Busting Fasting Myths with Dave Asprey

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All right, we are going to be unpacking fasting today with one of my very best friends on the planet. In fact, such a best friend that he walked my mom down the aisle at my wedding. I am talking about Dave Asprey, the founder and chairman of Bulletproof360. You know Bulletproof, it's the amazing high performance coffee and food company. He's also of course the creator of Bulletproof Coffee. And I'll tell you, I love Bulletproof coffee when Dave makes it for me, I'm spoiled. He's a three times New York Times best selling author. Actually, I think that, I think that is now wrong. I think he's now hit four times with his new book Fastest Way. Of course you know the Bulletproof diet. That's the book I wrote the forward to. And he has got the incredible bulletproof radio, super great podcast you will want to be tuned into. You've probably seen him on The Today Show, Dr. Oz, Fox, CNN, Nightline, and all over the place. He's known as the father of Brazil biohacking. And he also puts on an incredible conference every year called Upgrade Labs. Yep, I've got Dave with me today. You're gonna love this interview and here's what else you're gonna love. You are going to be able to do his Fastest Way challenge for free by going to jjvirgin.com forward/fastest way. And you'll also want to grab his book Fastest Way to help you through the process. Okay, I will be right back with my buddy Dave. Stay with me.

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Okay Dave, this is going to be so super fun because I think back and you know, we've talked so much about dieting and especially where you came from. Which by the way, I'd love for you to tell your story. Like let's actually start there and then I'm going to throw this next line out to you. So before we start to dig into today's topic, I want to make sure everybody knows the Dave before the bulletproof Dave.

Sure.

I wish we had the visual.

I can find an old fat picture but I used to weigh 300 pounds and before I turned 30 I had most of the diseases we think we get after 60. I had high risk of stroke and heart attack, had arthritis since I was 14. I had cognitive dysfunction, pre diabetes and chronic fatigue syndrome. So I was not in a good place. But my career was taking off. I was faking it a lot of the time because I couldn't remember anything. But no one noticed unfortunately and I decided I'd work out the way you're supposed to an hour and a half a day, six days a week, go on a low fat, low calorie diet and I'd have to lose weight. And after 18 months of that, I looked in the mirror and sure, I had some muscle under my fat. I still had a 46 inch waist and I still weighed 300 pounds. And I looked at my friends eating double Western bacon cheese cheeseburgers with extra large fries. And I'm having the chicken salad with no chicken and no dressing. Wait a minute. I work out more than all my friends, I eat less than all my friends, and I'm the fattest one. This stuff isn't working. Maybe it's not me, but at the time I thought, actually I'm just eating too much lettuce, I need to eat even less, maybe have some more Diet Coke. And since that time I got really frustrated and I said, I'm going to try everything. And I did. Because I'd been successful in Silicon Valley, I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying everything. And I recovered my health and I got rid of those things. And then I said, how can I continue upgrading? And I've raised my IQ, I've lowered my biological age, and I'm around 11% body fat today, give or take a half a percent on the scales. And I'm never hungry and I like my life. And I ate food that tastes delicious and I have more energy than people half my age. And it's only getting better. It's awesome.

And this is what we're going to unpack because you, as that was happening with you, I remember I was in grad school and we were taught that you would eat every couple of hours, you should graze, that you should eat very low fat, be a vegetarian and do a lot of cardio. In fact, don't lift weights until you've lost the weight. You should just do at least, at least 30 minutes of cardio a day. More is better. If you couldn't do 30, don't bother. Go long slow distance, don't go too hard, go moderate, right? And so, you know, we started to talk off before we started the recording. I'm like, hold on, we got to get this on. We got to get this recorded is this whole idea of grazing. And let's, we're going to bash this and then move into today's topic because way back then it was like, don't let yourself get hungry. You should eat every couple of hours because it keeps your blood sugar up and stable. And you should do all that long slow distance cardio so that you can burn more fat. So blow through that, and then we're going to dive into fasting and really kind of get rid of some myths, too, around fasting. Like, you'll lose all your muscle and all that kind of crazy stuff. So what do you say about grazing, my friend?

