Let’s Talk Intermittent Fasting- Interview with Gin Stephens

Host James Egidio: 0:42

Hi, I’m James Egidio, your host of the Medical Truth Podcast. The podcast that tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the US healthcare system. Just to put out a disclaimer before we get started, this podcast and its associated content, websites, articles, video’s only provides general information and discussions about health and medical related subjects and topics. The information and other content provided in this podcast, blog, and website, or in any linked materials are not intended and should not be considered or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your personal. we got that out of the way. Historically done for religious or cultural reasons, fasting has now become a popular way to lose weight because you don’t have to change what you eat, just when you eat, or do you? My guest is an expert on intermittent fasting and has authored several books on the subject. Her latest book is a New York Times bestseller called Fast Feast. Repeat has a 4.6 out of five star rating, which translates to an 80% five star rating based on over 13,000 reviews. It is my pleasure an honor and a blessing to have on the Medical Truth Podcast, Ms. Gin Stephens, Hi Gin.

Guest Gin Stephens: 2:04

Thank you so much for having me. I’d love to talk about intermittent fasting and the way it will just change your life like it changed mine and the lives of thousands of people. Millions probably who are doing it.

Host James Egidio: 2:16

Yeah. You probably want to correct me too, because I had mentioned that was your latest book. go ahead and share

Guest Gin Stephens: 2:22

It’s my most popular book. Fast, Feast, Repeat. Came out in 2020, and it was a New York Times bestseller, which was very exciting. And my most recent book was called Cleanish. It came out in January of 2022. And Cleanish is not an intermittent fasting book, but it’s like the next step. You know how you mentioned in the intro that with intermittent fasting, you change when you eat, not what you eat, but often people find they start. Feels so good. They want to clean up other areas of their life as well. And cleanish, just eat mostly clean, live mainly clean and unlock your body’s natural ability to self-clean. Intermittent fasting is one of those ways that we self-clean, we just we often find that as we go down this healing journey that intermittent fasting takes us on, we start losing weight, we feel so much better, then we start wanting to naturally. Eat differently than we, we never thought we would wanna do that because we realize how much better we feel when we choose different foods than we might’ve used to had.

Host James Egidio: 3:19

So tell the listeners and viewers of the Medical Truth Podcast a little bit about what intermittent fasting is what are the types of intermittent fasting and how does it work?

Guest Gin Stephens: 3:31

Okay. Let me first give a little backstory about me just really quick. Sure. I am 53 and I have been living an intermittent fasting lifestyle since 2014. You were recording this in 2023. So you can see I’ve been living it for quite a while, and when I started intermittent fasting in 2014, I was obese. I weighed 210 pounds and I, yeah, I know it I really it’s been so long now that it almost feels like, who was that girl, even though obviously it was me, but I lost over 80 pounds with intermittent fasting, and I have maintained it ever since. Even as I’ve gone through menopause, as I said, I’m now 53 and I am, I think, healthier now. As I, enter my fifties and look forward to many more decades of life. I’m healthier now than I was in my thirties when I was on that. Yo-yo, that diet, yo-yo, that probably so many of your your viewers and listeners can relate to. Cause I was always, on a diet and I was always trying to find the next best thing. And I was always either gaining weight rapidly or losing weight rapidly, but I was never maintaining until intermittent fasting. We said intermittent fasting is about when you eat and it’s not a diet. Sometimes people will say, oh, the intermittent fasting diet, and that’s not true. A diet refers to what you eat. We all have a diet. Your standard American diet. Maybe you follow the Mediterranean diet, maybe whatever, however you eat is your diet, whatever that is. but intermittent fasting is not about what, that’s up to you. Intermittent fasting is about when, and there are several ways you can do intermittent fasting. Most of us who live an intermittent fasting lifestyle follow something that’s also known as time restricted eating. And that actually sounds a more gentle than fasting. Fasting sounds so hard, and you mentioned the religious roots of fasting. It’s Right. Definitely not a fad. Fasting is not something that’s new because. for all of time. All of religions, all religions have fasting as part of them, but with time-restricted eating, which is a type of intermittent fasting, you restrict all of your eating for the day into what we call an eating window and it’s just as simple as that. You’re either fasting if you’re in the fasting part of your day or you’re eating windows open and you are free to. and then you close your window and start your next fast, and it’s just really such an easy way to live your life.

Host James Egidio: 6:00

I see. And. what are the types of intermittent fast, because you hear about different types of intermittent fasting.

