Transcription
Imagine you decide to start a fast, but you have different goals today than you did even last week. You want to fast for a different purpose. Well, what you eat prior to starting a fast drastically paves what happens during the fast. We're going to cover specifically what you can eat to kickstart your fast in a specific way. And I'll also clue you in with some things that you can consume during your fast that might help specific goals. For example, things like fat loss, things like longevity, things like improving sleep. We're going to cover these things because how you start your fast makes a huge difference.
In just a couple of minutes, I'm going to share a different way that you can start a fast that's actually going to make it a little bit harder, but it could get you a little bit more fat loss. So, we'll talk about that one in a second. It might make the fast harder, but it does definitely amplify things. So, just we'll get to that in a second. I'm also going to share something really interesting that I just experimented with about a month ago when I was filming with George St. Pierre, the UFC champion, and we were doing a longer fast. It's a way to start a fast that changes everything. I had exponentially more fat loss with it, and I'm excited to share, but I'll I'll talk about that as we get a little further in so we get the basics of the video and then we talk about a little bit more kind of advanced tactics.
So, today I want to walk you through three main things. First, how your prefast meal really determines how easy or difficult the fast feels. Secondly, what you can do during a fast if hunger shows up. That way, you just pop one or two little supplements or spices that can enhance fat loss. So, I'll talk about those. And then finally, I'm going to talk about what you can use right before breaking a fast to actually avoid crashes and feeling like the energy dip after a fast. So, let's go ahead and dive in.
Now, before we get into the specifics, I put a link down below for a symbiotic. It's called Seed. It's a prebiotic and a probiotic in one capsule. It all starts in the gut. One of the reasons we feel so good when we're fasting is because our gut becomes less inflamed. And part of that has to do with the gut microbiome composition. So, I popped a link down below that is for C's daily symbiotic. It's probably one of the most important supplements that you could have along with a fasting regimen. So, go ahead and click that link down below after this video to check them out and claim that 20% off.
Now, let's start with the overall big idea. What you eat before a fast doesn't decide whether you're fasting. It decides how your body responds once the food is gone. Because the assumption that most people make is that they think fasting starts just as soon as the food stops. And in a lot of ways, that is the case. But physiologically that's not necessarily true because your hunger, your energy, your cravings during a fast, those are all heavily influenced by the signals that you set up beforehand. So we have things like satiety hormones, we have digestion speed, we have blood sugar stability. So really instead of asking like how do I push through a fast, the better question is how do I make this easier to maintain for my specific goals? And that brings us to the foundation, which is what to eat before a fast so you're actually satiated.
So, let's start with protein because this really is the anchor. And there was a study in obesity that looked at overweight and obese men consuming either a normal protein diet or a higher protein diet with calories held completely consistent, like they were constant. What they found was really simple, but it was also really powerful. They found that higher protein intake led to greater fullness throughout the day regardless of how often they ate. This is what's important with fasting because mechanistically this happens through increases in hormones like peptide Y which acts in the hypothalamus to suppress appetite. And what that really tells us is that protein is quieting hunger signals before the fast even begins which doesn't impact your fast negatively. It just makes you fast easier. It also slows down how quickly food leaves the stomach which really matters for satiety.
Now the type of protein matters too. It can make a big difference. There was a review in Advances in Nutrition. It showed that whey protein tends to be more satiating in the short term while casein protein is more satiating over longer periods. I'll get to what that means in a second. And in a second, I'm also going to describe some things that you can do during a fast that can literally enhance your fast without adding calories. It's pretty wild. So, whey protein, it digests faster and it stimulates satiety hormones very quickly. Okay? Whereas casein digests more slowly and it forms a gel-like structure in the stomach and that delays gastric emptying. So, if you're eating before a fast, especially in the evening, slower digesting proteins will often work better. So something like a milk protein instead of a whey protein. Literally even just drinking a glass of milk. Believe it or not, milk ranks higher than many other proteins in terms of digestible amino acid score, satiety, and actual muscle anabolism. Milk protein is one of the most powerful proteins you could consume. So that's the first lever.
