What’s up, everybody. Welcome back to the fit to fat, to fit experience podcast. It’s me drew manning. Uh, thank you guys for tuning in each and every week here on the podcast. I appreciate it. And today we have another great episode. You guys just like, uh, all of our episodes, actually. Um, today I sit down with Jimmy Moore living. Lavita low carb man. I’ve had him on before in the past, we’ve talked about ketosis and his, um, his amazing transformation from being over 400 pounds. Basically he went over 400 pounds. He started at out at over 400 pounds, went low carb, lost a ton of weight. Um, became very popular online, has had one of the, I think the longest podcasts, health and fitness podcasts in the industry, uh, live in Lavita live in Lavita low carb show on iTunes. Um, he’s also the author of many books, which I recommend to someone who people, cholesterol, clarity, keto clarity, his latest book, the complete guide to fasting is what we dive into today.
He’s the international bestselling author and he, I think he has seven books. But anyways, today we dive into the complete guide to fascinate. I talked to Jimmy Moore about his 21 day fast that he recently did. He’s done some in the past as well. And we talked about the benefits of fasting the science behind it. He teamed up with dr. Jason Fung and wrote this, um, this book, the complete guide to fasting, which basically, you know, goes through everything. The science backed information, showing the benefits of fascinating. What’s the difference between fasting and starvation is fasting healthy for you. What are some myths about fascinating that we, that he busts? And we talk about specifics. You know, we talk about fasting for women, fascinating for weight loss, fascinating for spiritual purposes. Um, if someone’s never fasted before, what should, how should they go about doing a fascia?
They jump right in and do a 21 day fast a hell. No, definitely do not do that. Um, we, he goes into that the step by step process to prepare your body, to do a fast. And then from there, maybe you start out with, we talk about intermittent fasting and we talked about, you know, short periods of fasting and then, you know, how do you eventually work up to 21 day fast anyways, anything you guys want to know about fasting? We talk about it here in this episode. So do not miss this episode. You definitely want to stay tuned for all the good information. The reason I had him on you guys, because I am actually preparing for my seven day fast, which I’ve, I’ve never done more than a 24 hour fast actually. But now that I’m a keto adapted, I definitely feel like it’s something that I want to experience and test out.
So I’ll be doing my blood work before and after I’ll be doing a DEXA scan before and after to show my lean mass versus fat mass, you know, before and after the process. And, uh, I’ll be documenting the whole thing. So you guys can tune in to follow me along every single day of my seven day fast and it should be coming up after. Well, depending on when this airs, it actually might be happening as when this episode airs. So we’ll see. Um, anyways, before we jump into the episode with, uh, Jimmy Moore, uh, we have to get a shout out to our show sponsors. Um, first and foremost, Everly, well.com. I do all my medical testing through them. If you ever want to get your blood work done in the most convenient way possible, which means not having to go to a doctor’s office and pay expensive lab fees and waiting in lines and drawing a ton of blood, check out every well.com use my code fit to fat, to fit for 10% off of there.
A test that basically you order online, they send to your home, you do the test from your house, you administer the test yourself. So it’s usually a prick of the finger or urine test of some type, uh, super easy to follow, very convenience, very affordable as well. And you can get your testing done as often as you want. I definitely recommend at least once every three to four months. So you can tell if you’re becoming healthier, right? Just because weight loss alone doesn’t determine if you’re becoming healthier. So, uh, I’ll be using them for my fasting. I’ll be using them for all my future journeys, every well.com use the code fit to fat, to fit for 10% off. Our next show sponsor is none other than quest nutrition. These guys have been great to me over the years. I have known them for a long time.
I trust their products. Their products are amazing. They have, I mean, they’re, they’re well known for their protein bars, right? Which tastes like dessert, but they’re, you know, low, low net carbs, high protein, high fiber good ingredients that have some with artificial sweeteners that have some without artificial sweeteners and they all tasted good. In my opinion, they have protein powder, protein chips. Um, they also have a Kita line of products. If you go to quest, kito.com, you guys you’ll find out, you can test out all of their, their Kito chocolate bars or their Kito, um, fudge cups, peanut butter cups, um, which tastes delicious. Like you really can’t tell that it’s healthy for you. Um, especially from a keto perspective, which is high fat, moderate protein, low carb, um, and they have frozen meals. They have chips and crackers that are, um, that are keto friendly.
Uh, it’s amazing what they’ve done, um, in this industry. So check out quest nutrition.com or quest Kito for the keto line of products. Um, one last show sponsor that I’m just throwing in there just because it’s, for a limited time is highly leaked. Um, I, they used to be a show sponsor back in the day and they’re back because they’re doing from this, from this date of this show and through December 31st using my unique URL, which is highlight.com, that’s H Y L E T e.com for size fit to fit and get 40% off of any of their performance apparel. So I, um, use highly, I love their shorts. Their shorts are my favorite, but they have t-shirts tank tops, socks, pants, um, spandex, you know, compression shorts, compression pants, um, hats, uh, fitness bands for your head like sweat bands. Um, and this is all high end stuff. This is, you know, comparable to Lulu lemon, in my opinion,
Um, just not nearly as expensive, but the quality is amazing. They have backpacks, which by the way, you guys there six in one backpack was a successful Kickstarter campaign that just launched. So you definitely have to go to haile.com, check out their six and one backpack. Use my code fit to at fit for 40% off, only through December 31st. So, you know, all you ladies out there are guys that want to get your, your spouse, some, some sick performance apparel, right? Workout clothes. Um, definitely check out haile.com forward slash fit to fat, to fit for 40% off. All right. You guys, now let’s go ahead and jump into the episode with Jimmy Moore. Jimmy Moore. How are you doing today, man? Hey man, what’s up? What’s up? What’s up
Excited.
