Inspired with Nika Lawrie

Empowering Women Through Intermittent Fasting with Laurie Lewis

• Laurie Lewis • Season 2024 • Episode 101

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Transform your health and well-being with insights from Laurie Lewis, who shares her inspiring journey of losing 51 pounds and rejuvenating her energy through intermittent fasting at age 54. Learn how fasting can empower women, especially during perimenopause and menopause, to reclaim control over their health. Laurie dives into the essentials of clean fasting, hormonal balance, and practical tips for sustainable fasting tailored to your unique needs.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Inspired with Nika Laurie podcast.

Speaker 2:

Laurie Lewis. Welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here today. Hi, nika, good to see you, welcome, welcome. So today we are going to deep dive into intermediate fasting and the do's and don'ts and the pluses and minuses and how it might impact women's health. I'm really, really excited to talk to you about this because I think it's such a really cool, important tool that really anyone can use, but women can use to improve their health. So I'm excited to dive into that. But before we do, can you just tell me a little bit about yourself? Who are you? How 'd you get into intermediate fasting? What's your backstory?

Speaker 1:

Well, I have had a passion for nutrition and fitness and fueling myself well for as long as I can remember. But I had kind of an epiphany in my late twenties I think I was around 29 and it started like this I think this diet Coke might not be good for me. I had that thought. I had that thought and guess what? I listened to it and I feel like that was a turning point where I made some decisions for myself in that moment that have made a big difference for me. So I decided then to stop drinking soda, stop eating sugar, and it didn't seem hard, it was just like oh, I'm not feeling so great all the time, I'm kind of foggy and dragging through life and maybe if I just change some of these things that I'm eating, that's as simple as it was. And so then, through my thirties and early forties, I became known amongst everybody who knew me as a person who was a super healthy eater. But I never wanted to be the food police, so I was not going through my life telling other people what to do. I stayed in my lane, I took care of myself.

Speaker 1:

Well, when I got my first symptoms of perimenopause, I didn't know what that was they don't send us to biology class for older ladies. So I was 44 and I woke up in the middle of the night and I thought man, I need to get a new air conditioner. This thing is broken. Well, my air conditioner was fine. It was cranking out the cold air. It was me Now, what I've subsequently learned. So I'm 61 now, so that was a long time ago and over the years I've learned that menopause and perimenopause are way more than hot flashes. We just think, oh, it's kind of when you get hot all the time and your period stops, yeah, not necessarily the case.

Speaker 1:

Well, at that time, at age 44, I felt like I got pushed down a very dark hole. My body seemed alien to me. I started experiencing memory loss and brain fog and I was achy head to toe. I experienced depression for the first time and I was achy head to toe. I experienced depression for the first time. And I mean, if you look at a list of a hundred symptoms that women experience in perimenopause, I checked many of the boxes.

Speaker 1:

Now people don't have to expect to get all these things, it's just when it's happening. It's helpful to know by talking to each other and listening to podcasts and reading books like the New Menopause, to understand oh, this is part of this transition phase. By talking to each other and listening to podcasts and reading books like the New Menopause, to understand oh, this is part of this transition phase. Well, I suffered for five years. My period stopped at 40. I went into menopause at 49. So I had one year without a cycle and I was in menopause at 49, which is early and then I gained 50 pounds.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1:

Boom yeah. Now I was running marathons and lean and fit and healthy eater right. So I say to people I was lean and fit, eating the way I ate. I ate the same exact way. When I gained 50 pounds, nothing changed. I didn't change my diet and I lost the 50 pounds eating the exact same way. The thing that made a difference was at age 54, after really suffering for almost 10 years. I read about intermittent fasting and I was shocked because I thought wait, I'm well-studied in nutrition. This has been my personal passion for all these years. I'm well-studied in nutrition. This has been my personal passion for all these years.

Speaker 1:

How did I never know that you could live your life fasting and being in a pattern of fasting and eating every day? I had no idea. So I started that very same day. I've kept an eating window now every day for seven and a half years. I lost the weight very gradually and healthfully and methodically.

