Episode 101: Intermittent Fasting Part 2
We’re continuing to dig into intermittent fasting in this episode (continued from last week) and we get into intermittent fasting as a weight loss tool, who should NOT do intermittent fasting, what fasting does to your hormones, and much more. I also answer some listener questions that came in about this particular topic.
In this episode:
Intermittent fasting as weight loss tool
Biomarker improvements with intermittent fasting
Who should NOT do intermittent fasting
When is fasting contraindicated?
Considerations for disordered eating history
What fasting does to your hormones
Fasting and the thyroid
What’s leptin got to do with it?
How to start
Different ways to approach intermittent fasting
Different intermittent fasting schedules
How to transition away from fasting
Signs it’s time to stop
Resources mentioned:
Carb Compatibility Project (Available for free within the Funk’tional Nutrition Collective)
Learn More About Metabolic Health
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Erin Holt [00:00:05]:
Welcome to the Functional Nutrition podcast. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I'm a board certified integrative and functional nutritionist. I live on the seacoast of New Hampshire and work with clients in my virtual practice all over the world through private consultations and online nutrition and functional medicine programs. Functional medicine nutrition is all about diving deep with people to get to the root cause of their health issues. And that's exactly what I tackle in this podcast. All things health, food, and nutrition, unpacking, current research, and almost a decade of clinical experience. I love to bring experts and thought leaders to the table so we can all learn together. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment.
Erin Holt [00:00:55]:
Thanks for joining me. Now, let's dive in. Intermittent fasting, part two. That's the name of the game today. Last week, we started with part one, and today we're picking up right where we left off. So we're gonna get into intermittent fasting as a weight tool or, excuse me, a weight loss tool. What's contraindicated for fasting? Who should not try it will have the whole hormones, thyroid, leptin, cortisol discussion, because, of course, fasting is going to affect all of those hormones. We'll talk about how to start if it's appropriate for you, different ways to approach it, different schedules to try, and then finally, I will.
Erin Holt [00:01:41]:
Whoops. Listener, answer some listener questions that came in about fasting. I did put put a call out for questions a few months ago, and so a lot of them overlapped one another, which is always nice because that means lots of you guys have the same questions. So. So we can be sure to cover them. On the show last week, we really talked about what intermittent fasting is. So you might want to journey back to that episode if you haven't listened already. We spent a lot of time talking about metabolic dysfunction because it's an absolute health crisis.
Erin Holt [00:02:14]:
So I didn't want to just gloss over it. I didn't want to just mention it, kind of like drop the bomb and leave. I really wanted to pay it the time and respect that it deserved. So this quickly became a two part episode or two parter for the topic. In last week's show, we talked about ways to assess whether or not that metabolic dysfunction was a problem for you. We we did that both from a symptom perspective and also, um, I gave you lab based ways to analyze that, and we will get more into, uh, detail about all of that with the upcoming carb compatibility project. So that SAP that starts Monday, if you're listening to this on release day, it's going to be next Monday. So you can sign up right now.
Erin Holt [00:03:02]:
We have quite a few people going through prep week, myself included, and we dive in on Monday. So you can sign up right till right till the very end. You last minute larries, you and I will close down registration Monday evening sometime. It's so funny. I know I have a lot of healthcare practitioners and nutritionists and lots of different people who run their own businesses. And isn't it so funny how last minute people are with signups? You can launch something and market something for like months and you still get sign ups that very last day. And I'm the same way, like with my own purchasing behavior. I am super duper last minute, Larry.
Erin Holt [00:03:45]:
Always, always. Sometimes I wait till the day after. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just can't help myself. So weird. I like the extra stress maybe of being like, can I get in? Can I not? I don't know. So anyway, I feel you if you're one of those, but. So I'll leave it open, leave cart open right up until the very end.
Erin Holt [00:04:04]:
If you are doing the CCP this round, might I suggest looking into some digestive enzymes? So, sponsor of the show, Houston enzymes, my favorite digestive enzyme company, they are going to offer you 20% discount if you enter the coupon code Houston 20 at checkout at their website, houstonenzymes.com. And the reason I say it for my CCP folks is because if you're increasing fat and your body's not really used to increasing dietary fat, it can feel a little wonky on digestion. Not always, and not for everybody. But for some folks, this is especially true if you don't have a gallbladder, which is, you know, becoming more and more common. Their product, lipozyme, is a combination of three different lipase enzymes. So lipase helps your body break down fat, and it can just make digestion a little bit more gentle on the body. If you have that problem, I mean, even if you're not doing the CCP and you have trouble with fat, might I recommend this product? And then we also have sometimes have issues with sluggish bowels. If you drop carbohydrates, it's simply because you're pulling water out of the stool.
Erin Holt [00:05:20]:
Carbohydrates pull water in. And so if you're dropping your carbohydrates, sometimes people can for a temporary period of time as they move through the transition. They can feel like they're a little bit backed up. They're not moving their bowels. Biomove is a product that contains enzymes, probiotics, and prebiotics. So it can be really helpful for that. And again, even if you're not doing the CCP, if you're constipated, that's a wicked good product. So hop on it again.
