Welcome the Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life.

I'm Jen Stevens, author of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast.

Repeat, and I'm Sherry Bullock, longtime intermittent faster and health and wellness advocate.

Please keep in mind that this podcast is for educational and motivational purposes only and is not intended to provide medical or diagnostic advice.

Jen and I are not doctors, so make sure to check with your trusted healthcare professionals before making changes, especially when it comes to any medical treatments or medications.

Whether you're new to intermittent fasting or an experienced intermittent faster, tune in each week to get inspired, to learn, and to have some fun along the way.

Hi, everybody, we are so glad you're here today.

Welcome to this week's episode of the Fast Feast Repeat Intermittent Fasting for Life Podcast.

How are you doing today, Sherry, I'm doing wonderful.

I'm so glad it is twenty to twenty six.

Can you believe it?

Nope, not in real life, in real life where we're still recording this in December.

But I'm wearing my Christmas sweater.

But I'm just gonna say, Gin is wearing this really kind of loud Christmas sweater.

Yeah.

Jen's not a loud person with her clothes, but this lot.

Usually wear bold colors with my florals and my whatever.

Yeah, but they're still not they're not loud.

That's just in your face Christmas sweaters.

True, it's true.

It's fun.

It is fun.

It's red with green trim and Christmas trees and I'm so happy.

I love Christmas anyway.

But now it's the new year, so that we have a lot of new people starting off, you know, the new year, ready to get started with intermittent fasting, and we're excited for everybody to get back to it or get started.

Yeah.

And if you're new to fasting because you decided you were waiting until the beginning of the year to start, welcome to now's the tast and that's gonna be the best choice you ever made.

It's true.

All right.

Well, we have a weekly celebration from Dana and this was sent in a couple of weeks ago from when we recorded, so she said, it's Dana celebrating a low sugar Halloween.

Today we had to say goodbye to our nineteen year old fur baby Brandy after work.

We've had her since she was two, so my amazingly generous boss told me to go to this incredible bakery and get whatever I wanted for my family for tonight.

The cakes are like fifty bucks, but she said get whatever you want, a cake, pastries, whatever, and said I could also get a yummy coffee drink and a Danish if I felt like breaking my fast early.

On the way there, I thought about how yummy amocho would taste alongside a killer croissant or fancy donut or Danish.

And I absolutely had every reason to open early today due to the emotional toll of saying goodbye to our fur baby, who's been with us longer than our son.

But as we got closer, I kept thinking how crappy I would feel if I broke my fast early with something so sugary.

So I decided to follow the glucose Goddess's advice and clothe my carbs in protein, meaning I would have a savory breakfast alongside the mocha.

But when I walked in, the smell of rich Bold coffee reminded me that I wouldn't even taste that if I filled my cup with chocolate syrup and whipped cream, I wouldn't taste the rich, bold coffee.

I would just taste the sugar.

So I opted for black coffee.

But then by the time I made that choice, I figured, what's the point of breaking early at all?

If I'm going to have black coffee.

I've had a million doughnuts, dainishes, and savory breakfasts, and even if I break with something healthy, like a more savory breakfast, I'm still not going to feel great.

Sure, I might not feel as badly if I ate the savory over the sugary option, but opening early still means I'm going to be tired.

It's already going to be a very hard day, So why would I compromise my fasted energy slash power slash mental fortitude so early in the day just to have to struggle later in the day when I need my power the most.

Eating seemed like the exact thing to do, and certainly justifiable considering the circumstances, But when I really thought about how it make me feel physically, I was able to resist pretty easily.

I walked out with one of the best cups of black coffee I've ever had and I had a bunch of yummy treats for tonight after we say goodbye, and I didn't open my window until my normal time about three pm after exercising.

It was a huge moment for me and a great success.

I was able to come home and be with my family for Brandy's goodbye and then have a super healthy dinner followed by some incredibly yummy handcrafted desserts.

Success.

I'm so sorry.

I know that has got to be so hard, saying goodbye to a family member that you've had for so long.

But I agree.

Fasting is your superpower, and you harnessed that power and you made it through a really tough day without leaning on sugary food and drink to get you through, and that is a fabulous win.

Yeah, we're so sorry to hear about Brandy.

I know how hard it is to lose a pet that we love so much.

They really are family.

But I love what you said there.

You know, emotional eating certainly seemed justified.

You're like, well, I'm having a really bad day.

It absolutely no one would have faulted you for making that choice to have something sweet like your boss had suggested, but you thought it through and you realized it might make you feel emotionally better in the actual moment that it was going in your mouth.

It soothes you, but then you would feel worse physically, and when we feel worse physically, we feel worse emotionally.

Then you're beating yourself up over I really shouldn't have had that.

Now I feel so bad, So you made a powerful choice to feel better later in the day.

I love what you said, why make a bad day worse?

Exactly?

And that is like, I like, yeah, that gave me goosebumps.

You know, when you're having a bad day, don't make it worse by choosing something that's going to make you feel physically bad.

