The Power of the Clean Fast: Reset Your Cellular Health And Age In Reverse

Introduction and guest background 0:00

Welcome back to the conversation at the Restore Your Mitochondrial Matrix Summit. I'm your host, Laura, from Ontario. I'm bringing you experts to help you boost your energy and fix your health so you can build the life you love. Today, I have a really fun guest. Jen Stevens is joining us. Hi, Jen. Welcome to the summit. Hey, I'm so glad to be here. Yes, this is going to be a fantastic conversation. The reason I asked you to come on to the summit is because you are part of the solution for mitochondria dysfunction, energy dysfunction, chronic disease, weight loss, resistance, you know, weight regain, all of it.

You know how to get people back on track with your strategy. So we're going to talk about that today. You are the author of the New York Times and USA today bestseller, fast, feast, repeat and Delay. Don't deny. I love the names of your books. They're so good. And this is all about living an intermittent fasting lifestyle. And you live this lifestyle and you lost over 80 pounds. I did yes. You are the host of top ranked podcast, Intermittent Fasting Stories and Life Lessons Podcast now audience for all of you listening.

If you want to know about the biochemistry and science of mitochondria, go listen to some of those other interviews that I've had. Jen is here to tell you how to simply, easily, effectively, and quickly solve your health problems with her strategy. Jen, you are a retired elementary teacher for what, 26 years? 28 I taught for 28 years. I know, and I retired in 2018, so y'all can do the math. I started teaching in 1990. Yes. Jen is older than you think. She obviously has her mitochondria health dialed in.

Mitochondria, by the way, are the key to anti-aging. Tell us how old you are, Jen. Well, as of this recording day, I am one week away from being 53. It's insane. I like to tell people I was born in the 60s. Okay, barely. But it was still the 60s. That's so great. It's still great. No, you're doing something right, and we all want a piece of that. And, And we love that you are a retired teacher because you know how to teach, how to do complex things and how to make it easy. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today.

So let's jump right in. What is intermittent fasting? And let's make it simple. Well, you know, intermittent fasting sounds so scary with the word fasting for people who haven't done it. You know, we picture like monks or like Jesus fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. But really, you know, all it is is you eat and then you don't eat and then you eat again. In fact, one of the very earliest books written about intermittent fasting was called eat, stop, eat. And that's just brilliant because that's really what we're all doing anyway.

You know, every person sleeps and then isn't eating while they sleep, so they wake up and it's some time during the day. Everyone has break fast. We say breakfast, right? So every person is breaking their fast every single day. Those of us who live an intermittent fasting lifestyle, we simply purposefully delay when we eat a little bit later. Either we delay it later in the day, or we may do something where we are doing

What intermittent fasting is 3:14

alternate day fasting. We might delay it for 36 hours, but it's just a matter of we're not waking up necessarily and eating from it first thing in the morning till time to go to bed, which is what so many people are doing these days. So when you live in intermittent fasting lifestyle, you just structure the wind of what you're eating. Just a little differently than the modern world. And, you know, we know how how well, what the modern world is doing is working, right? When we look around us and see, you know, I was 80 pounds heavier, I was obese, and then in 2014, I changed my life with intermittent fasting, lost over 80 pounds.

I've been maintaining it even as I went through menopause. And so intermittent fasting is an amazing way to live. And it's not scary at all. It is simple and it's so good. So when you listen to the other interviews on this summit, you're going to learn all about how mitochondria function. We're talking cellular healthcare. You're going to learn about autophagy might haffajee. And this is what is stimulated when you're intermittent fasting. So this is why this is one of the solutions. So in your experience of guiding people and supporting people through this, what kinds of health benefits can people expect to feel when they're intermittent fasting?

And then we'll get into your clean fast and how that's different. It's like, well, it's yeah, it's really amazing. You know, in my podcast, Intermittent Fasting Stories, I've now interviewed 200 plus people, on the podcast who tell their story. They're just regular people who do intermittent fasting. And the ways that their health have been improved is just remarkable. I mean, I've heard so many incredible stories from people, whether it's like their Crohn's disease is better or they no longer have brain fog or, you know, I just talked to somebody recently who was wheelchair bound and with intermittent fasting, she hasn't used a wheelchair in two years.

