Can You Fast and Prevent Muscle Loss in Menopause and Beyond?

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. Okay, buckle your seatbelts. My guest today is Shawn Wells, who has more alphabet soup behind his name than certainly than I do, but then a lot of experts that I've interviewed, and that's a lot over more than 10 years. Shawn Wells is a globally acclaimed expert expert in nutritional biochemistry known as the world's greatest formulator, boasts over 2 decades of experience formulating over 1,000 products globally and holding more than 25+ patents, including market leaders like TeaCrine and Dynamine. As a registered dietitian, certified sports nutritionist, and with a master's in nutritional biochemistry, This professional has profoundly impacted the supplement industry and healthcare sectors. Serving as Chief Science Officer, they were instrumental in driving a major nutrition company's $125 million annual revenue and played a pivotal role in transactions exceeding $425 million. Yes, their business acumen is complemented by ownership. Stakes in 8 enterprises. Notably, they are a revered keynote speaker on pharmacology and mental health, sharing their expertise worldwide. Their journey overcoming personal health challenges adds a layer of inspiration to their contributions, which extend through documentaries, TV appearances, and comprehensive online resources. Helping to optimize health and well-being globally. Stay till the end. Definitely visit the show notes because you're going to want to follow Shawn. And who better to ask about fasting for active women? Fasting. All right. Are you confused yet? Seriously, I think it's so very easy to get confused about it. And it was— I think we've got such impassioned experts experts actually talking about fasting and the benefits of it for hormone balancing for women in midlife. But we also have on the flip side, you know, experts calling it, you know, there's putting themselves in a low energy availability situation where there's not enough fuel to both do the workout and do the repair of the body after workouts that we end up potentially, are we at risk for loss of muscle. So number one, as women over 40, we all want and need to prevent muscle loss. But that seems to me like a negative. I mean, at this point in time, we know we can actually gain lean muscle and we can reverse bone losses after the age of 40, after 50 even, and after 60 if we're doing the right things. So where does fasting fit in? Knowing there are health benefits, how do we do it? And what, by the way, consists or qualifies as a fast? Hey, this is Debra Atkinson, and there is one thing you can't do in the gym at your age, and that's get all the protein that you need. You've got to do that in the kitchen. To make it easy for myself, not only to get the protein but the fiber, the fruits and vegetables I want daily, I started drinking a smoothie a day 30 years ago. But when I realized all the junk, the sugar, and the extras that you don't want, that I don't want, hiding in most protein powders, that's when I finally caved in after years of saying I will never, ever, ever sell supplements. Stop skipping, skimping, and sabotaging yourself in the morning after workouts by always being prepared. Look, yep, I agree, real food first, but it's just not convenient to carry a turkey sandwich. Sometimes the protein— and don't forget the fiber— they kill cravings and they boost satiety. And you've got to make it easy to do the right thing. You can use code PODCAST for 10% off your first order at flipping50.com today. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50. I started this podcast over a decade ago to answer questions about fitness in menopause and beyond before you knew to ask them. The goal: to help accelerate your results with science and the practical application of proven protocols while living your best life. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than a midlife woman. And it's not just about you, but the 3 generations that you influence. My unique 40-year career, including being a university senior lecturer in kinesiology, an industry subject matter expert, and an international speaker, to founder of the first and the only exclusively made for menopause and beyond fitness membership in the world. Every week I interview experts behind the scenes and the science of optimal hormone-balancing fitness and longevity and share answers to our community's questions so you can have the vitality and the energy that you want, need, and deserve. Sean, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you for having me.

This is gonna be a rock and roll, I think, because every listener here has probably heard of or is obsessively or compulsively doing fasting, and she's taken ownership of that or knows she needs to. But I also hope that she's taking ownership of being very observant of what's going on with her muscle tissue, her skeletal muscles, so that she can not just be a badass today but in and 20 and 30 and 40 years. So let's just unpack this huge question. The, the juggling of the two of them, fasting and preservation of lean muscle tissue, can they coexist together happily ever after for a woman in midlife?

Man, there's a lot there. That's a pretty involved question. And I think even with scientists and medical doctors, you're going to get a lot of different opinions on that. So, let's think about this. There was a recent study that showed that you can utilize up to 150 grams of protein in one bolus. And this really upended this thought of it needs to be 25, maybe as high as 40 grams.

