What happens to your body when you start intermittent fasting for a week? Well, the answer is gonna come as a surprise. So here’s the thing. The vast majority of people in this country have such high insulin levels, have such insulin resistant levels are so metabolically inflexible that they absolutely do not do well with intermittent fasting. Shocking but true. You’ve seen in my last book and heard me talk that 50% of normal weight individuals in the United States are metabolically inflexible. Now, just to review very quickly, normally our mitochondria should be able to take sugar, glucose and turn it into a TP, our energy currency. They should also, when the need arrives, instantaneously switch from burning sugar as a fuel to burning free fatty acids and ketones as a fuel that come from our fat cells and from our liver. And that switch should happen instantaneously. Very much like a hybrid car can switch from gasoline, powering the engine to the battery, powering the uh motors.
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And that switch can happen instantaneously. But 50% of normal weight individuals can’t make that switch. That means when they stop eating, they can’t switch over to immediately drawing on battery power or releasing fat from their fat cells. And I’ll talk about why that is in a second. If you look at overweight people and the vast majority of Americans are overweight, 88% of overweight people can’t switch between burning sugar and burning fat. And 99.5% of obese individuals, and that’s a ton of us in the United States, cannot make that switch. Okay, so why is that so important? Well, when you have high insulin levels, insulin is a fat storage hormone and insulin’s job is to take any extra food that you eat and store it for harder times. That makes sense. But insulin is going up and up and up in our bloodstream as we eat more and more processed foods, we exercise less.
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So the vast majority of Americans have elevated insulin levels. So not only is insulin a fat storage hormone, but when insulin is elevated, it prevents fat from leaving the fat cell. It’s literally blocking the exit and until insulin levels fall, all that fat that’s in all of our fat cells is literally locked in there. And you could stop eating, but you will not release the fat until your insulin levels begin to fall. And here’s the bad news. It may take two to three to four weeks of dramatically reducing your food intake or your carbohydrate intake for insulin levels to fall enough to start releasing fat from fat cells. Number two, ketones are made in the liver from free fatty acids that are released from fat cells. Ketones are designed to aid your brain and your muscles in times of starvation by keeping the brain and muscles functioning.
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But if you can’t release fat from fat cells, then there’s no free fatty acids going to the liver to make ketones. So what happens? You don’t have any sugar in your blood. You don’t have any free fatty acids in your blood. You don’t have any ketones going to your brain. And what happens? You crash, you get headachey, you get weak, you get hangry. You just do not feel well and that’s your body saying, Hey, I can’t make this switch. So when people start trying to cut out a meal, they, ’cause they heard, oh, you know, I need to have my first meal of the day at noon and you’re used to eating a breakfast at seven o’clock in the morning, that’s five hours of going without fuel, coupled with what you went through in the night where you don’t have any chance to keep your brain happy, much less your body happy.
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And that’s why this is so difficult to do. Uh, I can’t tell you the number of people, and I’ve written about this, who fail a ketogenic diet or an intermittent fasting diet because they just have too high an insulin level to access what they really need to do. And 60% of people who try a ketogenic diet, a low carb, high fat diet quit after a month. And it’s obvious why they quit. ’cause they quite frankly feel miserable. Now, this will happen if you are insulin resistant. I guarantee it. I like to use the example. Uh, I could, I could have King James LeBron teach me how to dunk a basketball. And as much as he would show me over and over and over again, I am height impaired compared to King James. And as much as I would like to replicate exactly what he was doing, I can’t do that.
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So when you see influencers, particularly young influencers who tell you how easy it is to do an intermittent fasting program, these are people who start with metabolic flexibility and they’re right. It’s really easy. Once you have metabolic flexibility, this is easy. But most people are starting from a place where they, with all the instructional in the world with all the, here’s what you should do, can’t get off the dime because they can’t break their metabolic flexibility. Alright, so how do we do it? Well, as I’ve talked about in my last two books, there’s actually a fairly easy way to get metabolic flexibility and rather, you know, jumping in the deep end of the pool and trying to push out your fasting period. What I ask you to do is one hour a week extend when you’re going to have breakfast. So if you have breakfast at seven o’clock in the morning this week, we’re gonna have it at eight o’clock in the morning and then take the weekend off, relax the following week, we’re gonna extend another hour, we’re going to go to nine o’clock in the morning and so on each week, rather than going, oh, you’re not going to eat until noon and you’ll fall on your face.
