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Losing weight should't be expensive or complicated. The ideal process would reduce our stress while driving results. Dr. Z weaves together his perspective on physical and mental health and the powerful way that fasting can connect these two spheres of our lives. Let's move toward total wellness and a holistic vision of health and healing. Learn more at SimpleFasting.com
Welcome to fasting space.
Welcome to
beautiful shot
across Lake Monona in Madison.
If you're listening only on the audio,
you can see the shot of the Madison
skyline
with our state capital looming over it.
Although it's pretty tiny in this shot
across the lake.
Got the last golden rays of the day
shining across the lake.
See beautiful
clouds catching the light across the sky.
Hey, if you're.
If you're looking for a place
where you can settle in
for just a little while.
Settle the mind a little bit, bring some
stillness into the body.
Feels like a little bit less stress
for a little while.
This is the place, I say.
Really nice to have you here with me.
Fasting space, physically in the body,
a little bit of a space
where we can carry on
without food a little while,
cast off
some of the requirements that we are told
we have to do,
have to keep the energy flowing in.
Otherwise, what might happen?
Problems, they say,
but we say, you know what?
Here fasting
space is a relaxing space in the body.
It's like a deep breath.
And it's a place for the energy to flow.
This is what I really want.
So I was sitting here.
There's a little, public access
point on Lake Monona.
And so I came over
here, watched the sunset on Saturday.
And just doing some reflecting,
I like to do some reflecting as I'm
watching the reflection on the water.
One of the most peaceful,
things that I can imagine.
And I was just thinking about the sun
and about the golden hour.
So in photography is a golden hour
is just when the sun is up in the horizon.
That first hour at sunrise, at sunset,
we get these golden tones of light
as it's being bent by the atmosphere.
Just the most beautiful time.
And I was thinking about
the flow of energy from the sun.
All the energy, the thing that was
hitting me more is like, okay,
we can see energy out there, right?
We can see the light rays
shining through the cloud
and reflecting off the lake.
We think all the energy
and the earth is coming from the sun.
Yes, in this moment.
But then even deeper,
I mean, everything that has ever been
basically all the life of this planet,
storing energy from the sun,
coming into the carbon bonds of plants,
you know, that we then eat.
Oh, man.
And so even the energy
that is inside of us,
in between the bonds of all the molecules
and atoms holding us together,
it all came from the sun at some point.
And so as we are sitting here
in this space, trying to.
Capture that
a little bit, hang on to it a little bit,
get some encourage
on our journey and find energy.
This is a big part of it.
Find that energy
so that energy is in there.
It has had a flow across base
through incredible processes
and come to us.
And now we are here in this moment,
in this space.
Check out
this quote that I thought was fun.
As we think about these big picture ideas,
the sun and its energy,
here's Galileo,
the sun with all those planets
revolving around it and dependent on it,
can still ripen a bunch of grapes,
as if it had nothing else
in the universe to do.
Oh, does that just bring
a little smile to you? I,
It brought me a little
smile when I found it and was reading it.
You think about Galileo,
you know, poor Galileo in his telescope,
and he's looking around and just
observing the reality that he can see.
And,
I should have read all the details,
but didn't, I guess.
Didn't he get, like,
a rested by the church state?
And I think he spent the rest of his life
living in, like, house
arrest for heresy.
Something like that.
I didn't know when he
when did he say this quote, I don't know,
but I picture him
just chilling out in his house.
Did they let him keep his telescope?
Was he just looking around?
And he's, he comes up with such a
a light and beautiful phrase.
Do you find yourself in a space like this?
Have you watched a sunset?
And can you just feel
a bit of encouragement from the sun?
This is want this session to be.
I got the camera there.
I tried to capture some of those rays
and send them out to you in this space.
I know I felt encouraged by it,
especially when you get in a space
like this, a lake.
It's just such a big open space.
And to see the sky I picture, it's like,
it's like Bob Ross in real life,
you know, it's like say,
oh, and is beautiful to paint the clouds
and see this beautiful scene.
How much more to see, like the real thing
in this giant, expansive space,
to be really out in the natural
space.
To me,
it's like I always feel like, oh, I'm
like really in my, element now.
