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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello. Good morning. Welcome back to the one day at a time podcast where we focus on today and we do our best. Remember the phrase, which is a phrase used by emperor Augustus of the Roman Empire. You know, he could He wanted to build so much in a short period of time, but all He reminded himself of this saying, Fistina lenti, make haste slowly.
Speaker 1:So each day, we're gonna go at it, we're gonna try our best, but we're gonna look at it over the long term and not expect everything to change overnight. Okay? That's what we gotta do here. So today's topic is what happens during a seven day water fast, which means you're only drinking water for seven days, no food. Okay?
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of reason reasons people fast. Some do it for health, think for weight control, they think so. Right? Some people do it religiously, some people do it as a political statement, you know, some people do it as a last resort or whatever. And obviously for much of human history, we may have gone into these kind of fasts, but not by choice.
Speaker 1:Like, you know what I mean? We it was farming, it was drought, it was illness, it was war, there was no food, like we didn't really go here and yeah, I'll do this, this sounds great. But because obviously starvation was so common, there's a lot of survival, kind of the humans that did survive possessed advantageous genetic traits that have obviously passed on down to us. Okay? So what are those traits really?
Speaker 1:And they are like adaptations to when energy is low. Okay? And we can find this out. So and actually there was a research study that did go and find this out. So it's a new research study by researchers affiliated with universities in Germany, Denmark, Norway and UK.
Speaker 1:It's a small study though, it's 12 healthy volunteers, seven males, five females. Average age is 28, BMI twenty five point four, average body fat percentage 25%, and their white European ancestry. Okay? They were taking daily bloods, looking at 3,000 individual proteins, and looking how they change to calorie restriction, and looking at what happens. Right?
Speaker 1:So the researchers took another blood sample on day 10 as well, so three days after refeeding. So what did the study find? Okay. So let's have a look here. So after forty eight to seventy two hours, ketogenesis increased throughout the fast.
Speaker 1:So going to ketosis, obviously, is gonna happen here, which is basically the body shifting from using glucose primarily to using fat for energy. Okay? And participants found this transition really challenging. And if you've done keto before, you'll know what you're talking about here. It's it's it's very hard.
Speaker 1:You feel you just wanna eat carbs. You know? You just wanna get some energy and see us. People get some brain fog and stuff like that. But yeah.
Speaker 1:So during this for period, hunger signal is hunger signaling is amplified obviously, and down regulation of reproductive function happens as well. So, you know, the reason behind this is why get pregnant or need to get you know, create kids if this is the environment you're in, it's not great. And there was an increase in protein breakdown. Okay? So, they're looking at the bloods and they saw this, that the proteins, the third of the proteins being tracked changed in response to the fast.
Speaker 1:And this was coming in day two and three as well. So the body in day two and three kind of resulted in it protecting or sparing protein. It doesn't want to lose muscle mass at this stage, okay? It's one of the last things it wants to lose, but it has no choice over time but to use protein for energy, okay, and this is not what we want to happen. So after seven days, participants lost on average of 12.5 pounds which is 5.7 kilograms.
Speaker 1:But is the thing, almost two thirds of that was lean mass. Okay? But the proteins, protected in the brain neurons and synapses, they were preserved which is important. Okay? So the body's an amazing thing.
Speaker 1:Right? Subcutaneous fat declined, but there wasn't much of a visceral abdominal tissue fat going down. Hardly any lost there, but subcutaneous fat did go down. Okay? So what you're basically seeing here is it's an extreme seven days water fast.
Speaker 1:You see it promoted on social media. Yes. There's a lot of weight lost, but at the expense of two thirds of it being lean mass, which we really, really don't wanna lose. You know? And after three days of refeeding, alright, 80% of the lean mass returned.