Speaker 1:

My body shifted within about a month into being a fat burning machine, becoming fat adopted, and I lost 51 pounds in 15 months. And then everybody was like how did you do that? It wasn't just the weight loss either. I was sharper and brighter. I was just back to being myself, and one of the things women report in perimenopause and menopause is I'm just not myself. It's like I've been taken over by an alien. I'm walking around in a fog, I have no energy, everything's caught up to me, and I'm just so grateful that I was able to start at that point. I'm starting my seventh annual group program over the holidays where I help women navigate the holidays, keeping an eating window and feeling amazing and never having to diet again and never having to rely on January to fix everything. So that's how I started, and having an eating window is really an awakening experience.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it can be such a powerful tool and I think there's so much kind of misinformation around intermittent fasting Is it good, Is it bad? Does it work, Does it not? But I think when you really start to kind of one just kind of biohack your own health right, Like, test it out on yourself, See what those windows look like and see do they work for you here or do they not, or how does it make you feel, I think you know it's so it can be such a powerful tool for some people and I love that you're out there supporting people, helping them figure this out and figure out how to implement it into their lives. So beautiful story and I'm really glad it worked for you too, because getting healthy is the most important thing you could do in your life.

Speaker 1:

It's so awakening and fast forward. That's actually the name of my business, but I'm 61 and at age 59 and 60, I went through a battery of longevity tests and biological age tests with VO2 max and testing my mitochondrial health, and both tests came back that my biological age is 40, which is pre-menopausal.

Speaker 2:

I got to tell you looking at you. For those listening, we're recording on Zoom and I can see you in person. You look stunning and I would never, ever guess that you were 61 years old not in a million years. So it definitely you look amazing too.

Speaker 1:

Thank, you and if you saw me when I was 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, when I put on all that weight and I couldn't lose it because nothing I was doing that worked in the past, nothing worked. There's just squish everywhere. I suddenly had more belly fat and I was really hurting and I just not only looked a lot worse, I just, energetically, I was just dragging through life and I was beating myself up for not being able to figure it out and so to learn about daily fasting, having a daily fasting regimen and starting within three days, I felt better. I had the experience that I was visiting my mom in Colorado, where I grew up, and I was standing in her kitchen and all of a sudden, I had the thought there I am and it's like there I am, but what a funny thought to have. And it was like, oh, I just was ground, I was back in my body, I was sharper, bright, I was clearer, and so now I have this amazing joy of being able to support people and I have really four cornerstones to the work that I do, where the foundation of intermittent fasting is the clean, fast, curiosity, leaning in and discovering what your own body needs, customization.

Speaker 1:

There's not one right way to do this and then continuing. How do you continue? How do you stay in a fat adapted state where you're just burning your own body fat for energy day in and day out and keeping inflammation low is everything. High inflammation and high circulating insulin are the root causes of all metabolic diseases. Basically everything, yeah. And then you add a new factor when you're in perimenopause, which starts in your late thirties, the new factor, the new root cause factor, is low estrogen. So we've got high inflammation, high circulating insulin, having our estrogen tanking and then our gut microbiome If those things aren't handled. Having our estrogen tanking and then our gut microbiome if those things aren't handled.

Speaker 2:

You know we're in bad shape and that's going to show up in different ways for everybody, but it ends up being the root cause of almost every chronic disease that you can think of. That's right. So yeah, so let's break down. So you know, I want to take your four C's, but let's break that down over some different questions. So, for those who may be brand new to intermittent fasting, can you just give like the basic 101 explanation of what it is and why it matters or how it works?

Speaker 1:

Yes. So to alleviate anyone's fear, this is evolutionary. Anyone's fear this is evolutionary If you think back, even just a hundred years. But throughout all human history, humans survived, and all the longevity experts say this, david Sinclair's like human beings survived through lack of food. We thrive, we're brighter, stronger, sharper when we're in a fasted state. This body fat is stored on us for a reason it's to use it as fuel.

Speaker 1:

And in our modern times of 24-7 food around us, we're becoming emotional eaters because the food is designed to have us feel better in the moment and keep us addicted to it. And our ancestors there was no such thing as emotional eating, there was no food. Our ancestors, there was no such thing as emotional eating, there was no food. Okay, yeah. So if you just think evolution, okay, there was food and no food, and food and no food. And because we have food around us all the time now, it's very smart for us to now rely on the clock to determine our eating time. Okay, so, and each person gets to say when that is Okay. So I describe it really simply like there are two parts to every day the fasting hours and the eating window, and you get to say when it is.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

And so what you're, what we're doing when we're in a fasted state and fasting clean and I'll explain why that's so important is we are keeping insulin low, so we're getting out of fat storage mode and then we're getting into fat burning mode. We're keeping insulin low, we're keeping inflammation low and we are in a complete digestive rest where our hormones are beginning to do their job. We have over 80 hormones that are little chemical messengers in a hierarchy and a network and they wanna do their job. They wanna communicate with each other. And then the things that we're doing either aging or lifestyle choices or our food choices or lack of movement, poor sleep all of it is affecting the, and perimenopause, of course, are affecting the imbalance of those hormones.