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Any of us can make it for one hour. And even that one hour change going slowly week after week will start to lower our insulin resistant. And I, I see this all the time now, there’s places where people kind of run into a brick wall. Let’s suppose you made it to nine o’clock and you’re pretty good at that, but then pushing to 10 o’clock. Then you go, oh, you know, I’m, I’m hungry, or I’m feeling weak. That’s actually telling you that this is, you still have insulin resistance and this is where you’re running into trouble. And as I talk about in the books, we got lots of tricks. One, get yourself a handful of nuts. It won’t break your fast. Have a teaspoon or a tablespoon of MCT oil. Have a bar that contains MCT oil. These are really easy tricks and just hold it at nine o’clock for another week and then try for nine 30.
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Lots of different ways. The other thing that I think is is important that I’ve talked about before is when you break your fast the first meal of the day, make it what’s called a mono meal. Make it either mostly carbohydrates or mostly protein or mostly fat, that actually makes it much easier for your mitochondria to power up and make energy. Now, how do you know when you’re metabolically flexible? Well, quite frankly, the longer you can go without these feelings, the more you’re becoming metabolically flexible. So long story short, for most of us, please, please, please do not jump off the deep end and try time restricted eating of six to eight hours a day. It’s gonna not work. Instead, try time restricted eating on a variable schedule of just extending your eating period one hour a week and watch what happens. The point of this is doing intermittent fasting for one week, you’re gonna see some most likely bad effects. But if you slowly but surely week after week, extend your intermittent fasting period, you are gonna feel the benefits. You are gonna see it on the scale, and that’s what I’m looking out for you to do.
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Now, fasting is all the rage, but it doesn’t have to mean total deprivation. In fact, there are a few smart things you can consume that won’t break your fast and may even make your fast more effective. Whether you’re fasting to support your gut burn fat, improve mental clarity, or extend your health span, this episode is for you. I’ll walk you through the surprising foods and drinks that won’t disrupt your fasting window and a few sneaky ones that might just break your fast. Plus, I’ll share some tips on how to fast smarter, not harder. But before we get into it, please don’t forget to like this video, subscribe and share it with someone who needs a little fasting clarity. Now a big question is, does whatever you’re going to put in your mouth stop ketone production? And quite frankly, that’s all you should be paying attention to.
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The reason you are doing a fast, an effective fast, or what I call time restricted eating is to spend more time in a 24 hour period where your producing ketones. Now ketones are a fuel that’s for cells, but ketones really are useful for one thing and one thing only. Ketones tell your mitochondria your energy producing organelles in almost all of your cells to waste calories, to uncouple, to repair the cells and simultaneously to make more mitochondria to help with the efforts. So anything that we can do to produce ketones for a longer period of time during a 24 hour period is a good thing in my many other people’s opinions. And that’s where the entire idea of time controlled eating or time restricted eating came about. So here’s the good news. Black coffee or tea with no sweeteners are the real deal. These can actually help with energy and mental focus while fasting.
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Black tea and coffee have polyphenols, which actually helps further mitochondrial and coupling without being in ketosis. So black coffee, black tea, green tea, great. Now the problem with milk in your coffee or tea is that milk contains sugar. But good news, heavy cream has no sugar and heavy cream will not break a fast. But unfortunately, heavy cream cancels out the polyphenol availability and you can add allulose or monk fruit. That doesn’t break the fast either. Just remember in general, fats do not spike insulin fats have no effect on insulin production. And just as a refresher, course sugars promote insulin production and proteins promote insulin production. And anytime your insulin rises, that shuts off the flow of free fatty acids out of fat cells. And with rare exception, it shuts out the production of ketones in your liver. Now there’s one exception MCT oil, but the great news is that MCT oil, unlike any other fat, is absorbed directly through the wall of your intestines and goes directly to your liver where it actually promotes ketone production regardless of what your insulin level is.
