Fasting Q&A with Ben Greenfield

All right, let's see. I am on. Welcome everybody. It's gonna take me just a second to get set up here. So first of all, let's make sure that you can see me for this fasting Q and A as I wander on my treadmill. And next I am going to pull open your guys questions. So I have all those in front of me and we're gonna be diving into this beautiful Kion fasting challenge. This is the first day if you're watching this at the at the time that it is launching. And first of all, thanks for submitting all these questions. We got a ton and I'm gonna do my best to answer in the next little bit as many of your fasting questions as I can because it's just fun to talk about not eating. How many of us foodies love to talk about not eating? Raise your hand.

No. I personally have relied upon fasting for years. I've intermittent fasted for probably 10 years, incorporated 24 hour fasts for about seven years, done quarterly five day fasting, mimicking diets for the past two years. And it's certainly something that I use quite a bit when I travel. I fast as well, especially for long haul flights. I'll minimally eat or fast, you know, fast when I get to where I'm going until the first meal time arrives in the area of the world I happen to be in to reset my circadian rhythm. And occasionally I will even fast for religious purposes when I'm in deep.

Kind of, kind of deep areas of soul searching or I am praying intensively about a matter I will just based on, you know, principles of religion that often pair fasting with prayer. I will fast in those situations. I will also fast as kind of a dieta from certain compounds, you know, such as meat, dairy, etc. And also do complete fasts in some cases leading up to plant medicine ceremonies. And that's another thing I've done for the past four years or so and I'm about to sneeze. I'm sorry.

Okay, no edits on this video. We're just gonna roll with it. So fasting is certainly something that is a big part of my life. I'm also gonna spread out my gum, which is a great way to keep your appetite satiated when you're fasting, but not a great way to walk on a treadmill and talk simultaneously. Okay, so before we jump into your questions, I should mention I'm not a doctor. Please do not misconstrue any of this as medical advice. It does not serve as medical advice. Fasting is not necessarily for everyone. So if you have any health concerns, any issues, make sure that you talk with a qualified health practitioner prior to embarking upon any type of fasting protocol. So the other thing is that we have plenty of questions that were submitted about fasting that, in my opinion, have already been answered in our fasting decoded book that you got as a part of this fasting challenge. And so because of that, I'll skip those questions and encourage you to to review that book for the answer to any questions that I don't address with regards to things that are already in the book. We also got a lot of questions about fasting for women. And one of our crack team members at Kion, an expert in nutrition herself and someone who has been intimately involved with creating this entire fasting challenge, Kelsey Hess, she will be doing a separate Q and A for you guys with a lot of the questions that came in about fasting for women. So that all being said, just a few other things before we jump in, I want to make sure you're aware of a multitude of other resources that I really like that I think would be a perfect accompaniment to this fasting challenge. So a few of my favorite resources in addition to the fasting decoded book that should have gotten for free, if you didn't get it yet, go to getkion.com fasting getkin.com fasting to download that. The other ones I really like are Dr. Mercola's book keto Fast, Kind of a unique approach to combining a ketogenic diet and fasting to get more from an autophagy and a stellum cell standpoint out of your fasting protocol. The Complete Guide to Fasting, which is just kind of like a A Dictionary for all things Fasting by Dr. Jason Fung and then also Beyond Fasting by Dr. Dan Pompa. All three of those titles, in my opinion, are some of the best when it comes to really getting your head wrapped around all elements of fasting. But I'm also going to answer a lot of your questions today. So I'm going to kind of scroll as I go here because I got a lot of questions in front of me. So of course, the number one question I get most frequently, and you guys ask me plenty about this, is does insert title of random supplement or food or compound here? Does it break a fast? Does it break a fast? So we'll do this one kind of lightning round style. So amino acids. Amino acids, do they break a fast? So amino Acids, whether branch chain amino acids or essential amino acids do have small amounts of calories in them. Which means if you are fasting purely for the purposes of autophagy or perhaps purely for the spiritual effort of denying the appetite, then amino acids would technically break a fast. Now branched chain amino acids would be a bigger culprit in that regard because the leucine in the branched chain amino acids will really break do do a bigger number on glucose and insulin sensitivity issues than essential amino acids which don't have the the large amounts of unbalanced leucine in them. I consider BCAAs just be expensive flavored water really. But I personally have used amino acids a lot in a fasted state because they allow me to maintain muscle while getting just about all the benefits of fasting with a slight dip in the amount of autophagy and cell cleanup that I would get in a completely fasted state. Amino acids will also slightly increase activity of mtor, an anabolic pathway that is really.

