Diving Into Intermittent Fasting: Insights from Bestselling Author Gin Stephens! 560

That episode was our most popular and most downloaded episode we ever have recorded . We also hosted her in episode 278 as well . All about her book Cleanish Eat Mostly Clean , live Mostly Clean and unlock your body's natural ability to self-clean , written in 2022 .

Jen Stevens is the author of several other best-selling books , including Fast Feast Repeat , which she wrote in 2020 , and was an instant New York Times and USA Today bestseller . And Delay Don't Deny Living an Intermittent and Fasting Lifestyle was the number one Amazon bestseller in the weight loss category .

Jen has been living the Intermittent and Fasting Lifestyle since 2014 . This lifestyle's shift allowed her to lose over 80 pounds and launch her Intermittent and Fasting website , facebook support groups , several self-published books and three top-ranked podcasts . She hosts Intermittent and Fasting Stories and co-hosts the Intermittent and Fasting Podcast and Life Lessons .

They will be discussing her latest book 28-Day Fast Start , day by Day , the ultimate guide for starting or restarting your Intermittent and Fasting Lifestyle . So at 6 . Jen Stevens , with an absolute honor , is to welcome you to Balanced Body Radio .

I left the Intermittent and Fasting Podcast in 2022 after five years on that show , and Sherry and I closed down the Life Lessons podcast this summer and we have a new podcast called Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent and Fasting for Life , because basically people just kept asking us for Intermittent and Fasting stuff , so that podcast is going great .

So I've got two right now Intermittent and Fasting Stories and Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent and Fasting for Life .

So I must have confused the Intermittent and Fasting Podcast with your new one , with your new rebranding , and I did see that the Life Lessons there hadn't been a new episode in a few months . So I did question whether that one was kind of left to kind of hang out for now .

We no longer have the Facebook groups , we've moved to an off Facebook platform for a private community , but she's been my friend for a while and we did the Life Lessons podcast together for two and a half years and it was a lot of fun .

But , like I said , people wanted to hear fasting stuff from us , so Sheena decided to shift to all right , y'all are asking for it . So we shifted and we're loving the format of Fast Feast Repeat . It's different , of course . Intermittent and Fasting Stories you can imagine it's stories .

I talk to one Intermittent and Faster every week , but for Fast Feast Repeat we share celebrations that listeners send in . We answer questions from listeners , we talk about the research . Every now and then We'll have a guest . So it's a completely different format and we're having a lot of fun with it .

Our two and a half years with Life Lessons helped us know how to work together really , really well .

It's great information and it's information that needs to get out there , because this topic is just so important .

And speaking of , just like we mentioned in the introduction , your podcast episode that we did with you number 48 , almost three years ago is the most downloaded episode we've ever done and I think you'll know as a podcaster , if you look at your numbers every now and again , you'll see your total downloads and you'll scroll down and you'll see how many of the

individual episodes are downloaded on a particular day or month or whatever it is , and the older you go , obviously , the less and less they get downloaded . Yours , your episode , just has constant daily downloads and , for whatever reason , it's more popular on Spotify than it is on Apple Podcast . It's the only episode that is like that .

I have no idea what is going on , but congrats .

What have you been working on since then ?

So I record podcasts at least really four days a week because you have to schedule . If you're going to release three , you have to record , you have to plan for cancellations and things . So I'm recording podcasts at least three days a week and I run my online community and I'm in and out of there all day long and it's a wonderful place .

People can find it if they go to genstevenscom slash community and Jen is like Genatonic Stevens with a pH , but I spend a lot of time on there . I love . You know I'm a teacher . My background I was an elementary classroom teacher and I love to help people with things . That's just .

You know how I'm wired and so I love running the community with intermittent fasters who you know may be having struggles or maybe they have questions , they have celebrations , and so I spend a lot of time doing that and I told my editor , I was never going to write another intermittent fasting book after a fast feast repeat , and then I realized there was a hole

in what we needed and it was the idea that came to my latest book , 28 Day Fast Start Day by Day . That is available for pre-order right now , coming out December 26th . So I've been working on that between now and when it comes out . You're recording this a little early .

I still have to record the audiobook for it and they're on a tight deadline with that . Luckily , they're always used to doing the audiobook at the last minute because of the way they have to wait till the end for all the changes .

. Have you done that in the past ?

So I had a friend that was a radio talk show host and he hooked me up with a guy who did editing for the radio station and I went in . I didn't know if the radio station knew we did it , but the guy's like , just go in , he'll help you . And so I paid the guy to edit for me and I got that book done myself .

But with my traditionally published books starting with Fast Feast , repeat that one , the audiobook for , I think , is 11 hours and I read the whole thing and then Cleanish I think the audiobook is 14 hours .

I was like I said I was a teacher and we can do anything , so I worked through . I mean , it was back when COVID was still bad COVID , really hard COVID and I did it . It was no joke . I had a fever for like 10 days but I got the whole book read and it doesn't come through in the audiobook .

It will be coming out here in a few weeks and by the date of release we're recording this in October . It's just I already know it's going to blow me away that December is going to come this quick when I'm listening to this again on my phone in December .

But before we do that , it's been a minute since we've had you on , so let's hear your story as it relates to intermittent fasting . How did you find intermittent fasting ? What things , kind of problems did it solve for you in your life ?

