Episode #65: The Truth about Intermittent Fasting

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Spotify Podcasts | Google Podcasts 

Summary

High achievers love getting into new strategies but before you decide you want to try something new, I want to help you get to why. In today’s episode we are getting into the truth behind intermittent fasting, which has taken the weight loss community by storm over the past few years.

Intermittent fasting can be a potent tool for you when you come in having prepped yourself for success. That is what we are going to discuss in today’s episode.

Tune in this week to discover best practices for how to start with intermittent fasting, the science of how it affects fat loss and the common obstacles and solutions high achievers face.

Join me for a free one-on-one consultation call where I want to hear about all the different weight loss strategies you’ve tried and why they haven’t worked. I’ll help you understand your amazing, high-achieving brain and even create a customized solution just for you on the call. Click here to grab one of the limited spots I have available!

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• How to start intermittent fasting
• Common obstacles and how to overcome them
• The science behind why it is a potent tool
• Who IF is not for
• The 5 steps to help you get started

Listen to the Full Episode:

Enjoy the Show?:

• Follow: Get new episodes in your feed every single week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google or search "The Unstoppable Mom Brain" on your favorite platform.

• Rate & Review: Take a few seconds and leave your review in the stars and comments of this show.

• Instagram: Come hang out with me on Instagram, you'll find me in your daily feed @theunstoppablemombrain

   

Featured on the Show:

• The Truth about Flour and Sugar: Episode 15
• The Hunger Tool: Episode 57
• The Hungry Brain by Stephan Guyenet
• The Obesity Code by Jason Fung

Full Episode Transcript:

Click here to download the full transcript

•  

  Hey, this is Dr. Priyanka Venugopal, and you're listening to The Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast, Episode 65, the Truth About Intermittent Fasting. I am so excited to bring you today's episode, which is going to cover all of the details about intermittent fasting. We're going to get into defining exactly what intermittent fasting is and why it has been such a huge thing that you might have been hearing about.

  Particularly if you have been wanting to lose weight for a while. It is something that has really taken the weight loss community by storm over the past few years, and my intention with today's episode is to talk to you about why you may or may not want to try this as a strategy and what the science behind intermittent fasting really is.

  I'm here to really discuss this topic in detail because my intention is, anytime you try a strategy or you want to incorporate a strategy into your weight loss journey, for you to know exactly why you're doing it. I think it's incredibly important for high achieving professional moms to know that they have a strategy that is backed in science, and they know exactly why they're even doing what they're doing.

  So, I think that when we come into our strategy with this lens, we know exactly why we're doing it. It makes so much sense to us. It really helps get our brain so much on board with the work that it takes with incorporating a new strategy. Because let's be honest, I think that sometimes we jump into fad diets and brand-new things, thinking that it's going to be a magic bullet, and I never, ever, ever want you to come into any strategy with that lens, which we're going to talk about in today's episode.

  I want you to know why you're doing it. And be willing to do the work that it takes to play with this and to incorporate it into your life. I will also, just so you know, be definitely putting on my OBGYN physician hat in this episode because we are going to also get into the science of how your body is functioning when you are grazing or eating all the time versus when you decide to incorporate intermittent fasting.

  And then my biggest goal for you in this podcast episode is for you to really think about whether this might be a strategy for you. It is absolutely not for everyone. It is not required to lose weight, but it can be an incredibly valuable and very powerful tool if you come into it with the right mindset and with the right understanding.

  Let's get into it. If you want to reach your ideal weight and create lightness for your body, you need to have simplicity, joy, and strategic decisions infused into your life. I'm a physician turned life and weight loss coach for ambitious working moms. I've lost over 60 pounds without counting points, calories, or crazy exercise plans.

  Most importantly, I feel calm and light on the scale and in my life. There's some delicious magic when you learn this work and the skills I'm going to be teaching you. Ready, let's get to it.

  So let me just start by saying, the way that I wanna kind of paint the picture with intermittent fasting is I wanted to tell you my personal introduction to it, where I was in my own personal weight loss journey, when it was that I actually decided to start intermittent fasting and why I decided to do it.

  And then I'm going to kind of walk you through some of the pros and cons with intermittent fasting. Who intermittent fasting is not for, absolutely. And who might benefit from it. And then at the end of today's podcast episode, I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step process for how you can incorporate it into your life.

  If it is something that you are actually interested in trying. Now just the fact that this podcast is a little over a year old, and this is the first podcast episode that I'm fully dedicating to intermittent fasting speaks volumes, and I did this on purpose because I think before you incorporate intermittent fasting into your strategy, it's really important.

  To change your relationship with food, change your relationship with weight loss, with setting goals, with hitting them, and absolutely with yourself, which is why a lot of the podcast episodes up until this point have really focused on hunger and satiety and high-quality ingredients and managing your normal human brain, especially the high achiever brain and her tendencies.