But now let's talk about fats. How you can incorporate different fats into your diet for a specific change. Now, hang tight because after we talk about fats, I'm going to explain some things you can do during your fast. Fats matter not because of the calories, but they matter because of how they behave during digestion. So, mediumchain triglycerides, for example, MCTs, they are especially interesting here. There was a study that was published in nutrients that compared meals containing MCT oil versus longchain fats. And they tracked hunger. They also tracked gastric emptying. They tracked layer food intake. And they found that MCTs delayed gastric emptying. and ultimately led to lower food intake later in the day, which is weird because MCTs digest quickly. They're rapidly sent to the liver and they're converted into ketones. That's why it works. They digest quick, but they turn into an alternative energy source very fast. So, what that means is that MCTs smooth that energy gap that shows up once food is gone. It's there's a gap between like when you stop eating and when your body shifts gears into a different fuel. And omega-3s play a huge role here, too. In fact, I was just filming with Dr. Rhonda Patrick and we were talking about omega-3s. They do this in a different way. We have to look at some animal research, but it's interesting because the animal research that was published in the American Journal of Physiology showed that fish oil increase leptin and adipeneectin levels. These are both hormones that are involved in appetite regulation but also involved in insulin sensitivity. So, while it doesn't really mean that omega-3s directly stop hunger, they improve the insulin sensitivity and they reduce inflammation that makes appetite signals more reliable. Okay, that's what's important, not distorted. So, think of it as setting the hormonal environment, not really forcing an outcome.
Now, before we move on to the next thing you can eat before a fast, I promised you something that you could use during a fast. MCT oil during a fast is acceptable if you want it to be. It does count as calories, but it also provides you with energy. Okay? So, you have to weigh this out. There is evidence that olive oil, MCT oil, exogenous ketones, these three things can actually enhance the effects of a fast from a true sort of cellular perspective. So, even though you're consuming calories, what you gain in terms of mental acuity and ability to fast probably outweighs it. So again, is fasting just not eating? Yes. Is this muddying the water? Yes. But you have lots of different times that you can try it out. Olive oil fasting, I did a video on it. It's one of the most powerful things you can do. You have a boost of these different associated compounds because of like hydroxyol and these other uh antioxidants that are in olive oil that actually do huge things.
So, one other thing you can do if you don't want to have fats during your fast, and by the way, I'm talking like a tablespoon or two, using Mediterranean spices, so maybe like oregano, thyme, sage, okay, rosemary, even though there's negligible calories and a little bit of these herbs, you can muddle them into some tea. And these Mediterranean spices activate something called par alpha actually helps the body shift into a fat burning state better. This is legit, okay? It changes at a cellular level. It's called a nuclear receptor protein. It's not small scale stuff either. There's good evidence on this. So yes, you could say there's a half a calorie in that stuff, but you could also say that about green tea or coffee. So I would say add some Mediterranean spices during your fast to enhance fat loss. Kind of a cool little trick.
But now we need to talk more about how to start your fast because fiber is very interesting. Soluble fiber specifically before going into a fast, especially something called psyllium husk. This does a few really useful things. A large metaanalysis that was in BMC indocrine disorders showed that psyllium intake improved fasting blood sugar. It improved insulin resistance and overall glycemic control. Mechanistically, what's going on is psyllium slows down the carb digestion. This is going to lead to a greater stimulation of GLP1, which we are all familiar with. Now, this is the hormone that increases fullness and reduces appetite. Physically, psyllium forms a gel in the gut which increases satiety without adding calories. It also helps expedite the removal of microplastics, which a lot of people want to fast for detoxification effects. So, you have that.
But then there's something that's even simpler, which is just your eating speed. Okay, check this out. There was a study in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity that found that eating more slowly didn't change how full people felt immediately, but it did an hour later. They found that hunger was massively lower. Now, I'll get to the why in a second, but another thing I want you to be aware of is that all these things are super important for fasting because what is the most important part of fasting? Consistently remaining in the fast, right? Don't break it early. Don't cheat it. So, these things may sound silly, but I promise you, they're going to help you shrink more fat. They're going to help you get your hormones under control the way you want. They're going to help modulate insulin resistance because they're going to help you stick to it. So, please trust me.
Now, why does eating slower help improve your hunger later on? Slower eating increases the mechanical distension of the gut and it gives satiety form a simple time to respond. So, when the body actually has time to register the meal, things get better. Now, let me give you a good example of a prefast meal. Okay? And this is not something you need to follow. This is just an option to put it into context as like an example. One approach could be a lean protein like maybe chicken uh lean beef I like to do paired with a high soluble fiber vegetable. So maybe like some Brussels sprouts and maybe some chia seeds, some flax, a small amount of MCT drizzled on top. I would keep the carbohydrates to a minimum if you can. No need to have carbs going into a fast. It just puts you on a blood sugar roller coaster.