Speaker 1:

And eating in an eating window and putting our body into a deliberate, conscious, gentle, fasted state every day allows for this deep healing, including this incredible phenomenon called autophagy, where, when we're in a fasted state, the body goes in to each cell and digs out all the broken, junky parts, old, broken down, junky proteins and so forth and recycles them, spruces them up and reform makes the cell again brand spanking new. In fact, it takes less energy for the body to clean up an old cell than it takes to make a new cell. So we want to be cleaning up those old cells, which is why people who are intermittent fasting every day for a long, long time our skin looks really good because we're cleaning it up naturally.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. So talk about how intermittent fasting versus so you know, like you mentioned, for you know the history of humanity, food has always been kind of a scarcity, and so it's just really in the last like maybe 70 years that we've had this overload and plethora of food to us, you know, access to it at all times, 24, seven, right, and I mind you. I also want to say food with quotations, because a lot of the food that's out there, that's available to us, isn't necessarily food.

Speaker 1:

I call it not food with a hyphen.

Speaker 2:

It's food like products, but it's not actual food. So, with that said, we've we've brought in all of these calories and all of these chemicals that we're putting into our body and digesting, and so our body is basically burning the sugar all the time, opposed to burning the fat that you may get from doing intermediate fasting. Can you talk about the difference between the two and how the body functions different?

Speaker 1:

Yes. So when we are eating all the time and that could be eating anything, okay, so we could even take ultra processed food out of the equation. When we're eating, if people are like I'm eating healthy and I'm remember, my story was I was eating healthy like soup and I gained 50 pounds. What on earth was happening, right? So once I kept my eating to an eating window and I lowered my circulating insulin and I lowered inflammation, I could then balance out those hormones and get myself into a fat burning state. But when we're eating and I say drinking flavored drinks also when we're eating and drinking flavored drinks from the minute we wake up to the minute we go to bed, we are keeping ourselves in a high insulin state. So we are never able to tap into our own body fat for fuel. So when we flip the metabolic switch, which means switching from being a sugar burner into being a fat burner, that happens usually around the third or fourth week. So if you start keeping an eating window and start gently, start with a 12 hour fast, you're asleep for hopefully eight of it, right? You are then training your body over three to four weeks to use up the sugar in your blood, the food you just ate the sugar in your blood, the stored sugar called glycogen, that's mostly in your liver and muscles and so forth. And about that third to fourth week you drain that tank and the stored sugar is used up. And then the body rebels a little bit because it's like we don't like this, we're out of sugar. And then it remembers it. It has a. It remembers, it knows oh my gosh, there's all this fat here.

Speaker 1:

I can switch over into fat burning, but you know, so many people are like I tried that intermittent fasting. It didn't work for me. But you know, so many people are like I tried that intermittent fasting, it didn't work for me. I want to find out from people, if you're fasting clean, how many hours you were fasting each day? Did you either not fast long enough or did you go way too far and you burn yourself out? And then the other thing is for how many weeks did you try it?

Speaker 1:

Because if you didn't make it through that adaptation phase, you never got into fat burning and you just missed out on all the goodies. Yeah, and then when people stop and start and stop and start, people are like is this something that I have to do all the time. Well, you don't have to. But remember, if you get through that adaptation phase and then you're a fat burning machine every day when you're in a fasted state, you don't want to lose that, because then you got to go back through the whole adjustment phase again. So you can have a longer eating window, you can have a shorter eating window, you can move it earlier, you can move it later. Just every day, have one, and that way you won't ever have to start again.

Speaker 2:

You keep mentioning fasting clean. What is that? Describe what that means.

Speaker 1:

Imagine what fasting was for ancient humans, and I love that you said 70 years ago. I usually say 100 to give us a little wiggle room, but you're right, it is about 70 years ago. We started eating all the time and putting stuff in our drinks and drinking flavored drinks constantly. And so I human beings, I understand when we start something new and we do something that we think is going to be hard, we try and figure out what can I get away with, like, what is the least amount that I could possibly do? Okay, I understand that, but we want to remember evolution and we want to remember and honor our physiology and the way our body works, and that what our intention is is to put us into a complete digestive rest to allow the liver, the heart, our brain, our gut every aspect of ourselves is healing when we're in a fasted state, and fasting clean not only allows for the most amount of healing and fat burning, but it makes fasting easier. So what? That is what a clean fast is.

