Intermittent Fasting for Females with Cynthia Thurlow

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Hey, this is JJ Virgin. Welcome and thanks so much for joining me. This is Ask the Health Expert. Here.

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Fast I have a great guest for us today. It is Cynthia Thurlow. She's been on the show before. Now she's going to be talking about her new book, the Intermittent Fasting transformation, featuring her IF45 program. Let me tell you a little bit about her before I bring her out. She's a nurse practitioner and the CEO and founder of the Everyday Wellness Project. She's an international speaker and she now has over 10 million views on her second TEDx talk about intermittent fasting. With over 20 years of experience in health and wellness, she is a globally recognized expert in intermittent fasting and nutritional health and specifically intermittent fasting for women. And she's been featured on ABC, Fox 5, KTLA, CW, Medium Entrepreneur, and the Megyn Kelly Show. She was listed in Yahoo.

Finance as one of the 21 founders.

Changing the way we do business. She hosts the Everyday Wellness podcast, considered one of 21 podcasts. Expand your mind in 2021 by Business Insider. A lot of 21s here. Her mission is to educate women on the benefits of intermittent fasting and overall.

Holistic health and wellness so they feel.

Empowered to live their most optimal lives. And boy, have we done that in this interview. There are so many gems in here that you are just gonna love it. And she also has provided her Intermittent Fasting Quick Start Guide which you can grab@jjbirgen.com if45. All right, I will be right back with Cynthia Thurlow. Stay with me.

Hey, it's J.J. here.

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I get so many questions about intermittent fasting. And by the way, intermittent fasting is different for women than it is for men. Kind of a shocker. So I wanted to bring on, I mean, not a shocker for us women, but I wanted to bring on the expert, the international expert in fasting for women with over again, you heard it already. Over 10 million views on her TEDx talk. So, Cynthia Thurlow, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

So I would love to dive into before, before we get into like, why is it different for women? Which every woman's like wagging their head. Of course it's going to be different for women. But before we get into that, I'd love to just hear your definition of what intermittent fasting is.

It really is as simple as saying we're eating less often if the average American is consuming a sugar sweetened beverage or food Six to ten times a day. It's really honoring the way that our bodies are designed to thrive, which means you eat two to three meals a day and you don't snack in between. And I know that's completely contrary to the information I used to provide to patients and the rhetoric that you hear in the media, but eating less often is the way to optimize metabolic health. And that's really critically important, given the fact most people are no longer metabolically flexible. And so that begets all of these chronic health problems that we see here in the United States and other Westernized countries. And I feel like it's really my mission to help educate women on how to navigate their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond, and to do it successfully.

I mean, when you think about Cynthia, like the past, I was trying to think of when this all started. It really probably was like, 35 years ago when all the snacking dogma came into play. It was like, eat less, more often became the mantra. Eat less, more often. And you should eat every couple hours. Have breakfast, have a snack, have dinner, have lunch, have a snack, have dinner. And then. And this, by the way, there was a diet book Ian Smith did shred. And I remember seeing a little thing from him, a little interview from him, like, God, it must have been six years ago saying, oh, no, have a snack before. Before you go to bed. I'm like, what? You know, so, you know, you look at the. What's happened from six, you know, six meals a day, because those little mini meals, what it's really done to our metabolic health over the years, what. There's maybe 12% of the population that's actually metabolically healthy now. It clearly isn't working. So you've really become the expert on intermittent fasting. Before we get into. I keep teasing this, but before we get into how it's different for women, how did you get into this?

