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Rules for Fasting & Ketosis

fasting. Let's talk about fasting. I mentioned that I like fasting as a way to increase what's called cellular autopsy ji, or the ability of cells to turn over and clean themselves up and clear up the junk that accumulates in your body through life. Going long periods of time without eating is a good way to do that. Like I mentioned yesterday, there's zero evidence that eating more than three times a day elevates your metabolism or that snacking somehow increases your metabolism so you don't have to eat constantly. And by not eating constantly, you actually allow your body to clean up. And it has a really cool anti aging and longevity effect, so I f that's intermittent fasting. I try to intermittent fast almost every day for about 12 to 16 hours. I mean that I go for his long a period of time. It's possible, Um, right now, while I'm travelling, you know, I've been showing up here to these creative life sessions and eating breakfast at about 7 38 AM or so. That's really weird for me. I ...

usually breakfast around 10 a.m. I wait a long time after I wake up to eat, and I don't eat after about nine PM or so at night the night before. So every single day I'm working in a good 12 hours worth of just not eating, allowing my body to clean up junk. So intermittent fasting about 12 16 hours of duration. So let that leaves you with an 8 to 12 hour eating window per day. That's a really good strategy for getting some of the benefits of fasting. Fasting is stressful fasting. Fasting is is, ah, mild form of this whore, me sis or this uncomfortableness. Or, you know, this this ability to create anti fragility that we kind of geeked out on a little bit yesterday. But if you're living a high stress lifestyle and combining not eating along with that, that can create a little bit of excessive cortisol. So you do need to be careful. And there are. There are ways that you can hack living a busy lifestyle and still getting adequate calories, and it was just talking Ah, earlier with with somebody here who's using M C T oil because they didn't have enough time to eat calories today, so they just put this medium chain triglyceride oil into their drink into their tea, and they're using that as a way to get calories as we're going through their day. And so you know, you don't necessarily want to combine fasting or zero calorie intake with a stressful day. So if you know you've got a stressful day, it's actually recommended to eat. You just might want to eat foods that you can get in quickly, you know, like a smoothie or M C T oil or something of that nature. Next, you want to avoid doing hard or long workouts fasted unless muscle loss is your goal. I weigh £ right now. Um, I used to weigh £210 was a bodybuilder. The way that I got rid of £35 of muscle weight was by going out and doing triathlon style workouts in a fasted state without amino acids on board thought carbohydrates, on board, just drinking water. Um, my wife can attest to the fact that she's kind of watched me over the past eight years, get skinnier and skinnier and skinnier by using that approach, actually shed muscle so I could get faster for the sport that I wanted to dio. I'm not necessarily arguing that that is, that is healthy. I'm actually a bit lighter than I would care to be right now. But unless muscle loss is your goal, you need to avoid doing hard workouts or doing long workouts in a fasted state. That's why if you want to gain muscle getting up and doing a really hard work out in a fasted state, you do need to be careful with that. Um, you know, if your goal is simultaneous muscle gain and fat loss and you're willing to accept slower rates of muscle gain than getting up and doing a facet, hard workout would kind of be OK. But you need to understand that fasting and stress once again, is something you need to be careful with unless you want to go. Cata Bolic. Okay, so for fasting, some of things that can help you get through a fast, especially if you're going to do that occasional 20 out of 24 hour fast that I talked about some of things that can still keep your body in that state where you're getting some of the benefits of fasting and cellular cleanup. But you're also not going into a full on cattle bolic state, or you don't feel like you want to your arm off. You could use amino acids. They make amino acids capsules and amino acids powders. There's two forms of amino acids. Branch chain amino acids and essential amino acids and essential amino acids. Air one of the best sources. They're more expensive, but they give your body all of the amino acids that it's unable to make itself. Usually there's eight or nine different amino acids, depending on which nutritionists you ask. But it's either a capsule form or a powder form. I've got links to a few of my preferred brands over a Ben Greenfield fitness dot com slash creativelive. But amino acids can really help, um, and using right around the range of about 10 to 20 grams of amino acids on a day that your fasting you can split that into like 45 grand portions. Kinda help get you through that day. Medium chain