Fasting and Meal Timing for Weight Loss

Intermittent Fasting, Insulin & the Truth About Weight Loss

In this episode of Healthier Ever After, Rick and Greg break down one of the most talked-about—and often misunderstood—topics in health and weight loss: intermittent fasting, meal timing, and the powerful role of insulin.

Rather than focusing solely on calories, this conversation dives into the why behind weight gain, plateaus, and sustainable fat loss—highlighting how when you eat may matter just as much as what you eat.

⸻

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

1. Intermittent Fasting vs. Timed Eating

•Are they the same? Pretty much—but the key is simplicity.

•Common approaches include:

•16:8 fasting (16 hours fasting, 8-hour eating window)

•5:2 or 6:1 fasting (normal eating with 1–2 fasting days per week)

•The goal: create longer periods where insulin stays low

2. Why Insulin Is the “Master Switch”

•Insulin tells your body to store fat

•Constant eating = constant insulin = constant fat storage

•Even “healthy” foods eaten all day long can prevent fat loss

3. Why Calories Alone Don’t Tell the Whole Story

•“Calories in, calories out” matters—but it’s incomplete

•Your body responds very differently to:

•100 calories of sugar

•vs. 100 calories of whole foods

•Timing + composition of food changes your hormonal response

4. The Problem with Grazing All Day

•Snacking, sipping drinks, and frequent meals keep insulin elevated

•Popular advice like “eat 6–8 small meals a day” may actually:

•Increase calorie intake

•Prevent fat burning

•Keep your body in storage mode all day long

5. How Fasting Helps Reset Your Body

•Fasting gives your body time to:

•Lower insulin levels

•Burn stored energy (fat)

•Improve metabolic flexibility

•Many people report:

•Better energy

•Improved focus

•Less hunger than expected

6. Breaking Through Weight Loss Plateaus

•Your body has a natural “set point” (thermostat) for weight

•Fasting and insulin control can help reset that set point

•Strategic fasting (like 24-hour fasts) may help push past stubborn plateaus

7. Sustainable Weight Loss (Not Extremes)

•The goal is not starvation—it’s strategic, deliberate eating

•Extreme diets (like strict keto or constant calorie tracking) often fail long-term

•The key: work with your biology, not against it

⸻

Key Takeaway

Weight loss isn’t just about eating less—it’s about understanding your body’s hormonal response, especially insulin.

By controlling when you eat and giving your body time to rest from constant food intake, you can:

•Improve fat burning

•Reduce hunger

•Create sustainable, long-term results

⸻

Bonus Segment: Supplement of the Week

Vitamin D

•Supports insulin sensitivity

•Plays a key role in immune health

•Commonly deficient in many people

Rick and Greg highlight why Vitamin D is a foundational supplement—especially for those working on weight loss and metabolic health.

⸻

If you’ve ever felt stuck despite “doing everything right,” this episode will change how you think about food, fasting, and your body.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Here we go. All right. Hey, welcome. Thanks. Welcome. We are back.

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Healthier ever after podcast. Um, I'm Greg Camp. This is Rick Sorensen. Uh, we are gonna be talking about something pretty cool today. We're gonna be talking about we've talked about it a little bit before, but we wanted to dive in a little bit um and kind of geek out on uh timed eating, intermittent fasting, and insulin and kind of what this all means. Boy, there's so much information on it out there. Um, and so it just deserves its own podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Yeah, we can talk for a long time. We get diarrhea of the mouth when we come to this stuff. So we'll try and uh narrow it down a little bit. Uh talk about some of what timed eating. Yeah, people say the intermittent fasting, there's you know, is there a difference? What I mean, is there a difference between intermittent fasting versus timed eating? I don't know. What do you think about it? Well, I mean I think dive in right now.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, I think it is good. Well, we're I'm gonna do the disclaimer since we didn't do that yet. Just uh, you know, really, this is a podcast, it's for information and educational purposes only. We're not your medical providers. If we are, fantastic. Talk to us in clinic about this. But this is this is for that. This is just for information and educational purposes only. We definitely recommend you talk to uh your healthcare professional about, you know, you starting a weight loss program, changing anything with vitamins, nutrients, you know, exercise, all the things. So we don't want anyone to go out there and and just base everything on this. We hope that you can take this information and take it to your healthcare provider and discuss it. Yeah, yeah, discuss it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

Talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah. So and if that ends up being uh us at one point, great. But uh, we don't expect that. Um we just want to do this uh because this is a labor of love for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

