, blood glucose levels, things that he's spoken to in the book around that, as well as other knowledge he may have. He has not spoken to. We'll ask him about his future plans of study. We'll ask him about different forms of fasting that he may have practiced himself. We'll ask him about an increase based on hitting a stall for different people who have looked into that, namely calcium scores of zero. A lot of you have written about very specific elements that Iowa or has spoken to. We'll talk about vitamins and minerals supplementation and other cardiological elements with different aspects there. And we'll talk about fast mimicking. And if he's had any things to study or talk about that we're going to get into the questions you guys had about, based on the list of the 10 items to be considered outside of the low carb diet that he advises about sleep vitamin D. I know that I've always done a bunch of podcasts on on his own podcast system based on expertize from people in a lot of those fields as well. So as promised, prior to peppering Ivor with questions, quick bio, Ivor Cummins has completed a biochemical engineering degree in nineteen ninety. Since 2012, Ivor has been intensively researching the root causes of modern chronic disease. A particular focus has been on cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. He shares his research, insights and insights at public speaking engagements around the world. Revealing the key nutritional and lifestyle interventions which will deliver excellent health and personal productivity. Iver's 2018 book, Eat Rich Live Long, coauthored with preventative medicine expert Geoffrey Gerber, M.D., details the conclusions of their shared research can be found on Amazon. His public lectures and interviews are available on YouTube, where he has about seventy five thousand subscribers and about six million views as recorded to date. Again, you can find out all of the information regarding either on the Fat Emperor or dot com. So I work instead of kind of climbing through which people can find on your Web site a lot of your academic and occupational background. I know that you come at it from a different viewpoint. Can you briefly describe what your career prior to diving into Eat Rich and Live Long and the studies there in.

 

[00:05:06] OK, Patricia, I'll try and keep it brief.

 

[00:05:08] Yes, I came out. 1990, I started in the medical device company as a development engineer in kidney dialysis units and those kinds of things.

 

[00:05:20] And basically, to put it very bluntly, I very rapidly got into complex problems solving some multifactor kind of complex problems that were causing major impacts to the processes. And I found that that's where the flare. So I focus more and more on that. And then as my career went on, I moved between companies. I. Became a team leader, senior engineer, then a very senior technical expert, and ended up as a master technologist, which is one of the highest levels in the corporation. But I also spent around fifteen years in and out of management roles. So managing teams of people, doing the people management as well as the technical. So I think problem solving was really the thing that unified it all. I would be the person who'd go in and take a very complex problem, multi-million dollar losses per week, say, and I would get to the bottom office as fast as possible using all the Problem-Solving tools. And there are many tools I won't last year. So in 2012, I got some kind of adverse blood tests. There just standard blood tests. And three of the measures were very far off, cholesterol and then a liver enzyme, GGP and Serum Feresten, an iron loading in the blood. And after I went through three doctors in succession over several weeks, including a professor of medicine, I couldn't get the answers to the two key questions that any complex problem that you're faced with or if you're brought in to lead it from outside. And the two questions are what are the implications of the bad metrics and what are the root causes generally that would drive those metrics to be bad so they can be addressed or at least investigated? And I couldn't get the answers from the three doctors. And I realized then something fairly profound, that if these are standard blood tests and I can't get those two questions broadly answered, there's something huge missing in medicine. There has to be I wasn't sure what it was, but I just knew there was no question about that. So I went to research gate and pop mad corporate law guns. And I started going through the last 60, 70 years of human trials, published science, biochemical science. And essentially within several weeks I'd worked through the three metrics I found the answers of the implications of them being bad, and they were pretty huge except for cholesterol. But the other two and I found the processes and I got myself to carbohydrate metabolism, excessive glucose, excessive sugars in my diet. So whole grain breads and pastas and orange juice, all that stuff. And I realized I was trying to eat a healthy wholegrain type diet and a low fat one generally. And it had completely backfired because I also discovered then that the whole thing about fat was fat wasn't really a problem at all. So I switched my diet. Eight and a half weeks later, I had lost thirty four pounds. I had my blood tests, came back fantastic. And basically everything was fixed. My blood pressure, which had been all was kind of hypertensive, was right down, but no extra exercise. So I knew then that I basically found the primary root cause. But then I got into fasting as well during that period. And essentially I began to research and that over the years releasing YouTube videos, you've seen a few. It just became my main career. You know, as though. Yeah.

 

[00:08:53] Did the book write itself then? Were you? I mean, I know the history of it personally, but it sounds like a personal journey.

 

[00:09:00] And this research that you were doing and then you came into this camaraderie with Dr. Jeffrey Gerber. Was it a combination of your own personal research or did you need to put it out there so that you had this kind of cohesive collection of information?

 

[00:09:16] Yeah, there were a few things just from a long time back I knew that I at some point want to write a book.

 

[00:09:22] I wasn't sure about what happened when this happened to me. In 2013, I released the cholesterol conundrum, which is extremely popular around the world. And that's so Gerber and all the other doctors found me originally and we struck up this kind of friendship. And we met in South Africa, the world's first low carb conference in South Africa in early fifteen. But I was basically during fifteen writing this book. And then later in fifteen, you know, I kind of linked up with Jeff and said, Hey, Jeff, you want to be a coauthor on this? And he was delighted because he could bring all of his clinical experience, clinical expertize. Twenty five years as a low carb doctor and kind of complete the package, if you will. But I did. And I'm sure he won't mind me saying this. I did write most of the book for sure in terms all the science and everything else. I mean, brought in a professional chef them to do all the recipes that you've probably seen. But a key thing as well was I got funding in 15 to really support me to be able to write the book and do many other things like travel and research outside of my main job. So that was from David Bobert, an Irish heart disease awareness charity. They found me through the same video, the cholesterol video, and wanted to support me to get the message out. So a lot of things came together. We got a professional editor from Karl Mann agencies in New York, which I was able to phone now. Otherwise, I would have done a book that would have been very different. So the professional editors, they know their craft in terms of structuring and simplifying. So I think it was way, way better as a result of that.

 

[00:11:02] Yeah. The book is beautiful. I must say in layout format, having come from a literary family and I appreciate the content. However, the actual graphics and the layout of it is incredibly friendly.

 

[00:11:13] I think you have a review on Amazon, but I was looking over that said the Kindle version is good, but that the in-person version is great. And I think it speaks to the vibrancy of not just the layout, but also the art, you know, the pictures, the photographs of the food, because it is really a part of what you're speaking to. Right. You're talking about diet and nutrition. And that's best relayed through both Visual Forum and I think lesson. I'm wondering with you, you kind of dropped a little nugget about fasting and you mentioned frequently and a lot of your other YouTube lectures and things like that that I've looked at. You have this conversation with your audience about becoming truly ketogenic and and following a keto diet and how it allowed you this freedom to kind of choose when you eat. And that parlays into this semi fasted mentality where you tend to skip lunch on certain days. You kind of choose your way in and out of meals. Can you speak to how that relationship came about?

 

[00:12:11] Right. Well, originally, actually, during that period of eight and a half weeks, I discovered a few weeks into low carb that my appetite came under an incredible degree of control.

 

[00:12:22] And this was completely new to me. I used to do triathlons and I would do huge amounts of swimming, cycling, you know, running. But when I came home, I'd be ravenous and I'd, of course, be eating lots of healthy whole grains. And what I thought at the time was healthy. But now I found when I was eating meat, fish and eggs and just low starch vegetables, I just found that my appetite, after having one good meal, was kind of suppressed for much, much longer. When I was going to eat lunch, I realized I'm not hungry like I used to be for this lunch. In fact, I could almost skip it and I began to skip meals in work because I was so busy. And then I just learned that there was a different way of living altogether that didn't involve breakfast, lunch and dinner in the evening.

 

[00:13:10] And also some snacks in the afternoon and maybe a bar or two in the mid-morning. I realized if you're eating meat, fish, eggs, high protein, high fat, you know, and vegetables and eating real human diet, your appetite just it just comes under your control. And because I was losing weight, I actually in fairness, during that eight 1/2 week period, I began to fast, more purposefully because I was enjoying losing the weight. And it was such fun, I decided to accelerate it, which happened so people and work out an awful shock, like in four or five, six weeks, I was completely transformed. And that was how I kind of got into the idea of fasting and skipping meals. And I also liked it. It suited me because I could really enjoy a meal then later on so I could get all my work done and put off the pleasure of the meal, which would be a good nutritious meal later on. And at the end of my labors kind of way, I could sit down and really enjoy a good meal. And that suited me. It suited my psychology. So that was kind of it just grew. And by the time it came to writing the book, I had done a lot more research on that because we are writing a book and got a little more technical about it. But in a sense, as Dr. Gerber says, rather than fasting, he thinks of it as meal skipping because you can so you save time.

 

[00:14:33] You can spend the time eating and work doing work, maybe finish earlier and just skip meals here and there and let your hormones, let your insulin, your glucose. Let let all that digestive process calm right down, you know, and it's just it's the right way to live. And I think evolutionarily as well, it's so appropriate. As you can imagine, though, I know that's not proof of any benefit, but it just makes sense and it gives you freedom. There's no downsides that I'm aware of.

 

[00:15:02] It's a laissez faire attitude about eating for sure that I don't think a lot of hyper and intense individuals in this latter day have towards food.

 

[00:15:11] You know, the addictive nature that we've kind of every country that I've seen ascribes to their diet, at least. And I'm wondering, do you. Have you experimented with this control? Has there come? You're a very curious individual. And has there been any curiosity about playing around with forms of fasting? Have you met at these conferences with other like minded health individuals who talk about extended fasts, or is it more about this meal skipping mentality?

 

[00:15:38] Yeah, it's probably more the latter. Patricia, I'm relatively casual, so I'm not really the type.

 

[00:15:44] I did a lot of blood measurements, blood glucose meter and ketones way, way back. And then I kind of dropped it, to be quite honest. Now, if I thought I had any kind of physiological issue that I had to address, I'd be a real metrics person, you know, because I'm an engineer. But I've kind of got more casual about that because I just feel if I'm doing things right, I occasionally take a blood glucose, but I'm not compelled to.

 

[00:16:07] And likewise, the fasting, I don't feel I have to keep a certain routine. So what I've kind of ended up at first sheer convenience is and to get a little longer fasting in, because I believe the longer, fastest way you really get your glucose and insulin down, I'm kind of doing one meal a day around three times a week or four. And the other three or four days, two meals a day. So that's roughly where I've settled for me. Now, I've talked to Jason Fong, many people who know Dr. Jason Fong, the fasting guru, and many other people about fasting. But I explain that I have a longer term. Fast is more like a medical intervention to me. So someone who has profound obesity or very severe insulin resistance that will is not dealt with in a normal, healthy low carb with some meals skipping can push the boundaries further. And I know Jason deals with a lot of those more challenging people. But for me, I haven't gone over 24 hours and I do anecdotally hear that there's not really much published science on it, obviously because of the nature. I anecdotally hear about some people, many people maybe more so female, maybe postmenopausal. That going beyond that 24 hours into longer term fast can just be challenging, you know, tiredness, sleep impacted. Don't feel so good. And I sense that it appears that men appear to be a little luckier in terms of fasting. There's less of that anecdotal feedback. But even myself, when I go to around 27, 28 hours, I really feel like eating. So I've never pushed true the envelope into apparently day two, where the hunger that has come on falls away again. And apparently there a utopia of healing in today, three and four. I haven't done that. But I do hear about his.

 

[00:18:00] Yeah. Curiosity hasn't led you there yet. Well, there's time. I wonder, with your emphasis on I were meant to ask you about that before I start the rapid fire questions with people that wrote in.

 

[00:18:12] In reading through your book, you do talk about faster blood glucose levels, measuring that. And it seems like you tie into you have mentioned actually a lot of your interviews as well as a very quick way to get into ketosis is through this kind of fasted state. And I'm hoping that you can kind of draw that out or enumerate that further for everyone listening.

 

[00:18:32] Yeah, well, my my approach to QI tells us we all know those hardcore Kiesel people who tend to push fat into their bodies with ultra low carb to kind of almost force Quito's.

 

[00:18:45] It's almost like eating the extra fat is creating this beneficial ketosis. And I just never perceived it that way. So my way to be in ketosis and I like to kind of go in and out of it. I'm not entirely convinced from the literature that staying hardcore Akito all the time suit's all genetic type suits everyone so well, I'm not sure now. You know, the jury's out in the sense, but what I like to do is eat low carb and then skip meals and the combination of a good, healthy, new, nutrient dense, low carb diet. It might not make you in ketosis deeply, but if you start skipping meals as well in combination with low carb, then you're going to be going in and out of ketosis in waves. And it's a great feeling and I find ketosis now. I never gone really hardcore, but it does a great feeling of mental acuity. Even so, I give an example and it's anecdotal, but when I'm speaking in a very big conference, maybe eight or nine hundred people in the audience, you know, your tension will build and you want to be at your best. And I always pretty much ensure that I'm around 24 hours fasted before I go on stage. Now, this would be a shock to the average American. You know, who if they didn't have their lunch, you know, they wouldn't be able to concentrate or Irish or anyone nowadays. I don't mean just Americans. But for me, like when you get into that 20 hours fasted. Your mental acuity, it may relate to the fact that Bayt hydroxybutyrate and ketone bodies are feeding our brain, but no one has proven that. But something changes and and you get sharper, edgier. There's a high performance feeling. So I think I've gone off the topic now. But that's why I like to go in and out of ketosis by meal, skipping and eating low carb. And I don't really target eating lots of fat and ultra low carb. Like I said, it's meat, fish, eggs. You know, all of those cheeses above ground, leafy vegetables, sometimes even a little rice. If the family is doing rice, I'll have to eat much smaller portions than I used to. But, you know, for old times sake. Bitter rice. Yeah. So it's kind of that's kind of my approach to it in terms of science. One of the interesting things I always bring up about fasting in ketosis is that everyone knows that exercise gives neurological benefits and does not does nothing faddish about that. Everyone accepts exercise is good for neurologically. But I have a paper that I was amazed to find once, and they'd looked at the whole question of why does exercise give this apparent neurological benefit, even short term? And I think it's brain derived neuropathic factor B DNF. So they went to all the biochemistry and actually found out that when you exercise beta hydroxybutyrate, ketone body rises. And their paper came to the conclusion that the increase in BHB was one of the primary mechanisms that was supportive of neurological function. So it's interesting to think that you can almost fasting is almost like exercise of the pill away and some other papers like that. I love ones that integrate the benefit of exercise and the benefit of the right foods or fasting behaviors into a kind of more unified thing. Those reasons, all these different things are healthy and a lot of the biochemical pathways overlap. So anyway, I just I just thought I'd throw that out there.

 

[00:22:21] Well, yeah. And I think that part of the problem with Western medicine in at least in the early part of the nineteen hundreds, was that, you know, and this necessary isolation view.