You feel the encouragement,
the beauty of it.
You feel the energy flowing.
Through this huge natural world,
this natural cycle.
And just to sit there and to realize, man,
I am part of it.
You know,
I am dipping my toe in the water here
of this world.
You feel a little warmth of the sun,
right?
Even here, when you see these layers
of the clouds, you know, I'm
sitting there behind the camera watching
the scene.
Sun is coming out.
You feel it on your face.
You can feel the warmth.
You feel the energy.
I just say I feel like the encouragement.
And then you see it,
feel it drop between one of those layers
and you start to feel the chill
of the evening coming in,
and then
it'll come back a last
kind of fleeting moment
before it heads below the sunrise
in the evening.
Take that golden hour.
You know, I had a lot of thoughts
as I was sitting there.
Okay, Golden hour
and energy from the sun.
And what does this mean for us here?
Okay. The golden hour of weight loss.
I titled this like this space
we're trying to get into to say,
okay, energy flowing all around us
and through us.
Golden hour, this beautiful space.
Encouragement from the sun.
We know we think gold, in our life,
such a valuable, precious commodity.
Highly sought after
golden hour of weight loss to me.
What is the corollary
in our space of a golden space?
To me, maybe it is that key.
Fasting our
is like weight loss gold.
A lot of ways that I have said it.
Precious space metabolically in the body.
This is what we're trying
to find a barrier to it.
Just like there's a barrier
to get out to the lake.
You know, I don't live on the lake.
You got to find a spot where you can get
to, you got to get to it and
set up all these things to get a shot.
Right like this of the sunset,
fasting space.
A lot of barriers to it, right?
We're in a culture that,
aside from niche areas online,
you know, not super
supportive of it, right?
We are in
definitely a consumption culture.
I love to say
a lot of pressure, even if
we're alone right there, just the habits,
the patterns of society.
We feel like we should be doing things
that other people are doing
and then eating such an integral part,
such a necessary part.
It's like we're trying to find the right
balance
can be different for everybody.
At that barrier to entry.
Do you experience the benefits
of a fasting space?
Have you gotten through that
barrier?
We say, I kind of feel hungry, right?
And it's like,
is this unpleasant or pleasant?
Actually,
that's the space really to sit with it.
This is the ideal place to sit with it,
I say,
getting actually out
of watching your own sunset,
coming here into a session
like this, sharing it together.
Right? This is what we can do.
Sit in a space
recognizing energy is flowing.
We see it in the big cycles,
the sun to the earth.
We can feel it in our body
from energy
storage into the muscle
and into the mind and everything
that is running into the heart
as it keeps beating always.
To me, one of the most profound spaces.
Get the distractions out of our life,
sink into the body a little bit,
and start to feel the energy flowing.
To realize how much is happening
in the body at every moment,
all the work that is being done
by the body to take care of ourselves,
each part of the body
taking care of each every other
part of the body,
never stopping
as long as we're on this side, right?
And then ultimately we'll stop, right?
And in the long term, this is another
this is a type of thought that comes into
old doctors who use mind.
I'm sitting there at the
watching the lake and thinking about,
you know, universal
time, galactic time scales.
These are the types of things
the sun and the Earth 93 million miles
away, sending its energy to us,
storing it up on the Earth.
You know, whatever you
think of the geologic
time, hundreds of millions of years,
I was thinking of all
and how all used to be plants and animals
in every living thing,
and it's just condensed over
geologic time.
And I was thinking, really?
Well, you know, it's condensed sunlight.
Ultimately it's carbon
storing the sun energy in the carbon.
It's gone through hundreds
of millions of years of this.
And then we burn it up wild.
And ultimately, this is the thought
heading back to the sun.
Ultimately, probably
in a very, very long time from now.
But then here in our life,
this is what I was thinking.
Oh, energy from the sun, back to the sun
and the future cosmic cycle.
And here we are.
One moment, our life, this moment
where we have come out
into our own conscious moment,
collecting our handful of this energy.
Can you feel it?
Are you just holding on to it
a little bit?