And I'm a researcher , I have a doctorate in gifted education , I love to learn things and I love to solve problems . So I thought , surely I can solve my problem of being overweight and why am I continuing to gain weight and nothing will stick . So I first heard about intermittent fasting in somewhere around 2009 .

And I literally would haunt the Amazon diet category Like if I didn't have anything to do . I would go to the Amazon diet category and see what were the top 10 books and have I read that one ? Have I read that one ? Now I'd read the reviews and then I would order the book and try it , all that .

And I would go to the bookstore and read all the diet you know the titles and say what have I not tried ? And so I was just really , you know , in tune to what was going on in the world of diets , but I could not lose the weight . I mean I could do something for a while , like , my doctor gave me diet pills and I lost weight .

But that's not sustainable and it's really bad for you . And you know I did the whole crazy HCG diet with injections , also from your doctor . Well , that didn't go well and I gained all that weight back . So , 2009 , I heard about different types of intermittent fasting had pylons eat , stop eat , or a half-mickel , or the warrior diet .

These are all the OG fasting books . You know we had Umbert Hearing Fast Five , but then we also had some stuff going on with the 5-2 diet , dr Michael Mosley , which is based on Christa Verity's work with alternate daily fasting . She had a book called the Every Other Day Diet . So every single one of those things that I just mentioned I dabbled in from 2000 .

And oh , not to forget the eight hour diet , david Zim his last name starts with a Z . He also did the Eat this , not that , books .

So intermittent fasting is a way for you to structure your eating so that you're eating fewer calories . That is what every single person talked about in those days and that is what we all really thought . And so I didn't understand metabolic flexibility .

I didn't understand , you know , what it meant to be metabolically flexible and able to burn your own fat for fuel . I didn't understand . That took time to work up to that .

I certainly didn't understand the clean fast , which I can talk about a little bit later , but I basically would dabble here and there , try a little bit of fasting a couple of days , then something would happen . Over the weekend I wouldn't do it anymore than on Monday I would try again . It was really , really hard . I didn't understand why it was so hard .

So I never lost any weight with intermittent fasting . And then in 2014 , I went on a cruise with my family , saw the cruise pictures , got back home , weighed myself . I was 210 pounds , I was obese and I was like you know what ? I got to do something . And again , you know , I've dabbled in a few things here and there the whole summer of 2014, .

I tried keto because everybody was doing keto . Well , a lot of people were doing keto in that summer and by that point , facebook groups had really started coming around , so I was in a whole bunch of those . No matter how I tweaked my macros , I never lost a pound and I felt awful .

They're like well , you're just not ketoing hard enough , so I would keto harder , right ? Never lost a pound . When school got back started in the fall of 2014 , I was like you know , I can't , I can't live like this . This is terrible . So I pulled back out old trustee fast five diet and lifestyle Dr Bert hearing .

It was a five hour daily eating window , 19 five approach , and I was like I reintroduced all the carbs , started intermittent fasting . But this time something was different .

I finally started losing weight and I really think that time that I did keto , I'd become fat adapted because I was in ketosis all the time , cause I was , but I was eating so much fat and my body you know the metabolic adaptation required for ketosis had occurred .

So I can remember I had , like this keto breathalyzer that I had gotten when I was trying keto and it was an old one . You had to plug it in , wait for it to warm up and blow into it and I would always blow really , really high on you know breath ketones . Still wasn't losing any weight on keto .

But when I switched to intermittent fasting I added back all the carbs . I remember a couple of weeks in I was like I just ate a burger and fries , I feel like I'm in ketosis . And I blew into it . I was blowing ketones on my breath and I'm like wait a minute , can we get into ketosis from fasting ? I started to understand a little bit more about it .

The difference is that is the time I didn't stop . I didn't stop and I lost about a pound a week until I reached my goals . I lost over 80 pounds by the time . All was said and done . That was long-winded answer to that . But at the beginning intermittent fasting is something I did because I was obese and I wanted to lose the weight .

It worked , but since then it's done so much more for me . I didn't even know what intermittent fasting could do because , again , like I said , all we thought was it was just a more efficient way of eating fewer calories , but it's so much more than that and I didn't really understand that till I read the obesity code that came out in 2016 .

When I'm using a metabolic cart and validating metabolism , resting metabolic rate on people who are telling me they're not eating all that much food , but it's just in a tight window , how come their metabolic rates are so much higher than they should be when somebody who calorie restricts comes in and it's always a lot lower .

And it couldn't reconcile those things until the work of Jason Fung and kind of you know , help us understand why fasting would help increase your metabolic rate and help you burn even more calories , which is awesome . It's exactly what you want to do if you do want to lose weight .

And one thing that I just I absolutely want to point out I love this about your story . As always , we're kind of fans of the carnivore diet around here but , knowing you and your history , you don't do well with meat . You have tried over and over . You do really well on a plant-based whole food type diet with intermittent fasting .

That's great , that's awesome . I just I always want to try to point out the fact that we don't know everything about every little thing that's going to work for every person all the time . It's just it's so important to be really , you know , working to kind of find out how things are working for you .

. And at that time , you know , I was certainly not ready to do any kind of whole food plant-based . I love dairy , I love a good burger . You know I talked about that already . I love eggs , all of that and so I was like , well , this is great for them , but this is not for me . So fast forward . You know , I started learning more about the gut .

