Is extended fasting healthy? Will it put you in starvation mode, lower your metabolism and make you burn muscle? What are the benefits of extended fasting? Who should do it? Who shouldn’t? What are the benefits? How do you do it? What can you eat? What can’t you eat? How long should a fast be? Is 1 day enough? How long do I have to fast to get benefits?
So many questions about extended fasting and we’re tackling them today! Plus, I’ll be sharing details of my recent 7 day fast including why I did it, how I felt, what benefits I experienced, if I’d do it again and how I broke my fast.
If you’re curious, interested or even skeptical, make sure to check out this episode!
In October 2019, our relationship with Thrive Market changed. They decided to put their marketing dollars in avenues outside of podcasting but we still think they’re a good choice if you’re looking to save money on health & personal care products.
I am beyond excited for this 2nd episode in the Food As Medicine series of the podcast! Today we are talking about turmeric and it’s active components, curcuminoids.
Curcumin has long been used to fight inflammation but it does so much more than that! We’ll explore the role of turmeric in cell health, inflammation, skin health, depression, cognitive function and more!
We’ll differentiate between turmeric root and turmeric powder, talk about how to identify a quality supplement and I’ll even share a few recipes.
In October 2019, our relationship with Thrive Market changed. They decided to put their marketing dollars in avenues outside of podcasting but we still think they’re a good choice if you’re looking to save money on health & personal care products.
Forget what you have heard! You can eat carbohydrates and still successfully meet your fat loss goals and maintain the results.
There are hundreds of opinions related to carbs & fat loss and it’s tough to know which one is most effective. We’re going to clear that up and ensure that you don’t have to subscribe to models of restriction or deprivation in order to burn fat and have plenty of energy.
In today’s episode, I discuss 4 smart carb strategies (aka The Golden Rules of Carbs and Fat loss) that, when implemented, will help you unlock your health and weight potential while increasing your energy, decreasing your cravings and stabilizing your hunger.
Let’s try something new! I’m going to be kicking off a monthly series on the podcast – you can consider it the Primal Potential Book Club! We’re starting with Always Hungry by Dr. David Ludwig.
I read a ton. I’ve always got a couple of books going. Each month, maybe even a couple of times a month, I want to share with you the best books I’ve read, the most interesting things I’ve learned and how I’ve changed my fat loss approach (if at all) based on those books.
Without question, one of the best books I’ve read recently is Always Hungry by Dr. David Ludwig. In today’s episode I’m sharing the most powerful lessons in the book and my thoughts on his “Always Hungry Solution” that he argues (quite well) will conquer cravings, retrain your fat cells and help you lose weight permanently.
In today’s episode I’m sharing what I feel are the most powerful & high-impact points made by Dr. Ludwig in his new book. I share my commentary and what changes I made based on this great read (as well as how my body responded). Definitely take a listen to the full episode but here are the highlights of what I share from the book.
We don’t get fat because we overeat. We overeat because we’re getting fat.
What? Huh? Of course we get fat because we overeat. No. We overeat, he argues, not because of the volume of food we eat but because of the type of food we eat.The type of food we eat creates a hormonal condition that makes us 2 things: hungry and fat.It makes our fat cells greedy. They suck up more than their fair share of the nutrients we eat. The body responds by triggering hunger & cravings. We eat more. We overeat because of the hormonal conditions created by the type of food we eat.Dr. Ludwig uses a couple of great examples to help explain this notion that we overeat because we’re getting fat, not the other way around.Think of a teenage boy during puberty. Do we say he’s growing because he’s eating so much? No! We say he’s eating so much because he’s growing. The hormonal conditions in his body are increasing his appetite. His appetite isn’t creating the hormonal conditions that make him grow.The same is true in pregnancy. Do we say that a pregnant woman’s belly is growing because she is eating so much? No! She is eating so much because her baby is growing. The hormonal conditions in her body increases her appetite.This, he argues, (strongly, in my opinion) is what happens with obesity. Here’s what Dr. Ludwig explains in Always Hungry: The food choices we make when our diet is filled with processed foods, grains, wheats and oats send insulin production into overdrive. Insulin is a fuel delivery hormone (if you need an overview on insulin, check out this episode).This chronic, overstimulation of insulin essentially fertilizes your fat cells. Your fat cells become greedy because they are overstimulated. They suck up more than their fair share of the nutrients you consume.Well, what happens if the fat cells are taking more than their fair share of the nutrients you consume?The body misses out. The rest of your body doesn’t get the fuel it needs, even if you’re eating it! How does the body respond? Hunger & cravings to stimulate you to feed it and by lowering your metabolic rate to conserve fuel because it’s not getting enough (even though it is).
