Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1602: Why Intermittent Fasting is Bad

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover the pros and cons of practicing intermittent fasting. What is fasting, and the history behind it? (2:52) When did fasting become mainstream? (10:46) The benefits of intermittent fasting. (15:20) The dark side and detriments of fasting. (28:53) Who should AVOID fasting? (33:43) Who is fasting FOR, and when is it a good idea? (40:47) Why fasting is NOT an effective weight loss strategy. (46:15) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Promotion: Intermittent Fasting Guide 50% off!  **Promo code “IF50” at checkout** Visit Drink LMNT for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Why You Should NOT Use Intermittent Fasting To Lose Weight – Mind Pump Podcast Fasting Mimicking Diet Intermittent Fasting - Dominic D'Agostino Is Fasting Effective? - Mind Pump Blog Fasting is a Terrible Way to Lose Weight – Mind Pump Blog Should You Incorporate Fasting to Help Lose Weight? - Mind Pump Blog The Warrior Diet: Switch on Your Biological Powerhouse For High Energy, Explosive Strength, and a Leaner, Harder Body Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis - an overview Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Dominic D'Agostino (@dominic.dagostino.kt)  Instagram Layne Norton, PhD (@biolayne)  Instagram Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, alright? In today's episode, we talk about intermittent fasting and infesting in general. So we talk about the benefits and the detriment who should and shouldn't use this health technique. It's been quite the fat over the last 10 or more years. Lots of people using it for the wrong reasons.

Lots of the wrong people doing it. So we talk about who should and shouldn't use intermittent fasting. We talk about the history of fasting. And we get into depth with that particular topic. Now, because we're doing an episode on fasting, we're putting our intermittent fasting guide on sale 50% off. So this is a guide that talks about popular ways to utilize intermittent fasting, kind of goes into detail.

The guide itself is very inexpensive, but we took 50% off the price anyway. So you can go check this out at maps, fitnessproducts.com, use the code IF50 for the discount. Now this episode is also brought to you by our sponsor, LMNT. Now they make the best electrolyte powder you'll find anywhere. Actually, it has adequate sodium in it. The most electrolyte products don't have enough sodium to make a difference. I love element T. It's got a thousand milligrams of sodium per serving. This is great for people who eat low carb diets or people who don't have a lot of processed foods.

I notice better pumps and performance in my workouts when I use it. This product is exploding. It's one of our most popular products with our listeners. And because you listen to Mind Pump, you'll actually get a free sample pack. So all you got to do is go head over to drinklmnt.com forward slash Mind Pump. And all you got to do is pay for shipping and you'll get a free sample pack. All right, enjoy this episode. You know what we got to talk about is one of our most popular clips on the podcast channel that gets a lot,

has tons of comments and there's negative, lots of negative comments on it. It's the one that we did on intermittent fasting. Yeah, we did. Pistoph of the zealots. Yeah, we pissed a lot of people off because we said that fasting was a terrible way to lose weight, and so people in the comments are like, what was the title of that one, Doug? Why you should not use intermittent fasting to lose weight.

Yes, and there were people that, oh, these guys that know fasting is, they're confusing it with starving, and this is what I, you know, and so I think we should go deeper into fasting in general, and then talk a little bit about why we still think it's probably a bad idea to lose weight and It's a bad way to die first Why don't you do this because I think I read some of the comments and some of the comments people I think that we don't know what fasting is so why don't we Definitely break down one the what fasting, and then also the history of it, so we can make sure we address that we know what the fuck we're talking about when it comes to fasting. And then we'll

address the point that I think we made before. Yeah, no, that's a good point. So fasting is the voluntary, essentially you're voluntarily not eating, you're choosing not to eat for a specified period of food. We and resources are plentiful. Yeah, and that's a very important part. Fasting is not, because here's what happens. A lot of people will use evolution as a way to support why fasting so good, because obviously thousands of years ago,

we definitely went for long periods without food, right? So you would successfully hunt, not that often. We didn't kill an animal every single day. It's highly unlikely. So we probably ate very, very little until we killed an animal and then we ate a lot, right? And then we would repeat that cycle. And so humans evolved to be able to go

for long periods of time without food without really any detrimental effects. There's studies that have been done on people who didn't eat for two weeks a month, and they don't see really any, these are with healthy people. They don't see like, you know, super detrimental effects, and it's because we evolved to do this, but that's not the history of fasting.

That is, we didn't have food. The history of fasting is way past that. Fasting again, it's the voluntary, you're voluntarily not eating when food is available and around you. That's what fasting is. Not, I'm not eating because I don't, because then we could label every famine that happened as fasting or anytime somebody was, you know,

a POW or in concentration camps. That wasn't fasting, that was involuntary. How many different variations of fasting are there now? I know that, I mean, the warrior diet was... Five to diet, yeah, there's the 16, eight protocol. Which is the warrior one, right? That's warrior diet is... You don't eat all day and then you eat one meal at night?

Yeah, there's a lot of different protocols to what would be considered fasting. So you have the eight hour window, you have multiple days, what's the 522? What's that one Justin? Oh, so there's two days where you're at 500 to 600 calories in the rest of the week, basically you eat normal.