I went through Zoey , which is personalized nutrition and figuring out what works for you based on the way your body clears fat and clears blood glucose . And it turns out my body doesn't clear fat very well and I'm like , oh , that's really interesting and that's not true for everybody . Some people have bodies that clear fat very , very well .

So lately I've gone back to , you know , reread Mastering Diabetes . This year I'm currently doing an experiment right now . You know Cyrus Robbie and Cyrus that wrote Mastering Diabetes .

They are both type one diabetics , so they understand obviously very clearly insulin needs because they use insulin every day to stay alive as type one diabetics and they actually talk about how a low-fat , whole food , plant-based diet is fantastic for lowering your insulin needs . It has to do with insulin resistance . So I'm experimenting right this minute .

You know , I've been pretty much whole food plant-based-ish , like when I go out to eat , like the other night I had lobster rolls at a restaurant . So I'm not , like you know , a hardcore . I like the-ish in my life but at home I'm pretty much plant-based .

But I just popped on a CGM and I'm doing an experiment right now with whole food plant-based and I'm not adding olive oil when I'm cooking and I'm doing a lower-fat approach just to see and I'm like really testing their hypothesis there of what they say about fat . And oh my gosh , I'm noticing an amazing difference in my morning blood sugar levels .

It's pretty astonishing . You know the whole food plant-based , lower-fat . You would think that my blood sugars would be like insanely crazy . No , it's incredible . Last night my meal was , I mean , I had like , I had like . I opened my window with pharaoh and tomatoes and I don't even remember what was on spinach , it's sourdough bread .

And then for dinner I had couscous . It was a glazed carrots glaze with maple syrup and more sourdough bread . Now would you think my blood sugar would go crazy ? Absolutely I would . Yeah , it went up to 112 . And then , I know , and then it came down nicely while I was sleeping .

And what's funny is the last time I was in CGM was in June and I was eating all the foods At that time .

I wasn't doing plant-based , I was still eating meat , I was eating dairy , all of that , and my blood sugar was staying very steady when , after my dinner , I was eating a mixed meal of fats , carbs and protein meat , dairy , all of that , plenty of butter . I have some data from June .

The next morning , my blood sugar when I woke up at like 6 in the morning was like 120 . So , whatever it is , it seems to be true for my body . I do better with less fat and so I mean , do I want to hear that ? No butter is delicious . I love it and I'm just doing it to experiment now because I don't need to lose weight .

I'm not trying to lose weight , but my dad is going through some health struggles . He's a type 2 diabetic and I don't want to go through those things later on . So , amazingly what they're saying , I'm putting it to the test with my eating sourdough , bread and couscous and carrots with my blood sugar .

I have been shocked at what I woke up to this morning with my blood sugar already low . I'm talking like in the 70s and staying there . I haven't eaten yet today . I feel amazing .

How are things going Well ?

That was shown with a scientific test and that's really interesting . And so maybe other people who clear fat very , very well would have a very different response than me . But it's super interesting to do this experimenting with just for the sake of my own health and see how I feel .

I see you've been in this world for a little while and you're watching other people .

A good friend of mine is a functional medicine , abgyn , and last June she's like you need to do something about this because you know female hormones will you're not having , the hormones will age you and I didn't know any of that because they don't really tell us and there's a lot of people who actively tell us not to do it .

For you know the misinterpreted study from back in the day , and so I have seen a lot of change in my skin just from using the bioidentical hormone replacement therapy that you know , balancing my hormones back to how they should have been . But I also really do think that I have less inflammation because I'm eating the foods that work really well for my body .

As someone who's pretty plant-based , you know the higher quality , the more whole food plant-based I eat , the better I feel , which is shocking .

They like take HCG , which is pregnancy hormone , and they extract from , like , the urine of pregnant mayors or something , and then they like you take the shot and then it's supposed to like fool your body into thinking you're pregnant so your metabolism doesn't slow down on 500 calories a day . It was crazy .

Knowing what I know now , I would like to go back and tell myself don't do that . But it was written by a doctor and he's sharing the secrets and you get it at a doctor's office . So it sounds so legit because doctors are giving it to you , right ?

Whatever they claimed it was going to do for metabolism , that was definitely one that I have personal experience measuring lots and lots of people and their metabolic rates completely tanked .

So the baby , you know , even if they weren't a famine , the baby would survive . So it , like , did something different . Anyway , that was the theory . But after doing HCG , that is when my body really , you know , first I did the diet pills and then I needed the HCG and then my metabolism tanked and then for a few years I was just like who cares .

So I think I , you know , without meaning to , I reversed diet , right , so I boosted my metabolism . So when I was 210 pounds and not dieting at all because I'd given up , you know ?

Yeah , great , it's one of the best things you could do . So you write books about fasting , you do podcasts about fasting . You know you wrote cleanish and kind of stepped away a little bit from the fasting world , still maintaining everything that you were doing . But what ?

What did you observe in the fasting world that you identified as a gap that this new book is now ready to fill ?

You remember that Low carb was synonymous with Atkins and I can't tell you how many times I bought Dr Atkins , new Diet Revolution and all the different forms and I actually had more than one addition because I thought low carb was going to work for me . It never did . I don't know why , and now we know why .

But when I wanted to write fast-fist repeat , I wanted to write the comprehensive book about intermittent fasting that would stay in the test of time Ten years from now it would be just as relevant and it would be the kind of book that people would recommend to their friends and they're like well , how did you do it here ?