 

[00:22:30] But nothing exists in a vacuum, certainly not any system within the human body. And so to not consider other factors would be, I think, to introduce the concept that you love of black swans. You know, with them, with engineering and these kinds of flying in the face of the hypothesis moment. And so I like that you stay open to the inclusive city measure while always looking for things that disprove that. I'm wondering, with what you've said about fast before I drop into the rapid fire questions. You do, have you haven't you explained Fats? And I think it's important with people who do low carb, who don't practice, actually those who practice Vegan diets as well. But there is a very clear distinction between fats for you as well as carbohydrates. And I'm wondering if you can draw those out quickly, because I think I always preferred people to say low refined carbohydrates, because almost everything in the human diet, aside from straight fat, has carbohydrates in it. And I think what most people on a low carb centric diet or way of life are looking at refined carbohydrates. So if you could just drive for you, if you could define those terms as to how you define carbohydrates when you talk about low carbohydrates as well as healthy versus non healthy fats.

 

[00:23:47] Gotcha. OK. How can I do this efficiently? Well, I'd say upfront what I generally say to lay people who are not going to get into the whole falsies stuff. I say to them, look, there's the what I call Satan's triad or the devil's triad that's caused a lot of modern chronic disease, sugar, refined carbohydrates, refined grains and vegetable oils, these fake factory oils, I call them.

 

[00:24:11] So those three things are the primary components and most ultra processed food.

 

[00:24:16] So if you cut out ultra processed food and those three components greatly, you know, for most people, that'll be the vast amount of the benefit they're going to get. I'm honest about it. And then if you want to go low carb, you know, you're going to be careful with the not quite so bad carbs, like fibrous carbs or even for details in moderation. If you want to really go towards ketosis and then the non starchy vegetables are fine. So broccoli, cauliflower and all those carbs and avocados and lots of things. So I kind of say that first. So in terms of refined carbs. Absolutely, Patricia. That's the real devil in the room rather than carbs in general. And I give the example in the book of the catarrh funds, and they're around sixty five percent carb in their diet, which is actually high carb. But again, they're eating nutrient dense fish and meats and another good stuff. And the carbs are eating or like I think contains on the high fiber, low blood sugar spike carbohydrates. And they were eating this high carb diet all their lives and they never got access to refined carb sugars or vegetable oils. So any human who from birth. Right. True. Never gets access to the three. I think they can eat a whole range of diets. No problem. They're never going to be diabetic or obese. So it's when you get a population that those three components have come into and the population becomes diabetic and obese. Now you've got people who are carbohydrate intolerant, generally insulin resistance, and then they have to also maybe be very careful with carbohydrate foods that may be an ancestral person wouldn't have to worry too much about. So I kind of say everything is nuanced on the fats then. So saturated fats from real Whole Foods sources. Fine. And any fats from real Whole Foods sources are fine. The problem, again, I'll have to say it, are the added fats and oils, particularly vegetable oils in all the factory oils, basically, and seed oils. Another name for them. And then you could say that the omega three fats are good to keep, you know, good and high in your diet. Not just not to be low. So eat the fatty fish and get your omega three. Good. And no problem. And saturated fat and omega six kind of polyunsaturated fats that are in the vegetable oils that are a problem. My general part is if they're in real whole foods and the balanced diet, I would not worry about excessive omega six fats. I would only worry about them really coming from added oils of a vegetable oil nature. So that's kind of the fats, really, put simply. And I think I've kind of Kollberg covered the carbs as well. Good versus bad, roughly.

 

[00:27:09] Absolutely. And I'm wondering and I think your book does a good job about talking about Whole Foods and how, you know, the supplementation of fats is not to seek out fat, but rather supplement those calories with the nasty carbohydrate calories that you're removing. And so that augmentation makes a lot of sense for the reader, at least it did for me. All right. Moving on to the Rapid Fire. So we had a lot of questions asking about and because of the work that you've done as over the past two years and with the launch of the book in 2018, where do you see the most research needing to be headed or headed towards this low carb and or fasting scientific research?

 

[00:27:53] Right. Well, I think probably the big gap for me personally or see Ts are randomized control trials are generally designed for drug treatments. So you've got your, say, statton drug and you've got a placebo inert. And the RC teas are usually Dohm, which is one intervention, you know, and that and that makes sense in a certain way. But I would love to see an R t that adds together a multi factor approach. So a standard a kind of heart association, kind of low fat diet, but pitched against a low carb, nutrient dense kind of healthy diet of my defining. OK. Including some element of fasting that's tracked. So you can work out from the data afterwards. Some people may do more, some may do less. But you can work it out at the end of the trial. Add in vitamins and minerals. Not too many Bacau ones like magnesium, potassium, add in sun exposure and ultraviolet light exposure, which gives us way more than vitamin D and like do it, do an experiment, a human trial that admittedly the ethics committees don't like these.

 

[00:29:08] They like to see one intervention. Simple, but I think we're missing out on doing a multi factor intervention of all of what we know is synergistically going to boost health and do all that cluster of things together. Well-documented, undefined, you know, no hiding, no secret changes. What? Just do it against the control of the standard low fat diet on what the Orthodox authorities tell us to do and then pitch. Pitch my system up against that. I'd love to if that experiment was done. I'm not sure of what lever happened.

 

[00:29:44] Oh, I hope so. That sounds fun and kind of along those same lines of research. And and what you endeavor to do. We had a lot of questions regarding how you curate the research. You do. You're one human being. And so even with a team of researchers, how do you curate what you look at, what you incorporate, what you also kind of allow into the metrics of your theories and philosophy?

 

[00:30:08] Yeah, well, I kind of you I'm a lone wolf, to be quite honest, I have no staff.

 

[00:30:12] I have nothing. So what I do is I research our research, our research. And I have around probably nearly 3000 published papers on my hard drive under myriad different directories and topics. And I have a good memory for these things. So like when people ask me about a study, I'll say, oh yeah, that one was a rats. And there was a four percent threshold of adding omega six for a mammary. Tumors were increased in size, but after four percent add, there was a threshold effect. And I'll usually remember studies even though there's so many. So I have an informal system of directories, but I generally do is I take topics of my greatest interest. So for the movie we made extra time movie dot com. We were involved with a scanning forty five ads, guys in their 50s X sportsmen.

 

[00:31:05] We found that some amazing stuff. And we also followed a guy who reversed his score and he did all the stuff we're talking about to do that.

 

[00:31:13] But during the making of that movie, I went deep dove on the mechanisms of calcification, you know, medial versus into more calcification kidney disease and the mineral based calcification that occurs in that. So, again, I went much deeper into the mechanisms because I felt as the movie came out, we really wanted to thoroughly know the state of the art and the science of exactly why calcium may leach back out of Arthur almost as plaques, why it's actually gathered. And it's just an example. During that period, I did a ton of work on that. And another recent example was I finally got the chance to meet Professor Vladimir Subaltern. And I released the podcast a few weeks ago, but I met him in Crossfade headquarters in Santa Cruz last November and I did a ton of work researching on the pathways of cholesterol and LDL particles from the Luman into the Intermap, all of the diffusion coefficients and all of so Boltons science where the cholesterol comes in from the outside of the wall of the artery.

 

[00:32:25] So Vaslav a Sorum and the lymphatic system that drains cholesterol out of the arterial wall, I discovered that HDL good cholesterol. People know that it takes the cholesterol out of your artery wall. But what I found out was it takes it out to the outside. It doesn't take it back into the blood.

 

[00:32:46] So let's just say during that journey that I may be another hundred and twenty published papers on my hard drive. And I've gone through all of the made notes in the margin. And then what I do is I produce talks. So one way for me to kind of store the research, other high level, useful for real people is I'll do a talk maybe an hour, 50 minutes, and I'll do all the diagrams and slides to explain it to a lay person. But behind it, there might be a hundred published papers and maybe, I dunno, three, four or five hundred hours of research. But all those papers and references are there. When people ask about an aspect of the talk, I'll immediately just email them the paper. So it's kind of informal, but I'm very dynamic and these things, you know.

 

[00:33:35] Yeah, absolutely, and you talk about I mean, just to kind of unpack a little bit of what you were saying.

 

[00:33:41] If I could be so bold from what I garnered without having looked at all of the research, you were kind of getting into a lot of the five markers when you're talking about the build up and the X exposing in that lead to like a coronary episode. Right. And also other things that have been affiliated with it, like cancer and things like that. And those are low HDL or good waist size hypertension, blood sugar. And then you kind of we're getting into the very specifics of the plaque within what's found in a C.T. scan.

 

[00:34:12] Yeah. And this was found in the C.T. scan, the C.A.C. score, that's the best measure of your degree of heart disease and degree of risk.

 

[00:34:19] So if you get a zero score at middle age and it simply sees the calcium in your coronary arteries and the inflammatory disease of atherosclerosis driven by vegetable oils and refined grains and on an insulin resistance. Well, all of those things and more lead to pressure on your arterial wall and lead to inflammation, inflammatory forces on the body. When you develop these plaque brings in calcium at a certain stage to try and stabilize these, that could rupture. So the calcium that comes in is is a bone formation process and quite complex and not fully understood, even with all the papers I Gartner's. And this scan can simply see the calcium like an x ray. So if you have a zero score, it means there's no detectable calcium, which means you've developed very little plaque. You haven't even reached the stage that your body is reacting to. And therefore, your risk is very low. Maybe one or two percent risk in the next 10 years of a heart attack. And if you have a very high score, like my sponsor, David Bobert, nearly a thousand at the age of 52, you have an enormous risk, maybe 25, 30 percent. So the measure of the calcium in the C.A.C. score in the scan. That's the best measure of risk. But what causes that then exactly? You mentioned there the five criteria of the metabolic syndrome, which is insulin resistance syndrome, which is essentially type two diabetes.

 

[00:35:51] And you got your low HDL. You've got your high triglycerides. You got your high blood sugar. You've got your high waist size. And you've got your hypertension, blood pressure. And they're pretty good. Five metrics. I would add in serum feresten. I would add in Jegede T Gamma illusional transfer as they were the two I had high rise and they are good markers to for metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance syndrome. And there are lots of other good markers. But I would say if people really wanted a simple way to check themselves out, if you just got a fasting glucose and a fasting blood insulin and you put them in the home calculator, it's online h.o. m.a calculator, you get your home resists our insulin resistance index. And if that's below one point two, you're pretty good. Non diabetic and it is above one point eight or you're you're probably in trouble. So that's a really easy way to skip all the other measures. And a lot of people like that one.

 

[00:36:53] And your book, Eat Rich Live Long talks about the tests that you should really just garner an understanding for as you begin the journey of looking and endeavoring into the advice there.

 

[00:37:04] So I think that's good to know and it's good for people to have understand what those results mean and most importantly, that those are all, you know, retractable. A lot of those those results can be fixed very, very quickly with a correction in diet, which obviously is is the main ethos of eat live long. I'm curious, you have a section in the book and we've had a lot of people. Right. And talking about vitamin and mineral supplementation. And you you advise as specific vitamin A mineral protocol. I won't list them off here, but we do a lot of people. Right. And asking if you consider there to be a chief like catch a multivitamin that hits all of your core constituents. And that advice.

 

[00:37:47] Yes. OK. In terms of products. Well, actually, going forward, I have got a new friend, a Goodbody, who is a nutraceutical manufacturing plant on the other side of the world.

 

[00:37:56] So I am going to be getting more into vitamins and minerals research. So I did enough in the past for the bulk, but I'm probably going to be getting into that more in terms of multivitamins. I've never really looked at them, but I generally do as I get magnesium, potassium, that's magnesium, separate potassium chloride. We have iodine there and see kelp and does a couple more than me think, oh well, the vitamin D though I prefer to get that from my UV lamp and from the sun because that way you get nitric oxide and other folder chemicals. But the vitamin D, if you can't get that, is another important one. And that's kind of that cluster there. I mean, you could say chromium is important, too. There's quite a bit out there on that. But that cluster of around five or the key ones for me. Now, obviously, there's loads more vitamins and minerals that could be beneficial. I never got into the vitamin C thing. I think that if you're eating a very healthy diet, well-balanced, you should be OK anyway. But I notice a lot of people feel very strongly about taking higher doses of vitamin C. I've never been overly convinced that the science behind, rather than just being sufficient and not insufficient, actually getting a lot of it into you. And it's something that I've made a note I must circle back to some day. But a lot of people say to me, Ivor, why don't you talk about vitamin C? It's magic. And I've just never been convinced of that. Yes.

 

[00:39:27] Yeah, absolutely. Well, I've heard it. We're running out of time. And I mean, I apologize in advance to my audience. I'm going to try and quarantine you again, no pun intended.

 

[00:39:35] And before I let you go, I'm hoping to ask you a bunch of people ask what your future plans of study and speaking abroad. Given that, you know, people aren't traveling as much right now, have you looked forward to 2020, 2021? And do you have any kind of a sneak peak you can offer us?

 

[00:39:54] Yeah, well, actually, because unfortunately, sadly, the Irish heart disease awareness funding was supported true business and the impact has been enormous with Korona. And so I'm kind of moving on from that now, largely. So I'm going to have to find alternative sources of support. So I will be probably developing into having some kind of patrie on. I'm talking to people in the U.S. about developing a nutritional program for training medical people. So their connections who have come to me. So that will be a role I left to spend time on and of course, do more research around vitamins, minimal minerals, nutrition at all. I have a lot of it already.

 

[00:40:35] And there's a few more projects as well, that there's one where there's an insurance company in the US. Very large insurance company. And they want to get their people healthier because obviously they'll save an enormous amount in terms of medical bills. So very large amounts to savings. So I may be doing a program with them, with a couple of other doctors who again came and found me. And then there's conferences I just came out of low carb Sydney. Well, it was actually called low carb international all stars, but it was online. But there are going to be more veny torture trick on the West Coast is doing a conference, I think is the end of June. Dr. Burgs, Quito's so much this year is gonna be virtual. So I'm gonna be at that and does the series more of those. Let me see what else. Several more projects I may take on depending.

 

[00:41:28] But I've got to pick my winners because, you know, I've got a family, five children, and I'm going to have to pick things now that are more commercially minded than I would have had two in the past. And I've also got my pal in Extend Life dot com. New Zealand, an excellent manufacturer of vitamins and minerals. So I'll probably be working with him, helping him research the best ones for heart disease, reversal, etc., and engaging to some degree and maybe offering discounts to my followers and some of those products.

 

[00:42:01] So really a lot of balls in the air at the moment. And I just have to do my more engineering manager role now and actually program manage all these different potential projects. I make sure I get I do the the best use of my time.

 

[00:42:18] Absolutely. I think 20 twenty one is the year of the pivot and the juggle for a lot of people. So it sounds like you're no exception to that. Ivor, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. I really do appreciate you taking time out of your really busy schedule and giving us all of your knowledge.

 

[00:42:34] Not at all. Thanks a lot, Patricia. We should talk again sometime.

 

[00:42:37]  I'll make sure of that. And for everyone listening, thank you for giving us your time. We've been speaking with Ivor Cummins. He is author, engineer and speaker. You can find out more on his Web site, the fat, poor dot com.

 

[00:42:53] And until we speak again next time, remember to stay safe. Well, when you do eat and always count on yourself. Slainte.

 

Chatting with Andy De Santis; Registered Dietitian

Today I chat with Andy De Santis. Andy is a registered dietitian (RD) in Toronto that is as charismatic as they come, who also happens to be a 3x published author with an unmatched passion for helping clients reach their health goals. He completed his requirements for accreditation as a registered dietitian at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health, where I also graduated with a Master’s degree in public health nutrition (MPH).