So it's just a low calorie days. And then there's the fasting mimicking diets. So Dr. Longo, who came up with this because of the beneficial effects of fasting on the outcomes of cancer. Long ago or so. Yeah, Dr. Walter Long ago. And so he does is he puts people on this really, really low calorie diet for extended period of time, which mimics the effects of fasting. But if you want to look at the history of fasting, you have to look at the voluntary

absolvment or the voluntary rejection of food for a specified period of time. And when you look at that, really the roots of fasting were from spiritual practices. This is the oldest records of people that we have of people voluntarily choosing to not eat. And you find this in the Christian Bible, the Jewish Bible, right, the Old Testament. You find this in the Quran. You find this in Buddhism, in pretty much every major religion has fasting as a component of that religion or is written into the religion. And some of them still practice fasting. The practice of abstinence, you know, in different forms.

And all of them, like for religious reasons, all about abstaining, right? Is that what they're all about? It was all about the spiritual practice of abstaining and the detachment, you know, of worldly desires. I mean, food is one of our most primal needs in desires, right? So it's like food, sex, water, shelter. And what you find in spiritual practices

are abstinence from a lot of those things. Some religions where people will abstain from sex, right? In fact, today, in the Catholic tradition, if you're a priest, you don't have sex. There's no more. Ramadan is about two, isn't that what that's about? Yeah, they go through periods of fast, whether they don't eat or drink when the sun is up,

only when the sun comes down. So the history is spiritual. There is some medical history to fasting. You can go back as far as apocryty. It was the, he's the guy that came up with the quote, like what was that quote? Let medicine be thy food and food be thy medicine? Yeah, and he observed that when people went without food that certain conditions would get better

Primarily conditions that involve seizures. So you know back in ancient Greece, right? When people had epileptic seizures It was like a mystery what the hell is going on are they possessed we don't know what to do and he noticed when they went without food yeah this seizures which also the dr. D. M. High can't pronounce his name don't have to go yeah so with this ketogenic protocol I found that same thing right oh yeah yeah we've known that for a long time we've known Fasting or eating a ketogenic diet which is high fat very very low carb and low protein. This is a medical ketogenic Now that was okay

So my point that I was trying to make was that he theorized that it wasn't confirmed until Dom's research with the seals Is that correct? No, that was it already was it already confirmed condition and diving I believe yeah So so they were getting seizures Yeah, yeah getting seizures when they go under for a certain amount of time And then I think that's what led Dom down the the path of actually doing the research Yeah, cuz the the re-breathers that they would use to minimize bubbles, right? So they're trying to be stealth would it would give him too much oxygen and some of them would suffer from Seasures and he knew that

ketogenic diets had been used. That's the first treatment for epilepsy. So I have a family member with him. Okay, so in other words, Dom wasn't the one who pioneered that. He just made the connection of, okay, we've already been using this as an anti-seizure tactic. So let me try and apply this to the seizures.

I mean, before anti-seizure medications were created, that was how you, if you had to. Oh wow, so it's been around a long time for that reason. Oh, I wanna say it's been used medically since the 1950s or maybe even before. Cause the 70s is when it got popularized as far as the diet. Is it diet? Yeah, so it came out as a diet. I believe in 72-ish or somewhere around there.

I wanna say medical version has been around a long time. Yeah, Doug, maybe you can see how long people have been, how long we've been using ketogenic diet to treat epilepsy. I wanna say it's the 1950s, it might even have been before that. And they would put kids on super high fat, low protein, low carb diets.

And of course, this before we had epileptic medications, and it would work for a lot of them, not all of them, but it would work for a lot of them. And this is because when you don't eat carbohydrates and you're not eating a ton of protein, you create ketones and they have this anti-seizure effect. The 1920s, wow, even before that. So it's been around for a long time.

So hypocrite notice this and notice that it cured this type of condition. So that's the, I guess you could go back as far as hypocrite's for the medical history. But the history of fasting for health and fitness, it's all rooted in the spiritual practices. And it comes from people practicing fasting because they noticed that it made them, they would detach from things. And they will feel better as a result. And you

also see too, there's been some evidence of being beneficial in terms of like cancer and sort of starving the cancer from evolving further and like going into treatment to do that, leading into treatment as well. Yes, yes. So these are all medical and health benefits that have came from it.

And we've been using this as far back as you're saying, hypocritees. But when was it introduced as a diet? When did it become a fad diet? Was it in the 70s when it was first used as a diet? And the 70s? And it's been popularized again today. In the 70s, there was like the wellness crunchy crowd.

That would do it. And they would talk about benefiting their health. But it wasn't like a health and fitness thing. In fact, health and fitness people would laugh at it. We know this, even as trainers in the 90s. Yeah, to say because I wasn't, it wasn't something that we would take seriously. If in when I did come across it, which I don't remember the first time I heard someone talk about it, I probably would have scoffed at it in the early 2000s, late 90s, if so one said, oh, you should do this.

No, they would do just skipping meals. That was one of the most common ways to lose weight, is they would say skip breakfast or don't eat lunch or don't eat breakfast or lunch and you'll end up losing. That says 2012, duh, yeah. Yeah, that's the five two diet. We came talking about that. That's what Justin was talking about.

