#081 Fat, Fiber, and Fasting - Why EVERYONE Needs These And How to Bring Them In!

We break down the three most overlooked levers in a healing journey: fat, fiber, and fasting, and why your results change when you understand the “why” behind each one. We connect cholesterol, insulin, bile flow, gut health, and metabolic flexibility into one practical framework you can actually use. 

• why healthy fat supports cell membranes, hormones, bile flow, immunity, and brain and nerve protection 
• how to think about cholesterol as repair demand, not just dietary intake 
• large buoyant LDL vs small dense LDL and what increases cardiovascular risk 
• what damages LDL particles, including high glucose, high insulin, oxidized seed oils, toxins, and gut endotoxins 
• why de novo lipogenesis and triglycerides point back to excess sugar and liver overload 
• statins lowering LDL vs long-term trade-offs discussed, including diabetes risk and mitochondrial effects 
• fiber as the missing fuel for the microbiome, short-chain fatty acids, and gut tight junction integrity 
• soluble vs insoluble fiber for binding bile acids, lowering recirculation, and improving stool regularity 
• realistic fiber targets and food-first ideas like chia, flax, psyllium, berries, avocados, nuts, seeds, and raw vs cooked veggies 
• fasting for lowering insulin, improving mitochondria, supporting autophagy, and reducing liver and visceral fat 
• common fasting mistakes, including high-stress training while fasted and skipping breakfast daily when you are not fat-adapted 
• how to ease into fasting and how to break a fast based on your goal 

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Episodes Mentioned: 

How Much Protein is Too Much?

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This information is just that; information only - not to be taken as medical advice. Please contact your primary care before changing anything to your routine. This information is not mean to diagnose, treat, or cure disease.

Transcript

Welcome And The Three Fs

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome back everybody. This is Bibing Well with Dr. Stacy. I am Dr. Stacy here to remind you that health is found in what we repeat every single day, and today's episode is no different. We're gonna talk about the three big F's that I see so overlooked and underutilized when it comes to a healing journey. So we're gonna learn what they are, how to incorporate them, and of course why. Why you have to know the why behind things that you're doing because it makes you that how becomes so much more applicable. So, anyways, we're gonna dive right in, hang tight, and let's get into it. Okay, the three big F's. You guys probably if you follow me on Instagram, you see me talk about these all the time. What are they? So let me go ahead and line them out and then we'll go in detail with each one and how and why we need to be incorporating these no matter what healing journey we're on, or even if we're just looking to accelerate or optimize our health, we really need to be working these in. Okay, so fat, fiber, and fasting. Alright, so let's first start the conversation with fat because I think it's one of those. I don't think, I know, because I am helping people balance out their diets and their metabolic needs and all these things all day, every day. This is something that we are way underdoing. And when you understand what we need fat for, and I also am gonna talk about cholesterol too, because I know that um we we have this like placement of fear when it comes to adding fat into our diet. Sometimes that fear can be um caloric density. So sometimes we're like, oh gosh, we're gonna gain a bunch of weight. Sometimes it can be, oh, but cholesterol's bad, right? Um, like when we live in a place of fear where people are terrified to eat eggs, that's a problem. So we need to talk about like why this is such a problem. But the other thing is uh one thing that a lot of um these topics that we talk about today have in common is they are some of the biggest things that have been removed from our food production and food supply. Fat is one of those things, right? And the the good fats, right? So we we live through the low fat like crisis, right? And now things are fat is being added back in because obviously low fat products taste like crap. But now the fat that's being added in is oxidized seed oils, right? So that's causing more inflammation, and we'll talk about all those things. Good, healthy fats, we need them, and let's talk about the vital functions that they serve, and then we'll talk about my favorite ways to encourage fat back into the diet. So we need fat for cell membrane repair. So we know that in today's world, with all the insults to our cellular membranes, and this is the quality and the function of our cells, are very reliant on the function of the membrane itself. So these are insulted by things like toxin exposure, right? And we uh we can do what we can and control what we can in our home, but also uh insult to injury with things like high glucose levels, right? Where that's going to damage our cell membranes and also our receptors as well. So the high glucose, the high insulin environment, the toxin load, those are things are all affecting our cell membranes. And then when we talk about fasting, we're also missing those repair states where those things can happen. So it's not to say, oh, let's just take something to fix our cell membranes. We have to adjust the lifestyle so that the demand for all of that cellular repair is not there, right? So cell membrane repair. And so this is also going to affect our receptor function. That's another reason why I'm so cautious to, oh, let's refill this deficiency with a supplement. The thing is, if your cell membranes aren't working properly and your receptors aren't working properly, you're just basically peeing out that supplement that you're trying to work that deficiency out. You have to work up the strength and the power of the receptors as well. So that's one thing that we need fatty acids for, okay? Hormone synthesis. So all of our hormones, right? They're all synthesized from cholesterol. So we need to make sure that we have enough of that coming in. I can't tell you how many women I work with that are low hormone status, but their diets are also very low in fat, especially if they are tracking macros. The amount of fat that they are, that's usually the first macronutrient to cut because it is so calorically dense. So I see this as such a trend when it comes to that low hormonal state. Like we don't have enough of the building blocks to even come in and replace those hormones. Not to mention most of our hormone synthesis is going to cortisol and all of the other things. Now, another thing we need fat for is bile production. We're going to talk a little bit about bile when I talk about fiber. Um, but we also bile, as we know, is synthesized by the liver. This helps us conjugate toxins and all of the excess, right? So it has to be flowing and it has to, it also serves as a digestive capacity. It also is helping with things like fat-soluble vitamin absorption and all of those wonderful things. We've got to have bile flowing. That's one of the first things that kind of gets hung up and then starts to look like a lot of different symptoms. Um, but part of that too is that we are watching how much fat we're intaking to a fault, to a fault, right? Um, all right, so immune response modulation. This is gonna be really powerful. We have to have enough fat coming in to help with those processes. And part of that is the metabolic flexibility that's needed. So going in and out of ketosis, burning fat for energy so that we can have that. Um, and and part of that is going to be in line with the gut as well. So we'll talk about that in just a minute. Um, brain and nerve protection. So fat and cholesterol lines the myelin sheath, right? Um, and so nerve impulses, all of those things are required. We have to have enough fat as the cholesterol backbone for these processes, right? And to help that um the communication along. Estrogen metabolism, so not just building up hormones, but also breaking them down, which is also intertwined with that bile conversation. We'll talk about that. And like I said, getting enough um fat-soluble vitamins, so A, D, E, and K, those come from fats. We have to have them in our diet, and we have to have a diversity of fats in our diet. So we'll talk about that as well. So, what about cholesterol? Well, first we