Guest Gin Stephens: 6:08

We got time restricted eating, like I said. And there’s so many ways you can structure that eating window. You may have heard of 16. Eight. That’s one that’s gotten a lot of popularity. although I hate to tell you this and I talk about this in Fast, Feast, Repeat. When 16 eight first gained real popularity, it was a book called the Eight Hour Diet that came out, I don’t know, maybe it was like 2012. I’m not 2012. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 2012, I think it was 2012. The eight Hour Diet I was obviously that was prior to when I was a successful intermittent faster, but I remember reading it and the claims of that book were, you could eat whatever you want. in an eight hour period of time and you would effortlessly lose the weight as long as you stuck to that eight hour eating window. I’m like, sign me up. Guess what? I gained weight I can’t. I can’t eat whatever I want within an eight hour period of time. That so if I were gonna do 16 eight, I would also have to diet within my eight hour window. And I have no desire to ever diet again, meaning consciously restrict what I eat. I prefer to eat until I’m satisfied in an eating window that works for me. So for me, a five hour eating window is pretty much, standard. What feels good to me from day to day. I don’t always have a five hour eating window. Some days it might be six or seven, depending on my schedule. Other days, maybe only two because I was really busy that day and I didn’t have time to eat till dinner and I just had a really nice dinner and then a little something to close my window later. So all of those are just different ways to structure, time restricted eating. It’s a very flexible way to live and it doesn’t have to be the same from day to day. And then we also have alternate daily fasting protocols and people may have heard of five two. That was one that was really popular. probably right around the same time, 2012 ish. A lot of people were talking about five two it came out of alternate daily fasting research done by Dr. Krista Verde here in the United States. But Dr. Michael Mosley in the uk, he’s a he’s a doctor that does a lot of different things on television. We have TV doctors here in the United States as well, and. he had read about alternate daily fasting and he said, what if I just do it two days a week? So he started doing it two days a week, were his fasting days. And actually in those days it was eating 500 calories on the, the fasting days. And then the other five days were just normal eating days. So all of the alternate daily fasting protocols have their roots in. You have down days and you have up days. Is that your down days or your fasting days then your up days are eat normally days and. It’s a lot more complicated than a daily eating window approach. And for anyone who has dabbled in five two or four three or alternate daily fasting, I have a lot more information about that. And Fast, Feast, Repeat. It’s really a more complicated or advanced type fasting. And I encourage everyone who’s interested at starting out to start off with the daily eating window approach or time-restricted eating, you’re building up your fasting muscle before you venture off into other forms. Because what we want to avoid is over fasting. and like everything. Can be taken to the extreme. Fasting is one of those things, there are people who are like, oh, if fasting is good, then fasting for 21 days straight must be even better. And that’s not true. There comes a period of time when you’re doing too much, and so we wanna make sure that we’re. building a safe fasting protocol that’s based on research, time tested and it’s going to do good things for your body rather than being too much.

Host James Egidio: 9:33

Yeah. Yeah. And what do you mean by five two? What clarify that a little bit.

Guest Gin Stephens: 9:38

Okay. I’m a little five we got seven days a week and so the five two that, that Michael Mosley popularized five days of eating normally, and then there were the two days that were the fasting.

Host James Egidio: 9:49

Oh, okay.

Guest Gin Stephens: 9:49

So you have two days of fasting protocol and then five days where you’re eating normally. And that sounds really attractive to a lot of people, but it actually can be a lot harder than just. Sticking to time-restricted eating day by day, right? Because with with time-restricted eating and sticking to a schedule that’s more consistent day to day like a five hour eating window for example, your body becomes metabolically flexible and you’re fat adapted. And so you are able to have your daily fasting time sail right by, and you feel great, and then you open your eating window, whereas with five, two, The five days are just normal days, and then on the two days that you’re fasting, you’re just not quite as metabolically flexible with only having two fasting days per week. If that makes sense.

Host James Egidio: 10:37

Does that mean those two days you don’t eat at anything at all?

Guest Gin Stephens: 10:40

The original research on alternate daily fasting, they had people eating 500 calories a day. It was more like fasting mimicking. because you’re obviously, if you’re eating 500 calories, that’s not a full fast. So you can choose to have a 500 calorie down day, which is what the original research. Was based on, or you can do a full fast for let’s say 36 hours. For me, it was actually easier to, when I’ve tried all the different fasting protocols, it was easier to fast for 36 hours than it was to have a 500 calorie meal and then fast some more, cuz I, 500 calories is just opens the floodgate for me and I want to eat more

Host James Egidio: 11:19

Yeah. H how does intermittent fasting. in addition to good nutrition because it sounds like when you say, okay, I’m gonna adopt this intermittent fasting protocol that I could pretty much eat what I normally eat or whatever I want to eat. But does it, how does it work? Let’s say if I adopt intermittent fasting and change my dietary intake of the foods that I eat.

