Welcome to 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 great.

The sun is shining, so you know that always makes for a better day.

It does.

It's nice and sunny here too.

I can tell, Yeah, I can tell.

The whole country I think is in this weird early cold spell right now.

Well, it is November eleventh today, and yeah.

Photo of something like, like, we just left San Francisco.

So if my voice is hoarse, it's because I've been talking and laughing for five days straight with the boys.

We had a great trip to San Francisco.

Me and Will went to see Cal and Kate.

We went everywhere.

We walked twenty three miles, by the way that I know of in three days.

Yes, wow, and more than that, that's just what Every time I had count the end of the day, I'm like, all right, how much should we walk?

On his watch?

The total of twenty three recorded miles on Apple Watch.

But Cal sent me a picture of this morning and like, San Francisco is one of the warmest places in the country right now.

Yeah, and what was the temperature?

Sixty?

Okay, wow, I know, wow, Yeah, it's cold.

It all of a sudden hit like apparently we were not here.

We flew home yesterday.

I had to get up at two forty five am get to the airport.

But I'm an early morning flight girl, much more than the red Eye.

I will never red Eye again.

But we had a long day of traveling, and when we left San Francisco it had been like seventy seven the day before, and then we get home and it's freezing.

It is a long day.

Yeah, so that would be weird to go from a couple of days of really warm weather time.

Yeah.

San Francisco had unseasonably warm, was like seventy seven degrees.

One of the dates we were there.

I messaged in last night because I'd seen something about snow flurries and Myrtle Beach.

I'm like, as a snowy marriage.

She said no, and I was like, Okay, maybe I'm confused, and then she messaged.

Me this morning.

Oh no, there were flurries.

There were beach last night, earliest recorded flurries I think ever, the weather man said for Myrtle Beach.

I hate that I missed it, but I did.

I was sleeping.

Oh well, all right, well let's celebrate.

Vanessa from Indiana, she wrote, Hi, Jen and Sherry, I'm a huge fan of the podcast.

I have been thinking about sharing my experience because so many of your listeners have helped me by sharing their stories.

I had a hysterectomy at the end of twenty twenty two and struggled terribly with hormonal issues.

I was afraid of HRT and none of the doctors I talked to about it had any good advice, which is a whole other topic on its own.

After they has directed me, I suffered with severe anxiety and deep depression.

I eventually realized that my issues were hormonal.

I found a good functional medicine doctor who got me started on HRT, but even so I was still struggling.

After a lot of research, I came across intermittent fasting at the end of twenty twenty three January of twenty twenty four, I decided to give it a try, and I was surprised to see I was losing weight and feeling a little better.

Unfortunately, the book I read was not one of Jin's and the clean fast was not a thing.

I was drinking coffee with heavy cream and sugar free flavors every morning all morning.

I lost about fifteen pounds over the first half of the year, but the weight loss stopped and I was still struggling mentally.

I gave up on fasting and just focused on exercise and eating clean, but nothing was working.

I still had quite a bit of weight to lose, especially around my belly.

At the very end of December of twenty twenty four, I came across fast fee Threep and it has changed my life.

The clean fast is a game changer.

I started clean fasting January first, twenty twenty five, and I have averaged a five hour eating window every day since.

After my twenty eight day fastart, I was shocked to see that I was down ten pounds.

I continued to lose about five pounds a month for the next two months.

Then I had a plateau.

I listened to everyone else's tweaks and I tried a lot of things, but the Way eight refused to budge.

Although I had days where I was discouraged, I trusted the process.

I knew if was a lifestyle that I would follow forever.

I feel so good mentally and physically that if I never lose another pound, it's worth it.

I stayed encouraged while the scale was stubbornly holding tight to the same weight range over and over, because I could feel my body changing.

Even months into the process, I was still getting smaller.

I am large chested, and even when I was thin, I would jokingly say that my boobs won't ever let me be less than a size large shirt.

One day, I noticed that my bra was too big.

I thought it was just stretched out, so I switched to a newer bra, which was also too big.

A few weeks later, I noticed my large shirts seem too big.

But that's strange because I've never worn anything smaller than a large shirt.

All of a sudden, I was buying medium shirts that fit so well.

And now, finally ten and a half months in, I am losing weight again.

Over the last three weeks, I have lost a half to one pound per week.

So the real message I'll want to communicate is trust the process.

It works, even if it takes longer than you may like, it really does work.

And the non scale benefits are too many to list.

I couldn't imagine my life any other way.

My mental health has improved tremendously without any of the medications that doctors kept trying to push on me.

Thank you for all you do.

Keep telling the world about if.

And we will.

We are never going to stop.

Absolutely well.

Congratulations Vanessa.

That is awesome.