triglycerides, which I mentioned earlier, you know, doing something like the bulletproof coffee approach where you got some caffeine and some M. C. T is going into your body. You can still get a lot of the benefits of fasting and calorie restriction and longevity and anti aging benefits of fasting. While doing that, Um, however, you need to understand that from a weight loss standpoint, your body still treats those trackless rides as calories. So even though you get some of the fasting benefits, you still need to count those as calories. If you're drinking medium chain triglycerides. Andi, that would be like this stuff. This is the stuff that I use from the from the upgraded self website Um, just M C T oil, which is like a like a concentrated form of coconut oil greens. I really like to use those as a way to detox the body during a fast I mentioned greens like thes enter prime capsules that all use. I don't recommend a calorie based green source like this if you're fasting, so these air greens. But there's like 200 calories and a serving, so you'd want to use like a powdered green source or greens capsule rather than using like a greens meal replacement powder. If you're fasting and you want to get those benefits of fasting than two of the things that can help out Number one is electrolytes, something like an effervescent electrolyte tablet dropped into a glass of water to help, kind of keep your appetite satiated. Some people find that they feel really good when they fast while they are traveling well, they're doing something like taking a plane on an international flight. And I found sometimes that I could do that, but I can't get by without electrolytes. So I'll take something like this on a plane and actually drop these effervescent electrolyte tablets into my water once every hour to kind of help string my body along. And it keeps the appetite satiated. Keeps your blood pressure up in the absence of calories, things like that. And then caffeine can enhance fatty acid utilization when you're fasting. And so using green tea or using coffee in moderate amounts, not over doing it. We talked about central nervous system stimulation and adrenal fatigue when you overdo caffeine, but in moderate amounts, um, or mild amounts caffeine kind of help you when you're fasting to get even more of the fatty acid burning benefits. So, um, we're gonna talk about ketosis in a second, but before we do, let's take some more questions. You guys have questions or is anyone who's in the chat room right now Questions about fasting, kids or anything we talked about Peter, questioned about kids Have a four year old is a finicky eater. So, Um, and I'm also interested in his brain optimization and and growth. So would you recommend the same amount of or not same out, but the same kinds of things that adult would take that be any kind of problems? It's why we give our kids a multivitamin that's chock full of omega three fatty acids. It's why our kids do things like eat sardines for lunch. It's why we rubbed fish oil into their feet when they were babies, before they could even eat the stuff that's are incredibly important for a growing child. So absolutely, for everything from nerve Milo Nation Teoh brain growth, Higher fat intake for a kid is really good. Eso does that work actually rubbing oil into the skin because he would not touch sardine so that I can actually you can get some absorption if he doesn't care for the flavor official, there's some really fantastic, like there's one called, I think like Omega Swirl or something like that. It's like this orange slash lemon flavored kind of fish oil that tastes really good. There was a lemon flavored cod liver oil that we were doing for a while. That's really good, and our kids love the flavor of that stuff. They love their multivitamin, they love the flavor of it. And so there's there's a way that you can get benefits and it's not chock full of sugar. I believe that one does have a bit of stevia in it, but, um, yeah, there are ways to give a kid fish oil without necessarily forcing them to dive into a can of sardines. So, yeah, Cheryl, what about the practicality of some of the intermittent fasting things you're talking about? So, for example, if I finish eating by 8 p.m. And I go to bed between 10 and 12 and I get up in the morning, I'm not eating until about 10 o'clock, so I've naturally got this thing going that I never thought about as being intermittent fasting. For me, it was more in 16 hours, so I'm wondering if fat loss is my goal. What do we need to change if I'm not interested in eating every two hours? Like some other people were trying to convince me to dio doing needed every two hours? No, you definitely. Only indeed Every two hours. I mean, if you were using that scenario, you'd get up on you have breakfast, and then perhaps you could have either a late lunch or lunch is just an afternoon snack, And then you have a nice, complete dinner full of some of the nutrient dense foods that we talked about earlier. That's it. Okay. Like that. Still that 14 hours of not eating exactly that's still okay. Yeah. And really what I tend to see more often or the