Intuitive Fasting, Metabolic Flexibility & Metaphysical Meals

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance. You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today we're going to talk about intuitive fasting and getting in touch with real hunger with a guy who really knows what he's talking about. I'm talking about Dr. Will Cole, leading functional medicine, nutrition expert and senior clinic director at the Cole Natural Health Centers in Pittsburgh, one of the top 50 functional and integrative doctors in the country. And he looks at chronic disease and things like thyroid and inflammation. He's also known for his book the Keto Tarian, and he has a new book that is right up your alley. If you like Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting, if you liked Fast this way, you absolutely have to read his new book, which is called Intuitive Fasting. It's this idea that fasting doesn't have to be rigid and painful and that there's really good stuff you can do there and that it doesn't have to be the same every day. So Will and I are in great agreement on a lot of things, but not everything. And we're going to go deep on fasting for you today. And if you're saying, I'm really tired of fasting, trust me, we're going to talk about a lot of stuff that isn't fasting because he's a functional doctor, you know, pick his brain all over the place. Will, welcome to the show.

Thank you, my friend. It's truly an honor. I'm excited to be talking.

You've also just launched the Art of Being well, your new podcast, which comes on the heels of Goop Feliz and some other very successful podcasts. So I'm excited you've got your own show. I think it's important. We need way more functional medicine leaders out there saying, I'm not just interviewing people, but I'm sharing the stuff that works in the clinic. So when you see some garbage headline that just makes no sense, you can say, well, here's my take on it, and I've got a license. And you can talk to other people like me who are unlicensed biohackers who, you know.

Yeah.

Really don't know anything.

Oh, please. You know more than most doctors do in this world. There's no doubt about that. But I appreciate the kind words. And it is true. It's like when you talk about this thing 10 hours a day, we talk about wellness, functional medicine all day long, consulting patients. It's kind of like the air you breathe and it's easy to talk about. And I'm excited for the chance to share case studies and the deep dive stuff that I love to help people with and help people overcome these things.

How long have you been fasting?

Well, I've been fasting professionally, like. Like consulting patients with it for the past 12 years. But personally, up 15 years doing it myself, personally.

Take me back 12 years. When you first told a patient to fast. Oh, boy, did they punch you.

Yeah. You know what? That's like, the duality of what we do in functional medicine, the science and then the art of it. The science is like, well, I know on paper, this lab is saying you'd really benefit. You're really metabolically inflexible. You have chronic inflammation, you have gut issues, your body's reacting to every food under the sun. And then you have to see the art of it all. The space in between the words. The. Is this person even ready for this? Where's their head in their heart? Where are they at intellectually and emotionally with this stuff? So sometimes it's leading people into these practices, leading people into these tools of wellness and functional medicine, where they actually can digest it, no pun intended, where they actually can take it in and receive it. Because sometimes there's more stuff that they could benefit from than the vessel can contain. And sometimes it's just meeting them where they're at and realizing we don't have to do everything all at once. But, you know, most of my patients are really complex, complicated patients who have done a lot. So most of them wouldn't hit me over the head with fasting. But I imagine you could really rock somebody's world if they're new to this.

When I weighed 300 pounds and I was much younger, I remember someone suggested skipping a meal or whatever, and I was so offended because I'm like, don't. You know, I'll go into starvation mode and I'll be hypoglyt, bitchy, and all that kind of stuff. And there's a lot of emotional stuff, which led me to write a lot of the emotional stuff in my take on fasting. But I like the word that you used in intuitive fasting in the title. There's what makes what you're recommending intuitive compared to all of the fasting stuff that's out there. I mean, fasting is kind of like, don't eat. There you go.

