Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2190: Fasting Masterclass

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Defining what is fasting. (2:04) The history of fasting. (5:05) The guy’s personal experiences with fasting. (6:23) Why fasting became popular. (13:55) Don’t do it for fat or weight loss. (16:26) Do it for detachment reasons. (23:43) Short fasts vs. long fasts. (25:48) How to prepare for a fast. (30:05) How to get out of a fast. (35:06) Should I work out during a fast? (38:15)  Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Sleep Breakthrough by biOptimizers for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP10 at checkout** October Promotion: MAPS Bands | The Skinny Guy ‘hardgainer’ Bundle 50% off! **Code OCTOBER50 at checkout** Mind Pump #1602: Why Intermittent Fasting Is Bad A Beginner's Guide To Intermittent Fasting - Mind Pump Media Is Fasting Effective? - Mind Pump Media Intermittent Fasting Guide | MAPS Fitness Products For a limited time only, Mind Pump listeners get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase: Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

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. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded Fitness Health Entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode is about fasting. This is a master class on fasting. For everything for health, fat loss,

etothagy, and more. You're going to love this episode. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Sleep Breakthrough. This is a product with proven ingredients shown to help improve the quality of your sleep. Give it a try, see what happens. It's sleepbreakthrough.com forward slash mind pump. Use the promo code mind pump 10 for a discount

We're also ready to sail this month Maps bands is half off and the hardgainer bundle half off both half off you can find either one at Maps fitness products calm, but you have to use the code October 50 for that discount. All right here comes a show Fasting it does have some value, but not for the things you think. Fasting is terrible for fat loss, but it's good for other things. In today's episode, we're gonna cover fasting, all of it.

This is a master class, here we go. Oh yeah. It's been a minute since we've actually gone on deep on fasting. And has remained one of the most popular and trendy ways of dieting. Still, I think, I don't think a month goes by where I don't hear about a family member, a friend, acquaintance that is now fasting, is incorporating some form of fasting into their plan.

And still, it is always the, for the same reasons. It still is never for the reasons that I feel like we've talked about on the show so many times on how we recommend people use it, either for their clients, if you're a trainer or for yourself, there's still this trend around it as a great weight loss tool. Yeah, it's, so obviously,

you probably know what fasting is, but just to loosely define it, to go without food for a significant portion of time. So typically longer than you would normally go without food. So from breakfast to lunch, that's technically a fast, but when people talk about fasting, it's typically for, you know, six, eight, 10 hours or days without food, and usually they'll drink water. So most faster or what are considered water fast. The reason why I think fasting is still popular

is because it's one rule. Well, no, it doesn't. We'll get into it. We'll get into it. We'll get into why it's terrible for the dirty food. Guess what, you lose weight. But it's one rule, right? It's one, like, like, the challenge that people run into with diet is eating a really

healthy diet for you that works for you. I mean, it's complex. It requires a journey of exploration. It requires learning. It requires relearning. It requires getting rid of old ideas and concepts. It requires a good relationship with yourself, and it takes time to develop. But people don't want time. They don't want

to take time. They want it to happen right now. And the more simple a diet seems in terms of its rules, the more popular it is. If you look at the popularity of diets, you could literally rank them in terms of... Do you think that's what it is? Absolutely. Do you think that's what it is? Absolutely. Do you think that's what... That's why the adherence, because of the simplicity. Yeah, that's why Atkins crushed up, you know, at first,

as it was counter the message, but it was also just, don't eat carbs. Oh my God, I could do that. Well, it's such a paradigm, shattering thing for a lot of people to step away from a meal, just that fact alone. Like, because it's like, so ingrained in culture and society and everything's socially wrapped into us eating food to get yourself sort of out of that formula for a minute, you become a bit of a

evangelist and it becomes something that it worked for you. So therefore, you know, I think everybody could benefit from it. And also too, I was able to lose weight. And so that's what they focus in on is the losing weight part of it. Yeah, I mean, I think Sal, you're really on to something that it's what makes diets the most popular is less about how healthy or how even successful they are for people, but let more so it's simplicity,. The simplicity of it, right? Like, I just only eat this.

