#87 Eating Well and Intermittent Fasting with Dr. Sally LaMont

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists, and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me today. This is Dr. Donnie, and I am really excited to have this conversation with my really good friend and colleague, Dr. Sally Lamont. Sally, oh, my gosh, I feel so grateful for having you in my life, for getting to be working side by side as naturopathic doctors all of these years. You've been a naturopathic doctor for, is it 35 years?

Yes.

That's pretty cool. Pretty amazing. Thank you so much for everything you do, and thank you for being here today. I know you have your Sally's Kitchen.

Blog and website where you help people with food and eating.

Of course that's an important topic all the time, but it's especially an important topic at this time of year. Thank you so much for joining me to talk more about food and eating and ways of eating that can benefit our health.

Absolutely. I always love Talking with you, Dr. Donnie.

Well, tell us, like, I mean, I am curious, too. Like, what got you heading in this way, you know, in doing this work in your life?

Well, I grew up in the heartland in Wichita, Kansas, in the 50s and 60s. And I ate an atrocious diet. I mean, really, we had Spam sandwiches on Wonder Bread and Ding Dongs and a quart of milk at least every day per person. And the whole Midwest ate that way. And I watched my family start to develop disease. Healthy cousins. By the time I was in high school, they were growing obese. I watched aunts and uncles get heart disease and diabetes and my grandparents die. And it was clear to me that it had something to do with the way they were eating. But that whole concept was actively being denied. So I studied nutrition in college and taught myself how to cook. And then I was really fortunate to find out about naturopathic medicine because I was not particularly drawn to conventional medicine. But when I found out that there was this profession that I know we both love so dearly that teaches doctors how to approach chronic illness with something besides drugs and surgery to really address the role of diet and lifestyle, I just knew that I had found my calling and I went for it. And here we are several decades later, and that was the best decision of my life.

Wow, it's, it's so amazing, you know, when to think about, you know, how like, you just followed your intuition and you were being observant from a young age, like food is playing a role here. I'm going to investigate further. And I know you're, you're in California and, you know, help people there, but you also help people all around online, right? Doing your.

Yeah, I have a practice just north of San Francisco in Marin county in a town called Larkspur, California. Really wonderful practice there. But like you.

The word doctor stems from the word teacher. And I am naturally a teacher. And there's only so much time to do that and in a visit. So I created Dr. Sally's Kitchen as my outreach to share my passion for food and cooking and recipes with everyone.

I love it. And again, it's so, you know, I think it's important this time of year. So we can touch on that a little bit today too, in terms of, you know, eating around the holidays and in the new year. But also, you know, some of the, the trends of eating that people are likely hearing about, like intermittent fasting. I know that patients are asking me about that every day, like, what is this about? Should I be doing this? How do I do this? So I love to hear more from you. What is that all about?

Well, I had the same questions coming.

I did a deep dive into that last year and I'll share that with you now. So intermittent fasting is really about creating an extended period of time between meals. It's actually restricting the window of time in which you eat into a shorter window of time, hence the name time restricted eating. So intermittent fasting and time restricted eating are essentially the same thing. And I love it because the, this type of eating is much more in alignment with nature's circadian rhythm. When we eat in alignment with our body's cellular clocks, our metabolism is optimized. For example, one of the things I learned over these last several years is that we have clock genes. Each organ has genes that tell it when to function at its highest and when to slow down. So the pancreas that makes insulin really begins to close up shops, so to speak, around 8pm it slows the production of digestive enzymes and insulin. And so when we eat a big meal or down a pizza or some ice cream at 11 o', clock.

Those foods are not going to be optimally digested and used for energy, but instead stored as food fat. And that's the opposite of what we really want.

No, it's such a good point. I know sometimes if I'm up late after 10 o' clock and I'm start to feel hungry, I now have my mind thinking, okay, if I eat now, my body's probably not going to use it very well. It's just going to go to my waist or my hips.