Now I also recommend having some milk protein. So do like a whey protein concentrate over a whey protein isolate or do a casein protein. A casein protein might actually work well in this case. You could also just flat out have cottage cheese. You could have Greek yogurt with maybe some chia seeds or some flax seeds. That way you're getting the protein, the fiber, the slower digestion. You're getting the dairy fat which has these positive impacts, right? Plus, you know, it's just something that tastes kind of good. Now, if you prefer, you could also go salmon, too. But the thing is is that salmon, as we know, is getting harder and harder to get good quality versions of. Okay, good wild caught salmon is really pricey now. And most of the other farm race stuff I'm not a huge fan of. But you do get those omega-3s. So what you'd want to do is if you're not having salmon, have just a couple tablespoons of MCT or have a couple tabs of fish oil pill. In this case, you actually want to go a little bit more on the EPA side, not just DHA. So regular standard fish oil pill that is in a triglyceride form, not in a ethylester form. Another thing you can do is just put psyllium husk mixed into water and just have that as a separate drink too. That's going to kind of slow everything down. The point isn't really stacking everything. It's choosing foods that really keep hunger calm instead of like just making you want to eat an hour or two later cuz that's going to be the biggest problem you face. more eating that meal than going to bed and waking up hungry and being like, I've got this mountain of torture in front of me today.
Now that the fast is set up properly, let's talk about what to do if hunger still shows up like while you're fasting. With this, there was a study that was published in nutrients and it looked at light activity after meals and it found that gentle movement like for 35 45 minutes after eating improved postmeal blood sugar control. No surprise, but better glucose stability in the evening a lot of times means fewer cravings later. So when you're heading into a fast, being able to stabilize that is probably the most important thing. And mechanistically, it really makes a ton of sense. Like we want to keep moving and keep that blood sugar being utilized because after a meal, glucose is moving from the bloodstream and it's going right into the tissues. A little bit of movement is going to help the muscle glucose uptake through both insulin independent and insulin dependent pathways. meaning muscles can pull glucose in even without a big insulin spike. So you don't need bunch of carbs. You don't need the insulin. And what that means is that you're going to clear glucose a lot smoother. You're going to avoid that sort of sharp rise that's followed by a drop. And that's going to reduce the late night hunger, but more importantly the hunger that shows up in the morning when you don't want and that really really really matters when you're going into a fast because if your blood sugar is more stable the night before, you're not starting this fast from a place of volatility. And again, what's the most important thing? the consistency of the fast.
Now, walking is also great during a fast, but when you time it, it gets kind of interesting. You can actually play with the timing. If your last meal was the night before, then when you wake up fasted, a walk in the morning becomes really important, especially like walking in that morning light because there was a study in obesity facts that found that morning bright light exposure reduced appetite and body fat in overweight people. And then there was another study in the International Journal of Endocrinology. It dug into the mechanism and it showed that morning light exposure, especially combined with walking. It increased leptin, which is the hormone that signals energy sufficiency. It decreased direin, which is the hormone that's released by the stomach that actually drives hunger. So, you're not really just burning calories on that walk. You're influencing the hormonal signals and that's going to tell your brain whether it's time to eat or not. So what happens is morning light is anchoring these circadian rhythms which in turn these are well, they're basically aligning these appetite signals with the time of day that you're actually supposed to be eating. And what that's doing for you is it's making it so that a fasted morning walk is doing like double duty. You're getting the movement that's like glucose handling and energy regulation and then you have the light that's calming the hunger signals. This is really important, especially if you didn't sleep well the night before, which can happen when you're getting used to fasting and maybe you ate a little earlier. So, if you ate dinner, you started your fast and you wake up feeling a little bit off or hungry. Sometimes that simple combo of just like walking in morning light just ends that.
