Episode 124: Leptin Resistance and Insulin Levels, Fasting Length and Fat Burning, and More

Welcome to this week’s episode of Fast. Feast. Repeat. Intermittent Fasting for Life, with Gin Stephens and Sheri Bullock.
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Resources used in today’s episode: Fasting sweet spot graph: https://share.icloud.com/photos/030s2ptnQNkwyEnj3BvHnJNIg https://www.bertherring.com/not-hungry-vs-full-the-difference-can-cause-relentless-weight-gain/ 
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome the Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life. I'm
Jen Stevens, author of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock, longtime intermittent faster and health
and wellness advocate. Please keep in mind that this podcast
is for educational and motivational purposes only, and is not
intended to provide medical or diagnostic advice. Jen and I
are not doctors, so make sure to check with your
trusted healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes

(00:30):
to any medical treatments or medications.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Whether you're new to intermittent fasting or an experienced intermittent faster,
tune in each week to get inspired, to learn, and
to have some fun along the way. Hi, everybody, we
are so glad you're here today. Welcome to this week's
episode of the Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
How are you doing today, Sherry? I'm doing fine, Me too,
You I'm doing great.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
I want to share something cool sure that I just learned.
Did you see that? Actually it was sk shared in
the community this week the Zoe episode with doctor Andrew Jenkinson.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
I saw that she shared it. I haven't had a
chance to watch it.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Well, I listened to it. I was able to listen
to it while I was in the sauna, and then
while I was getting ready in the shower, and then
when I was drawing my hair. It was so good.
Doctor Jenkinson is a bariatric surgeon, and he was He
likes aousting, by the way, that's one of the things
he likes. But I learned something that made my brain
go aha, like it was an aha moment, like never, well,

(01:33):
not like never before. I have a lot of moments
in my life, but it connected two things. He was
talking about weight set points, for example. And you know,
I've never been able to find any really good science
about weight set points, never, But we know that our
bodies tend to protect a certain weight. And I think
that I think I understand it now. And it has
to do with leptin. Okay, do you know a lot

(01:55):
about leptin?

Speaker 2 (01:56):
I mean yeah, I mean I feel like I know
a fair amount.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Lupton was even discovered. I looked this up. It was
not discovered until nineteen ninety four.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Okay, yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
They discovered it in nineteen ninety four, and then I
remember hearing about it in the I don't know sometime
after two thousand and five, because I know what house
I was in when I was thinking about Like, I
can picture myself thinking about it in this one room
of that house that we lived in. And so they
were talking about the idea that leptin. Luptin is a
hormone that lets you, you're, like your hypothalamus or something,

(02:28):
know how much body fat is stored on your body.
And it's a feedback mechanism that our bodies have because
it wouldn't be good for us to be overly heavy,
because then we couldn't run away from predators, like if
we go back, you know, in time. So our body
needs to know you've got too much body fat stored
on you now, and so that's what luptin is supposed

(02:50):
to do. Leptin is supposed to tell us you've got
too much body fat, and so then your body is
supposed to crank up your metabolic rate and so our Remember,
scientists were really excited that they'd found leptin and that,
you know, we could just give people more leptin and
then they would not be be so heavy and they
would lose weight. But then it turns out, a wait
a minute, they were wrong. People who are overrate weight,

(03:12):
actually have too much leptin. Mm hm, they have leptin resistance, yes, right,
And so they're like, okay, never mind, we don't understand it,
forget it. Luptin's not the answer. We know luptin's important,
we don't really know what to do about that. So
doctor Jenkinson said something I had never heard anybody say before,
and that is, guess what interferes with your brain registering

(03:37):
high leptin. I don't know high insulin, oh right, And
I'm like dingding ding, Okay, So.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
I did know that there is a correlation between high
insulin and leptin resistance.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Right, This is why, this is why if you have
high insulin, your brain can't get the message from leptin.
And if we think about it, in history of like
survival of our bodies, there really wouldn't have been a
time that you had both at the same time. Because
if you're enough famine, you're not eating and your insulin

(04:12):
goes down right, right, and then your body can you know,
it's not gonna have trouble luptin. But if you're storing
I mean anyway, this is an unusual time that we
have high insulin all the time and high leptin because
we're like in a feast that never ends in the
modern world with the ultra processed foods. So if you
have leptin resistance, your body is not sending you the

(04:35):
right signals to stop eating. So basically you're starving because
your body doesn't understand you already have all this fat stores.
Like our body, what did he say the number might
have been, was it ninety days or something? Like? Our
body wants to have ninety days worth of stored fat.
But if you have luptin resistance, your body can't perceive
that you actually have more than enough stored fat, so

(04:56):
it like thinks you're like starving even though you're not,
so it sends you eat e, eat, eat, eat, and
so you're hungry, but your insulin is high because you're
eating all the time. So it's kind of like they're
messing up. Your brain is not able to get the
right true picture of what's going on with your body.
So this explains why intermittent fasting helps us get appetite correction.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
I just had this aha moment, the appetite correction part. Right,
I kind of wait set point most of my adult life,
and like that was like my weight Watchers goal weights.
That's just where I would maintain anytime I would put
on weight, whether it's pregnancy or stress or you know, grief, whatever,
and then when I would take it back off, I

(05:36):
would always go back to the same little weight range right, right.
And when I first started in fasting, before I found you,
I was not clean fasting, right, and I immediately lost
down to my old weight, and I was like, oh,
I'm back to where my body likes to be, which
wasn't necessarily where I wanted it to be, but that's