Yeah, I didn't hear about fasting for fitness and fat loss. The pressure is a warrior diet was the most popular one that gained the most track. That's the one that brought it to my attention. Because I was back in the, obviously it was back when I had my personal training studio, I would go on the bodybuilding.com forums and fitness forums,

that's why I would get like information. And there were people talking about how, oh man, I only eat once a day and I'm getting so ripped. Now this was mind blowing because at the time, everything was about eating every two or three hours. Like you had to eat every two or three hours. So it was so counter that. And the fact that people weren't losing tons of muscle

by not eating all day long. Now granted, they were eating a lot of calories when they would eat that one meal. It's 2001 when that came out. That's when I, it came on, you know, my horizon when I started trying to. That's when it was like sort of mainstream. So, yeah, so I recall hearing about it around around this time, but I could have sworn when I dug into it, it got the science that supports it came out in the 70s. And the warrior diet is what made it mainstream and popular. And so since 2001 to now, it's become this weight loss strategy. But the science and research that supports all the benefits

that when you talk about the growth hormone and you talk about cellotophagy, right? All those benefits that research, yeah. I believe was done in the 70s that the warrior diet pulls from and the diet is what made it pop. It probably wasn't mainstream. I know that skipping meals and not eating for a long time was not encouraged. But here's a funny thing about that. The medical benefits, the physical benefits

that are observed with fasting are almost identical to being in a calorie-restricted diet. In fact, our friend Lane Norton hammers this all the time. He smashes on the intermittent fasting crowd for that, that all these benefits that they tout are so amazing that fasting gives you are all similar, if not identical to the same benefits that you get if you just are in a calorie restricted diet for an extended period of time. Yeah, you see the cell autophagy, you see the reduced

in inflammation. I mean, in fact, the reduction in inflammation from eating reduced calories and the health benefits from eating reduced calories are so powerful that even eating an unhealthy low calorie diet makes it actually can be quite healthy in comparison to a relatively healthy diet that's high calorie. So the point where like we know that lots of sugar and certain fats are good for you. But when it's in the presence of low calories, a lot of those problems become small problems

or small issues. To the point where there's actually professors and nutrition teachers that have done experiments. Like there was one guy, I don't remember his name, but he was a professor, and he said, I'm gonna go on a Twinkie and Big Mac diet or something like that, and show everybody that I'm gonna improve my cholesterol and I'm gonna improve my blood lipids. You know, my-

Because he just did low calorie, right? Because he just did low calorie. And I wouldn't go that route because I think longevity of the diet is a big factor nobody considers, which we'll get into with fasting. I mean, we'll call because I think longevity of the diet is a big factor. Nobody considers which we'll get into with with fasting like nutrient deficiencies. Yeah, it was a good amount of. How sustainable is it really? That's it, the sustainability, right?

But yeah, a lot of the health and medical and physical benefits, I should say, come from calorie restriction. Even the medical benefit, so Dr. Valtralongo saw that if you just, if you made a little bit, but really reduced the protein in the carbs down quite a bit, you would still see this kind of anti-cancer effect from doing that. So, you know, that's a big one. That's a big, important thing. So, let's talk about the benefits, because I do think there are benefits of fast things.

There's lots of, you know, the irony of this is that we are doing this episode in response to people bashing us about our stance on intermittent fasting, but we actually have a guide. It's on some level. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that we talked about it a lot. Early on, when we first started the podcast, we all have experimented with it. We've all taught it to some of our clients and utilized it ourselves personally. And I see tremendous value in it. And I obviously will cover all the different things I think what I have a problem with

and I think you guys are on the same page is that's not how it's being used. That's not the main reason why it's being used. Well, the reasons that are the benefits of it are not why they're using it. That's right. As a diet. Yes. And that's why it's being used. Well, the reasons that are, that are, the benefits of it are not why they're using it. That's right. Because it's a diet. Yes.

And that's how it's popular, right? If you got popular, if no one, not a really knew about it. It's about it. Before 01, when the warrior died, came out, the benefits that people are talking about is the weight loss benefits from it, which I think we agree is the worst reason

for you to do that, Doc. Yeah, and before we get into that, let's, let's, let's, let's stick to the benefits for a second. Now, the benefits from fasting to the best of my opinion based on my experience, right? Train lots of people, and you've, of course, working with myself, but just being experienced, trainer and coach,

begin and end at the emotional, spiritual, and mental benefits. So forget the physical benefits, the physical benefits of weight loss, fat loss, whatever. It's a byproduct. Yeah, that can happen from it, but that's not the benefits of fasting, the fasting benefits, really the spiritual, mental,

emotional kind of benefits. By the way, not for everybody, for some people, it'll actually do the opposite. But let's say you're somebody that has a, you have a lot of impulse issues with food, right? So you're very impulsive every time you get stressed or anxious or bored, you eat, you have this bad relationship with food in that particular regard. Sometimes being without allows you to deal with those issues and detach a little bit from this impulsive thing.

And then you can rebuild a better relationship. So, in the anxiety around hunger in general, about having like this, I mean, I went through phases of that, and that's what was so mind-blowing for me with intermittent fasting was just, I don't have to eat right away, and I'm gonna be okay, and I'm not gonna lose muscle mass within a day or two because I'm not fueling my body. But other than that, it was just a way for me to break the cycle

of what I felt I was bound to. Well, even the definition of hunger, many people think it's hunger when it's really craving. Yes, exactly. I think that's one of the biggest things that I got from that. Even personally was, you know, I would think if I didn't eat for four or five hours, oh, I'm hungry. I mean, that's, I've got to eat, you know what I'm saying? Oh, my muscles probably falling off the ear point or I've got to get some food in me. And a lot of times I didn't realize that I was just craving foods because we've built

these rituals around what time we eat and what we eat during that time. And the body is craving something more so that it is truly hungry, We've built these rituals around what time we eat and what we eat during that time. And the body is craving something more so that it is truly hungry, especially if you had a very sedentary day when you probably didn't even tap into your results. Oh yeah, here's a good rule like test, right? Oh, I'm starving. And then would you eat anything, you know? Yeah, I'm actually craving Mexican food right now.

