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In the last episode, I recommended adopting an intermittent fasting lifestyle as your New Year's resolution. I went into some details about what actually happens during a fast and just how beneficial fasting can be to our spirit, mind and body. But adopting a fasting lifestyle can be quite challenging if you don't do it right. So in this episode, I want to answer some of your questions that you may have about how to get started with intermittent fasting.
and how to make it an enjoyable experience. One you want to rinse and repeat over and over again. I want to answer questions like, how do we handle the hunger cravings? What can we do to ease some of the negative symptoms of a fast? What supplements to take? What's the best way to lose weight? And this is really important. I'm going to explain the proper way to prime your digestive system after it's been dormant for a while without
shocking your system and having an unpleasant experience. Let's talk about it.
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Welcome to the Christian Healthy lifestyle podcast where I help you navigate natural health so you can stay out of the doctor's office, age gracefully, and live a more purpose-driven life. I'm your host, David Sandstrom. Besides getting good regular sleep, intermittent fasting is probably the least expensive and most efficient way to build health. Again, I talked about all the benefits to practicing intermittent fasting in the last episode, episode number 201.
Adopting a fasting lifestyle can sound scary. It can be intimidating to think about voluntarily abstaining from such a primary physiological need like food. Fasting is stress producing and it will elevate stress hormones. Cortisol and growth hormone both become elevated during a fast, but the combination of cortisol and growth hormone together with ketone production
produce a high performance state that is very much health promoting. Now by understanding and practicing a few of the things I'm about to share with you, you'll minimize any negative symptoms from your fast and you'll actually look forward to those times because you're doing it right. When you're doing it right, fasting is quite enjoyable. The first question I want to answer is, isn't fasting unhealthy? Won't I be starving and losing muscle mass?
The answer to that question is no, you won't be starving and you won't lose muscle mass. Let me explain. In order to understand why that's true, I need to go over a little of our God given physiology. Now hang in there with me. This is not going to be too tough, but we've got to lay the groundwork here. First, a couple of presuppositions. My first presupposition is God designed our bodies with a remarkable
built-in intelligence and our default setting is health. In the natural health world we call that vitalism. A seed is said to be vital if you plant that seed in the ground and it sprouts and grows. That seed has life in it. It has vitality. Well, God gives us vitality in the form of a built-in intelligence that keeps us alive. It's our internal programming that's
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programmed for health. In naturopathy, we lean heavily on that God-given wisdom of the body and do our best to cooperate with it. The second presupposition I use to operate on is if God gave us an organ or a system, it has a function. It has usefulness. It serves some purpose for the body. Now, you might hear your doctor say that the appendix serves no function for the body. It's a vestigial organ
a leftover remnant of an organ used by prehistoric humans to help them digest things like tree bark and leaves. So they say, you can remove your appendix with no consequences. Well, we now know that's not true. The appendix is a vital part of our gut health and our immune system. Now in our discussion today, I want to point out that God created our bodies with the capacity to use different fuel sources to make energy.
One fuel source is creatine stored in the muscles. That source is not used very much. Our body's primary fuel source is blood sugar that mostly comes from the carbohydrates in the food we eat. The other fuel source is ketones. Ketones are produced in the liver during a fast. If God gave us the ability to use these different fuel sources, then there's a reason for that and He expects us to use all of the available fuel sources from time to time.
Let me unpack that a little bit. Our bodies produce energy in the form of ATP or Adenosine Triphosphate. ATP is the energy currency of the body. It's produced in the mitochondria, which are specialized organelles inside our cells. In order to produce energy or make ATP, our mitochondria need a fuel source. They need our materials. Our bodies can use creatine stored in the muscles for short
bursts of energy like running a hundred-yard dash or maxing out on the bench press. But that explosive energy only lasts a few seconds. When that energy runs out, our bodies turn to an anaerobic energy production system. Now the anaerobic system breaks down glucose or blood sugar or glycogen, which is sugar stored in the liver, without using oxygen. Now that energy is short-lived as well.
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It lasts from 30 seconds to two minutes. The anaerobic energy production system is great for resistance training in the gym, but it won't sustain us over the long haul. Then there's our body's preferred way of making energy, the aerobic oxidative system. It's the body's most efficient energy production system. That's where our bodies break down glucose or glycogen in the presence of oxygen. That's the body's preferred method. Our bodies will burn
carbohydrates and fats, and on rare occasions protein in an oxygen-rich environment. Now this is the most complex energy production system and it takes longer, but it's the most efficient way for our bodies to produce energy. So that's their preferred method. It's capable of producing massive amounts of ATP as long as we have fuel and oxygen present. Now with slow to rev up, it can't produce energy fast enough for
high intensity sprints, but it's our endurance engine. It's great for long-term energy production. And that's the reason why it's our body's preferred way of making energy. In a lot of ways, our bodies are like a hybrid car that has both an electric motor and a gasoline engine. In a hybrid car, the electric motor is used to supply short-term energy production. The electric motor is great around town, where we're doing lots of starting and stopping.
