[00:00:00] This is episode number 240 of the reversing diabetes with Delane M. D podcast. Welcome to reversing diabetes with Delane, MD, where women who are confused and worried about their type two diabetes come to learn strategies to fix it. I'm your host, Dr. Delane Vaughn. Ladies, if you know you are capable of doing badass things at work and for your family, but you're frustrated with why you can't seem to stop eating the chocolate, take this podcast is for you. Let's talk. Hey there. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:31] Thank you for joining me. Today we're going to talk about intermittent fasting. I am so glad that you have joined me. I am so glad that you're taking some time for your health and for you. I'm just glad you're here. Thanks for being here.
[00:00:46] This is going to be a primer today on intermittent fasting. If you stay tuned to the end of the podcast, I will get to kind of housekeeping stuff and my typical warnings about meds. So if you are medicated for type two diabetes, make sure you stay tuned to the end. We're going to talk a little bit about that, but today I just want to jump right in to intermittent fasting. So this is something I'm going to be talking about in the podcast throughout the month, and it's also what we will be talking about during any of the well, there will be add ons in the DelaneMd webinars that will happen this month. And again, I'll talk a little bit about that at the end. But intermittent fasting is one of the most powerful tools that we have to improve our insulin resistance. So we're going to talk about insulin resistance, what it is, why intermittent fasting helps our insulin resistance, why it's such a powerful tool. I'm going to talk a little bit about regimens. I'm going to talk today a little bit about hunger and kind of, first, understanding what hunger is, but then second, how to kind of navigate that when you're doing fasting. I do want to talk a little bit about meds and warnings with meds and fasting, and then I want to talk lastly, just for a few minutes, about misuses of Intermittent fasting. And I don't know that's a very judgmental term, a misuse. But I think it is easy to fall into some to kind of find yourself in a pitfall of intermittent fasting and using it in ways that really it's not going to be beneficial to you. So let's jump in.
[00:02:21] Let's talk insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is what is the source? What is the cause of your type two diabetes? Type two diabetes is insulin resistance. Insulin resistance means that your human cells have been exposed to so much insulin, to too much insulin, and have stopped responding to it or become resistant to the insulin.
[00:02:44] Our cells, when they get exposed to insulin, this happens with the foods we eat. The foods that we eat cause our cells or our body to produce insulin.
[00:02:54] And therefore, that overproduction of insulin is what leads to the insulin resistance, which is why the foods that we eat are kind of causing this.
[00:03:05] When we eat high carbohydrate foods, we have a lot of insulin that's released when we eat high carbohydrate foods a lot. And all day long, that high level of insulin leads to this insulin resistance in our cells. Okay, so that's what is the cause. Right. And how this works is what should be happening in your body when insulin is present is on a cellular level, your cell should open up. Insulin is around. Cell sees insulin, cell opens up. The sugar on the outside of the cell is allowed to move inside the cell, and then your cell burns it off as fuel. That's how it should be working. When we're insulin resistant, that step of moving it inside the cell never happens, which allows the glucose on the outside of the cell to climb quite high, and that's what we pick up as a high blood sugar, and that's what we call type two diabetes. Okay? So the fix to this is to stop that process. How intermittent fasting does this is, of course, intermittent fasting is when you take a break from eating. So if you're not eating, it makes tons of sense that you're going to not be producing insulin. And if you're not producing insulin, that allows your cells to not be overexposed to it and heal up from what's happened with that overexposure. Okay? This is why intermittent fasting is such a powerful tool to improve insulin resistance, to get you better blood sugars, right? If your cells are no longer insulin resistant, they start to manage glucose appropriately, and that brings that glucose level down into a normal range. So when you prick your finger and get a blood sugar, it's normal. It's not outside of the normal range. Okay. Intermittent fasting is a powerful tool because it brings the insulin. I mean, if you're not eating and fasting, I always say fasting is the other f word, right? People feel like they're starving themselves. And there's a few reasons that that's not the case. One, you're making a choice to do this. You are fasting, not starving, because you know it's going to heal your body up.