Speaker 1:

Well, my friend Jen Stevens, who wrote Delay, don't Deny and Fast Feast Repeat. She coined that term in her Facebook group, like seven or eight years ago, because people were talking about am I allowed to have some lemon? Am I allowed to have MCT oil in my coffee? What am I allowed? What am I allowed, what am I allowed? And so she thought, okay, I'm just going to call it clean. So people get in their mind that there's fasting and there's not fasting, and anything that's not fasting clean and there's not fasting, and anything that's not fasting clean, we say, is not fasting. Because you're bringing in nutrients and you're bringing in food flavors that are exciting the system, and we don't want to do that. We want the fasting hours to be quiet and boring and healing. And then you get to eat the yummy foods, the delicious flavors. You can have all the lemon in your water you want. You can put anything in your coffee you want later in your eating window.

Speaker 1:

So the clean fast is plain, unflavored water of any sparkliness and any temperature. Okay, hot, cold, sparkly, flat, whatever. Plain, unflavored, nothing in it. Then plain, unflavored black coffee. Plain, unflavored, bitter, nothing in it. Then plain, unflavored black coffee. Plain, unflavored, bitter, black or green tea. So no, no, lemongrass or ginger or mint, or okay. So, and then the fourth ounce of water coffee, black or green tea.

Speaker 1:

And minerals. So sodium magnesium is a super important mineral to be having all of the time, and then your medication as prescribed. And the thing I want to leave people with is it sounds like that's a whole lot of no, like you can't have this, you can't have that, you can't have this. But you can in your eating window and you get to say when that is. So we get all the healing and we get. And it makes fasting easier because imagine, when you take in lemon or some food flavor, the tongue and the rest of your body goes woohoo, food's incoming, except you don't feed it because you think you're fasting and the body gets kind of grumpy and mad and it's like where the heck's the food. So make it easier on yourself Fast, clean and enjoy the delicious food you love later in your eating window of your choice.

Speaker 2:

Makes sense, definitely. So let's talk about eating windows, and then after that I want to talk a little bit about how it can impact. We've discussed the hormone piece a little bit, but I've had clients ask me specifically about their menstrual cycle and intermittent fasting. But first let's talk about the window a little bit, because I know for me my body is sort of a natural faster. I've never been an eat first thing in the morning person. I usually yeah, I've always been I like to eat after 10 am at the minimum. I usually don't tend to get hungry until 11.

Speaker 2:

I've noticed my daughter is kind of naturally the same way too. You know, we usually have our last meal around 6, 6.30 and we don't eat after that, and so we're kind of natural fasters in our own. But there's definitely you know I've been much more strict about it where I will actually set a fasting timer and stay on the schedule and then I kind of fall off and then get kind of back into it. But my body just sort of naturally does it on its own. When people first start, like you mentioned a lot of times, they're recommended start with a 12-hour fast, so overnight while they're sleeping as they progress, how would you tell them to progress. Would you say, go two weeks and then add an hour, or go a month and then add an hour? What does that look like and how do we figure that out for our own bodies?

Speaker 1:

Perfect. We want to leave everybody who's listening with an understanding of how to start. And what's so great is this is not a diet that you have to prepare for you literally today. Look at your clock and go I'm going to finish my dinner at whatever time and I'm going to close my eating window at whatever time you say. Now we know that it's a really good idea to stop eating many hours before we go to sleep, but based on some people's you know daily schedule and so forth, they eat later. Okay, that's fine. So you get to say when you're closing that eating window and then after that you drink plain water. You might need to mix up your evening routine, because late night snacking is a big part of people's evening routines. So do something different. And then you might even go to sleep early and sleep and wake up tomorrow and have plain water and have a black coffee. If you like coffee. You can open your eating window 12 hours after whatever time it was you decided to close it. But then if you're like, well, that's kind of easy, that's no problem, keep going. Other people 12 hours is a stretch. Many people eat very late and then the minute they wake up, they're rushing out the door with their candy coffee, and so it can be hard for some people to get to that 12 hours. So to answer your question, even right there at the beginning, it's different for each person. So get to that 12 hours, gradually, increase the fasting hours, fast squeaky clean. It makes it so much easier.