It's so true. It's so true. And you know what? This was the way our ancestors ate. You know, they had to hunt and gather in the safety of the light of day. They didn't have the luxury of eating in the middle of the night. But now we live in this culture where we have grocery stores filled floor to ceiling with sugary drinks and refined and processed food. So people, especially college students and younger people, they don't think anything about eating really late. But that throws our body clock out of alignment and it really stokes the fires of chronic degenerative disease, which is what we're all fighting against.

Scary, right? And it's, I mean in some ways, like when we, when we hear intermittent fasting, it sounds like what? You know, it sounds complicated, right? It's like. What is that supposed to mean? Intermittent between what? But like as you're describing, it's really rather simple. It's just taking a break from eating while you're sleeping is a lot of it, right? Like from the evening, while you're sleeping and then into the morning. Or tell us more like how does a person figure out how long that overnight fast should be?

Well, I think that that's a very good question and I would say the answer is by listening to your body and experimenting. The cool thing about intermittent fasting or time restricted eating is that it is flexible and you get to experiment and choose the plan that works best for you. So let's just talk about where to start. The minimum that we ought to be doing is exactly what you said, extending that overnight fast. So let's just say the place you would begin is with a 12 hour fast. So if you finished your dinner by 7 and you ate breakfast at 7am There would be a 12 hour fast. And the most important piece is not eating after dinner. So let's roll that out. The real benefits kick in in intermittent fasting when you extend that window from just 12 hours of not eating overnight to 14 or 16 or 18 hours. So you could eat say a brunch at 11 o' clock and have your dinner over by 7 and you would have a 16 hour fast. Excuse me. Yeah, a 16 hour fast. And be eating in an eight hour window. That's where the real benefits kick in.

So tell us about those benefits. What can people start to expect when they, when they do that?

Well, it's pretty awesome because when we get into this protracted window of fasting, the first thing that happens is the body begins to go into ketosis. It begins to burn belly fat instead of glucose or sugar that we're eating or our muscles. Almost most women want to shed a few pounds. And so that's one of the primary benefits of, of intermittent fasting, is promoting weight loss. Next, it helps to lower inflammation. And some of those markers of inflammation that we might identify on blood work and help our patients change, like C reactive protein. It helps to improve insulin sensitivity and therefore lower blood sugar, lower that hemoglobin A1C that we hear about all the time as the marker of how high your blood sugar's been over three months. One of the coolest benefits is that it stimulates this process called autophagy, which literally means cell eating or self eating. And that's where the immune system goes to work. Cleaning up old dead cells, stimulating the growth of new stem cells, which results in better immune function and longevity. Just a couple of other benefits. Lowering cholesterol and triglycerides and improving cognitive function. If you're running around with brain fog, just clearing your body of having to constantly digest food allows the production of this thing called bdnf, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which helps us grow new neurons. Those are some really solid benefits that have been described in the medical literature, both in animal and human studies.

Because this is so great. Because sometimes you almost need to really see those benefits to motivate you to create a shift. Because otherwise those food cravings can come in or that whatever you're usually might be going for in the evening or some people, I find even will, if you wake up in the middle of the night, find that you're going to eat something or early in the morning. And those are those sneaky times when.

Eating is actually potentially going to throw off your metabolism and increase the risk of those things. We were just talking about reversing, but I wonder if. Because sometimes I find that there are certain patients where.

Maybe they're not quite ready to go into a full intermittent fasting. What do you find or situations where maybe a person should do a little more preparation first or check in with their practitioner first?

Absolutely.

