Okay, so what is intermittent fasting? Intermittent fasting breaks your day into two windows in a fed window or eating window or a fasted window? Pretty much, that’s it. And so this starts after your last meal. So after your last meal in the next eight to 12 hours, you’re really pretty much just absorbing that meal. There’s really no optimal weight loss or fat burning. But at 12 hours, this is when you can start to say, okay, I am on the fastest date. You’re at the very edge of entering that optimal fat burning zone, where it would be beneficial for weight loss. And your human growth hormone levels are rising. So it’s easier to add muscle. But you’re not  burning fat yet. Now 16 hours, your body is in a fasted, fat burning zone. 

This is a great time to exercise, to build lean muscle. But you’re not quite at the optimal fasting sweet spot, you’re just at the tip of it. But at 18 hours, your body’s ability to burn fat is growing exponentially and you are well within that fasting sweet spot. And by our 20, your body is a fat burning machine. You have high levels of human growth hormone, and a great time to work out, to build muscle. At 24 hours, your body has reached the peak of fat burning, and the peak of that fasting sweet spot. And you have reached that pinnacle of where you would be burning fat.  No, that sounds so exciting, does that sound? but I want to tell you that aside from fat-burning, You also have some other benefits of fasting. It decreases your insulin, which is of course, why you’re able to burn fat. 

But also cell autophagy and autophagy is essentially cells committing suicide. And that’s so important because if a cell is damaged, we don’t want it to replicate in us. right? That’s how diseases build in us. So if a cell is damaged, we want it to recognized. This isn’t a good place for me and then it commits suicide itself. That’s called autophagy and this is one of the benefits of fasting. Another benefit of fasting is gut health. It’s fantastic for our guts to rest especially if you have a condition, like what I’ve had is SIBO, small intestinal, bacterial overgrowth. Where my body is just so happy when it doesn’t have food in there and it doesn’t have to digest. So you can see it’s exciting. The body does some amazing things in a fasted state.  It’s really fantastic for health and wellness. It’s a tool.  So I want you to start thinking of it as a tool.  That’s available to you. And it may or may not be the right time to do it.  So, how do you know if fasting is not the right time for you? 

Before I tell you what, how to discern, whether it’s the right time for you to try fasting, let me tell you how I suggest you get into fasting. So this isn’t the discerning part, and this is just the, Hey, I think I want to try this. I’ve already talked to the Lord. He says it’s safe for me to try, okay? So what you’ll do is you’ll just start to push her back fist back about 30 minutes. Take one week to push it back about 30 minutes the next week to push it back again the next week to keep going and going and going until you reach the optimal window that you want to practice. But I don’t suggest anyone’s jumps into intermittent fasting. Especially if you want to give it a go. And when I say give it a go, I really think that when we make dietary changes or implement a new tool, To really see if it works. And it’s beneficial for us. Adherence to it for probably two to three months is best. 

So that said no matter what we’re doing, I like for people to take that first month to be very gradual. To implement a new advanced technique like this. And so if you do it gradually, it will feel natural. And then those last two months you will be able to experiment with does this really have the effect that I want? All right. So now how do you know if intermittent fasting is for you? And you mentioned fasting can only be effective if it is what’s holding up your weight loss. If it is preventing you from getting to the next level of health and wellness. If it is not causing you stress and mind drama. But what I do find is that unless you have dealt with what is actually holding back your weight loss, Intermittent fasting will only distract you and make your weight loss journey feel even more stressful. So let me give you a couple examples of how you’ll know that if you find your stress eater. Addressing stress, eating and learning how to get through the ups and downs of life. Without stress eating is where your attention should be. No matter how much intermittent fasting you do, it will not teach you how to get through the ups and downs of life without stress eating and eventually no matter what your window of eating is, or no matter what autophagy is happening or insulin regulation is happening your weight loss will still be held back because you have not learned how to get through the ups and downs of life without food.  

And this happened to one of the women in our community. She said, Denise, when I would try intermittent fasting, I could stick to the fasting window. But then when I was eating, I was just emotionally eating the whole time. I have another woman who was doing intermittent fasting and she thought it was really helpful for her. She went through a trauma, lost a family member and was living in grief and because of that and her emotional state when she wanted to do intermittent fasting, she saw that she couldn’t stick to it. She felt like such a failure for eating three meals a day.  But it just wasn’t the right time for her. For some reason, she was having so much fear of not eating, so sometimes we have this as emotional eaters, you can have this fear of food scarcity and your body just doesn’t feel safe not eating regularly. That doesn’t mean you’re over eating or emotionally eating, but it does mean that there’s no need to restrict your food or try intermittent fasting if your body isn’t ready for it. So if what’s holding back your weight loss is your stress eating; You’ve got a lot of stress in your life. 

And you can listen to my podcast, the one before this, that’s all about “How Stress is What’s Really Keeping You Overweight”.  But if you’ve gotten to a point in your weight loss journey where you feel calm around food. You can make an easy to stick to meal plan if you’re eating foods you love, you don’t feel like the foods that you’re eating feel depriving or restrictive. Then you, huh? It might be time to dip your toe into intermittent fasting. I will tell you what the research says for weight loss. The most effective fasting is 24-20/4, which means your 20 hours of fasting, and 4 hours of eating. That feels kind of extreme, you guys. I would probably say that if you wanted to dip your toe into intermittent fasting, again, easier ways into it. And practice it for two months to see if it’s giving you the changes that you want.  You will not get to a 20 hour fasted state. Well, in my opinion, you will not get to a 20 hour fast and state with a four hour eating window. Unless the composition of your diet changes significantly. And I just mean that likely, unless you’ve learned how to become fat adapted at that point, which means that you’re eating very low carbohydrates, high protein, high fat. Your body will likely not be able to sustain a natural 20 hour fasting. And I say natural, meaning that you won’t be. Just living on diet sodas or coffee. So if you want to do more therapeutic fasting like that.  