Read this book , fast-fist Repeat , and I think I did a really good job writing a very comprehensive and complete book , and that is the biggest strength of Fast-Fist Repeat . But it's also a weakness , because there's so much information in it .

If you start on page one and read straight through , your brain is going to be so very full and some people just aren't ready for all that at once . And so there's a chapter in Fast-Fist Repeat called the 28-Day Fast Start . It tells you what to do , but people get lost because then they keep reading .

And then there's all this stuff in there and some people have friends and family members that they want to do intermittent fasting but they're not going to read Fast-Fist Repeat and I need to have a way to get them just what they need when they need it .

So that is why I wrote 28-Day Fast Start day by day , because I realized people really needed that little extra bit of hand-holding for the first 28 days . And so that was the teacher in me , the school teacher in me said oops , we need something for the people who need just a little more support . So the 28-Day Fast Start , day by day was written .

I'm great at delivering curriculum that was my job and pacing it out in a way that's understandable . So I wrote the book for people . Before you even begin , I'm setting up the reader for success . What are the most common problems ? The subtitle of the book is the ultimate guide for starting or restarting your intermittent fasting lifestyle .

So it sticks that restarting part , because I've realized over the years there are a lot of people who go over and over and over starting over . They start over , then they quit , then they start over , then they quit , then they start over , then they quit . And so I'm trying to plant the seed that this is a lifestyle from day one .

And why do people quit and why are you not going to quit ? And part of that also is , before they even start fasting at all , they have to craft a really strong why statement . And if your only why is I want to lose weight as quickly as I can , then you're probably not going to be ready for intermittent fasting .

Come back to it when you're ready for something different , because intermittent fasting is an amazing , healthy way to live . But I could tell you 15 ways to lose weight more quickly than intermittent fasting . Of course , they're going to take care of metabolism . They're not going to be sustainable . You're going to gain it all back .

Intermittent fasting is different than that , but it's not the quickest thing you'll ever do , but it will change your body forever and it will change your life forever . So I want people to start with all in their mind about their why , and for me . I talked about my dad being a type 2 diabetic my why . Today , after watching my dad and his health decline .

My why would be different than the why I had in 2014 , which was just I want to wear my size 6 pants While I'm sitting here right now in size 0 pants . I never dreamed I would be wearing size 0 pants that I bought , by the way , the ones I'm wearing right now . I think I bought them in 2016 and they still fit .

amazing . Okay , so I have been accustomed to saying that intermittent fasting for me is like gold standard of what will work for a majority of people . You know , primarily for that weight loss , like we talked about , for different other things as well . I think it's one of the very best things you can do .

I don't think you have to be as picky about your diet when you're on it . I think people do benefit from staying on some type of a diet when they're when they are eating .

But it seems to work for many people and I've watched it work for lots of my clients and it's you know , once you get into it , it's fairly difficult without having that , why the hunger is going to be really tough , for breaking up with foods you think you can't go without will be a little bit challenging .

But what are some of the top reasons that people do quit the diet despite having good success with it ?

So that's been like kind of realizing that that is such a problem for people has been eye-opening for me . And you know how do we help people not get into that cycle of emotional eating ? And then they're just it never makes you feel better in the long run , right , it just it gives you that temporary hit in your brain .

And so helping people have better coping mechanisms while they're fasting , that that's really , really important , because we're all going to have stress , stress in our life and we've got to figure out how to deal with it .

And so the old friend that helped us get through it might have been eating all the time or having snacks and say sometimes people just go back to what they knew .

So that's one reason that people will stop , or they'll go on a vacation or have a holiday season and they're like , oh , intermittent fasting is flexible , I'll just have really , you know , whatever , I'll stop doing it just for this two week period , then I'll jump back on .

Well , it's not just quite so easy to jump back on , because your body is refilled , it's glycogen stores and now you're having to push through a few hard days , and so that can be a problem as well with people . And another thing that really causes people to quit is watching their friend do something that's working faster .

You know the latest injections that people are doing . You know the ozympic and the like , and you know they may have a friend that is losing weight super rapidly and maybe they've been doing intermittent fasting and they're losing at a pound a week , and that doesn't look very sexy when your friend is over there dropping weight like crazy .

Of course , your friend didn't tell you about the nausea and the whatever else side effects that they're going to go through , and then the minute they stop taking it , the weight's going to come back . So , but that's something that happens all the time , or their friend will be selling a program and they're doing the pro anyway .

People are always looking for quick weight loss , and so they have unrealistic expectations . So having realistic expectations of , first of all , what's going to happen for you , how long it's going to take you might need to clean up your diet and make some changes and you know all those things .

It's going to take some effort , it's going to take some discipline and and it's hard yeah .

I do see that one all the time where people you know they want to go to you know kind of chill out when they're going on vacation and do a cruise or go to an all inclusive in Mexico or whatever , and you know a few things sneak in and it's really hard to get them back out when you return home .

You get re habituated to a lot of the you know kind of crappy foods and I think what most people only remember is the first time they really adapted to this way of living and how difficult it was the first time without realizing it might be a little bit easier the second time or the third time If you write kind of falling off , falling off , it will be

easier to get back on this time , but you'll only take a few days , yeah .

