Vanessa: 0:03

Hey, ma'am.

Emily: 0:05

So today we have kind of a different episode for you. We've been wanting to take topics that are currently trending in the media and in food and nutrition, culture, and science, and take that, break them down in a way that you can easily understand so that when your coworker, your aunt, your brother brings up this new trendy diet. You already have all of the knowledge and can educate everybody around you too.

Vanessa: 0:40

Yeah, we're really excited to have these kinds of episodes to stay on top of the latest and greatest that's coming out in diet culture. Because there's always something new and this one is kind of exciting. I mean, it's not good, but it's kind of exciting.

Emily: 0:59

Yeah. That's like, as I was, I'm getting my stuff ready to record. I was like, wow. I've had so much caffeine today. I feel so jittery, but I've literally had no caffeine at all. I'm just like really excited to talk about that. I'm so excited. Yeah. I'm literally high on intuitive fasting at this point. And, um, I'm really excited to share with everybody cause we've been getting so many questions about this one. It's a very trendy.

Vanessa: 1:28

Very trendy and it really just came out like a couple of weeks ago at this point. So it's very new.

Emily: 1:35

Yeah. And we'll explain it. If you don't know what it is, don't worry. We'll, we'll cover

Vanessa: 1:38

Just wait.

Emily: 1:40

That's the way you're in for a treat.

Vanessa: 1:53

So welcome to wellness missed today day. Uh, we are doing a trending episode. We're going to talk about intuitive fasting, which is something really, really new promoted by our favorite Gwenyth Paltrow. That was sarcastic. If you didn't get that in my voice, she promotes a lot of, pretty toxic diet culture things.

Emily: 2:13

Yeah, definitely. There's. I mean, the top of mind thing for me that is on Gwenyth is website goop is, which is basically a website with quote unquote health and wellness things on them being sold to you. And one of the. Things that she markets is a supplement called high school jeans. So it's like a play on words and it's basically a supplement to help your metabolism reach the body that you had in high school, which we know is so wrong on so many levels. So that's like a little, a little peek into what the offerings usually are coming from goop, which is like I said, her wellness brand So if you were unfamiliar now, you know, the depth

Vanessa: 3:05

like, just so, so toxic. So intuitive fasting gang is based on a book that is being promoted by Gwyneth. It was written by a man named Dr. Will Cole. He also wrote a book. Called the Quito Tarion I have not read that. But I can imagine what it's like. And if you listened to our most recent episodes on keto, you could probably decipher what our thoughts might be on that but so this book and to, to fasting is marrying intermittent fasting with intuitive eating. Which those two things certainly do not go together in any way. So it's caused a pretty big uprising especially in the intuitive eating world.

Emily: 3:58

Yeah. I really only heard of this first from the other anti-diarrhea dieticians that I know and follow on social media. And then people started sending it to me being like, wait, can I do this? And then also do intuitive eating. I'm not quite sure what this is. But the language that they're using is. Very co-opting of intuitive eating's language. So I can see why people are really confused by this one. And it's just kind of a perfect example of how insidious that diet culture worms its way into something that is quite the opposite of it. At least the intention of intuitive eating is to be the antithesis to diet culture. So it's quite bold that they kind of took this and made it into. Something it's really not.

Vanessa: 4:50

Intermittent fasting is something that's been around for quite a while. It's pretty much. Heavily promoted for weight loss for the most part. It can be either eating within a time restriction during a day. So just not eating outside of those hours or it can be fasting some days and eating other days. So it just kind of depends. There's a bunch of different styles, I guess.

Emily: 5:18

Yeah. And we know that there's other people who use fasting as a spiritual or religious practice. And that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about it as a modality to lose weight and to control the body. So. Just so, you know, that's a totally separate discussion and this stuff does not apply. So. The beginning of this book is just the most cooptive version of intuitive eating I've ever seen. He, the author tells you to throw out your food rules that, you know, because they're toxic and you have all of these restrictions, but then in like almost the same sentence tells you that he's going to give you all new rules to apply. And these rules are being applied to everybody that reads this book, the same rules. He even in the very beginning gives kind of a sample meal day or something. And, you know, it's. Right away. You can kind of tell that this is something that's steeped in diet culture, because we know that you can't give every single person the same advice. Especially if you're saying like, look at this day of meals, everybody has different activity levels. Everybody has different metabolism, body size, height, all these different factors. So that's kind of culture's. Yep. And every single, every time we see this blanket advice, that's like, alarm bells should be going off that it's probably not some really healthy piece of advice that you're being given.

