 What happens if you water fast for 72 hours, the 72 hour fast? Where the heck did this come from? And why 72 hours? Now I'm not a huge fan of going without food for this long for a couple of reasons. Instead, as you probably know, I recommend time-restricted eating, which is where you ideally reduce your eating window to about a six to eight hour period. But we'll talk about that in just a little bit. Now here's the major problem with a 72-hour water fast. Most people will crash and burn. Why? Studies have shown that even if you are of normal weight, in other words, your thin 50% of you are metabolically inflexible. Now what does that mean? Normally your mitochondria that make ATP like to burn glucose, sugar for fuel. But if glucose runs out and isn't available, they can make a switch to burning free fatty acids that are liberated from fat cells to make energy. Now your brain unfortunately can't get free fatty acids because quite frankly they're too big to get through the blood-brain barrier. Instead your brain will use ketones, which your liver will make if free fatty acids are available. Now it's a big if. Here's the problem. 50% of us, plain old normal weight people, can't make that switch. 92% of overweight people can't make that switch. And 98% of obese people can't make that switch. So what happens if you decide to just drink water for 72 hours? You will exhaust your glucose supplies in about 8 to 12 hours. You'll exhaust your glycogen supplies, which is stored glucose primarily in our muscles and in our liver in about 24 hours. And then unfortunately you will not be able to liberate free fatty acids from your fat cells, because as I've talked about before, the vast majority of us who are metabolically inflexible have elevated insulin levels. And insulin will not let you release fat from your fat cells even if you're starving. And it takes multiple days for insulin levels to drop enough that you can start accessing your fat. So what happens? You get hangry. You get headachey. Your brain is going on fumes. And you'll notice that you don't function well. I've noticed this in people who go on these fasts and they're very healthy. And I'll see them in the Pilates class. And all of a sudden they can't even do an hour of Pilates, power Pilates. And I'm going, Hey, you know, you're feeling all right. Oh, no, I'm doing the 72 hour water fast because it's healthy for me. And I'm going, Well, what healthy, you can't even do an hour of Pilates. And you know, you do it every day with me. And they go, Oh, yeah, you know, that's, that's an interesting point. Yeah, I got no energy today. And these are healthy people. So please, please don't fall into this trap. Okay, so you're metabolically flexible. What happens in that case? Well, you have to get energy from the fat in your fat cells. So what? Unfortunately, fat is where we store our heavy metals that are mischievous. A tuna or swordfish, most of us know is full of mercury. Even though it's swimming around and is a powerful, you know, 1000 pound fish. Why aren't they dying of mercury toxicity? Because their mercury is safe in those fat cells. The problem when you start fasting, and you are metabolically flexible is you start releasing fat from your fat cells. And guess what? Outcomes the heavy metals. Now this was proven years ago at the biosphere to experiment in the Arizona desert. And these people, unfortunately, couldn't grow enough food to live on in the experiment. And Ray Walford, who was the head pathologist from UCLA, documented that these people released huge amounts of heavy metals into their bloodstream. And so you're doing 72 hour water fast for detoxing. In fact, you're actually toxifying. That doesn't sound like a really good idea. Plus your liver is responsible for detoxifying. And your liver is starving because it doesn't have the fuel to accomplish the purpose. Finally, your liver cannot detoxify heavy metals. And instead it pushes it out through the bile. And your bile has the heavy metals. And guess what? You reabsorb the heavy metals again. So your whole purpose of detoxifying actually fails. So that's a really bad idea. So what do you do instead? Actually, before I get into that, one other thing that you should realize, if you can't get to free fatty acids and you're metabolically inflexible, you can make sugar from your muscles. And it's called gluconeogenesis. So guess what happens in the worst case scenario? You will actually lose muscle mass during that fast. And if you've noticed the recent weight loss craze using injectables, the downside is that you lose huge amounts of muscle mass. And again, that's the last thing you want to do for health. Is there a better way? Well, I mentioned at the start of this, yes, there is a better way. Time restricted eating. That means compressing your eating window to preferably six to eight hours a day. Now, during that time, during that compression of your eating window, part of that time, you're sleeping. So you don't have to worry. But increasing the time, pushing the first meal that you eat, your break fast, closer towards noon, the more you produce ketones. And ketones have dramatic effects on uncoupling mitochondria. If you uncouple mitochondria, you promote thermogenesis. Thermogenesis promotes weight loss. You actually do a caloric bypass on your mitochondria. So they literally waste, fuel, waste, fat, good idea. And studies in Italian athletes have shown that this way of eating has composed to a 12 hour eating window. These are Italian cyclists, Italian cyclists who ate in a seven hour window, maintain their muscle mass compared to the group that ate in a 12 hour window. The Italian cyclists who ate in the seven hour window lost weight, even though they maintained muscle mass, pay attention, you folks who are injecting your stomach every week. And they actually lowered their insulin like growth factor, which promotes health span and longevity. How do you do that? Well, gut check, my new best seller tells you how to do it. And I'm going to hold your hand. I don't want you to just start with a seven hour eating window. It's too hard. But what I do want you to do is next week, just push your breakfast off one hour. If you normally eat at seven o'clock, eat at eight o'clock. Do that for a week. Take the weekend off. Next week, eat your breakfast at nine o'clock. Do that for a week. Take the weekend off and so on. In five weeks, we'll get you up to 11 or 12 for breakfast. It's easy. It's doable. And I'll be here for you every step of the way. Do yourself and your body a favor. Stay away from a 72 hour water fast. Thanks so much for watching. But don't go anywhere. This next one is sure to surprise you. These are literally like swallowing razor blades, which will damage the wall of your gut. And that damage will be reflected in your skin.