If a person is underweight or they have an eating disorder or a history of an eating disorder, say a woman was bulimic or anorexic, it's not a really good idea to force yourself to not eat. It may stimulate some of those old triggers. So you'd want to approach it carefully. But that still doesn't mean you should be eating in the middle of the night or snarfing down food at midnight. So I think that the first step is just sitting on your hands, drinking water or tea, or doing something else besides eating right at bedtime. Also, if a person is really seriously hypoglycemic, they need to start at that 12 hour window and very carefully, just maybe 30 minutes a day for a few days, you extend out the breakfast. So if you are starving when you wake up at 7 o', clock, eat, but just finish eating earlier in the day is one way to do it. Another thing is if a person has full on diabetes and they're insulin dependent dependent, extended periods of not eating are going to require real supervision of those meds and monitoring of blood sugar. So diabetes. And then finally, if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, it's definitely not the time to be restricting food. So those are some of the reasons that I would just not say that this is across the board of practice for everyone.

Okay. No, that's, that's very helpful because you know, in always, as I'm hearing you kind of say too, it's like, listen to your body like as you go into it, maybe start with the, if you've been, if your fasting window has been less than 12 hours, you're gonna kind of work toward the 12 hours first listen to how you're feeling, how's. And then gradually work into maybe longer period of time and really listen to how your body's responding. Right?

Yes. And you alluded to this earlier, but it gets a lot more easy to do this after you've done it for a week or two and you start to see your energy improve and the scale start to move and you can feel your body burning off that fat. That's a good feeling. So I think that this is great practice to use in the month of January, no matter what protocol you might be doing to clean up your ACT for the new year.

If you simply work to find the right window of time for you, starting with 12 hours and then experimenting to find that point of balance that allows you to feel really good, Work towards your ideal weight, optimizing your blood work with your doctor.

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Well.

I'm curious like even like say someone say we're in holiday time and people maybe have events, you know, in the evening. How do you help people navigate that? If they're like around food and other people are kind of expecting you to eat.

What can someone say? How do they handle that?

Well what I would do would be if I were really into this and I were going to execute it through the holidays, I would eat my big meal at 4, 5, 6 o' clock whenever that time is right. And then I would go to that party, get bubble water and talk to people while they're going through line and just say, oh I ate early, I've already eaten, I'm watching what I eat these days.

And you could even go so far as saying I'm doing some intermittent fasting and talk about it because lots of people are interested in this. You might as well share your journey. The other thing that you can do is make sure if you're hungry and you're going to a party is bring something that you feel good about eating and put that on the table so you can pick at a couple of other things.

I think if you offer the host or hostess a platter of something that's wonderful and healthy, you get to eat it. Others will gravitate to that because I think people are increasingly recognizing like yeah, that plate of brownies looks good but I don't want to wear it.

And people will understand.

Well that's the thing is, I mean I think sometimes like there's a part of this that can really be about prioritizing ourself, realizing am I going to eat this food just because I feel peer pressure or I was told I'M supposed to eat everything on my plate and write all these internal messages. That's a broken record in our brains.

How can we shift it to say, hey, this is my body? I want to be healthier. I want to be feeling better in my body. I want to be preventing heart disease and dementia and cancer. I want to choose to be committed to this new way of eating. What do you find? Do your clients also struggle with that choice to really put themselves first in this way?

Well, I think we all do. I know there's times I have to talk my way in my own head out of something I was about to do and go, wait. That is not really in my best interest. What's my commitment here? My commitment is feeling incredible and being as vibrantly healthy as I can so I can do the work I want to do, being an example to my daughter, to my patients, and not. And not end up like my family back in the Midwest, the majority of those people. I mean, that's where obesity is. That's where the highest rates of all these chronic diseases. So I just reflect back on where it came from and where I'm going. I want to age gracefully. And I'll tell you, I've been a naturopathic doctor. It's actually been kind of crazy. But I graduated 40 years ago this year, so that this. For decades. And it is really paying off about this point. So.

So you're beautiful, Sally, for being, you know, for. I'm sure anyone watching this video is like, what she's been practicing for 40 years. I mean, it just shows that, like, you're been implementing all of this along the way to really, you know, to just really.

Talk about longevity, right, to prevent aging, to really help your slow down the aging process, which is. I think a lot of what you're describing is, like, if we can drop inflammation and we can. And we can stimulate autophagy, we're essentially slowing down aging.