women for which fasting tends to be stressful and cause hormonal issues. These are the women who don't express it the way that you just expressed it. But they're like, I've been forcing myself to go for two hours after I get up, and I'm so hungry, but I'm doing this fastened to him and get through it. And I'm like, No, that's that's actually a stress on your body right now. And we actually need to present you from a neuro endocrine standpoint with an entirely different scenario that nourishes your body as soon as you wake. But usually, you know, that person has already expressed that, that they're going out of their way. I be hungry. So, yeah, what about online way? Have quite a few questions coming in from online If we go back, Teoh the section on women specifically, those questions coming in about foods that are particularly good for women to eat during menstruation because the body has lost nutrients and minerals. And if there's anything that can help with the symptoms that go along with that also, in terms of foods and supplements that you can do naturally, right? Exactly. A lot of the supplements that help with Nora transmitter replay Shin can help quite a bit with mood during the menstrual periods. So five htp and tyrosine is one example, um, this traffic or supplement that I showed earlier for neuro transmitter Ripley Shin. It can work really well for something like that, and it's just basically a neurotransmitter. Precursors mixed in a correct ratio toe actually stabilize your mood when you're in a situation where your mood is basically really getting aggravated. um, the same company that makes Alfa Brain, which I also have up here as like like a brain nor tropic. And this is one that I've experimented and used with a little bit. They also make one called New Mood, kind of similar to this travel course stuff on bats. Also, another supplement that's made by on its called new mood. Jessa just is used new mood before, and it's it's helped her out quite a bit. So, um, CIA as faras nutrients go. The biggest one, of course, is iron. And I really like that florid ICS stuff, the ferret empire of phosphate supplement. If that tends to be an issue for you, and you tend to find yourself with anemic like symptoms, So, yeah, let's talk about ketosis and let's take some more questions. Um, and this is, by the way, the final slide for this workshop. So we get to do questions the rest of the time, so we'll have plenty of time to do that. So, first of all, ketosis, which I've mentioned a few times, is something that I've personally used. A za bio hack meaning that, for example, this summer for 16 weeks I consumed a diet that was to 90% fat, almost pure fat. And when your body burns fatty acids for energy and puts them through what's called the Krebs cycle, it kicks off what are called key tones. And so you generate these high levels of key tones and key tones can actually cross your blood brain barrier and be used by your neurons as a fuel source. Using high amounts of fatty acids like that. If you're able to train your body to actually absorb and utilize that amount of fatty acids, and you're able to tweak your diet to the point where you can get to that ratio is really, really good for turning yourself into a fat burning machine for, say, something like endurance performance you avoid. When you consume a high fat diet like that, a lot of blood sugar fluctuations that tend to cause nerve inflammation or blood vessel inflammation or the formation of some of those things like advanced like ation end products that we talked about yesterday, the adherence of sugar to cholesterol to cause increased risk of cardiovascular disease or the adherence of sugar, two proteins to cause increase like aging on the skin or aging in the muscle, so there are some cool benefits that go along with ketosis. But again, like I mentioned earlier, it's kind of difficult. It's not necessarily natural, but there are some cool benefits. The other thing from a neural standpoint. People who deal with with epilepsy and seizures and things like that that the ketogenic diet has actually been trying to be very therapeutic and situations such as that. So there are some situations in which ketosis comes in handy. Some issues, first of all, blood pressure tends to really drop as soon as you start to tweak your diet up to that amount of fat intake. So if you experiment with dropping or carbohydrates down to his Lois to 10% you're gonna find that you get dizzy. And sometimes that is not necessarily because your blood glucose is low. It's because your blood pressure is low and you oftentimes need to do things like adding a bunch of sea salt or even used like chicken bullion cubes. Like I mentioned during the supplementation Performance protocol toe actually keep the blood pressure up when you're on a ketosis based diet. If you actually really, truly want to turn yourself into a fat burning machine, and you're using ketosis for something like a marathon or an adventure race or an iron man. And you want that kind of mental stability and physical performance longevity that you get with ketosis. You have to avoid what's called cycling