That'S kind of the reason that I would use amino acids sometimes in a fasted state state, just to be able to say, crush a really hard workout, be able to build muscle while still simultaneously losing fat in an overnight fasted state. Or say when I was training for triathlon, I do really long fasted bike rides to increase my metabolic efficiency and my beta oxidation or my fat burning efficiency. But at the same time I would use the amino acids to allow my muscles to get what they need to repair and to also stave off central nervous system fatigue without catabolizing muscle while still retaining almost all the benefits of working out from a fat based standpoint in that fasted state. So amino acids I would consider to be something useful, I wouldn't use them all the time in a fasted state, especially if you're doing this purely for autophagy. But most of the athletes that I work with and the exercise enthusiasts I work with, they'll use amino acids especially for their hard workouts or the very long workouts in a fasted state. The same similarly could be said of ketones. Exogenous ketones would act a little bit similarly. They won't really target the MTOR pathway quite as much as aminos, but same thing as far as being able to have a slow bleed of energy into the system that's going to have a negligible effect effect on glucose and insulin sensitivity issues. The other cool thing about using ketone esters in a fasted state is they really help to modulate the NRF2 pathway which is a really, really good anti inflammatory pathway. And in some ways they can almost upgrade a fast because they're so, you know, they're relatively hypocaloric and again don't really have an impact on glucose and insulin sensitivity. So you wouldn't truly be fasting if you're putting amino acids and ketone esters into your body from a pure cellular autophagy standpoint. But I think that the pros outweigh the cons of both. Bone broth is another one. Now bone broth. If you look at an average serving of bone broth, depending on the bone broth you're using, you know, you typically are anywhere from 40 to 80 calories when you're having a serving of bone broth. I would consider that to be something that would take you out of a fasted state. But for longer fasts that would be considered like a, almost like a three to five day water fast. I do like a modified version of that especially for people have a really difficult time from an electrolyte or a mineral status type of standpoint, maintaining just a strict water fast. You could do a water fast with things like, you know, multivitamins, pinches of sea salt in your water, etc. But there's even entire books, you know, written around this concept of a bone broth fast. And I think that for longer multi day fasts, bone broth is just fine. But I don't see it being that necessary for.

Most fasts. And for like a, you know, let's say an intermittent overnight fast, I would say bone broth is definitely going to break your fast. Anything that has calories in it is going to break your fast. And even bone broth is going to have more calories. You'd have to have a lot of amino acids and a lot of ketone esters to get what you get out of a typical, you know, one and a half to two cup serving of bone broth. So the other thing about bone broth, you know, because it does have some fats etc in it, I would say similar to something like MCT oil, which I'm also asked about a lot or C8 oil, your body does need to burn those fats before it taps into its own fats. So if you're fasting for really pure, pure fat loss and cellular autophagy, it anything that has calories in it is going to break your fast. Which leads to another question. I get coffee will coffee break? A fast black coffee with no calories in it will not break your fast. Coffee with stevia in it, Coffee with cinnamon in it, coffee with sea salt in it, that will not break your fast. Coffee with fats in it, Coffee with butter in it, Coffee with MCT oil in it, Coffee with caprylic acid in it. Yes, all of that will break your fast and really rinse, wash and repeat with what I just said regarding tea. Sugar free gum, sugar free gum, those sugar alcohols in it, those are not necessarily going to impact a fast. They, they do can have issues for some people with like small intestine bacterial overgrowth. Sometimes those can ferment in the gut a little bit. I like a form of gum called Sleek. I get that from young living and that can actually elevate metabolic rate. It's got peppermint oil in it, it's good, good at staving out the appetite. And that one doesn't have artificial sweeteners in it, it's got stevia in it. That's something that would not break a fast. A lot of gum will say it has like one to two and a half calories a piece. So again we're talking about a negligible effect on any of the elements that you're looking to get out of fasting. And I would say since gum can also be a really good way to reduce appetite cravings, especially if it's mint flavored gum. Gum in my opinion kind of falls in there with black coffee, I think, I think it's okay.

