The Intermittent FASTING MISTAKES That Make You GAIN WEIGHT! | Dave Asprey & Lewis Howes

The number one thing fasting or intermittent fasting regularly will do. And remember, it doesn't have to be a super long one. 14 hours can start. 16 hours is good. We're not talking heavy duty, you know, living in a cave kind of stuff. And that will.

And how does, from all the research that you've done, obviously you've tested this for 10 years personally, but from the research and the science, how does fasting the right way play a role in anti aging in your life and other people's lives?

The number one thing fasting or intermittent fasting regularly will do. And remember, it doesn't have to be a super long one. 14 hours can start. 16 hours is good. We're not talking heavy duty, living in a cave kind of stuff. And that will stop you from having insulin resistance. When you have insulin resistance, it means that insulin levels go up and your body can't hear them, so they go up higher. When your insulin is higher, your all cause mortality goes up. In other words, your chances of dying from every disease you can think of happening. What insulin resistance means is that when there's energy in your body, your cells are weak enough that they can't make good use of the energy. And fasting fixes that problem. When sugar goes up in the body, it forms something called advanced glycation end products. It basically cooks your tissues the way onions brown in a pan. And we know this from 30 years of anti aging research about the effect of excess insulin and sugar in the body. Fasting will fix that. But on top of it, there's something called autophagy, which is a core part of the recommendations I make, which is do whatever it takes to cause your body to turn its protein digestion mechanisms back on you. Because if it's not busy eating steak and eggs or tofu, if that's what you're into, it'll turn around and go, oh, there's some extra debris, some junk inside the cells, outside the cells. I can clean that up. And if you go a little bit longer, it says, you know what, I've got enough extra enzyme activity here. I think I will take out the weak mitochondria, these little power plant generators. I'll take out the weak ones and replace them with young strong ones. And you start upgrading yourself internally, because the stuff that would have gone into digesting the food you eat every two hours, because that's what someone told you to do in the 70s. Instead of doing that, you're eating the stuff in your body that makes you old. And when you control insulin and you control autophagy. Something very interesting anti aging wise happens and, and it's that you actually have younger and more abundant stem cells in your body. So intermittent fasting has proven to increase stem cells, increases testosterone, human growth hormone and a huge swath of anti aging substances in the body. And like it's free. Yeah, it costs less than eating breakfast.

And what's some of the new research about stem cells or the new developments that have excited you that everyone should know about?

Well, I've been pretty public about doing a lot of stem cells. I've had my bone marrow taken out twice.

And you've been trying to convince me to do this for a while. I've been considering it. I still change your life. I still need to consider more.

It'll change your life. Anyone with old injuries like that, I have just no bodily pain. And you get younger and there's really intriguing new research about stem cells making brains work better, especially if you've had a traumatic brain injury, which I have had. And so you just get younger and I can't tell you that it was stem cells alone that did this. I live, you know, a bulletproof life and all that. But I recently measured my brain's response time. This is an automatic response time. How quickly does the brain respond when a light or a sound comes on? So this isn't a conscious thing. And my response time is the average response time for a 20 year old. The response time goes down with or goes up with age. So you get slower and slower as you age. So I have a 20 year old's ability to respond to the environment around me, which is pretty remarkable. And I truly think that the stem cells helped with that. There's also things like arterial flexibility where I have the average flexible arteries of a 24 year old. When you just compare. And I'm twice as old as that Louis, so something is working. I think stem cells are a core part of the anti aging thing. What's happening now though is we're able to pull things that are like stem cells out of the blood instead of out of the marrow. And that's really less painful.

And then I'm more open to that than the whole sucking out of my bones. Yeah, it's spinning it up.

You're asleep when you're. Actually I was awake one time when they did it.

So wait, what's this new blood drawing stem cell that you're talking about?

It's still getting regulatory approval, but it's called very small stem like cells. But I'll show you the video sometime in that I'm laying on the table and the doctor has this thing, and he hammers it with a hammer.

Oh, no, I can't.

And it. Every time I see that video, it's like.

It's the worst thing ever, man. Yeah. You go through a lot of pain to have, you know, less pain for the rest of your life.

It's really weird, Louis. It's almost like hunger. Like you can look at something as pain or just weird. And when I really dug into it, like, there's the strangest feeling in my skeleton, but it wasn't pain. It was just so outside the universe of anything you would ever or should ever feel that your body could say it's pain, or it could just be like, that's different.

That's weird.

Yeah. So I can say I've been through much more painful things than that, but the idea that we could have younger and more stem cells by skipping breakfast is a little bit less money and time than that, and that's why it's such an important practice.

And what's this blood stem cell process, then? It's not available yet, but have you tested it?

There's a very few do who are offering it today, and I think it's in a bit of a gray zone from a regulatory perspective.

Have you tried it?

Very small stem, like, cells? Of course I've tried it.

How do you feel about it?

Well, I think it's hard to say to compare A versus B. There's a lot more studies on getting stem cells from your fat or your marrow. There's also people getting stem cells from, like, placental cords and umbilical cords or placentas and umbilical cords right there. I have mixed feelings about that, because if you're getting stem cells from eight different people and, like, how. How tested was that? And that makes all of my friends who do stem cells that way irritated that I would question it. Maybe it's perfectly good. I know a lot of people do it and love it.

I just.

In my mind, I'm like, what do we test for? Every little virus and every little bacteria. And I kind of like the idea of growing my own stem cells, but that's not legal in the US Anymore. It was for a while, and that was the most effective.

That's crazy.

It's coming down. We're at, like, year one of an evolution that's happening. Kind of like cell phones. The first cell phone. Some guy in LA in his Mercedes 300D convertible. The whole trunk is his cell phone.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And it was like, $25aminute. But with stem cells, it's come down in price a lot. The efficacy is way higher, and it's getting better. It works better and better every year, but it still takes a doctor a lot of time to get the needles in all the right places and understand your joints and. But, man, it's, you know, a couple hours of relatively minor discomfort, but then you're better for decades. It's a really big deal, Louis. And I'll tell you, if you fast before you do that procedure, you have less insulin resistance, you have a working metabolism. Everything you can do in a hospital, whether it's a surgery, whether you get in a car accident, whatever, everything goes better if you just have a strong metabolism. So, like, what do we all need right now? We want more resilience. Resilience comes from biology. The people who are best at taking fat or sugar plus air, combining them and getting abundant energy, those are the people who live the longest, have the best life. They have more opportunity for greatness because they simply have more electrons bouncing around in their heads to do stuff with. And it could power your immune system. It could power whatever you're doing in the world. But that's the core of everything I've ever done with bulletproof, with all the content, how do you make yourself better at making energy? And it turns out sometimes not eating is part of the equation.

Yeah.

And I'm curious. You know, everyone swears by the lifestyle diet that they live by that works for them. People who are vegan swear by it. And the ones who are super healthy have lots of energy. The ones who are vegetarian, I feel.

Like vegans just swear. They don't even swear by their diet. Is that just me?

Who knows? Yeah, I mean, they swear by lots of things.

Sorry, vegans. I'm just teasing you guys.

The vegetarian diet. People who live a vegetarian lifestyle for a long time say that this is the best for them. People are carnivore. Diets say it's the best for them. Keto. Is there a worst type of diet? Even though some of these things might work extremely well for particular body types.

What is the worst type of diet is the standard American diet. And there's three things in it that are just horribly destructive. The first one is what?

Sugar.

Sugar.

Sugar's there. But I don't think it's as destructive as the other two. Okay, so I'll give an order from the worst to the best of the worst.

Right?

So the number one thing that is wrong with the American Diet is seed oils. These omega 6 oils and canola, corn, soybean, safflower, sunflower, all this stuff that's in everything at the restaurant and most packaged foods at the grocery store. Unless you buy from the right company, it's full of these oils. These are the oils that drive insulin resistance. Your body takes these oils and they're all plant based oils. And it says, I'm going to try to construct the outer layer of my mitochondria, my cells, these little batteries. But I have the wrong ingredients, so I'm going to make subpar batteries. Like if you go to the knockoff store and you buy the cheap batteries and they last a third as long as the good ones. That's what happens when you eat a lot of seed oils. Americans have about 40 times more of that oil in their systems than they should. And it gets built into your tissues and that makes you weak. It is just not good seed oils.

Get a riddle.

Seed oils are bad. Second thing is industrially raised meat. It's full of xenoestrogens. These are estrogens that make animals fat on one third less calories than normal. It's also full of antibiotics and it's destroying the soil of the planet right now. It also is depleting farmland. When we take and we grow corn and soy and, and grain and we don't actually put the animal poop back into the soil the way we do on my farm. What we're doing is we're sucking all the nutrients out of the soil and we're creating a very, very big catastrophe. 60 years from now, we'll be out of topsoil because we stopped having animals walk around and poop on it. The way it works when you're doing a regenerative agriculture kind of thing. But worst of all, you eat industrial animals. They're also full of cortisol. And so you do this, they mess up your gut bacteria and they're full of glyphosate because it was on the feed. And glyphosate disrupts your gut bacteria, your nervous system activity and is tied to cancer. So we're getting bad oils. Oh, and those animals, because they ate corn and soy, they're full of bad oils too. So now you're like, man, the steak tasted good. And I had that nice salad dressing that came out of a bottle that was full of crap oils. And you think you're being healthy, but you're completely wrecking things. And this is some of the stuff that I did when I was heavy and Then the third thing would be sugar. If you have a ton of sugar, it's directly harmful. If you do the stuff I'm talking about, you can probably have a few grams of sugar and you won't notice that your body can handle it just fine. So sugar is not good for you, and it is addictive. But it is way better to eat sugar than it is to eat corn oil. Don't eat either one.