ketosis, which would be where you go. This is really popular, like five days of eating like lower carbohydrate, and then two days of car bloating are going all day with low carb and then carb loading in the evening. That type of cycling Kato Genesis can actually knock out a lot of that fat burning efficiency that you'd get if you actually kept yourself in ketosis. So there's kind of two different forms of ketosis staying in ketosis and doing cycling ketosis. And if your purpose is to get some of these mental and physical bio hacks of ketosis, staying in ketosis will do better for you. When it comes to that, you can use supplemental key tones. This is a brand new thing that has just come to market. But if you wanted to get a lot of the effects of high blood key tones. And there's a way that you can actually measure blood key tones or measure breath key tones I have around here somewhere. Ah, breath key tone monitor that you can actually blow into to test whether or not you're in. You're in ketosis. Um, and I have a link to those that Ben Greenfield fitness dot com slash creativelive. They're made by a company called Met Tron, but you can literally just blow into a tube to see whether or not you're in ketosis. Um, basically, you can use supplemental key tones. You can actually consume key tones. They're called beta hydroxy Butera rate salts. There's a supplement called kiddo Force. You can also order these direct from like a chemical laboratories. They're not FDA approved, but what they do is they increase your levels of blood key tones and actually give you all of the mental performance enhancement benefits that people go after when they do things like drink bulletproof coffee or use M. C T. Oil. But they allow you to hack your way into that scenario much, much more quickly, and there's something that you could technically use during physical performance. I'm personally still on experimentation mode when it comes to liquid key tones, And I recently did an interview at Ben Greenfield fitness dot com on using key tones as an actual fuel source. So what I mean by this is that rather than eating fats and relying on the burning of those fatty acids to generate key tones instead, just drinking the key tones themselves. So that's what that's what I mean, when I say use supplemental key tones, you can actually put your body into ketosis without necessarily using high fat intake to do it. What you miss out on, of course, are some of the benefits of controlling your blood sugar because you are by definition, if you're doing that, not necessarily going low carb. Finally, you want to pay attention to your thyroid or your body temperature when you are in ketosis. Because, as I mentioned earlier, carbohydrates are necessary for the conversion of T three and active T four. Hi hi. Fatty acid levels can inhibit some thyroid receptor activity. Um, and you content to see thyroid activity deficits and a drop in metabolism and dropping body temp. This is something I struggled with. I I kind of messed up my thyroid a little bit when I was experimenting with high levels of physical activity and those 12 to 16 weeks of ketosis. And it turned out that I was able to keep my body in ketosis consuming up to over 400 calories of carbohydrates per day when I thought I had to be a far fewer amounts of carbohydrates per day than that. And so I did some damage to my thyroid. I went through two weeks of testing. My body temperature found it to be low on a consistent basis, testing most both axillary and Orel. Body temperature upon waking every morning consistently low for two weeks gave me a pretty good clue that thyroid was low tested. TSH. Remember, we talked about TSH and you needing to be between about 0.5 and two point owes. I was up in the mid four point some things when I tested TSH and this all happened just from me eating a low carbohydrate diet. So you need to be careful if you're combining something like Etoh sis with performance. Um, there are some ways that you can hack this. For example, organ meats are really, really high in a lot of those thyroid precursors that can help you from going low thyroid. If you're limiting carbohydrate intake, there's another supplement that I use. I recently tested thyroid. I'm fine now. I'm completely turned around. I went through about a day protocol. This stuff this is Tiro Gold rather than it being like a synthetic form of thyroid. Like Synthroid, which is just t three. This is actually a desiccated thyroid that's a mix of T one T two, T three and t four. So it's very, very similar to just your body's natural thyroid makeup. So this is what I used to dig myself out of that hole. I researched this stuff. I called him on the phone. I, um, kind of made sure that it really was like from a good organic source, but this is just like a desiccated thyroid gland. Now that one's called thyroid gold. Cairo Gold stuff is not cheap. It's like I want to say it's like 60 bucks a bottle or something like that. But, um, you know, that's that's what I had to use for kind of mitigating the effects of ketosis and excuse me. Ketosis with too low carbohydrate intake, basically was the error I made