What's different? It's par. It's like probably a paradoxical statement at first, like, how could fasting be intuitive? And in some ways, that's true. It is. They're Two different things of when somebody's metabolically inflexible, meaning if somebody's hangry and they're on the blood sugar roller coaster and they are in this sugar burning mode, it's going to seem very counterintuitive to say fasting. That's going to seem miserable and make them angry and shaky and all that stuff. So why I called the book Intuitive Fasting is because I want people to actually get to the place where they are guided by their intuition, where they can hear that still small voice of that knowingness of what their body needs and what their body doesn't need at any given moment. So we're actually putting in the work to get there. Because, I mean, you know this more than most people, but it's for people that don't know when your body's out of balance, when there's inflammation, chronic inflammation, when there's autoimmune flares, when there's hormonal imbalance, when there's signaling problems going on in the body. That's that proverbial noise going on physiologically where it's really hard to discern what's up and what's down, what your body needs, what it doesn't need. So. So they have to quiet that noise. And I think, without a doubt, what I've seen clinically over the years of pairing flexible, intermittent fasting with a clean, nutrient dense diet that complements that fast and vice versa, the fast complements food. You can start to build that flexibility, start to build that metabolic resilience, so they can actually have proper signaling pathways to have that true intuition to get to that place of intuitive eating and get to the place of intuitive fasting. But you, you know, we live in this social media culture where people say, oh, I'm a. I'm an intuitive eater. That's what I am. I am an intuitive eater. That. That sounds nice and sexy and, well, so nice.

No, it doesn't. If I was an intuitive eater, it'd be like pizza and French fries.

Exactly the point that. Exactly.

It sounds like such BS to me. Like, intuitive eater means I have no standards and I have no willpower. And I haven't. I don't even want to think about what I eat. I'm just gonna eat what I feel like. I was like, it's like cotton candy forever. Like, how can that work? Am I a little off the rails here or.

Well, I think when somebody is, has. I mean, we talk about scent memory and food memory and the way that our brain works with certain foods, but Largely with. When somebody is inflamed, has metabolic inflexibility, their cravings will mask themselves as true intuition. But if somebody is truly practicing what they teach or practicing these principles of, of wanting to be well and wanting to be metabolically flexible, you actually can know, hey, this food, you'll have the knowingness of saying, no, that food's going to make me feel lousy. And that intuition will supersede that craving. The intuition will be more obvious and you have that space to realize you aren't your thoughts and emotions, you are the observing awareness of them. Most people are so divorced from that and they're just, they think that their thoughts and emotions, they think they are the cravings and they just go for whatever. There's so, so much impulsiveness going on. So I want to create a space between that observation. But it's really hard to do that when you're completely in sugar burning mode.

It seems like a catch 22 now, if you're in sugar burning mode, which most people are, I mean, let's face it, unless you know, they're long time listeners of the show, they've done some reading, done some work, they've lost a bunch of weight or like they've, they've made changes in their life, but a good number of people listening, okay, you eat carbs every day, you're in sugar burning mode. That's just how it works. Yeah, but if It's a catch 22 because, all right, if you could just get out of sugar burning mode, it'd be so easy to get out of sugar burning mode. How do you break the cycle?

Well, you have to put the time in. I mean, these are not quick fix issues. What has taken years, decades, someone's like most of their entire adult life and childhood gets to that place of a lot of metabolic rigidity. It's going to take time. So they, I mean it's going to take weeks and months and months and months down the line to really start leaning into this. But it's not, they have to wait that long to start feeling better. I mean, you and I both know when they start making these changes, the body is amazingly resilient. Where they will start to see, whoa, I have a lot more disarmament, I have a lot more knowledge of what my body loves and doesn't love. Whereas before they just were at the whims of their cravings. But it's really cool to see somebody that is in the throes of inflammation, in the throes of insatiable cravings. Start to see, have an awareness about their health that they've never had before. And they start to have this whoa. Like, I actually had that food that caused the inflammation flare. I had the food that I was really craving and actually didn't like it as much as I used to. So they have this own checks and balances, this own regulatory system in and of themselves. And that's the intuition that starts to grow. That happens on a mental, emotional, spiritual level, but it also happens on a physical level too, as the microbiome is changing, as the hormones are changing, as blood sugar becomes more stable, etc.

My daughter, who is 13 and doesn't do a lot of snacking just because they eat food that actually makes you full. So you don't need a snack.

Yeah.