And when I was writing Fast Feast Repeat, we did a survey about plateaus and I talked about this in the book, and the number one plateau buster the number one answer was time give us some time and see what happens, because our body is just kind of regrouped for a bit and have time happen a lot.

If it keeps going on and on in months and months and now it's been a year, then it's time to try something different.

Twe get try a different strategy, but time is a great one to stick with first.

Yep, I agree.

So now we have a question from a listener.

This question is from Chris in Minnesota.

Does an Americano break a fast?

I do not add any sweetener or flavor to this at all.

The answer is no, because an Americano is just espresso and water, So you are completely fine to have an Americano.

So now I'm so curious, Sherry.

So it's just basically they make strong coffee and then add water to it.

Yeah, it's usually like a small Americano is usually like two shots of espresso and it's topped with hot water.

But now I'm so curious as to why why don't you just drink brood coffee?

Well, espresso has a complete different flavor profile.

I think that doesn't brood coffee.

I think it does.

Is it the way that it's brood that gives it a different flavor.

It's like created with pressure.

Okay, the pressure does something with it.

My sister used to own a hotty shops.

I'm like thinking of her making shots of a.

Okay, so the pressure it's a different it's different than just the drill.

Yes, side just espresso uses high pressure hot water to force a small amount of hot water through finely ground coffee beans in a short time, while coffee is grewed with less pressure, usually using gravity and a long extraction time okay, using coarser grounds.

So the high pressure results in a small, concentrated and intensely flavored shot topped with a layer of crema, whereas breed coffees are less concentrated with a milder flavor profile.

Okay, it's a stronger flavor profile.

I I've always wondered why do you need to make a small amount and add water when you could just make the large amount.

But now I'm going to have to experiment and see what I need to do.

See, I know that it would have a different flavor if it was different coffee.

But like if I went somewhere and had like the same exact coffee beans made as an Americano and as a cup of coffee.

That's the questioner in me.

I can't help, but wonder would it be different?

Probably because I think it's gonna taste different because too, like espresso is less acidic than brood coffee.

Okay, because of the time that, like the water comes in contact with the coffee grounds.

I still think it would taste different.

Well, now I'm gonna try because I never order Americano.

I always just get regular coffee.

But I should start ordering Americanos and see what I think.

I love a good Americano.

Yeah, I've never ordered one because again, my brain's like, what's the difference.

I don't know.

I mean, I knew that it was made from espresso, and I knew espresso is more concentrated, but I didn't think about the pressure so and the acidity.

All right, Well, do you know how like cold brew tastes different than hot coffee.

Like if you took hot coffee and you cooled it and then you put it over ice, that's gonna taste different than.

Cold brew over it rice.

Yeah, So it's.

Kind of like the brewing style makes a huge difference the flavor and the depth of flavor and the acidity of the coffee.

All right, Well, now I'll have something to try.

There's your coffee lesson today with sir.

All right, so we have a question from kg and Maryland.

Hi, Jen and Sherry, thank you so much for your books, podcast and advice.

Finding this podcast and your books have been life changing for me.

I have a question about a very stubborn plateau.

I have been fasting for over a year now, straying from sixteen to eight to slowly building up to ADF and lost close to fifteen pounds.

Then I faced a plateau while on ADF for a couple of months.

I cleaned fast and I found it very easy to complete the fasting, but the plateau my weight not changing, discouraged me a lot and derailed my efforts, causing me to gain back seven to ten pounds.

I've tried shaking things up by doing a week or two of refeeding and switching to OMAD.

I have been on one mail a day with an eating window of one to two hours for four weeks now and I've not seen the scale budge.

It's more like a maintenance protocol to me.

Currently, I would appreciate some guidance on how to break this plateau.

Should I change the fasting method by increasing the eating window As I am well adjusted to ADF, I feel like any other method is just not effective for me.

I am a forty one year old woman.

I'm currently one hundred and sixty pounds at five foot three, and I would like to lose another fifteen plus pounds.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

All right, So this is a little bit tricky because I think that I wish I knew what your weight history was a little bit more, and what your set point has been like throughout your adult life.

Like for example, based on set point theory, our bodies have a certain weight range where they really like to be.

And I am very fortunate that apparently my after intermittent fasting weight set point is a weight that I love being.

But if it hadn't been, Let's imagine my weight was twenty pounds higher than it is right now, and what I did led me to stay at that weight.

I mean I wouldn't be as happy with that obviously, So it could be related to your body's natural set point.

And you know, if you think back to your size, and I always like to say, just as a rule of thumb, this is not any kind of hard science, right, But if you think about the size you were after you went through puberty and you matured, and I like to say, like you know, senior in high school or early in college, that sort of an age.