Speaker 1:

Then, when you open your eating window, I always say eat normally. People are like what's normally? Well, what do you normally eat? Okay, so we're doing one thing at a time. We're not going to pull out all this. We're not going to hit the gym and go to different classes and start eating healthy and do everything at once. Just do one thing at a time. Learn how to fast clean, and I promise you, once that foundation is established, you will then have the energy, the creativity, the curiosity to upgrade your food and move your body more. And so I always say with intermittent fasting as the foundation, everything else gets easier. So then your question was do we add an hour a day or again, we start with that clean fast and you start with 12 hours. If you can get to a 16 hour fast within a week or two, I really recommend it.

Speaker 1:

Now some people, if they're not used, if they like black coffee and they don't really eat breakfast, that's really easy. They just fast till noon or fast till 10 and close it at six and boom, they're there. But again, there's not. Isn't a competition? People feel like, oh, someone else is doing that, I should be able to. Nope, here's how you figure out your perfect eating window.

Speaker 1:

One you got to feel good. It's got to feel great. People don't keep doing things that don't feel good, okay. The second one is it's got to work with your life. What's your daily schedule and the people in it? Okay, it's got to feel good. It's got to work with your life. And the third thing is it does have to help you reach your health goals.

Speaker 1:

So if you've just gotten a diagnosis of prediabetes and your A1C is over five, is 5.9 or something, or you've got high triglycerides and low HDL, or you've got high, suddenly got high blood pressure, I think that it's very important to go gently because we want it to be sustainable. You don't want to quit To go gently, but also have enough focus and determination that you are shrinking that eating window and then eating well in the eating window. By eating well, I mean eat a meal, pause in between. This is a big habit to change. Eat a meal until your body's satisfied, then don't eat anything else for like four or five more hours. Nothing, no more flavored drinks.

Speaker 1:

You eat a meal, you drink water, you eat another meal, you close your eating window and if you can do that for a month or two, then the curiosity, your own body, will start asking you questions. It'll say I think I can go longer, or I think I'd rather have my eating window in the morning, or what if I tried this or what if I tried that? And when clients of mine bring these questions to our coaching conversations, I usually ask them where did the question come from? Who did the asking? Oh, I heard it on a podcast or something that I should be doing this or this. Okay, I wanna know if your own innate curiosity, your inner wisdom, your body, who did the asking? And so what will happen is people will lose interest in ultra processed food and they will start having thoughts like have more eggs, eat more Brussels sprouts. You know people are like who am I? I don't even like Brussels sprouts. And your body's like well, we do.

Speaker 2:

Now I love it Because I know if I haven't had a salad in I don't know 48 hours, my body is like where are the vegetables, where are the greens lady.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And so when you can hear what is an outside infusion or fear or pressure as opposed to what is the quiet inner wisdom, that inner curiosity. So my cornerstones again are the clean fast you got to start there you then listening to that innate curiosity and then the customization is oh, maybe I'll try this, maybe I'll try that. And so when you talk to a wide swath of intermittent fasters, everybody's got a different schedule. Everybody eats different food. I have clients who are carnivore and clients who are vegan, and so we're all bio-individual and the opportunity that fasting clean and having an eating window provides well many opportunities. But one is you get really tuned in to the foods that are fueling your unique body. Very well, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

I loved earlier you mentioned too, because I think people don't kind of click onto this specific thing, but you mentioned within that eating window. So say you have a six-hour eating window, right, and we're going to have a full, you know satiating meal when we first eat and then we're going to take a break and not eat anything in between and then eat another meal at the end of our window, right, yes, but so often people will have, you know, they'll go out to eat and then they'll bring their soda or their you know, coffee drink back with them and they don't think that they're eating between the two meals. But while they're drinking the soda the whole time, having those liquid sugars in our body the whole time, you don't have that digestive break between the meals the body really, really needs. So I think that's so key for people to really understand is you know, go back to your clean fasting even in between your eating window. It's good to have those actual breaks between the meals too, so your body can digest.

Speaker 1:

It does. We want insulin to come back down Now. I don't want to overcomplicate it, right? So if people are like wait, laurie, you said there's two parts to every day the fasting hours and the eating window, I get to eat what I please in my eating window. That's right, it's yours. The next important habit to practice is to even notice what is satiety. What does it feel like to eat until my body goes? Oh, that was good. I can now rest in between. And Dr Jason Fung has a really great image in the obesity code where he shows that if you eat and then pause, no flavored drinks are eaten and then eat again and then pause. When insulin comes back down during the fasting hours, it goes even lower than it would have if you'd kept the insulin high during your whole eating window.

