Top 7 Fasting Mistakes That Cause Cravings And Fatigue

Introduction to Fasting Benefits 0:00

Hey, it's Dr. David Jockers. And today I'm talking about the top seven mistakes I see people make when they're trying intermittent or extended fasting. So we know fasting can be one of the one of the most powerful healing strategies. In fact, I call it the most ancient, inexpensive, and powerful healing strategy known to mankind because all of our ancestors did it because they didn't have pantries and access to food all the time. So there are many times of scarcity where they had to eat very, had only a very little amount of food or no food.

Sometimes they would go days, sometimes they would only once a day. This is very common for our ancestors. Today's day and age. We have food all around us, right? So we have to be intentional about fasting. Obviously fasting doesn't cost us anything, so it's inexpensive. And then it may be the most powerful, healing strategy known to mankind because of its incredible benefits for burning fat, for reducing inflammation, for stimulating cell repair mechanisms. We call that autophagy and might have incredible health benefits from fasting.

However, some people have not had good experiences with fasting, and these are the reasons why the top seven mistakes number one is actually not eating enough. And so we're talking about fasting. People are like what, not eating enough?

Mistake 1: Under-Eating During Eating Windows 1:23

I thought I wasn't supposed to be eating well. The key with fasting is actually feasting when you are in your eating period. So it's kind of designating times when you eat and feast and times when you fast. So it's not an attempted low calorie diet. You're not counting your calories and trying to keep your calories low. That's not the goal. When you're doing intermittent fasting. So when you eat whatever window of time you're eating in, okay, maybe it's six hours. Maybe it's eight hours. You want to make sure you eat really well, eat till you're fully satiated.

I recommend at least 30g of high quality protein in every single meal, and roughly 20 to maybe up to 40g of healthy fats, sometimes only more than 30g of protein. If you're if you have a lot of lean body tissue, if you're doing strength training, if you're trying to build muscle, you may need 56g of protein in a meal. and many more fat just depends. So the amount of fat you put in might be as low as, let's say, 20g of fat. Let's say if you don't have a gallbladder or consuming a lot of fat just makes you feel bloated, you don't feel good that consume less fat, more protein in your meal.

if you feel good eating a lot more fat, 30, 40, 50g of fat in a meal, then consume that because that's going to help give you more satiety, make you feel more satiated. You also need to have some sort of fiber, right? Fiber oftentimes really helps. I mean, not everybody does great with fiber, but for most people having like a big salad with their their meal, having vegetables, things like that, even some fruit can be really, really helpful for, providing more satiety. So the key is really just getting enough calories in your meals when you are consuming your meals.

So particularly like before you start your fast, let's say, you know, on a daily basis, you're eating 2 or 3 meals in a 6 or 8 hour eating window. So your last meal is, let's say, at 6 p.m., finished by 7 p.m., and then you're fasting until 1:00 the next day. So you want to make sure that dinner meal you're really consuming a good amount of calories, getting those protein, getting the protein, getting the healthy fats right. So that way you're not you're not hungry, right? You're you're you're satiated.

Now your body's burning fat for fuel. So getting enough calories, eating enough food, particularly protein really focusing on that is super important. Number one, a lot of people are not doing that. They're under eating. They're just not eating as much. And then several hours later they're hungry or they're eating the wrong types of foods are eating a lot of starch, a lot of sugar. And that's going to throw off their blood sugar. It's going to make it harder for their body to burn fat when they are going through their fasting period.

So then they're going to feel hypoglycemic. They're going to have cravings. And it's not obviously a good setup for a fast. Number two is poor hydration. So we really need to be hydrating when we are in our fasted window. And that's part of the cleansing process is actually getting some good hydration into our system. Hydration also helps to fill our stomach, right. So for drinking water, it actually expands our stomach, which reduces the amount of ghrelin which is our hunger hormone. So our stomach when there's nothing in our stomach.