[00:05:12] Starvation occurs when you have not had nutrition available to you in a way that now your body has a detrimental effect happening. Right. There's disease that is occurring because you have not had nutrition available to you. That is not what intermittent fasting is. Okay? So keeping those separate in case you're one of those that are like, intermittent fasting is starving. You see this as the other f word I want to just like, no, that's not what's happening with intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is a strategy. It is a tool that you can use to improve your cellular function and your overall health. That's what intermittent fasting is. And it's a very powerful tool.
[00:05:54] So when we stop eating, when we go through a fasting period, that allows our body to not have nutrient in it. Right. There's no carbohydrate because you're fasting. There's no protein, there's no fat because you're fasting. And because of that, then your pancreas doesn't need to make insulin, doesn't need to make more insulin, and therefore, you're not going to be insulin resistant. So that's how it works. Do understand that you are going to produce some insulin with all of the macronutrients. The macronutrients, of course, are carbohydrates, protein and fat. And there's a minimal insulin production with fat, although it's very negligible.
[00:06:34] There's a moderate one with the protein, but there's a very significant insulin production when we eat carbohydrates. Okay? So when we're not eating anything at all, it really gives our body, our pancreas a break, and therefore it gives our cells a break. So that is why intermittent fasting is such a powerful tool to reverse your type two diabetes, to get your blood sugars to where they're better. Okay. Regimens are varied.
[00:07:03] Let's be honest. Let's be honest, ladies. We have all been fasting already. Unless you have mastered the art of eating while you're asleep, you're already doing a fasting regimen. Whatever your sleeping hours are, you're already doing a fasting regimen. Okay? That's why it's called breakfast. It breaks the fast. That's what breakfast means. Okay? So we're all fasting, and that's one regimen. It may not be creating the health that you want, so you may need to shift that regimen. So if you're eating for 14 hours a day and fasting for 10 hours a day and your blood sugars are high and you're insulin resistant and you have diabetes and you don't want to do that anymore, you can try to adjust that. I do not recommend going from eating 14 hours a day to eating 3 hours a day and fasting for 19 hours a day, or, I'm sorry, 21 hours a day. You are not going to think I'm very cool if I tell you to do that. What I encourage women to do is to start where they're at. So say you stop eating at night at 09:00 p.m. And you wake up and you get breakfast at, say, 07:00 a.m. That's a ten hour fast. That means you're eating 14 hours a day. I'm not sure if I'm doing my math correctly. Sorry if my math is off here, I apologize. But you're eating for a 14 hours window and you're having a fasting hour or a fasting time frame of 10 hours start to stretch that fasting time frame. So if you're used to stopping at 09:00 p.m. For food and starting at 07:00 a.m. Maybe you stop at 08:00 p.m. And you start at 08:00 a.m. And then you're going to have a twelve hour fast with a twelve hour eating window. And then you just start shifting, you start squeezing, closing that eating window down hour by hour again, like I would do that. 1212. I would do that for a few days. Watch and see what happens to your blood sugar. See what happens to your fasting blood sugar if that's not going to cut it. Okay. Or if you think you want to do more, you're like, I know, I probably need to do what I will tell you in my business, working with women who want to normalize, get better blood sugars, normalize their insulin function, all of that. Women who want to get to that place. What I know about my work in this area is that you are probably going to have to do somewhere around an eight hour eating window with a 16 hours fast. That is what is probably going to normalize your cellular function. You may or may not have to do this for the rest of your life, but definitely somewhere around that. Some women have to do a six hour eating window with an 18 hours fast. For many years, most of my days were spent doing probably a 20 to a 22 hours fast with a two to four hour eating window. I was very comfortable. I did not start there though, right? Like I didn't go from eating 16 hours a day to eating 2 hours a day. Right? Like, I didn't make that jump immediately. I worked into it, and I encourage you to also work into it. If not, you will be very uncomfortable and think I'm a total turd and I don't want that. So go ahead and start just incrementally working it into wherever you start to see your blood sugars normalize. Really? That's the goal. That's what you're going to want to use to direct.