And also, in addition to feeling physically bad, you'll then feel emotionally guilty.

Even if it was, you know, justified, I'm gonna be like, why did I have it?

I knew better so we never regret continuing to fast clean exactly.

I was gonna say, I almost feel like she definitely had this sort of mindset shift there, And when you said, you know, it was certainly justified, it made me just think, like, immediately a thought in my head, if you have to justify a behavior is it probably the best behavior?

Right?

You know what I mean?

I do if you have to be like, oh well it's okay today because of YadA, YadA, YadA, it's almost like you're reaching for a reason to deviate from your norm, right, And why would you deviate from your norm on a day that is already going to be so hard when your norm is what makes you feel good?

Right?

That was huge, I think, so to choose.

Very proud I am too, and everybody listening.

We all make choices.

Sometimes we might have chosen the opposite.

I've certainly had days where I chose the opposite.

But when we can make the choice, it's going to support us feeling better.

And it's rarely the sugar retreat.

That's just in a moment and it fades and then it's worse.

So now we have a question from a listener.

This question is from Nancy in fair Play, Colorado.

She said, first, my thanks and admiration to you both.

You're changing so many lives for the better, and we love you Nancy.

We know Nancy from the community.

She's awesome.

Nancy says, I have a smart BMI question.

I think this has been answered somewhere and I've searched, but I could not find it.

My natural height all through life was five to eight.

At almost sixty nine, I have osteoporosis and I have shrunk to five six.

My question is, when filling out the information for the smart BMI, do I use my natural height or do I use my post osteoporosis height.

Although I would love to someday be at the weight that goes with five six, I think that's probably not realistic.

All right, So this actually came up several months ago, and I gave you my gut feeling on it, but I actually looked this up this same and.

Our guts were opposite initially.

So they really searched into like is this the most accurate way to look at a person's BMI.

And of course we all now know that BMI itself, a real like standard BMI, is very flawed.

That's why we really advocate the use of the smart BMI.

However, what they found is that it would give falsely elevated health outcome predictions if you use your aged height.

So the best height to use, they say, is your before age forty height when calculating BMI, because that is going to give the most accurate prediction of weight slash health outcomes.

Yeah.

I love that you looked that up because my first gut instinct does use the height that you are because BMI is based on it's a ratio right of your height and your weight, your mass whatever.

So your long would change, which means your muscle mass in correlation with your long bones isn't going to change.

It's just your spine and discompression that makes you shorter a lot of times.

Posture as well, and so use your before the age of forty height.

Love it.

That's good information and I appreciate it all right.

So we have a question from Nicole in Utah.

She said, Hyjen and Sherry love the podcast.

Thanks for all you do.

I've posted the struggle in the community before, but I'm still having issues with it.

So I figured i would submit it here and maybe hear you talk about it.

I think that's smart.

Sometimes we can read something and it doesn't click, but if you hear it, it's very different.

She says, I have issues with consistency.

When I'm on my regular schedule and i'm home, I don't have any problem maintaining a four to five eating window.

My problem comes when I travel for work, if I get sick or there's any other disruption to my routine, travel isn't a special occasion for me.

I travel at least one time a month for several days or up to a week, and if I let myself indulge, then I have trouble getting back on my fasting window when I get back.

I would like to keep regular fasting when I travel, because I feel better when I do, But I have a hard time saying no to the temptation of lunches or snacks that are offered.

Also, with the unpredictable nature of my days and the stress of travel, it makes me want to eat food when it's offered.

I know that this is not helping me reach my goals, and I get derailed almost every time I travel.

Do you have any tips for staying on track that would be very helpful?

All right, so you already know the answer to this no call.

You already know you know the answer, And shar and I both want it for you, and you want it for yourself, But we can't want it for you more than you want it for yourself.

And you have to not only want it for yourself, but follow through right you know what you want to do and you're making choices to not do that.

So this is where discipline really comes in.

And you know, Nike said it their slogan, just do it even when you don't want to.

You don't want to, it's stressful, I get it.

You might be like, traveling is so stressful that I just need to eat because I'm so stressed out and it'll make me feel better, or food is offered it looks good.

My day is unpredictable, so I might as well just have it.

And you know what that is that justification.

With Yeah, there you go, you're justifying it.

It's unpredictable, I'm stressed out.

So what Sherry has said before recently, if you keep doing what you've always done, you're gonna keep getting what you've always gotten.

And this is one of those situations you don't want to do this anymore, and yet you get on the trip and you do it again.

So this is where you just have to have that firm talk with yourself, parent yourself so you can keep making the choices you've been made when traveling and choose to open earlier than you wanted to, eat more than you wanted to have longer windows than you wanted to.

Then you know you're going to struggle and you get home because you always do.

That's what's going to happen if you keep doing that.

Or you can say, I'm going to make a different choice this time.

I am going to find the window that's going to give me the most satisfying food for the day so that I feel good.

If you're traveling for work, then I'm assuming there's work involved that you're going to be doing at some point, So you want to be mentally sharp when you're working.