(05:57):
just where my body has always stayed. Was not until
I started clean fasting that my body naturally went lower
than that set point. Yeah, And it was the fasting
that made all the difference.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, So keeping our insulin low, suddenly your body's like,
oh wait a minute, We've got plenty of stored fat,
we got plenty of fuel on board. And so then
that explains why you have appetite correction all of a sudden,
when you're able to flip the metabolic switch because your
insulin is low, so it works together. So anyway, I

(06:35):
just thought that was a big aha moment, more reason
for us to know what our insulin is doing and
keep our insulin low and that is why the clean
fast makes such a difference. Keep that insulin low, fast
clean and let your body be able to sense what's
really there. Anyway, that is really fascinating. It was, it

(06:55):
was so that was a great episode to listen to
doctor Andrew Jenkinson again, that was his name. He's a
beriatric surgeon. And so I kind of understand, now your
set point's going to go up if your body can't
sense how big you really are. Your body doesn't know,
and so it just keeps going higher and higher. And
so that's the role with insulin and leptin. We want

(07:16):
our insulin low so our body can become leptin sensitive. Again,
I had to share it. I'm so excited.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
It's funny because while you were talking, I looked. When
I did function health, they checked my leptin levels and
it's interesting because they say that high leptin leads to
cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, and high levels of chronic inflammation
in the body. They work together, but it all works together.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
If you have high insulin, you probably also have high leptin,
and so you if you bring one down, that'll help
with the other.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
So they say it that leptin is actually made by
your fat cells.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
So interesting.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
I was reading something about it and it had to
do with like our whole fat cell system, like being
like an organ working like an organ in the body,
and like our body has all these feedback mechanisms that
are supposed to work and they're not working. And the
reason they're not working. I'm working on my like a
grown up program and you know, really digging into sotiety
signals and food and all of that, and it just

(08:17):
comes down to two things. Eating all the time in
our ultra processed food environment and when we understand how
that keeps our insulin up and we're not getting our
right satiety signals. So the answer is intermittent fasting plus
real food.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
That I answer interesting. Yeah, yeah, I was also just
looking while you're talking. So low leptin like this is
you know, some people think, oh, I want I want
a tophagy all the time. I want to be priposs
all the time. You know, Oh, well, if high leptin
is associated with ABCD and all these diseases, I want
really low in leptin. What they say low leptin actually

(08:57):
can lead to things like hypofoul, make a minorrhea, low energy,
It suppresses reproductive formats, It negatively affects bone health.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Well, here's why, because here's when you would have low luptin.
You would have low luptin if you did not have
enough fat, because leptin is supposed to be it's your
signal that you've got too much fat, right, but your
hapithalamus can't perceive it because also the high insulin is
going on. That's the leptin resistance. But if you have
really low luptin, it's because your body is like help,
you're not getting enough fuel. And we know that if

(09:32):
someone is on a starvation level diet, they're not fueling properly.
That's when you lose your period. That's when your body
slows your metabolic rate to protect you and keep you
from dying. So we want to have the right amount
of leptin and we want to be able to hear it.
We want to be able to hear what the leptin
is telling us because we don't want to have all
this stored fuel on our body and our body doesn't

(09:52):
even know it's there anyway.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
So one more thing here. Menopause and declining estrogen can
also disrupt leftin regulation, yeah, which leads to metabolic changes
in women. Post metopods host hormones. Eating it is, it
is so in our related. Our body is a system.

(10:16):
You've got to get the entire system working well so
that your body's in balance.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Well, this whole episode of the Zoe podcast with doctor
Jenkinson was all about like, what's wrong with eat let's
move more? Right and again though we know that it's
not just as simple as counter calories, eat less, move more.
You have to fix the underlying problems. Yeah, if you're
going to lose fat, you do need to eat less
to get to the fat. Your body has to have

(10:42):
a reason to burn the stored fat. But you can't
just eat less if your body also can't access your
stored fat, or if your hormones are all out of whack.
So that's what the internet in fasting does, that helps
heal those the reason why your body can't perceive that
you are obese, the reason your body can't tap into
your fat stores. Keeping your insulin low just is so

(11:02):
important that in flun it's important anybody. I was just
so excited to share that.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
That's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
All right, so we have a weekly celebration from Karen.
Karen wrote October first was my one year fastiversary. But
with my annual doctor's visit on October second and then
a trip out of town, I waited until today to
send this in. Oh, she's a member of our community.
I should probably put notes on there, because as I
start to read, I get confused, and then I realized, Oh,

(11:32):
this came from the community. Yeah. I asked her if
I could share this, so she says, I don't pay
for post very often, but I do check into the
community and I really enjoy all the positivity and encouragement
that I see, so I hope this will be an
encouragement to others as well. I first attempted intermitten fasting
in twenty fifteen or twenty second sixteen, when a friend

(11:53):
of mine told me about Delay Don't Deny and suggested
I read it. At the time, we were both attending
weight Watcher meeting and had been longtime members. I did
make lifetime in weight Watchers, but that was when I
was in my forties, and of course I did not
keep the weight off long term. I am now sixty four,
almost sixty five, and to say things are different as
an understatement. Anyway, when I gave up on IF back then,

(12:17):
when I did not get the desired results in the
time I thought I should, and then she says, fast
forward to October first, twenty twenty four. I had just
gone to my doctor for my annual visit, and my
weight was higher than it had been in a long time,
and I felt terrible, and I decided I had to
do something. I had tried the shots but did not
stay on them due to the side effects, and besides

(12:38):
weight watchers, I had also tried several other quote diet plans,
but without any long term success. So I thought again
about if still had the books, and also learned about
the twenty eight day fast start, and so I ordered
that one. I began again, but this time, after reading
jens suggestion to give it a year, I made the
commitment to myself to do just that no matter what.