  Because coming into intermittent fasting with the right mindset and with the right perspective is how you're going to set yourself up for success in implementing it as a very robust tool. My introduction to intermittent fasting began in about 2019, 2020, and what I wanna tell you is that I did not start my weight loss journey with intermittent fasting.

  It was really important for me to not think about intermittent fasting as another fad diet, which I think so many of us do. You think about Keto and juice cleanses and Whole 30 and Paleo, you name something that you've read about on the internet that. You find or hear everybody trying. And the first thing that high achievers want to do because they wanna solve this problem is to jump onto the next diet.

  Like it's just the next best fad. And I knew that because I understood the science of weight loss and I understood the science of intermittent fasting. I knew that I wanted to come into the strategy with a little bit more perspective, and I wanted to change my relationship with food before I did that.

  So what I wanna share is at my heaviest, I was a little over 200 pounds. And my very first step before I ever touched intermittent fasting was taking a break from flour and sugar, specifically very highly processed foods for three reasons. Number one, I really wanted to teach my body how to burn her fat and to do so more effectively and efficiently.

  I'm not going to get into the science of that piece of what flour and sugar does, and white makes fat loss harder. You can get that in episode 15. But that was really important for me to become a fat burner because I wanted to teach my body to burn her fat. And the second piece of it was to do it while enjoying the way I eat.

  So up until again, a few years ago, I really attached a lot of my comfort, my pleasure, my relaxation with food. I used to have my nacho nights and my nacho Dorito dinners and my wine nights and Netflix movie binges, and it was always attached with food. And the second piece that I really wanted to do was to teach myself how to feel comfort, relaxation, and pleasure, which we talk about on this podcast without food.

  The third thing that I really wanted to do was I wanted to get my hunger under control because I had, up until 2019, really been eating a lot of flour and sugar processed foods. Not even really thinking about really the quality of the ingredients that I had been eating. My body was, at that time a sugar burner, which means I felt irritable when I didn't get food often.

  I felt kind of like worried about when I was going to get to eat next. I worried about feeling possible hunger. I woke up feeling hungry and I went to sleep, like basically snacking right up until the moment I went to bed. And so it was important for me when I started my weight loss journey to eat in a way that, first of all, taught my body how to burn her fat and to eat in a way that I could imagine sustaining in the long run.

  As I've shared on the podcast before, I did this by eating a full variety of foods, so I ate healthy fats, protein, and complex carbohydrates, and I loved the way that I was eating. I think I cannot stress enough how important it's for you to love the way you eat while you lose weight. If you want to keep your ride or die, BFF, which is the way you eat with you forever.

  If you don't love the way you eat, I promise you you're going to abandon it at some point along the way. So it was important for me to find a way of eating that lightly tweaked the way that my family typically eats, and to do so in a way that took a break from highly processed foods that did not mean low carb or no carb.

  It's important to mention that on this episode because we're going to be getting into the science of intermittent fasting that to lose weight you don't ever have to do low carb or no carb. You can have healthy, complex carbohydrates and still lose weight at the same time. Most high achievers are completely disconnected at the head, like severed right at the head.

  We're so used to counting points and calories and logging macros. We're used to looking at the clock for when we're supposed to eat. That we've become extremely disconnected from the actual signals that our body is giving us in real time. And that was the next piece of my work. The next piece of my work was to really pay attention to what hunger actually feels like, what satiety actually feels like.

  And rather than using calories and points to determine how much food I ate, rather than measuring food or using plate sizes or pre-portioned meals, I learned the skill of listening to my body in real time. Understanding that hunger is a normal sensation, that hunger is never a problem and never an emergency.

  Like I discussed in Episode 57, The Hunger Tool that we can actually change our relationship with hunger and understand that we can feed ourselves in a way that really feels truly sustainable. Now, I am really emphasizing this very importantly in this episode because changing your relationship with hunger, I think in my opinion, is incredibly important. Before you consider trying intermittent fasting, and that's because intermittent fasting centers around the premise of having periods of time that you fast, right?

  You're going to spend some hours or some periods of time, which we're going to talk about, that you're not eating food. And so if you have a contentious relationship with not eating food, if you have a contentious relationship with being in a fasted state, if you have a contentious relationship with the idea of a whisper of a hunger, you're not setting yourself up for success.

  Right? So what we wanna do first and foremost, is clean that up completely before we embark on intermittent fasting. I just wanna just share as a side note, I remember one of my favorite memories of when I was an OBGYN in practice. Tuesdays used to be my main days on call at the hospital, and one of my favorite memories was being on the labor floor going down to the cafeteria, which had the best, best salad bar ever.