You know, some people will say, well, the taste of anything sweet, anything minty, anything you pop in your mouth is going to cause a release of incretin hormones. And when those hormones get released, that might disrupt some of the circadian rhythm benefits of a fast. But again, I think it's pretty negligible. It's nowhere near what you get from like a real meal. So, so gum for me is just fine. Glutamine, creatine, two other amino acids. Well, creatine, very low in calories. It's really only used to supply energy for 10 to 30 second very explosive bouts of energy. And I think especially if you're exercising hard in a fasted state similar to amino acids, creatine is going to be fine. If you're not exercising, not lifting weights, you're not going out for endurance bouts, anything like that, then I really don't think creatine is necessary in a fasted state. And lest any of you raise an eyebrow at what I just said, that creatine is used for efforts of 10 to 30 seconds in duration. And yet I paired it as something you might use for endurance exercise. One little known thing about creatine is that it can assist with glycolysis. And, and so for like a triathlete who's competing in a, what would be a relatively aerobic endurance event, but needs a little bit of extra power to be able to like, pass someone during a race or something like that, creatine can help with endurance as well in that respect. But ultimately, creatine I don't think is that necessary in a fasted state unless you're doing hard, explosive workouts. Glutamine would fall under the same category as the amino acids I talked about earlier. Everything I said about essential amino acids, you can apply that to glutamine. Same. The other thing is that, you know, bone broth can be really nourishing to the gut. Glutamine can do the same thing at a lower calorie load. So, you know, if you're fasting and also trying to simultaneously heal gut issues, glutamine could be even a better choice than bone broth because of that lower calorie amount in glutamine, THC and cbd.

If they're packaged in like a soft gel, same as fish oil, that means there are fats present in that capsule or even that liquid tincture that you're using. And sometimes, you know, a few dropper fulls, a hefty dose of CBD can give you 40, 50 calories and all the oil that it's packaged with. So, you know, like a powdered CBD or CBD in different form than an oil carrier. Yeah, it wouldn't break the fast, but I question the absorptability of that and whether you're just wasting your money on it. So I would say CBD and fish oil, both, you need to be careful with because you are getting a lot of fats in the soft gel or in the oil that those are typically contained in. Kind of similar to.

Let'S say, like the use of MCT oil or caprylic acid or butter or something like that. Your body is going to need to burn those fats before it taps into its own fat thc. You know, the reason I'm not a fan of that, and we got questions about that too, is that, as most of you know, it just makes fasting really damn hard because it spikes your appetite. So even though THC a lot of times does not need to be packaged in an oil medium and you could just really smoke it or vape it, it's something that I would Be careful with. Now that leads me to one other consideration of cbd. There are companies like Bio CBD, for example, that sell CBD vape pens. And if you really need your CBD and you're fasting, you could vape, but you'll just want to make sure it's from a company like that that's not using elements such as propylene glycol in their vaping liquid. So remember, vape pens can be dangerous, especially if they have that propylene glycol in them. Nicotine and nicotine toothpicks so nicotine gum would of course fall into the same category. If you look at Lucy gum or Habitrol or Nicorette sugar free. It would fall into the same category of everything I said earlier about the sugar free gum. But nicotine can be an appetite suppressant. So if you were going to chew sugar free gum during a fast, nicotine sugar free gum could amplify the fat loss benefits and stave off appetite cravings even better than regular gum. Nicotine toothpicks I was also asked about those can range from being flavored with stevia to being flavored with sugar alcohols. Again, comes back to the taste of anything sweet. If you're fasting for the circadian rhythm benefits, you know, could throw that off a little bit. I personally don't worry about it at all. Pretty negligible amount of calories and something like a nicotine toothpick. Nut milk. Nut milk is another one we got asked about that would definitely break a fast. Definitely break a fast because it has a pretty appreciable amount of calories in it. You know, I threw that in there with bone broth. It's just your body is gonna have to tap into those calories. And I would, I would consider both bone broth and nut milk to be an actual meal. So whereas I would consider coffee, sugar free gum, nicotine toothpicks, you know, glutamine, CBD vape pen, you know, all that type of stuff, it's, it's, it's pretty negligible, you know, and, and again.