I know. That’s good. That’s a good thing. No, we’re, we’re very grateful to have you on, so thanks for coming on today, man. My pleasure. Okay, so let’s first things first. Let’s talk about this 21 day fast that you just completed a few days ago. I was following you on social media. Uh, tell me about how the 21 day fast went and then we’ll dive into specifics of like comprehensive 21 days of no food. Well, let’s
I just cried a little,
Well, let me get some context because I didn’t just dive into never fasting before and then suddenly doing a 21 day fast. Um, this is one thing that I hope people will take away from this conversation today is if you’ve never fasted before, please do not try a 21 day fast cause a little part of you will die. Uh, I’m just kidding. Um, no work your way up to that. And keep in mind, I’ve been doing longer fasts and by longer, I mean anything more than a, a couple of days for about two years now. So I’ve been able to work my way up to that, being a thing. Um, and also know that during this particular fast, I went 21 days, but I still had two meals. So it wasn’t technically 21 straight days of fasting. Um, and one lesson that we talk about in our book very clearly is if at any point you don’t feel well and hunger, isn’t that not feeling well, that there’s a different sign than, than being hungry.
Cause you will have periods of hunger and we can talk about the waves of hunger that come and go. But I had two meals at the end of day 12. So I fasted for 12 days in a row, decided to have one meal and immediately continued the fast. And then on day 18 at the end of day 18, I also had a meal. So within that two or three week period, 21 days I did have two meals, but I still got incredible results from it. Yeah. So what were those results? Can you talk about, I mean obviously weight loss we know is going to happen. That’s not the most impressive thing. Talk about some of the other impressive results. If you don’t mind, it is not the most impressive thing, but it is something that people always are curious about drew. They’re like, well, you’re going to lose weight
Or yell. Don’t eat. Yeah.
It’s a great weight loss plan. It’s not a sustainable plan for long, but uh, but yeah, so I, I ended up because, and you know, my history, um, I’m insulin resistant to the core and, and so I have to fight this a lot harder than most people. So for me, I lost a pretty significant amount of weight in that 21 days I lost 27 pounds and the 21 days now that doesn’t mean everybody who does a three week fast is going to lose that much, nor should you necessarily in the more insulin resistant you are actually, the more you’re going to lose and what that is is a lot of the waterway early on. I lost most of that weight probably in the first week and then the past, uh, or the second two weeks was when it slowed down significantly. So don’t let that to, Whoa, I’m going to lose 27 pounds if I don’t eat for three weeks and it’s not going to work that way and actually talk about in our book that you can expect to lose about a half a pound of body fat
For each day that
You fast. So I fasted for 21 days that should have been 10 and a half pounds of body fat loss, but because I lost so much more, um, it just shows the significance of the insulin resistance that was happening for me. And you know, I’m going to test it about a month after the fastest over, I’m going to test my way and see where we are. I expect to have kept off somewhere around 12 or 14 of those 27 pounds by the time it’s all said and done. So, but that is interesting to some people, but the things that get me excited are real signs of healing that are taking place. And so one of the things that I noticed during this fast drew was the skin tags, which are all over my body from being insulin resistant. About half of them either fell off or shriveled up.
Whoa, that’s interesting. Yeah, that’s really major. And I, and I anticipate that that will continue. The more that I do these fast, you know, a lot of people say, well, are you healed from your insulin resistant yet resistance yet with this 21 day fast, I’m like really, you know, it’s over three decades to become insulin resistant. I don’t think one little 21 day fast is going to heal it overnight. So, but that’s one thing that I noticed. I did notice too that when I started eating again, I noticed previously when I fasted that when I started eating again, I actually would put on quite a bit of weight really quickly. Again, um, you expect to put back on some weight, but not five pounds overnight in one, uh, you know, with just one meal, but this time it was less than two pounds weight gain.
So I think I made coming a bit more insulin sensitive so that the effects of eating Eve, even eating a ketogenic meal aren’t as, as they once were. So that’s another sign. And of course, blood sugar readings, I was watching that voraciously blood ketone readings, my fat burning actually has continued. I’m now, what is this five days post fast? And I’m still blowing on the key tonics and it’s still showing significant amount of fat burning, which you would expect with someone eating a ketogenic diet. And definitely ketogenic has helping to keep that benefit of the fast going. If I switched over to anything high carb, I probably would not be seeing the continuation of those results. Yeah, no, that’s super interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Very interesting. And it’s not like your first meal was a, okay, now I can eat donuts and pizza, you know, which is what some people might expect, because the reason I am so fascinated by this is because I grew up in a religion where, uh, once a month we had to do a fast and as a kid, I hated it because I would stay up till midnight the night before Stephanie, my face I’m like, all right, I got a 24 hours.
So I got to, you know, that’s the wrong thing to do by the way, it’s the worst thing you could do. But as a kid, you know, like, I’m like, okay, I got to survive these next 24 hours. And it was always hell and I never, you know, you know, at that age, I didn’t understand how to do it fast. And so my perception of fascinating was one of a negative. It was a negative perception. Exactly. I’m like, I guess I have to do this, but
What are some of the benefits that obviously like you’re saying, if somebody was starting off and being introduced to fasting and trying to incorporate it into their lifestyle, they’re not going to jump into a 21 day fats. What would you recommend for an everyday person if they were going to try fasting? What are some key things like, how long would you normally go? What are some tips that you would give them?
Great question. And I actually came up with a practical progression of fasting and it goes like this number one, if you’re not already eating a nutrient dense, paleo primal, low carb ketogenic type of diet, do that because that’s going to train your body to start burning fat for fuel very efficiently. Uh, unfortunately most people are sugar burners. And so they’re walking around and, and, and eating sugar for fuel. And as I talked about in my previous book, keto clarity, you actually only have about 2000 calories worth of energy when you fuel your body that way. But when you fuel your body with fat and get it used to burning fat for fuel, you have even on a very lean person, 40,000 calories worth of energy. So training your body to go ahead and tap into that energy source before you go into a fasted state is such a critical part of this.
