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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
center.
Our thoughts on a positive vision for this day,
so that we can make a powerful step forward in health.
Fasting.
To me, I always like to say as much about a mindset as anything.
And so that's what I try to give you here.
Strengthen the mindset so that we can move forward
in a joyful and positive way.
And of course, if you're coming through on the replay,
say hi in the comments.
Let me know how you are doing.
A special shout out this morning to Eve's journey
sent me a nice note last night.
Put a link to their channel in the description
for this session
so that you can check out their fasting journey.
Very thoughtful things that they're sharing about their process.
So cheers to you today. Happy fasting!
Hope you are doing well today
we are talking about fasting for a worthy cause.
And then I put on the cover photo here for it, for weight loss
and for health.
These are the big things weight loss and wellness.
This is what I love to focus on
if you need to lose weight, if you're in a space where you say,
hey, I would like the number on the scale to go down,
then I say, I hope you're in the right place.
We're walking on that path.
And then to me I say, that's just the beginning.
We are all about total wellness.
That's what I want for people.
The talk I did
yesterday was about using this word human flourishing.
I love that.
So like step one just say get things
better and step two better and better and better flourishing.
Isn't it such a huge word?
Christy is with us. Good morning.
I hope you are doing so well today.
Really nice to have you here doing some fasting today.
Awesome!
I hope that it is a thoughtful and pleasant experience for you.
I had a fasting day yesterday.
And you know, my personal experience.
I used to do a ton of fasting.
I gained so much weight during my residency training, and I
a hard time getting rid of it before I learned about fasting.
That was my personal thing. I've always been a huge exerciser.
I was running and competing in half marathons
and training extremely intensely.
I could not get it to budge now.
I was also eating all the time
because I grew up eating four times a day
breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime, snack,
probably snacks in between, you know?
And this is the way that it was.
I didn't know that it could be any different.
And amazingly,
I didn't really learn that at all in medical school.
But it was.
I feel it was kind of a personal miracle
that fasting came to me, helped me out so much.
Now I use it as a tool to help keep everything in balance.
Once I used it to get to my goal and then I use it
as a wellness practice, especially when I really want to dial in
and get a lot of work done.
When I really want to clear out the space
and do my best thinking.
Yesterday I gave a talk at a nursing conference,
which was beautiful.
So many medical providers
and get to talk about fasting and wellness and health
and food and movement
and every beautiful thing that I try to share here.
And so every time I do a talk, I try to do it fasting
just because the spirit of it feels so good.
Try to practice what I preach always.
And then, you know, I'm not worrying about any digestion,
everything just focused.
Try to connect with the audience
and I feel like I was able to do that yesterday.
So I loved that.
But my experience, you know, coming back from Peru, I shared
I was traveling, I was in Peru for a while,
and I did some fasting around that fasting.
I find a very helpful process for traveling
or is like there's expensive airport food
that isn't even healthy anyway.
And if you're traveling in a foreign country
and it's like, I don't really know, can I trust all this stuff?
It's like, okay, if you are practiced in fasting,
we say, you know what?
I'm just gonna have some fasting space guarantee for myself.
I can pick up any digestive problems.
Okay.
While we're traveling.
So, but coming back.
Was kind of out of the habit I hadn't been.
I was eating three meals a day again,
and I was just starting to feel like.
Oh, and I got to tell you yesterday, a fasting day,
it felt so good.
So I hope you find a space like that.
If you're in a space where fasting is a struggle,
just realize, hey, I have been through that right?
Fasting is a practice.
You could call it a discipline.
You know, something that you have to work at.
It's something that the body gets used to.
And what I tell people, just like any practice, any skills,
something that you work at,
it's something that you can get better at over
time, that the body can adjust to,
and it can come to feel very pleasant,
something that you want to do just in and of itself.
You know, we pick, we say today, fasting for a worthy cause.
If maybe the worthy causes weight loss.
This is a very worthy cause.
Like if you want the weight to come down,
if it is causing a burden for you in some fashion,
if you're talking with your medical team
and they say, hey, this is, you know,
would help some other process
that you have, like blood pressure, cholesterol,
blood sugar, the liver health,
you know, heart health, pancreas health, digestive health,
so many things fasting,
getting to such a root level in the body
because it is interacting with our metabolism.
