Far 2 Fabulous

Balancing Fitness and Fasting for Women

• Julie Clark & Catherine Chapman • Episode 42

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Episode 42
Could the key to enhanced wellness and fitness lie in rethinking how you eat, rather than what you eat? Join us as we explore the intriguing world of intermittent fasting, inspired by the groundbreaking work of experts like Dr. Mindy Peltz and Dr. Michael Mosley. We challenge the age-old adage that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, uncovering the science behind time-restricted eating and the importance of a 12-hour fasting window for optimal body repair. With insights from Dr. Stacy Sims, we delve into the biological nuances of fasting for women, especially for those juggling active lifestyles and fitness goals.

Our discussion doesn't shy away from the complexities and potential pitfalls of fasting, particularly for women. We share personal stories and experiences, highlighting the balance between nutrient intake and the temptation to use fasting as a form of self-punishment. Discover practical strategies to maintain muscle mass and fuel your body appropriately, while also considering innovative approaches like the fasting mimicking diet. Emphasizing the importance of truly listening to your body's cues, this episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone curious about the transformative power of fasting on chronic conditions, gut health, and even injury recovery. Tune in to learn how to harmonize your eating habits with your health and wellness aspirations.

Here is the link to the Ted Talk mentioned in our chat: https://youtu.be/e5LYGzKUPlE

Got a question or comment? Send us a text message here!

Want to stay focused on your health and fitness over the Christmas period? This is the time of year most people take a break from their health and fitness goals and end up having to start over again on January 1st. But what if this year was different? 

If you want to keep your momentum going and feel a whole lot better in the process…

Download my FREE Healthy Christmas Checklist HERE

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For more information about Julie Clark Nutrition, click HERE
For more information about Catherine Chapman, click HERE

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We look forward to you joining us on the next episode.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Far Too Fabulous hosted by Julie and.

Speaker 2:

Catherine, join us on a mission to embrace your fabulousness and redefine wellness. Get ready for some feistiness, inspiration, candy chats and humour as we journey together towards empowered well-being.

Speaker 1:

Let's dive in. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the Far too fabulous podcast. So today we thought we'd talk about intermittent fasting because I think, with people like dr mindy peltz becoming extremely mainstream and lots of people talking about fasting, yeah, I thought it'd be good if we had a chat about our thoughts on it and what we know and what we don't know, and what works and what doesn't really.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm a fan of Dr Mindy Peltz. I loved her book. Well, I listened to the audio book Fast, like a Girl and took lots of it on board, actually, and what I quite like, as much as I'd like to kick against this. I quite like a rule and I quite like some structure. I quite like some structure.

Speaker 2:

I guess yeah, so it really it worked with me with regards to having, like, an eating window, and what I really really loved was that I'm not a huge fan of eating first thing in the morning. However, I always had that story about breakfast being the most important meal of the day, and it wasn't until you had said that it's literally the breaking of your fast and how you do it. That's important, and not that it has to be at the traditional time of breakfast yeah.

Speaker 2:

I did say that, um, so that was, that was, uh, the. The penny dropped then and that was really interesting. It was the quality of what you're you're eating, and not necessarily when, when you start to eat through the day. So I really I like that, I like that structure.

Speaker 2:

And the other thing it made me very, very aware of is that we, without that structure, we can literally eat from, I mean, I don't know, most households will kick off probably about 6.30, 7 if they've got school age children, yep, and then they will continue to function up until 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night. And so you've got that massive window where people are eating and drinking constantly. Yeah, without any thought. Just, you know, your first thing in the morning, the kettle goes on, maybe a slice of toast goes in, something like that. To the last thing at night, maybe that's the same again, kettle goes on, maybe a slice of toast, maybe a bowl of cereal or something like that, and how huge that eating window is and how. And then starting to encroach into the sort of the other side, into that non-eating window yeah, I think we should say a bit about what is normal.