I think the simple explanation is my own kind of health journey. I've always been a healthy woman, but in my early 40s, I kind of fell into perimenopause, and when I say fell into, it slammed into a wall. No one had prepared me for the things that were going to change with my health. My ability to manage lack of sleep, not managing my stress, probably over exercising, et cetera. And so my initial interest really stemmed from a desire to get my health back to where it had been. And as soon as I. Nearly instantaneously, within three days of starting fasting, I had more mental clarity, more energy, my sleep was better, and I remember remarking to my husband, I said, this is completely contrary to everything I was taught as a nurse and a nurse practitioner. Certainly the opposite of what I was telling my patients to do. And there's really something to it. And I recall that at that time I read Jason Fung's book and I thought, well, if an MD is standing behind this, then clearly it's something that I as a nurse practitioner should be looking into. And so that was the initial impetus, but really from my own health journey, realizing that this is a way for me to be in my 40s and have more energy, more mental clarity, be as lean as I was in my 20s and 30s and not have to necessarily completely augment or change my nutritional plan, at least up front.

And.

And that bled into all the other work I was doing with my patients and clients and started to realize a lot of people come to it out of a sense of curiosity, like I did, but stay for all the other benefits and just how much better they feel. I think one of the greatest misconceptions and greatest detrimental things that we really share with our patients is encouraging to eat with meal frequency when that is absolutely going to fuel this chronic disease state that we see in the United States. And you're right, it's 88.2% of the population, based on a UNC study from 2018. That really leans into the fact that we have a really unhealthy population of people.

88. It is so crazy, isn't it? And so it's now 76% of the population is overweight or obese. And then I remember reading this research about how 50% of the people who are normal weight were over fat, right? Tofi, thin outside, fat inside, which goes perfectly with those statistics. It leaves us right at that number again because you got 12% left. So it's really critical to look at this because I believe that we are where we're at from the low fat, eat all day long nightmare that we are put into. So you discovered intermittent fasting, you started doing it. And what did you notice? What like, because you've really taken on this, the expert role for women with intermittent fasting. What makes it different for women? What do we need to know?

Well, I think from so many perspectives, you know, the whole focus of being female, whether people choose to procreate or not, is our bodies are designed to carry life. Ultimately they are designed to have cycles, you know, hormonal fluctuations, month to month, all the way up until menopause, which is 12 months without a menstrual cycle. And if you think about it that way, we have to honor these infraredium, these intrinsic rhythms of the body. And if we do that successfully, then women can safely fast. Obviously, women that are in menopause have another layer of complexity in that their bodies are much more sensitive to stress and sleep quality and nutrition and inflammation. And so that's another kind of layer that we have to consider when we're talking and speaking to women. Unfortunately, there are a lot of, I'm sure, well meaning individuals out there on social media world who fear monger women. They try to suggest that women can't fast successfully. And I think that is completely inaccurate. And when we really think and reflect on how metabolically unhealthy the population is, it's downright dangerous. So from my perspective, when I'm talking to women that are still getting a menstrual cycle every month, I remind them there are specific times during our cycle and we can really capitalize on using fasting as a strategy. And then there are times during our cycle where we need to back off a little bit. It doesn't mean we can't fast, it just means we shorten the duration of fasting. And then women in perimenopause are kind of in this nebulous time period where we really have to really adapt to the changes in our bodies, the hormonal fluctuations. And so we may need to make some accommodations. And then menopause is a time if we're sleeping well and we're, you know, really mindful of stress management. We have a lot of flexibility. This is a time when I think many menopausal women find that they have the ability to be as flexible as the men in their lives can be. And so it can oftentimes be very freeing. They don't have to worry about having a menstrual cycle every month. They really can just be pretty flexible with their feeding and fasting windows. So a lot of it has to do with hormones. But I remind our ourselves that ultimately the whole concept of fasting and feasting is how we evolved as a species. Species. To suggest that it is dangerous or inappropriate or that we should be fearful of it, I think is incredibly irresponsible.

Well, it's also nonsensical because we wouldn't be here.

Right?

Exactly. I mean, like, when would we ever have eaten six meals a day?

Never.

It just, it just makes no sense. So that's kind of crazy. And I'm sure you've, you've written this book. I can say this Intermittent Fasting Transformation with youh if Program. So in there, do you then take each of the different time periods in a woman's life and show them how to do this correctly?