Is that like an Uncle Buck steak, you know, off the edge of the plate? What's 150 grams of protein look like for somebody who may not have any idea what we're talking about?

Well, I mean, a typical scoop of like whey protein is 25 grams. So you're talking about 6 scoops or yes, in terms of a steak, you'd be talking about maybe pound and a half kind of steak. So yeah, you're talking about a lot. It's a lot of protein.

Yeah.

And here's the thing. There's several things to unpack here that you're talking about. Yes, it's possible potentially. Now we know scientifically, it's been proven that you can potentially utilize a lot more protein than we initially thought. Here's—

at one, at one time.

At one time.

Yeah. Okay.

Here's where it matters. I like to think about the bolus because the bolus has everything to do, meaning like the amount of protein, as you just said, in one sitting and one time, one feeding. Let's say one meal a day, right?

OMAD.

Okay. And that's going to have very different characteristics to your gastrointestinal tract and your body is going to adapt. There's always homeostasis taking place, right? Homeostasis is the body trying to maintain itself. And if you're someone who eats protein all day, every day, every hour, your body's going to get really good at oxidizing that protein, eliminating that protein, turning that protein into calories and using it for energy versus turning it into muscle or optimizing muscle protein synthesis with it, right? But potentially if you're doing OMAD, maybe it's going to, let's say, and you are doing what we now think is a much better path with protein where you're getting 1 gram of protein per pound, not per kilo as we used to recommend. Yeah.

Dietitians.

So, you're getting 1 gram per pound. Let's say you're 150 pounds. One meal could be that 150 grams. Now, your body is going to use that in that one meal. So, the kinetics of the whole thing are very different versus if you're having protein all day through the day. Your body is going to use that protein very differently. So, if you're doing 6 to 8 meals a day, if you're doing little protein snacks, You're not optimized for muscle protein synthesis. You're going to be optimized for protein oxidation and elimination, and it's very different. So if you are eating OMAD, one meal a day, that means you're fasting by nature, right?

Right.

So that means like maybe the other, let's say 22, 23 hours a day, depending on how long your meal is. And you have to be careful that you are getting enough calories, enough protein if you're doing that one meal a day. But that would mean the other 23 hours you're essentially fasting. So I do think you could be anabolic and you could be fasting with that kind of setup. Now, if I was to study you, if I had just changed you over to this diet from eating 6 to 8 small meals a day, and then I studied you in a study to do one meal a day, we wouldn't see the epigenetic changes. Your body wouldn't be used to this yet. So this is the problem. I would have to study you as someone that's already adapted to this type of diet. Your GI transit has slowed down, you're utilizing the protein very differently, and that's just a totally different ballgame. So I believe that you can be anabolic and you can be fasting if you're following something along those lines and you're highly adapted to it.

So in terms of adapting, then there is a theory with fasting, like don't do the same fast all the time, every day. Like, vary it. Do 16:8, and then some days just do 12 and 12, and then do other days. So you're saying maybe that's not ideal, because if you're gonna make a one meal a day work, you have to be doing it and allow your body to get tuned into that.

Again, great questions, and I wish I could give you very easy answers, but it depends on what your goal is. So what you're talking about is kind of what I talk about heavily in my book, The Energy Formula, and it's all about resilience. Okay. So like resilience and instead of homeostasis, which our body's naturally trying to maintain, you're talking about hormesis is constantly changing up everything. So the body cannot adapt easily. And what this allows us to do is to adapt to a higher level. To become more resilient, to be able to take on what's called a greater allostatic capacity or stress load. So this not only works with, if you're doing that, let's say with fasting, that also makes you more mentally resilient. That makes you more physically resilient to temperature variations because your body is undergoing hormesis. It has a greater capacity to deal with stress. So if you're constantly confusing it, yes, that's great if you want to have a greater level of resilience. But if your goal is more autophagy and maintaining muscle mass, then I think somewhat of a routine would be ideal. And I'm going to end up blending all these things if I was like coming up with a perfect routine. But let's say like this is where I do probably 5 days a week of OMAD and then 1, 1 or 2 days a week week of, you know, something else where I'm mixing it up enough, but my body is also adapting enough. Where I'm not constantly changing it, but I'm changing it sometimes.

Got it. So, it's a 5:2, right? I mean, if we give it numbers. We should probably define anabolic just for anybody who might be tuning in for the first time and isn't familiar with anabolic versus catabolic state and what that means. Do you want to define that?