And then I think in this space,
and we are wanting to let go of just
a little bit of it, that's the golden hour
of weight loss, the space, fasting space
through the barriers, feeling the energy,
recognizing the strength
in a strength of the sun,
that golden energy
right in here.
To me, these thoughts as I was.
Sitting there.
Good morning. Welcome to you.
As I was sitting there and feeling it.
This is a type of mindset
that I get into in nature.
Also in fasting. Bring them together.
Just finding so many ways
to find gratitude for all of it.
Gratitude for light and sun and energy.
And then sitting in this type of space,
which can be difficult and frustrating,
say, try to move toward weight
loss in a society
that doesn't support it.
I should say a society
that is always pushing and selling it,
but in which it is still difficult
and can bring such a difficult space
where it's sold that it should be easy.
And certainly everything
that I try to do, try
to help people
make it as easy as possible.
This is the kind of idea of golden hour,
right?
A place of flow, a place of simplicity.
Like just sitting on a dock by a lake
and watching and feeling the energy flow.
This is the type of space.
A calm, centered, settled space,
also physiologically grounded
fasting space.
To me, in my personal experience,
this is the easiest way
that I have found.
If you find a space of flow with it,
it's like we're not going to struggle.
I personally,
I spent like three solid years
after my residency
when I put on all this weight.
This was my experience.
I spent three solid years
exercising to the top of my capacity,
competing in half marathons, running many,
many miles a week, 60,
even 70 miles a week,
dialing in dietary processes
as best I could.
I lost a little weight,
but like maybe half of what I wanted to.
And then I found the beautiful
fasting practice
and I was just blown away.
I was like, a person can do this.
Are you kidding?
Like, I don't have to do anything at all.
And to me, it felt like a deep breath.
To me,
it felt exciting because I was like,
I was I mean, I'm a big exerciser.
I love running,
but I was burning myself out on that.
Burning myself out on something
I really like.
That's not nice.
Lean into that fasting space.
Body is always running,
just like the sun is always running,
right?
Bless it.
Sun is always running
and sending its energy our metabolism.
You think of the metabolism of the sun.
Giant fusion reactor in the sky.
We got a fire burning in our body.
That's the metabolism
burning up the energy that is coming in.
We take it from the sun, ultimately,
and release it back into.
The world.
Fasting space.
Sit by the lake, send that energy back into the world just to feel the cycle of it.
Feels so good.
I thought I'd share this
couple little passages with you.
I brought this book.
I bring, I usually bring a book when I.
If I go sit by a lake or something.
And almost always I don't read it.
Honestly, I think
here's a thought that I think I was like,
man, I'm going to go to the lake.
I'm gonna sit there for two hours,
watch the end of the day and the sunset.
And then I love sitting, you know,
in this place, you watch all the city
lights turn on and see the capital
turn on and all this stuff.
But I worry.
I was like, oh, this is just like the same
thing with a meditation, you know?
I was like, I worry. Oh,
I'm going to be bored, you know?
Except then
I don't know, I then I never am
and I don't want to read.
I was like, I just want to
watch the sunset and watch the world.
But I did bring this.
And I paged through a couple pages
and I found this,
little section that felt
good to me.
This is Tara Brock.
Who says, in contrast to orthodox notions
of climbing up a ladder
to seek perfection.
Psychologist Carl Jung describes
the spiritual path
as an unfolding into wholeness.
So I really loved that.
As I was sitting here, I just kind of sat
with that phrase for a little bit.
Do you ever feel like that?
Like you're climbing up a ladder toward
perfection is like you can never quite
get there?
I would
say a health path could feel like that.
Always more to do.
This is the thing that bothers me the most
about, the psychology of our society.
Never good enough. Always the next thing.
Can't just sit in a space and
be good enough.
And I loved this phrase
unfolding into wholeness.
This is the type of space
that I really want to sit in.
You know, this is the process that I want
to have in my life, not some striving
or trying to be good enough
or trying to please anybody else.
But to just experience
and unfolding into wholeness.
Doesn't that sound like a health path?
Feels like the type of thing
that I would like
an unfolding.
Do you see that?
That's that's
almost something that happens by itself.
I just think of like, you left the
you took the sheets off
the laundry line and folded them up
and set them on the table.
But then the wind blew
and it just it was done to them.