Yes. And I think it kind of goes back to the fact that, you know, when I was writing the book, I kept saying to my publisher, it was important to me that we honor all women, whether they're 25, 35, 45, 50, or beyond. They can fast. They may have to fast a little differently, but yet, yes, there are ways that we've woven into the context of the book. For people to be able to adjust. I always say it's almost like a lever, like they can make an adjustment. This is where I am in my cycle, so I need to adjust. This is where I am in age and timeframe. This is how I adjust things. And I'm very, very clear. I'll give you a good example. I tell women, if you can't sleep through the night, you're not gonna be able to lose weight. Don't add fasting as another stressful piece. So really kind of foundationally providing information so that women can do this successfully and be able to utilize this strategy throughout their lifetime. And I always. I think that it's important for people to understand if you. The beautiful thing about fasting is that it's flexible, that you don't have to do the same thing day to day. Every single Monday doesn't have to look the same as the preceding or subsequent Monday. And so really reminding people that if you're on vacation or if you're pregnant or if you have an illness, you can stop fasting for a period of time and then restart it when you're in a position where your body can accommodate that additional hormetic stress, beneficial stress on the body.

Well, let's talk about that, because you just mentioned weight loss. Then you talked about beneficial stress. So let's go through the benefits, because I would imagine most people think of this and they think of weight loss, but there's so much more than that, isn't there?

Absolutely. And so I think a lot of people come to intermittent fasting out of curiosity. They're curious how they can change body composition, how they can lose weight. But what people feel almost instantaneously is with lowered insulin levels in the body, you have more mental clarity. Because ultimately your body will get to a point where it can utilize fat, stored fat, as a fuel source. And it's a very efficient fuel source. We actually can diffuse beta hydroxybutyrate. Big, complicated word Directly across the blood brain barrier. So mental clarity is number one. Number two, you can tap into this waste and recycling process in the body called autophagy. And this is so critically important, especially given the time that we are in this global pandemic. It is even more important that we are mindful of eating less often because it'll tap into our body's own ability to get rid of diseased and disordered cells. I think about the net impact on reducing inflammation in the body. You know, when you get the blood sugar and your insulin level's lower, you will have this automatic reduction in inflammation in the body. And inflammation begets a lot of the chronic diseases we talk about. We know it lessens your likelihood of developing certain types of cancers. We know that it lessens the likelihood you're going to develop high blood pressure, diabetes, insulin resistance, other types of metabolic disorders, high uric acid levels, which can lead to gout. And on top of that, we know that it helps to balance overall hormonal health and. And especially in this time when we have such a large proportion of the population that has high insulin levels, has predominantly estrogen dominant, too much circulating estrogen in the body or exposure to estrogen mimicking chemicals in their food environment and personal care products. I think this is really a way to better balance what should be going on intrinsically within the body in a way that is very accessible and tangible for most individuals. I know that the very first time I tried intermittent fasting because I had been so conditioned to believe that I was going to starve to death if I didn't eat a big breakfast. I was surprised at how much better I felt. One of the other benefits is people feel this digestive improvement. They may have more regular bowel movements. They have less bloating. They don't feel a sense of fatigue after eating a meal. Because what do most people consume for breakfast? A highly processed carbohydrate dessert.

They consume dessert.

Exactly.

Yes.

You're not doing yourself any benefits in the morning. So those are, you know, kind of the highlights of the benefits that I think of. But I think the one that surprises most people is the degree of mental clarity they experience. And so this explains why when I travel or I do any speaking events, I'm generally doing it fasted because I feel so much better.

So the people who shouldn't fast, I mean, are there. Because you mentioned a little bit like, if you're not sleeping well, don't do this. Are there certain people or certain times when you just. This isn't a Good idea.

Yeah.