Speaker 1:

So not only does this create amazing habits physiologically, but also mentally. We get the opportunity to quiet that constant craving, that constant mental noise of I could have a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Maybe I could try this. When do I get to eat next? That noise that just never stops.

Speaker 1:

And within that adjustment phase of learning to be a daily clean, faster the noise gets quiet and then we just get to eat and we go, I've had enough. And then you go about your day and then a bunch of hours later you eat again and what happens is that the emotional eating stops. We learn other ways to calm and soothe ourselves other than eating. And then that just automatic habitual eating, like when you get home you open a bag of chips or something, you eat the whole box of crackers while you're cooking dinner. It's like no, no wait, cook your dinner, eat the meal. So it's a beautiful opportunity to not only heal our bodies but create new habits of awareness and honor and respect for this incredible body that is working really hard not only to keep us alive but to replenish and restore and heal itself when we're in a fasted state women to understand how intermittent fasting can impact them on different levels.

Speaker 2:

So we've talked about using it as a tool to lose weight, to get healthy. But some of the concerns I've had over the years working with different clients or women have talked to me about it is its potential impact on their menstrual cycle and hormones. Can you dive a little bit into that and how we use it as a tool to work with our menstrual cycle, opposed to against it, I guess?

Speaker 1:

for lack of a better way of saying that Okay.

Speaker 1:

So it's really important to know that pushing hard and deprivation and over-restriction are bad for any person, especially women. Okay, yeah. So we live in what I call a punishment model where perfectionism wins. Pushing hard, extremism, like this pendulum of all or nothing, of good or bad. Like I've got to be good, these foods are bad If I eat them, I'm bad. Like I've got to be good, these foods are bad, if I eat them, I'm bad. So this model of good and bad achieving through self-beratement, deprivation, hard struggle, being confused all the time. So this punishment model, this idea of pushing really hard over deprivation, overextending ourselves, that's not good for anyone. That chronic stress, chronically high cortisol isn't good. But then people say but fasting raises cortisol, yeah, so does exercise. It is a blip up. The body's like woo, we're doing something here and then it comes back down. So what we don't want is constant pushing, constant stress.

Speaker 1:

Now, regarding our cycle If a woman is hungrier and needs more nourishing foods and a longer eating window on the days before her period, go for it. But we don't need to overcomplicate things. We have fasting hours, we have an eating window. You discover through your practice, your daily habit and your innate curiosity what eating window has you feel amazing and then you adjust it. You adjust it for social events, you adjust it for the days before your cycle. But I have clients who are in their early twenties who they're like oh, I heard I'm supposed to have a longer or no eating window before my cycle and they're like I don't have any appetite before my cycle. So again they're like I don't have any appetite before my cycle. So again, everybody's different. Yeah, so we need to adjust based on the cycle and not be mad at ourselves. It's shocking how many women are like well, I figured out that a five-hour eating window is my sweet spot, but I'm being so bad on the days before my period. No, you're not. You're honoring your body, you're respecting what it's telling you. Now, if you're diving headfirst into pints of ice cream, that's not serving you either. Now, I'm not demonizing ice cream. I love it, but as a reaction to PMS, it really doesn't serve us.

Speaker 1:

The other thing regarding the fear of harming women's hormones is having a gentle, daily, clean fasting practice with an eating window where you're nourishing yourself well will reverse PCOS and have us move from being insulin resistant to insulin sensitive. So if you read why we Get Sick by Dr Ben Bickman. High circulating insulin and high inflammation are the root causes for all metabolic diseases and we want to be keeping that insulin low when we're in a fasted state. And the way to do that is to fast, clean, push. It's the over-restriction, it's the pendulum swing, it's the extreme all or nothing. That doesn't serve us. And what happens to a woman's body through her 40s and early 50s is usually it tells us I've had enough, the push is over. And then we think, uh-oh, I'm letting myself go, I have to push harder. It's like no gentle is the way, gentle and consistent is the way. So that's why that final cornerstone for me is continuing.

Speaker 1:

I used to say consistency and then I realized that actually sounds like a judgment. Consistency to me fits a little bit into the punishment model of I'm being bad if I'm not being consistent. So what really matters is figuring out how do I continue? Today I wake up today, I look at my daily schedule and I say when's my eating window today? And I fast clean until my eating window opens and I enjoy nourishing food that I have on hand. And then I pause again and then I eat a yummy meal again, and some people eat one meal a day plus a little window opener or closer. Some people eat two meals a day. Some people if they're like an extreme, you know competitive fitness regimen they may have three meals a day. But mostly, as we age, we do not need to be eating the quantity of food that we're being told we need to eat, because when we're fasting we're burning our own body fat for energy and that isn't part of the caloric equation.