(13:01):
By the way, my nurse practitioner is very supportive of
by F. During this past year, we made two international trips,
one to Japan in December to visit our son and family,
and another in August on a cruise to England and
the British Isles, And the week before that we vacationed
with our family in Florida. We were gone three weeks.
On the first trip and two weeks in August. So

(13:24):
as you can imagine, it was not easy. But every
day I fasted, not always the same, but I did fast,
and I attempted to make good food choices. However, I
did not deny myself treats every so often. In March,
after slow weight loss, I decided to try ADF and
record my weight every day and then take the weekly average.

(13:45):
As Jen suggests in her books, it really did make
a difference. I've always hated the scale, but this certainly helped.
I continued ADF through the last week, except for my
cruise and the Florida vacation, and except for maybe three
or four week my weight trended down bit by bit.
In January, I rejoined our local gym and I began

(14:05):
a weight training program twice a week. Also in April,
I had my fasting insulin tested. After listening to a
couple of podcasts and hearing Jen and Sherry talk about it,
I knew I was most likely insulin resistant, but I
wasn't sure how badly. My fasting insulin was ten point
six and my fasting glucose was ninety, making my homa
IR score two point four, which indicates insulin resistance. No

(14:29):
surprise there. Last week I had it tested again and
my fasting insulin has gone down to eight point six
and my fasting glucose was eighty one, making my hom
a IR one point seven. Yay. I was so pleased
to see the improvement. And most importantly for me is
that in the year of consistently fasting no matter what,
I have lost a total of seventeen pounds. I know

(14:53):
that's not a lot for some, but for me it's
awesome because I know without fasting, I would be much heavier,
and I've always been a s low loser. I feel
so much better and I now experience appetite correction and satiety.
I didn't always make the best food choices, and I'm
currently trying to focus more on whole foods, eliminating as
much processed foods as possible. I have to ask myself

(15:14):
every day, will this fuel your body? It's a constant process.
For me, I truly believe if will be the way
I live for the rest of my life. I'm sure
there will be bumps in the road, but I know
I can always get back to it, and I know
the results. I still have about fifteen to twenty pounds
I want to lose, but I'm not stressing about it
because I know it's possible and I can do it

(15:35):
in time. Thank you Jin for all the research you
did and for sharing the information with all of us
in a way that we can all understand. And thank
you for this community and for your podcasts. I'm proud
of myself for sticking to my commitment and seeing the results.
I will continue on day by day and tweaking it
till it's easy. Fast on my friends.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
I love it. Karen, I love it, And she's got
the data. Her fasting insulin has gone down. Her hom IR,
which is her insulin resistance score, has gone down from
a two point four to a one point seven. That
is amazing. So I genuinely believe it's like almost medical
malpractice for not everybody to know their fasting insulin. It

(16:17):
is so important. If your doctor says, oh, it doesn't matter,
we don't even care about fasting insulin, make your doctor
listen to that podcast episode with doctor Jenkinson.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
And it's so fascinating too, because like, there are people
doing research on insulin right right, But you know when
you look at who funds most research, well, that's true.
It's just not going to be a heavily researched area
unless somebody has a special interest in that and they
go get research grants or whatever to do it. And so,

(16:52):
you know, as sad as it sounds, I bet it's
twenty years before healthcare catches up with what we know. Yeah,
but you know, I love what Karen said in that.
She said it's a constant process for me. And you know,
she knows that she needs to improve her food choices
and she's working on that. But she didn't try to

(17:14):
do everything at once, right, she just made the commitment
that she was going to fast every day for a year,
and you know, now that this year is over, it
sounds like she's really now going to work on focusing
on food. And I think that's perfect. And you know,
I've been fasting for ten years now. It's still a
constant process for me. I'm still learning what foods work

(17:38):
better for me and don't work great for me, and
what affects you know, my body and how I feel
and inflammation and you know, my body after fifty is
not the same as my body before fifty, And so
I think fasting isn't a set it and forget it
so much as stay curious, right, curious, continue to tweak.

(18:01):
You know, Yes, fasting is easy, but sometimes we have
to dig deep and sometimes we you know, have to
make adjustments along the way. And I just think that's
the nature of life really, So anyway, I just that
was a great celebration from Karen.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
All right, so now we have a question from a listener.
This question is from feeling stuck in Singapore. Hi, Jen
and Sherry, thank you for giving listeners the chance to
send in questions. I'd really value your thoughts as I
feel like I've lost my rhythm with fasting. I'm thirty nine, female,
one hundred and seventy two centimeters tall, and currently seventy
five kilograms. My goal is to lose around ten kilograms

(18:42):
and overall feel better in myself and get my energy back.
I've been doing intermittent fasting for a few years, always
with a clean fast, mainly sixteen eight or eighteen six,
and I've experimented with alternate Dave fasting from time to time.
For a while, fasting worked really well, but since the
start of twenty twenty five actually put on about five
kilograms instead of losing I'm not so fixated by what

(19:05):
the scales say. I more go by how I feel
and how my clothes feel, and they feel tighter. And
by the way, Sherry, I just ran her smart Bmi.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Did you, because I was working on that. I just
did it.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
I ran her smart Bmi and she is right this
minute at thirty eight over seventy. I mean you asked
last time about that she's in the normal weight range,
but at the slightly higher end. She's at the upper
half of the healthy weight range. So I think that
is important to note, all right, So she said a

