Getting Started With ADF (Alternate Day Fasting): How To Ease Into ADF

hey everybody Dr o here welcome to my new series on how to get started with alternate day fasting or ADF or how to start over if it hasn't gone well in the past I am completely humbled by the fact that I've helped thousands of people see results with ADF between my videos my courses my Facebook group and my private coaching it truly makes my day whenever I hear from one of you from someone who has used alternate day fasting to transform their health and turn their life life around in the same ways that I have it's one of the greatest feelings in the world to be able to help but this video series is for the people I don't hear from right the people who can't get started or don't stick with it long enough to see results so people who struggle with ADF generally fall into one of two categories number one you try to do too much too soon you make plans and set goals that you aren't physically or mentally prepared to achieve this is you if you struggle to even get started you might make a little progress for a week or two but the slightest bump in the road causes you to fall off your plan or number two you start out with plans that you can't stick with long enough to reach your goals this is you if you're able to make really good progress for a few weeks or months maybe you lose 20 or 30 pounds and you're cruising but then your old habits start to creep back in right a missed workout turns into a missed week of workouts a cheat meal turns into a cheat month and the next thing you know you're right back where you start started you may even end up heavier than when you began right I covered why this happens and how to keep it from happening in my fat loss Sweet Spot series one of the one of my favorite video series that I've that I've done I know this was the case for me for sure the guy in this picture had probably lost 500 lbs over the years years of failed weight loss attempts did nothing but make me fatter weaker and more metabolically broken than ever so the old me was a cautionary tale of what can happen if you keep trying and failing and trying and failing without figuring it out but now I'm living proof that of what is possible when you find a plan that you can stick with and you never give up I use alternate day fasting to lose 49 lbs in 10 weeks 101.2 lb in 6 months and 165 lb in a year so we know that intermittent fasting can work amazingly well once you adapt to it but getting started can be the hardest part right so here perhaps your goal is to get to an alternate day fasting schedule that looks like this you know if you're anything like me you want to get there want to get close you know that I kind of modified my Approach but it was really similar to an alternate day fasting approach but if you're anything like me you're starting with the plan that looks more like this way too much food way too many meals way too much snacking way too much junk food right way too much soda all things I'm going to cover in this series how we need to deal with it but this is definitely going to be a process for most of you just like it was for me so in this series I want to highlight the strategies that will help you get started the right way and stick to the the plan long enough to see results the videos in this series will each address one or more of the following topics how to ease into fasting which will be our big Focus today how to prepare your body for fasting just as importantly how to prepare your mind for fasting and then how to eat to fuel your fasting success I have one goal in mind for this series I want each and every one of you I want to help you make this the last time you ever need to begin an alternate day fasting program to lose weight and transform your health so I I want to hear from you before we dive in right I want to hear from the ADF veterans that are out there watching this video what's worked for you did you ease into fasting or Dive Right In right what tips do you have for someone who is just getting started what would you do differently if you were starting on your weight loss Journey today so we're all in this together I would love to hear your thoughts and maybe I'll even add them to future videos in the series first why should we ease even ease into fasting let's start with this quote from Benjamin Franklin if you fail the plan you are planning to fail I truly believe that in in all areas of life this video is about easing into fasting but some people prefer ripping the Band-Aid off and jumping right into ADF there is nothing wrong with that if it works well for you nothing at all there are certainly pros and cons though to both approaches jumping right into longer fasts will actually speed up the fat adaptation process but it can make the first few days or weeks really tough right it's high risk but also High reward right I I've done both CU I've had periods where I've gone away from longer fast and then eased back into it but when I first started yeah I had I had started just by diving right in and and and I was able to do it but I tried and failed a few times before it finally stuck and there were some really really rough moments no doubt so lots of people find that easing into fasting is a more sustainable approach allowing your body to get used to fasting over time will decrease the chances that you experience any negative side effects like hypoglycemia which is low blood sugar dehydration electrolyte issues or Etc right it will also give you in your doctor time to adjust any medications like insulin or blood pressure pills if needed right you should obviously always work with your doctor if you have any underlying health issues I've worked with enough people to know that both strategies can work the key is to know yourself well enough to decide the best path for you so why why is it so hard why can't we just start fasting why can't we just go 36 hours without food why is it so hard in the beginning to put it as simply as I can you need to transform your metabolism and rebuild your metabolism from running on sugar to running on fat and ketones for fuel this is a lifechanging process but it takes your body time to adapt you your cells need to build more mitochondria the powerhouses of your cell because you need more of them if you're going to be running on fat your your cells need to increase the number of fat burning enzymes and just in general your cells have to get better at running on ketones