Realfoodology - 33: How Fasting Can Be Intuitive with Dr. Will Cole

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

I speak with Dr. Will Cole, leading functional medicine expert & practitioner. He was named one of the top 50 functional-medicine and integrative doctors in the nation and is a health expert and course instructor for the world’s largest wellness brands such as mindbodygreen and Goop, and an international Bestselling Author and Speaker. He has 3 books: Ketotarian, the Inflammation Spectrum and his latest book Intuitive Fasting (which I highly recommend). He specializes in clinically investigating underlying factors of chronic disease and customizing health programs for thyroid issues, autoimmune conditions, hormonal dysfunctions, digestive disorders, and brain problems. We discuss intuitive fasting, how fasting can be intuitive, what metabolic flexibility is and how to achieve it for optimal health, what functional medicine is, the difference between fasting and eating disorders and so much more! Show Links: https://www.instagram.com/drwillcole/ https://drwillcole.com/ https://www.facebook.com/doctorwillcole Intuitive Fasting : https://amzn.to/3cU4rco

on today's episode of The Real Foodology Podcast. So that's in a nutshell what functional medicine is. It's evidence-based alternative medicine because we use food as medicine, but in specific ways. We're just asking the question, what is your most effective option that causes you the least amount of side effects? And for some people, they need to be on medications

and medications fit that criteria. It is their most effective option that's causing them the least amount of side effects and nothing's gonna come close to that. But the problem is that question is rarely asked in the conventional setting. It is their most effective option that's causing them the least amount of side effects, and nothing's going to come close to that. But the problem is that question is rarely asked in the conventional setting. Hi, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology podcast.

I am your host, Courtney Swan. I am the creator behind Real Foodology, which is, of course, this podcast. But it actually started out as a food blog when I was getting my master's in nutrition. And it was really just an outlet for me to talk about all of the things that I was learning about health, our bodies, and how to really just fuel our bodies with real food so that we can feel the best that we possibly can. And of course, it's also an Instagram. So if you don't follow me, please go and follow me at Real Foodology. I feel like I say this every week, but I'm so excited about today's guest. And you know, it's true. Every week I have amazing people on this podcast and I just feel so grateful and fortunate that I'm able to get these really amazing experts in the health and wellness field. So it's true. I'm really excited about everyone that I bring on this podcast. And this one is no exception.

On today's episode, I speak with Dr. Will Cole, who is a leading functional medicine expert and practitioner. He was named one of the top 50 functional medicine and integrative doctors in the nation. He's also a health expert and a course instructor for the world's largest wellness brands, such as MindBodyGreen and Goop, and he's an international best-selling author and speaker. He has three books, Ketotarian, The Inflammation Spectrum, and his latest one, which is Intuitive Fasting, which I highly recommend, and this is what we dive into today. He specializes in clinically

investigating underlying factors of chronic disease and customizing health programs for thyroid issues, autoimmune conditions, hormonal dysfunctions, digestive disorders, and brain problems. We discuss intuitive fasting, how fasting can be intuitive, what metabolic flexibility is and how to achieve it for optimal health, what functional medicine is, the difference between fasting and eating disorders, and so much more. I'm really excited. So let's get to a question and then we'll get into the episode. Before I get to the question, I just have a little disclaimer. As always, these answers and this podcast are just for educational and informational purposes only. I am an integrative

nutritionist, but I'm not a doctor. And I don't know you personally. I don't know what's going on in your body. So just know that this information on this podcast is not a sub for individual medical or mental health advice. And it doesn't constitute a provider-patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor first. Today's question is so fitting for the conversation that I have with Dr. Will Cole. So I'm going to try to keep it as brief as I can because we go more into detail about this in the conversation. This is really exciting. Organifi now has kid stuff. They just released two kid products. One is called Easy Greens, and it's a refreshing green apple juice where kids will never know that it's packed with veggies.

And the other one is called Protect. It's a delicious wild berry punch like the Kool-Aid that we used to have as a kid, but without any sugar. This is really exciting. And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of Organifi and most specifically because every single product that they make is glyphosate residue free. So you know that you're going to be able to give these powders to your kids and know that they will be able to consume them safely without any glyphosate in it. So let's break down each one. The Easy Greens is a nourishing and delicious blend of superfoods and veggies that provides essential nutrients, probiotics, and digestive enzymes to bring balance to kids' growing bodies without fillers, additives,

or junk. It helps to fill in nutritional gaps, aids in growth and development, supports digestive health, has a rich micronutrient profile, and includes digestive enzymes. This would be a great way to sneak in greens for your little one without them actually knowing that it's healthy for them. And the second one, which is the wild berry punch similar to Kool-Aid is called Protect and it is to support your child's daily immune health with food derived nutrients that work to strengthen their body's first line of defense. I know just through girlfriends of mine that have children that when your kids are going to school, going to daycare, they're coming home sick a lot more often just because they're getting exposed to different kids and different viruses when they're out in the world playing with kids.

So this would be a great way to help to support your little one's immune health. It's organic and it's also made with real whole food ingredients. It has a delicious berry taste and it's low sugar and it's gentle enough for kids to take every single day. And I really love the ingredients in this one. It's orange and acerol cherry, which is a powerful source of vitamin C and antioxidants, astragalus, elderberry and propolis. These are all really great for overall immune health. If you want to try the products that I talked about today or any of the Organifi products, go to Organifi.com slash realfoodology and use code real foodology for 20% off. Again, that's Organifi. It's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash real foodology. Do you want to hear the biggest