  Like they would make your salad in the way that you wanted them to make it, but it wasn't like, a rabbit salad like lettuce and carrots. It was hefty, so my salad would have beans and chickpeas and vegetables and big gobs of full fat ranch dressing, and you better believe 99% of the time I would get a side of French fries.

  I lost a little over 60 pounds while eating French fries. Now here are the caveats. I didn't eat French fries every single day or with every single meal, and when I did eat French fries, I ate them when I was actually hungry and I stopped when I was not, which means I didn't like scoop and lick the bottom of the bowl or have to eat every last French fry on my plate.

  Very often, if I was paying true attention to hunger and satiety, my body, French fries would end up in the trash. I'm sharing this on purpose at the start because I had to change my relationship with hunger and satiety and absolutely with food before I embarked on this journey with intermittent fasting.

  What I focused on before I ever embarked on intermittent fasting was loving the way that I eat, not feeling deprived or focusing on the foods that I quote unquote couldn't have. Taking a break from highly processed foods to teach my body how to burn her fat and making sure that I really paid attention to hunger and satiety.

  And what was crazy about this, and you'll find this to be true if you tried this as well, is that means eating less food than you are typically used to. We are so used to eating when we are not hungry, we're so used to eating because other people are eating, or maybe it happens to be 12 o'clock, so you think you're supposed to eat, or maybe you're eating cold scraps off of your kid's plate.

  Maybe you're just munching on something because you're bored. High achieving professional moms are very used to eating when their bodies aren't hungry, and so we are eating a lot more food then our body actually needs. So the very first thing you're going to notice is it's pretty surprising when you pay attention to hungry and satiety, how much less you'll eat.

  And the reason for me sharing this is for me to embark on that piece of my weight loss journey, I had to feel sufficient and taken care of. And what I mean by this is I had to decide that I was willing to change my relationship with food. I had to learn how to feel sufficient and taken care of without my cool ranch Dorito dinner and my glasses of wine at night.

  I had to teach myself like a new skill, how to feel taken care of, insufficient without the food, and that also meant making myself a promise. That promise was, listen, if you ever get hungry, I promise you, I will not deprive you. If you really get hungry, I promise you. We'll eat if you have to spend many, many hours in the or, or if you have a really long case or if you have back-to-back meetings and you experience hunger.

  It's not a problem. I promise you. I will feed you soon, and this might sound silly, this way of talking to ourselves. You know about food and eating and our bodies, but when you kind of incorporate this into your way of losing weight into how you want to talk to yourself about weight loss, you will also feel welcome, relief and comfort in doing the hard work that it takes to lose weight.

  After I did this for about four weeks or so where I took a break from flour and sugar and simply ate when I was hungry, stopping when I was not. I noticed, I mean, it was kind of crazy, the massive changes and differences that I noticed in my body. I of course, noted that the scale was going down. I was losing weight.

  But more than that, my body felt better. I felt lighter. I felt more, even with my energy, I wasn't having so many highs and lows. I noticed this is the biggest one, that I wasn't waking up feeling incredibly hungry, and this was when I decided at this point, after. I could feel like my body had gotten used to burning fat for fuel and I wasn't feeling hungry all the time, that this would be a great opportunity for me to incorporate intermittent fasting.

  I share this because this way of kind of entering the journey of intermittent fasting set me up for success. I'm emphasizing this before we get into the science of intermittent fasting because one of the biggest mistakes, I see high achieving professional moms make is jumping into a new strategy like intermittent fasting, like it's a magic bullet that's going to take away every single weight loss struggle.

  This is a serious mistake, and I do not encourage you to go into intermittent fasting or really any strategy with that mindset. You have to first start with changing your relationship with food and teach your body to burn her fat. Before embarking on intermittent fasting, and then when you decide to incorporate it, if you decide to incorporate it into your weight loss journey, then you know that you're making a strategic decision.

  And when you make a strategic decision, you get to really weigh the pros and the cons and whether or not it's beneficial for your life. I personally experienced so many benefits by incorporating intermittent fasting, and I wanna get into what exactly intermittent fasting is, how it works, and the science behind it.

  And then we're going to get into how to implement it. Let's get into really what intermittent fasting actually is, and then the science behind it. So to define intermittent fasting, think about your day split into 24 hours as it is, and intermittent fasting describes a period of time that you dedicate to being in the fasted state.

  So being fed means that is a time period during which you're eating, and then in the fasted state, that is a time period with which you're giving your body a break. So even if you're not physically eating food, you're not like putting food in your mouth, chewing it and swallowing it. If your body needs energy, she will eat in the form of your fat stores.