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Now this is in a way miraculous because adding MCT to your regimen will guarantee that you will manufacture ketones. Now what I like people to do is stick with small amounts. Initially you wanna start with a teaspoon and work your way up to a tablespoon. And preferably you want to have about three tablespoons of MCT oil per day and particularly look for MCTC eight MCT. That’s the most ketogenic of the MCT oils. Good news. Uh, my very popular product MCT Wellness doesn’t break your fast, but we’ll discuss more about that in a minute. Basil seeds. Now while I haven’t seen any research saying they won’t, I suspect basil seeds will not break your fast. Now here’s why. Basil seeds basically expand in water very much like chia seeds, but they have even more fiber, meaning that when you eat basil seeds, they’re great for making you feel full and staying hydrated.
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The great thing about it is that basil seeds are eaten by your gut microbiome, the good guys, and they actually tell your brain that they’re getting what they like to eat. And you don’t have to be hungry. You don’t have to look for anything more. Similarly, cilium husk. Now cilium husk is basically pure soluble fiber. Now this supports digestion without breaking your fast. So it’s easy to use, put it in water or tea, please don’t put it in juice or use sweeteners. It will absolutely keep you feeling full and curb cravings. Now there’s a study that I’ve mentioned in the last couple books that is really exciting to me and there’s a theory called the Gut Centric Theory of Hunger. The Chinese took volunteers and put them on a water fast for two weeks. All they got was water. Half the group got a hundred calories per day of non-absorbable soluble fiber.
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We can’t adjust it, we can’t absorb it as a fuel, but our gut buddies think it’s delicious. That’s their fuel. The group that just had water were obviously very hungry. The group that got the a hundred calories a day of mycelium powder had no hunger for two weeks on a water fast. Why is that? Because their gut buddies got what they wanted to eat and they literally sent text messages up to the brain. Like for instance, GLP one that says, Hey, our needs are met. You don’t need to go look for anything else. We’re fine. And the more we study the really deep connection between the good guys in our gut and our hunger centers in our brain, we realize that it’s the gut bugs that are driving hunger, not stretching out your stomach, not bulking up. It’s what these guys want to eat. So if you’re struggling with going a longer time between meals, don’t be afraid.
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Please add these soluble fibers. They won’t break your fast and they’ll support that you’re not hungry. Okay, what else? Works nuts work. Now this is controversial, but my friend Dr. Vaulter Longo’s research in humans show that in small amounts like a handful of pistachios, macadamias, or Brazil nuts are okay during fasting mimicking protocols. Now he gave people who were fasting a one of his nut bars and it’s called the Fast bar for their morning meal. The other group had to wait until lunch for their first meal and he studied ketone production and that bar did not break ketone production. Now that’s the only study that I know that’s ever been done in humans. So you can decide if that’s enough, but please avoid flavored nuts like salt and pepper or chili nuts or sugar nuts. Almost all of these have hidden sugars in the ingredients.
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And remember, sugar and or protein will break your fast. It will stop ketone production. Alright, let’s talk about supplements. Now, I love hearing from you. I get these questions all the time about what will break fast, what doesn’t. Now supplements like electrolyte powders are great and they do not break a fast, but please avoid anything sweetened with sugar or oftentimes fake sugars. Now my MCT Wellness or Vital Reds, which I’m drinking right now are just fine. If you’re using another brand of powder supplement, here’s what to watch out for that will kick you out of a fasted site. Just look for hidden sugars or proteins. I get asked all the time about gummy supplements. Now for the most part, you should skip these as a majority of them have sugar in them. Now I’m happy to say that our Gundry MD gummies do not break a fast because they use prebiotic fiber as their sweeteners and that your gut buddies something to eat.
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Now, natural sweeteners like Stevie or Monk fruit probably don’t break a fast, but it’s always something up to watch for other things to watch out for. Chewing gum, yes, even sugar free activates digestion and actually may pull you out of a fasted state and be wary of healthy fasting drinks that contain collagen protein or flavor boosters with sugar or amino acids. You have to remember that not only does sugar up your insulin production, but also protein consumption ups your insulin production. And once insulin arises, insulin shuts off release of free fatty acids from cells. And without the release of free fatty acids from cells, you are not going to make ketones with the exception of if you’re consuming MCT oil. So use these fasting safe options strategically to help you push through your non eating window, especially if you’re doing longer fast, like 16 plus hours.