We just like talking about this stuff and giving uh hopefully uh people, patients, whatever you consider yourself, uh good information. Yep. So yeah, let's let's talk about timed eating, intermittent fasting. Uh, you know, these these terms are oftentimes used interchangeably. Um and it really just the biggest focus for a long time in weight loss and in health was more of a based on calorie restriction, right? Is just like how many calories do I take it in a day? Um, what actually matters? Um, for a while there in the 80s and early 90s, it was just, oh, just don't eat things, just low fat, right? Even the government got on board with that. And it was a low fat. We found sense. I mean, the obesity number skyrocketed when they when the mantra was just just don't eat as much. Well, I mean, the obesity numbers have gone up with about every single program the government has instituted. You're right. The latest one actually is probably one that we more of us can, and whether you we're we're look, we're we don't want to get into politics, but the latest one that we're released actually probably falls more in line with um what we believe to be the more um reasonable food pyramid. Um and it kind of honestly reversed the old food pyramid. So you can check that out if you want. But once again, I mean, probably the government maybe not the best place to get your um nutritional or or information, like maybe just talk with a medical provider. Um, and so, but the the the truth is is that like there's always been these big fads of like reduce your fat intake, or and that's gonna be the answer, reduce you know, calorie intake. But you know, we're we found that that is like, I mean, just saying, I mean, sure, saying reduce your calorie intake, we we there can be some benefits there, but how do you functionally do that without a calorie counting app? And and can you be on a calorie counting app for your whole life, every day? I mean, it's just uh even counting macros, there's some benefits there. I mean, I would argue that you know, you can't if you count your macros for the rest of your life, you probably do pretty good. Um, have you ever tried to count macros for extended periods of time? It it's it's not for the average person, for the average human being that uh doesn't want to get into that. So, you know, timed eating or intermittent fasting is a way that even though the concept itself sometimes we can dive in and get more complex with it, um, it really is a simplified way of saying, hey, I'm gonna eat between these hours and these hours. Like the more common one is uh is uh um 16, eight. So I fast for 16 hours. That sounds like a really long time, but you have an eight-hour eating window where and that's whatever window you kind of decide. So a lot of people will skip breakfast, that's the more traditional one. They'll start eating around 11 or noon, maybe around that lunchtime period, and then they go about eight hours. So they finish off with dinner. So let's say around six or seven at night, and then they stop again and they do that 16-hour fast. Eight of those hours, hopefully, is when you're sleeping, so that does make it easier. Um, the other, the other common uh one is like a five, two, um, sometimes even a six, one, a four, three. Uh, and that all that indicates is not hours, that's actually days.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

So eating somewhat normal, whatever that means, right? Um, on the non-fasting days, but then having really 24-hour fast for one, two, or three days in a week for this big reset. We'll talk about some of the benefits of that. We'll talk about our own personal experience of doing that, and we'll just dive into all of it and why it matters and and how it affects insulin and why calories in, calories out. Um it's it's a good, it's a good concept, but it doesn't take into account like real life and it doesn't take into account insulin.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Well, and and and we talked about this. I mean, we've mentioned this before, but you know, if we if it's just calories in, calories out, which again, we will we are fans of that. I mean, if you're gonna lose weight, you need to eat less calories and you burn the calories that you have stored. Um, and and that that has to happen. But but it's not just as simple as I'm gonna eat less calories, uh, because because the type of calories you eat, the timing of the calories you eat, it it changes. And and really it's the physiology, it's the way your body is designed. Our bodies are not designed to uh a change, yeah, like like it sees something, you're dying, you're killing part of me. We talked about this before. Um, but but the other thing is is the way we're designed to eat is like it's like I we're not designed to just be constantly eating. It's like sit down, have a meal, you have a stomach, you fill it, and then your body works with that for a while. Yeah, and and and and then you don't eat while while it's doing that. And and so it it's a lot of times this constant, like I'm gonna eat breakfast, and then oh, I get a little snack, and I got oh, there's a donut at the break room, and oh, I've got my cup of coffee, and I got you know, a sip of my soda throughout the day, and you know, like whatever I'm I mean, the soda sipping is this constant flow of calories that signal your body store fat, store fat, store fat, right? All day, all day long, and you never turn that signal off. And and it and whether it's how many calories or not, it's it's the timing and composition of those calories sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Um I mean, even if you're eating, let's pretend for a moment you're not drinking sodas and you're even generally eating, let's even just say that you're eating pretty healthy, if you start eating, and we've talked about this before, if you start eating when you wake up in the morning at 7 a.m. and you don't go to bed till 11 and you stop eating at that point, even if you were eating relatively clean, can you really consume calories for that many hours, extended period of time, even if you're just snacking, even if it's smaller portions, can you really consume significantly like calories, the amount of calories you need to be able to lose weight and or even maintain your current weight if you're eating all day long? Now, all right, that's in a perfect situation where you're saying you're eating all the good things. Most of us, most real people, right, um, are not just eating, you know, fruits and veggies and and meat all day. Broccoli. Right. We're gonna, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna have some of the processed foods, we're gonna have some of the sugars and some of the sweets and all that. And so uh, well, sure. If you can And that's not the end of the world. No, it's not the end of the world. Yeah, um, it has to be within reason, right? And um, you have to be willing to kind of accept what that that's not gonna be good for you and it's gonna spike your glue for the what it's gonna do to you.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