And sometimes you'll feel like your stomach growling. That's kind of the effect where ghrelin is being released and ghrelin circulates, gets up into the brain and the hypothalamus and tells us, I'm hungry. Time to eat some food. When we drink water, we distend the stomach, reduces the amount of ghrelin that's released. And we don't get that neurological effects that that desire to eat, that hunger,

Mistake 2: Poor Hydration and Electrolytes 4:46

that takes place. So good. Hydration is key. Also very important for energy production. And along with water is taking in electrolytes, particularly when we're fasting our insulin levels go down. And insulin is the hormone we release when we eat. And Insulin's job is to take sugar and put it into the cells, right? Almost like a key coming in, unlocking the door on the cells, the insulin receptor, and allowing sugar and other nutrients like magnesium to get into the cells where they can be used for energy.

When insulin is elevated in our bloodstream, we retain sodium, so we retain sodium in water. Right. Water comes with sodium. So if we have insulin resistance in our body is producing a lot of insulin, we can oftentimes have a lot of swelling and we can have higher blood pressure. However, when we're going through a period of fasting or if we're eating a very low carb blood sugar stabilizing diet and we're exercising, we're doing things to maintain good metabolic health, we are not going to have high insulin.

We're going to have lower insulin levels, particularly when we're fasting, and then we're going to excrete more sodium. So remember high insulin. We retain sodium low insulin we excrete the sodium. So now we're getting rid of it. And if we don't replace it right by taking in some salts, we can feel very, very dizzy until you've adapted to fasting for a while. A lot of people, they notice dizziness. They notice an increase in cravings. They notice their energy goes down, their mental clarity goes down.

They just don't feel good. They even can can develop flu like symptoms when they're electrolytes, particularly sodium. The most important one there is lowering and going down. So until you get more adapted to retaining the sodium and retaining the electrolytes, taking it a little bit of salt, just putting some salt, sea salt on your tongue and taking that every few hours during the fast will really help with your overall energy production. So that can be really helpful. You can also do like electrolyte powders, as long as they don't have sugar or any other calories in them, those can be helpful, intense stress or poor sleep.

So if you sleep really bad, that's going to throw off your insulin levels and it's going to throw off another hormone called leptin. Leptin is a hormone that the fat cells release and it circulates, gets into the hypothalamus in your brain and tells you you're not hungry. It stops the hunger signal, tells you you're satiated, and tells you to burn fat for fuel. People that have poor sleep or high stress can develop a condition called leptin resistance, where they're producing a lot of leptin, but their body is not responding to it, so they never feel.

They always feel hungry and they're not able to burn fat effectively for fuel. So we need to keep stress under control. And then we also need to make sure we're prioritizing good rest and good sleep. If you're not doing that, if you're not sleeping well, or if you're going through intense periods of stress, maybe you're going through a divorce or a sickness in your family or something like that. then doing an extended fast would not be a good idea. you might just need to start with, like, a 12 hour overnight.

Fast. just be really gentle on your body.

Mistake 3: Stress and Poor Sleep 7:47

Obviously try to try to make good nutrition choices, but pushing your fasting window or tightening your fasting window maybe really tough on your body because of the amount of stress you're under. And if you're not sleeping well, especially right, that's going to make it really, really hard. So I always tell people it's dial in the stress to it to a manageable level, and let's make sure we're really sleeping well. And when we do that now that sets us up for a great fasting experience. So that's key.

Number five is not pooping. You need to be moving your bowels particularly if you're intermittent fasting. So let's say again you're doing a 16 18 hour maybe a 20-24 hour fast like only one meal a day. Whatever it is, whatever your fasting window is on it on a particular day, you should be moving your bowels every single morning, right? So between 6 and 9 a.m. in the morning, your colon is most active. You should have 1 or 2 bowel movements in that period of time. And really just get rid of everything, all the waste from the day before in that period of time or certainly within a 24 hour time period.

Meaning if you ate lunch, you know, at 1:00 on, you know, on Tuesday, you should have all the waste from that meal out of your body by 1:00 on Wednesday. If it sits in there longer, it's going to petrify, it's going to rot and petrify, and that's going to release highly toxic compounds. We call those endotoxins that drive up inflammation in your body, drive up stress hormones, and increase cravings. Believe it or not, the bacterial fermentation that takes place there will actually signal to your brain that you're hungry and that you want particularly food that's not healthy for you.