This is
kind of like the idea of a fasting space.
To me.
We say, is it work?
Is fasting work on the on the one hand
you could say, no, it's just nothing.
What do you do?
Well, you just go about your life
or you have a purposeful space like this.
You just sit in a space, right?
You say, well, this isn't really something
you do, on the other hand, is I say,
it's like the work of doing nothing,
like you've got to consciously work at it.
And so that is kind of a work,
kind of a paradox, but an unfolding.
If you are sitting
and you're just letting the process
unfold,
that's a nice way to think about it.
While you are doing the work of doing
nothing, well, you are going about
your life realizing and feeling
the energy flowing through the body.
The body keeps working.
The work happens as you do it.
We're doing it even right now.
If you're spending this time with me
as we're going through the thoughts,
okay, the body is working the whole time.
Even in this micro space, we're taking
a little bit of fasting space.
You just grab a coffee, grab a tea,
do anything else,
and the body keeps the unfolding
process happening.
Think of these tiny waves.
Even when the session started right,
the waves were a little bigger.
When I got there and set up the camera,
you know, they were even bigger.
And then they're calming
and settling down.
And so think of waves like that.
She goes on, rather than trying
to vanquish waves of emotion
and rid ourselves of
some inherently impure
self, would turn around.
And we embrace this life
in all its realness
broken, messy, mysterious,
and vibrantly alive.
I loved as I was sitting there
reading this,
you know that that phrase vibrantly alive.
Taking me back to our little discussion,
was it just last week?
Mitochondria energy in the body like this.
This what
the experience of vitality feels like?
And isn't it an overabundance of energy
just overflowing energy in the body?
And you know what a beautiful feeling.
And don't
we want to cultivate something like that?
And so this phrase, vibrantly
alive.
Vibrantly even, maybe
another notch up from vitality,
I don't know, vibrantly.
To me, that's like looking out at a scene
like this.
This is what I was thinking of.
Vibrant, like the colors, the oranges.
When they start coming through pretty soon
and just,
the, the yellows
and the blues that are mixed in.
You say, well,
this is just a beautiful canvas
stretched out, a vibrant see to it.
And so don't you want to capture,
you know, part of that?
Yes. This
is the whole goal vibrantly alive.
And I was thinking of the sun, you know.
And, isn't the sun vibrantly alive?
I say it is certainly overflowing with
energy.
Made me sit there and think.
I was just thinking a lot about,
you know,
we live in a strict materialist culture.
We have scientific, rational,
materialist explanations for everything.
And, you know,
I'm certainly steeped in this
as a science
person, you know, and you just think of
of the conditioning
of the scientific and educational process.
And certainly I'm grateful for it.
And I'm not.
It's not like I don't like it,
but think for a moment
what it would be like to grow up
in a different culture.
You know,
where you never had any of this knowledge,
and the knowledge that you were
imbued with is that the sun is actually,
you know, a being, a actually alive,
you know, as opposed to, you know, perhaps
our usage of it metaphorically alive.
I don't know,
how would life be different,
you know, if we were in a culture
that, had just totally different ways
of seeing things
by cultivating
an unconditional and accepting presence,
we are no longer battling
against ourselves,
keeping our wild and imperfect self
in a cage of judgment and mistrust.
Instead, we are discovering the freedom
of becoming authentically
and fully alive.
I loved reading that.
I loved sitting out there by the sun
and reading that sentence.
So many words in here
that just, felt good, you know?
The first one being wild, you know?
As in,
like a wild creature out in the world.
And then, you know, you just think about,
I mean, at least my reflection
I was reflecting
how far away we are from that.
When I was in Peru,
I was in Peru back in April,
and I was talking with some folks
at the property we were at
is on the very edge of the jungle
there, like,
and there's there's nothing else there,
like you're going to go a thousand miles
until, you know, you're testing
my geography, Brazil or whatever it was.
And then it's another, you know, hundreds
of miles till you find a anything else.
You know, that's that's just the edge,
really, of the world at that point.
Like, there are
there are people in the jungle.
This is what they say
that that have not had any contact,
you know, with the worlds.
And I remember that word.
