Fasting and Spirituality

I don't think you should just fast for 21 days, juice only on January 1st, and go back to bad habits after that. There's a lifestyle enjoying what God has given us, enjoying, you know, the donuts you mentioned or a birthday cake. You're either disciplining the flesh or the flesh is disciplining you. I hate to say it that way, but that's the truth. I'm either bringing my flesh into subjection or my flesh is leading me. And it's a, it's a balance. It's a hard, you know, you've got that battle inside of us. And so I think as we're following God, as we're asking for clarity, as long as it's not, you know, oh, I want to get a six pack of abs and I want to be this super spiritual person. I want to, you know, if your focus is on serving God and pleasing him in the Word, you know, you'll be guided, you'll be led to what is the right direction.

I want to talk about fasting and kind of this fast feast cycling and your own experience with fasting. So tell me about the book you wrote on fasting and what your own fasting protocol, or I believe it was almost like an experiment was in writing that book.

Yeah, there was the one you were talking about feasting and fasting. I did bring, bring a copy. People can take it. Take a look at actually. And just so people know we're not necessarily promoting a book, is they can actually download these for free on our church website at Westside Christian Fellowship. All the books are there, free downloads.

Poop.

Click it and you're good to go. So I just want to help people, but Amazon, last I checked, doesn't let me put them on there free. You know, we tried, we tried to get.

You can do like 99 cents on Kindle, which a lot of people.

Yeah, so we went real low on Kindle and audible and things like that. But so with fasting, the funny thing is, you know, in the bodybuilding world that's like, no, do, do not miss a meal, you know, every, every two and a half hours kept, Keep the metabolic rate up. And of course we know that. I don't think that's really true anymore with insulin and how it's released.

You got to have all your Pyrex glass containers full of, full of brick and, you know, broccoli and chicken at least three or four times a day.

I was up to when I had the 8,000. I was up to 8,000 calories when I was at 270 with on growth hormone and you had to make yourself eat, you know, it was, yeah, I remember those days, the bowl of pasta and chicken. So anyway, so I was taught, I mean I've heard, I read it in the Bible and I would justify like oh man, I don't. They didn't know what they didn't really know, you know, as much as we know now. I know Ezra fasted, Nehemiah fasted, Esther fasted, Moses fasted, Elijah fasted, Jesus himself fasted, Paul said in much fastings. And so fasting is throughout the whole Bible. And Jesus said when you fast, not if you fast. So that's pretty interesting. There was a lot of conviction, you know, when I first came back to the Lord like, ah man, they don't know. It's not that good for you really because you'll die if you don't eat. For what, what was a normal three days ago.

You'll die or at least you'll miss some of your gains, bro.

Yeah, you'll miss. They call it, looking back when I was lifting, it was, you look sucked up. I don't know what they say now, but you look sucked up and now you call it gear for steroids. Back then we called it on the juice.

So I was pretty much pushing it away. Especially if you're into, as I get older now, wanting to retain my muscle. Hello. You know, I went from bench pressing 315 pounds 15 times to now maybe deadlift it. You know, it's just because you start to decrease as you know.

And that by the way, Shane, is an uphill battle. Now in people who are encouraging fasting is this concept of muscle centric medicine, which is fantastic. Muscle is critical for longevity. The problem is there's this myth going out there that in order to maintain or build muscle you must feed it constantly. And in fact it's kind of the opposite actually. You've probably come across this research that short term fasting stints can especially combined with resistance training and things like protein refeeds, cause a subsequent bounce back and increase in growth hormone and testosterone and hypertrophy while also giving the gut a break and allowing for some cellular autophagy to occur. So there's a definite case to be made for intermittent fasting cycles and even periods of longer term caloric restriction.

Yeah, like the five day fast with insulin, like growth factor raising and everything you just said. I, I personally would, I always went past that. I actually did a 40 day fast, primarily water only.

40 days.

40 days. What price. I did some bone broth and I did some juice if I had to preach and I talk about it. It's a fasting documentary on Amazon Prime. They just, they just posted it. It's. I think it's called 40 days, my 40 day journey. And it was, I was confused.

I want to hear more details on this. Walk me through this 40 day fasting journey.

You go from a guy who's totally against fasting and then just reading, you know, in the Bible, Jesus fasted 40 days. You know, I follow a little bit of Alan Goldhammer stuff. We've talked on email before and of course they don't recommend. Don't, don't fast without.

Super.