The electrical motor provides great acceleration. Just ask anybody that owns a Tesla, you know they accelerate pretty good. Electric motors are very efficient at short-term energy production needs like driving around town and accelerating on the ramp to the highway. But if we're taking a road trip, we need the gasoline engine to meet the sustained energy demands of highway driving for a few hundred miles. Electric motors don't do that as well as gasoline engines do.
The electric motor is like our body's first two energy production systems, creatine and the anaerobic energy production. They're capable of producing energy very quickly to meet our short-term energy needs like running a sprint or lifting weights. The gasoline engine is like the aerobic oxidative system, great for long-term energy production that keeps us going and sustains us all day long. Now, our omnipotent creator saw to it that our bodies always have an adequate
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fuel supply. We're not going to run out of gas anytime soon. God gave us two fuel sources for the aerobic oxidative system, blood sugar and ketones. Using blood sugar as fuel is our body's preferred and primary way of making energy. Making energy from ketones is our emergency backup system. When God designed our bodies, he knew that from time to time our blood sugar and glycogen reserves in the liver would get low
And in order to keep us alive, he gave our bodies the ability to use a backup fuel source. And that fuel source is ketones. Ketones are water soluble molecules produced by the liver after the glycogen reserves are depleted and fasting insulin gets to a low level, around five. Now you could deplete your glycogen and lower fasting insulin by eliminating carbohydrates in the diet. A lot of people are doing that with the ketogenic diet these days. That's not what I recommend.
Because if you do that, it would take about two weeks before you got your glycogen and fasting insulin levels low enough to produce adequate levels of ketones. That's a long time. Those two things happen relatively rapidly during a fast. During a fast, most people's glycogen reserves will be more or less depleted after about 14 to 16 hours, definitely after 24 hours. And for most people, fasting insulin will reach five or below
within 48 hours. Now the mild stress from going without food causes our bodies to produce cortisol, our primary stress hormone, as well as growth hormone, as I mentioned earlier. So this is important. Ketone production along with elevated levels of cortisol and human growth hormone puts us in a high performance state. Are you beginning to see how powerful fasting really is? And by the way,
One of the criticisms of adopting intermittent fasting lifestyle is that since it's stress producing and it does raise cortisol levels, the critics say that the combination of calorie restriction and elevated cortisol will cause muscle wasting. Well, it is true that high levels of cortisol by itself will cause muscle wasting. That's the reason why long distance runners generally have a very lean looking physique.
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They don't look like linebackers because their bodies are tapping into their caloric reserves and sometimes the body will need to use muscle to produce the energy they need for those long distance runs. So it's very difficult to build muscle if you're a long distance runner. The physiological changes that take place during a fast protect us against that. Now, as I just said, fasting raises both cortisol and growth hormone levels.
After 72 hours, some studies have shown that human growth hormone levels increase by 10x or maybe more. It's the elevated growth hormone levels that act as a shield and protect our bodies from muscle wasting during a fast. Isn't that cool? So I said all that to say this. Our bodies are well equipped to handle short-term and long-term fasting and we shouldn't be afraid of it. God gave us the mechanisms to handle it.
quite well. Abstaining from food is a vital part of our God-given natural design. We shouldn't be afraid of it. In fact, we should embrace it. So let's talk about preparing for a fast. Obviously, our bodies will be tapping into their nutrient stores during a fast. Nutrient reserves will get used up during a fast. So the first thing we can do to prepare for a fasting lifestyle is to eat nutrient-dense foods.
We do that by eating non-processed foods that we bought ourselves at the grocery store or farmer's market, and we prepare that food at home. I know it's necessary to eat out from time to time. That's fine. But understand, eating out is almost always a compromise. We have very little control over what the restaurant puts in that meal. So understand, when you're eating out, you're probably going to be compromising your diet. Next.
we can cut out snacks in between meals. Every time we consume food, whether it's a meal or a snack, we raise our blood sugar levels. And in order to bring those blood sugar levels back down, our bodies have to produce insulin. By grazing on food all day long, we don't give our system practice in getting our blood sugar and insulin levels down. When we start a fast, the higher our blood glucose is and the higher our fasting insulin is,
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the longer it's going to take to reach the ketogenic state that we just talked about. The idea of having lower fasting glucose and lower fasting insulin is commonly referred to as being fat adapted, where our bodies can easily make the shift from burning glucose for energy to burning fat for energy. It's also called being metabolically fit. So one of the best things we can do to prepare for a fast is simply eat three quality meals a day with no snacks in between.
