368 - Annual Checkup

Looking at my lab results and weight loss results for 2023. Plus a look ahead to 2024.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hello, and thanks for joining meagain today for another episode of the Fasting
Guy podcast. Glad to have youalong today. So, as I'm recording
this, we are just a fewdays away from Christmas twenty twenty three,
so I don't wish all of youvery happy holidays and happy New Year if

(00:21):
you are listening to this soon afterit first publishes. If you're listening to
this from six months from now,then that won't make any sense. Nevertheless,
we are winding down twenty twenty three, and is the case with me.
At the end of every year,sometime shortly after Thanksgiving or you know,

(00:44):
Twain Thanksgiving and maybe the second weekof December, I have my annual
exams with my doctors, so Ihave a I guess the correct word is
a concierge doctor. If you wantgoogle it if you're interested in something like
that. My doctor is in what'scalled the md VIP network md v IP,

(01:10):
and so these doctors they you paya certain amount of money to them
every year. In my case it'seighteen hundred dollars a year, and they
take on a much lower case loadof patients, so they strive to only
schedule no more than eight patients aday, whereas boy, the number of

(01:34):
patients and normal doctor sees every dayis mind boggling. So not only does
that help them be able to spendmore time with the patients when they come
in, but it also leaves someleeway for open windows, so if you
need to see a doctor, youknow really fast. Like if I were
to call my doctor today, asI'm recording this, it's about eleven am.

(01:56):
If I were to call my doctordid and go, I really need
to see you, he would eithersee me in this afternoon or he would
see me tomorrow. So there's somebenefits to it. I also can call
him after hours, so we havethe phone number to call them at two
in the morning, which I youknow, hopefully none of the patients are
doing. That's something not something youwant to abuse. But nevertheless, part

(02:17):
of what's included in their program isthey're really big on these annual checkups,
and so it's a two parter.So you go in one day and you
do all these tests. There's thesebreathing tests, there's grip strength test,
eye tests, ear tests, breakreal artery tests. Then they do crazy

(02:43):
amounts of blood they draw and theyrun a billion blood tests and you know,
and then you come back two weekslater and you have a sit down
and you discuss all the results,and I would say eighty percent of their
test is all geared towards you're metabolichealth and risk of heart disease, et

(03:04):
cetera, and so so many testsfor that. So if you recall,
if we go back to twenty twentyone, around Thanksgiving the twenty twenty one,
this was about the time I'd seenmy doctor for my annual exam,
and we you know, I madethe decision, We're just going to change

(03:28):
things because it was bad. Allthe numbers were bad. I'd gained all
the weight that I had had backand I was at the highest I've ever
been. Four hundred and fourteen poundsis a lot, and so we made
the decision, Look, we're goingto change. But what we're going to
do this time is we're going tochange in small, subtle ways that we

(03:53):
can do for the rest of ourlife. That was my goal, because
I've lost lots of weights before.I've lost you know, sixty pounds many
times eighty, I've lost one hundredand twenty five pounds. But the one
constant in all that is that wewound up gaining it all back, and
so you know, I didn't wantto do anything extreme to lose a lot
of weight quickly and just to gainit back. I wanted to lose in

(04:15):
small, easy, sustainable ways thatI'll never stop doing. So that was
the plan, and so you know, we kind of started it right after
Thanksgiving twenty twenty one, and welaunched reburse twenty twenty two, where I
I recorded something every day for liketwo three months if you go back to
that time anyway. So that firstyear, from Thanksgiving twenty one to Thanksgiving

(04:42):
twenty two or shortly after Thanksgiving twentytwo, we lost thirty five pounds.
I don't remember the exact number,it was around it between thirty and thirty
five pounds, which was fine withme. I thought it was a great
goal. I'm kind of on whati'd call a five year plan, So
that's the way I've kind of lookedat it. I need to lose a
ton of weight. I needed tolose one hundred and twenty five to one
hundred and fifty pounds or something,and so I figured, like thirty pounds

(05:05):
a year, if we could sustainthat, we would be on a five
year plan, and so I wasfine. I was good with that,
but when winning for the blood testlast year, everything got worse. Everything.
The only thing that wasn't bad wasmy A one C. My A
one C was actually decent and itwas actually good. I think it was
like five point four or something.But my anselin resistant numbers were crazy.