  She will access the stored energy in your body when she's hungry. So fundamentally intermittent fasting is giving your body a break from eating food. And if you really think about it, all of us are already intermittent fasting. If you think about how many hours a night you sleep, whether it's as little as six or as much as 10, that time is a time period that you're not eating food.

  That is considered a fasted state. So for me, when I first kind of embarked on my own weight loss journey, I was not sleeping very well. I was sleeping super late at night because my husband and I would do our cheese crackers and glasses of wine with our Netflix binge, like probably right up until 11:00 PM sometimes midnight.

  And then we would go to sleep and then we'd have to wake up in the morning, right, like six or seven in the morning. The kids are waking up, we have to get them ready for school or you know, preschool and then head off to work. And so I would say that initially my fasted state was about six hours, and the reason for that is I would wake up really hungry.

  This is again, before I was ever a fat burner, so I'd wake up hungry and the very first thing I would do after I got the kids ready would be to have breakfast. So either oatmeal or eggs is when I would start my day, so I would break my fast. That's where the word breakfast comes from. Breaking fast.

  Pretty early in the morning, around seven in the morning, and then I would go about my usual day. Every few hours I would feel hungry and feel the need to eat. Now, what ended up happening for me as I first did the break from flour and sugar and focused on just my hunger and satiety, I noticed just that first step of taking a break from processed foods allowed me to not feel so hungry all the time.

  Like I was sharing at the start of this episode, one of the reasons that I even embarked on the no flour, no sugar, and taking a break from highly processed foods was because I really wanted to recalibrate my hunger hormones and teach my body to burn fat. And so I noticed that I stopped feeling super hungry in the mornings within a few weeks of me incorporating the break from flour and sugar.

  The next thing that I decided to do as I brought in the intermittent fasting was by extending my fasting period by just a couple of hours. So instead of eating at seven in the morning, I would push breakfast off until 9:00 AM and instead of snacking all the way up until 11 o'clock at night, I would stop eating for dinner around eight or nine.

  So I immediately turned what was a six hour fasting period into a 12 hour fasting period. And then over the next two to four weeks, as I started to play with it and I started to evaluate what it felt like for my body to incorporate intermittent fasting, I started to extend my timeframe of being in the fasted state for longer and longer until I got to the point, which is where I'm at now, where I don't actually even feel hungry before 1:00 PM in the afternoon.

  Now, if I could have heard myself saying this a few years ago, I would not have believed it because I used to wake up so hungry breakfast was my favorite meal of the day. I would not believe that. I actually don't feel hungry until 1:00 PM but this is what happens when you really teach your body to burn her fat for fuel.

  The other thing that was really important was just really stay hydrated. So I wasn't waking up in the morning hungry, but I really made sure to drink plenty of water. And you can absolutely have coffee or tea with some heavy cream in the fasted period. And it won't affect your fast. It won't break your fast.

  So for me, in the morning, instead of having eggs or oatmeal, I used to have coffee with cream and I didn't really even feel hungry at that time until I got to that point where I had my personal level of, of hunger that I liked to get to around noon or one. And that would be when I would have my first meal of the day.

  And then between lunch and dinner, I typically didn't snack because again, I wasn't too hungry until dinnertime around seven or eight o'clock, which is when I would eat my typical dinner. Over time, I wanna say that this took probably another four to six weeks. I very slowly and incrementally went from basically having a 12-hour fasting period to a 16 hour fasting period.

  And it was crazy because I think in the beginning I would pay attention to the clock. I would take a look and see when am I feeling hungry? When am I eating? Just so that I was gathering data. But over time, because I just was paying more attention to my body and my hunger and satiety cues, I just stopped feeling hungry early in the morning and very naturally what was the crazy part?

  Just naturally my body on its own got to a 16 eight eating and fasting window. No, I think that this is important because one of the reasons I'm sharing that example is I did not let the clock rule me, as I've been sharing on this podcast around how high achievers come into rules and we create restrictions out of rules.

  I can see how the high achiever can look at the rules of intermittent fasting and turn it into like, what, what should be a tool into a weapon. I did not look at the clock in a way to deprive or restrict me from eating when I was actually hungry, and this goes back to the very first promise that I made to myself that I shared with you at the start of this episode.

  I told myself that I would love to incorporate intermittent fasting. We would get there gently. I would decide to do it one hour at a time, increasing my fasting window an hour at a time. But that my agreement was if I really felt true hunger in my gut, if I really got to my personal, as I call it, yummy hunger level, I would promise that I would not not eat.

  Okay, so that, that was a personal agreement that I had with myself where I got to walk a nuanced line where I practiced feeling a slight whisper of hunger, a slight grumble of hunger, getting to my personal yummy hunger level. And for me, I like to get hungry before I eat. To get to that point without ever telling myself that I wasn't quote unquote allowed to eat.

