The Healing Benefits of Fasting & Our 40-hour Fast Experience!

Welcome to the Biohack Group Chat. I'm Anna. And I'm Alex. And we're here to talk to you about real wellness tips for real people like us. This podcast is all about making small changes that can have a big impact, helping you to live a happier, healthier and longer life.

So in today's episode, we'll be talking about the miracle healing benefits of fasting. And there's a surprise subtopic, which is a related topic, which, and you've probably seen this because you've seen the episode plan, but I did a very long fast as like a little challenge into this because we're not just talking about intermittent fasting. We're talking about all these different kinds of fasts, the longest of which can last up to like three

all the way up to like five days or something crazy. So I was like, I really can't go into this talking about how amazing these like long farts are when I've only ever done 16 hours myself. So can you guess how long I went? no, I'm scared for you. Did you do three days? No. So I went, I started on Saturday after dinner and then

I didn't eat all Sunday and then today I broke it like half nine, 10 o 'clock, which would have been just under 40 hours. my word, that is wild. Well done. Can't wait to dig into that. I know it's crazy, but yeah, why don't we talk about all of the benefits first, all of the topics I've got and then we can see if that would have convinced you to do it, like it convinced me to do it. Cause I was just like, my God, like all of this stuff.

is so crazy, like the benefits it can have, the healing benefits. So let's go through that first and then see if it would have motivated you like it motivated me to give it a try. Okay, amazing. And what motivated you to do this, Alex? Where did you get this idea from? There's this book that I've been reading, which is called Fast Like a Girl by someone called Dr. Mindy Pelts. I originally heard about her on a podcast.

And I'd heard before of like intermittent fasting, I'd seen that a lot on social media like a few years ago, and apparently there was loads of benefits, but it never really piqued my interest to look much further into it. But I'm really glad that I'd never like looked into it before, because a lot of the fasting rhetoric is based on men. So men have like 24 hour hormone cycles. And obviously women don't, we're on like a 30 day cycle, or even if you have like

an irregular cycle or even if you're like menopausal, you still have a huge fluctuation of hormones. Even if it's irregular, like not 30 days, like your hormones are going up and down all the time. It's not like a 24 hour testosterone cycle like men have. Like we have obviously all our sex hormones. All of that is really important. And that's why I really like Dr. Mindy. And I've listened to her on a podcast, loved everything about what she was saying. I

wanted to go and read the book, but she really preaches just like building a fasting lifestyle that's in harmony with your hormonal cycle if you are a woman. you are a woman, I am a woman. Yeah, we're women here. Building like building a fasting lifestyle that is optimized to your unique routine and making it work for you. And it's not like a one size fits all. And that's why it's like the book.

is like you need a whole book on this because it's like you have to take so much into consideration and build something that works for you. So I'll do my best to give some of the highlights for the book, but I probably won't be able to do it justice. Like it's just amazing. Like she talks so much about all these different things in so many different ways. And because they're so complex topics, you need to kind of go over them two or three times to get them, which is what she does in the book, which is great because you can actually digest it. But yeah, so I've picked out like

highlights for me that I was like, well, this is really crazy. So we can talk about that. Amazing. I can't wait to get into it. I was going to say there must be so many, like that book is, I haven't read it, but I've seen it and there's like, it's chunky. There's a lot of goodness in that. So I'm excited to hear your highlights and key takeaways. And then I might have to invest myself and have a little read. Let's see, let's see if you can entice me in. Well, fasting can, for women, it can like heal your body.

balance your hormones, gives you more energy and it's a diet that saves you money and time. And I think like it came in to my life at like a really important time when I'm trying to save money. So the timing worked really well for me and I was like, this is a really good thing to look into now because we're obviously on this journey to be so much healthier, but eating healthy is really expensive. And also I'm doing more now than I've ever done.

because I'm like working full time, we're doing the podcast, I'm also trying to go to the gym every day and like do all this healthy stuff. It came in my life at just the right time. And I was like, this is something that I can look into that's going to save me money and time. And that was like really life changing for me, because I always, I don't know about you, but like I've always struggled with that, where I was like, okay, if I want to go for a run before work, I have to eat before I go for the run. So I've got energy on the run, then I have to come back and have to eat after the run.

because I'll be hungry and you're supposed to eat after a run to fuel your body and then I have to shower and it's like, how the hell am going to do all of that and be at my desk on time? Like it just wasn't possible. Yeah, it was literally like, I have no idea how to fit all of this in. So like, I feel like I should start doing, you've already convinced me, is what I'm saying. Like, I don't even need to the rest. Like, that's fine. I'm going to go now and not eat. I'm a pretty like crappy eater anyway, when it comes to like planning things like that. Like I'm just a last minute.

food planner. So this resonates with me so much. Like even when you're not even like planning all those other things like gym and working into a routine, like even just having to plan like multiple meals a day, think ahead, get a shop in like all of that stuff. is a lot to think about. Yeah, no, it is. And it's like the cleaning up after as well. It's like three meals a day, but clean up after each one, like who has time like no one has time. But yeah, so we're going to be talking mostly about

the benefits for healing and more energy and time saving like we just said. But the point of the view from the book is quite focused on weight loss. I did find all of that stuff really interesting, so we can touch on that. But if you're not looking to lose weight, definitely keep listening because it's still incredibly transformative information. Okay. Yeah, that's really good to know. Okay. Where do we start? Yeah, let's start with weight loss stuff.

why diets don't work and then also just like a basic understanding of what actually happens in your body when you fast because then that will set us up to like understand all of the benefits. So fad diets according to Dr. Minzy, who I obviously believe everything she says at this point, they set you up to fail because they work against your cellular design and they make it impossible to get long lasting results. But not only that they accelerate aging and they lead you on a path to chronic disease.