I mean, it's just amazing how much better people feel. You know, we know. And everyone listening to your summit knows that a healthy metabolism really starts at the cellular level. And that's what intermittent fasting does for us. You know, one thing that really I'm going to use some elementary lingo here, what gunked up the machinery in our bodies is, you know, eating all the time around the clock. That advice to, you know, start eating the minute your feet hit the floor and keep eating all day.

Six small meals to keep the metabolism going. We've all heard that advice, but really, that means your body never gets a break. So things start to, you know, break down and our bodies can't fix them. You know, from, you know, our immune system can't work as well when we're eating all the time and not ever giving our body a break. You know, inflammation goes, people become, you know, insulin resistant, for example. That is really the root of so many of our problems these days, you know, rooted in insulin resistance and and so intermittent fasting gets to those things.

At the really the heart of the level are that, you know, down, down deep, you know, in our mitochondria and it does affect our, our mitochondria health. We have healthy mitochondrial networks and the better. That's all running, the better we're going to age, which is so important. So you know I could list so many, so many things that are improved with intermittent fasting from type two diabetes to irritable bowel syndrome. I mean, just so many things that I've heard from people, even crazy things like I remember talking to somebody.

This sounds made up she. But it's not. She had a C-section scar from like 30 years before. It's like thick and ropey. Or she had a C-section for for one of her children and with intermittent fasting, it all but disappeared. So that was like just a very thin scar that you could barely see. I mean, that sounds like like who would who would believe that scars would disappear? But, you know, you said the word autophagy. That's and that's our body's eating up the, you know, the junky protein that that are kind of left over.

Jason Fung talks about that in his work as well. You know, our bodies can use up the excess skin as we lose weight. So, so good. Really. It's amazing the things that I've heard from people. You know, you're not going to probably write it in a book because they'll be like, that sounds like she's just making it all up. But it's astonishing. I'm never surprised anymore. People say things like, my hair is no longer gray. I, you know, on the big ones to my arms is better to, you know, the little ones, like my hair is not going to have that did not work for me.

Yeah. Has it worked for me yet either not work for me. I still have plenty of gray, but yeah. Okay, so you said something really important that I want to highlight, right? Okay. So you said that, you know, we've been trained to start eating from the minute that we wake up, and it's so we've heard we've been taught that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And this is what I want to share. Break fast. The moment you break your fast breakfast is the most important meal of the day. However, that doesn't have to be early in the morning when you first wake up.

Your break fast could be at 1 p.m. and that that is the most important meal of the day. Yes, but under stand how this most important meal of the day has been has been turned into a misleading guidance that you should eat as soon as you wake up. And the other thing I want to share is it's so interesting, Jen, my daughter is a natural pastor, so right, since she was a little girl,

Health benefits and cellular repair 8:35

she's 17 now, but ever since, like we're talking kindergarten, first grade here, she would not eat breakfast. So mommy, I don't feel good when I eat breakfast. And she didn't want naturally, never wanted to eat until 10 a.m. and she would get in trouble at school because 10 a.m. would roll around. And that was, you know, snack time at school, because that's another thing. Maybe there's a whole nother tangent where, okay, but it was snack time, so she would start eating her lunch during snack time and her teachers would get mad at her and say, stop eating your lunch.

That's for lunch time. They wanted her to eat something little, like a carby thing, and she's going for the protein and fat right at 10:00. And she'd come home distraught like, mommy, they're telling me that I can't eat. And, you know, this is something that we've struggled with her whole life. And to this day, she just still doesn't want to eat until later in the day. She's so naturally smart that way. Well, you know, all of us start off life that way. As babies, we naturally have hunger and satiety cues.

You know, if you've ever tried to feed a baby who's had enough and you're like, no, but I feel like you should have more of the baby. Like, you know, not going to eat another bite, right? And we we teach all three year long as we teach people to disconnect from those hunger and satiety cues from early on, like, no, you will eat this and you will eat this now with our young children and forcing them to eat what and when they don't want to. And it continues as we get into adulthood and we, you know, start counting calories or counting macros and we're told we have to eat this many protein grams.

