Intermittent Fasting
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June 23, 2020 - Episode #22 - Intermittent Fasting - Good or Bad? Will it work for you?
You want to talk about a hotly debated weight loss topic....THIS IS IT! Since Intermittent Fasting has increased in popularity and controversy, we all find ourselves wondering if it will work for us. Does it really promote weight loss? How does it work? We had a candid discussion with a real guy who has real results from using this controversial weight loss method. And spoiler alert....he has lost weight! Listen in on our conversation about how being your own best advocate and doing the research can really pay off. If you are struggling with your weight and sick and tired of the diet hamster wheel, I see you! And I've created an amazing, empowering tool just for you! The 5 secrets of Anti-Diet weight loss comes with a guided workbook to give you the jumpstart you need to take control of your overall weight and wellness! Best news is that it is FREE. Click here to access and I'll get it sent to you right away! www.bit.ly/Fivesecretstoweightloss Are you wondering if Intermittent Fasting is a good fit for you? Tired of trying to decipher all the conflicting health info alone? Consider a 1 hour virtual coaching session with me. As a Dietitian and Certified Functional Medicine Health Coach, I've got your back. You don't have to figure this all out on your own. I know you will walk away encouraged and empowered! Book here https://www.inspirehealthyharmony.com/coaching.html#/ Read Full Transcript below Where else to listen: (note: Google is only available on android devices)
FULL TRANSCRIPT June 23, 2020 - Episode #22 - Intermittent Fasting - Good or Bad? Will it work for you? - Intermittent fasting, harmful? Good for you? Will you lose weight? This is our discussion today on Healthy Harmony. Welcome to Healthy Harmony, where we help you clarify and discuss health tactics to harmonize your life. I am your host and health coach Jennifer Pickett. And today my guest is Heath Gallimore. Heath is 41 years old, and he is from Melissa, Texas. He's been married to his wife Stacey for 22 years, and they have three sons that age in range from 22 to age 17. He studied computer science at Texas A&M University, and has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science from UT Dallas. Heath has been working as a software engineer for Texas Instruments for 16 years. He's very active in his church, serving as an elder. And his main interests are sailing, exercise, teaching and studying theology. He spends most of his free time reading. So here's what's really cool about that, Heath has had some health setbacks, and he put that strength to good use and did a lot of reading and studying. So I'm excited to hear about Heath's journey today. Heath is a dear friend of mine. Heath, thank you so much for joining us, how are you? - I'm good, thanks Jennifer. I'm glad to be sharing. - I'm really excited about this. You know I interview health experts, but I think what's most powerful is when we have discussions with individuals and we're like okay, what did you experience? What did you learn? And how are you your own best advocate? So we're talking about a big, huge subject today, intermittent fasting. I'm curious, what frustrations have you experienced on your health journey? - Well a lot actually. You know I started really being concerned about my weight and health kind of in my late 20's. I got married early in life, and so I had a lot of stresses early on with kids and being, even in my mid-20's gaining weight and things like that. And so by the time I was about 27 I had already put on a lot of extra weight from the time I had been married. And I guess it just continued to kind of steam roll on me until I was mid-30's. I was easily 25 pounds overweight all the time. I was miserable. And probably about seven years ago is when I really, I set out to figure out how to lose weight, keep it off, and I started-- - So let me stop you there. You knew you were carrying around some extra weight, but what effect did that have on your every day life? How did that make you feel from a physical health perspective? - Well, so, you know, it feels really miserable. You can have problems sleeping and just problems, you know, you get winded walking up stairs. And it had just numerous effects. I mean 25 pounds wasn't the worst. I had gotten up to as much as 45 pounds overweight. When you get that much overweight, just things you would never even think about. For one, my face had gotten so big that my eyelashes had started to turn in and scratch my eyes. And that's like-- - My goodness. - Things like that, you just never hear about. You don't even know. It's just a byproduct of being overweight all the time, just little things they start to add up. It's like death by a thousand cuts. And it's just really frustrating. None of your clothes fit, and you're always having to, you know, just make excuses for things. You just don't feel good about yourself at all. Every time you look in the mirror it's just like, I just feel like a failure. - Oh goodness. So tell me, did that have an effect on your performance at work as an engineer? - Um, yeah, I think so. I mean, if you don't feel confident, you know, when you're trying to speak to people that you don't know or you give a presentation, or when you're traveling. It really shows when you walk in a room when you feel shame about yourself, or, people can tell that you're just, you're not confident, you don't exude confidence, and you're not smiling