Speaker 1:So yes, that's great that there's a bounce back that's empty after three days of refeeding, that is 80% return, of lean mass. But like I mentioned in the Minnesota starvation experiment, the body's hunger levels are gonna remain elevated until all the lean muscle masses have returned to baseline. So when you're doing these extreme things or you get tempted by seven day water fast, oh my god, I can lose 12 pounds in this and that. You are making life a lot harder for yourself in the long run because you're gonna lose lean muscle, you're gonna increase your hunger signals after it, you're gonna build a terrible relationship with weight loss because you think you have to do extreme things. Okay?
Speaker 1:And really, you're not losing much fat really anyway. In the study, there was no adverse events reported because it was just seven days, but it doesn't mean that it's something we should do day to day. You know, this is a study like if you go work, you go looking after kids and stuff, going on in a seven day water fast, you know, is not gonna be sensible, basically. This is different to intermittent fasting, which I've had questions about as well. Intermittent fasting is like sixteen hour window where you don't eat, then an eight hour window where you do.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people eat, I guess, naturals. They'll wake up and they might have food at seven, AM or they might finish their meals, you know, early afternoon. So intermittent fasting is more like a lifestyle thing. If you prefer to have a timed window, that's fine, but there's no magic to it. It's just if it helps you reduce your calorie intake then great, utilise it.
Speaker 1:But fasting is getting, like, hyped up again right now. And I think a lot of people basically, we hope something like this works. This is the problem with hope. We get told it. This new thing, this new and you're Dana White, the UFC president, was saying he does a water fast and there's all these Gary I think his name is Gary Becker, who's like this guy who just talks absolute nonsense.
Speaker 1:And you get hooked into these things because they sound amazing. It's like, oh, I can detox for seven days and stuff like that. You don't need to micromanage your body to that level. Your body is an amazing machine. Okay?
Speaker 1:I've had blood work done every year like my annual tests. I don't try and optimize my vitamins and minerals. I do eat a lot of fruit. I eat lean meats. You know, I eat veggies.
Speaker 1:You know, I do eat a combination of ultra processed foods and non processed foods. And to me, it's quite amazing that my vitamin and mineral numbers were all in the green and vitamin D was slightly borderline and maybe it's because time of yours doing it. But it was like, my body's like a really good machine and if I'm covering the big boulders, which is I have a higher protein diet, I'm not over consuming on my calories, I'm not gaining fat and I'm eating around the right foods and I understand the foods I need to eat, I do need to eat my fruit and veggies obviously. You know, do we need to go beyond this and think, well, maybe this is 70 water fast is gonna fix stuff for me. No, it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not gonna do out at all. So there's no unique health benefits to it. And for weight loss, calorie restriction is the key thing. So you can achieve this without fasting. That's the important thing.
Speaker 1:Right? There was one person in the study who lost 20 pounds, but the people that lost the most weight also gained our weight back quickest as well. So you can see it as, okay. Cool. You know, Kelly lost 20 pounds, and I lost 12 in the seven.
Speaker 1:They walked fast, but then she also regained most of it, and I regained, like, a a large bit larger percentage of it. So you get hyper responders and stuff like that, but overall, it's like it works both ways. Right? Everybody lost a bit of fat, but when they do when they did go to the three day refeed, gaining fat, nobody gained more fat than they started off with after this seven a ten day experiment. Right?
Speaker 1:So I've mentioned this before. When some of you go over your calorie targets, you worry that you gain fat. Okay? So the the good news is when it comes to fat loss is that if our if our protein is high and if we are doing some resistance training twice a week, we're in a deficit that's moderate, which all of you are on, none of you are being pushed into a severe deficit because we know in the research a high risk of lean muscle tissue going, like the Minnesota starvation experiment shows. You want to be in a moderate deficit, high protein, having some resistance training.