(19:37):
bit of background. Last year, I was in a very
stressful job and my anxiety was quite high. Oddly the
weight came off more easily then. Since changing jobs, I'm
much happier and my anxiety is far lower. I can't
help but wonder if my body feels safe again now
and is holding on to weight differently. I've tried some ADF,
but I find it tricky. On down days, I either

(19:58):
can't sleep properly or I fel guilty that I've let
myself down if I feel like I've eaten more than
the suggested five hundred calories. I'm not sure if it's
the right long term fit for me. I've also got
a very sweet tooth. After opening my window, I often
want chocolate, even if I've eaten a full meal. I'm
curious if that could point to a deficiency of some
sort or whether it's simply sugar cravings. I'm just going

(20:20):
to pop in here. I think it's normal to crave
something sweet, and we should not let that make us
feel guilty. Have a little bite of something sweet, have
a little something, whatever it might be. I have read
that craving chocolate is really magnesium. Yeah, I've heard that too,
So you know, if it's only chocolate, then it could
be magnesium deficiency. But I think that we should stop

(20:44):
feeling guilty about craving something.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
I have a sweet tooth every day, I have something
I want to bite us something sweet to close my window.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Every day, and I do have I have something sweet
every day too, and I don't feel guilty about it
or feel like it's bad or wrong. And so I
think we've like kind of guilted ourself into thinking that
there's something wrong with you. But the fact that all
of us have a sweet tooth means there's something biologically
we're wired to want a little taste of something sweet,
so find it, have a little something, all right, she says.

(21:12):
I stay active with strength training and yoga, and I
try to balance fasting with looking after my hormones and
managing anxiety. Even so, I feel as say, my body
has adapted and I've no longer seen progress. So here
are my main questions. What tweaks or adjustments would you
suggest to help me break this plateau and see fat
loss again? And I got a really easy when I
bet Shery's going to say the same thing, I'm thinking,

(21:35):
do you think a different fasting protocol, such as a
more structured version of ADF might be better for me?
I see Shery and I agree on that already. And
could my sweet cravings be a sign of something missing
or just a happit I need to manage? And again,
it's okay to have a sweet craving. I've actually got
a bag of butterscotch candy in my pantry. I don't
have one very often. Sometimes I'll have fruit, sometimes I

(21:56):
just want one butterscotch candy. I don't want to do
easy to pint of ice cream right right? If I
had ice cream, I might we need a pint of
ice creams. I don't buy that, all right, sheer up.
And lastly, could the recent weight game be linked to
my lower stress and anxiety levels? I don't think so,
And thank you so much for the work. I'm sorry,

(22:17):
I'm just like answering all the questions, but we still
have a lot to dig into. But I have a hunter.
On the same page, she said, thank you so much
for the work you do. I love the way you
remind us fasting is a lifestyle rather than a diet,
and I'd really like to find that flow again. All right, Gary,
did I read your mind?

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Oh? I think we read each other's minds. Wht me
just start with that last question where she said, do
I think her recent weight game could be linked to
lower stress? Yes? And no, because here's why some people,
when they're super stressed and anxious don't have a lot
of appetite.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
Don't eat.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
Now, you could have been eating less during that period
of time, and now that you have less stress and
less anxiety, you have more of an appetite. And the
reason I think that you may be seeing away gain
is more to do with your fasting protocol. Yes, so,
as you've heard us talking time and time again sixteen

(23:12):
eight and eighteen six, seventeen seven. There is something very
magical once you get to a five hour eating window.
And I have a graph I share with a lot
of people, Jen and I cannot remember or figure out
where this graph came from.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
It came from a study.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yeah, I came from a research study. I just can't
remember what or where it.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Might have been. That study where they followed people fasting
for seventy two hours and then it showed when they're fasting,
ramped their metabolic rate and they're fat burn ramped up.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
It may have been that one.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
That might have been a study.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Sound familiar because that graph I look it up how
it saved seventy two hours. So anyways, we had this
graph from this research article, and basically what they found
is that at eighteen hours hours of the fast, like
eighteen to twenty four hours of the fast, is this
kind of magical area where insulin is the lowest and

(24:09):
fat burning is the highest. And so if you constantly
open your window prior to eighteen hours, you're missing out
on some of that like extra enhanced fat burning.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Okay, I have it pulled up. Do you want me
to read it. I pulled up seven it's from that
seventy two hour here's some quotes from it. So it's
like the little graphic that Sherry was talking about. I
saved it. I saved it on October tenth of twenty seventeen,
that is when I saved it to my photo roll.
So this is based on what they did. Just in
case somebody's wondering about this study. They took people who

(24:45):
were not faster. They just be like, all right, we're
gonna see what happened when you fast, and they put
them on a seventy two hour fast to see what happened,
and then they graft their insulin levels and how long
they'd been fasting. Oh, and the graph actually does go
up to seventy two hours, but it says of the
total increase in lipid kinetics that would be like fat loss,

(25:05):
sixty percent occurred between twelve and twenty four hours of fasting.
The greatest interval change occurred between eighteen and twenty four
hours of fasting. So there's that sweet spot between eighteen
and twenty four that was when the most fat burning
was happening. And then it says plasma insulin decreased. By

(25:26):
fifty percent between twelve hours and seventy two hours of fasting.
Of the total decline in plasma insulin, seventy percent occurred
within the first twenty four hours of fasting. So that's
pretty important. The first twenty four hours we had major
insulin going down. And it said, these results demonstrate and
this is from this is a quote from our research study.