because you don't feel good. And I think it really does effect your performance in a lot of ways, especially in the workplace. I think it just, I think it just gives people a bad vibe. They just, they can see that things aren't going so well for you. It's not the energy that you wanna sort of give out to people, especially when you're making first impressions. - Now do you think people could sense that you were struggling? - I think so, yeah. Especially my family. People that were close to me would always ask me, you know, how's it going? You know, what have you been trying lately? They could tell I was not happy. And they were honestly trying to do their part and spur me on. But for the most part people just kind of, I think people that don't really, really know you well just kind of ignore it. You get little, I don't know, little subtle hints that things aren't right, or the way you might overhear somebody say something about you, and that just makes it worse. - Oh goodness. So you're a software engineer for Texas Instruments. Obviously you have to be on top of your game, I mean this is a very mentally demanding job that you have, so did you find that there were certain aspects of your job that were difficult to perform? Did you notice anything? Was there any kind of brain fog? Or did you deal with any kind of lack of mental clarity? Let's talk about that. - Mm-hmm. I mean, I think I'm always, when it comes down to like the, just doing my actual job, and the work part of it, not the relationships and things like that, I've always done pretty well just because I'm real good at sort of blocking everything else out, and just focusing on one thing. But I could still see effects there. I mean just fatigue mostly. - Sure. - You know, fatigue from not getting enough sleep, or just the mental battles, the sort of mind share that's taken over by all the things that are going wrong outside of work that sort of weighs on you. And so that, I'm sure it took a toll on me. I don't know, I can't really quantify that. I can tell now that, you know, I made life changes and things, I definitely have more clarity when I'm solving problems or thinking through how things should work. I'm not distracted as easily. So I think-- - That's fantastic. Let me ask you about, as you were going through, 'cause I know this continued for some time with this extra weight, how did it effect your personal relationships at home? - Well, you know, the biggest relationship, me and my wife, she's always been super supportive of me, you know, been very positive towards me no matter what. You know, she's real good about the whole through thick and thin, and for better or worse. But I think it still had an effect there even though, you know, I would say she cared about me and was trying to help me wherever possible, I could tell that, just, it has a little, I think it detracts. You know it definitely takes away. There's times when you wanna do things sporadically, you wanna go out to dinner or a movie or whatever, and then there's just problems. Like when yo have extra weight it's like well I don't have anything to wear. I don't wanna wear that. And you don't feel good, and so then that kind of feeds to the spouse. And then they're like well, let's just not, you know it's kind of like well let's just not go do anything. You just, the things that you would normally do and not think twice about. Just small little things just weigh you down, you know? - So do you think that really, you know, I think some folks would look at this and say hey, it's just some extra weight, that's just part of life. Surely it can't effect all these areas of life, but you found something quite different, correct? - Oh yeah. Yeah, no, I think it effected me in pretty much every area. Just the mental, I talked earlier about the mental battle, just the sort of being down on yourself, sort of feeling like a failure, and there's the physical battle obviously that you're winded when you walk up stairs to talk to your kids or tuck them in at night. You know, just even spiritual things. Like you're trying to be a teacher and a leader of people when you don't exhume confidence and you feel like a hypocrite because you can't really control what you're eating or how much weight you have. It's kind of like why are you teaching me if you have this big issue in your life? It's always that. It seems like the people who teach should have their things together and should understand some things, and be able to have self control, for one thing. And I think people that are constantly overweight, it just tells people that they don't have self control, even if it's, for whatever reason that's just, that's kind of the impression that you give to people. - And I would agree with you. I think there's that prevailing thought that this is just about willpower. It's just about self control. But it's interesting how you refer to that this truly effected all areas of your life, including your leadership at church as you have taught. And obviously we have been involved in the same church, I've gotten to be a part of that. And to see you on this health journey, but it's interesting to think that this could hold you back when it comes to teaching and leading others because you just feel like you're being a hypocrite. That's a very strong statement that you feel like this really held you back from really being all you could be in those responsibilities. - Yeah, definitely. - Okay. So what was it that really prompted you to investigate further? What prompted you to say enough is enough, I'm tired of struggling, and