  And I think this is such an important mindset piece before you ever embark on intermittent fasting. Because if you tell yourself that you're quote unquote not allowed to eat, you're not supposed to eat, the clock says that it's not 16 hours yet or whatever your pre-decide time is. You are going to create a very distorted relationship with food and your body, and it's going to really create a lot of struggle for you when it comes to reaching your ideal weight permanently.

  So let's just get into why did I even want to bother with intermittent fasting? I was doing pretty well with taking a break from highly processed foods. My body was already really responding. I had so much more energy. I didn't feel like the afternoon dip in the usual fatigue that I used to feel. I felt lighter in my body.

  The scale was absolutely trending down. So like, why did I even bother incorporating intermittent fasting? Let me tell you about the benefits and the science behind intermittent fasting, and then you get to decide if this is something that you would want to do too. So we're gonna nerd out with some science because what I want you to know is you don't need quick fixes to lose weight.

  You don't need magic bullets. You simply need science. When you are eating all day long, when you're grazing or having meal, snack, meal, snack, meal, snack, which is what, especially in America, a lot of us are taught to do from a very, very young age, you are taxing your body and your pancreas and your digestive system all day long.

  Because every single time you eat food, your body is going to release insulin. The reason that your pancreas releases insulin is insulin is a fat storage hormone that drives. Glucose, which is what you've just consumed into your body's cells. The reason that you are considered a sugar burner, particularly if you're eating a lot of processed foods, is because your body's having to tap into glucose for its main food source.

  What this does over time is not only is taxing your pancreas and your digestive system, it creates a lot more oxidative stress in your body and more inflammation. This is why you'll experience frequent bouts of hunger irritability. When you don't get food, you're going to have peaks and like high peaks and low dips in your energy.

  You're going to feel fatigued if you don't give yourself a constant influx of food, and you're absolutely going to have a harder time with weight loss. Now, when you're in a fasted state, when you give your body a break from eating food, your insulin levels are low. And what that allows your body to do, because now it needs energy, right?

  So if the insulin levels are low and there's not glucose, rushing around in your blood, but your body needs energy. Where does it get its energy from? It gets it from stored fat on your body. When and what you eat is a complex process, and it's not only affecting the hormones of your body and your ability to burn fat, which I just shared.

  It also affects your brain. A study described in The Hungry Brain by Stephan Guyenet describes how, when and what we eat can create cellular stress and damage parts of the hypothalamus of your brain. Now, why does this matter? The hypothalamus is an important part of your brain that drives food and eating decisions.

  It also helps regulate blood sugar, and very importantly, it helps regulate your LipoStat, which is your body's personal body set meter for what weight feels comfortable for your body. Think of your LipoStat as your internal weight meter, so just like you live at an optimal body temperature, like 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, your brain.

  Your hypothalamus has determined your body's optimal weight set point. So for me, a few years ago, 200 pounds was my body's optimal weight set point. Now, it wasn't optimal in terms of my actual physical health, but my brain, specifically my hypothalamus, through the inputs that I had been giving, it had slowly over probably about 10 years, been driving up my body set point.

  This is what I like to think about as the slow creep up or the slow weight gain. When I tried losing weight in the past, using my old strategies of counting points and calories and macros, I would notice an increased desire, increased irritability, increased craving, increased hunger, even fatigue simply to drive me to eat.

  Now our brains are brilliant, right? Why am I doing, why? Why does our brain ever do this? It's doing this because it wants to maintain its personal internal body meter. Its internal body setpoint. Now, this process is way more complex than we can get into on this podcast episode but suffice it to say your internal LipoStat is dictated by your brain.

  And what it's important to understand is that when you eat food and the types of foods you eat play a significant role in what your LipoStat is going to be. Here's how it works. You eat food and it enters your stomach. As it enters your stomach, your stomach partially stretches and starts to digest the food.

  Partially digested food starts to slowly enter the small intestines. There are special cells in the small intestines that can gather which nutrients you've been eating, carbohydrates, protein, and fat, these specialized cells in your gut. In addition to the stretching that your digestive system has experienced, start signaling to your brain via the Vagus nerve, how you just ate.

  And this is what will signal your gut and your pancreas to release a whole number of hormones, including insulin and leptin. And in a complex pathway that's still being researched, will eventually signal to your brain, specifically the hypothalamus, how satiated you actually are. Now the crazy thing is none of this is happening consciously.

  High achieving professional moms are living their busy lives. You're running around after the kids after work. You're multitasking with your emails and your laundry and your task list. All of this is happening in the background in your subconscious, and you're not even aware of it. So why am I sharing it with you now?