What if your body doesn't need that much today because you had some great autophagy going on, broke down some excess skin. You know you're getting your proteins met from within. Believe that or not, you are. And so I have heard that from so many intermittent fasters that they started off life like your daughter, naturally not wanting to eat till later. Then they're we're told you got to start the day with a breakfast. So maybe in their, their teens or 20s they're like, well, okay, I want to be healthy.

So I'm going to do what I'm told. I'm going to start with my eating six small meals. And then there begins their, their battle with, with obesity or being overweight. They gradually start to gain weight and then they're just struggling until they hear about intermittent fasting and they're like, oh, that's it. My body naturally likes. So I hear that all the time. Totally. And I'm sure there's people listening right now who are thinking, you don't understand, Laura Engine. When I wake up, I'm starving and I have to eat right now.

And what I would say is hormone dysregulation is going on in your body. This is not normal and you can ease into it. And I'm sure you have some great strategies for supporting me. But if you wake up starving now, this is this is a your body screaming that things are imbalanced. You should wake up like that. So if you are waking up like that and people have told you, oh, you just have a high metabolism, it's the way you are. No no no no no. You have hormone imbalance. Well, you know, we're we're meant to be metabolically flexible, right?

Yes. That's our natural state is to be metabolically flexible so that you're not in a panic. If there's not like a cereal bar in your purse, you know you're going to be okay. Oh, the thing that I will panic over is if I don't have water in my purse right? But if I don't have water, that's when I panic. All right. So let's talk about the clean fast okay. Now that's different from other intermittent fasting approaches out there because I know this is one of your soap boxes. I do, you know, putting butter in your coffee is breaking your fast.

So so let's talk about the clean fast. Well, you know that it is really you know, I'm, I'm the the person that's out there like really trying to spread this message. And it has to do with, you know, why are we fasting. What are our fasting goals. So in my book fast, Feast, repeat, I took everything that I had learned about fasting and why we're doing it. And I broke it down into three goals. And the first is we want to keep insulin low. You know, I talked earlier about insulin resistance being really the root of so many of our issues these days.

But we know that insulin is a lytic, meaning it keeps you from tapping into your fat stores. Now that's just one of the things that high insulin levels do. It's it's, you know, storage promoting instead of, you know, burning promoting. Right. So we want to keep our insulin low. And we do that by keeping our bodies from thinking that a source of your fuel is coming in and sweet tastes or one thing that cause something called this a phallic phase and one response. And, you know, our brains are still back in the day of, you know, before the modern era.

Our brain doesn't understand that sweeteners might be a Diet Coke. You know, we we taste the sweetness on our tongue. It comes in our brain says, oh, we know what sweetness is. That means we're going to have a sugar of some sort coming in honey, fruit, whatever, because that's what natural sweetness came from. And so that stimulates the civil insulin response. Our pancreas releases some insulin, keeps the insulin high. So if you're low go ahead. You're saying that people drink in their diet soda, which I think a lot of people on this summit are not drinking diet sodas anymore, but they're using stevia and thinking that it's okay.

Yeah. So maybe you're doing like a healthy sweetened beverage, right? What you're saying is you're secreting insulin even though there's no glucose there, even though because your brain, your brain doesn't understand. And it's always funny because I'll see someone say, here's the one sweetener that doesn't cause an insulin response. Like, how does your brain know that's monk fruit? Your brain doesn't know the difference. Just taste sweetness and think something's coming in. You know, there there was an interesting study with rats where they would put the the sweetness, whatever the sweet flavor was inside their oral cavity.

And it's a phallic phase. And so in response they would release insulin. Then they cut the nerves from the tongue so that the sensation did not get to the brain any more, no more insulin response. So it's coming from the taste. You know, there's there's also a study where they put sweeteners directly into somebody's stomach. No insulin response. They didn't have that taste that the taste is they didn't go through the experience. Yes. You take away the experience. And so this is fascinating. All right.