Can you jump into it from the standard American diet and like drew eight on his year of eating crap? Yeah, you could, but it’s gonna hurt like hell. So, um, so start with a good diet first. And then I say, okay, then cut out the snacks. You know, cause we’ve lived in a breakfast snack lunch snack, dinner, snack, midnight snack. In fact, taco bell calls the midnight snack, the fourth meal or meal taco bell. I don’t even eat three meals, much less a fourth one. So, um, and then after that, maybe cut out one meal during the day. So, uh, some people breakfast is convenient to skip some people lunch. So just figure out one meal. So you’re basically eating two meals and you’re implementing a little bit of intermittent fasting by doing that. Then the next step is eat within a four to eight hour window.
And so you basically skip one meal, uh, say the breakfast meal, you’re going to automatically go about 18 hours, you know, and that’s a pretty good intermittent fast. And at that point, you guys, a lot of people are probably already seeing good results. I’m not standing here saying, and I’m standing, I’m doing a standing work desk. Uh, I’m not standing here saying that everybody should try to do a 21 day fast. Everybody should not drive it, freaks you out. Please don’t do it. But I think for some people they’re stuck in their weight and their health and they can’t figure out what’s going on. This is another hack that helps them out. So continuing that if you do need to continue, try alternate day fasting where you eat on Monday, don’t eat Tuesday. You don’t Wednesday, Thursday, and that’s about a 36 hour fast. And again, most people will probably at that point, get all the results that they want and it’s then, and only then that you realize, okay, I’m not getting the results I want. Let me push it for a few days. And don’t just do a 48 hour fast. You get to the hardest part of a fast you get through it and then you end it. No, no, no. Keep it going for at least five days. If you’re going to do an extended fast, because you’ll thank me later that you got today, three, four, five day two sucks, but four or five is amazing. And a 10, 11, 12, 1920, 21. Aren’t so bad either.
So with intermittent fasting, which I know is something that a lot of people have done, where, like you were saying, they’ll, they’ll eat their last meal of the day. Then they won’t eat breakfast. Maybe they’ll have something like Bulletproof coffee and then they’ll eat a meal at lunch. What are some health benefits that people that you know of that people see from that type of fasting?
Yeah. I mean, again, it’s going to depend on someone’s personal level of, of insulin resistance. I know I would not do well with that. Well, number one, I hate Bulletproof coffee. I just hate coffee. No offense to David. He’s a great friend of mine. Dave is a great friend of mine and I love that he has this concept. I prefer like Bulletproof broth. So I’ll do bone broth with some butter and things in it. Um, if I want to do something like that, unfortunately I don’t think that’s a true fast cause you are getting quite a few, quite a few calories. Would that, should it impact your insulin? No, but I think some people may have issues with that. Whereas if they didn’t eat anything at all, they probably would do a whole lot better. And interestingly, I did this thing called fat fast before. And if people are familiar with the Atkins diet, he promoted this like thousand to 1200 calories of mostly fat as a way to kind of kick start your ketosis and kickstart fat burning. Unfortunately, I actually got hungry earlier, eating 1200 calories of 90% fat, then not eating any food at all. Now tell me how that works. Sounds backwards. That sounds backwards. Of course. But
If somebody were, let’s say somebody were to skip the coffee then, which I’m not going to lie. That makes me want to cry. I love coffee, but let’s say they were to skip it. And they were, they were going to do the fasting till about noon. I know that you said everybody’s body is different. The results are different. What are some typical results that someone could see from trying fasting? If somebody was curious like, well, what are some of the health benefits of things that I could,
Oh my goodness. I mean, I mean basically what we’re trying to do here. You know, I’m obviously the low carb guy, but you know, what I would like to communicate to people is it’s about low insulin and so whatever can lower the insulin load in your body. So if you’re insulin resistant, you’re going to have to do a little bit more than those who are a little more insulin sensitive. So someone who’s insulin sensitive, you’re going to see incredible, um, even enhancements in that sensitivity to the insulin, just by implementing skipping one meal a day, kind of impending intermittent fast, of course, the improvements in your lipids, uh, become very quick, uh, to see, uh, the cholesterol panel, people care about the cholesterol. I don’t, I would rather look at inflammation and insulin because those tell truly the tale of what’s happening in your health, more than anything.
So the lowering of the inflammation, the lowering of the insulin, um, the mental clarity, this one, I do not want to let slip slip by because too many people are walking around moody. They’re walking around where they can’t re remember things and a brain fog. You know, I often see these health headlines to say, Oh yeah, don’t eat a ketogenic diet because you’ll just have brain fog all day. I’m like, no, no, no eating carbs is what gave, gave me brain fog and not eating it all and getting lots of ketones to fuel. My brain actually makes your brain super charged. And I did a lot of these interviews for the fasting book in a fasted state during that 21 days. And I never felt more alive, more coherent. I can’t talk because I’m eating again. But if I was, you know, it’s, it’s amazing. And, and I think just for that alone, it’s worth giving it a try.
I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be taking over the students, giving this look like an another question. Sorry. I just, I’m so interested in this because, um, this is something that I’ve actually had a lot of women talk to me about asking me about and, and wonder if it’s a good route for them. And honestly, I, I have always known so about it that I just told them I can’t, I can’t really give them guidance. Like everybody’s body is different, but the main thing that always held me up, and maybe you can shed some light on this. Jimmy is, I was always under the assumption, especially for women that often when we do things like that, when we restrict calories from our body, when we go through these periods of fasting, that it can, it can alter our hormones, which could then impact a lot of different things, obviously, but even, you know, give us the reverse results that we want. Have, have you researched or, or do you know of anything specifically to do with women and fasting and how that could potentially negatively affect our hormones? Or what are your thoughts on?