[00:10:15] How long do you need to fast versus how many hours what your eating window is? Okay. That fasting blood sugar coming into normal range, that's where you're going to know, okay, I'm doing it right. And then you're going to have to hold whatever you've been doing to get those blood sugars into that normal range. You're going to have to hold what you've been doing for a number of weeks to allow your cells to heal up. Okay? So this is not a quick. There's nothing about normalizing your cell functioning and getting better blood sugars and kind of beating this diabetes thing. There's nothing about that. That's going to happen quickly. So you're going to want to be patient with yourself. Okay? But I do encourage you to test out a couple of different regimens. I would also encourage you to not do what we call a garbage fast or a garbage fast. Right? Some people will use fasting to allow them 2 hours or 4 hours a day where they eat nothing but junk, okay? That is also not going to cut it. Remember, and I remind my clients of this all the time, and I really hope you hear this message also, your numbers are not what makes you healthy.
[00:11:20] So I don't care if you can do a 22 hours fast with a two hour carbage eating window and you can normalize your numbers. I don't care if your numbers are normal. The numbers aren't what make you healthy. The food that you put into your body is what is healthy, period, end of sentence. The food you put into your body, that's what healthy is. And if it's pop tarts and ding dongs and potato chips, there is no alternate universe where our human biology matches that food, okay? The food that you put into your body, that is what creates health. And so I do want to encourage you not to think that this is a tool that you can use to eat a bunch of junk food and think that you're quote unquote healthy, you are not. Okay, so other things that we do that are healthy, right. Even if your blood sugars aren't reflecting you, doing this. Exercise is healthy, fasting is healthy, eating carrots are healthy. All of those things are healthy. Even if your blood sugars aren't necessarily following over time. You keep doing those healthy things and your numbers are going to follow. Okay, so there's a number of different regimens, and there is not one. Right. Fasting regimen. There's not one thing that's correct. So don't feel like you need to do it one way or another. There's nothing that's right or wrong. Do what you need to do. Use this tool as frequently or as long as you need to use it until you complete the job you're trying to complete, which is getting normal blood sugars. Okay.
[00:12:44] I do want to talk about hunger and what hunger means a lot of times. Whenever, because clearly, if you're used to eating at 07:00 a.m. Every morning, your body has been trained to release hunger hormones at that time. That is a training. That's a pavlovian experience.
[00:13:05] It's not something that is the same for every human. There is adjustment, there is agency to move this time where you release those hormones. But what that means is you're going to release that hormone into your system and you're going to believe you're hungry at 07:00 a.m. Even though you're trying to fast till eight. So let's talk about hunger. A couple of things I want you to understand about hunger. The first thing is, if you are insulin resistant, you cannot trust hunger signals from your body. Your hormones are out of whack, and the hypothalamus of your brain is not hearing messages from your body about hunger correctly. Okay? There is resistance to some of these hormones at that brain stem level. At that brain level, there is resistance to recognizing these hormones, which means that you're not hearing the message appropriately. So when your body is like, oh, we're not satisfied, we need to keep eating, you cannot believe that story from your body, which makes it really hard to really understand when you're quote unquote hungry and when you're not. Okay?
[00:14:15] So you're going to want to use some external gauges to determine whether you're hungry or not or to determine if it's time to eat. Okay, I want to. Again, this is a time where, as a human being, we are heavily our neural pathways in our brain are very strongly set up to avoid hunger. To avoid starvation is really what it comes down to. That primal drive is really strong, and it served us well 10,000 years ago. Today, when food is available everywhere, it does not serve us well. Okay? So we need to have some ideas about what really hunger means and what it doesn't mean. Do understand that if you have excess adipose tissue on your body, you are not going to starve to death. That is not how the human body is made. Okay? Adipose tissue is our fat tissue. I don't like that word as much. I like adipose because it's what it is. That is the cellular type that we're looking at. And fat has a lot of crappy connotation with it that I don't like to deal with. So if you have excess adipose tissue on your body, that is your body's protection against starvation.
[00:15:29] Human beings do not starve with adipose tissue on their body. We can be malnourished. This is true. We can be malnourished. And what we are finding is most people who, especially in America, where we have a significant overweight and obese population, we are still very undernourished, okay? But they're not starving to death. They may have vitamin deficiency and effects of that, but they are not starving to death. Okay? Humans do not starve with extra adipose tissue. Adipose tissue is the human way of preventing starvation. It is the way that our bodies, our biology, developed to store energy when it was available to us, for us to use at another date, at a later date, at another time when maybe energy and nutrition wasn't going to be available to us. That's what adipose is there for. So your brain believes hunger means you're starving to death. So the first thing to recognize is even a normal weighted, quote unquote normal. I had a client once tell me the only thing that's normal is setting on a washing machine. And I love that. Right? I love that. I don't like the word normal a lot, but a human that is in a normal, quote unquote, body weight, if we're looking at the body mass index, which has its own set of issues, but that's just what we're going to use for right now as a rough guide. Humans that are in that normal body mass index range, they're normal weighted. Those Humans still have 60 meals. 60 meals is the estimation stored in various places on their body as adipose for them to burn off.
