If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, he's only one place to go might bite up with your hosts. Sal de Stefano Adam Shaffer and Justin Andrews.
So in this episode of mine pump, we covered one important topic we covered fasting. This is a big one now fasting was almost never talked about in the Fitness World. It was relegated to the wellness world, but recently it's also become kind of a fitness Trend. In fact fasting has become the new way to diet and we've identified a lot of problems with this. We know that fasting and in some cases makes people fatter. It actually makes it more difficult for them to to get leaner. So in this episode we talked about all everything in regards to fasting we talked about what it is the different types of fasting we talked about the positives there definitely are
Real positive effects to fasting positive health effects positive mental and psychological effects if it is appropriate for you now if it's not appropriate for you, which is a lot of you listening right now fasting can make things a lot worse. It can encourage restricting and binging they can slow down your metabolism. If done improperly it can make hormone problems worse hormone problems and more. We also talked about who fasting is appropriate for so if you think you might try fasting but you're not sure if it's right for you listen to the all that whole episode we cover that and then at the end we talk about the right way to fast how we like to do it and teach it to reap the most benefits now before the episode starts. I want to remind everybody that map's strong one of our most effective muscle building and Metabolism boosting workouts is 50% off. Now this program is unconventional. So it's fun. It's different than your traditional.
National body building workout you're going to doing exercises like Zurcher squats and snatch grip. Hi poles circumstances. You're going to be doing work sessions where you're doing farmer carries and just very fun workouts. But all designed to make you strong speed up your metabolism and build muscle. This popular program is 50% off this month only. Here's what you do to get the discount go to Maps strong.com. Ma psst are Ong.com and use the code strong 50 Str. Ong 504 the discount. You know, what I keep getting DM's about that. I remember when we first started podcasting we talked about the subject because in our space it was it wasn't talked about a lot. In fact, it was shunned and then we started bringing it up and then the people in the fitness space started talking about it and then they did in regards to this topic they did to it what they do to all topics.
Which is they turn it into a went full retard? Yeah, it got bad. Yeah just turned it in something stupid and that's fasting talking about fasting. I mean when we first started talking about fasting for years ago in the fitness space there really wasn't anybody really talking about it mainly because we were all told that we had to eat all the time and if we didn't eat all the time that it was, you know, we would lose muscle and gain body fat and all that stuff. And so we talked about fasting and said look in the right context is there's health benefits and all that stuff but it's gotten out of control Yeah, it's gotten you know, because what did the fitness space do with fasting? Well, it's gone mainstream now. Oh, it's huge mainstream. Yeah. Well, even before that to member
how breakfast was the most important meal of the day and that was like uncompromising. Like if you didn't eat
breakfast, you're fucked like that was like everybody thought that yeah, it was like ingrained in
our society that like if you
The mm
breakfast League. I mean you might as well start
over right right. It's been turned into a new diet. Yeah, you know fasting has become now the new diet, you know how I
always know when this has happened when I'm getting my hair cut and you here Paris all the way all the hair stylist talking about fasting Kido. You hear like them talk about it. Yes. Hey, what do you think about the
fasting diet? Everything about fasting?
Yes. Yes when it once I know it hits my hair salon put if once it hits there, I'm like a fucking umber driver. Yeah. He was talking my ear off about it the
other day. Well, let's let's let's let's do this is cover the entire topic, but I think the way we should start is to talk specifically first about what is fasting and how long people have been doing it fasting is been around since humans have been around mainly because food was scarce. Yeah up until recently up until not that long. Like if you look at the whole timeline of modern humans if it were a clock for example,
The time that humans have had plentiful and readily available food would be like not even a minute of the total time that modern humans have been on Earth, right? So for the vast vast vast majority of times humans have been around food was not easy to come by at all. You had to either find it. So this is before the Agricultural Revolution. We had to find it. We didn't we had to find plants where to find fruit. We had to find nuts. We had to find seeds or we had to kill it which is where we got a majority of our calories. We would hunt something and kill it which requires a lot of strategy work and effort and you definitely weren't successful every single day. And so the human body evolved during periods of not having any food and during periods of having food, we either had it or we didn't it was never like it is now where we just have it whenever we want so humans have been fasting and I do air quotes. Yeah.
For a very very long time it's a part of every major religion and spiritual practice. That's another thing. Yeah, you know, that's one of the a you trace that
back, you know, it's a lot of different religions where they they make it a point to you know, you get you get a lot out of it in terms of like meditation in really like a spiritual practice of you know, being restricted and being without food for a bit
if the abstinence part right, it's the eliminating something that you want so badly and then the spiritual growth that comes from I mean the Christian Bible has you know, Jesus went out into the desert right for 40 days and 40 nights no food, you have Islamic religion where they Ramadan and Ramadan they fast while the Sun is up no water or food, you know Buddhist religions have it, you know, Jewish relieved it religions even have forms of fasting practices again Hindu religions, I mean,
Its present in all of them because I think there's a lot of wisdom in these religions in the sense that they found some of these benefits so it's been so I guess my point is it's not new. It's not a new diet. It's not a new, you know, nothing. Nobody discovered anything.
Well we did in the in the 70s is when the the science came to support all the benefits that come from it. So it's been an ancient practice for the reasons that you're bringing up right now for religious reasons abstinence and relationship with food, but what we saw in the I think it was like the mid-70s when I say is around
74 when it's that's what it was first diet eyes - right and that's when you end it was the wellness sphere the the the hippie side that kind of brought it up and they would do these and it was part of their spiritual if you will practice, but then they kind of turn into a diet like detox your body don't eat any food just drink these juices or whatever. So that's when it first kind of became.