If you look at the research of Dr. Satchin Panda. Yeah, I mean the taste of anything sweet, even putting something into your mouth, even drinking water in some cases, we know that just having a big glass mason jar of water in the morning can jump start your circadian rhythm. And so again it comes down to whether you're fasting for circadian rhythm benefits. You may want to avoid anything at all. The same could be said if you're fasting for the spiritual effect and just denying the body, which you do need to be careful with. You don't want to carry that into the realm of eating disorder, excessive denying the body. But you know, that's where something like dry fasting or complete avoidance of anything at all kind of comes into the picture. Like if it really is a true religious or spiritual fast designed to buffet the body and to just learn how to control your impulses, then you just wouldn't really want to open your gaping maw at all for anything. So. So that's the deal with the does it break a fast Question. All right, so let's see what else we have here. 24 to 48 hour fasts. If you do 24 to 48 hour fasts each week, is it okay for the body or does it do more harm than good if caloric requirements are still met? Well, you know, you have to go for almost four weeks with severe calorie restriction for your metabolic set point to decrease or for your thyroid to start to downregulate. And you know, if you were eating every 24 to 48 hours and it was not a state of calorie restriction, but instead of state where you're doing like a one meal a day or one meal every two days type of protocol, there are a lot of people who do really well on the Omad protocol who will wait until the very end of the day. Guys like Jack Dorsey and Todd White, both guys I interviewed on the show, very successful entrepreneurs who for productivity reasons simply don't bother with meals until a certain point in the day and then they have that one meal a day. Now I think if you're doing a one meal a day protocol, lunch is a better time to do that one meal a day versus dinner. Because the bolus of food you have to eat is so large. You know, for me, if I was doing one meal a day, that one meal would be 3,500 4,000 calories. It's a lot of food for your body. Need to process right before you go to bed. It's going to elevate the core temperature before bed. Whereas if you do it midday, you might get a little bit tired, need a little nap in the midday. But aside from that, it's not going to disrupt sleep cycles during the entire night. Now that just kind of returns to my other comment I wanted to make about this eating every 24 to 48 hours. And that is that it's just a lot of food to have to process. That's a big meal. And if you're just trying to get enough nutrients and vitamins and everything on board. It can be tough to sit down for a huge meal like that. But we also live in an era where it's not hard to get like really nutrient dense foods like, you know, guacamole and sweet potato fries and ribeye steaks and dark chocolate and all these things that actually do pack a pretty hefty calorie punch. Nut butters would be another. And so, you know, it's not, it's really not that hard to get down thousands of calories in the hatch with that one meal a day protocol. But you just need to be cognizant that it does require you to have pretty big meals if you're doing that. And also trying not to just like wither away because you're not getting enough calories or nutrients to support your body. But it could work. I would just encourage you, if you're doing the one meal a day protocol, consider lunch or arguably even breakfast to be that one big meal of the day. And then make sure you are getting enough calories. And every 48 hours. Again, you might have to eat 6,000 calories in a meal if you're eating every 48 hours. All right. Is intermittent fasting as effective as one long seven day fast for autophagy? Well, that's a pretty big leap from intermittent fasting to a seven day fast. Like we know that once you go longer than about 16 hours, you will get a pretty big leap in cellular autophagy that you don't get underneath that 16 hour mark. And that goes apically more after anywhere from 24 to 48 hours.

That's why I'm a fan of doing the longer fast like the dinner time to dinner time fast or even a 24 to 48 hour fast occasionally. But you don't have to do that every day. Sometimes autophagy is placed, placed it on such a big pedestal that we got cold, hungry libido, less hypothyroid people walking around because they're just glorifying autophagy and not realizing that the body needs these press pulled cycles. Right. You need MTOR activation and autophagy. Right. That's why like I'll lift weights, I'll work out hard during the day, I'll engage in physical activity all day, I'll fuel my body with all the proteins and healthy fats and carbohydrates it needs and then I simply hit the switch in the evening and don't eat for typically 12. I shoot for longer than that. Typically I'll shoot for closer to 16 hours, but I do that. I'm a creature of habit. I'm a creature of compound interest, right? Meaning I don't do soul crushing workouts every three days or four days. I work out consistently every day. I don't do huge, huge long soul crushing fasts that frequently. Instead I do a good 12 typically coach to the 16 hour fast, but I do that 365 days a year. I mean, I'm super duper consistent. And I really like that approach where you're getting consistent autophagy versus these really hard, like mentally difficult periods of calorie restriction or complete fasting followed by periods of just like stuffing your face until you get to the point where you're like, oh, I gotta fast again. So I like the consistent shorter fast, even though, you know, the occasional longer fast is really good for cellular autophagy.