We should probably say that too. Disclaimer. I'm not giving medical advice here. I'm just telling you about my own personal experience and I think you do need to get medical advice if you're delving into waters that you're not familiar with. So I was just ignoring it for a while while I'm playing around with it. But I thought, you know, hey, this is possible. I lost 37 pounds over the 40 day period we did the documentary. But I had to preach sometimes three times a day like on Easter. And so that I would bring like a kajava, you know, smoothie, maybe 200 calories, two scoops in it. So it wasn't what they would call pure water only because in order to do that you can't take any nutrients in whatsoever to go. You know, if you're fighting, I would recommend if you're fighting cancer or these, these types of diseases that really need you to go deep into autophagy. And so it was just incredible after three or three days, not really having hunger, but the, the, the, my mouth was, and I was getting heavy. I was eating primarily plant based and I got to £230 and just a lot of nuts, just too many calories. And so I, I understand that calorie, you know, we shouldn't count calories like we used to. And it's, it's, it's more about hormone levels and not as much about. But I. Calories also play a role in, I mean if your body, if you're taking in more than your.

More than you're burning, calories play a bigger role than anything else. Despite a lot of the folks who try to defy that. If it fits your macros, like at the end of the day, if you restrict calories and exercise, you'll lose weight. Yeah, just watch that horse to death. On other podcasts yeah.

So, and, and so maybe it'd be good to talk. We can talk in the future. I'm curious where you stand on that. But the bottom line is I think we should be aware of what we're eating because I said okay, mainly plant based, got some clean meat and was just eating too much. And people are like, wow, yeah, I work out five days a week, but I eat too much. So if you eat too, because I'm that late night eater, I don't know, you know, after, if I could just stop at 5 after a healthy big salad and chicken breasts, I'd be great. But then the chocolate, you want this, you want peanut butter, you want. We have a lady dropped off a couple gallons of raw organic goat milk.

Oh man.

Oh, I love that stuff.

And by the way, I'm the same way with late night eating. Just because we have so much good food around our house, you know that people send us like the dark chocolate bars and all the different healthy ice creams. You know what saved my butt is ketone esters. I now have ketones with dinner and after dinner I don't even think about food because my ketone levels are so high. So that's my gut.

The little five dollar liquid.

Yeah, they're not inexpensive, but yeah, like a shot of ketone esters or even the ketone alcohol alternative, the one made by ketone Aid. Like having a big glass of that with dinner if you can. And you can, you can measure this with a sensor like Biosense or any ketone measurement device if you can kind of figure out a way by the time you finish staring at ketone levels AB about 3 millimolar. Like you just, you don't think about snacking at night, just goes away. Which is great. Wow.

Yeah. And I actually ordered some after you recommended though, so I'm anxious to try it. Try one out. But I want to get more too. So anyway, back to the 40 day fast. And there was a time where I said forget it. We were at the in laws house and I had some salad and a little bit of meat and I feel like, like you know how you, you're going two weeks, you feel like upset, depressed that I blew it a little bit and so I got back on track the next day and just kept going, going. Eventually got to like 193from230. And so why I was doing it though mainly is spiritual reasons. You know, there's a verse in the Bible, this kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting and the spiritual disciplines. Because if you just fast, it's a weight loss program for Christians. That's why you've got it instead of, instead of eating, you take it to prayer and time with God. And what's amazing is I didn't realize how much extra time I had. Have you ever, you know, when you don't eat all day?

Oh, at least the calculations I've done is with making the smoothie in the morning, you know, lunch with the emails, dinner with the family that I don't quite count because I want to be in the family with the, or with the family in the evenings anyways. But it comes out to about an hour and a half or two hours that if I cut out a meal or on the days I decide I'm just going to do like a fatty coffee or some ketone esters and amino acids with lunch because I want to be highly productive. Yeah, I mean the, the, the time and the freedom of time. And also of course, you combine that with the focus and the productivity from the elevated ketones and the fasting and it, Yeah, I mean the productivity impacts are enormous.