need to talk about the different types of cholesterol. So, when we're talking, there are two main LDL um profiles that we need to discuss. And so, if you are testing these and you're terrified to bring fat into your diet because they might be high on some level, know that uh solid large buoyant LDL level being elevated is also correlated with a long healthy lifespan. Now, what we don't want is the damaged LDL, the small, dense particles, and you can test for those. And you can also get a little bit of uh insight as to what is happening with your LDLs, like when your um triglycerides are going up and that sort of thing. So that's more a derivative of the liver involvement in creating fat because that's the other part of it. So we also like the fat that we're testing, as far as cholesterol goes, is not just the fat we eat. It's the fat that we are driving up. Think about cholesterol as this reparative mechanism that comes in when we have an increased demand because of inflammation. So things like oxidative stress, right? Stress, inflammation, all of those increase the demand for cholesterol formation, but also the demand for increased hormonal, like our stress hormones, right? Um, to need more of that cholesterol, which is going to alter the clearance and the signaling of the hormones. It also is going to respond to reduced phosphatidyl choline. A lot of time this is because we have that increased demand, right? We have more oxidative stress, more inflammation, more cellular membrane damage, but we also aren't eating enough, right? And eggs, like when we're scared to eat eggs because of cholesterol, eggs are one of the best sources of phosphatidyl choline that we could have, right? It's just the type of eggs that we're eating, right? So you want to make sure, without going off on a tangent, you want to make sure those eggs are like pasture raised, right? Full of omegas, not full of omega-6s that are going to be more inflammatory. So it always is kind of like the nuance of that conversation. Also, cholesterol raises to increase repair signaling. So it's responding to that chronic immune activation, also is responding to nervous system stress as that elevates. We also have a need for more neuronal membrane support, right? And so that's going to increase that cholesterol demand as well. Um, lower methylation, right? And the methylation is not just, oh, I have this genetic SNP for methylation. It is your cells being able to go through repair cycles, what is turning off and on those methylation SNPs, right? Epigenetics, which we'll talk about in a little bit, lots of things. But either way, the lower the methylation, the more demand there is for uh cholesterol to come in and kind of overcompensate. And then also a reduction in estrogen clearance when our methylation is low. So we have to think about in lowering if our big concern is, and we'll talk about this, do we really want to lower LDLs or do we want to reduce the damage to them and also reduce the repair demand that's driving up those cholesterol levels? And then we'll talk when we talk about fiber, we want to make sure that we're binding the excess. That when we talk about fasting, we got to make sure that the liver is able to clear the excess. So this is like there's a lot of nuance to the conversation versus just, oh, my cholesterol is high. That's a problem. I should take a statin. And we'll talk about statins in just a minute. But your cholesterol level is representative of your repair demand versus the dietary part of it, right? And so that, and remember that cholesterol fat storage drives up when the liver has excess energy that it cannot uh produce, right? So when it's we have that excess in glucose, it causes de novolipogenesis. And so our liver turns that into fat and stores, especially starting in the liver. So there's a lot more going on than just, oh, I need to stop eating fat because my cholesterol is high. Because, in all essence, lowering cholesterol across the board is lowering the potential for all of that, all of those hormonal building blocks, all of the repair processes that come in, even the cell membrane, right? Like we don't have the building blocks and the fatty acid. And then I'll say one more thing on top of that is that if we are trying to work up metabolic flexibility, we know 93% of the population is metabolically inflexible and we don't have enough fat in our diet. How are we going to have enough fatty acids for that to be our new energy substrate, right? And so we have to be thinking about all of these aspects instead of just like I said, oh, just looking at cholesterol, right? And we'll talk about what levels to look at and things like that in just a minute. Um, so when we want to think about the balance of cholesterol, we have to think about obviously improving inflammation across the board. Now, um, in bringing fat in to balance a diet is going to be part of that because fat is the least insulin-inducing macronutrient that you could bring in. We just have to pair it with other things to get that balanced effect, right? To really support the metabolism from the top down. So um, so we want to improve inflammation across the board. We will improve that when we improve the gut, which we'll talk about when we talk about fiber. Um, when we improve drainage, right? So bile flow, the liver's capacity to actually break down and remove um the excess instead of trying to store everything. And then, of course, um working up the mitochondria so that it can actually modulate that inflammation. Um, you want to think about the breakdown of cells and tissues. So instead of that demand that's going to cause cholesterol to raise, what if we tapped into the body's innate wisdom to repair and possibly cell death, right? The cells that should no longer be replicating, like the toxic mutated senescent cells that aren't working properly anyway. Those are not things that we want to be repairing and, you know, even just replicating. So that's so we want to minimize the need for that cholesterol to just be internally driven up, right? And then we want to come in and we want to eat enough fat, right? And what we want to do is make sure that we're preventing the damaged LDLs. So the small dense particles. And like I said, if there is a risk of cardiovascular disease that you're worried about, these are the plaque-building particles that you want to dial in. It's the damage to the LDLs that cause these small dense particles. Okay, so this is going to increase your cardiac risk, not the fat you're eating from eggs and avocados and olive oil, right? Assuming you're not cooking your olive oil, which we'll talk about that too. So uh glucose and insulin are things that damage. So what it what turns LDLs into small dense particles? What creates that damage? So glucose, right? The glycation and the insulin response to follow. Um, so being really high glucose levels or high insulin levels are both, what most people are, omega-6s and obviously trans fats. So these are seed oils that are oxidized, cooking, even cooking high temp with something like olive oil or an avocado oil can also produce an inflammatory fat. So you want to make sure that if you're cooking with something that it is solid at room temperature, I'm not talking about Crisco, I'm talking about tallow or coconut oil, right? Um butter and ghee on a lower temp scale of cooking, but you don't want to be cooking with something that is liquid at room temperature, even if it's avocado oil, which, you know, a lot of times we're like, oh, these chips are cooked in avocado oil. This is so great. It's just as inflammatory, right? Because avocado oil should not be heated to that level. And so it is producing uh, you know, a fatty acid that is oxidized and inflammatory when we eat chips that are in that way. So, um, so omega-6s that we talked about, toxins, of course, um, advanced glycation in products. So over charring, over-burning of things that that, you know, grilling, those sort of things are another thing that damage the small dense particles, and then lipopolysaccharides in the gut. So we're gonna have that fiber conversation soon, but this is really important. So gut balancing is so much more than just doing a gut detox or a gut protocol or forcing your microbiome to do something that it's not gonna be able to withhold because you never fixed the uh colonocytes or the pro the postbiotics in the gut. You never fix the fuel source. Um, so we'll talk about that when we talk about fiber. So, do we really want to lower our cholesterol