  Why is understanding the science of intermittent fasting, the science of fat loss so important? It's to really help your brain see. That the types of foods you eat, the quality of foods you eat and when you eat, plays a significant role in how your brain perceives the way that you're eating. Here's the kicker.

  This is not driven by calories. Research has shown that you can have calorie dense meals that have a lot of calories, but if they have a low, satiety factor, which means if your hypothalamus does not get the signal that you are satiated by the types of foods you're eating, your body will not feel sea sheathed, which is why it will be easy to overeat.

  This is why a potato chip, which has a low satiety index factor and a potato feels so different. In a nutshell, eating more food than your body needs is not only making weight loss hard, or your pants more snug, it is actually driving up your LipoStat, your internal body meter for what it thinks your body should be at, and it's making weight loss feel harder because it's making you want food more.

  Here is the best news. You can reverse all of this. And this happens in the form of strategic decisions, deciding the types of foods you're going to eat, how much you're going to eat and when you're going to eat. Keeping your leptin and insulin levels low are the key to driving this reversal. I feel like I could go on and on and on on this topic, and I kind of did, but I think it was important to give you this level of in-depth overview for what is happening in your body.

  Every time you eat that, your brain, your digestive system, your pancreas are all being taxed every time you eat and overeating, is creating an imbalance in your body that makes weight loss harder for an even deeper dive on the science and on the processes that are happening in your brain and your body, I strongly recommend reading The Hungry Brain by Stephan Guyenet and The Obesity Code by Jason Fung.

  So we just cover some of the science benefits and the health benefits of giving your body a break and having periods of fasting where you're not constantly taxing your system. But I also wanna talk about the non-science and non-health benefits of intermittent fasting and taking a break from constantly grazing and eating all the time.

  From a practical standpoint, I remember for me, when I started eating in a shorter window, I was prepping fewer meals, and it's crazy how much time and bandwidth I saved just from that, not thinking about breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack. Just focusing on fewer meals in the day saved me an incredible amount of time and bandwidth in the way that I was going to eat.

  I think so many humans, I mean this is just across the board in general, are thinking about food. All the time. What are we going to eat? What's the next meal? When are we going to eat? How much are we going to eat? What are the kids going to eat? It's constant, and I think that if you really think about how much bandwidth we spend on food, it's not surprising that food has gotten so much significance.

  I think for what I experienced in my own journey in weight loss, in taking the break from flour and sugar, focusing on hunger and satiety, and definitely when I introduced intermittent fasting, is I started to give other parts of my life more significance. So I still love food. I still will identify as a foodie who loves going to my favorite restaurants and enjoying my favorite things, but I don't give the food over significance.

  I don't overvalue it. Instead, I have started learning the practice of valuing and giving significance to other parts of my life, letting food just be along for the ride. Another non-health benefit is how much more easily I travel. Now, if I have a long car ride or an airplane ride, I used to think about like, I need to pack the snacks.

  Am I gonna take a burrito on the plane? Am I gonna grab a slice of pizza or a bagel? Like, what am I doing for this plane ride? I remember I used to worry about getting hungry if I had a flight that was anywhere more than an hour or two. And now what has happened because I have learned, number one, that it's not a problem or an emergency.

  If I'm hungry, my body is simply dining in. And two, because I have become a lot more masterful at intermittent fasting, I rarely experience hunger. I can go through long periods of time. I can go through long car rides or long airplane rides. And just not feel hungry. It's so easy to just fast without it being a problem.

  It doesn't feel restrictive, or I don't feel deprived. It feels like I don't even have to give that part a second thought. It's just created so much more ease. I will say that one of my BFFs, in addition to really drinking more water, has been coffee. I've always been a huge coffee drinker. It's just been a thing.

  I always have loved coffee, so that is something that I have absolutely incorporated. So whenever I'm in a fasted state, if I'm doing an extra long fast, which I'm going to talk about in a second, I absolutely will have coffee with cream, and that has been perfect for me. Let's talk about who intermittent fasting is not for if you suffer from an eating disorder.

  I do not recommend intermittent fasting if you are frail or have a low BMI, I do not recommend intermittent fasting. If you are a child or an adolescent, intermittent fasting is most likely not going to be for you. Certain medical conditions also require that you're not in long periods of being in a fasted state, so that might play a role in your decision about whether or not you want to incorporate intermittent fasting.

  If you aren't sure if you fall into one of these categories, make sure that you talk with your medical doctor. Now let's talk about the models and the mindset that intermittent fasting is not for. I just reviewed some of the physical conditions in which intermittent fasting would not be a good fit for you.

  But I wanna also talk about the mindset that you might have coming into intermittent fasting. If you turn intermittent fasting into another diet, it will become another form of restriction and deprivation and another set of rules that you have to follow. It will create a distorted relationship with food and your body, and if that is you, I do not recommend starting with intermittent fasting.