Yeah. Great question. And dr. Fung has seen well over a thousand patients, dr. Jason, Thung at his clinic in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, uh, where he’s put women and men alike on all kinds of fast, everywhere from intermittent fasting to these longer fasts. And he said that he’s never seen any differences between men and women in a fasted state. And he said, you know, the problems that are described out there on the internet, and by the way, don’t read the internet because it will discourage you from really giving this a try. And that’s unfortunate. I mean, I understand people want to share their stories and their experience. And I’m sure there are some women who have had adverse effects from, from going on a fasted protocol, but he has seen so many patients that he doesn’t really see that there’s any difference. Now, as far as the, the hormonal effect in them, the metabolic effect, a lot of women are concerned.
Well, if I don’t eat, I’m going to slow down my metabolism. Well, guess what? That’s not what happens. Um, we actually put a lot of this data in the book, uh, with the biggest loser. I remember they talked about how they ate very low calorie and truly did slow down their metabolism because when you eat too few calories and your body thinks it’s being fueled, uh, deficiently, it actually will slow down. And their metabolic rate did go down. So people like Whoa, that happened at a low calorie state. What happens when you don’t eat? Here’s the counterintuitive, this, again, you guys, when you don’t eat any thing at all, your metabolism revs up by 10%, it goes against everything you would ever believe that even just eating a few hundred calories would slow you down, but eating zero actually revs up. And what happens is you’re tapping into that stored body fat as your energy source. Whereas even if you’re eating even a little bit of anything, uh, you know, a few hundred calories of something you’re actually causing your body to try to preferentially deal with that food that you’ve consumed. And you’re not allowing that fat burning to commit. So it’s counterintuitive, but it should be encouraging as to why you would want to go with no food at all, rather than minimal food.
Yeah,
No, that’s why I love it. That you’re talking about this and getting this message out there. And just so everybody knows, Jimmy’s book is the complete guide to fascinating, and it really is the complete guide, right? So he teamed up with dr. Jason Fung, who we talked about, um, and they, they wrote this complete guide to fasting. So if anybody’s thinking about doing a fast, definitely go check out this book. I highly recommend it before you even get started. Right. So you’re knowledgeable about instead of just jumping into it. And that’s the next thing I wanted to ask you, Jimmy, is I think people’s perception of fasting is okay. Well, fasting is starvation. Can you talk to us about the difference between what a smart fast it looks like versus a starvation? Right.
So I love this question. You’re, you’re tossing up good softballs for me today. So starvation is a completely different puppy from fasting. So please, please, please hear me clearly on this. There is a very real difference between fasting or what I used to think was the F word, the other F word it’s not anymore because I know what it means. I thought the other F word was kind of a starvation. Starvation is where you have no control over what you’re putting in your mouth or not putting in your mouth in this instance. And so, you know, you think about, you know, Nazi Germany, where they had all these poor prisoners who were truly starved. They had no choice, they weren’t getting food. And so they were forced, uh, to not eat. Um, and that’s not what we’re talking about here. You are in complete control when you are fasting, fasting is nothing more than the controlled sense of not eating.
And so you’re not eating for a purpose or with a purpose in mind. My purpose has been trying to heal insulin resistance. Other people’s purposes might be that mental clarity we were talking about other people’s purposes might be weight loss, or controlling type two diabetes. All of these things are incredible benefits that come from fasting and your choosing for a period of time to not eat. Now, here’s the kicker. If at any point you don’t feel, well, guess what you can do. You can go to the refrigerator and solve that problem and eat something. And that’s the difference because you’re not saying, well, I got to push through it. You know, all those low fat diets I did over the year, all man, I’m hungry, but I guess I’m supposed to just deal with this. And so you did deal with it and you actually did more harm than good doing that.
And that’s, that’s not what we’re talking about with fasting. Now, I talked about day two being hard and you will feel hungry and have some urges to eat. But if you get beyond a two and you know, day six, you start to get a real hankering where you’ve got to eat. Then by all means you can stop at a day six. And you’re good to go to start back again whenever you want to start back again. Um, and so that’s, that’s the real difference here. I want people to know is starvation is you have no control over when you can eat, not eat and fasting let’s you have complete control over it.
Yeah, no, thank you so much for pointing that out on that you made it very, very clear and I wanted to get that point across as well as there’s a huge difference between these two things. The next thing I wanted to ask you, or you to bring up is what are somethings you did put in your body to help maintain staying hydrated, vitamins, electrolytes, those kinds of things. That would be another difference between starvation and fascinating and a smart way.
Oh yeah. And this is a big thing too, because a lot of people say, well, if you don’t eat anything at all, where do you get your subdue supplement? What do you do? And so I don’t, um, use supplements when I’m fasting. And I do that by design because I’ve done some fast in the past, uh, when I was trying to do it on my own without any direction, don’t do that by the way, but get direction. But when I did it without direction, I was taking my vitamins. And, uh, one of the experts on fasting in the world is dr. Thomas Siegfried is a very famous cancer researcher at Boston college with ketogenic diets and fasting protocols. And he was the one that kind of got me really interested in maybe doing some of these longer, fast. Cause he said, if you fast for a week, a once a week, once a year, you can actually, um, prevent cancer.
And I was like, Whoa, that’s awesome. And, and he noted, uh, when I shared my results of doing this on my own, uh, that the vitamins were probably sending mixed signals to my body. And it’s like, Whoa. You know, when you’re fasting realize it’s for a very short period of time and yes, even a week long, even a three week long in the grand scheme of your life is a very short period of time. So if you’re not eating your vitamins, taking your vitamins during that, it’s okay. Just take them when you start eating again. But to your question regarding in the fast, I actually have found that bone broth with some sea salt is so crucial, especially when you first start doing this. Cause people feel fatigued. They might have some muscle aches or Charlie horse or any number of things that happen. It tends to be the same symptoms of the so-called keto flu.
And you’re trying to get keto adapted, which is why being keto adapted first, then getting into fasting is such a great way to make this less painful than it needs to be. But I used that, um, I also used kombucha to try to help with some of the gut health things of, although I’ve, I’ve left that out of the recent fast, because fasting itself actually helps to, uh, clean up the gut health. So, uh, there’s so many benefits that we could probably get into deeply, but it’s just amazing that your body is so resilient. You don’t really need to give it much when you’re fasting because the fasting in and of itself is providing such healing to the body.