They used it actual wild human beings, you
know, people in the natural world still.
And, you know, I sit here,
I love looking at the Madison skyline.
I love the capital of the city.
But like, we're just surrounded
by concrete in every space.
And you got to
you got to get to the lake here
where you can
just kind of see the natural view.
And so I was sitting there,
I was thinking about a,
a wild person. And
the closer
and closer you get to that state.
This is the observation
that I make around the world.
The closer and closer you get to somebody
who is metabolically very well.
And this is something really to think
about
for all of our convenience
and the the modern conventions.
Right. We,
we aren't living a wild existence deeply
rooted
and connected into the natural world.
These sort of cycles sun to the earth,
to the person, to the Earth.
You know, as we think about moving
and eating in alignment
with the world and its cycles
that were just really hit me.
And so, you know, in this sort of space,
as we're sitting here
trying to think as deep as we possibly can
about living
and being in this world,
that's a word to think.
How do we bring a bit of
the wild, a bit of wildness
into our life?
And they go on are imperfect self?
To me, this felt like a lot of grace
to just to recognize, like,
obviously we are not perfect.
We we all struggle in so many ways.
And here is a space
just recognizing it, not judging it.
Discover the freedom of becoming authentic
and fully alive.
And I loved that
thinking about that word
freedom to that came up in a session
we were doing the other day,
fasting as freedom.
This is an inversion
of the typical societal thinking, the
the typical societal thinking.
Let me know if you agree.
My experience at least, is fasting
seen as a restriction?
It's like we are putting ourselves
in a small little box,
can't eat any of these other times.
And and how can find is that
this is certainly one way to look at it.
And people can have
thought processes like that.
I say complete invert that.
Fasting is freedom is just realizing
in the midst of a culture
that is telling us you can never stop and
that you're going to even hurt yourself
if you ever stop for a few moments
to say, do, do I not have to do that?
Is it okay if I just sit by the lake
and sip on an ice water
and watch the sun,
and that the body can just run
and that that I'm part
of a huge cycle of energy flowing through
and that through that mindset, that energy
in our body that we don't like.
We say body fat.
That is hard to get rid of.
You say, oh, that this is purposeful.
The body is storing this for me
so that if I get in a difficult spot,
then we can release it.
It's like,
can I just open that space and release it?
And they energy is free.
And isn't that freedom right?
It's freedom from a certain perspective.
It's freedom if it serves you,
if it sounds and feels good,
never if it is forced.
Anything that is forest.
Of course not.
Freedom, right?
Our golden hour is passing us by.
We sit here by the lake,
and the golden hour is passing us by.
Only a few minutes left.
The sun is just hitting the horizon.
You can see it's that glow
just as it hits
that last horizon point below the clouds.
Sends these beautiful pinks
and purples and reds out at us.
For the last few moments.
You see little bit of the rain clouds
starting to come in
across the lake in the middle there.
Thinking of some of these thoughts, right?
People
deeply connected into natural cycles,
right as the sun is going down
is like bedtime, right?
And we've got so much energy
flowing around that we have, captured
and utilizing.
Well, the we keep the lights on,
but in the natural cycle,
as the sun is going down,
all those
optical fibers heading in super nucleus,
all the clock proteins
getting the idea, time
to be cranking out the melatonin
and heading toward the end of the day.
Right.
Sit there.
Really?
Think about
how we are living
and what kind of society have we created
in which we don't live in the way
the body is really expecting?
One of those things Golden hour,
as I think about it,
a place where we find congruence agreement
between people who enjoy fasting
and people who think it's
not a good idea.
You talk to nutritionists, you find them
out there who say, oh, never fast.
They're very passionate about it.
But then you talk to them like, well, what
should we do to lose weight, actually?
And they will tell you,
okay, stop snacking before bed.
Absolutely they will.
And isn't that the beginning of fasting?
Right. We're opening up
a couple more hours of fasting space.
That is a golden hour right before bed.
So sun going down.
Here's
just a nice rule or a nice opportunity.
Sun is going down,
kitchen is closed.
Everybody can agree.
So that's a real golden hour.
If we can shut that down,
we are getting a long ways
in the direction
we want.