Erin Holt [00:05:46]:
Houstonenzymes.com coupon code is Houston 220. You get 20% off your entire order. That does expire at the end of the month. Just a heads up. So get on it. All right. We ended last week's episode by talking about the ways to address high insulin, high blood sugar, insulin resistance. The big nine audit your carbohydrate intake.
Erin Holt [00:06:15]:
Right? You've got to figure out how much carbs is appropriate for you. And I can't tell you that. Nobody can tell you that, right? It always depends. Some folks see a massive improvement simply by avoiding the processed whites, like your sugars, your breads, your pastas, your cookies. Some folks have to reduce their carbohydrate intake more dramatically than that. That's really why I created the four week process of the carb compatibility project. So you can find your particular threshold, help you dial that in. You also have to cancel sugar.
Erin Holt [00:06:49]:
This one kind of aggravates people, or they'll be like, well, what about, what about natural sugars? You know, at the end of the day, when it comes to your blood sugar, sugar is sugar. When it comes to glucose and insulin, you always want your sugar wrapped up with some type of nutrient, with some type of fiber, with some, with some fat or some protein to slow down that. That blood sugar and subsequently an insulin spike. But sugar is sugar is sugar is sugar. So at least get out, you know, the candy and the sweets and the treats. Proper sleep is huge. We talked about that last week. You need to make sure you're getting adequate sleep.
Erin Holt [00:07:29]:
We talked about different styles of exercise that can be really helpful. Walking after meals is a really good pro tip because it reduces postprandial glucose and insulin, which is like your glucose response after you eat a meal. So even just a 1020 minutes walk, you don't have to go for, like, you know, a power hour. Just a gentle walk around the neighborhood is. It will suffice. We want to support our gut because the microbiome is essential for insulin signaling and blood sugar control. So we always want to get the gut gut health on lock, which is why I talk so much about the gut in my ccP. And then finally, we have the nutraceuticals, certain supplements that can be helpful to regulate blood sugar, magnesium, berberine, short chain fatty acids, chromium, cinnamon, B vitamins.
Erin Holt [00:08:16]:
We're going to dive into more of this in the CCP, but those are kind of like the big, big eight. And then we have intermittent fasting as kind of a maybe because chances are intermittent fasting won't fix your metabolic problems all on its own, like as a standalone intervention, but it can work alongside other dietary and lifestyle changes. Right. So, with that said, we will talk about intermittent fasting as a weight loss tool. I sort of gently alluded to a study in last week show that talked about how intermittent fasting can get you beneficial health effects even without weight loss. In this study, we saw that early, time restricted feeding improves insulin sensitivity, improves blood pressure, and improves oxidative stress, even without weight loss. This study was looking at men who had pre diabetes. Okay, now, these are three things that we talked about last week.
Erin Holt [00:09:23]:
Insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, and oxidative stress, and why they all kind of come together as something that's not so great. So, pretty cool if we can have this tool to drop those things. But it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to lose weight to get healthy. These biomarkers improved irrespective of weight loss. Okay, so we know that early, time restricted feeding can increase insulin sensitivity. That's a good thing. It improves beta cell function. The beta cells, remember, are the cells in the pancreas that make insulin.
Erin Holt [00:09:57]:
We want them healthy and functioning. It lowers blood pressure. It lowers oxidative stress. It can lower the desire to eat in the evening. If you're doing early intermittent fasting, which might facilitate weight loss, that's a hard might. And then again, intermittent fasting can improve health even in the absence of weight loss. So what I'm always trying to do is to get people to not convolute the two things, right? Weight loss doesn't necessitate health. Okay? And you can get healthy without losing weight.
Erin Holt [00:10:32]:
So let's try to piece that out in our own brains. But there is evidence that intermittent fasting can be an effective strategy for the treatment of overweight and obese people. This is a meta analysis of six different studies. So, meta analysis combines different studies. So it's kind of like, it's a really good one to look at. It included different styles of fasting. Because, remember, we talked about last week, there's no, like, one set way to intermittent fast. There's even the experts in, like, the researchers don't have, like, one set thing.
Erin Holt [00:11:10]:
They can even disagree about what intermittent fasting is. But the study, the studies included alternate day fasting. So you're fasting one day, eating another, fasting for two days, and up to four days per week. And the duration of studies range from three to twelve months. And I hope that when I'm talking about weight loss, using fasting as a tool for weight loss, I hope it's clear that I'm talking about significant weight loss, visceral adiposity. So that's the weight that we gather around our midsections and metabolic dysfunction. I'm not talking about the five to ten pounds that every woman in America has convinced herself that she needs to lose. There is a section on the dutch test.
