Self-Heal with Intermittent Fasting & Inner Bonding with Margaret Paul, Ph.D

Bulletproof Radio a state of high performance. You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today's guest is someone who has been intermittent fasting for more than 50 years. And I wanted to do this on video so that you could see what happens when you do the things that you learn about in fastest way and from the bulletproof diet and just the whole lifestyle, what if you were to do it for very long periods of time? And our guest today is Margaret Paul, who runs a website called innerbonding.com and what you'll find if you look around is that she's been on Oprah, she's been on mindbody Green and has spent decades helping people figure out how to make just better choices about all sorts of things. So we're going to learn about fasting, what it's like, what she does, what she feels it's done for her, and we're going to learn about her inner bonding process. Margaret, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. I'm excited to spend this time with you, Dave.

In order to intermittent fast for 50 years, you have to be at least 50 years old, but you don't look much more than 50 years old. Did you start when you were 6 or how does this work?

No. So I am 81 years old. I started intermittent fasting when I was about 3:30. And it's been, it's been fantastic in my life. You know, I started learning about food in my early 20s because I, I was a sickly kid and I just didn't want to be sick. So did a lot of studying, learned about food, been feeding myself really well for a long time. I'm grateful that I found out about intermittent fasting before it was even a word. I mean, they didn't call it that then, but that's what it was.

What did they call it?

They didn't call it anything. I just, you know, I read, I read don't eat after 6 o'. Clock. So I started not eating after 6 o' clock in the evening. And then with my schedule, I usually eat close to nine. So I ended up with intermittent fasting. And when I was younger I would do fast like a week at a time at that time. I don't do that now. It doesn't work. But at that time it was fine. I did that periodically or sometimes I'd fast for a day or a weekend. But the intermittent fasting, I mean, it wasn't that long ago that there was a word for it that I'd been doing for that long wow.

So your eating window for most of your. Yeah, most of your adult life has been you. So from 9am until 6pm Basically.

Yeah. Right.

Okay, so let's see, 9, 10, 11, 12 and then 6. So basically you're doing a nine hour eating window and a 15 hour fasting window for decades. And you just. Every day.

Every day is what I do every day. Right.

How's your brain?

My brain is very sharp. I work probably at this point 60 hours a week. I'm highly creative. I love my work. I've been doing it for a very long time and I have no desire to slow down.

All right, that's impressive. There are a lot of people who are 81 who are not anywhere near able to work 60 hours a week, much less motivated to work 60 hours a week. What's motivating you?

Well, one of the things that motivates me is that I love what I offer. We've developed, like you mentioned, the inter bonding process, which is a fabulous self healing process and it helps so many people. I'm motivated to offer it as much as I can to write about it. I've got 12 published books, actually 10, two more coming out this year about this. I do everything I can to get it out because it's so incredibly helpful and it's really vital in terms of feeding your body well and being able to do the intermittent fasting. Because if you don't value yourself, if you don't really want to take responsibility for your emotions, your physical well being, your spiritual well being, if you don't want that, if you don't value yourself enough for that, how are you going to be motivated to feed yourself well?

So you're motivated by service to others, which is another thing that puts you in a flow state and keeps you young. I call that the fourth F word. In my teachings, we put so much focus on fear and then on food and, and then on sex and reproduction, which, there's another rough word for that, fertility. And then when we get those done, it's that friend, we're wired to be of service to other people, to take care of our young people, our elders, to reduce suffering. And so you've been doing that for a long time?

Yes, I am.

Tell me more about inner bonding. What have you learned over the decades?

What I've learned is that it's absolutely essential to learn how to define your own inner worth, the worth of your soul, the worth of your essence. So many people spend so much energy trying to get approval outside. You know, they try to look Good. And they try to achieve a lot. And you've got to approve of me to be okay. There's a tremendous amount of energy that goes into that and into avoiding responsibility for our feelings. So inner bonding is a process that's based on intention and that there's only two intentions. And one is the intention to have control over getting love and avoiding pain. And the other is the intention to learn about loving yourself and being able to share your love with others. Because sharing your love with others is the most magical and fulfilling experience in life. But if you don't know how to love yourself, you don't get filled up with love. You don't have anything to share, so. So you're always trying to get it, get the love, get the approval, get the attention. So inner bonding is about teaching you how to do that for yourself so that you can share that with others.

So you're better at loving other people and the world. When you've done the hard work of learning to love yourself.