I'm not, you know, no, I love that as I've used that. You've shared that before on the show where, know when someone says they're hungry and then you start listing off old. We can stop and grab this real quick or I have some I have some cucumbers and on some water over here with that and no I don't want that they start turning down food like you because nobody who's really hungry turns down any sort of cow. It reminds me of like with kids, like with my kids where my daughter's like, oh, I'm starving, you know, but like, oh cool, we have some leftover meat from last nine. Right. No, no, no, no, no, no, I want some of the tortilla chips or whatever.

Well, you're not really hungry, you just have a craving. Yeah. You know, you're not starving. Real hunger, you'll eat food. You want to have food. I know because I fasted for 72 hours and, you know know anything, broccoli, fish, fruit, you know, anything, it sounds good. I also know to craving it as a craving tends to be

much more specific. So it does give you a better relationship in some instances with hunger and what that really is versus cravings because a lot of what drives our food choices is based on cravings and not hunger. Well, and it's, I always try to kind of step back a little bit because we talk a lot to our bubble and people that go to the gym and we talk to people that have dieted somewhat. But there's a lot of people out there who have never taken a meal off. That's still a mind-blowing thing. They think this drop in blood sugar or whatever is going to pass out and die. I've talked to even some of my parents on some level, I had to kind of talk them through that process and tell them it's going to be alright.

Well, that's the benefits of just another self-control. You know, this the ability to say, okay, I've decided I'm going to fast for the next 24 hours or whatever you decide to do. And you have the the mental discipline to do that. And then you start to piece together what we're talking about. Oh, I wasn't really that hungry. So that unfolds from that. But even just the ability to refrain from eating, you know, because you definitely can. And there's lots of benefits for you actually doing it. You know, because you definitely can and there's lots of benefits for you actually doing it But a lot of people don't don't actually do it like you said they've never gone through a full day of not eating I mean that just sounds so crazy by the way the benefits of fasting from food that we're talking about can be applied to fasting from anything that you have a Bit of an unhealthy attachment to try fasting from electronics Right take turn off your phone, turn off electronics,

don't do anything for a week with them. And then you'll also potentially develop a better relationship with them. Fast from sex, fast from video games, things that you may have in unhealthy relationships with. So, it's so great you bring that up because if you've been a listener of the show for any time in the last two months or whatever, I brought up just a month ago that I fasted. I didn't say it, I didn't use it that word. I say I'm taking a break,

but that's exactly what I was doing. I was taking a fast from marijuana. And I always wanna check myself if I ever find that I'm getting out of control. Or I'm allowing it to drive my day, or I'm a day or two can't go by without me wanting to smoke. I never want to lose that self control that way. Regardless of all the benefits that have came out

about cannabis and how much I enjoy it or what I think I have balanced in my life, I always want to prove to myself that I can restrict from that and make sure that I'm always in control of that. So you're right, it doesn't always have to be food. And I think that's where we've changed this into all the physical benefits, when really this is where the real meat of the value

of fasting comes from. And it can give you a great sense of empowerment. If food rules you in many different ways, breaking that chain can make you feel empowered. Now here's the dark side of that, right? This, if you talk to anybody, and I've worked with a lot of people who have eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia,

if you talk to them or you talk to experts in this, they'll tell you that what drives a lot of people to do this is the sense of control. In fact, they'll do it worse when the life around them is very stressful and things seem to be falling apart. That's when they're most strict with that type of eating because it's that sense of control. So there's a bit of a double edged sword, right?

That's why fasting for weight loss or fat loss can be terrible because it can really encourage this bad relationship. That's the key here is what you're doing with your diet can either encourage or discourage a bad relationship with your food. And if you're abstaining from eating and the primary goal is aesthetics or weight loss,

more often than not, you're creating this kind of bad relationship or you're just starving, and that's the least to call it back in the day, starving yourself or skipping meals or not eating to lose weight. I also love the awareness that it brings. And what I mean by that is like, when you're a trainer and you're trying to troubleshoot with a client, like if they're eating certain foods

that they may have an intolerance to, right? Or have an issue, your body may have an issue with. And they tell me like, oh, I had, you know, my pizza dipped in ranch for my snack and then for dinner, I had, you know, my pizza dipped in ranch for my snack and then for dinner. I had Burger King with a milkshake. They name all these things that you know could be potential offenders.

It's like trying to narrow down and figure out, like, well, what the hell is bothering this person? Is it the gluten? Is it the sugar? Is it the dairy? Or is it all the above? Or is it just eating in a crazy surplus? Like, you can't figure that out.