 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with registered dietitian Andy De Santis, key points addressed where core aspects of Andy's most recent book, the 21 day intermittent fasting weight loss plan. We also discussed various forms of fasting and Andy's personal opinion about how these realistically play into one's lifestyle and applicability when it comes to his clients. Stay tuned for my educational chat with Andy dissenters.

 

[00:00:33] Hi, I'm Patricia. This series titled Investigating the World of Fasting with Patricia Kathleen features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories, lifestyles, companies and culture within fasting. The Chronicles captured here is part of our ongoing effort to host transparent and honest rhetoric. For those of you who, like myself, find great value in hearing the expertize and opinions of individuals who have dedicated their work and lives to their ideals. Welcome to Investigating the World of Fasting with Patricia Kathleen. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:24] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia. And today, I am so excited to be sitting down with Andy De Santis, a registered dietitian. And you can find out more about everything we talk about today as well of all his books and his work at Andy, the R d dot com.

 

[00:01:40] That's a n d y t h e r d dot com. Welcome, Andy. Thanks for having me.

 

[00:01:46] Absolutely. For everyone who has is new to our podcast. I will give you a quick roadmap as to the line in which our inquiry will be based. And then I'll read a bio on Andy. And then we will be off to the races and peppering him with questions. So a quick roadmap for today's inquiry will first look at Andy's personal experience with fasting, as well as his professional experience as a registered dietitian. Then we'll look at some of the implementing with fasting with clients, some of the techniques and increase we have based on that. And then I will spend some time unpacking one of his several books titled The 21 Day Intermittent Fasting, Weight Loss Plan Recipes, Meal Plans and Exercise for a Healthier You. It came out this year in 2020, and I'll kind of unpack that, looking at how he defines four or five of the fasts that he employs or has recommended to his clients, as well as the particulars within this fast. Andy, this book kind of discusses a lot of things about different states of fasting as well as protein, and it's also a meal guide. So we'll look at some of his food choices and how some of that was curated. We'll wrap everything up with our Rapid Fire questions, which is composed of our audience in a nod to all of you listening and my thankfulness. I do try to incorporate all of your questions for the guests that we have on, and we will end up with a stage of those for Andy and then we will wrap all of that up with advice. He may have for everyone who is looking to start getting involved or perhaps seek his advice. A quick bio, as promised on Andy. And he is a registered dietitian, R.D. in Toronto. He's as charismatic as they come. He also happens to be a three time published author. I think it's actually more than that now with an unmatched passion for helping clients reach their health goals. He has a private nutrition practice which offers both online and motion fit clinics. And you can find him online again and his Web site at ande that r d dot com. So, Andy, before I kind of skipped over a bunch of your bio, because I want you to unpack that for us. And before I start asking you about your book in particular and some specifics about fasting, I was hoping you could just briefly describe for us what some of your occupational professional academic background has been with your nutritional and dieticians studies, as well as your personal experience with fasting before we get kind of into the particulars of your work.

 

[00:04:07] Sure. Yeah. So I'm a graduate of the University of Toronto School of Public Health. And so that's why there's that MPH designation as well that I have. An stria school actually started work at Diabetes Canada, which was formerly known as the Canadian Diabetes Association. And it wasn't long after that that I actually end up getting into private practice and to accompany my private practice. I did a lot of blogging, a lot of writing just to increase my visibility online. Obviously, to increase my professional capacity, because I think that, you know, to be good nutrition professional, you have to be aware of the topics that people are interested in talking about. And you can't just dismiss them as fads or trends, even if some of them are. It helps to be able to speak about them on a higher level. And, you know, fasting is a great example of that. You can have a whole spectrum of people in the world of fasting who are either dismissive or perhaps overly valuate as some sort of fix. All right. I like to think I fall right in the middle. And, you know, my own experience with fasting is actually both both personal and professional. And one of the reasons I was interested on a personal level, I'm sure this goes to professional stuff after the main reason I was interested on a personal level is, you know, I'm someone who enjoys eating larger meals, shall we say. However, you know, I passed age 30 are getting busier than they could be, three, four massive meals a day. I just wasn't working anymore. And I found a way with a little bit a little bit longer between between my meals that I was enjoying the more I was able to eat more in the way I want to eat. And so actually, my passion in my interest for fasting all started there purely from that personal angle.

 

[00:05:39] Yeah, you mentioned that in the book. It was kind of an interesting tie in that you were unable to kind of sustain this massive eating campaign that you had on the set. That was kind of clever. I think a lot of men would really relate to that. At least a lot of my male colleagues who have this.

 

[00:05:54] It seems like a relationship with the amount of food consumed, you know, in as much as it was even just the type of food, right?

 

[00:06:01] No, absolutely. I mean I mean, it's a personality thing. Some people don't like sitting out a lot of a big meal. My dad doesn't like that, but I do. My dad kept his plates over. Well, he can't touch it myself. I'd sooner hold off eating it for something small. Eat something larger is just a purely a quirk of my personality. It's quite relevant to my overall my overall happiness and quality of life. And so here we are.

 

[00:06:24] Yeah. Just having that honest dialog and an awareness of one's self. Well, kind of fast. Have you personally practiced over your history?

 

[00:06:31] Yep. So, yeah, this this is interesting. So I'm not one. So that the thing for, for myself is I'm not one to do extended fast, super, super excited. So I think above twenty four hours, that's not something that particular interested because the reason I fast all relates back to what I just mentioned is I wanted. I love you. I love deep foods in a large amount. But I also don't see myself as someone who would ever not eat for a whole day. So the longest fast that I've ever done personally is probably been twenty two. Twenty three hours on average. I've probably applied to that standard cliche, 14, 15, 16, 17 hour fast because that's what, sir. That serves me best. Let's put it that way. You know, I don't necessarily but in my mind engage a longer farce for any perceived physiological benefits, whatever those may be. And we can theoretical or proceed benefits, whatever those may be. And so that's what that's what lands me in the style that I end up pursuing.

 

[00:07:22] So do you solely use fasting so that you can have this massive meal or have you used it to strengthen other physical attributes? Maintaining weight, strengthening immune system, anything like that? Or is it just bend personally towards that one end?

 

[00:07:36] The way I see it. I mean, it's largely down to it's become. It started off as something to her to facilitate eating these larger meals and to refine my hunger and my ability to eat these larger deals. That's how it started with the more I researched, the more I look into it.

 

[00:07:52] The way I see it, if I get some extra physiological bonuses, if it has a net positive effect on my metabolism, my immune system, my genetics, potentially, which a lot of the stuff we have to be honest, this is largely theoretical. Now, we do need more human evidence to really be able to say definitively that's true. But if that's a bonus for me, all the better.

 

[00:08:09] You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. And there and I think there's a lot of fall out bonuses from different, you know, health attributes, era techniques.

 

[00:08:18] Did you deal with hip hop clientele that are using or that you advised fasting to other means that you yourself have not used it towards? So to combat disease, lose weight.

 

[00:08:29] Or even, you know, as I call it, the rare bird. But there are some people who use it for mental acuity. I come from Silicon Valley. Fasting was about fifteen years ago by the top exacts and like really an incredibly creative, you know, to kind of enhance this mental heightened state and use it towards those ends.

 

[00:08:50] Yeah, it's an interesting question. I find in my experience, those types of things tend to be byproducts. So, for example, the mental acuity thing. So it's not unusual for for me to discuss fasting with an interested client, for that client to then pursue fasting, to experience that as a as a benefit. You know what I mean? Not so much. I won't have necessarily someone who comes in to see me and they'll say, OK, you know, I'm not feeling as sharp as I want to. I'm like, OK, fasting, done what I will. I'll certainly discuss fasting with if it's a topic they're interested in, all look more to what they're actually eating. Fix that part first because I feel like what you actually eat. And then this is what this is what's interesting about me, despite my interest in fasting, I don't hold it so, so high that it's the most important thing. But what I believe is what you actually eat is probably always going to be more important than how you structure your eating. Fasting is very much the icing on the cake, on the cake, on top of that. I can give you that little extra boost. And so while I've never pursued it with someone specifically for that reason, certainly they've had that benefit. The most common reason, you know, that someone would pursue fasting with me. So it's certainly a weight management strategy, but more often than not, it's just such a massive topic of public interest that, you know, so many people who see me are just otherwise savvy people that they want to broach these topics. And then we just go down that road.

 

[00:10:04] Yeah, absolutely. So I want to climb into your book. You have a few. I'll read them off. You've got the twenty one hour, 28 day dash diet weight loss program, the easy five ingredient Pescadero and Cookbook, The Low Cholesterol Cookbook for two easy five ingredient acid reflux cookbook. And then the final one today that I want to discuss. Your most recent the 21 day intermittent fasting weight loss plan is meal plans and exercise for a healthier you. So let me read a quick summary that we scraped from online. Most likely Amazon, as you mentioned, the. Or fasting is a practice with ancient roots and its health benefits are enjoyed by people all over the world, discover the benefits of yourself yourself with a 21 day intermittent fasting weight loss plan. This easy to follow plan, complete with healthy recipes, shows you how to begin your investing practice and how regular breaks from food can support your health and weight loss goals. I'll tell you as I climb through it delivered everything it said, which is appreciative. I like it. A title that describes what we're going to be endeavoring with. But in addition to that, you kind of start off with what I believe is like a really great and important part of fasting, which is the framework of the fast you're going to be discussing, because there's a just like a litany of facts out there. And people frequently don't define their terms. They don't define what fast they're talking about and they don't describe what they mean with that fast. Because I've heard Omar describe the myriad of ways, and it's an acronym for one meal a day. But how you do that and and actually what people considering fasting is, is very, very different. So before we get into those things, I want you to define a few terms for me when you are speaking as a dietitian. What do you mean by fasting? Is it going without food? Is it going without food and water? Is it. How are you defining it?

 

[00:11:53] Right. For the you know, for my average for my average client. I'm defining it. I start out by defining it as the length of time from your last five one day to your first bite the next. And obviously, there's a lot more nuance to that. Right. And then what really comes down to some further questions I get asked. And then what we're really saying is, you know, nothing caloric from your from one day to the next will. Of course, you know you know, a lot of comes in as an option and so forth and things like that. So that's really how I define it with my clients is, you know, last night, the first bite. Nothing caloric. Yes. Water, coffee for you know, for my clients, you know, that is the level that that they're at. You know, I know there are people who like to take things quite more robustly, perhaps forego other forgo water or things like that. That's not really the level they're operating at just because I don't think that is very appealing to the largest number of people. So that which is which is what I try and serve the large number of people possible. So the people in the middle, so it's without color, like food intake, essentially without caloric intake. So no food or beverages that offer any sort of, you know, meaningful amount of calories.

 

[00:12:58] Right. OK.

 

[00:12:59] And then you talk about let me list off the ones that you mentioned in your book as the framework for the ones that you employ and kind of discuss the 12 12, the 16 eight, the mad and then weekly fasts have two different categories under them. And one is the five to alternate day modifying fasting, which is a DMF. And the second one under weekly fasting is the alternate day fasting SFD so that you can kind of just climb through and really quickly talk about what each of these how they are defined for you. So starting with the 12, 12 and 16.

 

[00:13:33] OK. So the twelve, twelve, sixty eight. And even actually I mean to actually put the old man in that category is all because they actually are all very similar. Right. The only difference is the length of time from the last bite. I simplify by saying last point. I think we know what we're talking about here. The last plate one day to the first bite the next. OK. If you do a twelve twelve, you are going every day. Twelve hours of your last flight. One day. The first bite the next. The exact times where that takes place. That might vary. You might stop eating quite early in the day or stop eating quite late in the day and start early or later the next day. 60 NaCl is the same thing where that first number is indicative of how long you're going for your last flight, your first bite.

 

[00:14:09] All that gets gets a fun name. But all that really is is a twenty two to twenty three. Play to twenty three. The old one that starts. That's all it is. It's the twenty two or twenty three hour fast. They call it all mad. But essentially you are going most of the day you have it was probably going to be a large meal that's going to take you about an hour or so to eat and then you're going to go the next day and do that again. You know what I mean? But here's here's the other thing, actually, that, you know, one thing I'm big on with my clients were interested in fast is that, you know, we don't need to be dogmatic about it. You know, you don't have to adhere to a set amount of time every single day. Fasting is all ultimately met, in my view, to be dynamic and to just serve you and to improve the quality of life. And if that means that you have to go a little bit longer one day or live a shorter one day, so be it. Obviously, we provide these frameworks because that's functional and in the setting of a book. But, you know, I do believe there's definitely room for flexibility there.

 

[00:15:02] Yeah. And you did do a good job of mentioning that. You talk about, you know, if you wake up, ravenous. Would you advise fasting? Yes, absolutely not. And likewise, conversely, if you wake up feeling rather full one morning, why wouldn't you entertain the idea of fasting? You know, just barely paying attention to one's body. And then you also juxtapose that which I appreciate a lot into cultural customs when we expect ourselves to eat and really asking ourselves whether or not we're hungry. Those moments or we're doing it out of tradition. Right. Which I appreciate. Let's get into the weekly fast as the fourth category. This is one that was a little new to me only in terms of how you were putting it. However, I think that unpacking it people become familiar with that they've heard of this type of thing. The five to the alternate day modified fasting DMF. How do you define that?

 

[00:15:48] Right. So what is a weekly fasting is definitely more on the more robust and shall we say, a weekly fasting? I ask you, you probably want one of two things. It's asking you for two days a week to do a 24 hour fast or to do a very long, fast and have a relatively small amount of food. And for the other five days, to eat, essentially eat liberally. So with without no sort of no sort of restriction. So what. So the deaf. Sorry. Well, stuttering there, it means one of two things. So two days a week you're going the whole day without eating or you're eating very little. That's essentially what a weekly fast is. And how you structure those two days would be up to you. Presumably you might put them. You might divide them equally throughout the week. So three days on, one day fasting, three days to make it more manageable. If I'm being perfectly honest with you, for the sake of completeness, those type of fast food included in the book, because I know they took interest. Some people my opinion personally, professionally, is that the percentage of people who are enticed by this fast is not going to. Is not the most just because of what it entails.

 

[00:16:50] That's my personal opinion on that.

 

[00:16:53] Yeah. This tendency and the discipline, I think, you know, particularly for the RFD, the alternate day fasting alternate, the fasting day. I'm curious, have you ever had a client who has reached in far enough that wanted to execute these?

 

[00:17:11] Or do you ever have a client that hits a point with after you've modified diet and done a lot of your analysis to that end, where you recommend them doing something like this for a week to hit applier to change a plateau or hit a stall or change any of those things.

 

[00:17:26] Yeah, that's a good question. Personally, when it comes to these more robust fast, it's it's 99 percent of the time it's someone who has done it previously. They're telling me about it. So it will be Clyde who used to did this that one time or tried this that time for me in my own personal belief. I don't push this on clients because it's I think it's it's a big ask for someone, especially for someone who perhaps is just trying fasting for the first time. Now, that being said, there are people who who work with me who really like it, who have a great time doing daily fast, and then want to experiment with a with a slightly more challenging or different type of a fast. That is the minority, though. So I'm not going to I don't. So as a general rule, I don't push these these more challenging fast just because I believe that they're just fruit for most people, they're not necessarily most appealing. But if someone asked me how to implement it in the best way possible, we'll obviously talk about that.