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real foodology for an extra 15% off your purchase. Thanks to Neurohacker for sponsoring today's episode. But today's question is from Josh and he said, I'm very interested in fasting for all the health benefits, but I am intimidated to try it, intimidated to try it because it seems very hard and rigid. Do you have to follow the exact feeding times that are suggested to get the maximum benefits? So no, and this is what Will Cole is talking about a lot actually with his intuitive fasting. But basically, I think people forget that when we're sleeping, we're fasting. The way that I practice fasting is really simple. When I'm done eating dinner, and I don't have an exact dinner time that I eat. It depends on what I'm

doing that day. Um, I make sure I really fit it into my lifestyle. Maybe if I'm going out to dinner with friends or, you know, if I'm staying in for the night, I may eat a little bit earlier, but whenever my last meal is, which I try to eat around seven or before, but again, like I said, I am not super rigid about that time because for me personally, I just can't go there. I like to really follow my intuition and eat when I'm hungry. And I don't like having these rigid times and meal times. So I don't think that you need to either. But what I do say is whenever I'm done with my meal, when I'm done with dinner, I don't

eat until the next day. Now, does that mean that I never, ever eat late or past a certain point? No, I'm done with dinner, I don't eat until the next day. Now, does that mean that I never, ever eat late or past a certain point? No, I'm human, but it's pretty rare for me actually. So I try to not eat after dinner, but like I said, life happens. And then by the time I have slept a full eight hours, I get up in the morning. I generally have coffee in the morning with a little bit of either MCT oil or some butter in there. So I don't eat until I'm hungry. And depending on the day and more specifically, depending on where I'm at in my cycle, I sometimes find myself not hungry until noon, 1 PM. But then I do have those days where I

wake up and I am hungry an hour after waking up and I follow that. So it's not about necessarily finding the, it's not about stretching yourself into these certain specific timeframes and making yourself fast for a specific number of hours. If all you can commit to is not eating maybe an hour or two before you go to sleep and then not eating until you wake up the next morning, that's great. You have fasted for, depending on how long that is, you know, an eight to 10 hour morning, that's great. You have fasted for, depending on how long that is, you know, an eight to 10 hour window. That's great. And the beautiful thing about that is that you're sleeping. You have no idea. So you're not sitting in agony, aware of the fact that you are fasting. So that's a great way to allow yourself to naturally fast without having to worry about

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from our place, go to fromourplace.com and enter my code realfoodology at checkout to receive 10% off sitewide. That's fromourplace.com, code realfoodology. Our place offers a 100-day trial with free shipping and returns. And with that, let's get to the episode. Yeah. Well, Will, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm really excited about this conversation. Same here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Well, Will, thank you so much for coming on today. I'm really excited about this conversation.

Same here. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. So first and foremost, for those listening who are unaware of you and your work, can you tell everyone a little bit about what you do? Yeah, sure. So I'm a functional medicine practitioner. I started one of the first functional medicine telehealth centers in the world over almost 12 years ago. So over 10 hours a day, I'm here right where I'm at right now in my functional medicine telehealth center, talking to people via webcam, like we're talking right now. And we drop ship labs to them and provide them a functional medicine perspective on their health issue,

on their case, what's driving their symptoms. So we deal a lot with people with autoimmune problems, autoimmune conditions, inflammatory problems that aren't autoimmune as well. And that manifests in different ways for different people, but people that are struggling with different various degrees of fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, depression, sometimes digestive issues, musculoskeletal inflammation, hormonal problems, just dysregulation in the body, basically. And my job is to find out what are the underlying drivers that's causing these flare-ups, that's causing these imbalances that they notice in their life. So from my clinical practice, just an outpouring of that is my love of educating people about these topics. I've written a few

books, Ketotarian, The Inflammation Spectrum, and Intuitive Fasting is my newest book. Yeah, so that's my jam. That's what I do. I love it. Well, for people listening, can you explain what functional medicine is? I mean, I love functional medicine, and I really do believe that it's the best approach to medicine. But for those who are listening that don't, that are unaware, can you explain it a little bit? Yeah. So the main difference is between what we do in functional medicine and comparing that and contrasting that to conventional medicine. First thing is we interpret labs using a thinner reference range. So anybody that's listening right now will know, hey, when I get my labs, I'm being compared to this reference range, this X to Y interval. Well, we get that reference range from a conventional standpoint based on a statistical

bell curve average of the population of that specific lab. So if you go to other labs, you will see that reference range will probably vary from lab to lab because they're looking at different populations. It's non-standardized. It's not looking at optimal health. And we have to ask the question, who are people that are typically going to labs that are made up of that bell curve? It's people that are sadly going through health problems. So there's a lot of people, especially women, that know intuitively there's something not right with their health. They know these symptoms, whatever they're going through isn't normal for them. They go to their doctor and the doctor says, everything's fine.

You know, the labs are quote unquote normal. And, you know, they're told you're just depressed. Here's an antidepressant or you're just getting older or you're a new mom. You're just stressed or you are distressed. All these well-intentioned maybe reasons on how the heck you could be having these symptoms despite these quote unquote normal labs. What they're unintentionally telling that person is that they're a lot like the other people that they're being compared to with health problems. And just because something's common doesn't necessarily mean it's normal,

or we should settle for it. And comparing yourself to other people with health problems, there's no way for you to find out how you can feel you're optimal. So we're looking at optimal, not average, and comparing you to that, to optimal. And so that gives a lot of areas because we know that health and health problems exist on a spectrum. I mean, health problems don't happen overnight. By the time they're diagnosable, it's about four to 10 years prior to that diagnosis when things were brewing on this inflammation spectrum that I talk about. So the second thing we do differently in functional medicine is we run more comprehensive labs. So that's where we

really get granular, if you will, to the underlying confluence of factors, this perfect storm of variables that are oftentimes at play to give rise to things like fatigue and digestive problems or hormonal imbalances or whatever we're talking about here. So we're getting multiple labs perspective from their vantage point. What's the objective underlying root components to their issues? And then we realized in functional medicine, we realized we're all different and there's not going to be these cookie cutter approaches where you could have 100 people with the same diagnosis code, like everybody's diagnosed with anxiety or fatigue. And what works for one person isn't necessarily going to work for the next person. So we see these symptoms

like fatigue or anxiety or weight loss resistance or digestive problems, we see all of these as check engine lights. We know the check engine light's on, but there's a myriad of different reasons why the check engine light could be on. So we have to look really comprehensively and tailor healthcare to the individual. So that's in a nutshell what functional medicine is. It's evidence-based alternative medicine because we use food as medicine, but in specific ways for the individual. Because even healthy foods, what works for one person may not work for the next person. So there's so many different tools in the toolbox when it comes to just food as medicine. But then natural medicine

protocols, advanced protocols, out of the box stuff sometimes that are kind of cutting edge stuff in the scientific literature to apply into people's lives and medications when needed. We're not anti-medication. We're just asking the question, what is your most effective option that causes you the least amount of side effects? And for some people, they need to be on medications and medications fit that criteria. It is their most effective option that's causing them the least amount of side effects and nothing's going to come close to that. But the problem is that question is rarely asked in the conventional setting. We don't ask what the most effective option that causes the least amount