(25:48):
These results demonstrate that the mobilization of adipose tissue triglycerides
increases markedly between eighteen and twenty four hours of fasting.
So fat loss damn eighteen and twenty four hours, that's
when it ramped up.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yeah, I mean that's where we see that magic. Because
you think about it, even shortening your window by one hour,
that's seven hours a week that your body gets to
dive into some deeper fat burning. Yep. So no, I
don't think you need to jump to ADF right now.
I wouldn't even recommend it until you've done a month

(26:25):
of five hour windows or that's your boundary. So like
five hour windows, and you know it's not like I
eat for five hours. Gin doesn't eat for five hours.
That's kind of the boundary of our window. If we're
eating and we are completely satisfied, and this three and
a half hours, we're going to close that window. Now,
if I an hour later am like truly hungry again,

(26:48):
I'm going to reopen my window and reclose it. And
I'm still gonna get a five hour eating window. So
I think just by just some simple tweaks, shorten up
your eating window to five hours for a month, you're
gonna see your scales start to go down. I bet
you start to see some inflammation go down. I think

(27:09):
your sleep is going to improve. So yeah, just like
take eighty off off the table right now. Okay, so
shorten your window. As for your cravings, I don't think
it's a sign that you're missing something. You can take
some magnesium. We love by optimizers, magnesium breakthrough. You hear
us talk about all the time. I could not live

(27:30):
without it. I can tell immediately if I miss it.
So you can try that. But it's not a bad
thing that you crave sweets. Choose something that is not
going to negatively affect your goals. And you know, there's
a lot of health benefits to eating some dark chocolate

(27:52):
every day. The key is moderation, right, you know, one
serving of dark chocolate. You know, an ounce of our
chocolate is not eating an entire candy bar every day,
you know, working in some dark cocoa into some overnight
oats and adding some frozen cherries to it. That's one

(28:13):
of my favorites. And that's a great sweet dessert, healthy food.
So just kind of think about sweet foods that you
can eat that are just naturally sweet, that are not
bake goods, cookies, cakes, you know, that sort of thing.
And then I think that was pretty much solid. He yes,

(28:35):
I think so too. I think that's it. I don't
think you have anything major going on other than it's
time to shift your wind.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
And that window up again. So we've eighteen to twenty
four hours is when the fat burning rammed up. So
if every day you're fasting, if your window is average
of six hours, your fast is an average of eighteen
so you're you're missing that every day.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
So okay, So I just discovered something pretty fascinating. I
hope it works. I took that photo and I was
able to generate an iCloud link from it. I put
it in show notes, okay, and I just opened it
and it opens.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
It's a link.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, there's a link. Are you in there? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:18):
Oh look I was able to Okay, I was able
to open it too, So it's much as you So
we can try. There's a link in show notes where
you can find that find that graphic that we have
been talking about since twenty seventy.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Yeah, so yeah, take a look at that if you
want to know what we're talking about. I'm a visual person,
so it would drive me crazy to hear us talk
about not being to see it.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
And I don't know that we now end up on
Facebook somewhere someone shared that graphic, and really.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
I feel like maybe doctor fun had it in a
blog to do blog posts for diet doctor.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yep, or he had his own he had his own
Intensive Dietary Management Oh right, yep. That was the name
of his own website.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
I kind of feel like it maybe came from him,
But I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
If someone took that study in that graph and put
those quotes in it and generated that graphic, that was
not us. Yeah, I'm a teacher, right, Look, teachers, we're
not historians or mathematicians. We'd grab what they said and said,
here's there. You know, we share it with you, right right?

Speaker 2 (30:20):
All right, So we have a question from Struggling with
Windows in Willow Grove. Good morning. I've been doing IF
for three months. I typically have a twenty hour fast
and a four hour eating window. I have lost fourteen
pounds since July the twenty first. My question is, when
I want to change my eating window, how do I
calculate that for the next day. For example, during the week,

(30:42):
I typically open my window from five pm to nine pm. However,
on Friday and Saturday I might want to open early
and extend it longer. My struggle is I want to
start out every day trying to fast twenty hours, but
how do I calculate that. I'm sorry if this sounds
can be using business. I'm confused. I thoroughly enjoy your

(31:04):
podcast and I've purchased all your books. I would appreciate
if you could clarify this.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
So Struggling with Windows and Willow Grove, we're not at
all confused by your question because we know exactly what
you're talking about. So you're focusing on trying to count
the fast and your window, and when you think about
the fact that every day has twenty four hours in
the calendar day, okay, from you know, midnight until the
next midnight. There's twenty four hours in that calendar day.

(31:32):
And this is why I recommend even though we just
talked about all these great benefits that happened between eighteen
and twenty four hours of fasting, that might make you
think that if you're not hitting exactly you know somewhere
above eighteen, you're missing out on the benefits. I want
you to think about that one calendar day of twenty
four hours, Okay, just like think about it like as
a there's your calendar day, and I want you to

(31:53):
picture your eating window as sliding around. It can slide later,
it can slide earlier, but you're eating window length is
what you're focused on. So if your goal is to
get twenty hours of fasting every day, twenty four minus
twenty means your goal would be a four hour eating window,

(32:13):
and you can slide that around any direction within those
twenty four hours. If you slide that twenty, there are
that four hours around within twenty four The time after
midnight and before midnight of that day will add up
to exactly twenty. Because that's the math. There's twenty four
hours in a day. Four hours eating that left you
with twenty fasting hours in that day. Now, I understand

(32:38):
that if you close really late because you shifted it
later and you want to open earlier the next day,
you might not have gotten to twenty because that's a
new calendar day, right. But if you always exactly fasted
four hours every single day, it wouldn't matter where you
put that in your day. Your average fasting time would

(32:58):
be exactly twenty. So maybe your windows open later one night,
the next day you open it a little earlier. You
didn't quite get to twenty, but because you opened earlier,
you're going to close earlier, so maybe the next day
it's a little longer. So maybe one day your fast
only was eighteen hours, but the next day it's twenty two.