 

[00:18:26] Yeah, OK. And in your book, you discuss, which is kind of rare. I've read a great deal of fasting books and very few get into diet books in general. Well, ways of life people don't decipher between the male and the female body types enough. This goes into like all of Western medicine, in my opinion. However, your book does a good point. I've kind of briefly sussing this out and then discussing that, you know, one of the key things that has been found is that there are raised cortisol levels which are, you know, kind of this stress hormone in women naturally occurring. And then there's also the menstrual cycle that just does tend to change the way that fasting is received upon the female body. And you look at studies done with Ramadan, which is the fasting religious house, Muslim tradition. And I'm wondering if you can kind of speak more to that in. Have you drawn any connections or do you have any, like, platforms you've developed considering the differences between the male and the female body when it comes to fasting?

 

[00:19:25] Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's one of those in my my impression of that is it's one of those areas that people speak about very freely with the amount of good evidence we have is not a law. So, you know, there's so many. This is one of those things. It was a big disparity. So. So to the point about causal, suddenly I felt a little bit of stuff here. They're discussing differences in cortisol levels and how that may make may may make them slightly less inclined to thrive while fasting. But the best the most salient evidence I found was really studies of Ramadan, which actually ends up being the case. A lot of fasting because that's a that is obviously a great replication of what fasting gives on some level, because Robert afast is essentially a sixty eight minus. The water is essentially a 60 day fast. So what I what I found when I was looking into the stuff in this book as it relates to two to women fasting, is that there is a slightly increased risk of menstrual irregularities during during Ramadan or an increased rate increase in dental records. So that's something of note. You know what I mean? I can sit here and tell you definitively, this is this this is that male versus female. But there let's put it this way. There is there's potential for a difference there. It's something that, you know, as more and more fasting research gets done, we'll certainly learn more about.

 

[00:20:38] Yeah, absolutely. Have you. Do you have any curiosity when looking into fasting on behalf of your clients and you and your work? Do you look at things like fast mimicking and things like a tough igy that happened during these early stages of fasting for health for your clients? Have you followed any of those trends? And if so, how do you implement that knowledge?

 

[00:20:59] Right. That's a great question as well. I'm yeah. I mean, look, those topics come up. I mean, I just recently published a blog on my Web site that from a study that was just published, a Ramadan study published April 2020 that looked at gene expression.

 

[00:21:11] And Robert, on fasters, they felt certain genes that may be very, very relevant to human diseases.

 

[00:21:18] I think one of the most for the amyloid plaques, which are relevant for Alzheimer's disease.

 

[00:21:22] That that was down regulated in Robert on fasters. So, I mean, it wasn't expressed as much. Who knows what that could mean. It's you can't really make sense of it from one study, especially methodological limitations. But that kind of stuff. Well, I'm always keeping my eye that. You discussed that with my clients. The idea. I don't want to be one of the popular concepts. Absolutely. Autophagy is one of them. And then the idea that you're fasting is essentially a low level of stress, a cellular level. It makes your cells, your immune system more resilient as a result. That's certainly a concept that is thrown around again where we're at right now. If the human evidence. It's very hard to prove that definitively. But there is that what I say? Is there something there? And we're going to learn more and more as more studies come out. But, yeah, I absolutely talk about those types of things in my clients were more inclined to like that kind of stuff.

 

[00:22:11] Yeah. And I want to get into just a little bit more to unpack fast mimicking because it's this restrictive idea that it pushes Volter long now. And I don't want to butcher his work or anything like that.

 

[00:22:21] For those of you, please go to research and find out from the horse's mouth. However, the concept is, is that a heavily restricted calorie diet mimics a lot of the benefits from fasting while still some type of nutrient choleric meal to the recipient. And I'm wondering, in your book, you do give these calorie descriptions and I don't have them written down here. They change for men versus women. And you say it's an insider letter on the other due to age and things and an activity level. But I'm wondering how you feel about that. There is an obvious conversation between you know, you say that there's a calorie amount to start to be in the deficit where you're losing weight for weight management and as a dietitian, that and as it relates to calorie restriction, would you ever. I'm wondering when someone comes into you, let's say, and says, I'd like to lose some weight and you're obviously going to take their calorie count and ask them about their exercise level and take their age into account all of those things and then prescribe, you know, Kalac amount as a as a dietitian. But I'm wondering, do you ever get clients who want to play with going lower and lower than that? And what is your advice as as it stands in your field right now?

 

[00:23:34] Yeah, I mean, yeah, those are yeah. OK. So. As it relates as it relates to that, I'm not sure is trying to compare to the really packed. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm trying to figure out with what the question was. And there was a lot of interesting points. All right.

 

[00:23:53] There's a relationship right between and this fast mimicking extreme calorie restriction and then what everyone kind of recommends, which is calorie restriction for weight loss. And I think it's a fine dance between having, you know, five hundred like Volter long hours. The average study up to the twelve hundred that you talk about for women, you know, of a certain age to be able to have. How do you deduce your calorie count? And do you tend to take it down when you're a client who wants to lose weight, isn't losing weight?

 

[00:24:23] Yes. So. Now I got the question. But this is the this is the reality for myself as a as a private practice dietician, having worked with a lot of people over the last five years.

 

[00:24:33] It's that, you know, calorie there. There's a lot of things there's a lot of strategies people can employ to improve the quality of their diet to pursue weight loss. You know, among all of those things, among all the people, all the things that are willing to try, the number of people who are interested in intensely moderate their caloric intake is not very high. So sure in that sub population of people who like to play with that stuff. Absolutely. Those are strategies we can look at. Now, again, the thing that you're you're you're discussing the idea of, you know, your fast mimicking very, very low calories. You know, the appeal, as much as that may be scientifically intriguing. The appeal to the type of people who I work with is not very, very high because that is a very, very niche thing.

 

[00:25:16] You know, it's it's neither here nor there as to whether it's necessarily the best practice. So the way I look at fasting, honestly, is, yes, there are theoretical physiological benefits, but there's also practical benefits to it. And I kind of divide those two. And as a practical benefit. I mean, even if fasting did nothing for your body, your physiology, your genetics, let's say, even if it did nothing, and I don't believe that's true. But even if it did nothing, fasting may actually have practical benefits. When you reduce your eating window, when you when you wait till you're actually truly hungry, you know what I mean? Those types of things can have a net positive impact on overall. It take an overall quality of life. For example, if you have someone who wakes up early B breakfast, even though they aren't hungry, they're losing sleep and they're being more than they otherwise would. And they realize they actually don't have to do that. Those benefits that they're getting have nothing to do with the potential, you know, you know, genetic expression is a result of suspending food intake. Those are purely practical benefits, pragmatic daily benefits. So as much as I love the physiological side of it, I think that for most people this is just my my my opinion. I do explore the physiological side. I have written about it all that for most people it's the practical stuff that actually plays a really, really big role.

 

[00:26:26] Yeah. And to that end, actually, the practical I want to turn over into our final stage, which is the rapid fire question of people that get into the practicality of dietitian advice and where it meets and with fast things. I'm going to dove right in. And one of them is we've had a lot of people write in and say, as a dietician, how do you how do you design and work around people's food limitations? You know, there's allergies, there's food restrictions. There's the Vegan diet. There's all sorts of things. Do you find yourself able or is it difficult to cure it, especially when it comes in regards to things like protein that you've actually spoken about in your book as well?

 

[00:27:04] Oh, yeah. I mean, the reality is that that's that's my job. You know what I mean? This is what I do. I work with people of all different varieties. I mean, to be perfectly honest, people who are either Vegan a vegetarian or in the process of conversion or partial conversion, I thoroughly enjoy working those types of people. And so I'm very well versed in all of these different things. And if if you have six limitations, I know the six things we have to do on the other side of that.

 

[00:27:26] It's just that just comes with the job. You know what I mean? I mean, you talk to people. You, in some ways you've seen it all. And so you don't navigate that stuff really is you know, that's a part of the pleasure of the job. It represents a small challenge, but a highly enjoyable one.

 

[00:27:40] Nice. Yeah. We had a lot of people write in regarding, like the top 10 items to have in one's fridge, according to a dietician. And I know in your book you had pantry basics. And it's like a whole list of things that you had on there. And I'm wondering if you could prattle off like ten off of the top of your head. What would the top 10?

 

[00:28:02] A lot of people wrote in just like, what are the number one things that I should be eating daily? That type of thing, like I always have on stock and always be eating.

 

[00:28:09] OK. If I had to pick ten, I would say, well, I'll OK. I'll be specific. But I would say let's say, let's say kale, which represents a green vegetable, let's say a bell pepper, which represents a colorful vegetable, yellow, orange, red. Let's say flax seed, which represents a good source of fiber, a good source of omega 3s. I would say tofu. I'm a big fan of soy products, which is a whole other topic.

 

[00:28:30] I like tofu because it gives people an avenue to eat less animal products. And even though there's nothing wrong for the Apple products, I think were the biggest issues of our. But there's not enough variety in our protein intake. And so I would love people to eat less of the conventional protein sources and more of the unconventional ones. Tofu and Teppei being another one of them. You know, obviously fruit of all kinds. But we had to pick one group. Let's go with berries. Obviously very high in antioxidants.

 

[00:28:57] Let's say, you know, let's. Even though I don't think your dairy is that necessary or superfood. Let's throw Greek yogurt. And there it is, high protein. It does have probiotics. Yogurt is a great facilitator. So if you have seeds and nuts and you have fruit, yogurt can bring those together. So that works.

 

[00:29:13] I'm inclined to I mean, again, fruits, fruits, vegetables, some for nuts or seeds. Legumes are definitely in there, too. So legumes.

 

[00:29:23] Anything that's soy based lentils, chickpeas, those don't really go in the fridge. Those are very important. Very high fiber. Very high protein. Again, allow you to get protein from a known animal source. What else would I put in there?

 

[00:29:36] Is a good one.

 

[00:29:38] I mean, honestly, for the sake of the economical aspect of it. Eggs. And we'll explain why it's because vitamin D is quite elusive. It's locked out in very many foods.

 

[00:29:46] It's down to fish, which I also put in your fridge. It's funny, fish eggs and then is fortified of dairy products.

 

[00:29:52] So vitamin D, a lot people don't get enough eggs happen to be one of the only foods that are vitamin D and they're economical, which makes people's lives easier. So let's throw eggs in there, too. And yeah. So I'm, I'm just trying not to just say broccoli, onions, cauliflower and just all the fruits and vegetables and fruits and vegetables, especially vegetables, are the most important foods. So a wide array of different colors of fruits and vegetables are imported. So it is really hard to picture as well. I've just learned a lot.

 

[00:30:17] But I mean, the more the merrier right now. But really good road map and a direction of where you're headed. And really, we had people writing in about stages of life for men and women. And I'm sure this to be inclusive, like, of course, people identifying as male or female as well as non binary. We're talking about stages of life for the human development.

 

[00:30:37] So a lot of people wrote in asking about specific dietary like advice, key tips for menopause, as well as children hitting puberty. Men wrote in in regards to older stages of male and functioning in their 50s. As a dietician, how much do you think people should start to reanalyzed in these stages of these changes of human life? How frequently would you advise someone stop and like reassess what they're eating and kind of recalibrate to their stage of life?

 

[00:31:13] Yeah. That's a good question. Well, I mean, obviously, those are all map quite different demographics and there's very many considerations there. But the best piece of advice I can give is that, you know, if you are uncertain that you are, let's say your dietary pattern is as good as it could be every year that passes, that uncertainty should be troubling you more and more, because with age comes increased risk for, you know, negative things to happen to you from a health perspective. So if you're carrying uncertainty about what you're doing nutritionally, I would encourage you to speak to a health professional dietitian because that uncertainty is going to manifest in you not living the best quality of life in the best possible life as you get older, because as you get older, the decisions you make you've made up into that point are going to come to bear. And if you're not sure that you made the best decisions was that's going to be really important. So that's my best advice to kind of cover all the categories there.

 

[00:32:03] Yeah. What are some markers that people should really seek dietary advice for? Like just key physical mental markers that you would say immediately talk to your dietitian.

 

[00:32:13] I mean, look, fatigue, poor sleep, lack of energy. Know those things absolutely are up there. I mean, lack of mental clarity was something you brought up earlier. I mean, certainly. And then you have the blood work, you know, blood pressure, you know, blood pressure, blood cholesterol. Those are some of the most frequently prescribed medications for which there are dietary means of recourse. So stuff like that, I would say, yeah, just just like not feeling as good as you think. You could be feeling it. Because what I what I always say is that no food doesn't fix every single problem. But if you don't feel your best, you cannot be sure it's not because your diet is not optimized. So that's that's kind of like one of my my quotes, shall we say.

 

[00:32:55] Yeah. Well, I mean, her pocket, she's ripe for medicine. So I think that is catching on more and more, which means that you'll have to write some more books. Well, Andy, we are out of time, but I want to thank you so much for giving us your time today. I really appreciate just all of your honesty. And I know you're busy and I'm stopping and giving us your information about your book and everything else. I really appreciate it.

 

[00:33:19] Thanks so much for having a great time.

 

[00:33:20] Yeah. And for everyone listening, we have been speaking with Andy De Santis. He's a registered dietitian. You can find out more about everything that he has done, all of his work at Andy, the R d dot com. And until we speak again next time. Thank you for giving us your time.

 

[00:33:36] And remember to stay safe, clean and responsibly when you do eat and always bet on yourself. Slainte.

 

Chatting with Casey Budd; YouTube Channel & content creator, photographer

Today I chat with Casey Budd. Casey, originally born in an uninspiring small town in New Jersey, is now creating freely and living naturally in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a content creator, managing her self titled business CBUDD, which involves every aspect of her creativity. 

She currently creates content on her YouTube channel focused on holistic and spiritual healing, her travels of extensive passport stamps, and finding thrift store gems to embrace her style to an audience of around 50,000 subscribers. She is no stranger to the camera and has been shooting photography for at least eight years as well. 

 

In addition, she is a breathwork facilitator and hosts one on one video chat/in-person breath sessions with individuals around the world. She has been living a Pranic lifestyle for over a year and has dedicated herself to the power of the breath and sharing it with others. Breathwork has truly been a gift that she has discovered and trusted in completely, allowing it to completely transform her overall presence and perspective of life, which is why she’s so eager to share. With extensive research in pranayama and fasting/detoxing techniques, she is known for assisting others in tuning into their inner peace and thriving within it.

 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with YouTube channel and content creator and photographer Casey Budd, key points addressed were Casey's extensive history with fasting and how she combines it with breath work to retain optimal living. We also discussed how Casey has taken her expertize and created a massive YouTube and social media following that benefits from her online course and coaching programs developed and thriving over the past year. Stay tuned for my fascinating talk with Casey Budd.

 

[00:00:36] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site, patricia Kathleen .COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.

 

[00:01:28] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I'm your host, Patricia.