Yeah. Okay. So bone broth with sea salt once a day, twice a day. Yeah.
As needed. Um, so when I did it last September, I attempted my first ever 21 day fast and made it 17 and a half days in a row on that one. Um, I actually used it daily, so I would have one to two cups a day, but I would think it’s as needed. One of the cool things true about using the bone broth is you actually feel like you’ve had a meal. So I love, love, love got a million things of it in my freezer right now, chicken bone broth. And I just love the gelatin. And you feel like you’ve had like chicken noodle soup. So, uh, put ample amounts of salt in there. And then when you consume it during a fast, you feel like you’ve eaten. And so it kind of gives you that, that, uh, nutrition and a lot of people they wonder, well, am I going to get progressively hungrier and hungrier and hungrier?
That’s not what happens. You get beyond day two. And the most amazing thing happens. Especially if you have a lot of, uh, adipose tissue, especially around your midsection, you ain’t hungry at all. I mean, you’re, you’re able to go and, and be energetic and do all your normal activities. And yes, if you work out unless you’re drew Manning, um, and Batman, the gym, you know, you can probably work out pretty darn well and, and do fine. Uh, just with your normal activities. Now, obviously you don’t want to do anything really, really glycolytic demanding if you’re doing these really long, fast, but I think you can probably do like cardio and some light lifting without, uh, overdoing it and getting dizzy or anything that the people, you know, tend to worry about with fasting. Yeah. Awesome. No, you, you answered that was another question I was going to ask you.
I knew it was do all day. Do you just sit there all day and not want to, you know, energy? Yeah. Okay. I don’t want to move, which is how I was during the 24 hour and fasting growing up. Yeah. So, um, and then as far as water goes, just drink normal water as much as possible. And water becomes such a key because a lot of the so-called hunger that people tend to have, even when they’re eating, they think they’re hungry, it’s actually thirst. And so, you know, having ample amounts of water around and keep in mind, you’re wrapping up your ketones by day three for pretty high, um, high to a safe level. I don’t want anybody to hear a ketoacidosis. It’s not that, uh, but if you’re drinking ample amounts of water, you’re actually dumping a lot of water with those added ketones. You need to replenish that as well, but it also gives you that feeling of satiety, um, so that it does quilts down any potential hunger that might come. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for addressing that.
Start back from, I know you talked a tiny bit about, you know, you don’t just jump into eating pizza post, you know, fast, but when you jump out from it any sort of fast, do you have a specific guideline of how you eat?
Just jump out from a fast. So the thing that we talk about in the complete guide to fasting is make sure you prime your body a little bit first with, uh, just a small amount of food. So a small salad, um, you know, a cheese stick, just something, just a few macadamia nuts. Um, I actually love pili nuts. I’ve had those and they’re just extremely high. Have you had those drew? I haven’t yet, but I’ve heard about them so much. I just gotta find them. I do. They’re so good. We’ll talk off the air, but, uh, but they’re just a little something. And what that does is it gets the blood flowing to the stomach again. So that then when you have your meal a half an hour to 60 minutes later, you’ve got blood flowing to the, to the stomach. Again, it’s really important on these longer, fast that you do that on a private, just a little bit.
And dr. Fung actually made a mistake the first time he did a week long, fast, and then decided, Oh, I’m just going to break it with a big meal. Don’t do that because he was hurting for certain, um, uh, after that. And so, so we always say prime and a little bit, and I’ve actually never had issues post fast with eating. And obviously you’re going to have a little bit more calories than you typically would. You know, the have a normal meal, duh, you haven’t eaten for a while, but you’re not going to Gorge and you’re not going to be starving and have to like eat the next 10 hours to try to get all of your satiety back. Um, it actually comes back really fast.
So do you try to, you’re saying kind of like prep your body prime, your body. Do you try to, in a way limit then what you’re eating and how much you’re eating for like one day or two days following or is, or not really just
Try to try to limit what, I’m sorry. I missed that. Okay.
Limit your calories. Like, are you trying to it
Pay attention to the calories because it’s interesting. You know, people are like, well, I tried to eat a whole lot, but I actually couldn’t eat as much as my mind thought I could eat. You actually end up self-limiting without you even knowing it, uh, beyond that first meal, uh, which you will eat a little bit more, you find it quickly comes back down and you actually, when it comes time for mealtime, you’re like, well, dang, I don’t really feel like I have to eat. Don’t eat then go to the next day. And then if you wake up, I mean, that’s the beauty of doing these longer. Fast is intermittent. Fasting is like nothing. Now that’s true. That’s the actually a good point. Um, the other thing I want to talk about is some myths of fasting. Now I know a lot of people think, well, if I fast, then I’m gonna lose all my muscle.
My body is going to use my muscle for energy, and then I’ll lose a lot of lean muscle mass. Can you talk to that a little bit? Cause I know that’s not necessarily true. And I think in the past, I’m not sure if he did it with this one, but you’ve tested your body fat percentage beforehand. Yeah. I actually used a DEXA scan in my January fast in January. This year I fasted, um, four 28 out of the 31 days. I was trying to go 31 days in a row, but life got in the way and I had a few stressful moments that thought, pause me to cause me to pause
The fast, but um,
No muscle mass. This is the interesting thing. Think about it. Um, your body will not store protein. It doesn’t store protein in any way. What it does with excess protein is it converts it into sugar, which then it tries to use as energy. And then if that’s not used as energy, what does it get stored at as it gets stored as body fat? So we have all this amazing body fat that’s used can be used as a fuel source. So when we fast and we dump all of the sources of sugar in our body and we kind of force our bodies to become fat burners, which is what fasting does. Why would we suddenly think it’s going to prefer to use muscle as an energy source when it’s got a ton of really beautiful, um, efficient fuel to burn in the stored body fat I could, like I said earlier, even in the most lean person with 8% body fat, you still have 40,000 plus calories worth of energy to use.