Guest Gin Stephens: 11:48

Actually in in Fast, Feast, Repeat, I have something called the 28 day fast start and in the 28 day fast start, you’re building up your metabolic flexibility. You’re learning how your body’s learning to be fat adapted. You’re building up your fasting muscle, and during the first 28 days, I do not want you to radically also change what you’re eating. You know how people will get really excited and they’re like, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get healthier. I’m going to start intermittent fasting. I’m gonna rip the bandaid off. I’m gonna have a three hour eating window every day because that sounds even better. And they’re like, and I’m going to clean up my eating. I’m going to eat clean, fast. I’m gonna have a three hour eating window. Yes. And so you start doing all of that, and then you just, you’re, you can’t, it’s too much at once. So if you try to change too many things at once, you’re a lot more likely to crash and burn. And we’ve all been there. We’ve all. I really suggest that when people are starting intermittent fasting, whatever you were doing before you started, keep doing that. And that goes both ways. Yeah. If you were already eating pretty healthy. I don’t want you to start intermittent fasting and bring back all the junk, right? If you were doing keto and you’ve been doing keto for five years, and I don’t want you to start intermittent fasting and also bring back all the carbs at the same time, right? If you were eating the standard American diet, I don’t want you to start intermittent fasting and radically change what you’re eating and, be a perfect clean eater on day one because that’s just too much to change at once. Keep doing what you were doing with. Your only goal when you’re starting is to nail the clean fast, which we can talk about in a minute. What do I mean by clean fast? You nail the clean fast, you’re building up your fasting muscle and in the 28 day fast start chapter are, there are different plans you can choose from where you’re ramping it up slowly versus, starting off a little more aggressively. But you can always scale back if you need to. I liken it to Couch to 5k, which we’ve all heard of. If you wanted to run a 5k, but you’ve been very sedentary, you’re not gonna get up off the couch on day one and run a five. You don’t have the, you just can’t do it. You’re not in good shape. Fasting is like that. You’ve got you, on couch to 5k. They get up, they walk a little bit and then maybe run a tiny bit and they walk some more. When you’re building up your fasting muscle, it’s the same thing. So when it comes to food, cause I know I didn’t really answer your question about food. We find that something strange happens is really not strange at all. When you understand why, but when we start, we may be eating one way. I started as a very standard American diet eater, meaning I had done so many diets that I was just sick of trying to restrict what I was eating, and I never found success in losing weight by focusing on the what, no matter really where I was trying keto or Whole 30. Do can diet or literally name any diet you could fill it in. When I just focused on changing what I, that never really led to long-term weight loss for me. So I was so tired of that. I was just like, you know what? I’m just gonna do intermittent fasting. I’m gonna continue to eat whatever I want. And that’s what I did. And I found that I lost weight at about a pound per week. Wow. But as time went on, I started to make more connections with how I felt and what I was eating. And so naturally I started to gravitate towards, quote healthier foods, real foods because I realized I felt better when I ate that way. And as I hinted up before, we find that happens to almost everybody that lives in intermittent fasting lifestyle. They start to realize, really how foods make them feel. And we feel so good when we are fat adapted and fasting and then we open our window. If you eat something that doesn’t work well for your body, let’s say for example, I used to love Doritos. I still like the taste of them, but Sure. Let’s say I went and got a bag of Doritos and opened my eating window with a bag of Doritos, I would feel like. right? That would not nourish my body. I would feel awful. I would probably have a blood sugar spike, and then I would crash. Then I would feel hangry. And I would just feel, ugh. So I don’t wanna feel like that. And so I’ve made the connection with what works really well for me. So one of the things I’ve been enjoying lately, to open my window, I’m making homemade pita bread using whole wheat flour. I know what’s in it. it doesn’t have any funky additives and I top it with some homemade hummus and I can put in whatever I like the flavor it up, roasted red peppers or olives or anything. And then I put a little organic sauerkraut on the top. A lot of good probiotics in that. Organic sauerkraut. and I eat that and it nourishes my body and I feel amazing. I don’t have the crash and I don’t feel like crap. And if you would’ve told me in 2014 when I started intermittent fasting that I would rather have organic sauerkraut on top of homemade pita bread than Doritos, I would’ve been like, you’re lying

Host James Egidio: 16:42

Yeah, of course.

Guest Gin Stephens: 16:43

But I eat completely differently now than I used to but not. Somebody told me I needed to, my body has directed me to this, we went out to dinner last night. I got the vegetable plate and it was amazing. sauteed spinach and Brussels sprouts and mushrooms and, yum. It was so good.

Host James Egidio: 16:59

Yeah. Yeah. What are the benefits of intermittent fasting?