(33:20):
What's the average of eighteen and twenty two twenty? So
you're still getting that average amount of fasting time. So
instead of trying to calculate how many hours have I
been fasting, if you just keep your eye on the
eating window boundary. If you never fasted, I mean, if
you never had an eating window longer than five hours, ever,

(33:40):
you're fast would average nineteen hours. It's just the mouth
of twenty four hours in a day.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
And you know, I just did a Google search on
that on what that image that we have. Yeah, now
it looks like it came from a session from the
European Society of Cardiology, Okay, And the session was titled
Dietary Interventions for Optimized Cardiovascular Health and it was caloric

(34:11):
restriction and cardium metabolic health cardio metabolic benefits of intermittent fasting.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Love it.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
And it was a slide from that presentation.

Speaker 1 (34:24):
And what year was that presentation?

Speaker 2 (34:26):
I can't see. It's really locked down. Oh but Google
Images immediately went to this doctor Abinov Doyon.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Yeah, anyway, I don't know if he used this from
something else or not, but it's out there and it's
being shown.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
In a it's a powerful graphic. And no, that was
one study on a seventy to hour fast and what
was happening, And these people were not intermittent faster. So
I take with a grain of salt that if we
are fasting all the time and we're metabolically flexible, we
could flip a switch sooner. Right, we might see fat
burning earlier. It's just hard to know. But that does

(35:06):
help us get a glimpse into why that ends up
being such a great sweet spot for so many people.
All Right, now it's time for our segment called What's
Your Why. Most of us begin intermittent fasting with weight
loss in mind, which is a great reason to begin.
There's so much more to what intermittent fasting can do
for us beyond weight loss, and that is why in
my book twenty eight day fast Start day by day,

(35:27):
I have readers craft their why statements before beginning. I
genuinely believe that when your why is deeper than weight
loss alone, you are more likely to find long term
success because you view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
All right, So this week we have a wife from Jenny.
Jenny wrote my why well background. Until I was fifty,
I never struggled with weight. I ate what I wanted
when I wanted, and I was in good condition. After fifty,
my body started falling apart and I added on the path.
At forty nine, I was assize six on one hundred

(36:03):
and thirty five pounds. At sixty nine, I was two
o six and wearing tents. I hated how I looked
and felt I self loathed thought I'd tried everything to
shed the weight and start feeling good about myself. I
want to physically and emotionally feel good about myself again.
I want to live well into my nineties, maybe even

(36:23):
one hundred, like my Irish grandmother who lived to be
one hundred and four. I want to wear the clothes
I like and not struggle every day with what will
fit or what will not fit. I want to go
to functions indoor and outdoor, and to be focused on
enjoying the community i'm with and not be consumed with
how awful I look, or hide in a corner, or
even just stay home. I want to enjoy long walks

(36:46):
and hikes and nature without being winded or injured. I
want to be able to go paddle boarding or get
down on the floor without a plan on how to
get back up. I want to feel good about my
body again and age gracefully, not prematurely. I'm on my
way to these desires slash wishes, slash goals. I am

(37:06):
down to one hundred and sixty seven from two oh six.
I am now able to walk three miles without a
lot of difficulty. I'm starting to feel better about myself
and believe this is all possible. The best part is
I went on a vacation for a week with friends
in the mountains of North Carolina, and I had eight
to ten hour eating windows. I ate what I wanted
when I wanted, and I thought for sure i'd gained weight,

(37:28):
but when I got back, I weighed the same. I
am now back on track for further progress. I am
so grateful for IF and it is my forever way
of living.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
I'm so happy. Hooray, that is awesome. I'm glad you
are feeling so much better.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
Jenny, Yeah, so this question. The next question was sent
in by traveling mom Hijen and Jerry. Thanks so much
for your time on this, helping others with your stories
and connecting people through your community and websites. I am
forty four, five foot three and currently one hundred and
eighty five pounds. I am hypothyroid. I have high bad
cholesterol and low good cholesterol. My fasting glucose last year

(38:09):
was ninety nine, but my doctor had said it was
okay for me to have black coffee, so maybe it
was a little off because the year before it was ninety.
I've always been overweight slash chubby. Even as a child,
I would sneak in binge on foods I knew I
shouldn't be eating. For many years, I would overrestrict during
the week and then binge all weekend. I am having

(38:30):
a terrible time of breaking myself of this habit. I've
been clean fasting for about thirteen months. After reading Fast
Feasts Repeat, I started in August of twenty twenty four.
I initially lost over ten pounds very quickly in about
maybe six weeks. I skipped the twenty eight day start
and I went all in around Halloween. I began gaining

(38:51):
back because I was eating poorly during my window. After
the holidays, I settled into a routine with twentyish hour
fast during the week and longer weekends of up to
eight hours. While the fast were okay, I just was
eating too much in my window, and I maintained around
one hundred and ninety for about seven months. I teach