It’s not a matter of having too many calories in the in the body, it’s too few in the right place.
We can reprogram our fat cells to release stored calories Our food choices are responsible for programming our fat cells to take up too much fuel. Therefore, by changing our food choices, we can reprogram our fat cells to release stored calories. We do this in two ways (that I go into in more detail in this episode). We do this by choosing foods that don’t overstimulate insulin production/release and that control (and minimize) inflammation.
Dieting is not the answer.
Cutting back on calories will cause weight loss in the short term, but it programs your body to work against you. There’s a better way. Dr. Ludwig uses the example of taking an ice bath in response to a fever. Yes, a fever is reflective of too much heat in the body so you could reason that sitting in an ice bath would bring your body temperature down. And it will, in the short term. However, the body will compensate by making you shiver and trigger vaso-constriction to conserve heat, so it’s not a long term approach.We see this all the time with dieting. Sure, it might lead to short term weight loss but the body will fight against you by lowering metabolic rate, increasing hunger and triggering cravings.Dieting is a short term strategy that has been repeatedly proven to deliver, at best, short term results. We have to work with the body, not against it.
It’s not about calories.Even when you keep calories constant, you can significantly impact the number of calories you burn at rest by changing where your calories come from.In Always Hungry, Dr. Ludwig shares some of his clinical research where two groups of individuals received the same exact number of calories per day, but with different ratios of carbohydrate and fat.The individuals on the higher fat, lower carb diet burned 325 more calories per day at rest than the individuals consuming the exact same number of calories but on a lower fat, higher carb approach.It’s not about the number of calories you consume as much as it is about the signals they send to your body.
Your fat cells reach a critical threshold where they begin to emit stress signals to your body.Your body’s primary objective is survival. It will always operate from a “survival first” perspective. The two most significant threats to your body are starvation & infection.Your body fat is protective against starvation. It is the fuel reserve for your body. More or less, it ensures your protection against starvation. For that reason, your immune system (prevention from infection) and your body fat are very closely linked.Your white blood cells (whose job it is to protect against infection) patrol your body fat. They do so because your body fat would be the holy grail feast site of a potential infection.Unfortunately, your fat cells become stressed when they’re taxed and over-fed. They begin to emit stress signals to which your body responds.Those white blood cells call in reinforcements from the rest of your body (preventing infection fighting elsewhere) and your body begins to attack itself. This is the onset of auto-immune disease and other inflammatory conditions including heart disease.
We have to eat to reduce inflammation & calm our fat cells so they are willing to release their stored fat.Dr. Ludwig shares how to do this via food choices in his Always Hungry Solution.
The Always Hungry Solution is all about minimizing your body’s insulin response and controlling inflammation via food choices. Of course it emphasizes whole foods with the greatest emphasis on plant-based fats like avocado, extra virgin olive oil and coconut oil followed by non-starchy vegetables and high quality animal proteins.
Phase 1: 2 weeks long. 50% of calories from fat, 25% from carbohydrates (non-starchy veggies and non-tropical fruits) and 25% from protein
Phase 2: Duration of weight loss. 40% of calories from fat, 35% from carbohydrates (non-starchy veggies & fruit) and 25% from protein
Phase 3: Maintenance – finding what makes you feel the best while maintaining results
After reading Always Hungry, I was inspired to make a few changes. Just these tiny changes to my already clean diet improved my sleep, significantly reduced my hunger (and I wasn’t really hungry to begin with) and in just 10 days led to noticeable changes in my lower abdominals.
Carbs aren’t evil. But the way we eat them might be making us fat. In this episode we talk about how carbs have the potential to make us fat. We get into carbohydrate spillover, or the conditions under which carbs are actually converted to fat and stored as body fat. Fortunately, we talk about how to avoid that! We talk about how you can enjoy carbs without having them contribute to weight gain!
The Challenge: The Standard American Diet is rich in carbohydrates – almost every single meal and snack is dominated by carbs. The building block of ALL carbohydrates is simple sugar. When we break down these carbs they have the ability to raise our blood sugar and our insulin. This keeps us out of fat burning mode. Because we consume carbohydrates ALL the time, we encounter something called carbohydrate spillover – we don’t need these carbs for energy, there is no short term storage space available and so they are turned into fat and stored as such. In this episode we talk about what causes carbohydrate spillover and how we can avoid it while still enjoying carbohydrates!
