How to Pair Intermittent Fasting and Exercise After 40

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What are you waiting for? Good night. If you're trying to use intermittent fasting and exercise after 40, it can be tricky. You're choosing to apply two hormetic stressors to a body already under hormetic stress, going through physiological changes. And we really can separate this into three areas which might help you understand the dilemma. So first, The benefits of intermittent fasting for women in midlife potentially are great. Improved gut health, autophagy, which means at the cellular level is like a little Pac-Man going through and killing off and getting rid of the ones not functioning, the dead cells, getting them out of there. Busting a weight loss plateau— imposing this hormetic stressor will often do that and cause your body to start burning fat again. And then reduced inflammation. Powerhouses, right? Number 2 is yet the midlife hormonal changes mean like perimenopause brings these on. They continue muscle loss, putting you in a point of anabolic resistance where you don't gain lean muscle as well as you did. Your body is resisting doing it. Then bone loss and adrenal stress. These are 3 keys and honestly the things that were most often told to do for muscle loss and bone loss can be adrenal stress. So it's how do you juggle which and what is going on? And for those of you who have an autoimmune disorder or disease that maybe came on in midlife, realize that you can reverse that. And not necessarily is it related, but there can be both. And autoimmune disease and adrenal stress and bone loss and muscle loss are still true for you. And it doesn't mean you can't lift heavy or do intense strength training necessarily. We wanna get you back to doing that because strength training actually can be one of the best ways to support an autoimmune disease. Number 3. So Enter optimal exercise prescription that's unique to women in midlife and beyond. It supports muscle preservation and actually gains in muscle. It reverses or prevents bone losses and minimizes adrenal stress. So we're looking for how do we juggle all of these things and those somewhat competing and conflicting pieces that we've got. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns and follow trends and look at how does this fit me if I want to use this. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset so you can have the energy and the vitality that you want, need, and deserve in this second and better half. So let's unpack this. So this is based on a Community member question about intermittent fasting and exercise. Molly asked, "Debra, I've been wanting to incorporate fasting into my health regime. However, with your current recommendations of working out in a fed state, I found it's very difficult to get enough protein in and maintain the fasted state. I read the book Fast or I'm sorry, Feast Fast Repeat, and it goes against a lot of the information you recommend. It's difficult for me to fast for 18 to 20 hours and feel good. Just wondering what your thoughts are on fasting. So just to come back, first of all, thanks for Molly for asking a question that most likely many of you have, and/or she raised some questions you didn't know you had. But one of the things I want to point out to you is where the book came from that she's So Fast— or I'm sorry, I want to put that in the wrong order all the time. Feast, Fast, and Repeat is, uh, Gin Miller's book, and she's been a guest on the podcast talking about that and her newest book as well. I would highly recommend it. She also has podcasts, two of them in fact, and where she just tells stories about women's success with intermittent fasting. So highly intriguing, and she's a fantastic guest as well as friend. So I want you to, to kind of look at, you know, what she's telling is her story, what happened to her. She was a teacher, and this is what happened to her. And as she started to share her own story and her own success of losing 80 pounds, how it changed her life, others said, I want to know more about that. What happened to you and how did it— and as a teacher, you can imagine, she's a great telling its story. She's great at describing, "Here's what worked for me, here's how it worked." So in this question, there's a lot to unpack. So first of all, you know, getting enough protein, that probably is challenging. If you're fasting for 20 hours, you're only eating for 4. If you weigh 150 pounds, you're probably not going to get 150 grams of protein during that point. But one of the benefits of intermittent fasting is only going to be derived from varying your fasting length. You would never, ever, ever want to always fast 18 and 20 hours. You want to maintain that metabolic flexibility. Ideally, we're all fasting overnight, 12 hours. And, you know, I was on a call with someone last night and, you know, she thought, you know, well, what is fasting? And I said, well, what time are you done with dinner? She said about 7:30 PM. I said, what time are you having calories in the morning? About 6 or 6:30. I said, well, you're only getting about 11 hours because you've broken that fast with, you know, what you're putting into your coffee. It's not the coffee, but it's the creamer and the almond milk. And if you have anything, and probably that's gonna spike your blood sugar, and as soon as that happens, you're no longer in a fasting mode. So getting to the point where can you do dinner a a little bit earlier, can you put off the coffee drinking first, you know, for another hour so that you're at least getting 12 hours just as your habit, not as something special? I think that's something to consider. So the other thing is, it's difficult for me to fast 18 to 20 hours and feel good. That right there would be a ding, ding, ding, ding. Then don't do it. Okay, so the other thing is, did you work your way up to it, right? But if it's not feeling good, you know, the people who have success with intermittent fasting actually feel good while they're doing it. So you start with 12 and then you extend to 13, and maybe after 13 you go to 14 or you skip to 15 hours. And once you've done that, then going to say 17 is kind of a sweet spot, 17 or 18, but 17 feels like, okay, that's only 2 more than 15, I can do that. And I like to do a lot of that overnight. So I will finish dinner, have a really early dinner, and I'm talking like 3 PM would be my last really high protein meal of the day because you want to enter your fast with a high bolus of protein, and then you'll break it similarly. But that would say that then 9 AM is 18 hours. 