Don't eat this and then do whatever you want. It so follows the pattern of your clients, right? Like how many people would hire you and just be like, just tell me what to do or write this to it. Like they don't want, very few people, not everybody, but very few people, hire a trainer and say, I really want to learn how to properly feed myself and exercise correctly. There's a small portion, there's a percentage, but most people are like,

I want to do this, I need to do this, I have this thing coming up. Can you get me there? I'll pay you. Just tell me, do I have to push. Yeah, that's the extent of what they want to learn. Now fasting is actually, if you were to consider a diet, right? It's actually probably the oldest

or one of the oldest documented, quote unquote diets that there is. Fasting recorded documentation of fasting goes back as far as 450 or 500 BC. It's a present in every major world religion, not just the Abrahamic ones, right? Judaism, Islam and Christianity, it's present in all those. It's also present in Buddhism.

It's present in many Eastern religions. It's present even in religions and practices that are not so popular. New ageism even used fasting. So it's got some value for sure. Things that span culture and time, things that are communicated and put into practice in cultures that didn't communicate or trade off with each other, you know that there's some wisdom there.

So there's definitely some wisdom around fasting, but again, it's been turned into a diet plan. It's typical, right? The modern society will take something with some truth or some wisdom and they'll find a way to turn it into something for, you know, fat loss or, you know, something like that along those lines. Now I have a really good experience with fasting. And I believe that I fall in the category of people who benefited from this practice.

So just a little context, I grew up and I started working out for a lot of different reasons, but one of them was, I was very insecure. I had some body image issues. I thought I was too skinny. I thought I was too skinny, not strong enough. And so I started working out to try to get bigger, to gain size, to gain weight, and pretty much with like no holds barred, like whatever it took to gain weight and size,

I was a game for. And I did this for years and years and years. In fact, the first time I heard about fasting from the perspective of being a diet, because we had clients that would sometimes talk about fasting, it wasn't very common. So I knew what it was, but I didn't know, I really consider it a diet or a way of being for health until I was in my, I want to say

mid to late 20. So at this point, I'd already been lifting weights consistently for well over 10 years. I'd been a trainer and a coach for eight years or something like that. So I'd been doing it for a while, still fueled very strongly by insecurities. And I remember reading about something called the Warrior Diet. This was the first one that I tried. And I remember reading in at the time, it was a bodybuilding that calm had these forums. And people would be like, oh my god, I only eat once a day. And I haven't lost any muscle. And I feel so good. And I have all this energy. And I'm actually, I feel great. My workouts are better. And, you know, the thing that stuck out to me was,

I haven't lost any muscle. So my fear up into that point, it had been so hammered into my head that I had to eat every two hours. That was a message in the bodybuilding space of the musclebuilding world. It was, don't go without protein for more long than two hours. Otherwise, your body's in eat away at muscle.

I literally believe this. So I would eat every two hours, literally eight to eight meals a day I would have. Now I read this thing about fasting, people are saying they're not losing muscle. I became intrigued and I tested it once. I remember it took a lot of courage for me to not eat all day, right? So I was in eat at night. So I remember I started that day off, no food. And I remember going out throughout the whole day

and feeling okay, actually felt okay. Like, this is weird. I'm not like losing my mind. I don't have these crazy hunger pains. I'm not going nuts with cravings. And then I worked out in the late afternoon and I did have a great workout. And then later that night, I had a feast.

I ate this massive meal. And I said, let me try this again. And I did it over and over again. And to my surprise, muscle did not completely melt off my body. I felt good. In fact, I had more energy throughout the day. There's reasons why that happened to me.

And what it did for me personally, is it broke the chains between me and this insecure attachment to food, where no matter where I went, I had to have a protein bar on me or a shake or something, because God forbid I went two hours without food. This was gonna be a bad thing.

So it was so revealing to me and so transformative from that standpoint that, oh, I don't have to eat every two hours. I don't, it's not gonna, my body's not gonna fall apart and I'm not gonna become the thing that I fear most, which is this skinny kid. So that was really the benefit that I got from it. So like you, I had a very similar experience with it.