I'm tired of people looking at me and kind of judging me and thinking I don't have self control? So I want us to explore that actually before we go any further, that whole aspect of willpower and self control. Is there more to this, is there more to weight loss than just exercising willpower? What do you think about that statement? - Yeah, definitely, there's a lot more to it. I think of the people that I know, when it comes to willpower and being sort of extreme with things, I'm pretty high up on the list. If I make my mind up to do something, I'm pretty much gonna do it. And it can be very hard to talk me out of it. And so I had tried many different things. Like I said, I kind of alluded to about seven years back I had started, I had set out to lose weight, and I think the key thing was just enough, enough. I don't remember exactly what the straw was that broke the camel's back or whatever, but there was something that pushed me over the edge where I was like okay. I think it might have been when I finally hit like 220 on the scale. You know 220 pounds on the scale. And I had gotten married at 175. When I hit that weight, I knew that I'm not going the right away, it's about to blow up in my face, I gotta do something. And so I set out to do, to just see if I could fix it. And you know I tried the Atkins diet, I tried low calorie diets. I tried eating five, six times a day. I tried pretty much anything I could get ahold of. - You tried all the things that are out there. All the things, right? - Yep. And you know all those things, because I am just a disciplined person, and because I set out to do it and go strong and hard and all that, it just, I had some success, and so I was able to lose weight quickly, which is always really good if you're trying to lose weight. If you lose weight quickly it's really good feedback, and you keep going, you know, you get motivated. But the problem was no matter which diet I had picked, or which kind of meal plan I was on, after about three months, four months, my body would do pretty much what everybody's body does, kind of plateau out regardless of what you're doing, and then sort of slowly start gaining the weight back. And that's just a really, it's a really hard place to be when you know you're not messing up, but your body's sort of getting used to what you're doing. - Definitely. - And going back to set of its set point. And that is just really frustrating. You know that happened to me three or four different times. And I think the last time that happened to me probably five years ago I had, I had been on this five meals a day, really restricted calorie diet, almost less than 1200 calories a day. - Oh wow. - Yeah, it was the toughest thing I had ever done. - That is extreme, yeah. - It was super extreme, and I lost a lot of weight, but it wasn't maintainable. I mean you just can't, you can't eat like that forever. - Right. - You know never having a piece of birthday cake, never having a piece of pizza, never doing, I mean never being able to celebrate with anybody was just a nightmare. You don't wanna live like that. And so-- - You certainly don't. - So any time you'd have a bad day or two bad days in a row, you set yourself back almost a month. - Oh wow. - And that is super frustrating. - That verbalization of frustration, I've heard that from so many clients. You know we do have a very strong diet mentality in our culture. You know I'll start Monday, I'm gonna do this low calorie diet, or I'm gonna do this diet that my friend is doing because he or she lost weight. And then we do that thing, and we start it, and then inevitably we stop it because life happens, and there's a holiday or a birthday party, or whatever that might be. And then the weight comes back. And it is devastating. And typically the weight invites some friends. And so we're packing on even more pounds than what we had previously lost. And that disheartens us to such a degree. So what made you shift from this kind of low calorie diet mentality to trying something that is a little bit controversial? So what did you try, and how did you find out about it? - Yeah, great question. And I would just reiterate what you just said, is a lot of people try this and they get down the road and then life happens, and the weight comes back. And that is exactly what I experienced. And it didn't just come back. The second one I had was about 205, and then every time I would try something new and the weight come back it would be five pounds more, 10 pounds more. So, you know, like I said, I got up to, my highest probably 220-225, something like that, which was easily almost 50 pounds overweight, 45-50 pounds overweight. You know it's pushing on obesity where you're really, you know, getting into that place where you're tailing about type two diabetes with your doctor and things like that. It's getting really scary. And so I think just that along with the frustration of multiple failures is what I perceived them to be. Now that I look back on it I don't really consider them failures, I consider them steps in a journey. You know you have to sort of experience it and fail a little bit so that you can do something else and learn. - That's interesting. You look at failure almost as a learning experience more than anything else. - Yeah. But at the time they were definite failures in my opinion. And, you know, I was really frustrated. I happened to be, I was invited on a fishing trip with some friends that I go to probably every other year or every third year. And I was with a friend, we were hiking up a mountain in Colorado