You want to be clear, you want to feel your best, and probably the food that you're being offered is not that amazing.

I have a hunch about that.

So dig into that discipline, look at what's being offered to you, and you can always use the delay tactic and save some for later.

Put a ziplock baggy in your purse.

If you're like, man, these are the best looking semon roles I've ever seen in my life, and I'm going to be so sad if I don't eat one.

Put it in the ziplock baggy in your purse and have that after a nutritious meal later that evening and you will be so proud that you delayed, and you won't have the slump, and you won't have the struggle, and you won't feel guilty about it.

So it's just a matter of choices.

Or you could say, you know what, I've had seminoles before, I don't need to have this one.

Yeah, then two.

I think it's really important that she identified stress of travel makes her want to eat, right, So you know this, So now it's time to brainstorm.

What can you do besides eat to distress because I guarantee you that eating does not reduce your stress.

Right.

It might make you feel better right that minute, but that little high you get from eating something, it's gone in ten minutes.

Okay, So now you've broke your fast.

You're probably low key beating yourself up because you're like, why why did I do that?

Why did I do that?

Again?

I was gonna wait.

You're going to feel so much better if you make the choice to delay and do something else to destress, whether it's take ten minutes to call home, call a friend, go outside and take a walk, do a little meditation, do the EFT tapping, do something else to lower your stress rather than eat and that's really like you're learning a new habit.

Okay, that's that whole leaning into discomfort a little bit, learning a new habit, creating a new outcome to get what you're looking for.

And you know also too, you might have heard me talk about making your windows non negotiable.

Successful intermittent fasters who do this for a lifetime.

Their window is sacred.

Their window length is a non negotiable.

Yes, they may make it longer for special occasions.

But travel, if it's something you're doing for work, if it's something you're doing every month, that's a special occasion.

Nope, So really lean into I am an intermittent faster.

My window is sacred, My window is non negotiable.

And the more you do it, the more normal it becomes to where you don't have to think about it.

It's just what you do.

And you don't want to have it early, You don't want to open, you don't want to do all that.

You really don't.

You do it and you realize you don't feel better.

So I think having something else to do is a great suggestion, a great tip.

Food is not the answer to the stress.

Basically, find another way to do stress.

So now it's time for our segment called What's Your Why.

Most of us begin intermittent fasting with weight loss in mind, which is a great reason to get started, but there is so much more to what intermittent fasting can do for us beyond weight loss.

I believe that when your why is deeper than weight loss alone, you're more likely to find long term success and if you intermittent fasting a lifestyle.

All right, So this week we have a wife from schnaz in Auckland, New Zealand.

I'm forty seven and last year was a turning point.

After facing a herniated disk and undergoing surgery for stage four and demetriosis, I realized how vital it is to prioritize my health.

My goal is to stay strong, lean, and maintain a healthy BMI to keep my body in its best shape.

With a family history of high blood pressure, cardiac issues and hypertension, and being borderline on cholesterol, I am committed to preventing these risks.

Naturally, I choose a lifestyle that supports my heart, my body, and my future so I can live medication free and full of energy.

This is my time to take control, make smart choices and thrives.

I love that.

I love that as well.

And those words, the words that she used at the end, take control, make smart choices, and thrive.

You know, if you feel like you don't have control, then you can figure out a way to take control and it's your smart choices, and then you will thrive.

Yep.

All right.

So we have a question from Rachel in Cincinnati, and I cannot hear Cincinnati without thinking of WKRP.

Oh yeah, WKRP in Cincinnati, right, was it something like that?

I'm a terrible singer.

So for those of you not in the States or who are too young, you're like, what that was a TV show in what the eighties?

I guess earlier seventies.

I mean I was young.

Yeah, I think it was the seventies.

Maybe I went over into the early eighties a little bit.

But it was a radio It was a radio station.

Lonnie Anderson was on it.

Uh huh right, yeahep.

All right.

Rachel says help after a lifetime of being obese with the amazing health and nutrition insight from Jenn's books and podcasts, for the first time in my life, I have officially crossed my weight finish line.

Yay.

But now I'm terrified.

I'm working to change my mindset from weight loss to maintenance and healing my body from the damage OBESD caused.

For the very first time, I have never been at a healthy BMI.

I've been in a continual mode of attempting to lose weight for the last thirty five years.

Even at times when I managed to make significant progress, every single time the weight came back on and then some, and I cannot shake this anxiety that this will be my experience yet again.

Despite all that I've learned and overcome, I would love to hear your advice on transitioning to a maintenance protocol and mindset.

I am absolutely thrilled that I have finally achieved my lifetime goal of a healthy BMI, but more importantly, finally learning how to work with my body to be at my best health.

All of my lab work has come back normal.

Even in my twenties, they were already showing results that were caused for concern.

I am no longer on any medications of any kind.

Just this weekend, I completed running my very first five k race, no stopping, no brakes.

I actually ran the entire race.

I have struggled with exercise induced asthma since I was a kid, and IF has completely healed it.

I have never been so proud of myself and I have so much hope for the future.