So and a lot of people will argue with that. They'll be like well that's not true. That doesn't happen. And I would rather on the side of, you know, keeping my insulin down. I can save, you know, if I want to drink something with a sweet flavor, I can have that in my eating window. So keep keep your your insulin low. You don't want anything your body is going to think is food or a food flavor. And that includes lemon, cinnamon, apple cider vinegar. I know people like yeah, but those are all no, keep those out of your fast, keep insulin low.

If your body thinks food is coming in, it's going to release some insulin because that's the what the body does with the food. But what do you say about all these people that are putting butter in their coffee and think, well, that goes into step two. The second fasting goal is we want to tap into our stored fat for fuel, because if you're taking in a source of fuel, whether it's butter, MCT oil, whatever your exogenous ketones, I think people are not really doing that as much as they were for a while there.

That was like a big trend. But when you're taking in a source of energy, your body doesn't need to do the processes that it takes. Like, for example, you know, to make ketones from your stored fat, there's a lot of benefit to making ketones from your stored fat versus you're just taking it in, you know, from your coffee cup. So, you know, people say, well, I drink the butter coffee and I have so much energy. Well, yes, you just took in a lot of energy. So do you want to store or do you want to burn the energy from your coffee cup or the energy from your body?

And I know what I want to do totally. We want to burn it from our body. Okay, so now we know what a clean fat. Well, there's one more step. The number one. Yeah. What's almost there? The third fasting goal is we want to have increased autophagy. And what stimulates autophagy. While fasting is one of the things that stimulates autophagy, what stops autophagy? Eating but also protein. So you want to avoid drinking bone broth. You know a lot of people think oh bone broth. It helps me. It gets me through, well it's food. It's food for the body.

So we want to avoid food, especially protein to stop autophagy. So I just told you what not to have, but what can you have? Plain water, plain sparkling water, no flavors. And you can have black coffee, plain tea, real tea.

The clean fast and what breaks it 16:58

I'm not talking about, you know, like, you know, Apple cinnamon delight. Herbal tea. That's not tea. Real tea. Real coffee in real tea that are plain, have a bitter flavor profile and bitter flavor profile does not stimulate an insulin response because our body is not expecting glucose to be coming in. Okay, so now we know what a clean fast is and we're going to talk about the eating window. But before we do that we already touched on this a little bit. But intermittent fasting supports health and longevity.

So we were just we started off talking about how you look young, I look young, you know, I'm going to be 50 this year. You're going to be 53, really intermittent fasting in addition to, you know, helping you heal your chronic health problems. It truly is the part of the fountain of youth. I think. So, yeah. So let's talk about that for a minute. Well, you know, one of the things that happens as we age is, our levels of autophagy decline and our bodies can't clean up. And so we end up having cellular aging, and then our bodies age.

And if we can keep autophagy going strong, that keeps us young, you know, at our mitochondrial level. And so I just really think that it should be in every adult's toolbox unless you're pregnant, breastfeeding or having an eating disorder, or if you're really severely underweight, obviously if you're underweight, then you want to not be fasting. But I think it's something that would be in everyone's toolbox. You know, my husband does intermittent fasting, never needed to lose weight. So many people think that intermittent fasting is a weight loss diet versus not a diet, because a diet is what you eat.

Intermittent fasting is win, but yes, you may lose weight with intermittent fasting. You might not. My husband didn't need to. Like I said, I like to call it the health plan. What the side effect of weight loss. Oh, I love that, I love that or the health plan with the side effect of whatever your body needs. Your body is so intelligent that it is going to give you what it needs. So let's talk about eating windows and and what should what should everyone be eating? So what about the eating window? What should everyone be eating.

And then something called bio individuality. What does that mean? Well, first of all let me talk about how to structure your eating window. There's a lot of ways to do it, but you're going to find the the eating window that works best for you. You know, bio individuality fits into that as well. Bio individuality means we're different in so many ways. What we eat when we eat the best eating window for us. You know, you may hear a lot of blanket statements like everyone should have their eating window blank and they'll they might throw something out, like in the morning or midday or any of that.