But you can do it and you know the thing about it when you're , when you're metabolically flexible and you're consistent with intermittent fasting , it is not hard . It just sounds like it's going to be hard . It's hard at the beginning . It's hard until you adapt . It can be hard .

I actually think it's harder emotionally than it is physically because we're so used to , like I said before , comforting ourselves with food . Having a creamy cup of coffee in the morning it's a ritual , and now your gin's asking me to drink black coffee instead and not put any sweetener in it , and then it just feels like you're suffering .

But the metabolic benefits and the health benefits are so profound that when you really understand the clean fast and what that does for you , you would not trade that for all the creamy coffee in the world .

I didn't use the words clean fast in that , but it kind of came up in my intermittent fasting support groups that we had , like you know , you need to stick to black coffee , plain water , plain sparkling water , plain tea and by tea I mean actual tea , not like the whole tea aisle of all the stuff that's not really tea and you know , don't put lemon in your

water and all the sweeteners and the creamers and all that . And so we just started trying to differentiate what we were doing and so I started saying you know , you want to fast really clean . And so eventually we just started using the term the clean fast and it stuck .

And so now you know , I think most people have heard of like clean fasting or dirty fasting and all that , and that started in our Facebook

groups . I actually don't like the word dirty fast because I feel like you're either fasting clean or you're not really fasting . You know , if you had to have fasted blood work or have fasted surgery , you wouldn't tell the surgeon . Well , I had with some cream in my coffee .

I did a little dirty fast , who would be like , well , you're not having surgery , you know you can't fool the body . But the reason we want to fast clean is when we understand what's going on in the body . You know why is fasting different than a low calorie diet , and it has to do with all . You know the fasting goals , what's going on , what's different .

So we have three fasting goals for the clean fast , and when you understand those three fasting goals , you understand why you really want to fast clean . You wouldn't do it any other way when you understood . So the first reason we want to fast clean is because we want to get our insulin down . So you've had Dr Benjamin Bickman on , so he talks about insulin .

The last thing we want to do is have constantly high circulating levels of insulin for multiple reasons .

In his book , while we Get Sick , we learned that chronic high levels of insulin hyperinsulinemia is linked to , like all the metabolic issues that we're going through , so many things that we're facing these days , and so we need to get insulin low for our health . But also insulin , high levels of insulin .

Insulin's a storage hormone and so if we want to tap into fat for fuel , we have to have low levels of insulin so our body can release the fat . So we want to keep insulin low and we do that by not doing anything that will stimulate our body to release insulin . Well , what causes an insulin response ?

Eating so obviously we're not going to eat , but a sweet taste can cause a cephalic phase insulin response . Or just any taste that makes your brain think food's coming in . Because our brains are like , okay , you know , I know that sweetness , maybe you just had a diet coke and zero calorie , but your brain doesn't get it .

Your brain's like , ooh , sweetness , we're going to have a hit of glucose coming in , because sweetness is associated with a blood sugar rise in our brains and so goes ahead and signals the pancreas we have our cephalic phase insulin response pump out some insulin , except we really didn't have any glucose coming in .

So we don't want to be sipping on those sweet flavored beverages constantly causing our pancreas to release more insulin . And that goes with anything that's going to be food like or food flavored . That's where all those fruity flavored teas come in . We want to avoid those . That's why we don't put lemon in our water or we don't drink sparkling waters with flavors .

We don't put anything in our coffee that we don't drink flavored coffee like hazelnut Our brain's going to be like , ooh , hazelnut . Do we know what that is ? No , it doesn't understand the zero calorie . So that's fasting goal number one keep insulin low .

Fasting goal number two we want to tap into our stored fat for fuel because you know , like I talked about , when I did keto way back in 2014 and lost zero pounds and I was like in super duper ketosis and losing no weight , it was because I was eating so much fat .

My body was making all the ketones it wanted from the fat I was eating and so that I might have felt really energetic and I couldn't sleep , but well , I wasn't losing body fat .

So if we want to lose body fat , we don't want to just have ketones , we want to tap into our body fat for fuel , and so we don't want to put anything into our body during the fast that our body can use for fuel .

So that means we're not going to put butter , coconut oil , mct oil , we're not going to put any of that in our coffee , because our body will be like , oh , I'm going to use that instead . I don't need to clear the fat out of my fatty liver , I don't need to get into my stored fat for fuel .

I got all the fat I need coming in in my coffee cup , so we want to tap into our stored fat for fuel . We want to deplete any fat that's in a fatty liver . We want to use the fuel that's already in our body Maybe that's even just glycogen that's in your liver and your body's clearing that out so we can get to burning stored fat .

So don't put any more fuel in while you're fasting and then fasting . Goal number three we want to have increased autophagy . Autophagy is our body's cellular housekeeping , where it's like recycling old , junky proteins and cleaning stuff up . And what turns that off ? Well , eating protein also turns off autophagy .

So we don't want to do anything that'll interfere with autophagy and so we don't want to take in anything that contains protein during the fast . You know , save your pre workouts or post workouts or whatever protein supplements or amino acids . Keep this in your eating window .

Your body is going to be recycling old , junky proteins and it can build new things out of the ones that recycle . You don't have to immediately take them in after working out . Your body's got stuff on hand already and it's not going to tear your muscles down your valuable muscle tissue .