that will lower fasting glucose and fasting insulin. Again, getting away from processed foods and restaurant food, you'll be able to do that. Okay, once we've done that, it's time to start compressing our daily eating window or extending our daily fasting window. Now, as I said in the last episode, everyone should be able to do a 12 hour fast daily, every day. If we stop eating at 7 p.m.,
and we don't eat again until 7 a.m. the next morning, we'll have a 12-hour fast and a 12-hour eating window. We would call that a 12-12. Once we have that down, which shouldn't take long, we can stretch the fasting window out to about 14 hours and do a 14-10. 14 hours of fasting and a 10-hour eating window. Now we're still eating three meals a day. Then we can go to a 16-8. Now 16-8 is the sweet spot.
There's been studies that show that a 16-8 fasting and eating window is the most likely to be adhered to, and it provides an excellent opportunity for our bodies to exhaust their glycogen reserves and begin the process of burning fat for fuel and making ketones. The 16-8 also gives our bodies a longer window to experience autophagy. If autophagy is a new term to you, it's the process of either recycling
or eliminating old worn out cells. I covered that in detail in last episode. Now, having an eight hour eating window per day doesn't mean you're eating less. You still want to eat three meals a day and keep your caloric consumption where it was when you started stretching out your fasting window. We're not cutting calories here. We're simply compressing the daily eating window. Once we've been at the 16 eight for a couple of weeks, it's time to start stretching that fast even further.
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I recommend doing a 24 hour fast once a week. We can stop eating at 6 or 7 p.m. and don't eat again until 6 or 7 p.m. the next evening. If we've been practicing a 16-8 fast for a couple of weeks, this won't seem like that big a step. It won't be a giant leap for us. After doing a 24 hour fast once a week for a couple of weeks, it's time to move on to the 48 hour fast. The 24 hour fast can be done once a week.
but I don't recommend doing any more fasting than that on a weekly basis. The 48 hour fast should be more like once every couple of weeks or maybe once a month. After you've got the 48 hour fast down, it's time to move on to the big leagues and do a 72 hour fast. At that point, we've maximized our body's adaptation to going without food. Now it's kind of an individual thing, but I would recommend doing a 72 hour fast once per quarter.
every three months. Now the best gauge is how do you feel? If doing a 72 hour fast once a quarter seems easy and enjoyable, you can go more often, but be careful and always monitor how you're feeling. If the hunger is getting to you or you're feeling sluggish and uncomfortable, feel free to start eating again. Listen to your body. If you choose to go longer than 72 hours,
You'll simply be at that high performance state that I talked about earlier for a longer period of time and your body will experience more benefit. But I don't believe that it's necessary to go longer than 72 hours to experience a great deal of benefit from an intermittent fasting lifestyle. Now, for me, day three is the most enjoyable day of the fast. At that point, the hunger is completely gone. My mental clarity is dramatically improved and I have elevated energy.
If you ease into a fast the way I described here, I'll bet you'll feel the same way. There's a couple of things worth mentioning here. One is, during a fast is a great time to spend a little extra time in prayer. Remember Matthew 4.4. It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Fasting clears out the static in our communication lines with God. So don't just talk to God,
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Marinate on a passage of scripture and expect to hear from the Holy Spirit He loves to speak to us during those times Now let's go over a few other things to consider during a fast firstly children and pregnant women should not do extended fasting Everyone all adult men and women can do a 12 to 16 hour daily fast now men can start an extended fast anytime they want That's because their hormones don't fluctuate as much as a woman's during the month
If you're a premenopausal woman, you need to do a little more advanced planning. Your green light window as a premenopausal woman, or the best time to do extended fasting, is day 5 through 12 after the start of your period. That's because estrogen is rising and progesterone is low. Rising estrogen makes you more resilient to stress and improves your insulin sensitivity. Most women find that they have more willpower during that time.