or do we want to improve, right? Improve the cycling, reduce the demand for it, make sure that we're not damaging those small particles because now we know how much we need. Like we gotta have these fatty acids for so many reasons: rebuild, repair, communication, right? Our nervous system, our hormonal health, um, and then having a fatty acid fuel source that our body can run on when it gets into ketosis, right? We gotta have these things. Um, so like I said, from a fuel perspective, an insulin perspective, fat is what increases insulin the least out of any macronutrient. Now, could you overeat on fat, um, you know, by like, could you snack on fat all day long and insulin still be high? A million percent. But it's not going to raise insulin quite like carbohydrates would or even protein does. So if you're trying to work up metabolic flexibility and trying to heal your metabolism, fat has to be part of that process, right? So lowering the fat in the diet is how we got here in the first place, right? That was one of the biggest food system uh and food production shifts that we saw, in addition to like the uh adding sugar and replacing fiber, which we're gonna talk about all these things today. This is why we're here. So, what you know, what kind of fats do we want to add in? We'll talk about that in just a second. But also you want to make sure when you start to add fat into the diet, you want to make sure you're supporting and balancing it with fiber. And this is why you don't like the diet extremes, like even just being a high fat, low carb, because low carb is usually gonna translate into low fiber, eventually that will cause discrepancies in the microbiome. And when we talk about fiber, you're gonna learn a little bit more about that. But even being carnivore, right? It's very imbalanced. You don't have the fiber support to balance out all of that protein and fat intake. And after a while, there will be, there will be a metabolic effect to that, right? And that's always due to what's happening with the actual microbiome. Um, so you wanna make sure that you're supporting with fiber, which will help with the bioflow, which is going to help you break down and utilize those fats. So it has to kind of be like we're supporting all of these things as a system versus just, oh, I just need to add more fat in. Now, the other part is for if you're someone who's worried about adding in fat calorically, um, you gotta remember you don't want to add fat in when insulin's high, right? And this is why a lot of macro counting and things like that, insulin's very high in the high protein macro world. Insulin, because when you are high protein and high insulin, you build muscle really quickly, right? But is that what we want? Do we want to always be in a growth state? And I talked about that on last time's episode. I'll link that up in the show notes if you want to revisit that. We don't want to be in growth all the time, right? We want to fluctuate in and out of these. That's how the body's designed. Um, and this will be emphasized, especially when we talk about fasting. We're not designed to be fed all the time, but we're definitely not um made to grow all the time. We've got to grow, we've got to burn, right? We've got to be in and out of those states. And so if we are always fed and insulin's always high, and then we just throw a bunch of fat calories into our diet, could there be weight gain? Absolutely. The goal is to work up metabolic flexibility first, get insulin down. And part of that is going to be by shifting, right? Shifting the kind of foods that you're eating. So shifting down the refined carbohydrates, which stimulate that insulin response, reduce the frequency of how often you're eating, and then bring in the fats to support, right? The fats and the fiber to support that insulin response dietarily. That's how you want to do things. You don't want to just be like, okay, I'm gonna add like a thousand calories of fat into what I'm already doing and expect to not gain weight, right? So just from a caloric perspective, because I know a lot of people are um struggling with weight loss resistance, things like that. Yeah, you do. And I'm not saying you have to obsessively track, when you correct insulin, the tracking really becomes not as necessary because then you correct the hunger responses. But if you are someone who's tracking and you are worried about that fluctuation, um, for one, our bodies aren't designed to eat the same amount of calories all day, every day, or be fed uh, you know, five, six meals a day, or even three meals a day every single day. Like we kind of need breaks to really optimize other functions. But if that's where you're at, you have to meet yourself where you're at. So you have to kind of shift what you're doing. So, like I said, that would be a shift out of the refined uh carbohydrates or the carbs that are spiking your insulin and then shifting up fat at the same time and fiber so that you're not putting yourself in that place of like weight gain because fats are way more calorically dense. But what I would recommend is working up metabolic flexibility in the interim. So if you are constantly eating, constantly fueling and in that higher protein, higher carb state, it would serve you better to learn how to get in and out of ketosis and be strategic about being fed in that way on workout days or whatever that may be. But that's a whole other thing. But I just want to mention the caloric density part because I do get a lot of questions about that. Okay, so as far as what kind of fats should I be adding in? Well, I just told you you don't want to be adding in oxidized fats, right? So seed oils and things like that. We don't want to be adding those in. Um, we want our fats to be coming from a balance of animal and plant-based so that we get a variety of fat-soluble vitamins, right? Um, you want to cook with things that are solid at room temperature, but not vegetable oil, okay? So tallow, coconut oil, and then like I said, a medium temp cooking, you could do some butter or some ghee. Um, you also, so the oils like avocado oil, um, assuming it's like cold press, right? Cold expeller press is what you're looking for because there's just so much green washing on labels. You wanna make sure that when You're adding is actually beneficial and valuable. And if you're unsure of the avocado oil, go straight for extra virgin olive oil, right? Um, that's something that you would want to drizzle on a salad or veggies after they're cooked, okay? Because if you heat those at high temps, they're going to turn into trans fats, and then we don't have the capacity to break those bonds down, and that causes more inflammation. So we don't want that. Now, other sources of fat that I love also include fiber alongside with them. So we're getting both effects, and we'll talk more about fiber in just a minute. But raw nuts and seeds, um, those contain fat and fiber, right? Coconut products of all kinds except coconut water. That is taking out all of the fiber. You're dry, you're basically drinking coconut juice, right? Um, so we don't want that, right? Fructose is a completely other pathway that goes straight to the liver and gets processed just like alcohol would. We don't want that. Now, coconut milk, a million percent. It's got the fat, it's got the fiber in it. Um, full fat, unsweetened, yes, all day long. That's what I live off of. Coconut products, like coconut yogurt, unsweet, obviously. Um, and you know, coconut chips, those kind of things, great, love them. Um, avocados are actually really high in fat and fiber. Perfect. Those kind of things are things that, especially if this is newer to you, you want to be adding in those food sources of fats versus like just drizzling oil on everything. Because if your bile flow is not used to that fat intake, or if your bile's sluggish because maybe you've been high glucose for a long time, or you know, your liver's a little bit stuck or something like that, you don't want to be bombarding yourself. And the same with even adding fiber in, you don't want to do a dramatic shift overnight of these things. You want to slowly and strategically add them in. And like I said, the best way to do that is to synergistically get insulin down at the same time. Now, that naturally will happen if you are adding in fat and fiber and balancing out your meals a little bit more with those two macronutrients. And then, like I said, slowly coming off of the refined and processed carbohydrates will serve you the