The Intermittent FASTING MISTAKES That Make You GAIN WEIGHT! | Dave Asprey

You can fast without ever being hungry and without ever suffering and you'll have more energy. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Health Theory. I am here with a multiple Pete guest who I always enjoy spending time with, Dave Asprey. Dave, welcome to the show. Tom, I'm so happy to be back and I'm sad I'm not in your living room. Oh man, same. um you wrote a book on fasting and I have to say when I picked it up the first question I had was what is he going to talk about that's new in a book on fasting and I was quite surprised with where you went. Um the thing that took me by surprise is this whole notion of there are many ways to fast and walk us through that. When you started this, did you naturally assume that fasting was just not eating? Because you've given pretty broad options. I did start out with that that perspective, but then I started seeing people making mistakes where, oh, if something's good for you, more of it must be better. And the same things they do with keto, with a vegan diet, you know, where if if it works, I got to do more and more and more. And it turns out fasting is not like that. And no one talks about the spiritual side of fasting. Oh, that's on my list for today to be sure. Why Why is it problematic though to go allin? Like when I think about autophagy and the cells cleaning themselves up and knowing that that gets kickstarted by just not eating. Why is it problematic to go too hard on a fast? Well, there's a name for overfing. It's called starvation and malnutrition. So, there's that. Now, do you do you bracket that only by time, though? So, is that like if I was going to do a three-day fast, um I would think that your advice would be go all in, but obviously having read the book, I know you have a different punchline. So, um is is it that it becomes problematic as you get into the 7 10 21 day range or do you think that that's actually suboptimal from the jump? You know, I'm totally happy to do a three-day fast, four day, five day, seven day, 10 day. Although when you get to 10 and beyond, you probably want to be very experienced or have some medical um oversight because your electrolytes are likely to get out of whack. And frankly, your ability to really detect what's going on in your body isn't very good. Like you're kind of loopy after 10 days of fasting. You you have like clarity, but you're also ungrounded. And you're talking water only fasting. Um even if you're having tea and coffee and water only fasting is basically a form of self flagagillation. I call that hair shirt fasting. Hair hair shirt. So, um, monks used to, because they were such sinners, they would make shirts out of human hair that were super itchy and then they'd wear them all day so the itchiness would remind them of how bad they were. In other words, it's self-inflicted suffering that you didn't need to do. Uh, so it's most everyone has herbal tea in every spiritual tradition ever or just black tea or green tea. Um, so the fact that mice did water fasting, it's because they didn't have anything else. They're mice. So water only fasting is for uh perfectionist kind of purists. You don't have to do that to get the benefits. In fact, you'll probably get more if you have some polyphenols during your fast. All right. So let's define some terms here. So I've always thought of fasting as you put nothing in your mouth that isn't exactly H2O. That anything beyond maybe I recently broadened my stance to include salt, just normal table salt. That's pretty important. I was going to run a 10day fast without salt. You die. There's that. So walk us through then. So if we've got okay at water only becomes problematic roughly around 10 days and I'll say that that seems slightly controversial. I've heard people say that you can go farther with supervision. Um but broaden my notion of what a fast is. The definition of fasting is simply to go without. And you can fast from many things. You can fast from masturbation. You can fast from porn. You can fast from alcohol. Right? You can fast from junk food. It's called eating healthier. You can fast from carbs. It's called the keto diet. You can fast from animal products, even though it's a bad idea, for long periods of time, is called the vegan diet. And there's all sorts of things. Uh so fasting literally means to go without for a set period of time. And all of those things can make you stronger. And a lot of people mix up the metabolic and the cognitive and the health benefits of fasting with the self-control benefits. And they try to mix them up. And the truth of the matter is that you and I are pretty fortunate. You know, we've had companies that have done well and we don't have to worry about getting up, driving for an hour in traffic. Our kids are or now staying at home with, you know, two kids hanging off each arm. Uh, and just a huge amount of chaos. Oh, and on top of that, I'm just going to fast today even though I'm metabolically not really in good shape. And what's going to happen is you'll be just like me when I weigh 300 lb. You're going to be hypoglyicia. You're going to be hangry. You're going to yell at your kids. You're going to yell at your boss. And it's not going to be a good day. and you're going to say basically f fasting. This is stupid. It doesn't work. But you don't have to do that. You don't have to experience pain and hunger to get the benefits of fasting and to go into fasting. And after 10 plus years of recommending this in my my writing and 15 years of practicing this, what you find out is that there are things that you can do in literature that don't trigger the two things that break a fast. What breaks a fast is having sugar or carbohydrate that raises your insulin. So if you keep your insulin low and your blood glucose won't change much except for based on your adrenal adrenal function. Um if you do that and you don't eat protein, which impacts a whole different set of enzymes, you're getting the benefits of fasting. And now some people are already up in arms going, you can't have 5,000 calories of fat. No, you would get disaster pants if you did that. But you can have small amounts of this. And the evidence I have for this is called number one bulletproof protein fasting which has been practiced since 2012 when I wrote about it. And this is you eat less than 15 grams of protein during a day but you eat carbs and you eat fat and magically autophagy turns on. In studies you can do that. So I think we're going to have to we're going to have to define then what the biological markers are that we're um bracketing fasting with. So if the loosest definition