And if you think about in a day’s time, maybe you burn, uh, you know, 2000 to 3000 calories, you’ve got quite a few days worth of fat to burn for fuel. And only then after you’ve burned all that up only then would the body say, Hmm, what else can we use to, to fuel our bodies? But at that point, you’d be so emaciated that you would be okay, I need to stop fasting, which is why we say the people that it shouldn’t fast or underweight or pregnant women or people that have, you know, eating disorders and that kind of thing. Um, that’s why, especially the underweight or the malnourished, they probably don’t have a lot of body fat on their body and they would tap into muscle. But the average, Joe, uh, you’re not going to have that problem.
Exactly. I think that people get that concept from watching TV shows or movies or documentaries of people that are starving that have, you know, little to no muscle mass left on them. They think, well, that’s going to happen to me if I stopped beating, but I like that you did the DEXA body scan before and after you didn’t, you didn’t talk about
Yeah, here’s the results. So what happened? Thank you for that. Sorry. I was,
I was focused on the muscle. I forgot
About that question. So, so yeah, I had a DEXA run before that and then after that and, and so a lot of people, Oh, you’re gonna lose muscle. Well, here was the interesting results, right after the fast ended, I got another DEXA scan and it showed that I actually didn’t know exercise that month. Cause I didn’t want it to be a confounding variable. I just wanted to see what the fasting itself would do. I actually gained muscle in the arms about a half a pound. I gained muscle in my legs, really gain muscle in my legs about a pound. But then I lost 10 pounds of what was described as lean tissue, which interpreted as muscle. And what’s called the trunk area. So think about your neck down to your waist. What is in the neck to waste a lot of Oregon, all of your organs.
And so, so basically I talked to dr. [inaudible] about this and he said, well, what happened was you probably lost fat. That was around the organs. And the DEXA made a mistake saying that that was lean tissue. And in fact it was body fat that had been lost. And so to test this theory, I started eating normal again, eating ketogenic again and got another DEXA scan. Two weeks later, we put all this detail in the book, but got another DEXA two weeks later and magically about a being that a boom, those 10 pounds of muscle that I quote unquote lost actually came back on my body again. Now I’m not Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can’t put on, uh, I can’t put on that much muscle that quick.
Yeah. So it was pretty amazing. Yeah, that is. And I think that’s great for people to understand that that’s not, that’s not, what’s going to happen. If you do a fast like this, your body’s not going to just all of a sudden use up all of this muscle and you’re going to be, you know, look like this, a prisoner of war that’s been starved. Right. Um, but I did want to address that because I think that’s one of the myths. What are some other myths that you’ve heard like, Oh, fascinating, we’ll do this. Or we’ll cause this, Oh my goodness. We’ve hit some of that. And you go into this in your book, you go into this into your bank. Of course. But yeah.
Yeah. We hit most of the big ones, the muscle loss, the metabolism slowing down. You’re hungry all the time. I mean that, that, one’s just hilarious. After day two, you’re not really hungry at all. Um, because guess what? And people always freak out. They’re like, well, if I’m not eating, how am I not hungry? Um, you’re eating your body fat. They can’t wrap their heads around that. And even when you’re eating say a ketogenic diet, that’s part of the reason why you’re so satiated on your ketogenic diet, because the, the composition of a, of a low carb, moderate protein, high fat diet actually mimics the fuel that you get from eating your body fat. And so you’re able to be satisfied without eating any food at all because your body is feeding on that body fat. So you’re not going to be hungry. You’re not going to be dizzy and shaky.
I get all these questions that people have. Um, Oh, I’m going to be lightheaded. I could never fast I’ll get lightheaded. Um, no, it just doesn’t happen. I, you know, it’s amazing all these images that we have in our heads about fasting as if it’s just this mysterious thing, guys, we did fasting long, long, long before the past 50 years, when food companies told us, we must eat every few hours. Fasting was a regular part of our, our, of our life. You know, we had periods of feasting and you should have periods of feasting. We’re coming up on the holidays, you know, enjoy your time with your, and have periods of feasting. But those should be offset with, you know, very purposeful periods of fasting. So if you go hog wild on Thanksgiving and go for it, have that coma while you’re watching the Dallas Cowboys win,
I’m doing good this year. So you can brag. They are very good this year
While you’re enjoying that, just realize, okay, a few days after Thanksgiving, I probably need to pass for a few days. And that’s cool. And, and that actual gets you right back on track again. So you don’t gain that 10 to 15 pounds during the holidays.
Huh? That’s a good tip. Yeah. That is a good thing.
It’ll be hard after having a massive delicious thing.
Well, yeah, don’t just go into it right after that Thanksgiving meal or that probably shouldn’t be your last meal, for example, it’s just so everyone knows. I am preparing for a seven day fast post Thanksgiving holiday. That’s why I’m at Jimmy. Come on. I’m like, I need your book. I need to learn about this. Cause I want to do it the right way. I don’t want it just to jump into it and, you know, learn from your, you know, kind of, you know, past mistakes Jimmy of when you first started fascinating, just kind of shooting from the hip, like, all right. Just, I guess I just stopped eating and that’s how it works. I want to do it, um, with all the knowledge first. So it is coming up and I do want to be prepared for it, but that’s the reason I had to come on.
But, um, the other thing I was going to talk to you about is, uh, things that you’ve talked about. I remember reading your past fast, uh, things that are kinda not derails you, but cause more stress. And then you had to break the fast, for example, travel. It seems to be one of them. And so for me, my, I don’t plan on traveling during my seven day fast. Cause I think that’s just gonna add more stress than this already is. Cause fascinating is the stress. It does. It is a stress on your body. What are some other things that maybe derails you in the past or kind of, you should try and avoid?