Changing your diet to be low carbohydrate, high fat, high protein. We’ll allow your body to be what’s called fat adapted and fat adapted means that your. Using your stored body fat for energy. But a caveat to that, boy, this is just going off on a whole bunch of rabbit trails today. But a caveat to that is that you have to intentionally work toward becoming fat adapted in that process in and of itself is anywhere from three to six weeks. It’s got to be an intentional process.  You don’t become fat adapted by accident and you won’t get there in two weeks. So, again, that’s another advanced technique. And I just say that because it is available to you when the time is right and you’ll know when the time is right, because you will be super connected to the Lord in all of your food and weight decisions. The Lord will be guiding you a hundred percent. Okay. Not that we can ever do anything a hundred percent, but you will be walking very closely with him and asking him decisions like this.  

And that’s what happened to me three years ago. Three years ago, he put fasting on my heart. And I thought, ah, I’m just not ready. I was afraid. It would trigger me  to binge. I’d been in food recovery for seven years at that point. And it just didn’t feel right. But he put it in my heart and I became very interested that I was willing to read books. A great book is by Dr. Jay Richards, Who’s a Catholic scientist, called eat, fast, feast.  And so I was reading this book I found it very interesting, but I’ll tell you what chapter one was. Chapter one was really recommending what I just said, which was getting into a fat adapted state by following a ketogenic diet. And I was so shocked. I had no idea that would be in the book. I was still reading the book. I read it with the mind that it’s interesting, but that’s not for me. And I’ll tell you, on a Monday morning, the Lord said, try that. I want you to try that tonight and I was like, what do you mean? That’s crazy. That feels extreme. I was afraid it would send me into binge-eating. I don’t know, I was just so afraid. And he said, just try it for just one day.  And I tried it for one day.  And the end of the story is that it wasn’t comfortable. And the only reason why I kept doing it is because the Lord’s like, I’ve got something in this for you.  And then you led me on a journey of more fasting. Which was crazy. 

I never thought I would do that. So for two years, I practiced intermittent fasting. And I practiced a ketogenic diet. Things were going really well until I started getting into more of what is “Dirty Keto”. What I was doing was, I was allowing myself to be in a ketogenic state but I allowed a lot of keto junk foods back into my diet. Which essentially it was like comfort eating with these keto junk foods with a lot of sugar-free sweeteners. I say a lot only because it was a lot for my body. My sibo, which was my small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, did not like those artificial sweeteners and did not like the sugar alcohols to the point that I had become so sensitive to even natural and safe foods. 

And so, He asked me to change my diet again. He prompted me to try something. He prompted me to remove everything that I was sensitive to, and to only stick to a few foods, an elimination diet. And it sounded crazy and it sounded extreme. But that’s exactly what the Lord wanted for me. And what’s so crazy is that going on that gut healing journey? On that elimination diet I’ve gained 15 to 20 pounds, isn’t that crazy? But it’s not emotional eating. It’s by doing what he said.  

It’s just bananas you guys. My point is, is that when you walk so closely with the Lord, and you can ask him what he wants for your food and weight. Then you can find peace no matter what he says. And that’s how you’ll know you’ll be ready for intermittent fasting. So the end of the story is this. I was falling into this gut healing protocol. My gut was healed. I had a lot of benefits.   But I wasn’t so comfortable in my body. And so now I’m in a season of intentionally troubleshooting. And seeing what parts of this gut healing I can maintain. And what will allow me to let go of any excess weight that I have now. I don’t know, maybe this is what my healthy body looks like in this season of my life. And if that is, I’m surrendered to that. I said, it’s just a big experiment. I’m just troubleshooting. I want to keep the benefits. And see if there’s any excess.  So I’m just doing a few experiments here and there. I’ll tell you some more about that later. But that is what walking closely with the Lord looks like with your food and weight. That’s what surrender looks like. And once you reach that point. Where you’re consulting with the Lord. He will tell you what he wants for you. 

He will nod at you, he will put fasting on your heart. He will put intermittent fasting on your heart. It will not feel like you’re grasping and you’re chasing weight loss, nope, that’s what it won’t feel like. And that’s when intermittent fasting will hold back your progress. That’s when it will feel stressful, that’s when you will not get the benefit of it. So I hope you can detect the difference between that because no matter where you are in your journey with food and weight loss.  Meeting yourself where you are, and saying, and turning to the Lord and asking what he wants for you. Is the answer he will reveal to you what he wants for you, what your next step is? He probably won’t tell you the whole story. But he will tell you the next step. And if that feels really confusing, I want to offer you a really simple next step. I’m doing a free workshop called Weight Loss Over 40, What’s really holding you back. And, you know, how, what worked for you in your twenties and thirties has stopped working for you in your forties. Well, of all of the women that I work with, I have observed that there are actually three things that are holding back. Weight loss for women over 40. And it’s not a diet and it’s not, not having enough willpower and it’s not, not exercising enough. It’s Friday, February 23rd at 11:00 AM, Central, 12 Eastern, and 9.Pacific.

So I invite you to come to my workshop. And just listen with an open mind and allow the Lord to reveal to you what he wants you to know.  What he wants your next step to be. I promise you, you will leave that workshop with so much hope and clarity and direction. So go to weightloss withtheholyspirit.com to get your spot today.