She came to me the other day and she's like, daddy, I just don't want breakfast. It's a weekend. Like, I'm just not hungry. Right? And now the, the typical parents like, well, you have to eat. And I thought about it, I'm like, all right, well, if you're not hungry, this is going to sound weird, but don't eat. But pay attention because if you get hungry later, you should eat. You know, my kids are not asking to fast a lot and I wouldn't support it if they wanted to. But is that kind of what we're talking about here? Even. Even. Because, like, just don't eat if you're not hungry.

Yeah. Eat when you're hungry. Eat until you're satiated. These core principles that are so common sense, but it's not common sense for somebody that's, that's completely out of balance. It's actually not common sense at all. They'll eat just because they're bored. They'll eat because they're hangry. They'll eat because they're stressed. They'll eat because they're going through a stressful time. There's a complete reactivity to their foods and they're completely unconscious of what they're doing oftentimes. So it's exactly what your daughter is doing. She's doing intuitive fasting. Exactly. It's light, gentle, flexible, intuitive. It's not arduous, it's not punitive. I have a 14 year old too, and he does the same thing. He says the same thing. I'm not hungry. And I'm knowing coming from where I'm coming from, it's like, okay, it's all right. The breakfast. Breakfast isn't the most important meal of the day just because we said so, right. You should be okay with eating when you're hungry and not force feeding yourself because it's breakfast and it's what we do.

Now, my daughter may or may not have told me that she thinks ice cream is of course, dairy free. Ice cream is the best way to break a fast. Is she right?

My son would say the same thing.

The other side of intuitive eating rears its head.

Yeah, right, exactly. I mean, but you know, there's a centeredness, there's a sense. It doesn't mean that you're. Everybody's perfect and eats the perfect. They're just throwing back kombucha and like grass fed beef all day long. It's ultimately it is. People have to live their life, but they still have their center and they still have that, that knowingness and they still have their I'll eat this and then I'll move on. They're not kind of having this disordered relationship with food in their bodies. So is ice cream a good way to break a fast? I mean, not necessarily though. I mean, gentle the gut in many ways. I guess. We're talking about. You're making the, about some bulletproof ice cream. I think we can be okay with that for when you're 14 years old.

Yeah. If it was bulletproof ice cream. She wants some stuff that has a little bit of agave in it, which I'm not a huge fan of. But you know what?

Yes. Too much than that.

A little bit of. A little bit of that. You're getting 8 grams of agave when you're 13. I'm pretty sure you can handle it. And she's not really fasting, she's skipping breakfast. And you know, lunchtime comes around and we have a healthy lunch and if she wants something afterwards, you know, that's.

A grace and lightness. I mean we need, we're. We're teaching this to our kids, which is so super important. Can you imagine like if we heard this when we were kids? But as these are also things that we need to hear as adults too because you know, this is stuff we have to unlearn. We have to unlearn what we've been raised with.

So I gotta ask you this, Will. Yeah. Your hair is pretty epic. What did you do to it?

I just throw something in it in the morning. But I just like, it's not much, man. It's like it's. I have coarse hair, so everyone like I comment on my hair, but it just kind of does its own thing. I just throw some, some this. It's called Jack Henry. It's like this natural paste has smells.

Natural paste. Well, you're looking very fashionable, if I could say so myself. Yeah, you worked with Gwyneth.

No.

People have been giving me crap about my hair because it's like much thicker than it used to be. Because I fixed it.

Love it. It looks good.

Thanks, man. And I wanted to ask about hair, not just because you have lots of hair, but because a lot of people, especially women, are talking about fasting and hair. Let's go there. Tell me about fasting and hair.

We're all coming in like everybody that's listening to this, all my patients, they're all coming into this, this journey of health and wellness or journey of learning about their body, improving their quality of life at different points of their life. Right? So they're all coming in with a baseline that's different and we're all created differently. This is the heart of functional medicine. And we're all at different points of our journey too. So when you start changing any way of eating or fasting or supplementation, it's having a huge cascade effect in your body. It's shifting the microbiome, it's shifting your hormones. And we know that longer term ketosis and fasting, for people that are new to this, I mean your followers are savvy. So. But for people that are new to this, that are not knowing what's going on when they're fasting, they're increasing ketosis. So the ketogenic diet and fasting are both increasing ketosis, which is really great. It's really great. It's a signaling molecule, it's lowering inflammation, it's increasing anti aging pathways. The things that you're talking about in your book so brilliantly and the things that I talk about that all the stuff that we want is, it's happening during the state of ketosis. But it's the Goldilocks principle. It's not too high, not too low, but just right. And we all have to find our own Goldilocks principle of how to use this amazing tool of fasting or the ketogenic diet or any tool in wellness. We have to learn how to use this tool that works for us sustainably. Because you and I are not in our hearts and passions isn't just to do a fad thing. It's to really of like, well, fasting's bad for women or keto is bad for this or this is for proven wrong all day long. I have to keep an open mind, open heart to how do we look at the. You can leverage the benefits without falling prey to these potential drawbacks for some people.