Now, I did experiment with it later on in my career. So I had already gone through that transition as a trainer where I realized that most people that would hire me, even the ones that wanted to lose 30, 40, 50 pounds, were under consuming nutrients. weren't getting, they were missing fiber, they were missing protein, they were missing healthy fats. Like I'd already piece that together.

And so I knew that when I experiment with myself like, oh, this is not for most my clients already. Like I already, when someone hires me, even the people that I know need to lose weight, there's not something that I want to use as a tool for them. But what I had was the same thing that you had was I had this fear of, oh my God, if I'm not feeding myself every couple hours and hitting my protein and take every single day, muscle just falls off my body. That's how I felt and I thought

and it completely shattered my paradigm when I started to fast and incorporate that. And then I realized, oh, who is this really good for? And I found that there's gotta be a lot of clients that are like me. I found that in the body building space, you're, you're, you're, you're right with that. It is full of those people that have, that have like, do not miss a meal, carry their protein bars and shakes everywhere they go, or they're tufferware, right? Like, there's a whole industry built around never missing a meal.

And those were the people that I found, okay, this is somebody I'm going to help, you know, teach that they can break away like I struggled with too. And so that was the first And those were the people that I found, okay, this is somebody I'm going to help teach that they can break away like I struggled with too. And so that was the first type of client. The second type of client, and this is again through my experience of realizing what Odufink was, people that had gut issues and helping them kind of reset that because they didn't know where it's coming from or where they're having this bloat or stuff like that. And just putting them on this, you know, two day or three day fast

to completely reset themselves and then slowly reintroduce food. It was a really cool way to help people have insight to maybe you're eating foods that you have an intolerance to and you don't even know it. Let's try and incorporate it fast and see what happens. So it became a definitely a tool in my tool belt towards the back half of my career. But those are the only two people that I ever would apply it to. Never would I apply it to somebody who came to me and said,

I want to lose weight. Yeah, that was my first introduction was the benefit that I received was the the break and the digestive break. And realizing that what I was feeling wasn't normal all the time. And it helped to kind of highlight a certain things that were going on with my digestive system, like at night, having heartburn, having a lot of this blood and a lot of things I just would equate to, well, this is just what happens after I eat.

And also too, just that same kind of fear that you guys were describing is always having to seek out food because another thing psychologically I had to work through was that whole hanger factor, which I know is totally like a joke and everybody kind of tends to blame the fact that they're hungry and so it automatically gives them this sort of freedom to be an asshole. And for me, like I would use as an excuse and I would lean into that and this help to kind of teach me like going through that natural hunger signal process, it's a natural thing that actually too long enough would go away.

It would just go away. And a lot of times too, I was dehydrated. And so that was a huge factor as well that I kind of sifted through all that. So anyway, just in terms of like figuring out a lot of this, this self-reflection and being more introspective, I think that was the biggest value I received. Yeah. Now, it became popular for one reason because people saw that they could lose weight by fasting. That's why it became popular. Because like I said, it's a very old diet, strategy, or approach, not for weight loss, but just one for many other reasons,

which we'll get to. But it became popular because it was a simple, not easy, but a simple way to lose weight. Oh, this is just one step, only eat within a four hour window, for example. And then, of course, it got backed up by scientists and studies that showed that it increased or sped up cell autophagy and reduced inflammation. And you had all these blood markers that would improve, which we now know are not independent

of just being in a calorie deficit. In other words, just eating in a calorie deficit produces the same effects from that standpoint as fasting. So there's really nothing special about fasting from a health physical, I should say, health perspective or even a weight loss perspective. It also did something else, psychologically to people that we piece together as trainers over years, which was it gave people the freedom to kind of eat what they want

so long as they stayed in that window. And we learned later on, like one of the reasons why diets failed was people have this weird relationship with food that if you told them like you can't have cookies Or you can't do these things then they would have this like restrict and then bench type of relationship Yeah, and they would want to rebel was natural for you to want to rebel So it was a very important something that was pieced together really for me with fasting too because I realized