You know, people love to make those blanket statements, but really, the best eating window for you is the one that feels like a lifestyle. The one that makes you feel great. If my eating window is too early in the day, I don't feel my best throughout the day. I am a late afternoon early evening window person in know. Since I started intermittent fasting consistently in 2014, I've tried everything over the time. I know what works best for my body and it's a late afternoon early evening eating window.

But there are a lot of people in my community who may have a different eating window. Maybe a midday eating window works best for them. There are people also who prefer to wake up, open their eating window at 8 a.m., close it by noon, and they fast the rest of the day. Some people sleep better that way. I don't wouldn't sleep well. I don't sleep well if I am hungry, but it's all about finding what works best for you. You know, a lot of people think eight hours is like some magic eating window number.

You know, like, oh, 16 eight. That's what everyone's heard of. You know, I remember when 16 eight was like a really big thing when the eight hour diet came out and everyone was doing 16, eight well, I gained weight with 16 eight because he was like, eat whatever you want. An eight hour window? No, that didn't work for my body. Eight hours is too long for me. I need a shorter eating window. My sweet spot is really about 4 to 5 hours probably every day. I no longer really count what I'm what I'm doing.

I just like I'm very intuitive about it now, but I'll wait till a certain time of the day when I'm ready to eat. Depending on when that is, it might be 2:00, it might be 5:00, it might be 1:00, it might be 4:00. And depending on my schedule, I open my eating. When do I eat? Till I'm satisfied. I close it, so it's taken me, you know, years to get to the rhythm that feels right for me. And and I had to experiment with a lot of different things along the way. But for someone who's tried intermittent fasting and it didn't work for them, you know, maybe you were trying to structure your eating window after a model of someone else's ideal eating window, and that wasn't working for you.

So it really is very much, you know, n equals one, you know, a study of one and it's you. And so my main message is one of empowerment. And you figuring out what makes you feel your best, you know, start with the clean fast. You know, that's another thing. People who think intermittent fasting didn't work for them. Most of them were not fasting clean, or they didn't give their bodies long enough to adjust. In my book, Fast Feast, repeat, we have the 28 day fast start. And that's just the adjustment period.

You're not to expect weight loss. You're not to expect to feel amazing for the first 28 days. It takes a while to build that metabolic flexibility, but once you get there, you feel so good, then you can start experimenting. I have a section in there called Tweak it till It's easy, and when I say easy, I mean it. Intermittent fasting should not be a struggle and a hardship and something that's really awful. You need to tweak it till it's easy for you and that's finding your your right eating rhythm. We also talked.

You asked about what to eat. That's also some where that bio individuality is very important. You know, I had a really good friend that just came and stayed with us here for for six nights. It was her birthday. We live at the beach, she came for her vacation and her body craves more protein than mine does, for example. So like one night we had a decent dinner and it was didn't have any meat because often we will not eat meat. My husband and I don't always eat meat with every meal, and about an hour later she's like, that was not enough protein for me.

So we're rummaging around in my kitchen. I'm like, I'm going to cook you some pork chops or something. You know, her body told her you did not have enough protein, so she was looking for it and learning to trust your body instead of, like, let someone else come up with macros for you are. Here's what you should be eating. You know, I actually have a theory that every diet book that's out there that tells you exactly what to eat and how much of it to eat, what macros, what foods, how you should structure it.

That is the diet that worked best for the author of that diet book, you know, so I remember all those years when I was struggling with obesity, you know, reading somebody's diet book that was like, here's the formula of exactly. If you eat exactly like this and they'll have the meal plan and the recipes, and I would feel terrible following it. You know, but that was what worked best for that author. So I would like everybody listening to realize, stop looking outwards

Eating windows, bio individuality, and real food 23:58

for other people to tell you your macros, how many calories you need when you should eat it. Let your body tell you, because our bodies really do. You know if you don't get enough protein, your body will ask you to eat some more. I love that you're saying this because I run into this often with my clients who say they're feedback to me is your programs are amazing, I got better. I just wish you would have told me more what to eat. So we give I give guidelines and say this is what is supportive to reducing inflammation in your body.

