7 Warning Signs of Fasting Mistakes

Intro: Signs You're Fasting Wrong 0:00

Hey, in today's video, I'm talking about seven warning signs or seven symptoms. You're making fasting mistakes. When you do intermittent fasting, you really should feel great. As your body starts to burn fat, you produce ketones. Ketones reduce inflammation in the brain. They actually enhance mitochondrial function. You should feel very energized, mentally clear. You should be able to think sharply and quickly. Shouldn't have a lot of hunger and cravings, if any at all. You should feel really, really good while you're fasting.

If you're not, you may be making some mistakes. And so here are the seven symptoms. One is fatigue. Again, like I said, when you're burning fat you're producing ketones. That is a really great fuel source for the cells of your body. When you burn fat for fuel, fat produces a lot more cellular energy and a lot less metabolic waste in the body. And you produce ketones to get them up into the brain. And those ketones, they actually reduce inflammation in the brain. There are great energy source for the for the brain cells.

And so again, you should feel really good energized if you're feeling fatigued, if you have brain fog, if you have dizziness. Those are all signs that you may be making some mistakes when it comes to fasting.

Symptoms of Poor Fasting: Fatigue, Brain Fog, Cravings 1:12

And we're going to address those in today's training. Cravings you shouldn't have cravings. Ketones naturally shut down cravings, so you shouldn't have that if you are constipated, that's a little bit different. Obviously, if you're not moving your bowels, you may not be hydrating. Well, you may not be getting enough electrolytes, but you shouldn't be constipated. When you're doing intermittent fasting, you should be able to actually move those bowels well. And then if you're not losing fat, let's say you're doing a 16 or 18 hour fast and a regular basis, and yet you just don't.

You're not losing weight. You're not losing, you know, undesirable belly fat. Right? There's a sign. That's a sign. You may not be fasting correctly. So let's talk about what we need to do in order to fast properly. Well, the first thing is when we look at our diet, we want to make sure that when we eat food, we're eating somewhere between 30 to 50g of protein in each meal. That protein helps stabilize our blood sugar, helps stimulate the production of lean body mass, keeps our insulin levels down, and that's going to reduce overall cravings and make us feel satiated between meals.

And that gives us a longer ability to fast. We also want to focus on getting good, healthy fats. Or healthy fats are going to be things from, let's say, grass fed animal products, wild caught fish or wild caught seafood, grass fed butter, extra virgin olive oil, avocados, coconut oil, coconut fats, eggs. That's where we're going to get our good fats. We want something between, let's say, 15 to 30g or so of healthy fats in a meal. We want to make sure we're getting a lot of colorful fruits and vegetables.

When we consume our meals, we want to make sure we're avoiding snacking. I want you to focus on eating 2 to 3 good quality meals

How to Eat During Your Window 2:50

with that protein level, 30 to 50g of protein in each of those meals. Okay, so if you're doing that, eating 2 or 3 times a day, 30 to 50g of protein, getting healthy fats, getting colorful fruits and vegetables in there, you're going to be much more satiated and you're not going to have as much cravings. One of the big mistakes I see people make is they just don't eat enough when they are eating and they don't need enough protein especially they really load up on a lot of Saatchi carbohydrates, a lot of carbohydrates that are very slow genic, that make your body produce a lot of insulin and make you more insulin resistant.

And then it's harder to break into your fat stores because your insulin levels stay elevated. When insulin is elevated and you're not consuming food, that's going to cause more cravings. It's going to cause lower energy. It's going to cause your blood sugar to drop a little too low, and you're not burning the fat for fuel. And so therefore you don't feel good, right? You have low energy cravings. Like I said, you're going to have a lot more issues. And so making sure you're really dialing in your food during your eating window is super key.

So you can have a successful fasting window. The other thing is making sure we're keeping stress in our control and that we're sleeping well. That's super critical for keeping stress stress hormones under control when we're under a lot of stress or for not sleeping well, our cortisol goes up. And cortisol is what we call a glucocorticoid, meaning it elevates blood glucose levels. When glucose goes up in our blood, insulin comes up, and then insulin will drag the glucose down and get it into the cells.

Now blood glucose goes down, but insulin is still up. And now we end up with hypoglycemic like responses where we don't feel good. We have brain fog, we have cravings, we have low energy, we don't feel good.

Stress, Sleep, and Electrolytes 4:38

And so that's another big issue, right. Making sure that again, we're keeping our stress under control. We also want to make sure that we're consuming enough electrolytes, particularly during our eating window that we're consuming, you know, high quality foods. They all have good electrolytes. You may need a little bit of electrolytes during your fasting window as well. And it can be as simple as taking a little bit of, let's say good quality salt, Celtic Sea salt or something like that. Redmond's real salt and putting it on your tongue and just getting a little bit of sodium, a little bit of extra salt and minerals for a lot of people.

They notice that that gets rid of cravings, it gets rid of headaches that they may experience. If they're fasting low energy, their energy goes up. They feel a lot better for other people. They need an actual electrolyte powder, right? So they'll put a little bit of electrolytes, for example, and some water and drink that. And that's really good. Now you got to be careful of is if you're over consuming a sweetener like stevia or over consuming caffeine. I see a lot of people during their fasting window.