You know, I think I have to be incredibly responsible and state that, you know, first and foremost, if you're pregnant or you're breastfeeding, this is not a time to restrict your macronutrients. You know, your body is either sustaining a life or you're wanting to produce adequate breast milk to feed your baby. So that's number one. Number two, I don't like people fasting if they have an existing history of eating disordered behavior, whether it's anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating. I do see quite a few individuals on social media who hide their eating disorder inside the context of intermittent fasting, especially with anorexia, which has a very low cure rate. I also think about anyone who's had a recent surgery or hospitalization, really making sure you're optimized in a position where you're going to be able to do it successfully. And if someone's underweight, this is another good example. If your BMI is under 18, you're really not in a position to be restricting your macronutrient intake. And then lastly, really, it's honoring where you are in time and space. So for me, the five to seven days preceding a woman's menstrual cycle is not a time to be doing these long and prolonged fastings. You may just do a period of digestive rest, and that's a beautiful thing, but that's a way of honoring where you are in terms of your cycle. And lastly, people that should not be fasting includes those that have chronic insomnia. If you're not sleeping through the night, that is not the time to be adding and fasting as an additional stressor to the body, get your sleep dialed in properly, and then you can successfully fast. Because I remind people that sleep is designed to be this incredibly restorative process in the body.

And.

And you miss out on a lot of really key physiologic processes that happen, and that includes making sure your blood sugar's properly controlled, making sure your cortisol is properly managed, amongst a myriad of other things. If you're not sleeping through the night, it's not the time to add in the fasting piece.

And so let's say that you did add in the fasting piece. How would you know if maybe you shouldn't be doing it if it wasn't working?

Yeah, I would say if you've been sleeping well and all of a sudden you aren't sleeping well, that's number one. It may be that you're just not getting enough nourish. And during your feeding window, if someone's weak, tired, fatigued, definitely need to be checking in. Is it a hydration piece? Is it, Is this fasting just too much stress on the body? I think about changes to the menstrual cycle. It can sometimes take a month or two of fasting. You know, your period might get a little wonky. But I do think about our menstrual cycle as a barometer of female hormonal health. So if your cycle goes away entirely and you're not in menopause, that's a cause for concern. I would want to dial back and see. Maybe it's too much stress on the body. So really checking in. So I always think energy, sleep, quality, menstrual cycle. The other piece is just how are you managing your stress? Because, you know, there are things called hormetic stressors, and fasting is one of them and sleep is another, and cryotherapy and exposure to heat, you know, like in an infrared sauna, certain types of physical activity. But I remind people that, you know, if you're stressed out, if you're going through a divorce, you've had an illness, you're going through a major move that may not be the time to add an additional stressor. In fact, I see a lot of women in their 40s who are going through major life upheavals. Maybe they're going through a bad divorce. Maybe they've had a significant illness. I know for myself three years ago, JJ, when I was hospitalized for 13 days, I didn't fast for months because I had lost way too much weight and my blood sugar was really a hot mess. And I took a sabbatical until I gained back some healthy weight and felt like I was in a position to be able to participate. So, you know, those are certainly instances that could be temporary that you may need to back off, kind of take a look at what you're doing and making sure that you are doing all the right things to support your body while fasted.

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Now, I know you talk about a lot of those right things to support.

Your body while fasted in your book.

And again, I want to do a shout out on this intermittent fasting transformation featuring your IF45 program. Get the book. We'll give you more on how to get that. But I'd love to get a couple key tips. Someone starting out brand new to fasting, kind of like you're fasting 101, you know, what would you tell them to do first?