of fasting is going without but now we as we get into sort of metabolic fasting or dietary fasting there's certain parameters that we're looking for. So, um I've heard people define it as you started that you break a fast with anything that raises your insulin and should you take in something that doesn't raise your insulin then you have not broken your fast and so I'm just curious is one why do people use insulin as the marker is insulin the only marker of a fast or if it if you're not an autophagy it's technically not a fast like what are the the parameters by which you say this still qualifies as a fast it depends on your goals and the type of fast you're looking for, right? So, some people fast for uh healing the gut, right? And during that kind of a fast, you might want to have just water. You probably want to have water plus these colored compounds in tea or coffee because those feed good bacteria that are prebiotic. You might also use one of the three fasting hacks that just turn off the pain of fasting for people just need to get through the day and fast and get healthier along the way is prebiotic fiber. So, you can do that. And what does prebiotic fiber get rid of symptomatically? Headaches, hunger. Prebiotic fiber feeds the bacteria in your gut so they make less lipopolysaccharide, which is a major issue during fasting. It also makes sure that you don't starve the gut bacteria. And when you do that, you turn off hunger. And there's multiple studies that show that the soluble fiber that cannot be digested by you, um, that it helps support good gut bacteria. So now you're fasting. You're not dealing with a a large amount of lipopolysaccharides, which are bacterial toxins they make when they're stressed in the gut. So then like, oh, wait a minute. I had healthier gut bacteria. My blood sugar didn't change, but the gut bacteria converted this fiber into butyric acid or butyrate, which is a ketogenic compound. So all of a sudden, wow, I didn't experience hunger this morning. Wasn't that great. I didn't spend half my morning thinking about muffins and barely make it through the day, and I still got my fast in. And and this idea that you have to feel pain and suffering and just like muscle through it, it doesn't work for people who have a lot going on. In fact, it makes it much harder. I don't believe in causing suffering unless there's a hormetic effect and there's no other way to do it. Okay. So, let's talk about the goal of a fast. So, um one, so you just talked about healing a gut. So, there we might have different outcomes that we're looking for. Basically, you'd be resting the gut. You even say in the book, if you have a gut problem, you're trying to heal it, the easiest way to heal it is to not have anything in the gut. Um, so that makes a lot of sense. So, we're not necessarily worried about insulin going up, down, or indifferent. We're not necessarily worried about even calories being present. We're worried about having things for the bacteria in your gut to have to work on so that they can just take a break and sort of hit the reset button. Now, if I'm doing a a fast where my specific goal is to get into autophagy, what can we intake and still have autophagy being present? Like, can I have uh fat in my diet and stay in autophagy or what does that look like? You can have moderate amounts of fat in your diet and still stay in autophagy. But in the research that I did and in um the conversations with other experts, it's apparent that having only fat isn't going to affect autophagy. Now, if you have 3,000 calories of fat, a caloric excess can inhibit autophagy, but no one's ever studied what a fat only caloric excess looks like because no one would actually do that. So, there's also a lot of things like the fasting mimicking diet that turn on autophagy even though you're eating some stuff. And what elements of the fast are they mimicking? Um well it's a very low calories for five days about 500 calories or so um for five days and this is based on research from Valter Longo who's I call him the godfather of fasting you know one of the the top fasting experts out there today. So they're saying we're turning on autophagy even though we're eating some stuff. So you can't even say protein without saying which proteins. There's some proteins you can't even digest and maybe those wouldn't affect it. So it's it gets very specific around some amino acids raise insulin a lot more. So, is you know a few teaspoons of whey protein going to break a fast more than collagen? Probably. But it depends on your individual response to those. Ideally though, less than 15 grams of protein from all sources is going to maintain your state of autophagy. Uh, and this goes back to like my first big book in 2014 that data was out there and based on studies. So, the deal is just have no protein and have no sugar and no carbs you can digest and the fasting processes will work. There's one little asterisk to that statement and we're getting relatively technical. Um, one of the things that happens when you fast is there's something called fi. It's fasting induced atapose factor and your liver turns this on and says, "Oh, I'm fasting." Um, there's no calories. I better use this. And what does it accelerates fat burning and when you're not fasting? It accelerates fat storage. Unfortunately, if you have a lot of bad gut bacteria, they're like, "Oh, this petri dish is our petri dish, so we're going to hack it." And the bacteria themselves will make more fasting induced adipos factor than your liver would naturally, which means that you lose weight faster when you're fasting, but you gain weight faster when you're eating. And this is a question that um because they want to make sure that their petri dish doesn't starve. And also, I as a little bacteria, I don't have any food. let me tell the petri dish to secrete more energy so it can go find food and then I'll get food. I see. So they're literally changing your behavior. And it it's fascinating that they do this, but you can also manipulate them knowing that they do this. And so fasting can help you lose weight, but if you have good gut bacteria present, and you're aware of that fact, you can do things like consume that tea, those polyphenols, that feeds good bacteria called the bacterodites family. So the colored compounds and fruits and vegetables and coffee and tea and chocolate um are all prebiotics for good gut bacteria that you cannot buy in a probiotic. And so having healthy gut bacteria resolves that problem. And and the the reality is that you and I are from the perspective of our mitochondria, which are the things we're working on mostly. In fact, most of my work is around