So to my question, I would love to learn more about successful strategies and expectations when changing your protocol early on in my IF journey.

Your detailed information about what to expect and how our bodies are learning to adapt to the changes with IF for absolutely critical to helping me learn to trust the process.

I'm hoping more detailed information about this transition will once again help reassure me that I can still trust the process and leave my yoyo pattern in the past where it belongs.

I began my weight loss journey in August twenty twenty three at three hundred and twenty five pounds.

I began losing weight with Manjarro, but after one hundred pounds lost, it stopped being effective.

My progress completely halted and the effort required to maintain the progress felt stressful and burdensome.

That is when I discovered intermittent fasting in Jen's books.

It changed everything.

Not only could I feel my body go of weight again, but the first time my body was healing once I started my IF lifestyle and it truly became my lifestyle.

I stopped the medication and continued to lose an additional eighty pounds and I currently weigh one hundred and forty five pounds.

I wish I would have known about IF before starting the medication.

IF is the intervention my body needed, and I love how easy IF feels in my life versus how stressful the eat less move more approach felt.

I am five foot six female, forty four years old, no sign of perimenopause yet.

I started IF seven months ago and I was pretty quickly comfortable moving into an ADF protocol.

I've been doing ADF for the last four months and that was the protocol that helped me meet my goal.

ADF still feels comfortable, but for maintenance and working on new goals and building muscle and running endurance, I'm thinking that changing to a one meal a day protocol would be better.

However, each time I've tried one meal a day, I experience weight gain.

I try it for two weeks, see my average weight go up five to eight pounds, panic, and go back to ADF.

Am I not giving my body enough time to adjust to one meal day.

Is this typical to have weight gain going from ADF to one meal day or an everyday eating window.

I was comfortable doing ADF with out a five hundred calorie meal on my down days, but I now wonder if going without that meal was over restricting making it difficult to change my protocol.

If I have been over restricting and I need to do some reverse dieting, how would I navigate that protocol without traveling back down the dangerous yo yo rebound road.

I would love your insight on a strong start on this whole new phase of my life.

I cannot thank you wonderful ladies enough for all your hard work and dedication.

You have answered the desperate prayer that I've been praying for for so long.

Please keep up the wonderful and life changing work.

Well, Rachel.

Congratulations on getting to your goal.

That's super exciting, and I know that you are proud of yourself and it feels so good to have gotten there for the first time in your adult life.

Really, that's just fantastic.

So proud of you for that.

Now.

I completely understand now that you see that that one hundred and forty five pounds and you love it.

You don't want to see that weight go up.

I wish I knew how you were structuring your upday when doing ADF.

That's the one question I still have because you asked if you had been over restricting.

So having a full down day with no five hundred calorie downday meal, that in itself is not the issue.

The issue is what are you doing on your upday.

So if you were having either the five hundred calorie day or the full fast and then accidentally overrestricting your upday, that's the bad plan.

We don't want to do that.

So if you were having three full meals on your upday, then you can be confident that you were not over restricting from the down day the down day were because the upday balances it out.

If all we heard it was down day, down day, down day, down day, down day or down day, not up, down day not up, that would be over restricting.

But if you're truly following the recommendation for the upday, and again that's really outlined in the second edition of Delayed on Deny, then you can be confident that that should not be overly restrictive.

So why is your weight going up when you switch to a daily eating window and think about it like the weight of the food.

For example, when you weigh after a full fast down day, not only are you losing some fat, but you're also going to be empty empty, and you're going to have a lot of fluid loss.

And when we eat, our body retains fluid to process that food.

So you've got your lower than average down day weight, and then you've got your upday weight.

And overall, you know you're going to have a weekly average that goes from you know those days, but if you're every single day with an eating window, you never have those lows that you would have after the down day.

This might be hard because you said you've tried this for two weeks, see your average weight go up?

Panic, go back to ADF.

I would like to challenge you to try a daily five hour window four to five either one something around there average gens four to five depending on the day, for a month.

See what your trend does.

Maybe it pops up five to eight pounds right away in the first two weeks like it has been doing, but then it stabilizes and you realize that your weight when you're doing the eating window every day is naturally five to eight pounds high er, not because you have a lot more fat, but just because you have more food in your body seven days a week, plus the water retention the fluid.

So you know, if you're truly like gaining five to eight pounds of fat in two weeks, I mean you wouldn't.

We don't gain five to eight pounds of f fat in two weeks, right, You might gain half a pound of fat or one pound of fat.

So a very quick gain of five to eight pounds is not going to be fat gain.

And the fact that you go right back to eightyf and it falls right back off is showing that it's not fat loss, not fat gain.

It's just it's the food, it's the fluid.

So give yourself at least a month, see what your trend does after the first couple of weeks, and then see how your clothes are fitting.

If your clothes still fit, great.

If you weigh one hundred and fifty two but your clothes fit the same exact way that they fit at one forty five, then it doesn't matter what the skill says, right, and it's your body composition, But really give yourself time to see.

And the other thing she mentions too is she's now like working on building muscles.