It's going to use the junky ones that like excess skin you're losing weight , stuff like that and so we don't have anything that would halt autophagy like we don't want to have bone broth , for example , that would that would hold autophagy . So it's got protein .

Every single day I white knuckled it to my eating window opening . Every single day I was putting stevia in my coffee , I was chewing gum , I was drinking flavored water , I was drinking Zivia soda and I lost 75 pounds doing that .

And if anyone had said , well , you really shouldn't do that , I would have said it works for me , it works for me , except it really wasn't working very well . I was slowly starting to regain weight .

In 2015 and 2016 , over the Christmas holidays I'd regained about eight pounds that I had lost , just like every other low calorie diet , because I really do believe that if you're not fasting clean , it's more along the lines of a low calorie diet than fasting . Then I read the obesity code came out in March of 2016 .

Then I understood the cephalophase insulin response and then I was like , oh , so I stopped with the stevia because he actually in the obesity code talks about how stevia caused a higher insulin response than white sugar . Wow yeah . And he really doesn't talk about cream , like I really think you should .

But I mean , dairy causes insulin response and so dairy is the perfect nature is perfect . I'm not anti-dairy , don't get me wrong here . I am not anti-dairy . I'm anti-dairy during the fast . Dairy is nature's perfect food for building a mammal baby at the highest rate of growth ever . Does that sound like fasting ? It's not so .

I really do think you know the clean fast challenge . For anybody who was like me before . I read the obesity code and would have sworn that whatever it was they're using works for them . Take the clean fast challenge for 30 days .

Your mind is going to be so blown away at how much easier fasting is and you're never going to go back to whatever it was you were doing . You're going to be like all right , jen was right , darn it .

But it turns out she was probably drinking more cream than the actual coffee . Anyway , it was way more than what she thought it initially was , and at first she was just happy that she was saving money , but then , of course , the weight loss continued and just like clockwork really really pretty consistently after that .

So I do think that's a good step for a lot of people , despite I think you're not if you're not fast and clean .

So it's really like a very ultra low calorie diet if you're putting something like that in your in your coffee . So , be a little , send them to me , Casey , I'll tell them Okay perfect .

And it's always like monster energy drinks . Or I was putting cream in my coffee because I saw a video that said you could , or I heard that 50 calories didn't break the fast . And it's always that they weren't fast and clean and also usually they didn't give enough , enough time .

They're like , well , I did it for two weeks and it was really , really hard and I didn't lose any weight . And I'm like , well , you didn't give it long enough , you didn't adapt and you weren't fast and clean . So again that goes back to the 28 day fast start , day by day . Every day there's a checklist like day one , checklist Number one I fasted clean .

They check that off and they're making that commitment to themselves by checking it off . They're like feeling okay , I've decided I'm fast and clean .

One of the things is I didn't get on the scale today because we're not going to wait during the 28 day , fast start , because that is not the time to expect weight loss , that's the time for your body to adapt , and so just things like that .

Like you know , I did not turn to food for comfort , those types of things , to really get them off to the right start .

You know I've only been able to read the table of contents in the first little sample that you have , since the book isn't out yet , but I love how you laid it out by time and I really wanted to focus on kind of the first you know area and then also the very end when somebody's kind of transitioning off . What do they transition on to ?

So let's talk about the preparation to the 28 day . You know fast start diet . How are people preparing so they're ready for this ?

. You know , I understand most of us used to come to intermittent fasting for weight loss . However , there's so much more to it . So it's other things . Like you know , I want to age well , I want to be active , as you know , as a grandparent , or I want to feel good on my clothes , it's things like that .

And then there's places for people to write in their own and maybe they want to have good brain health , they want to prevent metabolic problems . But there are many , many reasons why someone might want to start intermittent fasting . Even it's just , you know , you don't think about food all day , that's , you have better mental clarity .

That might be one of your why statements . Then I have people you really understand the clean fast before they get started , and then they choose their plan and it's the same plan that was in fast . These repeat the same exact ones Because , remember , this is a companion book . So they're choosing .

You know , they can choose to ease in or they could have a middle of the road approach . They can rip off the bandaid and it tells them exactly what , what to do . And they , every day they're like all right , this is the plan I'm following . They check that off each day as well and you really , you just start . You don't have to do a lot of preparation .

You understand the clean fast and then you just begin . You know , I have a friend who started her first day on Christmas day . That was the first day . She did intermittent fasting Christmas day . She's like you know what I can do it , I'll just wait , I'll eat , I'll eat in a window . Bam , she did intermittent fasting on Christmas day .

I mean , I do intermittent fasting on Christmas day too , because I do it every day . I might have a longer window on Christmas day , but I still have a window of some sort and I don't eat from first thing in the morning till as I'm going to bed . I just have that condensed in a window . So they're every day .

You don't have to do a lot to get ready for it . You don't have to buy a thing , you don't have to clean out your pantry . It's not like anything else . We have to throw everything away and start over and now you're going to eat , perfect . I actually suggest that people not change what they're eating for the first 28 days because it's just too much .

We've all tried to do a million things at one time and then we're so overwhelmed we end up doing nothing . It goes both ways . If someone's been eating really , really clean and then they start intermittent fasting , I don't want them to just reintroduce all the crap and start intermittent fasting .

No , continue eating really , really clean and include the intermittent fasting . But if you've been eating the standard American diet , keep doing that for now . Start the intermittent fasting . As time goes on , you're probably going to have fun with some of those things you used to really like no longer appeal to you . Like with me .