We are. We are. And, you know, I think that a big motivator for a lot of us is feeling good. I mean, if we just eat the way that we were taught and we go for burgers and pizza and all the desserts, with each passing decade, the effects of those foods erode our metabolism. They start to make us not only feel thick and heavy in our bodies, but they promote.

A range of problems that really impair our ability to feel good. And you can't eat your way out of feeling bad from eating bad. So that's why I was so excited to really learn more about intermittent fasting. And it is not hard to do. I mean, it does take some discipline, but it also is so rewarding because you get to pat yourself on the back for having kept your word and wake up and see the scale a little.

Lower. And to that end, I want to say, I mean, I'm not obsessed with weight loss, but I think most women are wanting to watch their weight. The only time I think we should be weighing ourselves is first thing in the morning, after we've eliminated and before we drink a lot of water. Just if you're going to do it, step on the scale a couple times a week. Don't weigh yourself before you go to bed when you have five pounds of food and another several pounds of water, because you'll just go, God, I'm horrible, I'm failing.

What the hell, start pouring in, right?

Yeah. So just forget about that. Don't do it. Step on the scale only in the morning and something magical happens overnight. If you've ever weighed your the night and then in the morning you wake up lighter and it's because at night our body goes into this rest and repair mode and it metabolizes a lot of the food we've eaten and then the next day we eliminate it. So.

I just said, weight yourself in the morning, you're going to have a much better number. And you're reminding me because you mentioned earlier that ketosis, the burning of fat, gets stimulated and it makes me think of the ketogenic diet, which is sometimes people will be doing both intermittent fasting and a ketogenic diet. I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit. Like when might someone choose that? Do they need to think about a ketogenic diet or is intermittent fasting enough?

I think of intermittent fasting as a ramp into a ketogenic diet. I mean, if somebody is wanting to do ketosis because they need to lose 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds, once you, if you're really trying to stay on a ketogenic diet, you do it for a more extended period of time. But if you have no experience limiting your intake of refined and processed foods and a lot of starches and you're going to try to exist on a.

Protein based green leafy diet, it's really hard, but it can be done. It just requires a whole lot more organization and potentially supervision. So start by extending that period of time so your body gets used to eating in a different way than we all grew up. And then if you just love it and you have more weight to lose than a ketogenic diet or beyond weight, you need to improve your blood sugar, lower your blood pressure.

Move the markers on lab work, then a ketogenic diet, but it is a tool. So is intermittent fasting. I would say intermittent fasting can be more of a way of life because it's not that hard. You just don't eat all the time. Whereas a ketogenic diet really requires you to eat a particular number of grams of protein and carbohydrate and fat to stay in ketosis. But you can still get into it temporarily and have it do its benefits in an extended overnight fast.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So this is so helpful for anyone who's been hearing about all this and thinking, okay, what should I do? Where should I begin? And I agree with you. I mean, sometimes if you dive into all of it at once, it can be a lot, and then you feel like you're overwhelmed or almost stressed by implementing all of it at once. I like that concept you're mentioning of starting with intermittent fasting, getting comfortable there, observing that your body is responding well. And then think about, okay, do I want to go into something more detailed like a ketogenic diet? We're having to, especially because a ketogenic diet is when the percentage of fat in your, in your food is a higher percentage, about usually like 80%. So you're having to kind of figure out how to change your meals to be higher fat percentage. And that just is going to require some more attention and figuring out what you're going to eat and all of that.

Exactly, exactly. You know, one of the interesting things about intermittent fasting in the studies that they've done, especially when they started with mice and it went on to humans. A lot of the studies, they're just letting these animals and humans eat whatever they want. They're not saying you need to eat five to seven servings of vegetables and fruits and lay off of the refined and processed carbs and eat clean protein and fat. They're giving them their chow ad lib, meaning eating as much as they want during the window of time and then fasting them and they get those benefits. The way I feel about it is imagine if you actually ate well the rest of the time. You nurtured your body with the phytonutrients and all the rainbow colored vegetables and fruits and plants and you had high quality protein and you had great fats. Your body is going to thrive and that's going to result in better energy, much better control of stress, better sleep and overall better metabolism. So it is a win Win.