9:00 AM the next morning. And, you know, once you surpass that initial hunger, you know, a lot of you may be wondering, when I be hungry? Like, if I'm going to bed at 9:00, when I get hungry? I know there are things you can do. You can have tea, you can— and I know some of you then are jumping ahead and saying, oh, but I'll be up all night, right? So let's look for solutions, not obstacles. If that's where your brain is going, I want you just to realize that's what you're doing, and and you're guessing, then maybe that's how you'll feel. If you have worked your way up to it— not try this today and never have fasted— if you've worked your way up to it, your body is already pretty good at snacking on its own fat. And if you're having high-protein, high-fiber meals before going into a fast, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn It's not what happens. You don't actually feel more hungry, and you will sleep so much better because you've got this bigger break between your last meal and bedtime. So those of you who experience something happening like you're waking in the morning or you're extremely hungry, you may have a couple things going on. It may be a little adrenal stress. Your cortisol level may be going up and it's spiking your blood sugar levels, and that's why the hunger. And so I would back way down, just come back to that 12 hours, see what happens again with 13, and look at your overall diet. Is it really good? Are you, are you a sugar burner? You're focused on carbs too much and at the wrong times of day. You want to start early in the day with high protein. You want to introduce some carbohydrates at lunch, and you want to include probably the most carbohydrates at dinner when you have a little bit more insulin sensitivity, and it's going to help you sleep. But you don't want to go crazy with it. If you've got a lot more carbs than you've got protein, potentially that's where you're struggling. So again, I'm going to recap. You want to start earlier, and that makes it much more simple. I mean, you don't have a dinner at dinner time. You have your last high-protein meal at 3 or 4 PM, and at that You know, you're used to 8 PM start, you know, come back to 6 or to 5 and then back that out. You don't have to do it all today or this week. Over time, you know, play with it. Fasting has a purpose, you know, and realize, why do I want to fast and what's my highest priority here? You may need to get off a plateau, give that additional hormetic stressor. And in that case, you have to let go of other goals. You can't necessarily juggle all them at the same time. You have to put something down and say, this is important to me, and you're monitoring. So if one of the things, big overarching things you want, is bone density and muscle mass, you know, longer fasts regularly are probably not helping you because you've got to monitor your, your muscle mass. But you can gain strength, but probably not, do we find in women who are midlife and and doing intermittent fasting, they don't gain lean muscle mass. And that gets harder as we age. So muscle mass encourages greater metabolism, and, you know, ultimately that also is going to play into greater strength. But you may be fooling yourself if you're not measuring. So smart scales will help you do that— track the muscle mass in pounds or kilograms depending on where you are in the world. So Fasting has that purpose. You can kickstart your, your metabolism again, your fat burning, with an 18, maybe a 20-hour fast. But there's no reason, if you're an active person, to do this regularly. Rotate during your month, you know, 12 hours, make that your standard, you know, do 13 or 14, 15 and 18, and not, you know, whole stretches of them or 30 days in a row of them. Rotating the amount of carbs you have also becomes important. Overall, lower than you've probably done before in your life. You know, remember when we used to have 2 bagels at a sitting? I'm thinking it's so low fat, it's fine, right? But you might toggle between 50 and 100 grams a day of total carbs. And I know those of you who are doing keto are probably more like 20 or 30 grams, but that's really low if you're an active woman. So I hope I'm preaching to the choir and you are somebody who is like, I love activity, I'm exercising either because I love that too or because it's enabling me to do things I do love. But if you are active, you probably want to consider, do you have at least 100 or do you have even more than that? Some days if you're trying to, you know, do a regular workout and then you're doing 2 hours of this and 4 hours of that, you're just playing with fire. Right? And, and I know you may say, well, I've been doing that my whole life, I can't go back. Or yeah, you can, you can retrain your body to do anything, but you can't train it to live on more and more exercise and less and less fuel. Your body is just, wait a minute, right? You've got one foot on the brake and one foot on the accelerator. What do you think is going to happen with that? Nothing good, right? So the majority of humans you know, going really low on carbs always, it's not gonna work. Your body is gonna get stressed by each of the things— the fasting, the exercise, and the very low carb— and those things will never be rewarded, you know, and replenished. So just where's that energy to do work and work out and do fun stuff? Where's that gonna come from? And yes, your body can learn to use fat, but You know, generally we want to exercise fed. You want to start that with a little carbohydrate to help you. And if you are under adrenal stress, that's even more true for you, right? So if this also was your first book on intermittent fasting, keep reading. You know, it's good, but there are dozens of ways to fast. So they include just going lower calorie for 5 days with higher fat and lower protein during those 5 days, and then it's the feed where you actually begin to see the progress. You know, using bone broth or doing smoothies twice daily and just one regular meal is also another modified way to fast. There's so many ways to start, but for intermittent fasting to be the goal and then to extend, um, what it is that you're doing by slightly longer, um you know, or overnight fasting, that's just the beginning. You know, hit 12 hours, try 13, then 14, see how you do. But don't always do the same thing other than the 12. 