If you think about diet bars or fat -free food, all of that stuff is just ultra -processed. That's what I mean when I say a path to chronic disease. But basically calorie restriction diets where you eat less and exercise more raise something which is called your metabolic set point, which is the point at which your body maintains weight within a number of calories. So if you eat less and exercise more, you might lose weight initially, but

then you actually raise your metabolic set point. So that means when you give up the diet or go on holiday or stop having time to exercise as much as you did, or you get in a relationship and you start eating more, that means that the pounds come pile on back easier because you've raised your metabolic set point. So that means that long -term success with a calorie restriction diet gets harder and harder each time. Right. So then you end up just repeating the same cycle of doing a fad diet.

stopping it, feeling like you're putting the weight back on, trying again, and each time you're raising that threshold. Exactly. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Gosh, that's terrible. Then it just would make it harder and harder each time to achieve your goals and lose that weight. Yeah, and it rings true for me. A lot of people who have tried to lose weight just through calorie restriction, I haven't seen many.

people like have success with it really. Like some people have tried and tried and tried and tried and never have success and like now they're on Wigoby and that's the only thing that's ever worked for them or as -Pick, whichever one you want to call it. yeah. Which we don't recommend. No, we definitely don't recommend that. Swiftly moving on. So Poor Food Choices is the second

kind of way that fad diets have healed us because they focused on like, I mean, this is pretty old school now. Like this is like going back to like early noughties. I think everyone's kind of woken up to the fact that this stuff doesn't work anymore. But if you think about like the diet shakes or the diet bars or going to like fat free or reduced fat foods, because you think that that's a better option because you think fat is the enemy and you want to lose fat. When you have like a fat free or reduced fat food, you have to take out the fat, but the fat is what gives it flavor.

So the manufacturers making that food has to make it taste good so that you'll buy it. So they replace the fat with sugar and flavor enhancing chemicals, which obviously sugar causes obesity and the chemicals are toxic. it's just like, none of this stuff is actually really good for us and it's not like causing the root of the problem. So they replace the fat with crap. Yeah. Basically.

Yeah, and it's like ultra processed and that sort of stuff makes you insulin resistant and that can cause weight gain. But maybe to explain that a little bit more, I'll just read this section that I've got here, which explains what happens actually when you're in what's called the sugar burner energy system, which gets activated when you eat. So basically when you eat, eating food raises your blood sugar. So that means your cells get an influx of sugar into your blood.

and they use that sugar called glucose as fuel for the thousands of functions that they perform. So basically that's why glucose, insulin, if you are like flooding your cells with like ultra processed food, high sugar food, then you can become insulin resistant and those cells can't like perform optimally and that can kind of lead to weight gain. Yeah. So you're not like using that sugar.

as well as you should be like, you're not taking that sugar and being like, okay, I can use this for all these different functions, but instead it's being like, not optimized because of this insulin resistance. Yeah. So it's like, you're flooding your cells with insulin. Basically there's too much for them to use at once. So they have to store the leftover insulin as fat. So

The last thing I'll touch on for the diet just really quickly is that cortisol, which is like the stress hormone, that's also the enemy of insulin. So when you're stressed, like say you're on a high restriction diet and you're very irritable, that's creating cortisol and it's creating the fight or flight response in the brain. So that releases cortisol into the bloodstream and that shuts down digestion and it halts fat burning and it raises glucose so that you have the energy to like, you know, evolutionary terms run from the stressor.

And all of that equals, again, like another insulin flood into your cells. So it's like, that's just another reason why fad diets haven't worked because they create more stress and stress is enemy of fat burning because it shuts down the fat burning process. Gosh, I didn't know that. Gosh. So the cortisol, it also acts like in opposition to insulin in that sense. Yeah. Wow. Gosh. So now we have like a basic understanding of that. We can...

go to talk about what fasting is, what happens in your body when you fast. But to start that topic, we can talk about like why that happened because of evolution. I know we both love a bit of evolutionary psychology. So I wanted to include this. were saying like, based off of like an evolutionary perspective, we're like running from the stressor. And I was thinking, I live in Shoreditch, like running from a stressor is just a normal day for me.

Yeah, is everywhere. They're not tigers, but they're still there all around. It's more like ambulance sirens. I like it's worse than tigers. I don't want to see tigers crawling around and half the stuff I see. But yeah, go on, take me through the history. Okay, so for hundreds of thousands of years, hunter gatherer ancestors had to search for food. Like they didn't just have food in the fridge, they didn't have delivery on demand.