Guest Gin Stephens: 17:03

There are so many benefits and it’s all. interconnected, and it has to do with why we’re really so sick right now. If you think about, if you look around society, we know that, type two diabetes is on the rise. Everyone seems to have some sort of metabolic issue or metabolic syndrome. People have a lot of autoimmune diseases and. all of those things are connected to our unhealthy eating habits. Really, they’re lifestyle diseases, right? And we’re eating the wrong foods because all the foods that are surrounding us are so ultra processed. But we’re also eating all day long because we’ve been told for the past. a few decades, oh you gotta eat six small meals a day to keep that metabolism going. How many times have you heard that? Yep. Yeah. You start the day, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and you have to eat, within 30 minutes of your feet hitting the floor and eat often small meals throughout the day to keep your metabolism going. So we wake up, we have our, healthy breakfast, right? And then we have. latte chemically laden all throughout the day, and a little snack here, and a little snack there, and then a little lunch, and then we just keep going all the time. And so basically you’re constantly in the Fed State and you’re on that blood sugar roller coaster all day. I think about before I started fasting, I would have my breakfast. My blood sugar, then it would crash, then I would have my latte, then my blood sugar would crash. then I would have my snack, then my blood sugar would crash. So I was constantly feeding myself to keep my blood sugar up because of all the crashing. And there’s a little known thing going on in the background that unless you’re a diabetic, you don’t think about insulin, you don’t think about, what’s happening with insulin. But every time we. or drink something like a latte or coffee with a sweetener in it or a diet soda. Our brain tastes that sweetness. The food flavors or actual food, whatever we’re having. We release insulin, right? And we release insulin because that’s what our body does in response to blood sugar going up. And when the body is working well, we have the right amount of insulin. It manages our blood sugar. We feel good. But in this state of constantly feeding ourselves, where you’re constantly having another snack, another latte, another diet soda, your insulin levels go up. all the time cuz your pancreas is constantly pumping out more. I’m sure you’ve heard the term insulin resistance, right? Sure. And you become insulin resistant and then, your A1C starts to go up and then you get more insulin resistant, and then eventually it goes down the road to type two diabetes for so many people. But that comes from your, the demand for insulin being higher and higher over time. I like to think of insulin resistance. I was a classroom teacher for 28 years. I think of it with an analogy from the classroom of a teacher who. We all knew teachers who yelled and their class eventually just tuned them. And they had to start yelling louder and louder just to get attention. So think about insulin resistance the same way your body stops listening cuz it’s got so much insulin stops listening and stops being able to function. So it has to pump out more and more to do the job. Then you have chronic, high levels of insulin, also called Hyperinsulinemia. And there’s a fabulous book out there called Why We Get Sick. It came out I believe in 2021, so it came out after Fast Feast, Repeat but it’s by Dr. Benjamin Bickman. And in it he does a fabulous job linking hyperinsulinemia or chronic high levels of insulin with so many of the problem. of today, whether we’re talking about type two diabetes, which I touched on autoimmune diseases, obviously obesity and just so many other things like, if you have high levels of insulin and you’re going through menopause, that you’re gonna fare worse. So bringing down our insulin levels is one of the most powerful things that we can do. because it, and, cardiovascular disease, all of these things are made worse with the chronic high levels of insulin. And also, chronic high levels of blood sugar that cause so much damage in our bodies. But just keeps, it’s a cycle that perpetuates itself. high, higher levels of blood sugar, insulin goes up. It just keeps getting worse and worse. Sure. And the thing about fasting is when you’re fasting clean, nothing brings down your insulin levels better than fasting. And so we fast clean which means we stick to black coffee, plain water, sparkling water. no flavors added cuz we don’t want our brain to think that we’re putting in something sweet because of something called the cephalic phase. Insulin response. cephalic referring to the brain they did a fascinating study with rats where they put sweetness into the rat’s mouth and saw what happened. They released insulin just from the taste of the sweetness, even though it was a zero calorie sweetner. No calories coming in the cephalic phase, insulin response, the brain sensed sweetness and said, oh, we know what sweetness is. Now, think about just from the brain perspective and history of all of Earth. when you tasted sweetness, what were you having? You were having honey or fruit or something that was gonna have a sugar load for your body, right? And so your brain understands that from all of time up until now and knows that you’re about to have your blood sugar go up, we better go ahead and pump out some insulin to deal with that. Except now it might be a Diet Coke that you’re having. and your blood sugar’s not gonna go up from a diet Coke cuz there’s no sugar in that diet Coke. But the brain doesn’t understand that artificial sweetener. So they painted the, the rat’s mouths with these sweeteners or their tongues. Insulin was released then they did something even more fascinating. They cut the nerve from the tongue to the brain. So they were still painting the oral cavity of the rat with this sweetness but the brain couldn’t taste it, couldn’t perceive it, no insulin response. So that lesson, when I read that, I was like okay, we’ve got to really be careful about anything We’re tasting during the fast, so you don’t want us to have your flavored fizzy waters. You go to anywhere now there’s a million flavored waters you can have. And they might be zero calorie. And so you think this is absolutely fine because we’ve been trained with calories and calories out, right? If it doesn’t have any calories it’s gonna help us lose weight. It doesn’t affect us at all. But now think about what I said before about insulin. Chronic high levels of insulin. Every time you’re tasting this. Strawberry flavored water. Your brain thinks, oh, we’re getting strawberries. So it’s releasing that insulin. And another thing I didn’t mention about high levels of insulin before is that insulin is, it’s a fancy word. It’s anti lipolytic, which means it prevents fat burning when you have chronic high levels of insulin, your body is in storage mode, insulin is a storage hormone. And if you wanna burn fat, and you’re in storage mode from high levels of insulin, that’s not gonna work out very well. So when we bring our levels of insulin down with the clean, fast, cleanly, we’re able to tap into our fast stores for fuel, just like nature intended. When I was 210 pounds, I was carrying a lot of fuel around on my body Sure. That I should have been able to tap into, but I couldn’t. So when we’re trapped in that cycle of, six small meals and always drinking something flavored, We’re never letting our body have insulin go down, tap into fat stores, fuel us from our stored fat. So I’ve just talked around in circles, but I hope that makes sense.