and fatty acids for fuel these the the old fat burning Machinery hasn't been busy because your body's primarily been running on glucose refuel if you've been eating the standard American diet so it also takes time for your body to go from the fat storage mode that we hate to the fat burning mode that we love as our high insulin levels start to return to normal so these These are it just T it takes time for this for these adaptations to occur maybe you've heard of the fat adaptation process so here's my favorite study that explains why fasting gets easier and more effective over time so what does the science have to say alternate day fasting in non-obese subjects effects on body weight body composition and energy metabolism so I'll probably cover this video in other ways moving forward but there's a few things that I want to highlight and pull out of here this study looked at something called the respiratory quotient or the RQ you may also hear it called the respiratory exchange ratio or the reer but don't worry there won't be a test this respiratory quot oent determines whether your body is in carb burning mode or fat burning mode it it's actually determined by measuring how much oxygen you take in and how much carbon dioxide you take out so I actually get this done every time I that I get my resting energy expenditure test done that I've talked about in in multiple videos over the years so an RQ of 0.7 means that your body is burning 100% fat refuel an RQ of 1.0 means your body is burning 100% carbs for fuel and an RQ in the middle of 85 means that you're 50/50 you're burning you're burning a combination of both so we'll look at what happened to the respiratory quotient of the of these uh trial participants rson so here's a quote respiratory quotient or RQ did not change significantly from Baseline to day 21 but respiratory quotient decreased on day 22 which resulted in an average daily increase in fat oxidation so that means that over time they got better at burning fat for fuel they became fat burning machines and that's and that's what we're looking at here so let's let's actually take a closer look at the changes that occurred to get these people into fat burning mode all right so lots of neat stuff going on here so you'll see that the uh the white bars are at Baseline then the striped Bars were day 21 which was an eating day remember it's alternate day fasting and day 22 was a fasting day so you can see that their blood glucose levels were stayed pretty similar they just they dropped down just a little bit this is actually a good sign that means they train their body to go to fast for 36 hours at a time time without seeing blood sugar crashes and this is something that can occur when people first start fasting if they Dive Right In so the glucose glucose changes I would say are what what it's expected next we see insulin fasting insulin decreased an average of 57% this is an amazing Improvement since insulin is our key fat storage hormone and most people are dealing with too much insulin so their insulin levels came way down next you can also see that fasting put them into a state of ketosis and the fat fat was being mobilized for fuel so you see that the black bar there that's beta hydroxybutyrate the the the most important blood Ketone and then you see at on the right we have more free fatty acids so this means that their body was was releasing free fatty acids converting fat into ketones to fuel the brain and other parts of the body and these fuels were being released and they were being burned so the corresponding change remember we talked about how their respiratory quotient or RQ went down it actually was at 0.85 at Baseline when they started and on day 22 it had drop down to 0.79 so they'd become better fat burners so as a result fat oxidation increased from 64 G per 24 hours at Baseline the first day to 101 gam per 24 hours on day 22 that's a 57% increase in fat oxidation so I'm going to come back and talk about that in in a later video not even part of the series but I'm super excited about it I've been doing tons of research many of you have watched the video that I put out about you know how how much fat your body can release every day but I do think that there are ways that we can upregulate that so I want I want to look at all the science I can find and really dive in and say how much fat can we burn a day how much fat can we burn in a week so so I'll be sharing examples from studies like this but yeah this is a so the change from 64 grams for 24 hours up to 101 gram that's a 57% increase in fat oxidation so just to give you an idea of the difference if you burn 37 more gram of fat per day that's 1355 more grams of fat per year that's almost 30 pounds of fat being burned but just just from this increase in fat oxidation that we saw so this here right the these changes this is what a fat burning machine looks like and that's our the whole point of of alternate day fasting is to become a fat burner the point I'm trying to make here is that you can completely transform your metabolism in a few weeks if if if you can stick with the plan long enough to see these results I want to share a bonus tip from the study that will root be really helpful as you're getting started look at the weight loss during the study so they weigh them every day and you're seeing weight loss as a percent of their body weight the scale goes down on fasting days but then it goes back up on eating days this actually makes sense people get real terrified by this but this because your muscles and your liver are filling back up with glycogen and water after you eat you also have the weight of the food that's passing through you in your in your GI tract so you are doing great as long as the overall trend is going down but it kind of looks like a saw blade here if this IM image gives you anxiety of watching your weight go down and then back up every other day just weigh yourself at the end of your fasting windows and Skip your weighin on your eating days this is what I do it's better for my mental health I didn't like seeing the scale go up even though I understood why it was happening so I only weigh myself at the end of my fasts all right how to ease into fasting now we understand why you might want to ease into fasting but let's focus on the how so again I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of people and these are the the tips that that primarily have helped so here are six steps that