Now, during the fast itself, coffee and tea are extremely useful, but it's not really for the reason that people think. There was a randomized double blinded crossover trial that was in nutrients. It looked at the effects of consuming green tea kakans combined with coffee chlorogenic acids over a number of weeks. And what they found is that it actually wasn't the caffeine that was impacting the fast so much. It was the combination of those compounds that increased GLP-1 levels, improved glucose control, and basically made you more insulin sensitive. So the polyphenols that are in coffee and tea interact with the gut mainly these uh intereroindocrine cells that actually influence things like GLP-1 and GLP1 is of course slowing gastric emptying. It's improving glucose handling. It's making you feel fuller. But there's a really important distinction because these compounds don't really blunt appetite by forcing hunger down. What they're really doing is reducing the blood sugar volatility that drives cravings. The reason we feel so good when we fast is our inflammation is lower and our blood sugar is stable. It's not rocket science there. When glucose spikes hard and then drops, the brain interprets that as a drop that drop as really as like an energy emergency. Okay? Even if calories are adequate. So by smoothing that curve, coffee and tea make the fast feel calmer, not more stimulating. That's the paradox. Okay? It actually calms things down. So during a fast, they tend to help with adherence, not really willpower.
Now we can also talk about supplements that operate at sort of a different level. Okay, these are for people who maybe want to take their fasting to another level because like they do different things. So for example, compounds like yohimine and rauline these are potent. They don't work by smoothing hunger signals. They push the sympathetic nervous system. So you may want to test these out and make sure you don't get anxious from them because what they do is they act as what are called alpha 2 adrenergic receptor antagonists. These alpha 2 receptors normally act like brakes. Okay? So when epinephrine is released, alpha 2 receptors signal the system to slow the further release down. When you block those receptors, that breaking system is removed. As a result, epinephrine rises when we're fasting anyway. So higher norepinephrine does two really important things when we're fasting. First, it increases the activation of betaadinergic receptors, which drives lipolysis. That's the breakdown of stored fat into usable fat. and glycerol. Secondly, that same increase in sympathetic tone and lipolysis reduces appetite mainly in individuals who are more sensitive to adurgic signaling which is a lot of people right so we see this very clearly in the research in fact there's an early study in pharmarmacology biochemistry and behavior that looked at yohimine and raulene in lean and obese mice both compounds reduce short-term food intake but the effect was a lot stronger in the obese animals which is important because it suggests that appetite suppression isn't just about calories. It's about how responsive the nervous system is to norepinephrine. They we see similar effects in humans, right? There is a study in uh research in sports medicine. This gave highly trained soccer players, so athletes, 20 milligrams of yohim, which is a lot. Okay, they give them 20 milligrams every day for 3 weeks. The yohiming group saw a huge reduction in body fat percentage and fat mass, but they didn't have any changes in muscle mass and more importantly for them their exercise performance. There was another human study uh including one in the European journal clinical investigation. It showed that oral uh actually increased plasma-free fatty acids in glycerol direct markers of lipolysis. So they had like direct fat loss. And what that tells us is that it's not just helping us release fat. It's actually shifting the body into a higher adrenic higher stimulation higher fat burning mode because the same mechanism that mobilizes fat is also the mechanism that can make people feel wired. Okay. Or have the epinephrine response. So these compounds are doing a few things. They increase sympathetic nervous system activity. They increase your heart rate, but they can also increase that jitteriness which can also be anxiety. So you got to be really kind of careful. So while your hymnosis can blunt appetite, increase fat mobilization, they do so by pushing the system, not stabilizing it. So you got to really balance that. They're not required for fasting success. They're totally situational and they're rather advanced. Definitely don't need to rely on them, but they do work. Okay. So coffee and tea are going to help smooth the blood sugar and the appetite signals. whereas these compounds are amplifying the stimulation.
So before I get into what you might want to do prior to breaking a fast because it does matter. Uh let me give you a different way that you can start a fast. Okay, it's a way that might actually help you burn a lot more fat, but it's aggressive. Okay, it's hardcore. It's called proteinparing modified fasting. And what you'd want to do for the two meals leading up to your actual fast is do what's called PSMF. Okay, protein is very modified fast. In simple terms, this is very low fat, very high protein, very low, practically no carb. You're basically eating lean meat. It sounds terrible. It's what like Dr. Ted Neon has talked about a lot, right? It's very potent. If you want to just drop fat aggressively, you do it. In the scientific literature, it's literally called rabbit starvation because they've done studies like that. I'm not saying you do it for long periods of time, and I've certainly talked about this as an intervention to really drop fat fast, but it will make you very hungry during your fast, but you are starting the fat loss process essentially two meals earlier without actually like not eating. So, it's almost as though for the four, five, 6, 10 hours before a fast, you're still fasting. As a matter of fact, I did it with my last fast. I went up to visit George St. Pierre, the uh UFC champion. and he's up in Montreal. I filmed a 3-day fast with him and I actually I was like, "You know what? I want to amplify my 3-day fast." So, the two meals prior to starting my fast, I actually did protein sparing modified fasting. I did like non-fat Greek yogurt. I did chicken breast. I did some deli meat. I did some 96% lean ground beef. And then I even drained that. So, it was lean. I actually was hungry the next day. I'm usually not hungry the first day of the fast. I'm pretty experienced with that. I was hungry. But what I noticed after 24 hours, I was like, "Oh my gosh." Like, I have already leaned out so much. This is crazy. By 48 hours in, the hunger was gone. But I noticed my results from that 72-hour fast were so much more powerful. So, this is just like a fun little hack that you can try if you're a little bit more advanced.