You have to recognize that and and mitigate it.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Yeah, but there's things that we're gonna talk about with fasting and and that that can hopefully really help with some of that stuff, knowing that you're not gonna maybe eat perfect. Um, we'll talk about maybe reducing sugar, but that doesn't mean never have ice cream again. It just means probably um get the mini size and not the large.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah. Well, and and and so to to the point we were talking about timing as well, we'll get we'll get in a little more, but like uh, you know, a bowl of ice cream um might be better with dinner, yeah, as opposed to right before bedtime. Sure. You know, like like there's a difference between that. Yeah, and a lot of this comes from a lot of what I mean, what I found helpful is reading the book, The Obesity Code, uh by God in Fung. He's fascinating. He he he holds no punches against all of the government programs, all of the, you know, there's calories and calories, move. Like, like he's like, look, all these things were done, and obesity, look at what obesity has done over the last 50 years. It's done nothing but increase. Um, and and and so a lot of this comes from kind of that that thing. And he talks a lot about insulin, how insulin is the king. I agree with that. Like insulin is the master switch in the body. It it it signals to store fat. So any it it you get a spike in insulin. If there's insulin in your body, what that tells your body to do is I'm gonna take these calories and I'm gonna save them for later. Yeah. And that means I'm gonna store them in fat.

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah, and we know, yeah, we know what it stores at. It's not anything we want.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

And insulin is just a hormone. We talk uh when people talk about hormones, they typically are talking about the sex hormones, right? Your testosterone, your estrogen, things like that. And we talk about how much they affect your body and how how how big these, how big of a deal these are. Well, I would say the hormone even more effective and that can affect those sex hormones, including decreasing them, is insulin. Insulin is that hormone. It is a hormone that can drive hunger up. It's a hormone that can actually increase inflammation uh when it's in excess. It's a it's one that obviously is the primary responsibility of the body is to when it releases insulin, is it goes and finds that sugar, it pulls it out of the bloodstream, and what does it do? It stores everything. Um now, our bodies are designed to do this because it's not always been 2026. We didn't always have food in abundance. We didn't always couldn't always have the luxury of eating from the start of the day till the end of the day because of preservatives and refrigeration and uh never having to hunt and gather for food. So um insulin.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Oh boy, they're so good.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

They're so good.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I keep saying that the Reese's eggs have protein, right? Yeah, they're made of peanuts. They must. They've gotta have protein. I don't read the label, but they must. Insulin, yeah. So insulin, yeah, it's the master switch, and it it tells you to think. So so the problem oftentimes of obesity really isn't just the calories that you eat, it's it's the insulin that your body is using. And so, so it's a too much insulin problem. Yeah, and and and maybe talking about this timing on the meals is is how really it's it comes down to how we regulate insulin and what kinds of things. Um you know, frequent eating is something that will increase insulin, especially snacking throughout the day, um, sipping on the soda, uh, refined carbs and sugar uh and processed food. So your body responds as far as insulin goes, a big insulin spike, it responds differently. If you eat, if you eat a hundred calories of table sugar versus a hundred calories of broccoli, yeah. They're both a hundred calories, but your body responds differently. The sugar will spike your insulin much more. Yeah, that and so so there's you can eat calories that don't cause this insulin effect as much.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yeah, we know that a lot of people, you know, we're not a big fan of necessarily keto. There's some benefits to keto, but keto is that just that, right? You're you're taking down the um the foods that spike insulin. So the idea behind keto is your body goes into ketosis, your insulin is much lower, you know, your insulin resistance goes way down. So I've had some patients that have used keto just for a little bit of what we'll call a reset and actually find that that is really cool uh and and and interesting. And I know there's there's data that goes back and forth. So I don't know really whether to tell you the data supports it or doesn't support it. But overall, the the hard thing with keto is that you just really can't get all the nutrition, you know, because you have to eliminate certain things.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

It seems like in in in real world, in people that I've you know that I've seen, you know, in clinic and whatnot, um they've had a lot of sense that people really like that for a month. Yeah, you know, it it helps, it's it's it's I got reset, I've got you know a lot of things, I feel good, I lost a bunch of weight, even. But but after about a month, nobody, nobody in the real world that I know really sticks to that after about a it seems like about a month.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Yeah, it's a very good thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