Erin Holt [00:12:00]:
So the dutch test is a test that I run in your hormone revival that looks at hormones and stress hormones, and there's a section that asks what best describes you, and then it goes on to say, underweight at ideal weight, five to 20 pounds overweight, or over 20 pounds overweight. And what do you think most women choose? They choose the five to 20 pounds overweight. The entire nation of the US has convinced themselves that we have five to 20. Perpetually, no matter what your weight is, no matter if you've lost weight, if you've gained weight, you're like, I've got that five to 20 pounds just hanging around. Just hanging around all the time, right? You know what I'm talking about? You're like nodding your head along with me. And then the Dutch also asks, are you struggling to lose weight? Yes or no? And most women check off yes, they are struggling to lose weight, right? The perpetual hunt for weight loss, that's like the holy grail. If I can only get those five to 20 pounds off my frame, my life will be fixed. All will be well, right? It's the lie that we've been fed.
Erin Holt [00:13:07]:
We are all collectively running around thinking this, right? Why do you think it is? Why do you think that societal programming is thin equals good. Leanness equals worthiness? Weight loss is synonymous with health. Why do you think that is? Do you think it has something to do with a $67 billion weight loss industry? Booming. Booming industry. Do you think it has something to do with that? Sure does. Because if we all collectively change the way that we thought about our bodies and the way we thought about health and the way we thought about weight, the way we thought about weight loss, that industry wouldn't exist. You wouldn't have somebody sliding into your DM's all the time promising you they'll fix their life by giving you a shake. $130 shake.
Erin Holt [00:13:53]:
I'ma save you. Nope. I call B's on that. We have to reject these lies. We have to unpack our, you know, our fat phobia, our collective fatphobia. I do have some. If you're kind of like, yeah, I like what you're putting down. I like what you're saying.
Erin Holt [00:14:10]:
Rah, rah. I do have some accounts and people to follow. Happy shapes. Naomi, she's been on the show, episode 77. She talked to us about opting out of diet culture, and cultivating self trust. I have. Wellness lately is another great one. So these, you can find them on instagram as well.
Erin Holt [00:14:30]:
Or listen to the podcast episodes that they're on. Episode 79, when you're scared to stop dieting. That was a good one. And then Doctor Gillian Murphy. I love her. She was on episode 69. Morals, stigma, shame, and food. The power of intuitive eating.
Erin Holt [00:14:49]:
So check out their stuff. You know, either listen to the podcast or follow them on Instagram. They're putting out some good things. Linda Bacon. Doctor Linda Bacon is phenomenal with all of this. So some good resources for you. So I do want you to kind of question yourself. Like, is your interest in intermittent fasting? What brought you here? What brought you to this episode? If you're approaching this from only a weight loss perspective, you then have to ask yourself, do you actually have weight to lose? And if the answer is yes, have you been trying to lose weight for a long time? Or, quite frankly, if the answer is no, have you been trying to lose weight for a long time? If so, journey back to episode 65.
Erin Holt [00:15:35]:
It was a whole episode on weight loss where I really kind of broke it down to brass tacks for you. So those are all some things to think about as we. As we navigate this question of, should I try intermittent fasting, or should I not? The other thing I want to caution you against is, or at least put on your radar, is that restriction can lead to binge. Actually, that episode with wellness lately, episode 79, we got into this a little bit, but it almost always leads to bit to binging. And even if it's not caloric restriction, any type of mindset, restriction can lead to binge. So if you're. You know, if you're like, damn, I just want breakfast today, but I'm intermittent fasting, so I can't, because eating before XYZ time is really bad. So I'm gonna just.
Erin Holt [00:16:22]:
Even though I'm hungry, I'm not gonna eat right. Even though I really want to eat, I'm not gonna eat. That's a restrictive mindset. So that can kind of net out after a little while, you kind of like white knuckle it, and then all of a sudden you're led in the other direction where you're potentially overeating calories. And then what happens? That self flagellation comes in. I'm bad, I'm rotten. Something's wrong with me. I can't control myself.
Erin Holt [00:16:48]:
I don't have any willpower. It's me. It's a me thing. No, it's not. It's the restriction thing. You remove the restriction, the binging can oftentimes dissipate. So think about that, especially if you have a history with, with restriction and or binging. This, the intermittent fasting can be a real trigger for that really, really bad.
Erin Holt [00:17:10]:
And if you're using intermittent fasting as a way to slash calories, as a way to attempt weight loss, you're like, well, if I just take a meal out every day, I'm going to slash calories and lose weight, right? Remember that your metabolism will respond to that decrease in calories. It slows things down. That's what your metabolism does. It's kind of like a yo yo. It like, you know, bounces back. So if you're restricting calories, your metabolism slows. It's going to become much harder to sustain that weight loss over time. So keep all of that in mind.
Erin Holt [00:17:45]:
Again, if you're using this as a weight loss tool, there's a lot to think about before you approach this. Now, let's get into, like, some real contraindications where I go as far to say, like, do not intermittent fast. If you fall into one of these categories, and the very first one I'm going to start with is any type of history with any type of eating disorder. When we struggle with eating disorders, we essentially lose the ability to engage with food appropriately or to engage with our body's signals. And what happens is that rules can override what your body is telling you. Then, yes, no food rules or the time, you know, I don't eat until 11:00 a.m. Hard stop. There's no wiggle room.