mitochondria. These are ancient bacteria embedded in our body. They think they're in charge and they're the ones driving your hunger, your fear, your cravings. They're the the ones that make you, you know, date people you shouldn't be dating. And and they they drive human desire. In fact, there's an order of operations from them that I describe in the book. And this is the algorithm for all life forms. And so they're messing with you. And then you have gut bacteria that are also messing with you by secretreting their own factors to try and get your body to do what they want you to do. And then poor us, we're also in there in our our logical cognitive brains going, "Wait a minute. I'm getting pulled all over the place by these urges, right?" And then eventually when your energy is lower and your urges are high, your ability to manage your emotions goes down, your ability to make good decisions goes down, and then you eat the cookie. And that's the annoying thing. So, when I think about um all of this stuff sort of working in concert, this big cacophony of things happening, you've got the mitochondria pulling you in one direction. You've got the bacteria in your gut pulling you in another. You have your own body's response to um lack of food. We've got autophagy that's working for us. We're cleaning up the cells. So, I could see how that would speak to longevity, maybe even clarity. But other than autophagy, what are some of the reasons that fasting is so important for people? The number one reason isn't autophagy. That's actually kind of a a nerd reason for fasting. And I say that happily being a nerd. Um, most people who are practicing intermittent fasting today don't even know what autophagy is. And that's okay. What they know is that they fast and they get energy, right? and and it's a lot of energy because even if we're eating, you know, a so-called healthy diet, um, according to the the bulletproof stuff, the first chapter of the book, there's five classes of toxins made by mother nature that we're eating every day, right? And the first one, uh, I think it was the first big book about it was lectins. Not all lectins are bad, but these are defense molecules for certain types of foods like grains and bell peppers and things like that, and they make you really hungry and they mess with you, right? And then you look at things like phytic acids that inhibit your ability to absorb minerals. There goes the argument for a whole grain kind of thing because they're full of these things that stop you from having zinc. There's a problem there. And then we have histamine, which forms in certain foods when they sit around that gives you just severe cravings. And then you have oxylic acid, which is kale and chardred and raw spinach, which I've been warning about for years. And then the fifth one is micotoxins that grow on food in the field and while it's stored. And all of those will mess with you. And when you fast, you get none of those. So you're like, "Wow, I feel so good." And it's not the fasting, it's that you're not eating stuff that makes you feel bad that you're used to eating every day. So that's a a hidden side benefit of fasting. Yeah. So getting into like inflammation and things like that and fasting having such a profound impact on that. What I want to know when we start fasting and we're having the our energy levels are going up because we're not intaking a bunch of things that you know whether it's just bad food or whether it's the toxins you're talking about. Um we also are getting this lowering of inflammation. One I'm curious what's causing the lowering of inflammation? Is it simply the absence of the toxins that you mentioned or is there more to it? There's two big things going on. One is the absence of toxins. The other one is that ketones themselves are anti-inflammatory, profoundly anti-inflammatory. So now you're saying, "Wait a minute, uh, I'm having less inflammation because, and if I had to guess, I'm going to say it's probably 2/3 caused by not eating stuff that makes you weak and one-third caused by the presence of ketones, um, the inflammatory things. I could be wrong, but that's, you know, a very rough estimate of why." And if you were to say, I'm going to go on a super clean, no plant toxin kind of diet, you feel pretty similar, but you're still going to have blood sugar swings that you don't get when you're fasting that generally after a little while it stabilizes. Okay, so we've got fasting playing this insane role when when we're talking about metabolic diseases, which depending on who you talk to is everything from cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, like there must be some common thing that this all has working together. So, is it insulin? People have referred to Alzheimer's as type three uh diabetes type three of the brain. Um, is it just inflammation in general from the ketone bodies? Like what what is it that is operating across all these different um disease manifestations? What's going on there is you're getting a metabolic reset and you're getting a lot of autophagy. You're taking the the mitochondria that are weak. They've learned and there's a quadrillion of them, way more than there are cells in your body. And they've learned, ah, there's lots of food coming. I don't really have to do anything. it's okay if I'm running at, you know, 50% efficiency. It's good enough for the world I'm in. And then suddenly like I'm in a world where I have to be able to really be on my toes. The body looks around and says, "Well, this sucks. I guess I'm going to have to kick out all the weak mitochondria and go to the expensive process of building fresh new ones that are young." And those are the mitochondria that can effectively and efficiently use glucose or ketones. And that's what's causing a lot of this. It's removal of scesscent cells. But even then, if you were to take a water fast and you were to say, "Hey, I'm going to do 500 milligrams of fiscetin and two grams of queretin, which are massive colytic promoters, you're going to get more out of it, but now you're not on water only fast. You're using supplements in a targeted way uh to improve autophagy." And so I believe that the the puritanical approach of just water isn't advisable, but I do think if you're going to do stuff during a fast, it's got to be limited, and you've got to know what it is and why you're taking it. For instance, there's other supplements that I recommend in fast this way that improve the body's ability to do what it does during fasting. I'm talking about proteolytic enzymes, things like capeptise and nattokynise. And what these do is they help the body to break down waste proteins and