of side effects because most medications that are given today, a lot of them don't fit that criteria. It's not the most effective option for them and it's causing them a lot of potential side effects. So this is in a nutshell, what functional medicine is. I love it. Yeah. And you touched on what I find to be so important about functional medicine is that it's bio-individualized. Like we were realizing that one size does not fit all, one diet does not fit all. And we have to get to that place where we can treat people individually. And I think it's so interesting too, you touched on this with like conventional medicine, there's like that average range of numbers that you look at. And it's, it's almost as if like the, the way to a certain disease,

like for example, Addison disease, once you're there, there's no turning back, but you, if you're able to zoom out and look at those numbers and see them along the way and see it moving up, then you can like hopefully have diet intervention or some sort of intervention that comes in and you can actually reverse that and keep it from going to full blown Addison disease, you know, instead of just like one day, like, Oh, well, I guess you have it now. It's like, there's so many things that we can do before we're to that point of no return. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's a great example. I mean, we're talking about Addison's disease or autoimmune adrenal disease. There has to be 90% destruction of the adrenal glands before it fits mainstream medicine's criteria to be labeled with

Addison. Similar numbers, I mean, 70 to 90% destruction of certain parts of the body to be labeled with things like MS, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's, Addison's disease, even Hashimoto's disease. These things oftentimes don't happen overnight. And it's again, four to 10 years prior to mainstream medicine saying, hey, you've got this. It didn't happen overnight. There's exceptions to that rule, but the average person, it's just a long time coming. And you can, this is on this larger autoimmune inflammation spectrum. There's silent autoimmunity in one end, meaning if you ran labs, you really are looking at the proper labs for these people because they feel fine. So, but if you ran the data, you'd catch some things and it happens from time to time.

And then stage two is autoimmune reactivity, which a lot of people are on that range. And I don't want to scare people to say, well, everybody's there. It's not everybody, but there's a lot of people that are symptomatic that know intuitively, this is not normal. Like what's going on with my body? And they're told, you know, maybe it looks autoimmune or you have a family history of autoimmunity. There's like been chatter amongst your doctors that maybe throw the word autoimmune out, but there's never really a understanding, a solution, right? They're basically saying, wait till your body's destroyed enough of itself so we can give you a diagnosis code and put you on a steroid or a biologic.

That's really what's at play here because those are the options for people, for the most part, with people without immunity. It's some steroids, some immunosuppressant, and that is sort of the reactionary approach that happens four to 10 years later. Yeah. This is why I always encourage people to seek out either a functional medicine doctor or integrative because they both do similar. They both take similar approaches to it. Yeah. So interesting. So I want to talk about your new book because I am so into this. This is something that I have just intuitively practiced the last couple of years. So for those listening that are unaware, his book is called intuitive fasting. That's what it's called, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I want you to talk about this because I think this is such an important,

I just think this is such a incredible approach to fasting that's in my mind seems to be the most healthy. It is. I agree with you. So it's born out of my clinical practice and just how I've seen over the past 12 years. That's just clinical experience. But I've always been a health nerd since I was a teenager. And I first heard about fasting in the 90s when I was reading a book called Patient Heal Thyself. And Jordan Rubin kind of reverses ulcerative colitis or some sort of inflammatory GI issue with many things, but fasting being one tool. So I've been aware of fasting for a long time. And clinically, I've seen on an hourly

basis for the past decade, how this amazing tool can really enhance somebody's life. But context matters with fasting because something that is a great tool can be used in a way that's not healthy. A great tool can be abused, just like anything in health and wellness, just like anything in life. It's the context matters, how you use it matters, the intention of why you're using it matters. And that's kind of, that's what the conversation that I wanted to have with intuitive fasting. It's paradoxical on purpose, the title is, because it's also a conversation about metabolic flexibility, which is a real, something that's lacking in the modern human landscape. There's a lot of metabolic inflexibility or metabolic rigidity, meaning,

look at the statistics again. I mean, we're talking about 70 some percent of the United States has a massive blood sugar problem. That's a lot of people. That's we're talking seven out of 10 people are struggling with some sort of dysglycemia, blood sugar, dysregulation, weight loss, resistance, fatigue, hangriness, insatiable cravings, PCOS, other hormonal problems, type two diabetes, prediabetes. Again, just because something's common doesn't make it normal. So yeah, fasting will be anything but intuitive when you're metabolically inflexible because your hangriness and your

cravings will disguise itself as your intuition. So that's part of the reason why I'm saying, if you calm that noise in your body, if you calm that inflammation, which is proverbial noise in your body, you actually will have proper blood sugar balance and satiety signaling and awareness on what serves you and what's a saboteur in your life. So you'll be able to eat mindfully and intuitively fast, not because it's restrictive or arduous or like an eating disorder disguised as a wellness practice. Quite the contrary, you will have a deep, what I call in the book, food piece, because you'll be able to eat and have proper signaling pathways to know what serves you. You'll be able to go longer without food because your blood sugar is more balanced. So you'll be able to eat and fast more intuitively. So that's what

I wanted to talk about in intuitive fasting, because I've seen it, like you said, it's such a healthy relationship, not just with food and fasting, but a healthy relationship with yourself and your body. Because there's this grace and lightness and flexibility that's there, where if you put in the work and show up for yourself and build some good things in your life, both on a physical level, but also on a mental emotional level too, which I talk a lot about is using food and fasting as mindfulness practice, that cultivates such an awesome, like amazing, fertile foundation for, for food, peace, for peace in your life. So that's what it is. And it's also a second layer of that conversation that I wanted to have is I think so much of the fasting

community of which I'm a part of and have been for a long time in the ketogenic community, it can be so much from the biohacker side of things and like the alpha, like they are basically like, how can we do more to be demigods? And it's like this real alpha energy, which is cool. And it works for some people, but it doesn't work for a lot of other people. So I wanted to bring this sort of mindful, gentle, flexible approach where you could still leverage these amazing benefits without being this biohacker aficionado, like a superhuman.