Erin Holt [00:18:31]:
So even if your body's communicating to you, I need to eat, you're like, not till eleven. Not until that clock says 11:00 a.m. So rules, that's what I mean by rules, can override what your body is telling you. And you might not even know. You might be so used to this. This might be so much the norm for you that you're not even aware of this. It might not even be an intentional thing or a conscious thought. Your ability to hear your body's communication might just be offline from years of overriding it.
Erin Holt [00:18:59]:
So, for example, you might be experiencing deep fatigue or poor sleep or reduced capacity to recover from exercise, exercise or menstrual cycle irregularities. But you're so focused on the rules. I am intermittent fasting, that you either ignore these signals or you just don't see them as a problem. And I will say that intermittent fasting is kind of like the sweetheart right now. A lot of doctors are recommending it to people, and that might be great. For some people, it really might be. But if you have a history of eating disorders or restrictive eating patterns and your practitioner recommends intermittent fasting to you, that that's a problem to me. You got to speak up about that, because the risk for triggering old behaviors and old thought patterns far outweighs any of the health benefits you might reap from intermittent fasting.
Erin Holt [00:19:56]:
So I'm going to. I'm going to propose that you be your own advocate here. And if somebody recommends that to you, you say, not appropriate for me, doc, what else do you have? Postpartum, you really need to get in the nutrients that your body needs. And then the other thing is time restricted eating is kind of based on circadian rhythm, and chances are yours are hopelessly off in the postpartum period. I know mine were for two years. So it's just like, we're going to talk a little bit about stressors in a bit. And postpartum is a very stressful time emotionally, like psychologically, but physically as well. There's a great physical demand put on your body, so you don't want to then go in and layer on an additional stressor to the body.
Erin Holt [00:20:48]:
And fasting is a stressor to the body, so be really cautious against that. And especially if someone's coming at you being like you should intermittent fast to lose the baby weight them be fighting words in my book. Send them my way. Take care of them for you. Okay? That's when I say, pick on somebody your own size. Send them to me. The other thing is, if you're breastfeeding, you need fuel. You do not need to restrict your fuel at this time and want to really try to get people to wrap their heads around what I'm about to say.
Erin Holt [00:21:23]:
We have to earn the things that require a big energetic load from us, like breastfeeding, like intense exercise, like our over packed schedules, like our business hustle, all of these things. And how do we earn them? We earn them by putting in the energy, we putting in the fuel to do these things. So breastfeeding, huge demand on the body, right? We don't want to restrict fuel during that time. And I kind of see this play out clinically because I'll have clients with hormonal dysfunction. And maybe the reason that they have that hormonal dysfunction in the first place is because they've been restricting for so long that their body is trying to compensate in another way, and it becomes, okay, well, I have this hormonal imbalance, so should I fast or should I do keto or should I do XyZ diet in order to fix my hormones? And what I always say to people is, if your hormones are out of balance because of restriction, then restriction is not going to balance your hormones, right. We have to bring some degree of common sense into our food choices. The other place that I would say fasting can be contraindicated is if you have adrenal issues, whether that's adrenal fatigue, HPA axis issues. You know, I've talked about this a lot on the show.
Erin Holt [00:22:52]:
It's often tangled up with blood sugar issues. It can be pretty hard to regulate your blood sugar if you're adrenals are a mess. And kind of the reverse is that. The reverse of that is true. But especially if you have low blood sugar, hypoglycemia. Remember that cortisol, your stress response is a glucocorticoid. One of its jobs is to regulate blood sugar. So if you're skipping a meal in order to fast, your blood sugar might plummet.
Erin Holt [00:23:23]:
If you don't have good metabolic control and flexibility, your blood sugar drops, and then cortisol has to swoop in to raise blood sugar back up. So that's a stressful reaction in the body, and that's the last thing that we want to do if the body's already under significant amount of stress. So I usually, I wouldn't. I wouldn't recommend somebody struggling with adrenal issues to fast. In most cases, of course, there's always going to be exceptions to that rule. Um, you have to think about how much stress your body is under. Fasting increases stress hormones. It just.
Erin Holt [00:24:01]:
It just does. Um, it's a stressor to the body. So you have to assess how full is your stress bathtub? This concept was first introduced on the show in episode 63, strategies for managing burnout. And then again, I talked about it in relationship to weight loss. In episode 65, the weight loss episode, this is when intermittent fasting can backfire. If your stress bathtub is already full, it's locked and loaded, right? There's no more room and the faucet is gushing. You can't just dump in another stressor like fasting. This is when it backfires.