Vanessa: 7:02

And with that, we're not talking about, you know, if you're reading a book and there's some recipes in the back or something like that, we're talking about meal plans. So you should eat this much a day of these things. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, not just recipes.

Emily: 7:21

Right. Exactly. Let's just kind of go through with what his plan is in the case, buck, intuitive fasting. It has a framework and it's a four week process. So week one, they call it a reset and it has beginner fasting, which is a 12 hour window of fasting, which you might do naturally with the body just it's called sleeping. So that's kind of a common. Method of fasting

Vanessa: 7:48

I would say most people probably have a 12 hour fast. At least if you eat dinner at six o'clock, even if you had a snack maybe again at eight o'clock and you don't eat breakfast till eight or nine. I mean, I think that's a pretty reasonable schedule for a lot of people, and you're just not even thinking about that.

Emily: 8:10

Right. And that's kind of the key, right? You're not even thinking about it, but when you have this 12 hour rule, I guarantee you're going to start thinking about it. Suddenly, suddenly you're starving at 10 o'clock and you never eat them. So that's just week one, then week two is a recharge week with moderate fasting, which is 14 to 18 hour fasting. Then week three is renew, which is deeper fasts for quote unquote cellular repair. Then week four is rebalance where you'll cycle in and out of fat burning phases and balance your hormones. Once again, you really can't take any of this when they're making claims like this. How can you say that you're balancing hormones when everyone's hormones are different?

Vanessa: 9:02

When we talk about balancing hormones, we're normally going to tell you to eat more frequently to balance your blood sugar. So those conversations don't usually go hand in hand. There definitely is some intermittent fasting mumblings in the world, but we like to ignore those because it doesn't work very well.

Emily: 9:26

Totally. It's funny that you mentioned you normally tell people to eat more because in the book, in this framework, it says it's straight up unhealthy and just plain unnatural to snack before bed, wake up and eat and then snack throughout the day. That's a direct quote of the framework. And once again, that's so individualized. Some people might feel sick in the morning if they eat too late. Right? Some people don't, some people feel horrible at night. If they're sitting there like hunger, gnawing at them and they need to eat, Some people have a different schedule where they, you know, get off work at two in the morning and they might have a different sleep pattern. You know, my husband stays up until 2:00 AM nearly every night. So usually when I wake up in the morning, I find some kind of dish, like he's been snacking at like 11 o'clock when I was sleeping. Because he's not going to sit there for three hours feeling starving because he's supposed to be Bitterman fasting.

Vanessa: 10:26

So something that is toted a lot, I guess, for fasting is people have always been fasting for, you know, years and years, hundreds of years people were fasting. They weren't eating snacks all of the time. Couple of things to say about that. We are. Not a very close in lifestyle to our ancestors at all. We have really high cortisol levels are a lot of us do because we live really stressful lives. And guess what fasting does it increases your cortisol? So you're already high cortisol. We're raising up higher.

Emily: 11:04

and for what reason to lose way or to decrease your blood sugar, because that makes no sense. Cause it's going to do the opposite.

Vanessa: 11:12

Exactly.

Emily: 11:15

So the next piece that I found interesting was when. The framework States, if you're craving candy, carbs or caffeine, that's not your intuition talking. In fact, you should take some of those yearnings as a big sign that some of the signals in your body have gone haywire and are now sending you the wrong message. So right off the bat, we're building mistrust in the body and saying, well, if you're craving carbs, which once again, you can just. Really tell that this person might not have the biggest nutrition background because carbs are broccoli carbs are, you know, strawberries. That's like what sources of carbs. Clearly I think this person means, you know, bread, carbs, carbs that other people deem as bad. So I'm assuming that's what he's saying, but. How can you be promoting intuitive eating at all? If you're telling people to not trust their body, that is the absolute opposite of the goal of intuitive eating. Okay.

Vanessa: 12:25

You're building more food fear. And I think something that I always think of too is like, Okay, but so is the next thing, if you're feeling thirsty, are you going to tell people not to drink?