Okay, Someone says, I'm in the military, due to my schedule, I'm only able to fast for about 12 hours. Are there benefits associated with a 12 hour fast? Yeah, absolutely. You can get benefits by just going longer than about four hours. They recently did a study in which in diabetics they compare to three meals a day versus what a lot of us personal trainers used to encourage, right? The snacking, grazing type of protocol of six meals a day. And granted these were people eating a kind of like what would be considered a normal carbohydrate intake, like anywhere in that 40 to 60% carbohydrate intake, which is more like the standard American diet. And in the face of normal carbohydrate intake like that.

The three meal a day protocol was four, far superior for glucose sensitivity or glucose regulation and insulin sensitivity than the six meals a day. And we can definitely tie things like glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity to autophagy. And so we know that simply by going more like four to five hours between meals versus two to three hours between shorter meals is superior for cellular autophagy. One question mark raised in that study was would we see the same benefits if these people were on a low carb diet between the three meal a day and the six meal a day? And I don't really know, but ultimately, yeah, you're going to get benefits even with a 12 hour fast. And with a lot of the women that I work with, I don't encourage the lean active women to do much longer than 12 hour daily fast because I tend to see a drop in hormones, hormone status and a little bit of hypothyroidism, a drop in progesterone, fertility markers, et cetera, from consistent fast longer than 12 hours in females. And so for females I encourage a daily intermittent fast of closer to 12 hours than 16 hours and just very occasional periods of longer cellular autophagy, such as a couple of times a month at dinner time to dinnertime fast and similar to I do what I do like a four times a year year, a five day fasting mimicking diet, right, where you're eating about 40% of the amount of calories that you normally consume for five simultaneous days.

In women who have a little bit more fat to lose or who might not be as active, I don't see as many issues with that. And they can often go 16 hours. But a large part of my audience are women who are doing things like CrossFit, endurance sports, frequent exercise, from bikram yoga to swimming and beyond, and those in those female populations who are already lean and active. I don't recommend consistently going longer than 12 hours for an intermittent fast. Okay, I'm going to scroll to the next page here. Let's see, is fasting safe for people who are hypothyroid?

I think that because hypothyroidism can often be linked to to low carbohydrate status, not low calorie status, I feel that it's on a case by case basis. If your hypothyroidism is induced by long term calorie restriction that you've placed upon yourself, I don't think fasting is going to do you many favors. If the hypothyroidism is based on let's say long term carbohydrate restriction, then you might be able to just start into a fasting protocol similar to what I just discussed described, right? Like let's say 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast four times a year, a five day quarterly cleanup with a fasting mimicking diet and an occasional 24 hour dinner time to dinner time fast, very similar to what I do each year. But you were to simply step up your carbohydrate intake, do like nightly carb refeeds or weekend carb refeeds, etc, then you might be able to just jump into a fasting protocol just fine.

But in most cases, folks who are hypothyroid need to go through a period of time where they're actually getting their metabolic set point kind of rebooted by actually giving themselves adequate calories and just doing a really nutrient dense calorie dense, almost like a Wesin, a priceish or mediterranean diet type of diet with really good amounts of fermented foods and olive oil and wild caught fish and grass fed beef. And they just need to take care of their bodies for a while from a calorie intake and a nutrient density standpoint. Because half the time it seems like the hypothyroid people have been seeing have been maybe not fasting, but just like over exercising, which can be kind of a similar form of fasting in terms of the autophagy that it induces and the hypocaloric state it induces. And those people just need to back off the exercise and eat more for a while before they consider going into a fasting protocol.