Jj? I live on a regenerative agriculture farm. I raise cows and sheep and pigs. If you want to look like a cow or a sheep, definitely graze. And it turns out with our pigs, if we let our pigs eat like cows, they eat all the time, they'll weigh, oh, four, 500 pounds, and 300 of it is fat. And if we let our pigs, which are biologically wired a lot like humans, if we let them intermittent fast, when you take them to the butcher, the butcher says, what did you do? The pigs don't have very much fat, and they have so much muscle meat. I've never seen this in a pig that only weighs 300 pounds before. And the difference is how often you eat. So if we had three stomachs and you like to chew your cud, grazing works. And I take this back to when I actually had a fear of not eating every two hours because I was already fat and I didn't want to be any fatter. And I'd heard, your body will go into starvation mode if you don't eat every two hours. Then I don't want to starve. I don't want to die of starvation, and I don't want to get fatter. And even worse, I had learned I don't want to be hypoglyce. I don't want to be hangry. What happens then is if my blood sugar dropped, I couldn't handle it. I would just turn into a jerk. And so it was like fear of being a jerk and fear of going into starvation mode that I was so afraid of skipping a meal that I said, all right, I'm going to hire a shaman to take me to a cave in the middle of the desert, drop me off for four days with no food and no people. That way, when I get hangry, what am I going to do? Yell at a cave wall? And that was the basis of my Fast this Way book that just came out. And it turns out you can fast for 24 hours without feeling any hunger whatsoever. And there are some things you could do during a fast to make it happen. And so far, 70,000 people have done my fasting challenge. Just go to fastthisway.com it's free. You don't have to buy the book. But it's a testament when you see hundreds of people saying, I can't believe I could do this. I didn't know I could go a whole day without food. Sounds like a big deal, but it's not like, oh, you had dinner, you slept for eight hours, you skipped breakfast and lunch, you skipped two meals. Like, everyone can do this. But it sure does sound impressive to say I went 24 hours, but you can do it.

Well, here's the other piece of that. It is okay to be a little hungry.

No, if you're hungry, you'll die. Jj, come on.

You know, it is so funny, Dave. I still remember this, that the dietitians were saying, do not let yourself get hungry. You always want to eat ahead of being hungry. And I was sitting at Expo west talking to our buddy Jeff Bland and Dr. Joel Kahn. And Joel, who normally I disagree with the stuff he says, but I loved what he said here. He said, and I'm saying that Joel very lovingly was this as he was.

Choking on kale and saying that it made him more virile than liver, which is totally.

Joel's our vegan buddy, who. Anyway, we'll leave it at that. So Joel said this great line, hunger equals younger. Anyway, you know what, that's actually just a fantastic line. And we should not be so afraid of being a little hungry. And generally, most of the time, if we are a little hungry, it's just because we've, we've trained ourselves Pavlovian to be hungry when we're not. Anyway, let's start to unpack this whole idea because I do remember back then we were told you need to eat every couple hours and if you didn't, you would start to lose muscle. So I think one of the big urban legends around fasting is that if you don't eat, you slow down your metabolism, your body breaks down muscle. So what do you have to say to that?

Well, there is something that happens when the body breaks down protein and it's a very profound anti aging energy enhancing thing called autophagy. So you don't need to eat all of the time to keep your muscle. But if you don't go without food some of the time, the body never gets a chance to break down zombie cells. These are cells that need to get taken out. Or imagine in the days when Las Vegas had screw in light bulbs, there were thousands of people whose job was to find a dim bulb and get on a ladder and unscrew it and replace it. Well, your body has the same process, but There's a quadrillion of these little guys called mitochondria floating around. So you must go without food so the body can take all the energy that would have gone into digesting your next meal and say, hey, let me go into digest the weak bulbs and taking them out and replacing them with strong ones. And you're not going to lose muscle if you do that. Now, if you go on a long, long fast, you might lose muscle, but you're eating the same amount of protein every day. You're just eating it at a different time. So you can go 14 or 16 or even 12 hours without food and get benefits from that, even if you eat the same number and amount of calories, same amount of protein at a different time of the day. So it's not just what you eat, it's when you eat it. And they both, both matter.