Speaker 1:

What is normal eating, because sometimes we get time restrictive eating, intermittent fasting we've got all these different terms true fasting and it all gets blurred into one and they're not all the same. Yeah, so a normal eating window is where you have your meal when you get up and then you have your last meal about two to three hours before you're going to bed. It helps if it's about three hours in terms of how that food's digested and then how the sleep hormones etc work. But that would be a normal eating window and that gives you, or it should give you, at least a 12 hour overnight fast. Obviously we were not obviously, but we can't include probably in this chat because it's a bit more complex people that work nights and things.

Speaker 1:

But normal eating is that you've had your dinner at reasonable time, reasonable time three hours before you're going to bed, and then you get up in the morning and you eat your breakfast and you've had a good 12 hours where you haven't eaten because window of eating and lengthening the window of not eating. Well, that's more time restricted eating. So time restricted eating is where you have a window. That's anything between eight, between eight ten hours, sometimes even less.

Speaker 1:

Some people only have two meals in a day, don't they? They really condense that window down, yeah, so, and then you can have things like dr mosley's, the five and two, where you lower calories, yeah, and you've got fasting, mimicking diets, where you're lowering calories for a period of time to put your body into a state of autophagy. So you want your body to go into that repair. So there's quite a lot of different ways and different terms. But, yeah, normal eating is having that 12 hours window where you're not eating, you're allowing your body to rest and repair. So 12 and 12, although I find 12 hours is quite long for eating window, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I don't know if we are going back to sort of how we would originally function. I feel like we probably wouldn't have been eating for a 12-hour window. I feel like we probably wouldn't have that amount of food available to fill the 12-hour window. I feel like we probably wouldn't have that amount of food available to fill the 12-hour window. It would have been shorter.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely it's. It would have been so different, wouldn't it? Because we would have had periods of time where we were feasting and other times where we were in famine, depending on what we could forage, what we could kill. Yeah, so yeah, it's quite interesting. The thing I like about dr mindy peltz is that she recognizes that men and women are different. Yeah, and that, and also, um, dr stacy sims is what's her term? We're not small men. Yes, that's her term, isn't it? She's another one, although they have a little bit of opposing views about fasting, which kind of led us both down the route of, ok, what is actually best? Because Dr Mindy's approach was you know, fasting for everything and anything, and Dr Stacey Sims was you can't or you shouldn't fast if you're, if you're exercising or yeah, yeah, so it was interesting, but I liked um dr mindy's pelts how she factored it in around the cycle.

Speaker 1:

yes, and I've definitely incorporated some of that and it definitely helps.

Speaker 2:

yeah for sure, without a doubt, looking at, yeah, looking at what foods you need, um, as you are sort of drawing up towards your period and being able to incorporate that into it and not fasting for such long periods of time, as opposed to sort of in that time just past your period, up towards when you are ovulating, your period up towards when you are ovulating, when your body is is set up to be able to receive those sort of shorter eating windows?

Speaker 1:

yeah, because you've got your oestrogen and you've got your ability to handle stress a bit better.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so, and not eating is a stress and this is the thing where dr stacy sims came in and said women shouldn't fast although that was slightly taken out of context, but she was saying women shouldn't fast because not eating is a stress on the body and we already, as women, wake up with more stress hormone than men. Stress hormone than men. Yeah, so you know, to remind ourselves that men are doing their whole hormone cycle in a 24-hour period and we're doing ours over a 28 to 31 or whatever yours is cycle, so it's completely different. So we already wake up with a bit more stress. So if we then fast, it just increases that stress. That's basically what she was saying. And then if we exercise on top of that, yeah, then we're putting the body into more stress and then that can lead to loss of muscle mass because we then go to fuel our body in a in the most efficient way, which is is that breaking down of the muscles and, yeah, putting ourselves in that, in that stress puts us into fat storing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it can have the opposite impact of what we want to do, to do yeah, no, absolutely, which is why this has been really it's been a really interesting journey actually. So initially discovering fast like a girl, so we are not fasting linear like men, so we don't do the same thing every single day of the month. We we adapt it to our cycle, if we have one and then being able to look at literally who it's for. So for us who are very active, people that incorporate exercise, gymnastics, weights, running, all that sort of stuff into our lifestyle. Then looking at where the fasting element comes in, as opposed to probably the people that Dr Mindy are talking to, and so people like Dr Michael Mosley is talking to are people that have got weight to lose body fat.