 

[00:01:30] And today I'm elated to be sitting down with Casey, but she is a YouTube channel content creator and she's also photographer. You can find out more about her efforts and everything we talk about today on her Web site. It is C dash bud dot com. Welcome, Casey.

 

[00:01:47] Hi. Thank you for having me. Hello. Hello.

 

[00:01:50] Hi. I'm so excited. I love talking with the YouTube channel and content creators and people who are really prolific because it's a it's a very vibrant back and forth. And so I'm excited to unpack everything. You've got such an amazing amount of content out there. And I love what you're doing and how you've tied your enterprise of fasting and breath work and everything that you are together. And so I can't wait to unpack that with you. No one is ever watching and listening. I'm going to give you a quick roadmap for today's podcast. It's going to follow the same trajectory as a lot of these in this series. So I'll first look at unpacking Casey's history with academic backgrounds and occupational life to kind of garner a platform of who she is as a person. Then we'll look at unpacking her history and story with fasting personally as well as professionally. And then we're also going to look towards cases, enterprise, attaching, fasting or accompanying it with things like breath work and things that she uses regularly and has become very well known for. I'll also ask her to define terms as they are for her. Liquid arean fasting, all of these things that people have different definitions for in their own life. And then we'll do a bunch of rapid fire questions for people who've written in wanting me to kind of inquire to specific areas of fasting as they relate to Casey. But before we get to all of that, a quick bio on Casey before I start peppering her with questions. Casey Budd, originally born in an uninspiring small town in New Jersey, is now creating free freely and living naturally in Atlanta, Georgia. She's a content creator managing her self-titled business, C Bud, which involves every aspect of her creativity. She currently creates content on her YouTube channel focused on holistic and spiritual healing. Her travels of extensive passport stamps and finding thrift stores gems to embrace her lifestyle to an audience of around 50,000 thousand subscribers. She's no stranger to the camera and has been shooting photography for at least eight years as well. In addition, she is a breath work facilitator and hosts one on one video chat in person breath sessions with individuals around the world. She has been living a product lifestyle for over a year and has dedicated herself to the power of the breath and sharing it with others. Breath work has really been a gift that she has discovered and trusted in completely allowing it to completely transform, transform her overall presence and perspective of life. Which is why she is so eager to share with extensive research and Prunty Yama and fasting detoxing techniques. She is known for assisting others in tuning into their inner peace and thriving within it. Whether it's connecting with the breath or blogging a day in the life, Casey thrives on any opportunity that allows her to freely express herself creatively and naturally. So here's a love that that that bio, as is so perfectly I have to say. After I researched, you and my team did it so perfectly. You and I love describes everything about your practices and the work that you do. And I want to get into that. But before we do that, I'm hoping that you can kind of describe to for me your academic background and professional life so that we can kind of garner a sense that, like what brought you to launching your company?

 

[00:05:17] Yeah, sure. It's actually kind of funny to answer that question, because, like a year ago, I wasn't doing any of the things that I'm doing right now. Like, not even close to it. So just to rewind a bit, I went to University of Tampa for college and I went for advertising and public relations. Graduated there in 2016 and kind of had the plan of like following the steps of life and getting a job. And I was supposed to work as a marketing photographer for this company down in Tampa and things didn't work out. And just finding how life always does that. You, like, really heartbroken in the moment, but it's like this whole redirection that I'm so glad happened. And to make a kind of long story short, once I didn't get that job. I kind of took the entrepreneur route and I was like, OK, I do this YouTube thing. I was doing it as a hobby before in college. I was just kind of like something for fun. And then I was like, OK, people do this and I buy houses and cars and I can live, you know, freely. And it was always kind of just like a struggle back and forth between this entrepreneur and professional life and like following the steps of life, but also like knowing that I kind of always was an independent kind of creative.

 

[00:06:33] And so eventually ended up moving to Atlanta, Georgia. One of my best friends from high school lived here. So kind of just like timed out perfect. We ended up moving in together and working odd jobs. But I think when I finally moved here, I was kind of like a new chapter and I really just like drove into YouTube. Things I learned in college definitely like helped. And I applied and like building my brand. But overall, it was definitely more of just like my personal growth as a person. And like spiritually, I think, like, the more I get comfortable with myself, it got easier to express myself online. And then that chance. No, I think that became more transparent to my audience. I also got involved with, like social media marketing, which is something at one point I was chasing and running and trying to make happen for so long. I wanted to create my own agency. And it's just funny. Within the past year, since incorporating this lifestyle of chronic living in the breath work and all of these things we mentioned, all of these things just seem to found me like for the longest I wanted fifty thousand subscribers.

 

[00:07:36] For the longest I wanted the creative agency and I thought I'd have all these degrees. Once I started learning the breath, I was like, it would be so cool to start teaching the breath. And all of those things I can say fully right now, just like found me a yoga studio. I reached out to me. They wanted me to teach breath work. I started to do the one on ones my own. I just through my research and through my own learning. My oldest brother is who introduced me to breastwork. He's studied it for a very, very long time. So in a sense, he's kind of like a mentor and then social media, like, I guess as my attraction started to grow people's out of reach out to me to manage their Instagram and their Facebook. And now I have like five to six clients. And I like I guess I have the agency I always wanted. And it's just funny how we like you might think how something's going to look. It's completely not like I just sit fifty thousand subscribers and it's just there was a day there was times when I was looking at that so heavily every day and now it's like, oh it just happens when you just start to like move from a different space of like love instead of lack, you know, instead of like chasing it and wanting it and expecting an outcome, just kind of like doing it from like, I just really love to do this. So it's funny. I don't always know if it's necessary, like a professional background I have, but I think it's more so just like a dedication I have to my practice and to my work that created it to be its own business and stand on its own two feet. It's just it just didn't look or go how I thought it would go at all. But I'm really happy it all worked out.

 

[00:09:07] And when I researched your story and kind of who you are.

 

[00:09:11] Business for me is also like what you just said.

 

[00:09:14] It's like the proof of your business is the business. It's amazing things. Just kind of it seems like as you started to employ techniques and things like that, it became the work. And then it sounds like it just unfolded everything that you had prior previously set out as as goals. And I like to that end, I want to start unpacking and I'm not sure if I have the right chronology, but when I was looking at your work on YouTube and things like that, it seems like the retreat or the visit out with your eldest brother in Arizona. Was that the first time that you actually started looking at fasting? And what was your education prior to that when going there? And what did you determine? How do you define fasting on that particular trip?

 

[00:10:00] Yes. So previous to that trip, I had definitely experimented with fasting before. I've been so college and went vegetarian and then after college went began. And then like there was probably leading up to last February before that trip. Maybe like two to three years rabbit experiment with fasting. Never to like the extent of what I do now. But I think one of my longest fast before that was just a fruit fast for the month of August.

 

[00:10:27] I just do like nothing but through kind of fruitarian route for a minute. But it was always a little more resistance, a little more like trying. Like, again, like I was talking about the jobs and the professionalism and things we want. It was like, okay, 10 days or 30 days or whatever it may be like I have to reach this goal. And it was more of like an effort. And then once breath work, I learned in February with my brother at the retreat in Arizona. I once I learned that technique, it was like so effortless. And I just didn't even think that that was possible with fasting. I always thought it was gonna be like a challenge or like, you know, like a force in a counterforce and implementing the breaths, like, really nourished the body in a different way than I've ever experienced before. So in that sense, like the fasting in the past was just just way more challenging, was way more hard. I think, like I said, long as it was 30 days through and before that, maybe a couple like water fasts for like a day or two. But, you know, fast forwarding to February of twenty nineteen, I think fasting changed for me in a sense of like.

 

[00:11:35] I mean, and anyone who does fast, I think they can relate like you feel really, really. I mean, there's moments where you don't feel really good, but you feel so light and you feel so good. You have like always room for thought and clarity and you start to just move at a different octave in a sense. And it was like, so why does it have to be just such a temporary thing? Like, what if we just lived like that? And I know that's a big learning thing for people to, like, kind of digest at first, like, we'll know ask to be this temporary, like, detox. But I think that switched from me last February. I was like, well, why wouldn't you just, like, stay like that? Why would you want to go back and then have to be clean and then go back? So I guess fasting became more of a lifestyle for me now.

 

[00:12:15] I don't really think about it as like, OK, I'm doing this right now and this will happen like it's definitely more of a cycle low and very just like effortless. Like it's not like I'm trying to fast anymore or like today I'm not going to do that is just like not even a desire exists.

 

[00:12:32] And I think I always kind of say this and I might be rambling, but I think a lot of times we're in this, like, pursuit of happiness instead of this happiness of pursuit, like we want to want you know, we're like we're in our no side. We're the happiness of pursuit and not the pursuit of happiness like we're so used to wanting. And no, there's no better feeling than not needing anything. And I think a lot of people are kind of scared of that. So kind of switched from me. Right? I guess I became un scared of that. Like it was good to not want or need anything like desire and peace can't kind of really coexist. So to be I like a peaceful place where you're just like I'm content, like I don't need anything. And it just became more more than just about food, I guess.

 

[00:13:14] Yeah. Relationships with contentment and things like that you talk a lot about and some of those key aspects, especially with breath work and really acknowledging, you know, what's happening and reexamining your relationship with Thyer and things like that, things that come from food, you know, things that we think we want wondering how do you define fasting for yourself? Do you find do you define it as a lack of, like chewable food or is it complete nutrients like up for you? How do you consider yourself to be in a fasted state?

 

[00:13:49] Sure. Right now, currently, I'm just doing juices for the month of June. I don't know. I'm going to keep going. But in general, for me, it's been more of just like liquids, only like a liquid area lifestyle. We have to put a arean or egen on it, a liquid arean lifestyle. So just basically for the past month, the basis of everything. And if I do have to food, because I have in the past year, like since learning breastwork, it's not like I've never will eat food ever again. I think a lot of people think so. But it's been my raw Vegan if I do have any food. But it's just like a lighter density diet. I guess you could say. I don't like the word diet, I just lifestyle.

 

[00:14:28] So just like smoothies, juices, teas, water, coconut water, that's kind of like the basis for me. Fasting looks like it feels like like I said, it's been today's day. Twenty five of just juice and coconut water and water.

 

[00:14:43] So how do they get lighter advice or do you take did you take any advice along the way or did you let your intuition lead you like do you look towards I think a lot of people here about fasting and the more understudied or naive will say, you know, that's.

 

[00:15:00] Dangerous are things like that, but I think a lot of people would say, well, you need to be under the tutelage of some school of thought. How do you personally come at it?

 

[00:15:12] I definitely think there's a big value in research before you get into something. I know I get messages all the time about how to fast, how to go Vegan, how to, how to, how to. So I think it is important to reach out to people that could help you or read books and others. A few books and people on you too, like John Rose. My brother's a big, huge mentor for me. Tyler on Instagram, there's just like a lot of research I think is definitely important before you just dove into it. A lot of people might end up doing it and then be like this didn't work or like this felt really bad. And, you know, it can it could easily have a different perspective if you don't really know what you're getting into. For me, I definitely, I think had it already in my life. My brother had did a lot of fast in front of me and a lot of my peers kind of were stepping into that room. Like I just started to kind of track that environment in a sense. And I saw people doing it. It became like real like, wow, this person, you know, my brother went like a year on just liquids. And I was like, OK. He looks great and he's moving great and everything, like, you know, became like, OK, I can connect those dots. And I think, yeah, just like seeing that and kind of experimenting on my own for sure. Like knowing my limit, knowing like my I guess you could say like my intuition of like, OK, this is too much, too little. But again, I'm like it's a broken record. I feel like I say every day. But the breath really, really made it so much easier.

 

[00:16:42] Yeah. Well, you for us, let's talk about what you were referring to. We talk about breath work and for people who haven't even heard of that and how linking it with your fasting endeavors on a day to day basis.

 

[00:16:57] So, yeah. So Branzburg is just more of like active or conscious breathing pattern or, you know, focus, breath moreso than meditation, meditation, sense to kind of be daydreaming in a sense. A lot of times we can just be sitting there and like wandering off and there's nothing wrong. I think meditation but breath work is such a like present active, conscious practice. It's a very, very ancient one. It's becoming a little more trendy now, but it dates back to like Egypt and Africa, like forever, forever. You know, centuries ago it's been been happening much like a lot of these trendy things that are now trendy. But essentially for me, what it looks like is an hour of conscious breathing every morning, first thing in the morning, before tea, before water, just completely off of your drive. Fasted state, no for you, for your breakfast or break fast with the breath work so I could nerd out about it a lot. If anybody wants to know more, I'd love to do like one on one sessions with anyone. But essentially, like you're breathing from the diaphragm, from the lower lungs. There's so much blood there that we neglect. We're really caught in the shallow breathing a lot of times. And there's a difference, you know, in fight or flight, arrest and Digest's and it's eighteen or more breaths. A minute is fight or flight. So a lot of times we're walking around and fight or fight and moving with more thinking and like more anxiety than awareness. And, you know, you emotionally eat because you have this like emotional hunger. Like, you know, you start to crave things that are really just like emotional cravings or, you know, you eat out a celebratory or habitual or just filling voids with substance. And so when you start to replace that with the breath, the cells become so oxidated oxygenated and nourished because we're breathing from this from this lower part of the lungs that we neglect, like I'm saying, and really, really helping the digestive system also get massage because you're like breathing out fully from the belly. It really, really like shows you where your true appetite is, I guess you could say. And starting the day with that is is in a sense I mean, it sounds a little hippie dippy, but starting the day with your heart, your heart is the the air, the element of air.

 

[00:19:16] If you familiar with the shockers at all, it's that element of air. And I think for me, like everything comes down to alignment and harmony. So like waking up and kind of giving that respect to the elements, like waking up with the breath, first air. And then I always follow that up with like herbal cup of tea, which it's like fire, water and earth. You know, it's hot water.

 

[00:19:39] Herbs are for grounding and setting up that alignment just really, really kind of shifts and changes and shapes the day. I have a day without it, in a day with it. It's like so transparent. The breath really like nourishes the body instead of just filling it like you do. It's food like you really feel true nourishment. I think there's a big difference in being full. Nourished. And they go so many directions. But in a sense, it also just detoxifies the body so hugely, like 70 percent of your elimination is done through the breath. Like not in the bathroom. Like we lose toxins to breathing. More than anything. So, yeah. And it's just I think just knowing about it fascinated me so much. I guess that's why we're here today and like how much I dedicated to it, because it was just so like aparent. It's kind of one of those things. I don't know if anyone will fully digest until they do it. And so you just consciously grieve or even ten minutes you'll be like, OK, wait, this. I feel different. And all I did was breathe. It's this constant thing, you know, it's here with us since we were born. It's always here. And we just kind of neglected or subconsciously don't even realize where it's at. But yes, bringing that awareness to it is essentially like breath work is it doesn't have to be this huge, complicated thing.

 

[00:20:58] Well, what I love about it is the simplicity of it is really overlooked.