Speaker 1:The chance of you actually losing muscle mass there is reduced a lot. Okay. So when it comes to what you're losing when you're in a deficit, a lot of that's gonna come from, your fat stores and obviously some water as well, but high percentage of it is fat. So some people will say well you don't need to worry about protein when you it's just a deficit and I'll say you lose like maybe a similar amount of weight but the percentage of the weight you lose will be there'll be a higher percentage that are coming from your muscle if your protein's not in and potentially you're not stimulating the muscles with some exercise. I say, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:It cost it matters because maintaining muscle mass is one of the most important things you're gonna do on your weight loss journey and for general health in the long term. Okay? So that's good news that majority of it is fat. It's not an exact science in terms of 3,500 calories of fat. A three one pound of fat contains 3,500 calories.
Speaker 1:Going into a 3,500 calorie deficit, yes, you're gonna lose, you know, who knows what the number is. It could be, like, 87.5% of the, deficit is fat fat mass. Some of it might be tissue, but most of it is fat. But when it goes the other way, and this is a good news, and it shows in this study as well, when you go into a refeed and you go beyond maintenance for a bit, it's actually not the same ratio. So if I were to consume 3,500 calories over my maintenance, that doesn't mean that all of that excess calories gets stored as fat because a lot of it goes into building lean muscle tissue and other processes, your metabolic rate goes up because you know there's more, energy used to digest the food, you might actually fidget and move more, get your steps higher without even noticing.
Speaker 1:You might have more energy in general. So that percentage, so it works in your favor. So you might and I've read a few studies and I need to confirm this when I speak to doctor Paul next as well, what he'd seen in the research, but it's more like 6,000 calories over your maintenance to gain a pound of fat roughly or at least at least that. So that works for us, which means do not panic if you go over your target. Remember, your target is there, And if you go three to 500 calories over, you're probably around the maintenance.
Speaker 1:If you go a thousand calories over, you've gone like 500 calories of maintenance, you're still not gonna gain fat there. You might gain water retention and you get more muscle glycogen and that pulls more water in, but it's not fat. Even if you had 1,500 calories over, 2,000 calories over, it's still unlikely that you're gonna gain fat there. When you gain fat, it is accumulation over time. So it's like, you know, you have three big days over Easter for example.
Speaker 1:Yes, you're gonna go on the scales, after on the fourth day and your weight will shoot up. Your water weight's gone up, muscle glycogen goes up, it's not fat gain. And I can prove this in my own graph. So I did two heavy weekends and my weight shot up three or four kilograms and within a few days of reducing my calorie intake and getting a workout in, it's dropped back down to baseline. I didn't gain fat in that period neither did I lose fat.
Speaker 1:Okay? So same for you. So that's why you shouldn't panic about these things and again this research backs it. It's important not to catastrophize your weight going up and down each day. You are doing it as a scientist.
Speaker 1:It's a fourteen day experiment, most of you start off with or a seven day experiment you start off with where you start, you take a step back from the data and go let me just collect data. Even better, let me just collect data for thirty days. If I can weigh myself every day, great. If it's two or three times a week, great. If it's once a week, you know, that's fine, but it's better to do daily.
Speaker 1:And when you look at the data after a month in the graphs, you're like, oh my god, it really does go up and down each each day. And especially if you're female and you've the menstrual cycle, you'll start noticing patterns with your cycle and that's very different between all of you. Some of you have different reactions to different parts of your cycle with different levels of estrogen and progesterone. So you start noticing patterns but you start noticing a downward trend in total weight and it might take three four weeks for you. Some some of you are luckier when it's one week.
Speaker 1:For men for example, you got to remember that a lot of the advice in the fitness industry and stuff is based off male research and how men bodies react. Yes. I can look at my average weight week to week and I can see a trend if I'm losing fat quicker than a female most of the time because men are the same every day. We wake up, our testosterone level is pretty much the same, they dip over time slowly, we feel the same. There's no, like, huge change in our internal hormonal balances and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:But as a woman, there's a lot more things going on. So it might take you a full menstrual cycle to see the trend. It might take two menstrual cycles to see the trend, which, you know, isn't frustrating. It takes longer, but it means chill out a bit. Do the view from above like the Stoics did, you know, the ancient Greeks as well.