So, now let's talk about some things you can do shortly before breaking a fast, 30 minutes before. Cinnamon can be a very useful tool. It helps with metabolic transition. Okay? It's not a meal. It's just some cinnamon and water or whatever. After you've gone without food for a while, your body's in a different state. Okay? Insulin sensitivity is high. Glucose transporters are responsive. And the way nutrients are handled can either feel really smooth or sometimes quite jarring. So, cinnamon helps us out here because it contains a polyphenol. It's called methyl hydroxychal polymer, MHCP. This has high insulin mimetic properties. So, it's helping insulin do its job a lot more efficiently. And we have both cell culture and human studies that were in like diabetes, obesity, metabolism and another one in journal endocrine society and it showed that cinnamon just to name off a few things like it uh improved glucose tolerance. It enhanced uh glute for transllocation and glucose uptake. It reduced the overall blood glucose response to carbohydrates. So when you take cinnamon shortly before breaking a fast uh really especially if carbs are going to be involved, you are basically helping glucose move into muscle more efficiently instead of lingering in the bloodstream. And it matters because the sharp glucose spikes after fasting can be problematic if they're not controlled. Like I do like a small spike like 15 g of carbs, but we don't want to have a massive like you know 50 60 gram carbohydrate rapid insulin response and then a drop in blood sugar and then the brain sort of kicks into gear and says oh my gosh drop in blood sugar we need to eat. Right? So you overeat and you ruin the fast right? So cinnamon isn't blocking the carbs so much as it's helping manage that transition.
And for longer fasts, if you added bone broth and some cinnamon, you're getting another layer of support because during a fast, your digestion is downshifting a lot and enzyme production slows. And with that, we have gut motility changing and the mucosal layer of the gut actually thins out because there's simply less need for the barrier protection. It's a normal thing. Bone broth stops that. Okay, it's liquid. It's low residue and it's easy to digest at a time when the gut is really just waking back up. So, it's also providing a lot of amino acids, but mainly glutamine, which is playing a really important role for the intestinal barrier. I just talked to Rhonda Patrick about this. So, important for the cells that line the gut. Glutamine itself, you could also take a glutamine supplement, but I like real food whenever possible. You have less epithelial cell stress. Uh, you support mucosal repair. You maintain gut immune balance, which is again really important after the stress of a fast. Then you have bone broth that also contains gelatin and collagen which are hydrophilic compounds. So they attract water and hold it there and help with the digestive juices. So you're getting smoother digestion and you're helping protect the gut lining as you're reintroducing food. We got to take care of our gut. So instead of shocking the system with like a bunch of like just a complex meal with a bunch of different ingredients, you're acting bone broth. You're using bone broth as like a buffer, right? you get your digestive system having something that it can handle while it's signaling that food is coming back. Okay, so cinnamon is going to help manage the blood sugar and the insulin signaling if you're going to have carbs and then bone broth is going to help support digestion and the gut integrity. This is kind of how you break your fast, but it's really just a ramp up of the system beforehand. Neither one is mandatory, but they they help make breaking a fast feel a little bit more, I don't know, kind of intentional, and it feels it feels better.
Now, you're probably wondering how to actually break a fast without undoing the work that you just did. So, I put together a video that talks about how I'm breaking a fast in 2026. Okay? Some things have changed. There are some structure changes, a few ingredient changes, and some timing things that I think are going to make things a lot better. So, I linked out to that video right here. You can check it out, and uh I think you'll enjoy that one. and he'll give you some thoughtful tips.