Emily: 12:39

episode on key goals with Megan, we talked about how. Eating is a biological process. Similar to going to the bathroom. You're not going to like pee half way. What if you told yourself, Oh, I'm only going to pee between

the hours of 9:00 AM and 5: 12:54

00 PM. That's that's literally what you're doing when you intermittent fast, you're ignoring every biological cue and we're not talking about if you're not hungry at night. Yeah. Then don't eat. That's part of it. And we're going to get into that aspect too, but you don't want to ignore your body

Vanessa: 13:16

That's kind of the bottom line.

Emily: 13:18

That's really all it is.

Vanessa: 13:20

Well, and I think the biggest issue with intuitive fasting that you're just like bastardizing, intuitive, eating.

Emily: 13:32

And it's really frustrating. Like I said, people reaching out saying, Oh, can I do this and be an intuitive eater because it's not fun to be like, no, this is something that's. Being promoted for them to make money and profit off the system that's already in place that is really pressuring you to change your body. And I think we're seeing a general trend of things being okay. Misinterpreted as not diets people saying like, Oh, this isn't a diet. It's not a restrictive diet. We're kind of moving away from that as a culture, but it's really just the same thing packaged in a slightly nicer, more palatable way. But at the end of the day, they're still recommending weight loss. They're still fat phobic. They're still restrictive and they don't work.

Vanessa: 14:22

So with intuitive fasting, is he saying that you can eat whatever you want during those times? Or is there still restrictions?

Emily: 14:31

the sample meals and everything that I saw didn't seem like they followed a specific method. I know he uses, we mentioned that he is an author of a keto Tarian diet book that is mostly plant-based, but not all plant-based and that he uses like keto principles. So it really is like a blend of the ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting. And no intuitive nature at all. So he uses like ketogenic principles in his diet education of the book. But the main thing definitely is the eating schedule, you know, intuitive fasting. Doesn't believe that a natural cycle is eating three meals every day. And in fact, they are claiming that it causes metabolic and flexibility, which can lead to inflammation, fatigue, and chronic health problems. And there's no evidence to support that whatsoever. And that would be something that would also be really hard to study Everybody eats three meals a day. I mean, people who eat less than three meals a day are usually like highly stressed and don't have the time or they have some kind of disordered eating.

Vanessa: 15:43

And we know that if you follow goop at all it's kinda like Gwenyth is always trying a new diet or a fast or something like that. But she says in her forward, the only thing that's actually worked for her is eating intuitively. I don't know, maybe Gweneth is a great, intuitive eater, but if you're someone who's fasting all the time, I don't know how you're not messing with your hunger and fullness cues and how you're actually able to keep those in check to be an intuitive

Emily: 16:13

It's something that I definitely wanted to talk about because there's 10 principles and intuitive eating, and one of them is honoring hunger and one of them is honoring fullness. So. You know, we've kind of talked about this in previous episodes where intuitive eating isn't just about starting to eat so much more all the time. It could also mean eating less at times. So intuitive, fasting and intermittent fasting, both really take you out of that space, where you're listening to the body and puts you in a space where you're hearing external cues like, Oh, this random man telling you that you can't eat after eight o'clock or whatever. And so these fasting periods can lead you to eating less, right? Because you're simply not eating as much since you're eating less hours of the day, or sometimes it can lead to people overeating and eating more within their fasting window because they're worried, Oh my God, she's going to take the food away from me again. And I've got to really pack it in now, which can lead to discomfort.

Vanessa: 17:21

Yeah, a lot of discomfort. I know for me, if I was coming up on like a 24 hour fast, I'd probably be trying to eat as much as I could to, uh, sustain throughout that. I'd be a very angry person during that.

Emily: 17:37

Yeah. And, and that's the fact of it where it's taking you and putting you in this extreme situation, which as we mentioned before, is going to increase your stress hormone of cortisol, which is not doing any favors for your health. You're putting yourself in that space of primal hunger, which is when you're just so hungry, you can eat everything in sight and you don't know hunger and fullness cues anymore because you're just desperate and fasting can really put you in that space where you're unaware of cues and you can't honor your fullness whatsoever. So you might overeat,

Vanessa: 18:13

And so I think really one of the main points we want you to take away from this. And all of the trending topics we do is that sometimes these things can be packaged in a really sexy way that makes you think this might be something great, but you know, intuitive and fasting. Those words don't go together. So they, they don't belong on the same book cover for sure.