(05:29):
My inflammation is crazy. My cardiovascular inflammation, which is MPO, my
proxidase was off the charts, andit was just a lot of it was
just bad. It was real bad. I was very frustrated. My doctor
was frustrated. He was like,My doctor was like, if I didn't

(05:55):
know you so well, and ifyou hadn't been my patient so long and
I didn't know who you were,I would think you were lying. And
he said, but I do seeyou lost weight. So he lost thirty
five pounds, So obviously you've beenmaking changes or you would not have lost
weight. But I told him,I'm like, you know, I intermitted
fast a ton and I can showyou because I track it. I can
show you all the days and howlong I fasted it. It's a lot
of fasting days, so many eighteenhour days. Probably you know probably seventy

(06:21):
percent of the year. I fastedeighteen hours and then the rest of it
is more twenty hours, twenty onehours, twenty two hours, like a
ton of internet and fasting. AndI'm like, I can show you my
food log too. Now I don'talways eat the best, but I for
the most part tried it decent.I can show you my food log all

(06:42):
year gues I track all that too, And anyway, He's like, yeah,
I get it. I get it. You've you've You've made a concerted
effort. This is your first year. You admittedly are on a long term
plan. He's like, look,let's don't get too stressed out about it.
It needs to change, but youare making changes. Try to do
more of the changes. And hefinally convinced me to take a statin,

(07:03):
which I'm just very anti statin.I've done. I've looked at all those
studies on statins, and there's justnear zero evidence that statins do anything.
This is my opinion. I'm nota doctor, medical professional, so I'm
not giving medical advice. I'm givingyou my opinion. The evidence is near
zero that statins do anything to helpanybody who has not already had a card

(07:28):
a coronary event. Now, thereis pretty good evidence that if you've had
a coronary event and you get onstatins, it will help you not to
have it again, but the negativeside effects are just horrible. Anyway,
he taught me into taking Look,I'll take them. I'll take them for
three to six months, depending onwhat side effects are. And then he

(07:54):
wanted me to take high dose omegathrees. And it's this prescript product called
Vespa or acipa. I think it'sacipa. So I got both of those,
and within like three days of leavinghis office getting those prescriptions, I'm
like three days in, my heartrate is through the roof. It's like

(08:15):
sixty just just not doing anything,and if I moved a little bit,
it would go to one eighty orone ninety, which terrifies me because you
know, I had Graves disease inthe early two thousands and that did the
same thing and I nearly died fromthat. So I get the packaging and
information and do research on it,and I find that this asipa, this

(08:39):
high dose omega three can cause thesesymptoms. So I stopped taking that,
and within about twenty four hours,my heart rate was back to normal.
So we ended that we stayed withthe low dose and I wanted low dose,
low dose stating, and we wentthree months. We went three months,

(09:05):
and everything else was pretty much thesame, still doing the internete fast
things, still you know, eatingwell, mostly low carb all that type
stuff. We went three months andwe did another round of tests. So
normally I don't do that right,Normally we don't get it. But you
know, I told him that's whatI want to do. I want to
go three months. I want tobe very consistent with then I want to

(09:26):
see if there's any change. Sowe went three months and it was like
end of February, beginning of Marchor something. So we go in and
get blood planels done again, andevery single thing got worse. The MPO
of mileaproxi days, which is thebest indicator they have of arterial inflammation,

(09:48):
was it nearly doubled. It wentfrom like five hundred, which is bad.
Five hundred is horrible. It wentfive hundred like eight hundred and something.
All my other you know, hscrpsand all of those, all that
stuff got worse. Everything got worse, and so obviously I'm like, well,
I'm not taking that anymore. I'mjust not I'm not taking it anymore

(10:09):
anyway, as you may know fromlistening, as twenty twenty three started,
we moved to higher higher protein.That was the thing. Higher protein,
more protein, and I really,I'm for the most part enjoyed it.