[00:17:02] Ladies, nobody is at risk of starving to death in this country, at least not the general population, abuse cases happen. That's true. There are extenuating circumstances that do lead to starvation. That is true. But if you're here listening to this podcast and working on your type two diabetes, that is unlikely the circumstance you find yourself in. Okay, so if you have extra adipose, any extra adipose on your body, you have plenty of stored energy to utilize. You're not going to starve to death, so remind your brain of that.
[00:17:33] The other thing that I always remind folks of again is this misunderstanding of hormones that are happening in our body. So we don't ever hear a message from our body that we are satisfied and there's enough food. Our brains are resistant to hearing that message, so we can't rely on our body to do that. Okay, so we can't rely on our body. What we can say is we have stored adipose on our body, so we're not going to starve to death. So where do we go from there? I like to teach hunger when we look at it in two different ways, because hunger really means two different things. We can be hungry for love or hungry for excitement, right? Like, we use this word hunger to describe feelings a lot. I'm excited. I'm anticipating.
[00:18:16] I'm lonely. Right? I'm hungry for some attention, some affection. I'm lonely. We use the word hunger to describe a feeling that we're having a lot. And a feeling is something that actually originates in our brain. Right? I'm lonely, and I would like a hug from my daughter is coming from my brain. There's not a sensor on my body that's like, lonely sensor. We're hungry for love, right? Like, that's not what happens.
[00:18:43] That sort of hunger comes from a thought in our brain. My kids are at their dad's. I miss them. I sure would love a hug from them. Maybe I go see my daughter at work and say hi to her, whatever that is creating that loneliness or that hunger, that desire for something. Okay.
[00:19:03] Similarly, our brain will have experiences, and sometimes it's the same thing, like lonely. Oh, my gosh, I feel crappy. Let's go have some ice cream. Right? Our brain very early on realized that when we eat food, especially high carbohydrate foods, especially processed carbohydrate foods, and not only did our brain realize this, but the food manufacturers realize this. When we eat those foods, our brain releases dopamine and we feel better.
[00:19:29] So what we realized, our brains are so wicked smart in some ways, is that we can avoid feeling badly and elevate our mood with food. And sometimes we use it that way. And what we call it, what we learned to call that is hunger. I'm hungry, man. It's been a busy day here at work. This afternoon is so busy. I'm overwhelmed. Am I ever going to get it done? You know what would help? The candy jar. The candy jar would help. Candy helps everything.
[00:19:54] And we believe we're hungry, and then we verbalize it in ways. Like, I need an afternoon pick me up. Okay. That's how it comes through in our brain. That is a feeling of hunger, and it's about what's going on in your brain, not in your body. Hunger is also a sensation. It is a physical sensation that is perceived by things outside of our brain, nerves outside of our brain. Those nerves take that perception, and it travels on our nerves, to our spinal cord, and to our brain, and our brain perceives that information and diagnoses it, translates it into, oh, our stomach's empty. It's probably time to eat. Let's eat. Right? Same. We do this with warm, too warm is another great example. Right? Like, I can feel warm when I'm getting a hug for my daughter. I feel so warm. I feel so warm in my chest. I feel so good when I'm getting hugs from my babies. This is true for all of my babies and many people in my life. You feel warm with a hug, right? Or you can touch a stove and it feels warm.
[00:20:59] The warm that comes from the hug, right. The hug can be the same. Some creepy person on the street comes up and hug you. That doesn't feel so warm. That feels creepy. Right? The hug is the same. The difference is, what do I think about this human that I'm hugging? That's a brain experience that feels warm. That's not what happens to the stove. Whether you think the stove feels cold, whether you're like, oh, no, the stove is cold fire. It feels hot, and it feels hot because it's a perception that's happening in your fingertips. It is a nervous perception that's happening through nerve Endings in your fingertips.