Alized if you will yeah an old idea. I mean, this is a historically this is a very smart marketing strategy is taking old idea and then wrap it in marketing and name it something and you know, put it out there and then you could sell books on it or maybe even products I've even heard. It called now anabolic
fasting and I cringe stuff like that. But of course that happened
of course, of course and there's different types of fast, technically if you skip a regular meal that's considered a fast traditionally that's not considered a fast traditionally a fast as if you skip a day or longer without food there are different types of benefits to the long fast and fact along faster. We see most of the physiological benefits that we see from fasting and study. So when we look at studies and we look at some of the benefits that we'll talk about here in just a second. Most of these studies are done on 24 48 72 hour fast.
And sometimes longer very few of these studies are done on like a skipping a meal which some people will consider, you know, intermittent fasting or they'll call time restricted eating right where they'll you only eat for period of time and then you donate, you know past the certain certain hour or whatever. Now when I first became a trainer which was a little bit before you guys were right around the same time the last thing anybody ever recommended people do and our space was fast. Yeah. Nobody wrecks. In fact back then we didn't the word fasting was somewhat heresy. Yeah, that was like silly Not only was his silly. We didn't call it fasting. We would just say my client skips breakfast. Yeah, like they skip meals and they need how do we figure this out? And here's the thing in those days. We really we there were certain reasons why we never told people fast part of it was because we some of the information we were told was false, but the other part of it was truthfully we did Identify some of the negatives that can come from skipping meals which will
I think we should get to later on this episode. So it was something we just never almost never recommended to
people. Well, we were we were in the camp of which I think some people still are but we were for quite some time as trainers that the more meals that you ate the faster your metabolism works. So skipping a meal just seemed absurd since eighty percent plus of your clientele that come in and hire you or looking for fat loss. Oh, right. The first thing you would do as a trainer right away is actually wrap up the amount of meals that they're eating throughout the day in order to try and you know, quote unquote speed up their
metabolism. Now, here's the thing we got great results doing that. It's not because of the small meals though, but I would often times get good results if I had a client who skipped meals didn't have a good diet and I'd have them eat breakfast and eat snacks and then clean up their diet, but it wasn't from the small meals, right? It was that they were eating better right there were making better choices. Yeah, absolutely and so because fasting
Around for so long and such a so it's been a part of our Evolution for so long. It's natural that our bodies would evolve to derive benefit from fasting. In fact, the leading researchers on fasting call the fasted State a alternative operating system for the human body. So there's two operating systems. They'll say there's the FED operating system that that that behaves a particular way and then there's the fasted or non fed operating system both of which have their benefits so in oh, this is the way of Illusion works if something is natural or or unavoidable for long enough then things evolve to derive benefit from that state. So if we if we evolved with lots of food around us all the time after you know hundreds of thousands of years or a million years our bodies would just thrive on always having food, but the problem that
The opposite was true most of the time we didn't have food. So we started to evolve to drive benefit from them and we've now been able to identify some of the benefits that we get from going without food physiological benefits. One of which is the the speeding up of the cell waste removal process and this is important because if your cells can't get rid of waste fast enough or efficiently enough it can encourage the build-up of you know, either toxins or more commonly, encourage mutating cells or cells that just don't function as well cells are more likely to become autoimmune or become
inflamed. Now, this is when we see research or when people try and advertise or promote that it can be even cancer protective right because a cell that is most likely to get attacked by cancer is a
week or become cancerous. Yeah.
Is a weaker self, correct? It's an older cell. It's much more
likely to to mutate and what happens when you fast it's kind of interesting is in this happens after a certain period of time. I think it's like 48 Hours of fasting your older cells start to start to self-destruct. This is not a bad thing in this context. In fact, this is a good thing the the the cells ability to self-destruct or kill itself is actually a very important function of the human body. In fact, when it goes Haywire is when you get these mutant ever living cells that become cancer cancer cells are literally cells that fail to self-destruct. They just go on and on and on become tumors and then, you know, take over your body and you keep feeding
it over and over and so therefore it just decides to stay and hang
around it does and so when you fast the older cells a switch gets turned on this is just for lack of a better way of explaining it.
Which gets turned on in these older cells kill themselves the younger healthier cells do something kind of interesting though. They actually hunker down and strengthen. So your younger selves strengthen your older sale cells kill themselves. Now during this process of no food while the old cells are dying your body's actually stimulating stem cells like crazy. And what's happening is your body is preparing for the next time you have food for the next time you re feed then when you re feed these stem cells get turned into new cells and so again for lack of a better way of explaining this when you fast you are essentially regenerating your body essentially regenerating some of your cells. In fact, there was a cat study that was done a while ago where they fasted cats for 72 hours and they they essentially completely replace the immune cells.
Of the cat now. Why is this a good thing? Well, the cells that are likely in the case of immune system the cells that are likely to become autoimmune or the old cells and and in fact, they find that with autoimmune disorders. And by the way, this is an old treatment if you go back in history and look at the way that doctors like in ancient Greece for example would treat patients is oftentimes, they would fast them and they would find often times that it would cure them. Well you seen that
documentary where they showed practices that are actually out there that promote fasting as the main way that they're they're finding success healing a lot of these autoimmune issues.
Yes, and and in the terms of cancer now, we've identified a long time ago that cancer cells seem to weaken and oftentimes die not always but often times in the absence of glucose and the absence of sugar, I believe it's called maybe Doug you can look this up.