How can you avoid hypoglycemia while fasting? Well, it's actually very common, whether transitioning into a ketogenic diet or a fasting type of approach or a low carb diet, to go through periods of time where your body actually has yet to be able to shift efficiently into utilization of ketones or into beta oxidation. And because of that, this means that you do experience times where you're hypoglycemic, but simultaneously not really tapping into fats that efficiently. So there are things you can do to ease yourself into that process. Probably one of the best things to do would be trace amounts of those essential amino acids I talked about, or the use of ketone esters rather than simply eating more carbohydrates, because you're giving your body some, some fuel substrate that will amplify the availability of fuels such as ketones and amino acids that your body's having a hard time making on its own or utilizing on its own. And so you'll typically notice after anywhere from three to seven days of low carb or keto or fasting that your ability to be able to use fatty acids and ketones, it becomes a little bit more efficient. But to kind of get yourself over that, Humphrey, I would consider using like a serving of ketone esters on a daily basis or anywhere from, you know, 10, all the way up to 40 grams of amino acids, like essential amino acids. Okay, let's see. I am a vegan. Do you have special recommendations for fasting in this case, or things to be aware of? Really, the only things I would be aware of are the things I would typically encourage any vegan to be aware of, that your nutrient status going into a fast in most cases is going to probably be a little bit inferior to the nutrient status of an omnivore. And because of that, you'll probably need to take into Consideration the use of certain supplements that will help to keep those levels topped off. I'm talking about things like creatine, taurine, vitamin B12, a good multivitamin mineral complex, a little bit of DHA and some of these things, you know, like the DHA, for example, is going to come packaged in fish oil or an algae and it's going to have some calories in it. But you know, if you're vegan, you're already low on a lot of those things and I would just make sure that you're addressing those. And you know, if, if you've been eating a properly structured plant based diet and already using those supplements, your levels are probably already pretty well topped off and you just go into your fast and then continue, continue to use those supplements and continue to, you know, ferment and soak and sprout and do all those things that I think a good little vegan should do and you'll be fine. But if you've been following like a standard American vegan diet and eating whatever tofu and french fries, then you're probably going to need to make sure that you do some supplementation before you go into a fast to get things like DHA and creatine and taurine and B12, etcetera, back up. Okay.

Let'S see.

A few really random questions here.

In the fact that vagal activation, have you ever measured the difference in the effect on the body that vagal activation, meditative breathing or ice baths have in resting versus fasted states? I have no clue and I haven't seen any studies on that, so I'll probably avoid that one.

