Your Quickstart Guide to Fasting with JJ Virgin

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin and welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I give you the latest cutting edge intel to help you look at, feel and think better. Now today's show is all about fasting, intermittent fasting, and we'll kind of talk a little bit about being a sugar burner or fat burner. And before I dive into this, I'm just going to share with you. I remember early on I've been doing this for 30 plus years. So I will be the expert talking about this today because for 30 plus years I've been fascinated with weight, weight loss. What in the g gets in the way of you eat, being able to lose weight? When should you eat? When should you not eat?

What should you eat?

You know, it's, it's like some of the biggest questions I get asked are what should I eat? When should I eat? Right? And there's always the latest, greatest thing. And right now it sure seems like it's fasting and keto and lectins. So these are all things we'll be yakking about on some of the upcoming podcasts. But this is one that I've been looking at for a long, long time. And I remember early on someone said to me, well, you said, I forget what it was that I like reversed my opinion on. And I thought, well, don't you want someone who's going to look at all of the research? And even though the biochemistry won't change our understanding, our knowledge, new information will come out. And don't you want to always be like with someone willing to look at everything and go, this was right, that was wrong. So I'm going to talk through some of this stuff. I've shifted a little bit in my thought process, but I'll tell you, not a whole lot. And that's because of 30 years and gosh, hundreds of thousands, millions of people, of working with people, you see some stuff. And I will also tell you, this may come as a total shocker, but men are not hairy. Women. And I tend to, back when I worked one on one, I had a pretty even split between male clients and female clients. But in my consumer programs, I find that we have a lot more women, so I get a lot more Intel. Plus, I'm one too. But I have a lot of information in Intel. And so I view this as one large chemistry experiment that we're all in. And I'll be reporting the results all the time. So I've always taught people. And again, today's show is going to be all about fasting, intermittent fasting, and when the heck should you eat and should you snack? This is all the stuff we're going to be talking about. I'm going to be sharing the, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly here so that you can make an informed decision and try things to see what works for you. So one of the things that I've taught in the virgin diet and the Sugar Impact diet is to eat by the plate and by the clock. And the first thing I said, and I remember it was like, I was like, I was insane when I said this couple decades ago, I said, you know, you shouldn't snack. And it was back when everything was low fat and vegetarian, high carb. And everyone was snacking all day long because they were so hungry and their blood sugar was so out of whack. But it's very clear to me that when you're snacking, it's doing the opposite of what most of us are trying to do, which we want to be fat burners. What does it mean to be a fat burner? I talk a lot about this in the Sugar Impact diet so you can pick up the book, read more about it. But in that book, what I talk about is the fact that you should be able to go four to six hours in between meals. You should be able to skip a meal and not freak out. And you should be able to lose weight off your waist. If you're losing weight and nothing changes from your weight, you look your waist, you look like a potato on stilts. Sorry, but that's just a great visual, right? Or you have to eat every two to three hours. Or you just have all those symptoms of hypoglycemia. You're crabby, irritable, you can't focus, you get sweaty. You need to start to work on becoming a fat burner, not a sugar burner. And again a fat burner can go four to six hours in between meals. Could do skip a meal and, and be fine and easily drops body fat off their waist. So I've been teaching people for years to eat every four to six hours to stop the snacking. Yes, I have bars and all these things because sometimes you just get stuck. But that doesn't mean have breakfast, have a snack, lunch snack, dinner, a snack and then an after dinner snack which I've actually seen some, some popular weight loss expert tell people to have six meals a day and finish with like a little, you know, chocolate cover covered strawberries for an evening snack. I about like fell off my chair. Like talk about a way to make someone gain, gain fat. Anyway, so it's eat every four to six hours, stop eating at least three hours before bed. And here's one that I've shifted. It used to be eat within an hour of waking up, now it's really eat within an hour of two of waking up. And here's the thing that I've seen there, what I want people to do is get a 12 to 14 hour overnight fast. So ideally if you're getting up around six, you're having breakfast, say seven, eight, lunch, maybe one dinner, maybe six and then you're getting that nice 12 to 14 hour overnight fast. And that's what I'm really looking for is that time period where insulin comes down. You're very insulin sensitive, you can burn off stored body fat, you're healing rather than