It's funny, fasting, keto, even the vegan diet, which I'm not exactly a big proponent of, all of them can be useful for brief periods of time, but then, like, I feel so good, I'm just gonna dive in and all of them will trash you over time. Right. Tell me about the worst case of a. Of a patient who was trash by fasting you've ever seen.

Well, I mean, I think that I have a lot of cases that I have seen over the years of people who have various degrees of orthorexia, which is like a disordered eating around healthy foods. And fasting can fall into that. And that amazing tool of fasting can be abused and can be used improperly. And that's the antithesis of what you and I advocate for. That's the antithesis of intuitive. That's shit. Shame and punishment and obsession. That's an eating disorder disguised as a wellness practice. That is the opposite of what we're talking about.

Even bodybuilding is that for a lot of people. Right, right.

It's just, it's such a source of stress and obsession where I see cases like that, that they're like fasting so aggressively and they have such a bad relationship with fasting and eating that there are a lot of cases that we have to work with people of Jack's to deal with the mental, emotional side of things, and working with eating disorder specialists in conjunction with functional medicine to really use it in a way that works for their body and not against them. So there's a lot of examples of that. So that comes to mind. But, you know, there. There are many examples that I could probably go through and think about over the years of people using fasting. That's out of balance with what's working for them, and it's something that could serve them well, but it's caught being a source of unintentional saboteur.

If I'm working on your intuitive fasting plan, how do I know if a craving is emotional or biological or gut biome or how would I know if it's a craving or real hunger?

Yeah, it's a great question. So I think that first of all, when somebody's really metabolically rigid and they're super sugar burning, they're hangry, they're irritable, they're going to bound by that next snack and that next meal like I used to be. Oh, yeah, right. So many people are. I mean, there's no shame in that. It's just where they're at at this point when you start leaning into even light, time restricted feeding windows light, intermittent fasting, even like a 1212 window, like if they're eating between 8am to 8pm Even that late night snack will be difficult to stop. So at that point, if we're looking at that context, it's going to be the more it that's not a deep fast. And if they're craving, they have plenty of time to eat and be well satiated and nourished. It's not a deep fasting window. But even then you can know something on that level is going to be the blood sugar hangriness, it's going to be the fact that that kindling's off that fire and then this sort of metabolic purgatory because they aren't able to like get that kindling on the fire as much as they want to. That sugar, that quick fix that they're looking for and they're kind of addicted to. So at that point, you know, it's not really intuition. It's really going to be something that's going to actually move them away from homeostasis. It's going to actually perpetuate imbalance and inflammation levels in the body. So that's one way to check into it. But I would say something that I advocate throughout the book is, is what I call metaphysical meals. It's that when you are leaning into these like deeper intermittent fasting windows is to really use that time of when you would normally have breakfast, lunch and dinner or whatever fast that you're doing, if you're like doing two meals a day when you normally would have that meal that you're not having that meal, to use that as a time to go inward to actually do a mindfulness practice. And I give some examples in the book, whether that's journaling or a meditation practice or breathing exercise or any one of these things, forest going out in nature and checking in with your self. So you could start to create that awareness of checking in with your body, check in with your cravings, check in with your, your energy levels, check in with your digestion to know and have that awareness. And that's the intuition that's growing, that's starting to be able to shine through the physiological imbalances and noise in the body. So that's, that's what I would say. Is that an easy thing to do all the time? Absolutely not. It's going to take practice and that's what we're doing. We're all practicing these things and we're all getting stronger as we practice. And mindfulness and awareness and getting in touch with intuition is no exception to that.