And one. So I, you know, and I was, I wasn't too worried about, you know, vitamins, minerals, because I took a little bit of supplementation and overall it was a great experience and I, I wanted to do another fast. That was about a year ago and it is, I struggle. Okay, when is too much. But I began to realize studying it in the Bible, looking at all these different things. I think a person, especially as a believer, should live a fasted lifestyle. Now I don't mean I should clarify. I don't mean you gotta be fasting all the time. But I don't think you should just fast for 21 days, juice only on January 1st, and go back to bad habits after that. You know, there's a lifestyle enjoying what God has given us, enjoying, you know, the donuts you mentioned or a birthday cake or. But there's, you're either disciplining the flesh or the flesh is disciplining you. There's, you know, that, that's, that's. I hate to say it that way, but that's the truth. I'm either bringing my flesh into subjection or my flesh is leading me. And it's a, it's a balance. It's a hard, you know, you've got the, that, that battle inside of us. And so I think as we're following God, as we're asking for clarity, as long as it's not, you know, oh, I want to get a six Pack of abs. And I want to be this super spiritual person. I want to, you know, you know, if your focus is on serving God and pleasing him in the Word, you know, you'll be guided, you'll be led to what is the right direction. So I don't know if there's a happy medium because, you know, those who fast a lot feel like they're fasting too much and those who don't feel like they need to do it more. But I think if you can just, you know, live a self disciplined life and I think adding fasting to your weekly schedule is pretty important because that way you don't get too out of control.

I think so too. And just to share with people like a practical boots on the streets protocol, actually do that in a moment. But I got to mention, and I don't know if you've seen this book, but I first discovered the power of combining spiritual disciplines with self denial from a clerk or food standpoint. When I read a book, it's super cheesy looking, you can find on Amazon, I think it's only a couple bucks. But it's called Atomic Power with God through Fasting and Prayer. It's by a guy named Franklin hall and he gets into all of the different remedies that are healed and the impact in terms of the power of prayer when you combine it with self denial. And, and as we were talking about earlier, the link between curtailing hunger and appetite and being able to curtail things like sexual appetite or sinful appetite. And I read that book, it was absolutely fantastic. But to get back to what I do now is daily. I do an intermittent fast for 12 to 16 hours. And I gotta admit, I'm a lean guy with the high metabolism. Most days I wake up hungry and I could go make myself a smoothie right away. But I engage in all of my morning spiritual disciplines, the prayer, the devotion, the scripture reading, etc, without any coffee, without any food, and I have a big glass of water when I get up. So there's like a mini fast each day for, for women who are premenopausal. You want to be kind of careful with that because it can downregulate fertility and have an impact on the endocrine system. So women do a little better with 10 to 12 hours, guys closer to like 12 to 16 hours. But I think that's fine from a daily standpoint. And then every quarter I do a longer kind of like getaway, similar to your 40 day fast, but only three to five days where it'll be juice or bone broth or amino acids and ketones, at least 40% or less of the calories I'd normally consume. This would be almost like what would be called a fasting mimicking diet approach. And I use that time to catch up on the giant stacks of books on the deeper sections of prayer. Sometimes a solo retreat in my house, like a staycation, so to speak. And so four times a year, spring, summer, winter and fall, I have caloric restriction and fasting combined with prayer, meditation, spiritual reading, and a focus on the spiritual disciplines. So it's intermittent fasting daily and then a quarterly deeper dive for three to five days, which is pretty achievable. And then you mentioned about kind of balancing the caloric intake with the caloric denial. Well, this is where I think, you know, religion, if you want to call that, ties in pretty beautifully with these spiritual disciplines because we have one day of the week, Sundays, where not only is my physical activity much lower or at least less intense, you know, it's like walking with the family, bike rides, tennis, pickleball, etc. But Sundays are the feast day, Sundays are the glorious, like, double waffle breakfast with the family, or big pile of eggs and the big lunches, sometimes with friends and a big dinner party at our house. And you just basically fill the body with everything it needs for the whole week, which is also great for resetting the thyroid, making sure the thyroid doesn't get down regulated from too much caloric or carbohydrate restriction. That's a day in which I don't worry at all about carbohydrates, even though I'm more careful with carbohydrates on the other days. So basically, I would say six days of the week, I'm kind of sort of hungry most of the day, and especially hungry during that intermittent fasted period. And then that's the self denial piece that we talked about earlier in this podcast has so many side benefits. And then I get that one day of a week where it's rest, where it's embracing, almost like a little glimpse of heaven. And I get all the food I want, all the feasting I want, and then four times a year, I can do the fasting with a deeper focus on the spiritual disciplines. Again, back to what you just noted, especially because I've got an extra two or so hours in the day because I'm not making or worrying about food anyways.

Yeah, well, you just made a couple good points. And I think that protocol, I would actually heavily endorse that protocol and encourage people to do that. And when you take that three to five day, it's good when you have a little bit of juice. That's why you can get a lot of stuff done with your book reading and different things. Things because if it's just water only, you know, that's when you go into some pretty deep detox symptoms and things like that, which is good too. But I want people to know, hey, I'd rather have you have 2, 3, 400 calories of juice every day and get through a five day fast and have you give up on day one.