We were talking yesterday even about and many days
other metabolism is dynamic and people think that it's static,
that it's just stuck in a place that if it were to slow down,
that it could never come back again.
and that is not true.
The metabolism is dynamic and it can change.
And fasting is one of the things that can change it.
And don't you wish that we knew
exactly why the world was the way it was?
Everything.
You know, some people I see do some fasting
and it can really flip that switch quick,
and other people are in a space where
that switch is is more stuck than others.
And sometimes it takes some deeper levels
and some more time than we wish it was.
You know, to help grease and lubricate the
the little contact points
that help get something unstuck like that.
But that's what this space is. Fasting space.
I want fasting space to be problem solving space.
Two things celebration space and a problem solving space.
So if you're flowing through a fasting space
and everything is just clicking and you say, hey,
this is like I am just really stepping on the journey
and it's just a flow state.
I say celebrate stuff like that
because, that sort of state is possible
if you're in a state where you're not experiencing that,
it might feel like, is that even possible?
So I want to give you great encouragement.
Yes, it is possible.
And stick with it and lean into it.
And if you're in that place,
you know, share the difficulty, share the struggle.
Nothing on my channel is hyped.
That's like the the goal. Anyway.
You can tell me if you think it's true. I think it's true.
Not hyping anything. Fasting is a real process.
There's real potential,
which means there's there's periods of time
where things can flow and there are periods of time, isn't it?
In life, we have seasons of struggle,
including deep struggle and difficulty,
and we don't want to close
a, you know, a blind eye to any of that.
If we're going to be on a real journey,
you know, a real journey that is not some,
you know, curated process is, you know, it takes time,
you know, and it is a process and it's the process.
What was the beautiful quote we did the other day from Rumi was,
let pain become your progress, you know,
and that that is the case.
And then we did the session
the other day from The Alchemist about, you know,
discovering our personal legend that this journey going like,
what is the heart saying and how is it leading us?
And, you know, all these are, I guess, metaphors
and inspiring little ideas
that like, we have to go through a process
that most things of value in life
have some kind of barrier to them.
Through overcoming the barrier that we gain the strength
to actually attain the thing that we want.
I like that.
So today I'm going to share a passage with you
from one of my favorite books, The Mountain Is You.
And, you know, we're about halfway through that now.
We've done a bunch of sessions flowing through this,
and I'm excited to see where it goes.
I like doing.
I love I hope it is is fun for you as it is for me.
I love going through this stuff live.
I haven't read it, you know, so I don't know.
A lot of times
you say I would read some stuff, I'm reading some stuff now
where I really want to understand it before going through it,
but this is kind of like it's own journey.
Where is it going to take us?
Here's what I encountered yesterday
as I was thinking about this.
They say part of the human
narrative is wanting something to overcome.
Now, we could stop in them right away and we could be like,
I don't want to overcome this, you know, I don't want that.
And I can feel that too. Okay.
But like, think of the big picture of it.
Like, what if this experience we're having,
why are we having it?
I don't know, but here we are.
You know what?
If we never had anything to overcome?
What if there was never a challenge or a struggle?
You know, if we looked at it from that perspective,
we're just sitting in a white room somewhere
and food shows up
and we eat it like that could be kind of a dystopian existence.
So, you know, if we look to that very, you know, far
negative side,
we say, well, we wouldn't want an existence like that.
And we look over
and of course, some people, you know, life is not fair.
I would say, at least from some perspective,
some people having much more difficulty than others.
You know why? Why are these things the way they are?
I don't know, but okay, so we can look across like this
whole potential human experience.
And we say, well, in general
having something to overcome is an experience.
It is okay.
They say the trick is keeping it in balance.
Maybe this is what we're really trying to do in our space.
Bring things into balance.
I sounds good to me, right?
We're trying to say we want to bring the scale into balance.
Think of the old timey scale.
And we're we're balancing all the things we say.
We want that balance to come in just a little lower, please.
But then, of course, maybe more importantly,
we say really bringing our emotional state into balance.
Isn't this really what we're after?
The deeper layer, taking a deep breath,
finding a space of peace and contentment
so that we can flow through the struggle that inevitably comes?
Absolutely.
Choosing to exit
the comfort zone, to endure pain for a worthy cause.
That's where I took this title from. Thinking.