But again this is not like a scientific thing.

It's just based on that's what our adult body did at that time.

So I think back to that young adult period for you, and if you were right around one sixty at that time as well, that might be where your body just likes to hang out.

Now if not, if you are significantly smaller and you were able to maintain there, then it's more likely you could possibly get back there.

One thing I would do if I were you is I would get your fasting insulin measured just to see so you know, I don't know anything about your diet history.

You might have a really high fasting insulin and so you're going to need to work to get that down.

Whereas ADF, even though it hasn't caused you to get off the plateau, it may be healing some insulin resistance in the background.

Also, this is where food choices may be a big factor.

You haven't mentioned you know how you're eating.

You know, if you're already eating really healthy, high quality foods, then that isn't going to be the problem.

But if you have room to improve on your food choices, then I would focus on that.

But if you're on a plateau and you're not at a weight that is your body's natural set point, then I do think ADF plus thinking about your food choices and also get that fasting insulin you want it to be.

You know, optimal is between two point five and five.

So if you got your fasting insulin back and of like fifteen, for example, then you would know that there's still work you can do to bring that down, and AD is really the best way to do it, plus food choices.

Yeah, and my other thought too is like she doesn't really discuss how she was structuring her updays when she was writing ADF right, and so that can make a big difference.

For instance, if you were keeping your updays to short, not eating fully enough, not getting your three meals spread out in like a ten to twelve hour day of eating, and then you switched from like that to this very short one to two hour window, your body could just really be like, she's not really providing us enough nutrition, so we're gonna downregulate our metabolism to match what she's giving us.

And you know, while the clean fast does protect you to a degree, if you continually under eat, at some point your body is going to say, WHOA, we're not going to release any weight right now because it feels like it's in a constant deficit.

Really, if you're going to switch back to ADF, really make sure you're having those full up days and if you're having a daily eating window.

I really wouldn't lock into those really short eating windows like that, because, as I said, you're going to be more prone to adapt that way.

That was a very good point, and you're right if she had not been having full up days, then that would explain it completely.

And the other thing I want to say too, is when you're switching your protocol to ADF, sometimes it takes a while to like work out how to do your updays and how to structure them and how much to eat and spa food spacing and all of that, and that can be a kind of a learning curve.

So I don't it's not I think some people think I'm gonna do ADF and the weight's gonna start falling off, and that happens for some people, but more often than not, we hear people are like, well, I did it for three weeks, I did it for five weeks, and I didn't see significant weight loss, So it's not working for me.

And it could just be that you need more time for your body to adapt to that and for you to figure out the balance of fasting and feasting.

And it can take a while to reverse any kind of metabolic damage that you've had.

You'd had years of low calorie dieting and your metabolism had slowed to match the years of low calorie dieting, and your updates are not sufficiently up, then it's not going to give you that metabolic boost.

But even if your updates were sufficiently up, it's going to take a while for that metabolic boost to really take hold right and for your body to be like, okay, there's plenty coming in.

So you know, we've talked about this phrase before reverse dieting and we did not make it up, But it's really the very very similar idea to ADF except that with reverse dieting, someone who's been really restricting for a long period of time purposefully eats more every day, not every other day, but every day to boost metabolic rate and usually sees a good deal of weight gain as a part of that reverse dieting.

As you're gaining the weight, your metabolism gets boosted, then your metabolism is healthy again, So that's the whole theory behind reversed dieting, and then you're able to lose weight again.

But ADF is just basically that every other day.

Did you want to add anything to that.

Well, I can just say you guys might have heard me talking early in the year that I was trying to do some reverse dieting in my window because I realized that I had been probably significantly under eating for a while without realizing it, and so I made it a point to eat pretty significantly in my window, even having some longer days in there, knowing that I might see some weight gain.

And the first couple of months I did not see any weight gain with that, but then probably the next three months I started to see my weight creep up.

But I was just pretty like confident, like this is what I needed to do.

And with my schedule, ADF is hard for me.

I can throw some down days down in there, but I just can't get a good rhythm going in August is when I really just is like, okay, here we go.

Now we're going to work on reducing.

So that's when I tighten my windows back up, started throwing in a few down days when I could work it out, being very very mindful of what I eat in my window, really focusing on nutrient dense foods.

And I have lost every single week since August fifteenth.

Yeah, and so I do believe reverse dieting worked for me.

Yeah, but you can't freak out when you see the scale go up.

So you've got to just hold tie and know that you know what you're doing, has it has an end, you have an end goal in mind.

Yep, so, and it just it lets us know that this is why it's so hard, right, bodies are complicated.

They'd be like, oh, this is what we're doing now, and yeah, the body will, you know, try to find homeostasis or it wants to stay the same.