scar tissue. So since the body's already working on that and you give it more of the enzymes it needs, that means your pancreas and to a certain extent your liver can make the enzymes that they need to make for repairing DNA and refolding proteins and things like that because some of the cleanup proteins you've already taken orally. You can also take uh things like activated charcoal during a fast and because your gut bacteria get really stressed and they make more of that lipopolysaccharide or LPS we talked about earlier. If you bind that in the gut, you actually have less inflammation. but you feel a lot better. So the the water only thing is like I'm just gonna put my head down and go through it. I just don't believe in extra suffering. I would say anyone on a water fast who adds activated charcoal is going to have better results 100% of the time because it's blocking the toxins from coming out into the body. I know in the book you said that part of the keto flu that people experience when they're beginning fasting or beginning a keto diet is mitigated by taking activated charcoal for that reason. It's interesting. I wish I had known that the first time that I did keto, which I had brutal keto flu. It was god awful. Um, what are some of the other because you give many different styles of fasting um and ways to mitigate some of the the difficulties that people can have with fasting? So, what are some of the other things that we need to address and how do we address them? One of the biggest concerns there is is people are saying, "Fasting makes me feel good, so I'm going to just do it every day." They go, "You know what? I'm gonna try this new OMAD thing where I only eat dinner, right? Like I'll do that every day for a week or so. Oh, this is awesome. Never heard of that. One meal a day. OMAD. Yeah. So, OMAD is one meal a day. And they're saying, "Okay, um that's that's great." And OMAD is really easy. You skip breakfast, skip lunch, have dinner. There you just did a 24-hour fasted. It's not as sexy as it sounds, like I'm OMAD. I'm I'm keto. I'm strong. It it's literally you skip two meals. Like, good for you. And uh during the day though, you might get a little bit hungry, but there's things you can do. So if you ate if you eat the right food, you won't be hungry after you eat. And if you eat the wrong food, which most of us do, at least one or two things is off. Then an hour or two later, we're like, man, I really want some food. I I got a sugar craving. What's going on? And then you have to work on it. So learning how to eat is an important part of not experiencing pain during a fast. But people are like, okay, I can do a 24-hour fast. Man, I feel so good. I'm rocking it. What's really happening though is they're kind of getting a little bit stressed biologically. They're feeling good mentally, but their body is saying, "Okay, I'm making a lot of cortisol and adrenaline right now, uh, which I'm using to break down some muscle so I can have enough glucose to keep my brain running." Because this isn't a fat burning body yet, like your metabolism isn't flexible. And if you've been eating bad fats for years, it's going to take a while to fix your mitochondria. What's the ideal split for you? The ideal split is whatever you'll do. And 168 is great, but for a special 16 hours of not eating and then I eat however much I want in an 8 hour window or do you put limitations in the eating window? You can eat as much as you want during the window of Twinkies. Uh, you know, you can and you'll still get benefits to be perfectly honest. You'll just get more benefits if you eat good stuff during the window. And that's the other thing, okay? Maybe you don't want to go grass-fed only. Maybe you don't want to eliminate French fries from your universe. Okay, fine. Intermittent fasting will help everybody even on a complete crap diet. However, you'll be more hungry during your intermittent fast if you eat crap. So, you got to deal with that. And ideally, what you're eating after you break your fast, you can have carbs or not have carbs, but don't have sugar, don't have seed oils, and eat grass-fed meat or don't eat meat. And if you follow those basic principles, and there's other nuances in there, what you find is that you feel really good. and the next morning you wake up and you're not ravenous and you're like, "Oh yeah, I don't even want breakfast." And and that's a very liberating thing because if we're spending so many of our thoughts every day on food, food, food, and then you just aren't hungry, it really changes things. So So I I want millions of people to say, "I'm going to try this basic thing. I'm not going to worry about getting my diet perfect. I might make a few changes, but I'm just going to learn how to intermittent fast." And what I don't want them to do is what a lot of the fasting community does where it's all about the fast and you know every month I'm going to fast for a week. And what you end up doing is you get people who become um they basically burn out their adrenals. And so women see problems as the first symptom that they're overdoing it and then they see hormonal problems in their monthly cycle and then see hair loss and hair thinning. Guys, same thing but it's usually two to four weeks out for women. First is sleep problems. Then you wake up and there isn't a kickstand and then you That took me a second. I got there. Yeah. And then after that you can see hair thing as well. And this is from excess cortisol because you overdid it. And you can see the same thing from just being keto for 3 months straight. Right. That's why I've always recommended cycling because I made all these mistakes when I was learning about all this stuff. It was just very early days. And and so how do you make this sustainable? And the truth is fasting the same way every day is bad for you because it doesn't lend your body the idea of metabolic flexibility. It's like, oh, I live in a world where there's almost never enough food. So have breakfast every now and then. At least, you know, Saturday morning, have breakfast with your family and you can have a keto breakfast or you can have the gluten-free waffles, whatever you want. You should be able to handle that. Just don't eat bad oils. And over time, takes about two years to replace half your cell membranes, the oil in those membranes. Over time, you'll become more and more metabolically flexible because your cells work better. But if while you're intermittent fasting, you're still eating a ton of junk food, you won't get that benefit, but you'll get many other benefits of fasting. You're still going to lose weight. You're still going to have uh an improved blood sugar