These the Warburg effect if I'm not mistaken named after the scientist that discovered this and so when patients were would consume diets that were devoid of carbohydrates or sugar and relatively low in protein as well. Because remember your body can take amino acids and turn them into into glucose that cancer cells would weaken or tumors would shrink but that effect is it is the Warburg effect that of effect is Amplified on a complete fast because there are ways your boss cancer cells can use amino acids and even fats to feed themselves
now doesn't that ramp up with the time also, so the longer the fast the the the more that ramps up the shorter the faster the less of that
affect Chinese medicine, the remember Chinese medicine is thousands of years old and there's a lot of wisdom in Chinese medicine and it has its own special value that's different than Western medicine one is not better than the other. I think they're both complementary if
If you look at them the right way, but the old in Chinese medicine the way of treating cancer was a long was to starve fast. This is a this was a this is a classic Chinese medicine method of treating tumors as they would just not eat until the cancer went away. Now, the the irony of that is actually science is showing that that actually works there was a study done in the US by dr. Vault. I think dr. Valter Longo was the one conducting the study in I believe of Southern California and they had people who had cancer and they had them fast. They took the group they split them in half half of them faster for 72 hours and then went and got chemo the normal chemo treatment the other half didn't fast and did the regular chemo and cancer treatment the group that fasted had a far better response to the chemo and less side effects from the chemo. So it
Essentially weaken the cancer cells to the point where they were just killed by the chemo easier. And as I said earlier fasting seems to cause healthy cells to hunker down right getting stronger and get stronger. Yeah, and they were able to protect themselves from the chemo. So and we're at right now, we're in the process. I believe if I'm not mistaken the fda's actually reviewing fasting as an adjuvant therapy for cancer. And if you look at studies across the board the single most black and white thing you can do to reduce your risk of cancer is to do regular long fast and I say the most black and white thing because if you compare fasting to like just eating a really healthy diet and exercising not going to be as effective. It's just fasting is black and white like eating a healthy diet and exercising much more complex fasting quite eat quite simple in the sense that you should tell people. Hey, you know once a month don't eat for three days and you lower your cancer risk and that
Seems to be true. Yeah. No, I was going to bring up the fact I noticed two with
fasting. There's a spike in growth hormone versus you know, the opposite where we're in the FED State like, you know, there might be more of a spike of testosterone and then inverse or insulin
in particular. Yes, so insulin and growth hormone tend to be inversely related and when you don't fast, you see insulins drop drop drop, obviously your body doesn't need to put out insulin to to you know, to process or whatever utilize the carbohydrates or proteins. You're not eating them growth hormone spikes and it goes up actually quite high and are there benefits to this? We have we don't know yet. We don't know yet, but I would speculate that there probably are some
benefits or aren't there some theories around this like, you know, we're that there's a good chance that you know back in the days. You would be day two or three you haven't had any food and you finally see
Pray, or kill and the body has to go and kill that and you probably don't have a lot of Reserve because you haven't had any calories and so the body gets this Spike from growth
hormones. Yeah, you're here's the interesting thing about fasting for humans is if you're relatively healthy long fasts seem to not have any negative effect, which is so counter to what a lot of people believe so like you'll if you take someone's really healthy. Everything else is good and you have them like fast for like 10 days 14 days 21 days some studies even will do they'll definitely lose muscle mass. They'll definitely lose body fat but everything seems to be their organs will shrink your local your liver tends to shrink, but they rebound once they are fed. It's that whole cell at apogee. You're it's like you're the old liver cells will die sliver shrinks and when you re feed it grows back intends to be healthier, so it's really interesting that we and we produce energy. Just fine for a while.
Through ketosis through our own fat stores. And so we're able to move and have energy. I don't think you're going to have energy like when you feed yourself, but you'll have energy and I think the growth hormone Spike helps with that. So insulin goes down growth hormone goes up for some people. This was me fasting actually contributed to a better relationship with food for me. Now why for me because I was the kind of person who had I had a bad relationship with food and this in this particular way. I was a skinny kid. I wanted to build muscle. I thought I could never skip a meal. I thought I had to eat every other hour. I force-fed myself. I brought food with me and protein bars and protein shakes with me everywhere. I went I was chained to food. It was literally a leash that was tied to me everywhere. I went if I want to vacation if I went out to dinner if I did anything and I was gone without food.
Longer than two hours. I had to have food with me fasting showed me that I could go 24 hours without food and not lose muscle and gains and so it got me to work on my food relationship quite a bit. I know Adam you had a similar experience with fasting know a hundred percent same
thing. I think the relationships in my opinion. This is the most important Pro. I think any client that I've ever taught fasting to its to make them realize that when you thought you were hungry before you really weren't hungry before more than likely that was more psychological or a craving that you have and you weren't truly hungry. I mean to be hungry we would need to go, you know, beyond 24 to 48 hours without eating very few people accidentally do that in a day, you know, we may miss a meal and go an extra four hours of not eating and stretch out. You know, you maybe just had breakfast and or you see you
Breakfast and you went all day until dinner like to somebody there. Oh, I'm starving. It's like no you're really not starving. And so teaching clients to break free of that in my opinion is the most beneficial part of all the different benefits that come from fasting because we live in a society today where we are so used to getting everything we want right away when we want it that we've actually trained ourselves to believe that when you feel this grumbling in your stomach or you feel like you really want pizza or you really want some of this you're starving in your hunger and it's like we don't know how to navigate right, you know, and that's something I noticed two had the similar experience where I just didn't even realize that I was always in a Fed State I just it if I even felt any kind of inclination that I was hungry or had some kind of craving like there's a gas station. There's there's somewhere there where I could go grab, you know, some food too kind of satiate me just in the meantime to get towards my meal and and