Speaker 1:You know, take a view from above, zoom out a bit. You know? Can I zoom out and not make rash decisions after three days or one week? Can I understand that I need more time to see the patterns? And if I am sticking to my calorie target and I hit my steps target and my protein target, you can just you go, hey.
Speaker 1:My body's beating a bit. My body's just doing what my body does. A weight is up and down right now. But I am focused on what I can control. And what you can control is trying your best to take your calories and protein steps, and results will happen over time.
Speaker 1:I promise you. But I can't promise you when you'll see the results in the data form, but it will be there. And you've got to look at other measures as well guys, you can't just say this all comes down to my weight. You know, you're looking at your relationship with food for example, which you cannot understand your relationship with food if you're trying to judge your relationship with food. It must come from a place of non judgment.
Speaker 1:It's an observational thing. You look at your relationship with food day to day and journal it. And then you start seeing, oh, you know, did a poll in the group, pretty much everybody struggles with emotional eating. That's your relationship with food. You're using food to cope with certain emotional turbulences and you realize quickly when you do look into this without judging yourself, well, did that bingeing of chocolate actually help me afterwards?
Speaker 1:So that I feel worse. Most of the time you feel worse. Is food the answer to my emotional struggles? The answer is hardly yes. Sometimes it can help ease the ease, you know, if you're if you need a break and it does make you feel a bit better to, like, calm the mind down, you know, you've gotta look at it, holistically in that sense.
Speaker 1:But it's all about the self awareness, your relationship with food, understanding energy balance, not judging if you consume too much energy from time to time, it's very easy to do so in the modern world. Know, we are surrounded by high fat, high sugar, high salt food which tastes amazing, you know, and we all love those foods and when they're in our faces and it's easy to access it's difficult. So yes, we consume too much energy sometimes. You know, yes, our relationship with food is being manipulated over decades of diet cultures with magazines and influencers or celebrities more than that with the size zero trends and all this nonsense. There's been a lot of companies that whilst they started off with great intentions, and I don't wanna bash any company, you know, they end up getting, you know, sold off private equity, this and that.
Speaker 1:People come in. It's all about shareholder value, da da da da da. And really then it's all about, like, is it is the main is the main mission still the core thing or not? And usually the answer is no. You know?
Speaker 1:So, yeah, you gotta look at it fully. So don't be worried if your weight's not coming on all the time. Let the app do the work. It will tweak it for you if results aren't coming. And if results are coming, happy days, you get the review.
Speaker 1:Look at other factors that really are making a difference in your life. Like you feel a bit better about yourself, you're getting steps in, your mindset's in a better place, you're you're talking to other people in the community, you're making connections, you're feeling heard, you're feeling okay, I don't have to do anything extreme anymore. I'm feeling at ease in my journey, I'm taking a bird's eye view, I'm having a long term approach to it which is different to all the short term approaches, and I'm in a place where people actually care which is important. So just a recap on that. Hopefully you don't get caught into these fasting, water fasting stuff because it's all over social media right now.
Speaker 1:But understand, you know, where they're coming from and understand why people do them because the pull is big. You're like, you lose this weight quick and it's gonna solve your problems. No. It it doesn't happen that way. So hopefully that covered the water fasting topic for you guys.
Speaker 1:If you have any questions about it, let me know. But hope you have a good day. Remember to get your one big thing done, your OBT. So if you're feeling behind, you haven't tracked in a while, you're feeling stressed, everything's crumbling around you, financial work, just do one thing today. Whether it's your step count, whether it's your protein target, or whether it's your calorie target, just pick one and get that done, and you'll notice that the other ones will get done eventually that day.
Speaker 1:But just focus on one and done and, you know, get one big things done, and you've started building momentum. So have a good day. Speak to you all soon.