Yeah, I think the first thing in the context of we eat too frequently in our society, number one is stop snacking. So I want you to really be deliberate when you're having a meal at breakfast and lunch and dinner, restructuring your meals so that you have adequate amounts of protein, really aiming for 100 grams of protein a day. And that will blow people's minds because most people eat far too many carbs and not enough protein. So really focusing in on larger portions of meat, fish, poultry, et cetera with your meals. Oftentimes that means 6 to 8 ounces of meat that will satiate you. You will not be hungry in between your meals. In fact, I tell people if you are hungry in between meals, it means you didn't put your macros together properly. So no snacking. Adjust your macros. Number three is understanding the concept of clean fasting. And this is what I teach and I remind people. I want everyone to understand that there is a differentiator between dirty fasting and clean fasting. But my differentiator is understanding what can you consume during your fast that will not break it. And that includes black coffee. That includes bitter teas. Bitter means bitter. It does not mean that you have the apple celestial seasonings, you know, orchard mix, that that's going to be sweet. What I want is black tea, green tea, bitter teas. And then you want water with electrolytes and electrolytes can come in the form of, I'll give you some examples. I have a product that I have that is not seasoned with any, any stevia or any sugar. But you know, Element Redmonds all make nice quality products that you can utilize. Putting salt into your water. And this is why it's important. As you are, you know, backing off on snacking and having a heavily carbohydrate laden meal, you will lose electrolytes in your urine. And when you lose electrolytes in urine like sodium, potassium, magnesium, you need to replace them. Because if you start fasting and you do not replace your electrolytes, you are going to feel like crap, you are going to have a headache, you're going to be dizzy, you're going to be nauseous, you may get cramps, you may have insomnia, struggle with sleep issues. So those are generally the key is, like I say, these are non negotiables. These are the best strategies to really focus in on when you're new to fasting. That will help you be successful and help you kind of integrate this new strategy into your life. So the last thing I would add to that is giving yourself grace. Because some people can go from being a couch potato, eating a standard American diet and they can get up to speed fairly quickly, meaning they might be able to get up to 14, 15, 16 hours fairly easily. That's not the average person. Most people need to slowly go from 12 hours fasted to 13 to maybe 13 and a half to 14. It may take four to six weeks. In fact, the more carbohydrate dependent you are, the longer it is going to take. So just acknowledge to give yourself grace. The process may take a little longer than you anticipate, but. But if you use those steps, you will be successful without a doubt.

Awesome. And I know you've got it all laid out in the book. You also have a Quick Start guide for everybody and I'm going to put that@jjvirgin.com if for intermittent fasting. 45, because that's the name of your program. If 45, tell everyone what they are going to get.

Yes. So the program, the book or the book?

No, no, the Quick Start Guide.

Yeah. So the Quick Start guide, it really incorporates all of the, you know, I call it the blueprint. What is going to allow you to be successful with fasting and be able to walk away with tangible, helpful strategies and tips. And it includes what to drink, what to avoid, how to sleep, how to manage your stress, signs of things you need to look out for to identify that maybe this is too much stress on the body. And those are the things that will allow you to feel comfortable and confident integrating the strategy into your lifestyle successfully.

Awesome. So again, I'm putting that@jjvirgin.com if 4, 5. And I wanna remind everyone the book is now in the stores. So exciting. Cause I've been with you while you've been birthing this book.

I know.

Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited about this book. And we'll also link to your TEDx talk, which is. It's over 10 million views now, right?

It is. And what I think is a little like, energetically amazing is that it's continuing on. Like, my kids actually follow the views. I don't, but they'll say, well, mom, you're at 10,200,000. You know, 10,200,000 views. And I'm like, how is that possible? It just continues to kind of roll along. Which just goes to show you. I mean, I get messages every day on social media as well as on YouTube, just people saying that it's inspired them to take action. And there's no greater compliment to know that a talk that I did almost three years ago has inspired so many people to take back control of their health.

It's so fantastic. It makes me beyond excited. So I'm super, super excited about this book. Everyone, you're going to want to get this for your library and use this as your blueprint for how to intermittently. Intermittent fast. It's a hard one to say because it's like intermittently fasting. That's not it. Intermittent fast, successfully, without the pain and hunger itself. It's easy to do if you do it correctly. So there you go. Thank you so much, Cynthia.

Thank you for having me.

For more info on this and other health topics I cover or to rate and review, find me on Instagram, Facebook and my website, jjvirgin.com and don't forget to subscribe to my show so you won't miss a single episode. Go to subscribetojay.com thanks again for being.

With me this week.