In your interview with Dr. Mercola, he cautioned against doing a five day water fast because of the risk of metal toxins that are stored in fat being released. In 2019, I did two five day water fasts. The first one was rough until day four or five. The second one seemed easier. Do you think you could follow Dr. Mercola's advice or would complete five day water fast be okay for certain people? Well, yeah, I would test your meta levels first, like get a nutrival test for example. I mean, I mean really gold standard for metal testing is what's called a tri test where you test urine and you test blood and you test hair. That that would be a gold standard for testing your metals. But even a nutrival analysis like from Genova Diagnostics I think is going to give you a really good idea of your metal status. And it's also nice because it can give you, you know, a Marker of a lot of different micronutrients. And you know, the, the thing is, if you find yourself high in metals, you may want to consider a really good metal detox like Quicksilver Scientific's push catch detox or Dr. Pompa's three month detox, which is pretty hefty but really does a good job at getting it out both the body and the brain. Or even, you know, Dr. John Douillard's two week Colorado cleanse. Those are examples of a few detoxes I'll use with my clients who are high in metal and that will help to make sure you low earned metals before you go into something like a water fast. The other thing you could do is just use a really good binder or chelator during the water fast. Something like really good activated charcoal or really good chlorella supplement, or even the metal free amino acid chelator by Dr. Minkoff. But the only issue with that is that sometimes if those metals aren't being excreted, they can simply bind and wind up in other areas of the body. So you have to pair that with really hefty amounts of things like infrared sauna, dry skin brushing, trampolining, rebounding, sweating, enemas, things that help those metals once they're bound to be removed by the body. So if you're going to do a five day water fast, what I'm saying is, you know, if you haven't done a big detox, first consider using a binder and then at the same time consider doing a lot of things like, you know, infrared sauna, rebounding, dry skin brushing, or trampolining, vibration platforms, coffee enemas, things like that. Just to make sure you're really pushing a lot of those metals out of your body and they're simply not getting relocated. Okay, how do you build muscle while fasting? Honestly? I mean, research has shown that even on 800 calorie a day diets, people who are lifting weights tend to basically cause muscle protein synthesis, even in the absence of hefty amount of calories that allow them to maintain muscle. And then the other cool trick along with that is something I already alluded to, amino acids. So what I would do is lift weights and take amino acids during your fast. But please know that a metcon workout is different than a weightlifting workout. I mean, when I say lift weights, I'm not talking about CrossFit, which is so glycolytically depleting that you, you aren't going to be able to do it during a fast. However, Doing something like a five by five protocol, right? Like five rounds of five reps, deadlift, squat, overhead press, chest press and row. Like really heavy, short, hard efforts, that type of thing would be fine. Or you use something like, you know, like, like a cold lifting protocol where you got a hex bar deadlift, you know, on the floor of your office and you're stopping every hour during work to do like 10 heavy hex bar deadlifts. And you're also weaving push ups and pull ups in throughout the day. So you're just stopping for brief spurts of muscle activation during the day rather than doing these hefty draining, anywhere from 45 to 60 minute workouts. So I would consider that kind of greasing the groove approach. I would consider a five by five protocol. I would consider the use of essential amino acids and I would also really make sure you're not doing metcon style workouts. Okay. I'm a skinny, lean guy with a very high metabolism, trying to put on weight, but agree with the benefits of fasting. What are ways I could do an extended fast without losing a lot of weight? You could try some of the things I just talked about, but it's a real uphill battle. I'm just not a fan of skinny, lean, active hard gainers doing extended fast. Arguably you don't need to. Your body's already pretty good at cellular autophagy and you know, compared to like an endomorph or an apple shape or somebody who's really good at storing fat, you might be just fine. From a longevity and on top of the G standpoint, sticking to, you know, something like I do, I'm a skinny hard gainer guy with a voracious appetite, super lean. Like those long, long fasts really aren't that great for my body and I see things like, you know, thyroid issues and libido issues and hypogonadal issues set in. So I use the protocol I just described to you, like 12 to 16 hour daily intermittent fasts every day of the year, a four times a year, five day fasting, mimicking diet and occasional, we're talking like one to two times a month, 24 hour dinner time to dinnertime fast and occasional dietas abstaining from protein or certain nutrients or sometimes calories altogether leading up to something like a plant medicine ceremony, which again might be four times a year max. And that's my approach. So for, for a skinny, hard gaining guy, that's what I would recommend. Okay, training while fasting, if I'm an elite athlete, what would be good fasting protocol to still get all the benefits of fasting, but fuel my training?

Frankly, I would wait until the off season or wait until you're done being an elite athlete. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. You cannot engage in cellular autophagy and longevity enhancing tactics and at the same time pursue extreme performance. And I'm sorry to say it, but elite athletes, professional athletes, et cetera. I would be very careful with fasting. I would stick to like a, you know, 12 to 16 hour intermittent fast and even that if you got a hard morning workout or morning practice, I'd even be careful with that. I just. You can't pursue extreme longevity tactics like this or anti aging tactics and high hefty elite performance simultaneously. And I can't with good conscience recommend that you, as a professional athlete do a lot of fasting, especially if you're in a metabolically demanding sport. If you're a professional bowler, maybe it's a different story, but you get what I'm saying. Just wait. There's plenty of time in your life when you're done being an elite athlete that you can tap into autophagy and fasting. Now is the time when it's probably going to do more damage to both your crew rear and your body than good. Is it bad for muscles to do a lot of weightlifting during long fast? Yes, if you are getting into a state where the time under tension of that muscle is exceeding about two minutes or more. Because that's getting very glycolytic versus the short heavy burst that I was talking about earlier or 10 to 30 second bouts on a bike rather than two minute bouts on a bike. Anything that taps into the creatine phosphogenic system or that is sub glycolytic, that's just fine while fasting, but what you need to be careful of are these big long bodybuilder type sets or metabolic conditioning, CrossFit style sets or high intensity interval training sets. Okay, so we're talking about more the use of, you know, short repeats, short intervals and short bursts of training. And if you do that, the weightlifting is fine. If not, you're just going to really be fighting an uphill battle. From an energy and a recovery standpoint, what is the best time to exercise during intermittent fasting? I'm a huge fan. I talk about this a lot in my book Boundless.