Speaker 1:

Actually, I'm going to be more specific to lose and are perhaps not exercising as much.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, or?

Speaker 1:

at all. Yeah, people that weren't exercising and that were metabolically imbalanced, so their ability to function properly with glucose metabolism and insulin and everything was compromised because of their poor diet, because of their inactivity, fasting for them in the way that dr mindy had kind of promoted these longer fasts. I mean, I'm on her, I'm on her group and there are people there that have been doing water fasts, like long-term water fasts, and for the most, for the most part, that can be really, really beneficial for chronic conditions. But if you're someone that's exercising and you're pretty, you're looking after your health, pretty much doing those sort of fasts you're just not fueling your body and then your body's going to start to break down. So that that's. That's not good, and I think that's where dr stacy sims came at. It is because she works with a lot of athletes, doesn't she? And she went oh, hang a minute.

Speaker 2:

If you're an active woman of a certain age, yeah, not eating till midday is not, it's not good. It's not good. No, it's really, it's so, so interesting now. But you're talking about the, the, the water fasts and the sort of 24-hour fast. You use them really. You use them like separately, as again as tools, don't you?

Speaker 1:

yeah, so very specifically. So, because of the fact that the digestive system takes a lot of energy and because most of the immune system is in the digestive tract, it is beneficial for supporting your immune system. I think we mentioned this when we were talking about immune stuff recently Too fast to help support your system, and I think naturally we tend to do that. If we listen to our body, the kids definitely do it. You know they go off their food, don't they? To our body, the kids definitely do it. You know they go off their food, don't they?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, in fact I noticed with um, with my kids is that just before they're going to get ill and luckily they don't get ill very often, but they will be really hungry it's like they're fueling up. I've got to get my nutrients in because then I'm not gonna, I'm gonna switch off, off appetite. But I find those 24-hour fasts where you literally don't eat anything other than drink water when you're ill, really, really beneficial. We also know that the microbiomes start to change in that time as well. So all of my clients that have got IBS-type issues, I find that if they do a 24 hour fast and then we start to put in the probiotics and support their gut microbiome that they are better, and then going forward, when they know that they've gone off a bit track with their diet or they've been a bit more stressed or something's happened, they might throw in a 24-hour fast to support their digestive system, and that seems to work quite well yeah like a bit of a reset.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, because it definitely helps. And then the other time that I've used it is I did do a three-day water fast because I injured both my ankles ligament damage quite severe. If you remember, I did that yeah, and I was one. I needed to get my ankles working as quickly as possible because I had a competition and, um, I did a three day fast, because when you're not eating, you do turn on this mechanism in the body called autophagy, which it goes into repair and renewal. So I've used it for very specific reasons.

Speaker 2:

And I'm assuming. Well, I mean other than the fact that you couldn't do much because both your ankles hurt. You looked after yourself, you didn't do any hard exercise. I imagine you probably had to rest quite a lot. I couldn't walk, Catherine, I'm rubbing it in.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was bad. I mean, yeah, you remember when I came to the, the meeting at the at the rugby club, getting up and down the stairs and yeah, it was horrendous. I really did a good job on myself, but yeah, so fasting can be extremely beneficial for situations like that, but I think, on a day to day basis, as women, especially if we are active, we can't throw in those long fasts because it's not beneficial to us, we can't get the amount of nutrients we need in. And it's interesting on that podcast that we were both listening to the huberman one about the amount of protein. Yeah, the active women of a certain age need, because we start to lose our muscle mass, don't we? Yeah, and protein is the building blocks for that.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, I think that's a it's it's becoming now a much bigger conversation around the protein.