I'm done.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

There's a wedding that comes up, and you're like, I can have one piece of cake, and then all of a sudden you're done. Well, and then what happens, right? Your body responds in such a like a wild way because you've had this like low insulin, this really well-managed glucose. And then all of a sudden you go and start with the birthday cake, which ends up leading to you know some soda that night. And then and then you kind of just even if you go back to a really kind of standard way of eating with just a normal amount of carbs, your body goes into full bore shock mode. You are so hungry, you're hungry, and your insulin, you feel like it's out of control because you've enjoyed the benefits of having that lower baseline insulin, and you're like, wow, I'm not hungry and my energy is awesome, and and all these things, and then all of a sudden you put your body in a shock. So that's why we really don't promote that. It's not that there's not some, you know, some arguably.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

You try to well, it goes back to our mantra. We want sustainable uh changes, not not this shock to the system that that has potential for a being rebound.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah, and no extremes, right? Because most of us can't live in the extremes, right? If you're the one of the you know five million people that can live on keto, that's good for you. You're probably uh the exception, not the norm. So it's uh you know, so getting back to to kind of your point about um insulin and and and and really in fasting, uh, the idea behind the obesity code is really to have longer periods of uh not releasing insulin. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Long periods of time that your body's not exposed to uh high insulin levels, which is we know just storing.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

And that's where fasting comes in, and and why intermittent fasting has become so popular is because we know that just just based on the numbers, right? You're just gonna consume. If you only eat eight hours a day or six hours a day, or you, you know, whatever fasting window you decide that you wanted to do, we just know that you know, during those non-eating hours, those fasting hours, you're not gonna be spiking your insulin. Right. And that's why it's gonna be beneficial. Not to mention, we know that you just can't consume as many calories in six hours as you could in 16 hours that you would be otherwise be eating. So when you combine the two things, you really end up with this kind of beautiful marriage of I eat less calories. When I am eating calories, I'm not spiking insulin all day long. I'm spiking insulin for a short amount of time. Hopefully, hopefully during the middle of the day, we really think that's best. I mean, when you're active, when you're moving, when the sun's up, right? Your body knows when that sun's up. And that's when your body's expecting to be able to not only be taking in calories, but then burning those calories. You know, you don't want to put the, you know, firewood when the fire is low. You want to go when the fire is burning hot. And um, so yeah, I mean, really, it's just about that's what the obesity code is. We're gonna hit on a few other points about um uh about insulin and and how that all works within the body and why it matters.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah, yeah. So it's not it's not just what you eat, but how often you eat. Uh or or sometimes I guess we I might say that is how constantly you eat. Yeah, because that's that's that's that's really even worse than than two frequent meals. It's just that that grazing all day long. It's having a little snack on the thing. Um it just keeps telling your body, depending on what you're eating, but it tells your body, hey, I I need to store this.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Do you remember there was a fad? It still gets brought up in contact to me. You probably hear about it as well. There's a fad where it was like, hey, you you shouldn't be eating big meals in the day, you should be eating six to eight small meals. Yes. Oh my gosh, this is just like the anti. It's the worst. It's the worst. I mean, it only it only gained popularity for a very short amount of time because the idea was that hey, you kick up your metabolism when you eat. You you do. Okay, so so Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Do you know do you know who was a huge proponent of the you know, six to eight small meals a day? Snack food companies.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Oh, a hundred percent. They're like, yeah, let's do this.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Like, that's exactly like that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah, you know, it was no one that had any interest in you losing weight or being healthy.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

We want to sell you small packages of processed foods. I gotta be honest with you.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

You can eat all day long. I loved it. When they came out with that, I'm like, you mean I gotta eat six to eight times a day, and that's how I'm gonna get skinny? That's yes. I I'm signing up for that. Now, the theory behind that was just that you kick up your metabolism every time you eat, and so you they're saying, hey, you eat a bunch of times in a day, you you consume uh a few hundred calories, but then you burn that in metabolism. What they found is is what we already kind of knew. But you know, like once again, like Rick said, it was uh it was a good uh sales tactic. What it ended up finding is that yeah, you may be burning the extra 50 calories because you're eating more regularly because you do fire up your metabolism when you eat. The problem is is that you, yeah, you you burn 50 extra calories, but you consumed 300 additional calories. So I'm sorry, that math doesn't add up. You're still at a surplus of 250 calories. And then when you break it down further, because you have insulin, don't you? Yeah, so then you're like spiking your insulin every single two, like two hours. So along with the obesity code, I mean, you're just your body never gets a break. Your pancreas is constantly pumping out insulin. So what is your body doing to all that?