One of the coolest ways to bring more awareness to how your body responds to certain foods is by taking them all away for a while. Taking them all for a way for a while and then as you start to reintroduce these different foods, becoming aware of how the body responds. As the body is amazing, you'd be surprised how quickly your stool will show, your energy will show, your sleep will show, your hair, your skin. There's lots of indicators on whether this food that you're consuming is bad or good for

you, and you can't really tell that if you're constantly feeding yourself every couple of hours, it's hard to tease out, well, what was it that actually bothered me or makes me feel bloated afterwards? Well, I don't know until I get rid of everything and then slowly I just, that's one of my favorite things about fast. Yeah, and I think if you're somebody that has a fear of not eating, so like I was, you know, skinny, right, as a kid and I wanted to put on muscle.

And so I developed this bad relationship with food where I was afraid of not eating to the point where if I went on a road trip, God, make sure I have three protein bars with me or a shake or where we can eat for lunch, got to make sure I have the high protein meal and I was afraid of missing any meal. So I had this bad connection to food in that way,

not eating for a day or two and then realizing it was okay. Boy, that was great, that was great for me. And then when I went to eat, all of a sudden, I enjoyed foods totally different. I had a different appreciation for different foods because of it wasn't all about, oh, I gotta get big and build muscle. Another point to that is when I was faced with,

when I was at like a birthday party, or I was at like somewhere where there was like this, and I was trying to be like hyper conscious of, staying within, you know, healthy body composition. Or I'm like, I'm trying to like, you know, enjoy myself, but also realizing like, I can also just not partake.

I'm gonna be okay. It's not like, I have to, you know, because my body's on this clock, like I have to be bound to like eating at this specific time. Like I can break free and I could do it elsewhere. I, you know, like it was just more freedom that just unlocked itself for me. Well, and back to Sal's point,

I was just definitely this kid, right? Trying to build muscle and get bigger and was insecure about being skinny. So missing a meal was not an option. It was like I would, I would rather eat junk food, get calories in, then not eat it all. In fear of, I wouldn't get bigger, I wouldn't build more muscle.

So for the longest time, that was a big... So if you came to me with all these benefits and told me how great intermittent fasting is in the early 2000s, you would never get me to do it. Just because of that simple reason. It was like, I don't care if it does cell topogy, I don't care if it increased energy good for hormone I don't care about all that stuff if I'm potentially going to sacrifice muscle or not getting bigger because I was so insecure about that now now what I know and understand to your point Justin is I easily can go to a birthday party and instead of

eating the all the sugar and cake and candy that's just there just so I can get calories in, I'm totally okay. Not anything whatsoever, maybe not even for the rest of the day and waiting until I'm back home again and I can make myself a good healthy balanced meal and it is not going to slow down my progress towards my gains of building muscle. Yeah, that's road trips were like that for me. I have to go in a long drive and, you know, it's lunchtime, my only options are Taco Bell and McDonald's and Burger King. Yeah, those time slots are so arbitrary.

You know, I think that's like one of the things. Like it really like, it could be any time, like I could just have one meal that day and like load up on calories and that one meal. Another great, that's another great point. It's something else that goes back to the old, you know, every the two hour window of like you want, you never want to let the body go for longer than two hours

or eating in the anabolic window is so caught up and all those things that I didn't think about it as, oh wow, I can just not eat for these four to six hours that I'm driving or I'm at a party and I'll just double my dinner. I'll just instead of just having, you know, 12 ounces of chicken, now I'm gonna have a whole pound and a half

of chicken for dinner and I never thought that way before I was so concerned about every two to three hours you had in these meals. So some of that stuff are some of the great benefits of understanding that. Right. So if you're going into fasting and you're going into it from a spiritual emotional standpoint, like, okay, I've got this bad relationship to food. I just need to stay away from food for 24 hours, or 48 hours, and just deal with myself. And when I feel those impulses,

I'll go for a walk, or I'll meditate, and I'll deal with these cravings without putting food in my mouth. And if you're going into it with that standpoint, you're gonna come out of it, typically with some benefit, right? You're gonna come out of it and be like, you know what, that wasn't so bad.

I was able to do that. I lasted for X amount of hours and I was able to kind of change my relationship a little bit. Now, if you go into it saying, I'm not gonna eat for 24 hours because I need to lose weight. Boy, is that a different mentality? And what it tends to lead to,

it's no different than the binge restrict model of dieting. This is the problem with all diets. Is that they tend to encourage this restrict model that is typically usually followed by this binge model. Because here's a deal. If I'm going into it from a spiritual standpoint, it's coming from a place of look. I want to better myself. This is something I want to work on.

This is something I want to do to improve myself. When you typically go into it from a weight loss standpoint or fat loss, it's like, I need to lose fat. I don't like how I look. I'm bad, whatever. I'm going to not eat this food. Eventually, after that period, you rebel from that. This is what the binge looks like. And by the way, you know, if you look at people who practice fasting and don't come to it from a spiritual standpoint, you almost always see that. You almost always see the following meal or meals or after the time is up,

where it tends to be the opposite direction. The food choices tend to be not so good. By the way, one of the characteristics of binge eating, here's one of the characteristics, the speed of the food that you put in your mouth. So you tend to eat much faster than you normally would. Studies will show something like 30% faster, maybe it's high spits. So like, you're just getting it in there. And the food that's on the fork or the spoon is what you're thinking about. Not even the food that's in your mouth. By the way, we've all experienced this, right?