Host James Egidio: 24:49

No, you didn’t. You made a lot of sense. In fact, I’m very familiar with that study you were talking about.

Guest Gin Stephens: 24:53

Yeah. That’s yeah. Yeah. And people are like, that’s not true. I’m like it, that’s what happened. So I’m drinking my unflavored topo Chico right now Yeah.

Host James Egidio: 25:03

I can’t believe, yeah, I can’t believe how many people don’t drink water. It’s amazing and it’s, yeah.

Guest Gin Stephens: 25:10

Oh. What people will say, I can’t drink plain water. I don’t like the way it tastes. And I’m like, that is really a, just a testament to modern society. Yes. What do you mean you don’t like the way, if you go back thousands of years, people are drinking water out of the creek. Can you think of all the and now we have fresh, clean water and we don’t like it. What?

Host James Egidio: 25:32

Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. And I drink probably three liters a day, at least. minimum.

Guest Gin Stephens: 25:39

Yeah. And when you retrain your taste buds, if you’ve been drinking nothing but flavored water and flavor enhancers and diet sodas and putting a bunch of junk in your coffee, then you’re gonna have to retrain your taste buds. But once you do, it’s amazing.

Host James Egidio: 25:55

Yeah. Yeah. I hear that. Yeah. I hear the biggest complaint about people not wanting to drink water is the number one complaint is I’m always gonna pee. I’m peeing too much. I pee too. Peeing is. Good for you. If you’re drinking water and you’re peeing, your body’s gonna, means your body’s flushing itself out.

Guest Gin Stephens: 26:11

But yeah, the person who’s saying that is probably drinking a big gulp diet Coke, they all day long.

Host James Egidio: 26:15

Of course they’re right. And that of course that is.

Guest Gin Stephens: 26:18

That used to be me. So I am not, I don’t want anyone to ever think that I am criticizing people because that was me. I would go to, on the way to school, I would drive through Chick-fil-A and because on my way to work, and I would get chicken minis and I would get, they had these big styrofoam cups, and if I was dieting, I would get Diet Coke in my big styrofoam cup. And if I was not dieting, I would get regular coke in my cup. and I would nurse that all day long. Sure. And whether it was the Diet Coke or the regular Coke, neither was good for my body. No. Now I know that I wouldn’t drink it if you tried to get me to but yeah.

Host James Egidio: 26:57

When we used to have patients come into our clinic and they were o obese and they’d have diabetes and Yeah, blood pressure problems. The first question I would ask ’em is I would, do you drink soda? And they’d say, oh yeah. And how much soda did you drink? Oh, I drank maybe two or three. Four big gulps a day. Yeah. And they were like, what? I wanna lose this weight. And I said, I’ll tell you what, just give yourself a 30 day challenge on just quitting soda. Yeah. And they did. And they’d come back and they’d had lost like 15 pounds. Yeah. 10, 15 pounds in one. I’m not drinking any soda at all and substituting it for water so that first 10 or 15 pounds came right off right away.

Guest Gin Stephens: 27:39

I really think even if, forget fasting. I mean I love fasting. I think everyone who is an adult who is not pregnant or breastfeeding should do some intermittent fasting unless you agree. Also have eating disorders. That’s a whole different conversation. But I think, even forgetting fasting, if the only thing we did. Was change the beverages, right? And if people only drank black coffee, right? And I’m talking about unflavored, don’t get your hazelnut specialty, right? No right. Black coffee. The bitter flavor profile does not cause our bodies to release an insulin response. We do not release insulin in response to the bitter flavor profile of coffee so you can stick to plain black coffee, plain tea, and I’m talking about real tea, not all those fr fruit. Herbal teas that are sweet and plain water. Plain sparkling water, no flavors. If everyone just switched to that, what a difference we would see. Oh, you can go to Starbucks and order a black coffee. It costs a lot less. They hand it right to you. You don’t have to wait forever for your drink. and you also feel like a champion with your black coffee. And it, it’s just a very easy change to make once you train your taste buds. But I really think that we would see such a change because I used to always have a, either that big soda or a latte in my hand all the time. Yeah. When I was.