Yes. When you've learned to define your own worth. And also we teach people how to connect with their higher self, a higher source of guidance, whatever that is from them, and to do that easily. And it's very much tied in with food, which we can talk about. But when we learn who we are inside and to value that, and when we learn to access a higher source of love and truth, then we stop relying on that ego voice, that ego wounded voice that you know, that that tells us you're not good enough and you'll never be good enough. And you know you've got to get this approval in order to be okay. And if you don't, you're not okay. You know, we've all got that program voice. And part of inner bonding is learning how to heal those. Those program beliefs so that you're not operating from that, and instead you're operating from that higher connection. And that higher connection is love and truth. And when you can bring that inside, when you learn to do that in a moment, in any moment, then you're equipped to share love with others.

Turning off that voice in my head was a big challenge. I like to think that my voice was louder than the average person's voice. But I'm guessing everyone says that to themselves, right?

Yeah. Right, Right. Mine was pretty loud. That judgmental voice.

How long did it take you? I mean, you have the benefit of decades. You have 30 something years of additional knowledge and wisdom than I do. So how long did it take you to do it?

Well, inner bonding came in See, I worked as a traditional psychotherapist for 17 years, and I just wasn't happy with the results of my therapy, therapy I was doing with others. So I started to ask for a process that would come in really deeply and really help people in a very deep way. So that's when spirit brought an inner bonding. I realized it was extremely powerful. I had to practice it. And one of the first things that I realized I had to practice was being aware of my self judgment because I thought that all the anxiety and depression and stuff that I was feeling was coming from outside. And when I realized it was coming from the self judgments and not listening to myself, not hearing my inner guidance, my higher guidance, I started to pay attention to the anxiety, to the feelings. And every time I felt anxious, I realized there was a negative thought, there was a negative judgment. And for me, it took me about a year because I didn't know what I was doing. This was at the very beginning, 36 years ago is when inner bonding came in. And so I really didn't know what I was doing. But so it took me about a year. When the, the people I work with, it doesn't take them nearly as long because I'm here to help them do it. The process is here to help them do it. But once I got that, I stopped judging myself. The last 35 years, there's been no self judgment. It's amazing when you reach that point.

So it took a year of hard work and you were done, right?

I'm done. Well, I was done with that aspect. That's not the only hard work.

It's a constant practice. That's why we call it a meditation practice and a forgiveness practice and all of that.

Right, right.

That matches my experience. You really sit down and you become aware that this is an issue. And at least 80% of it you can handle in about a year if you're working with a good practice. You know, daily work, and it's a lot of work. But man, the freedom that comes from turning off the voice in your head, it's. It's pretty big.

Yes, it is. It's huge.

What, what happened, Especially in the early days of fasting. So you say, I'm going to fast, and you break your fast early and you know, eat a cupcake or something. Did you ever do that?

Yeah, well, the problem is that I started doing it. I started trying to eat well and fasting before inner bonding came in. And so that was before I really knew how to love myself and before I understood how important frequency Is which has a lot to do with food and has a lot to do with intention in accessing your higher guidance. And I had been trying to access this for years, but I didn't know how to do it. And so before inner bonding, it was a struggle. I mean, it was like willpower. And you know, I would go in and out of it and you know, I would do it for most of the time, but then I would get tired of it. And so, you know, I didn't have, I didn't have the love for myself and the deep motivation that I have now. See, one of the things that's really motivating for me now is that I love being in connection with my higher guidance. I don't do anything anymore without saying what's loving to me, what's in my highest good right now, and getting the answer right away. I don't do anything without that. And that has to do with keeping your frequency high. And there's two major things that you need to do in order to keep your frequency high. And one is you need to eat really well. You need to eat organic, you know, non processed, no sugar, you know, no, no industrial seed oils, none of that. Because all of that lowers your frequency. And the other is you have to be open to learning about loving yourself and sharing your love. So the intention to learn as opposed to the intention to control raises your frequency. When your intention is to control, that lowers your frequency too low to have at will. What I call at will, divine access. So if you're, if you're loving to connect with your guidance like I am, it takes no willpower now because I have no trouble now doing the fasting, eating extremely well. I don't want to put anything in my body that's going to lower my frequency because I got to tell you that that at will access is worth anything. It's a completely different way to live when you, you know, you're not alone, you feel you're not alone. You're, you're, you're being guided. Every, that's really what creates safety. That ego wounded part of us thinks it creates safety by trying to control everything, but in fact it's creating anxiety and depression and guilt and shame and anger and aloneness and emptiness and all this pain. Whereas when you stay connected with your higher guidance, you know that you're being watched out for. I got stories about how often my life has been saved by my higher guidance. And so it's a safe way to live, is to have that at will connection. And it's so powerful that I don't even think about foods that are not good for me anymore. I don't even think about not having the intermittent fasting and I don't even think about trying to control everything rather than opening to learning about love.