(10:33):
You know, there's always this,you know, question about how much of
it can I get in form ofbeef chicken, mostly beef, some chicken,
and then how much do I getfrom a you know, a good
high quality of way protein shake ora I don't know if such thing exists
as a high quality protein bar,but some of definitely better than others,

(10:56):
and I try to just only dothe best ones. And so so you
know, we're trying to hit twohundred or more grams of protein a day,
and you know, with some differentlevels of success. But you know,
even in the days I hit onehundred and eighty, I considered success
because that's twice as much as Iused to eat. And then if we
ever do get over two hundred,I'm like, yeah, a good day.
So you know, that was theplan all year, and as the

(11:20):
year progressed, as we moved towardssummer, sometimes around summer I think around
July or so, I really didmove to really pretty much carnivore at that
point. So we just stopped eatingany kind of a vegetable really and tried
to focus mainly on beef and eggsas my two primary sources of food,

(11:46):
both of those highly nutritious. Andyou know, it wasn't one hundred percent
for sure, but I would havetwo three four week stretches where I would
be very strict and good with it, you know, then we might have
you know, two three days we'dbe off the wagon or whatever. I
think. I recorded an episode ofI'm one hundred percent sure. I recorded

(12:07):
an episode of the end of Augustbeginning of September when I couldn't explain it,
but as went on food benches likecrazy, and I was melting down
and I couldn't understand why. Andthen it dawned on me that it was
the anniversary of my mother's death wascoming up, which was in the back
of my mind but not in theforefront of my mind. And so it's
crazy how your you know, youryour lizard brain takes over when even you

(12:28):
don't really understand what's going on,you know. Anyway, we stopped it
it only I think it lasted aweek and a half or something. Maybe
I don't know. I can't rememberhow far back. It might have been
two weeks, but we got backand then we got back on track,
and so we're doing really really well. And then we did like a what

(12:48):
was it a four or five dayfast? I'm pretty sure I recorded episodes
about that, and our intention wasto maybe go fourteen or twenty one days
or something, as I recall,but I think we ended it at five
days or six days, I don'tknow. But it was a lengthy fast
nonetheless, and then we did someforty eights and you know, a lot
of pretty long fast in there fora few weeks, and because we knew

(13:09):
the doctor's appointment was coming up,and so then we just we just recently
did our annual checkup and this wasI'm recording this on a Thursday. Monday
was the meeting with the doctor todiscussed the blood results. And so that's
what we're we to talk about today. I know it's a big lead up
to it. Thirteen minutes just toget to this point as I'm watching the

(13:31):
timer on this apt record. Butso we had improvements this year, like
None of it was great, don'tget me wrong, none it was great.
But the MPO came back down toits normally high range. It was
it was a little lower than it'snormal high because it's normally it had been

(13:52):
for two years in a row,you know, five fifty five, eighty
five, ninety or something. Itwas on the low end of that.
I don't remember these act number.It was five, on the low end
of five. But our am oneC was perfect. Our insulin resistance score

(14:13):
came way down, which was prettyremarkable. Obviously, we lost like another
thirty five pounds, which was good. Man. There's so many markers in
there, and ton of them camedown, and some of them are still
not great. But all these markersof the they run so many tests crazy.