best. And then things like olives, right? The food-based fats are gonna be the most supportive. Um, so yeah, just a variety of animal versus plant-based. I love that. And that's how you're gonna get that diversity in fat-soluble vitamins and just kind of work up the fat in the body and give your bile time to kind of catch up with that as well. So always thinking about balancing out the diet, right? Um, a lot of people are okay, well, fat's good for us, then I'm just gonna do all fat, right? I'm gonna do keto all the time. But keto, in all reality, and I think I talked about this last time, keto is not it's not like high protein, and it also isn't high enough in carbohydrate that would allow you to get the fiber from the veggies and things like that that you need. Um, even technically, keto is, you know, 70 to 80 percent fat. So in a place where you were trying to do this for let's just say seizures or neurodegenerative conditions or something like that, or like acute cancer therapy or something like that, yes, I would say go full-blown that 80%. But you do need a little bit more balance if you're trying to be more sustainable and um you don't want to be eating sticks of butter every day just to get into a certain parameter of macronutrients, right? Like that's not necessarily because you could you like you could do this very inflammatory by like eating butter and bacon every single day. And we don't want that, right? So it's all about uh adding in the fiber to help balance that out and then plug in the protein and the carbohydrates to meet your needs on top of that. I would always structure your meal around the fat and the fiber to start, and that's usually what I start my clients out with because we've been so backwards on that. Like, okay, let's do protein and carbs and then just throw a little like a tablespoon of fat in it. And that's where that's why we're here, right? So if you're too low in fiber, you're gonna have a lot more recirculating of toxins and things that the bile can't clear, right? Um, you're gonna have a lot more estrogen dominance, which is what I see when people are long-term keto or even long-term carnivore, that sort of thing. So it's always about supporting where you're at right now and shifting things and building up, right? So when you are low hormone, when you are high blood sugar and high insulin, and you have damaged tissue and you have inflammation, you need dietary cholesterol, right? Those cholesterol levels are driven up because you are inflamed and or because your body is damaging those LDL particles, right? And so you need to bring down the incidence of that. The cholesterol is responding to that repair demand, right? They are the firemen on the scene. When the firemen are on the scene, that doesn't mean they caused it, right? They're there to respond. And so the same thing when it comes to cholesterol numbers. So you want to make sure that you are adding in the building blocks you need for all of these reparative mechanisms, but that you're not damaging and turning them into small dense particles, which those are the plaque forming and the cardiovascular risk-forming particles. Now let's talk just for a second about de novolipogenesis. So this is fat that's formed from excess glucose and fructose that the body cannot utilize. So that goes straight to this is not because of dietary fat. It's because of dietary excess sugar that the body can't produce or that your mitochondria can't produce. Okay. So when this excess happens, your body starts to store via triglycerides, right? So triglycerides truly are more so like that liver output of excess glucose. That's how I want you to look at your triglyceride number. And so it's going to form these triglycerides and then store in the liver, in the visceral tissue, the muscles, in the adipose. But this is the biggest contributor of fatty liver, right? Non-alcoholic fatty liver. So it's the glucose consumption, the fructose consumption, the de novolipogenesis that happens from the excess, more carbs than we can process. And then, of course, we have the alcohol that comes in for actually like alcoholic fatty liver. Um, but alcohol and fructose are metabolized the same way, identically, right? So the fructose consumption, and most of this is through the sugary beverages and that sort of thing, goes straight to the liver and it form triglycerides just the same way as alcohol would. So obviously, this is going to elicit more of an insulin response, which is even more storage, right? And we couple that with sluggish bile and an environment where we can't burn through our stores, which we'll talk about when we talk about fasting. And then we have more tissue breakdown, more catabolism, right? And then low fiber, right? High sugar. This is the perfect storm, right? This is a perfect storm for this cholesterol like crisis that we have right now. But as you can see, this is not due to what we're doing dietarily as far as like eating healthy fats. This is because of our body overcompensating for a diet that's lacking in essential fatty acids and lacking in beneficial fiber. And if we're always just looking at lowering the cholesterol number, we are reducing our healing potential. We're reducing our hormone potential, we are working up the incidence of diabetes, um, things like neuropathy, which is even increased even more when we take a statin, which we'll talk about in just a second. We have lower energy because we have lower mitochondrial output, right? We have impaired immunity and we have lower cognition and a higher dementia risk. Now let's talk about statins for a second. If do statins work, they will get your LDL number down, absolutely, but is that what we want? Because we just realized that if we get our LDL, our large buoyant LDL down, that is associated with a decrease in longevity. And we're not really looking at the big picture of what statins do long term. So we increase our risk of diabetes by 20% when on a statin. We also have an increased incidence in things like neuropathy, cognitive issues, inflammation, because it does impact our mitochondria, right? And it, and not only that, but all those risks, statins do not decrease our risk of cardiovascular disease at all, right? They simply are just getting that LDL number lower. And so the increase in mitochondrial dysfunction on the back end of that and all of the symptoms that that, you know, causes, is that really worth the risk, right? And if you look at the studies of long-term statin use, the increase in lifespan overall is literally four days, right? Four days of living with more mitochondrial dysfunction, four days of living with like more inflammation, more cognitive issues, neuropathy, all of these things, right? And that could even just be placebo, honestly. So, like, do we really want to get the LDLs down or do we want to optimize the function of the LDLs that we have and reduce the need for them so we don't have too much cholesterol output and also reduce the damage to them, which are the inflammatory particles that are caused when we damage those. So we need to help the body utilize cholesterol properly. We need to bring in enough dietary cholesterol so that we have the building blocks for all of those substrates we need. We need to circulate the cholesterol, right? So we can't have it just constantly clogging up and congesting the liver. We want to move it out. We want to bind the excess and create an environment like we will with fasting that will help remove the excess as well. And then, of course, like I said, minimizing the damage products. So let's, this is a perfect leeway into the fiber conversation because that's one of those things that helps us bind and remove the excess, including cholesterol, including toxins, including hormones, right? But also the thing about like the food we eat, we think that like we're eating to meet like our cravings and our needs and our building blocks of our cells and things like that. But we need to shift that just a little bit and think about like feeding the bacteria in our body, right? We are actually more bacteria than we are human cells. And so that is the majority of us. And so if we're not eating to meet the needs of the bacteria and help with all of the beneficial things that that bacteria does for us, then we are really missing the mark. So our bacteria actually ferments the fiber that we eat. And we are very fiber deficient, right? And a lot of that's because, like I said, the processing of our food supply, but also we've just become, we