How many people had success with just sticking this and part part of that is, is because they also gave themselves the freedom of like, I'm not gonna tell myself, I can't have a cookie or I can't eat this fast food or I can't have this ice cream. I'm just gonna say, I gotta eat in this window. And as long as I just think that, I still have the freedom to do these things I want. There's something important there

that you need to understand that. That's why other types of diets fail so hard is when you put these restrictions and say, I can't, I can't, I can't, eventually you want to rebel. That was important to learn that as a coach and a trainer. And part of why I flipped the whole diet thing with my clients on its head and said,

instead of telling my clients, they can't do these things. Let me focus on telling them what I need them to go get. And that was a massive shift in my coaching. Yeah. So fasting for fat loss is a terrible approach. By the way, this success rate of fasting for fat loss versus the success rate of any other diet for fat loss is about identical, meaning about 90% of the people who lose weight using fasting or veganism or if it fence your macros or whatever, you know, paleo, whatever, about 90% of them when they lose weight following a specific quote-unquote diet, they gain it back. They gain it back within a year or two and I bet the data would show that the

small percentage is left over, eventually gains it back as well. That's just my own experience. So that's rule number one. That's number one. Why would it want to do a fat loss? We now have the data. It's very clear. It's not more effective than other approaches at all.

Now, I would argue that it has, like many, the most restrictive diets, the ones with the most hard set rules tend many like the most restrictive diets the ones with the most hard set rules tend to produce the most dysfunctional behaviors that I tend to see fasting for fat loss when somebody says I want to lose weight so I'm going to fast Almost always in my experience with people results in a restrict binge behavior Don't eat don't eat don't eat look at the clock at the clock, look at the clock, look at the clock. Time to eat and then they go nuts.

And what happens over time, and maybe at first you're somewhat aware of this, but then you find this is what ends up happening. What I've seen, slowly the eating period becomes, okay, I'm eating this much food and then, oh, I gotta eat more food and then how much can I fit in this eating window and then I can eat whatever I want and then push it.

And what you're actually doing with that is you're training a behavior, you're conditioning yourself to go from nothing to anything, nothing to anything. And that's what we're constantly battling when we're working with people is that on, off, on, off. There is no on, off when it comes to eating in a healthy way that's sustainable.

It doesn't work that way. It's always on. I don't mean always on in the sense that it's always perfect. It's always your diet and it's always your behaviors. But fasting for weight loss almost always results in that strange, don't eat, eat anything or eat terribly type model. And that's just a bad bad thing to train

It also exacerbates what I had seen already in in normal clients that were trying to lose weight Most people that would come to me were over consuming Process carbohydrates sugars saturated fats Not eating enough protein not getting enough, not eating enough vegetables and fruits, and getting a good, so they were missing all these micronutrients, and in a macro-nutrient when you can include protein and healthy fats, and they were missing those things,

over-consuming the bad foods, and then you put them in this constrictive window, then they had an even harder time hitting that fiber, the protein, healthy, all those things. But then they would just over consume even more to your point of the binging habits of those bad foods. Yeah.

Look, so now you've made it, like if I gave a client a 12 hour window all day, basically, to eat all these foods and they were missing all these things that are important and crucial to their overall health and they were missing that and things that are important and crucial to their overall health, and they were missing that, and yet struggling with still weight loss. And then I say, okay, now you can only eat four hours, it just made that worse. I mean, it just made it more difficult for them to hit their protein and take more difficult

to be consistent with their fire, and more difficult to hit healthy fats. They were just overconsuming processed foods. Look, a petite, so we, okay, let me back up. Okay, here's something that data is very clear on with diet. A high protein diet, one in which you're eating close to a gram of protein per pound of body weight in a normal lean individual.