Speaker 2:

The irony too, is that you know most of the meals. I always laugh when I go out to eat and you know the meal is the size of like my whole chest right.

Speaker 2:

The size of Texas is the size of like my whole chest right, the size of Texas, yeah, and it's like you know, this is like three meals. For me it's almost always at least two, and that's usually with me being really full leaving. And the irony too is that the quality of food, the higher the quality of food usually not always, but usually the smaller the portion you need, because when we're eating mindlessly eating that bag of chips there's almost no nutritive value and so it just kind of goes in and it dissolves quickly and you can eat the whole bag, whereas if you're eating a steak, like really good steak and a good salad or something like that, the portions are much smaller that you need to actually fill your stomach and fill full. And so I think it's really important to understand that the quality of food we eat also will impact how much of it we're going to eat.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, and it affects how hungry you are later. If someone eats and they feel full and they are then hungry an hour later, what you just ate did not sustain you, so you want to take a look at what was that. And so if you're someone who closes your eating window at six or seven and you're suddenly ravenously hungry at nine, it's because you either have a late night snacking habit and your body is so smart it's like, hey, tap, tap, tap. But sometimes you can check in with your body and be like wait, is this just a thought that it wants to have the same thing I had last night, or am I actually hungry? And pausing and asking yourself, tuning in Intermittent fasters know the difference between what I call a hunger alert like when do I get to eat?

Speaker 1:

Like a thought, a stomach growl. That is not actual hunger. We actually know what real hunger is. And when you train yourself over that first month to become fat adapted, it just gets clearer and clearer what real hunger is and what the hunger alerts are. When our ancestors had a hunger alert like our stomach growled thank goodness it did, because then our ancestors remembered to go find food it's like oh, we got to get up and go. We got to find some food, and that wasn't always easy. It's hard to even for us to imagine what that would have been like.

Speaker 1:

And go ahead. Go ahead Because the food is just right there for us. And how many times do we walk by? You know people work in an office. There's food around constantly and and bowls of chips and snacks and bowls of candy. Having an eating window really slows us down and one of the things people are very surprised about early on is how easy the fasting is and how shockingly on our mind and in front of our faces, constant eating is available to us and it doesn't serve us.

Speaker 2:

The thing, too, is like we've become so accustomed to that constant eating that our brain so many people are confusing dehydration or thirst with hunger.

Speaker 1:

I love that.

Speaker 2:

You know, boredom is a big one too. Where you know, I know boredom will get me. Sunday afternoons I'll sit on the couch with my husband. We watch football, and when you're three hours into a game unless it's a really great game you're like, okay, I probably should get up and move my body. And I noticed then is when I crave the crappy foods. That's right and it's not. I've eaten lunch, I've fed my body with nutritious food, but the boredom will make me crave the sugars, or crave the salts and the unhealthy fats, and so, yeah, those two big ones.

Speaker 1:

That's another reason to fast clean, because what it does is we have to deal with that boredom and if we're constantly like, oh, I can have a little mint tea, I could put a little of this in my coffee. It's that constant entertaining ourselves with a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And when you get through that adaptation phase it does get quiet. And if you're fasting clean, what it takes off the table is entertaining yourself with food and soothing your emotions with food. And then we get to be more creative and be more quiet and figure out what are the ways I can actually make myself feel better when I'm lonely, hurt, angry, you know, and walking and snuggling with a pet and drinking a glass of water and meditating there are so many ways journaling that we can make ourselves feel better without diving into a bag of whatever, and fasting clean makes it so much easier.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, definitely so, lori. I have two more questions for you, but before I get to those, is there anything that we haven't touched on relating to fasting, that you really think is key for the listener to know, or something you'd want to share?

Speaker 1:

I feel like we've covered so much ground. I really want people to be left with that. This is gentle and that when you discover your daily eating window sweet spot, over time you will not want to do anything differently because you feel so well. And one thing that we didn't touch on was whenever you start let's say it's today, so there's no reason to delay. Today you decide I'm closing my eating window at this time, drinking plain water, adding 12 hours and going as long as I can. It's a really great idea.