digesting as you're sleeping, your growth hormone can come up more as you're sleeping. Cuz if you just ate, your growth hormone's not coming up. So that's what I really want to see there. But I used to be kind of a stickler about that hour window and now I'm an hour or two. And if you're one of those people that can do fine without breakfast in the morning, there's research all over the board on this showing that people eat breakfast, lose more weight, tend to eat less during the day, that people eat breakfast, it makes no difference. People that eat breakfast don't eat breakfast, it doesn't matter. Like I've seen everything, so I can't tell you. I, I think the real answer to that is that it's not the same for any one person and that some people can skip breakfast just fine and some people can't. But what I have seen is that for most of this women tend to be, need to be a little bit more regimented than men. And I Think by just nature of having babies and feeding them, we and being fat stores by nature, we just don't tend to be as good at skipping meals. It tends to stress out our systems more. And we have got a lot more complicated systems. I always say we are much more like say the, the Maserati or the Ferrari or the Tesla versus the VW bug. So we've got a lot more complicated systems. So. And that's kind of what the studies show, is that people who don't do well with a lot of the fasting or intermittent fasting are those who are pregnant or infertile. Struggling with that. Women tend to have more challenges. Anyone under stress, any issues with your adrenal system? Which women tend to have that a lot more than men. And of course anyone with diabetes or poor blood sugar control, that can be an issue too. So with that though, let's talk about first of all, what is fasting or intermittent fasting? Fasting of course is like don't eat. However, there's also a form of fasting that my girlfriend, Dr. Kellyanne the Bone Broth Diet author, New York Times bestselling book came up with and that is fasting with bone broth. And I like this idea that she talks about as mini fasting. It's actually what I did to prepare for my colonoscopy. I was like, how am I going to get through this thing? And I just used chicken bone broth all day long and I was fine. It was like totally awesome. So when I'm going to do it, that's how I do it. The other thing is this idea of intermittent fasting, of really doing in the key research. It's an eight hour feeding window. So maybe you'd eat from, you know, noon to six and then you'd stop eating from six to noon. But you can get a lot of those effects by doing the 12 to 14 hour overnight fast as well. Now there's. So as you can tell already there's different options. And I'm going to talk about like how to know what to do and where to start in a moment. But let's talk about why the heck you'd even want to do this before we get too into it, because it's really the key thing here is about these benefits. And I got interested in this and the keto diet when my son Grant was the victim of a hit and run, left for dead in the street and has a severe traumatic brain injury that we've spent the last five years helping him through. And that is chronicled in my book the Miracle Mindset. And so of course I was looking like everything that we could possibly do to help. And one of the things is fasting and intermittent fasting and ketosis and specifically benefits of fasting. Intermittent fasting can be neuroprotection that's protecting your brain anti aging. It mimics the effect of caloric restriction, which is the only way that we know that you can actually extend lifespan. Insulin sensitivity. So key mitochondrial efficiency, cancer, supporting your body, being able to like battle cancer, not get cancer and immune health. Now again, I already said like who shouldn't be here. But if you want to put this into place, if you're looking to maybe improve your insulin sensitivity, break through a weight loss plateau, get your immune system back in check, have more focus, energy. It's like, it sounds funny that that would do it, but that's what it does. Burn more fat. This can be a great tool to use for awesome tool use. In fact, one of the things I've really put into place is to start the day. I start the day with some black bulletproof coffee and then I have breakfast. Generally about two hours after I wake up. I just keep putting it off till I feel like I need to eat. And then we tend to have earlier dinners around the house here, so and so I break, basically do my shake and then lunch, which is usually a salad with some protein and, and then dinner, which is usually some vegetables, protein and a little bit of some slow low carb like in the sugar impact diet. So that might be a little bit of squash or wild rice or something of that sort. So that's it. I mean I keep it super duper simple. But here's the thing. This is not your starting point. This I want you to think of is advanced. So if you're going to try the one, you know, the eight hour feeding window or the day of mini fasting that Dr. Kellyanne talks about or you know, you can shorten your window right now to 12 to 14 hours. And that's what I'd love you to start with. But the rest of this stuff is advanced. And here's what I want to make sure that you do first. First, you will want to go through the sugar Impact diet program to find out how carb intolerant you are and really how many carbohydrates you should be eating. You know, I