SPEAKER_01 17:26

It's just storing all that's the signal that you're sending your body is store this energy, store this energy, and and you never give your body a chance to work through that and say, you know what? I I need to use what I have as opposed to store more, store more, store more. And I mean and and you look at you look at numbers in the United States of America right now. Yeah, and it I mean it it is it is not an exaggeration when they talk about the obesity epidemic. Yeah, but it is an epidemic. Like way too many people are way too overweight.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah, and it's killing far more people like that. We freaked out about COVID. I mean, uh rightfully so, right? It was a huge pandemic. Um this is killing far far more people and the and the reaching effects is far more significant. And and at least in COVID, we were saying, hey, look, like the the young people don't seem to be affected as much. The obesity epidemic right now is um so much worse now in younger people. They're finding that that literally the number I I I could be quoting this wrong, but I'm I'm pretty sure it's pretty close to accurate. And the only reason I say that, and I mean me and Rick uh prior veterans, the number one reason for people getting denied for military service, they actually the recruitment numbers were 110%, right? The number one reason obesity. Obesity. They couldn't pass the basic physical fitness standards or the or they had a BMI that was so high. Now, these are these are generally speaking, younger people. And this is what caused the military to actually go in, and well, the army specifically to increase the uh enlistment age to 42 recently. And I because I was looking into that, I'm like, why would they do that? They found that like so many people, young people either had uh comorbid conditions, or those is like like like diseases that would stop them from getting in the military, and or obesity that would require so they're like, Yeah, we get tons of people coming in to sign up and they can't they don't qualify. They can't get in, yeah, they don't meet the qualifications. This is not a problem we've had, you know, 20 years ago. This was like uh every once in a while a guy would, you know, or guy or gal would not be able to enlist because of this. This was not like a uh well, really the problem it is now.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

And so not everyone is David Goggins who can go from like 300 to about 40 in six weeks or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Yeah, well, I mean, he's definitely the exception. And and and uh, you know, so it really comes down to hopefully something like this is is like uh as we see this trend towards people wanting to live longer and be healthier, hopefully we see a big swing of the pendulum, yeah, where it swings back and people are like very cognizant of like their insulin response and that you can't eat all day and expect to lose weight. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Well, and and and you talked about like this is not just a an older adult problem. I mean, it was only well, it was only two or or three years ago, even now, that you know, we talk about the GLP1 medications, and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended them uh a couple starting a couple years ago for patients down to like 12 or even 10 or 8, like like young kids.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

I mean 12 GLP1s down to age 12. I mean, they're looking at it even lower.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah, because because they the the American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes that this fact that that there are far too many overweight kids, and overweight kids grow up to be overweight adults, correct, and overweight adults die early from multiple disease processes.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

And and it's the data. It's not this is not bias. This isn't fat shaming people, the as two guys that are always working on themselves and and both have lost weight and all the things that we can do. We recognize that this is not a this is not a uh point our finger and say, you know, you're bad kids or bad parents or anything like that. This is just an information problem. It's a too much junk food readily available problem. It's people not understanding really basic biology of how their body responds.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

I mean, their their body is going to release insulin every time. Insulin is not the enemy. You need insulin, but if you're if you too excess insulin is the enemy, excess glucose is the enemy because the two work hand in hand. So, you know, just trying to get that all dialed in. And sometimes for a lot of people, really the timing of eating, uh, working on something like a like a fast or or uh and figuring that out so that you're just not consuming calories all day so that you can get up, give your pancreas a rest and get the insulin a rest, or having maybe a couple days where you're doing these like 24 hour water fast where you're just getting uh, you know, and and and please, once again, talk to your medical professional before you do this, because there is a a specific way to do this. This is not just starve yourself for 24 hours, right? There's a there's a way to do this. So, you know, but looking at doing that. So that you can kind of reset and help your body not just pump out insulin all the time. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Well, that's good. And I mean that's that's kind of we hear about the diet culture, you know, and there's there's we you talk about low-fat diets, you talk about calories in, calories out. And a lot of those things, like low, low-fat diet, for example, tends you cut out fats, but you tend then to um have higher refined carbohydrates or sugars. Um there's you know, yo-yo dieting, and you that you kind of do these extremes, yeah, then you you don't, and and that never really gives your chan your body a chance to to adapt and and work out how to use the calories that you have stored rather than store more. And it it just doesn't ever kind of reset that body weight thermostat, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