It sounds like you sort of feel your way into it, for lack of a better word.

Absolutely.

There isn't a hard and fast rule that I've been able to find. I know for myself now if I eat something and 10 minutes later I'm really hungry, like that's biological, right? I ate something that had a toxin that triggered my body's desire for glucose to get rid of the toxin. Or I ate something like MSG that I didn't know was in there that caused a drop in my blood sugar. Or I ate some histamine that causes an increased demand for sugar to deal with it. Those are biological. But I haven't in a long time had what I used to have, which was that, you know, I'm just like nagging hunger. Like, maybe it's longer term hypoglycemia, or maybe it's, I'm just bored. But man, it really, it took me years to get there. And I. The reason I started my whole blog, the reason I started this podcast, I just want people to learn all this stuff because I spent a million dollars and I suffered a long time and I fasted in a cave and did all sorts of weird stuff that I shouldn't have had to do. If I could have just made an appointment with you, Will, and like, I'm going to go to the doctor, he's going to tell me, dave, skip breakfast sometimes, dumbass. And that would have been all I needed to do when I was 20. Maybe there was more, but that would have been so life changing. But at this point I can say, I know, but I don't know how to teach it. And I think you hit some good stuff in intuitive and intuitive fasting. I was almost called intuitive eating, which is the opposite of that. But you hit on it and maybe you're shortening the amount of time that it takes a reader or a patient to just know, oh, wait, it's okay to eat now. I did something wrong versus this is actually something that I'm just going to ride out. What do you say to a patient in the office with you when they're asking you that question, like, guide me as if I was a patient.

Well, I mean, that's that earlier duality that I mentioned, that science and the art. It is such a. So much of my job is like proverbially holding somebody by the hand and walking them through this and like disseminating the science, disseminating the labs, disseminating all this stuff that we read about and love, love so much that not everybody is going to get it at that level. Not everybody is going to. It's going to even make sense of how do I apply this realistically in my life and how do I make sense of it all? Because I mean, Dr. Google is like a very conflicted physician. I mean there's so much things we can substantiate with our, with the click of a button.

I thought Dr. Google got acquired by big Pharma. You can't find anything on Dr. Google and we have to go to doc. Some other search engine to find anything useful.

Right, but even. Yeah, you're right. That's, that's definitely true. Definitely true. And you know, but even the way that Dr. Google is sterilized right now because of the censorship that's going on, there's still a lot of that censored information to weed through. And then there's the uncensored stuff that I have to tell people about too. Like what's the stuff that you're not going to find on the first page of Google? How do we make this practical? In your life.

Have you seen people doing like 10 or 20 or 30 day fasts in the dark? Like the super extreme long term fasting?

Not the dark part, but like. Yeah, the long fasting. Water fasts.

Yeah, yeah, water fast for 10, 20 days. Definitely. Yeah. There's some places in India where it's part of an extreme anti aging program where you go and you're fasting from light at the same time.

Oh, amazing. No, I haven't seen that or heard of that. I'd love to know more about it though.

I was hoping that you'd be like, oh yeah, I did it. No, I haven't talked to anyone who's done it for more than like a week in a, in a cave. Like some forms of vipassana are done in darkness, but that's a.

That talk about deep meditative process. I can only imagine the untangling that happens there.

I found some research when I was writing about mitochondria and Superhuman that said up to 10% of the energy we make can come from sunlight directly, which blew me away because I didn't think we had photosynthesis. And it's not exactly photosynthesis, but the process was explained well enough biochemically. Like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. It's just something that we don't really rely on. So you're thinking, man, I got no food. At least I still have air. But I'm doing breathing exercises, so maybe I modify that and then I got no light. That's pretty, pretty aggressive. I kind of want to try it because I'm a guinea pig.

But yeah, you needed to document that. I don't know how you get cameras in the dark, but like maybe some night, night vision cameras. It'd be interesting to see the process of what goes on on there. I'm sure it's. It could be probably pretty intense.

I guess if I did it for a week or something, I could pull it off. I have kids.

Yeah.

Not polite to disagree. Hey guys, I'm going to be gone for a month.

See you back.

