Dave Asprey talks with journalist Lara Logan about fasting strategies and how to manage hunger through diet changes. Logan shares how she uses fasting to stay sharp while traveling constantly, and they discuss the hormones that control when you actually feel hungry versus when you think you do.
Bulletproof radio, a state of high performance. Now, if you use the fasting hacks in fast this way, you actually, okay, I ate an early dinner. I had four hours before bed. I slept for eight hours. I've got 12 hours of fasting. Go another four or six hours, wait till lunch to eat. And if you use the fasting hacks that morning, black coffee. Better yet, bulletproof coffee. Those two will raise your ketones up enough so that it resets your hunger levels to your current body weight. And the side effect of that is it'll drop ghrelin, which makes you really hungry and think about food all the time. And it'll raise a hormone called CCK or cholecystokinin, which makes you feel full. So now instead of someone puts the donuts out at 10:00am look, everybody, I brought donuts today. Normally when I was heavy, I'd look at those, man, I'm not gonna eat a donut today. But the glazed one looks really good. And eventually you eat half the glazed donut and you're like, why did I do that? But if instead they put the donuts out and you go, oh, donuts are delicious, but I'm not hungry, I just don't want one. And it's very freeing. There's a. One of my favorite studies from the book show that 15% of the average person's thoughts are about what's for their next meal. And if you're a heavy person like I was, or you have blood sugar regulation issues, it's probably closer to 30 or 40, 50% of your thoughts. Tacos, donuts. Oh, is that candy? And it's just constantly there and it distracts you from your life. Well, if you had a job to do and you had parenting to do while you were doing your job, as is the case for most people now, what if you got those 15% of your thoughts back to do something else? That's really cool, but it has to do with manipulating those two hormones. And just sleeping for eight hours can raise your ketones a little bit. Having that earlier dinner raises it a little bit. Caffeine, the amount in two small cups of coffee doubles your ketone production. And the MCT oil that's in bulletproof coffee quadruples ketone production. So suddenly you're up to levels where yay, my neurons are happy. I have the laser like focus that people usually fast in a cave for two days to get. I got it the first morning. But most importantly, I didn't think about pizza even once before lunch. And that's been freeing for me.
It's fascinating. Of course, you had to choose the day when I had donuts this morning to tell me that story. Just rub it in, Dave. Okay, Thanks a lot. Seriously. Donut glaze. Donut holes. I blame my husband and my children. And then now I feel like I'm committing a crime, feeding my children donuts. But that doesn't normally happen.
If it happens every now and then, we can celebrate eating junk food. And the magic is when you have a highly resilient metabolism. I can eat donuts if I really want to. And my blood sugar doesn't go crazy. It does go up, but then it goes right back down the way it's supposed to, and I can walk away. Except the gluten still messes with me. But. But generally speaking, a flexible metabolism can handle some sugar. It's still not good for you, but it doesn't knock you out, it doesn't make you gain a bunch of weight, and it doesn't make you crave food and turn you into zombie the way it did for me before. So, all right, you. You had some donuts. No problem, as long as you're not paying for them for the next three days, which is what happens when your metabolism is broken.