The generations that were affected from low-fat diets, I mean, it'll be generational for I mean, so many people that that feel like fat was the enemy. And yes, we know like fried foods and things like that are definitely not great, and we're not promoting that. But I'm saying fats in general, in a lot of cases, are not only a really important part of our diet, but actually help us feel for fuller longer, get fuller, uh faster and stay fuller longer. Um, it's actually one of the ways that your body actually recognizes being full and then um actually releasing our own GLP1. So, you know, proteins and fats are a huge part of that. No carbohydrates. That's why you can eat bowl after bowl of ice cream or cereal and all that stuff. And eventually, yeah, eventually maybe you'll fill up. But it's really why you just feel like you're at a bottomless pit when you're eating only carbs. And it's because you're you're you're not you're not gonna ever release those those uh peptides and or hormones that say, hey, it's time to dial it back. In fact, even worse, you're gonna be spiking your insulin and sugars.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

We're gonna store this quick.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah. Yeah, and go ahead and keep on eating more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Um, and so it's it's just yeah. Yeah, so most most, I guess most diets I would say fail um because they fight your biology rather than working with it.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

That's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

That's that's what that's why I think what we're talking about is timing of meals. We want we want to work with your biology, we want to help um utilize this hunger and storage hormone in a way that lets you then also utilize its absence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Um well, and I think effectively that just kind of brings up a kind of a uh a related thought, but almost an independent thought is that, you know, and our bodies that are not the same as they were when they're 15, as when you're 18, as when you're 25, as when you're, you know, get into your 40s and 50s, where me and Rick are out. I mean, we realize that our bodies are changing. And I do think sometimes adaptation to your changing body rather than fight it, rather than then sit here and and go like, I I don't like that my body's like this and and and fight that, sometimes actually just adapting to your changing body is such an important thing to recognize. Hey, things are maybe you can't eat what you used to be able to eat. Maybe you've never had a problem with your weight, but now you're getting into your 40s, and boy, now I'm like actually getting a belly and things are not. So if that's the case, then obviously you're you need to adapt to your changing body. Don't be mad at your body for that. Just look at it and go, hey, look, I've gotten a free pass up until this point. Um, good for you if you haven't fought it earlier on. Now you are fighting it. You need to adapt to your changing body. And insulin, and that's why we're talking about time and of eating, insulin and and sugars, these are all parts of that. If you want to be able to crack that code to your changing body, you're gonna have to at some point look at at these things and know like how does this affect me?

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Yeah, no, and that's and that's that's helpful. And and you know, as your body ages and it it it reacts differently to different things, the the thing that stays is is there's you the the way to think about it, it's like a thermostat in your house. All right, like you set it at uh 72 degrees. And so if it's like too cold, then it'll heat up a little bit to get it back there. If it's too hot, it'll cool down to get to the and it kind of sets it at that point. Your body has you think about that, it has kind of a weight thermostat. Your body thinks it has this weight that it's supposed to be at. And and usually that's like where it is, right? And so as we're trying to decrease that, your body at some point recognizes that as like, hey, wait a second, am I my thermostats? I need to I need to get back up. I need to regain this weight. Um, you know, that's that's just your body trying to get back to its set point. Yeah, and and part of what this talking about is is these prolonged periods of decreased insulin, it that allows your body to reset that thermostat. We want to we want we want your body ultimately as you make these sustainable lifestyle changes, is is you bring down your weight, but but what we also want to have happen as an effect of that is to is to reset and have your body recognize, hey, you know what, this new weight is is where I'm supposed to be. Yeah, and I'm not gonna fight that anymore. And so it's it's there's a whole lot that goes into this. It's just working with your body and making your body work with you, um, and to reset that that kind of thermostat rather than keep it clear up here. And and that's the other thing that you you know, resetting that down is another thing that managing insulin and and timing on meals is just is effective.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Absolutely. I want to reiterate that and uh to put it in like a real world circumstance. So, because what Rick's talking about is when we're I and it, this is how I see it in patients, right? They're coming in, they're losing some weight, and they commonly will actually have this weight in mind. They just don't actually realize what they're kind of saying. They're like, Look, I've I've done all the fat diets and I get down to 180 pounds. And I have never, I they are set, they get to 180 pounds and they're like, I'm never able to drop below 180. And they don't like their goal is 150, and they are so frustrated by the time they grind their wills. So, and I will tell you with almost assurity, every time they get to that weight. I don't know if it's a mental thing, but it's also that set point that Rick's talking about, the thermostat in your body that just says, Look, this is the weight I think I'm supposed to be at. I'm not supposed to drop a lie below here. And I think at that point is actually when the body's hitting that panic button going, like, hey, what's going on? I'm supposed to be actually 220. You got me down to 180. And they just will not, it will your body, no matter what you do, they're like telling me I'm exercising and I'm I'm eating just like you told me to, and I'm taking my medication and all those things. They just won't go below 180 pounds. And so a lot of times, like when we're on that, what you know, on a plateau, which we've talked about here before, is a lot of times it's it is just changing up things, including one thing that that me and Rick have talked about is uh doing a little bit of a reset, going on a 24 or 48, uh, even 72-hour fast to give your body a new reset.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