Erin Holt [00:24:43]:
This is when you do not get the results that you are after when you're under stress. Like I was saying, you can be in a hypoglycemic state, low blood sugar. You could also be in a hyperglycemic state, high blood sugar. You can bounce between the two. It can be an either or both situation. So I wouldn't recommend throwing intermittent fasting on this, on that. Ultimately, what you have to do first is stop the erratic eating. Right? Eat at the same time throughout the day, stop skipping meals, regulate your blood sugar.
Erin Holt [00:25:15]:
Basically all the principles we talk about in the carb compatibility project. And if your body is already under stress, we don't want diet to be a stressor. We know that the body does need some external stress in order to cultivate resiliency, like whether that's exercise or, you know, sauna or, you know, whatever it is. But. But we. We don't want that, that external stressor to come from the diet. If the body is already under stress, we don't want to further stress ourselves through food or dietary interventions. It's just going to blow back up in your face.
Erin Holt [00:25:51]:
It really will. It might feel good for a little bit, and then there's going to be this, like, this period where you're like, what's happening? And you can start to see negative side effects. Another. Another way to, or, excuse me, another situation where it would be contraindicated is if you're at an ideal body weight for your body or you're even at a low body weight, if you don't have much body fat on you or you have low leptin levels. So leptin is a hormone that's made by the fat cells, and it's also made in response to dietary fat. Needs some type of fat around, whether it's coming through the food or it's on the body. We know it as our satiety hormone. That's what most of us think of leptin as, because it inhibits hunger.
Erin Holt [00:26:37]:
But leptin can also influence things beyond just appetite and metabolism. It can influence the brain, the thyroid, menstrual cycles. If leptin runs too low, it can interfere with ovulation, because low leptin is telling the brain this body is not fed, right. There's not enough dietary fat and, or there's not enough body fat on the person. So it basically any, any signals of underfed to the body start to slow things down from a hormonal perspective, sex hormones, right? Ovulation, menstruation, thyroid hormones. And if you have low body weight or you have low leptin or you have both, fasting is going to even further lower those leptin levels because there's no dietary fat or there's no body fat to increase the level. So again, it's going to send those signals of underfed that goes directly to the hypothalamus and the brain. And the hypothalamus then goes on to communicate that message to the thyroid via the HPT, access to the adrenals via the HPA, access to the ovaries via the HPG axis, right.
Erin Holt [00:27:52]:
So it's like this downstream effect of like, alert the presses. This person is underfed. This person is under resourced. So remember in last week I was talking about a fat fast, doing a fat fast with some fat and some protein. It might be a better option for you. If you're absolutely adamant, hell bent on fasting. Doing that would be better than just a straight up fast with nothing. But I would recommend just kind of no fasting at all.
Erin Holt [00:28:25]:
And then we have thyroid issues for all of the reasons that I just talked about. I don't need to go into much more detail of the physiology of it. But again, you know, hypothalamus, if it's under, if it is hearing signals of underfed, that's going to talk to the thyroid. The thyroid's going to slow shit down. It's going to. It wants to conserve your energy because energy's not coming in. That's what it's thinking. Energy's not coming in.
Erin Holt [00:28:50]:
So we got to use all the energy we have. So I'm going to slow things down in order to make that happen. It's like the thermostat of the metabolism, your thyroid, this I mentioned last week, but I'm going to bring it up again because I think it's interesting. Wilson's temperature syndrome. A lot of people aren't into this. I'm kind of like dipping my toe in it a little bit to be like, how do I feel about this? What's the deal with this? But it's basically low t three, low active thyroid hormone. And what this doctor discovered or figured out for himself or what he's seen clinically play out is that it tends to be more common in patients whose ancestors have survived famine, like the Irish, the American Indian, Scottish, Welsh, Russian. What he's noticed is that there's almost this genetic predisposition to the body responding unfavorably to food scarcity.
Erin Holt [00:29:43]:
If your ancestors have survived famine, your body is going to go into conservation mode really quickly. Now, under conditions of severe stress, things like divorce, the death of a loved one, childbirth, the metabolism can slow down as a coping mechanism and then after the stress has passed, the metabolism is supposed to get back online, but sometimes it doesn't and the body gets locked in, gets stuck in conservation mode. And so you can have a lot of hypothyroid symptoms because of this. And I just thought that the link between ancestors surviving famine and the predisposition to this condition is pretty wild and pretty notable here. And then women of menstruating age, I kind of have a question mark next to this in my notes as like, maybe. Question mark? Like, I'm not totally sure, I don't want to say definitively. If you're a woman of menstruating age, you can't fast. But when it comes to intermittent fasting, women are usually more sensitive than men and we're not really sure of the exact reason.
Erin Holt [00:30:50]:
There's a theory that it's because women have more of a hormone called kispepsin or, excuse me, kiss pepin. Peptin. It's really hard to say kiss peptin, which creates greater sensitivity to fasting. So I will say, clinically, I've certainly seen the negative effects of fasting on hormone tests. I've for sure seen that. So my clinical experience certainly echoes this. It's just like what I've talked about here on the show a bazillion times. Perceived states of starvation impact hormones.