Speaker 2:

I think the the realization that we are, I imagine, as a society, we're probably not getting enough protein, but, uh, for for us women of a certain age where muscle mass is more important than ever before, yeah, or to highlighting how, how important it is.

Speaker 2:

So that's, that is one of the big things I I have changed now, because I really do like the not having to eat until sort of 11 or 12. It actually really suited my lifestyle. So the adjustments that I have made because when I work out in the morning, I have added a scoop of protein powder to my coffee my oat milk coffee in the morning, protein powder to my coffee my oat milk coffee in the morning. And so what Stacey Sims has said is that it's not necessarily fueling your, your actual workout. It's giving your brain the energy that it needs to be able to get you going and do this workout, and it also signals to it that we're not starving you something. Something's coming. We haven't, we haven't forgotten to feed you. Something's coming. So so don't go breaking down my muscle to fuel me yeah.

Speaker 1:

So it's not pushing you into that stress, is it? Because I think, going back to how maybe we would have lived the? The thought is is that the men generally would have gone off to get the food and the women would have stayed put or just been in the local, you know, just maybe picking whatever was very near to them because they were looking after children or they were pregnant, or it was a completely different scenario.

Speaker 2:

So the men can fast yeah, this is why it works really well for them, yeah they can fast and exercise, but we can't fast and exercise.

Speaker 1:

So it's interesting that you changed what you were doing, because I also changed what I'm what I've been doing, because my, when I go to gymnastics I don't normally eat. Well, I didn't normally eat because it doesn't feel nice. It's probably the same as you to have some load of stuff in your tummy.

Speaker 1:

It doesn't feel nice to then go and do a lot of exercise, especially if you're, you know, spinning around and going upside down and stuff, which I tend to do. So I usually I have a smoothie, but it's I've put my protein, I've upped my protein in my smoothie, yeah, and then, because it's a smoothie, it goes through pretty quick anyway, and then I go and do my workout. And then the other thing that I found fascinating was I recently went to a conference for longevity, but this actually came up was that after exercise, you should put your for women, we've got quite a small window, yeah, to put our fuel back in before again our body thinks we're in stress and it starts to break things down. So now, because it takes me an hour to get back from my gymnastics location, I've now taken with me, in a little pot, some nuts and some cheese to eat on the way back so that I pick that. I hit that window because it's up. It's only is it 30 to 45 minutes that you've got to put some protein in.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whereas men have got like a, like a three hour window. I think it is yeah To get to get that fuel in so Completely different. I love that there are. I love that there are these conversations and the differences. Now, however, we women are on the back foot, because all of the research up until fairly recently has all been based on young men yeah, for fasting we talked about that in our last podcast. How many times have we said this now?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it's true, isn't it, that a lot of studies are done on young men and so we don't have all the facts. But yeah, you're right, we are getting there with it. But it is interesting to look at this from a male perspective and a female perspective and then get it to work for you. So the argument there was a bit of if you don't know these two ladies that we're talking about, go and look them up. So Dr Stacey Sims is kind of recognized as being almost the the world authority on nutrition, and well, I guess we're working with elite athletes, with exercise, but female specific, female specific and she works a lot with hormone health, doesn't she? Yeah, so she's coming in it from that angle I'll, um, I'll.