So they had to fast involuntarily and then once they found food, they feasted on it. So that means our bodies evolved to be optimized when they're moving through different cycles of fasting and then feasting. like moving through both of those cycling states is the optimal like process for your body. Like you need both. And so

We basically developed those two different fuel systems so that we could move through both of those systems and still function optimally when we didn't have food available to us all the time. So one of them is the sugar burning system, which I just explained, which runs off like glucose. And then the other one is the fat burning system, which is what starts to happen when you fast. So for most people, it takes about eight hours to switch over to that fat burning system. And that process of switching from one to the other is called metabolically switching.

And so there's loads of key healing responses that happen in the body when we make that switch. And if you don't understand any of these words, like don't worry, because we're going to dig into them in a few minutes. So some of the things that happen when you switch into the fat burning system is you get increased ketones, increased mitochondrial stress resistance, increased antioxidant defenses, increased autophagy.

Increased DNA repair, lower blood pressure and obviously reduce total body fat and reduce visceral fat, which is like the really dangerous fat that is around your organs. And it can also improve your microbiome. So like if you did that correctly, like with the right knowledge, you could do that to kind of heal an autoimmune disease. And it also reduces the occurrence of cancer, which is one that was for me was like, wow, so I've got a bit of a deep dive into that.

in a second, but just to explain like what actually happens when you fast is that ketones flood your bloodstream. So you make ketones when you fast, when you don't eat. And they go in, these ketones go into certain tissues in your body and regenerate them and they like repair your nervous tissue. They regenerate damaged neurons, they improve memory and they also give you increased focus and mental clarity. And they also turn off the hunger hormone.

So the more you fast, the less hungry you become. Apparently they also trigger the release of GABA, which is a calming neurotransmitter with anti -anxiety effects. I don't really know if I experienced that over the last three days, but apparently that's what happens. But if you think going back to evolution, like if we didn't have a successful hunt one day and then we just fainted as soon as we left the cave the next morning, like we weren't gonna survive. So the ones of us who did survive,

is the ones that were able to evolve with this secondary fat burning system, because we needed our bodies to get stronger, the longer we weren't eating to ensure that we could go and find food and still work at our best when we were doing something super stressful and like tire someone the body which was hunting. That's really, really interesting. like when you aren't eating and your body's not relying on the sugar for that sugar burning system.

It then switches, releases ketones, uses those for energy instead. And then that has all of these effects on you. Yeah, exactly. So your liver senses the absence of glucose in your cells, and it releases your insulin stores to break down fat. So every time you fast, you're like training your body to find the extra sugar it has stored away for a rainy day, which in evolutionary terms would be like a few days when you didn't have a successful hunt.

This is so cool. I love this so much. I'm not eating dinner tonight. I was going to do a big food shop after this. I'm just going to save the money and not do it. That is so funny. Yeah. So I mentioned autophagy. I don't know if I'm saying that right. I think I am. you're getting into that one because I've never heard that word before in my life.

So autophagy actually starts from 17 hours of fasting onwards and Dr. Mindy explains it as like a slow dimmer switch that starts at 17 hours and keeps kind of slowly turning up until about 30 hours. When your cells register the dip in blood sugar, they start the process of autophagy, which makes them more resistant or stronger and they also detox, repair and remove disease cells.

So if you break down the word autophagy, it literally means like self -eating. instead of looking for nutrition outside of your cells from food, they turn within and they eat what's inside. But what they're eating is all of the damaged proteins, all of the oxidized particles, all of the harmful pathogens. So they're cleaning up all of the cells inside you. in all of that.

bad stuff inside your cells. So in the absence of food, our cells actually get stronger. is that kind of like survival of the fittest but inside your own body when you go through autophagy? like, right, we're going to eat weakest cells first. Yeah, just eat all of the weak parts of the cells. Yeah. And so that can also prevent viruses because when viruses enter your cells, they use the glucose in your cells to fuel and multiply quickly. But if a virus enters

into a cell with no sugar, it loses its ability to replicate. So it's got like almost an immune function benefit as well. Yeah, so she said that in the book of like next time you panic when someone sneezes at you in the airport, like realize that you can actually take back your control and do a fast and...

You could potentially stop the virus from replicating in yourself. This is outrageous. Right, so next time someone coughs in front of me on the tube, I'm just going to go, no food for me today. Yeah, exactly. I need to mute this Mindy. I don't know why I'm finding this so funny, but I'm just absolutely loving it. It's actually so incredible. It is. I'm really into this.

Yeah. So there's anti -aging, which, you know, we love to talk about. When you fast, it increases something called the growth hormone, which is like our fountain of youth. The growth hormone burns our fat, it grows our muscle, and it improves brain function. So when you decrease blood sugar levels from fasting, you stimulate your body to make growth hormone five times the normal rate. So if you think about it that way, it can actually slow down the effects of aging as well.