Here I am eating mostly whole food , plant-based , completely that way at home , unless it's like my son's birthday . We had a cake . I'm not going to be like I can't eat cake . No , I'm going to eat the cake with joy . But I've gotten this way because of how good I feel After I had that lobster roll and fries .

After I went out to eat with my husband last week , I felt really puffy and sluggish . I didn't feel my best . I'm like I don't like to eat like that very often . It was no big deal , but I've naturally gravitated towards eating better foods . I didn't force it and I don't do it because I'm on a diet .

I just really like to eat good quality foods that make me feel amazing .

Let's just cut back One thing that- .

Those are both fasting books . You go to any of the fasting books that are out .

There's a dietary strategy attached to it where you're also going to be limiting foods and dieting and eating certain things and not other things , whereas with my approach I understand that you said you followed more of a keto , carnivorous kind of a way and that makes you feel great . Versus , here I am over here , whole food , plant-based-ish , and I feel great .

But there are people who don't know how their body is going to feel the best If they read the diabetes code by Jason Fung , this low carb , high fat approach and then they feel like crap . They'll be like , oh well , fasting didn't work for me . Well , they were also trying to follow this dietary strategy that their body didn't like .

Versus saying with mastering diabetes , maybe they read that and it's got the fasting component and they're trying to do whole food , plant-based , low fat and it's just too much and they're like well , fasting didn't work for me , but with my approach we start with the fasting and then you get curious about what works for your body and you start to connect how you

feel . It's not Jen Stevens telling you well , I feel better on lower fat , whole food , plant-based , so why don't you all try that ? No , what feels right to you ? In our community we have people all along the continuum in our intermittent fasting community . There are carnivore members of our community .

I would never tell them not to be carnivore because they look so healthy , they feel so good . It's working for them . But on the opposite end we've got vegans . I would not call myself a vegan . I'm not dogmatic about what I eat . I just like to feel good most of the time and I'm structuring my eating in a way that does that for me .

Then we have everyone in between . Our central focus is fasting and finding the food that make you feel your best over time . Don't follow me around and eat what I eat . You figure out what makes you feel great . It's making people empowered to do that .

Maybe he was Australian , I can't remember , but he was talking to him and that guy came through the keto paleo world and now he's vegan . But it all just had to do it . He was experimenting with his body .

But they had an interesting discussion about getting in these diet silos , right , and you get so dogmatic about it that you don't realize that there are a lot of things that make us different biologically . There was a really great talk , someone named Denise Minger . Have you ever heard of Denise Minger ?

Absolutely , and she's paleo , low carb , right , she's in the paleo low carb world . Well , she did a talk and gosh , I'm not sure when she did the talk . It was years ago . You can find it on YouTube if you search Denise Minger . She did a talk about the low carb diet in defense of low fat .

She did a talk at like a paleo low carb conference where she shared the data about the power of extreme low fat diets and these weren't even like really good quality low fat diets . It was like the Kempner rice diet where they had like nothing but white rice and sugar , but they were reversing .

He worked at Duke University , which is not fly by night , and you know his patients lost lots like 150 pounds and reversed their diabetes . I mean it was like they were having a remarkable result . So Denise really unpacked a lot of that research and she talked about how the metabolic magic seems to be at either end of the continuum . It's fascinating to talk .

I learned so much watching it and anyone who's stuck in a diet silo should probably watch it . Denise Minger in Defense of Lofat it's on YouTube but she talked about the two ends like being the metabolic magic , and in the middle , like no matter which end , which silo you live in , as far as you know what makes you feel your best .

We could all agree the middle is where the metabolic problems happen . That's when people are eating high fat and high carb and ultra processed food and all the crap and that's . She called that like the metabolic swamp land or something .

So a fascinating talk and I'm really , really impressed by her as someone who just would take a look at the science , because what we tend to do is , you know , if you're in one camp or the other camp , you tend to say , well , all their science is just wrong and they're all super dumb and interpreting it wrong and their studies are bad , and but our science

is good , except you know , this study wasn't done right . I mean , you know we love to do all that and and realize that there are actually people who can thrive on

either end . Do you know the , the bi optimizers guys ?

But we are interviewing Denise two days before this interview dropped , so that's so funny , so it'll be a few weeks afterwards and we'll drop that episode as well . So tell her that .

Somebody got really mad in my community and left because I somebody in a silo who we've just heard the only way If you've got diabetes you , the only way to reverse that is to do low carb , high fat , whereas the mastering diabetes guys are getting amazing results with people and you know you can't fake a type one diabetic .

A type one diabetic has to inject insulin . So when a type one diabetic is eating a certain way and their insulin requirements go down , you know it's , it's working like everyone would probably predict that if you're eating whole food , plant based , low fat , you're going to need more insulin because you're having . But that's actually not what they find .

So again , like Denise said , it's that metabolic swamp land in the middle . It's the fat and the carbs together that are causing a problem . And you know when you think about it , think about in nature , the foods that we eat from nature .

If you're eating seasonally first , you know , think about that and you're like you're a hunter , gatherer living a long , long time ago . You're either eating kind of carnivore , because that's what you got right now , or you're eating completely whole food plant based because it's the growing season . So maybe we're designed to be cyclical .