(39:11):
pre K so I'm not sedentary. I have two kids
who both do travel sports, and I am insanely busy.
After working on the weekends, I am with kids twenty
four hours a day, and I give all my mental,
emotional and physical strength to them. My kids both have coeliac,
so our house is gluten free. I don't eat much
as far as the gluten free versions of foods, as

(39:32):
I know they have no nutritional value. I have tested
for seliac myself and I am negative. I walk on
the weekends and some weeknights, and I do twentyish minutes
of stretch or yoga each morning. At my highest I
was two hundred and fifteen pounds. That was five years ago.
I took off about fifteen through lifestyle changes, and I

(39:52):
was two hundred when I started cleaning fasting. Prior to that,
I was dirty fasting till about eleven each day with
Stevia in my car and focusing on gut health. I
know how to eat healthy and I make good food choices. Usually.
I've always been able to eat at any time and
joke that I could eat a Thanksgiving meal and be
hungry again thirty minutes later. This has not changed with fasting.

(40:15):
I'm still hungry a lot, although it's a different type
of hunger that I can wait through. I begin tweaking
and listening to your podcast at the beginning of the
school year. I lost about five pounds this month, but
last week I found myself eating too much again and
I gained back a pound. I do one meal a
day on mondays less than a one hour window, and

(40:35):
have a four hour or less window the rest of
the week. I wake up at four every day and
I open my window around one thirty or two, and
I am usually done by five. This works best with
my schedule and keeps me from binging when I get
home from work and before I start driving my kids
around to their after school activities. My tweak was to
eat dinner immediately when I got home from work and

(40:56):
then close my window. My questions are, first, does taking
levothyroxine for my thyroid break my fast? Do you want
to just answer that it does?

Speaker 1 (41:06):
Not? Keep taking it? You're supposed to take it on
an empty stomach. Just got it?

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Well, let me just back that up, because this came
up a couple of weeks ago. As long as it
is the pill levothyroxine, you're fine. If it's the oral,
we did find that there are ingredients in it that
could break your face.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
What's the oral? Is it like a liquid?

Speaker 2 (41:27):
The liquid?

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Oh, I've never heard of that.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Okay, yeah, we talked about a couple weeks so somebody
asked about that, and so I did deep dive into it.
I didn't neither a liquid, So Anyway, next question is
how do I know when to close my window? If
I eat, feel moderately full and close my window, I
am always hungry again before bed, but I'm okay the
next day when I eat to overly full. I seem

(41:50):
to not lose with over restricting in the past and
the binging, I always think I need to feel overly
full to close my window. I still don't know how
to listen to my body. And while I've I've absolutely
experienced appetite correction as I feel much full, much faster,
I still don't know how much to eat. Should I
just eat a good sized meal and close my window
despite being hungry an hour or so later? Am I

(42:12):
fat adapted? Please help? I am sick of being the
largest mom on the sidelines, and I want to be
able to live a full and happy life, to see
my kids well into adulthood and help them and be
with them as long as possible.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Okay, So this is tricky, and there's a lot of
variables here, and so I think you might be over
restricting and you're caught up in the cycle of beinge
restrict beinge restrict perhaps, and when we're over restricting, whether
it's accidentally or on purpose, your body sends you the

(42:47):
signal to eat EADDD because it feels like you're starving,
and the fact that you are. You know, Monday is
a less than one hour window, and you're aiming for
four hours or less the rest of the week, and
you're closing, but then you're hung again later and then
my hunches tell me, if you think this is what's
happening Scherry, then some days she's got that overwhelming hunger
and she gives into it and then she just binges.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Yeah. I mean, the other thing could be that the
one thirty to five is not for you because you
have legitimate, legitimate hunger later and on the evening. But
then also she says that she recognizes that she's full,
but then she says she doesn't feel satisfied unless she's

(43:31):
really full. Yeah, that she thinks she needs to feel
overly full to close the window. Right. So then, I mean,
it could be that she's just having a really short window,
and so then she's not getting into touch with her
satiety and she's overriding satiety rights.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
These days she's stopping early, some days she's underreading, some
days she's overeating, and she's not in touch at all.
So my advice would be, first of all, like Sheery said,
I think that trying to go from one thirty or
two until five is probably not your sweet spot. And
I know that you don't want to bend when you
get home from work and you have to drive them

(44:09):
around there after school activities. And your tweak is eating
immediately and then closing your window, which also might be
affecting your ability to hear your society signals because you're
just like cramming it in without being mindful about what
you're eating. So if I were you, I would shift
your window a little bit later, and I would think
of it as two distinct meals in five hours. Like

(44:35):
open with a meal, but not a giant meal where
you're gonna feel overly full. You don't want to feel
overly stuffed. And then a few hours later have a
second meal. Again you don't want to feel overly full.
We're not having giant meals, Okay, we're having a small meal,
pause another small meal, and then by shifting it slightly later,

(44:57):
not trying to be done before five, you're shifting it
a little bit later. That second eating experience will hopefully
stop you from being hungry again. So you need to
find the right window that gives you the feeling that
you're having enough to eat, not too little, not too much.
You don't want your body to be sending me that
urge to binge. The urge to binge is often not

(45:19):
a good sign that your body is feeling overly restricted.
And it can also just be emotional, like you're feeling
emotionally restricted. You know, physically, we know your body does that,
but it could also be emotionally. So what do you
think about that, Sherry?