to do some fly fishing, and I just couldn't make it up the hill. I mean I was really struggling. It wasn't hot that day or anything. I was just so out of shape, and so overweight that I couldn't fish. And so I just kind of-- - I bet that was embarrassing. - It was, it was embarrassing. You know we had to end up fishing somewhere else. We knew where we knew where we should have been fishing, and I just couldn't get there that day. So my friend, you know, he's a great guy. He saw my frustration, and we just kind of sat down. He took a minute and we just talked about it. And he, I could tell he had lost some weight recently, probably about 30 pounds from his normal self. And I just asked him, I was like what are you doing? What are you trying that's different? And he told me about this, he didn't really tell me that much actually, he just kind of peeked my interested a little bit. He told me about this sort of 16/8 lean gains method. Where he was eating in this sort of eight hour window. I was like that's interesting, I had never heard of anything like that. I was just, it peeked my interest enough to investigate, and he told me that he had read a book. This book called "The Obesity Code" by Dr. Jason Fung. - Yeah, very good book. - Yeah, and he said that it had really helped him lose weight. And he was still eating kind of the foods that he wanted to eat, but he was just restricting the timing of it. And I just thought that was a totally different way to think. - And so what is that method called? I wanna make sure that folks who are not familiar with this kind of know what this is called. - Yeah so the 16/8 method, I think it's pretty well known as the lean gains method. I believe it's named after the guy who coined it, or set that up. So it's a person's name. But he put that 16/8 sort of schedule together as sort of a first step in intermittent fasting, which is really, when you think about it, it's basically skipping breakfast is the right way to interpret that. If you skip breakfast you're not gonna eat 12 hours to 12 hours, you know 12 hours of eating and 12 hours of fasting like a typical person would. You're gonna extend that fasting time to about 16 hours and you're gonna try to eat just lunch and dinner within eight hours. - That's, so it's very interesting. So I wanna clarify for the folks out there. As we throw out some numbers, what we're looking at is an eating window. And so when he refers to a 16/8, that is fasting, going without anything to eat for 16 hours, and that's overnight. And we extend that. And then timing your meals to an eight hour eating window. And so that is kind of restricting the body and only eating during that window. So I know for me, as a dietician, if you had told me hey Jennifer, one day you're gonna be on a podcast talking about intermittent fasting and encouraging people to skip breakfast, I would have been like no, there's no way. So let me ask you, Heath, is this scientifically sound? Give me, you have a researcher brain for sure. You go at this from an engineer perspective, so is this scientifically sound? Is it safe? - Yeah. Great question. And you hit the nail on the head there, that's the way I think. I really want to see things that are scientific. And I wanna get feedback. As an engineer that's how engineering works. You put some stimulus in and you look for feedback, and you adjust to get the results you want. And so if it's not a scientific approach I really struggle with it. Like okay I feel like I'm trying something, I'm just trying spraying in the wind, and there's no feedback so I can't really, you know, determine whether a success or failure. But something about this book, I got it immediately after I talked to my friend when I was on the, actually I ordered it when I was on the plane on the way back. You know I looked at the first half of the book is basically going through the science. Going through the science of how people actually gain weight. And most of it was actually dispelling the bad science that was out there, which as really good for me because those were all the things I had walked through. So everything that-- - Now what would you say the bad science is? - Well things like, you know, just that everything's about caloric intake, calories in versus calories out. And this whole sort of eat less, move more mentality. Sort of a bad model of how the body uses energy and stores energy. And it has been something that everyone has, at the time sort of accepted. A widely accepted model that just quite frankly doesn't work. And-- - It's been touted for literally years and years on end this whole mentality of it's just about calories in versus calories out. All you have to do is eat less and move more. And I think it finds people to be very frustrated because when that doesn't play out they assume that it's just them. That everyone else is having success and it must be just them. They don't have the willpower. They don't have the motivation. And so I think we find ourselves frustrated and devastated from a health standpoint, 'cause we just continue to gain. So what was it about that book that was so appealing to you that it got your attention, and that then prompted you to make some changes and implement some of these strategies? - Well first of all the book, that particular book, there's other books too, "The Complete Guide to Fasting," by Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore, which really is a, more of a, it's kind of a followup book that talks about more of the implementation of how you might do intermittent fasting. But the sort of Bible