So we just have to think, Okay, what could be happening and why and what could I do If this is what's happening, then what would fix that?

And really being honest with yourself, have I been accidentally overrestricting or am I actually eating too much, and when we really think about it, we probably can figure it out, all right, So now it's time for our segment called What's Your Why.

Most of us begin intermittent fasting with weight loss in mind, and that's why I started, and that's why Cherry started.

And when I wrote twenty eight day Fast Start day by day, I decided the most important thing would be for readers to craft their why statement before beginning, because I genuinely believe when your why is deeper than weight loss alone, you're more likely to find long term success and view intermittent fasting as a lifestyle.

So this week we have a why from Jessica in Junction City, Oregon.

She said, Hi, Jen and Cherry.

I've listened to this podcast since the beginning, and I want to thank you both for the great gift you have given us through your work.

You have truly changed my life and helped me more than you'll ever no.

I found Jane's book in twenty nineteen and became an intermittent faster in January of twenty twenty.

I quickly understood that this was it.

I committed to fast daily and everything clicked.

The weight started coming off and I felt fantastic.

For reference, I'm five three, I'm currently forty eight, and I had a starting weight of one hundred and eighty five pounds.

By summer of twenty twenty one, I had reached my goal weight of one thirty five and could proudly report that I'd lost fifty pounds.

At that time, My why was weight loss, and I'd done it.

After reaching this goal, I continued to fast, but also started getting more invested in my health.

I sought out books and podcasts aimed at women in midlife Hello Perimenopause.

I bought all the supplements, I increased my protein intake, I started tracking my macros, and I started worrying about getting it all in.

Eventually, I realized I was consumed by food noise, and I gave it all up.

My windows got long, food became entertainment and comfort again, paired with a couple glasses of nightly wine of course, haha.

My weight responded accordingly and kept crept back up while I buried my head in the sand.

I'm here today after seeing one hundred and sixty nine on the scale last week, with a new why.

Looking back over the past few years, I can see that I let much more than my windows creep out of control, and it is time to take charge of my life again.

So I'm back with my new and improved Why fasting is my superpower?

Living an eye of lifestyle gives me a sense of self control and ownership over every aspect of my life.

I have seen the far reaching consequences that come with a traditional eating pattern.

For me, that's inflammation, fatigue, anxiety, sleep disturbances, weight gain, and an overwhelming apathy towards it all.

Fasting gives me the energy, mental clarity, and self confidence to truly be my best self.

I fast for my physical and my mental health.

I fast for my future health and to provide space to allow myself to heal from my past.

I fast to feel good today and to feel even better tomorrow.

Side note, Since recommitting to a shorter eating window of five to six hours, my body is already showing signs of regaining balance.

I feel empowered to regain control over my life, and I'm excited for the journey ahead.

I love that part of that.

I get she was.

This is what we see happen A lot.

People get excited about, you know, their health journey, and then they want to learn more, and then they start going down rabbit holes and then suddenly they're in the I need to eat a million grams of protein and I need to do this, and then they lose their way.

And then we've seen that happen time and time again, and so then you find your way back to you're like, wait a minute, I felt better when I was doing it this other way, and stop listening to all those other people out there.

They got me confused, right, You know, it.

Really comes down to we are always as humans incline to like be pushing ourselves, and we're not content to just like hang out and just be like.

We feel like we constantly need to be working for something or or working towards some goal or whatever, and so we can get really wrapped up and excited about new things, and we start pushing ourselves and pushing ourselves until we just become we start having you know, like decision fatigue, and then pretty soon you're just like, oh my gosh, this is too much.

We get overwhelmed, and then we just throw up our hands and then we just we like stray away from the basics, right where if we can just stick with the basics and not constantly feel like we have to push and push and do better and do more.

We maintain a good balance in our life.

Yep.

Yeah.

And you know, even as much as we love the work that they're doing with Zoe and what people are learning about their health and how their bodies, you know, pross those foods and stuff, we've seen people get off course doing Zoe.

It's just becomes overwhelming.

One of the great things about fasting is you don't have to think about food all day, right, And you start doing something like that, and pretty soon you're thinking about food and what can you eat and what's okay to eat, what's going to give you the best score.

You know that food starts to lose its kind of joy and appeal, and then eventually you.

Rebel Yeah, and then you've got to diet.

Brain anymore, right, and then you know, pretty soon your windows are getting longer.

And then next thing you know, we find out people are like, oh, I drifted away from community because I got off course, but now I'm back.

And anytime people get.

Off course, it's because they think they need to adopt a new way of eating or that they need to be whole food plant based.

But they don't love it, and so I think a lot of it comes down to knowing yourself and knowing your personality.