Maybe we're supposed to be carnivore in the winter and whole food plant based in the summer . I don't know . It's a theory I just made it up , but it makes sense .

Now , okay , we've completed the 28 days . What is life going to look like now ? So my question is is a fasting quote , unquote , fasting lifestyle ? Is that something that can be done long term without much problem ? I mean , you seem to be doing quite well , no problem .

I haven't eaten yet today , yeah , and I feel fabulous . I've having no fogginess , no trouble . I could go jump on my little mini trampoline when we get off . I could jump on that for 15 minutes when we're done . I have plenty of energy for that .

Intermittent fasting just it opens up my day and I feel so good while I'm fasting , but I also feel great after I eat , because I'm eating foods that don't make me sluggish . They make me feel wonderful and I would never want to live another way , like if I can't imagine what the reason would be .

But let's say I went to the doctor and they're like you've got whatever it is . You can never do fasting again . I mean , I can't think of anything that would make me not be able to do fasting , but I'm 54 . Let's say I was pregnant . I can't do fasting while you're pregnant . That couldn't happen anyway .

But let's just , I would be really sad that I couldn't do fasting because I I don't . I would be tempted to like sneak and do fast . It just feels so good . You know all those crazy diets that I did back in the day , the HCG , the diet pills , the restrictive diets . They felt awful . They got harder and harder as time went by .

I didn't feel healthy , I didn't feel vibrant , I didn't feel good . That's the opposite of how I feel . With intermittent fasting . I can keep up with anybody . We went to San Francisco . We have a 25 year old son and his wife . They live in downtown San Francisco and we walked all over the place .

I only had on flip flops because that's just , I guess , how I roll , so I walked like 10 miles a day in my flip flops . We walked all the way to the top of Coyt Tower from the ferry building . We walked from the ferry building up those stairs .

I kept up with them and for a 54 year old woman , and I hadn't eaten , I was in the fasted state and I'm just , you know , able to do whatever I ask my body to do so . If you want to feel your best , intermittent fasting as a lifestyle is really the way to do it .

Go , go have fun , go do the rides , go explore something cool , and fasting definitely allows you to do that . Right before recording this podcast was about kind of my normal eating window , that I would eat my first meal , and I just thought you know what , if I eat right now , jen's going to be so furious with me . I better wait .

Like it's just not that big of a deal and fasting is something that can give that to us . So just I know how busy you are . I'm so grateful that you'd be able to come back on our show today and tell us about your new work , which is amazing . Where can people go to find you and connect with you and your work ?

Definitely , people pre-order it and even if you think intermittent fasting didn't work for you and you tried it before , you're going to set yourself up for success this time . 28-day fast art , day by day . Go ahead and pre-order it .

And if you're someone who already does intermittent fasting , this is the book you're going to want to have to hand to a friend because your friend might not be ready for fast feast repeat . I've heard a lot of people they gave their friend fast feast repeat or they gave it to their mom and their mom never read it and so of course , it didn't work out .

But 28-day fast art , day by day , is going to set you , if you're listening , or your friend or your mom or whoever it is . Set them up for success from day one and you're going to finally understand why you want to live an intermittent fasting lifestyle and not stop .

They sent them an early copy and they reviewed it and the reviewer didn't like it and they said seems like you should just buy the other book . I'm like I literally said that in there . Yes , I said if you're only going to buy one , buy the other one . But I mean this is it's a small investment .

The money you save on lattes in the first month will make it worth your while to . It's not expensive at all and you're going to save money . Like I said , the breakfast you don't buy going out to eat . You've saved the cost of the book right away . And so I think people you know they need 28 day fast start day by day .

But you will also need fast feast repeat because as you continue , that is really going to be your handbook and I really think you need the paperback of each of them . You know some people like the audio book and I think 28 day fast start day by day . If you get the audio book , you absolutely also really need the paperback .

You may want both together to hear me read each daily lesson to you . That'll work fine . We also each day we have an inspirational story from the past intermittent fasting stories guest , which I really like . Like it might say you know , like Joe blow extra episode 47 .

You know , and then it'll be like updates since episode 47 and some advice from the from that guest , so you also can listen to that podcast episode that day if you want to .

Our business started in the pandemic in July of 2020 , and we started the podcast in October of 2020 . So it has been three years now and to see that we have generated over 400,000 downloads worldwide is just simply unbelievable to me .

This year in particular has been such a blast to travel to different health conferences and not only meet some of our amazing guests , but also to meet many of you , our listeners and supporters . We really just can't thank you enough . As always , feel free to book a complimentary 30-minute session on our website , which is MyBoundlessBodycom .

On our homepage , there is a Book Now button where you can find a time to speak with us about health , fitness , nutrition , whatever you like .

We've loved chatting with people all over the world and many of you out there to bounce ideas off each other or to try to come up with plans to achieve specific goals , or even if it's just to reach out to introduce yourselves .

We would just love to meet you and connect with you there . Also , be sure to check out our YouTube channel if you would like to watch these full interviews and also the shorter interviews on more specific topics that are taken from these full interviews . We've gotten really good feedback over there . It's also a really fun way to interact with people who comment .

We read and reply to every single YouTube comment we get , so head on over there . If you want to start a conversation and watch these videos , as always . If you haven't already , please leave us a five star rating and review on Apple . It really is the best way to make sure this podcast gets out there to more listeners .

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