You're eating something. Although you're in, you have the taste in your mouth. By the way, we've all experienced this, right? You're eating something, although you're in, you have the taste in your mouth and the food is still in there, you can't wait to swallow that because what you're thinking about is the next one. Which we chips. Right, which is a very, if you think about it's very strange, right, it's like, well, the whole point is to enjoy this and taste it,

but I can't even enjoy and taste it. It's about getting the next one in. This is one of the characteristics of kind of that binge mentality. Fasting to diet tends to encourage that. I've seen this a hundred thousand times over and over again. And again, back in the day, it was just called skipping meals. We didn't call it fasting.

People would just, oh, I'm trying to lose weight, so I'm not eating breakfast. And then you would look at their lunch or their dinner later on and you could see like oh Well, the success rate it still falls under the diet categories Yes, so I mean what what is the success rate on your fat diets? Like I think it's the failure rate is north of 80% oh, it's gotta be cats like 85 90% Yeah, so I mean north of 80% fail on all fat diets and And so this now falls under that category

as a failure, as a diet. Now, I don't think it's a failure as a tool for health and wellness. It's an incredible tool for health and wellness when used properly. I still stand by that it's a terrible diet method. But I also blame our space for this because I know not only did the book,

while your diet make it popular, but so did a lot of influencers and stuff. I mean, even people that I remember I used to watch the Hodgents. And the ball like fasting and running. That's right, exactly. And the ball fastings the thing, the Hodgents made it really popular on their channel when they first came up.

And it was all about showing that they could eat a garbage. They were eating fast food and things like that. Yeah, they could get away with eating bad food, quote unquote, bad food in these smaller windows as long as they were training and doing all this and fitting their macros. And so it became very popular. Well, look at these people that look amazing.

They have great bodies and they're going through fast food, drive-throughs to fill their calories in as long as they're eating this window. So that's where it took off. And I know it took off, and I remember getting asked by clients about it because that's why it looks very appealing to the average person who's going to the gym.

Almost hold out for 10 hours. That's why I need almost more of that. That's right. It's a gutted, what a selling point for a diet. Like listen, we're not gonna tell you, you can't eat McDonald's You absolutely can have that burger king your ice cream, but here's the deal You just need to fit in this window and stay within these calories

You stay within these calories and you eat in this window go ahead and have whatever you want it'll work and so That is that is such a a bad strategy for 99.9 reason same reason why people when they get their stomach stapled, why there's not as good of a success right with that either. It's like, you know, your stomach's smaller, but you're still cram, and they haven't addressed the behaviors leading into that, which then it ends up stretching out, and then a lot of times upends the surgery. Yeah, the studies on fasting and weight loss are because people eat less calories.

That's it. So when people have this window of eating time or they don't eat except for one meal a day, when you equate the calories, you find that they eat less calories. Now if you follow these people long enough, you see that the fail rate is just as high as regular diets. Now I remember, as a trainer, when fasting became kind of this thing in the fitness space diets. Now, I remember as a trainer, when fasting became kind of this thing in the fitness space, right? And I remember some clients having a bad reaction to fasting.

In particular, female clients. I remember one woman in particular, she started exhibiting science, so what she was doing is she was doing this kind of, this one meal a day type of fast, so she would only one meal a day. It's now a very popular thing right now, by the way. It's called the omad diet or whatever. One meal a day. Yeah. Omad diet. It's getting really good. So I had this client's female client. Now give you a little backstory. She's your your typical cortisol junkie,

wanted to work out all the time. Go, go, go type of individual. So this was very appealing to her. Oh cool. I don't have to take up time eating. So this was very appealing to her. Oh, cool. I don't have to take up time eating. I'll eat one meal a day. Oh my God. All these wonderful benefits. I have discipline and control. That was what she was all about. And so she did it. And then she started noticing her hair was thinning, starting to fall out. Her skin wasn't looking so good. Her libido was dropping. It was the thing that tipped her over into HPA axis dysfunction. So HPA axis is the hypothalamus pituitary and the adrenals.

Back in the day, they called it adrenal fatigue, right? It's not really your adrenal is adrenal fatigue, it's really the hormone communication. That starts to get out. It's a, it's being in this kind of chronic stress response, right? High cortisol in women estrogen, progesterone get all over the place. And you get this like the symptoms of like,

you know, bad hormone profile. Women tend to be more sensitive to the effects of extended fasting than men do. Now this probably goes again back to evolution where men were the hunters. And we probably did go for longer periods of time without eating. And also women's bodies are just more sensitive to those types of stresses anyway because they're always under the potential of getting pregnant, right? So the body's always like, hey look, if we're not, we can survive but we can't survive and be pregnant. So let's shut that down so the hormones tend to respond in that way. So if you're somebody that is dealing with hormone issues,

fasting is probably not a good idea. If you're a guy with low to, fat chronic fasting can actually lower testosterone in some men, not all men, but in some men it can also lower testosterone because going forward extended periods without food can be perceived as a stress by the body. And if you're already on the line

in your high stress already and sleep isn't good, skipping meals and not eating for long periods of time might just tip you over. Well, the other negative that I see with it too, that's very common is somebody who has, let's say a lot of success with it, with losing weight, right? So they decide this is going to be a weight loss strategy for them. They read the warrior diet or whatever or someone their friend did it and it was successful.