I love that. I mean, that has been my own experience with getting to this place of intuitive fasting. Um, I, and I love how you put this, you called it food piece. I truly now, like, as you said that word, I was like, yes, that is where I feel like I have gotten to, to, because I look back on when I was in school, I was getting my master's in nutrition. And when I would pack my meals for the day, I would pack lunch. I would pack two snacks and then sometimes dinner, depending on how long I would be on campus. And I look back, I mean, I would literally be snacking in classes because I could not even go two hours without thinking about food and without needing to eat something. And now I'm in a place where I pretty

much only eat two meals and sometimes a snack here and there. And I do not feel deprived. I never think about it. I feel hungry when I feel hungry. I eat, but I'm not like chasing this hunger all day where I'm just like, oh my God, if I'm going to be away from the house for more than four hours, I need to pack snacks. Like I really have found that place where I have this food piece. Yeah. It's so true. It's our birthright. I mean, look fat times of fasting and this, and this feeling and awareness that we're talking about, it's actually encoded in our DNA. We can have that agency and agency over your health is not obsession and feeling like you can need to control food. That's not that that's, that's disordered eating too. This is a healthy agency awareness over your life that you know, it works for you and what doesn't. And you're able to

pivot. It's not like so rigid. It's, it's a flexibility, um, instead of food controlling you, which is most people are bound by food. Exactly. And I want to talk about that a little bit because I know that some people have, well, a lot of people have been going at you online about this, comparing this to like an eating disorder. Let's talk about that because I feel like that is doing such a disservice to this fasting intuitively. Let's just talk about it. Yeah. So it's interesting. Here's the backstory of this is like, when I wrote the book, I wrote it, I started at the end of 2019, and wrote it over 2020. So I'd see patients during the week. And then I write the book in the evenings on weekends. And I wasn't traveling over 2020 because pandemic. And I was like, I really was immersed in

this book. And I thought thought you know what this is going to be something that's never been done before in the fasting conversation because it's always that alpha beta alpha biohacker sort of bent which is great it has its place and serves people but like the analogy that I use in the book it's like we're all different facets of the same diamond we all reflect our light in a different way but we're all part of that same diamond within wellness. So that biohacker stuff works for some people. That's great. I mean, but I wanted to resonate with different people and reflect light in a different way and talk about this amazing tool of wellness and have this commonality of this.

And I thought, OK, because the publishers had talked about me doing a book about OMAD, because I wanted to write about fasting. I knew that book was going to be about fasting. And they thought, well, let's let our in conversation to be about OMAD, which is one meal a day. And I thought, you know what, the context is really going to be lost on the, if you're judging a book by its cover, it's going to be lost on the people. They're going to be like, whoa, like this is full on eating disorder prop prop. Why is he advocating this? And obviously, I know that the context of how you use something like OMAD, which I talk about intuitive fasting, has its place and is an amazing tool. But if you're leading with that, I know how people can spin things and judge a book by its cover and not look at the words you're actually writing about.

I thought, I'm solving this problem entirely. like intuitive fasting. This is what I talk about with my patients. It is the right time. It's the right perfect synergy of what I believe. And honestly, if you read my other previous books, I talk about all this in my past books too. This is just a deep dive and a protocol based on the science around intermittent fasting. So I was wrong. I was really wrong. Because when the book came out, I didn't realize the lengths that people could twist things and misunderstand things on purpose. And nobody that's read the nobody that read the book. So I wouldn't say I mean, 99% of the comments in the response of the book has been amazing. But like with anything, there's normally a really militant, loud minority, 1%, that's like very tribal and very militant. And honestly, they're cyber bullies, many of them. Or if they weren't cyber bullying, they were just part of that toxic vitriol division of something they didn't read. So that what the critique was

and the criticism and the negativity around the book was the fact that I titled the book Intuitive Fasting. And it was triggering for a lot of people because they were conflating that with intuitive eating, capital I, capital E, the book that was written in the 90s, that this book has nothing to do with it. This book has nothing to do with capital I, capital E, the book Intuitive Eating, which is used for many different purposes, but has been used for a certain percentage of people in the eating disorder community. So it was the intuitive eating community and conflated with some people within the eating disorder community. So it was the intuitive eating community and conflated with

some people within the eating disorder community that were somehow thinking that I was, this book was for people with eating disorders, which this book has not been an eating disorder book for people with disorder eating at all. I talk about that at length of the book. I mean, if they would have read the book, all the things that they were saying about the book, if they just would have read it, they would say, oh, well, like this, he knows what he's talking about. And this is, this is everything that they were saying, I actually said in the book, and would have answered their questions. So it was a massive experiment for me, because I'm just in my bubble, I'm in my functional medicine bubble talking to patients 10 hours a day. I'm like, I'm the most on, like, I don't want to offend anybody. I don't want to

hurt anybody's feelings. And I wrote the book with its full care and awareness of these topics. Cause I talked to people and at 10 and 11 hours a day. So, um, there's interesting, I mean, but look, they're conflating a lots of things. I mean, intermittent fasting is not an eating disorder. Uh, it is actually something quite in alignment with human biochemistry. Could it be abused by people with eating disorders? Absolutely. And I talk about that in the book. But that's like saying that exercise is not good.

You can abuse exercise. There's people that can be addicted to exercise and have a negative place and hurt their bodies. And it can be really disordered working out. It's the same thing with intermittent fasting. It's not abusing something because that's really the antithesis of the research around intermittent fasting, which is what I'm talking about. I know I'm going on and on, but that's basically what the noise was around the book. But look, 99% of people love the book. We hit the New York Times bestseller list. Like I get like the noise is just so loud when you're in this weird social media world that the trolls are can be viscerally negative. And they can be very loud. And I've come to realize that

there are just some people that are just dedicated to misunderstanding you, you know, and you just have to let them you just have to move away from that and focus on the positive and all the people that are actually following along and understand it, you know? And yeah. And like I said, I feel like that whole, that conversation around that, the reason why I wanted to address it is because I think it's doing, um, this whole notion of intuitive fasting, a huge disservice because like I mentioned earlier, I really found a lot of freedom in this actually. And, um, and I do want to say too, for people that are, you know, that are still kind of misunderstanding it, at least the way that I