Yeah. So anabolic means that you are essentially anabolism in any tissue, but we're talking about muscle in this case. But anabolism is the growth, or at least maintenance of that tissue. And in this case, muscle. And then catabolism is the breakdown. So when we talk about anabolism, we're talking about muscle protein synthesis with muscle. When we're talking about catabolism, we're talking about muscle protein breakdown. So it's MPS and MPB. Those together, like if you kind of imagine like those legal scales, right? And it's MPB and MPS and catabolism and anabolism. You're talking about net muscle accretion. Okay. Like that means like your net muscle gain, hopefully, or loss.

Beautiful. Okay. So OMAD versus like some other choice for fasting or a blend of OMAD 5 days a week and 2 days you don't do something. What about metabolic flexibility? That term is thrown out a lot. Does it mean something to you? How would you describe it to a listener?

If so, I do like the idea of metabolic flexibility. That means in my mind being dual fuel. So that means that you can use glucose for energy and also use ketones for energy. The body seems to be primarily set up to use glucose for fuel, but in times when there's not enough glucose, it can go to this other fuel source, ketones. And I do think that if we were to go back in history, back in time, we would see that people are a lot more ketone adapted in that there was more frequent, you can call it fasting, some people might call it starvation. There would've been high fiber foods potentially eaten in certain times of year, like when, especially in the summer. When it's mostly vegetables that they would've been eating. And also there would've been resistant starches, so those would be harder to break down and they wouldn't be the same as like our super ripe bananas and fruits and things that we're eating now. So it used to be maybe when you ate a green banana and then you wouldn't be getting the glycemic impact that you are now. They would be moving their bodies more, using their bodies more. Far less sedentary and doing more manual labor. And then during the winter, they wouldn't be eating much vegetables. They would be eating more essentially ketogenic already because they'd be eating protein and fat, like via animals. So I believe that if we looked in the past, all those things add up to people would've been far more ketogenically adapted, right? Versus the way that we're eating constantly, we're more sedentary, we're eating low fiber, low resistance starch, we're, we're getting like hyper palatable foods that are like making us overeat, that, that are engineered for what's called high bliss point. And all these things are like making us just sugar burners. We're not good at being ketogenically adapted. So if you factor all those things, it's a very different equation.

The problem for midlife women who become often insulin resistant because of changes in their hormones and why this not snacking between meals is so important. And we often— women over 50 and 60 for sure— come from this era of, you know, snacking, or many small meals a day is probably better for boosting metabolism. And, you know, what are we doing to our body's ability to go into the bank and get the reserves?

Exactly. When insulin's chronically up, especially when these snacks are like these hyperpalatable foods, that are high glycemic, that essentially are sugar to your body, your insulin is going to be chronically elevated when you're chronically snacking. And so that's going to leave you in a state where you're not going through autophagy and essentially that cellular detox and cleanup where your insulin is staying high, your blood glucose is staying high, your energy is dropping low. You're constantly essentially in food assimilation, breakdown, excretion, utilization, all those things. Like your body's always kind of working with something. Like it's trying to like multitask all the time. We know that we're not effective multitaskers. We're all what's called monotaskers. And we do what's called task switching. We go back and forth and it expends a lot of energy in our brain to keep going back forth, back forth. So it's kind of the same thing with our bodies. That we're going back and forth, back and forth, trying to rest and digest, but then also be in sympathetic nervous system where we're fight or flight, where we're stimulated, we're working, we're moving, but then we're also supposed to be resting and digesting. To get insulin down, because a lot of people as they age become borderline diabetic, type 2 diabetic, is to do a postprandial stroll. And that's to take your walk after your meal, after anything, certainly like a dessert or, you know, you had a soda or something. If you went down that path, then just take a walk and you will upregulate what's called the GLUT4 translocation of glucose into the cell. And that will get that blood sugar down. That will get that insulin down. It's really powerful. You don't have to go sprint and that's very easy for everyone to do. When insulin stays up, then you're also more readily going to be storing those calories as fat as well. So you're going to be in a situation where you're also what's known as insufficient cellular energy states where there's a shortfall of ATP, of cellular energy. So getting insulin down, getting blood glucose down is ideal. And if you are kind of metabolic syndrome-ish, then I would recommend at least doing somewhat of a ketogenic diet.