Speaker 2:

I'll link her ted talk into the show notes, because that's really it really explains where she's coming from. Um, she gets lots of. So as a, as a young woman and an athlete, they were almost encouraged to be like man-like, to to have exercised and pushed themselves so much that they didn't have periods, that they didn't support themselves enough, so they didn't menstruate, and and how it just stunned her that we didn't kind of work around this and and and use it yeah, the ted talk is really really good.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, we definitely put the link in for that. And then dr mindy peltz is known for her book fast like a gal and she's done some amazing work and she's very like she's so enthusiastic about helping people, isn't she? And I really like her approach and everything. She's been on with Dr Chatterjee a couple of times, so that would be a good place to listen to her. She's yeah, she's really good. But there was this conflict almost between them, because Dr Stacey Sims was was recorded on a podcast saying I read Dr Mindy's book Fast Like a Girl and I cringed because girls or women shouldn't fast. And then this kicked off this whole thing within Dr Mindy Peltz's Facebook group people saying, well, now I don't know what to do. What should we be doing? And then they actually did an episode together, didn't they? But we felt that it didn't really.

Speaker 2:

Still didn't go far enough, no, to give us the answers, and and so, again, I think the the conclusion that we we have both almost drawn is that you can take the bits that you need, so for, so, for the like, fasting like a girl is potentially more for people that want to lose, want to lose body fat and are not active, and that, if you want to incorporate some sort of fasting, this is what my take on it is that I am just making sure that I am not like literally eating through my whole awake window. Yeah, that I am going to have my, have my dinner, maybe have uh, I don't know a herbal tea or a or a cacao.

Speaker 2:

I have often be having in the as it's getting getting darker in the evening and and then, that being my last thing that I have, and then not continuing to graze for the rest of the evening and then so then having my, my fasting window, if you like, from potentially sort of six o'clock all the way around to perhaps seven o'clock in the morning, something like that I think 12, 12 to 14 hours is a good amount of time to not be eating and that will fit in quite nicely with most people's schedule, I would have said.

Speaker 1:

And then, going back to the longevity conference that I went to, they did cover a lot about fasting and the amount of calories we consume and where those calories are coming from. So again, when we're just looking at what are our objectives are we wanting to be stronger, are we wanting to maybe release a bit of weight? Then we've got to look at what are we putting into our body anyway, what is the quality of that food that we're putting in? And then how often are we putting that food in? I think we should start there, because a lot, a lot of the time, if we just if we we're going back to food diaries again, if we write a food diary and we see what we're doing, then you start to see the patterns, yeah, and I think we've become a nation of snackers, haven't we snackers? We're big knickers butickers.

Speaker 2:

But you're so right that actually fasting could be another way of women almost punishing themselves. Yeah, you have to be so careful with it and restricting their calories. I mean, because there's lots and lots of research of all the benefits of fasting, yeah, of all the gut benefits, or all the benefits, all the energy benefits from it.

Speaker 2:

However, if you're, if you're using it as a bat to smack yourself over the head with and reducing the calories because I think again that's another thing is that people do not get enough calories. We need to obviously be very aware of where these calories are coming from.

Speaker 1:

It's the quality of the calories that's important.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, you're right, people don't often eat enough of the right calories yeah, and so then, if you're restricting that time window that you're eating in, there is a danger of doing that even more yeah, and then and then.

Speaker 1:

It's not just the calories, it's the amount of protein. Yeah, that's in those, that small amount of that window that you're eating in. How much fiber are you then getting in it's? It has a knock-on effect on everything. For women, yeah, for men, they can actually get away with a couple of meals a day, and I and I know men that off. Well, I will only eat one meal yeah, a day and they're and they're very active and fit, etc. It works differently for them than it does for women.

Speaker 1:

So we've got to be very, very careful with what we're doing and, I think, with fasting as well. Just being in that. In that, dr mindy's is that there are a group of people that fall into that category of. Well, I can eat whatever I like, because I'm then going to do a three-day water fast.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's not why you're doing it.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 2:

You're doing the three-day water fast to reset your body, to give your gut a bit of a chance. Maybe you want to kick that immune system in. You're not doing it for a calorie deficit, no, and I I think that that needs to be the like, the message yeah yeah, absolutely we're not doing it to stop eating the calories, we're doing it for all the additional benefits yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:

I mean we are going to do a fasting mimicking diet.