Don't eat either one. Yeah, have sugar every once in a while, but don't eat oil.

And yeah, like, if someone said, here's a birthday cake, you know, it's gluten free. I don't do gluten. And they said, I made it with canola oil, I'd just be like, no, Right? But if they said I made it with sugar and butter, I'd be like, all right, I'm gonna have some. And it's that big, the sugar, okay? Your body can process that and it's gone. The other stuff, it sticks and it gets in there and you don't want to do it. So the worst diet of all is that one with lots of fried stuff and bad oils. But the second worst diet, for people who think they're being healthy. Louis, this isn't going to be popular, but it is the vegan diet.

Why is that?

There's two things, okay? I was a devout raw vegan, okay? I did this for more than a year. I mean, I have bowls as big as my head full of kale, and blended and mashed and sprouted. And I mean, I'm good with rice.

And beans and everything. Yeah, yeah.

All that stuff. So what happens there is your body doesn't get the essential fats that it needs. We are not made out of plant oils.

And.

And I have in my books, I talk about the studies that show when you change the type of oil you eat, it changes what your body is made of. So when you go on a plant based diet, you're getting two things. You're getting plant based oils which are not very compatible with you. Vegans will get mad at me and say, dave, we can convert plant omega 3s to the good ones. Yes. It takes 45 grams of bad omega 3s to make one gram of the good ones. If your body can do that, which it won't be able to do because you're on a plant based diet, and then you get tons of these antinutrients from plants that cause cravings. When I was raw vegan, I was always hungry, and I think that that's A very common occurrence. And I would say, well, that's right, I'm going to put more coconut oil or eat more fresh avocado, Thai coconuts, all these things, avocados, it didn't matter. It's because plants don't want you to eat them and they cover themselves in defense systems that cause cravings. So I talk about the five big categories of things that are causing problems with us right now. And many plants that are common on a plant based diet are not very compatible with humans. Like, oh, they have these vitamins. Yeah, they also stick to the stuff that lines the cartilage in your joints and gives you joint pain. Or they inhibit your ability to absorb zinc and magnesium and iron and things like that. So what happens is you tell yourself you're doing this to be nice to the animals, but what you're doing is you're making sure that the animals will go extinct. Because if everyone's vegan, we'd have no animals and then two generations later we'd all be extinct because we'd have no animals to make soil, because you can't grow carrots without animal poop. At the end of the day you can do it for 20 years, you can do it for 30 years, but eventually you have to build that soil back up. So what's happening on a plant based diet is the wrong fats and lots of anti nutrients and that combination is kryptonite for people. And I've had tens of thousands of former vegans go bulletproof. And part of the reason I made the bulletproof diet was because I did harm to myself, including additional food allergies and worse, hypothyroidism as a result of being vegan. Um, and in terms of animal cruelty, I calculated deaths per calorie from eating a pound of grass fed steak every day, which is a lot. You don't need to do that unless you're on the carnivore side of things, which there's an argument for that. Um, but if you do that and the cow is grass fed and local, unless the cow stepped on a frog, you kill less than one animal per year in all of your food. But if you eat boxes of processed soy nuggets, you disrupted the lives of whatever was going to live on that land and whatever the tractors killed. And so the number of deaths per calories is way higher for any grain product and anything other than basically fresh picked vegetables because of habitat destruction and tractor kills. And like I asked to monk this in Tibet, I'm not dogmatic, but I Want to do what works. So I like to minimize suffering, buy from a local farmer, eat less meat, but make it grass fed and eat very good fats. And if you do that, you'll never have a craving during a fast. And if you don't believe anything I say, you can still be plant based or vegan and you can still be Standard American Diet Dave. I like my industrial animals. Go screw yourself. Just do intermittent fasting and you'll still improve. It works for any diet out there and I'm happy to share the knowledge. And I've for sure moved a lot of information. There's 3,000 blog posts and stuff like that. But what I want people to do is figure out the foods that are compatible with your biology. And if you're one of the small percentage of people who's like, you know what, a vegetarian works for me. I know people, it really does. They eat some eggs, they eat some cheese, they eat a substantial amount of butter and magically that really works for them and that's okay. But if it doesn't work for you, don't tell yourself it's supposed to work so you'll do it even more.

That's the mistake that I made before the interview continues. If you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose, and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of, I've written a new book called the Greatness Mindset and I think you're going to love this. Through powerful stories, science backed strategies and step by step guidance, the Greatness Mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life. To design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the Description description to get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video. What are your three best strategies and or practices for fasting that people can practice for the next seven days that is sustainable, maintainable and doable and it will also get added benefits.

Yeah, I mean I think that the in terms of fasting, one make it a habit, right? So habits are what makes it easy. You know, tough stuff, not so tough, right? So if you are, you know, make it a habit to sort of do a 16 hour fast, right? Say my eating window is between this and this. Do it consistently so that it feels normal to you and therefore when you step outside that you feel a little bit uncomfortable. Just like that day you don't brush your teeth, right? It's like you feel a little bit like something's off here because that's a thing, right? So you do it consistently. And I think that's one of the big, you know, big things that happened in the 70s. That is, they had that 14 hour period of fasting without thinking about it, right? So it was never onerous because they just did it. Right. It's not like I have to not eat after dinner. That's just what I do, right. It's, it's a huge shift in the way you think about things. Two is sort of staying busy so that you don't think about the food and there's, you know, certain things that you can do and something that, that are good and some things that aren't so good. So one of the things, of course is trying to avoid the triggers. So if you decide, okay, once a week, I'm going to do a 24 hour fast, I'm going to eat just one meal that day, that's fine. But then you have to make sure that you schedule something into that period where you would be not eating. So, you know, if, if you're doing something else, you're not going to eat. For me, for example, for years I would just schedule, you know, I would do writing. I would write like my books or I do a podcast or something like that. So it's easy because if I'm, if it's 12 o', clock, I need to go do this podcast. I'm not thinking about lunch because I'm doing this podcast or it was a, to the library or somewhere where it's quiet. Then I do some writing, I write my blog, right? And it's like, oh, okay, well now I'm not missing it anymore, right? So put it on the schedule and make sure that you have something else that's going to sort of take your mind off that makes it easier for yourself, right? And that's, you know, that's the key. And then the third thing I think is to really plan ahead of time how you're going to deal with the hunger, right? Because if the hunger comes, you have to have a plan. Like, you can't just shift, show up.

What's the best plan that you do or that you recommend for people when they're like they're hungry and they're just like, I'm emotional, I'm having a challenging day or I'm sad or, and I'm so used to grabbing for the chips, the snacks, the cookies, the crunchies. What's the best practice to keep people's discipline at a high when they feel like all they want to do is munch.

Yeah, there's. There's two things. If, if you're in a place where you can do it, do something active, especially outside, because, of course, then you're taking yourself away. So going out for a walk or a run is great, because exercise, like it does two things. First of all, you can schedule it. Second of all, when you're actually exercising, you'll almost never be hungry, right? Like, think about the last time you played tennis or basketball or soccer. You're so full fully into the game, you're not thinking, boy, I'm really hungry. Like, almost never. Like, like it almost. You almost can't do it, right? Like, you. You know, you've. You've done plenty of stuff. You never think in the middle of a game, boy, I could really use a burger, right? You're thinking, how am I gonna score right? Or whatever you're doing right. So putting a pickup game of whatever you like to play, right? Does wonders, because you know the hunger is going to go away. You're taking the time where you are. You know, you're in the past. You would have taken something. So lunch hour, for example, you're taking that time. And three, when you make a plan to play a game of tennis with your friend, you're not going to back out. You're not going to just say, ah, forget it, I'm going to go for a pizza. Because you're going to let your friend down. So that keeps you accountable to yourself. So it's like, okay, so once a week, and this is great, when people are trying to say lose weight together, it's like, okay, let's figure out what we like to play. Is it, you know, yoga? Is it riding a bicycle? Is it going for a hike? Is it going, like, whatever it is, let's do it together, and let's do it at a time so that we get through this period, right? And that's how we help each other, right? We help each other by doing these sorts of things. And of course, that's sort of the secret of how people fasted in the past. Like, you think about groups of people now, there's all sorts of religious fasting traditions. So around Lent, for example, around Ramadan, Yom Kippur, whatever it is, there's. There's fasting. Well, literally millions of people are doing it. Why? Because they're doing it together. It's just a lot easier. If your family is not eating, you're a lot less likely to eat because it's just the norm so, you know, doing things together in a supportive group, that's, that's important. Like, it's, it's the way we get things done. We're humans, we're social beings. Right.

Earlier you talked about environment and willpower. How does someone develop more willpower or discipline when their environment continually challenges them to stay disciplined? You know, maybe they don't have the ability to remove all the sugary foods, or they're working in an office where they can't say, hey, can we get rid of this stuff? How does someone with a room full of distractions manage to stay disciplined and have willpower?

Yeah, that's a tough one. Because, you know, I, I don't think, you know, a lot of people think obesity or weight gain is about lack of willpower, but again, I don't think it is. I think it's the change in sort of the norms, I.e. the eating norms and the environment, which is led in the processed food, that has led to that. So if you can't take yourself out of the environment, then you really have to look at alternative ways to, you know, again, you have to plan for it. So if you know that there's going to be something like, you know, in the meaning there's going to be food, right? And you don't want to eat because you don't want to gain weight, then you have to decide what are you going to do to sort of counteract that? Maybe you're going to get a tea, right? And then that's all you'll have. So at least you'll have something to sip on, put in your mouth because, you know, you need something in there. It's just like the way people used to when they stopped smoking, they chew gum, right? Because you need something in there to take, take away the sort of thing. So it's, it still takes willpower, but takes a little less because you're still getting something, right? Or you have to decide, okay, well, how, you know, you have to decide, what am I going to do to sort of minimize. And maybe I'll sit further away from where things are. You know, if you're, Sometimes you have these meetings where you're, you know, in the auditorium and foods at the back. I'll sit at the front so that it's going to be embarrassing for me to get out and, and get some food because it's going to look so bad, right? Whereas if you're back, you just grab it and then go back to your seat, right? So, so there's, there's, there's ways, but it's really still about trying to figure out how you're going to mitigate those effects of what you're. Of what you're trying to do. Because the temptations are always going to be there. Right. And. And you have to realize the foods are made to be tempting. Like, nobody's trying to make their foods not. Not appetizing. So.