Okay, so let me throw something back at you as a volley. So experts and many of the listeners are also fans of Dr. Stacy Sims' work, and she's got a big concern about low energy availability. So if we wanted to do one meal a day or begin, you know, to go to 16:8, I think for many of our listeners the challenge is how do I make sure that I'm exercising at least intensely? We're not talking go for a walk, but you know, if I'm doing heavy strength training or I'm doing high-intensity interval training, how do I do that within my eating window?

So you're saying that that would somehow conflict with your workouts in the evening?

Yeah, and for a lot of them, we want them to do that high-intensity working out ideally in the morning when cortisol is already working in their favor, and not at night when they might disrupt their sleep. So that can be a challenge for them. And do they put that aside and say, okay, right now we're going to focus on the fasting and the benefits from that, and, you know, I want you to walk during this period of time, and maybe we focus on the strength training and high-intensity work when you're not doing the OMAD?

Yeah, I would agree with that kind of idea because that energy shortfall can be a huge problem, and especially with women that are trying to maintain, you know, during the menstrual cycle, like when you're premenopausal and you're trying to maintain fertility, that takes more energy. And this is why we've seen that women can have a harder time with like extended fasting and maybe like a really strict ketogenic diet. It can be harder on the female physiology because your body is meant to maintain another life, right? So, you know, whether you go down that path or not. So when you're premenopausal, that's definitely something to be aware of. We see a lot less difficulty when you're postmenopausal with fasting and like ketogenic diets and things like that. There is this idea of, I was mentioning it before, of allostatic capacity, and that's known as like the, essentially your stress bucket.

Yeah.

Right. And so to your point, if you're going through like, you know, you just lost your job, you just lost a spouse, you just had a, you know, whatever happened in your life, adding like OMAD to that mix, adding like a ketogenic diet to that, adding cold plunge to that mix and biohacking and adding these stresses, even though they may be what's called a eustress, e-u stress.

Yeah.

If your body's going through so much stress already, that bucket is overflowing.

Yeah.

Okay. Now there is at times, obviously, like I was mentioning, that healthy eustress, eustress, where you can, through hormesis, grow the size of your bucket. And that's your allostatic capacity. And you want a bigger bucket. And then you're antifragile. You're harder to kill. You're more resilient. And that's amazing to be that. So it's, it's a very different equation and you have to grant yourself that grace to adapt, grow your allostatic capacity. And certainly if your body has been sedentary, your body's been eating one way for decades, then you can't make quick, quick changes and not expect it to not be stressful to your body. So you have to like choose one thing at a time.

Yeah.

And I think that makes sense scientifically too, to do that kind of a scientific method, essentially to know what's working and what's not working to do one thing at a time. So let's choose, you know, whether it's moving our bodies and, and going down this path of of being highly active and doing resistance training and HIIT and all this kind of stuff, or whether we're going to do some type of fasting, that's a new stress as well.

What if we've got somebody who's already tipped their bucket, they ignored their bucket, they kicked it to the curb, and they're in adrenal insufficiency because we know that's related to blood sugar stabilization issues. Might it not be beneficial for them to eat smaller meals throughout the day to stabilize blood sugar? What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, possibly. I think more ideally you're eating more satiating foods, like foods that are high fiber and high water volume. You get this actually a, a stretch reflex from the stomach that actually signals your body through side Y and CCK and leptin and all these kind of hunger hormones that like with that stretch reflex, that the more it's stretched, that you're full, that it's time to stop eating essentially. So I still like the idea of not really snacking all the time because you're never getting that stretch reflex, right? So what I would rather do is like start migrating towards the 3 meals a day. And just making sure they have a lot of volume to them.

Mm-hmm.

Getting like a lot of, you know, these water-filled vegetables, these fibrous vegetables, and just doing that and making sure that you're getting that stretch reflex. Mm-hmm. Versus just certainly not eating anything processed where it's made to make you overeat. Now these foods are engineered to have all of them and your brain, you literally have brain gasm. And then they'll do things like they'll engineer these foods to have like a lot of flavor on the front end and no flavor on the back end. So you keep eating, they do this with the drinks and it makes you continue to keep consuming.

Oh my gosh.

This is all like meant to override your brain from feeling full. So if you want to feel full and get healthier, get away from processed foods.

Yeah. Amen. Okay, so coming back to fasting, how do you know— I mean, you've seen it a lot as a dietitian— when does it become excessive, or dare I say obsessive?