So if you're overweight, it would be your target weight. So just to loosely say it, roughly a gram of protein per pound of body weight, okay. So that, the data shows clearly all things being controlled, everything else being controlled, calories, exercise, lifestyle, everything else, the high protein version results in more muscle, less fat, more satiety, meaning less cravings, less hunger, better insulin levels or blood sugar levels. So it's just superior, okay? So this is a fact across the board, doesn't matter if you're vegan, carnivore, paleo,

whatever, however you like to eat, high protein across the board in studies is just better. Okay, that being said, a petite woman who weighs 100 pounds, okay, so I'm using a woman, a small woman, a 120, 130, that's 100. I'm gonna say 100. A somebody who does not represent the vast majority of people listening right now, okay? If this woman put her eating window at four hours,

that means she has to get a hundred grams of protein in four hours. Okay, that's hard. That would mean she would have to eat 50, three six ounce chicken breast. Yeah, imagine that. And a four hour, for a 100 pound woman. Now, if you're a 150 pound woman, which is average, good luck.

I would have struggled eating 150 grams of protein in four hours. Now, a 200 pound man, like, you forget it. You're not gonna hit your protein targets or it's gonna be really hard or what you're gonna do, which a lot of people do when they fast like this, is they'll eat as much protein as they can. They stuff themselves like, I gotta get the protein because I only have a four hour eating one, then they throw a shake on top of it, and now again,

they're doing that, that binge type of thing. Now you throw on top of it, like you said, fiber or healthy food, good luck trying to hit those targets in that short period of time, unless you're actively stuffing yourself. So literally, think of this for a second. Starve for 12 hours or however many hours, you know, that you go on the fast. And then cram because I gotta get these protein targets in that four hour window,

which is by that's one type of fasting. I know there's different varieties, but that's one of the more popular ones. Good luck. Not gonna work. And when it's happening, the data shows this is that when they compare fasting to other calorie-stricted type models, they're very similar,

although fasting, ready for this, trends towards muscle loss. It tends to trend for this reason. For this reason, for this reason. The exact reason, right? This is probably the main reason. Of 100%. If I'm telling you right now, that every single client, I can't even think of a client who hired me that was overweight, that we needed to get on a workout plan and I assess their diet, they were under consuming protein

with 12 hours. So what in the world would make me think that same client put in a protocol where they only have a four hour one with now a sudden hit their protein and take good luck. It's hard enough. No, it's totally difficult. That's, and so, and then they, but yet you see weight off the scale come down.

So yeah, you restricted calories and temporarily, there's nothing magic. Yeah, the scale window, but your metabolism just got slower. Your body fat percentage probably changed very little if at all because you lost as much muscle as you lost fat. So you're in a worse predicament than what you were when you started the fast. Yeah. And again, I think people like it when they compare to other diets because it's simple. Yeah. And by the way, they like it initially, almost

nobody, you know, two, three years later says, oh yeah, I love it. It was great. You know, they're always like, yeah, in a short window. Yeah, exactly. Now, here's the reasons why fasting has some value. It has tremendous value for detachment. Okay. This is why it's present in every spiritual religion. This is the purpose of it. This is the point. Now, why would fasting and detachment from food,

like, why would that be valuable? Well, one of them is what we talked about. I gotta eat all the time. If I don't eat, oh my God, I'm gonna feel crappy or I'm gonna lose muscle. That helped me practice a detachment from this thing that I felt chain to. But then there's also this, like, okay,

I'm not eating for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or I'm not eating when I'm stressed out, or I'm not eating when I'm watching TV, what do I do with myself? What do I do with my feelings? How do I handle the situation? What do I reveal about myself when I take away the most commonly used method of medication, which is food. Everybody medocates with food, so now that I don't have that, what's coming up for me?

How do I feel? What's happening? And then when you go back to eating again, there are things that tend to be revealed to you. By the way, if you have, we didn't say this in the beginning, let's say this right now, if you have a history of eating disorders

where you restrict yourself, anything that even resembles bulimia or anorexia, already have to do. Run from fasting methodologies, as fast you can, almost always will put you back into your eating disorder. Yeah. OK, well, now that kind of ruins what I was going to say. But I was going to equate fasting in terms of like stepping

away from it from the detachment part of it is meditation and what that, the benefits with that in terms of like stimulus and just constantly inundating your senses with all of the stimulus all the time and now with blue light and all these other sort of... Distractions out there.