I love that you're saying that is so key, important. I've seen it so often too. It doesn't matter. You, you know, it doesn't matter if you eat right before bed. It's like, you know, yes, it does. So let's look at that because in fastest way, Great book. And I will put in the show notes. Go to jjburgin.com fastest way. We'll make sure that you can get into that fasting challenge. But what's great is you go through the different types of fasts. And we also, we're going to talk about fasting specifically for women. Let's talk fast in general. And like, you know, what is fasting? And then what are, like, what are the different types of fasting? And what you do in that book that's so beautiful is you kind of walk people into fasting so they don't just start out and go, we're going to go one meal a day. You know, there's a process you take people through.

But let's talk about what fasting really is. Fasting means to go without. And there's all these weird arguments. There's purists who like to be on the fringe. And we have animal vegan purists. Like a bee touched it, I can't eat it. Extremism. And you have keto extremists. If you eat a carb, again, you're a bad person. And so you get all this thinking and you get faster as you go. Well, in studies, the mice only had water, so you can only have water during a fast. And it's a dogma. It's a belief system that's not backed in science. And it's funny because then you get the even more sense, oh no, you can't have water during fast. You have to have a dry fast with no water. And then the next step beyond that is you can't have air during a fast either. So it's absurd.

Very special fast called a dead fast. Right?

Exactly right. The suffocation fast, it's all the rage. So what you end up getting with is you say, okay, what am I going to go without to get what benefits over what period of time? And all of a sudden now fasting becomes, oh wait, can I fast from social media? Yes. Can you fast from alcohol? Yeah, it's called abstaining. Right. Can you fast from sex? Yes, people do that and I write about that in the book. And it can be intermittently or for longer periods. The same as it could be with food. Right. So now that you've said, I'm going to teach my body to feel safe going without, what is the right length of fast? Might it depend on the state of your body when you start the fast? If you're like I used to be, with a hundred pounds of extra fat and inflammation hanging on you, probably starting with a three day fast isn't going to work very well. So maybe I should have started if I'd have known about it back then with a 12 or a 14 hour fast and worked my way up. And the same thing goes, oh, maybe you've never fasted. You've been eating 12 meals a day every day for the last 10 years. You're probably not want to do a 24 hour fast right away so you can start where you are. Likewise, if you're like me and you're really used to fasting, I do about 16 hours almost every day or more because it's easy. Today I'm doing one meal a day. So I'm only having dinner today. And it doesn't affect my performance or my attention or my mood or anything, it's just very normal. But if I woke up this morning and my throat was sore and my eyes were bleary and I didn't sleep very well last night and I got in a fight with someone and I was really stressed at work, you know what I would have done? I would have had breakfast.

Right?

And that's the thing, your fast doesn't have to be the same way every single day. It's completely okay to change it. Every single day you are fasting if you go at least 12 hours without food. And there are studies of middle aged women in Australia, sizable Studies. I interviewed the author on my show. Her name is Dr. Murad, and she says three days, a week of 12 hours or longer, intermittent fasting showed substantial benefits over even periods of time, like six weeks. So that's all it is. You don't even have to fast every single day in order to get benefits. In fact, there is something called the fasting trap that I write about in fast this way. That's really important because women fall into the fasting trap faster than men. And it's the same as the vegan trap and it's the same as the keto trap. And it's that if something is good for you, more of it must be better. And it's even the exercise trap. And you and I both encountered this. Look, if lifting weights is good, I'll lift weights twice a day, every single day. And what you get is overtrained and injured. You don't get stronger. Right? So that's what we're dealing with with fasting. Let me talk about the trap, if that works, because it's so important for women. When you first start intermittent fasting, you go, oh my God, I just went 16 hours. And I have so much energy. It turns out I have more energy and focus during the day. And I love my life. And so you do it for a month. You say, you know what, that's it. I'm going to do one meal a day, five days a week, because I know fasting is good. It made me feel this good more. Fasting can only make me feel. So then you do that for a little while and then usually in about six weeks. But it depends on who you are, how old you are, how stressed you are, et cetera. About six weeks. That's weird. I sleep like eight hours and I feel like I didn't even sleep. And if I monitor my sleep like with an Oura ring, then it shows that I'm not sleeping very well. But I don't know why. I know I'll fast even longer because fasting always makes me feel better. I'll try a three day fast on top of this. This happens all the time. Okay. Then you wait another couple weeks ago. That's weird. My cycle's totally off and my sleep is still broken. And then you go another couple weeks and now is my hair getting thin? That's strange. I haven't seen that before. So that's the symptoms of the fasting trap for women. For men, it usually shifts out a couple, two to four weeks. It takes a little bit longer. And for men it's sensitive.