That's a great question too, and I see that a lot, that fasting is kind of a cover for disordered eating. So you have to be very careful about that, whether you are that person or you're working with that person as a health coach, dietitian, nutritionist, whatever. If the body weight loss doesn't seem healthy and it seems too rapid, or there's a lot of secretive or kind of shame behaviors coming up, then be aware of that. So you have to be very careful, be honest with yourself, grant yourself grace. I think you have to be kind with yourself and say, look, this took decades to get here. Then I should maintain it for the rest of my life. I shouldn't do some crash process.

Beautiful. Okay. So I also want to ask you this question because I think it's a little complicated. And if you go out there and you do a search online, Dr. Google will tell you so many things qualify as fasting. And even scientifically, the 5-day fasting mimicking diet actually has you eating. So what qualifies as fasting ideally? And maybe what are people confusing as fasting?

Okay, so fasting, again, your point is, is really good in that there is the fasting mimicking diet, there's fat fasting, protein fasting, some people do dry fasting, wet fasting. So I believe that like true fasting is just when you're not consuming calories for a certain period of time. Now I do think I've done very extended fasts where I consumed like bone broth or something from time to time to kind of get me through. And I do think ultimately it depends on what your goal is. And I also think it matters to not get caught into like, you know, when I've done a lot of keto stuff, it's been the keto police. And then, you know, fasting, it's the fasting police. Like, what's right? What's wrong? Like, you broke the rule. There is no rule. This body is meant for exploration and understanding. Everyone's unique. So you need to kind of work under those parameters. Again, granting yourself grace, having explorative ideals instead of saying like it needs to be regimented because I'm telling you, if you're hyper-regimented, like tell me where else that's coming up in your life and I guarantee it, it's going to be gaslighting yourself, shaming yourself, perfectionism, you know, and that's not a recipe for long-term success. I have been through disordered eating and body dysmorphia. Like, I was morbidly obese, over 300 pounds. I was 150 pounds and anorexic. And trust me, when I was in my dietetics program at Chapel Hill getting my master's there, the majority of the people that were in my program were disordered eating people.

We study ourselves, don't we?

Yeah, exactly. It's a thing. And it does help with us understanding the clients we're working with, like having a passion and purpose to it. So there's something real to that, but also someone's still in that place. You need to be aware of that.

That was so good. What would you say to somebody who's here that, you know, is wondering, should I try fasting? And if I do, am I at risk?

Well, so again, here's another thing that matters. A bolus is really key. So when we talk about getting like, let's say, 1 gram per pound of protein, you don't want to get that spread out throughout the day either. To optimize muscle protein synthesis, you need to get enough protein in that bolus to what's called turn on that, that system of muscle protein synthesis. That has to do with rapamycin and all this kind of stuff. And it takes leucine, and it's the leucine content that's a key amino acid, probably the most important amino acid we to talk about with muscle. That's in protein. It's one of the reasons why bodybuilders love whey protein, because it's the highest leucine level in any protein per gram. So all this to say that you need to make sure you get enough protein in one sitting to turn on muscle protein synthesis. So this happens as we get older, that we tend to not get enough of a bolus. We don't eat enough protein in one sitting.

Yeah. Is there one meal where that matters more than it does at others?

I mean, somewhat like it tends to be argued that like post-workout that it matters more, but what's really been seen is what does the diet look like for the other 23 hours? And if you are hypocaloric, then that period right after the workout would definitely be a time where you're primed. And I would say that for athletes, it matters more. I think for people that are just general people, like we don't see it have as much of an impact. And then of course, like at breakfast, you should try and get like more protein. And they have shown that when you have like a higher protein, higher fat meal first thing in the morning, that you tend to be more satiated and eat less throughout the day. You tend to have better cognitive performance. But dinner tends to interfere with our circadian rhythm. We tend to eat when it's dark, which is like not what we're evolved for. I think they've shown consistently that breakfast really is a good time to get food and turn on your circadian rhythm. I've done it every which way. You can be successful no matter what you do.

Kick the family to the curb if you can, but if you can't, then you might have to deal.

And then, so add to this that as we age, we tend to be what's called anabolic resistant or leucine resistant, and you get into what's called sarcopenic obesity where you are essentially putting on more fat and losing muscle because you're trading off these tissues. You may maintain the same body weight, but you're losing muscle, you're gaining fat because you're rarely in this optimized muscle protein synthesis state because you're not getting enough protein and as you're aging, you're becoming more resistant. So you're needing more levels of leucine, not less as you age. And this is because we're becoming like more insulin resistant. This is because testosterone and other androgens are dropping, things like DHEA as well, and growth hormone. And so all of these are a factor.