[00:21:31] That perception, that Experience travels your nerves to your spinal cord, to your brain, and your brain says, WHOOP, that's hot. We should remove our hand from that. Okay. The same thing happens with hunger. You can have a brain experience of hunger that you assign to your belly as being hungry, or you can have an Experience in your body of empty stomach that your brain then translates into, it's time to eat. I'm hungry. So how do we distinguish between these two, I think it's really important to kind of ask yourself some questions about this.
[00:22:08] The Science of your stomach is it takes at least 6 hours for you to transmit, to transit all of your food through your stomach. Okay? So if you eat at noon, your lunch is probably still in your stomach at 06:00 p.m.
[00:22:25] So physical hunger is probably not there. If that's the case, because you already got food in your stomach, certainly within 2 hours of a meal, there is not physical hunger because you already got food in your stomach, because it's still there from when you ate your meal 2 hours ago.
[00:22:42] The more fat and the more protein that you have in your meal, the longer that food sits in your stomach, the longer it takes to move through from your stomach into your Intestine. So usually that takes eight to 12 hours. And if you think about this, makes tons of Sense, right? If you're going into Surgery, your surgeon tells you you have to be NPO without food in your stomach for 12 hours prior to surgery. Why? Because they don't want you getting those contents that are in your stomach. Like, we put something in your throat and it might make you gag and throw up. And we don't want something to be in your stomach that makes you gag and throw up. And then you breathe into your lungs, that's bad news.
[00:23:20] So we tell you not to have anything in your stomach for eight to 12 hours. Do you know why? Because the food stays in there that long. We all know that.
[00:23:28] So that's the first thing I encourage you to look at when you're trying to decide, am I hungry? Like, when was the last time I ate?
[00:23:36] Is that food still in my stomach? Getting a good idea of, can I sense food? Like, what is actually happening in my body? If I can get my head out of the game, what is actually happening in my body? All of these are good, just external things to look at, right? Because you cannot trust the message coming from your body to your brain. If you're insulin resistance resistant, the message coming from your body to your brain is always going to be eat more. That's always going to be it because you're insulin resistant. Since you can't trust that message, let's look at what's going on in your body. Let's talk about snacking. People ask me this all the time. In fact, in the Facebook group recently, somebody asked, I get this, this goes out in the Facebook group all the time. What are some good snacks? And it's not a bad question. It does show how effective trainers, nutritionists and some dietitians. And it's not across the board. This is definitely shifting. But in the old days, the story was three meals and three snacks every day. That's what they told diabetics to eat. This is old advice about snackings. Right. Many small meals, that's what we need to be doing. So this is not good advice for the human that's trying to normalize blood sugars and get their insulin function normal. Okay. And this goes back to, you have to go back to, like, brain hunger versus physical hunger. What's really going on? Do I really need a snack? If it's 2 hours after a meal and you're feeling like you need a snack, that is likely brain hunger. I cannot think of a situation where it's not brain hunger. If you've had high carb foods, those do transit through your stomach much quicker. But still, again, four to 6 hours would be like the super fastest. Do understand food manufacturers, processed food manufacturers understand that if they put high carb content, that it gets through your stomach quicker and you'll feel hungry sooner. It's just another little game they play. Also makes your blood sugars and your insulin resistance worse. So it's easy to kind of walk away from those. Okay, so what I recommend, if you are used to snacking a lot, one, I recommend that you increase the protein and the fat in your food because it makes it stay in your stomach longer. You feel satiated, you feel more satiated, and you feel satiated longer with those macronutrients. Protein and fat. Macronutrients. Okay, so as you're implementing a fasting regimen, if you do find that you're super hungry and it really does feel like physical hunger, adding more fat and that's healthy fat, adding more protein, and again, that's healthy protein is unlikely going to be a main contribution to persistent insulin resistance. So what I mean by that is, if you aren't sure whether you're hungry or not hungry, and you're feeling like, oh, I know every day that I get hungry at 03:00 in the afternoon, even though I just ate lunch two and a half hours ago, and you're like, oh, how do I fix that? Add more fat and protein, healthy fat and proteins to your lunch meal to try to extend through that area where you typically would snack. Okay. See if you can get some satiation where there's food still in your stomach. You're going to have to get really good at sitting with, feeling overwhelmed or stressed at work, or annoyed at work, or even sitting with your brain being like, ooh, I want hunger. I want to eat. I want to eat. I want to eat. And your brain will do that. And again, it's because we're just really heavily hardwired to avoid starvation. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about this. I actually was coaching a client through this this week, and they were talking about how they don't want just think about food all the time. I don't want to be thinking about food all the time. And if I don't eat these foods and all I have to do, then that's what happens. I just think about the food all the time. And I was like, well, how do you want to remedy this? What do you want to do? And they're like, well, I just want.