can help you ease into the fasting lifestyle so we'll go through them all but step one stop eating after dinner step two skip the snacks step three slowly shrink your eating window step four try a modified alternate day fasting or 52 approach step five prepare for your first full 36- hour fast and then step six use crutches if needed so step one stop eating after dinner no food after dinner bonus points if you skip to deserved as well this is the perfect place to start for several reasons we already fast overnight while we sleep right hopefully you're sleeping 7 to 9 hours a night so you're already fasting every day that's why they call it breakfast because you're breaking a fast in the morning so avoiding food after dinner is the simplest way to extend the fast that you're already doing every night another reason that choosing to extend your fasting window by avoiding food after dinner is better than maybe pushing your breakfast back in the beginning is we often make very poor food choices at night right most people don't binge on Kale while watching TV before bed they eat a few hundred calories of cereal ice cream chips cookies those types of things avoiding food too close to bed will also help you sleep you don't want to be digesting a belly full of food or riding a blood sugar roller coaster while you prepare for sleep this is a win-win since sleep is one of our biggest fat loss superpowers this is why sleep is one of my favorite topics to talk about if you need another reason to skip the midnight stack snack let's go ahead and look at this study that showed that eating late decreases fat burning so what's the science have to say eating breakfast and avoiding late evening snacking sustains lipid oxidation so this this uh the study showed that people that eat late at night burn 15 fewer grams of fat per day so it doesn't sound like a huge number but that's 5,475 G per year that's over 12 lbs of fat per year so we're looking at just by eating later no we're not talking about more calories just by changing when people eat you can impact how much fat they're burn for fuel all right so that's step number one step two skip the snacks save your calories for your meals you're trying to teach your body that it doesn't need to be fed every 2 to three hours we're trying to break that cycle this will also make your meals larger and more filling and satisfying so skip the snacks so if you follow these first two steps you should now be eating two to three satisfying meals per day with no snack in and no food after dinner we are building momentum in the right direction so Qui quick bonus tip before we move on to step three eat until you're satisfied right give yourself some wiggle room here especially in the beginning you might feel like you're eating more than normal and that that's going to be okay you are not on a diet at this point we are focusing on getting good at fasting right so don't limit your food intake for the first few weeks give your body time to get fat adapted and then you will naturally start to consume less as as your appetite gets regulated so here's the key make sure you are eating enough to recover from your last fast and prepare for your next fast that's the absolute key that's why it's super important to be eating enough undereating will cause more problems than overeating at this stage fasting is where the real magic is happening so we have to allow it to occur all right so eat until you're satisfied all right so step number three slowly shrink your eating window now our goal is to shrink our eating window until you're fasting for at least 16 hours per day you can do this by pushing breakfast back a little bit by a couple of hours having dinner a couple of hours earlier or a bit of both right so a good schedule for a lot of people here in this place is going to be eating 2 to three meals from 10 to 6 or 11: to 7: because that keeps you from eating too close to bed and then you've pushed back your breakfast which a lot of people aren't super hungry when they wake up anyways so pushing back their breakfast is generally easier to do than pushing dinner earlier and then also if you're eating your dinner at 3 or 4:00 that might impact your family all right so you can track your fasting progress I personally don't use a fasting tracker because I don't restrict my eating windows on eating days right I practice 3612 fasting so I have days that I eat and days that I don't but if tracking motivates you then I 100% think that you should do it right it can be especially helpful as you are extending your fasting Windows here in the beginning you can focus on fasting a little longer every few days or maybe every week here are my two favorite fasting trackers based on the little bit that I played around with them then feedback from people I've worked with so you have zero the fasting and health tracker and then you have the life fasting timer and tracker but I don't have a lot of experience with these so please share your thoughts if you do do you track if you track your fasting Windows if so what's your favorite way to do it how do you track your fasting windows or maybe explain why you don't all right so we're trying to slowly shrink our eating window but what if you're really struggling to do that what if you're what if you're having a real hard time getting your eating window down to an 8 oring window for example the first thing to do is to make sure you're properly hydrated with water and electrolytes right this is the solution to most of the problems that people deal with in the beginning of their fasting Journeys so check out these videos for more details another trick is to try a fat fast fat fasts are where you add fat calories during your fasting window to help your body get used to burning fat for fuel adding a little fat can really help control hunger while flying under your metabolisms radar this is because fat doesn't stimulate insulin and mtor the same way that carbs and protein do you can use any fat you want but I recommend using MCT oil MCTS are medium chain triglycerides so MCT oil is a great fuel source for the body you don't need you don't need bile to absorb it or and digest it uh and it's it's burned for fuel better than other fats so specifically the C8 MCT oil is called caprylic acid it's the most ketogenic of all the MCT oils and will boost your blood Ketone levels this is where the hunger control comes from so I personally use or recommend the bulletproof brain