 

[00:21:02] And I will say, like using myself as an example, you know, having done yoga, practicing, being avid practitioner due to my faith as a Buddhist, you know, of daily meditation, I would I would be the first person to erroneously say I yeah, I practiced breath work all the time. When you talk. Yeah. What you do is so distinctly different, you know, with breath work and just eliminating all of the other very good aspects of yoga or meditation that also incorporate the breath. But just singularly being the breath is the activity in that moment, I think really crystallizes what the breath is actually doing in all of the other activities as well. Yeah, totally different. It's also interesting to me that it's this missing piece of anyone who talks about fasting from any different realm, from science, from health, for meditative and mental clarity. All of those things that people come to fasting for. Right. They they frequently that there's a large part of the dialog about the emotional treasury and drudgery of fasting. You know, of of people they eat. A lot of people talk about it from a medical standpoint. That's your body switching over to fat reserves, yada, yada, yada. Insulin release, not released all of those things. However, there's always that emotional element that people are addressing that's incredibly difficult. And what's interesting and what I've when I've looked at what the work you were doing is the breath work is kind of this answer, you know, and this key piece about like this, the only aspects of fasting that people will say it was awful is, you know, that that feeling of of longing or missing all of those attachments and things that when you talk about work, you know, is an answer to that. You know, it's like this. This aid, you know, that you get kind of communicate with it. And I think that this because of that, they go so tangibly together. I it's interesting that fasting doesn't talk more about breath work and things that kind of answer to that. I'm wondering, with your own personal experience, it's clear that it's it's accompanied it and things like that. But have you can you imagine fasting without doing your breath work anymore? Or is it like it's become so intertwined?

 

[00:23:18] No, it's a great question.

 

[00:23:19] I think about it sometimes because, like even yesterday, I didn't really do like a full session of breath work and cravings were, like, happening at night. I mean, the only thing that changed was I didn't do my full hour in the morning. And so, yes, I do two hours now and I'm doing just like a lighter, lighter density of just use.

 

[00:23:39] But I mean, I definitely think you can fast without it. I just like I said, I feel like there's just more resistance and more of like a measurement when it comes to that. Like, I just know so many people, like I was almost at day seven and I failed at day five and like it just for me. Doesn't even become that kind of mentality for fasting anymore. Is this really like.

 

[00:24:02] Like, I prioritize the breath and it all kind of falls in line. OK. You have to worry or think about that.

 

[00:24:07] And it's just it's the craziest thing that I try to explain. Because you're like, wow. How do I just not want these things anymore? Well, yeah, I don't know. I don't think I can really imagine doing it without it. I think it's just so transparent for me now. Like it in the past. And I would fast and I would fail so many times. I can't share how many times I would say I'm going to do a three day fast, get to the end of day one and binge out on Vegan cookies.

 

[00:24:32] I, I every Vegan being like, yeah. And you create a really unhealthy cycle for me.

 

[00:24:38] And I have talked to a lot of other people that experiment fasting and they relate a lot to that. And I don't think people talk about that enough, really. It's just like how unhealthy you can kind of go with the bingeing and fasting and just like yo yo that we kind of do. We're trying to do this healthy lifestyle easily. Just wake up and binge out.

 

[00:24:55] And I'm like, OK, tomorrow I'm fasting and we just have to justify everything and bounce back and forth through.

 

[00:25:01] It's it raises like it's it's it's a crippling irony, you know, when you get into healthy measures and how it can kind of facilitate neuroses and like a disorder with food and the way that you consume it. You're right. All of the conversations and negotiations that go down with the fast before the most sage faster, you know, we'll have this kind of wild. I'll be talking to a colleague that's getting ready for a fast and she's, you know, just voraciously consuming everything in her right point of that guy.

 

[00:25:33] Yeah, that's it's. So. Yeah, yeah.

 

[00:25:36] Gry and the breath work sounds like it helps, like, return the conversation to where it needs to be, which is about, you know, I kind of like just brings you back to like OK, like because Reft literally if you look at the definition of spirit is breath like they translate to each other. Inspirer means to breathe like a lot of things just come back to breath. So it's like, OK, where's my spirit lagrima breathing from right now? Like a lot of times those thoughts and those cravings, they're really not even you. Like all other conversation. But they can be like parasites or they can be influences from other things that are you might not even be aware of that. And so you just come back and like, take a moment for clarity.

 

[00:26:13] Absolutely. All right. We're going to climb into some rapid fire questions that we've collected from audience members. All right. So the first one is, how long have you been practicing fasting?

 

[00:26:26] Let's see. It's probably been twenty, twenty four years, I'd say, in total, just like like experimented with fasting last year.

 

[00:26:37] What is your preferred fast method is always used method or length. So like it sounds, I mean, you're doing liquid dairy and diet right now are fast. But do you prefer. Do you tried. Oh man. Have you tried all of the different forms of fasting?

 

[00:26:54] The only one I guess I specifically can remember really trying is like intermittent fasting. I think that's kind of how I got into it. Like gradually I just got into lighter lifestyle. But I preferred I guess like I always kind of start with like a three day and then see where that goes.

 

[00:27:10] Yeah. When do you advise your clients or followers to fast. Have you ever, like, gotten to a place where you are advising these people with breath work or anything like that to incorporate fasting, or does it naturally happen?

 

[00:27:23] It comes a naturally happen. I, I tend to kind of step out of the way for that. I don't want to ever really like push somebody to something they're not ready for. I will say like the new moon, if anyone follows the moon cycles and stars or anything, the new moon tends to be a good time to start anything new.

 

[00:27:37] So I definitely recommend starting a fast or any type of new detox on a new.

 

[00:27:44] Nice to have you ever have goals yourself personally? We've had we had people ask about like because you have this like very fluid, like things are just kind of ways leading on way for you. Do you set goals ever with fasting based on clarity or desire?

 

[00:28:03] I guess you could say this month was kind of a goal. I wanted to do just 30 days of juice and just see what that was like. I'd cut fiber out because the smoothies have a lot of fiber. So because I still somewhat like, definitely hit little balls and things, I don't put too much pressure or stress on it. And I kind of try to just ebb and flow with intuition.

 

[00:28:21] Right. And can you define liquid arean as it as it refers to you? Does that mean that anything in a liquid form? So it is in essence, can you puree a broccoli? And as long as it's liquid, drink it. What does that mean for you.

 

[00:28:34] Yeah. Hundred percent.

 

[00:28:35] I know it sounds gross or crazy, but I like raw Vegan soup is really, really good if you can find really good ones. So for me it's like raw Vegan soups, teas, movies' juices, coconut water, even like vérité. I just, just all anything that you could not to as a liquid. Yeah. That counts for me very personally.

 

[00:28:59] And what about the chronic lifestyle that you talk about living? Can you define what that is, in essence for you?

 

[00:29:06] Sure. So Prana is essentially all around us. That is achee. The energy sitting in the sun, you charge up literally from the sun, literally from the sun, you get frohna. So essentially, it's just kind of for me personally, I'd like to just say it's it's getting back to the natural living naturally and living off of what already exists within you. I'm not depending on external things. And just having that internal peace, I guess you could say, of knowing, like, you can literally eat from the sun, from the air. There's prana, there's water vapors in the air that you can get that hydration from is just coming back to the natural, in a sense, depending on like Mother Nature, to really nurture you.

 

[00:29:49] Yeah, yeah. What about in your videos, you talk about the death of the ego. There's so many different things that you get into.

 

[00:29:58] And it's almost a therapeutic like and you have, in fact, mentioned, you know, two hours of talk therapy or one hour of breath work, you know? And you get into things that breath work and fasting that have led to for you emotional release, the ability to cry without, you know, as a scribing pain or judgment to it, anger that comes up, sadness, good and bad. You know, not all this like flowery, lovely moments, but you talk about how they come about with breath work and the utility of that. Like it's not being a bad thing anymore.

 

[00:30:33] You talk about the death of the ego and things like that.

 

[00:30:38] Do you feel like it's accompanied with fasting or do you think all of that is just brought about with breath work, as is fasting?

 

[00:30:47] Does giving the ball like both of them tie together? And I will say, like in this past year of practicing breath work and everything, I think in a sense and with fasting, like you give everything up to receive everything. You kind of like make room, in a sense for. For you to receive more from one of my favorite books, the dad teaching is kind of like my lifestyle. If anyone familiar with that book, just like you give everything up to receive everything and like pass, you have gotten rid of so many clothes. I don't wear makeup anymore. Like, my friends have kind of changed around, like just over my you know, you're a magnet in a sense. So you attract a different reality when you start to be at a different density. And so, like, I'm feeling a lot lighter. I feel like that kind of shifted everything around me to like, again, needs just kind of drop like, OK, food wasn't as crazy of a value to me anymore. So neither was like material things and desires in these temporary, you know, satisfactions of like new shoes or whatever, you know, makeup and all that kind of like ego, ego esque, you know, dressing the vessel up to look a certain way or whatever. It's not like I don't like dressing up anymore or anything like that. It's just I guess attachments just kind of shifted, you know, once I got into this lifestyle.

 

[00:32:01] Absolutely. So when you coach, you do one on one coaching, is that correct? You still do?

 

[00:32:06] Yes. Yes, definitely.

 

[00:32:08] So if someone's looking to get involved with it and things like that, do they just sign up for a one on one session with you for their breathing, or do you recommend that they educate themselves first?

 

[00:32:17] How does that work?

 

[00:32:19] I have yeah. I would definitely say I just you can go ahead and book a session with me. I tend to love when people get. I have like a one on one just one session and then there's a three pack that you can get for like once a week for a whole month. And that one is kind of I get to be a bit a little nerd out with you a little bit more and like teach you a little bit more. And also lead you through a couple of sessions. I also just released a six week video course that really, really like if you don't want to listen to me ramble too much, you can just do the whole chorus that kind of introduces you to breath work, how to breathe, how to properly fast the herbs that I take, just like kind of getting into this like. So that kind of helps with that, too. But in general, like, you know, experience is needed. You could have never even heard of breath work. I've worked with people that have done it for years. And, you know, today I had somebody that's like never done in their life. So wherever you're at, I can meet you for sure.

 

[00:33:13] Well, I like that. And that's so the six week course, all of that's on like the sea.

 

[00:33:18] But I mean, find that. Yeah, on my website, I just really sit, like, on Sunday, I think. So it was like a baby I've been nurturing for a while. So good to release it to the world. Yeah. And a book with innovations. And there's kind of information.

 

[00:33:33] Yeah. When people don't have like exactly what you're saying, the herbs and you know, it's nice to have like the whole picture.

 

[00:33:40] And Yeah. And sometimes it can be a lot to like pour onto somebody at once, you know, like sometimes you need to take bites as they go. OK. This week we're doing this, this week we're doing this. And that's kind of how I formatted it. Like each week you kind of like take more steps into the water, into your food, hopefully.

 

[00:33:57] Well, lately, I imagine there's been a lot of conversation about the covered 19 pandemic, at least in some of the communities you function in. There have been nothing but in the ones that I function in when it comes to health and and diet and wellness and the immune system. Do you have any, like, key takeaways that you and your community talk about when it comes to, you know, the overall state and health of you personally or the world on a whole?

 

[00:34:28] Yeah, I mean, it's a big picture to look at and to dove into, but. I mean, with so much emphasis on breathing right now, it's just I can't I can't be just ironic. You know, like I mean, just one the agrarian season we may be in of just knowledge and information. That's an error sign. And then, you know, George. George Boyd, I can't breathe. And that includes a respiratory infection and the face masks. It's just like like I said, the breath detoxifies the body more than anything you could do. So like, I don't know, a lot of conversations I've been having with people is just just really like turning internal to fix the external, I don't know, fixes the word I want to use. But it's a big reflection, you know, the internal versus external. And the more and more I think we prioritize just the simple thing of just going internal and getting that piece right in the breath. Right in spirit. Right. I think I could really, really shift the literal pressures of the world. Every time you do breastwork, you are kind of shifting through the, you know, the pressures. And so, I don't know, it's it's like a good and I don't know what where to put on it, but it's definitely just like a wake up that's happening in the world. And yeah, I guess like with Earth and everything is in this big fast herself just detoxifying. And I think it's is a big reflection and I don't know, I can't say like I'm not excited or excited for what's happening. I just think, you know, nothing changes if nothing changes. So in a sense, it might be what's necessary for people to kind of open their eyes a little wider. 20/20 vision. Yeah, I think I think a lot of it, though, if we prioritize like peace as much as we do a lot of other things and kind of turn to ourselves for the sources that we look to the TV for, so much like, can you go inside and see what's really needed here instead of these external validations and sources?

 

[00:36:20] Absolutely. I agree. And I love the way that you're coming at all of that. You know, I think that that you had there's an incredible tie in, you know, with the breath that you just kind of did this incredible trifecta, quite frankly, the world, the earth, our our society and the United States, with the murder of Judge Floyd, like all of those things, the breath kind of relating back in the earth, everything. I think it's a beautiful thing. And I I think that it's we do need to make sense of things. You know, we do need to be able to take tragedies and and actually do something with them. Work is actively doing that, you know. A hundred percent. So cool. I love how you came at fasting. I love this story and your combination with it. I think it's so wonderful, Casey. And I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today.

 

[00:37:08] Thank you so much. I appreciate all of your questions are really, really fun to answer and reflect on. So I appreciate being here. Thank you.

 

[00:37:15] Absolutely. And for everyone listening, we have been speaking with Casey, but she is a YouTube channel and content creator, as well as a photographer. She has a company, a consulting. You can find out more on her Web site. That is C dash, but B, you, D, D, dot com. And thank you for giving us your time today until we speak again next time.

 

[00:37:37] Remember to stay safe, eat well when you do eat and always bet on yourself. Slainte

 

Speaking With Alyssa Sybertz; Freelance Health and Wellness Writer and Author

Today I am speaking with Alyssa Sybertz. Alyssa is a freelance health and wellness writer and author of The OMAD Diet: Intermittent Fasting with One Meal a Day to Burn Fat and Lose Weight. She is a frequent contributor to First for Women magazine and Woman's World magazine and is the food editor for Closer Weekly. She also writes for Allrecipes, The Healthy, and wellness brands like Peloton and Power for Life Fitness. Her passion for health and wellness extends beyond her day job, and when she's not writing she's teaching Zumba classes, cooking, snowboarding or hiking with her husband and her dog.

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

 

TRANSCRIPTION

*Please note this is an automated transcription, please excuse any typos and errors

[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with journalist copyrighter and author Alyssa Sybertz Key Points addressed where Alyssa's book, coming out in December of 2020 titled The Mad Diet Intermittent fasting with one meal a day to Burn Fat and Lose Weight during our chat. We unpack the basics of mad fasting and how Alyssa conveys what she believes to be some of the core principles of the practice to her readers. Stay tuned for my informative talk with Alyssa Sybertz. 

 

[00:00:36] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas. In an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles, this dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information research. Personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen dot COM, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod, Dean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. 

 

[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. 

 

[00:01:30] I am your host, Patricia. And today I'm delighted to be sitting down with Alissa Seibert. Alyssa is a journalist, a copywriter and an author. You can research more about her, her work and what we're talking about today on her Web site. Alyssa Sybertz dot come that is a L Y. S s a s y b e r t z dot com. Welcome, Alyssa. 

 

[00:01:52] Thank you so much for having me. 