of intermittent fasting, as far as I can tell, is this "Obesity Code" book, which is really, like I said, about half the book is just the science behind why calories in, calories out doesn't work. And how it's been proven over and over again that it doesn't work. But that the scientists and the government, and all the people that regulate things, they're so ingrained, and they've got it so in their mind that this is the way it works, that they just refuse to accept the science. And they kind of make their own numbers up, or show what they wanna show. And you know that's the thing about this book. I mean Dr. Fung is, he doesn't hold any punches back. And he just literally tears their science apart, and just destroys it over and over again. I ended up reading the book about four times because-- - My goodness. - There's so much information. I got the audio book. You know you go through it once or twice you can't, you sort of glean what you can. But until you go through it and really study what he's talking about, there's so many key ideas. Every chapter is a key idea that is something completely new that you never would think was true. And so I think, you know, spending the time and really investing in it, and taking one idea at a time, and really trying to figure out what does this mean? And how was I wrong before? How can I change one thing to, just to see, let's test this. If this idea's right then, you know does it work? And I think some of the things he puts in there like, I mean he gives very short examples. Like he says I can make anybody fat. Let me inject you with insulin, and you will gain weight no matter what you eat. Or he says things like why is there no, why is there no reunion show for "The Biggest Loser?" There's never gonna be one. - Very interesting, very interesting. - Because everybody gets the weight back. - They regain the weight. And what I heard you, what I am hearing you saying is I just hear that determination, that you truly threw yourself into reaching this wholeheartedly. You didn't just read the book once, you read it through four times. And then really looked at that science. 'Cause you're not a health expert. You're not a physician, you're not a nurse. You're not a dietician or a health coach. And you're just an individual who was frustrated. But you took that pro-active mentality and really dug into the research. So in your research, what did you find are the biggest benefits, what are the biggest benefits to intermittent fasting? - Mm-hmm. Well, I mean as far as like the research is, I can't speak to much of that. I can speak to what I've experienced myself. - That would be great. Yeah, tell me about you. What benefit do you experience from this? - Yeah so, the first thing I can say, it definitely works. I lost, was able to lose 40 pounds. Today I've been on it for probably about 16 months. I've lost 40 pounds. And most of that weight was lost-- - That is amazing. Absolutely amazing. - Yeah so I lost that weight probably, most of it was in the first three months, which was typical of my weight loss endeavors in the past. But I've been able to keep it off with no issue for 16 moths now. So that by itself was enough-- - That speaks volumes, right? - Right, right. But that was just the beginning. So I really, once I saw that it was good for maintenance, the maintenance phase that I could never sort Of solve, I sort of integrated it into my life and made it sort of a life change. And you know I lost so much weight that I actually lost a shoe size, a whole shoe size. - Oh, that's crazy. - I didn't ever think that could happen, but my old cowboy boots didn't fit anymore. So I had to get some new ones. - Now that's weight loss on the-- - So not a half size, a whole size. - That's weight loss on a whole nother level. You know you're making a lot of good when you're losing it everywhere. - Right. And so just the whole, the whole concept of feasting and fasting together so that now I can participate without fear or shame in any kind of social event. I mean yesterday I was at your house eating like crazy. And I know that in two more days I'm gonna be right back to where I was on Friday with no issue because I can just not eat for two days. And that's how it goes. It's hand in hand. It's sort of a balance. And so when I see things like that, when I saw things in balance, how I can still do the things that I wanna have in life, and still get the things that I want, it just made sense. And another thing I'll say is it's super convenient. I don't have to chop any vegetables, I don't have to pack any food. There's no containers. There's no going out of my way to stay on this plan. I just, I sort of moved to the extreme version of it so now that I'm only eating basically one meal a day it makes it super easy, I mean it's the most convenient thing I've ever done. I don't have to worry about food all day. I come home and eat dinner. And because I'm only eating, preparing that one meal I can really spend the time to do it right. I can eat healthy with no problem for one meal a day. I mean anybody can do that. Cook, really cook, use whole food, not eating grab and go things are not a problem for me anymore because I'm not trying to fill this little calorie gap. In the past, you know, you're eating five meals a day, you're either gonna be chopping a lot of vegetables every morning, or you gotta have grab and go food. And one of his key ideas is anything that's been processed, that sort of the poison is in the processing, and that's where most of the issue is coming from. So that's been eliminated for