Erin Holt [00:31:29]:
It impacts your ovulation, which then impacts progesterone production, it impacts your menstruation, it impacts sleep, it impacts fertility. Right. So you can't fast and drop your daily caloric. Caloric intake too low. We know that caloric restriction creates stress in the body, it suppresses thyroid function, it suppresses thyroid conversion, it suppresses female sex hormones. So if you're gonna fast, you have to make sure that you're not also dropping your calories. You need to eat according to your caloric needs. You can't fast and dramatically under eat.
Erin Holt [00:32:11]:
That's going to send your female body into a tizzy and you might not see the effects of it right away, but you will eventually. I had a question, a listener question from Tiffany, who asked, how do you do intermittent fasting and still meet your caloric needs? You still hit your caloric needs, right? You just do them in a smaller timeframe. It's not like you're just skipping a meal. You're, you're making up for that in your allotted window of eating. You might still eat three meals just in a shorter period time, or you might eat two larger meals, but you're still getting your calories in. Fasting. Plus, caloric restriction in a menstruating female is really pretty, pretty gnarly. Some people might be able to do it, but I haven't seen evidence of that, that's for sure.
Erin Holt [00:33:02]:
All right, so where do we begin if you want to try it? Where should you even start? How do you dip your toe into the world? Let's say you've heard a lot of great things about intermittent fasting. You really want to try it. Where do you begin? The number one first thing that you need to do is manage your blood sugar first so you don't have wild blood sugar crashes and so you can prevent that adrenal involvement in your blood sugar. This is why a lot of people will start with a ketogenic diet or a lower carb diet, and then they'll try intermittent fasting from there. Karazian, who I've talked about a lot on the show before, or certainly referenced him on the show, he says that once in ketosis, intermittent fasting is much easier to do. He went on to say, this is from an actual lecture from him. Fasting with adrenal issues and blood sugar issues can be very difficult when you're using ketones for energy, fasting is non traumatic. And then those are his exact words.
Erin Holt [00:34:05]:
And so what I took from that is, huh, well, if you're not in ketosis and you're not using ketones, fasting is quite traumatic for the body, right? So it's not just me saying these things. There's a lot of well respected physicians and other, other people saying, saying similar stuff. Now, I have found that you don't have to go all the way keto in order to have success, but I would recommend you doing, you know, going through something like my four week carb compatibility process. So you can regulate your blood sugar first and then try intermittent fasting from there. I wouldn't just go, especially if you kind of ride the blood sugar roller coaster. Intermittent fasting can be pretty, pretty hard on you. So I would, I would stabilize yourself first. The program the CCP utilizes plenty of fat, protein and fiber to help stabilize your blood sugar the best.
Erin Holt [00:35:03]:
And while. And it also supports the microbiome, your gut microbiome, which is a key player in metabolic health. So you're kind of hitting it from a couple of different angles. So doing that program before attempting intermittent fasting can help to prevent that stress response. You also learn how to feed yourself appropriately, adequate calories, deep nutrients, all the things that I just mentioned and was just talking about. So there's, there's less of a chance that your body is going to go into freak out mode. Um, some different fasting schedules to try. There is kind of a specific schedule that I have women of menstruating age follow, so it's less likely to affect hormones.
Erin Holt [00:35:44]:
I use that clinically. But here are some different things that you can tinker around with. One is eating from eight to six. So 08:00 a.m. To 06:00 p.m. That's your eating window. And you don't eat outside of that. Twelve to six is another one.
Erin Holt [00:35:59]:
So you basically eat your first meal of the day at lunch. Do not love this one for menstruating females. Just gonna put it right out there. This is a hard one. You can eat normally five days of the week and then two days per week eat 700 calories. So that's kind of like that fasting mimicking diet a little bit. You can eat normally five days a week and then two non consecutive days. You can fast completely.
Erin Holt [00:36:24]:
These are all different approaches. I am not recommending any of them. To be crystal clear, I don't want you to walk away from this episode being like, Erin told me to not eat two days out of the week. Uh, no, I didn't. So listen to what I'm saying. These are just different schedules that people, um, that people do to get similar results of, uh, of intermittent fasting. Um, what I like is, uh, doctor will Cole talks about this. He refers to it as crescendo fasting.
Erin Holt [00:36:53]:
Um, you fast two non consecutive days a week, so, you know, not like a Tuesday or a Wednesday. Tuesday and a Wednesday. Days that are not touching each other. During the fasting days, you're only doing light exercise, so you're not going hard and heavy. You're certainly not going to do like a HIIT training on the days that you're fasting. And you fast between twelve to 16 hours. Now, this is kind of what I help women dial in, like, where they start. How do they know if they're, like, when to increase it? But I would start with 12 hours.
Erin Holt [00:37:28]:
See how you do. If you do okay, then maybe you can bump it up. But I really wouldn't go more than 6 hours. If you've done two weeks of this and you're like, okay, like, two weeks of two days non consecutive, and you feel okay, and I will talk about, like, things to look for, like signs that intermittent fasting isn't working for you, I'll talk about that at the end. Then maybe you can add an extra day, kind of work your way in that way. All right. And again, if you're. I just want to.