 

[00:01:54] Absolutely. I'm excited to kind of crawl through everything that you're doing. You have a book that hasn't launched yet. So we have the scoop, which we were talking off the record I'm super excited about. I can't wait to climb through that with you. I'm for everyone listening. I'm going to give you a quick roadmap for today's podcast. You can follow the trajectory in which we are going to pull our inquiries from. But prior to that, I will also read a bio on Alyssa so that everyone has kind of a background of who she is as a writer and an author. The Roadmap for Today's Podcast. It will follow a brief history on a list as it pertains to the subject of fasting and her book that she's written on the subject. We'll also get into her academic background early occupational life, so we garner a sense of where Alyssa has kind of come at writing with. And then we'll look at Alyssa's personal history with fasting and as its kind of an entrenched and woven within that person, that she is academically an occupational wise. And then we'll turn straight to unpacking her book, which is called The Mad Diet, intermittent fasting with one meal a day to burn fat and Lose Weight. And you can preorder this on Amazon. We will be unpacking things. And I'm excited because I get to come at this a little blindfolded as I have not read it yet. I get to kind of just go at it as though we were sitting down on a bus stop together, which will be exciting. I haven't done that in a long time. For those of you who listen to my work, my podcasts and my documentaries. I love research. So this will be on the fly research. But prior to kind of climbing through Alissa's book, I want to quickly read the bio as promised. Melissa Seibert is a freelance health and wellness writer and author of The Omak Diet Diet Intermittent Fasting with one meal a Day to Burn Fat and Lose Weight. She is a frequent contributor to contributor to First for Women magazine and Women's World Magazine and is the food editor for Closer Weekly. She also writes for all recipes the healthy and wellness brands like Peloton and Power for Life Fitness. Her passion for health and wellness extends beyond her day job. And when she's not writing, she's teaching Zumba classes, cooking, snowboarding or hiking with her husband and her dog. So, Alyssa, I love that we have a lot of things in common. I love to snowboard. I love hiking. I have a dog and Zoubi haven't tried, but I absolutely would. Any day of the week. So before we get into all of your book and how those different activities play into probably who you are. I'm hoping you can draw us like a brief history of your academic background and occupational life, bringing you to writing your book, The Mad Diet. 

 

[00:04:29] Absolutely. So my first job was actually as an editorial assistant at first for women, where I still write. Prior to that, I was an English literature major in college and I applied for this job at first. And it kind of just turned out to be in the nutrition department. But then I kind of sat back, thought to myself. I've always been interested in fitness. I was an athlete growing up. I was on the crew team in college and nutrition and fitness kind of go hand-in-hand. I feel like so, yeah. I was pretty excited to dove into that role. So I started working at first and really learned on the job. And I think that two of the fastest ways to learn about something, become knowledgeable about that topic are one, to speak with the doctors and the researchers and the experts about the work that they're doing. And then to to be tasked with explaining that thing to other people in a way that is easy to understand. And so that's really the role that I was in writing for a women's service magazine. I was kind of that conduit from the research and the experts to the average woman who wants to learn about these things. And so I quickly kind of developed the vocabulary, too, to talk about them, found and figured out what these different things are doing in the body, that kind of stuff. And then from nutrition, I kind of branched out to write more about fitness and health and food and cooking and kind of that whole world. And then fast forward to twenty seventeen. I left first full time and became a freelancer and started looking for kind of larger, more challenging. Different different types of projects, that kind of stuff. And I saw that Ulysses Press was interested in publishing a book about the old man diet and was looking for something to someone to write it. And I thought to myself, I've developed this vocabulary. I've spent years reading these types of books, writing about them. I know the structures that work. I know kind of what what to look for. And so I pitched myself and kind of my vision for the book. And they liked it. And I got the opportunity to then go and write it. 

 

[00:07:20] Yeah, it sounds like a match made in heaven. I mean, given your extensive history and in health and wellness and particularly with the scope and lens of women. One of my biggest beefs with fasting in the health industry, I will say in general, and people who've listened to me know that this is kind of out there is I'm not really breaking news here, but we don't study women's health in specific or as separately from men's. We study overall health, largely garnered from historical studies done on white men and call that health. And we just kind of disassociate and this is this is something that I've actually kind of plagiarized from white male doctors. Like everyone acknowledges, we don't study hearts differently. And as much as a woman's heart versus a man's. We study a group of hearts and we say that's kind of the human heart. And so what I like about the idea of coming at it from women's health and wellness is that, you know, having this specific view of of one gender and then kind of coming at the world of fasting from your basis of health and wellness, being, like slided towards women is it's an interesting and it's a neach, you know, take. And I like the idea that you studied more of the underdog in the community that has been understudied and things of that nature. And I kind of want that to drop a straight into the oh man diet and into it. 

 

[00:08:37] So the title is the OLMA Diet, intermittent fasting with one meal a day to burn fat and Lose Weight. And I do want to get into why you titled that that. But before I do that, I want to read a quick excerpt that my team scrubbed from online. So it is legit. And you said that a part of this might be on the jacket as well. But I think we got this from Amazon and it says, The one meal a day approach to fasting is an efficient way to burn fat and lose weight. The eating only went, but eating only one meal a day when done improperly can deprive your body of nutrients and energy it needs to thrive. The Omak Diet will show you how to take this approach in the healthiest and most mindful way possible. This comprehensive guide book will show you exactly what you need to feel your body to stay healthy, full and burning fat. Then, once you have the technique down, you provides over 100 recipes to make your one meal planning. Breeze, each delicious recipe comes with a Step-By-Step instructions, as well as a complete nutritional information. 

 

[00:09:36] And. 

 

[00:09:38] And then it's so that you can be absolutely sure you're getting the macronutrients, microinsurance and vitamins you need. You'll savor your daily meals. Delicious recipes like fiery maksym, burrito bowls, teriyaki salmon, basmati rice and proper rub, a roasted vegetable salads. 

 

[00:09:56] So eating one meal a day may be extreme, but it doesn't have to be miserable with these tasty and easy recipes that continue or conform to Quito paleo plant based gluten free lifestyles and more. And that last bit is actually, for me, one of the most important ones. I feel like the way you can climb into this later on. But the fasting community gets very, very divided into like people who eat specific diets outside of their fast. And I just don't I don't think it necessarily needs to. And I love the idea that you've got this book with recipes that can kind of conform to all those specific people when they are eating and eating those specific diets. And so it doesn't exclude anyone. But I want to get back to the title and I want to know how you came up with. I'm very big on titles that do what they say they're going to do. And I haven't read your book, but I'm hoping from the description, it sounds like it's doing exactly what it says. So the oh, diet, intermittent fasting with one meal a day to burn fat and lose weight. How did you come up with that title? 

 

[00:10:56] Yes. So we kind of worked work together on that. And myself and the publisher both decided that we just wanted it to be super. Not again, like you just mentioned, trying not to be divisive and really just provide a kind of high level. Introduction, really, four people into one meal a day, which is what the book is trying to be, is really a kind of a QuickStart guide, an overview for anybody who is interested in a one meal a day lifestyle, trying it or just learning more about it. And this will really provide the kind of the a jumping off point for for those people. 

 

[00:11:45] Nice. And you personally, I kind of want to climb into your personal fasting story before we climb into the core tenants that you wrote the book, because even if you weren't trying and you had a publisher weighing in, I find a lot of authors cut pull more than that. 

 

[00:11:59] Maybe even they suspect from their own personal experiences, particularly into these kind of informative manuals. What was your history with fasting? 

 

[00:12:11] I didn't have a lot of it to. To be honest, I have since obviously doing a lot of research and stuff like that, given given it a go and kind of experimented with different different strategies, especially as far as Mohmad goes, which I know we're going to get there later. But I have a whole chapter in the book about the things that you can have during your fast bet. And it's not that it's not that while within the twenty three hours where you're not eating your meal, it's not that you can't put anything at all into your mouth, because I know that from someone like me you like I, I love food like I really enjoy, enjoy eating. And so I was like what can, what would help me get through the fast. And not like you mentioned in the reader might not be miserable. And so a lot of my my personal kind of references and stuff like that really, really went into that chapter. I think that was the biggest one. And then I will occasionally do I'll occasionally do a like a fast for part of the day or the whole day and then just do the one meal. But yeah, I didn't have a lot of a lot of personal experience with it before writing the book, but. 

 

[00:13:37] Well, you don't need to I mean this is where so when people hear that they might cringe. 

 

[00:13:42] But I truly this is like the greatest choreographer's for ballet have in the past been like crippled Weitman, you know, like it's actually not necessary to conductors being able to play every instrument, like to be able to research and study something. One does not necessarily practice it. And in fact, it can bring a different take on it. You know, the object, the objectivity, the bird's eye view can change to a critically good standpoint. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I'm wondering, I you dropped breadcrumbs. I'm going to pick that one up. I want to know how the book is structured, because I only have the tidbit that I just read. How does the introduction play out and the subsequent chapters that follow? What's the flow of the book? 

 

[00:14:27] So it's broken up into two main parts, which are kind of the science of the diet and then the recipes. And so the first part starts with an introduction where I go a little bit into the history of fasting, which I found pretty fascinating, particularly the fact that the kind of three meals a day model, breakfast, lunch and dinner was kind of born out of the Industrial Revolution and people starting to go to work from 9:00 to 5:00. And their schedules kind of dictated that they needed to be eating at those certain times as opposed to anything kind of health related or body body related, which I thought was pretty interesting. And then I kind of go into the science of what's going on in the body, at the cellular level, cellular level, at the hormonal level while you're fasting. And. Like the research that has been done on different aspects of health, so obviously weight loss, as the title suggests, but then also the benefits of fasting for folks with Type two diabetes. The benefits for heart health. For brain health. Yeah. For immune health. Different things like that. And I just kind of provide a overview of some of the some of that research that's been done, what it's been finding. 

 

[00:15:59] So the over thing. Let me ask really quickly before we go on with that, how in depth. It's always tricky for me. I this is why I could never write a book on fasting or diet in general, because I just don't know when to stop. But I'm wondering, like, do you get into the hour by hour? There are some fasters that get into like when a top vagy starts to kick in cellular repair and regeneration, things of that nature. Or do you do it much more layperson like are you just like this is normally when insulin switches into you know, this is like there's that moment of urgency when you go from burning sugar or, you know, to to burning fat, like all of those different autophagy is mixed in there. Do you weigh all of that out or do you use much more broad terms? How did you, like, decipher that? How did you curate that? 

 

[00:16:44] Yeah, I kind of I used a more a more broad approach that basically kind of went into how. The there was there was an interesting and interesting study that I looked at where there were kind of three different groups of people in the study and the first group was eating kind of a regular three meals a day. This next group was doing, I think, one meal a day. And then the third group was doing alternate day fasting. And so there fast was even longer. And they really were able to look at the three side by side and just see that the obviously the group with the longest fast kind of made that swap from burning sugar for energy to burning fat for energy. 

 

[00:17:32] And we're in that phase that much longer. And so which obviously is when your body kind of starts going into the stores is energy that are stored in fat cells and things and using those as opposed to just using the food that you're you're kind of taking in in a more immediate manner. And so, yeah, so I basically kind of described it as at some point, like during the fast. Your body runs out of that energy that's being taken in and kind of makes that swap. And. That's where that's kind of the point that you're that you're trying to reach. And if you have asked is twenty three hours as opposed to eight hours or something, when you're when you're asleep, then you're going to have that much longer and kind of host switch land. Yeah. As opposed to as opposed to pretty. 

 

[00:18:34] So you explain the science in the first few chapters and then you said you crawl into recipes and I'm curious with you looked at the science and then you you kind into recipes. How did you find. How did you create the recipes standpoint and this inclusive measure? It feels like that it would be a much more laborious endeavor in that you're looking at Kito, you're looking at plant based. You're looking at all of those different things with people who fast. How did you even begin that? Did you break it down into different times of day's meals or did you break it down to genre? You mentioned something about Mexican food. How did you come at that one? 

 

[00:19:10] Yes. So I kind of broke it out by chapter in two different types of meals. So the the types of meals that I feature are breakfasts, what I call breakfast style meals. So those are your, like, egg dishes. Your burrito's your. 

 

[00:19:33] And then some kind of loaded oatmeal dishes, some smoothie bowls like some of those those things that people like to eat in the morning, that even if they're not having their one meal in the morning, but they just love breakfast foods, they can still have those. And then I have a chapter on salads. I have a chapter on Bolls, which are kind of with the base of a grain or a noodle or something like that. And then built on top of that. I have a chapter that I called Protein Plus Two, which is kind of the format. I feel like when I was growing up, my all the suppers that my mom made were always like chicken and broccoli and potatoes or something like that, kind of a very round plate like that. So I have a chapter that's built around that in the chapter of chilies and soups, things you eat with a spoon out of a bowl and then a chapter of more kind of indulgent dishes. So like pasta bakes and things like that for when you want to indulge a little bit more. And all of B, all the chapters except for that last one are the recipes are built to serve just one person. But they're obviously very easy to double if you're eating with. Excuse me, if you're eating with someone or like triple dribble. If you're if you're eating with others. And then I know you've mentioned the different kind of diets and different eating eating plans. I just try to intersperse options for those like. So some are kind of naturally. Quito or palaeo or plant based? Yeah. And then for others, I wrote, like, for example, a lot of the salads. If you take out the cheese, then you're going to be like paleo or plant based depending on the other ingredients. 

 

[00:21:41] And so there are a number of recipes that are just kind of naturally fit into into one of those molds. But then there are quite a few others where I've included in the recipe. Note at the top that if you exclude one or two ingredients, then it will fit into this mold as well. Because, yeah, I did really want to be inclusive of those different forms of eating. And I also in the first section of the book, I have a bunch of success stories of people who had done Nomad and found success with it. And some of them were saying that they kind of had started with a certain diet like Quito, for example, and maybe lost some weight and then hit a plateau. And I couldn't figure out how to keep going and then kind of move from that into fasting or. Yeah. Oh, man. And that was what helped them. So I wanted to make it kind of approachable no matter what. Background or eating style? You're coming at it from well and following that. 

 

[00:22:50] Did you have an idea? I mean, inclusively seems to be a thread here. 

 

[00:22:54] But did you have an idea as to or did your publisher assign you like a target audience as far as gender, age, health status, any of those things? It sounds like you're trying to be inclusive with everyone practicing different forms of eating. 

 

[00:23:10] But did you have an idea as to who you were largely writing the book for in regards to anything else that just defined your audience? Characteristic was. 

 

[00:23:21] Again, nothing super specific, I think inclusive really is is the right word. 

 

[00:23:28] I was did point out, obviously, that one meal a day is not for everybody. There are certain health conditions, like if you have low blood sugar, for example, then you kind of need to be eating at certain intervals throughout the day. But. As long as you are like. If you speak to your doctor or health care provider, say, like, I'm thinking about trying this. And then they give you the go ahead. No matter who you are. I wanted this to be a book that like that person can turn to and find information and recipes and kind of a a jumping off point. I and then because in addition to the recipes, there is a chapter in the first action that kind of breaks down the different elements of a meal from a macro nutrient kind of standpoint. So your your proteins and your facts and your carbohydrates and kind of the different elements that need to go into a meal. If you wanted to, like, start using your own recipes, things like that. And then but then also, if you don't want to get too creative right off the bat, then here all the other wonderful recipes that you can choose from. 