They're drinking a lot of caffeine, like a lot of black coffee. In some cases, they're sweetening the coffee with stevia, and that stevia can trigger cravings and actually trigger insulin release, which brings down your blood sugar and causes the hypoglycemic like reactions. And so you want to make sure you're I recommend while you're fasting during your fasting window, no stevia, no sweeteners. You can do black coffee, but make sure that you're not overdoing the coffee. If you're noticing you feel agitated.

More anxiety, maybe overdoing the caffeine. When you're fasting, you're naturally have higher amounts of stress hormone, right? So when you're fasting, your cortisol comes up a little bit more than it would if you weren't fasting. And that's not necessarily a bad thing as long as it's balanced with human growth hormone. So when we're fasting we get elevations in growth hormone. And that growth hormone is very anabolic, meaning that it helps preserve lean body tissue and has very anti-aging characteristics to it helps help support

Caffeine, Cortisol, and Growth Hormone 6:32

healthy collagen, whereas cortisol catabolic breaks down sugar. Right. And if cortisol is not balanced by growth hormone, it will actually break down our skeletal muscle. So when we're fasting we might have elevated cortisol. But we also have elevated growth hormone. And that balance helps us preserve lean body tissue and feel great because cortisol gives us a lot of wakefulness and great mental energy. And so cortisol actually has a really great component to it where it makes us feel great. We feel energized, excited, mentally sharp and alert.

But if cortisol is elevated in growth hormone is low. Now we end up breaking down muscle tissue. We end up over agitated, not feeling good. So for overdoing caffeine we're going to elevate cortisol more. And we're going to reduce growth hormone. So if we take too much caffeine we get too much cortisol too much adrenaline, too much of these catecholamines that break down tissue and not enough growth hormone that protects the muscle tissue, that's not what we want. So keep your caffeine under control.

Take the right dose that allows you to function really, really well without having the unwanted symptoms associated with it. Also, caffeine. Too much caffeine can stimulate cravings as well, which can be an issue, so make sure you're keeping that under control. The constipation you may not be hydrating enough, right? So making sure you're really well hydrated okay. Make sure you're taking a good magnesium can really be helpful. And electrolytes in general making sure that we're doing that super keeper keeping things moving in your system.

You shouldn't be constipated while you're doing an intermittent fast for, let's say, 16 or 18 hours, you should be able to move your bowels well, and that's actually going to help you have a better fasting experience. So that's really critical. And then finally and really that balance between cortisol and growth hormone like I was talking about is super key for losing weight, losing deli fat.

Constipation and Fat Loss Issues 8:27

Because if you're not sleeping well, if you're stressed out or if you are overdoing the caffeine or doing stevia, things like that, you're going to get more cortisol, low growth hormone. You're not going to be able to burn fat. Well, growth hormone will help trigger fat burning. And that's key okay. And so these are the things that we want to make sure we're doing. And then finally if you're a female let's say you're a female. You're in your menstrual cycle. So you're menstruating. Another really important caveat is timing out your fasting.

So the best time to fast for a female on our menstrual cycle is day one. When she starts menstruating somewhere between day one and let's say day 10 to 12. Great time to do intermittent fasting right around ovulation. Ovulation is usually day 14, so right around that period of time, maybe a few days before we want to do less fasting. You know, you might do an eight hour eating window during your first ten days of your mental cycle, and then you go to a ten hour eating window or a 12 hour eating window those few days right around ovulation.

And then you can go right back to doing, let's say, an eight hour eating window right after that, up until the week before your menstrual cycle.

Female Cycle Timing and Exercise Tips 9:35

So roughly day 20, day 21, somewhere in that on your menstrual cycle, that's when you go back into a longer eating window, a short fasting window. And that's also a great time to really consume more protein, more carbohydrate, just more more calories in general. And tell the body, okay, I'm in a time of feasting, time of where food is plentiful and that's going to help your body. It's going to help lower cortisol. And it's going to help with good progesterone function, progesterone release. So that way you have less PMS like symptoms and you have a really good healthy menstrual cycle.

So again, the best time to fast for a female interventional cycle is roughly the first ten days or so right after she starts menstruating and then shortly after ovulation for several days, and then the week before menstruation in particular. That is the best time to do less fasting and more eating, more feasting. Okay. And also right around ovulation. Okay, a few days before maybe a great time to do less fasting and more feasting. So if you do those things, that's going to help set you up for having a healthy fasting experience where you feel great, you don't have brain fog, you've got great energy, and you're able to really, really thrive in your life.

One last caveat actually is exercise timing. I prefer exercising at the end of a fast. That's when I feel best. Exercise can oftentimes cause more cravings you have to time it off of based on when you're able to do it, obviously. But for some individuals, they find that when they exercise, they need to eat shortly after. So try to time your fast around that as well. So if you're able to get, let's say 14 hours in 16 hours in before you exercise, that's great because you've gotten the benefits of the intermittent fast.

Now you exercise which further ramps up autophagy, and then you're able to consume food right after that. Okay. It can be tough sometimes to exercise and then just wait a while for, you know, let's say 3 or 4 hours before consuming food. Oftentimes, you'll have more cravings. You won't feel as good if you do that, and you don't recover as well from your exercise. Some people do it and they feel great, but for a lot of people, they struggle with that. So that's something to keep in mind as well as your exercise timing.

So hopefully I know there's a lot of information here. Hopefully you guys got a lot out of this and we'll see you in a future training. Be blessed.