All days is revolving around these meals. It's very social. It's very much like a fabric of what you know, how we operate during the day and to be able to pull myself from remove myself from you know, that wheel was super enlightening. You also start to see how many things that we ritualize around food to which I think is really interesting. Like I remember the first time that I experienced, you know long periods of faster. I was fasting for 24 hours or more. I found myself with all kinds of extra time. Yeah. I was like don't know what to do with. Yeah, like damn normally, I would spend 30 minutes to an hour making a meal right here. I would we be getting ready to go do this. We'd be watching TV and then shoveling food in our faith. There's a lot of these things that I'd be doing around food that I was no longer doing and I had all this extra free time. And so there's a lot of benefits that I think come from teaching somebody about fasting and the main ones that I think about that I've seen the most benefits with clients and myself personally have just been
Helping them Break Free of that that relationship of food and that understanding of what real hunger really is like because you get to this point where you think you're hungry and you say oh I've committed already. I'm going too fast for 24 hours and here I might our 12 or so which tends to be where this happens for people and you mentally push through it and then about an hour or so goes by and that feeling passes completely and you
realize that just how psychological at
one right and you realize like oh shit. I wasn't that crazy hungry. Like I'm totally fine right
now. No and it also helps you deal with your issues without food. So what I mean by that is often times people will when they're anxious or stressed or board they eat food. Well if they're fasting now I need to deal with this uncomfortable feeling without my favorite drug, which is food, which can be a good thing because now the person can identify like, oh, I really
For food whenever I'm bored, I know I'm fasting today. So I don't have that food. What are the other things that I can do to deal with this this uncomfortable feeling or just sit here and deal with this uncomfortable feeling rather than occupy myself or distract myself with food and I think that's why it's part of most spiritual
practices. Well, I think there's just massive,
you know benefits to understanding behaviors
like that. I think, you know behaviors and like how your whole day is organized around these things and coping mechanisms. Like you're talking about like all these things like just being able to really assess yourself and like that including that spiritual practice. I think that's one of the main things it's like you're really reflecting,
you know, all those all those like components that make up who you are. Absolutely. I also
love using it as a tool to reset either my own palette or a client's pal. So if I have a client who just says
They don't like vegetables or they don't eat fruit in their diet throwing them on a 24 or 48-hour fast. And then when you reintroduce foods like this when they truly are hungry because they haven't had anything to eat for 24 or 48 Hours having some greens with a little bit of salt or a little bit of butter on is like the most amazing thing ever was completely different. Right and the same thing goes for fruit, you know, if you're somebody who has a lot of sugar in your diet you eat a lot of processed foods. And so when you eat food fruit, like apples and bananas peaches pears grapes berries, whatever and they it taste Bland to you one of the best things that I've ever been able to figure out for my clients is to put them on a fast and then reintroduce some of these foods and it's amazing how it resets the palette because you've just oversaturated all your senses with all these foods that are super super processed and are shooting are getting you like, you know, five times what the Sensation that fruit would give you're used to drinking Coke.
Send having candy and ice cream and these things that were just not found in nature. And so then when you have something like a strawberry, it tastes blah, but then you fast and then you reintroduce them because your body does
adapt to things that are perceived. So it's it's okay. Here's a great analogy. It's like you're asleep and then you wake up in the morning and the Sun is bright. And at first the brightness is overwhelming it's hard for you to open your eyes, but then your body acclimates and then the sunlight no longer bothers your eyes and that's the perfect amount of sunlight. Well, this is what happens when you're hammering your your palate with these extreme flavors that we get from like processed foods over at first, they become their overwhelming. In fact that may have happened so long ago that you might not even remember when it was overwhelming but now your soul accustomed to it that that's what taste normal to you to the point where natural food can no longer compete natural food is Bland. It's again, it's like a super bright.
Sunlight versus a dim room now now whole natural foods are like a dim room you can barely see it. But if you fast it's one of the fastest ways you could reset your palate when you fast after 24 or 48 hours, then you eat whole natural foods and it's like it's on a whole new life. It's delicious again. And if you stay there and you don't go back in the other direction again, now, you can start to enjoy the palatability of healthy foods, which makes it easier. Well, I also notice to like
I being in the FED State all the time. I
it would make
things a little more cloudy for me in terms of like, you know, remembering information and being able to you know, have these kind of like cognitive sharpness and I noticed that was something that when I fasted I was able to access, you know, more sharp more clarity of mind and also to I don't know if we brought the the benefit to of neurogenesis. Well, yeah something that you can't find
You know a way to regrow brain cells like there's not a whole lot of ways that that even happens. This is one of those ways where we I was like my mind was blown. It's the only way as far as we know,
right? Yeah, that's one of the I mean bdnf goes up and the Brain which was like Miracle Grow for your brain like the rest of the body. That's your stem cells get stimulated fasting seems to encourage neurogenesis the forming of new brain cells and new connections fasting is actually quite healthy for the brain and again in ancient practices philosophers routinely would fast in order to come up with insight and breakthroughs and that's probably part of the reason the other part of it may be that when you are fasting you tend to go into ketosis after a couple days, right? And when your when your brain is running on ketones for many people it tends to feel sharper Kiki. It's a cleaner type of energy for the brain.
So interesting to me because
A kid don't you guys remember this like on test Day Mom would fit in, you know, feed me with a stack of pancakes and syrup and they can he sit there all probably the opposite. Yeah, right it you know in a bad thing of orange juice. I mean, I just over saturate my body was sugar like right before I head off into a day of testing where man if what I know now if I was to go into that same situation where I have a big test or something where I might be mentally sharp, I'm going to go in fasted
100% It's funny. I remember do exactly that and I remember sitting in class looking at the test and try not to fall asleep. Yeah, you know because I just had like four waffles with you know, with butter and syrup or whatever, you know, but you know all these all these good things that we're talking about fasting because I mean, here's the thing to be quite honest if you're healthy regular fasts are one of one of the healthiest things you can do for your body. If this is true the studies will show the science will support it. But that being said all these amazing benefits that all of us have listed it could be abused.