profile, but not as good as if you made a few changes in the diet. So, this is something everyone can do that's cheaper and more convenient than what you do in the morning right now. So, I don't think um we closed the loop on metabolic flexibility before. So metabolic flexibility being um that you've got on one hand you can burn the glucose and then on the other that you can burn ketones. Most people unless they're paying attention never get into a space where they can burn ketones because they're not creating ketones. Um can you give people a really fast because I want to get back to what an ideal fast looks like according to fast this way. Um but first give people a quick breakdown about how you put your body in a state where it will produce ketones and exactly what they are. Ketones are what happens when your body burns fat instead of sugar. Naturally, it doesn't happen if you're consuming carbohydrates in any meaningful amount. And it doesn't happen if you're eating a ton of protein. And what happens when you do that is ketones have more energy in them than glucose does. And the neurons in your brain love ketones. In fact, all the cells in your body do, but some of them prefer blood glucose. So, all of a sudden, you get this feeling of clarity. And the natural way to get into ketosis is you fast for about two days for the average person, sometimes three, and then the body says, "I got nothing here. I better start burning my fat stores." So, it liberates some fat from the fat stores and all the toxins from the fat it liberates as well. Which is why it's good to mop them up while you're fasting. And then your cells get get this and they go, "Oh man, we've got to reformat our power plants because they're used to only having sugar." So, it takes metabolic energy to transform and they literally change their shape and function so that they're better at consuming fat, right? And that takes a while. Now, you're metabolically flexible. But if you do that all the time forever, your cells are like, why would I ever be configured to do glucose? I live in a world with no sugar. So, they aren't very good at that. Which is why cycling in and out of ketosis, fasting some of the time, but not other times, and not fasting the same way every day or every week is really powerful. You want to keep the body a little bit off balance. So it's like, you know what? I'm ready to make energy at any time rapidly from any type of fuel. And when you do that, you can actually go out and have a bowl of hopefully dairyfree ice cream without bad fats in it. So a coconut based ice cream and uh with real sugar and everything, and you know what'll happen? Your blood sugar will go up and come right back down and you'll be fine. And that's a metabolically flexible person. You do it all the time, you won't be metabolically flexible, right? But if you're the guy who has ice cream every single night, well then what's going to happen is you're not going to know how to burn fat whatsoever. Your body's going to be only sugar burning and it's it's not going to work and your blood sugar will always be high. So the idea is occasionally it's okay to have some carbs. I don't recommend, you know, ice cream is a major source, but honestly, if you're intermittent fasting, you're occasionally in ketosis, you ought to be able to eat a treat that isn't full of inflammatory stuff like bad oils and all and be just fine. And the evidence is that people whose metabolisms will work really well, they can do it and their blood sugar doesn't go bonkers. Okay. Now, if we were going to give somebody the fastest way starter kit, um, you know, sort of a what does a basic week look like? What is what is a good entry point where they're not hangry, they're not going crazy, but they're still getting some benefits, anti-inflammatory, they're maybe in uh, you know, ketosis, they've got some autophagy going on. Like, what does that starter kit fast look like? All right, I'm going to to explain that right here. I'm also going to offer um because I was a teacher for five years at the University of California. I wrote every book I've written. I haven't really been a great teacher of the content. I just write I'm like you should read it. When people order Fast This Way and send the receipt to fast thisway.com um I will teach you this over two weeks like every morning explaining walking people through this who are new to fasting ending in a one or two day spiritual fast. So, that's the long answer to the question is it's gonna take me two weeks, but I'll show you. The short answer is that do 12 hours without food. See if you can do that if you've never done it before. That's not really technically an intermittent fast. You're just showing yourself you've got legs. And you work yourself up to 14 hours without food. And that's when you're really starting a real intermittent fast. And then you maybe the next day you have breakfast. Just lots of protein, lots of fat, no carbs for breakfast, right? You're taking it easy. And then the next day, okay, I'm going to do a 16-hour fast. And you're you may use all three of the fasting hacks because you're ravenous. When I was 300 lb, if you told me I was going to skip breakfast and lunch, I'm like, I will kill the people around me. Like, I will be such a jerk. And it was true. I I ate six or eight times a day because I knew I'd go into starvation mode if I didn't. And all this like mental garbage we've been told. So, what you end up with is this idea where you're slowly going to work your way up. And it's okay to do that. and some morning someone's going to bring in donuts and you're just going to break your fast. And in the book I explain the psychology and the biology of why that happens. And it's just it's okay, right? You have the rest of your life to to to do this. That's why it's called a fasting practice. And it doesn't have to be perfect. And once you get up to that 168, one day you're going to sit there and go, you know what? It's lunchtime, but I'm actually not that hungry. So, I am going to for the first time in my adult life, I'm going to just say I'm not gonna eat till dinner. And then you're really kind of tricking yourself because it's only like four or five more hours until you've had dinner anyway. And then you're going, wait a minute, the last time I ate was dinner yesterday. But it wasn't pain. It wasn't suffering. It wasn't struggle. It wasn't strife. It wasn't pushing. It was just, "Oh, okay. I could do that. Yeah, I was a little hungry in the afternoon, but I drank some extra water." Right? Maybe you did use coffee. Coffee is good for you anyway, right? It's okay. And then no sugar or cream, I'm assuming. Thank you. No