In the end, I think any change you make to eating should be slow because you just start to adapt to like one new habit, like add more fiber, and then from there other changes start to happen.

So let those habits build on each other rather than just like throwing a whole bunch at it at once and getting overwhelmed.

You know, this is exactly that you like a grown up program that I'm going to talk about in a few minutes.

Well, i'll talk about later.

It's exactly what you just said, One new habit, one week at a time.

Anyway, I love it.

But the big thing is we want to feel good, like Jessica said, and I think about myself.

Over this past long weekend in San Francisco, I kept up with three fit, healthy twenty somethings right as a fifty six year old woman.

I never said I need to sit down.

If that Will was the one who's like I need to sit down.

Yeah, he's twenty six.

He's like, I've done enough walking and we're not doing it.

But I was able to keep up with them.

Up and down those hills and it felt amazing.

Yep.

Yeah, So all right, well we have a question from Alex in Montreal.

Alex hijen Iss Sherry.

I have been absolutely obsessed with your podcast because it's non judgmental.

Thank you for saying that and research oriented.

I'm catching up on the episode, so I hope my question hasn't been overly covered.

You've opened my mind to this way of life as something that's possible for me when I had completely given up on myself, well not completely but almost.

I am so grateful for the information and support.

You are a very complimentary team, and you do such a beautiful job.

Thank you, Alex.

I am a thirty nine year old female with kids, nearly five foot seven and currently one hundred and forty five pounds.

Smart Memi tells me I'm in the healthy BMI range.

I'll be it in the higher ish range.

And I'm actually just gonna say we looked this up and I actually ran her results through SMARTBMI.

When you're running your results through smartbi, people often do this.

It gives you a regular BMI calculation.

That's the old standard BMI.

Don't look at that.

We don't care about that.

You want to look at the SBMI, which is the smart BMI, and it's reflected as a fraction, and so her fraction is thirty five over seventy and thirty over seventy to thirty nine over seventy.

That is a healthy weight range.

So she's right smack in the middle of that healthy weight range.

So anyway, she goes on to say, I found delay don't deny when it first came out, and I had good results before my first pregnancy, and I've come back to it many times over the years, stopping during two pregnancies and years of breastfeeding, but never committing for long periods because making babies was my priority.

I have a very long history of weight fluctuation.

I remember starting my first diet with my mother at the age of thirteen.

This is not something I want to repeat with my own kids, because when I look at pictures of myself as a young teen, I now realize I was perfect just the way I was doing diet.

After diet became my way of life, and you can imagine the predictable scenario of weight gain, weight loss, more weight gain.

This dress ordered eating led me to develop an eating disorder later on that followed me all through my twenties.

I suffered from bulimia for fifteen years.

During my early thirties, I said no more to this way of life and went to therapy a couple of times and tried living an active life.

Not based on appearance and scale numbers, but invariably I could fluctuate between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and seventy five a couple times during the year.

Every year, I'd gained during summer with drinks and snacking, food and holiday festivities that seemed to never end.

In between during autumn and spring, I'd get myself back on track skipping breakfasts, not realizing I was starting my eye of journey.

My chiropractor had told me skipping breakfast was the best way to lose weight in a sustainable and durable manner, So I tried, and I got results fast.

This was in twenty sixteen to twenty seventeen, but as I said, I never committed and I hid it from my then boyfriend now husband and family.

I had much shame since not having mastered your book, Jen, I still thought fasting was an eating disorder behavior and severely judged myself for wanting to do it, hence never really committing.

Having kids has changed my life, changed my body, but also and mostly how I feel about it.

I'm much more gentle with myself and my imperfections.

I want to take care of this body that has given me so much strength, life and love.

I want to cherish and honor it.

I would never go back to the years and years of self hatred.

I've just recently stopped breastfeeding my last child, and I am ready to take care of myself.

I've been doing IF for a month now.

I have into mind to get down to pre baby weight of around one hundred and thirty five pounds.

I know it's in the lower range of BMI, but I really feel best in my body at that weight, or at least that's how I felt.

In the past.

But honestly, the number is not as important as how I feel.

So I'm also looking for mind clarity, freedom for thoughts about food all day and moodlifting.

So far, I'm blown away by how easy this is and how many non scale victories I notice.

No more brain fog, no sugar crash after lunch, no urges to munch on snacks or sugary things and best of all, no lunches.

What a freeing way of life.

My weight hasn't changed much, but I expected that and I'm not in a hurry.

But oddly or not, I feel much better in my genes.

I find a three discs hour window is best, giving myself also pleasure to enjoy the weekend with kids.

So my question is this, I think the research as fasting can be a slippery slope for people who have a lifelong struggle with eating disorders.

I would be curious to hear your thoughts since I feel so good doing the IF's lifestyle and I feel it's for the right reasons.