Well, not only that but how often do you actually recommend fasting right to clients? How often do you take a client say this is a good person who I think should fast not very often very seldom not very often and there's a reason why we don't recommend fasting to a lot of people we just talked about the food relationship and how it helped us with our food relationship. But here's the deal most people's poor relationship with food is not the same as mine was or Adams was where they're trying to feed themselves because they're too skinny. Most people see opposite Muslim people are afraid of getting fat and so they're poor relationship looked a lot like restricting and binging right in which case fasting is just restricting for them. All it's doing is it's encouraging somebody will and it encourages demote the extreme on
the other end, of course because they're so used to the yo-yo back and forth of I'm either on or off the diet where if I'm on the diet, I'm eating three salads a day and fruit and
Two bowls and that's it. And then when I'm off the diet, I'm eating fast food and sweets and junk food and that they already kind of have this diet and its leadership and then somebody introduces them to intermittent fasting says, hey, my girlfriend says that intermittent fasting is a great way for you to lose body fat. I want to try it and like oh this end it you know what it works so well for them because it's already close to the bullshit. They were on doing becomes a go to this becomes a part of the process. It looks a lot like, you know an anorexic practice where it's like okay where I could just restrict myself from eating and I'm going to lose body fat and like that's that's where my mind is is in terms of using this
practice. Yeah, and it's funny because and this is what we identified back in the day and fitness. This is exactly what we identified. I would get a client and like most of my clients their goal was to lose weight and like most of my clients the way that they tried to lose weight in the past was by starving themselves. Well, everybody every single person has
Have you been on a diet? Yes, what was that die? Oh, I ate barely anything or I just didn't eat breakfast or I just wouldn't eat all day. And this was what people did forever when they wanted to lose weight. The problem was that we which we identified was what ended up happening when they would do that. They would lose weight and gain a back and lose waiting in a back and oftentimes it gained back more most the time then they had lost in the first place. Well
not to mention and we've talked about this before what happens when you go on a you know, calorically restrictive diet or no food in this case is the body eventually adapts and if you start running these days of fasting and fasting and fat and you start fasting all the time and you're eating very very low calorie, when you look at it like as from a you know, vantage point of a week or a month at a time, you know, because it's not just it's not just a day-to-day thing. You have to look at the overall. Oh how much food of I consumed over this last week or two and when you look at the daily average and then you
Cat the the lack of nutrients that they're probably getting your body is going to start to it's going to realize like oh shit, you know, Sal has not given me very much to eat every single day. I better slow this metabolism down and you and learn to utilize the little bit of nutrients that he's giving me. And so what ends up happening is the metabolism slows down from all this fasting and then if you're not perfect Forever at that caloric intake and you decide to enjoy somebody's birthday or you fall off the wagon for a weekend, then the body just rebounds like twice
as hard as it does in your body adapts your body starts to adapt and learn and but is that a bad thing? Your metabolism is not a supposed to be flexible. It's supposed to speed up at times and slow down a time. And so if you're just not giving yourself food a lot your body slows down so that it can run off of that lower amounts of food now to be fair if you're doing the daily intermittent fast and your otherwise healthy and your calories are equal to what they would be if you ate breakfast,
And dinner your metabolism is not going to slow down because your total calories per day are the same but here's the thing and here's what I've noticed when people do the whole skip meals version of fasting where they skip breakfast skip lunch and dinner. They the dinner starts to look more and more like a binge. It starts to look more and more like how much food can I fit in my mouth? You know for this next meal because I haven't eaten all day long. I experienced this when I started doing the warrior type fast where I would go all day without food and then I come home and then I know I have to consume x amount of calories and programs approaching stuff in order to maintain my my fitness goals and it ended up looking like and they used to call it fast and feast but really it's starving binge is what it ends up looking like because it really really does encourage that bad relationship with food. But yeah, if you do the long fast for too long, you're definitely going to start to slow your metabolism down because your total calories are Lo all the time and the metabolism evolve.
Do that it evolved to slow down over time.
This was one of the problems that I had with some of your your famous YouTube people. Like I remember this is when The Hodgetwins got really big and the way they one of the way other than being funny cause I think they're funny they're hilarious but one of the ways that they got really well-known was when intermittent fasting was starting to become popular. They were right on the right on the front end of that and they would show themselves not eating all day. They go get their training session and then they would just Crush like Burger King and McDonald's and eat all this crazy food at the end there young muscular fit guys that are training and lifting pretty heavy and they were showing people that you know, you could go all day, you know not eat for 12 to 16 hours. And then in this window we Crush 3,000 plus calories of McDonald's Wendy's Burger King, whatever fast food restaurant will message them. Yeah, and and their the truth is some somebody at that age and that good of shape and that
Metabolism and it's still a calories in versus calories out.
Yeah, it's still it's still comes down to that. They absolutely could stay in decent shape. Maybe even getting good shape by using methods like this that message I think is a really bad message for a majority of
people fasting is a terrible way to lose fat terrible. It's a terrible tool I should say that does that mean you don't lose fat when you fast? No, of course you lose fat anytime you're in a calorie deficit whether it's no food or little food now to be clear if you do it if you fast for a long time, you'll lose muscle and body fat as your body tries to slow down its metabolism lifting weights will help offset offset this a little bit and if you course if you do it, right and you re feed properly and train that everything the muscle tends to come back, but if you starve yourself to lose weight a lot of the weight that you lose, you know will be muscle. It's a terrible if I have never recommended fasting for fat loss. I've never looked at somebody and said, oh you're
Weight loss we're going to have you fast. No, the only times I've ever recommend recommended fasting was for health benefits independent of fat loss or fat gain everything like
that. But we also talked about when we first start a client off one of the very first things I do is I have them track their food for a week so I could just see what they're eating and always okay always I have to introduce things to their diet before I start to take anything away because they're just lacking things their body needs whether it be fiber whether it be protein whether it be healthy fats, they're just most people aren't eating that way. There aren't eating very balanced and are lacking some of the the micro and macro nutrients that their body needs. And so when I look at the diet as a whole I look at it go. Oh, wow this person even though they're coming to me and they want to lose 30 30 pounds of body fat their bodies not getting enough of what it needs or wants to run efficiently in the first place. So let me introduce.