haven't prioritized it, right? And I think a lot of it's because we don't understand the value of it. But these metabolites that are when the bacteria actually ferments the fiber, these are going to help us modulate everything from our immune system, our metabolism, our neurotransmitter health, our digestion. If we don't have proper fuel sources to our colonocytes, we can't even hold our tight junctions together. So we talk about chronic leaky gut. That's not because you haven't gotten on the right probiotic or that you haven't done the right gut cleanse. You haven't prioritized this piece of it, right? Between the fiber and the metabolic piece of it, those are the reasons why the guts can't heal. Okay. So it's so much more than just trying to hack and manipulate the gut to do what we want it to do. We want to make sure that we're optimizing the fuel sources of the bacteria and then working the fiber in to get that biodiversity that we need. Because a lot of times the candida, the yeast, even the mold in their guts and things like that, those are because we've been on such a high glucose environment for so long. And that's overpowering the bacterial metabolites that should be fed by fiber. So one of the best reason ways to start bringing more balance into that is bringing the sugar down, right? And bringing the fiber up. We just overcomplicate this so much. And as you can see, I get a little passionate about it because like we should all be starting here, right? And the needs for all of the harshness of the killing would go away if we started here. Um, so fiber is undigestible to us, right? But it's broken down by our bacteria. And remember, we're more bacteria than anything else, right? And that's what modulates our systemic health. So all the way down the GI tract is what that fiber is going to do to provide the diversity to the microbiome and provide the proper fuel source for them. So the fermentation of that fiber produces things like beneficial short chain fatty acids. And I'll go over the top three. Um, butyrate is probably the one you've heard about the most. This is our main energy source for our colonocytes, which, like I mentioned earlier, maintains those tight junctions and our gut integrity. So if that isn't part of our, and I'm not saying take butyrate, I'm saying create butyrate because we are that's how we're designed, right? Um, acetate, which is the most abundant. This is in charge of our energy metabolism and our peripheral tissues and our brain, right? And then propriate, which is the main source for our liver, which helps us produce gluconeogenesis. So all of these are really beneficial and help us modulate every system in the body, and it is very highly overlooked. And so, what about the balance of fiber? Okay, so talking about soluble versus insoluble, you really need to bring these in together. And this is one reason why fiber supplements can be so irritating because they're usually really heavy on one side and not the combination of the both. And if that's something new to us, um, especially in like a processed source, is gonna be very irritating. Um, so the soluble fiber is what forms our food into a gel, right? So that's sponge-like, it binds to fatty acids, and that's how we get that lowering of cholesterol, the binding of the toxins, right, and uh hormones and all of those things. Now, the insoluble is what adds the bulk. It moves that fiber further down the digestive tract, like I said, to feed the bacteria further down that tract. And these two work together and create like a web and a mesh to slow down digestion in a good way, right? Lower that insulin response by that slowing of the digestion, which helps also create that web where the glucose from our food is not taxing our insulin as dramatically, right? Not going straight to our blood sugar, right? It's going, it's doing its thing. We're actually absorbing those vitamins and those minerals from our food because we have that binding effect of the fiber. And so we want to make sure that our fiber is coming in from a diversity, but also a combination of soluble versus insoluble. And so these are bioavailable sources. I do not like fiber supplements. People try them, they irritate them, and then they're like, fiber's not for me, and then they're done, right? And I don't like that. And so the more you think about bringing in a diversity, and we'll talk about some of my favorite ways to do that. And also, I want you to get your head outside of the box of thinking, like, well, I eat veggies, that's plenty of fiber. So I just want to give you a quick comparison that a tablespoon of chia has just as much fiber in it as a whole head of lettuce, right? And so how much dark leafy grains are we actually eating, right? How much of those veggies that we eat are actually cooked, right? Which changes the benefit of that fiber, not to say it's not good, but at that point, you're more so eating the vegetables for the mineral and the vitamin content versus the fiber content, right? So how much of that fiber is like macerated, severely cooked, severely like broken down already by the time we eat it and ingest it. So not to say don't eat veggies, but you want to be more strategic than just that. Because if you added up all the fiber and just the veggies you eat, it is not getting you where you need to be. Um, so you need to be thinking about feeding the most abundant cells in the body, right? So fiber is what has been affected the most in our industrialization of our foods. And because when you take the fiber out, it makes the food shelf stable, right? So how much do we need? Well, evolutionarily speaking, and I I love these kind of things because like we try to replicate, we think we are replicating um ancestral diets with like paleo and carnivore and things like that, but like carnivores didn't eat ribeyes three or four times a day, right? Like they ate actually a lot of fiber, um, a hundred plus grams of fiber, actually, our ancestors ate a day. And the average American's eating like 10 to 15, maybe. And we wonder why, why do we have such high cholesterol? Why do we have so much estrogen dominance? Like, why are we so toxic, right? Now you can kind of get the big picture of like how these things all flow together. It's that once again, that perfect storm for like dysfunction and dis-ease and inflammation across the board. So I want you to think about when you add in this diversity, I'm gonna give you some sources in just a minute. I want you to think about raw versus cooked. Like, um when you are working up fiber in your diet, don't go zero to a hundred, just like with fat. Give your body time to change, like the microbiome will change as you slowly change the fiber content of your food. So don't go like everything I say, like do it all tomorrow. Like ease into it, bring the balance into the diet, and then make fiber a higher and higher priority as your gut catches up. Okay. So um, raw versus cooked, blended versus like whole food form, think about that, right? Like a lot of people just throw everything in a smoothie and like, oh, this is nutritious. And it's like, well, you literally just changed the effect of all of that food, the insulin response, the fiber benefit, all of those things by like macerating it in a blender, right? And I'm not saying there's not a time and a place, but I'm saying if this is new for you and you know this is something you need to work in, you're not gonna get the full benefits if you're just putting everything in a blender. So just want to kind of make sure that that point is gotten across. Um, okay, so we want to think about the role that fiber plays. Like I said, if we understand the why behind what we're supporting, then it helps with the how and the integration of that new habit. Okay. So fiber, as we just learned, helps us bind things like excess cholesterol, excess hormones, right? Hormones we need to be building up and we need to be cycling them out, right? When they recirculate, that's when we have a problem, right? That recirculation because we have too little bile, too little fiber, um, too high insulin, all of those things. Those are how the hormone problems are created. Um, fiber to add in setaity. Like we know that GLP1 helps with setaity and the hunger response. We know that we have to fix the hunger to be able to fix a metabolism, right? And we can do that naturally. What fiber stimulates those setaity um hormones like GLP1 naturally. And so, so it's gonna have that metabolic effect because we're gonna start regulating