personally practice it. And this is what I tell people about, um, fasting and doing it intuitively is that the second that you are trying to hit like certain time marks and you are like starving yourself when your body is screaming for food and you're hungry, that's when it has become disordered. Yeah. You know, and it looks different for me on almost on a day to day basis. If I wake up in the morning and I'm really hungry in the morning, I will eat. But there's a lot of days where I don't eat until noon. I'll have my coffee in the morning, but I follow my hunger cues and I wait until I'm hungry. And it just totally depends on when my body's like, Hey, okay, we're ready for fuel. misunderstanding because you have this social media culture that's based off of not really looking into things just reactionary uh we can say things that we would never say face to face but we could say it with the click of a button in a comment section on instagram or somewhere or a

tweet um so the last lack of humanity that's going on And it's ironic to me that a community that, you know, the people that were attacking me, the small but loud group of people were people that acted, you know, they were the people that would say that they were the enlightened people. They were the kind of people. They were the compassionate people. They were the tolerant people. But I, you know, it's easy to be tolerant and accepting for people that only agree with ourselves. We agree, right? With this echo chamber and toxic tribalism that social media fosters. It's really malignant oftentimes, where it's like you only are kind to people that you agree with, which isn't true kindness at all.

It's just rapid soundbites. True kindness is actually with people you don't agree or don't understand. And I want to learn more and actually help them mind. Like, let me look into this book before I say it, or let me figure out what you're saying. Because it's not a controversial book. And anybody that read the book knows, well, this book is not controversial at all. And anybody in the health space that read it, not controversial at all. It's really down the middle, actually, as far as the advice is concerned, for the most part, for most people. So yeah, it was interesting, definitely interesting. But you know, in hindsight, it was actually was good. And I talked to a few people that have gone through similar things in different spaces, but they were like, well, you know, yeah, it's negative, but, and yes, it's misunderstanding, but they, their negativity

is actually alchemizing the algorithm because then more people are seeing the message. So honestly, they helped me hit the New York times list and sell more books, which is helping more people who are actually reading. So I, it's all transmuted for good at the end. And what was, you know, negative has actually brought so much goodness to other people. I used to be one of those people that believed that we didn't need to take any supplements at all because we could get all of our vitamins, minerals, just all the nutrients that our body needed from our food. And while I do believe that this is true, it's a lot harder to do these days, especially here in the U S because

of the way that we spray pesticides and kill off the ecosystem. Our soil health is degrading because of all these pesticides that we're using. So unfortunately our food is not as healthy and full of as many vitamins and minerals that our body needs anymore because of this, which is why I believe in supplementing and why I started supplementing myself. I'm sure a lot of people will, will be wondering this when they're listening. Can we talk about how you get yourself to a place where you're a metabolic, metabolically flexible? You can get your blood sugar in balance, how do people that are listening that may be really struggling with that get to that place? So I use the analogy in the book as

this, I say, I call intermittent fasting, mindfully used this way, or intuitive fasting is proverbial yoga class for your metabolism. So if someone's metabolically inflexible, or metabolically rigid, meaning like they have blood sugar imbalances, their blood sugar is all over the place like a roller coaster, they have hangryness, they have insatiable cravings, they have some chronic inflammation or hormone imbalance, those are all telltale signs of metabolic inflexibility. And there was a quiz in the book that I adapted from questions that I asked patients that can take the quiz at the beginning and at the end and kind of see some subjective markers on

their improvements in addition to how they feel, of course, and checking in with their body. But the reason, the way that I built the protocol in the book, it's, it's, it's like that yoga class, you're starting off with a more beginner yoga class and then leaning in to a more advanced and then leaning back out. So it's this constant ebbing and flowing, vacillating, expanding and contracting, if you will, of eating and fasting windows, which builds a metabolic flexibility, just like yoga builds a flexibility in your body. And if at the beginning, look, it's paradoxical at the beginning when you're metabolically inflexible, fasting will be anything but intuitive. It will not be intuitive at all

when you're metabolically inflexible. But as you get metabolic flexibility, just like you and I know, there is an intuition with this and there's a grace and a lightness to this, but you actually have to show up for yourself to build that flexibility first. So week one, let's just say this, every week is a new intermittent fasting window. We're focusing on different aspects of the health. And I talk about the scientific literature, the science in the medical journals, exploring different types of intermittent fast, the specific subset of intermittent fasting called time-compressed feeding or time-restricted feeding, which has nothing to do with caloric restriction. So let's not conflate that. This has nothing to do with chronically lowering your calories.

It's eating ample amounts of food. It's eating the same amount of foods as you would any other day, but it's doing it in specific windows. So you're giving your body a break to fast, but you're eating really delicious human foods because both are important. It's not just fasting. That's called starvation. That's not the conversation about intermittent me a protocol? That's the point is when you're metabolically inflexible, it's like that being someone being inflexible going to yoga class, you have to become flexible to actually know how your body feels and to calm things down so you can actually be more intuitive. So for intuitive, whatever fasting you're eating, be more than for it to be more than just a sound bite and a hashtag on instagram you have to have some metabolic flexibility otherwise the hangryness the cravings the blood sugar volatility is going to disguise itself as your intuition

so once you get some metabolic flexibility it's going to look exactly how you live your life and how i live my life is that it will be intuitive you won't have a protocol the protocol will just be your life and you'll be able to ebb and flow and show up for yourself. But you have to get there. Most people are in the throes of inflammation and imbalance in the body that they have to actually calm that down. So I'm using the protocol in the book. I want the reader to use the protocol in the book as a template and a tool, a therapeutic tool for a time to calm things down on a physical level and also experiment with different types of intermittent fasting too. And then because we are all different, this is the heart of functional medicine, bio-individuality, we'll all end up at a

different spot, but we all can pick up this tool and use it in a way that works for us long-term. And I talk about that at length in the book. So it's just a springboard, but after a while, you'll be able to be able to do this really intuitively for yourself. feel good? Does this work for me? Because ultimately the goal is to feel good in your body. You know, that's like what we're all striving for. So, so you really have to take certain things that you hear and apply them in a way that works best for you, you know, and figure it out. I heard you talk about stress eating, insatiable cravings, foods that perpetuate inflammation, um, and disguising that self as intuition. And I think this is such an important part of the conversation when we think about these hyper palatable foods that we are now consuming.

