Is Intermittent Fasting Safe for Diabetics?

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Is Intermittent Fasting Safe for Diabetics? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert, and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Kathy Hartsfield Harris from Instagram asks, is intermittent fasting safe for our diabetics? Kathy, not only is it safe, it can absolutely be therapeutic. There's just something you definitely want to make sure that you do.

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All right, so intermittent fasting, not only is it safe, it can help with insulin sensitivity. That means it's improving your hormone receptors so that they're more sensitive to insulin, so your body doesn't have to pump out as much to it. And it can help with balancing blood sugar. So, yes, it can be super helpful. However, you want to make sure that you are set up for success. And what I like to think of is training your way into intermittent fasting. Because if right now you are a sugar burner, not a fat burner, you're relying on hits of carbs all throughout the day, your insulin's high, you can't access stored fat for fuel, and you try to go straight into intermittent fasting, you're going to crash and get hangry. So here's what you want to do instead. And this doesn't take much time for your body to make this shift, but you want to make the shift from being a sugar burner to a fat burner. I talk about this in the Sugar Impact diet book. And you want to get your blood sugar super balanced and your insulin starting to come down, so it's easy for you to go longer in between meals. So the first thing that I want you to think of is making sure that you're eating by the Sugar Impact diet plate. That is, each meal should have protein, fat and fiber. This is really the trifecta for satiety, because protein and fiber slow down stomach emptying, keep ghrelin suppressed, and help you feel fuller longer. And fat triggers the release of certain chemicals in your small intestine to tell your brain you're full. The plus that helps keep your blood sugar balanced. So what does that look like? Well, that could be as simple as having some wild salmon that's rich in protein and good healthy fats with some broccoli with a little ghee, and you're getting all that great fiber from the broccoli, easy peasy. Or having a protein shake with some a good protein powder. I like my Paleo inspired protein powder with a nut milk like a coconut milk, maybe a little avocado in there. And now you're getting the fiber and fat from the avocado, you're getting the protein from the shake, and you're getting a little more fat from the coconut. So super easy to do. Now the next thing you want to do is dial that in and then first thing is start with a 12 hour intermittent fast, stop eating 3 to 4 hours before bed and then eat when you start to get hungry in the morning, hour or two hours after you wake up. So that's the first easy thing to do. So maybe you have dinner at 7, you wake up, you go to bed at 10, you wake up at 6, you have breakfast around 7. Next thing I want you to do is start drinking a lot of water in between meals and kick out the snacks. So you have your breakfast at 7, your lunch at 1 and your dinner at 7. All right, next thing we're going to shorten the window a little bit. Start eating dinner an hour earlier. Now you've got four hours before bed and push your breakfast an hour or two later. So now we took this 12 hour window to 10 hours and we've got the snacks out and then you just work on pushing your breakfast to more of a brunch. So you move to maybe having a 10 to 11 o' clock brunch and then you have dinner around 6. Super easy to do. But you do that over time. That might take you a couple weeks as you transition to first that 12 hour rule. And stopping eating three to four hours before bed, getting a lot of fluid in between your meals, stopping the snacking, making sure you're eating by the plate and then just starting to compress that window. And remember, you can do this and be super flexible. And I think this is a really important concept, this idea of caloric variability, you know, this idea that we should eat the same things at the same time every single day. No, our body needs to cross train our diet just like we cross train exercise so that you don't eat the same things all the time. You're not eating the same amount of calories every single day. So maybe you do intermittent fasting with an eight hour window a couple times a week and then the rest of the week it's 10 to 12 hours and maybe a couple times a week you're having two meals and the rest of the time you're having three meals. Just cross train your diet just like you cross train your exercise. All right, if you've got questions, I've got answers. All you need to do is go over to Instagram DM me @j virgin and be sure to subscribe to jj@subscribetoj.com that way you'll never miss a daily dose.

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