wrote two books, one around food intolerance and how some of these foods we eat every day trying to be healthy are actually taking us down, making us flame, being us crave foods creating triggering autoimmune disease, inflammation. And the follow up book to that really looked at carbs specifically, and it's called the sugar impact Diet. But remember, all carbs except for fiber turn to sugar. So it's really about looking the impact of these foods on your on your body so that you can understand how to choose lower sugar impact foods and how to really put together a program with the right amount of carbs to work for you. So when people ask me, well, should I be in ketosis? Should I be like, should I eat a high carb diet? I go, you know, go through the sugar impact diet first. Because that allows you to connect the dots between what you're eating, how you feel, and what you weigh so you'll know what the heck to do. So that's step one, because one of the things that that program does for you is it helps you move. Shift from being a sugar burner to a fat burner. And before you go, start any kind of intermittent fasting. Fasting, any of that, you better be shifted over to being a fat burner, otherwise you're going to be a super duper unhappy person. It will not work. Okay, so that's step one. The next step is make darn sure your adrenals are awesome because you do not want to put more stress on your body. Intermittent fasting is stressful on your body. Now that can be a good thing if you're not already over the top with stress. Because remember, stress, little bits of stress, as in high intensity interval training does stresses your body out and then you recover and it stresses your body out, then recovers. But too much stress and you're just pushed over the edge. So make sure that you've really got your stress levels under control. And you know, I talk a lot about this in the Miracle mindset book. This isn't like you're getting stress out of your life. Like, you know, I don't know how we could do that. It's really about learning how to handle stress. And just going to do a shout out to my buddies, the Ortners, uh, Nick Gortner. I did a great podcast with him. You can go back through the podcast list on itunes and we actually walk you through how to do tapping. Don't do it while you're driving. Um, but what's so cool about that is tapping can lower your stress hormones. By gosh. They did a study. Dr. Dawson Church did this study, another buddy of mine and lowered cortisol by 27. I don't know anything that does that like, that's insane. So again, get your techniques in there to help with stress. Make sure that you're sleeping well. We've done a lot on sleep. I talked to Ariana Huffington on a podcast about sleep. I talked to the amazing Sean Stevenson from Model Health show about sleep. So we've talked a lot about sleep. And so I want you to make sure that you're really focusing on your sleep. If you're having trouble with sleep or stress, I've got both my stress reset product and my sleep candy. So I got you covered there. So next thing is start dialing in that high intensity interval training and the resistance training. So these are like the first step I find with so many people, they're like, okay, I want to break a plateau. I want to lose weight. I can't lose weight. Nothing's working. And I go, all right, well, what are you doing? Well, they're not following the Sugar Impact diet or the virgin diet, right? They're not sleeping well. They're not doing the best basics. So the key takeaway for all of this today is that first, first we dial in the basics. First you go through Sugar Impact diet, your blood sugar under control and stable. Then you make sure your lifestyle habits are dialed, sleeps dialed, stress is dialed. You're incorporating that exercise in then when all of that is dialed. Now, if you feel like you want to dabble and try this to start to break through some plateaus, see the impact it has on your health. My advice is to don't do it on, like, the busiest day of the week. Like, oh, my gosh, I got a totally stressful day on Monday. No, that's not the day to do it. Do it on a day where things aren't, like, crazy, out of control or stressed. It's also great if you're not, like, at home where you're going, well, there's the fridge, there's the fridge there. You know, it's like, get out of the house. But that's the ideal thing, is to do it in a real low stress environment time and see how you feel. Because if all of a sudden you go, okay, I know I'm gonna wait till noon today to eat. But you're just dying and headache and cranky at 10:30. Well, come on, you know, like, work with yourself. Don't be mean. So again, we've got all those things dialed in. And then what I like to have people do when they're gonna try this. And again, five, first try. The first thing to start is doing that 12 to 14 hour overnight. You know that window, the longer window of fasting? So you're going to eat breakfast two hours or so after waking up. You stop eating dinner three or four hours before bed. So we've already extended that window out. So there's the first step that makes it easy. You take to say a 14 hour overnight fast. Now you're not that far away from the eight hour. So that's the next step is just start your breakfast, have breakfast at maybe nine, have lunch at one, have dinner, finish it by five. That's it. Or you could do 10, two and six, right? See how easy that is? And play with that. And