Host James Egidio: 28:57

Yeah. I can’t remember the last time I drank a soda. It must have been like, maybe I’m, I’ll be 60 in July, so I’m thinking that had to be like when I was 13 and it was probably at a McDonald’s or something.

Guest Gin Stephens: 29:09

July. What? I’m a July birthday. Third. I’m the 23rd okay. We’re, yeah. The third. Yeah. So I, like I said I drink black coffee. because my stepson. the largest distributor of Coffee in Rome, Italy. He’s got the number one selling brand. I’m plugging it, on this podcast. Definitely, yeah.

Host James Egidio: 29:28

But so I know coffee and I drink good coffee. His coffee’s amazing. But I drink it black. I don’t even drink it with cream or sugar or anything. It’s better for you. Yeah, it is. And my wife, she’ll put oat milk in her coffee, which is, but I just love coffee. You, it takes the taste away when you start putting anything other than just drinking your coffee black with no sugar or anything, or any cream or anything.

Guest Gin Stephens: 29:50

Yep. And if you’re fasting if someone you know is specifically fasting, there’s little. Tiny, a little bit of oat milk or a little bit of cream does make a difference. You don’t wanna put that in cuz that’s food for the body. So keep all that out for the fasting black coffee. And the part that’s such a challenge is people do not want to give up what they put in their coffee. No. They’re like, yeah, I can’t drink it black. And then I saw a YouTube video that said it was okay if you put 50 calories of cream in there, it doesn’t break the fast. And that always boggles my mind because what is cream is dairy. And what is dairy? Dairy is nature’s perfect food for the period of time when we are building a mammal baby, right at its most rapid stage of development, right? I’m not anti-D. Dairy. I love dairy, but it’s not fasting. Sure. It’s the perfect food for building your body, and so it’s gonna cause insulin response. It’s also. Food for the body. And so I, I don’t care how many YouTube videos you watch that say cream is okay, it’s not fasting.

Host James Egidio: 30:54

Yeah. Man, you’re making me hungry. I think I’m gonna go get a pizza after this.

Guest Gin Stephens: 30:58

All right, We’re gonna have pasta tonight with like a little Thai kind of pasta. It’s got,

Host James Egidio: 31:06

there you go.

Guest Gin Stephens: 31:06

Vegetables in there. And a little peanut sauce and some peanuts in there. I’m really excited.

Host James Egidio: 31:12

Gin, let me ask you a question. What, intermittent fasting program or regimen is best for weight loss?

Guest Gin Stephens: 31:19

And that question does not have an. Oh, okay. So you’re like, what? Okay. So when people start with a 28 day fast start, one of the things that’s the most important is I have them put their scale away for the first 28 days not weighing at all, because the first 28 days are not for weight loss at all. And then after the first 28 days, they can start weighing and seeing what their weight is doing overtime, focusing on the trend only, not the fluctuations. and from there we, we call it tweak it till it’s easy. And that means you’ve gotta figure out the approach that works well for you. We’re not all gonna be the same, and it’s gonna depend on a lot of individual factors. For example, I already mentioned that for me an eight hour eating window was way too long because I am more of a volume eater. I like to eat plenty of food. I don’t like to feel restricted. I don’t like to diet little bits of food so I can eat too much food in an eight hour window. That being said, there could be somebody who naturally eats like a bird. Little bit. Maybe an eight hour window is perfect for them because if they tried to have a five hour window, they wouldn’t be able to eat enough. and it just all depends. The beauty of intermittent fasting is you really do figure out what feels good to you. You figure out what time of day is best for you. You figure out how long your of a window feels great for you. For me, I like to open my window every day depending on the actually seasonally when it’s. winter and gets dark earlier. I tend to open a little earlier, maybe two o’clock. As the days start to get longer, I’m more active. I’m out and about. I might not open till four that day and I might stop eating by seven in the winter, but maybe in the summer I’m still having a little something at nine. I’m staying up a little later. And so for me, I feel great having that eating window later in the day. There are some people though, who can’t sleep well if they eat too late, I can’t sleep well if I eat too early. So that’s all the part that makes it individual. The alternate daily fasting protocols are amazing for people. If someone is especially insulin resistant, if they have been overweight for decades like if someone is listening and they were overweight from the time they were in high school and now they’re 50 years. They’re most likely pretty insulin resistant. They may need to do some alternate daily fasting down the road to really get their levels of insulin down farther. The daily the daily time restricted eating might not be enough for their bodies, but I don’t want people to think that they’re gonna have to do that or that. they’re gonna need to because you won’t know till you try. If someone starts off and they’re having a five hour daily eating window and they’re losing weight at a great pace, then that is what they should keep doing. But if they keep going and they’re not losing the weight, they can start to experiment with different things. Maybe throw in one down day a week, and then all the, all this is in fast feast repeat. The down day would be the day where they do a 36 hour fast, for example. Yeah. Because that’s really bringing their insulin down. And the I have a podcast called Intermittent Fasting Stories, and on that podcast I talk to, intermittent Faster is just like me, just normal people who have been, doing intermittent fasting and. you’ll hear everything all from people who have a five hour window to people who do alternate daily fasting to people who switch it up. And it just really is all about figuring out what your body needs for weight loss. And then that comes down to the food choices as well. Some people find they do need to make changes to what they’re eating to see weight loss. Again, someone who’s been obese for decades. May need to make more changes than someone who is yeah, just wants to lose a little bit of weight. They’re pretty healthy, they’ve always been active, they’ve never been much overweight. They really don’t wanna lose 10 pounds. And it’s all about what your body needs and what your body what’s going on inside. I hope that makes sense.