But like I said before, I never want to go back to so much suffering and self hatred.

What does the research say and what are your personal suggestions for a recovered for five years now woman with a fifteen year struggle with bolimia wanting to live and I have lifestyle.

Thank you again so much for your inspiring, insightful thoughts.

Well, thank you for sharing all of that, and I really appreciate Alex all of the backstory, especially because that's really important.

Officially, I think every person who's ever written a book or had a fasting podcast says the same thing.

Fasting not recommended if you have a history of an eating disorder.

That's the official word.

That being said, I have talked to people on the Intermittent Fasting Stories podcast who had eating disorders and then became intermittent fasters and felt like it's cured.

I'll use that word cured, but solved maybe the better word solved their disordered thinking, in which case, obviously, if you're no longer having the disordered thinking, then that is a good thing.

My standard advice would be if you want to do intermittent fasting, especially if you've ever been diagnosed with an eating disorder, is have a therapist who understands eating disorders and work with that therapist along the way so that you do not find yourself drawn into disordered behaviors.

And the part that gives me a little bit of nervousness is that your goal is one twenty five, which is very low because what I understand, and again I am not an expert on eating disorders, right, so understand this.

That's why I suggest a therapist who is an expert, not me, but from what I understand personally about eating disorders, the disordered part is your body image.

When you start thinking your body isn't right and you start trying to get it smaller, small or smaller.

And so if you could put the scale away completely, not have a one twenty five in mind, because that's the very low end of your smart BMI, I would not try to get the one twenty five.

I would not try to get to a scale number that is lower than you are right now.

I think your goal needs to be healthy relationship with your body and feel good in your body.

Not I remember when I weighed one twenty EMBOI did I feel good in my body?

I would like to get back to that.

That was false feeling good in your body.

That was perhaps the eating disorder.

The skinner you got, the better you felt, so you might think you need to get there again.

A woman's body, especially after children, we are meant to be squishy, we are meant to have fat on our bodies.

We're not meant to be tiny as small as we can get.

So I us been nice to use the word supple.

There we go.

I would really just encourage you.

And again, like I said, a therapist is a great idea who can help you work through this.

And I really think the idea of disconnecting from a weight, putting the scale away, paying attention to your clothes, because I know myself that's why I put my scale away, and I had a disordered relationship with scale number, and so I don't weigh, and that has cured me of that disordered relationship with the scale.

I'm not trying to get to a number or diet somewhere.

So just imagine as a mom, how fabulous it's going to be to model healthy eating behaviors and not focused on scale numbers for your kids.

Yeah, and then I wanted to say too, Yeah, I agree one hundred percent with the not weighing.

You're likely not going to find a therapist who specializes in eating disorders who is going to be educated and know about intermittent fasting and how it works in your body physiologically.

They're going to you know, one of the first things they tell you when you're recovering from any kind of eating disorder is to always honor your hunger.

And of course, you know with em fasting, especially during that adaptation period, you kind of have to ignore your hunger for a while.

What we see time and time again is people actually find that fasting is the best thing for them people who have had eating disorders in the past, because they are protecting their body, they're protecting their metabolism and their hormones by fasting clean and they're not They're just enjoying food more in their eating window.

The other thing I was going to say, too, was when you were having disordered eating, you were clearly lacking nutrients.

Your body wasn't getting the nutrients that it needed, and so we know that you were losing muscle mass.

You can even lose bone mass with eating disorders, so you are very very likely not going to get to a weight that you were in the past during your disordered eating, because you're not losing all that muscle mass, right.

You know, if you had been away from your disordered eating for years before you had your children, and you know you had a good you felt good in your body, then I would say that would be a good way to strive for.

But it doesn't sound like you were free from your eating disorder for a long time before you had kids.

So you're working with a whole different body now, right, And so I think having a number in mind is not going to be beneficial to you.

Rather start to notice just how you feel, start to focus on being strong and healthy, and maybe you want a leaner body, but you know, the goal shouldn't be skinny, and it shouldn't be fit in genes that you had ten years ago.

Work with the body you have now and having a healthy relationship with your body food now.

Yeah, and you're right about a therapist who understands both intermittent fasting and disorders would be a tall order.

That would be amazing.

I hope there's one out there.

I really do.

Yeah.

And by the way, I just realized I said that I was going to talk about eat like a grown up later.

That's actually next week, so everybody, you'll just have to hear it next week.

All right.

So we have a question from Gina from Wisconsin.

Hi, Jen, and Sherry.

I am forty four years old, five foot seven, and I began intermittent fasting six months ago.

In February of twenty twenty five, I was two hundred and two pounds and I have gotten to about one hundred and seventy five in those six months.