(14:37):
The number is you get like sevenpages of test results when you show
up. But a lot of thosetests they've simplified them where you'll see like
red, yellow, green, right, So I had a lot I had.
I don't know what some of themwere. I don't have them in
front of me because I'm not athome. I'm staying on the beach this
winter, and I just went backhome for the doctor and stuff. Now

(14:58):
I'm back on the beach. ButI know on several of those pages you
saw a lot of stuff because it'llshow you what it was last year,
and it'll show you what it wasthe year before, so you get to
see I think it goes back likefour four years or five years, and
I saw a lot of stuff thathave in red red red red red was
now yellow, right, And thenwe had a few things that were yellows

(15:20):
before now had turned green, andso that did see some movement. Look,
it's still bad that the numbers arebad. The outlook still seems bad.
If you want, if you wantto believe those numbers. I mean,
you know, that's the best measurementswe have. And of course,
a person of my age and mysize and family history here, I mean,
you know, I'm not discounting thatI am at risk for sure,

(15:45):
But we tread forward, we moveforward, and so I'm going to talk
about the future now. I justwant to w a yell on that,
because I know it's amazing how manymessages I've got over the past I would
say two weeks of people going,hey, I hadn't her for me.
I hope you're well. So I'vealways moved when you know complete strangers,
you know, so I've never metany of you. I don't think I

(16:07):
have, you know, reach outand say, hey, how the man
we haven't heard from you. It'svery very moving, and it means more
than you could possibly know. ButI don't know. I don't know for
sure, because you know, ifif if I've learned anything from doing this
podcast for how many years it's been, now so many years I've been doing

(16:27):
it, if I've learned anything,not just about the podcast, but just
about my life and my goals andaspirations and things. You know, saying
we're going to commit to something onehundred percent rarely, if ever works out.
But I do believe that I reallywould just really like to do a

(16:48):
year of pretty locked down carnivore ora way of eating, so no processed
carbs, no, you know,no vegetables, mostly beef, maybe some
eggs, and then really get backon that fasting game. You know,

(17:11):
I've given this a lot of thought. I follow several quote unquote experts.
They're all medical professionals, so theyfor sure have some kind of a background.
But there's a few of them.Doctor ken Berry's one, doctor Chafe
it's the other several of them,but all of them say that. You

(17:34):
know, if you are doing thiscarnivore diet, you know, the the
the physiological effect of it on yourbody is that of fasting. Right,
you do have this bolus of proteinwhich can somewhat affect some of those things
that aren't fasting, like, butit quickly subsides and then the rest of

(17:56):
the day you're just your body isin a fasting mode because of what you're
eating, Like, you haven't givena lot of stuff that it would consume
all these resources that when you're eatingbad foods it does. And so then
there by extension, when you actuallydo fast less, fasting has more of
an impact than it would otherwise.Right, So, somebody that's eaten bad
when they do eat there's carbs andother bad stuff in there. You know,

(18:18):
if they were fast for twenty fourhours, it doesn't have nearly a
benefit of somebody who's just you know, eating a beef and you know,
beef and egg type diet or somethingfor the most part, when they fast
twenty four hours, because the startingpoints are different. Nevertheless, I think

(18:38):
about that, I've thought about thisa lot, but I think it'd be
awesome if we just had a schedulewhere we just nail it down and like,
okay, the beginning every month wejust fast three days. We still
continue the internete fasting, right.But I can tell you this because when
I am on the carnivore eating itcorrectly, you know, fasting isn't is

(19:00):
nothing I ever think about. Itjust happens naturally. You just you still't
get hungry, and you don't haveto track it, and you don't have
to use the app. And asa matter of fact, I don't use
the app when I mean that way, because there's only everything about food and
it just I just eat when I'mhungry, and it winds up being twenty
hours or eighteen hours or twenty fourhours. I mean, it just just
all happens naturally, which is anotherindicator to me that it is probably the

(19:22):
most correct way to eat that weknow of. When it causes you to
naturally do something that we try onpurpose to do to help our health,
that it's a pretty good indicator thatthat is probably the right way to eat.
So anyway, in addition to higherhours daily we'd be doing on the
INTERMNTEDE side, I think it'd begreat if I could commit to Oh god,

(19:44):
it's such a loaded thing to sayit, you know, but it
means such a great thing that wecould commit to doing at the beginning of
every month, the first three orfour days of the month we just fast.
Boy, what a commitment. That'ssuch a commitment because it's I'm not
gonna lie. Getting to that thirdday is hard. It just is,
man, it just is hard.So you know, it's a I'm not