  If you're thinking, I'll do this intermittent fasting thing until I lose weight, and then I'll go back to eating quote unquote normal again. I want you to hear the diet brain coming out. I see so many people do this with intermittent fasting and with flour and sugar. People will say, I won't do flour and sugar.

  I'll just take a total break from flour and sugar until I lose all the weight, and then I'll go back to eating normal again. First of all, who said that eating flour and sugar was normal? Who said that? Eating and grazing all the time was normal up until a few decades ago, this was not a thing until the modern industrialized food industry came in and started brainwashing us.

  Most humans did not eat and graze all the time, and we were not eating this level of processed foods. So just because you've been eating a certain way for decades does not make it normal. I wanna invite you to challenge the paradigms that you have had around what you define, quote unquote, normal eating as.

  So now I've covered who intermittent fasting is not for. Let's talk about who intermittent fasting is for. If you want to become a fat burner, if you want to optimize your internal fat meter and start reversing where your LipoStat is right now, if you want to feel less hungry and have more even energy.

  This strategy is absolutely worth exploring. I recommend giving it a full two to four weeks, really seeing how it fits into your life before deciding truly whether this is a strategy that you want to keep. Now, if you decide you want to do this, here's the mindset that I want you to go into in intermittent fasting with.

  Decide that you're willing to start off slow and steady, that you're going to incorporate gentle changes like making your fasting window an hour longer than it was the previous day. And be willing to not be in a rush. Can you feel the texture of that not being in a rush? Gently increasing your fasting window and not ignoring your body simply because of the clock?

  Make that promise with yourself. If you really feel that true grumble of hunger in your body, make a promise that you will always feed yourself. I think that when we have this level of personal trust, that type of relationship with ourselves, it allows us to strategically play with tools like intermittent fasting so much more effectively.

  For me personally, I started gently and as I shared, I eventually started doing 16 eight fasts. Not because it was intermittent fasting, but simply because that's when my body naturally started experiencing hunger. I have now gotten to the point where I only let hunger and satiety, lead me. I don't too intermittent fasting for the sake of quote unquote doing intermittent fasting.

  I simply now follow my hunger tool cues, and I think that the work of getting here over the last 60 pounds in the last few years has taught my brain and my body to burn fat for fuel and has allowed me to lower my internal LipoStat so that I'm living more comfortably at the weight. Here are a few things to be aware of.

  When your brand new to fasting, it's important to make certain decisions in advance and to. Think about certain things in advance, specifically how long you want to fast for, and how exactly you plan on breaking your fast when you're hungry, which you most likely will be when you first try intermittent fasting.

  Your brain will very naturally crave a lot of crap food. This is normal, okay? It's just literally happening at the chemical level of your brain. So decide in advance what amazing food you are planning to have to break your fast. If you're doing a 12 hour fast or a 14 hour fast or a 16 hour fast, know what in advance and have decided what you're going to eat so that you don't break your fast with crap food.

  The next thing I want to warn you to do is not to rush when you eat, when you're hungry. Just again, because this is a new practice, you may find yourself eating really, really fast, and then you're going to totally overeat and kind of miss your satiety points. So I want to encourage you when you do break your fast, in addition to having something amazing, decided to break your fast, to not rush.

  Simply slow down and savor every bite. I also wanna just take a quick minute just because I want this episode to be fully complete, to mention longer fasts. There's plenty of studies specifically discussed in the obesity code where people have really done a lot of research and experimentation with very, very, very long fasts.

  In my personal experience, the longest fast that I have really done is a 24 hour fast, and I used to, I would say for probably the first 50 pounds or so of my weight loss journey, I would do three long fasts per month. And let me tell you why I loved it and why I did it that way. I always chose my long office days on Thursdays because I was so busy in the office seeing my patients that the day flew by.

  So what I would do, cause I had three long days, three long Thursdays per month, those were the days that I did my quote unquote long, fast, and by long fast, what I mean is 24 hours. I would absolutely feel that grumble of hunger around one or 2:00 PM. And if I just drank some water or had some coffee, it was gone.

  I didn't have to worry about the grumble of hunger, like gnawing at me for hours and hours. I would just watch it. I would observe the hunger. It wasn't a problem. I didn't make it an emergency again, because of the mindset stuff we've talked about. And that hunger would eventually leave. And then usually I would break my fast with dinner.

  So what my 24 hour fast would look like would be dinner on Wednesday night, and then I would have water or coffee for Thursday and then again dinner on Thursday night. I wanna tell you that I felt so good in my body when I did this. When I had this as a part of just my regular routine, I did not feel fatigued.