And we're being disguised by this as intuition, but sometimes we're just addicted to these like processed foods. Yeah. Yeah, it was that part of the conversation was really important for me to have because you see all this stuff that we're normalizing different forms of disordered eating, right? I think there's a disordered eating spectrum going on where there's diagnosable eating disorders, which I'm not talking about, but I'm talking about the larger disordered

relationship that people have with food in our culture that we try to normalize, or there's actually concerted efforts amongst many groups that are full on trying to normalize it, but it's not. I mean, that feeling, feeding metabolic disorders, which is killing one in two out of Americans, that's the leading cause of heart attack and stroke in the United States. Again, ubiquity doesn't necessarily equate with normalcy. And many people think it's so nice to try to make that nice and sexy and like an Instagram thing. But the reality is that feeling fatigued and out of control in your body, because that's actually what's going on. Your physiology is out of control. That's not intuition. That's a metabolic disorder. Let's differentiate the two. And it's, I think that something like a mindful approach to

eating and an intuitive awareness when it comes to wellness is a wonderful thing. But let's just realize that most people aren't at that place at the outset because of all these health issues. Because it's like 50 million Americans have autoimmune conditions. 70 some percent of Americans have a metabolic issue. Okay, like that's an issue. Let's calm that noise, at least move in the direction of calming that noise. So we can actually hear that still small voice of your intuition. So you're at that point, you have awareness and a discernment that this is hangriness isn't my intuition. Emotional eating isn't my intuition. Insatiable cravings, which is

a physiological thing is not intuitive. So like, and I think this is part of the bigger conversation that we like to separate mental health from physical health. Mental health is physical health, our brain is part of our body. So when you're talking about stress, eating, emotional eating, anxieties, these type of things around food, there are physiological implications of this, meaning that people that feeling this way, it's because their blood sugar is imbalanced. It's because they have inflammation going on in their body that's blunting neurotransmitter receptor sites and impacting how their brain is signaling with the rest of their body. And things are dysregulated. Their gut brain accesses are being impacted. That's going to make anyone feel anxious, depressed, fatigued with insatiable cravings and hangriness.

So how is someone supposed to be there like in an intuitively eat? How are they supposed to get there? So I'm just saying from a functional medicine perspective, let's calm this stuff down so you can actually have a mindful approach to food and fasting. And I, you know, it's an important thing to understand, I guess. Yeah, it's a really important thing, especially because I think a lot of people don't even realize that they're in that state of metabolic inflexibility. Because like you said before, I forgot the percentage of Americans that are metabolically inflexible. The way that we define health in this country is it's similar to like what we were talking about earlier when you look at the numbers, you know, in the lab work where it's like it may be common and it is an average, but that doesn't mean that the majority of us are living in true health. And how do we get back to a place where people are eating real food, feeling good in their bodies, at a weight that they feel comfortable and healthy in? How do we change that definition of what true health like really looks like and means?

Yeah, that's what I want people. That's why the true heart of intuitive fasting is having finding your center and creating an amazing center that just like the analogy that I used earlier, all different facets of the same diamond, we're all gonna look different. We're all gonna reflect light differently. This isn't about weight loss. This is about health. And we're still gonna all be different sizes, but we're gonna be healthy.

And our labs are gonna look great. We're gonna feel great. And we're gonna be united and unified as health with our common, being our common bond. And let's that be our common bond instead of our common being our common bond and let's that be our common bond instead of some negativity being our common bond or trying to normalize health problems because that shouldn't if we truly loved ourselves we wouldn't try to normalize something that takes years off your life and takes years they take your quality of life down so that's what i would say

this is truly an act of self-love to actually call things out when they need to be called out. It's truly act of love to say, look, I'm trying to love you to the next level. I'm trying to love you to the new level. And that's what we shouldn't be afraid of in our culture. We are, many of us are afraid to say things, but if it's said in love and it's said to actually base an experience of like, no, you can be better and let's do it together. I think that's how I'm trying to approach this conversation. Because I think diet culture does suck. I think that shaming people and, you know, restricting and becoming obsessive is not healthy. But the other side that's trying to normalize metabolic issues isn't healthy either.

So there's a third way. There's a middle way. And that's what I'm trying to bring the conversation around to. Yes. I love that so much. It's so important. Yeah. And it's, and like you said, I think a lot of people are scared to have these conversations

because there is this really loud voice saying, you know, you're shaming people or you're perpetuating unhealthy habits. And it's like, well, but the mainstream narrative is very much perpetuating unhealthy habits. So we need to get to that third place. Like you said, we're, um, we're in this place of love and caring about each other and getting to a place of like true, true health because it will only serve all of us. So I'm curious to hear what your approach with intuitive fasting is, um, for women, because we hear this conversation a lot. I've had some hormone experts on the podcast as well that say that, um, fasting sometimes isn't healthy for women. So what is kind of your approach to that as far as like women's health and hormones? And I know some of this is, um, because especially in like the biohacking world,

a lot of these studies on like, for example, the keto diet are only done on men and post-menopausal women. So I know that's part of the conversation as well, but what's your approach for women? Yeah. So it's the major part of the book too. There's whole chapters devoted to this because most of my patients, I mean, my patients are 90 that umbrella, the beautiful umbrella of cycling women, there's so many different variables to consider to put them all in one reductionist box and say, it's not good for you. And the collective use, like we are all fricking different. Why are you putting us in a box? Because if she's going through PCOS or endometriosis, is she struggling with fatigue and weight loss resistance or autoimmune conditions or GI issues, that's going to look completely different than if she doesn't have any of those issues if she's lean she works out a lot if she's stressed she's not sleeping very well

they're all women all going to look all cycling all have periods or should have periods if they have amenorrhea but what how you do the fast is what matters, not if it's good or bad. The context matters. So again, going back to those very broad sweeping over-generalized statements that that's not good for women. Well, who are we talking about? Who is she and how is she doing the fast? Because that matters. So to me, that gender or menstruation doesn't have much to do with it. It's how she's doing it that matters. Now, because it's true that more fasting is not better for those people, a lot of them. Women tend to be higher in something called hispeptin, which is a signaling molecule that makes them more sensitive, some of them, more sensitive to caloric restriction, even temporary

intermittent fasting windows, and ketogenic diet, which mimics fasting, which is a lot of the same research around that fasting-mimicking way of eating. So does that mean that they can't be in that state at all? No, it just means that too much is not good. So you have to strike that balance, that sweet spot that really can, you can leverage these amazing health benefits like the anti-inflammatory, the brain boosting, the longevity, the gut healing, all the energetic benefits like the improving energy on a mitochondrial level. All of those things can be leveraged and tapped into without falling prey to these potential pitfalls that are thinking more is better. Because it's absolutely true that most