Speaker 1:

We've been talking about this and we do need to do this because a fasting mimicking diet and we will cover this more in future episodes and give you some more information, because what a fasting mimicking diet does is actually what it says on the tin it puts your body into a fast for all those benefits that you get, but you've still got an amount of food going in so that your body does not perceive the stress of not having food and it doesn't then start to attack your muscles and things. And then we look at how the body is switching, how it burns fuel, the impact it has on the brain. So we're going to do this on ourselves in order to look at supporting hormone changes, because this could be extremely beneficial. But if you don't do this right which is what I see a lot of the time on some of these fasting groups is that you put yourself in that stress. You haven't got your calories going in, you've got no nutrition going in and your body isn't set up to deal with the outpour of toxins that your body needs to get rid of that suddenly appear in your in your bloodstream.

Speaker 1:

How to process fat is incredibly important. So we see people start getting gallstones, liver problems, you know, cholesterol levels going up. So you've got to know what you're doing with it. But I think, with having gone to the longevity conference and listening to these two people that are very knowledgeable knowledgeable about this subject there is no denying that there are benefits to eating less on occasion yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, and being able to use it as a tool, like you're saying, like when you were, when you're feeling ill or when you want to really help your body to recover yeah, I think it's absolutely amazing what your body can do when you put it into the right circumstances, and that is definitely one of those situations where you can really help support your system.

Speaker 1:

And, going back to that, when you're in tune with your body, we just don't want to eat, do we, when we're unwell, until our body's got like it's won the battle, and then you're super hungry, aren't you?

Speaker 2:

yeah, absolutely, because you've got replenish all that energy, so right, and it is about being in tune with your body. Like I was saying, um, yesterday I was feeling, I was just feeling irritated. We've, we've blamed it on the moon, haven't we? The?

Speaker 1:

moon was really, really big and it did cause me a few issues with my sleep actually. Yeah, you don't sleep on a full moon, do you? Did you get out there and howl at it? I did feel like getting up at one point because also it was so bright, I mean, it was absolutely beautiful.

Speaker 2:

But there was so much energy, big much energy moon of the year.

Speaker 1:

oh right, yeah, I mean it was so there was so much energy from that, from that moon so I yeah, I don't think I knew what to do with it.

Speaker 2:

Um, and so my um, my knee jerk reaction was to was to go and forage for chocolate in the house.

Speaker 2:

Uh, thankfully I, I decided to do a bit of tapping and a bit of breathing and, um, and I and I sort of I didn't go and do that, but it was the being in touch with my body, being like knowing my body, knowing that I wasn't hungry, I wasn't hungry, I didn't need to go and have, um, a cup of coffee or a chocolate bar. Uh, knowing that actually I was quite well hydrated, I'd had a, I've got a jug of water next to me on my desk, so I didn't feel hungry. It didn't because I was thirsty. I wasn't thirsty, so it didn't um, come across as hunger and it's really important to to know your body and know those cues and know you know why it might send you off into the cupboards and things like that yeah, definitely, tuning into your body is such an important and it's an important skill which we've all got, but a lot of us have kind of forgotten about it or tuned it out, I guess.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, no, it's interesting. So I am. I am at the moment I'm in the kind of midst of trying to again because I said I quite like, I quite like a rule. So I am trying to work out how starting to eat a little bit earlier in the day is going to impact my routine, because I mean, sometimes I do a late class and I know that I need to fuel before and after that. However, I obviously don't want to go and have a full meal, so being able to kind of tweak that and perhaps have something to something larger to eat in the middle of the day that's exactly what you want to do yeah and then have maybe a soup after your workout.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's got protein in it, so for you that would be like a bean yeah beans in or something, wouldn't it? Yeah, into that soup.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and not putting mother, if you're listening not putting protein powder in soup. I don't. I don't quite know where she got mixed up with this, but I then had this I then had this image of my broccoli soup with my chocolate protein powder in it, thinking no, this is never going to work.