We talked about how carbohydrates are chains of sugar of varying lengths and sizes, right? Straight chains, branched chains, all chains of sugar molecules – glucose, fructose – tiny little sugars. Well, it makes sense that when we metabolize these carbs they break back down into their little building blocks. Enroute to storage, this sugar enters the blood stream. The hormone insulin is released when sugar enters the blood and insulin is the USHER that takes the sugar to be stored. Now, if sugar hits your blood stream because you just drank a Gatorade during your 26 mile marathon, that sugar is probably going to be used immediately for energy, but for the rest of us, we’re probably not mid-workout or being chased by a tiger so that sugar needs to be stored. Insulin has a few drop off options for the sugar. The first place its going to try to take it is to the muscle. Storage space there is limited, but its easily accessible for your next workout or the next time you get chased by a bear. So, if you’re eating carbs regularly and not exercising regularly to tap into that fuel, chances are that the storage space in the muscles is all full. Next stop? The liver. Again, easy access in case your body needs to generate fuel but limited storage. And I’m talking seriously limited. About 400g between the muscle storage and liver storage combined. And that is not per day. That’s TOTAL capacity. Like I said, if you’re not working out regularly or your eating carbs on a regular basis, chances are that both of those storage sites are FULL. No vacancy. But insulin has another storage option. And this is what we call “carbohydrate spillover” – its also called lipogenesis, meaning essentially, creating fat. And this is where most of us live after every carb rich meal…
The excess glucose is converted to fat. That fat either continues to circulate in your blood (this is where we see things like elevated triglycerides) or it is stored in your adipose tissue – aka body fat. And, lucky us, this storage space is UNLIMITED and it is NOT easily accessed. Once it gets stored as body fat your body considers this its emergency fuel reserve and doesn’t give it up without a fight.
The Solution: We have to do the following: eat the right carbs at the right times in appropriate amounts. We need to get active so we can tap into our short term glycogen stores so that when we DO enjoy carbohydrates in the right amounts at the right times, they can replenish our muscle storage sites instead of initiating lipogenesis (fat creation) and being stored as body fat! This isn’t a complex process that will remove our enjoyment of food or require us to spend hours in the gym – it’s really simple once you understand how it works and how it can keep us in fat burning mode all the time!
Our control of our blood sugar and our insulin response is the primary determinant of our energy levels, our cravings, hunger, focus, mood and much more. Here’s the bottom line that you need to understand: your body cannot and will not burn fat when insulin is high.
Think about it – insulin is deployed when there is fuel that needs to be stored, right? There’s extra sugar (glucose) in the blood that needs to be taken away and stored. So insulin tells the body “hey, there’s plenty of fuel here, we are now in storage mode” – that message turns OFF any fat burning machinery. Why? Because burning fat generates extra energy for the body and insulin has signaled the body that there is already an excess of energy. No more is needed!
In order for your body to go into fat burning mode, there has to be two conditions:
The right hormonal environment
Less fuel available than your body needs to operate
Most people only focus on #2. They eat less and create hormonal chaos in the body without realizing that for your body to break down fat, the hormone glucagon MUST be in action. Glucagon kind of works as the opposite of insulin. Where insulin is deployed in response to excess fuel and facilitates storage, glucagon is deployed when there isn’t quite enough fuel and facilitates the breakdown of body fat to provide fuel for the body.
Practical Implementation: Eat the right carbs: Carbohydrates from whole food sources like berries, apples, citrus fruits, potatoes, sweet potatoes Avoid the wrong carbs: Wheat, grains, oats, processed foods & simple sugars Eat carbs at the right time: At your dinner time meal or post workout Eat them in the right amounts: Not to exceed 1/2 cup Pair them properly: Always have your carbohydrates with fat or protein (chicken, beef, fish, butter, avocado, etc) Take care of your short term storage to avoid having excess carbohydrate being converted to and stored as fat: This boils down to getting active. The most effective activity is going to be high intensity intervals, lifting heavy weights, or both. This doesn’t require hours in the gym. In fact, these workouts can usually be done in 20 minutes or less. We talk about how beginners can get started in the episode and one of my favorite links for workouts is below!
Resources: Looking for regular coaching, accountability and more tools and resources than you can imagine? Join me inside The Consistency Course.
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