the hunger hormones, right? Um, we're creating a place where the liver can kind of start to clear a little bit, which is great. We're going to improve the gut integrity, which as we continue the inflammation lowering processes, that's a huge one. And like I said, it's never fully addressed by a gut protocol. You have to come in and make sure that the environment is conducive to maintaining those results, right? Um, bowel movement regularity, that is phase three liver detox, you guys. So just taking things to detox the liver and not thinking about the binding and the removal, um, that's where the fiber comes in, right? And then bioflow, let's talk about this. I mentioned it earlier. Let's talk about it for just a second. So fiber is going to help us bind to bile acids, preventing them from reabsorbing. When we have that reabsorption, not only do we have recirculating toxins and hormones and things like that, but also digestively, like that's where we can get bile reflux. That's why eventually we can get gallstones and things like that. So when we bind and remove that excess bile, not only are we removing all the excess things that it's conjugated with, but we're forcing the liver to consume more cholesterol. So using up those LDLs, right, to synthesize new bile. And so we're reducing the gallstone risk, we're improving everything from digestion to hormonal balance, our toxin load, our absorption of fats, um, fat-soluble vitamins, the neutralization of stomach acid. So that's going to help with things like pathogen balance as well and digestive enzymes and stomach acid levels, but waste elimination across the board, right? So if we live in this low fiber state, a high glucose state, plus the toxin loads on top of it, not a lot of times we go just straight for the toxins and we don't like correct any of these other things. And that's why we're like chasing our root cause tail, like I call it. This is the perfect storm for bile flow issues, right? Um, and so the downstream effect is going to be everything from digestion to hormones and everything in between. All of these like little symptoms that we feel like are completely disjointed are all accumulated from the inflammation from this environment. Okay. So how much? How much fiber do We need. Like I said, our ancestors ate about 100 grams a day. I don't expect that from you. Um, I want you to meet yourself where you're at, but work up where you're at, right? Eventually getting to hopefully an ideal range of about 50 grams a day. You guys, if we're only getting 10, like that's gonna take some work and it's gonna take some time. What are my favorite sources? So I really want you to look at the nutrient density of things like chia, flax seeds, basil seeds, hemp, right? Not only do these have healthy levels of omega-3s, but they also have the fat and the fiber that we need. So I want you to really think about the impact and the nutrient density of these things versus like, you know, most people aren't even eating enough vegetables to hold a candle to how much fiber is in these. Okay. So you could do chia sea puddings, right? Sweetened with some stevia or monk fruit. You could do flax crackers, right? And served with some guacamole or avocado or something like that, right? Do those kind of things in addition to the vegetables and the salads that you're doing to really get those fiber levels slowly and incrementally up. Things like psilium husk, they're another great way to add in fiber. What I do is I do my chia seed pudding. Um, before I go to eat it, I'll add some more coconut milk into it and a scoop of psyllium husk just to get another four or five grams of fiber in, right? Like those things. By the time I have my meal, right? Like that's the chia seeds usually like my dessert for lunchtime. But that like fiber-packed chia seed pudding is gonna get me to my daily fiber goal. And then anything else I eat beyond that is like a bonus, right? And everything has changed for me since I've been prioritizing that. I cannot tell you how much easier it is to improve your digestion and your hormones and your blood sugar and your insulin, all these wonderful things when you get the amount of fiber that you truly need in your diet, right? And it's often what's missing. Um, another thing is low sugar berries. Um, if you're really insulin resistant, like just do blackberries and raspberries, right? Like those are really high in fiber, but they have wonderful, you know, uh, phytonutrients in them, antioxidants, those kind of things, but do them earlier in the day. Um, low sugar berries, of course. Um, raw nuts and seeds. Um pumpkin seeds are a really good source of fiber. The papitas, those are great. Um, avocados are wonderful because they're that perfect balance of fat to fiber. Um, and then come in with the veggies for the minerals and the vitamins, right? But when you do your veggies, make sure you have a diversity of raw versus cooked, right? You don't want to overcook everything. Um avoid macerating everything in a blender, avoid overcooking everything, right? And just breaking down that fiber substrate, you're gonna lose the benefits of it. And you're gonna add fiber and you're gonna be like, this didn't work, right? Like this didn't change anything. Well, you can't break it all down. You know what I mean? Um balance out the diet. So if you are someone who's been keto or carnivore or whatever else, just think about slowly and incrementally bringing up uh, you know, a little bit of fiber here in there. Like I said, if you're easing into it, do something like an avocado that has the fat and the fiber together that's a little bit more digestible before you go straight to like the psyllium husk or um something like that. So I would just be intentional and just incremental with meeting yourself where you're at. But the eventual goal of 50 grams a day would would serve you so well by eventually making that the goal. Okay, I'm gonna segue over into my favorite topic now, which is fasting. And it's because it's so underutilized and it is literally the ultimate healing environment and potential you could ever create in your body. This is why we are supposed to heal at night, right? We heal at night because we're fasted. It's not because we're asleep, it's because we're fasted. And most you would hope that we're fasted, but I see so much glucose data that most people aren't actually fasted at night because their cortisol or their insulin is driving the show when it should be low at that point. So this is the ultimate way to create space and energy for the body to play ketchup. Now, even if you're not struggling with a health problem at this point, you still need to play ketchup from normal metabolic activity, normal detoxification in the liver activity, right? Like even just normal mitochondria make reactive oxygen species as byproducts of their energy production. Okay. So this is like this is for everybody. This is not just for people who are having health problems, right? Like this is literally cleanup that everyone needs to be going through. Um, and even more so if you are having trouble, right? You're having trouble with your body playing catch-up, which looks like symptoms and inflammation and chaos in the body, right? So every time we are in a fasted state, we free up energy. Just think about how much energy goes into things like digestion and detoxification and even just energy production in and of itself, what we require of the mitochondria that's already not functioning properly because the symptoms are there, right? And then thinking about when we're always, always in a fed state, we don't allow for that cleanup to happen. And not only that, but we're not generating new cells, right, to come in and replace, right? So we have a lot of catabolic breakdown, but we don't have the production of the new cells to come behind that and create new stem cells, new mitochondria, and even things like brain-derived nootropic factor, which makes us more neuroplastic, helps with our neurodegenerative disease risk, all those things, right? It truly is the body's reset button. And we we talk about um evolutionarily, like ancestral living and things like that. We need to be thinking about this because we were not eating even three meals a day when we were, you know, evolutionarily speaking. It was food was not available. And that's where the metabolic flexibility has to come in. You have to think, okay, how are our bodies designed? They're designed to go in and out of ketosis and glycolysis. So burning glucose for