Dr. Pompa Solo: Fasting like this makes you fatter

Okay, so you're gonna want to hear this and you're gonna want to share with your friends that daily intermittent fast or even do extended fast because there's so many myths around fasting, and people need to know. Do you realize I go to the top seminars on diet and of course where they talk about fasting? And I can see them. I know who's fasting too much, I know who's fasting wrong.

Yep, it shows on their face, it shows on their body, but if they just had a few little tips, then they could transform all of that back into health and healing. Okay, let's start with the basics of fasting. Why does it even work? Why am I pro-fasting? Then we'll get into all the pitfalls of fasting and what people are actually doing wrong. But I assure you, I'm gonna make sure you actually know how to fast. What happens during a fast?

Let's start with just daily intermittent fasting because that's so popular right now. And what does that mean for people that don't know what I'm talking about? That means that you go a span of the day without eating, or you could say you eat in a window of maybe six hours, eight hours, where you do one, two, or even three meals in that eating window, and then the rest is fast.

Most people fast through the night because you don't eat when you sleep, and you wake up, miss breakfast, and continue your fast. And it's super easy to not eat breakfast in the morning, and then maybe your first meal's at noon, maybe it's at two, and then you have dinner. That is an intermittent fast. A lot of people are doing that incorrectly. I'm gonna tell you the pitfall right now. The body eventually will think it's starving.

Yep. And then it starts feeding from your muscle and not your fat, your metabolism lowers, and it even can affect your energy, how your brain works. So we don't want to ever get to the point where we're fasting so much, doing that every day. Is that you? Does that sound like you or someone you know where we're actually thinking, we're actually getting our bodies to think that it is starving to death? And yes, that is a bad place to be. The fix is very simple.

That's one form of fasting, daily intermittent fasting. But there's another form,

extended fasting. I used to call it block fasting, meaning you pick a number of days. Maybe it's two days, maybe it's three days, and maybe it's five days. There are great benefits to this type of fasting as well. But let me explain this. Fasting is a stress to the body. Did you hear that? Okay, even though there's all these benefits, which I'll explain some in a minute, but fasting is a stress to the body.

Okay, now that sounds bad at first, but it's not because exercise is also a stress to the body. If you stress your body with exercise and you adapt to the exercise, you get stronger, faster, better, healthier, all the benefits of exercise. But what if you overtrained, or maybe you don't think you're overtraining because really no one thinks they're overtraining, but you're doing too much, and maybe you don't adapt because you're under more stress.

Maybe you're not eating good, maybe you're not sleeping good, maybe you're stressed out, maybe you have a thyroid adrenal condition. A lot of reasons why you wouldn't adapt to exercise, but here's the point you get worse, you get weaker, slower. The very opposite thing of why you're exercising. Well, guess what? The same applies to fasting. If you don't adapt to the stress of fasting, then you don't get all of the amazing benefits. So we need to adapt. Keep that in mind.

There are benefits to fasting. This is why it works. There's something called autophagy, but it simply means your body is getting rid of bad cells. That's it. Cells that cause inflammation, cells that potentially can lead to cancer, cells that absolutely make us not feel good. They age us prematurely. So it sounds like a really good idea to get rid of them. That's what happens during a fast. Your body will eat the bad cells.

Here's how stinking smart it is it won't touch the good cells that are functioning really good and help you. It will go after the bad cells. Why does it do that? Because it needs energy, breaks down the bad senescent cells, as they're called. Some people call them zombie cells. And but here's the best part it stimulates a stem cell and recreates a new one. Many people have hyperimmunity driving all the bad stuff, autoimmune as it's known, allergies, that's all hyperimmunity.

Your immune system's in overdrive, not good, doesn't make us feel good. We wake up with aches and pains, we have food allergies, and of course, it can lead to an autoimmune where nobody knows what's wrong with you. That's hyperimmunity in many people who have low immunity. So here's the point: if you're getting rid of bad immune cells and then you stimulate a stem cell, you actually create new immune cells. Down goes the hyperimmunity, up goes good immunity. That's a huge benefit of fasting.

