Master Fasting: Shed Weight & Retain Lean Muscle

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Hi everyone, this is Dr. Joseph Antoun, your co-host for the Longevity for the Fasting of the Longevity Summit. Today, I have a very, very special guest with me, Sharon Brack. And she's very special because, first of all, she's a functional nutrition. So when we talk about fasting and dieting, this is this is her court. But more importantly, she has first level experience personally with fasting, but also with her clients. And she sees all kinds of clients in people and within their daily life, pro athletes, corporate wellness.

So she has exposure to the different uses of fasting and longevity and cannot wait to to learn about your experience. Dr. Sharon with fasting and longevity, to, to learn about the results that you've seen as a practitioner and with corporations. And also we're going to focus a little bit further on the muscle because it's an organ of longevity as well. And as you've known, the muscle has been very challenging for any intervention in nutrition because if you lose weight, you're losing muscle. Even if you inject it was limping and it will go over you losing muscle.

So fasting is luck. That challenge and Dr. Sharon will help us, will help us understand all of this. Welcome. Sharon. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be on here with you today. Do you want to say a few words about yourself before we we I ask a few questions and focus on the topic at hand. Sure. So I live in sunny Arizona with my husband. We have three teenagers and one very active dog. I'm I've been in the health and wellness industry for over 20 years, my own practice for over 50 years, working with one on one individuals of all ages, but then also very specialized training, small group, large group, corporate health and wellness.

I have years of neutral genomics under my belt, and then my main goal is to truly get people results, teach them how to control their blood sugar, and doing that without medications. Obviously, sometimes there's cases where you need that, but most of the time in working with people, learning how to control the blood sugar with your get your diet and your food choices. And the combination of those food choices is essential for being able to travel and not being able to, you know, not having to follow a meal plan every day, but learning how to work with the foods that you love and how to combine them to work and turn into energy the way you need it to be for your lifestyle.

That's fantastic. I think what the latest statistics are showing, 73% of us carry a little bit of an extra weight and 90% of us have some metabolic disorder.

Blood Sugar Control and Muscle Preservation 2:57

And I think it's all coming from the lifestyle which you tackle. It comes from muscle loss with with aging and aging itself. And I think this is why we're so excited in this summit to unlock this trio for people and help them age gracefully and stay healthier, longer and live better lives. That aging gracefully is huge. You know, this whole culture of anti-aging is, you know, I have two teenage daughters and one teenage son is teaching them not to to be against aging, aging undefeated, but learning how to age well with the lifestyle that you want in. So let's let's tackle the topic at hand.

Can you talk to us a little bit about your approach and your experience with blood sugar control and muscle, because these are actually related and insulin resistance and how fast they can, you know, has a lot of those for your patients or your clients or the companies that you support. Yes. So thankfully, with the help of the the controlled glucose monitoring systems, it's been very helpful to even watch this on those types of and you can gather data and actually see where your insulin is spiking.

And I have been convinced over years that it's these spikes in these drops of blood sugar. Right. All day long that just really cause problems and make our results slow to no results at all. And in fact, like you said, end up burning the very thing that we're trying to keep and maintain as we age. And that's muscle. So combining the foods is one thing, and that's something that I always work with my patients on in clients is what are your carb choices? What what do you have on your plate in front of you, whether it's a small snack or a meal, and making sure that those combinations that you're going to enjoy them, that you're not feeling like you're having to be on some diet of some sorts, but they're the foods that you love within reason, portion control.

And then we have protein, fats and carbs working together for us. So when I became introduced to you this prolon fasting food mimicking diet, it is it was fascinating to me because I thought, well, I'm going to hook up to all these systems and see what happens here. I'm going to see my blood sugar is like rolling hills. I don't want to see them spiking up. And that's exactly what happened. And we also tracked our muscle on smart skills and it was fascinating because not only did we did we not lose muscle, we gained muscle and and our water weight went up.

Our body fat percentage plummeted. And then outside of that, the energy was wild. We were sleeping better. We were able to regulate our emotions better on down the line. But the first specific, you know, conversation today, I was truly blown away with being able to keep my muscle and or, you know, during those five days make it more of a mental retreat for me, taking a little bit of time off, some of the heavy lifting during those five days and incorporating it afterwards, it put me and my husband and our clients that we're working with.