Some of these greens and let's get some more fiber into the die or let me have them get some lean proteins the die because they're not getting enough protein in there to help recovery and build muscle. And so I end up introducing food to somebody who's trying to lose body fat. So if you take that same person, which is my average client that I've trained over all these years and you said I want to do intermittent fasting for fat loss and you just go right into their their their poor diet habits that they currently were having and you transition them into intermittent fasting what you end up doing is you still are eating, you know foods that are not ideal for their body or you're not getting the nutrients your body needs. And now you're just putting it in a condensed to window or you're restricting calories and more nutrients that person needs and ultimately it's not ideal for the
metabolism. So it totally it encourages a very very bad relation. If I take somebody who has always been afraid of being overweight and is dealing with body fat and I tell him to skip meals
I am going to make their food relationship. Terrible. Yeah it the person you tell the skip meals is the person that has a fear of skipping meals that always needs to eat because they need to build muscle. That's the person that's the guy or girl who may benefit. This is why I didn't
I'd recommend it very often. I mean ever the majority of my clients were already very motivated. They were already like very active very much like already teetering towards too low of calorie intake to begin with and so for me to then like apply this as a practice, you know, it's just going to it's going to like lower their metabolism even further and it's not going to do
any beneficial. Here's the other thing too. We talked about growth hormone going up with fasting but soda cortisol cortisol is your energy hormone when you're when it's high. It gives you more energy to move and function and your body remember without food is preparing you or giving you energy to find food, right? This is an again evolutionary mechanism, but we know as cortisol being the stress hormone. So if you're somebody who's getting poor sleep,
And you're under a lot of stress, you know, maybe HPA axis dysfunction of some sort. Do you think fasting is going to be a great idea? All right, definitely not the type A clients that I would get who worked out too much didn't get enough sleep who were frazzled, which is a lot of you listening right now who overtrain and you know, don't get enough sleep and just over, you know beat yourself up all the time fasting is going to make it way worse. It's another stress another it's another stress and that case.
Yes. Yeah. It's another stress and then the body doesn't know. I mean, that's the thing that I think people forget to understand that working out as a stress not eating food for long periods of time can be a stress. You have all this stress from work. You have the stress from the the environment that you're in with your work environment with your family life your relationships. So you get you and if you're that and you're also a type a go-getter grind it so your balls to the wall at everything or you give everything you got.
And you add in something like fasting your body is just going to revolt it's not going to respond to you the way you would like it to respond. And it's a terrible choice to use for the intentions of fat loss. I've never recommended fasting to a client for fell. I love to recommend fasting to clients that I think are in the right mindset in the right place. And then also we haven't touched on is and why I'm not a fan of the warrior fast and why I'm not a fan of like, you know, consistently intermittent fasting in the fasting windows. I personally believe that the the most benefits that you get from it is less frequent and longer
duration. Yeah, the science would support that.
So I think that once a month doing a two or a three day fast or twice a month doing a one day type of fast, I think is far more beneficial for health reasons for relationship with food. You will get to all the other benefits.
We talked about from fasting in there and then you end and then I also believe that it doesn't allow the body to get really adapted to this eating pattern because if the thing the the knock that I have on the fasting window and and doing it so regularly is our bodies are really really smart. They learn to adapt and I would imagine that if you do it on a very regular basis all the time that the the same benefits that you got the very first time you did it versus the 30th time in a row, you've done it in ish. They would diminish it only makes logical sense. That's what would
happen. Yeah. I mean that that definitely that definitely could be true. I think the bigger thing is the looking at the benefits of a long fast versus The Daily day-to-day type of fast and in my experience, here's my personal experience. I've had I have a lot of experience with with fasting. My personal experience is I get way more benefits if I occasionally do a 48-hour fast versus doing the every single day, you know, skipping one or two meals
Type of fast I get way way better benefits everything from my gut health to you know, my athletic performance to just my state of mind everything and the clients that I've worked with who fasting was appropriate for have echoed the same thing, you know back to the hormone thing. Here's another one that a lot of people don't like to talk about which I find funny Justin. He brought up anabolic fasting. Yeah, which I think Solaris fasting lowers testosterone now, it's not permanent. It'll lower while your fasted when you refeed testosterone goes back up but in a fasted State your testosterone does tend to tend to drop so it's not so when we talk about the growth hormone boosting benefits of fasting and everybody's like, oh, I want my growth hormone to go up. So I'm going too fast. You have the counter lowering testosterone affects and the rising cortisol affects from it. Now in that context. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. But my the reason why I'm bringing this up is to to offset the the bullshit sales.
Of you know 0 raises growth hormone. Therefore, it's anabolic. Well, it also lowers testosterone. So it's kind of like in the middle I guess. Yeah. It doesn't do it doesn't do anything. And of course fasting for long periods of time your body does pair muscle down now takes a long time before your body Burns muscle for energy. So there's a bit of a myth there where your body starts to burn. It muscle right away that takes a while for that to happen. But your you still lose muscle not because your body's burning it, but because like what we talked about earlier your body's trying to slow down its metabolism and one of the the the biggest offenders in this case or one of the biggest calorie burners in your body is your skeletal muscle and big muscles burn more calories. So if your body wants to slow down it's going to reduce muscle mass now. Keep in mind if I do a 48-hour fast and I lose a little bit of muscle and then I refeed I do it properly muscle comes back and then some but if this is inappropriate for you if you're somebody who
It's too much stress. Like I talked about earlier you have HPA axis dysfunction and you throw fasting on top of it. You're going to lose muscle and is not going to come back. It's not going to come back until you balance things out and get your body in a healthier State because all you've done is make you made your health worse. And this by the way, women are more sensitive to fasting than men this is this is another important note and I know this I belong to these forums a while ago on fasting and you see men on their that be like, oh, I went four days and five days without fasting and I, you know started refeeding it felt great and women would be like, I feel terrible. I'm losing hair. My nails are getting weaker my periods, you know being, you know irregular whatever and it makes sense. It is not to say that women can't fast and men can but they're just more sensitive to fasting mainly because their bodies obviously evolved to procreate and so if you're without food for long enough your body's like yeah, we're not going to let you procreate.