Yeah, I feel like it's going to be a chance. I mean, I feel like there's so many emotions are tied towards the discipline of eating with all the marketing messages, with all the stress that people have. It feels good to eat and consume. It takes away some of the pain. It takes away some of the emotional challenges that people face. And I, you know, I. I can empathize with parents. I'm not a parent, so I can't speak into how it might feel having kids who are. Who maybe are a handful or maybe you have a lot of emotional and energy, and it's hard to manage that. It's hard to manage your job and your relationships and. And your own health. And so I know a lot of parents probably know what's good for their kids, but they maybe give in sometimes because it's just easier to just give them candy and have some peace. So I understand, even though I'm not a parent, but I can see how that challenge could come up. What can parents do? Because it seems like parents have a massive control on what their kids eat, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Until a certain age.

Until a certain age. I think that parents, on the one hand, there's a lot of challenges there, but on the other hand, they're very motivated. So that's good because they want to do good for their kids. Right. So. And I think that's where a lot of, you know, a lot of parents have actually made those changes. So trying to cut out sugary drinks, cut out some of the snacking, because, remember back in, you know, not that long ago, it was all about giving snacks. So I had, you know, my kids are older now, but they used to play soccer at night, you know, and. And it was always like, for years it was like, oh, at halftime we have to give them some juice and cookies.

Yeah. Some oranges, slices and stuff like that. Yeah.

Why was always thinking. I like thinking, like, I played soccer when I was a kid. I had so much fun, and nobody chased me around trying to give me juice and cookies because I probably had water. Yeah. And I probably would have just asked. I probably would have preferred to play, truthfully. Right. Because it's so much fun, right? All these games are fun for kids. And so one is limiting the drinks. So you see, water has come back in sort of a big way. Sparkling water, still water. Like 15, 20 years ago, it was all juices and pop. Now you see water available everywhere. So that's good. Cutting down the sugar, cutting down the refined food, so making sure they have good choices. And the other thing, of course, is that if you're. Again, if you're in a situation where you know there's going to be stuff that's tempting is to sort of spoil your appetite, right? Make sure you're eating something good before you go in where there's a lot of stuff that's bad, right? Because if you're full, you're going to be less tempted than eating other stuff. So if you're going into a place where there's just going to be tons of stuff, make sure you have a good dinner first or a good lunch first. So that when you're going in, you're not like, oh, cookies, chips, right? And it's like, you know. So I think parents have already made some of those good changes. The thing about the snacks, which I thought was strange, was. So this always happens, actually. So my, my. When my kids used to go on these field trips and stuff, you know, you'd get this letter to the parent and it's like, we're going on a field trip to whatever museum, you know, they're going to take the bus. Make sure you pack two snacks for them. Like. Like, why are they not eating lunch or am I not feeding them dinner? Like, which one? Because there's no other reason that they need a snack. And the problem with this, and this was just a few years ago, is that it sort of institutionalizes the fact, right, that you should be eating all the time, right? But you shouldn't because there's no reason to. Why would you want somebody? Remember, when you eat, you're gonna store energy, which is body fat. There's no way around it, right? It's calories, especially these refined snacks. Snacks are the worst, actually, because they tend to be refined carbs. Because, like cookies, because they don't spoil, right? Nobody's packing a piece of salmon for snack, right? It's like a cookie, right? Or a cracker or something, right? So it institutionalizes the fact, two parents and two kids, that snacking is a good thing and that you should eat two snacks in between sort of lunch and dinner, and it's healthy for you, but it's not. You really shouldn't because that's the period of time that you should have been using the energy you, you ate at lunch. Remember? Like if you wanted an after school snack in the past, in the 70s, and I grew up in the 70s, your mom would say, no, you, you're going to ruin your dinner. Right. On a bedtime snack. No, you should ate more at dinner. Right? And dinner, of course, was, you know, the fully cooked meal. Cooked meal. It was the, the proteins and the fats and, you know, the good stuff that you're cooking, you know, that you spent time cooking. Not the packaged cookie that you put into the, you know, into the snack box. But yeah, it's, it's trying to get back to those basics. And I feel like we don't, we're just, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to look back at what we did in the 70s and you'll get your blueprint for what you're supposed to be doing. Free snacks, unprocessed foods, cut the sugar and make sure you have a period of time at night where you're going to use those calories that you took in during the day.

What are the insane benefits of water only fasting? Because you've been doing this for 38 years with over 20,000 patients that have done water only fasting. What are the main benefits?

Well, you know, one of the first things that we look at is that there are certain conditions that are really common today. So cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, type 2 autoimmune diseases where the immune system itself is attacking the body. The rheumatoid arthritis, ulcerative colitis, ankylosing spondylitis, the sweet psoriasis, the eczema, These conditions where it's your own body that's kind of working against you. And also certain types of cancer like lymphoma, and these conditions that are so common now are really thought to be unmanageable because, I mean, if you go to a physician with high blood pressure, they're going to give you a medication. It might be a diuretic or beta blocker or whatever or a combination of medications. And they're going to tell you right from the beginning, if you do what I tell you, you'll never get well. Really? You'll be on these meds for the rest of your life? Absolutely. They're telling you you'll never get off these meds, you'll be on drugs forever. Because they know that they're not actually dealing with the reasons that you've developed High blood pressure. The root you're dealing with trying to manage the consequence of the root. And so our approach is a little different because we're not interested in trying to come up with a pill, potion, powder and tell you, well, that's it, just take these drugs and suffer the consequences.

Keep eating the same way, keep living the same lifestyle, keep lacking sleep, being stressed, eat all the processed foods and you'll be on these drugs for the.

Rest of your life. Well, live normally.

Yeah, right. Normal the way it is today, right.

Well, two thirds of people are now overweight or obese. So being overweight is normal if you want to, doesn't mean it's healthy. You don't necessarily want to be normal if you want to be healthy. Because normal or average right now is in trouble. And it's in trouble because people are under the influence of the pleasure trap. There's this hidden force that's undermining people's health and happiness and they don't even realize it.

In many cases, delayed gratification is the key. That is the way, in my opinion, not living in the instant pleasures of today, but how can I, you know, distance myself from it as long as possible to be rewarded in other healthier, happier ways.

The problem I think is though that you are biologically designed for short term pleasure seeking, self indulgent behavior.

Those hits, those dopamine hits.

Absolutely the body, the brain rewards the body every time it engages in behavior that favors survival and reproduction. And those primary dominant behaviors are feeding behavior and sexual behavior because it's food and sex that are necessary for the species to survive, to get enough to eat, to not get eaten, live long enough to reproduce. And that dopamine driven short term response worked great through most of human history, but more recently it's become a bit of a trap. And it's become a bit of a trap because we've changed our environment from an environment of scarcity where it was really hard to get enough to eat.

People struggles to abundance.

And now we live in an environment of abundance. And these highly processed foods are so appealing because they, they play off those.

Ancient mechanisms, the salt, the sugar, the process, nature of it. It's just delicious, but it's not good for you.

Well, you have to override that biology if your goal is to survive long.

And well, yeah, not survive unwell, which is what we've trained our society to do. It's like how can, can we extend our life on machines? That's not a well loved life. But how can we be happy, healthy, fulfilled, and then have a quick, quicker death, right? It's like not suffer for as long as possible, but live as long, happy and healthy and then turn off the lights.

Well, we talk about having a good life, good, hopefully long life, but also a good death. The death where one night you go to sleep and you don't wake up, rather than spending the last 9.6 years unable to talk or move, lying in some nursing home bed waiting for people to come and change your diaper because you've had a stroke or you've had other debilitating illnesses that prevent you from actually making the last decade or two, perhaps the best, most enriching time of your life, rather than the worst dependent on others around you, unable to really function properly. And that's the price we pay for short term pleasure seeking, self indulgent behavior that, that doesn't necessarily cause an immediate problem, but definitely causes longer term problems.

So what are these crazy benefits of water only fasting then? What are the main things you've seen people transform of these 20,000 plus cases?

Well, one of the biggest things that fasting does, it's an efficient way of undoing the consequences of dietary excess. So people spend a long time accumulating the consequences of dietary excess and they can very rapidly reverse many of those consequences.

Consequences such as what? What are the main things you see?

So the conditions like they're caused by dietary exercise. So high blood pressure, for example, we did a study with 174 consecutive patients with high blood pressure. And 174 people were able to lower their pressure enough to eliminate the need for medications. The medications for blood pressure cause chronic cough, fatigue, impotence and premature death. And yet they're routinely used because it's not recognized that blood pressure is reversible and containable process. Really fasting is an effective and efficient way of reversing and normalizing blood pressure. Now the problem is you can't fast forever. You have to feed. So you also have to learn to eat a health promoting diet in order to sustain those results. But in terms of eliminating the risk factors, eliminating the need for medication, normalizing blood pressure, you can do that very predictably with medically supervised water only fasting.

What does it mean, medically supervised when you're just drinking water?

I mean, what do you need?

Why do you need someone there to watch you? Is it like testing with your blood sample? Is it just making sure you're not fatigued in starvation mode?