So keep in mind that when you are in turance, running and also working to actively build muscle, you know that is creating inflammation in your body that can cause your body to retain fluid.

And so as you're working to build muscle as well, if you were at maintenance right now and you didn't do a thing, but your goal is to add muscle, then you're going to add weights, right and you have to work your mind around that and be okay with that.

But what you are going to experience is a smaller, more tone body.

So this is where I really think you need to start taking progress photos.

You know, a sports bra and some leggings or shorts, something where you can actually see your body and see your muscle definition.

Start taking progress photos.

How often people always ask how often?

That's up to you.

I would think if you're looking at progress photos, eight to twelve weeks is going to give you a good difference.

But with that said, sometimes I can see a difference in people in a month.

It just depends on how quickly their body responds.

And the other thing I was going to say as well, is if you're going to panic and in two weeks you're gonna be like this isn't working, and you go back to ADF, treat it like you're fast.

Start don't weigh for a month, right, good path, and then start with a new baseline.

Yeah.

So, now if you think you've been over restricting, you've not been doing three full days over three full meals, me three full meals over eight to twelve hours on your upday, then I would almost recommend that you stick with ADF and do that right for a while, yeah, before switching to an eating window.

Good.

And then also when you say one meal a day, oh mad, you know, keep in mind we're not referring to one and done.

You know, you want to be eating, giving your body the message that you know nutrition is incoming for a good solid four to five hours each day, and using that whole window, spreading your food out across that length of that window rather than just you know, sitting down having one meal, one and done type of eating.

Right.

I think that's great.

All right.

Our next question is from Julia and Saskatchewan.

I am really frustrated and I hope you can help me.

During the first year of my intermittent fasting lifestyle.

I was listening to intermittent fasting stories.

In fact, stumbling onto that podcast is what got me interested in intermittent fasting as a weight loss and health management lifestyle.

But a year into fasting, I have only lost twenty pounds of the forty five pounds that I am needing to lose.

I hear so many mixed messages.

I was first drawn to intermittent fasting because of so many of the people that Jen interviewed who found that the weight just magically dropped off and for the first time in their life, they weren't counting macros or calories and were just eating whatever they wanted in their windows and they found success.

However, I haven't lost a pound in over three months.

And when I listened to this podcast and when people write in because they're stuck like me, one of the first things you ladies discuss is focusing on food quality and changing what they eat, eliminating foods.

I guess I'm curious why I would lead an intermittent fasting lifestyle if in the end I have to watch every single thing I put in my mouth and I can't eat the foods I love I'm loving the freedom of if, but I also strongly desire to lose these last twenty pounds, especially before menopause strikes.

I'm forty nine, I'll be fifty in February.

Before we get into this more, I want to just mention one really important thing about intermittent fasting stories.

Who writes in and says I want to be on intermittent fasting stories.

It's the people who have the most amazing success.

They're the most motivated.

So I love it when someone has a struggle story on intermittent fasting Stories and we've got them.

You know, there are a lot of people if you really listen to all five hundred and thirteen episodes that we have recorded wright as of this minute.

Of course, some of them aren't out yet, they're just recorded.

There are people who did not start untert and fasting, the weight magically fell off, and boom they happily ever after.

There are plenty of struggle stories.

So yes, they do skew very heavily into the super duper success.

But those are the people who write in.

The strugglers are less likely to write in.

We actually see the struggling come out in the community because those are the people who join the community.

If you're struggling, you're more likely to seek support.

And also the people who write into this podcast, they are looking for support because they're not having the easy success.

So I want you to listen to intermittent fasting stories for inspiration.

But you know how on every one of those little diet ads you see, it says results not typical.

Now, results with internet and fasting are typical.

That we feel better and that we want to keep doing it.

But the weight just falling off easily and quickly, that is not typical.

Those are the people who are writing and they're super excited.

So I was gonna say too, this is something interesting.

I've noticed there are people who literally are eating whatever they want.

And I've thought to myself, I noticed this back when we were in Facebook, Like, I don't know how you could eat like that and lose weight, Like my body wouldn't give it up right.

Well, something that I notice is one they're usually younger, younger, they're younger, Okay.

Then the other thing that happens is they may have been eating whatever they wanted, but they were also eating in it too short of an eating window, like one hour over writing satiety signals not eating nutrient dense foods, and then they may get to goal weight really effortlessly doing that, but it's not sustainable.

And what you find out is that they either drifted away and came back and then we learn what happened, or they start to have weight regain because they're having binge days and suddenly fasting is feels hard to them.

Yep.

So sometimes you don't know what's going on behind the scenes, or what's going on a year later and we see that.

We do see it, and that again that's people in the community that we work with more long term and also the people that are writing into this podcast.

So I just want you to keep that in mind.

You know, one thing that we have in common, even with people in the community is they want to keep doing it because it brings value to their life.

But you may need to make some changes and it all depends on your goals.

This is where you have to balance, right, You have to balance how much freedom with eating do I want?

How much flexibility can I have and still meet my goals?