  I did not feel tired. I had steady energy. But this is the crazy part. Sometimes we think we need energy, like we need to eat to have energy. I know I used to think this. This was the opposite of my experience. I had more energy. I felt clear in my mind, and I felt more focused, which I just think is amazing.

  I don't do these that often anymore. I have to say that even just talking about intermittent fasting and how good I was feeling while I was doing it, I might incorporate them more again. But for me, my general strategy has been 16-8. Sixteen hours fasted. Eight hours was my eating window. I didn't snack in between lunch and dinner unless I truly felt hungry.

  And then I would do one of the 24 hour fasts once per week, but not every single week, about three times per month. This is something if you are interested in this, if you fall into the category of people that wants to try this, I recommend being willing to play, be willing to play with what feels good for your body, what feels sustainable for you.

  Because the intention of intermittent fasting of 16, 8 or 24 hour fast is not to help you lose weight, and then you go back to eating in a totally different way. You want to lose weight in the way that you plan on sustaining it. I think that that's really important in how you make this decision.

  There's a Yoda quote from Star Wars that I'm officially obsessed with, and I think it ties in really well here. Do or do not. There is no try. So what I wanna share with you and why I'm telling you about this quote is whatever strategy you decide to pick, whether it's taking a break from flour and sugar, eating when you're hungry, stopping when you're not intermittent fasting, or a mix of all three.

  Don't try it. Don't just try intermittent fasting. Try no flour or no sugar. Don't just try to lose weight. Decide what you're going to do, decide that you're going to do it, and come in with that level of commitment. Let me wrap up this episode because this was a fairly lengthy and robust episode with a recap and my step-by-step process if this is something that you want to do.

  Step one is your mindset. Don't try, decide, answer these two questions. Do you want to do this? Do you want to do intermittent fasting? And why? Why do you want to do intermittent fasting? You have to love your reasons and go all in. And once you do that, don't question yourself. Step two, set yourself up for success in advance.

  This means don't just jump into intermittent fasting randomly while you're a sugar burner, who's used to grazing and feeling hungry all the time. Make decisions, be specific, and go in stages. Be willing for it to be slow and steady. So maybe you take the first two to four weeks and take a break from highly processed foods.

  Then maybe you start paying attention to hunger and satiety. And when you feel ready, start intermittent fasting with a window that feels reasonable to you. Make sure you stay hydrated and well rested as you are incorporating this new strategy. Step three, decide you’re eating window. Start small and go slow.

  Maybe it's 12 hours on, 12 hours off, or 14 and 10 or 16 and eight. Be willing to play with it and experiment. As you decide what's going to work for you, step four, know how you'll break your fast in advance. Choose delicious high-quality foods. Know that your brain is going to want to crave going crazy.

  Don't do that. Eat well and eat slow. And finally, step five, know that this is a practice. Our goal is not to expect perfection. It is to focus on progress. Stick with it, because now you know if you want intermittent fasting as a tool. You have it in your back pocket always. You don't need apps or calendars or fancy planners to incorporate this as a strategy into your plan.

  It is something you can have with you all the time. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found it both informative and inspiring, and if you try it, I would love to hear from you. I hope you'll have a lovely rest of the week. Listen, if you have been loving everything that you are learning on this podcast, you feel a readiness to reach your ideal weight with science backed strategies, that it's free of deprivation, then we should talk.

  I have opened up my consult calendar with a few spots per week, and I would love to talk to you. You can grab your console spot over at theunstoppablemombrain.com/connect. On this consult call you come as your brilliant self. You don't have to prepare anything at all, and we will dive into the strategies that you have tried in the past.

  I will walk you through on this consult call, how to make small, powerful tweaks to help you get consistent results. And we are going to talk about science back strategies and really folding in a way of eating that feels sustainable and simple for you forever. You better believe we are going to get into all of the nitty gritty detail, and also my favorite part is that it gets to be fun.

  This call is for you if you want to have a personal roadmap to solving the weight loss struggle in a way that feels simple and sustainable, and it all will happen on this consult call. Go to theunstoppablemombrain.com/connect to grab your spot. And then if you want to work with me, I will tell you about The Unstoppable Group, which is my six-month intimate small group coaching program, specifically designed for the high achieving professional mom who wants to solve this problem at the root.

  If that is of interest to you, we will talk about it. There are just a few days left to join before the July group starts, and I don't want you to wait to solve this problem. I want you to get to 2024 feeling lighter, and actually being lighter, in your body. And the solution is right here waiting for you.

  Don't wait to grab your console spot. Go over to the theunstoppablemombrain.com/connect to grab your spot. I cannot wait to meet you. Bye.

  Thanks for listening to the Unstoppable Mom Brain Podcast. It's been an honor spending this time with you and your brilliant brain. If you want more resources or information from the show, head on over to theunstoppablemombrain.com.