So it's going to make changes in this happens with a low calorie diet to if you go low calorie for too long and lose your period and hormones go out of whack because your body does not want to procreate so women tend to be a little bit more more more sensitive to this but you know fasting for fat loss is if that's your primary goal for fast for fasting I'm gonna tell you this right now bad idea bad idea and it's ship for anybody for anybody. It's a terrible idea to do it. You're already walking into it. I mean, here's the thing you need to understand all powerful tools are double-sided. I don't care any powerful tool that you use in Your Arsenal to help you accomplish a particular goal has a dual side. There's a light in a dark side to it. Just like any I can pull any powerful tool. Look at fire the invention of fire. There's a there's a side of it that could be very dark in the side of it. That could be very light fasting can be a very very powerful tool for spiritual growth.
And for a good relationship with food now, what does that mean on the opposite side? It means it can also completely destroy the spiritual side of it and completely destroy your relationship to food if you're walking into fasting because you're doing it to lose body fat. I hate to break it to you. But that's the dark side. You're already using fasting in a as a powerful tool to damage your relationship to food. You will not gain a better relationship to food. If you walk into fasting with the idea of losing body fat not going to happen 100% It's going to make your relationship to food worse. The only people that benefit from fasting in a positive way or the people that are going into it not to lose body fat not to change the body composition not to become more fit but rather for the spiritual and health benefits to feel better to become healthier and maybe the abstinence effect that you get from not having food and dealing with things like natural hunger boredom stress anxiety.
So on and I cannot stress that enough you go into fasting because you're trying to burn body fat one out of percent poor relationship for food and it is completely inappropriate to join the Dark Side. So let's briefly talk
about who we would recommend fasting to and how we would so the first person that comes to mind right away. I used to love to do this to my competitors at the time that I was coaching competitors. I believe I was the only coach of this least. I was only coach that I knew of that would actually have his competitors fast during a cut or a prep and the I remember every every client that I had that I may do that. I know freaked out when I told them that hey tomorrow we're fasting and they'd be like what and the reason why I wanted to do that is because I also know that we had I had trained them so well before that to be tracking carrying food and so tied to food that I also wanted to show them the benefits of being completely
Acted from the food and so it was my way of showing them a good relationship with food and that your muscle is not going to fall off your body like crazy. We're going to be absolutely fine the next day and they would be in fact most of them will wake up feeling amazing the next day especially when they re fed and they exercise. So those are the clients. I love to intermittently introduce it now normal client who I think has a healthy relationship with food. We're in a good place metabolism wise so they're eating a good amount of calories. I like to tell clients to do a two-day fast once a month or two one 24-hour fast. So I like I like a long 48 hour once a month if I can get them do or split to 24-hour fast in the month is what I like to do.
Yeah. I mean the irony is as I'm thinking about this is people who fast for fat loss and up getting fatter over overtime. You know, I just want to make that point before I talk about who I think is ideal. If you go into it trying to burn body fat and that's your goal.
Just going to get fatter over time as you continue to to restrict and binge restrict and binge because that's what you're going to end up happening. The here's the irony the person who I think fasting is perfect for is somebody who's already fit and healthy. Somebody's got a good relationship with food. Yeah, somebody who's already done most of the other work. It is not the person who's just starting to do the work. It's not the person who's like hey, I need to improve my health. I've been eating shitty. I'm not exercising. I'm not going to tell them. Oh first thing you should do is fast know the person I say that should that is going to benefit somebody who's been doing that already somebody who's already developed a good relationship to food somebody who's already eating a good diet. Somebody's already active there were already healthy. They've already got good Stress Management. Now, let's add in the practice of fasting. That's the tip of the pyramid. I
mean you do have to like Build That Base out before we get up to that point. I mean, it is a powerful tool like you're mentioning earlier to where if you're if you don't like really know how to navigate through that and
The right intention going into it, you know, you could do yourself some damage. And so that's I think that's the cautionary why we're being kind of a cautionary about it in general is just to you know, educate people that here's how we would actually use it but it's all pretty much how to be more healthy. It's not like how to you know, you know alter your body
composition. Yeah. It's like it's like you're building a Lego set and you're skipping to page 100 and you're trying to add those pieces on and it's not going to work. You haven't built the other the rest of it that it attaches to so it's not going to work. If you don't already have a good diet and a good relationship to food if you're not already appropriately active. So you're doing a good workout. That's right for your body. If you don't already have good sleep and your otherwise in good health through fasting isn't going to you're not going to derive much benefit from it. In fact, you may instead derive negative effects from it like we
About earlier. So keep that in mind if you're thinking about doing fast and keep that in mind, especially if you think you're going too fast just to burn body fat now. I think we should also talk about how to do it the right way because it sounds simple right just don't eat but there are things that I've identified that seemed to make it easier and where I also derive the most benefit from fasting I find for me and for the people that I've worked with who fast the best way to fast is to lead into a fast with a low-carbohydrate ketogenic type diet that's relatively low calorie. And here's why the shock of a fast the psychological shock of a fast is terrible when you go into it after eating a lot of calories. So if I like because here's what a lot of people do a lot of people think I'm fasting Saturday Saturday and Sunday. I'm going fast. So then Thursday and Friday, they're fucking but I'm going nuts. I'm eating whatever I'm going out. I'm eating a lot of food. You can have a rough fast Saturday and Sunday.