Host James Egidio: 35:12

Yeah. I’m sure you’re not gonna be an intermittent faster with losing weight in mind and replacing that or having that meal at McDonald’s, that voracious meal at McDonald’s you, if someone is you probably could, but

Guest Gin Stephens: 35:27

you could. But you’re not gonna wanna do that for long a again, I told you that when I started, I was very much eating the standard American diet because I was so diet weary and I was like, forget it. What I eat doesn’t matter. I’m just going to, now I’m just gonna do intermittent fasting. I’m not gonna change what I’m eating. And we were still doing a lot of driving through and a lot of microwaving and convenience foods at that point. Right. eventually. I didn’t like the way those foods made me feel. I started to connect it. Sure. And I wanted to feel better, and so I changed it naturally. So if someone is starting off with, and they’re eating McDonald’s, then again, it’s better to do intermittent fasting with McDonald’s than to eat all day with McDonald’s.

Host James Egidio: 36:10

Start. Yeah. It sounds like your body actually makes these biochemical changes when you do intermittent dieting.

Guest Gin Stephens: 36:18

Yes. Yeah. With intermittent fasting, our bodies change a lot. We get more in, in tune with our hunger and satiety signals. There’s a really fascinating study that I talk about in my book, Cleanish that came out last year and it was, you could not do it today, but it was like this pediatrician, and she got all these kids that were like, I don’t know. orphans. All, I don’t really, it one of those things you would not do in the modern world, but she had all these kids and it was a feeding study and she just put all these foods in front of them and said, eat. And they were, they didn’t direct them to anything. And it turns out those little kids the infants, the toddlers, they were fabulous at crafting a very healthy diet over time. There was this one kid in that they studied that had, or some sort of deficiency. And that kid fed himself cod liver oil. Wow. Until he cured the rickets and then he never touched cod liver oil again. So the point of that story is, if you think about pregnant women who start craving weird things, may that pica or some of those is pike the right word for. When they have those peka, I’m not sure how you pronounce it. Anyway, I think so they start craving weird things and start eating them when they’re pregnant cuz they have these deficiencies. We know that our bodies are wise and with the whole modern food landscape, with all the ultra processed food, all the chemicals, all the eating all day long, we’ve completely lost touch with what our bodies want and what we are really craving. I was just, someone in my fasting community today just made a post. She said, I’ve just noticed something really interesting. She’s post-menopausal. She said, now that I am on the other side of menopause, I am no longer interested in red meat. But when I was younger, I used to crave red meat, especially certain times of my cycle, and I and she’s I really think that my body doesn’t, have the same, maybe iron needs that. It did. I’m like, that makes perfect sense. Yeah. So the point to all of that is when we tune back into our bodies we get that connection that we used to have, that we have lost.

Host James Egidio: 38:23

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s what’s interesting too, a lot of things I hear besides the not drinking water. Is I hear a lot of sentiment about it’s gonna cost me too much to eat good. No, it’s the opposite.

Guest Gin Stephens: 38:36

True. What’s the thing, you can either make time for your wellness now or make time for your illness later. The same with the cost. You can either pay for being well or later you’re gonna pay for the medication.

Host James Egidio: 38:48

Absolutely. Yeah. I know. I live on personally, I live on, I’ll do a couple protein shakes in the course of the day. You. And I primarily live on raw, a raw diet salads with raw vegetables and bean soups, a lot of bean soups.

Guest Gin Stephens: 39:03

I love beans. Yeah,

Host James Egidio: 39:04

I make a lot of those, so they’re like my favorite.

Guest Gin Stephens: 39:05

Yeah. Lentils. Yeah. Yeah.

Host James Egidio: 39:07

And a 16 bean soup. And it’s amazing because. when I get to eating it in the evening very early, and I cut off eating after seven o’clock. I don’t eat anything after that unless I have some tea or something.