of the research done is on men or postmenopausal women. And there are other studies that have been done on cycling women too. But I think the sweet spot is a cyclical variable approach or a flexible approach, which is really what intuitive fasting is. And there's so many modifications within the protocol that I built for the book for women that are cycling. So we're doing less fast and increasing clean carbohydrates around their period and around ovulation to support thyroid hormone conversions, to support progesterone conversion, to support microbiome diversity. But most of the week, most of the month, you're still doing these vacillating intermittent fasting windows. And it's also important to know, and we said this already, but just to repeat myself here,

is that this specific subset of intermittent fasting that I'm talking about in the book is not multiple day fasts. We're eating the same amount of calories, you're eating your calories, and every day you're getting your calories in, you're just doing it in specific windows. So that's a really important differentiation there too, because this isn't like multiple day deep fasts, where that's a bit of a different thing. This is you're still getting your calories and you're just doing it in specific windows. So it's the context matters. And I talk about that at length in the book. And that's part of the flexibility and the intuition here is that we're able to learn about our body. And we're constantly throughout the protocol using fasting and food as a mindfulness

practice to say, how, how am I feeling? How's my energy? How's my digestion? How's my libido? How's my cycle? And adjusting it accordingly. Because once you've done this yoga practice for your metabolism, a few cycles of the four weeks, you're going to know, oh, I felt better here. I'm going to do more of that. I didn't, I want to do less of that next, less time. Like I'm glad I did it, but I need to do less of this. And then that's the ultimate springboard because you've then used what you've explored through the protocol and evolved it intuitively to work for you long term. So there may be people, and I definitely see this clinically, where one of the weeks in the book is just actually two of the weeks of the four weeks, it's just a 12-12. It's just 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. That's a time-restricted feeding. That's a

time-compressed feeding window. You have all day long to get your windows, your eating window. You're fasting through the night until you break the fast at breakfast. It's just not eating too late at night. So that's a very unsexy, admittedly, protocol for people within the fasting community because they're like, no, more is better, and I'm a biohacker, and what the heck? Those are for wimps. But the reality is that some people need that bigger eating window and they're just fasting through the night. So there's so many ways to use this amazing tool that you don't, it doesn't, there's enough room for everybody as long as you know how to use it. Yeah. Well, and you brought up a great point that I think a lot of people forget about is that if

you stop eating, let's say you eat your dinner at 7pm and then you don't eat again until you wake up the next morning, 8, 9am, you fasted, you already fasted right there, you know, through the night. And that's usually that's what I use as my major fasting window. You know, like I said earlier, it's, you know, totally dependent on when I can wake up in the morning, I eat when I'm hungry. And I already had that like built in like eight, you know, it ends up being like 1011 hour fasting window, and I didn't even notice it, you don't even realize. And that, that is an interesting thing. Cause I remember when the book came out and like, there was that crazy noise around the book. A lot of the people within that eating disorder community or the intuitive eating community, they were saying the only fast you should do

is through the night. And I remember like on the other end, I'm like, I talk about that in the book. Like if you just read the book, I'm saying the same thing. That's the point of like, when it's don't touch a book by its cover. Like that was one of the things that cracked me up. Like, I agree with you, like read the book. It's definitely some, a tool that people can use because people are binging late at night, and that's not good. So you're allowing your body to actually heal and restore when you're sleeping through the night and making sure you're getting enough sleep. Yeah, that's an amazing tool. And it's so underrated. And then from there, we can lean into bigger, bigger fasts. And that's wonderful, too. These

are all different tools within the toolbox. Yeah, exactly. So before we go for everyone listening that is really struggling with this right now, maybe the insatiable cravings, the stress eating, maybe they're aware that they're metabolically inflexible. What would you say would be kind of their first steps to kind of start down this path? Well, I would say I walk them through these steps within the book. So I would say the first thing is to week one in that in the, in the book is the body reset fast. Yeah. Get the book, but I'll just tell you what what's in the week one. So you can kind of prepare yourself. Week one is the body reset fast. So it's a 12, 12 time restricted feeding window, time compressed feeding window. So you have 8am to 8pm, 7am to 7pm. What I'm trying to do

is I'm showing the reader, the research and the scientific literature around time compressed feeding and specifically 12, 12 studies. And you're allowing your body to fast through the night until you break the fast at breakfast the next morning. And I'm trying to get the person to start leaning away from late night snacking and binging at night, getting enough sustenance throughout the day. And we're pairing that time compressed feeding window with a ketotarian way of eating, which is another layer, I guess, of people, you know, the controversy around the book is like, well, keto, like, why are you doing that? That's restrictive too. And it's used therapeutically

to gain metabolic flexibility because it's mimicking fasting without actually fasting. You can eat delicious foods all day long until satiety. You have 12 hours to eat throughout the day. But you're doing, you're not eating your way out of a poor diet. You're not fasting your way out of a poor diet. You are using food to nourish your body, to balance blood sugar, to gain metabolic flexibility, and you're fasting through the night. So that's what I'm doing. That's the reason why I called that week in that chapter, the reset or the body reset, because it's starting to lean the body into metabolic flexibility. And there's some really cool studies looking at the microbiome

circadian rhythm. So basically there are all the trillions of bacteria in our gut have this sort of wave-like circadian rhythm, just like cortisol does, where certain colonies of bacteria are higher in the morning, some are higher in the evening. So it's like this awesome ocean of microbes that happens throughout the day. Many people's microbiome circadian rhythm is disrupted, dysregulated, because of what we've been talking about with these chronic health problems. So just by doing a simple 12-12 and eating these clean foods helps to start supporting microbiome circadian rhythm balance and resets that microbiome clock is another way of putting it. So that's what we're doing in week one. I think that's a great starting point.