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, and so one of the solutions I was thinking
is like she said that she comes home and eats
dinner immediately before she starts running the kids, which is great.
I congratulate you on that, because a lot of people
try to eat in the car or while they're run around,
and that is not a good way to get in
touch with so tiety. So I think I would like

(45:52):
when you get home from work, if that's when you
like to eat your dinner, open with your dinner, start
then and you don't have to eat to your stuffed
because you can eat again when you get home from
running your kids around, and then you can eat again.
And whether that's a light meal or whatever you want
to call it. You're going to have another eating occasion

(46:15):
at the end of your window.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
So not opening at one thirty to two. Instead, you're
opening when you get home. You said you were usually
done before five, so you'll be opening some point before fives.
You'll eat, have your meal then, and then you'll plan
to eat a little bit more later when you get home,
so you won't have that panicked, binging feeling. I think
that's great, and I do notice, Sherry, I've been you know,

(46:37):
I had a little fluff from over the summer putting
my jeans back on, and I had, you know, stressful summer.
I had a lot of friends visiting, had some ice
cream more than I should have. I am also really
really busy working on like a grown up. So I've
been waiting until five to open my window. Man, do
I have such a different appetite correction after five? Like

(46:58):
it's dramatic, Like if if I wait till after five,
I can't possibly overeat. If I wait till after five,
it's impossible, whereas if I open it too, I can
eat a lot. Just the timing of my window makes
a giant difference. I had forgotten how it feels to
wait until far.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
And the fact that you know she does have like
kind of a history of some emotional eating bingeiting, and
and the fact that she just says she's insanely busy
after work and she's got these kids in sports and whatever.
I remember having kids in high school and it's your go, go, go,
and evenings are stressful, and so I think that you
can just like carve out time for yourself to have

(47:40):
a nice dinner before the stress of the evening starts,
and then when it's done and that stresses behind you,
then relax into your second eating occasion for your window,
and then I think you'll be less prone to kind
of stress eat or try to force it down before
you get busy, and just really relax into your eating

(48:01):
and like immerse yourself in eating, explore the taste, the
textures and that sort of thing. And then I'm going
to go ahead and put a link in show notes.
I share it all the time, but it's just a
really great blog post from doctor Burr Herring about how
to really recognize when you've had enough in your window.
You know, what's the difference between eating till you're no
longer hungry versus eating till you're full, So I'll share

(48:24):
that as well.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
So before we get to our tweak of the week,
I want to take a minute to tell you about
my books. I will always be a teacher at heart,
and so it makes me really happy to have a
wide variety of resources for you. No matter where you
are in your intermittent fasting journey, you're going to want
to start with Delayed on Deny, which I think is
the best quick introduction to intermittent fasting out there. It
talks about the clean fast and also for anybody even

(48:49):
if you started with Fast Feast Repeat and you're interested
in ADF, Delayed on Deny the second edition has the
best ADF chapter because I wrote Fast East Repeat in
twenty nineteen for the twenty twenty publication and we've got
a lot more practical experience with ADF since then. So
you want the ADF chapter of the second edition of

(49:10):
Delayed on Tonight. So if you are looking for Delayed
on Tonight, the paperback and the hardback are only available
on Amazon, but it's also available on Audible, and you
can find the ebook wherever you get your ebooks. And
now it's time for our tweak of the week, and
this one was sent in by Sarah in London. So

(49:32):
Sarah said, I recently heard you mention sarah peptize as
breaking the fast. I take it every morning as it
helps with my sinus inflammation, and I know it needs
to be taken on an empty stomach. When you mentioned it,
I thought, no, it can't really make that much difference,
can it. As an experiment, I moved the Sarah pepteze
to my eating window three weeks ago, and I feel

(49:53):
so stupid that I didn't do this earlier. Within weeks,
I'm satisfied. When I'm satisfied, and I don't even think
about eating more f towards. I don't crave crisps or wine.
I have actually lost a couple of pounds without meaning to.
I can't believe that I didn't believe you when you
said supplements matter, but honestly I thought fasting just maybe
didn't work the same way for me. Thank you for

(50:14):
guiding me in the right direction at last. And so
this does show how supplements can make a difference even
when you think they can't. And sarah peptes is one
that is supposed to be taken on an empty stomach,
so you don't want to have it in the middle
of your eating window, but you would use it to
open your eating window and then wait a little bit
and then eat. So that's what I would do. And yes,
supplements really really are important.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yeah, all right. We would love to leave you with
inspirational motivational quotes, and this week we have a quote
from Susan. This quote is from James Clear and I
thought it especially applied to adopting IF as a lifestyle
and learning to love ourselves, improving our relationship with self,
such as self love. While we are at it. The

(50:57):
quote is lessons are unlikely to stay unless they are repeated.
Behaviors are unlikely to stick unless they are repeated. Love
is unlikely to stick unless it is repeated. The practice solidifies.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Hey, I love that. You know I've said it before.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
You know.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
The magic is in the clean fast, the magic is
in the feast, but the magic really is in the repeat.
Thanks so much for listening today. We would love to
have you join us in the Delayed on Tonight community
where you can interact with both me and Sherry plus
the most supportive bunch of intermittent fasters you'll find anywhere.
Go to Jenstevens dot com slash community to join us.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to your favorite
podcast app, and if you haven't already, please leave us
a five star review that helps new listeners find the
show and we really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
We are a community driven podcast, so to submit your
success stories, your questions, your favorite tweak it till It's easy, moments,
or anything else you want us to share on the
go to fast Feast Repeat dot com slash submit and
then listen each week to see if we share your
submission or answer your question Until next week.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Thanks for listening