sugar, no cream, no protein, no artificial sweetener either. You can use stevia or monk fruit if you want to, but definitely not neutra sweeter or splenda because those wreck your gut bacteria and it it's really shocking and you see this look of wonder like, wow, I can't believe I I thought I would die, right? But I didn't. I just did 24 hours. And as we talked about earlier, that's you know, one meal a day. But if the next day you're like, I did it yesterday, I'm going to do it again today. and you're still just getting into it, you're probably not going to feel as good, right? So the next day, go back to 168, right? Like slowly work up to it. And what you're doing, it's like you go to the gym saying, "I haven't worked out in 2 years, but I'm going to go do a full CrossFit workout, right? I'm going to do the full wad." And then the next day, you're laying on your back and you're like, "I think I have to go to the hospital. My kidneys are overloaded with protein breakdown. You know, I hate my life." It's because it's okay when you're exercising yourselves the way fasting is. It's okay to just get started in a healthy, gentle way and work yourself up to this. I can fast for 48 hours and still be totally fine and and have my brain work and do interviews like this and I feel great. I can also eat and feel great. But before I'd eat and then I get the food coma and then you don't feel very good and then you got to have some sugar. That doesn't happen either. But if you just go all in and start with a 10-day water fast, man, you're going to feel like crap. And the deal here is fasting is not about deprivation and it's not supposed to be about willpower unless you're doing a spiritual fast. And what I would say is do fasting in a painless way which is a big part of the book or choose to face the pain and use it as a spiritual personal development practice. The arc of the book when I first started this I was afraid of of being hungry. I was afraid of being alone. Uh which I was something I came up with through my personal development work. I'm like, "Oh, I didn't realize this." So, I hired a shaman to drop me off in the middle of nowhere in a cave. There's no food and there's no people for 10 miles in any direction. And I'm like, I'm going to be here for 4 days and I'm scared, you know, I'm pretty scared of this to be perfectly honest. This is the first time I'd done a 4-day fast. And when I got out of there, I couldn't believe the energy I had. And I I talk in in the book about, you know, the the mental process you go through the first time you do a fast like that. And that is a spiritual practice. And that's why at the end of this this challenge I'm running for people it I am going to say all right here's the meditation work that you do. Here's understanding the voice in your head because there's these three voices in your head that make you do everything you've ever been ashamed of and they're coming from mitochondria and gut bacteria and getting on top of that and just owning that. That's awesome. But if you have to own it every day on top of everything else in your life it's going to be overwhelming and it's going to raise your cortisol. You don't need to do that to get the benefits. What are the three voices? This is the algorithm that all life runs. It doesn't matter if you're a plant, doesn't matter if you're a bacteria, which is what's powering us, or whether you know you're a deer. And the first rule is run away from, kill, or hide from everything. So that's fear. And you put 10 times more energy on that than is necessary, right? Because from the perspective of making a life form that will always be around, it should protect itself. And you protect yourself if you're a plant with, you know, hard shells or spikes or toxins. And if you're a bacteria, you use toxins or other defense things. And if you're a person, you think you're out of it. And the second f word, which gets about five times more attention than normal, is eat everything because famines kill lots of things. So now we have fear and we have food, right? And that's why food gets so much attention when you're fasting because your bacteria like eat that, eat that, eat that, eat that, eat that. And you're like, no, no, no. And eventually it's like a little kid wearing you down. Okay, fine. You can have half the cookie, Johnny. And they're like, "Why'd I eat the cookie? I'm such a bad person." No, your mitochondria got the best of you. It's okay. And then the third f word. What else does all life have to do to make sure it's on the earth forever? Tom, fornicate, baby. Oh, I was thinking fertility, but if you want to just go straight to I'll go right there. You're correct. So, I actually was thinking of the other f word. I was just trying to get you to say it. So, nice dodge. What um what's going on there is that gets about three times more attention than it deserves, right? And all life has to do it. And this explains everything you've ever done that you're ashamed of. Like all procrastination, all resistance, all not seeing things all that's fear, right? Eating all the stuff you shouldn't eat, that's food. Going on that date you know you shouldn't have gone on, that is the other f word, right? And this is in our cells. This is not your brain. This is your cellular biology driving you to do it. And the saving grace in all of this, and this is towards the end of the book, is that there is a fourth f word that all life does, and it's friend. And this is why we form communities, why we specialize, and we're actually wired to help each other, right? But if you're so wrapped up in hunger and so wrapped up in lack of love and so wrapped up in fear, whether it's from watching too much news or just your old programming that's like, "Oh no, if you know if my boss yells, I'm a bad person. No one will love me." Ah, and you just lose it. So if those are going on, we aren't there to help other people. And if you can turn off the hunger voice, it frees up so much more energy that you can now do the work necessary to turn down the fear and to make sure that you're managing the love in your life. And all of a sudden, you're a better person than you were before. And and this is why fasting is so important because it has the power to give you the energy to overcome the other f-words that are messing with you on a daily basis. And it's it's not because we're bad people. It's a separate operating system meant to keep you alive. It's not trying to harm you. It just makes you do stupid stuff all the time. And fasting is a way out of that trap. Is that the reason that this is uh such a time-honored tradition for spiritual traditions to use fasting or is there something