It put us in a prime state to build muscle on the days and weeks following in between each cycle that we did. So I've not answered your question a little bit. And that might strike some people because you're saying in talking about prolon, the faster we can die. So your body is fasting for 5 days and then you're talking about building muscle, not losing muscle. How is that even possible for somebody listening to us today? What is what is the mechanism that's allowing prolonging? And I promise attempted to practice on protecting me body mass, actually.

So what you're saying is scientifically very valid with a lot of trials, but can you log this because that's the secret that has helped us say, okay, chronic clearing restrictions are not going to work because I mean, it's difficult to comply and muscle and you decrease slower than your metabolic rate and you lose muscle and you say, okay, it was epic and in what Govee and others came and they help you lose the weight very fast. But 20 to 30% of the weight loss is from muscle. Right. And here comes the fasting and the contrition saying I'm going to be better than both.

But explain a little bit to the people listening to us here. How come it fasting, intervention is protecting your body mass? It's protecting you because it's it's recalling, I believe, the body's way of utilizing insulin. And when we do that, we get into these phases where our body rejuvenates faster and is able to then turn over our cells and and create like we were talking about earlier. The mature cells are behaving like almost like they're they're going through puberty again. Right. And it is fascinating the way that your cells can actually become more useful then and again, it's not so much that we are we're anti-aging, but we're teaching our body how to age well.

And obviously, the portion control comes in after that. And we have to talk about that, especially here in our Western culture.

How Fasting Mimicking Supports Rejuvenation 8:12

But at the same time, what I think our body is doing is we are really learning how to use insulin as energy and as a helper versus something that's just managing our poor behavior in. And like you said, the rejuvenation is key and the three to the five were paraphrased and it won the Nobel Prize in Medicine is an amazing phenomenon of getting the cells a little bit biologically younger. And this is this is one of the major pillars of this summit is to help people understand that if you cross two days of fasting or 3 days as of the three, the body's saying, hey, I depleted my reserves.

Now I'm going to tell the cells every cell to rejuvenate, to survive. That rejuvenation is what taking the body temporarily backwards in biological age is improving muscle and then there's one secret which you and I were talking about before this call is is that fasting is a stress. It's like really intermittent exercise or stressful exercise. Yes. In that stress push, this growth hormone in the growth hormone tells the muscle to grow on top of the nation. And that's turning out to be magical and is very valuable for everyone listening to us.

Why we're focusing on the muscle, because if you don't maintain muscle, your metabolic rate will slow down. Anything you're going to eat after is going to be picked up back in fat. And this is why most people say, you know, I try so many things. I don't lose the weight or I have a stubborn, fat and I'm not getting out of it. Right. And it's because of the muscle is the engine of the burn. And if you don't preserve that, you're just doing yoyo diets and going for visceral. It's a vicious cycle of building fat at the expense of muscle within every cycle. Yes.

And your body is smart. It's picks up on the fact that you're doing that. You know, these hard core, you know, diets that you lose, you end up losing more muscle and water and then it goes into like almost a storage phase. Then everything you put in your body after that is going to store it as fat because it's like, you know, I don't know what Sharon's going to do down the line here in one month, so I'm going to keep this and hold on to it. But one major thing I would think that we should also make sure that we're making note of is that way that this that prolonged is fasting mimicking in general is fighting inflammation in our body and inflammation is a core root of so many things.

And it just, you know, for instance, some of my one client that just finished a chronic hip pain years and years went to year rounds of professional athlete so you know been aging well because they have they like the activity side of things they know what they're doing with their health and wellness, but they could not get rid of this hip pain until the first cycle of prolonged hip pain is completely gone. And I'm convinced it's lowered inflammation to the level that there was regrowth with that autophagy in the collagen and just new cells, new blood flow to that area.

And now that client is back doing, you know, pickleball and tennis that they thought they were going to have to give up in their fifties, no longer. In nature. Now, do you have fasting integrated as part of your recommendation in your practice? Can you tell us a little bit how some of the listeners as as potential consumers could benefit? But also we have listeners who are practitioners themselves themselves that nutritionist, doctors, best practitioners kairos what do you how you do fasting and how do you use it in your clinic? Yes.

So 99% of my clients, there's only a very small percentage of clients that I don't recommend it for. That would be probably eating disorder clients that have other type of things going on. And then obviously they and if their use under under 16 years old, I typically don't recommend it for them. But the majority of my clients, like I said, 99% of those fallen into that range where I would say, listen, let's run some lab work before and after and I build it into a program. And I said, we're going to do lab work before we're going to do a five day fasting and make sure they're completely set up for that and make sure that they have those five days marked out.