Wow. So it increases the amount of growth hormone. So you like produce more growth hormone. Exactly. Yeah. Five times more. God. Yeah. I think you stop producing growth hormone around 30. So we better get cracking. Okay. And is that, do you know roughly how long into the fast that happens? Or is it kind of just like from like that eight hour after eight hours, all of these things start to happen? Yeah. I think

That one starts pretty early on. That one should happen anytime you're making ketones, but autophagy particularly starts at 17 hours. Okay, great. So this is a cool study and this is the main one for me, talking around cancer because that stat that you see floating around all the time is like, two out of three people, two out of three adults are gonna get cancer in their lifetime and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. That's horrific and terrifying.

I really wanted to do a bit of a deep dive on like reducing the occurrences of cancer because I think that's like this, that's just so cool and such a good way to like take a bit of that power back. So they did a really cool study on chemotherapy patients where they proved that it could improve their immune system. So after three days of water fasting or 72 hours, they found that

old worn down white blood cells die and new energized group forms and that happens due to the release of stem cells into the bloodstream. Yeah, that was like a big immune reset for anyone that was going through chemotherapy. need a minute to process this. they didn't eat for three days, anything except water. Yeah. During chemotherapy and after the 72 hours, the white blood cells were kind of killed off.

and new ones were formed. Yeah. So that was like a big immune reset for them. And that is called like an immune system reset fast when you do that. again, the longer your body fasts, the stronger it gets to ensure that you're working at your best when you were struggling to find foods that you could find food and that you could survive. This is completely fascinating because during chemotherapy, when you're

your cells are kind of being killed anyway, to try and kill off the cancerous cells. So you're having cells that are being killed anyway, in this, whilst that process of chemotherapy was happening, they were still producing like new stem cells. Wow.

h, there was another study in: 2016

Yeah, no, that. take your time. of studies. is, is. So they followed women for four years who had had breast cancer and undergone breast cancer treatment. And when they found that when those women fasted for 13 hours or more, they had a 64 % less chance of reoccurrence of breast cancer. And is that how long was that like every day that they were doing that for the 13 hours?

No, it was just like when women did do this and I suppose Dr. Mindy would recommend to do it according to your cycle, which can be like maybe maximum two weeks a month and 13 hours also isn't much at all. Like that's something you can adapt to super quickly. Yeah. So those two are kind of like how they can affect you like once you have, how fasting can affect you like once you have cancer and studies around that. But there's also this.

thing around the mitochondria. And according to this book, like scientists are now saying that it's proven that cancer starts in the mitochondria. And Dr. Mindy believes that fasting has a huge effect on the mitochondria, like a really positive effect. So the mitochondria is basically like the powerhouse of your cells. It provides your cells with energy and it also detoxes your cells. So it takes glucose and it turns into ATP, which is like the main source of energy for the body.

And so when you fast, the mitochondria uses ketones instead of glucose for energy and ketones supposedly repair your mitochondria. So mitochondria controls, not only does it control methylation, but it also detoxes you as it produces something called glutathione, which is basically like a mass, did I say that right? Do you know that one? I know it, but I don't know if it's glutathione or glutathione or... Yes, it is glutathione. It is. I looked it up yesterday.

This stuff seems to be incredible. I feel like we need to do a whole podcast on this, by the way. just a note. Glutathione. Glutathione, yeah. So the mitochondria detoxes you because it produces glutathione, which is like a master antioxidant. So it reduces oxidative stress, it lowers inflammation, regenerates skin. So that can help with diseases like eczema psoriasis Parkinson's.

So if your mitochondria are damaged and you're low in glutathione and you're not methylated properly, that's allowing toxins to stay inside you, which can allow diseases to be triggered. So essentially when you fast, your mitochondria uses ketones for energy that can repair the mitochondria and it can make sure that you're detoxifying correctly. And if you look at that,

from that perspective, you're basically saying that you're stopping diseases to be triggered from the source, which is the mitochondria. That's really powerful. so diseases like cancer or chronic illnesses. Or like autoimmune diseases as well. Yeah, and there is like so many benefits of fasting in part one of the book, many things that we didn't have time to cover.

things like how it can heal the gut and autoimmune disease by starving the bacteria in the small intestine, how it can heal the microbiome in the large intestine. So I would definitely recommend for anyone with gut or autoimmune issues to read up more about it and see if this is something that you might want to try or look into or might be able to help you. Yeah, I'm definitely going to read it. Can I have yours when you're done? Yes, I have it on Kindle, but let me see if I can figure out a way to it to you. your Kindle?

Yeah. No, yeah, you actually can. Yeah, you can borrow my Kindle. Yeah, that's fine. It's fine. I'll just I'll get myself a physical book. You know me. Physical book. Yeah. So I'm dying to know like how so like from a practical angle, like it sounds amazing. And I definitely want to start fasting more. So in terms of like, the practical side of things, so the different types of fasts or

kind of like also another one for me is like the kinds of food that you should eat or not eat. Like what is actually a fast? Like what can you eat or drink during that period? Or is it literally just nothing? You cut literally everything. Yeah. So like we talked about the start of the importance of moving through the fasted and the feasted states, like for your body to function optimally, like you need both. Like you can't just fast all the time and you can't just like be feasting all the time.