It's going to stimulate more sugar cravings, more starch cravings you're going to be eating. Next thing you know, you're going to be eating, you know, a big bag of, frito-lay's. Right. Because your body is saying it's giving you these strong urges to do that. So you got to make sure you're moving your bowels, okay, and getting things out of your system. So drinking a lot of water in the morning, getting the salts in that can really help. Perhaps some magnesium supplementation can help a lot of people notice,

Mistake 5: Not Moving Your Bowels 9:38

you know, good bowel movements when they drink coffee in the morning, coffee, the chlorogenic acid in there. The caffeine stimulates your vagus nerve and stimulates peristalsis in your gut. It also helps to, improve bile flow right from your liver and activate liver detoxification. So that can be really helpful for a lot of people as well. But you got to get pooping. another thing you can do is just a castor oil pack. You can actually get a castor oil, get a flannel or my favorite castor oil pack is, Queen of Thrones.

They have the whole kit with it. And I'll have a link below the video, and you just kind of put that over your colon. Okay. A little bit of the castor oil on on the flannel. Tie it up. Do that overnight. And that has a natural laxative effect if it's over the colon. And that will help move your bowels and help you get rid of toxins. So that can be really helpful. You can also do it over the liver to help stimulate and open up the bile ducts and stimulate liver detoxification and liver regeneration.

So that's really helpful. Number six is poor mindset. A lot of people, when they go into a fast their whole time, they're thinking, oh, I can't eat anything, I can't eat anything. So it's this attitude of deprivation. And because of that, because that's what they're thinking about. That actually that thought process itself actually stimulates more cravings. And then they'll go and they'll see like family members or friends eating something. And then again, it triggers that response and they're like, oh yeah, I can't eat anything.

And so it's triggering this reaction that tells the body, I need to have cravings, I need to have cravings, and it makes it really, really hard to actually do be successful with the fasting period you're trying to accomplish. So you got to have a poor mindset, not a victim mindset, not a deprivation mindset, but an empowering mindset. A mindset that says this is going to be amazing for my body. I'm going to build better strength, better stamina. I'm going to have better control over my mood, over my cravings.

I'm not going to let food control me. I'm going to control how I decide to to to eat food. Right? You got to have that empowering type of mindset. When you do that, the fast becomes a lot easier as opposed to a deprivation mindset. And then number seven, this obviously really only applies to women. is the menstrual cycle timing. But for men it's important to know this. If you know you're having your spouse fast, or your girlfriend, or your daughter or sister or whatever it is. Menstrual cycle timing, super key.

Mistake 6: Negative Fasting Mindset 11:56

So for women, the last week before they start menstruating is not a good time to fast. The reason why is you actually need to increase your insulin levels during that period of time, in order to produce the right amount of hormones for, the menstruation process. And so what happens the last week before a woman menstruate? They oftentimes have a lot of cravings. It's their body telling them, hey, I need more calories, more food, and more carbohydrates during that period of time. The best time for a woman to fast is actually right after she starts menstruating the first few days.

It's a great way to just reduce inflammation, reduce the, any sort of symptoms cramping, bloating, things like that that can be associated with menstruation. Great time to do fasting, usually right around ovulation, which is day 14 on the menstrual cycle. Typical 28 day menstrual cycle, roughly around day 12 to 14 or 15 is when ovulation takes place. It's usually again, a good time to go more into a feasting cycle. During that period of time, and then right after ovulation is a good time to go back into doing some fasting up until you get to roughly day 21, day 22 on that menstrual cycle, and then again, that's a great time to eat more calories, more protein,

Mistake 7: Menstrual Cycle Timing 13:09

more carbohydrates, ideally from healthy sources like fruit, starchy, like like sweet potatoes, nutrient dense starch, starchy vegetables, squashes, beans. Perhaps those are be healthier sources of carbohydrates. Obviously getting a lot of protein during that part of time as well can be really, really helpful. So hopefully this video was really helpful for you guys. You do not want to make these mistakes if you're trying to be successful with intermittent fasting or with, you know, particularly with extended fasting, which gets even more challenging, even more important to be doing these things correctly.

if you're trying to do a three day or five day water fast, really important. You dial these things in right here. So hopefully this is helpful. Be sure to share this video or podcast with anybody that you know and that you care about that needs to understand this information. And now is a time, if you have not already, what are you waiting for? Subscribe to our channel and hit the bell button. That way you get notified whenever I put up a new video so you never miss one of these important trainings.

Thank you so much for doing that, and we'll see you guys in a future training. Be blessed everybody.