Emily: 18:46

And that's the thing. If you're doing intermittent fasting. Okay. You know, you're, you're going to do what you're going to do, but don't try to say that it's intuitive eating because it's not

Vanessa: 18:58

right. They do not go together, but I can see how confusing it would be from a consumer standpoint and how it could be a learning, you know, you're looking at, especially if you're someone who's like, you know, I'm trying intuitive eating, but you know, I. Don't trust myself, which I feel like would be a huge part that would be a learning to intuitive fasting, but it's like, okay, well I can eat intuitively, but then I'm still going to have these times to restrict.

Emily: 19:31

And it might seem like it's almost a beginner step to getting to intuitive eating and it would be great if that is how it works. But unfortunately there's always going to be this phase and intuitive eating, especially if you've been restricting for a long time where you're going to have a lot of compensatory behavior, which just means, okay. You're gonna want to eat all of these foods that you haven't allowed yourself for years. And you kind of have to go through that slightly scary phase of lack of control in order to get on the other side. So you're really just prolonging it. When you do like half intuitive eating, half fasting it's you're not going to get the full benefits of intuitive eating until you take that scary leap.

Vanessa: 20:17

And so as far as intermittent fasting goes, you'll see a lot in studies that people are losing weight. Well, intermittent fasting and we know that's just because they're restricting calories, so they're not losing more weight than other people who are also just restricting calories. But have a timeframe for when they're eating and overall or eating less because of that. We don't necessarily know the long-term are they keeping that weight off? Are they having any other benefits? There are some studies that talk about lifespan increasing with Intermittent fasting. But again, with those kinds of studies, there's always some weird variables. What are those people's genetics? Are they smokers? Are they non-smokers? Are they active? What's their lifestyle. There's just truly so many components that it's really hard to do a good study on stuff like this.

Emily: 21:18

Exactly. And a lot of these studies don't measure for the potential harm. You know, if you've lost weight and maybe your lipid levels are improving or something six months down the line, well, eight months down the line, do you also have an eating disorder? Do you also experience social isolation? And then of course, intuitive fasting as a whole is brand new. And so there's zero longterm research done on that as a practice,

Vanessa: 21:45

Right, right. I mean, like it's truly, truly brand

Emily: 21:52

truly

Vanessa: 21:53

With intermittent fasting, it's something to think about too., so let's say you're doing intermittent fasting where you eat some days and you don't eat other days. You also have to think of the possible. Implications of that. Not only do you possibly have to, you know, plan your whole day around that. I mean, if you're fasting, you're probably not working out. Do you take any supplements or medications that you need to eat with? So are you just not taking your supplements or medications on those days that you're not eating? We know that there's. Some things medications or supplements that if you take on an empty stomach, I mean, like, it is not going to be good. Um, or it's not going to feel good at least. It's scary to think about it in that context to of the potential harm that people might be doing.

Emily: 22:45

Yeah. And I think that's really important because it seems like, Oh, just such an innocent thing to pursue dieting in general, but there's real harm with that comes along with most of these practices and that really needs to be talked about, and yeah. People should be made aware of these kinds of risks because in books in framework, sometimes it doesn't talk about that.

Vanessa: 23:10

It's just the sexy part.

Emily: 23:14

Some takeaways. If you're interested in intuitive fasting, I would suggest looking into intuitive eating you're halfway there. It's basically the same thing without the fast. And I would really recommend Evelyn Tribole book. If you want a real guide to intuitive eating and we'll put a link in our show notes for that book. It's basically a handbook on all things, intuitive eating. It'll go through all the principles with you. There's even a workbook if you want to get really deep into it. And just being super cautious about the insidious nature of diet culture, warming its way into intuitive eating, because this is not going to be the last iteration we see

Vanessa: 23:55

And if you're interested too, even in something like an intermittent fasting, talk to someone, talk to a dietician about it. They'll likely tell you that you shouldn't do it right. But if it's something that you want to explore, or you're just curious, it's important with these kinds of things to have a very individualized approach. For someone who, for example, is fasting for religious reasons, like, well, that seems great for them. Again, you have to think about the nuance of that they're fasting, but they're filling that time possibly with lots of mindfulness and prayer and things like that.

Emily: 24:34

Exactly. Have to really think about the intention behind your choices. And I think, That won't lead you wrong.

Vanessa: 24:51

Thank you so much for joining us for our first trending episode on wellness myths. We hope that if you like our podcast you'll rate and review and join us next week for a podcast episode with yours, truly about PMs.