That's really powerful. The idea that you don't want to eat to lower your frequency matches with me. People are saying, well, Dave, are you constantly avoiding foods and is it perfectionist? And I just don't want to feel bad. If I have enough energy, I show up the way I want, but I eat stuff that isn't compatible with me, even though I can survive on it. Survival was never the goal. It was a little bit more than that. So you come to the same place?

Oh, yeah, I've come to the same place. And also I want to. I mean, I'm going to live a long time. I know I'm going to live a long time and I want to, I just want to be healthy until the day I drop dead. I don't want arthritis, I don't want knee replacements, I don't want hip, I don't want any of that. And I don't have any of, none.

At all right now.

No, I don't have any, I don't have any arthritis. I don't have any of that. I don't have any of those, any of those problems whatsoever.

No. Senile cognitive dementia, no Alzheimer's. That's pretty obvious. 60 hours a week. Anyone who watches this video is going to look at you and go, there's no way that Margaret's 81 years old. You're biologically younger than your calendar clock, which is remarkable.

Oh yeah, and people usually think I'm 50 or 60 around there.

Yeah, you certainly have energy at that. Or even younger. Just the way you show up, your eyes are sparkling. It's pretty impressive. Now, you avoided food toxins the vast majority of your life. You've done intermittent fasting, you've managed your energy and you don't waste energy on self hate and all the negative stuff that most people waste a ton of energy on. And you talk about this connection to a higher power, but not really a religious component here. How do you define that higher power? What is that?

You know, it's whatever it is for a person. I mean, I, I even work with people who are atheists and I'll, I'll tell them, well, just ask the air what's loving. Because if you, if you generally, if you genuinely want to know what's true and what's loving, the answer is going to be there no matter what you believe, because we live in, in a universe of intelligence and information. And when we genuinely ask, we will get answers. And so, you know, with people, I work with a lot of people who have been spiritually abused and that is, they've been taught that there's this God who's judgmental and is going to punish them. And watching them all the time, I tell them to imagine an older, wiser aspect of themselves like themselves 200 years from now, who's here, who absolutely adores them and is here for them all the time, and that they can open to that higher part of themselves to get the truth and to open to love and to bring that inside of themselves. One of the things that's so important for people, and this is part of the inner bonding process, is being able to ask what is loving to me right now? What is in my highest good and the highest good of all right now? Because it's up to us to be able to take loving action for ourselves. People, they, they, they read books and they learn all kinds of things and they take classes and workshops and then they don't take action. Like they won't eat well and they won't get enough sleep and they don't get exercise. Well, you don't take action. You're going to stay stuck, you're going to stay miserable. And also the action of staying present in your body with your feelings. Most of us have learned when we were young, because we had a lot of pain, that we couldn't manage to stay up in our head to avoid our pain. Inner bonding is about moving inside, being present with your pain, and realizing that your pain has information for you about how you're abandoning yourself, how you're not loving yourself. And I'd like to share with you the four major ways that people abandon themselves. On the emotional level, obviously, we know. On the physical level, yeah. So one is that people stay in their head. They disconnect from their body, so they don't even know what they're feeling. They're numb, they're empty, they're anxious, they're depressed, but they don't even know it because they're staying up in their head. Now, if a child came to you upset and you were just off and you were on your computer and you were up in your head and you did not attend to that child, that child's going to feel abandoned and rejected. Number two is we've talked about, we judge ourselves. So again, the child comes to you and you say, what's the matter with you? Don't cry over spilt milk. You know, you're just a jerk. And how's that child going to feel? Feel abandoned, feel rejected? That's what we do to ourselves. The third thing is we numb out with various addictions. We we numb out with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with. With. With being on the Internet, being on the phone, with pornography, with shopping, with sex. You know, all kinds of things to avoid our feelings. So again, the analogy of a child comes to you needing something, and instead of paying attention, you're off on your phone. That does not help the child. Or you give the child a cookie and say, go watch tv. That does not help the child. Then the first thing is, which is really what affects relationships, is that we make other.