And that's not going to be the same for everybody, all right, So I'm going to get back to this you're forty nine, You'll be fifty in February, and then you keep going.

I eat in a four to six hour window most days, except for special occasions or when I'm traveling or have family visit, and then I relax my windows to eight hours.

I am five five inches and I weigh between one hundred and sixty three to one hundred and sixty seven, depending on the week.

Lately, my goal weight is one forty five, which gives me a BMI of twenty four.

In my thirties, I was able to easily maintain my weight of one hundred and forty to one hundred and forty five.

I did boot camp workouts three times a week.

Now I just can't do those intense workouts as my joint's hurt and I frankly don't have the time or energy.

I have eight year old twins who are busy, and I work a full time job.

I would love to see my pre pregnancy weight before my baby's turn ten.

I usually open my window around two pm at work.

My evenings are often full of scalps or sports, school activities, et cetera.

We normally eat dinner once we get home, and I try to have my window closed between seven and eight, probably three evenings a week, we will stop for carry out, and once on the weekend we go out to eat as a family.

When I cook, I cook American favorites like burgers and tots, tacos, spaghetti or casse rolls or croc pot one pot dishes.

So yes, I do use things like canned soups and bottle dressings.

I eat cheese and dairy.

I feel like you're going to tell me that I should eat potato instead of tater tots, and then I should give up pasta and take out.

But realistically, I don't want to do that, and I never had to do that when I was younger, So I guess I just don't understand how all of these people on intermitt and fasting stories ate whatever they wanted and lost their weight, but I can't.

Is there something I can do besides worrying about every bite I take.

I'm too busy to track and plan every bite.

Okay, I have lots of thoughts.

Yeah, listen, I eat burgers, some tots sometimes.

Me too.

I love tater tots.

It's sometimes sometimes, Yeah, it's not.

A weekly event.

I eat tacos me too.

I eat spaghetti, but I am patting my meals with lots of cyper rather than eating tacos.

I mean, listen, I can eat a whole bunch of tacos, I can pound tacos, okay.

But if I make a taco salad instead that's more voluminous and it's full of mixed screens or blend of mixed greens and romain or whatever, I can eat a lot more taco salad and get more fiber, more nutrition, you know, than eating a bunch of tacos.

So it's just about kind of like making some swaps and just altering a few little things that can make a difference.

You know, Am I going to make cast roles that are full of bottled dressings or canned soups.

No, I'm probably not.

Those can get really really high fat depending on the meat you have on them and whatever else you have with them.

I'm going to look for more things like easy sheet hand dinners that have veggies and potatoes and a meat.

Something like that can really make a difference.

Sheet pand dinners you can prep in advance, just like you would throw things in a crock pot, have them ready to go, so when you get home, you throw them in the oven.

They take I don't know, anywhere from eighteen to thirty minutes, depending on what you're cooking.

There's some great websites out there that do lots of sheet pand so you can still eat delicious food that you love while making some healthy swaps.

Adding fiber is a great way to you know, adding more veggies to your dishes is a great way to pad your dishes to where you eat less of the less nutrient dense foods and more of the more nutrient dense foods.

I like to use the leanest meat I can find when I make spaghetti.

I like to really look at my spaghetti sauce what's in it?

And I try to find the least processed spaghetti sauce there is out there.

You know, so just by being aware, starting to kind of read your food labels, looking to see where you can include fiber, maybe rather than tater tots, you could make your own oven roasted potatoes very easy to do.

So there are lots of things you can do to not feel deprived or feel like you're dieting, but still eat really well.

And you know, is there room for carry out three times a week?

And eating out at a restaurant.

Maybe not.

You might have to make a few changes there, but with some planning and some prep in advance, you can do that really easily.

And you know, maybe you've never tried meal kits, maybe give that a try.

So if you listened to last week's episode, I think it was we talked about why our nutrition changes as we get older.

And you're not thirty anymore.

I hate to tell you.

And you said you want to make some changes and lose this weight before menopause strikes.

But I think number one, you're probably in perimenopause of forty nine.

Absolutely, so your hormones are already fluctuating and that can absolutely affect your weight and your satiety.

Estrogen is the society hormone.

Did you know that?

You know?

No, did you know that estrogen helps promote society?

I don't think I really did know that.

Actually I just learned that last week.

Awesome.

So anyway, so you probably are already having some issues there, whether they are presenting and you're recognized them.

Yeah, menopause is a lot more than just a hot flash, right, Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I've heard like ten years.

Yeah, there's like a ten year span there.

But anyway, all that to say, if you can start to adopt some different eating habits now, you know, it doesn't matter if you lose all the weight right now if five years from now you don't have the pieces in place to sustain it and to sustain satiety, you know, and good health.

So I wouldn't think of it as all or none.

Just think of it as what can I alter to make my meals healthier, more nutrient dense, and give me better satisfaction while eating less of the foods that do not contribute to my good nutrition and my weight loss goals.

Yep.

So I just went on to Amazon real quick, and I just searched.