Well, you can, but like neither of those things will be optimal and you won't get like the amazing benefits. So it's like all of your cells and all of the processes that happen in your body, they need nourishing food to function and heal. So the key is doing that cycling and the balance and not too much of one or the other. And then you can like really heal your body in the most optimal way. So during your eating window, you want to eat like really healthy nourishing foods. And yeah, when you're fasting, you can have.

obviously water, herbal tea, black coffee, or some people can even have more than that. It just depends on you and your blood sugar. So if you wanted to like take this really seriously, you would want to get one of those like pinprick blood sugar tester things so that you could actually try it out one day and say like, okay, if I have a coffee with full fat milk, is that going to spike my blood sugar or will I stay in the fasted state? So everyone's a bit different. So if you want to take it seriously, you can do that.

But for me, I just stuck to black coffee because I don't have a blood sugar monitor. Okay, and then so you want to eat really healthy when you are eating and you're feasting times. And then when you're in your fasting times, you can have things like black coffee, teas, water -based things, but just you want to avoid other food or things that have like, let's say milk in the coffee until you kind of test it and figure out what's best for you. Because I have seen some things around like how you can have like high fat

things like you could eat like an avocado and it wouldn't necessarily break your fast. But I guess again, it's just one of those things you've got to test it and see. Yeah, that's what Dr. Mindy actually recommends breaking the fast with is like an avocado with like a lot of olive oil, like one way one good way to break it is is that and what that will do. Again, I don't know if it necessarily breaks it or not. I think it depends. But just eating that is like a really good way to reintroduce like eating.

your system and break your fast. And she says that when she does that, she can actually like go until dinner. Like that's like a ties her over until dinner if she's feeling hungry. But yeah, you have to think about what you eat to break your fast. That's super important, but it will depend on your goals. like healthy fats, like the avocado that will ensure that you keep burning fat, just like you just said, or if you want to gain muscle, like you might want to break your fast with like some really good protein, like organic grass fed like

healthy protein, or if your goal is to reset your microbiome, you might want to look at fermented foods or probiotic prebiotic foods. Okay, I have a question. And I don't know if Mindy answered this in the book. But so I'm just thinking now, when people talk about binge eating, so you know, when people will just not eat for ages, then they'll just absolutely binge. Obviously, you're talking about this fasting state, feasting state.

and all the benefits and I'm thinking, but in my mind, binge eating is terrible, like not eating all day and then having like a big meal is really bad and that spikes your blood sugar. Was that kind of covered or do you know like anything about the difference? Yeah, so obviously I think it depends what you eat. Like if you're binging on like really health, natural proteins, like animal proteins, like healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, if you're binging on that stuff, great.

go to town, have a great time. then if you really overeat, just do a fast the next day, and you can manage your weight doing that. But if you're eating ultra processed takeaway food, that could, after a long fast in particular, that can damage your gut. She explains that as the lining of your gut. Imagine it's like cling film.

And every time you eat like toxic chemicals or like ultra processed foods, you're like making micro holes in the cling film. Right. Okay. So you want to just like, if you were to have a fast and then you would eat like just loads of like really refined, like high carb rubbish foods, that's then potentially going to cause this blood sugar spike, like in a negative way. And that's not what you want to do, but you want to eat healthy foods. Yeah, exactly.

But I think even if you did want to just have like a really unhealthy takeaway, go for it. Still good to try and like fast, maybe do it the next day instead of the day before so that you're not introducing that unhealthy food as the first re -entry to your digestive processes. So like maybe try and eat healthy in the day so that you've got all of that healthy microbiome built up in your gut already and then eat unhealthy.

and then fast to detox afterwards. Because yeah, like we don't want to say like never have a takeaway, never have like a really nice, you know, we love Japanese food, Chinese food, that sort of stuff. So and that can all be like quite greasy, and a lot of like vegetable cooked in vegetable oils. So if you want to go out and do that, that would be how the best way that you could do that for your body. Could we do, because you're saying it's got like a detoxifying effect and it's making me think of these coffee enemas.

And obviously when you do things that are like gut cleansing and like colon cleansing, because obviously it's really good to do like a cleanse and make sure that you're all squeaky clean inside, just to like try and have a bit of a reset. Could you do like some form of cleanse? You know, I'm not suggesting we go and get like a colonoscopy, like, with some form of mild cleanse, like colon, gut cleanse, and then go into a fast or that, do reckon that would be? Yeah, I don't know. I think...

Either way, if you're completely cleansing your gut, you just want to make sure the first thing that you eat is gut healing foods like fermented prebiotic, probiotic, that's going to help heal all of your microbiome. do you want to do it? Yeah, I'm definitely up for trying that. We can try that. They'll put that on the list for soon, for sure. Okay, cool. We can make maybe make that a challenge.

for an upcoming episode. Okay, cool. So tell me about the different kinds of fast then because I want to get started ASAP. based on what I've got so far, it starts after around eight hours. That's when the process starts, but then you don't start the autophagy slash internal survival of the fittest process until 30 hours. No, no, sorry, 17, 17.