It helps heal the gut. We get rid of bad guys in the gut, the bad bugs, and we actually create new or upregulate new. It creates diversity in the gut, which makes us healthy, simply put. Helps our immune system, helps our brain. Here's one more thing. During a fast,

we actually turn off bad genes and turn off good ones that make us actually live longer. Look, bottom line is this I truly believe, and this is why I've taught fasting for so many years. I believe every human is meant to fast and there's great benefit. But fasting too much or doing it incorrectly, I think is why we're seeing so many people uh, well, not look so good, but it does become a little addictive because you do feel better.

I'm gonna give you one more analogy is something that's very hot right now. Well, it's actually really cold because cold baths. People are doing cold baths, but it applies to the same principle that I just taught you about exercise and now fasting. If you adapt to a stress, you become stronger, better, healthier. If you don't, you become weaker, worse off, more unhealthy, etc. Cold baths work because it's a massive stress.

Matter of fact, so stressful, the body literally thinks it's going to die, and it upregulates something called neuropinephrine, which upregulates growth hormone, downregulates inflammation, just like if you adapt to the amount of fasting you're doing, all those wonderful things that I just described happen. If you adapt to the exercise, you get stronger faster. You get it. Cold baths. Many people are doing too cold, too long, and oftentimes when they can't adapt because they're too stressed.

And then the cold bath is ends up to be very damaging to their tissues. Inflammatory causing lowers their immunity instead of ups their immunity, actually impedes recovery. That's right. Athletes that are doing it all the time. I just did an Instagram video recently talking about how cold baths in the study actually hurt recovery because it actually does the opposite. After you work out, you actually want this inflammatory state and it drives recovery and all kinds of good cells to adapt.

But if you don't adapt, it goes south really fast. So the key is not doing too much cold baths. The key is maybe you're doing too high of a too low of a temperature. You get the point. Now, back to fasting. How do we adjust a fast to actually help us so we benefit? It's simple. With every fast, we need to think about the feast. So when I go to these seminars, I see these people who are not looking good. I can tell who they are that are fasting too much.

And I say, the feast is as important as the fast. Think about ancient cultures. Ancient cultures were forced in times of fasting, and they got all those benefits that I said. When they had food, guess what they did? They weren't worried about calories, I assure you. They weren't worried about their protein content. I don't think they were counting any of that. Macros, right? Nothing, of course. No, they feasted, but here's the magic: their body's starvation was over. So what does it do?

It fires back up fat metabolism because the body will shift over and start burning muscle and tissue. You know, what's happening right now with all the Ozempic GLP1 stuff, it puts the body in this catabolic mode and they're losing more than just fat, they're losing muscle. Well, too much fasting can do a similar thing. If we feast now, we can remind the body it's not starving, keep our metabolism fire going so we stay in a fat-burning mode. So, what does that look like?

Let's start with daily intermittent fasting. If you are fasting every day, day in, day out, where you're maybe eating two meals in a very small window, eventually your body will slow down metabolism. But what if you add one, maybe two, and some ladies that have thyroid or hormone adjustment, some men too, actually will benefit from three feast days a week. Add a feast day in. Start with one. What does that mean?

That means a day where you maybe eat three, maybe four meals, so you're not intermittent fasting. It's also a day, if you're low carb, where you can eat higher carbs to remind the body it's not starving. Maybe it's a day where you really load protein in three meals instead of one or two in the intermittent fasting. Do it once a week, watch what happens to your metabolism. How about if you do it two or three? Because sometimes it's even more beneficial to add more feast days.

I interviewed a very bright scientist, Karen Verde, some years ago. This is back when I first did podcasting when no one was doing them. She talked about this feast famine procedure. I she didn't call it feast famine cycling. That's a name I gave it, but it was an every other day fast where they feasted the rats, then they famine. Feast, famine, feast, famine. And you know what they found? It worked better than any diet that they compared it to for weight loss. I said, Karen, why?

She said it's simple. Because there's a hormone optimization that happens with the confusion that we give the body feast, famine cycling. And I got it right there. Oh, and by the way, it's also shown to increase the diversity of our microbiome, which fires up the metabolism as well. So, anyways, a lot of reasons why this method

works. But one, two, maybe three feast days a week, watch what happens to your daily intermittent fasting. It's gonna go through the roof. I'm gonna get some people saying thank you. How do I do these extended fasts where you get massive amounts of autophagy?