Do it that way as a tough transition. So I do is I prepare my for my fast let's say I'm going to start my fast on Saturday. I start preparing on Thursday. My calories are lower by carbohydrates in particular or lower Friday comes around. I have almost no carbohydrates to kind of kick try to kick start my body in the into ketosis. My calories are again low. I'm eating clean. I'm eating Whole Foods and then I walk into my fast were I'm not having any food at all for whatever length of period time think that's very
important to you know, approach it that way first and to kind of scale that and lead into it with that kind of, you know momentum. I have seen people use products like cleanses and different things to distract you while you're doing your fast, which I highly like don't recommend. All you need is water and you know, like being present and conscious of that's why we kind of tied in more towards the spiritual side of it because
You have to be comfortable in the fact that you know water is all the substance you
need. It's work you're going in there to do work
taking BCAAs while you're fasting is here, but
also dumped again in your in your in again. Those are people who are going into the fast for the body composition aesthetic effects, right? If you want to derive the most effects from fasting you don't have food and you don't have anything else either that includes stimulants that includes depressants, right? So I know some people are like, oh, I like another challenge. Yes, black coffee or tea while I'm fasting and and technically do you still drive the physiological benefits from fasting if you have you know things that are devoid of calories like tea and coffee. Yes, are you getting are you going to get all of the potential benefits from fasting know I go without anything when I'm fasting I'm fasting that means no coffee. No caffeine. That means very little stimulation. I am like working on myself, you know -
It's the food and from a physiological standpoint. There is some evidence that shows that it's better because your liver still has to process caffeine and stuff from teas and stuff like that. So there is some evidence to show that you'll get better physiological benefits to if you go completely without a couple things that I also do when I fast you may notice hypotension while fasting this is the in is a normal natural thing that'll happen for some people wear their blood pressure will drop not a bad thing, but it can be a little bit annoying if you're sitting down and then you go to stand up and you'll find yourself get a little dizzy or feel a little faint and then everything comes back to normal after a few seconds something that can help with that. Oh and headaches as well. Some people get headaches because of the the vasodilating effects that that caused the hypotension some people that can trigger headaches add a little bit of salt a little horse or minerals to your water. So mineral water is good for this or a little bit of sea salt or pink Himalayan salt.
In your pinch of it in your water tends to help people in this particular State. I like to go to bed early when I'm fasted probably because I want to sleep and get over it get it over with. Yeah, but also I think the fact the sleeping process helps with the fast and don't
plan any super high intensity
workout. Yes. People always ask me like, what do you do? How do you work out when you fast like, I don't ya like my I'm not trying to build need for yeah. I'm not trying to build muscle right when I fast what I do is I do I am active but a lot of my activity revolves around I'll go on walks outside or hikes just to kind of, you know be around
nature. It's also really important to what you eat when you come out of the
fast, that's a that's such a big such a most important thing.
Yeah, when you end this this was like a major shocker for me the first time that I did like an extended fast where I went longer than 24 hours. So my first 48 hour fast,
did you do that one with us there? Was it
before those with you guys? Nothing and boy?
Did I real a recognize how sensitive my gut was? I mean, luckily I had talked to you beforehand and you would recommended that. I just do something really light and like bone broth. And so that's become like a go to like when I fast I'll just have like a bowl of bone broth and maybe some like a small bowl of veggies and not even a big bowl because even the veg vegetables especially unless they're really really cooked really well are tough for my gut to process the first time.
It's common that the first bowel movement that you have when you re feet after a fast is going to be diarrhea. This is common for a lot of people your body your digestive system literally, not literally but figuratively goes to sleep I should say so you're waking about it back up and it's starting to move and process things. You don't want to throw a bunch of hard to digest heavy food at it. Like Justin did when he came out of it fast. I saw this eyes pointing away. What did you do you like?
Got a huge Burger so that it was a bad idea. Yeah, definitely. All right, man. It was tough on the stomach know anything that's
important. You you treat what you do before and after it seriously, right like your workout if your workouts really important you do a good priming session before afterwards, you feed yourself properly. Maybe do some proper stretching like you don't just go into it and expect to get the same results you would get if you treated what you did before and after well the same is true for a fast coming out of a fast slow come out slowly and eat things that are easily digestible and in small portions. So bone broth a cup of bone broth sip on it. Don't just pound it. Well cooked vegetables because vegetables are far easier to digest when the well cooked. So I recommend people boil them. So boil some some, you know broccoli.
Or rapini or asparagus make it mushy and eat that with some of your bone broth and then wait like an hour and a half two hours. See how you feel my guts. Okay have a little bit more the day after your fast is a slow refeed. It's the second day after the fast where you can start to eat back to normal. Do not jump back into normal eating after a prolonged fast because you are going to and it's usually the ones that are longer than 24 hours after a 24-hour fast if you just eat once a day not a big deal 48 hours or more you're going to want to take your time and slowly refeed your body and give your body time to acclimate. What you'll find is three four days later. You might notice some improved athletic performance better sleep better health better sense of well being adjusted palette where you'll eat food you like. Wow, this tastes really good. I mean all these incredible benefits, but again, I'm going
Stress this again. If you go into it without a good relationship to food, you're not going to get any of those benefits. Here's what it will look like if you're going into for fat loss. You'll fast 48-72 hours notice you lost five pounds of water and maybe some body fat or you know on the scale. Oh, wow. This totally worked. My fast is over and you're going to go back and then you're going to binge and it's all going to come back and you're going to have bad gut health afterwards and it's gonna be a total waste and it's only going to encourage you to try it again, which looks a lot like restricting and binging. So if you can't if you if it is appropriate for you, make sure you do it the right way take it seriously don't plan lots of events or it's but here's another thing. I don't schedule outings when I'm fast. It's not easy and makes it's already not easy enough to fast for 72 hours. I'm not trying to go to my mom's house for Sunday dinner and sit there while Everybody Eats, you know during my fast I'm probably going to skip it. I'm going to pick a weekend where
Doing anything. I can just focus on the work I'm trying to do so and that's it. Look go to mine pump free.com and download our guides. We got a ton of them on there. They're all free. You can also find us all on Instagram. We all post our own information that's unique and separate from the podcast. You can find me at mine pumps out you can find just that my pump just and you can find Adam at my pump Adam.
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