less hunger and higher energy during that window day 5 through 12. The second best time, the yellow light window to start a fast is during days 1 through 5. This is a maybe depending on how you feel. During days 1 through 5, all hormones are at their lowest baseline level, similar to a man. This may be a good time for you to fast, but you got to consider
If you have heavy bleeding, cramping, or low iron, extending fasting during that window may be too taxing. You'll just have to do some experimenting to see what works best for you. Now the red light window, the worst time for a premenopausal woman to do extended fasting is day 15 to the start of your period. That's because during that time, your body needs to build up progesterone to support the uterine lining. And in order to build up progesterone,
you need higher levels of carbohydrate. There's a reason why you get a sweet craving the week or 10 days or so before your period starts. It's because your body needs more carbohydrate to produce the needed progesterone. Now progesterone is very sensitive to cortisol. Now another problem during that window is the higher cortisol levels produced from the stress of fasting will also interfere with progesterone production. If cortisol is too high,
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it can steal the resources needed for progesterone production. That can lead to premenstrual syndrome, irritability, sleep issues, and intense sugar cravings. So if you're a premenopausal woman, you definitely want to avoid extended fasting during the two weeks prior to the start of your cycle. As I said earlier, after 48 hours or so, the hunger will fade or go away completely. But what do we do in the meantime? Well,
The first thing I would say is understand where your hunger cravings are coming from. If it's day one or two, it's not because you're starving. You should expect to get hungry at your normal meal times. That shouldn't take you by surprise. Hunger is triggered by the release of ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone. And like any other hormone, ghrelin fluctuates throughout the day. Levels go up, levels go down. So just because you're hungry at any given moment,
doesn't mean the only way to get over your hunger is to start eating again. Or worse yet, succumb to the marketing machine that says the only way to curb your hunger is to get on a GLP-1 medication like Ozempic or Wigovia. Don't fall for that. That's a sophisticated marketing system that wants you to believe that you need those drugs to be healthy. That's not true. A rise in ghrelin levels happens around our normal meal times. And once that time has passed, so will the hunger.
Remember, ghrelin goes up and down. Also, an expanding stomach will cause ghrelin levels to drop. Instead of eating, the perfect way to get rid of your hunger cravings during a fast is to drink a warm herbal tea. Warm beverages also stimulate the vagus nerve and that produces a calming sensation. So a warm cup of chamomile tea is perfect for quenching a hunger craving. Also, here's a gentle word of caution.
During a fast, our bodies get busy doing house cleaning and sometimes that means removing toxins like heavy metals and microplastics, those types of things. When that happens, there's a chance that our detox organs like the liver, kidneys, lungs and skin can get overwhelmed with the amount of toxins they need to eliminate in a short period of time. When the liver gets backed up, that means those toxins spend too much time in the general circulation of the body
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in the bloodstream and that can cause symptoms, unpleasant symptoms. If that happens, you could experience what we call a Herxheimer reaction or a Herx. You might feel like you've got the flu. You could be a little extra tired. You could have achy muscles or joints. You could have a headache. You may even have a runny nose. Sometimes it really does feel like you have the flu. Now if you've eased into the fast the way I explained earlier, the chance of that happening are very low.
But there are a few things we can do to reduce the chances of having a herx even more. The first thing we should do is making sure we drink plenty of water. So normally I recommend drinking half your body weight in ounces of water per day and sipping all day long. During a fast, I recommend doubling that. Also, make sure you're getting adequate amounts of electrolytes in that water. Now other liquids we can have during a fast are
as I mentioned earlier, herbal tea, apple cider vinegar, maybe a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in an eight ounce glass of water. We can drink lemon water and non flavored electrolytes. A question that often comes up is what about caffeine? Well, caffeine raises glucose, so it can break your fast. Now with that said, small amounts of caffeine can be very useful to stave off going through a caffeine withdrawal. So personally,
I continue to drink my favorite energy shot during a fast. I like Ethan's energy shots. They're all organic and the caffeine comes from a South American herb called herbayusa. And herbayusa gives your body sustained energy without the jitters that coffee can sometimes do. So if you have to have some caffeine, a cup or two of coffee a day is fine. Just go ahead and do that. It's not going to be the end of the world, but drink your coffee black. Don't put any sugar in it. Ideally,
Pure spring water alone would be the best thing to consume during a fast, but that's the ideal. No one executes perfectly. And also the other beverages I just mentioned. Coffee is okay in small amounts. The next thing you can do during a fast is to take a binding agent like activated charcoal or zeolite. Those products will bind to the toxins after they've been mobilized by the body and make it easier to eliminate them. Another product you can take is glutathione.