And then from there, we'll lean into bigger things over the subsequent three weeks. That's awesome. So I'm curious. I ask everyone this. What are your health non-negotiables? So like, for example, my non-negotiables that I do, it basically means like what you do every single day, no matter what to support your health. So for me, I go for a hike outside every day. I make sure I have greens with one meal and make sure I eat like seven earths or drink 70 ounces of water a day. Okay. Well, yeah, I mean, I think what's the non-negotiable for me? I think mindfulness

practice is definitely non-negotiable for me. I start my consulting patients 11 hours a day. So I start my morning off when I actually get to the clinic. I do one personally as well, but I tell you what I do when I get to the clinic, my team's here, and we go over the case reviews and do deep dives just being there because we're dealing with complex cases. So I really want to be on our game on a clinical side of things, making sure we're serving people and we're not like we're the best we can be for them. But before we do that, we actually start a mindfulness practice together as a team. So we do some prayer, meditation, breathing exercises, and some unifying thing as a team. So that's the seed of our day. So after that, then we do the clinical stuff. And so mindfulness is not just in the morning thing, but I'm constantly doing it in between patients and consulting people. So I'm using breathing techniques and present moment awareness tools.

So I would say mindfulness number two, I love to get outside as much as I can. So like we'll go on walks during lunch as a team too, or, you know, people can go by themselves, but typically we go as a team. So,

and we, I live in Western Pennsylvania, so there's trees and woods all around so i'm typically we're walking as a team and and i think that's another part of it it's not just getting out in nature and there's so much cool research i actually talk about in intuitive fasting of shinran yoku forest bathing i'm using nature as a meditation where it's not just hiking it's actually being more mindful and more aware of using nature as a meditation um but it's also a community you know and surrounding yourself with positive people that lift you up um but also will refine you and you don't always agree with i think that's important in our culture today too so i i see that as a mindfulness practice of like

surrounding myself with people that will lift me up, but also call me out when I need to be better in love and kindness. So I think that that's a wellness non-negotiable for me. And then like on a clinical nutrition side of things or like a functional medicine side of things, definitely stay hydrated.

I definitely want to get my water in. I normally, I'll be honest with with you which is probably not the best like wellness answer because i know there's different opinions on this but i just drink lots of tea like tea is a non-negotiable for me and i see literally what i'm doing right now and people always ask me does tea does it, you have to drink water? Like, does tea count for your hydration? And I say, yes, absolutely. Look, caffeine and tea has a slight diuretic, but you have to drink so much of it for it actually have any considerable effect as far as a diuretic is concerned, especially when you dilute the tea too. So the concentration, and there's tons of caffeine-free teas that I'm including in that too, which don't have the same diuretic effect.

So tea definitely is not negotiable for me. And, you know, I intermittent fast pretty much every day, even if it's lighter versions of it. So that's pretty non-negotiable, even if it's just a slight one, because I feel great doing it. So I typically will do, I vacillate just like the protocol in the book, but I oftentimes will find myself intuitively doing like a 18 hour fast where I'll fast in the morning. And then, cause I feel great doing it. I'm consulting patients. I'm hitting, you know, hit the ground running and then I'll break my fast at lunch. So that's kind of a non-negotiable, not that it's a non-negotiable for me cause I can move it around, but it's definitely a tool that I love using.

Yeah. And then food, like obviously eating foods that make me feel good. And it's not about the things I can't have. And that's the big conversation that I want people to realize that I'm having with my patients and in the book is that we can eat whatever we want. It's that we like feeling great more than we think we missed something that made us feel really lousy. And that's a paradigm shift that I want people to have because that's what I have for myself. I can have whatever I want. That's food peace. But I just really, it's a bad tradeoff when you feel great. So I'm eating foods that make me feel great and the foods are in alignment with how I want to feel. Yeah.

Oh, I'm so glad that you brought that up. Cause I think that's so important for people to hear. I mean, as a former sugar addict myself who could not go a single day without eating candy, cookies, whatever it was like a cupcake, I always had to have like some big sugar bomb. And I'm at a place now where, to be honest, like similar to you, nothing is off the table. I allow myself to eat that stuff, but I often find that I don't really crave it or want it anymore because I've now associated in my brain with when I eat that, that I don't feel good afterwards. I crash. I feel sometimes sick and nauseous from like the amount of sugar that I eat.

I mean, I literally had something yesterday that was super sugary. I took two bites and I was like, Ooh, that's actually, I didn't want that. It's too much sugar. Yeah, no, totally. I think that we can use those moments as a mindfulness practice too. So eat something, whatever, whatever it is. How did it make you feel if it was worth it? And maybe it wasn't the healthiest thing, but it was worth it. You enjoyed it. Or maybe you were socializing and you're out with friends and it was that kind of community that was worth it for you. Then eat it and move on. Quit shaming yourself because honestly, the shame is probably worse than the food itself. But conversely, I think oftentimes, like you said, you'll eat it. You probably won't eat as much of it because you're

eating more mindfully and you'll say, yep, it's enough now. Or maybe this wasn't worth it. And next time you'll remember because you've grown in in an awareness around that food, how that food made you feel. And it's a really bad trade off. So that's what I want people for themselves. That's what this food piece is all about. It's because when you create an awesome center for yourself and awesome groundedness and awareness, you can pivot from that center, but you probably won't pivot very far because you feel so freaking good. And I, that's, that's the flexibility that I want people to find themselves. Yes. I love that so much. And also like, remember too, I'm human. We're all human. Of course I have

my days where I eat a ton of sugar and I, you know, don't eat super healthy. And, and then, like you said, there's no shame around it. I don't even think twice about it. I'm like, all right, cool. Like back to eating healthy tomorrow, but not, yes, but not in like a, I'm punishing myself way. Just like a, you know, cool. Move on. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. Well, I loved this conversation so much. Thank you so much for coming on for everyone listening. Yeah. For everyone listening, where, where can they find you? Everything's at drwillcole.com. D-R-W-I-L-L-C-O-L-E.com and Instagram at Dr. Will Cole. I'm on Facebook, Pinterest, all the places, but yeah, mainly Instagram as we're talking to people. Yeah. He has a great Instagram. Go follow it. It's really fun to follow.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a resident media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Chris McCone. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie, spelled with a J. Love you guys so much. See you next week

bye Bye. I know that Oh, it's you kissing And make me dance Like this guy So if you don't like me At least I know I have a hand But if I don't, we say You're more You'll be quite like me I'm not sleeping I'm not sleeping I'm not sleeping

I'm not sleeping I'm not sleeping I'm not sleeping Thank you.