octane since it's 100% C8 which is the best type of MCT oil in my opinion so try adding some to your coffee or your tea to help you make it to the end of your fasting window so you're trying to get to 11: it's 9:00 you're you're ravenously hungry try a little bit adding a little bit of fat see if it can help you get to your fasting window right I'm not saying this you're going to do this forever but but it's a nice little way to help you reach the end of your fasting Windows you can also use an MCT powder if the MCT oil causes any GI distress so some people don't don't do well with MCT oils people typically tolerate MCT powders better speaking of ketones you can also go straight to the source and take exogenous ketones so I've used several exogenous ketones but my favorite is keto start from audacious nutrition it has only 52 calories and causes my Ketone levels to jump more than when I use MCT oil this does not need to be a permanent solution but combining MCT oil and exogenous ketones will crank up your body your Ketone levels and help your body adapt to fasting until you can rely on your own body fat for fuel instead all right so step four try a modified ADF or 52 approach so now that you're comfortable with a 168 schedule it's time to try a modified fast a few days per week so here this is the original 52 plan you can see that on there's five days a week you eat and on two days a week you consume around 500 calories I would still eat in the 168 window on your five regular eating days I wouldn't do that if I was if you were just going to use the 52 program forever but you don't want to lose the progress you've worked so hard for right we're trying to get better at fasting so we can go to full 36-hour fasts so keeping this tighter eating window will help you I think so you have 5 days a week where you eat in that 168 eating window then choose two days per week to have one or two small meals that total 500 calories right we're trying to stress our fasting Machinery to see if and when we're ready for a full 36-h hour fast so definitely go and check out this video I covered that in great detail I'm I'm a huge fan of 52 fasting so check out the video for details but this is one example of a modified fast you can use the other one so here's the modified alternate day fasting approach so instead of eating one day and fasting the next you're eating one day and then you're consuming you're doing a modified fast where you consume five 100 calories in one or two small meals on your quote unquote fasting days right so some people end up seeing such great results that they stick with modified ADF and don't see the need to go any further right for example a member of my Facebook group has already lost 100 PBS using this plan that I lay out in this modified ADF video pretty exciting to hear all right so now we've what have we done we've stopped eating after dinner right we've we've cut out the snacks then we've shrunk our eating window now we're doing these these modified fasting days so now we're ready right so step five prepare for your first 36-hour fast so let me read this quote by Lau I I hope that's right mastering others is strength mastering yourself is true power and I feel that's I feel like there are real mental benefits that come with being able to complete your first 36- hour fast this is the moment you've been working for right you've trained your fasting muscles your body has become a better fat burning machine so as the as Ronnie Coleman would say there's nothing to nothing to it but to do it now all right so what's the here's the best advice I can give you for your first 36 hour fast have a busy day planned right we've all been too busy to eat before let's take advantage of that for your first fasting day so so keep yourself busy to keep your mind off of food so hopefully this is the first of many powerful and effective fasts for for you in your future but what if you're still really struggling if you've done all five of these steps and you're still really struggling what do you do so step six is to use crutches if needed I never tell people to but but I certainly allow it right you can skip this step if your ADF is in cruise control I don't do any of this anymore but I did I used a lot of crutches in the beginning most of you know my story but I don't see any problem with adding a few fasting crutches if they help you stick to your fasts long enough to get used to them right I've worked with dozens of people who have told me that they would have given up on Alternate day fasting if it weren't for little things like sugar-free gum a splash of cream in coffee or some broth when they were about throw in the towel right I I I mean I'm I'm that was me in the beginning right a warm cup of broth a piece of sugar-free gum they kept me fasting on days when I felt like giving up and I still made amazing progress right that's what we're looking for we're looking for Progress not Perfection if you have to choose between a piece of sugar-free gum and a large pizza because you you you gave up on your fast then choose the sugar-free gum or the bone broth or whatever it is so clean fasting May matter absolutely I've been clean fasting for months and months now if you can do it it's a smart move but sustainable fasting matters a lot more right I am not the fasting police my goal is to help you work towards the ADF plan that will work best for you and if it involves some crutches occasionally to keep you fasting then I'm all for it but keep in mind what works well for one person can be a terrible idea for someone else right don't add anything to your fasting window if it increases your hunger or makes you feel worse if something helps then use it as long as you need to skip it if it doesn't all right so there you have it this is how to ease into fasting start slow start smart and take every easy Victory you can get but give it time right don't forget who won the race between the tortoise and the hair you need to focus on the next 24 months more than the next 24 hours if you want to see long-term results so this is as far as some people need to go right some people make amazing progress by only focusing on when they eat but if fasting is still difficult for you after this process or you want to see even better results it's time to focus on what you are eating as well that's what's going to be that's what I'll be covering in the next few videos so I hope this one helped you have a wonderful day be blessed