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Glutathione is one of the body's master antioxidants. Mobilizing excess toxins causes free radicals to form. A quality glutathione will help to quench the damage caused by excessive free radical formation. Now here's a caveat. Glutathione is not normally absorbed very well. It gets broken down by the stomach acid. So we have to take it either in sublingual form under the tongue
or in a nanoencapsulation where the product is protected from the digestive juices in the stomach by being encapsulated in a fatty acid bubble that's called nanoencapsulation. There's several products out there that can do that. Nanoencapsulation is sometimes referred to as time released. Also, getting adequate sleep during a fast is very important. Most people find that they sleep better in a fasted state. Your body will be ready for sleep
Now remember, our bodies choose to do most of their repairing and rebuilding while we're sleeping. So a little extra sleep during a fast will go a long way. And by the way, no matter how hungry you are when you go to bed, when you wake up the next morning, you won't be hungry anymore. That's because you've given your ghrelin levels a chance to settle down during sleep. Also, another thing we can do is get outdoors and walk.
That'll help reduce the chances of having a herx, or if you have one, it'll reduce your symptoms. Walking is probably the best exercise to do during a fast. The added benefit is with light to moderate exercise like walking, you'll be tapping into your aerobic energy production system and you'll burn more fat. Now remember, a fasting lifestyle is not about losing weight. It's about getting healthy.
because a healthy person doesn't struggle with their weight. We don't lose weight in order to get healthy, we get healthy in order to lose weight. And fasting is one of the ways we accelerate the process of building health from the inside out. Now, I don't recommend high intensity exercise during a fast. It'll likely be counterproductive. Ask me how I know. Been there, done that. And my experience has been that although you can expect more energy and more mental clarity during a fast,
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you'll probably have less stamina when it comes to intense exercise. So I would avoid intense exercise during a fast. Now, if you're having a really rough time with a Herxheimer reaction, there are some other things you can do, things like doing a coffee enema, doing a lymph massage, or using a chi machine. But those are advanced level detox techniques. And it's really beyond the scope of this podcast. Here, I want to stick to talking about fasting.
If you've done all that and you still feel uncomfortable, you have some Herx armor systems, it's time to take a break from your fast. Maybe you actually did catch the flu. Maybe you really are sick. You'll know if you stop the fast and you feel better in a day or two, it wasn't the flu, it was a Herx. If you're not better in 48 hours, you very well just might be sick. Either way, ditch the fast, start eating, and get some rest.
Okay, so how do we break our fast and re-engage our digestive system after it's been shut down for two or three days or more even? Just like a baseball pitcher needs to warm up his arm before he throws a fastball, the same is true with our digestive system. Our digestive system is in a dormant state after two or three days with no food. We haven't been making digestive juices in the stomach or asking the pancreas to produce digestive enzymes.
or asking the gallbladder to excrete bile, all of that is dormant. We need to warm up first. So when we break our fast, probably the best food to start off with is a small bowl of bone broth. Bone broth has plenty of electrolytes and it's very easy to digest, very easy on our systems. So meal one should be about eight ounces of bone broth. That's what I recommend. Meal two should include some type of fermented food.
The fermented sauerkraut is great for this. You can't buy the cheap variety. This just has vinegar in it. It's not really fermented. Buy the real fermented sauerkraut or make it yourself. That's a great thing to have when you're breaking a fast. Or perhaps if you don't have a dairy sensitivity, a little yogurt or kefir or some hard cheese and maybe a small portion of fruit. That'd be a great second meal when you're breaking your fast. You could also have a hard-boiled or poached egg. Eggs are
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packed with nutrients. Ounce for ounce, eggs are one the most nutritious foods we can eat. And by the way, when you're coming off of fast, one of the best things about fasting is your body's going to crave real nutrition. You're not going to be craving Doritos and Diet Coke when you come off of a fast. Your body's going to naturally want real food. You'll find it's an amazing thing how smart our bodies are. Now, as far as eggs goes,
I wouldn't fry them or scramble them just yet. You're not quite ready to consume a fatty meal. Bio flow from the gallbladder hasn't adequately kicked in just yet on the second meal. At your third meal, you can start introducing a small portion of meat with fruits and vegetables or a salad if you want, although I would keep the portions small. So after the third meal, you should be good to go and eat like you normally do any other day.
So those are my recommendations for how to prepare for a fast, how to enter a fast, what to do during a fast, and how to end your fast or break your fast. I hope you found this information useful. There's a lot here. You may even want to listen to this episode a second time. If you're enjoying the show, I sure would appreciate it if you tell a friend about it. One of the major limitations to having a podcast is podcasting has
very limited discoverability. It's not like YouTube where the algorithm will really push your content out to people that are likely to enjoy it. We don't have anything like that in podcasting for the most part. So good shows are hard to find. So if you have a like-minded friend, do them a favor and help them find this show. Tell them about the show. The number one way people find out about a podcast is a friend tells them about it. So if you're finding value here, if you consider this show real fine, tell a friend about it.
I'll bet they'll thank you for it. That's it for now. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you. I'll talk with you next time. Be blessed.