Speaker 1:

To what I call set your dashboard. What are you measuring? Because anytime a human being embarks upon a new habit that's going to take some time to implement, we want to see results right. So on your dashboard, you definitely want to have a lot more than the scale, because this is a health regimen, as Jim Stevens says, a health regimen with a side effect of weight loss, and so if people you want to have like a non-stretch item of clothing that's a little too tight right now, you want to maybe take a picture of your face. You want to measure your waist, because our metabolic health having our waist less than half our height is a really important biomarker, and you could look at any of your lab work, you could have an in-body composition scan.

Speaker 1:

There's so many things that a person could do to put on their dashboard of what they're measuring. But the most important thing and I have people make a circle like a pie chart and cut the circle in half, so it's 50, 50, perhaps the chart right, really big. How do I feel? That's half of the things you're measuring, then, and the other half you can put all sorts of little pieces of the pie and can put the scale and your waist measurement and how your clothes fit and your A1C. But how do I feel? So when people say I've tried intermittent fasting, it's not working, I think, oh, what were you measuring? And they're like I've never felt better, but I only lost this much, you know. So we really want to have how do I feel as the most important thing and we adjust from there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man, that's such a I hadn't even really thought about, which is funny because I have patients or clients track things all the time. But really thinking about tracking those things specifically to just using intermittent fasting as a tool too, is really great, but how do I feel is so key?

Speaker 2:

to how so many people come into the health and wellness world wanting to lose weight, not realizing that the key thing is really how do I feel? How is my health supporting me or hindering me in daily activities? And you know what are those long-term effects of either supporting your health or neglecting your health long-term, and the scale is not the boss of me, I mean it is really it tells me.

Speaker 1:

it is one data point that tells me very little, yeah. Does not tell me about my mitochondrial health. It doesn't tell me about my brain sharpness and my stamina. It doesn't tell me how long I can hold a forearm plank.

Speaker 2:

put two women that are around the same height and age and have very different body structures, you know, and very different genetic makeups and heritage, and their weights are going to be very different. But what's healthy for one is maybe not healthy for the other, right? And so, yeah, the scale number means so little in the big picture thing it does and wherever people are out there listening.

Speaker 1:

Whatever your age is, whatever's happening in your life right now, I encourage people to be able to say about yourself I am a person who takes really good care of myself right now, no matter what's happening in life. So we don't need to wait for the perfect timing and stars align to start taking good care of ourselves. And I have found that the easiest way to take really good care of ourselves is to say when am I closing my eating window today and when am I opening it tomorrow? And from there we move more, we sleep better, we drink more water, we pay closer attention to our strength and movement. So it's a beautiful foundation.

Speaker 2:

Well, lori, I love this. Thank you so so much for sharing all of this information and just trying to get the word out Because, like I said earlier, I think it's such a powerful tool that people can use and implement and it's something simple really that people can kind of control in their life and their health. So, thank you for doing that. I appreciate it.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, nika, it is simple. If it gets confusing or complicated, just keep it simple. Yeah, keep it very simple.

Speaker 2:

So, before we close out the show, the two questions. One where can people find you? How can they connect with you?

Speaker 1:

My business is Fast Forward Wellness, so I'm on Instagram, fast Forward Wellness and my website, and people can go to my website and you can download a free checklist if you're like. Wait, she said it so fast how to start. So you can download a checklist on how to start. And I absolutely love it when people write me and say I started. I have a question, or I started and it changed my life, or I have group programs and one-on-one coaching and a group membership and I love every minute of it.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, I'll make sure everything's in the show notes too. Thank you, yeah, as easy as possible. So my last question for you is something I ask every guest is what is something inspiring that you've either experienced or learned over the years that you'd like to share with others?

Speaker 1:

I feel like gentle is the way. I feel like this punishment model of beating ourselves up and that the only way to motivate ourselves and to achieve anything is by pushing hard and speaking meanly to ourselves. Yeah, that is not true. And this beautiful transition of perimenopause. And then, as Dr Lou Anne Brizendine says, she calls menopause the upgrade. So I wanna leave people with being excited about getting older.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I love that because, I will tell, I was talking to my husband about this the other day. So I am 39 and we were joking. I said I'd probably take my 20 something body back, but I would never, ever give up the. Just the mentality that I have now, the thoughts that I have, now the experience that I have. I think aging is so beautiful and such a privilege and I don't know. I'm just always grateful for every year that I get, the things that I get to learn. So I love that.

Speaker 1:

It is a privilege You're so welcome.

Speaker 2:

Thank you Awesome. Well, thank you again for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks, Nika.

People on this episode

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Nika Lawrie

Host
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Laurie Lewis

Guest