Yeah, that hype up your stress levels. This can also have that physiological effect by stepping away from food for a bit. Well, this also brings us to the next one, which is comparing the difference between short, fast, and long, fast. And this does bring up the example where I would allow a client who is trying to say,

lose 50 pounds. And she's like, I really, I hear what you guys say. I have some things I want to detach. I've abused food in the past, and I definitely want to be somebody who, and I want to use it for the meditative purposes. Like, you know, do you think I could use it? I would allow a client like once a month

to do a single day fast. 24-hours, right? For that purpose, like the single day. We're not doing this because it's going to speed up our results in your, in your fat loss journey. But I do see the benefits of going for an entire day, restricting from food, detaching from food so that you can focus on meditating and realize that you don't need to reach for that thing all the time. You're totally okay. going 24 hours and not eating.

And I think there's a lot of value for that reason. And that would be the only way I would let that client who is trying to lose to depends, because I would need the other 29 days of the month focused on hitting your macro targets and your micro targets, because most people trying to lose weight, struggle with doing that.

And I would want most of our time focusing on getting that with, okay, once a month we can interrupt our diet plan or our month or our routine to do this complete fast so that we can look at other aspects, work inward in our lives. If you want to use fasting for what it's valuable for, then all your fasting needs to be a long fast. Oh, okay, what does that mean long? Long is subjective. It needs to be a long fast. Oh, okay, what does that mean long?

Long is subjective. It needs to be a fast that challenges you. Okay, so if skipping breakfast is a big challenge for you, then that would be your fast. That would be the way you detach from something that you're so tied to, right? If fasting for breakfast and lunch is a challenge for you, then that would be your fast.

Many people probably, I would say, could start with a 24 hour fast. But you could go pretty damn long. You know, people can fast for a week without food. By the way, make sure you're not underweight if you attempt a fast that's longer than 24 or 48 hours because then you can run into some trouble. But otherwise, you could go for a long time. And so the question is, how long should I fast? Okay, you've made the points, not for weight loss. I get it, that makes a lot of sense. It's good for detachment reasons or spiritual reasons

or self-reflection type reasons. Then how long should I fast? You want to challenge yourself. That's what brings out the value in the fast. Obviously, you don't eat when you sleep. Well, that doesn't challenge you so that, but that even though that's technically a fast, right? So it's like, okay, what's the length of time that I feel like I'm going to be able to start to reap some of the benefits, the detachment, the reflection,

the, I'm not reaching for food because I can't. So I got to deal with my feelings right now or it's lunchtime. Okay, I always typically go get that thing and now I'm not going to, what does that feel like? How do I feel? How is that causing my emotions to change? Am I more productive? Am I less productive? What is this bringing up for me?

You know, that's kind of how you want to view the whole thing, but a successful fast or one that's going to benefit you in that way is one that challenges you. And so the length of time is dependent on that for the individual. Now, people always ask how to prepare for a fast. I do want to comment just as we get into preparing, the groups of people that are most successful with fast, people who tend to be able to stick to it and repeat it,

are people who do it for religious reasons. There's your clue right there as the real value. People who practice Islam do this every year. In fact, they do a fast, what is it? Sun up to sundown, they don't even drink, they're not even allowed fluids. And yet a large chunk of them is successful at doing it because they're doing it for spiritual reasons. There's also a culture behind it. So you have support with the people around you. Well, you've highlighted vegans before,

vegans that had the most successful. You're fasting from meat to say. Yeah, the ones that do it for animal, for to save animals, I believe they're the ones that are successful. People who do it for a diet, they fail. So how do you prepare for a fast? Well, there's nothing special you need to do with your diet. This is where people who sell fasting kits tend to profit. They'll like, oh, you know, take our fasting preparation supplements or take these pills during your fast. Or here's your fasting, breaking program that you need to do. So they surround this, his fasting is like, how do you make money off of eating nothing, right? By the way, if you are one of those people who's listening

to this and you drink BCAAs during your fast because you're trying to not lose muscle, you're doing it the wrong way. You're again, you are the person who I want to fast completely because you got the same silly fear that I had all the time. I'm going like, oh God, if I don't eat for 24 hours, muscle's gonna fall off of me. So if you're wanting to do fasting for purposes like that