[00:27:21] This is what came out. The simplest thing for me to do is to just make a plan and eat what's on the plan.
[00:27:30] But when I do that, I find in the moment that I'm not able to look and consider all the different options, and I feel like, oh, I'm missing out on something. And I was like, oh, so you don't want to think about the food all the time unless you're thinking about the food that you want to have different options for. See how your brain is telling you you want both things. Like, you want to think about the food, and you don't want to think about the food. So recognize, like, you're not wanting to feel the hard part of your brain offering you food, but you likely do want to consider all the different things you want to eat in that moment. Do I want the Snickers bar? Do I want the eminem's? Right. Like, we want to run through. Do I want potato chips? Do I want popcorn? Right? Like, our brain wants to run through all of those options, and we tell ourselves that thinking about the food is uncomfortable and horrible unless we're allowing ourselves to eat the food, and then we want to think about all the food. Right? So realize that that is going to be, like, to do that differently. You're going to have to be comfortable, or you're going to have to get willing to feel uncomfortable about it. Another thing I want to touch on before we start talking about prescriptions and kind of the misuses of fasting is this idea of feeling hard or feeling a challenge versus feeling bad.
[00:28:47] Okay.
[00:28:49] Many of us enjoy a good challenge. Like, in fact, I work with type a women. Like, the women I work with, they're like, give me the hardest project.
[00:29:00] They're lawyers. They're professionals. They are doing the hard things. They're running businesses. They're like, yeah, let's go. I'm going to figure that out. Let's go. They're in for a good challenge.
[00:29:11] A lot of times they make the feeling of being hungry mean something about them. I'm not doing it right. This is horrible. I'm not going to ever have this food again.
[00:29:20] I'm never going to be able to enjoy those things like I used to. There's all sorts of really dump, horrific stories that they have that make them feel horrible about being hungry. And it's not that they feel a challenge, it's that they feel bad like they're broken.
[00:29:39] I want to encourage you.
[00:29:42] This should not feel bad. And the reason that you're feeling bad is not about the food.
[00:29:49] The reason that we feel bad about how we're doing it is what we're making. Either the food mean what we're making that we're having to not eat the food mean. There's all sorts of things. This should feel maybe like a challenge and maybe even it feels hard, but it should not feel bad. And if it does feel bad, you got to really investigate what it is you're making that food, Mead. Like, you got to get to the bottom of that because we don't want to feel bad. Getting healthy, that's no way to do that. So I want to encourage you. A lot of this will likely come up with fasting. A lot of these feelings and these thoughts about this good or bad, or whether it feels like a challenge or whether it actually feels bad. A lot of this is going to come up with your fasting regimens and using this tool.
[00:30:36] So I want to warn about prescriptions. If you are on medications, including specialty, for the love of all the tool. If you're on insulin injections, be very careful with fasting. You're going to have to probably make some adjustments to that because you're giving yourself meds that override your body's ability to bring your blood sugar back up if it gets too low. Okay? So be aware of that. You're going to definitely want to call your provider, get on the phone with them, have a conversation with what you're intending to do, and get some guidance from them about either med changes that they want you to make or maybe how they want you to do the fasting. Okay. That's certainly one of the things that I help the women that I work with. I help them navigate, that I help them. When do you need to call that? You need to call the doctor now or your blood sugars are dropping into this range. I need you tonight to hold that med and call your doctor in the morning. Those are the things that we'll talk about.
[00:31:32] I never take over your medical care. I don't order labs. I certainly don't prescribe medications for you, but I certainly do help you kind of know when is it time that you definitely need to have a conversation with your doctor? And I do encourage you before you make any of these changes, get on the phone with your doctor, let them know what you're planning on doing, and ask them how they want you to share your prescription or your blood sugar logs with them and how they intend to share guidance and feedback for how they want you to adjust your meds. Okay.