me. I don't have to worry about processed food anymore. - And I would really agree with that statement. I think we have completely under estimated the impact of processed foods on our body. It's just so widely accepted. And so many of these processed foods are marketed as being healthy. They have these key words on there that just kind of draw us in, and lead us to believe that hey, it's fine for me. We give it to our, we buy it for ourselves, we give it to our children, and we're being fooled into thinking this is okay, this is acceptable, but it's the preservatives, it's the chemicals, it's the flavor enhancers that are wrecking our health. So I love how not only are you employing the intermittent fasting, but you're also really sticking to whole foods. So what other kind of good habits have you picked up along the way that have been very beneficial to you? - Yeah, so I mean just lots of other things. I mean like because it's so convenient, and because it's so much less time for me now, I'm able to do other things with that time that I would have been eating or preparing food. I'm able to go to the gym at lunch instead of eating now. So I'm working out maybe three days a week. Those workouts have been better than ever because training in a fasted state, I have more, he speaks about it in his book, and it took me a long time to really dig into that and figure out what are the benefits there, but you have more, you have a higher HGH level, you're in a fasted state so your growth hormone is active. You're not-- - HGH is human growth hormone, correct? - That's right. - Okay, just wanted to clarify that. - Those are the things that, you know, like these big star body builders inject themselves with to gain massive amounts of muscle, but that's obviously not healthy for them because they're using synthetic hormones. - Okay. - But if your body produces it itself, there's nothing synthetic about it. Your body automatically will produce up to five times its normal HGH level after just 24 hours of fasting to sort of help you maintain your muscle mass while you're not getting food from calories. And so-- - Incredible. - And so if you can take advantage of that at the gym, and you can see, you know, gains. I mean in those 16 months that I've been doing this and working out three times a day, I told you I lost about 40 pounds of fat, but I also was able to put on nine, just a little over nine pounds of lean mass. - That's amazing. Now three times a day or three times a week? - I'm sorry three times a week. Yeah three times a week. - We were all like wait a minute, don't you have to work? - So it's only, you know I only have an hour lunch break, so it's about an hour a day, three days a week, and that's more muscle mass than I've put on in any other diet or any other exercise routine I've ever been able to do. - Incredible. - And I attribute it to that hormone, and also just I feel like you have a different, it's not, I'm not spending a lot of time doing cardio in my workouts. That I would say would probably be a lot harder to do if you haven't been eating carbs, and you haven't got a lot of calories in your system. But just lifting and doing those things, I feel like I can train harder, and more focused when I'm in a fasted state. So that's a great thing. Other benefits include it's super cheap. If you're not eating, you're not spending money. - That's a very good point, very good point, yes. - I saved about 75% of the money I was spending on health food every week, on protein shakes and supplements. I think I was spending roughly $130 a week. Now I'm spending under 40-- - Oh goodness. - to feed myself. - That's a big cost savings. - Right, yep. It released me from sort of this food fix is what I call it, which again is just the mind share of I don't have to think about food. It's just gone. - Do you feel you were kind of obsessed and fixated on food? - Yeah I think whenever I was dieting in the past I was always thinking about my next meal's coming up, what am I gonna eat? Or did I pack my stuff, or is this the right thing to eat? Or I was just, there were things, you know you think about well what are we gonna eat for lunch? You know all that's sort of gone. - Very overwhelming. - I don't get the hunger pains or the, I just, I don't-- - Okay that was my next question. I can almost feel the listeners asking this question as we discuss this. Do you get hungry? Heath, do you get hungry? - I do get hungry. And I, I kind of understand what real hunger is like now. Because, you know, I've mostly fast for roughly 24 hours is my typical fast. You know eating one meal a day. That's 22 to 24 hours of fasting window, but occasionally, and there's various reasons why, but I'll do an extended fast. So up to three days. Especially if I was really rough on myself over the weekend like I was at your house the other day. Just eating cake and having a lot of high fructose things, and just enjoying a social event without fear and no shame. So I might fast for three days after that. And so I will get hungry when it's my normal time to eat, which is about 4:30 in the afternoon is when I start to get hungry. And then I'm eating usually at 5:30, by the time I get home and cook whatever I'm gonna cook. A lot of times I don't even have to cook. I'll just eat a lot of fresh food that I've picked up. I'll make a salad with various things and avocado and a lot of mixed nuts and things like that where I don't even have to cook. So that even makes it more convenient. But yeah, I definitely-- - I was gonna ask you-- - I definitely get hungry. - Okay. I