I always say we're like Ferraris, and you guys are like VW bugs.

VW bugs.

I know I'm dating myself, but, you.

Know, you were like a delicate flower that goes in the vase of a VW bug. Isn't. Isn't that.

That would be it. We're. We're delicate. We are very intricate. You guys are way easier. You take more to mess you up. Our hormones.

Delicate flowers.

Our delicate flowers. You know? Yes, we will as. As we. As we've proven, haven't we? Leave that one alone.

Shh.

Okay, so back over. I think you were going to talk about men. We don't really care on this show we discussed, actually.

Are you kidding? Some of us are, you know, married.

Hey, here's the thing. We are the healthcare CEOs of our family. We really guide our guys. And I think it is important for women to understand that, like, you know, it is easier for men to do this, but if they continue, they don't tend to be as crazy as we are. Where we'll, like, do more fitness, more stuff like. And if it's not working, we double down on it, which is really crazy.

Well, guys do it too, once it works a little bit. Like, I'm going to double down. And for guys and women need to know this. The first symptom is the same, but it's not gonna happen for probably eight weeks. And it's, wow, my sleep quality is down too. So I wake up and I feel groggy. But the second symptom for guys is you wake up without a kickstand.

Oh, right.

Now, here's what an unenlightened guy is gonna do.

That gets real right there, doesn't it?

Well, it happens. But here's what happens in the head of a guy. And I'm just gonna give you ladies a little peek inside a guy's unco. And since I run a neuroscience clinic that looks at unconscious stuff, I think this is credible. We're going to look for an excuse for why there's no kickstand. And we're not going to look at fasting. We're going to look at the women in our life and say it's because you. And then they're going to insert, are too skinny, too fat, are mean to me, didn't make me dinner, blah, blah, blah. And we're not going to do it because we're mean. We're going to do it because we automatically look for a reason. Our brains are always looking for an excuse. Right? And we'll Actually believe the voice in our head that says it's your fault that we woke up without a kickstand, even if it's because we were fasting too much. So guys, I'm telling you, and women with guys, if your guys over fasting and this becomes an issue, like, well, there you go, this can happen. And the same thing happens, by the way, very commonly with guys when they go vegan, you wait eight weeks and suddenly there's no desire. And all of a sudden they're like, why are you? And we get bitchy. So there's that.

Then they start to cry and all sorts of things go strange.

No matter how much celery juice they drink, jj, it doesn't seem to fix.

That's so crazy, isn't it? So I look at this all like a bell shaped curve and you really want to be in the middle. You don't want to be on either end. And so you're finding what's optimal for you. And what's optimal for you is not necessarily what's optimal for your husband. And so it's really paying attention and dialing it in. But there's also a concept here that I've been playing around with a lot that really your program lends itself to perfectly because you say, you know, listen to your body. Of course, over, over fasting is a form of stress. So everything you started to talk about was like, okay, these are all signs that you've just, you've over overstressed yourself. And I look at this just like you do exercise, which I want to dig into next is that we know when exercise you're supposed to cross train. We've got to think of that same thing in diet. So what you just talked about is you don't want to eat the same every single day. And naturally what you described you wouldn't be. Some days you may go, you know what, I'm waking up and I'm hungry. I'm going to have breakfast. Some days you, I'm not hungry, I'm going to wait till lunch. And you're naturally having caloric variability. You're naturally, maybe you're keto one day, the next day that you have some carbs. And that's good because your body should be a hybrid and be able to shift from ketones to fats to carbs and be able to be that metabolically flexible. So that is what's so key in this plan, is that it's not some rigid hardcore plan that doesn't give people that variability, that unique personality that they own, they have. So it fits within their life, right. And allows them that flexibility that will also create the metabolic flexibility that we need to have.