So we want something to overcome.
We say we have a struggle.
Maybe we've identified the weight is the worthy cause.
Maybe we are looking at some other health process.
The blood sugar, another health condition.
We say it's worth it.
This is what I say.
It's worth it to take care of ourselves.
Like if we have to have a struggle of something to overcome.
This is my encouragement for you.
Our health is a worthy cause.
Like sometimes we say,
oh, we're not even worthy of having health, right?
This would be a very discouraging thought that could come in.
This can be part of self-hatred.
So much of the.
Negative thinking that we can have toward ourself, like,
can't we often be so unkind to ourselves?
Do you believe that that you are worth it,
the taking care of ourselves and making powerful decisions
so that we can be healthier and experience
something as beautiful as human flourishing?
Do you believe that you are worth having that that it's
worth having some amount of struggle and effort for?
I say it's true.
Okay.
And I want you to have that mindset
and to build it and foster it and nurture it every day
so that you can develop love and kindness
and compassion for yourself.
First, say yes, it is worth it for me to do it,
and then take that energy and flow out
so that you can share it with as many people as possible
to, you know,
that's how we build up the positivity
and the good vibes and the momentum.
It just cycles around, you know, that's what we want.
Positive cycles in our life.
They carry on here.
They say it's about staying engaged
with what we can control in life.
Absolutely.
But then listen at this, which is most things
if you really think about it.
Why did that make me think?
I don't know, I don't know about that sentence.
Like.
I do some good thinking about it right now.
Sometimes it seems like to me
like actually, do we not control very many things?
You know, part of my process has been realizing
I can't control so many things,
especially things that I would get angry about, things
that are happening in the political sphere all around the world.
There's a thousand problems everywhere
that I can't, you know, control.
So you have to let go of that.
Helps me to take a deep breath and realizing,
okay, the things that I can control
are just the things in my one tiny little life right here.
And that is even hard enough, you know, to control.
Am I eating the healthiest food?
Am I taking care of my body and moving it in healthy ways?
And am I showing kindness to myself and other people?
These are these are struggles to do in in one little life.
So but maybe that is what they mean here.
What we can control in our life.
Maybe we can actually control here. Let's be more empowering.
Let's take it.
We can actually control a lot of things in our life.
We can make significant changes in our environment
that have real impacts on our body and health and mindset
and thinking.
And so once we have let go of the things that we can't control,
we can take powerful control of the things
that we can actually change.
And I want to inspire you to do that,
and that is what we're trying to do here.
So I think that's what they're saying
here, finding that balance.
I think that's an incredible balance to move forward in health
is to find that line.
The things that we can control and the things that we can't
and not let any of our precious, limited energy
that we could be using to the things
that actually move the needle to the actually
to the things that help us change,
don't waste a molecule of that
on anything that we can't control,
and bring all of that human energy intensity here
into our own life, into the spaces we can control.
They go on, they say antifragile things
need tension, resistance, adversity
and pain to break and transform.
I really like that word antifragile.
You know what is the opposite of fragile?
People say words like, you know, strong
and robust and things like this say antifragile.
Like things that resist fragility,
that in their nature are opposed to it.
I like that we want to be antifragile, right?
This is like weight training.
As an analogy, I love weight training as an analogy for fasting
that, you know, when you lift a weight, right,
you're actually breaking that muscle down,
but that creates the stimulus
that helps it to grow and reform into something stronger.
This is definitely the fasting process.
You know, if you look at a fasting physiology,
if you do an extended period of fasting,
okay, you will be losing weight.
Some amount of that weight is body fat a little bit less of it.
You know, depending on the length you lose some water weight
and then some amount you will lose some lean mass.
You preferentially lose a lot of body fat,
but you will lose some lean mass in a fasting period.
Okay.
But then the fasting is over
and the energy returns and the protein and you will build back
even the lean mass stronger, especially if you're combining it
with weight training, which is just driving the whole process.
This is how we become lean and strong.
So, you know, the whole process
really physiologically in the body is the same.
Breaking down lean mass
and building it back in a more efficient and powerful way.
But then also just as a metaphor that that fasting,
you know, here's a lot of things
that there's fasting helps us to encounter.
Paradox. Fasting is nothing.
Fasting is openness.
Fasting is just space for the body to operate and use energy.