Yeah, it starts at 17. Yeah. So intermittent fasting is typically 12 to 16 hours, but then autophagy starts at 17. So you'd have to go a little bit longer to really get those like mitochondrial healing benefits. is it kind of like this intermittent fasting then 12 to 16 hours? Is that more kind of recommended for that sort of weight loss approach that Mindy was like focusing on? But when we're getting into kind of like the more extended fast and the autophagy and like

detoxification, that's when it's a bit longer. Yeah, so intermittent is like, weight loss, more energy, immune benefits, I think they're the key things. And then all of the like the cell healing starts at like 17 onwards. And if you wanted to do like a gut reset fast, she says that that's like 24 hours.

or like a real fat burner fast that could be like 36 hours and then anything like over three days all the way up to five is when you get the release of stem cells. So that's like the real that can like really heal the body from injury and stuff like that. So she had like a live 48 hour dopamine fast happening. I think it started yesterday. So that's why I was like, okay, perfect timing. Like I'll do this during or before we record this, but

Then I realized it worked out way better for me to do it a day earlier because I had no food in the house on Sunday and I had a grocery delivery coming today. So I was like, and also like, obviously she's in America. So I was like, the timing is just going to be way off anyway. So was like, I'm just going to do it myself. And I didn't actually go 48 hours, but I just thought like I went into it with no pressure. I'm just like, I'm just going to try it and see how long I can go. And like the day when I didn't eat anything.

because usually I find if I go to bed hungry, I just can't sleep. So I was like, if that happens to me, like, I'm just gonna like get up and eat. But it was like the hunger really switched off. But the interesting thing about the 48 hour dopamine fast. What is a dopamine fast? I've never heard this before. So basically when you every time you eat like really yummy food, you get a dopamine hit and

If you're eating all day long, you're constantly getting dopamine hit and then you raise your dopamine baseline and it's actually proven in obese individuals, they eat all day, not from hunger, but because their dopamine baseline is so high, they need more food just to get a normal dopamine response. And as you age, that can actually cause less available dopamine receptors to receive the dopamine. So.

By doing a dopamine fast, not eating at all, you can lower your anxiety levels and you can also reboot your dopamine levels. So now that I went like 48 hours without eating, hopefully I'm just going to be like super happy and not anxious at all. I literally didn't think you could say anything else that would be more like interesting to me, but like this is definitely even more interesting. So like you can increase your dopamine baseline. It's like your threshold.

what gives you a dopamine hit and a positive effect of dopamine if you eat lots continuously because you're kind of like desensitizing yourself a little bit to that dopamine effect. Very cool indeed. It is. So just to touch on the fat burner fast at 36 hours if anyone's interested in that. She explains that many women won't see lasting weight loss results until they release that

stored excess sugar that the body has put away like for a rainy day. So the 36 hour fast puts just the right amount of stress on your body so that it has no choice but to let go of that stored excess sugar. So but these longer fasts and in particular, I know the 48 hour dopamine fast, that's not something you should be doing on a regular basis. That's like you do that once a year. And that can keep you like topped up loving life.

on a dopamine high. And also put you into that 36 hour fast as well because it's like you've got the 36 hours for the fat burning and then you've got the 48 hours for the dopamine. You're also doing the autophagy as well. So you're getting like you're improving your immune system function because you've reached that stage of autophagy where you're getting rid of those dead inefficient cells. Like this really sounds incredible. I know, I know. And that's why I just

Yeah, I wanted to make sure I tried it because when you've never done anything like that before, it can be like, well, what the hell is going to happen? Like, I've eaten every single day of my life. Like, you just have no idea what it's going to feel like. But the hunger really did switch off. And like when I was writing the plan for this yesterday, that would have been about maybe like 18 hours in or something. And I just, I just had so much energy and so much focus.

And it was very, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Like it was a little bit difficult going to sleep because I just, felt a bit nauseous actually. I didn't feel hungry, just felt nauseous. And then I woke up this morning and I did feel really weak, but then I went to the gym. I just felt too nauseous to run. So I was just kind of walking on the treadmill. But when I was doing weight training, like I felt fine. I actually probably did like the best workout I'd done, not because of the fast, but just because like this is my third week at the gym now.

but it didn't affect my workout basically. That's great. I'm really impressed by that because I would think I'd be almost a bit anxious to go and do a workout after not eating for that long. Because like you were saying, when you've got this idea in your head, like I need to eat before, I need to eat after, I need to keep my energy topped up. But actually that energy can just like come from within. Like you've already got that energy stored in your cells. Like you've already got that. You just need to like help your body kind of release that. Exactly. Wow. Okay.