Speaker 1:

Seriously, did your mum do that?

Speaker 2:

No, she asked me, she was confused, she didn't understand how you put the protein powder into soup. It's like no, no, no, we don't Just smoothies, mum, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Although of course, you can put things like because my protein powder is hemp based, I don't know what protein powder you use, but mine's hemp based, so you can put ground flax seeds in your soup. Yes, that's a good idea, which is almost like a protein powder, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. Now that would boost up that protein in it. That's a really, really good idea. Yeah, so it's just looking at all these tools and being able to fit them with your lifestyle. But it actually makes a lot of sense to me that you are fueling or we are fueling whilst we are awake and we are doing things.

Speaker 1:

If you're very active, like we are, and then making sure that you've got that full window to kind of recover whilst you're asleep yeah, I think if you want to start looking at fasting, if you're someone that isn't very active and you've got a fair amount of weight to lose and you know that some of your markers, like hba1c for blood sugars, is on the rise etc.

Speaker 1:

Then dr mindy peltz approach is probably really beneficial for you I think anybody should have a look at it in terms of understanding how this works with us, with your cycle, and knowing how, that you know how certain times of your cycle you need to be feeding more than you know, feasting more than being in a famine. I think that's really good. If you're someone that's very active, like myself and Catherine, and you're of an age where hormones are changing, then I would definitely look at Dr Stacey Sims' approach to it, which is very much about consistency quality of food coming in and just having that overnight fast, or you know, as she calls it, normal, normal eating which I would agree with that

Speaker 1:

is that should be normal eating. You know, stop eating food three hours before you're going to go to bed and then if you're getting up and exercising, then have something. But if you're having a day like like you know we we often have when we run our own business is you might not be getting up to do an exercise, you might be getting up to go sit at your computer. Yeah, then you don't need to eat. Yeah, you could eat later. Then yeah, yeah and it's working it like that, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

yeah, absolutely, but I think the big message was do not exercise fasted, yeah, yeah, especially if you're in your 40s and above yeah yeah, not a great idea, and then also, if we're talking to people that are are looking at this is really I find myself tripping over this because I don't want people to think that to use fasting as a sort of a way of calorie deficit. It's. It's brilliant for helping people to, um, either lose body fat or or sort of take some sort of control over it. And some of the research has been incredible that when you're eating in that fasting window and I'm not encouraging you to eat anything, but often just making that change, even if you don't change what you are eating initially, has had some really positive impacts on people's health.

Speaker 1:

And so if it is just like the first step, yeah for something, it's, it's, it's again, it's a brilliant tool, being able to use this tool to work within your life and your lifestyle yeah, I think if it's your very first step and you're not looking at changing everything, just whatever time you have breakfast, you then want to make sure that you've had your dinner by that time. So if your breakfast is at 6 am, you've got to eat your dinner at 6pm and then you're done really interesting.

Speaker 2:

So, as always, this we really do like to talk about. We talk about it quite frequently, so do come into the Far Too Fabulous Facebook group and have a chat with us. Do you like fasting? Have you read Fast Like A Girl? Have you heard any of the stuff that dr stacy sims has come out with recently? She has been working very, very hard on getting her message out, so, and she's doing a great job at it. What works for you, what doesn't work for you? And I? I am seeing some differences already. I think only, and I think I've only really been changing what I've been doing in the last three weeks or so, and I've already started to see a difference in sort of my energy levels and I, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the scales say, because I don't ever stand on them. My, my, uh, my um. What is it? My relationship to gravity? Yes, um, but in my body, I I feel like I am not holding on to as much.

Speaker 1:

So interesting, yeah, very interesting yeah, well, we're going to end up talking more about this, I think, on another episode. Of course, we are attending that day's conference with Dr Stacey Sims, so we're going to find out a lot more and then we will let you know what we've discovered indeed Excellent.

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