energy when it's available, but then being able to burn fat for energy when it's not. That is how we're designed, right? And so when we tap into fat burn for energy, energy becomes more stable, our senses become stronger, our cognition turns on, it lights up because it's making us better suited to go hunt, right? And find our next food supply. And it helps with that cellular turnover, the digestive turnover, right? All of those other things. And so most often what I find is that we're getting sick because we never tap into not only metabolic flexibility, but a fasted state, right? We never tap into this innate potential for healing. And the more you avoid this, the more you're gonna have to rely on things outside of you to keep you somewhat baseline, somewhat feeling good. And so when we get in this constantly fed state, like I talked about um last episode, and you know, that comes to be in that state of mTOR all the time, where we're always growing, we're always replicating cells that may have otherwise been better off going through apoptosis and autophagy, which we'll talk about in just a second. Um, but we inhibit new fresh cells coming in. Our liver is constantly going to be overburdened because we are constantly, you know, pushing out hormones like insulin, which is storing, right? And then the dietary part of that, right? If more glucose than we can process is also going to go to storage, starting with the liver. It's a mitochondrial inhibitor, right? When we have more energy coming in than we can process as well. And then also our digestion never gets a break. That's why I'm like, please drop the gut healing protocols till you get these things dialed in, because your environment will never allow them to stick until you work these up. You give the digestion an actual rest where it can come in with new stem cells to promote new gut cell lining and even just change the diversity of the microbiome every time you lean into a fast, right? And then hormonally, you get a break from cortisol and insulin. So other hormones can come to the surface, right? And then now we know that, hey, we're dialing in the fat for those hormonal building blocks, and then we're bringing up the fiber to make sure that we're cycling these hormones out too, because we don't want them sticking around and recirculating. We've got to be thinking about all of these things acyclically, right? Moving them in, moving them out. And the same with fasting, we need to learn to embrace a fed famine state that is where we exist metabolically, optimally in the best case scenario, right? So we want to improve the quality, quantity, and function of our mitochondria. This is happening when we switch fuel sources, but also when we tap into its innate wisdom to promote cell die-off when appropriate, when we have those toxic, mutated or senescent cells, or promote cellular healing and repair, right? And those both happen when we are fasted and you know, also when we sleep, if our fasting windows are big enough and if our cortisol and insulin are low enough, right? And then as far as the liver goes, so we're like, oh, I can't unstick my liver. It must be the toxins, right? And we we are clearly avoiding toxins in our day-to-day. We take a bunch of liver supplements, which can also add to that liver load, right? But we're not told that. We're told that they're gonna detox our liver for us. But talk about the ultimate detoxification state where our liver actually has an environment where it can cleanse at night and burn through its stores because we finally got the storage hormones and the stress hormones down. Um, and so those can only happen if those are in a hormonally supportive state, but also if um we're not filling up that glycogen tank and that liver storage tank right before we go to sleep, right? So lots of things. And this will um serve well for teaching the body how to burn fat for energy. It has to burn through that liver fat first before it will go through our body fat or the fatty acids in our bloodstream. So fat burn for so many reasons. It's not not just to lose weight, it's really to help modulate inflammation. And then, like I said, the gut lining repair with um now you know we've got to bring the fiber in, we've got to support the bioflow, right? And a healthy metabolism because if we don't have those things, it your gut protocol will fail every single time. Um, so you need the postbiotics from feeding your bacteria with proper sources of fiber, but you also need mitochondrial energy to keep those tight junctions in place. So there's so much more to the story. Now let's talk about some other things that fasting comes in and does for us. It helps reduce that liver fat, of course, because we're creating that hormonal and metabolic environment where that's a possibility. It also is burning visceral fat. That can only be done in a fasted state. Um, like I said, once the body burns through those stores in the liver, then it will go for the visceral fat, right? And we've got to combine that with getting cortisol down and supporting the hormonal environment so that we're not continuing to accumulate that visceral fat, right? Um, it's going to lower blood pressure because it's lowering insulin. Insulin, when it's high and blood sugar is high, it's going to also affect our vasoconstriction and vasodilation. So that in a lot of people is gonna look like blood pressure issues and hypertension. It also shifts our mineral levels, which contributes even more to that. Um, it's also going to reduce this, is the quickest way to reduce insulin. We know that insulin is the bad guy in the story, right? Like we need a certain level of it, but the thing is we've pulled this lever for so long. Now we all have to work to get out of this hyper insulin, insulinemia state. Okay. So when we do that, we reduce systemic inflammation across the board, right? But we're also reducing that storage load in the liver, the cholesterol, the triglycerides, and then those eventually will spill out into the bloodstream, right? And the adipose and the visceral fat and the muscles and all of those things. So when we reduce insulin, the body can burn that fat for energy. And then we got to come in behind those fasts and reduce the need for that excess, right? Whether that's dietary, whether it's inflammation related. But fasting is the quickest way to get inflammation down across the board. So you can only burn fat for energy when insulin's low. And so we live in this state of lipotoxicity because we can't process energy properly, right? Because our diet is overly um refined carbohydrate heavy and low in dietary fiber, right? And low in dietary fat. And so we have this imbalance that we have to create space for the body to play catch-up. So we are going to see a decrease in LDLs naturally, right? We're also going to see a decrease in the damaged LDLs, right? Those small dense particles that we were talking about that are the ones that are really inflammatory and the ones that build plaques. We also have potential to reset dopamine pathways, right? And so a lot of this is because we are increasing things like brain-derived nootropic factor. Um, we are increasing neuroplasticity to create a new nervous system baseline, but also we are um giving the vagus nerve some time to rebound and repair and heal from all of the glycation, which is what a lot of times inhibits the communication from the gut to the nervous system. And then we're coming in and we're replenishing the microbiome, right? So we're giving it time, we're giving it an environment where it can reset, we're improving vagal tone. Um, and then what we do after that fast is gonna either like accelerate that potential and complement that potential, um, or could be, you know, just getting right back to where we were at. So being intentional and strategic with how you come out of your fast will kind of ramp up those benefits as well. An increase in human growth hormone. I can't emphasize this enough. This is our anti-aging hormone. This is how you repair and heal from your workouts, how you repair and heal tissue, how you repair and heal the muscle, right? Because I see a lot of people they over-train, they have the breakdown, and they never get the full potential of the healing response because they never tap into this growth hormone potential. So this is gonna be inhibited by cortisol and insulin. It's very much inhibited by ultra-refined processed foods. Uh, so we wanna make sure that we are tapping into this. This is our fountain of youth that