then also play with those days where you go, you know, today I'm just gonna do a lot of spring water. Maybe I'll go sit in my sunlight and sauna and I'll do, when I get hungry, I could do a little bit of Dr. Kellyanne's bone broth, or I could do a little bit of bulletproof coffee with the MCT oils and grass fed butter. So those are some options that could just help you move along. But again, the big takeaway here is there's some amazing benefits, amazing benefits to intermittent fasting and fasting. But this is an advanced strategy. So let's do the, let's do the basics first. Get those dialed in and then, then, then, then move into this. Now normally in the show, what I do at this point is I took it, I asked, I asked who I'm interviewing. What's the one thing a day that you do every day that makes the biggest difference in your life? And I want to share with you something you can use to help you really dial in the basics. All right? That will make a big difference. And, and that is journaling. And it was very interesting. You know, one of the things that I've done is I've put together a program to help you lose the weight and feel better fast as I've gone. All right, what are all of the things that are the most critical success strategies that you must do? I'm always looking for like, what's the shortcut? What's the guarantee so that you know that you're going to have results? And one of those things is journaling. And I'm talking pull out. Like this is old school, all right? Pull out a journal. I've got one sitting right here on my desk. I've actually got a closet full of them so that when I run out of one, I start a new one. But this is super, super key to have these things because the studies show that this is like, can be the dividing line between being successful on a program or not journaling. And it's free. You know how much I love tools when I found out there's like something cool that can help you be successful and it costs nothing. So now that means you, my friend, have no excuse for not to do it. So big thing I would tell you here is like, you've heard all this, you go, okay, am I doing the basics? If I'm not doing the basics, go get yourself the Sugar Impact diet. Dial that in. Learn how to become a fat burner. Then make sure you're working on your sleep, stress and exercise. We have gone through those things at length on my podcast, so all the information is out there. And I also have my fast fitness program that takes you through all that too. Then go ahead and start with that longer fasting window or play around with little mini fasts like Dr. Kellyanne teaches with bone broth or Dave Asprey, my buddy over at Bulletproof, starts with a little bulletproof coffee with MCT oils and butter. All right. It's good to have some good friends who are so super duper smart. Alright now, after the break, I am going to be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And you know, I always try to like hook these up so that they fit with what I'm talking about. And so Lisa from Boise and oh, where do I find these? We get these all over the place and there's nothing, honestly I love more than like getting a great provocative question I can use use on the podcast or use to do a Facebook live. So we are always checking on our Facebook and Instagram and, and our Pinterest and you know, the things that get sent through to Facebook messenger and to our customer service. We are digging through because we want to make sure that we leave no stone unturned and answer all your questions. So a lot of them will do like right on the minute when they come up on Instagram and Facebook and. But I also saved some of the cool ones. Some of the ones that I think just like a lot of people are like, yeah, that's me. And save them for the podcast. So here's a. Yeah, that's me, I think. And it's from Alyssa in Boise. And she says, all right, what you got for sugar cravings? That's simple and sweet and short. But, you know, it was very interesting. After I wrote Virgin Diet, the number one thing I got pummeled about was sugar and seen people were either confused by it, they were like, well, what about honey? It's, you know, it's all natural. Or what about NutraSweet? There's no calories? I mean, complete confusion. Or. And they were controlled by it. They're like, you know, I hear you. I know what you're telling me I need to do, but I cannot get rid of my sweet tooth. And really what I set to do with the Sugar Impact diet was a couple things I wanted to answer that question that I get asked all the time. How many carbs should I eat? You know, how much sugar can I have? Cause my mother actually said to me, well, everybody needs sugar. I'm like, no, actually, mom, no one needs sugar. But I wanted to really clear up the confusion around like honey and fruit juice and fruit and how much fruit and all of those questions. But the biggest thing that I set out to prove, and this was a bold claim, but I believed that I could get rid of chronic sugar addicts cravings in two weeks or less. Crazy, right? I did it. I proved it. So here's what I did. I took the biggest sugar cravers. People who were in the Virgin diet who were like, oh my gosh, they just like were failing because of the sugar issue. So I did not make this easy on myself and I took them through this program and the. So here's a couple key takeaways. And of course I'm going to say, read the book, it'll help you. But the key takeaway is you don't go cold