I like to describe it like just a breeze blowing
through that we can sail sail with.
Okay, but fasting is also tension, right?
It is also its own type of work.
It's the work of doing nothing.
And, just like the work of lifting a weight, like here
we are lifting
a metabolic weight with fasting.
The type of thing that can help us to transform.
I love that, like the butterfly.
So speaking of this tension, they say here
we get this by deeply communing with life
and being a part of it,
rather than fearing our emotions and sitting on the sidelines.
Isn't that beautiful?
We've done sessions on overcoming fear.
Fear is the biggest obstacle, isn't it?
Just huge.
And I love this word here.
Deeply communing with life.
I eve in the note they sent, we had a little chat
on YouTube, was getting out in nature,
practicing fasting while out in nature,
and saying that this getting out in nature
was the highlight of this fasting experience that is shared.
My perspective.
If I'm doing some fasting, I'm trying to move toward
health, like getting out in nature.
I totally agree, nature is always a highlight to me.
Being out in the world amongst you know, especially
some open space and trees
always is a source of strength and inspiration.
I always feel more calm, centered and grounded
when I do that than when I don't.
Helps me to take a deep breath and release stress and tension.
And when I am fasting in that space,
I feel like fasting is a little bit of a process
that can open us up a little bit.
You know, it's a little bit like this
reading is saying a little bit of tension, a little bit of,
something help us get out of the mind a little bit,
get down into the heart and the body,
the things that I think about
and you know, whether it's true or whether it's just an idea
that is helpful, say like, okay, we are nature.
And when we get out in nature,
we get out of a building into nature.
I think it helps us connect more deeply.
I think thoughts like, hey, this is where I belong out here.
This is what a human being is.
I should be out here caring for the trees.
And these things are just beautiful thoughts like this.
And then in a fasting space,
it helps, I think, soften the heart.
We spend like the last five sessions, right?
How do we talk to the heart?
How do we get in here, get into nature,
have some fasting space, open up some space.
That's the type of the space where
if the heart is holding some emotions in there, it's got ideas.
It's got, you know, things.
Heart is trying to lead us and help us go in a path of health.
We say fasting for a worthy cause, like everything in our being,
whatever we're doing, however, we're spending our time.
You know, we're trying to flow in a direction for some reason,
you know, whether it's just earning money, you know,
which is a fine thing.
You say, we got to earn money to pay for things,
to take care of ourselves
and our family like this, or some broader purpose
that we have would try to find meaning in the work that we do.
Okay.
And then part of the meaning we're looking for a worthy cause.
Yeah.
Just taking care of ourselves, moving toward health.
So loved that conversation.
That's to me, that's deeply communing with life.
When you can find spaces like that, you know, nature is one
relationships and conversations with thoughtful people,
you know, another one where they really can sink into a space
and then spaces like that, hopefully spaces like this
where we can connect around such a powerful process,
fasting process, getting deep into the body and the physiology.
To me, I resonate with that deeply communing with life.
This is what we're trying to do.
Don't fear the emotions.
That's that's the other quote we had earlier in the week.
Keep your heart open through everything.
And how did that end can become our our great ally?
That's what we want.
Heart is a great ally.
We said in that session, don't put it in a box.
Don't you know, put away sometimes, you know, we said,
maybe we have to do it.
We've experienced something difficult, something traumatic,
some sort of struggle.
And maybe for a time
we say we just wall ourselves off from the emotions.
We get through a space,
but that can kind of scar us and close us up in a process,
not a healthy state to remain in
any more than we have to do it to keep ourselves
walled off from our emotions.
Right?
Fasting space part of a process like a meditation space.
Thoughtful spaces. Try to open that up again.
Try to process and release and forgive and.
Forgive.
See, there's another word that makes me take a deep breath.
There's something very difficult to do.
We tend to hang on to things that wound us.
We think that if we are hanging on to it,
that we're maybe punishing the person
who did something to us,
or we are having resentment for an experience that happened,
and we think that that makes it better in some fashion,
but really it just keeps punishing us, right?
Sometimes it takes the difficult work of being open to.
Going back to something like that, being able to sit with it
in order to finally let go of it.
And sometimes that can be a big hurdle on our path
toward healing.
So we can't stay on the sidelines forever, nor do we want to.