That doesn't mean again, that's not starvation. Nope. That's a deliberate fast. Talk to your doctor.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Yep, staying hydrated. This is a this is a food fast. Yeah, you're gonna have a bone broth or you know, but it's it's it's a specific way, but the point of that is that is that that's how we see it. And so if you've ever been in that situation where you're like, I gosh, I got this set point and it's very frustrating, and we've maxed out my medication, or I'm not on medications, I want to do this the good old-fashioned way. Good for you, but then understand your biology and understand that like a lot of us have a set point that we're like, gosh, I get to this point and it just won't go any further. Well, to keep on doing the same thing and expecting different results is not going to change. So you need to take a look at your insulin, you need to take a look at when you're eating, how you're eating, and start changing some things there that I think that a lot of times will change that set point. I've seen it in clinic and patients get below that. Who cares? Well, shit, we're using 180, for example. They get that. And what when the scale reads 179, it's almost like not only physically, but mentally, they're like, oh, okay, I've done it. I've passed that point. I've never been able to get to this point. And now they're like, they're they find a new motivation because they're like, I've I've actually done it.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

So it's I really think it's important to pay attention to where your body's kind of trying to be and fight you when it gets there. And rather than fight your body, like figure out, like, hey, where am I messing up? Like, where where am I going wrong here? Assuming that you don't have any other diseases or problems or thyroid issues or you know, that are keeping you there.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Yeah, well, and and that's kind of I guess the way to think about that is fasting isn't just starving yourself, it's not just depriving yourself. It's it is it is more of a strategic eating pattern uh that is deliberate. Yeah. Um and and and I would say even deliberate eating and deliberate not eating, yeah, you know, during different periods of the day. Um, and so it's not it's not just extreme dieting, it's just it's it's being very purposeful and deliberate about the timing of when and what you eat and when and what you don't.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

Absolutely. Can I go uh I want to go sideways here for a minute, just because what Rick brought up there is that the biggest worry that we get from patients, even ourselves, me and Rick have talked about this, um, is that we thought that we if you fasted for 12 hours, 18 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, however long, that uh you'd be starving and that your energy would just, yeah, you'd feel like you just have to lay on the couch and be like, oh, is my fast over? What's interesting is when you do this, uh, going into it with the right mindset, making sure you're staying hydrated, making sure that, you know, obviously a week or whatever leading up to it, that you're you're feeding your body good nutrients. You're not just you know eating ho ho's because you're gonna be like uh, you know, fasting for 72 hours. That's a bad start. Yeah, bad start. But um, you know, we've we've actually found exactly the opposite. Uh, and and I'll share my experience when I uh have done I've done shorter fasts, like 24-hour fasts. Um, I found that actually cognitively, I am a guy that suffers from you know being 52 thoughts at a time. And uh, so you call it ADD, you call it whatever you want. I found that cognitively I found that I was much more focused and concentrated. I actually found my energy levels were better, not worse. Um, I actually found like instead of hitting the afternoon crash, it was oftentimes when I would feel more energy, which I wasn't used to. So it's interesting that you think you're gonna feel one way because you're going without food. And and my experience has been that boy, like during the fast, I I I mean, especially towards the end, I'm like, I almost didn't want to eat because I felt so good during the fast.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Yeah, well, and and again, we we don't want to make this too long. You know, these need to be have not too long episodes, but but to that end, like when you are talking about I I felt like I was gonna feel bad, but I didn't. Um, really if you look at some of the studies, like like during these fasts, if you do this correctly and you um are not consuming, you're staying hydrated, you're doing that well, your your blood sugar, your body maintains your blood sugar. It's not like you're getting you're you're dying and starving deaths your body, and and that's because your body is it gets to a point where it's recognizing, hey, I need to keep the energy level up and it's getting it from its own storage, not from the food you would have been eating had you been grazing all day long. Sure. And and and ultimately that's that's the biggest effect that we want uh your body to be able to learn and take advantage of is how to how to keep that energy up and keep feeling good and keep providing all the things you need to do the things to that you do. And I'm gonna even go to the gym and and and not feel this big tank because my body knows how to get me the nutrient energy that it needs, yeah, even without me eating that.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Yeah, yeah, your body doesn't do that by accident, it is actually designed to be able to say there's gonna be times of eating, there's gonna be sometimes even long periods of not eating. Um activity can keep going. Yeah, you you this may surprise you, but uh back before, you know, in the olden days, I mean, people would go extended periods or apothecary. Right, yeah. I mean the people would go, people would go long periods of time with time without eating. And uh, so this is not new to your body. Don't worry. I uh you can go longer than four hours without eating. I I promise you're not gonna starve in that time. The uh the the truth is is that a lot of excuse me, a lot of times uh you're you we think that our bodies are not built for that, our bodies are designed to go for longer periods without eating, and uh arguably there's many benefits to that. So we you know, and we dove into some of those. Yeah, we do want to uh we're we're over our time, but we want to we want to do our supplement of the week.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