and detachment, then you don't need to be drinking BCAAs or some supplement that someone tried to sell you that this is how you should do a fast. All you need is water, that's it. Just drink some water all day long. Yeah, add some electrolytes, I'll say that. Definitely add some sodium because going without food will deplete your body of electrolytes

and you may find you. A little help with the shaky kind of feeling too. Yeah, headaches, the low blood pressure, all that stuff, actually makes a big difference. Literally put, like we work with a company called Element, put that in your water or literally put like salt in with a company called element put that in your water or Literally put like salt in your little bit of salt in your water. That'll make a big difference All right, so how to prepare for a fast the way you prepare is you set your intention

You prepare your mind you prepare your psyche or your spirit however you want to look at it And you say to yourself Wednesday for example, I'm going to fast. My intention is to deal with my feelings instead of medicating myself with food or my intention is to reflect on how I am as a partner or as a parent or as somebody's child or as a friend. My intention is to go without to deal with my negative feelings, whatever it is. That's how you prepare for a fast, is you go into it with an intention. Now, the intention may change, just like anytime you do something that's pro-growth, something might reveal itself, but having the intention really adds value and meaning to the thing you're about to do. If you don't do it,

if you don't go in with some kind of intention, you actually run the risk of falling into the, oh, I feel smaller. Oh, I think I'm losing weight. You fall into, you may fall into that trap. You may say to yourself, I'm doing this for the right reasons, but then you may find that you lost five pounds of water weight,

you feel smaller, not as bloated. Oh, I like this. This is why I'm here. You're gonna fight all the noise in your head that's telling you to go back to food and it's gonna help to kind of resolve a lot of some comfortfulness that you're feeling. So to place your mind somewhere where it's very focused,

you know, even if it's journaling, you know, just having gratitude and kind of writing things down. You're grateful for something that's like really directed and focused will really help through that process. I do have a small minor food tip going into. A mistake I've seen happen when people are going into their first like 24 hour fast is they decide to have their their last meal like the last supper. Like, you know, like they go super big. They go for people that we have. Yes.

And so they go. So common. Carb heavy ice cream, candy treat, like they go all out on that. And they just make them feel more shitty. Yeah. Yeah. It actually will make the fast more difficult. I've found, and by the way, I know that speaking from experience, I've done that, gone and like had the big burger fries, like an ice cream meal before I go to

freeing. Freeing gold, like, exponentially. Yes, it actually makes the cravings that much more difficult over the next 24 hours, versus doing a good whole food, healthy, high fat, high protein type of meal that's minimal carbohydrates or none going into your last meal. You'll actually have an easier time in my opinion going through that 24 hours. And if you go like, oh, this is my last meal and I'm going to go all out. Yeah, and that's if you want to, I think that's a healthy approach because you're going,

so here's a thing. So what Adam's talking about, if you're doing this to make the fast easier, okay, that's fine, but that's not quite as valuable as the following. I'm going into this fast with intention. I want to stop self-medicating with food or I want to stop hating myself. If you go into the fast with that intention, you're not going to lead into the fast with a massive meal because the intention has nothing to do with the fact that I'm eating, not eating, it's more like, I'm going to deal with this thing. So that's fine to do that because you want to make the fast easier. But the truth is if you go in with a true intention, you're not going in like it's your last hurrah. Better get this last pizza meal in before I go into my fast. It probably won't happen if you have the right intention going into the fast.

Now, the last question, the second question people ask is always how to get out of a fast. Well, the simple answer is to eat again, but. But, you know, they make the same people to say the mistake that I just said about going into. If you come out with a huge meal, expect explosive diarrhea, that's just what's gonna happen. First hand account.

If you do that, your digestive system essentially turned off during the fast, and it'll turn on and it'll vacate very quickly if you consume too much all at once. I recommend having a small meal. That's easily digestible. Like a broth or a soup. Just something that's easily digestible that you normally can eat and I feel okay.

Full has become my like go to. Two, three. Well, it's got nice soda even too. Yeah, so high in sodium, it's got some protein in there. It's a broth. It's just not a heavy, easy. Most people don't have any intolerances to like a chicken, you know, rice noodle.