I put in the words healthy croc Pot Cookbook, right, so a bunch of things come up.

Now, I don't know how good these all are.

There's one skinny Taste sheep cooks for a family tastes.

Those are great, great recipes, and I totally understand.

You know, I have never once said you can eat as much of whatever you want or whatever you want and still meet all of your weight loss goals.

And whether you're looking at delayed, don't deny or fast feast repeat.

I have a whole section Fast East repeat where I talk about, you know, eating whatever you want, what that really means and weight loss goals.

So but I understand we want to eat what we want to eat.

I get it.

I didn't want to change what I was eating.

I don't do well feeling restricted personally, so I have to find a way to eat foods that are delicious so that I don't feel restricted.

But you still have to keep in mind that some things are going to help with weight loss and some will not.

So now is where you get to decide.

I looked at your smart BMI.

You are just right at the top end of the healthy weight range.

So I can understand why you would like to come down a little bit.

I would too, I get it.

But you know that what you're doing right now is going to keep you where you are, so you could you have to balance it.

Do I want to have this freedom that I'm giving myself right now to have take out three nights a week plus eat out on the weekend.

That's four out of seven that you're bringing home outside food or eating in a restaurant.

Or is it more important to you to get down a little bit in your weight and you're going to need to make some different choices, and you don't want to feel restricted.

I never want to feel restricted.

So go look at some of those you know, healthy crock pots cookbooks.

You can probably find it online too.

Find some choices online and just that'll give you something that's quick when you get home, and you're not going to have to drive through.

And think about how much money that's going to save your family.

And you know, maybe your kids are like, but I like to eat out well, but that doesn't mean it's what's best for them.

Eat her right, So think about how powerful it will be to teach your kids about eating a good home cooked meal that's been in the crock pot all day.

Why are we not driving through?

Let's talk about why why are we making a change, because it's not just about your wait, it's about help down the road as we get older.

In eating a lot of fast food meals or takeout meals and restaurant meals, those are not the best for our health, even though they may be really palatable and we enjoyed them.

So you have found that what you're doing right now is not a weight loss approach for you anymore, and you're going to need to change something.

You can shorten that window up a little bit.

Maybe don't open it too If you have a hard time closing by seven, maybe shrink it down a little bit, but a little better preparation.

Maybe you only go out to eat once on the weekend and the rest of the week you're doing something at home.

But kids can understand this.

Don't talk about it with weight loss, talk about it with budget.

And it's so expensive to go out.

Look how much this costs versus this crock pot meal that I can make at home.

And talk about healthy, eating healthy and nourishing your body well.

And try to make it fun.

Let the kids help you pick out these crock pot meals or these sheep pan dinner or whatever it is that you're going to have instead.

Convenient doesn't have to mean carry out, So just shift that thinking and don't have a like a deprivation mindset, right, make it fun.

Make it fun, That's what I was gonna say.

What fun eating?

And your kids are eight years old, it's a great time to get them busy in the kitchen with you.

Yes, they can scrub potatoes and they can peel carrots and potatoes and get them in there helping you.

I love chikiet pan dinners because they're easy, and they also make great leftovers for me to take to work on the weekends.

And so there's a couple of websites I used to get them from, So I went ahead and drop those in show notes for you and take a look and see what you can create at home.

And guess what you're going to save money?

Yeah, so now you can afford grocery delivery and take that off your plates.

Yep, you know, there you go.

So, yeah, it doesn't have to be, you know, a restrictive diet, and we can have fun modified the way we eat and eating for.

Health and for you know, for somebody who can you know, quote eat whatever you want and still lose weight.

You know, that's awesome, but a lot of us can't.

Well there's something I want to say too.

We Yeah, maybe you can eat whatever.

You want and get to a healthy weight, but is it going to provide great health and longevity right long term?

So there are a lot of people, and I see this every night in the er, who are tiny little women and they eat whatever they want and they have blood sugars through the roof, and they're not metabolically healthy, right, And they don't have stamina, and they don't you know, they're not active, and they feel awful and they have high blood pressure.

So try to take it out of just weight loss and try to widen your scope to health and longevity.

Yeah, and again, I just I know that it's frustrating if you feel like you're the only person making changes.

But really this segues into what I eat like a grown up program that I'm going to talk about in a minute.

Think about how much you're going to teach your kids about healthy eating by making some changes now.

And we want them to grow up knowing how to cook, knowing how to have nutritious foods.

And if the only thing that your kids will eat is takeout or kids meals they're eight years old, it's time to make those changes.

I would go back and do a whole lot of things differently now that I know what I know versus how I approached when the kids were young.

Thank goodness, now they're healthy eaters.

They've grown up and they're healthy eaters.

But it's never too early to start your kids with healthy eating.

So before we get to our tweak of the week, I want to talk about the new Fast Feast Repeat app and the website.

So, if you are struggling with food confusion or diet brain, or you're stuck with takeout all the time and you can't think about what to eat, you don't know what to do, You're struggling with your eating window, if you know that you need to make changes but you don't know, we're to begin.