And I've talked about it on podcasts before too. Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. When you wake up in your intermittent fasted state Meaning walk in the sunshine, a little sauna session with a little cold afterwards, a nice yoga session.

Occasionally like some very light mobility work or very kind of like easy restorative activity. And then later on in the day, hours after you've already fed, you've broken your fast, et cetera, when the body temperature is higher and the grip strength is higher and your post workout protein synthesis has peaked and your hormones have peaked, that's when you do the hard workout. So I'm not a fan of doing the big hard workout early in the day during intermittent fasting. Your cortisol levels are already high in the morning. I'm a fan of light low level restorative movement in the morning and then the hard workout later on in the day.

Okay, what is your recommendation on how to introduce food at the end of the fasting period? What kind of food is preferable to start with? I would. If you're eating a complex meal like steak or like a big roast chicken or going out to dinner with friends, if you get really good digestive enzymes, I like the stuff from bioptimizers for example, like their protein digesting enzyme mas or their fat digesting enzyme K Pax. And you take a lot of enzymes, those can help quite a bit. But I personally like things like pumpkin mash, sweet potato mash, like I get the organic canned stuff from Amazon. I like smoothies, I like bone broth, I like coconut yogurt, I like kefir beer, anything that's a little bit more kind of like mushy baby food. Ish. I even like those little serenity foods, baby packs that are made for babies. But I go through them like candy because they're just like wild caught salmon and grass fed beef mashed up with like olive oil and beets and sweet potato and they just squeeze them out of a pouch. I like stuff like that. My stomach responds better to that after a fast versus like a more complex food that you got to chew and chew and chew like a steak or chicken. But you know, let's say you have a big party or big restaurant you're going to and you know, you know, you know this. In the morning you say I'm going to fast all day. You know, go, go to the restaurant and break your fast with whatever meal that you really love, but take digestive enzymes along with you and plan on really eating slowly and chewing that food a lot, masticating that food and you should be just fine. Or you can just always bring your Vitamix to the restaurant and throw everything into that.

Okay.

How can I prevent feeling hangry and low energy? Well, I kind of addressed that question when I was talking about hypoglycemia, which is a lot of times what the hangry and low energy is. But I would also challenge you.

I'll get on my soapbox for a second here. It seems like sometimes we all want to think fasting is abnormal or brag about our fasting or try and figure out all these ways to biohack a fast, or we almost make fasting too complex. But when you look at it from a religious or philosophical standpoint, fasting is just basically let yourself get hungry, deal with it, pardon the expression, shut up your inner bitch, right? And just basically fast, be hungry. It's okay. One thing that can really help with that is the understanding that hunger is not cumulative. Right? The gnawing feeling you get in your stomach at 11am when you haven't eaten since 7pm it's not going to get worse at 2pm or worse at 7pm like it just kind of, you get hungry and then you just stay with it. I think a lot of people are afraid, oh gosh, from this hungry now, how am I going to feel at 10pm tonight? And honestly, I stay busy. I drink coffee and tea, I walk, I. I move, I talk, I play music, I get things done. And you just do things to take your mind off of food. But if you're around food, thinking about food, planning on how you're going to biohack your fast, writing about food and fasting, thinking about fasting and food, then you'll just dwell on, you know, this myopic approach to just like, you know, fasting as this biohack and food as this complex thing you got to get around. It's just you just basically fast. You deal with the hunger and you don't think that much about the fasting and the food. You just focus your mind on other things and then also consider those hypoglycemia tactics I talked about earlier. If it's really a huge issue like ketone esters and amino acids.

You know what? I think that is a perfect place to end right there. Because I got through most of the questions, except there were a few very, very random case specific questions I didn't feel were, were appropriate for everybody else. The fasting for women piece, Kelsey's gonna get into that with you guys. And yeah, I hope this has been helpful and kind of giving you a little bit of, a little bit of help and some tips when it comes to how to how to optimize your fast this year. So.

Day one. Here we go. All right, guys, have fun.