Yeah, rice noodle, chicken broth type of meal. It's very, very satisfying, digest really, really well. But also keep in mind that you're already doing this, even if you're doing it for the attachment reasons for other things, it's always a great opportunity. This is why I like to still include this and my routine now is that to really highlight how foods are affecting you.

And so you're slow, I like to slowly introduce different food groups to see like, oh, that's interesting, that food that doesn't agree with me as well as I thought it did. And you'll become your hyper-sensitive after you fast like that. And so it helps people that are trying to become, we talk on the show all the time about

trying to become aware of like how foods affect your mood, your energy, your digestion. Well, guess what? After a fast, those signals are louder than they ever are. And so if you were going to go into a come out of a fast and you're part of your intentions are, I really want to make a better relationship with food and get better connected. The guys always talk about, you know, pay attention after you eat, like you're stool and you're mood and make a better relationship with food and get better connected. The guy's always talk about, pay attention after you eat, like you're stool and you're mood

and you're hair and your skin and like, I don't know, I don't notice any of that stuff. I don't know, now is the time to try and become better connected to those things. And this is a great way to do that. If you come that fast, you slowly introduce different food groups, especially the ones that are on that list of,

like, you list of most likely to be a problematic for people and pay attention to how they affect you. You will know the alarm will be much louder now than what it was say two weeks ago. Yeah, now if you did a 24 hour fast or 48 hour fast, you're probably not going to lose any muscle. It's unlikely that you'll lose muscle, but you will lose weight on the scale. That is water weight, okay? Expect to gain it back when you go back to eating normal. Do not become attached to the scale during and after fasting unless you want to trigger yourself. Really should be no

reason for you to wait. No, you don't weigh yourself at all after. Just leave it because what you'll notice is a swing of five to eight pounds that can, depending on the person, feel exciting or scary and then either relieving or scary. So don't weigh yourself. It's a terrible, terrible strategy. Also people ask, should I or could I work out during the fast? You know, I, if I was doing a 24 hour, if this is me personally, right? If I do a 24-hour fast, I typically can work out like I normally do. Anything longer than that, my workouts are reduced in intensity, but here's the main message

that I want to give people when they're fasting. When you're fasting and you're doing it for the right reasons, it has nothing to do with fitness, fat loss, muscle building. So don't work out. Don't worry about working out. That's not the priority. Yeah, I don't like to, and I don't like to recommend to it because of what we just you just said. Yeah. If the reason is not for fat loss or building muscle or any of those things, which should be, then working out or not working out has no route. It isn't relevant at all.

So why? So why? And you don't have any fuel for that workout anyways. So why? And you're not eating any calories. So it's like, why? Instead, use that opportunity, all the time you're gonna get back, you be, you know the thing that I think is always fascinating and never fails to like realize, you realize like, wow, how much time humans spend around thinking about food, prepping food, and eating food.

And now, as soon as you have like hours of your day, you get back immediately. Use that for other reasons. To work inward, to spend time with your family, do something that you haven't done that you have been meaning to do. This is not the time for me to go train at all. Yeah, and by the way, fasting can be applied to anything you feel attached to, any worldly thing.

So you can fast from electronics. You could fast if you have a bad relationship with exercise from exercising for a little while. You could fast from, of course, alcohol or other substances. So this detachment practice extends itself beyond just food. And there's tremendous value in detaching and reshaping your relationship to things that you may feel chain to.

So again, fast thing for the right reasons, great, for the wrong reasons, absolute terrible strategy. Look, if you love the show, head over to MindPumpFree.com and check out all of our free health and fitness guides. We have a ton of them on there, and they can help you with their health and fitness goals. You can also find all of us on Instagram. Justin is on Instagram at MindPump. Justin, I'm on Instagram at MindPump.de Stefano and Adam is on Instagram at your health and fitness goals. You can also find all of us on Instagram. Justin is on Instagram at my pump Justin.

I'm on Instagram at my pump to Stefano, and Adam is on Instagram at my pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media.com.

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