And there are people who say, just tell me what to do and that doesn't work. You have to start listening to your own body. Yeah, I am like your friend. If I don't eat animal protein every day, I am not having a good day. Yeah I am, I could never be a vegetarian. My body type does not operate well like that. And so, and then some people don't operate well when they eat a lot of animal protein. They operate better when they eat more plants. So everyone is different. The other thing that I would share, I had another speaker on here, who was talking about there is no one type of diet forever that serves, true.

Actually changing your diet up is what is what your body craves. Yeah. So actually going carnivore for a while and then going vegetarian for a while and then going, you know, whatever it is, that's what your body loves. But listen to it till it's easy and feels good and that's the key. And it's not going to be the same. You know, I just said, I don't eat a ton of meat all the time. It was savory. Interesting. When I had, I had Covid in the fall and November, and when I had Covid, I lost my taste and smell very briefly, like just for a few days.

And then it came right back. But when I was sick, could not eat me. I mean, like zero. When I had Covid, I was like, no, no, I can't have chicken. I don't want beef, I don't want any meat at all. I did eat some eggs. But what's funny is as soon as I got better, like a week later, I was eating all the meat. I, like, only wanted me. I was, like, eating all the chicken. And I'm like, that is so interesting. My body is craving this. I guess it was doing some rebuilding. I don't really know what it was doing, but my body told me that and so we're our bodies know what to do.

And I do want to say one other thing. You know, I didn't talk about. Obviously your audience probably knows this already, but real food is always going to be better than ultra processed food. You know, when we're trying to learn to listen to our bodies, that doesn't work. If your your diet is like the standard American diet and you're eating mostly ultra processed foods like most Americans are, really, that's all they're like over half of their diet is ultra processed foods. Probably not for your audience, but we food.

But ultra processed foods are tricky to people. Yeah, I think they're eating real food, and they are actually eating more processed food than they realize. Well, and especially in the health world, there are a lot of, you know, keto, paleo, ultra processed foods out there, like meal replacement kind of things that are that are people are selling them. It's healthy. And it could even be organic and maybe an organic meal replacement bar, but that's an ultra processed food. Yes it is. Yeah. Protein powders.

Yeah. Processed. Ultra processed. Yes I mean it is I use I use protein powders when I'm in a pinch and I'm in a hurry and I need some extra, you know, food, a quick and easy meal. Right. But not every day. Yeah, yeah. Real food is I mean, your body knows what to do with real food and and the things that are ultra processed get metabolized so differently and go straight. I mean, your body doesn't even need to do as much work to break them down. Yeah. There was an interesting study I talked about in, and fast food.

Repeat cheese sandwiches. They took two different cheese sandwiches and fed them to people. And one of them was an ultra processed cheese sandwich, and the other was a less processed version of a cheese sandwich. And and the way that they affected the body was very, very different, of course. Yeah. So yeah. So our big message is eat real food. Yep. As close to it as you can as often as you can. And the other thing I'm hearing is intermittent fasting is not a diet. Intermittent fasting when you eat your real food.

So yes, very different. And then the power of bio individuality. This means we're not all the same. We're all different. It's not one size fits all. And you might not want the same thing week after week or month after month. Your body might crave something different. Go with it. Exactly. Yeah. And the. I'm very seasonal. What? What I crave. It's so interesting. And probably a lot of people are if you just learn to listen to your body. But in the summer, I really start looking at salads in a different kind of way, all a fruit.

But during the winter I'm not going to eat a strawberry. I don't want one. Not I'm not interested in that salad. You know, I'm more in like, beans and and things like that. But it really does follow a seasonality. And I think that our bodies are supposed to do that. Absolutely. Yeah. Think about those cravings. We do crave summer foods in the summer. Now of course nowadays you can get any food any time of year right there. So when you're browsing your grocery store and you see, you know, watermelon and strawberries in February, you know you can get them.

But if you eat seasonally, I mean, that definitely supports supports your healing. All right. So what about women? Let's talk about women's specifically. Can they safely live an intermittent fasting lifestyle. And the answer is yes to that. And it's such an interesting question because I get that from so many people, especially in the health community, because I'll say, oh yeah, I do intermittent fasting. They go, yeah, but what about women? Because there's a misnomer out there about intermittent fasting.