think that makes people feel a little bit better. And I do find it interesting that sometimes we can curb hunger simply by drinking some water. - Mm-hmm. - A lot of times our body is getting, is sending out some confusing signals. We think we're so hungry, but actually we're thirsty, we're not adequately hydrated. So I know that's a little trick that I use sometimes to kind of get me through. I've heard you discuss before, and I think it's such a great point that we wanna make on this, as we kind of wrap this up, is if you have done your fasting window and you're about to enter into your eating window, is there something specific that you do to break that fast? To kind of minimize the effect on your blood sugar? - So great question. You know I think most of what I do is related to what I, the ideas that I got out of that book, "The Obesity Code." And one of the things that he points to is that before the obesity crisis, which happened in about 1977-1978 is where it began, the diet of the basic American was about 60% fat, about 30% protein, and only about 10% carbs. And so I try to model my meals after that. And so I'll try to hit as much fat as possible early in the eating window. So I'll hit a full avocado, which is probably, what, 400 calories? Just almost, I don't know if it's 50% fat, but it's a great deal of fat right there. - It's just a good healthy fat. A good healthy fat. - That, and then a big old handful of mixed nuts. Not peanuts, but cashews and hazelnuts, and true nuts. Not legumes, I guess. And so I'll hit that, which is a lot of fat. I'll be drinking water. I drink coffee throughout the day. And if I am gonna skip dinner I'll usually drink tea, like a flavored tea or something like that just to, like you said you wanna fill up on as much liquid as possible, sort of curb the hunger. I wouldn't really call it hunger pain. It's sort of your body is telling you you're hungry, but it's not really pain. It's the, we have a lot, we can go a lot further than we think we can on not eating. And so I'd say it gook me a while to get used to that. I didn't go into this eating one meal a day, I had to work up to that, of course, obviously over weeks. But yeah so I'll hit those fats first. I do eat dairy so I'll eat a big hunk of cheddar cheese or something, and then after that I'll typically make a salad with whatever fresh, you know I'll try to pick up fresh salad ingredients probably every other day from the grocery store. It's on the way home from work so I'll make a salad, throw some pieces of chicken on it, some feta cheese, a lot of olive oil and vinegar. So one of the other key ideas in the book is that if you wanna protect yourself from an insulin spike there's two real protectors, and that is vinegar and fiber. And so as much fiber as you can get, and as much vinegar. I would say at least a teaspoon of vinegar in your meal can really help curve the spike. As much as 40% less spike the next morning. - That's fantastic. That's fantastic. And I love what all you've gleaned just from your own personal research. And guys this is why I wanted you to hear from Heath, not a health expert, but just a real guy with real results, who decided to be his own best health advocate, and really kind of got sick and tired of being sick and tired and overweight. So took it into his own hands to do something about it, and kind of ditch that diet mentality, and decided to start this new idea, which is still pretty controversial. You know we can ask any doctor, any other health expert, any other health expert, and you're gonna get all kinds of different opinions. But what I love most about this is that, Heath, you found what worked for you. And it has continued to work. I love the fact that you don't have that diet mentality. Cannot thank you enough for joining us today. This is such a hot topic, we could probably go on for two more hours, right? - For sure. - Well I know some folks might have questions for you, they might wanna reach out to you, so where can they connect with you, Heath? - So probably the best way is either Instagram or Facebook, social media. You can follow me. You can look me up on Facebook, it's Just Heath Gallimore. I'm probably the only Heath Gallimore in Melissa, Texas. I'm pretty sure you can find me that way. Instagram I'm Heath_man, m-a-n. You know that's, I connect with a lot of my students that way, through Instagram. Other than that, probably just email, [email protected]. Pretty easy. - Fantastic. Fantastic. Heath, thank you so very much, I appreciate your openness and your honesty. And just providing some additional insight and education on a very interesting hot topic, this whole hot topic of intermittent fasting. Guys, also remember to subscribe to us on your favorite platform of choice. You can like us on Facebook, on Instagram, @inspirehealthyharmony. And guess what, you can also join in the hotly debated topic in our discussion group on that Facebook group where we discuss intermittent fasting so you can weigh in with your personal opinion. You can also check us out at inspirhealthyharmony.com. So until we meet again, I hope you have a great day. Bye y'all. Are you wondering if Intermittent Fasting is a good fit for you? Tired of trying to decipher all the conflicting health info alone? Consider a 1 hour virtual coaching session with me. As a Dietitian and Certified Functional Medicine Health Coach, I've got your back. You don't have to figure this all out on your own. I know you will walk away encouraged and empowered! Book here https://www.inspirehealthyharmony.com/coaching.html#/ |