Erin Holt [00:38:06]:
I want to follow up just so I'm not sending mixed signals here. If you're a menstruating woman who fits the picture of what we talked about last week, the metabolic syndrome picture, I might be singing a different tune. Right? This is extremely individualized. Extremely, extremely, extremely individualized. All right, let's get into some listener questions our little health journey asked. First off, you're awesome. Thank, love your passion, and thank you for all the work you put into your content. Secondly, my husband thinks everyone should at least try intermittent fasting.
Erin Holt [00:38:42]:
He thinks it would solve a lot of health problems, and it seems to have. It seems to have for him personally, which is awesome. But I've been told in the past by medical professionals that I shouldn't fast on the pod. Can you go into specific detail or of what are good and bad candidates for intermittent fasting and what someone like me could do to get some of the benefits of time restricted eating while also listening to my body and eating when it is telling me to eat. Now, we've already unpacked a lot of her question, but I pulled this one and read it out loud because I love it, because it showcases an extremely common mindset, which is this diet or technique worked for me, and therefore it must work for everyone. I wanted to call that out, highlight that specifically. That's a fallacy, and it gets us into a lot of trouble. Now, I'm not overly worried when the average Joe is doing this and saying this for, you know, this woman's husband, for example, it sounds like he found something that worked really well for him.
Erin Holt [00:39:43]:
He's passionate about it, so he wants to share it with others. Right? It's coming from a good place. The trouble is, when people try to build a business around that, it just shows lack of experience, lack of understanding, lack of expertise. Which is why when nutrition practitioners or coaches start saying things like this, I tell people to run in the other direction. Just because something worked for one person does not mean you build a business on that one thing and assign it to all people. Give me a break. Anyone worth their weight will tell you that not all practices will apply to all people. So hopefully we've already cleared up why fasting is not appropriate for all people and for this listener in particular.
Erin Holt [00:40:31]:
I'm always going to be an advocate for listening to my body and eating what it's telling me to eat. Unless there's metabolic damage, unless there's insulin resistance, leptin resistance. You might have to retrain your body to understand hunger cues, but for the average person, you got to listen to your body. So to answer your question, how to get the benefits of time restricted eating without shutting down your body's messages? Get good quality sleep each night. Support your circadian rhythm through sleep hygiene. Exercise regular regularly. Try to eat at the same time every single day. If you can exercise at a similar time every day.
Erin Holt [00:41:09]:
Incorporate some high intensity interval training. Incorporate weight lifting, lift heavy weights. That's really supportive of insulin sensitivity. Keep your blood sugar regulated through diet. Those are the big heavy hitters. You know, so many people are focused on intermittent fasting to try to level up, but I gotta like, bring you back to baseline. Are you doing these things? If you're doing these things, if you have these things on lock, you probably don't need to intermittent fast. All right, you could try a twelve hour eating fasting window and see how you do with that, like I was just talking about.
Erin Holt [00:41:45]:
And if you do, great, great. And if you don't, no, no worries. Do do all the other stuff. Okay. Loa Anderson asked, people keep recommending intermittent fasting, even Omad, and it sounds way too challenging for me now. When I accidentally skip a meal, it feels like my whole body is stressed out. I don't know if my worry is legit. Can't wait for that episode.
Erin Holt [00:42:07]:
So first of all, Omad stands for one meal a day. I'm not going to talk about it on this show. Thank you. Next quote. I want to share this quote from a really good book called the body keeps the score. And her question sort of reminded me of this. Being a patient rather than a participant in one's healing process alienates people from their sense of self. Being a patient rather than a participant in one's healing process alienates people from their sense of self.
Erin Holt [00:42:44]:
If you're letting other people's recommendations override what your body is clearly conveying to you, then you're not being an active participant in your own healing process and you will continue to come back to this place time and time again, reaching outside of yourself for the answer, saying, here's what my body is telling me. I'm not going to listen. I'm going to ask somebody else what I should do with my body, right? You are alienating yourself from your sense of self. Don't be the patient. Be the active participant. You're telling me when I accidentally skip a meal, it feels like my whole body is stressed out? That's valid. Listen to that girl. This is a sign.
Erin Holt [00:43:28]:
I would say, if you can't skip a meal without your body freaking out, that's a sign of poor metabolic control, a massive sign of low blood sugar. If you can't skip a meal without adrenal involvement, without that stress, like feeling that stress in your body, you don't have a great handle on blood sugar. So I would really work on that. You can do it through the carb compatibility project or otherwise, but that's like a big thing to dial in and then quiet down the white noise. Nobody else needs to tell you what to do with your body. You've got to listen to your body first. Another question was, how do you transition from intermittent fasting to a more typical eating schedule? Now, this is another one. You can see why I pulled some of these questions, right? I'm going to kind of put this person on the spot and use them as an example.