So you did in total, did you say 30 hours? 40. Well, was like 39 .5 because I ate at half nine instead of 10. Yeah. So I got back from the gym and I was like, I just want to eat now because I was trying to like be really sensible when I broke my fast. So I wanted to start slow. So I just started off with like a bit of yogurt and a banana.

then I had a little bit more and then I ate at like 12. So I just at that point I was like, okay, I just want to bring my body back in the healthiest way and not focus on numbers. that was like by far the longest, like significantly longest fast that you've ever done. yeah, like I've never done that before. I've never gone a day without one meal or a snack. That sounds like you had a really positive experience actually, like even when you've been talking about it, you've not really said anything like

perceivably negative other than feeling a bit nauseous and a bit sort of hungry maybe when you're trying to sleep. you've not really said anything that's like put me off, which I'm actually really surprised by. Were there any other kind of side effects or things that would make you not want to do it again? No, just like very mild nausea. Your tummy feels a bit weird. You don't feel hungry, but you can feel a bit like, I don't know, just like some bubbling going on or something. You're like, what's... It doesn't feel normal. You don't feel full. Like, yeah, I've just had a nice...

meal or whatever like you don't have that nice feeling in your tummy but it's not like I would say it's like a two out of ten like it's completely it's really mild apparently if you are sort of very unhealthy or you have gut issues you can have like bloating or diarrhea but I didn't really get anything like that so I guess my gut's doing okay but yeah just a little bit of nausea

And other than that, was fine. Like really didn't feel hungry. I guess it was just like the habitual thing that was the hardest part of like, I'm so used to eating and like having nice coffees or like a hot cacao with milk. Like that is like a little dopamine hit, like those nice little rituals. I was very excited to have a few days now where I'm not gonna fast at all. And I'm just gonna like, if I wanna have a nice like cacao.

hot chocolate at like 9pm tonight, like I'm gonna have it and just really enjoy those moments. So I guess that was the most unpleasant thing, was like not having those nice rituals or those nice dopamine hits, but now I'm probably gonna appreciate them a lot more and I definitely wouldn't do this again until like a year for sure. But it was great to do it and to try it. Well done because that's not easy, really not easy at all. And yeah, I'm gonna give it a go too. I think it's gonna be...

Very insightful. I haven't experienced much, to be honest, with fasting. We've spoken about intermittent fasting before and I do that quite frequently, but I've never challenged myself to do an extended period of over, let's say, 36 hours, unless I've had food poisoning maybe, but that's not intentional. And you don't tend to feel so good when you have that. I had food poisoning the other week and...

Yeah, I couldn't eat for like two days and I just felt absolutely dreadful. But I guess it was still technically fast. Yeah, like did because usually when I have like a virus or food poisoning, like I will eat like some dry toast. So did you you literally didn't have anything you can just water? Well, I mean, I had some tequila. But that was that was just medicinal. I was thinking, okay, like I need to kill whatever bacteria is in me. So I had some tequila.

So guess that's obviously sugar. Yeah, I mean, I didn't eat probably for at least 24 hours, but that was it. But then I had basic stuff. Like I think I had some maybe like a pasta or something like the following lunchtime. So I definitely did like it wasn't a long one by any chance, but like even just doing that, like you do feel the effects on your body. Definitely. You kind of go in like, at least I went into like this feeling of like a bit of like an adrenaline boost maybe like you've got to keep going. Like, you know, that feeling when you've

not really slept and you've got like that adrenaline boost of like you know come on keep going like get through the day I kind of felt a little bit like that but again it was food poisoning Alex I can't in any way compare this to your experience of an intentional fast. No I get that I think I felt like that a little bit in the night but I think I don't know if like in evolutionary days we went out and like did night hunting.

But I was like so awake last night, like I could have gone out and done a night hunt. But maybe that was intentional. A night hunt! Sounds like a great night out. What are you doing tonight? Going out with my mates, having some drinks. What are you doing? We're going hunting. Night hunt. Yeah, people do that, don't they? go for night running. He's like a tread now with a head torch and weird. Yeah, strange.

talking to someone the other day and they were saying they like to go cycling at night around London. It's like fair enough, each to their own. I like to sleep at night. Yeah, it doesn't always work, but try to. That's when we try our Well, thank you so much for going through all of this because I appreciate that was like so much to talk through, but you broke it down really well and I've got like a really clear understanding of it and I definitely want to try it.

and see if I can like how different it feels to just doing the intermittent fasting because I think I probably do that most days, the intermittent one, but I've been doing it for so long that I couldn't tell you any benefits of it because I don't have a comparison really anymore. Well, one thing we didn't touch on, which I think could be really good for you to read about if you are doing intermittent fasting like all 30 days out of the month.

is how you can optimize your fast to your cycle and also separately how you can best eat at different times of your cycle to better support your hormones. So she goes into all of this in the second and third part of the book, which we haven't covered at all. But basically there's two points.

in your cycle depending on which hormone is rising or dipping at those points where you should be doing the longer fasts and then the certain points where you don't want to fast at all, you just want to completely nourish your body as much as you can and that is how you can optimize your hormones and that could really help with like energy and things like that for you so that could be a really good one for you to look at. When women fast in harmony with their hormones they can best balance the fluctuation in the hormones and optimize their health and feel their best.