we have to tap into. And sometimes we miss the window because we aren't asleep when cortisol's at its lowest point in the day. So if we aren't getting in bed between 9, 9:30 or so at night, um, then we miss the mark to be able to tap into its fullest potential as well. So that is our anti-aging hormone. Um, or if you are a growing child, this is those are primary, right? Healthy levels of melatonin, lowered levels of cortisol and insulin, and then a proper bedtime so that we can tap into that potential. Um, also, like I said, all of the things that are going to reset with the quality, quantity, and function of the mitochondria, and then leaning into those repair processes that I talked about, the autophagy and apoptosis, this impacts our DNA repair and replication as well as the genetic expression. So we worry about all these methylation SNPs and our genetic SNPs and things like that. But if we aren't creating an environment for them to thrive and not turn those epigenetics on, right? Turn those genetic SNPs on, that's our power right there. So if we are lowering inflammation, we improve the mitochondria, improve the function of our mitochondria, and tap into those cellular repair and renewal programs, that's how you support those. You do those to start, right? It's not a missing supplement that's going to fix those pathways for you. It's tapping into your body's physiology that knows whether or not it should be turning those epigenetics on or off. So we lower inflammation across the board. We're improving energy across the board, right? We're decreasing glycogen, we're cycling it out. One of those things that has to cycle out. Glycogen's not bad, right? It's energy potential, but you have you can only see it when insulin's low. And we want to make sure that we're moving our muscles to move that glycogen out, and then we'll restore it next time we eat, right? The it should be something that's constantly also in flux. Um, a decrease in mTOR. I talked about being fed all the time. This is one reason why I'm not a huge proponent in the same calories, the same macros all day, every day. Every day is different. Um, every workout is different, the needs are always different, and we can't be fed all the time. We have to, because when we are, it blocks autophagy and apoptosis, it blocks ketosis, it blocks AMPK, which is our fat-burning pathway. So if we're always fed, especially if we're overdoing protein in excess, that keeps us always replicating. Okay. We always in a growth factor and we need breaks from that, in and out of that, right? Cyclical. Think about everything cyclically, and we get so caught up in the extremes, that's where we get stuck because we don't have that balance that we need, right? So I will link up the podcast um episode that I mentioned all of those things as well. Um, but I do want to talk about why and how we get fasting wrong. So the problem with fasting and why it might even get a bad rap at times is because we're already chronically stressed, right? We're trying to fast and like continue our CrossFit workouts while we're fasted, right? Not a good idea. We're like, we want to be lowering cortisol and insulin, and we want to not be playing with our hormonal balance. Fasting, we really do need to slow down, especially if we're new to fasting. The other thing is that we try to do the same fast every day. And one of the things that I see like reek hormonal uh havoc is that we are trying to intermittent fast. Intermittent fast I associate with skipping breakfast and possibly even lunch every single day. You don't want to fast like that. That's very anti-circadian appropriate way to fast. And what that means is that our cortisol is naturally higher those times of day. And most people need to come in, especially because most people are stuck as a sugar burner. We know 93% of us are stuck as sugar burners. You're not ready for that, right? You're not ready to skip breakfast when cortisol's already high. And so you're because you're not a fat burner yet. If if you were a fat burner, there may be a time and a place where I'm okay with you skipping breakfast on occasion, but I don't want you to do it every day because you're setting yourself up for a high cortisol environment, a stress pattern, because cortisol is already high, and then you skip a meal and you're a sugar burner and your cortisol is gonna raise and your blood sugar is gonna raise, even if you're fasted. So you're not even getting the full benefits of that fast because you're doing it in a hormonally inappropriate time. So that is a problem. And so if you're gonna fast and you're gonna consect that eating window, which everyone can do, what I would start with is first going to three meals a day, three caloric intakes a day, right? Because I think a lot of times we're like, yeah, we eat three times a day, but we're sipping on caloric beverages in between meals throughout the whole day. We're keeping our insulin response high. We're keeping all of our metabolism trying to function, right? Like with no reprieve all day. And that's the same thing. Grazing, consuming any kind of calories, even if it's through beverages throughout the whole day, is keeping your insulin high and it's keeping you f unable to tap into these heal and repair mechanisms and out of a fasted state. So your body also will adapt, right? It will adapt if you try to do the same fast, even if you're doing OMAD uh one meal a day, every single day, eventually your body's gonna get used to that and it's gonna adapt and you're not gonna get the same benefits. So that is a problem too. Now, the other thing that I see that needs a little bit more strategy is that how you break your fast, right? So you may um condense that eating window, you're doing maybe an earlier dinner. Um, how you break that fast does matter because you're coming in, you've depleted glycogen stores, you've offer the gut a chance to kind of reset that microbiome and potentially burning fat for energy, if you've been training your body to, you know, fast for longer periods of time and producing ketones and things like that. So how you break your fast does matter. And so if you want to, you know, uh, let's say we're supporting the gut and supporting digestion and microbiome and things like that, then you want to come in with something to break that fast that's supportive of that, something maybe fermented, something maybe um easily digestible but full of fat and fiber, like we mentioned. Um, things that will help feed that bacteria and feed the diversity you want to bring into your microbiome, right? Or if you wanna stay um in ketosis, maybe you're able to get into ketosis. So then maybe you come in with a higher fat meal to stay in that state a little bit longer, right? So make the how you break your fast mass match your attention of that fast, and you're gonna get so much more out of it. And the other part of it is, you know, sometimes we never really train the body how to switch fuel sources. And that is a retraining process because so many of us are stuck as a sugar burner. So it's not saying, oh, one fast and I'm gonna be there, right? It's it's being intentional. It's meeting yourself where you're at, just like with the fat and fiber, meeting yourself where you're at, and just maybe you condense meals into three instead of four. And then maybe you just slowly bring that dinner up a little earlier, a little earlier, so you tap into more healing potential in a bigger fasten state at night, right? Meet yourself where you're at. It does not have to be an extreme to get the potential because the potential is based on what your metabolic normal is right now. And then the more you train this new metabolic flexibility in, the easier the fast will get. So it truly is like balancing the blood sugar, getting the hormones in balance, getting the insulin response in check, and then leaning into some longer, fast for better support. That's how you ease into this. You don't jump headfirst into any of these changes that we talked about. I hope this made sense. These are the three biggest things I see overlooked along someone's healing potential, and honestly, three of the biggest game changers when my clients are ready to embrace them. And uh I hope that you guys get the same outcome. For more on this and so much, so many other things, right? Follow me on Instagram at dr.cc. For everything else, head to the show notes. I'll link up all the resources and everything mentioned. Um, thank you guys so much for being here. I'll talk to you soon.