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Now these tricks I’ve found with my patients really help first time, time restricted eaters ease into the habit of shortening their eating window and lengthening their non eating window without crashing or stressing the body. And please remember, fasting should support your health, not stress your system, and you really need to adjust when needed. Now I just wanna reiterate what time controlled eating or fasting actually is. Remember, the object of the game is this is not personal suffering. You’re not going on a religious quest. What I get from my patients is not about being hungry or being a monk in a monastery. Fasting means that you are going to limit the amount of time during a 24 hour period when you are not eating. That’s what that means, going 24 hours without eating, going 48 hours without eating, going two weeks without eating more and more.
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We’re realizing that’s not a good idea for reasons that I’ve gone into on other podcasts, but the more we can stay in a continuous period of fasting beyond about 12 hours, the more benefit we get from mitochondrial and coupling, which may be the greatest health span longevity trick there is. The good news is that once we stop eating about eight hours later, if you are metabolically flexible, you will start making ketones as a natural process of not eating. So that means let’s suppose you stop eating at eight o’clock at night and you go to bed at 10, about four o’clock in the morning, you will start making ketones and you will start uncoupling mitochondria and you’ll start getting the benefits that ketones give. But if you start eating at eight o’clock, you only got about four hours of benefit. If you start eating at nine o’clock, you get five hours of benefit, 10 o’clock, six hours of benefit, 11 o’clock, seven hours of benefit noon, eight hours of benefit of being in ketosis.
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So the longer I can push that out, the better you’re gonna do. And this has been confirmed in human studies, particularly the Italian athlete studies who a seven hour window had remarkable benefit in reducing insulin like growth factor in improving performance. So the more I can get you to a six to eight hour eating window, the better you’re gonna do. And again, you don’t want to do this overnight, you don’t want to dive into the deep end of the pool without learning how to swim. And that’s why taking baby steps of pushing break fast a little farther each morning each week is gonna make a big difference. And know the tricks. When you are not doing well, when your brain isn’t working well, when you’re getting hangry, you can give your gut buddies what they want to eat and keep going. And so these tricks that we’ve just talked about are a good way of getting food into your stomach that isn’t gonna break your fast.
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So if you really want to do Dr. Longo’s a fasting mimicking diet, you know that a week long vegan fast once a month works wonders compared to daily time restricted eating. And I have that vegan week-long fast in multiple of my books. You just have to eat vegan for five days. That’s pretty dog uneasy. So with the right tools, you can make fasting more sustainable and more powerful. So stick to this list, listen to your body and as always, let your gut be your guide. The three worst fasting trends. Alright, fasting is the health trend a juror, no doubt. And that’s why there’s a lot of misinformation out there about this ancient health practice and a cornerstone of almost every religion to achieve enlightenment. Everyone is talking about it, but not everyone knows the dangerous side effects if don’t if you don’t fast correctly. Now, don’t get me wrong, fasting is one of the keys to longevity and vitality, but you need to know how to do it properly in order to reap the maximum benefits.
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So today I’m gonna address the top three fasting trends to avoid at all costs and what you can do instead. Alright, number one, cutting your window of eating too drastically. Now if you read any of my books, my favorite way to fast is intermittent fasting or time controlled eating. Now that basically says that we are going to shorten the period of time during the day that we consume our food. That’s intermittent fasting. Time controlled eating means we shorten that window, preferably down to about six to eight hours a day. Now, as I talk about a lot in unlocking the keto code, unfortunately if you are eating used to eating 12 to 16 hours every day, and the average American, believe it or not, eats 16 hours a day, literally from the minute they get up to the minute they go to bed. And as I show in my last two books, most of us are insulin resistant and metabolically inflexible.