And I'm going to come back super.

Pale and thin and you know, have you ever seen the document documentaries with like the guys in Antarctica or the Pole where they're not getting much sunlight and they're like stuck inside for long periods of time and what that does to the human body. Human health is pretty, it's brutal.

But we, at least we don't have to go to the Arctic to do that anymore. Find a cave, just go to la. And that's kind of life in LA right now.

Definitely.

I say that as a small business restaurant owner in la.

Yes. I love your place. Venice beach, beautiful. Oh yes, of course. My wife's from Los Angeles so every time we go out there I make a stop at your place.

You're awesome. Well, if you stop, it's takeout only until they change the rules again for whatever reason.

Yeah.

What about fasting during times when it's cold and flu season? Is fasting a good idea for immunity?

Absolutely. Absolutely it is. So there's so many things that come to mind. I mean. Well, I mean an easy One is that 75, 80 of our immune systems in the gut so that the healthy modulating effect of the microbiome and sort of this gentle pruning resetting of the gut microbiome. And our microbiome has a circadian rhythm similar to.

Yes.

Hormones. So it's like.

Talk more about that. It's fascinating and awesome. Most people don't know.

Yeah. So like the. Are certain colony forming units of bacteria, beneficial probiotic things that help to regulate our immune system. Certain level colonies are higher in the morning and certain colonies are higher in the evening. So times of fasting helps to really allow the microbiome to find its natural rhythm because it's always being well in many, for many people in the west, it's constantly being insulted by disruptors of the microbiome, aggravators of the microbiome. To let, letting that little reprieve, to allow the microbiome, all these trillions of bacteria to actually recalibrate themselves is one beneficial mechanism that comes to mind of really supporting a healthy, robust, but healthy, normal response to immune system where you're not having these hyperinflammatory responses. But I mean, look, then you talk, you mentioned mitochondria, I mean mitochondrial biogenesis you can tap into with fasting, improved autophagy, upregulated autophagy, or cellular recycling pathways. There's so many things that could happen and all of this stuff is predicated on the fact that fasting is a hormesis. It's a hormetic effect in the body. So that slightly good stressed response that fasting brings is really good for the immune system. So Paracelsus, for people that don't know, he's like one of the fathers of modern medicine. We have Hippocrates, everyone knows Hippocrates. But Paracelsus is like, people need to know about more about this guy. But he lived in the late 1400s, early 1500s in Switzerland. He was called the father of toxicology. He called fasting the physician within. So I think more people during cold and flu season could be leaning check instead of Dr. Google, call the physician within.

I love the way you referenced that. I did find some studies and I'm doing a bunch of blog stuff like. Like you are? Yeah. On your blog, you know about fasting and just teaching people. Right. And I found some studies showing, hey, if you're dealing with a bacterial infection, especially fasting is just really can, can save your life. It's a big deal.

Yeah.

Right. And that's not something that, that necessarily people would think of. And then with, with viruses, if you're actually sick with the virus, it looks like you probably want to eat during that time, but you don't want to eat a bunch of sugar and garbage. But you want maybe a little bit more fuel. And that idea to be, oh, today I feel sniffly. Maybe it's not a fasting day or maybe it is. But to be intuitive about it, I mean, that's the right thing to do.

Yeah. Even if it's a light time restricted feeding window, it doesn't have to be super aggressive. Like you said, go with your body. But I know just through this last 2020, if I felt like I was run down, I had never had Covid or anything like that. But If I was feeling a little run down, I would just intuitively fast where I wouldn't eat as much, kind of preserve my energy. And I recover a lot faster when I'm in this sort of light fasting state. And that doesn't mean that everybody has to do that all the time, but it's just a tool that people can lean into and experiment with.

Yeah. If something is not good in the gut and in the sinuses or whatever. Yeah. Skipping breakfast and maybe lunch. Huge differences.

Totally. And the balancing effect it has on blood sugar and insulin too. I mean, that can't be forgotten about.

As well, of course. What about when people say you have to only have water during fast because that's what happened in a mouse study? Or water and salt. How strict do you think people need to be on what they eat or drink while fasting?