Embracing the grit of it all is what you were made for.
Lean in and start living, they say.
Yeah, I like that last sentence.
I have a slight.
I get a slight little twinge on that last sentence
because say like, start living.
It's like, was I not living before? No, we're living okay.
Like I feel a little judged by that.
And it's it's okay.
They're trying to be inspiring with it.
We will take the positive thought.
It was like, let's really start living, you know?
Have you felt like that?
I know I've had seasons where they use a phrase in there
that is so
powerful, like, are we deeply communing with life?
You know, I was like, I've definitely gone
through a lot of seasons where I would say, no, you know?
Or I was like, I'm just surviving here, you know?
I'm just getting by. And.
But isn't that a longing that we have?
Like, I think most people do you experience it,
feel somewhere in here, maybe in here or down in here.
It's like we do really like when we hear words
like that grit and we say like, like, yes, I'm ready.
Some seasons
we are not ready to dive in for a challenge, you know?
And if you're in a season like that, it's okay.
You know, come hang out here.
Nobody has to do anything.
We just sit here, we're thinking about ideas.
I think the ideas are the most important thing.
You know, I set a stat that I made up the other day
that, you know, it's 10% fasting and 90% mindset, you know,
something like that,
which is just the idea that I was exploring and mine,
the the mind guides our thoughts and actions.
And so spending as much time as necessary
to just get our mind into a totally centered, powerful
and strong space is way more important than diving in on
any kind of dietary process, whether it's healthy
eating, fasting, which to me is the same thing.
It's just finding the balance.
We're going to be eating periods of time.
We're going to be fasting, whether maybe it's just overnight,
maybe it's just ten hours, okay.
But we've got it. And so we're trying to find that balance.
But like that's its whole world there fasting space,
healthy eating, bringing nutrition into the body.
But then the whole broader process,
how do we think and feel about it.
You know, how are you thinking and feeling about it?
Feel free to share your thoughts at this point.
Because if we're thinking and feeling poorly about it,
I got to tell you, like how how is that going to service?
Are you going to force yourself into some process
that you're not feeling good about?
Like, see, I would never want someone to do that.
That doesn't sound very sustainable to me.
I only care about things that are sustainable for people.
Like if people are able to do something and force
the square peg into a round hole for a while,
you know, but it feels,
you know, off
most people not going to keep doing something that they.
Not feeling good with, you know?
It's the same thing with exercise. I'm a huge exercise.
I want to encourage as many people to be as active
as they comfortably want to be.
And but there's a lot of people
who force themselves into exercise that they don't enjoy.
And, you know, my experience is that people can punish their way
to some better health for a while
by doing that, like in the short term, say, people
getting a little stronger, people losing a little weight.
But if you're not enjoying it,
like most people reach a breaking point
with that over a couple months and then they don't continue it.
And I say it's much better to dial a process
like that back into a level.
Maybe it's just taking a walk because, you know,
I love things that are both,
you know, helpful on a weight loss process,
but also a wellness practice in and of itself.
Whereas like, you want to do it and feel better if you do it
and feel better in our mental health, in our mind
and our spirit and our being, okay,
like then the health benefits that you're getting from it in
the body is like a bonus.
You know, that's a win win and we want win
women's as much as possible across every domain.
Then we get in a cycle where we can flow forward
in health in a joyful, positive way.
Help us on our process are worthy, cause
better health, more strength in the body,
a leaner and stronger being,
both physically in the body, in our mind and spirit.
Fasting is a tool
in that process that I say is a very powerful tool.
You can add it on top of all the tools that everybody else knows
about
choosing the healthy food and moving the body in healthy ways.
Dialing in on a mindset of peace and contentment
through some breathing practices help send that message.
The deep breath telling the body, hey, everything's okay.
You can put down.
These hormones that are telling, telling us the danger is here,
and we can actually turn on the repair enzymes
and help to rejuvenate the system, okay?
And and we can get out the journal
and we can help to write this stuff out.
Like we were saying, we get out in nature,
we open up a little bit,
we open up some fasting space, let some of the stress
and the difficulty out, let it flow out into the journal.
Beautiful practice to do.
Wonderful to share this space with you.
I hope you enjoy these thoughts.
I hope you have a beautiful day
and I will look forward to connecting with you again soon.
Have a great day everybody!