more? Was there what were all the things that you learned or discovered in the cave? There are two reasons that spiritual fasting works and I actually reference a bunch of different fasting practices from around the world in the book that are all spiritual traditions. One of them is that when the neurons in your brain get ketones from fasting, you actually think better. You have more energy for thinking and for awareness. Food tastes better. Colors are brighter, right? and you're you're aware of sensations in your body and the world around you. It's like someone went from black and white to color TV. So So you get this this energy. It's like, "Wow, I I like this." And if you take that energy and you turn it inwards, you become aware of what's going on in there in a way that you normally wouldn't be. And I believe that's a part of it. And the other part of it is, you know, you do have to to feel the hunger and have willpower to overcome the hunger for 2 days or so. And it's about showing yourself who's in charge, right? And that is a spiritual practice in and of itself. But it's the the clarity that comes and with that clarity you can do deep work. I want to talk about that growing part. So you said in the cave you know doing a extended fast like that you're creating the space to do the deep work or you have the energy to do the deep work. What was the deep work like? What was it that and I mean you talk about it in the book so I don't think I'm going out of school here but what was it that drew you to wanting to do a spiritual fast? Um, and then you know what what did you encounter that you've taken with you? Well, I I lost a lot of weight, but I recognized I I still had, you know, a fear of being hungry because when your metabolism doesn't work, when you're as fat as I was, if you don't have food, your brain stops working. I had a great career in Silicon Valley, you know, very cognitively demanding, but interesting and fascinating. And you're in a meeting and you're like, "My brain won't work." Like, I'm trying to think right now and I got nothing. Like, the accelerator is all the way to the floor and I'm slowing down. and I can push hard, but it doesn't matter how much I try. It doesn't much want. It's not a willpower or a moral issue. It's a biological issue. So, you become afraid of being hungry because you don't want to be disabled, right? And I had that and I recognized I had that and I didn't know what to do about it. So, I said, "Well, I'm just going to, you know, face it." And one thing that happens when you face your fears, they lose their power. So, for me in the cave, I'm like, there's no one around. Like, showing myself I'm actually still safe with no food. I'm I'm still safe with no companionship, right? And then to be able to go, you know what? Great. I'm not going to die. And that soaks into your body. It What did you do during the day? You just sitting there thinking, you walking around. I sat there. I'd think and I say, you know what? Okay, I'm just going to go walk. I'd walk up the little canyon where I was. You know, I'd stack up rocks. I had a little journal uh and and just really feel. But, you know, you you think about all the stuff you've done uh that you're like, man, I wish I hadn't done that. Oh, now I understand what was driving me to do that. and you really you gain insight and and you you feel way more connected uh to the world around you. And like most people like, "Yeah, I'm I'm going to fast. I'm going to have my metabolism. I'm going to get younger. I'm going to lose weight. I'm going to get abs. I'm get these benefits." You're like, "Actually, you have no distractions when you're fasting." So, if you remove all the distractions from your world and you do some of the other things that I talk about in the book briefly, you know, fasting from sex is a very powerful practice that raises your testosterone if you're a man. If you're a woman, it probably isn't beneficial. Um, there's other things towards the end of the book like fasting from hate. Like try to go four hours without thinking one bad thought about another person and then go 24 hours. It is remarkably difficult to do that. And you become aware during that time. I cannot believe how often I'm like sending dirt towards people that I didn't know I was doing. It costs you to send them dirt. You got to make the electrons to do that and it gives it does nothing for you, right? So, you can go without many different things. But when you have the clarity and the time to sit in a cave, be like, "Why am I thinking about this right now?" Like, "Why is it pushing my buttons? Why did that show up for me right now?" And then you you dig on like, "Oh my god, I'd never thought about it like that." And this is one of I had the clarity of ketones, right? I had zero inputs anywhere. I had no food in front of me to to challenge me. And I could say, "Oh, I'm really hungry." And then I'm like, "Why am I thinking that? I know there's no food here." And like, who's thinking that? Cuz it's not me. And then you realize, oh, there actually is a separate consciousness that's driving my biology. And I I mean, you can see the effect of that consciousness using neuro feedback and all. It's one of the things I do with my neuro feedback company um 40 years as it's wow, there's this whole thing that's like making me worry about stuff that I know isn't a threat and it's making me worry about food when I know I'm not going to starve. And I'm like, wait, why? What? And and then you start really getting in there and you when you're done with a spiritual fast like that, you can develop a sense of of first empathy like I I feel the pain that I felt, I feel the pain of others when they're hungry, right? And then the level beyond that in spiritual teaching teachings is a sense of compassion where instead of having to feel everyone else's pain, you can see the pain and you feel openheartedness towards them and you know want to serve without taking it in. And the final state, which is the hardest one to develop in these openhearted Buddhist practices, is equinimity, which is where you can be completely calm and at peace no matter what's happening inside or outside of you. And and that's the kind of things that can develop when you sit in a cave for days because you're like, "Wow, I had all this garbage in my mind that I didn't know was in there because I had nothing else to do but unpack it." And we're just too busy to do that. But I would say the fasting runs from I skipped breakfast and I had more energy and I'm better off metabolically all the way up to I sat somewhere for several days in intense personal development. But when most people hear fasting, all