turkey. And that was really clear right now when I was talking you through, like trying out fasting and intermittent fasting. You don't just go, hey, I've been eating crappy. I feel rotten. I think I'll go do this. You know, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. You Got to prepare for these things. Same thing with getting your sugar cravings gone. You just don't wake up one day and go, you know, I'm just going to stop all that. No, what you do is you taper. And that was one of the biggest things I saw. I actually went and read like all the books out there, all the reviews about them as to why they weren't working. And the big thing was this going cold turkey was setting people up to fail. So the first thing I help you do is really identify where all of this is creeping into your diet. Because it's sugar sneaks into places you would never flippin expect. It's crazy, honestly. So step one is to figure out all the places it's sneaking in and then to start trading and tapering. Now what I did in the virgin diet was I taught you how to make these swaps. So if you loved your whole wheat tortillas, you could do an almond tortilla. If you loved soy milk, you could do coconut milk. So simple swaps, you wouldn't miss the food you really liked. I found most people really liked the new ones better. So I did the same thing here. If you're eating pasta, you can switch over to say lentil pasta or you could switch all the way down to spaghetti squash. So simple things that can lower your sugar impact so that you start to do that, you start to stretch, you know, get stretch this out. If you've been snacking, we start to get the snacks out, we start to extend that intermittent overnight fast. We put all these things in place before we really lower those carbs down for two weeks. And during that two week period, I pull out fructose, we pull out all the sweeteners, we get you back in touch with your taste buds liking savory, spicy salty and dump that sweet tooth for good. Say bye bye to that sweet tooth forever. So that's my take, Elisa is go do the sugar impact diet. Break yourself free. It is. I'm not going to say it's easy, but it's super simple. It's really simple and you can do it. All right now if you'd like to submit a question again, we check all over the place but probably the easiest thing is just go jump over to my Facebook page at JJ Virgin official. Next up is the gratitude portion of the show and this is where I highlight the review of the week. And I read all of these reviews on itunes and so does my team. We love them so much and we super duper appreciate you taking the time and Leaving a review. And if you then go and share it, like, we're beside ourselves. So that's the one thing I'll say. Sharing is caring, right? So if you're hearing this stuff going, man, this is great information and I know some friends who need it. Share it. So appreciate it. All right, so this one says amazing show. And I'm just going to pull my laptop over here. Amazing show. It's by Shelly Summer from the uk. I look forward to listening to each show. You get straight to the point. Your talks are full of energy. I listen when walking my dog or having an Epsom salt bath at night. The information is so, so relevant to me. Thank you, jj for researching and creating such info pack shows from Shelly and Drizzly London. Oh, and I'm excited. Tim and I are going to London as part of our honeymoon here coming up. So super excited to get there and I super appreciate that review. And for all of you, kind of a big ask here. If you love the show, if it's helping you, could you jump on itunes and leave a review and share it with your friends? I so, so, so appreciate it. These things take a lot of energy to produce and I just want to make sure. Sometimes I'm like, am I just sitting here in this room by myself, yakking to myself, looking at my dog? Are people out there? So it's always good to know you're out there. And the biggest thing, honestly, the most important thing to know is that I'm giving you simple, actionable tools that you can do right away. One of the things I talk about in the Miracle mindset book is the idea that little hinges swing big doors. And one of the things I strive to do is give you those little hinges that are additive. They actually are amp. They're actually exponential. And as you put them in place, like today, if you just get used to eating dinner and then, you know, making sure you're eating dinner early so that you are not going to bed on a full stomach, that you're stretching that out three to four hours. If you are getting rid of the snack and you just start putting these things in place, all of a sudden you'll look back months later and go, oh, my gosh, I am so much different. My energy is better. I can think more clearly. I've dropped a belly bloat. I look 10 years younger. Yes, I know that sounds insane, but that's what those little hinges can do and I want that for you. So there you go. My big challenge I'm throwing out to you you heard a couple things on the show. I'm sure there was at least one thing that you're going yep, I need to do that. So do it now. Because if you wait till tomorrow, the buzz has worn off and you know what happens. Do it now. Let me know how that's going. Join me on any of my social platforms. I'll check in all the time there. I'd love to see you there. And until next week, Make It. Toyota Thon is on.

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