I am really excited to announce my new Eat Like a grown Up program.

It is a fifty two week learning journey that helps you finally build a peaceful, confident relationship with food without dieting, guilt, or overwhelm.

It's only available in the new Fast Feast Repeat app.

So if you would like to join me in the app for the grown Up Year fifty two weeks to listen, play and nourish, you can go to app dot Fastfeastrepeat dot com to join, or you can download the Fast Feast Repeat app through the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

So what isn't?

Each week, you'll watch a short video lesson and you'll download a simple practical mission designed to help you listen to your body, play with your food in a joyful way, and nourish yourself with calm intention.

You'll learn how to move past emotional eating, understand your hunger cues, make meals deeply satisfying, and fall back in love with real food, all while connecting with a community that's growing right alongside you in the app.

So if you're ready for transformation that unfolds gently but meaningfully over time, this is where it begins again.

That's app dot Fast Feast Repeat dot com to join us, or you can find the fast Feast Repeat app and the app store that works with your phone.

And along with the eat like a grown up fifty two week program, you're going to find an ever growing library of intermittent fasting resources.

I'm going to be adding a twenty eight day fast Start day by day section in there.

It's not there yet, but join us.

And there's also a link in show notes.

And it's never too late to change how we're eating.

Food really is medicine.

In our modern world, we've gotten away from that, and you can figure out how to bring real food back in without feeling deprived.

I never want to feel deprived EveryWare never.

So now it's time for our tweak of the week.

You know I always say tweak it till it's easy, but the tweak that works for me might not be the one that works for you.

That's why it is very helpful to hear how other intermittent fasters are making intermittent fasting work for them.

Amy says, I recommitted in early October to putting a stop to window creep and being more consistent.

I've fallen into a pretty natural uppish downish approach, which is one meal a day on one day and two meals the next.

Thanks to watching my averages on Happy Scale, I'm down an average of two pounds a month for both October and November, and again, that is a great rate of loss, one half to one pound per week.

This is super exciting because I have been at a plateau for at least a year.

I know that I wasn't quite at my goal body, so I knew I needed to make some tweaks.

I loved the idea of ADF, but like many people, the upday messed with my head.

It put me in diet brain where I struggled to open my window when I didn't feel hungry and then attempt to eat three meals.

It put me back in a cycle of feeling like I was binging when I opened my window.

Having one meal followed by two meals is currently work, and I like how it feels.

I will continue on until I feel like my body has settled into maintenance.

And I love that.

I love that too.

And you know, we always say one meal a day is not one and done, with the exception of down Ish, that is a one and done.

You're not counting five hundred calories.

You're just gonna sit down.

You're gonna eat a really full, delicious meal and then close your window and start fasting again.

But that's the only time that we're like, yeah, one and done, short, Yeah, short.

You know I wanted to share something too.

I haven't even told you this jin a couple of weeks ago, we discussed eating disorders and fasting to you remember that conversation I do.

One of my coaching clients is actually a therapist, okay, and this is something that she has worked with her clients on.

And so when we met last week, she immediately launched I guess it came out last week.

So the first week of December out this episode, and she wanted to let us know we did a great job of handling it so good and She absolutely advocated to you know, if you are a person who has history of eating disorder with especially like restriction anorexia, that she does feel like you should have a therapist that you are working with when you adopt the protocol.

There is research that shows that internant and fasting could be more really more beneficial for people who have binge eating this.

Yeah, so anyways, she really made me feel good for a therapist to say that, you know, we were on track with our you know, advice on that and that she does see that there's a strong place for it for the right people.

That was episode one twenty seven.

I just looked back in my notebook that I write things in.

So when you said when this person had said that they like this because the update made them feel like they were binging us cycle of feeling like she was beinging, that's what kind of made me think about So anyway, all right, Well, we love to leave you with inspirational or motivational quotes or messages from listeners, and this week we have a quote from Janet in College Station, Texas.

I was watering my plant when I noticed a new shoot emerging from the soil.

All that time I've been watering it, making sure it had enough sunlight, and keeping it pruned.

That new part of the plant had been growing without my knowledge.

It made me think about our IF journey.

Sometimes we live our eye of lifestyle and we don't see the changes we want immediately.

What we don't see is what is happening without our knowledge.

Keep doing what you're doing, and one day, when your body is ready, you will see a significant change too.

Love it.

Thanks so much for listening today.

We would love to have you join us in the Delayed on Tonight community, where you can interact with both me and Sherry, plus the most supportive bunch of intermittent fasters you'll find anywhere.

Go to Stevens dot com slash community to join us.

Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast to your favorite podcast app, and if you haven't already, please leave us a five star review that helps new listeners find the show, and we really appreciate it.

We are a community driven podcast, so to submit your success stories, your questions, your favorite tweak it till It's Easy moments, or anything else you want us to share on the podcast, go to Fast Feast Repeat dot com, slash submit and then listen each week to see if we share your submission or answer your question.

Until next week.

Thanks for listening.

This podcast was edited by Resonate Recordings.