We recognize that fasting can be done safely and should be done safely every day by every patient for 12 to 16 hours, depending on their goals. If they're trying to lose weight or gain weight, it may depend on the duration. But we recommend a period of 16 hours a day of fasting, eight hours a day of feeding. And by limiting the feeding window, as people like Valter Longo and others has pointed out, you may be able to induce some of the benefits that happen with long term fasting cumulatively and also prevent perhaps some of the overeating and other things that contribute to dietary excess. So everybody can and should fast every day. In fact, everybody does fast every day, right?

When you're sleeping, you're not eating, you.

Break it with break fast in the morning. It's an interesting process. So we're talking about maybe extending that natural period daily so that you aren't necessarily eating. Three or four hours before you go to sleep may improve your sleep quality, may improve digestion, may improve your muscle to fat ratios over time, and may induce changes that are beneficial. The thing that we do in addition is we'll extend that period much longer. The problem when you start talking about long term fasting and we're fasting people anywhere from 2 to 40 days on water only, is that first you need to make sure that the person is an appropriate candidate for that longer term intervention. People that have certain pathology, people on medications, people that have risk factors, may be better off with a different approach than long term water only fasting. So first thing is a history and an examination to make sure there isn't any primary issues with kidney or cardiac function or medications that would contraindicate fasting.

What happens to the kidneys or the liver if you're water only fasting?

So the kidneys and liver are main detoxifying organs in the body and particularly the kidneys if kidney function isn't at least at some minimal level. In our clinic we use creatinine levels of 2.0 as an arbitrary marker. If kidney function isn't adequate, then the rapid detoxification that occurs during fasting, where the body mobilizes and eliminates both endogenous exogenous toxins into the bloodstream and then our protein processed by the kidneys. If the kidneys function is inadequate, you could overload the kidney function and create problems there really. And so it's very important that people have minimal levels of clearance. And that's also the reason we make sure that people have adequate fluid intake and maintain electrolyte balance and hydration. So we're monitoring people's electrolytes. So to make sure that we don't get into problems with potassium or sodium or other things which could become a problem, especially in these longer fast ones. We're going to two, three, four, five weeks or longer.

Wow.

What's the longest someone's been on a water fast with you?

Well, in our clinic we limit fasting generally to 40 days. We've had a few patients, we've had to go a little bit longer than that. But there's evidence in the literature of patients fasting in medically controlled settings for as long as a year or more. So not that we would recommend that.

Is that just someone who's so obese that they're trying to, you know, get rid of all the complications and shed the weight and all those things.

There was a lot of work done in the center 70s and 80s and treating supreme obesity with long term fasting. But even a thin male, say a 70 kilogram male, could probably fast somewhere around up to 70 days if they're resting during the process. Not that they should necessarily do could survive. But as far as nutrient reserves and adequacy, the body is pretty amazing. You know, the main burner of glucose for humans is our brain.

Is what, just thinking or what like.

Cognitive activities, the brain. We have this ridiculously large brain in humans, two and a half times that say of a chimp. It's huge. And it's our main burner of glucose. And in fact, if it wasn't for our ability to change our brain fuels from sugar to fat, we couldn't have survived as a species the way we have. Because if we had wandered away from the tropics after a week or so, if spring came late, we would have died. In fact, we did. The humans that didn't have the ability to change brain from burning sugar to burning fat weren't able to survive. We know that because today virtually every human being has this ability to change its brain fuel from sugar, which is the normal fuel to burning ketones or beta hydroxybutyric acid in particular. And that would suggest a biological adaptation, such an important adaptation that the spirit species had to have it. So today humans can wander away from the tropics, spring can come late and we can survive despite our very large brain and it's huge burning of glucose because we have this ability to fast. All we've done is taken this ancient biological process and applied it in a very unnatural situation. And that is a situation of dietary excess. No other animals maintain obesity. I mean, even whales, who you think of as kind of fat, are 9% body fat. Okay.

Really?

Yeah, they just hold it on the outside of their lean mean machines, like all animals do, unless they get access to hyper processed foods like humans eat. So if you feed human style hyper processed foods to animals, they also get fat. We add chemicals to our food specifically to induce dopamine stimulation in our brain. Those chemicals are salt, oil and sugar. These are not foods, they're food byproducts. They're hyper concentrated food byproducts. They're essentially chemicals we're putting in the food. Stimulate more dopamine. Dopamine is the neurochemistry associated with pleasure. The more dopamine, the more pleasure, the more we like the food. That's what good tasting food means. It stimulates more dopamine production. And the consequence of hyper stimulating our brain with dopamine means we overeat and we become obese. And that's why 2/3 of people are overweight, is because they fooled their brain with chemicals they put in their feed. It works in red rats, it works in mice, it works in humans. Put the chemicals in their feed, they overeat, they get fat, then they develop obesity and metabolic syndrome. And if you have metabolic syndrome, you're more vulnerable to dying from heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and even viral infectious diseases like Covid. The higher your metabolic syndrome increases risk of dying from all these things, all these downstream consequences.

What about olive oil or avocado oil? I hear these good oils, these fatty oil oils are supposed to help you in certain ways.

Is that, well, you have to be careful when we define these quote, good oils. There are oils that are more harmful than say olive oil. So an oil being less harmful doesn't necessarily mean it's good, it's just less bad. So oils are all highly processed, fractionated foods with 9 calories per gram and limited satiety feedback. So if we're talking about trying to lose or maintain optimum weight, oils would have a disadvantage compared to eating your fat from whole food. So I would advocate, if Putty wants avocado oil, eat avocado, not necessarily process it down, remove the fiber, a lot of the good components and be left with the oil. And the same thing is true with sugar. You need carbohydrates as a primary fuel, but you eat whole food, whether it's fruits or vegetables, or starches, not necessarily the highly processed, hyper processed byproducts. If your goal is to avoid overeating, dietary excess, obesity and the diseases of.

Dietary excess, what's the three main benefits?

You see, it's hard to different. There's so many benefits, it'd be hard to say which are the three.

Don't.

But I can talk about some of the benefits that we see. Certainly you see weight loss. You can't help that. The laws of physics and thermodynamics say if you don't eat, you're going to lose weight. We know that weight loss is about a pound a day. Now, that pound a day average weight loss is a pound a day. Now, some of that's water, some of it's protein, some of it's fiber, some of it's glycogen, and some of it's fat. And of that fat, some of it's adipose tissue, some of its visceral fat.

The visceral is what you want to burn, right?

Well, visceral fat is the one that's most associated with pathology, in fact, probably shouldn't be very much visceral fat. Visceral fat is what happens when the body has no place else to put fuel. And so you'll store some additional visceral fat. And the higher the visceral fat, generally the worse you are, simplistically speaking. And so we just did a study where we took a DEXA scanner that has software that allows to do precise whole body composition. So not just how much fat and protein there is, but how much visceral.

Fat there is internally and externally, Right?

Exactly. So visceral fat, just typically you think about an apple or strong in the belly around the organs, that internal fat.

So a lot of visceral fat around the organs as well, Right? That is not good for you.

Yeah, that's not thought to be very healthy.

I mean, the belly fat that people see is not good, obviously, but the stuff that's surrounding all the organs is you don't want to have a lot of that fat, right?

That's correct. And so the question is, what can you do to get rid of it? Any type of dieting will cause various various types of body changes. But the approach that's shown the most effective at mobilizing visceral fat is actually fasting. Fasting is the most the highest ratio of visceral fat. Adipose tissue mobilization, for example, typical patient in the study might lose 20% of their fat, but would lose over 50% of their visceral fat during a couple weeks of fasting, even though they only lose 4% of their lean tissue. And what's even more exciting is we look at, okay, what happens during fasting. Let's say, for example, a person loses 10 pounds and we know some of that is water, some of it's fiberglycogen, some of it's adipose tissue, some of it is visual fat. Then what happens after fasting? So you lose 10 pounds, you might regain 5 pounds. You're going to drain about 2 pounds of glycogen because you have sugar stores in your muscles that'll be depleted within a couple days of fasting. You're going to rehydrate because there's a little physiological dehydration during fasting. You're going to put fiber back into your gut because your gut's not going to have had fiber being added to it. You're going to pump up your muscle cells again because you will have depleted a little bit of glucose in order to maintain the glucose, the core glues that your brain needed, and you're going to theoretically put back on fat. But after fasting, assuming a person adopts a whole plant food SOS free diet, what we found was weight comes off, weight comes back on, but the weight that comes back on is glycogen, water, fiber and protein, not fat. Fat continues to drop.

I like that.

So we've been able to show, and this study will be coming out later this year, exactly what happens. And then we followed people at six weeks, brought them back in, reanalyzed them, and we're able to demonstrate that not only can people lose their fat and visceral fat, but they can continue to lose their fat and visceral fat even further. Eating, health promoting.

So the scale will go up some, but the fat will not go up?

That's correct.

So you gotta, you gotta trick your mind and say, well, I'm not gaining all this weight. Like you're gaining the necessary weight that your body needs to be stronger so you can have an active lifestyle and all these things, but not the fat back.

Keep in mind it's not weight per se that's the threat, it's excess fat. So for example, if you work out, you might gain 10 or 20 pounds of lean tissue over time. That's not necessarily compromising your health just because you gained weight. Now, if you sit around on the couch and eat greasy, fatty, slimy, dead, decaying flesh and highly processed foods and put on a lot of fat, particularly visceral fat, gain that same £20, that might be a problem. So we want to be careful not to be thinking just in terms of weight, but in terms of body composition. So the idea is to lower the fat, not necessarily lower the muscle.

Fasting is like eating right it can do a lot of good for you or a lot of damage. So I would say that you're starting to see lots of clinical studies and pre clinical, so animal studies. At a certain point you put it together and you get a good sense for what works and what doesn't work. It doesn't mean it's not by no means final, but you get a good sense. So I would say if you look at the daily type of fast, what clearly works and is not associated with any negative effects is 12 hours.

Right?

12 hours.

12 hours of time restricted E day. Yeah.

Don't eat for. Don't eat for 12 hours.

Yeah, don't. Yes. Say 8am 8pm Stop eating at 8pm and no more food until next day, 8am okay.

Okay.

So that I would say I've never seen a negative study about this.

So if you eat, if you wake up, you eat between 8 and 8, you're good.

Yeah.

Don't eat before 8am, don't eat after 8pm yeah.

So that's already a very good one. Another one. Now if you go to 16 hours, right. Say 16, eight, you're starting to see lots of benefit, but you start seeing lots of problems.

What type of problems?

Well, first of all, gallstone formation. Right. Gallbladder operation, gallstone formation, they double between the people that fast for 10 hours, the people that fast for 18 hours. Right.

Really?

Yeah.

So.

So just to give you one, another one study after study after study. And we've done the same study, but somebody has published it before we get a chance to people skip breakfast. Most people, they go 16 hours, will skip breakfast. And the breakfast skippers tend to live less, have more cardiovascular disease, have more diseases in general. Right.

Okay, wait a minute, let me break this down. So for years I was always eating breakfast because I love breakfast. Then I heard about intermittent fasting where it's like skip the breakfast and eat at lunch and do the eight hour window.

Right.

You're telling me now that the studies are showing that those that skip breakfast are living less and having more problems.

Yes.

Than if you eat breakfast and eat within the 12 hour window?

No, if you just eat breakfast, eat breakfast against not eating breakfast.

Right, gotcha. So just eating breakfast, what are the studies showing now between not eating breakfast and eating breakfast?

Yeah. So the people that skip breakfast, they're living shorter with more diseases.

Really?

And then study after study, it's not one, you know, it's very consistent.

Is this for people, you know, over 60 years old or. No, no, no.

Yeah. This is just looking at people, did they have breakfast or not? And then follow, you know, let's say for 20 years the mortality of those that historically never eat breakfast, are there.

Other conditions around that where they were stressed or they were, you know, didn't have good relationships or they adjust for.

For most of it, but it's possible. But my point to, to those that say, well, maybe something else. It's not the breakfast keeping. Yeah, I say, but, but if it's so beneficial to go 16 hours a day of fasting, why doesn't it at least bring you back to normal life?

Right, Interesting. So why is breakfast so important?

Well, nobody knows, but it could be that it's setting up the metabolism, right? It's setting up the metabolism to be, you know, you know, like we were discussing earlier, right. So if it's affecting the way you burn fat, if it's affecting the way your insulin functions, et cetera, et cetera, eventually you could be more prone to, you know, insulin resistance, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc. You don't need very much. And also the heart, right? So it could be the ketone bodies, this continuous high level. So when you fast these ketone bodies, this is what the word ketogenesis comes from. These byproducts of fat are going up in the bloodstream, right. And also fatty acids, right. The fat themselves. And these can alter the way your heart works and the way your brain works.

And.

So we don't know. But it is possible that by having lots of that all the time now, some of the systems now develop problems and not improve.

So it's okay if you're doing like a week long fast or a three day fast to obviously skip the food or have less food during breakfast. But you're saying skipping breakfast on a consistent basis has proven that it's not a good thing.

Yeah, I mean, obviously nobody did an experiment where they say, well, let's randomize that 10,000 people and you skip breakfast and you don't and let's wait 30 years, right? They cannot be done. But it's epidemiological study. So you know, you look at the databases and you say the breakfast keepers, you know, are they doing better or worse than the non breakfast keepers? And they're doing consistently worse.

Wow.

And this is why you want to say, okay, if you want to do 16 hours, talk to a doctor, fine, it could help you do it for a month or two. But then find something else. Yeah, find something else. Because it does have a beneficial effect. It can have lots of good, could do lots of good. Things, but then eventually you don't want to keep it for 20 years. So that's the sort of daily stuff. Once you get to alternate day fasting and all that, I think it's just crazy stuff. You know, it's just, you know, I always say I have a difficult time at asking people to go from four coffees to three coffees a day.

Right.

So when, when, if you go to someone and say, oh no, from now on, beside the potential, you know, long term problems that we just discussed.

Right.

So if 16 hours does that, what could happen if you don't eat every other day?

Right.

But beside that, just the feasibility, the fact that people are actually going to do this, it's just extremely unlucky. You're looking at one person out of 100, maybe they can not eat every other day.

Right, right.

What about one day a month? Like I'm going to do a 24 hour fast one day a month, is that.

Yeah. And nobody knows, right? Nobody knows. The problem with that, and this is why my lab and my group has always focused on this, developing this fasting diet, is that in that one day you don't quite get into the ketogenic mode. Right.

In one day of fasting.

Yeah, in one day of fasting. So you struggle because most people will not view that positively. I mean, tomorrow or next week I'm not going to have a day where I don't eat. Right. So it's a struggle. And also you don't quite get. So you're hungry for that 24 hours and you don't quite get into a fat. A starvation response mode. Yeah. That's why we're saying probably the system, if you look at our history, most likely we don't have, we can't go back in time, but most likely in the summers we had the job to get fat. Right.

Fill up for winter, lots of fruit.

Honey, whatever you can get your hands on, eat as much as possible. And then the diabetes and prediabetes, you know, the insulin resistance that then leads to diabetes. So insulin doesn't work as well. It was probably part of that process of making you store fat, put away as much fat as possible. So now you know this can be activated any time of the year. Right. Because people overeat all year long. And so probably not probably what we see now clinically is that when you do, let's say five days of a fasting mimicking diet, or it could even be water only fasting, you unlock that, you seem to unlock that mode where, and this is why? The doctor that I was telling you about, you see even, you see him even using the longevity diet, but it's still not quite losing that insulin resistance until he does the fasting Mickey diet, that changes. And you clearly see the slope of the glucose levels curve. And so probably.

And the fasting mimicking diet is around like 3 to 500 calories a day type of thing. Is that right or.

No, the fasting mixing diet is the one for regular people is 1100 calories on day one, and then it goes 800 calories on day two, three, four, five. Right.

Okay, gotcha.

So it's 800 calories for the last four days.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Yeah. So then the possibility is considering that, you know, over 70% of Americans are either overweight or obese. Now we're saying if you intervened a couple of times a year at least, and you remind the system where we are not in summer mode. Okay, let's go into winter mode. Let's go into. Let's burn these fats because, you know, we're no longer having to store them. Yeah. So that, that could be the trick of the five days versus, let's say one day a month.

Interesting.

Which may keep the system confused and not.

Sure.

Did we reach another phase here? Is it. Do we need to go now into a fat burning mode or can we stay in the fat accumulating mode?

So what's the difference between having the fasting mimicking process of five days, 800 to 1,000 calories versus water only for five days?

If I've done it, I can tell you the difference. I've done it one time with water only for five, and I remember every day of it.

Pain of it, you mean, or what?

Yeah. To me it was neurotorture. And we knew that there was true when we did the, that. I was telling you about the first clinical trial in 2009. I think it was here, USC on cancer patients. And we thought, somebody has cancer, they're not gonna argue with water, only fasting. They're gonna do it.

Right.

We were sure. The oncologists were sure. Let's go, let's do it. Nobody wanted to do it.

Right.

So this is why we went to the government and said we would like to develop a fasting mimicking diet, you know, for, for cancer patients. That's. That's where it comes from. Right. So it comes from. From the refusal of cancer patients to.

We're like, I'm going to eat no matter what.

Well, they do. Yeah. It's just, it's a safety issue. There's lots of things in food that, that are important to maintain high enough glucose level, high enough blood pressure, et cetera, et cetera. So once you remove it, I think, you know, people can do water only fasting, but probably in a, in a specialized clinic, you know.

Right, right, right.

Yeah. So if you go to a place, it is effective. It is effective if you're in a.

Specialized clinic and you have.

But watch out, right. Because again, as we were saying earlier, the devil is in detail. And if you go long enough, right. Especially if you're extreme and long, then the body goes into another response, which is thrifty mode.

So the body, thrifty mode. So it stops burning.

Yeah.

Then the body, it keeps the fat.

Let's say you got a couple of weeks without food at all. The body now has to intervene and say, we're going to be in trouble soon enough. Right.

So we're going to keep that. We're not going to burn this.

We're not going to burn. And so now you could have, and we know this from long term caloric studies, you could have probably nobody's ever figured out what it is, but it's what's called epigenetic change. So there's a switch that turns on and say, okay, from now on, and maybe for years, I'm now in a saving mode. I'm going to save energy. So now if you. And this is why the technology is so important. Right. So you want to do all the things that we just talked about and don't you want to avoid all the bad things? Right. You don't want to get into thrifty mode, you want to get into the ketogenic mode. You, you want to start burning the fat. Keep that long term and avoid the side effects, you know? Yeah. So all of this, even though people think, oh yeah, it's an old thing, people used to do it, you see how the purpose was not to get to 110 years of age healthy back 2000 years ago. The purpose, if you were lucky, is make it to 50 years of age and have children. So now everything changed.

Right.

So now we can't just fast the old ways. Right? Right. We have to know, we have to be respectful of the tradition and what we learn from all these old practices. But at the same time, we have to bring in the science, the clinical trials and say, okay, how do we, where do they match? You know, what's the common denominator between all these things?

Fasting is kind of a funky state because you're you're altering so many other things in the physiology. But one of the things that happens, especially by about the second day of a water only fast, is you really are seeing the impacts of what deep sleep can look like in a state that is totally absent food. And it's very interesting because you're competing with two forces. One that's keeping you awake and one that's helping you sleep a lot deeper. The one that's keeping you awake is cortisol. You have more of it, you have more stress hormones when you're fasting. Because that's the thing from a prehistoric standpoint that would have been going on, right? Fasting would trigger a signal that says, go get more food.

Right?

Be alert, be focused, be alert, go get food. Like, we don't want to die. And so that's kind of keeping you awake. But the flip side of that is the total absence of nutrient is allowing you to get into this amazing sleep. And your body temperature is really going down because your body's turning down its metabolism. So I actually find fasting sleep to be some of the most amazing physiology because I'm watching this plummeting temperature, rising heart rate variability, falling heart rate, all of these really valuable things. But a little bit of rising cortisol that can lead to shorter sleep times. But I still feel quite, you know, rejuvenated by sleep.

Wow.

Okay, I want to stay asleep for a second. I know you got the fourth one, which I want to close that loop. But do we, does that hurt us if we nap throughout the day or take a power nap for 20 to 40 minutes? Does that help our bodies recover more even if we're doing the seven or eight hours of sleep? Or does that not matter?

You know, it depends. I would say naps are not a bad idea, provided they don't reduce your drive to sleep later. So I just got back from like a hunting trip last month where just based, I mean, first of all, it was exhausting, right? You're sort of hiking 10 or 11 miles a day on vertical walls, you know, carrying a 50 pound pack. It's all the stuff that is physiologically as, as it gets at altitude, right? So, but there was no way you could go to bed like any earlier than 11 and you had to be up by 4:30, really well, just because, you know, you have the most. The two times when you're going to have the best opportunity to go and stalk the animal is in the evening and in the morning. So those are the times. So, you know, there was no Way I was going to survive a week of that if I didn't carve out an hour and a half to two hours in the middle of the day to sleep. And I'm normally not a napper, but I made it a priority above anything else, including practicing with my bow and arrow in the middle of the day, which I would normally want to do. Nothing was a higher priority than getting that nap in during the day because I was deficient at night. And getting that nap in the day didn't rob me of the ability to sleep at night.

You still were passing out right when you got in your pillow?

Absolutely. Now, let's say we talk about a person who is getting seven and a half or eight hours of quality sleep at night. Is there any downside to a 20 minute power nap? I would say no, but if going any longer than that, I would be mindful of it. Because sleep comes down to balancing basically three things. The first is cortisol. So the stress hormone cortisol must decline in the evening for you to be able to sleep. The second thing is you have to accumulate something called adenosine. So adenosine is kind of like this metabolic breakdown product that corresponds to how much work we do, physical work, cognitive work. So more adenosine makes us more tired. That's how caffeine works, by the way. Caffeine blocks the adenosine receptor, so it functionally makes you think you have less adenosine. And napping reduces adenosine, so you just want to make sure you don't reduce it too much. The third is melatonin, by the way, which has to go up. So good sleep is when melatonin and adenosine go up and cortisol comes down. So I guess to close that out, I would say if you are sleeping so short during the middle of the day, and this is what I was thinking about on my trip, you want to try to replicate a full sleep cycle in your nap, which is about 90 minutes. So that's why I really said, look, I'm going to set aside two hours to take a nap in the middle of the day to give me one full sleep cycle, because I'm clearly being deprived of one during the nighttime.

And is there such a thing as too much sleep? If you're getting 10, 12, 14 hours of sleep every day consistently, does that affect the body in a negative way?

Really an interesting question, by the way, and quite a controversial question in the sleep literature. So there is no question that hypersleep has been associated with, with poor outcomes. So, you know, there is an inverse U shape or, sorry, a U shaped curve of mortality with sleep. Right. So people who don't get much sleep have a higher mortality and it's really more of a J curve. Right. So they kind of, you know, as you get more and more sleep, the mortality comes down, down, down, but then it does sort of uptick. So you get these people who are sleeping a lot and they're actually having worse outcomes than the people that are in the seven and a half to nine range. Historically, that has been explained by the fact that people who are sleeping a lot are usually sick, and that's why they're sleeping a lot. So we're not, we're missing. We got the arrow of causation wrong. We're saying, you know, are they sick because they're sleeping too much or are they sleeping too much because they're sick?

Right.

While I think that the majority of the hypersleepers are hypersleepers because they're, because they are sick, there is actually some emerging evidence to suggest that absent that there might be a downside in too much sleep. But again, I think for most people, most of us are on the other end of that spectrum, which is we're constantly battling the need to get enough, and that's either through our kids, our work, our stress, our electronics, our food, our alcohol, all the above, our travel.

And is it a negative if you're a kid and you're eating a lot of junk food, you're not sleep, you're staying up late because you're whatever, playing video games all night, but you've got all this energy all day and you're active. Is there a negative for in your early ages, teens, early 20s, through lacking sleep, eating poorly, or is there a way to recover in your 20s from the damage you've done in your before 20?

Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, certainly you can break it down into sort of the behavioral habit side and you can talk about it through the physiologic lens. The good news is, before the age of 20 or 30, we are pretty remarkably resilient. I mean, you're an athlete, so you can relate. How old are you now, Louis? You're new.

37.

37.

So you might not have fully appreciated. I'm 47, so I'm a full decade older than you. And when I think about 17 to 27, to 37 to 47, I can really talk about those decades through the lens of resilience. Like at 17, you could shoot me and I think I'd still get up the next day. Like you just couldn't, right? You're Superman. Yeah, you're absolutely Superman. And I don't know, I feel like the first observation of not being Superman for me kind of kicked in about 42ish about five years ago was the first time I was like, oh, so this is what people talk about, right? Like you can't just go out and crush it every minute of every day. And I think that's just one lens, which is through the lens of exercise. But the same is true of physiology, right? Like, or I'll give you another example. Many of my patients have observed this. I've observed this. Like, I was never a big drinker in college, but certainly there were enough occasions in med school or college where I'd go out and drink far more than anyone should. And yet somehow the next day I could like get up at six in the morning and go and do whatever I need to do. Like I remember one night actually being out drinking until 3 in the morning. I mean, having so much to drink, it was ridiculous. And somehow getting up at 6 in that morning to do 100 mile bike ride.

Oh my gosh, man.

Probably probably still partially drunk and, but felt fine by about like two hours into the ride today. If I had three glasses of wine, like the headache I'm going to have the next day is going to last me till the middle of the day.

Is that because your body was able to assimilate the glucose into the muscles and it used it for its, to its advantage then and now it's like it takes over.

It's a very good question. I really, I mean I could, I could sort of, you know, speculate on what it is, but I just think there's an over. So there's this thing called homeostasis, right, which is one of the hallmarks of youth and it's one of the hallmarks of aging. And you know, it's the ability to, or it's our lack of homeostasis. We lose this ability to get the body back into the zone of optimal performance. So everything about the human body is very particular. For example, take ph, which is the amount of acidity in our body. We're so highly regulated. Like our body really needs to be at a ph of 7.4. So 7 would kill you and 7.6 or 7.7 would kill you. And this is a scale that goes from 0 to 14 to put that in perspective. Wow, okay. So tiny perturbations will kill you. How good Is our body at staying in that amazing temperature?

Right.

You go much below about 94, you're dead. You go much above about 104, you're dead. How good are we at staying in that range? Oh, I mean good. I mean, we generally stay within a 1.5 degree band. So this homeostasis thing is amazing. It gets weaker and weaker as we get older. And so your ability to tolerate bad food, bad sleep, sedentary behavior, more stress, all those things, it just gets weaker and weaker and weaker and I think it declines non linearly. So again, what you experience is a decline between 30 and 40. It's bad. 40 to 50? Yeah, that's worse. 50 to 60, you can fall off a cliff.

Is there a way to reverse this?

I don't think we know. I think you can definitely slow the progression of it. And you know what, I would say you probably can reverse it. Right. So just as you can clearly reverse diabetes, Diabetes is a glucose homeostasis problem and it's clearly reversible, you know, so there are probably some variants of this that are harder to reverse than others. But no, I think we can reverse this process. But it gets harder, you know, it gets harder as time goes on and it gets harder the further, the further you are into, you know, sort of the physiologic trap.

What are you doing to reverse it now that you've been experiencing this kind of not maybe a cliff, but a dip over the last five years for yourself? How are you thinking about it?

Well, I sort of had a change of heart five years ago, so actually six years ago, 2014. So I sort of hung up my bike, which at that point. So at that point I'd switched from swimming to cycling as sort of my main sport. But at that point a couple of things had happened. So one, I had become very familiar with a lot of emerging research on excessive cardiovascular training, which again is a rich man's problem.

Ultramarathons, ultra biking, ultra swimming, hiking.

That's right, that's right again. And it's the same sort of curve, right, where as exercise, dose of exercise goes up, mortality comes down. But it has this little bit of a J where once you start to get into hyper amounts of exercise, especially over the age of 40, you're actually driving an increase in mortality now again, really? Yes.

Does that mean like running a marathon once a year or is it running a marathon every week?

Yeah, great, great point. Running a marathon once a year probably not increasing your mortality at all. But running 40, 50 miles a week probably is, especially at that age. Now again, this gets to your point about resilience. Someone in their 20s doing that doesn't seem to have any impact on mortality. It really only seems to be an issue if you continue. In fact, I did an interview with a cardiologist, James o', Keefe, on my podcast, who is the world's expert on this. And it was actually James's work six years ago because I heard him speak at a conference 10 years ago, we became friends. It's one of those things, I'm sure you've experienced this where you hear something and you don't want it to be true. So you basically come up with all the reasons, you're going to poke holes in it until you can you find.

The evidence the other way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And eventually it became very difficult to ignore that this hyper amount of exercise was counterproductive. So that's one piece of the change six years ago.

The second piece, it's probably bad that I just committed to doing the marathon next year yesterday.

That's all right though, you'll be fine. I just think don't do one a month, you know.

Exactly.

And then, and then I think the second thing was I realized like, it was sort of funny, but I realized like my prime was so far behind me that I needed to think about like what, what was, what was I doing this in service of? Right. Like, and not that I needed anyone other than myself to do these things because I'm very self motivated. So I don't. But just as a joke, one day I asked my wife, I said, hey, do you know what my PR is for 20k bike run or swim? Yeah, bike on a 20k bike on the time trial. And I was like, this is my wife, she hears me talk about this stuff all the time. I have spreadsheets and models and data and I analyze my power data every single day. And I'm trying to break the record record for San Diego. Like I'm really so switched on to this. She'll probably get it within a minute. She'll guess what my PR is. Within a minute she was off by 20 minutes, meaning she wasn't even in the zip code. So I was like, huh, that's funny. Like, it's like literally the most important person in my life couldn't care less about this. And what I realized was, you know, I need to start thinking about a different sport, which is the sport of longevity. So what does it mean to be a kick ass 100 year old? And so that was the beginning of a mental model for me that in the past two years has gained much more traction, called the Centenarian Olympics. So how do you train to kick ass at 100 should you get there? And of course everywhere along the way. So that now dominates my landscape of training, which means I don't, you know, care about how fast I can, you know, ride a 40 kilometer time trial because that doesn't quite fit into what a centenarian needs to be able to do.

What is your mindset going into a 40 mile bike then? Or, or some type of experience? Is it more the joy of it?

So, so I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't train. No, my training is very specific, but now it is fundamentally organized around four pillars. So the pillars being stability strength, mitochondrial or aerobic efficiency and anaerobic performance. And so each of those then has a super layered detail approach. And I still ride my bike four hours a week, so it's a fraction of what I used to do. And it's now very much geared to a certain energy system and a type of training.

What was the fourth one?

Stability strength, mitochondria and mitochondrial efficiency or aerobic efficiency. And then the fourth and final one is anaerobic performance.

So you focus on those four metrics now on a day to day basis?

Yeah, yeah, those, those four pillars sort of make up the training program which is then in service of something that I invite every patient to define for themselves, which is because you will have a different, you know, set of variables from me potentially. But you know, my Centenarian Olympics has, you know, 18 events in it. You know, like I want to be able to pull myself out of a pool that, you know, where there's a one foot gap between the water and the curb, like lift myself up. I want to be able to hop over a three foot fence. I want to be able to walk three miles in an hour. I want to be able to carry two 10 pound bags up four flights of stairs. I want to be able to goblet squat 30 pounds because that's about the weight of a kid. I want to be able to get up off the floor without using my hands. So I could rattle off all of my 18 things and you would say, Peter, those seem really easy. And you'd be right as a 37 year old stud. But the point is, as a 60.

Year old, a lot of them aren't easy.

Most 60 year olds couldn't do this if their life depended on it. And I have yet to meet, but maybe one person in their 80s or 90s who can. And so that's the aspiration, is to get to that level in your 80s or 90s. How do you work that backwards to inform your training in your 60s, in your 50s, and in your 40s. And it's actually very hard.

And as I'm getting into, you know, I'm three years away from 40. What should someone in my age range be thinking about when they're, you know, I'm healthy, I feel good, you know, maybe have some aches and pains here and there when I'm training hard or something, but for the most part I feel amazing. What should I be thinking about moving forward so that I continue to feel amazing and have the ability to do these things?

So I don't, I think it's never too late to at least become familiar with what these ideas mean. And, and it doesn't mean that you have to go whole hog and devote yourself to this. Like, I've obviously made a very conscious choice that I don't go to swim meets, I don't go to bike races. Like, I don't train for those things anymore. And a big part of that is just time. You know, There are only 168 hours in a week. And you know, I have a very clear set of priorities and I'm willing to set aside 10 to 12 hours a week for exercise, which by many people standards is still quite a lot. But probably by the standards that you exercise, and certainly by the standards that I used to exercise, I've never exercised so little in my life. So I have to be very efficient with every one of those minutes. And that means I'm laser focused on the four principles of that. In your case, I think it comes down to saying, okay, how much time do you want to devote to the long game? How much time do you want to devote to the short game? Another way to think about this would be investing. If you're looking at an investment portfolio, you might say, how much do I want to put both time and money? So the actual capital I set aside, but also the amount of time I spend deliberating over it into my retirement account versus how much do I want to invest as a day trader for short term gains, for money that I'm going to be using in the near term, that's maybe even supplementing my income today. You could have totally different strategies for that, and that's totally fine. So I'm just in the category where I'm only thinking about long term permanent capital. And so that's the first question is, you have to decide how do you want to do that? And it might be that you say, you know, Peter, at 37, I just want to focus on running a marathon. I've always wanted to do an Ironman. So I'm going to go and do that. And you know, I want to climb Mount Everest. And that's going to require like, you might have a whole bunch of these bucket list things. And truthfully, I would say do them now because it's only going to get.

Harder because you're not going to be able to do it later. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I don't think you're going to want to do it later. So get those things out of the way.

What is part of this 45 day process? Is it multiple days of fasting throughout? Is it certain foods? Is it, what is the process like?

Well, it is a 45 day program and there's no really long fasts in the book. I mean, they're no longer than a day and a half. But because it's meeting people where they are. So some people have been fasting, they're ready for the challenges. Some people are like, I'm a standard American diet person. I've been a couch potato for 30 years. I need help. So we can kind of meet all their needs. But I think it really speaks to the fact that we have to talk about lifestyle. We have to talk about are you getting good sleep, are you managing your stress? And that's not five minutes of meditation once a week. And how many of us think that? Check the box. That's what's done it. And it's really talking to people about anti inflammatory nutrition. Unfortunately, most of the foods that proliferate in the processed food industry are highly inflammatory. And I'm talking about gluten and dairy. I always get the side eye from people like, no, not dairy sometimes, in certain instances, sometimes grains, processed sugars, alcohol. Alcohol is a big one. Unfortunately.

Alcohol is really bad, especially if you're having it consistently. I don't know. I think Andrew Huberman just did a whole breakdown masterclass on alcohol for the brain and the body. And he was essentially like, there is no benefit. You know, there's only bad things that can come from that. Not even like, oh, what about a little bit of wine every now and then and the resveratrol that's in the wine. But he's like, it doesn't outweigh the, the alcohol itself having a little bit in that resveratrol, whatever. So I think I've never Been drunk in my life or high, and I'll have like, maybe like a bath on ice a couple times a year to, like, sip on. But I'm like, yeah, I just feel like there is no added value. Try to find something fast during that time. Right. You'll get a lot more value for your body with that.

Well, and it's interesting because I feel like more and more people in the health and wellness space are either no longer drinking and never had problems with it, but just choose not to drink. And when I go to these events, like I was in an event in New York this past weekend, and most, if not all of us don't drink. And so, you know, I think it's a very personal decision. I know for women north of 40, all of a sudden, you know, they get hot flashes. They don't. I mean, who makes good choices when you've had too much to drink? You're not going to make good choices personally or with nutrition because you're going to crave, you know, the salty, sweet junk. And your body processes alcohol as a toxin. So, you know, it's one of those things that I'm glad that more and more experts, and obviously Dr. Hubman is absolutely brilliant, and I'm so glad that he's using his platform to help educate people, because I think we've been convinced otherwise for a long period of time.

Sure.

And certainly for me, you know, being former ER nurse in inner city Baltimore and, you know, working with thousands and thousands of patients, like, having those hard discussions about, does alcohol serve you? You know, and I think that's an important, really important point.

Yeah. And I get it. You know, there's. There's people that, they like their alcohol, they like their wine, they, you know, all these things. I get it. Their tequila, the shots that like going to the bar and having fun. And I just think, I mean, it's kind of like with me with sugar. Like, I love sugar, but I know it's not good for me. It doesn't do good things to my body. So I try to have days where I don't have any, and then I have some and I'm like, okay, I'm just going to enjoy this. But I know this is not benefiting me. This is not giving me any nutritional value. It's not helping my brain, my digestion, my heart, none of that. It might bring me some joy in the moment.

Right.

Just like alcohol might for people. But you got to understand the risks. And obviously just being in moderation is the best thing. But I think what do you think is worse, sugar or alcohol?

I think it depends on the susceptibility of the individual. I don't drink alcohol anymore, but I was always someone that. I didn't drink a whole lot, so that wasn't a problem. But I think processed sugars, because we start people so young, I mean, think about what we do with children's birthday parties and every sporting event that, you know, you're constantly doling out sugar. We get people addicted really early on. I would imagine that processed sugars are really in almost everything. And so I think that is a greater issue. But I would be remiss if I said I personally have been impacted by alcoholism with a family member. And so for me, alcoholism holds a special spot in that I recognize a lot of people. And it's not just alcohol. It could be any. It could be food addiction. It could be so many other things that people have uncomfortable feelings that they aren't comfortable processing or acknowledging, and so that might be why they choose to.

Numb it a little bit.

Yeah, correct.

Yeah.

And so no judgment.

Yeah, of course.

Sympathetic to all that, but I would say processed sugars for sure.

And what if. What if someone's never fasted before? What do they need to understand as a. As a. Potential effects that will happen with fasting, whether it be 16 hours, 24 hours, or 2 days. What. What do people need to know before they do their first fast?

Yeah, I mean, I usually have kind of a graduated perspective, like, first you stop snacking. Like, it really is that simple. So if someone is really starting from a place where they've been eating a standard American diet, they're not physically active. I'm like, we need to teach you to stop snacking because I promise you're not going to get hungry in between. Because we're going to teach you how to balance your macros so you're going to have more protein with your meal so that you can get from breakfast to lunch and lunch and dinner. And you're going to eventually get to a position where you can go from dinner to. To breakfast. Now, that freaks everyone out without having.

Chips at night or something.

Correct.

It's so challenging when you're so used to it. You have dinner and you just want to have a couple, you know, some chips or some. Something. A cookie or whatever it is before you go to bed.

Yeah. And you. And I think you have to replace that habit with something else, like tea. Right. Even if I have a lot of people that have herbal tea at nighttime, they take a walk with their Dogs, they call, you know, a friend. Maybe they've got a friend who's fasting with them. So it starts with no snacking, restructuring those macros, and then really the next step is going from dinner to breakfast, just dinner.

And that's it for breakfast.

But I think you have to kind of get yourself out of that head space. Think very clearly about why are you choosing to fast. Is it because you want to get healthier? I can't tell you how many people I meet who are like, I was told I had pre diabetes. That was a powerful impetus to shake things up.

Sure.

Or, you know, I've got young children at home or I've got a loved one I have to take care of. And so all of a sudden, you know, people's priorities shift. It's like, I have to take care of me because other people depend on me. So getting very clear about your intentions, because that's what you're going to need to reflect on when you are considering what the options will be. So for a lot of people that evening snacking, and I think the last two and a half years in particular, people have just been stressed and they don't know how to deal with the stress. And so stress eating has really become a huge issue. But I always remind people that we become less insulin sensitive as the day goes on. So you would be better off having an early breakfast than eating late at night. That three hour window before bed is really important. And so understanding to not eat at night. Right. That insulin, insulin sensitivity is lowered at nighttime. And so that late night eating can really derail even if you're doing all the right things. So when someone's new to fasting, those are usually the first three things that we talk about. And then I say, listen, baby steps, we go from 12 hours to 12 and a half. If you need a break, we do that. Then we go to 13. And so really saying to people you are eventually going to get to a point, but also explaining to them that if you are primarily using glucose as your primary, primary fuel source, it's going to take you longer to become fat adapted to where your body is. You know, your insulin levels are low enough, they can go in and free up these fatty acids to fuel the body. So saying it could take four, six, eight weeks for that to happen, depending on how metabolically flexible someone is. I mean, some people are like a duck to water. It's two weeks easy, no big deal. But more often than not, that's not the case. And just helping people understand that everyone's an individual. Some people, it's, you know, you take two steps forward and four back. It's all okay. It's part of the process. We want this to be sustainable.

Yes.

And there's no benefit to white knuckling it with fasting. Like some people white knuckle everything they do. And I'm like, that is not the way to live.

No, it's not. It's not sustainable.

No.

What's the lifestyle approach you have now after these last few years of, of testing it and trying it and having case studies of other women? How do you live your life moving forward personally?

Yeah.

Is it a fasting once a week? Is it every other day? What's your style?

Yeah, I would say I'm very intuitive. So depending on how hungry am I, did I lift that day? What was my sleep like? Did my Oura ring bark at me and tell me my sleep scores in the toilet? Maybe that's not the day to push the fasting envelope and push doing a heavy workout. So I tend to really listen to my body. But the consistent things are I don't eat after 6 o' clock at night, ideally. Really, I do much better having an earlier feeding window. That works for me. It might not work for someone else. I really focus in on sleep. I eat a lot of protein. I always say I'm carnivore ish. I like vegetables. I do eat carbs, but I carb cycle and that's worked really well for me. I don't drink alcohol and there's no judgment for those that do. I just know it was the only thing that gave me hot flashes and messed up my sleep. And my sleep, sleep, like on the hierarchy of important, sleep is so high up there that to me I'm like, it's not worth it to have a martini every six months. It just isn't.

So what about sugar? What's your sugar intake like?

I'll be honest with you, my, my vice in life is dark chocolate. That's my only. But that's really like the one thing. And so I have a little bit of dark chocolate every day, but most of the time it's sweetened with stevia. And you know, I have, I don't have it on today, but I usually wear continuous glucose monitor kind of episodically. And so for me it's like, that's my one vice. Like, I don't eat dairy, I don't eat grains, I don't eat gluten, I don't eat gluten. And I haven't For a long time.

No bread, no cereals, no pastries.

No. And I don't really love that stuff. But my dark chocolate is my thing.

I wish I had that disease where I didn't love bread and pastries.

Yeah. No, but I think for me, it's like. Like you mentioned that the cost benefit. I don't feel good when I eat those things. And I put an autoimmune disease into remission when I went gluten free.

So you had an autoimmune disease?

I did. I had two. Yeah. And so once you get leaky gut, that kind of opens up that. It's like once you have one, you're more prone to others. And for me, I was like, you know, I have to get. Get myself together. And so for 11 years, I've been gluten free.

Wow.

So you eliminated certain foods where you're like, let's try this. And then it started to heal.

Yeah.

And you're like, well, why go back on now?

Right. And so for me, it's, you know, it's funny, like, on vacation, will people say, oh, we have gluten free bread. Might I have a piece of gluten free bread? But I also recognize it sets up that I get that dopamine hit.

I'm like, let's get more.

Exactly.

It's so hard to have one.

Yeah. And that's why. And so my kind of mindset now is it used to be moderation, not deprivation. But if you can't moderate, you eliminate. And so that's kind of how I think, like, each one of us has to decide.

I know I don't have moderation in me. It's either all in or all out.

Right. And. But you recognize that about yourself. That's really what's so important, so challenging.

I would love to get to the point where I can be like, okay, you know, once or twice a week, I can have a small, like, taste of ice cream, not like a whole bucket of ice cream or something, you know, but like, once you have a little bit, it's so hard to trick your brain that you don't desire this so much.

Well, they got that mask, putting the.

Drug on your tongue and it tastes. It just rush your whole body.

It's quesomorphine. So it's actually. And it's interesting, even Peter Attia loves ice cream.

Yeah.

So my husband actually came home one day and said, I was listening to Peter Attia and even he has a weakness for ice cream. He said, so I don't feel quite so bad.

Yeah, yeah.

But ice cream in our house, not that I eat it, but like that is their crack, of course.

Yeah, it's.

Is there an ice cream that you could eat that's good for you? Like a protein ice cream that has no sugar or something.

I'm sure you could probably make it.

I mean, I wouldn't taste right the.

Same, but you know, I just try to get them like Aldean's, which is this organic ice cream. And then I feel like, okay. Now I'm like, listen guys, when the half gallon is gone, it's gone. And so the teenagers will sneak downstairs and they'll eat it. I mean they'll literally just eat it out of the carton and they'll do it to one another so that the one teenager will try to eat it so the other one can't eat it.

Then my husband has teenage days when I had eight Dr. Peppers a day in the summer and you know, just ice cream all night.

Yeah. And they're impervious. Like my 17 year old, 6ft tall.

And the six pack and yeah, always ridiculous.

Plays football and can eat anything he wants.

That's crazy. So you're kind of like an intuitive person right now. You'll fast. Are you doing intermittent fast every other day? How does that work?

I do, I would say I fast most days. So it could be 14, it could be 18 hours. I can tell you when I came out from the east coast, we had a 90 minute ground delay in Denver. And so when I got to the hotel, I remember saying to my husband, I was like, normally I wouldn't eat this much food this late in the day, but I'm like, I ordered a double burger, I ordered hard boiled eggs and I just ate this massive meal. So for me, I think a lot of it is based on what's going on with my schedule. I fast every day, but sometimes I fast only 12 or 13 hours. It really depends on what's going on.

And then you focus on the protein intake. How do I get my protein in? And usually when you eat enough protein, you don't feel as hungry.

Correct.

That's the thing.

When we have carbs, we need more carbs.

Right. And so I always say when you break your fast, protein and healthy fats or protein and carbs, it's never carbs. Naked, I use the term naked carbs, meaning you don't just sit down and eat a bowl paper of chips. You want to have a steak or a piece of chicken or a piece of fish or some egg and you.

Can have some carbs with that, but eat the meat or the protein first. So that's the first thing we should do once we break the Fast, whether it's 14 hours or 24 hours, is have protein first.

Right. And I think the other thing is that some people, and I'm certainly guilty of this, if I do a longer fast. The longer the fast, the lighter the meal when you break your fast. So when I have, when I used to do longer fast, I would have bone broth because if I sat down and eat a meal, my stomach was.

Like, no, like a four or five day fast.

Right. I had to have very light meals. You know, my soup, salad, soup. And there are people that are definitely more sensitive to when they break their fast. So I always say, if you get digestive distress or you don't feel good, lighter meal, break it with something light and then eat a more substantial meal later.

What's the worst foods to eat after you fast?

Oh, I would say just sitting down and eating a bunch of processed carbs. Don't sit down and have a bowl of ice cream. You're going to spike your blood sugar, spike your insulin. I would say the processed carbs. If you sat down and had some rice and had some chicken, that would be fine. But I would say most of the processed foods, because your appetite and satiety cues are not going to be clicked in. And I'm sure you, you probably have had. Experts have talked about this. But the bliss point, the processed food industry hijacks your brain chemistry. So you don't realize, you know, you can eat two bags of Cheetos and you don't feel it.

No, you don't.

It's crazy, right? And it's designed to be that way.

I'll tell you three foods that actually.

Harm the body's health defenses and including the immune system by ratcheting it up.

Inflammation and then lowering the defensive properties.

But also harm to your DNA.

Also harm your microbiome.

Also blunt and stun your stem cell.