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That means when you stop eating normally, you should be able to, instead of using glucose as a fuel sugar, use free fatty acids, fat as a fuel. But the vast majority of us can’t do that. And when we stop eating within a few hours, our glucose stores fall dramatically. That could be compensated by using fat as a fuel, but most of us can’t use fat as a fuel. So we crash, we get headachey, we get grouchy, we get dizzy, we get worse, and that’s why so many people fail at time restricted eating. Now, as I talk about in my last few books, what I want you to do if you want to do this is gradually decrease the amount of time that you eat your food. So for instance, if you eat breakfast at seven o’clock in the morning this next week, let’s eat breakfast at eight o’clock in the morning.
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I just want you to wait one more hour, accomplish that, take the weekend off. The next week we’ll do nine o’clock in the morning. That’s just one more hour. Gradually work your way out to about a six to eight hour eating window. That means eat breakfast at 11 o’clock in the morning, finish dinner at seven o’clock at night. That’s an eight hour window. Want to compress it to six, eat breakfast at noon, finish dinner at six o’clock. Fantastic health benefits, but you don’t jump off a 10 story building to do that. I’ve seen it fail so many times, just avoid that at all costs. Alright, how about a prolonged water fast? Now of course, this is the most well known historically speaking approach to fasting. And even Jesus has said to have done it for 40 days and 40 nights and almost all great religions have some form of prolonged water fasting.
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There’s clearly benefits in ancient times to water fasting, but not so fast, excuse the pun. Most of us store our heavy metals and organ pesticides in our fat cells. So when we stop eating anything for a continued period of time, we release not only fat from our fat cells, but those heavy metals and organ pesticides. We have a horrible detoxification system in our liver to eliminate these problems. In fact, Ray Wolfer, the famous UCLA professor who was the doctor on the biosphere, two experiments in the Arizona desert, documented in that group of people who literally starved for uh six months, their levels of heavy metals and organ pesticides went up dramatically and remained dramatically high for a year following ree. That’s because they put ’em into their bloodstream and they couldn’t get rid of them. So right now for Americans, water fasting is dangerous because of that fact.
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Now, if you want to do that, understanding the risk, you want to absorb those heavy metals and organ pesticides by taking chlorella tablets and activated charcoal that will bind those heavy metals and prevent them from being reabsorbed into your system. But you don’t need a prolonged water fast. Instead, time controlled intermittent fasting will have just as good an effect. Or as my friend and colleague Dr. Walter Longo has shown a fasting mimicking diet, which uses a five day low calorie vegan fast once a month has been shown to duplicate the ability of a water fast in terms of health benefits without the danger of the heavy metal and organ pesticide release. So lot better and safer ways than a water fast. Alright, and the drum roll please for the worst fasting mistake that I have seen, the fruit fasting detox diet. Most of you have heard of this.
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It’s basically all you do is for three to seven days, drink or eat lots and lots of fruit, lots and lots of fruit juices. I know it’s touted to clean out your system, help you lose weight and reset your digestive system. But I think this is actually the worst idea. Just remember, fruit is loaded with fructose fruit. Sugar fructose is the best way to cause uric acid to increase in our blood, which causes gout and kidney stones and high blood pressure and diabetes. I’ve had several patients recently go on these fast for fun as an experiment and we looked at their blood work before and after and they were shocked every one of them to look at their triglyceride numbers, go sky high to look at their liver enzymes, go sky high. These were liver detox diets and yet their liver enzymes got worse. Their uric acid levels went sky high and one of them doing it for a month became a diabetic.
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So please, you do not need a fruit detox. This is the worst way, in my opinion, to toxify your diet. If you want to do a vegan fast like I write about in all my books, you’re gonna be much better off and much safer. Now, I highly recommend that you check out chapter five in my new book, unlocking the Keto Code for the latest studies on the most effective fasting practices Today it’s all about MCT. If you’ve ever wondered why MCT oil is praised by biohackers keto fans and longevity researchers alike, why it might have sent you running to the bathroom, don’t worry, we’re gonna clear things up today and you’ll have the knowledge determine if it’s right for you. But before we do, make sure to hit the subscribe button if you’re watching this episode on YouTube. So what are MCTs and why are they so special?