So let me back up a little bit. We know what's bad for women is over restriction. Over restriction is not good hormonally for our bodies. But for some reason people perceive that intermittent fasting equates with over restriction. And it does not. You know, I would contend that when I was doing the diet that I was advised to do of 1200 calories a day, or I was eating frequent small meals throughout the day, Holy moly, that was overly restrictive for my body. And because I was eating all those small meals during the day and I was drinking diet soda because it had zero calories, I insulin was high.

I was not tapping into my fat stores very well, so my body was definitely not well fueled and that's when your metabolism starts to shut down. That's when you start to have the urge to binge because you're not well fueled. That's what's really bad for our bodies, especially if you're doing intense exercise. So, you know, we we tell women, go on a low calorie diet and do intense exercise, eat less, move more. And no one worries about that. But intermittent fasting, you know, my book is called Fast, Feast, repeat.

Not fast low calorie diet. Repeat. You know you're nourishing your body well during your eating window. So women should not ever restrict through any paradigm, including intermittent fasting. But we should not assume that intermittent fasting is overly restrictive. When you're listening to your body, you're eating according to your hunger, and some days you're going to need to eat more, and some days you won't need to eat as much. You can eat 2000 plus calorie. You can eat 2000 plus calories during that five hour.

Absolutely very satiated. I count nothing I but I just eat, I'm satisfied and I'm sure it's a lot.

Women, flexibility, and sustainable fasting 31:28

But you're eating real food. You're satisfied is not including a big old giant slice of chocolate cake. And not most days. But there could be some cake, some light. Oh yeah, we want to have we want to be able to enjoy those things sometimes. And when you have, when you have, you know, cellular health that is operating at a high level, you can handle a piece of chocolate cake, right? I my most recent book is called clean ish. Right. Eat mostly clean, live mainly clean and unlock your body's natural ability to self clean.

The ish is important though because you know if I if it's summertime and I can't have any ice cream ever again, I'm going to be sad. I know we do have to, find a way to live in these modern times, and I'm the first person to raise my hand and say, I'm not perfect. I am not living like a cave woman where there's no sugar and no, you know, nothing. Now, they didn't have ice cream, right? I'm not living like that. But, But I've gotten myself to the point where my body can now tolerate that from time to time.

And it doesn't send me down a tailspin. And I don't gain 5 pounds because I eat a dish of ice cream. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. This has been incredible. Jen, you are. So. You're just such a breath of fresh air. You are. Thank you. It's so nice to have somebody here who can just break this down so simply. And I think people after watching this are going to feel like I can do this. You can do it. Yeah, you can do it. We have people in our community. You know, when I left Facebook in, 2021, but we had almost 500,000 group members and our Facebook community is doing intermittent fasting.

And it's just a testament to it's the best way you will ever live. You know, there's a saying, you know, I didn't make it up. I'm sorry I interrupted you, but you were winding it down. But there's a saying that says, you know, dieting is easy in contemplation, but hard in execution. We've all been there, you know, we start off strong. It's going to be great. I know it's awful. It gets worse over time. Fasting is the opposite. Fasting is hard and contemplation but easy and execution. Once your body adapts and you find your rhythm and you tweak it till it's easy and you choose the foods that work for your body, you will feel better than you've ever felt in your life.

That is a perfect way to end the center. Yeah, I like that. Jen, thank you so much. Tell us where we can find your books, where people can follow you and get your support. Where are you at? Well, you can find everything through Jen stevens.com Jen is GI and Stevens with the Jen stevens.com. There's a link to my books. They're all available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. And I also have a community Jen stevens.com/community. Since I loved Facebook it's it's a lot smaller than 500,000. We're sitting at just above 5000 now.

But it's just a great place for investors to support one another. And yeah. And look for intermittent fasting stories. Podcast. If you want to hear some stories of intermittent fasters who have changed their lives. Amazing. Thank you so much for your support of this summit, for being here, for sharing your wisdom, and for the guiding light that are out in the world. You take good care, Jen. Thank you. Bye.