12 should be standard, I think, for most people. And some days you'll break that, and that's okay. Your week should not ever look the same every single day, or you will lose that metabolic flexibility. If your goal is to stay active, gain muscle, and improve bone density, you know, tell me a 20-hour fast, how you manage to get micronutrients and that are going to help you do that. What we all have to do is prioritize. So at this moment that you're in right now, you may have something, and it may be that you really need to work on weight loss, you need to work on fat loss, improving your triglycerides, your cholesterol, your gut health. And that may say fasting right now is something you really need to focus on. And exercise doesn't become less important, but knowing that you're only shelving the high protein that fuels that exercise, or going heavier and harder, you're going to shelve that for a little bit because this first thing may be life-saving for you. And then coming back to second priority is now I know I've got to get on this You can't necessarily juggle all the first-priority goals at the same time. So are you inflamed, right? You may need to reduce that inflammation and kick up the autophagy and fasting for a short time as your focus may be your priority. But high-intensity exercise and fasting are not going to coincide well together for a long period of time. That leaves you energy deficient and that puts you in stress mode and that causes a loss of muscle and bone. Keep in mind that lots of low-intensity activity also becomes high intensity as it relates to causing cortisol. So what I mean by that is, you know, if you're just doing a lot beyond your stretch and capability of, you know, going for tons and tons of walks and you're doing it early and you're doing it late, you know, that is still causing breakdown within you and potentially stress. So say you're fasting, you're going for a significant walk a couple of times a day. You know, that's potentially not what you want to do. Be kind to yourself. You know, go for a 30-minute walk, a 45-minute walk, great, call that a day. And maybe just 10 minutes after each meal. But be good to yourself. Try yoga, try calming things. If you need activity to insert where you otherwise have exercise, that will work for you. But you have to decide, what's my major stressor right now that I'm picking the hormetic stress and then decrease the stress coming from the other sources. I hope that helps. The one place you can't necessarily control the stress from other sources is that one happening for you right now, because say you're in perimenopause. If things are just very volatile for you hormonally, it may not be the best time to apply intermittent fasting and exercise, you know, so movement maybe and a little bit of intermittent fasting. Or, you know, take care of paying attention to your sleep, your stress level, your energy level, your mood, and decide what's my best next step. I will put a couple resources here. One is Heal Your Hunger and Tricia Nelson Debra Atkinson is the owner of Heal Your Hunger, and she really may have a lot more to say about intermittent fasting and really does not like it for her population. And the reason is it triggers eating disorders, right? It triggers for people who already have emotional eating episodes and may have a history of deprivation or binging and purging. And intermittent fasting is really a a masked way sometimes of purging and often can lead to then a binge that occurs. So if you are very tempted to fast after a big weekend of eating and indulgence, you're kind of in that cycle. So you want to avoid that. And another resource, of course, I will come back to listing episodes with both Tricia and with Gin Miller, the author of of Feast, Fast, and Repeat. I wanted to get it right this time, I slaughtered it twice. And Cynthia Thurlow is also a great resource for any of you interested in more information about intermittent fasting, because the benefits are great. So they can— intermittent fasting can coincide with exercise. I do it. I've used, you know, 12-hour overnight fasts for you know, the last decade consistently and really probably was doing it. And then yet many times not when I had early morning wake-up calls, you know, that was probably during a point where, you know, we shut the kitchen after dinner most times, but we would have like ice cream or yogurt, frozen yogurt, you know, a lot of times right before bed. And I thought, oh my gosh, I can't believe I used to do that. Up. But, you know, then an early morning wake-up call means probably I was only getting, you know, 7 hours at most of fasting. So wish I had known all of this earlier, sooner, and made some better choices. But, you know, we only do the best we can with the information we have at the moment. So I hope that's been helpful because I do believe there's a place for intermittent fasting in our lives for those of us who are active and energetic and like to exercise maybe a little bit more than the next person does. There's still room for that, if you will do it correctly and think about, "What am I doing now?" I have a client who does intermittent fasting, loves to exercise, but when we do a longer fast once or twice a month, you know, we will put it on the days where it coincides with a light day and then a day off. So she's really in recovery mode during that phase and not overtaxing her body and not coming out of the fast and taxing her body without being fed and refueling and starting that fire. So if you have questions, please put them wherever you've seen this. You can go to the show notes at flooping50.com/intermittentfastingandexercise.. 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