It's kind of hard to find five days in there, but once you identify five days where you can do this, you are golden. Your soul is that the system itself makes it. You don't have to think about your food for the whole week, which makes it help you, which helps you focus on, you know, what you're doing and and getting through that week. And then obviously the transition, which is very important out of it as well, but not typical. Like I said, things are this is essential and very important, but none of this is really difficult at all.

So I run lab work typically before and then we do the five days of of pro roll on and out of that when we what we do is we stick to some very clean eating out of the out of prolonged people understand we we make yes lists

Clinical Use of ProLon and Client Results 13:12

the carbs that they enjoy obviously less processed better we make lists of the proteins that they enjoy. We'll make lists of the healthy fats they enjoy. And then that makes it so that they they don't have to be on a specific meal plan with me after that, they can choose from those lists of carbs, fats and protein within the right portion size based upon their activity level, on their lifestyle, how tall they are, how you know, how how fast their metabolism is. There's many things that play into that.

And then a month later we redo the lab work and then they're set up also at that time to do their second cycle. I usually recommend four cycles in a row. That does depend upon the client, but most of my clients will do a four month, some five days, one month at a work out of ten. So basically 20 days of cycling over four months of fasting, which is not very many at all. And each time they do it, they get better and better and even different results than they do the first time around. So I usually do that and then I incorporate obviously into that those programs.

I'll do food shopping tours or if they need specific sit down, what's working, what's not working? Let's find foods in here that are making sure we're controlling your blood sugar. Because like I said earlier, what this is doing is just reteaching your body how to use insulin for energy and for the right reasons versus just, you know, trying to maintain and fix all the things that we're doing with our, you know, Starbucks, Frappuccinos and this and the mismanagement of food. Right. So it's been, you know, something that over the four months, 4 to 6 months usually is what I have a client for.

It gives them the confidence to know what they're doing. My goal is not to have a client for life. Honestly, if I have a client coming back to me month after month after month, I'm not giving them the confidence or the the knowledge to go out and know what they're doing when they're on family vacation or they jump into a barbecue at a friend's house or, you know, they have a huge, significant life change, whether with family or job. My goal is to give them the confidence that they know how to do this and then they don't have to listen to all the noise that comes out every year.

On the newest fad diets and the newest pills and shots and weight loss programs. They will know for life how to manage their blood sugars, how to keep building lean muscle, how to keep, you know, biologically reversing their clock, aging well. And this system has been essential in the last year of helping me teach my clients how to do that and then launching them out to know it. And then, you know, they'll come back to me here and there for Refreshers, what's new, what's going on with the new products?

But other than that, they know what they're doing, which that for me is is the greatest the greatest thing that I can provide to my client. In sharing is a functional nutritionist. And I know that discipline dietitians, nutritionists for the last 20 years, it has been a frustrating 20 years for them. Right, because we see obesity on the rise. We see that is on the rise. They are trying to do the right thing with their clients. And there's like the circle of learned helplessness, right? We try, we try, we try to put them on healthy diets and then they default.

Then they get by the weight and then they go back and then and then they end up in the hands of pharma, in the hands of, you know, pills every day. Do you feel fasting is giving you a different if a fresh breathe of air, a new way of getting effectiveness? That is really unlocking the dilemma completely. I mean, results speak and result healthy results, not just weight loss, right? Anyone eat, anybody can go out and cut carbs and most people, I should say, can cut carbs and lose weight. But they're losing the wrong type of weight, which is is a bummer when I put them on my scale and I say, okay.

So you went low carb, high fat, high protein for the last two weeks and you lost £10, but eight of it was muscle. And that is just discouraging because now you have to get back on track of how are you going to build that muscle back? And it doesn't really teach them how to eat. That does nothing but teach them, you know, cycling this unhealthy cycling. So, you know, this is, you know, back to your question on on what it's doing. But the muscle piece of it is is something that I it has changed my practice and the way that I recommend because like we were saying, results, results talk and not just weight loss, but the right type of weight loss.

And then when they're mental capacity is there for it as well. It's like not just a skill that's saying good things, but how they're feeling, how they're able to go about their day with better energy for whatever lifestyle they have. And that to me is, is what has gotten the compliance and the engagement that I've been looking for in the past 15 years of my practice in. And thank you for all of that in know, incredible information. What do you recommend for your patients or your clients to do between the problems?