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Now, MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides, a unique class of fat that behaves unlike any other fat in your diet. Now, these fatty acids are instantly absorbed without the aid of digestive enzymes. And even more impressively, they don’t need any special molecules to help them cross the gut wall. What that means is that unlike other fats, they go straight to the liver where they’re rapidly converted into ketones. Now the cool thing is that this process happens regardless of your carbohydrate or protein intake, which makes MCTs a nutritional powerhouse. You can generate ketones as you would through fasting or a strict keto diet, but while still enjoying a plate full of plant-based foods. This is why I call MCTs the goat of this program, the greatest of all triglycerides. So are all MCTs the same? Well, unfortunately, no. Now MCTs include valeric acid, caproic acid, C six, caproic acid C eight, and capric acid C 10.
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Now these names actually come from Capra, the Latin word for goat because C six, C eight and C 10 are all found in abundance in goat’s melt. Now just make sure you have your goat dairy products fermented please, like yogurts, like cheeses, like cashiers, and when it comes to helping your body melt fat, C eight is the star. Why don’t you see a lot of C six MCT oils out there? Well, quite frankly, C six is a really good ketogenic MCT oil, but it smells Goldie, and so it’s not included in most products because most of you really don’t want that Goldie flavor and smell. So when it comes to helping your body melt fat, C eight is the star. It’s the most efficient at converting into ketones, helping you give clean cellular energy fast. Now, coconut oil does contain MCTs too. In fact, most MCTs are made from coconut oil, but there’s another MCT called RIC acid, which is C 12, but despite its type loic acid acts more like a long chain fat and has little to no ketogenic effect.
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Also, in my practice, coconut oil is not good for APOE four gene carriers, which is about 30% of the population. For those of you don’t, don’t know, it’s labeled the Alzheimer’s gene. So if you want real results, pure C eight MCT oil is the way to go. Also, taking MCT oil while you’re fasting is a great way to extend your fasting window and calm any cravings that you may be having. However, even the best MCT oils can be rough on your gut. Some of my patients, particularly women, experience bloating, cramping, or emergency bathroom runs. That’s because most CT oils are unbuffered and absorbed so quickly that your system may not be ready for them. Now, interestingly enough, I learned firsthand from my patients that women tolerate powdered MCs much better than liquid MCs. And in fact, that’s why in my product CT Wellness, we use powdered MCs and luckily that’s a real winner.
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Now, here’s where it gets interesting as to whether MCs versus olive oil is gonna help people lose weight. In a 2008 study from Columbia U University, two groups of overweight participants were fed the same number of daily calories. One group used olive oil, the Mediterranean Diet Superfood, which I love. The other used MCT oil who lost more weight. The MCT group, they actually generated more body heat, burned more oxygen, and lost more weight than the olive oil group, not because of eating fewer calories, but because of how their bodies used those calories. In another study, the MCT group lost an average of 3.7 pounds more than the olive oil group, thanks to what I call wasting calories or caloric bypass. And you do this by uncoupling mitochondria through metabolic and heat activity. Okay, so where else can I find MCs? Well, you can find MCs in MCT oil, MCT powder and in goat, sheep and water buffalo melt products like yogurts and kefi or cheeses, which naturally contain up to 30% MCTs.
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But if you’re looking for a gentler, more efficient way to get your MCTs daily, that’s where MCT Wellness comes in. I wanted a better solution for my patients, one that delivered the clean energy of C eight without the digestive distress. So I formulated Gundry MD MCT Wellness, a powdered product that combines C eight MCT oil, acacia fiber for gut support, polyphenol rich extracts like red current and grapefruit. And it comes in three delicious flavors from watermelon to blueberry to lemonade, and you can add it to your water or for something different, add it to your coconut yogurt for breakfast. For a yummy treat, it mixes easily, tastes great, and gives you all the benefits of MCTs without the bathroom drama.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry Podcast. If you did, please share this with family and friends. You never know how one of these health tips can completely transform someone’s life when you take the time to share it with them. There’s also the Dr. Gundry Podcast YouTube channel, where we have tens of thousands of free health insights that can help you and your loved ones live a long, vital life. Let’s do this together.