It is. It's so important to have metabolic flexibility where your body, and I don't mean you consciously, I mean your body feels safe with an empty stomach, feels safe with fat. It feels safe with carbs. And it doesn't get a stress response.

It knows what to do with them. Right? It doesn't go, what is this carb? You have not eaten one of these for years. What is this? What do I do?

In fact, we know that people don't eat any carbs. In addition to probably getting cranky over time and having poor gut bacteria helps.

They don't get mochi made by their friends.

There you go. Someone has to do it.

Very sad. What you don't know listening is that Dave, he makes the best mochi ever. So at all of our parties, we always have Dave making the mochi.

And mochi is a pounded rice thing from Japan.

For people that have heard of it.

The stuff that's wrapped around ice cream.

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Back over to carbs. Yeah. What happens when someone never, ever eats a carb? They're just straight keto.

You get insulin resistant. And there's studies that show this, which means your body forgets how to use carbs. And when your cells are wired right, they're able to make the enzymes that allow you to make energy from glucose or blood sugar or from fat. And magically, this means you have more power, more resilience, more endurance. And the kind of resilience and power isn't like I'm a power athlete, but just power to wake up, stay focused, get grounded, do what you want to do all day long. And the power to maintain control over your emotions. And fasting triggers a lot of emotions. We should probably talk about the F words of fast.

Let's talk that. And then we're going to go into exercise. So, yes, let's talk about that. Oh, come on.

Exercise. Oh, how boring. All right, there are three F words that are built into Your cells. All life on earth, whether it's a bacteria, whether it's a whale in ocean, it does not matter. Everything in between, plants, animals, follows the same rules. First important rule is run away from, kill or hide from scary things. It's fear. That's the first f word. So 10 times more focus than is necessary for that. Right? And this is our emotional trauma. This is stuff we worry about. Even if it isn't actually a real fear. If your brain thinks it might be, like, oh, someone yelled at me, that's actually scary to your subconscious, not to you. The second F word is food or feed. Because the rule is eat everything. And all life dies of famines over time. So we are wired in our cells. Way before we can think about it. About a quarter second before we think, there's a part of us that's like, eat the bagel. Right? And you have to recognize that's not you. Right? Same way if you lean against a hot stove accidentally and you pull your hand away before it gets burned. You're like, yeah, good thing I pulled my hand away. And then you go, wait, I didn't decide to pull my hand away. Who pulled my hand away? It was the same person that made you eat all the bagels is the one who pulled your hand away. It's before you can think. And it takes a lot of extra energy to catch that desire and then hold back on it. And that's called willpower. So when you get the voice, just eat the bagel. And then you have the power and the resilience and the energy to say no. That is something that's necessary. But if you can't make energy because your body doesn't have resilience and flexibility metabolically, then you're not going to be able to say no to the bagel and it becomes really a problem. Third F word that all life has to do to stay alive on earth is a reproduction related F word.

I do know that one. Yes, I do.

Fertility. Yeah, Fertility is what you're thinking about. Yeah, I know you, jj, that's not what you're thinking about. Anyway, those are the three F words. But what we get mixed up, and I'd like to say especially women, but I don't think that's true. I think it's actually men and women is that we go, oh, if I don't eat, I might die. So we ping pong between fear and food. Ping pong, ping pong, right? And then someone tells us we'll starve if we don't eat six times a day. So then that puts us in fear. Right. That's why it's so hard. What you learn in fastest way is how to turn off the fear part, which makes it so much less work to just deal with the food part. It's all about the voices in your head. So the book is as much about psychology as it is about.

So I'm going on a hike with our buddy Vivian today and. Well, actually, I'm not going on a hike with our buddy Vivian today because I wanted to go on this big steep hill hike and Vivian said, I'm fasting, so we better go do something like a little walk on the beach. And so what would you say? I'm like, oh, come on. Piece of cake. So anyway, we're going to. We compromised with a yoga class, but what would you say about exercise and fasting?

I want to be behind you guys in the yoga class. That's what I'm thinking about.

Well, we'll do it in Santa Fe.

Yeah, I just want to see if.