Well, I think that it's definitely not all or nothing. It's a continuum of people, a continuum of results. And everybody's different in that way. So it's. To me, actually, I think that I've heard you say this years ago and it stuck with me is the fasting that's right for you is a fasting you can stick with.

That's true. Same with exercise programs. Right. The one you're going to do.

So it's like they don't have to feel like a failure if they. That tea, like latte in the morning and that bulletproof coffee in the morning, that's not breaking your fast. You get some of these extreme, like, I don't know, I don't know what to call it, but I don't want to call them orthorexic.

There are angry fasters out there, just as they're angry keto and angry vegans.

No.

And there are ones who are curious. I like the curious ones, the angry ones, I must say, I'm like, you can yell, you can yell about whatever, like.

Exactly.

Only the other seventh graders are listening.

Exactly, exactly. So the militant zealot Fasters out there will say, well, it's completely you. Why? Why are you even fasting? Pretty much. I mean, it may not be that extreme, but they're basically saying that it's a bad thing. And honestly, I. To the layperson, I'll just tell you, as someone who talks to lay people all day long, that leans. It adds into this orthorexia where they feel like, yeah, they are like a failure, it's all or nothing. And they're just. They might as well just stop it all because they're hearing all this do all or you're a failure. So it's as long as you're not. I mean the one exception is if, if too many calories or too much protein, which mtor is sensitive to that, other than that, something that's not overly stimulating, insulin, which fat is not shocking, you're good. You're gonna get so many good things. Ve versus any potential downregulation of some random pathway that you don't even care about anyways.

Well said. I, I love that. Some random pathway. It's so beautiful. I, I like to talk about my wife Dr. Lana's ice cream fast. You know, she was doing a five day fast and she's the whole fast. She's cooking food for our kids. Okay, that takes a little bit of. I'm just going to call it balls. Yeah, right. Because you're, you're tempted. And she had one bite of ice cream in the middle of the fast, like a small, just like a taste of it. Right. Which is also courageous because if you have one, the odds of you having 10 are very high. And she just had one and was like, okay, I just want to taste it. I'm good. And the kids are like, ah, mommy went on an ice cream fast. And in my mind I'm like, she fasted perfectly for five days. And that, that wasn't a failure. Even in a little bit. She tasted something. It just doesn't matter. Right. How do we teach people to be kind to themselves? The way, the way Lana was. If they're fasting and then they break their fast early or then they taste something. Is there a recipe on the intuitive side of fasting that just be like, hey, it's okay. How do you teach that to a patient?

I think it's consistently showing up for yourself and consistently checking in. And that's why a mindfulness practice and the word is overused so much. So what I really mean, whatever that looks like for you to start to grow an awareness. Whatever that looks like, it's starting being mindful of your relationship with your body in relationship with food and checking yourself. So when you see yourself feeling like a failure, you're like, you're shame. You're filling your whole thought life up with shameful, obsessive, ruminating thoughts. That is something that you need to be conscious of and mindful of. Take those thoughts captive, as the Bible calls it, to just be. Create a separation between you and those obsessive ruminating thoughts. So that doesn't happen overnight. There's not like a five step program that's going to solve you from that. But we're all working on that as human beings to not be led by those shameful, obsessive thoughts, because what your wife did was actually the right thing to do. So I think that there should be a grace and a lightness infused into wellness of which it's really not right now. I mean, there's so much tribalism and so much obsessive absolutism that's going on, that's the antithesis to sustainable wellness. Because it won't be sustainable if people fall off the wagon, so to speak. I don't want there to be a wagon. I want there to be like your life is the wagon. You cannot get off of it. And there are things that move you towards feeling great and there's things that move you away from feeling great. And by growing an awareness, the things that don't make you feel great, you can use that as a mindfulness practice too and say, well, was this worth it? How was my energy levels? How does, is there inflammation afterwards? How's my digestion? All these things. And you can decide for yourself as a grown up, as a, as a wise human being, did this serve you or not? Was this worth it or not? And either using that as a learning experience to not do that again next time because it wasn't worth it, you'd rather feel so great than you missed that food that made you feel really horrible and it's not punitive any anymore and you're free from that. You actually have food peace or it was really worth it and you eat it and you.