You know, one of the things that I did before, and I don’t do this anymore, but I used to drink diet soda. And so if you’re using artificial sweeteners, uh, well crystal light has no calories or diet Coke or Coke. Zero has no calories if you’re doing it within the context of a fast, these products while zero calorie. And it’s not about the calories by the way, uh, but at zero calorie, but it’s actually going to stoke cravings. It’s going to stoke hunger where it doesn’t need to. And I think that was a huge mistake I’ve made in previous fast. Cause I was like, well, at least the diet soda would give me sanity during a fast. And I thought that, uh, again, when I was doing it wrong, uh, you know, and, and it actually, uh, didn’t um, one thing that I did two on, uh, one of the one week fast that I did way back in 2011, uh, it was the first time I ever tried a one week fast testing, dr. Seyfried’s, uh, thing about, you know, preventing cancer on day seven, I made a huge mistake as a, as a Christian. I actually went to church that day in day seven of a fast and had communion. Now people that don’t know what communion is, it’s like a little wafer Cracker and like a little thing of great juice. Well, when you haven’t eaten for seven days, your body’s very well adapted to using fat for fuel. Um, and you suddenly give it sugar.
Don’t do that because I got very hypoglycemic and had to end my fast. I was like laying on my bed. I’m literally standing within feet of where I was laying in the fetal position. And my wife, Christine says, are you dying? I said, yes, yes, I’m dying and bring me food. Yes. So I actually was very ravenous after that experience and I learned, okay, God will forgive me for not taking communion while I’m fasting. But yeah, so that was a huge mistake, but I mean, there’s so many little things that people do to try to get through the fast that probably isn’t such a good idea.
Yeah. No, and I definitely wanted to learn from those. So yeah, like traveling, I think that, you know, you said like go into in-laws houses. I think, uh, one of them you mentioned in your last house, well, they made all this food for you travel
In and of itself probably is okay for a lot of people, but what I’ve found drew in my own personal experience, and it’s probably true of a lot of insulin resistant people. If you have type two diabetes or obesity of any kind you’re insulin resistant. And so for those people, I think if your insulin resistant, you’re also stress resistant. So you have, you know, a susceptibility that, that stress is probably going to impact you multitudes more than it would someone who wasn’t insulin resistant. Uh, I’m still working on that theory. I would like to see some studies in that aspect. Uh, maybe one day I’ll write stress clarity if I can figure out that piece of the puzzle.
Yeah. That’s a good idea. I did see on social media, you, you, you are coming out with another book, just use announced it, right. Or you just found out about it. Right.
Um, I actually have three books coming in 2017. Sorry. No, that’s all right. So, uh, so more ketogenic focused typed ones, uh, a couple of, of medical doctors. And then, uh, this, uh, RHN a registered holistic nutritionist and I are gonna kind of talk about the piece of uh self-love and, and how to heal that it’s more than just the nutrition. So, uh, Meg doll is her name. So we’ll be, we’ll be busy next year.
Yeah. That’s, that’s what I, that’s the one I saw. Um, last question before we let you go. And I just wanted to get your thoughts on this, um, taking exogenous ketones. So maybe the first couple of days, cause I know day one day two are the hardest. Is that, what, what do you feel? What’s your thoughts on excitedness ketones during a fat?
It could help some people, but like I said, drew, if you’re already pretty keto adapted, which is not very difficult, uh, I wrote a whole book about it. If you want to learn about a keto clarity, but uh, you know, get keto adapted and that becomes a non issue. Um, I do think some other things that could be helpful and I’ll, I’ll give Dave Asprey a bit of a plug here, uh, not his Bulletproof coffee, but his, uh, the MCT oil that he has, the brain octane fuel. If you take a little bit of that for the first couple of days of a fast, it may actually squelch some of the problems. And actually it would become in essence, a source of exogenous ketones, because those do get converted into ketones very easily. And maybe that would help someone if they’re starting off on a fast. So whatever it takes for you to get through that first couple of days, because day three, four, five, and beyond our Nirvana.
Yes, that is what I’m looking for. Because for me, I’m not trying to lose weight. I’m not trying to get ripped or shredded for me. I want to experience the mental benefits of it. And then also in a way, for me, spiritual benefits, I really do feel like there’s a spiritual side of fasting. And I don’t know if you talk about that in your book, but we do.
We do. We talk about the history of fasting. We have a whole chapter very early in the book on the history of fasting and we pay homage to all of the religious sectors that have used this for generations. Um, you know, really every religion has some sort of fasting period. And, you know, back to your women question, they don’t say, well, the women can’t do this, but all the guys in the religion can know everybody, uh, except for the children would be fasting.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. Um, okay. What is your, uh, what is your blood ketones? What was the highest reading you got during the 21 day fast?
During that 21 day fast? I hit a 6.3. Okay. So give people an idea of your cause. People don’t know the levels. So an average, I probably, uh, once I got into the higher range, I probably averaged about four. Yeah. Which is cool. And, and get this, you guys test your blood sugar at the same time and you should get down into the eighties and below actually, a lot of people were doing this fast with me on Periscope. And I saw some people saying sixties, fifties, even in the upper forties, that is normal when you have higher levels of blood ketones, but also something interesting happened to me. I actually saw levels that were even higher in the nineties and even into the low one hundreds and that freaks people out what’s going on. Well, if you’re insulin resistant, you actually are releasing pockets of sugar that are deep inside that stored body fat. So keep in mind, your body is burning that fat on your body for fuel will inside that if you’re insulin resistant and, and it’s an, you know, moot, removing all the layers of the onion, so to speak of this body fat inside there’s pockets of sugar. So sometimes that sugar temporarily gets into the bloodstream, spikes your blood sugar just a little bit more than it normally would be in a fast and that freaks people out don’t get freaked out by that. That is normal. And it means healing has come in.