 

[00:24:51] I find it interesting that the world of fasting opens up more conversation about what you eat when you when you're not fasting, you know, is not it's it's a fascinating and education. Everyone I know who's gotten into fasting be through a more gentle like 18 six or like Hammat or something like that always comes back to like studying macro nutrients and things that they had no idea about before, you know, kind of reinvestigating re familiarizing themselves with their relationship with what they are eating, which I think is a beautiful kind of consequence of it. I'm wondering, do you kind of dropped the idea that you have a chapter that you loved most. You talked about what you can eat to while you are fasting that you personally really subscribe to. And I'm wondering if you looked at Walter, long hours, fast mimicking, you know, he talks about getting the calorie intake low enough that there is a lot of the benefits, the cellular benefits from fasting, but one isn't actually not eating or not consuming some kind of nutrients. And I won't I won't blast remise Dr. Long now study about any of that stuff. I think he's coming on this summer, so hopefully we'll get it straight from the horse's mouth. However, I kind of want to look at. 

 

[00:26:05] What areas and what foods you decided to include in that and what the research was that a company? 

 

[00:26:12] Yes. So I'm not super familiar with the fast mimicking specifically, but I kind of went into it with the idea that, like, what can you consume without pulling your body out of its fasted state? And so I thought of the fasted state as the state in which there's no more glucose, there's no more sugar coming in for your body to use as energy. You've used up your stores of glucose and so now your using fat and then anything that it's particularly carbohydrates that will pull your body out of that state. So that the chapter that we keep referencing it has, which I used a I think Akito diet Kito community term, which is fat bombs, which are these little treats made from fats that you kind of won't pull your body out of the state. And so one of one of my favorite ones, which I actually ever since developing the recipe for the book, I've kind of always had them in my in my fridge just for my freezer as an afternoon snack. They're made with coconut oil, coconut butter, raw kakao powder. And then just like a tiny bit of stevia. And you kind of mix that all together, poured into an ice cube tray or into a muffin tins and stick it in the freezer and it freezes. And this really kind of smooth, thick, luxurious texture and just tastes like dark chocolate. But because it is like primarily fat, it's really just like an instant hit of energy that won't pull you out of your fast. And so my feeling would be kind of to what you should be consuming, like during your fast. Ah, no one is like always have some sort of beverage on the side, especially because there's been like a lot of research done. And a lot of doctors say that most people, if they think they're hungry at any given point during the day, there's a good chance that they're probably thirsty and not hungry. And so they have like water or black coffee or tea or. I also include, like chicken broth and beef broth in that, because that can feel a little bit more like you're eating something, because if you get that kind of savory flavor. Yeah. So I think if you kind of have something, something to drink kind of on hand at all times, and then if you really feel like you need to need to chew something, you can like have a fat bomb or two and that will kind of carry you nice. 

 

[00:29:12] So I'm wondering is when you talk about, you know, kind of not coming out of the fasting state, it's largely keeping your body in ketosis, which is why you're doing these Kito fat bombs. Right? 

 

[00:29:22] It's it's burning the fat and that being like keeping the body in the ketosis state, just to be clear. And that's interesting. I'm wondering. And along with that, have there been. Were there other areas when you were in your health and nutrition studies that you pulled into from that like there have been companies they spoke with, you know, someone for the series that has fasting sticks and things like that that they've have you looked at other products or have you kind of stayed with just these Kitto recipe diet ones that keep you in a fasted state? There are also things that you can consume that will rather they keep you in a ketogenic state. And have you come across anything else or has it just been these kind of Quito based fat bomb like tinctures? 

 

[00:30:08] That's the kind of the big one that I would like. Something else that I mentioned in the book is using like fiber supplements that are like powders, like insulin powder that you stir into water. That isn't something that you chew, but it doesn't have any calories, doesn't have any car or doesn't have any sugar, rather, because fiber is a carbohydrate. 

 

[00:30:32] But you kind of drink that and it gives your stomach the feeling of being full. And so that can kind of help as well. And so that. Yeah, about something else that I have in there that I recommend to help help get you through the the fast as well, because fiber and protein, which I don't know if I mentioned yet, are kind of the two big things that I really focused on when developing the recipes to get those. High levels of fulness and kind of end like satisfaction at the end when developing, those were the two big ones that I tried to focus on. 

 

[00:31:14] Nice when you talked about in the beginning, like in the introduction of the book and you start describing, oh, mad. Do you talk about other lengths of fast as you're differentiating it from that? 

 

[00:31:24] And if so, what do you what you do to kind of talk about those? Or do you just specifically define mad and get into that? 

 

[00:31:34] I. 

 

[00:31:36] Do mostly focus on. Oh, man. Summit. Not all of the studies that I include at the beginning of the book are on. Oh man. Specifically, they're kind of on different types of fasting because, like, the the research that's being done is some of it is on. Oh, man. Some is on alternate day, as I mentioned, some is on more intermittent fasting like your 18 to six kind of thing. But something I found in the discussion portion of a lot of studies were. That they said that basic bike to kind of summarize that these were the results we saw with it, two to six, for example, if the fast were a little bit longer, we probably would have seen continued or like. Yeah, kind of extended extended the results a little further. So I tried to include different ones like that and kind of touch on those different things. But as the bike, the title suggests and stuff like that, this was really focused around kind of building a one meal a day and the fat burning and losing weight. 

 

[00:32:49] I mean, that seems to put in your title as those are the goals for everyone listening. I forgot I, I always define acronyms. I hate people who drop them and just pretend that we all know Oh man is one. It stands for one meal a day. Sixteen eight is six three. Eighteen six is when you say fast for eighteen hours and you have an eating window if you will, a time period in which you eat for six hours a day. Right. These are all various forms of fast and then you get into the longer and those numbers are usually just titled out 48 72. Those in amounts of time you stayed in the fasting state. I'm curious. So I want to kind of climb into the weight loss part of it, because that's a big feeder into the fasting kingdom. You know, I've interviewed some people for the series so far that actually get into one of the reasons I actually started fasting years ago was because I was talking to someone who said that it's it brought her a great deal of mental clarity. And then my mother of four, and I'm just constantly looking for that like brain fog to lift. That doesn't include more cups of coffee. And so I was like, I'll try anything. And so I came at it from a very weird sample. And I actually found someone who talks about like a lot of the mental clarity research in the brain and what happens during a fasted state. But I know that ninety nine point nine percent of people come at it for the cessation of disease and weight loss. And sometimes those go up. They usually go hand in hand. And and so I kind of want to climb into how you address the weight loss portion of the book. Do you kind of have every chapter speak to it, or is there one area that specifically talks about like this is where your weight loss traditionally comes off? Would you use those case studies that you talked about? How do you speak to the weight loss portion? 

 

[00:34:37] Yeah, it's it's kind of an over arching kind of idea throughout the book. I mentioned a number, a number of studies off the bat. And then, as I mentioned earlier, that I kind of explain the shift into ptosis or burning fat as opposed to sugar. And that is kind of. One of the primary ways that weight loss occurs. Also, I go into a little bit from the hormonal aspect in that particularly with insulin, for example, that a lot of people these days are kind of increasingly becoming insulin resistant or their production of insulin kind of isn't regular enough. And so when they are consuming sugar, it's not being utilized right away. And then it ends up being stored and then that's how weight gain occurs. And so I talk a little about how fasting can really kind of give insulin a break and help it kind of help its production kind of get re reregulated. And then the other hormone that's affected most is HGH, human growth hormone, which also plays a big role in metabolism and whose production drops significantly with age. So especially in women, which we were we're talking about earlier, that is can play a big role in why women, as they get older, struggle to lose weight. And why some of the kind of weight loss solutions that may have worked for them in their 20s don't work anymore in their 40s and 50s. Right. Yeah. And yeah. So that's another thing that HGH production has been found to kind of go up with fasting as well. And that kind of helps you build more lean muscle, which helps keep your metabolism higher and kind of contribute to weight loss that way. 

 

[00:36:54] Absolutely. I've spoken with a lot of athletes that flip a lot of common myths, and I don't think they're Kofman because someone has told somebody else. I think, like there has been a lot of natural intuitiveness that people have developed just erroneously together on their own separately. And a lot of them is like working out and fasted state. That being an issue, like every professional athlete, I spent my youth involved in a plethora of sports and a lot of them competitively, like gymnastics and dance and swimming and even surfing now and things that I do now. You know, they require longevity. I used to do half marathons and things like that. And the idea was eat before you work out. Your body's going to need that fuel. And it's cool to talk to advocates of fasting and scientists and doctors who would talk about the benefits of actually exercising intense exercising in a fasted state and how it's, you know, the benefits from the body receives from exercising in a faster state and then eating directly afterwards. Do you ever do you discuss any of that in the book inadvertently or do any of your case studies discuss it? 

 

[00:37:58] Yeah, interestingly, one of my case studies is a kind of semi professional athlete. 

 

[00:38:04] He plays basketball in plays fictional basketball in Europe and told me about how he was really struggling to kind of build muscle and burn fat, especially in college, and then kind of found, oh, mad. And it was really kind of the thing that flipped for him and really helped him get in shape. But yeah, I do. I talk about exercise. A little bit. And I know that there has been research on kind of should you and there's a lot of information out there, I'm like, should you eat before you exercise? Should you eat after you exercise? And one of the things that I like about all mad is that I know not a lot of people say this, but that it can actually make your life a lot easier because, yeah, you only have to carve out time to eat one meal. And it's really you can have that one meal whenever is best for you. 

 

[00:39:07] So I kind of feel that same way about exercise in that I kind of encourage people to experiment a little if they once when they first start this, like if they feel like they want to have their meal after they work out, they can do that if they want to have their meal before. And they feel like that will give them the energy to get through a workout. Or maybe they have like a fat bomb and then workout and then have their meal. I really think it it has a lot to do with personal preference. But I am also fascinated by the kind of research into where you put your eating kind of around your exercise. Yeah, I mentioned that I was on the crew team in college and those were obviously pretty, pretty strenuous workouts on a regular basis. And my senior year, one of the coaches approached me at one point and was like, I want to put you in this boat, but I think you need to lose a little weight first. Like, what time of day do you have your biggest meal? And I was like, oh, well, I usually like I'm starving after practice. Like, I go and have this big dinner at the end of the day. And they were like, maybe think about switching that up. And so I started having my biggest meal of the day as lunch, which was before practice. And then after practice, I would have kind of a lighter dinner and just that switch I lost like five pounds almost immediately. 

 

[00:40:43] So I feel like it is it's definitely really compelling science. I'm kind of how you how you structure your day in terms of eating and exercise. But I do think that in the end it comes down to like what makes you feel the best and what feels the most attainable. 

 

[00:41:05] Yeah. Well, we're changing. We're changing organisms. You know, like nothing. I shudder to think that anybody should apply even to themselves. The same theory was something that's working from one year to the next. You know, as as human beings, as women. We certainly have different decades that have completely wildly different hormones happening. The 20 year old body is no greater or worse than the 40 year old, but simply not the same and shouldn't be treated the same. To train obtain the same amount of optimal health. You know, once you accept that, you can kind of say that things should shift and vary as they go. I'm wondering as we kind of close in on the end of our chat here. I'm curious if this has ignited. Are you going to move forward and do more research and writing with the fasting universe? We wait until there's a call. Are you going to look into other aspects? Have you thought about writing about longer fasts or are you kind of happy with the work you did here? 

 

[00:42:03] Yeah, I don't know. I heard you ask that if someone on another podcast, and so I started thinking about it a little. 

 

[00:42:12] I obviously I really enjoy this kind of format of being able to kind of get this extended opportunity. That is a book to talk to people and really kind of provide them with, at the very least, something to think about at the kind of optimal level of some way that they could potentially improve their life. I think that is a really it's kind of a gift that I am feel lucky to have gotten with this book. I would love to do more. I would love to research different things. I'd love to see what the next trend is. I find these kind of trends in nutrition research to be super fascinating. One of the big ones, when I was still working full time as a magazine editor, I really got to witness, like the rise of all of this research into the microbiome and how, like, that is really kind of what is governing everything going on with the body. And it's really cool. I found it really cool to kind of be. One of the people witnessing that and then kind of translating it out into a way for the lay person to consume it. And so, yeah, I'm just I feel grateful to be in this position and we'd love to kind of continue it. 

 

[00:43:51] Nice. Yeah. I agree with you about the microbiome. I'm down. Well, there's probably not an area of health I'm not fascinated with, I must say. People like you are curious about everything, but I do think the microbiome and the conversation as of late, over the past five years has been eye opening. I've heard someone talking about the microbiome of an apple. Dr. Joel Kahn was talking about the microbiome of an apple. And I was just like, go on, tell me more. This is fascinating. And so, yeah, I get into that stuff as well. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for talking to us today, Elissa. I love the idea of your book. I just told you before we started recording. 

 

[00:44:30] I hope we can bring you back on after it launches in December and kind of climb through it as I've read it. And I receive it. And they build more questions. 

 

[00:44:39] Yeah. Yeah, I would love to. Thank you so much for the opportunity to come and chat about it. 

 

[00:44:44] You bet. And for everyone listening, thank you for giving us your time today. We've been talking to Alissa, cyber threats. You can find out more on Alyssa Seibert dot com. And the book we've been discussing is the Ohmar Diet, intermittent fasting with one meal a day to burn fat and lose weight. 

 

[00:45:01] It's on preorder right now on Amazon. You can jump on it comes out in December of twenty twenty. So everyone jump on and have a look. 

 

[00:45:10] Thank you for giving me your time today. And until we speak again next time. Remember to stay safe. Eat well when you do eat and always bet on yourself,

Talking With Jill Lebofsky; Author and Health Coach

Today I am talking with author and health coach Jill Lebofsky. Jill Lebofsky’s focused mission in life is to be the champion for midlife women and helping them to look and feel their best during their midlife years. She is the Amazon best-selling author of two books, “No Sweat It’s Just Menopause! Eating, Exercise and Essential Oils For A Healthy Change” and “Melt The Midlife Middle: A Beginner’s Guide For Women To The Intermittent Fasting & Essential Oils Lifestyle”.

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

Chatting with Kim Dechert; CEO and Wellness & Accountability Coach

Today I am chatting with Kim Dechert. Kim has been in the health and fitness field for over 30 years, first as a fitness instructor (yoga, Pilates, Zumba, Les Mills' Body Pump, Turbo Kick, Piyo, and more) and more recently as a health coach.   Kim is a graduate of Purdue University (BA in Psychology) and currently taking courses through the Institute of Transformational Nutrition.  Upon completion, in May 2020, Kim will gain the Transformational Nutrition Coach certification under their program.

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts

Chatting with Eve Mayer: Author & Entrepreneur

 

In this episode I  had an enigmatic conversation with speaker, author, and entrepreneur recognized by Forbes as one of the most influential women in social media and as one of the eight women to follow on Twitter by CNN, Eve Mayer. We unpack Eve's book she co-authored with Dr. Jason Fung and Megan Ramos: Life in the Fasting Lane as well as hear more about Eve's personal journey with fasting, weight loss, and health. @EveMayerMedia 

This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts