Are you fasting the right way?

Foreign.

Not just a word. Welcome to the Synergy Podcast where myself, Lori Essery and Kelly Engelman shed light on powerful tools and topics that nourish your body and most importantly, feed your soul.

We are so excited to be here. As you may notice if you're watching, we have changed the platform. We're now on video. So if you're used to listening, feel free to just listen. But if you want to see our faces, here we are.

We wanted to create this space so that people can together really thrive in our community. Today we are going to be talking about fasting, intermittent fasting, you know, time restricted, eating, all of those words that people have heard. But are they utilizing it and are they utilizing it in the right way and is it even right for them? So I can't wait to dig into this topic.

I know you know, fasting to me is one of the most powerful, inexpensive, cost effective ways to work on resilience that is so misunderstood and misused today than never before. I mean, I feel like people are so confused about the whole world of fasting and how it fits into their wellness practice. And unfortunately, you and I both get to see patients that come in that have been fasting, intermittent fasting, 16 hour fasting windows, and they're actually gaining weight and don't understand, like what's going on with their body. So we're going to dig into. So what would you say about that person that comes into the clinic? They've been fasting for months. Maybe it worked the first few weeks they did it and it felt really good to them. It works for their time schedule. They like not having to eat all day long, but they're not seeing result and they're very, very frustrated.

You know, it is, it's a common denominator. Many people coming into the clinic these days, because it has been such the, the word, right? It's been basically on every social channel, everything that they're reading, heck on TikTok and a lot of the different videos, I mean, they're hearing it everywhere. And I think the question is, you know, is it, you know, I've been doing this, but I'm not really sure if this is right for me because clearly it's not working for me right now. So what do I say is the same thing, you know, I would say to any of our patients. You know, it really comes down to number one, why would you, like, what are you looking for? What are you wanting to improve? What is it about your health that you're looking to change and what did you read? Because I want to meet them where they're at, right?

Absolutely.

I think that's the most important thing is meeting them where they're at and really asking those discovery questions of what did you read and what resonated with you? What even got you thinking about the potential to do some fasting and then how have you been doing it? You know, kind of going through that, that diet log and understanding. Because to your point is, you know, some people it's, you know, I'm not eating until 10 o' clock or I'm only eating between 10 o' clock and 7 o', clock, and really it comes down to, I think, I don't want to say less about when you're not eating and more about what you're eating when you are eating. But at the end of the day, that kind of is it.

Right. I want to dig into that a little bit too, because I think for, and I'm speaking anecdotally here for things that I see in my practice, but patients that are most successful on a fasting practice, and when I say successful, I mean they're meeting their health goals. Inflammation's down, they're moving their body better, their energy is good, their biometrics are changing in a positive way, whether that's body composition or whether that's serological lab testing. The people that are really winning are the people that worked on their metabolic resilience first, getting blood sugar under control before initiating a fasting practice, and those that are eating early in the day. So the tendency at what I see, most people coming into me that are doing or they're eating late in the day, they may not start eating till noontime, and they eat from noon till 6 or noon till 8. But the people that seem to do the best are the ones that are getting up, eating, and then they don't eat maybe after three or four in the afternoon. And that's harder to pull off because we're all working and we're busy in the daytime. But that seems to be the time of eating that is most impactful, when we're lowering inflammation.

Why do you think that is? Because that is very different than many.

People are hearing what I see. I feel like it has a lot to do with digestion. If they're eating, if they're not finishing their meal until 8 o' clock at night and then they're going to bed, there's not a whole lot of time for digestion to occur before they're trying to sleep. And so I feel like part of it's that I don't know that I understand all of it. And maybe they're more active during the day and so they're burning up some of those calories and can really get maybe into autophagy a little bit while they're sleeping. I don't know that we know the answer to that. I'm just saying that's kind of what I'm seeing. The ones that are most successful tend to be the ones that are eating earlier in the day.

Yeah, that's an interesting pickup. And I love what you said about those that have been the most successful are the ones that have worked on their metabolic reserves prior to initiating fasting as a tool for overall health. And I just wanted to reiterate that because I truly, you know, it's. Everything's going to work better when you've already done the intensive work or some of the work to set the stage. We always say it's kind of creating this. This body. Right. That good at creating good soil.

Yes.

Creating good soil for when we add these other things in. The challenge that I have faced with many of mine that are using fasting as a strategy is oftentimes they're not getting their nutrient needs met during the window. You know, so they are basically depleting their, their nutritional stores even more because they're not getting the food that they need. And I would say that that's probably a key ingredient. Anyone who is utilizing fasting is making sure that you don't just have kind of that set fasting window, but when you are eating, making sure that you're logging and paying specific attention to the macronutrients, protein, carbs, fat and fiber while you're eating, along with the micronutrients, the nutrients that you're getting in, you still need to get quality nutrition in that time.

Absolutely. Otherwise you can run the risk of getting, you know, micronutrient depleted hormones dysregulated. You know, cortisol is one of the primary hormones. Cortisol and insulin are controlling a lot of your metabolic functions. And if you're fasting during a time when you're incredibly stressed, then you may not see the best result. Right. Because you're going to be driving cortisol dysregulated patterns that would interfere with your ability to decrease inflammation and offload body fat.

And I. And you know, the other thing is, is remembering that it's not just what you're eating, it is also what you're drinking.

Yes.

You know, so paying specific attention to anything we Say anything that goes past your lips, right? It is, it's something that you are, you're consuming. So keeping, keeping track of that. I also wanted to mention, and you know this, you know about my practice, I deal with a lot of metabolic disease states, hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes. And we know that relationship between a lack of blood sugar control and inflammation. So I have a lot of people that come into the clinic that have exactly what you said earlier. You know, they've been fasting and they're actually putting on the pound and they are extremely frustrated. And what I have come to realize is that, that fasting is actually for them created more of a stressor.

Right.

Their cortisol. So it's actually driving their blood sugar up and then the blood sugar up. It's, it's just this vicious cycle. So, you know, I love, love, love the use of continuous glucose monitors in these patients because I do believe that it gives them insight to what's happening to their blood sugar in relationship to the time that they're eating and not eating and then what they are eating too.

Yeah. That has been one of the most profound tools that and the oura ring have been game changers for our practices in the way that we can help patients again. If we're going back to the premise of helping people learn their body, those tool tools are incredibly impactful in the way of helping them understand that. And I love, love the continuous glucose monitor as we're prepping someone to develop a fasting practice for themselves. You know, when I got in, I was doing fasting before I was doing functional medicine. Okay. And I have to. Or for what purpose? Yeah, exactly. For what purpose? So I was a registered nurse, first assist. So I was in surgery a lot and a lot of my cases were long cases or long days where we had very minimal time between cases. And so what I learned was I could plan to fast on the days I was in the or so I didn't have to think about eating. I was doing it more for weight control. I was, I was doing it for caloric restriction. I had no idea the power that it had in other areas of my life in the way of decreasing inflammation. I didn't learn that until later, but for me it was just controlling what I could control and having one or two days a week where I fasted. I would do a 24 hour fast at least one day a week. That was probably too aggressive. Right. I probably didn't do myself any favors if I were going to recommend 24 hour fasting. For a patient, I would probably say once a month. I wouldn't do that once a week or certainly not twice a week. But I didn't know any better back in the day. And that just, that was the very first start of kind of a fasting journey for myself, was realizing I did feel better on the days I fasted. I had great energy and I needed that energy to withstand the demands of the or. So it was certainly a learning tool for me, even though I wasn't using the tool to the best of its capacities, let's say.

You know, and I think you brought up a good point about the terms that we oftentimes hear. You know, time restricted eating versus calorie restriction. You know, time restricted eating is the timing of the meals in alignment with that diurnal circadian rhythm that we've talked about. And then you, you just talked about calorie restriction and that's reducing caloric intake below what's typical. And sometimes we do see if we are eating below that threshold. In fact, often we see that the body goes into somewhat of that starvation, starvation mode. So using it specifically in the right patient, in the right way to achieve specifically what their goals are, and it will change, we talk about that all the time, is you have to adapt, you have to be adaptable and you have to adapt, adapt these principles that we believe, because we do know that calorie restriction, they say in some studies, I think, Kelly, you said this by 12%, reduced aging by 2 to 3.

3%.

Yeah, yeah, we know that it works. But again, the how, right, how do we execute it in a, in, in the right way to get the outcomes we're looking for? And how does that change through the different seasons of our lives? If I remember correctly, was that a time also that you were tr. You were exercising, you were running?

Okay, now you're getting way too deep in the weeds of my personal life. But yes, I was training way too hard. That's why I chuckled a little bit about the fasting. Trained way too hard. I was not eating well at all. I thought that it was calories in and calories out again, going back to that caloric mindset. And so it was probably not the best thing for my body at the time to be doing that aggressive fasting. But it did pique my interest as to what the body's capable of doing. And I have to think it was somewhat helpful in the way of developing resilience because I was asking my body to do amazing things with marathon training, back to back races and Then fasting on top of that, and then not putting in my body what it needed in the way of micronutrients. Not a good recipe. I don't recommend that recipe for anyone. But it's the journey I was on that was part of my story and part of my journey. I learned from it. Every bit of it I learned from. I do want to go into something you talked about, Lori, and that's the seasons of life. You know, most of the research that we have on fasting is on men. We have very little research on females because we're much harder to track because of all of our hormonal changes that we experience. And so it's harder to get data on what really is moving the needle and what's not moving the needle. But I will say for females that are still having menstrual cycles, the luteal phase of your cycle between ovulation and menstruation is not the time to fast. That is a time when we need to be restoring. And so I would say that would be a vulnerable time that would increase a stress response and dysregulate cortisol. And so we're thinking about seasons and times to fast versus times to feast. You know, our bodies are made for feast and famine. We weren't made to feast all the time. So fasting is part of what helps our DNA work better. But understanding when to implement and how to implement throughout the seasons of life is profound.

Yes. And I want to go back to what you said from ovulation, which is around mid. Mid cycle.

Yeah.

And then to menstruation starting. So that's approximately two weeks.

Yes.

Out of the month.

Yes.

Yeah. So for our menstruating females, now, would that. Do you. Do you believe that applies to our perimenopausal women who may not know.

Yeah, that's harder to advise, honestly. Now, with OURA ring and the way that it tracks body temperature, it's a little bit easier to see the body temperature changes and kind of extrapolate. Okay. That could have been an ovulatory cycle to know. So if you are wearing an OURA ring, really paying attention to the changes in body temperature can be helpful in understanding, like, is this a time I should be fasting versus not fasting? Because you may not be able to rely on a menstrual cycle to teach you that.

What are the things. You know, I want to dig in a little bit to what are the things that actually happen? Way beyond just the potential autophagy. Right. The aiding in Cells and heal and repair. But what else happens during fasting? Because I know that when I'm fasting my mind settles like just I feel an internal sense of calm.

Okay. I love it.

Ability to introspect a little bit more and just those types of things. So it's more, you know, and I don't know, Kelly, what you feel when you fast, but I do think paying attention to not just the, the physical benefits, if you will.

Right.

You know, fasting, but the emotional and the mindset.

I really leaned into fasting strategies when I was really sick with chronic inflammatory response syndrome a few years ago. I found that if I didn't eat, my brain felt better. And so that forced me to kind of do a little bit of study, a little bit of research on what fasting could look like during that time. Because I was very much in a time of repair, I needed to be in a time of repair. So I didn't want to sacrifice repair. And so I found that doing some cycles of fasting were really, really helpful in decreasing inflammation, neuro inflammation. But also there's some research to show that if you fast for 48 hours, you actually reset your dopamine receptors. So think about that.

How would that equate to. For those that aren't as familiar with what dopamine does in the body, like what, what would a person feel when that happens?

Yeah. So dopamine is your neurotransmitter that helps with drive, motivation, clarity. And we get a lot of dopamine hits with social media. That's one of the things that really addicts us to things. It is an addiction hormone, our neurotransmitter. It's both a hormone and a neurotransmitter. But so oftentimes we have kind of fried our dopamine receptors. They don't work as well. And so that's where that mental clarity that you're talking about kind of coming in and the calmness that you have coming in probably relates to what's happening at the neurotransmitter level. I think it's truly fascinating things that happen with the 12 hour fast, you know, and I think most people, most people can do a 12 hour fast. And that's where I would recommend that you start. If you've never fasted before, just do a 12 hour fast. Nothing from 7 o' clock at night to 7 o' clock in the morning or whatever that little window needs to look like for you. See what that feels like. And honestly, most of us should be living kind of on a 12 hour, I wouldn't even really call that fasting. Right. I wouldn't call that fasting. But you could, if you wanted to use the word, it's fancy, you could say you're fasting with a 12 hour window. But we really need 12 hours of non eating to help the body kind of regulate, to sleep well, digest well, that kind of thing. So I think 12 hours could be a great place to start, especially if you're a snacker and tend to eat after dinner. That could be a really great place to start. And after about 14 hours we start burning fat for fuel. And so, you know, stretching that a little bit beyond seven hours. So maybe not eating after five o' clock at night and then eating again the next morning at 7 may be helpful. In 18 hours we're experiencing autophagy. And that's a big word, right? But autophagy is so important. Inside our bodies we have aberrant proteins, we have proteins that are misfolded and they stimulate our immune system in an abnormal way. They keep inflammation going. They can turn into cancer cells if they're left unattended because that immune system is distracted doing other things. So autophagy is a way of letting the body offload cellular debris. It's like taking out the garbage. That's right, take it out, take it out. And so 18 hours is kind of the perfect fasting window for someone that's looking for longevity strategies, especially longevity in the way of health and wellness. I want to age well. Giving your body time to clean up. Just let your body do what it does. Let it, let it have that time of magic where you're offloading cellular debris. I mean that just sounds like such a great thing to have the body do for you. You don't have to do anything, just drink water, rest and let your body do the magic.

And we think about detox as not an event, right? We think about detoxification as a daily tool in the toolbox. I think about fasting just as that, that is that daily, if you will, taking out the trash, detoxifying and deloading your body. I'm super glad that you mentioned where to start because I think when you talk to a patient about fasting it's like no way, like I don't think I could do that. And it's, you know, you're never going to get anywhere unless you start somewhere. And so starting out with that 12 hour, you know, if it's 7 o' clock at night to 7 in the morning, it's or 8 to 8, you know, when you look at where to start, you think about circadian rhythm. And when the body, you know, physiologically, when the sun goes down at night, what is our body preparing to do? It really is preparing for rest. And if you can really embody and you can really embrace the things that would help you rest better. We know that not eating because eating revs up the body. So beginning to fast is automatically one of the first things you're gonna see is that you're sleep better, you know, and sleeping better is where you restore and where you heal. So I love what you said about starting with just that and then being able over time, depending upon how your body adapts to that, how you're feeling and how your body responds. Right. If you're reaching those diagnostic threshold, working with your functional medicine expert on that. The other thing is some people, that's just too arduous. They're just too much. And I think about what can they do? You know, you can start out by just avoiding sugar and maybe some refined grains. Start out with one, maybe the other. Maybe it's just starting out with removing alcohol, you know, so start somewhere. Let your body get to the place where you can grow to more time between those meals, forcing it to do just that, burning fat. And you know, just consider simple. Start simple. Don't over complicate something that doesn't have to be right.

The other thing I'll say is technology and research is phenomenal. You know, we now have research to support a concept called fasting. Mimicking. Right. And that's where you eat in a way, a very structured way for five days. And your body thinks it's fasting. And you're allowed to offload cellular debris even though you've been eating something every day.

And so you're tricking it.

Yeah, you're tricking the body. You're biohacking the body. Right. And that is called prolon. That's a prepackaged way of experiencing a fast. If that's something that you're interested in doing, I would encourage you to look that up. That's something that we both, Lori and I both support in our practices. Oftentimes we'll lead a fasting journey with prolon or with what we call a food first, fasting, mimicking, where we teach you to prepare the food on your own. It's not prepackaged food. So, you know, there are many, many ways to start embracing fasting as a strategy for resilience, no matter where you are in your health journey and what you're trying to accomplish. That's something that I would encourage you to talk to your functional medicine provider about because again, it is one of the most powerful tools that you can use on a consistent basis to promote your health and wellness.

I completely agree. And again, right person, right time in the right way to achieve the goals that you have for yourself and it will change seasonally. So definitely work with your healthcare provider in developing that plan for yourself. But start now. Do something because you can hear all the benefits. As we're wrapping up today, we just want to thank you so much for being here today on our episode. If you want to know more about synergy, you can find us a few ways. Our website synergy4life that's S Y N E R G E E the number4life.com Our Facebook is Synergy Connect. And remember to follow us on your favorite podcast platform so that you can receive notifications when new episodes are released. We'll see.