Yeah. And just for, so just a frame of reference here, you know, when
I’m eating my keto diet, you know, when I test my blood ketones on average, I’m anywhere between on the low end 0.5 blood million Mueller’s to maybe 1.5 that’s average for me. Yes. You know, when you’re deep in ketosis and you’re fasting like that, you’re, you’re running, like Jimmy said, you’re running off of fat for fuel. Your blood ketones are bumped up. Yes. But it’s not dangerous, dangerous, like be around 20 melee Mueller on the blood ketones 20, which is like multitude, even the highest of high that I had. We’re talking three times over three times higher than that. Exactly. So, um, okay. Lynn, any last questions before we let Jimmy go?
No, my biggest thing actually, honestly, out of all of this, cause I’ve heard so many times, I mean, I’ve heard the pros and cons from who knows how many people about fasting, but the biggest thing, the biggest myth that I had perpetuated, which was why I was went to it directly was about it not being as beneficial for women because of hormones. And I’ll be honest. I don’t know where that myth came from. I don’t know where I heard it. Uh, Oh really?
Unfortunately, there was a very enthusiastic blogger out there who shared her experience with fasting and it went viral on the internet. This was about four or five years ago and it’s become kind of the go to place that people say, Oh, this is why women shouldn’t fast. And it’s just unfortunate. Uh, this particular blogger has no background in nutrition. They’ve never seen patients. Dr. Fung has seen many patients. He is a medical doctor. Um, and so he knows from whence he speaks and I would say that’s a cautionary tale for anyone listening to anything, uh, on the internet is do your research and, and does this person have credibility? And unfortunately this one did not, but it’s out there. That’s why I say don’t read the internet because it can lead you astray. Unfortunately.
So that’s why I loved you talking about your relationship with the doctor and that he’s done all these studies and that he hasn’t seen any difference between men and women. Cause I’ll be honest. This is I actually do. I know a lot of people know me well enough to know that I generally just do intuitive eating. I don’t generally stick with a specific type of regimen, but I have tried most of the different things out there just to see what works well for my body. You know, whether it’s, you know, doing low carb or whether it’s doing ketosis or, you know, or trying to eat more paleo, like I’ve tried those, but I haven’t tried fasting just cause I’ve had hormonal imbalances in the past and I have, and I was scared of that affecting me. So,
So you’re saying you’re going to be joining me for the seven day fast, but I think do intermittent fasting.
I think I, no, I don’t. I think I might try it.
Do an answer. Maybe, maybe start there maybe an eight hour window, try to eat within like 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM or whatever times you want to, to eat and then try doing an 18 hour. Cause I think you might even see amazing benefits just from doing that. Yeah. Okay. We’ll let you go. I’ll be in for me, Jimmy. I’ll be calling you on day two. Yes, please. So I want to Periscope you on day two.
Aye. Aye. So quick question, just because I really am going to try this. I really am. Um, what are your, so your, your thoughts that I should not have coffee, even if it’s black in the morning, I’m doing it. That’s in our, I,
Yeah, I just personally hate coffee, but like here’s what I do with, with, uh, with coffee on, on a fast is dr. Fung says, well, if you’re going to do several days of fasting, which you’re not there yet, but when you do have like a little splash of cream, if you use cream in your coffee, not creamer but cream, um, you know, and that’s it. Um, and so that would be fine. Black coffee would be totally fine. Okay. Um, and then we’ll let you go, but what’s next, you did a 12, 10, 21 day fast. You’ve done almost a 31 day fast. Are you going to go up from there? Boris henceforth is just becoming a part of my life drew and I, I think, and I’ve got a Helter Skelter traveling schedule in 2017. There’s at least seven ketogenic conferences that I’ll be speaking at next year.
So, uh, keeps me quite busy all around the world. Um, and so I’m going to follow up periods of feasting with fasting. And I think if you make it a regular part of your life and realize this is the way people lived before the last 50 years, it’s not as weird. It’s not strange. This is just the way it was. You followed up periods of feasting with periods of fasting. And so if I’m away for, and then we actually have a cruise coming up in January and I get back from that one, I’ll get off the cruise, which I don’t go crazy on cruises. It’s easy to eat keto on a cruise by the way. Um, I’ll come back and I’ll just fast for a period of time after that. Um, and again, not just about weight loss, but it definitely will help you maintain, uh, weight as well.
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So working people will find, uh, you’re both the complete guide to fasting your social media can tell us all that. So people, cause I know people are gonna reach out to you now with questions. Absolutely. So I’m easy to find I’m a live in Lavita low carb.com is the website, or if you just Google Jimmy Moore, the first two pages is literally all my stuff. And the book itself, the complete guide to fasting is on Amazon. Um, it’s also on at Barnes and noble Books-A-Million re really wherever books are sold. It actually hit number one on Amazon Canada, and actually hit the globe and mail bestsellers list in the self improvement category at number five. So we were pretty stoked about that. So it is an international bestselling book now, uh, hadn’t heard about New York times yet. I’m jealous of drew that he hit New York times. Never done that yet. So I’m still working on that, but um, yeah, wherever books are sold and I’m at living low carb man all over social media. Yes. So please go follow Jimmy Moore, Jimmy. Seriously, thank you for all you do. Like I really do look up to you and appreciate all you do for me
And getting this out there in the more mainstream, um, uh, out there to the mainstream, cause this kind of stuff is people think, Oh, that’s not for me. That’s just for, you know, the elitists that are in the fitness industry, but really this is becoming more mainstream. So thank you for what you do. Everything is old. That is old is new again. Amen to that. There we go. Bell bottoms are coming back right now. Those are never coming back. I’m just joking. I was a kid when I had to catch him. You have a good one. We’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
All right, you guys thank you so much for listening to today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed this episode of talking about fasting. Let me know what you guys thought of it. Please leave a comment on iTunes, subscribe to our podcast, please. And please share it with your friends and family. If you really do feel like this information is valuable, please pay it forward by sharing it with those that you love, that might benefit from, from these types of episodes. Please reach out to me, you guys on social media, let me know what you think of the podcast. How can I improve it? Um, you know what you guys like, and don’t like, I’m open to suggestions. I really am. So just reach out to me on social media, you guys, and let me know what type of, uh, for what type of format you guys want.
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