You tip over anymore. I've gotten really good at yoga.

I.

You wait till. Yeah. And I even actually did a really. So here's the funny thing. So, yeah, you got good at. So. But I love Happy baby. But Tim and I went to core power yoga because it's right near our Airbnb. It's like literally half a mile. And I find this core power yoga, too. And I don't know anything about. I'm like, this looks cool. So we drive over there, and it's a Saturday morning, and we get there 10 minutes ahead, and we put our mats down and the. It's not a big room, and people keep coming into the room. Well, first of all, we go in the room, and the room. It's a hot yoga class. Now, I've only done hot yoga, so I've done it once. Do you know what I did? I did it with Jeff Hayes and Kathy Smith in Park City, Utah. I'd say that because I'm so glad Jeff Hayes was with me because Kathy Smith is sitting there balancing on a toe. It's 110 degrees. She's on one toe. She's got a leg up on the ear. She's got this crazy leg behind her head. I. And Jeff. Jeff and I are looking at each other sliding, you know, and it was the first yoga class I think I'd ever taken. And here it is. Is like an advanced yoga class with all everybody in there. It's like doing these things. I'm like, get me out of Here. I'm never doing this again. So I didn't know this was a hot yoga class. We go in, it's hot. I'm looking at Tim like, we should go. Tim's like, we're going to stay. And so we're sitting in there waiting for the class start and there's more mats and more mats and now pretty much it's like, it's like boiling sardines here. It's so boiling packed full of people in this yoga class. But I will tell you, we, we rocked that yoga class. Like I feel now like I can pretty much do anything. I did not stand on one toe and put my, you know, foot around my head. But I made it through and I didn't have to run out well.

And I, I have a lot of concerns about hot yoga. Mostly there's air quality and it's got a lot of the studios get moldy, right, because it's so humid.

You're now breathing in everybody stuff. So we're not going to a hot yoga class today. Vivian was like, I want to go back to another one. I'm like, yeah, no, I did that. I can cross that off the list. I know better now anyway.

Regular temperature and when you should exercise. Okay. So I wrote a whole chapter in fast this way. There's a chapter for women and there's a chapter about exercise and timing. And the most effective thing you can do to get more out of your exercise is to exercise at the end of your fast and then break the fast right after the exercise. So in Vivian's case, if she wasn't jet lagged, she slept really well last night. She didn't have any wine last night and she's like, I'm really feeling full of power. This is a really strong fast. I've got it. I'm going to go hard and then afterwards are going to go eat some protein. I could respect that. And she'd get probably more of an effect from the workout for doing that. But if she's saying, you know what, we just traveled, I'm actually, it's really hot. I'm just not feeling super energetic today. That's probably not a day to push yourself really hard during a fast. So it's okay during a working fast and that's what she's doing. And in the book I differentiate. There's spiritual fasts. One day, two day, three days, journaling, resting, relaxing, recovering, going deeper, taking all the energy of the body that would be looking for food instead of looking for knowledge and wisdom about your body. And yourself. Okay, that's cool. But if you're trying to do that, you probably shouldn't also be doing CrossFit. And then there's a working fast where you're saying, okay, how do I have more energy and more focus throughout the day? And then you probably do want to do your exercise, but not at the beginning or middle of the fast because that's going to raise your cortisol for a long period of time.

So fast, exercise, eat. Because I think one of the hacks that people don't use is how great it is to work out and then eat. So talk about what happens when you do a workout and then you have your meal.