[00:32:00] Lastly, let's talk about misuses of fasting. So I think it's very easy for us to think that we will fast away a bad food decision. I think that it's easy to just fall into this pattern of I overeat yesterday, so I'm going to fast longer today. And it's fine to use that strategy ahead of time. Right? Like I'm going on vacation, I'm going to a wedding. I'm going to fast long so that I can have wedding cake, or I'm going to fast on the travel day so that I can enjoy vacation, or I'm going to fast on travel days coming home too. Right? Travel days, going out and coming home. And I'm going to enjoy some things that I don't usually enjoy day to day. Okay. Using as a tool in that way is fine.
[00:32:50] Not having your own back and not eating the way you had intended for you to eat, like going behind your back and eating more, bamboozling yourself to thinking it's okay for me not to keep my word to myself about what I said I was going to eat because I can just fast tomorrow. That is going to be toxic for your relationship with yourself. So I want to encourage you not to ever look at fasting that way, okay? Fasting is a tool, just like all of your food. And I encourage my clients to decide what they're going to eat the day ahead because then it's from a clean space. You make it from your prefrontal cortex. You're like, oh, I know that these foods serve me. These foods are good for me. These foods serve me. If you make it in the moment, you're willing to make more concessions and you're making it from your primitive brain, that brain, that part that wants to avoid starvation and just seek out a good time, right. Those decisions are not always in your best interest. Making it ahead of time from your prefrontal cortex is using fasting in the same way is also part of that. Okay, if you have any questions about this fasting business, don't hesitate to email me.
[email protected] if you're going to implement fasting and you've been on medications, you definitely want to call your primary care or whoever's prescribed your medications and let them know. This is what I usually say in the beginning right before we get started. I always say this right. We're moving this to the end today, and we're probably moving this to the end for the podcast. Just in general, if you have been medicated for your type two diabetes, you have been medicated because of the way you have eaten in the past. If you change the way you eat, you will need to change those medications. If you don't, you can get very sick, the kind of sick that looks like an emergency room visit, a hospitalization, and possibly even death. I don't want that for you. You don't want that for you. Make sure you call your provider and let them know the changes you intend to make and ask them, how shall I share my blood sugar logs with you? And how shall I expect to hear what you want me to do differently with my medications so that I can stay safe? Okay, do that so that you can say stay safe. Have a good line of communication with your provider and be careful. I do have help for you. With your type two diabetes. There is a 14 day workbook. It's 14 days to better blood sugars. You can find it at delanemd Combe. Better, better be very careful with it. Again, it's very potent. You're going to see better blood sugars. You're going to see them quickly. Have a conversation with your doctor so you know how to come off your meds appropriately. You can also find help, more help from me at my website, delanemd.com. You can find it on Instagram and Facebook. And there is a webinar coming up on March 6. So that's this coming week. This podcast should go live on Monday. On March 6, there will be a webinar about how to stop once you start, right? And this is a big thing with fasting. Women will find, I did this fast. It was amazing. And then I started eating and I ate everything. So how do you stop eating once you've started eating? That's what this podcast is going to be about. And strategies and kind of how to manage that. You can sign up for that again. Delanemd.com March 6 like the date so Delanem as in Michael D.com, I'm sorry. Delanemd.com March March 6 so you can get yourself registered, and you'll get reminder emails about that when you register there.
[00:36:15] Lastly, if you could rate and review this podcast if you're finding it beneficial, recognize that nine out of ten americans struggle with insulin resistance, even if they don't know it, okay? That means a lot of people that you know need to hear this before they get a diagnosis of type two diabetes. We don't need to live sick. We don't need to live tied to the american healthcare quote unquote system that never will produce health for you. It is possible to live healthy. If you're finding that benefit from this podcast, share this with your friends so they can you can like and review the podcast on your podcast player. You can share it on your social media, you can go to my website and you can find the podcast there, and you can share a link that goes directly to that podcast with whomever you need to. If you're finding help from other people need to hear about this, share it with them. Lastly, guys, keep on listening. Keep avoiding the foods that are making you sick. Keep making the choices for your vitality, your longevity, and your health. I'll be back next week. Bye.