And there's also when we're releasing different hormones and stuff, we automatically release toxic loads into our bloodstream just as part of our cycle normally. So we also want to make sure that we're not fasting during those times when we're already releasing toxic loads, because fasting will release toxic loads and then that could be like a toxic overload. So it's really important to time it. But there was just so much good information in the book, like how to choose healthy foods, which

information about which chemicals are in our foods that are bad for us. Also just like the standard 30 day cycle for women. Like I didn't actually know what was happening in those 30 days. Like when does ovulation happen? Why? Like which hormone triggers that? Like I just learned so much about my body. So it was great. like a great book, Mindy. Thank you. If you're out there listening. Yeah, that's awesome. I do want to look into that actually and see like if I can time it better with different

parts of the cycle and those hormones, because I could be doing that without realizing this toxic load thing and maybe actually having a negative effect. So yeah, I'm going to look into that. definitely. you so much. I really want to know what our little promise is this week. So we always do a little promise at end of every episode, something we want to try for the next five days, just to try something new and see.

you get on, if you want to try a new little wellness habit or just for little inspiration. And as we've been talking about intermittent fasting and different types of fasting, I'm a bit scared to ask you what our little promises for this week? No, well, we've already done the intermittent fasting and I did my big fast. So that was the challenge. So the promise is just something much more sort of gentle, as we like to keep them. So the promise for this week is just to try and eat some fermented foods.

So fermented foods are like a probiotic and when you eat probiotic food, they do like so many amazing things for your gut and just do like great things for your health. They support healthy gut microbiome. So some of the things that you could try that are fermented is like kefir, yogurt, or like pickles, kimchi, or I really like to do like homemade pickled red onion or pickled red cabbage.

Yes we know. Every time I'm like, you're always telling me about your red cabbage. Yeah, so that's the promise for this week is just to try some fermented foods because it's a really good thing to eat. But also, if you do read the book, there are certain times in your cycle when you can eat them when it's even best and does the most for your body. well firstly, can you please share your pickled red cabbage recipe on our Instagram so everyone can see it? Because I think it looks really nice.

and I would also like to try it. But also I had some fermented cabbage yesterday. Can I count that? Did you? one of my favourite days. Where was that? Did you make it? No. That's okay. Where did you have it? I had it at a burger restaurant with a burger. Perfect. Sounds amazing. Balance. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, it was good. I would love to have.

burger to be honest. haven't had a burger in ages and I'm pretty hungry after 40 hours of fasting. I've got a burger is coming to me soon. That's for sure. I hadn't had a burger in ages as well. And I just got a craving for it. And I thought I'd have one but I got a vegan one. What are they called beyond meat? And it was really, really nice. I mean, I don't love to eat loads of the processed fake meats. But I thought, do know what I'm fancying it today? So yeah, it was really good. So I fully recommend the Burger Edge Alex.

Maybe tonight is a burger night, Monday night burger night for you. Maybe. Well, thank you so much for talking through this. That was absolutely fascinating and I'm really excited to go and get started. I wanted to just ask you before we wrap up, just for me personally, but also if anyone else was listening and kind of wanted to try one. If I wanted to do a fast, like let's say now or like soon, what's your top recommendation for...

what I should do, how long I should do it for, or any tips around the time I should start it or end it. Just how would you say to me in one sentence, for your first experience of trying it, extend it fast, you should try this? Well, of course, if you haven't done intermittent at all, I would say start with that for sure. Start with 12 hours, work your way up slowly to 16 hours. You and I got quite a lot of experience with doing that, and that's why I felt ready to try a longer one.

And the best way that I like to do intermittent is just like eating at like 5pm and then not eating until about nine or half nine or 10 the next morning. that like that's once you get into that, like that gets super easy. And that's also really good for sleep as well, because you're flooding yourselves with glucose from the food early enough so that that can kind of decrease before you start to produce melatonin.

to to bed. if your body is producing the burning the glucose and producing melatonin at the same time, too much is going on and you store the extra insulin as fat. So that is like a really nice time to eat. So that's something that I've worked on a lot over the last couple of years, because I was eating late so much. And that was, yeah, just something I wanted to get into the habit of doing of like eating early. So then when you've like got into the gist of that, and you're happy with that, then I would say

Just maybe pick a time, like for me this weekend I wasn't doing anything. We had a bank holiday so I had an extra day and I was like, I'm just gonna start and like see how long I can go. Like maybe I'll go 17, maybe I'll go 20, maybe I'll go 24. Yeah, like maybe just start with that. Like just have those milestones in your head and just kind of go with the flow and see what you're comfortable with. But just put no pressure on yourself. Like don't get concerned in the numbers.

Okay, so I'll try and aim for like 17 because I just really want to get into the autophagy. Yeah, autophagy sounds great. And then yeah, I'll try and aim for 17, see how I feel, engage what my body's sort of telling me at that point, and then go from there. Sounds good. Thank you, Alex. That was awesome. And I've learned a lot. That was amazing. And I really, really enjoyed that. And I hope everyone listening also enjoyed that very much too.

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