Erin Holt [00:44:15]:
The obvious answer to how do I stop intermittent fasting? Is to eat earlier in the day, right? That's pretty basic. There's no magic formulaic process. But the way the question is formulated showcases three things. One, permission seeking with food. Two, lack of trust in our own bodies. And three, getting trapped in rigid food rules. If this person is asking how to stop fasting, then chances are something in their body is telling them that fasting isn't working for them. If it was working great, they wouldn't be wondering about how to stop, right? For the most part, for most people, transitioning from one eating schedule to the next is not going to completely derail your body.
Erin Holt [00:45:02]:
We have to put more faith in our bodies and trust them for the resilient specimens that they are. Our bodies have a very real capability to bounce back. Unfortunately, we've all been lied to, and we're all taught that we must permission seek for our food. So when I read this question, I heard something in my body is telling me the way I'm eating isn't working. Instead of heeding those messages, I'm going to seek the answers outside myself, right? Very similar to the previous question, getting trapped in rigid rules. If you're so rigidly clutching to intermittent fasting. This is what I do. This is how I eat, this is the way I live.
Erin Holt [00:45:42]:
That you're disengaging from your body's signals or you're scared to stop intermittent fasting, then that's a problem. I get a lot of questions asking, or I got a lot of questions asking, who is intermittent fasting? Not for, like, where. Where are the. Where? Like, who should not do this, right? And this is something I would be on the lookout for. This mentality, this mindset. This would be an unhealthy response to intermittent fasting, feeling like you can't or shouldn't stop even if you want to. Like, you can't get off the hamster wheel. And unfortunately, I think it's a.
Erin Holt [00:46:19]:
It's a pretty common response, which is the one reason I don't love intermittent fasting for many people. And. And why I hate. Hate when people make blanket statements about fasting. I think it's irresponsible at best, in criminal at worst. That might have been a little, you know, a little bit hyperbolic. But when I see women who are promoting fasting, like, as a part of, like, an MLM type thing, I lose my damn minds. I re mines both of them.
Erin Holt [00:46:52]:
I lose them both. They both. They both drop right out of my ear and roll away. I just. I feel like you're building a business and making money on the back of somebody else. Like, essentially breaking their metabolism and ruining their hormones. Like, that's what I meant by criminal. I get really ragey and cagey about that one.
Erin Holt [00:47:13]:
Many of us, especially those of us with a checkered or disordered past, we lose the ability to engage with our food and our body signals, including our body sign stress signals. So when things go pear shaped, like, let's say you're experiencing fatigue or anxiety in the morning without food, right? You're not eating and you're feeling really anxious and, like, not yourself. Or you're relying on coffee to mask your low energy, or you're relying on coffee to mask your hunger. You're not admitting to yourself that you're actually hungry because you're an intermittent faster. Instead of realizing this is working, we tend towards that self flagellation, blaming ourselves, seeing ourselves as the issue. And this is especially true if you're doing it in one of those groups or you're being led by a coach to do it. You see, it's working for them. It's working for everybody else.
Erin Holt [00:48:10]:
Why can't it work for me? What's wrong with me? I do have, if you want to hear more of me, talk more about this stuff. If this is helpful for you on Instagram, I do have a dieting highlighter. You know, the highlight section, if you go to you, if you go to the page, there's like the highlights at the top, the circles if you click on dieting. I have done many different iterations of this same type of dialogue and I think it can be helpful, especially for those of us who are trying to drag ourselves out of the diet mindset. It can be helpful to kind of bathe in these messages because it reminds us like, oh, we're not crazy. Like, oh, this is legitimate. Oh, okay, somebody's giving me permission to opt out of this nonsense. Okay, finally, before we close out some signs that it's not working, I just mentioned a few of them.
Erin Holt [00:48:57]:
But agitation, feeling kind of like aggro and on edge is a good sign that it's not working for you. If you're getting an uptick in anxiety or mood issues, headaches, fatigue. Like I said just a moment ago, relying on more coffee, either because you need the energy or you're like too afraid to eat. So you're leaning on coffee instead of an actual meal. If it's starting to affect your sleep negatively, if it's affecting your exercise tolerance, your ability to exercise has gone down. If you're experiencing any hair loss or if you've noticed any cycle changes, like you lose your cycle or your cycle lengths change, those are all kind of wake up signals from your body that what you're doing isn't working. So it's time to change. No big deal.
Erin Holt [00:49:43]:
We just gotta pivot, right? Pivot. Alright, you guys, thanks for tuning in. I always appreciate you being here. I got a little bit wild at some points, but this stuff kind of makes me mad. So the dragon came out on a couple of occasions. So remember, I changed my handle on Instagram. I'm now the functional spelled with a k, just like the podcast dot nutritionist. So follow me over there.
Erin Holt [00:50:12]:
I love to engage with all y'all. And yeah, that's it. Love you guys. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Functional Nutrition podcast. If you'd like to submit a question to the show, fill out the contact form@erinholthealth.com. If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review in iTunes. Take care of.