they hear is I'll starve, therefore I'll die. And then they they blank out to it. And no, this is about more energy and it's about more clarity and less time wasted and less pain in your life. Yeah. and hearing you describe the way people push back, seeing how even today sort of the mainstream um medical establishment thinks of fasting and how it's considered so sort of outlandish and you know people immediately go to well you're going to give um people anorexia and it's such a bizarre reaction and when you think about those three Fs and and the fear that seems to be driving people's perception of this do you have like a magic phrase or idea that you can give to people that are really resistant to get them to try it. You can fast without ever being hungry and without ever suffering and you'll have more energy. But when I was, you know, really heavy still, I was eating super healthy, what I thought was healthy, you know, low fat, low calorie stuff, but I was still working on it. And if you'd have told me I had to fast, I'd have been like, "No, like I'm not going to do that. I'll go into starvation mode and it's going to suck and then I won't be able to do my job and you know I'll act like a jerk and all that stuff. That message is playing super loud for everyone who's got extra pounds. And then they have this desire to fast but then you feel like a failure because the automated system in your body wants you to eat and you don't know how to deal with it. So the deal is I'm going to put you in charge. That that's what's going on here. And so all of the bad things that you think about fasting won't happen. What's going to happen is you're going to save time and you're going to feel better than you do today and you'll never be hungry. And then they're like, "Okay, I'm going to try this once. I think you're full of crap." And they almost always start with a fasting hack. There's a reason that there's been several hundred million cups of bulletproof coffee and people have lost a million pounds on the bulletproof diet. It's because when they had that fat in the morning, they were intermittent fasting. They just didn't feel hungry. And for the first time in their lives when lunchtime came around, they're like, "I guess I could eat instead of the way I used to be, which is like,"What's for lunch? What's for lunch? Tacos." You know, that whole voice, it just shuts up. And oh my god, it's so liberating. Yeah, it really does change your relationship to hunger. That was the thing that I could never quite get people to understand about ketosis specifically. And it's not like you're not hungry. It's that it doesn't have a grip on you, which is very, very different. it it's because there's two things that we confuse. One is a craving and the other is hunger. And hunger is the sense that you know what, it's time to eat sometime soon, but I could wait a while. And a craving is if I don't eat right now, someone's going to die, whether it's me or someone else. And most people eat in such a way that they always experience cravings. And they've never experienced just hunger without a craving. I was like that 100%. And when you clean out the stuff that's causing the cravings, like, wow, the experience of lunch is so different. So for somebody that's new, they're in that space where they just can't imagine where can people um I mean, they can buy the book at Amazon and all the normal places, but where where can they engage with you and um really get the help that they need to give this a shot? Um order the book wherever you like to order books and send me a receipt. There's a little upload form on fastestway.com. Uh, and I will register you for two weeks of training where I walk you through here's what you're going to do today, here's what you're going to do tomorrow, and you're going to do it in a community of thousands and thousands of people sharing your results because having other people doing it with you is really motivational. So, when you feel like, you know, maybe I'll just have one bite of the doughnut, you're like, I'm going to post about this later. I don't think I want to tell people about the donut. I'll skip the donut. So, it's a little bit of extra willpower there, but honestly, if you're doing this the right way, you probably won't need the willpower. And I'm I just want to teach that. I hear it. All right, guys. Trust me, man. Fasting is a gamecher. Read the book. It's very interesting. It's a very unique take on all of this. And as always, Dave is taking people by the hand, showing them exactly what they need to do. He's got like a dozen companies that will help you in one way or another. Uh, so be sure to check this man out. And speaking of things that will help you in one way or another, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you. All right. How do you know when it's time to break up? Will having kids ruin your dreams? Why can't you control that ugly jealousy? When do you know if it's time to move in or get the hell out? These are just a few of the no holds barred, no BS conversations we'll tackle on the new YouTube channel, Relationship Theory, along with my wife, the lovely and talented Lisa Billy. We'll bring our 20 years of experience juggling our entrepreneurial aspirations while maintaining a strong relationship through all the obstacles that have smacked us in the gut, walloped us upside the head on a daily basis. It's just as hard to maintain a relationship as it is to build a successful company, maybe even harder. But it is well worth it, certainly more worth it than building a company. And if you can't maintain a healthy relationship, then there's no way you're going to be able to thrive in your business environment. It's absolutely impossible. We might be thriving now, but it wasn't always the case for us. We had to deal with family pressure, financial struggles, and a neverending stream of obstacles. And just when you think one problem hasn't been solved, 10 others are going to slam right into you. And let me tell you, if you can't deal with the inevitable struggles that are coming your way, there's no way that you're going to stay together. Like most of our success, we've gotten to where we are by making a lot of mistakes and learning along the way. And now through relationship theory, we're sharing everything that we've learned. Lisa and I will tell you that if you want to stay together, you better open up or shut up. We'll also share some secrets on how to keep the sexual spark alive and practical tools to help you stop fighting. For anyone that wants to improve their relationship or get ready to have one, this show is for you. 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