Let me ask you one more question. So you mentioned as we age, we need the leucine more. We need the hit of protein or the bolus protein more. What about an active woman compared to an inactive woman?

I would say, and this is a kind of, because someone who's athletic is going to need more protein as far as maintenance of more lean body mass, and their mass is more active. So from that standpoint, they need more protein. But you're right, from the standpoint, if, if we were just looking at things were calorie-controlled, muscle mass-controlled, and we were just looking at what I was just talking about, someone who's more sedentary tends to be more leucine resistant or anabolic resistant, and they're already older, then it's going to be harder to put on muscle mass and harder to maintain muscle mass. So yes, their, their needs are therefore higher. They need a greater amount of protein so that they can get a greater amount of leucine. Now, a hack to this would be supplement-wise, to add some leucine to your meals, to add something like HMB to your meals. HMB is a leucine metabolite that's anti-catabolic. Leucine is gonna drive muscle protein synthesis. I've actually patented a new version of leucine called D-Leucine. That's a dipeptide. It's two amino acids put together of leucines. It's called the PEPT-1 transporter in the gut. It prefers di and tripeptides. It's much faster to the bloodstream. Versus standard leucine. So this is like why we're not only looking at bodybuilders and athletes, but we're looking at the clinical applications, like with burn patients, wounds, sarcopenia and cachexia and all these kinds of things. So if you want like the kind of the ultimate stack of supplements, I definitely recommend creatine. Incredible nutrient helps maintain lean body mass, strength, and power. It also helps with bone mass. Eye health, brain health. They've shown reproductive health, including like testes and ovaries. So that is a really good one to get. And then I would also take another ingredient I, I patented and put into the world is dihydroberberine. It's an optimized form of berberine. It's about 5 times more bioavailable. It doesn't have that GI distress. And so that's going to help with your insulin sensitivity. So those would be some things that I'd add. And then it also is going to help with ketone elevation if you're doing fasting. If you're doing a ketogenic diet, you're going to get deeper into fasting, deeper into ketosis by using the dihydroberberine, cuz it's going to lower blood sugar further and therefore elevate ketones.

Sweet. Oh my gosh. Where can they follow you and find you?

@SeanWells, S-H-A-W-N-W-E-L-L-S on Instagram and SeanWells.com. I have a, a free newsletter that I go through all these studies. I'm on Instagram. I have all these infographics. And talk about Stacks and it's really cool. There is a confusion between me and this like hot, sexy Black stud that is also Sean Wells, same spelling. He was on Netflix, this Too Hot to Handle documentary game show. I am not that guy. I'm the white guy with gray hair. I think I'm still attractive.

Extremely.

He's cool, but we're different people.

Fantastic. Sean, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. To listen to a decade of episodes and to get the show notes, visit flipping50.com where you'll be able to find all the previous episodes. And I made it super easy to make the most of your listening time and get exactly what you want to listen to as top priority by getting the top 10 episodes in the areas you most care about, like how much protein do you need, weight loss, and other 3 ultra important topics we've identified as our community's top 5. There's no more powerful health influencer in the world than you, midlife women. So go and listen right now. So there you have it. That is a rich, rich informational podcast episode that we just did. You may want to rewind and go for that walk all over again if you're listening to this one. Shawn is a wealth of information. So questions that we answered today is number 1, how long should you fast? I think that's a very key question, especially for midlife women, one that should be asking. And how do you know if fasting has become excessive and, dare we say, obsessive? And what qualifies as fasting? I think a great question to answer and look at multiple things if you're overlapping them that may or may not be sabotaging the results that you get from your fasting in combination with lifting weights in order to preserve and/or gain lean muscle mass. Love to hear your questions. Don't forget to submit them. Do you have a question for a podcast? A question you would love to ask, or maybe a story you want to tell? Did you know we have a special group just for podcast question roundups and the answers? My Community Coaches and I provide answers daily in inside of this group, but it's also where I go when I occasionally say, okay, open call for podcast questions, or tell your story, would you like to be a guest? So if you're looking for a community of women who are also interested in optimizing their health, strengthening their mindset, and looking forward to every new year, join the Flipping 50 Insiders group. That's Flipping 5-0. Insiders on Facebook.