(20:08):
gonna call it a goal because I'llfeel like I failed if I don't do
it, but I'll call it somethingthat I aspire to do in twenty twenty
four. I aspire too fast forI mean, even two days will be
good. You know, if wedid forty eight's at the beginning of every
month, the first two days ofa month, we did forty eighth would
be phenomenal. But I really thinklike seventy two's is where you really to

(20:30):
get into some deep beneficial stuff happening. And if you could go pass that
into the four day range, youknow, you know, not only is
it just you know a huge benefitfrom all these standpoints of all the things
that happened internally and physiologically, butjust from a weight loss perspective, it's

(20:51):
you know, well if you didthat every month, so you know,
let's just say eleven month, becauseI have my testing at the end of
the eleventh month or somebody. Ifwe're not eleven eleven months, four days,
right, that's forty four days.That would be the equivalent of a

(21:11):
month and a half of not eatinganything like full days, not adding hours
up together, but adding full daysstringing them together. It'd be like almost
a month and a half of notconsuming any food at all, which would
just be profound in terms of whatit would do for for the health of
the body as well as the weightloss and other type things. So not

(21:36):
a goal, I'm not going togo so far as say it's of goals.
It's I aspire to do that,so we'll see how it goes.
So that's where that's what I wantto look at moving forward. I would
really like to have a solid yearof mostly and you know, I don't
get into this saying we're gonna dosomething always because one call it sets you
up for failure mentally and psychologically.And when you have a been only psychological

(22:02):
issue with food as I do,which I really worked on with the therapy,
which has been very helpful. Youknow, I went from just having
these breakdown bench sessions that would happenmultiple times a year and would last for
weeks too. You know. Ihad one that lasted a little right before
the anniversary of the death of mymother, that lasted, you know,
a week and a half or something. And then I've had a couple of

(22:22):
more in the past year that lasteda day. Maybe there are two days
at most, but I think maybelike two. Three times this year it's
happened, and two of those wasjust insignificant for the most part, day
or twos. Whereas before when Ireally got started working on this with a
therapist and understanding what was going on, I mean, we would just have
this all the time. It justhappened, and we did last a week

(22:44):
or two, and it happened liketen times a year. So anyway,
you know, I can't commit tobeing perfect. I just can't. I
just know, I just know whathappens to me. I know that I
have these shoes that stem from childhoodtrauma that you know, maybe to say
I have no control of them isa cop out, but to say that

(23:07):
I certainly have great struggles. Controllingthem is very accurate. So that's the
plan moving forward. That is thethat's the thirty thousand foot of view moving
forward. I really want to focuson this, you know, mostly sustaining

(23:29):
my subsistence of beef, like higherquality beef if I can. But you
know, the meat of ruminant animals, I think, hands down has been
shown clearly to contain everything we needand that your body process is at the
best. I think of the researchis clear on that. I think the
research on eggs is very clear.Eggs is one of the most nutrient dense,

(23:52):
most perfectly balanced between proteins and fatsforms of foods that ever exist.
And then you know that I don'tthink there's any dispute at this point on
the benefits of fasting, Like youwould just have to be somebody in the
dark somewhere and a complete denier ofscience to understand the benefits of fasting.

(24:15):
So I mean, I think it'sa these are I think those are good
things to aspire to. In twentytwenty four, we'll see how it goes.
So I did want to report thetest results. I wanted to give
an annual recap and maybe even moreimportantly, I just wanted to wish you
all the very best during the holidaysand into the new year, and hope

(24:37):
that you're doing well on whatever journeyand path you're taking, and that for
all of us the next year willhopefully be the best year that we've had
yet. So we'll wrap it upthere and we'll talk to you in twenty
twenty four. As my sweet preciousmom would say, good Lord willing,

(25:03):
we'll talk to you in twenty twentyfour.