I started out by doing a twenty hour fast with a four hour window, and I followed that for the first three months.

I lost fourteen of those pounds in the first thirty days, but since then weight loss has really slowed to only maybe one or two pounds a month.

I began throwing in one to two down slash up days each week week in May, and I even tried a whole month of that recently, and that seems to help stimulate weight loss slightly.

But my concern is hair loss.

I started losing a lot of hair about four months in and it has continued to worsen to the point that I'm starting to look like I have bangs, but I don't.

I know this can be a stress response from the body, but it seems to be getting worse rather than better over the past two months.

I wonder that if I do more ADF that it will continue getting worse, as it seems that is when things went from bad to worse after doing a month of it.

I love fasting.

I have so much energy now.

My husband cannot even believe I'm the same person.

I do not want to give it up, but hair loss is scary and frustrating, and really I still have twenty to twenty five more pounds to lose to get to my goal weight.

Any advice for this dilemma.

I am not a high volume eater, so I may struggle to get in enough calories during my four hour window.

So I then wonder maybe ADF is better with a full up day, But again, I'm just hesitant to do more of that due to the hair situation.

I appreciate any advice you can share.

I love the podcasts and look forward to listening every week.

Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge with us.

All right, well, so first of all, noticing that you had hair loss about four months in is not surprising to me at all.

There is a condition called te logen affluvium or intelligen affluvium.

Maybe I'll get a link in show notes for you so you can read about it.

Anytime the body goes through anything that it perceives as stress.

This can be sudden rapid weight loss.

This could be pregnancy.

This could be a surgery.

This could be grief.

It could just be an illness.

This happened a lot during COVID.

To people, your body has a hair shedding cycle, and so what happens is the stress can basically affect the hair shedding cycle so that it just disrupts it and so you're constantly losing hair.

Everybody does every day.

But what happens is there's like an interruption in the like regrowth cycle at one point, and so then you start to notice the hair loss.

But what most people, what happens to most people is like by the time that you've noticed that your hair is thinning and you've lost some hair, it's already past that point.

It's already fixed itself, and so there's nothing you can do about it to that point because it's already the situation's already corrected and you're already regrowing hair where you lost it and it didn't regrow for a cycle or whatever.

And most people will say that Usually we hear this about maybe six seven months in.

They're like, all of a sudden, I have all these hair sprouting up.

I went through this, my hairdresser noticed it.

That's how you know that your hair growth cycle like restarted, because you start to get new hair growth.

So and most people, really, after you know they've been doing fasting for a while, they'll say their hair is thicker and healthier than ever.

We hear that a lot.

I would not be concerned unless it gets worse and it doesn't correct itself.

So if it does get worse, that could be a sign that you're over restricting, that you're not getting all your nutrients in that you're suddenly having some sort of thyroid or hormonal issue.

And considering you're forty four, that's right in the throes of perimenopause, so it could be something that you have hormonal going on.

So, like I said, it usually reverses and corrects itself.

If it doesn't, I would see a doctor or a dermatologist so that they can rule out any causes that could be hormonal, thyroid, nutritional like that.

But anyway I would, I would not be concerned.

Us my point, it happens.

And it might not even be fasting that caused it for you.

So if you think about when it started, go to when you when you noticed it, count back two to three months, and if you went through something stressful, then it was probably that, not the fast.

Oh you know what, and I just noticed too, she said, she's starting to look like she is bangs, but she doesn't.

That's her hair.

Is a sign that your hair is actually growing back in.

So when you notice it, count back two to three months from when you noticed it, first starting to happen for me.

Keto did it for me.

Like I started doing Keto.

I did it for the whole summer and then I noticed, oh my hair, so I counted it was Keto was doing it.

I also when I had COVID in twenty twenty one, I had really you know, it hit me hard.

I had a high fever for a week.

Three months later I noticed it with my hair.

But the thing is is that it grows back.

It does, it comes back.

It did for me both times.

So I know it's scary because it's happening.

But as soon as I understood that it's the process.

But once you notice that the process is already in the works, you can't stop it.

Once it has started, right, it has to complete the cycle.

So again, for anybody listening, if you count back two to three months and that is when you started idea, then perhaps your body thought that was a stressor.

But often people are like, oh, that's when my dog died, or though that's when I lost my job, or oh that's when I had COVID, or oh that's when we moved.

So sometimes it's not the fasting.

I just want to address this too, You said, you're not a high volume eater, so that you may struggle to get in enough calories during your four hour eating window.

Open it up to five hours.

Yeah, make sure that you are opening with a nice, full, balanced, you know, nutrient dense window opener, and then you know, make sure that you're having a nice, full balanced meal at the end of your window, or however you structure your window.