Guest Gin Stephens: 39:18

I’ll just drink some tea with no honey or anything like that in it. But the bean soups are amazing because they just, they fill you up. Yeah. And they’re so hardy and they’re so good. Especially those 16 bean soups, they’re amazing beans are cheap. Beans are so good for us. Yeah. And so people can afford to eat beans. And I actually saw a study, it wasn’t like a randomized controlled trial kind of study, but it was more of an epidemiological type thing. And it talked about how when it comes to longevity and health like beans, are the food most linked to. Being healthy and living. Sure. Because pe you look in, in the societies where people have enough to eat and they’re eating beans, but beans are the food that are just linked to better help all around the globe.

Host James Egidio: 40:00

Absolutely. And they’re loaded with all the essential amino acids with none of the fat. So you got all the protein that you’re ever gonna need. And I’m a muscular guy. Go to the gym five days a week, it’ll work out with weights every day, five days a week. Yeah. And I don’t have a problem. And I hear a lot of people say it’s. I’m gonna lose muscle tone and I’m gonna do this if I, start that kind of a diet. And I’m like, no, it’s the opposite actually, because you’re gonna lose shed a lot of the fat. Yep. And you’re gonna be, you’re gonna be leaner, more muscular is what’s gonna happen.

Guest Gin Stephens: 40:30

and with intermittent fasting to, to piggyback on the idea of muscles and muscle loss, there’s a misconception out there that if you’re fasting, your body’s gonna burn your muscle up for fuel. No. And it’s not gonna do that if you’re fasting clean. Let’s think again about right, what I talked about insulin being high. And, okay, if your insulin is really high and you can’t tap into your fat stores, the body’s gonna burn whatever it can find, right? But if you’re fast and clean, your insulin is low. suddenly there’s all the fat. Is your body so stupid that it would burn valuable muscle tissue or is it going to use the fat that is right there and easily accessible? Now,

Host James Egidio: 41:06

use the fat.

Guest Gin Stephens: 41:07

It’s going to use the fat. We’re not gonna burn our muscle tissue UN unless it can’t get to the fat. So you know, if you’re doing a typical low calorie diet where you’re drinking diet sodas all day long, and you’re eating all the small meals, and your insulin is high. maybe your body can’t get to your fat very well. It might actually have to burn a little muscle tissue because it can’t get to your fat. But when you’re fasting, you are getting into those fat stores like never before. And we also have something going on called Autophagy, which is our body’s recycling program. So it actually breaks down old junky proteins that we’ve got hanging around. It, any old junky cell parts, it breaks those down and rebuilts things out of them. So you’re like recycling your body’s own protein while you’re fasting,

Host James Egidio: 41:54

right, yeah. It’s amazing. Yeah. I totally agree with everything you’re saying, and I, you’ve become the expert on this subject, and your latest book is called Cleanish, right?

Guest Gin Stephens: 42:05

Cleanish long one,

Host James Egidio: 42:07

Fast. Feast, Repeat right? Yeah. And then you could be found online at

Guest Gin Stephens: 42:11

www.ginstephens.com. And it’s Gin, Gin Stephens with a “P” “H” www.GinSptephens.com, and we have an intermittent fasting community that you can join. It’s at GinStephens.com/community. And I used to have groups on Facebook and they were free, and we had 500,000 combined members and it was just way too much. It was crazy. And I loved supporting people with their intermittent fasting journey, but it got to the point that all we were doing was managing instead of. you can imagine how Facebook would be with 500,000 people Sure. To ask questions. And so I took my community off of Facebook and so we have more along the lines of 5,000 members and it’s a paid community, but it is such a different kind of a place and everyone is there. With the goal of supporting each other and I’m there. And so we’re helping each other get through our intermittent fasting journeys. It’s such a great community. Yeah. And for people who wanna learn more about, how people can make it into a lifestyle, the the Intermittent Fasting Stories podcast. Just pick any episode at random and listened. And, I’ve recorded 200 and maybe 93 episodes as of yesterday, and every story has something new in it sure. How can I listen to 293 different? They’re all, we, all we, he see ourselves in every story, right? But we also learn something in every story. And for anyone who wants to get started, get Fast Feast, Repeat and start at the 28 day fast start chapter. Make sure you understand the clean fast, because if you’re gonna fast, you don’t wanna waste your time, you wanna fast clean, you’re either fast and clean, or you’re not really fasting.

Host James Egidio: 43:47

Awesome. Thank you so much for, oh, by the way, I’ll post the links from the Medical Truth Podcast, website over to Gin’s website and her book and everything. So it’s all there to be viewed and purchased. And thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Medical Truth Podcast. Gin, it’s been awesome. Thanks.

Guest Gin Stephens: 44:05

Thank you for having me.

Host James Egidio: 44:06

You got it. Thanks.