Well, jj, you and I have both had pre workout formulas and there's a time for pre workout formulas. Right. But it isn't necessary to eat right before you work out because you're going to crash. If you're going to do a century riding 100 miles, you will bonk if you don't eat. That's a different thing than what most of us are dealing with in a hot yoga class or even a pretty heavy session at the gym. You've got enough in you to handle that. That. So what we're talking about with exercise and food and what happens if you fast is something that I talk about in fast this way called tripling down on mtor, which sounds kind of technical. So let me walk you through it. MTOR is a signaling molecule in the body that says grow. Right. Okay, that's awesome. You should have that all the time. Except then you would probably grow tumors. So your job is to spike it really high so you get regeneration and then to keep it low the rest of the time so that you get recuperation and recovery. Right. So grow clean. Grow clean. So these, you create these cycles in mtor. Well, the way MTOR works is like a spring. The more you push it down, the more it will spike. So we know three things that push MTOR down. One of them is fasting. So great, you skipped breakfast, you've already suppressed your mtor. Another one is coffee suppresses mtor. One for the coffee and probably green tea. Exactly. The third thing is exercise. So imagine if you woke up, you had a bulletproof coffee, which will not break a fast. You can have it non bulletproof if you want. But most people find they have less hunger and more focus if they do it with a bulletproof coffee. And then you say, I'm going to exercise now you've suppressed MTOR as much as possible. Then what will cause it to spike is after all that exercise, all that suppression eating, protein and carbs, you don't have to have the carbs, just protein will spike it. But insulin will raise MTOR substantially. So what you can do then is you can say, all right, I actually had a good fast and a good workout. I'm going to go have some source of protein and I can have some carbs with it. And it might be one of your favorite carbs, garbanzo beans. Those are so gross. I don't know why you like those. But you can have rice, you can have sweet potato, whatever kind of carb you want. It doesn't have to be sugar, but you want some of those. But most importantly, you want protein. And studies show that about 30 grams of protein within a half hour of exercising prevents a two day spike in cortisol. And cortisol is a really interesting and important hormone. If it's too low, you will die and you'll get sick and you'll feel terrible. And if it's too high, you'll get sick and you'll gain weight and you'll feel terrible. So it's one of those things, it's important and necessary needs to be in the goldilocks zone. And if you do this, I'm going to exercise faster, then I'm going To fast another 12 hours, your cortisol is going to go up and you'll actually feel good because cortisol makes you feel good. Unfortunately, then you're going to probably have a little bit of a spare tire from that that you didn't want because cortisol is pro inflammatory when it's too. So basically just have that food right after you exercise and it's okay to have some carbs. Then if you're not doing keto and you're going to feel really good and you're going to get your mtor to go up right after you exercise. So boom, you got muscles.

And then for those of you that missed that beautiful video of Dave's, your biceps are almost as big as mine now. Look at that.

They're just as big as your triceps. Jj, I'm not even talking about your biceps.

All right, so you've got your fastest way challenge. And I know you've had what, like fifty, a hundred thousand people go through this Fastest Way challenge.

7,70,000 and counting now.

Yahoo. So let's get some more in there. So jjvirgin.com fastest way jump in there. And again, I love the way you lead people through this. So I watch that And I'm like, this is just fantastic. It's so good that you, you step people in, you meet people where they are and help them so that wherever you are coming into this, you will have success. Because again, you start in this, you know the wrong way, you get hungry, you get angry and you spin out. That won't happen here. You're going to go, wow, I can do this. So a fantastic job on the book and really explaining things, making something that has a lot of like, misinformation and urban legends and myths around it, dispelling those explaining it and easy to understand science, then giving people a very actionable blueprint. So again, that is fastest way and you can join the challenge for free. JJ virgin.com forward/fastest way And Dave, I love you so much. Thank you so much for being here and being such a great friend forever.

Thanks jj. I love you right back and thank you for your work in the world and for sharing knowledge and also just making it accessible. I am still traumatized that I spent so much time tired and fat and miserable and doing things that didn't work. I had the willpower, I had the desire and I just didn't have the knowledge. And you have been such a wealth of knowledge for so many people. And heck, I wouldn't have become a four times New York Times bestselling author without you helping me. So I am forever in your debt. Anything I can do to help you, I'm there.

Ah, thank you, my friend. All right, so there you have it. Every myth about fasting busted. Plus you learned a little bit about some of the, some of the things Dave and I have been up to over the years. We've been hanging out for, gosh, over a decade now. So I want to remind you to jump into that challenge. It is fantastic. You can get@jjvirchon.com for forward slash fast this way for free. And he really does a beautiful job of meeting you where you are and helping you walk through and get fasting into your life without going through any pain to do it. And also, if you've not yet subscribed to JJ. Yep, that's it. Subscribetojay.com it's as simple as that to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an awesome episode. See you next time.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading. Next Next Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.