If four hours isn't enough, open it up to five.

If you're kind of a light eater and you said you wonder if ADF would be better with a full up day, then the question is are you able to eat three full meals on an up day?

And were you doing so when you were doing ADF, because you want to make sure that you're doing that as well.

Yep, all right.

Well, have you been experiencing window creep or lost your way and been thinking that you'll wait until the first of the year to get back on track or to solidify your fasting lifestyle.

Have you been feeling stuck or uninspired?

Is your mindset not where it needs to be, holding you back from your true potential?

Or maybe you have been secretly quote dirty fasting end quote.

I didn't realize this was such a problem I did before, I don't believe it when it happens, or maybe you need help tweaking the feast.

So no matter where you are or how long you've been fasting, I feel confident that if you book a session with me, we can get where you need to be.

We can do just some one on one sessions.

We can do a monthly program.

But I am booking up already through the beginning of January, so don't wait to reach out if you want to get some troubleshooting help during just you can do a one on one session for one hour.

We can sit, we can troubleshoot, we can come up with some tweaks for you or a lot of people like the book a monthly program.

I meet with me weekly for a month, and we can get you where you want to be.

We can have you feeling great in no time.

So email me today, Sherry at fast Feast repeat dot com, and I will say occasionally some people's emails are slipping through the cracks.

I don't know how, so please don't hesitate.

Email me a second time if you don't hear from back for me in a couple of days.

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

And you know I always say tweak it till it's easy.

But the time that works for me might not be the one that works for you.

And that's why it's super helpful to hear how other intermittent fasters are making intermittent fasting work for them.

So we have JP from Southern Illinois thank you for the warning about feeling like you're walking through jello when first starting IF because when I could barely walk one mile when I usually walk three miles, I thought, Aha, this is what Jen was talking about.

Thankfully it only lasted a few days.

I have found that eating dessert to close my window doesn't work for me because I go to bed and wake up a few hours later wanting something else sweet to eat.

The sugar monster is hungry.

But if I want something as a treat to close my window, fresh fruit or even a dark chocolate frozen half of a banana satisfies me and doesn't wake the sugar monster.

Recipe cut a fern, just write banana in half, sticking a popsicle in each half.

Put bananas in the freezer for an hour.

Melt a cup of dark chocolate or semi sweet chocolate chips with one tablespoon of coconut oil till it turns to a liquid.

Add more coconut oil if it needs thinning.

Dip the frozen banana pops completely in the chocolate, twirling the excess chocolate off.

You can also dip the bananas in chopped nuts if desire.

Set the coated bananas on parchment paper and return to the freezer for chocolate to set up.

I put banana pops in a baggy to store in the freezer.

My grandkids love these too.

Oh and this just made me think of something funny, Sherry from San Francisco.

Like the one day that we walked nine miles, I could actually feel my legs felt a little shaky, and I'm like, I think it was like, oh no, it was the second day.

First day was like anyway, whatever, it was two days of a lot of walking.

The second day, my legs felt a little shaky, and I'm like, I feel like I might have used all of the glycogen stored in those muscles, in my calf muscles, you know, because walking up the hills.

And then that night I was like really craving dessert and that funny you know, I don't have dessert all the time that I was feeling like I need a dessert, and I'm like, I hope this doesn't give me restless legs.

It didn't, so I had the dessert.

I think it refilled the glycogen where it needed.

I don't know.

That's my theory.

It's a good theory as any.

And you know, I also just learned too because I got intrigued by that suggestion about bananas.

I'm not into frozen bananas.

You can take fresh raspberries and strawberries and do the same thing, dip them in chocolate and freeze them.

We love to leave you with inspiration our motivational quotes, and this week we have a message from Allison in New Jersey.

She wrote, the thoughts and messages that go through our mind aren't always the most productive, or even very nice.

For that matter.

True making causes to feel deprived or unmotivated, especially after a lifetime of dieting and self loathing.

Although we can't always control the thoughts that drift into our mind, we can certainly stop them and replace them.

I have found it very helpful to replace the word fasting hours with healing hours, and the words eating window with nutritional opportunities.

The word fasting is very triggering for me still after five years of practicing, if focusing on my healing hours sounds so gentle, positive and reassuring, The words invoke a sense of peace and control instead of panic.

The words nutritional opportunities remind me daily to eat the healthiest whole foods first, then add in a small treat if I really want it.

When in doubt, ask yourself, is this a nutritional opportunity for my body?

Or is this mouth entertainment?

I know I will fill my best if I fill my eating window with delicious, real food.

Stopping the unproductive thoughts and replacing them with more positive versions have led me down a path to success with this wonderful lifestyle.

Mindset shifts are so powerful.

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 Jenstevens 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