So the reason why uh we wanted to do this supplement in particular is because not only do we find that our ton of people are deficient in this supplement uh or this uh vitamin, but um also it kind of does help uh truly with when you're when you're doing a fast. And that's vitamin D. So um I I I just have this uh you know kind of pulled it up on my phone because I didn't want to forget anything, but um, it definitely helps with insulin sensitivity, which we've been talking about, uh immune regulation. So uh oftentimes uh people do not realize this. In fact, we we learned a lot more about this during COVID that people that had low vitamin D levels that got COVID uh did tended to do worse. Uh and so we found that that was a big problem. We found that like a bunch of people were low on vitamin D. This wasn't something we were all regularly checking before. Now it's part of like your standard labs with your primary care physician. And if it's not, you should ask for it. Um inflammation and then mood, um, because we we know that all this is all intertwined and affected. Vitamin D really acts more like a hormone in the body than it does a vitamin, even though it it is just a vitamin. Um, and we do have a great vitamin D, K2, and calcium supplement. K2 and calcium are in our vitamin D supplement, primarily because absorption is a lot of times the issue with vitamin D. Yeah. Um, vitamin D, uh oftentimes, even if people are like, oh, I'm out in the sun all the time. Uh, you know, I have my brother who's a pool guy that said, Oh, my vitamin D got to be great. I'm a pool guy. Uh, I'm out in the sun all the time. His vitamin D was horrible. And um, it's because nutritionally he wasn't getting what he needed, uh, the calcium K2, as well as vitamin D that had just gone down. He doesn't hardly drink any milk anymore. So the point is that vitamin D is a great supplement. We do have a good one on our um on our um website, get weightwise. Getweightwise.com. Yeah, uh, but you know, or find one that works for you. Uh, but it's a great supplement. It definitely helps in support of all of this. If you've never had your vitamin D levels checked, maybe the next time you're in your um primary care physician.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Okay, so patients that come to the clinic and you check their vitamin D level. I mean, would in my experience, I would say that seems to be from from my clinical experience, that that's probably the most common thing that people are deficient in without knowing it.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Most common deficiency I see in clinic are our vitamin D. Uh, the one thing that I that prompts me, I now I check it a lot more regularly, but actually the thing that got me checking it a lot more often was actually when I was in family practice. And I would have these people come in with just fatigue. Their chief complaint, or we call it in medicine, is I'm just tired all the time. And right, and you hear this all the time, and we all feel tired at times. But um, I would, as part of my fatigue workup, I would check a thyroid level, we check uh, you know, blood counts to make sure they weren't anemic. And I started adding on a vitamin D because I'm finding that a lot of these people that was their deficiency, that was their problem. And as soon as we get their vitamin D level up, voila, they're like, oh, hey, I'm I'm my fatigue's gone, I'm feeling better, I'm not getting sick as often. And so I found this just anecdotally. I mean, yeah, sure, we had the data and the studies, but it was not something that was like in your face. It's a lot more on it now. But before it was just, it wasn't so obvious. And now, even in um in my weight loss clinic, I am finding that 50%, 50% of the people I check, at least 50% are deficient in vitamin D. Um, and this is a a truly important vitamin that your body uses, and it's a fat-soluble one, actually tends to be uh much tend to tend to be much lower in patients that are overweight or obese. And so uh it's a fat-soluble vitamin, it's very important. Uh, so you should get your levels checked. And if you need to be supplementing that, you should be. Um, we'll talk about um other ways to get vitamin D and things like that. Um, we'll talk about uh uh our complete multivitamin at some point uh in the future, and and we'll cover all that. And that does have some vitamin D as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Yeah. So get your vitamin D, talk to your medical provider. Um, what we discuss here is informational and educational, but talk to your medical provider, get your vitamin D checked and uh and talk to them about uh getting on a good supplement if that is appropriate for you. Um and we will see you next week. See you next week. It's awesome.