So they follow it and they apply just like most clients would apply is more is better, which in this case restricting more is better. So they get in the mentality of, oh wow, I've just got to eat this. I don't have to eat all day long and then I have this small window. And instead of eating all the calories, they probably should for their body and what it needs. They try and resist even more and stretch that time out even further. Not realizing that what they're doing

is they're teaching their body to adapt, to conserve, to slow down the metabolism. Yeah, they're doing these 500 calories to 900 calorie days. It's like a super low calorie diet. Right, and it's a very common thing I saw. Very common. And of course, it shows initial weight loss and success when it comes to that, but it's not long-term success.

And they just made it that much more challenging for themselves when they get off this super low calorie diet because now their metabolism is slowed down. You know what's funny? Because people approach fitness through this, you know, hardcore motivation, and I have the, I can restrict myself, and I can prevent myself from what, what is that called? It's not discipline. Discipline is a skill. I'm talking more about like, not motivation, motivation is a part of it, but rather, you know, the ability to restrict, right? The ability to just withstand this pain, right?

This is how people approach fitness and health. Okay, I can withstand this sucky period of time to get into shape. This is why the diets that tend to be the most successful, not in terms of long-term weight loss, but rather in terms of sales, right? The most successful selling weight loss diets always have very few, some hard and fast rules.

Yeah. Don't eat until 6 p.m. Or don't eat after 6 p.m. Or only one meal, or avoid all carbs, or eat no fat, or you can eat everything so long as it's green, or raw, or whatever. You'll find all the diets that sell the most are all about three or less hard and fast rules, because most people approach fitness through this, okay, I'm motivated, I'm ready, I'm gonna

just do whatever I need to do. Oh cool, two rules I need to follow, I'm gonna do that, I just going to stick to that. Of course, it always fails. So true. It fails every time because it's not developing the long-term behaviors. If you want to develop, if you want to get into a situation where you're lean, healthy lean, long term, the only way to do that is to have these behaviors that are healthy and sustainable and relying on motivation, inspiration, relying on the fact that you can restrict and prevent yourself, that's short lived. It's not forever. It's impossible because at some point, you're going to go through periods of time when you're not motivated, you're going to go through periods of time when you're really stressed or you don't care.

I mean, times that happen, you know, you know, people like that. Like, you know what? I know I've been on this hardcore diet. I don't care right now because I just, you know, that shitty thing happened to me today or now, fuck it. And then what happens when you're off of it, there's, I forgot the name of the psychological phenomenon. I talked about in a previous podcast,

is it's like, it's like someone who cheats on their boyfriend or their girlfriend, right? Like, as soon as they cheat once, now I can cheat a thousand times. Yeah. Because what's the deal with the difference? I did it once, do it a million times, right? It's like, okay, I'm off the diet. Well, now I'm off.

What you break to seal. Now screw it, right? Yeah. Whether I do 10,000 calories or 1,000 calories over, it doesn't matter. So that's the lure of fasting, but that's also the problem. If you go into it with a weight loss goal and aesthetic the allure of fasting, but that's also the problem. If you go into it with a weight loss goal and aesthetic goal, you're almost inevitably going to fail and potentially create a bad relationship. Here's the people that it's worse, the worst for. If your bad relationship

with food involved restricting yourself too much, right? So if you're somebody that was borderline Anorexic or bulimic or you really starved yourself or in the past and Now you're thinking now you're like okay, now I'm gonna try and do it healthy do not Go into this you will push you right back into where you were before just because it's named something different I would I wouldn't mess with it with 90 plus percent of my clients. The small percentage I did play with it is in the competitive world. I actually loved, I'm in fact, I remember when I first started introducing it to competitors. There's nobody I knew that was doing that.

I didn't know a single other coach that was coaching people that were getting ready to get on stage and intermittent fasting with those clients. And I did it to break up this, they have the opposite relationship with food. getting ready to get on stage and intermittent fasting with those clients. And I did it to break up this, they have the opposite relationship with food. They're addicted to this. They cannot go longer than two hours without being fed that they have to have a protein bar or a shake or their Tupperware meal out and they got to be on this schedule all the time.

I love to disrupt that by interrupting their week by saying, okay, we're not eating today. All I want you to do today is if you go to the gym, it's walking, stretching day, and we are not gonna train, you are not gonna eat, and we're gonna fast. And I remember, they would all freak out. Oh my God, what about my protein? I'm gonna miss my targets, and won't the muscle fall off? No, that's not how the body works,

and it's not gonna do that to you at all. And trust me, it's gonna benefit us, and you're gonna feel great the next day. And love to teach those people how to interrupt their eating patterns. And those are the ones. Or somebody that has a very good relationship with food and diet and understand balance and macros.

And they've been in this space. And I really feel like that's gotta be a lot of those, the negative comments that you got from the YouTube clip that we did have gotta be other fitness professionals that have a really good handle on nutrition themselves. And they're like, that's whack. I see benefits. I use it for all the benefits.