Here's some more words from Tara Brac
as we see the last of the sun here.
When I've been caught up in tension
or self-judgment,
I have stopped and asked myself,
what would it be like
if I could accept a life,
accept this moment exactly as it is?
Perhaps easier to do
if we if every moment
could be the beautiful red rays of sun
at the thing,
maybe a little easier to accept.
Bring some of that into whatever
difficult space we have.
That's the idea I say, she says,
regardless of which particular mental
movie has been playing, just the intention
to accept my experience begins
to deepen my attention
and soften my heart.
This love, the way that she writes this
because,
you know, something like this
radical acceptance
and you say, oh, as a big, powerful thing,
you know,
even the idea can give us the idea
that, you know, man, these
this person has has been,
at least in the past, some sort of,
monk type figure,
you know, living in a religious community.
Very, very must be
practice person.
Just saying.
Just the intention of doing it,
even if you can't really do it
or don't even know exactly what it means,
having an intention of acceptance,
even if it's self, can be helpful.
I find that
soften my heart.
See, as I was sitting here,
day is winding down.
These are feeling like beautiful words,
I think.
Beautiful words
at the beginning of a day too.
But we think I end of a day.
We can hang on to things, right?
Do you ever do this?
Oh man, I know I do hang on to things
that can weigh us down.
How do we soften the heart? Right?
How do we let go of things?
Bring some acceptance into a day
is such a beautiful practice to do.
And so here would be another practice.
Maybe it's something to practice
in this day, wherever you're at.
Hey, when the sun is going down,
we're going to practice some acceptance
for things that have happened in this day,
and we're going to let go of that
and maybe that idea,
maybe we can merge these two together.
as I grow more intimate with
the actual waves of experience moving
through me,
here's
an interesting way to think about it
waves of experience moving through us.
That'd be a little bit
more of an objective way to draw back
and think about what is happening.
There are experiences moving through us,
she says.
The running commentary in my mind
releases its grip.
The tension in the body begins to dissolve
each time
I begin again.
Wakefulness allowing life to be as it is.
I experience a vivid sense of arriving,
of reentering
the changing flow of existence.
No, she says of experience,
the changing flow of experience.
This is the big idea that I wanted
to communicate in this session.
The flow of energy
from the
sun and through us and back again.
This letting be is the gateway
to being filled with wonder
and fully alive.
As author Storm
Jamison puts it, there is only one world
the world, pressing against you
at this minute.
There is only one minute
in which you're alive,
this minute, here and now.
The only way to live is by accepting
each minute as an unrepeatable miracle.
That beautiful,
an unrepentant miracle.
I just I love the language of this book.
It is very encouraging to me.
Every minute,
of course, is an unrepeatable miracle.
And I say,
you know, getting some minutes
where we can spend
those minutes in a beautiful sun
is a great way
to really dial in and feel it, you know,
to realize the same beauty
that we're seeing in a minute like this
with golden rays across the lake.
Okay,
every minute is like this,
even the difficult ones.
Can we bring the lightness into minutes
like that?
Is this, you know, a
great coping mechanism and process, right?
If you are in a space, say, trying,
you know, to break a snacking habit,
trying to stay dialed in on a health path.
Are these the types of ideas
grounding and centering
in a present moment?
Feeling energy? Finding gratitude.
These are the things that I use
personally, that I find benefit.
To really dial myself in on a process.
The last sentence in this chapter,
rather than striving for perfection,
we discover how to love
ourselves into wholeness.
I just I love the mirroring of that.
You know where we started?
We started about not climbing the ladder
to perfection,
unfolding into wholeness,
and we end not striving
for perfection.
Discover how to love ourselves
into wholeness.
There would be
a beautiful space to sit in for this day.
Maybe it is a cloudy day,
but if not, find the sun for a few moments
out there
and feel its energy and encouragement
coming to you,
let that energy be an encouragement.
Think of
love for self
unfolding into wholeness
as what it feels like
to take the most powerful step forward
that you can in health.
Let that energy
and that thought support you in all that
you do in this day.
Beautiful to share this space with you.
So, grateful for you.
Wishing you the very best in this day
and I'll connect with you again soon.
Be well everybody.