And one of the things that I've taught doctors for many years is how to do fasting correctly, obviously, but how to add it in for people who are really suffering, people who have something they just can't break through, they feel like they've tried everything. I love doing a fast, either one five-day fast. There's a reason for five days, every month for maybe three, four, even five months. Some people, maybe every other month. Some people even do something called a partial fast.

I'll explain what that is in a minute. And when I'm talking about a five-day fast, I'm typically talking about a water fast. Because water fasting is very stressful. Many of you listening might do better on what I'm gonna define in a minute as a partial fast, but it's still five days. And the reason for five days is because you get your max benefit within five days, where your body's getting rid of all the bad cells. That's called maxitophagy. Most people, it takes three days to get there.

And by day four, they're crushing bad cells. That's why I like five-day fast. Whether it's partial fast, which I'll explain, or a pure water fast, either way, five days, once a month for several months or every other month. That's what we do for people who really need to break through something because the body goes into massive healing mode and just harnesses innate intelligence. That's the intelligence God put in every one of us that heals. It's better than any doctor.

The body knows how to heal. And when you're in a fasted state, I described how it gets rid of the bad, creates a new, and you reset your genes or microbiome, all that. But something that we can't even explain happens in fasting, especially when you do these long extended fasts. So five days once a month, if you're low carb, that could be higher healthy carbs.

Okay, if you're lower protein, that could be higher protein, or it could be five days where you're just eating more calories because yes, more calories would consist of a feast and the reminds the body it's not starving. Remember, there's two pathways. This might get a little scientific, but this is worth it. Fasting, I already taught you, autophagy. The body's getting rid of bad cells. The danger is the fact that too much autophagy puts you in a catabolic state.

I said I could see the people who are doing it too much, catabolic. You ever hear of osempic butt? That means they're so catabolic they're losing their big muscles in osempic face. It sucks in the face. Yeah, that happens with too much fasting. Catabolic too often, not good. Okay, the other thing, feasting. Many anti-agers hate this pathway called mTOR. Bodybuilders love it because it's anabolic. You put on muscle, but it's healing as well.

But if you stay in that pathway too long, bad things happen. Science will show you you're aging prematurely. Too much protein too long, age prematurely, too many calories too long. Well, you might get fat and age prematurely. So the point I'm making is there's a balance between autophagy and mTOR, catabolic, anabolic, fam, and feast. You get the point. The magic is in the balance. I've taught this for years. My diet variation principle, it is how people break through weight loss resistance.

It's how you can set, reset your microbiome, your gut. It's how you can build good immunity and downregulate bad immunity, downregulate inflammation. I will be the first to say if you are very toxic, what I've taught for 20 plus years is my cellular detox. All these things, it could be too much. Remember, fasting's a stress. If you're really toxic, you might have to detox before, during, and after. Otherwise, fasting may be too much for you.

Let me explain what a partial fast is, because I said that partial fast for five days is probably a better place for most people listening to me right now to start. If you've never fasted, first of all, under a thousand calories. If you're smaller, maybe under 600 or 600 calories. If you're bigger, you might get away with 1200. You get the point. You have to reduce your calories, but it's not just calories. Protein is just as important, if not more.

For big people, 25 to 20 grams of protein, you have to get under. Smaller people, maybe more like 15. So that's a daily amount. So we're talking about 20 grams of protein to 15 grams of protein a day. We're talking about a thousand calories on average a day, and that's what you're eating for a whole day. That could be our combinations of healthy food. Carbohydrates, you're gonna ask about that. Where does that play?

Well, typically staying under 50 grams, but when you're eating that little protein, you're eating that many little calories, I should say, you're probably going to be under 50 grams of carbohydrates, especially if you're eating healthy food. What we want on a partial fast is extreme whole foods. Yes, you can eat vegetables, you can eat a little fruit, but we, you know, want to be a little careful there. We don't want to spike glucose.

And you can even eat a wee little bit of meat, but I tend to say, let's just stick to the vegetables, keep it as simple as we can. You'll fall into the parameter. But you follow those rules. That is the definition of a partial fast. If you eat too much protein, you're gonna go over the protein. I should say too much meat, you'll go over the protein too easily.

So sticking to vegetables, a little fruit, you could eat some healthy whole nuts and seeds if you desire, but you have to total up those numbers at the end of every day for five days. That's a partial fast. Most people are better starting there. Those are typical, the mistakes that people make, and that's how you really can do a fast so you can benefit.