Right. You know, another sort of category that annoys me. And I've seen this in somewhat of like the wellness sphere and just, you know, other places has been promoted to sell products specifically about like detoxing. And, you know, they'll sell you some solution to go with it or, you know, you have to do some kind of like, you know, specific lemon, you know, powder thing or like, you know, having your own pepper or something to like get these toxic agents in your body out and

basically exercise the demons out. You know why? It's because unless you're selling a book on a specific way to fast, how do you make money? How do you sell it? Yeah, how do you make money telling people to not eat anything, right? You can't sell them anything. So what they did is they said, okay, here's your fasting protocol. You're not eating any food, but you know, take these pills three times a day to help your fasting protocol. You're not eating any food,

but take these pills three times a day to help your body de-touch. I remember that was a big push on the BCA. That was a big push in our space. I saw coaches that were... While you're fasting, Dr. B. when fasting became popular, and then you started to see it move into

even the body building world and a lot of the fitness enthusiasts were starting to promote it. They were also promoting it along the lines of their, you know, BCAA supplements. Like, well, if you're worried about losing any muscle mass, make sure you take your drink, you sip on your BCAAs all day long, but stay fasted. And so, so we get all the benefits of fasting and then we make sure you don't lose any muscle and then I can sell you this product.

Yeah, or this was a big one was, you know, you're not going to eat all day, but you're going to get your nutrients. So we're going to sell you these juices, right're not gonna eat all day, but you're gonna get your nutrients. So we're gonna sell you these juices, right? So this is these juice fast and you buy their bottles. And it's really, again, it's their way of capitalizing on a particular trend, because again, how do you sell anything when you're telling people to do it? Yeah, they're just keeping you low calorie,

like everything else. Like that's literally, yeah, it's the same for me. Yeah, now my best experience with fasting, I'll, I mean, I'll tell you what one of my favorite experiences was was when, you know, when I first started dating my wife, we went on this road trip and in part of this road trip, we stopped at Lake Tahoe and we were gonna,

we were gonna get in these kayaks, we were gonna go across the lake and we're gonna find a campsite and do this whole thing. And really bringing a bunch of food, I mean, because you're in these little kayaks and you're, and it's like, you know what? Let's just, we'll have something light for breakfast, and then we'll just fast all day long

because the point of this isn't to go eat a bunch. The point is to be in nature and be with each other. And it was great, like what a wonderful experience. But it wasn't like, hey, I know we're going to the lake to kayak, we're going to be burning tons of calories. What if we didn't eat and got ripped at the same time? It wasn't that at all. It was all about detaching from food during this particular,

this is really how I recommend it for most people. Like if you're going to fast try meditating with it or try spending time with your kids or again if you have this Bad relationship with food where you know after meetings I'm so stressed out. I go reach for a candy bar. Maybe that's a good time to fast So you can deal with your feeling. I really I really love the awareness piece That was probably one of my favorite things because it you I mean we all remember right you you were the one that started talking about your Three-day fast you were doing for a while there.

How sensitive you are after you come out the fact. I mean, in fact, we remember recommending like having chicken broth for like your first meal because your gut is so sensitive. And what I love about that sensitivity though, is that as soon as you introduce anything that your body doesn't agree with, you know. I mean, the way you got to go to the bathroom afterwards, how it feels even going down.

And it's amazing how quickly the body adapts and will figure out a way to be okay with that food if you ignore those signals. So it's a really cool way to give yourself this loud signal on, you know, I know that maybe this could be the food that is bothering me, but I'm not sure, like, man, you clean out your system for two or three days,

then you start to introduce these foods and then you pay attention and you will feel it, you know? And if it feels great going down, that it's probably not something that's bothering you're gutted all. But again, if you're teetering on this, like too much stress, not enough sleep, you know, kind of line, and then you fast on top of it,

your body will perceive it as more stress and you will see cortisol spike, you could see more anxiety. I don't remember who said this, this was a famous psychologist that talked about how some of his patients would have anxiety throughout the day and so when you recommend, and many of them he noticed, he breakfast.

So he recommended that they eat a protein and fat breakfast in the morning. And it helped significantly with their anxiety because it helped prevent cortisol spiking. It was great for insulin because it was mostly fat and protein. But if you're like in this high stress situation, over trained lack of sleep,

and then on top of it, you're going for hours without food, that could definitely tip you over the edge into this HPA access dysfunction. Look, if you talk to a functional medicine practitioner and you are, and they identify that, you've got some HPA access dysfunction. And it's not related necessarily to maybe

something inflammatory in the gut, because sometimes fasting is good for that or whatever. Oftentimes, they'll tell you, we're gonna have you eat every few hours. You will oftentimes they'll say, no, you should not go without food for long periods of time because it's just stressing your body out too much. So definitely, when it comes to fasting as a diet,

even our fasting guy, we don't talk about it this way, it's not an effective weight loss strategy. What I mean by effective is whenever we talk about something that's effective, it's sustainable. Because not eating is very effective for weight loss in the short term. So it's chaining yourself to a treadmill and running for hours on end. But when we talk about effective, we're talking about sustainable. It is not sustainable. It's about as unsustainable as every other diet

that exists, every other fat diet. If you're doing it for spiritual, inemotional reasons for detachment for creating a better relationship with food. If your relationship with food is being attached to food, needing to eat all the time, it could be a very valuable tool. If you're somebody that has eating issues that resulted in you not eating food, terrible,

terrible tool. So, fasting like any tool can be effective in the positive. It could also be very effective in the negative. So, was it buyer beware, right, when you do this? Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com. And check out our guides. We've got tons of guides on everything from exercise to nutrition.

Guides that help you get more fit. And of course, they're all free. Again, it's mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So you can find Justin at Mindpump Justin, me and Mindpump Salon, Adam at Mindpump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mindpump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy

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