Well I love that and that's I know what you cover a lot in Dr. Sally's kitchen is okay, when you're going to make food and eat food, what should you have? And you share such amazing, beautiful and yummy recipes there. Tell us more about that. Like what? What can people learn when they come check you out at Dr. Sally's kitchen?

Well, first I would invite everyone to go to Dr. Sally's Kitchen. It's Dr. Sally's no Apostrophe Kitchen Dr. Sally's kitchen.com and subscribe. And one of the first things you'll get is a a PDF I wrote on what I call flavor bombs. Using herbs and spices to make your food really delicious. And so it's got a bunch of recipes and so I want to give you that gift.

Yeah, you'll find a blog post, a lot of blog posts. You'll find a whole what I call RX or prescriptive recipes. And I've got a section called Food Pharmacy that lists a bunch of common foods and their healing capacities. But what I have done more recently is create some wonderful online courses. We've all been in the midst of this pandemic and really worried about what we can do to improve our immune response. I have created a class which is now all pre recorded so you can download and watch it anytime you want and move through it designed to support the immune system. And it's called the good food way to power up your immune system. And so there I'll give you that you can, I'll put the link to that in the show notes here for you, Donni. Yeah, and it's just a great online course and very affordable because it's not live. I've pre recorded it and it's just packed with really great information and a bunch of fun cooking videos so that if you don't know how to cook, you can jump in and learn some really delicious recipes. One that comes to mind for the holiday that's in that flavor bombs PDF is my recipe for chai tea, the spicy tea that is a great thing to do if you're intermittent fasting and you want those flavors of savage cinnamon and ginger and clove and you know the holidays but without all the fat and sugar that the gingerbread and such has. You can make chai tea and you don't have to put milk or honey in it. It can be just so when you're intermittent fasting at night, chai would be fine. And if you're doing it during the day and you want to put some oat milk and a little bit honey or something. And you can do that, but definitely stay away from the kind that you get at the coffee shops. I won't name names that are just laden with sugar and fat, laden like 500 or 1,000 calories in one of those tall things. And that's not the way a good chai really is. So there's recipes like that on Dr. Sally's kitchen.

Oh, I love it. And that's the thing is, like, I think sometimes with intermittent fasting, what I find is then I so much look for forward to when I am eating. Then I'm like, I really want to eat something that tastes good and is good for me because it's like it shifts our intention around the food and eating. You know what I mean?

I do.

Because you're having to kind of wait for it and then you're like, okay, I'm so excited. I get to eat. I want to eat something that I know is good for me and tastes good. So great resource.

Yeah. I am driven by my taste buds. I will admit it. I love the flavors of real food. And having grown up eating the average American food, it's super salty, super sweet, super fatty, super refined and processed. So our taste buds get kind of used to thinking that that's what food is really like, but it's not. When you start to orient your taste buds to the literally millions of compounds in plant food, they wake up our metabolism and our brain and our senses in a way that refined and processed food just does not. And it's so much more fun to get into the kitchen and learn to cook real food.

I agree. Oh, wow, that's so awesome. Thank you so much. And my gosh, congratulations on everything that you've created and put together to offer to everyone. I mean, I think it's amazing resource and you're so organized and just have such a beautiful way about it. So thank you so much for that, Sally, and thank you for coming to share all of this with us today. I'm sure everyone is really going to benefit from everything you've mentioned.

Well, I hope so. It has just been my pleasure to join you today, Joni. I always love talking with you and I look forward to the next time.

Likewise. All right, well, thanks again and I'll make sure, yes, everyone has the links so they can find out more about you and your and your recipes and your courses. And thanks again, Sally.

You're welcome. Take good care now. Bye.

Thanks for listening to how humans heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review, and for more resources, visit drdani.com.