I guess. Yes. So transitioning out, I really love the one day resets for you know people will go out they'll enjoy their weekend. They they should you know they they they can go out and they can enjoy food. But I think what we need to do then is we put on some guardrails and we say, let's build these lists of healthy carbs that you like. The less processed the better. Let's make sure that we're using portion control with them. I usually have them mark it out as if you can hold it in your hands. And this works, you know, for my six seven offensive linemen, their hands are ginormous, right?

So we teach them about portion control and I make sure that they understand how to use their carbs because carbs are your number one source of energy. And right now carbs are like, oh, carbs are making me fat. Carbs are not making us fat. It's the fact that we overeat them and we don't know how to combine them with our protein and fat to control our blood sugar. So in the five days that we're on prolonged, I'm frontloading them with lots of information and counseling on the transition out of this.

Transitioning Between Cycles and Intermittent Fasting 19:36

What are your first meals going to look like? Two eggs, you know, and a side of we have like, you know, whether it's even some diced roasted potatoes and vegetables on the side. And then you have your carbs, your fat and your protein in the same meal, in your stomach, working at the same time together. Some of my clients actually like to do intermittent fasting coming out of it. They're they're all we listen to a lot of podcasts during those five days to that I give them and so they say what should I do depending upon their lifestyle if they're not working out super heavy 5 a.m.

in the morning, we can do some intermittent fasting in between, but it goes back to just clean and simple eating and that's what makes us so relatable and so doable is that there's not some sort of food system that you have to follow in those three weeks. You get to go back to the foods that you love, but now you understand how to utilize them better. Don't just run out the door with a banana, but grab that banana. Maybe think of grabbing that banana and eating a handful of nuts and seeds with that.

So then you have your protein, carbs and fat together and then the light bulb starts coming on because that now that food, that banana will take you so much farther into your day than just on its own. There was there was a great affirmation that talking about muscle and intermittent fasting, prolon fasting, if you if you experience intermittent fasting with muscle protection or muscle loss or. It has to be done consistently, yeah. I think a lot of people think intermittent fasting, it's very trendy, it's very right, it's very happy to intermittent fasting.

I think a lot of people don't understand that either and they'll do that Monday through Thursday, you know, to correct their behavior from the weekend so that they can, you know, do whatever they want on the weekend. And I really encourage people not to do that. That actually works against you. I would just rather them go to more balanced eating if they're going to be beautiful, if they're going to be going off track on the weekends and using cheat days, I would rather them have some sort of treat every single day versus a whole cheat weekend or cheat days, right. So intermittent fasting, though, for those people who really do do it consistently and I'm talking like 30 days in a row, not really having days in there where you're, you know, three or four days, where are you?

You're just eating whenever you want, but you really keep it within that eight hour window of their window is open to eat, say, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., or however usually like 3 hours before you go to bed on that, you're done eating. So whatever that window looks like for you, but I'll do like an open eight hour window. And I have found fantastic results on continuing the benefits of what just happened when you cycled with broken and then you just now are you understand okay I'm eating between the hours of 11 and seven or eight, eight or 10 to 6 p.m.

and then you're utilizing your combinations of foods together. I also, like I was saying, I really loves the one day reset step pro. One has to get you back on track as well because sometimes that just is just a mental it's a it's a it's a mental boost to to to your week. Mondays are a perfect day for that whatever day. Sunday, Monday is reset.

Final Takeaways on Lean Muscle and Inflammation 23:00

That's a lot of a lot of people it is Monday and reset for those listening it's a one day fasting mimicking diet it's it's not for rejuvenation and autophagy but it's actually for re correcting just from a pure calorie intake and and premium food and cleansing the body on that Monday. Yeah, it is it's it's so much it's so much here that you're, you know, and obviously you're doing good things for your body. But it's also that moment where you're like, I'm back on track and sometimes we just need something like that where you don't have to think about it.

It's all right here in this box, you take it to work with you, and you don't have to think about what's happening that day with food, which then clears your plate for so many other things. If you're not having to think about, you know, what am I having for breakfast? A lot of times people are eating breakfast and thinking about already what they're having for lunch and already thinking about it or it's exhausting. It's so nice just to have this all completely done. The convenience of it is incredible.

Fantastic. Well, Sharon, appreciate you very, very much. Any final thoughts before we the part here and any final conclusion for for the listeners? Yes. I mean, if you're looking for, you know, continuing to build and maintain your lean muscle, which that helps us feel good in our clothes and our skin, and then you're also looking for lowering your inflammation. Then this these is this fasting mimicking is exactly what you're looking for. Will, appreciate it very much. Thank you for your time today.

You're welcome.