 Hey everybody, Dr. O here. I wanna talk about the different approaches to fasting. So we're gonna talk about clean fasting versus dirty fasting versus really calorie restriction or a fasting mimicking type of diet. The reason I wanna talk about this is because a lot of times on social media, someone will ask, will this break a fast or will this spike my insulin? What you're basically talking about is, is this a clean fast or a dirty fast? There's tons of arguments about this. Now I promise I'll go into much more detail later, backed up by dozens of scientific studies that show the real true differences between clean fasts and dirty fasts, which are much, much smaller than you probably have been led to believe by people talking about insulin spikes. But for now, I really just wanna talk about defining them and the basic pros and cons of each of them, okay? So let's start with a clean fast. A clean fast would be water. Now you can add salt to that water. You can add unflavored electrolytes to that water. And most would agree that you could have carbonated water. And then you can have black coffee, black or green tea, or non-fruit flavored herbal teas, things like ginger, mint, and cinnamon. But again, there's so much gray area that some people would probably argue with that list and that's okay. I'm not here to be the fasting police. I'm here to define terminology. So what are the pros? The pros of a clean fast is that it may offer some slight benefits over dirty fasting, which we'll cover next. Now most of this support comes from cell culture studies and animal models and is truly not backed up by research in humans. I promise I'll cover that in more detail later. The cons, it is the most restrictive. So to me, this is the best type of fasting if you are trying to maximize the health benefits of fasting besides weight loss, right? My audience is generally trying to lose weight or maintain weight. So fasting is used as a calorie restriction tool. But if you're trying to maximize the benefits of fasting and you feel like a 1% difference, let's say, is worth it then, absolutely. The clean fast is the way to go. This is also the best type of fasting for people that are made hungrier by things like diet soda and sugar-free gum. So if you're adding things to your clean fast that make it dirty, but it's actually making you hungrier and making you less likely to stay on your fast, then stop doing that, I mean, absolutely. And I also recommend that everyone try clean fasting at some point, maybe not right in the beginning, but try it and then see which approach makes you feel best and leads to the best weight loss. I also recommend trying clean fast if your weight loss has stalled. That's one of the plateau busters that I recommend. Okay, so what's a dirty fast? Now, you're still trying to keep calories minimal and maybe even at or near zero, but there are some things that you can add to a fast to make it a dirty fast. You can put lemon or lime in your water. You can have a splash of milk or cream in your black coffee. You can use things like apple cider vinegar, which may help control your blood sugar. You can use non-caloric sweeteners. So it'd be the artificial sweeteners like aspartame, but then also things like stevia. You can add diet soda and other sugar-free flavored drinks. So the flavor is what the clean fasters would argue against, but dirty fasters would not. You can have things like sugar-free gum. And also you can take more vitamins and more supplements. Like one example is I use three grams of glycine before I go to bed. It's been proven to help with sleep and it works really well for me and for my wife. So I'm a dirty faster because I would not give that up. Whatever the three grams of glycine is doing to my fasting, it is helping me sleep and we all know the health benefits of sleep. So that's just an example of something I would do that would make my fast dirty. So what are the pros and the cons? Pros, you don't feel as deprived. You have a little bit more freedom. And then fans of dirty fasting would argue that the calories, the protein and the carb intake is still too low to actually cause any real issues. They would argue that whatever this insulin spike is, it is so small that it's not making a difference over the long haul. I'm not saying that's you. I'm just saying that's the argument. So like for example, I don't think that the three grams of glycine is making a big enough deal for me to impact my sleep to stop doing it and to make my fast clean. All right, so the cons, some people do feel hungrier on dirty fasts and they seem to lose weight faster on a clean fast. Absolutely, fast whichever way helps you stay on your fasting program, lose weight and feel the best. And every calorie does count at the end of the day. So if you're consuming, you know, 40 calories, let's say on your dirty fast and you fast every other day, you know, it does add up over time. So every calorie does count. We can't defy the laws of physics. Now, I will say though, this is my overall favorite approach, right? I lost 165 pounds in a year and I was fasting dirty. I would have sugar-free gum when I was craving something. I would have a diet soda when I was craving something. So there's a few calories there. Maybe there were some tiny insulin spikes or whatnot, but it kept me from quitting my fasts. So a few calories might slow you down, but quitting certainly won't speed it up. And that's why I try to choose a sustainable approach. And for me, this was more sustainable. All right, then we have the calorie restriction, right? Or so you could argue that this isn't a fast. I like to call it kind of a fasting mimicking diet where you get a lot of the benefits of fasting like lower insulin control glucose, et cetera, but you're not actually fasting because you are consuming some calories. But some of these, some intermittent fasting programs like modified alternate day fasting and the 5-2 program actually allow up to 25% of the calories on fasting days. So with this kind of program, you are focusing purely on the calorie deficit and focusing much, much less so on the other health benefits of fasting. So we'll be on a list like this. Food, I guess, bone broth, soup, protein powders, mirror placement shakes, adding things like sugar and honey and sweeteners to your beverages, adding things like MCT oil or coconut oil or butter in your coffee, things like what are called bulletproof coffee, pre-workout supplements that might have 15 or 20 calories in them, energy drinks and things like alcohol. So what would be the pros and cons here? To me, really the pros is it's the best option if you have to take medication, right? If I would rather see you do this type of approach and have a few hundred calories on your fasting day than throw in the towel and completely stop fasting, right? So if you're in a fasting window and it's like, I'm either going to have a little bit of bone broth or I'm going to have a large pizza, have the bone broth, right? That's why I think the calorie restriction type of fast is always better than not fasting at all. So what's interesting though is some recent research around the fasting mimicking diet is actually showing that it may offer health benefits over water fasting. I'm not saying it does. These are early studies, animal models, same reasons I would not agree with most of the insulin spiking studies. But one study showed that a fasting mimicking diet lowered C-reactive protein, a measure of inflammation in your body, more than water fasting. And another study showed that the fasting mimicking diet improved inflammatory bowel disease in another. Now, again, too soon to tell, I'm not telling you that you should do this. I'm just saying there's still a lot to learn and there's a lot of benefit to this type of fasting as well. So what are the cons? You're in a smaller calorie deficit. You're going to lose weight more slowly. All right, so those are the three main types of fasting. You've got the clean fast, the dirty fast, and really the calorie restriction or fasting mimicking type of fasting. I am not the fasting police. What I'm going to tell you though is consistently good, is always better than occasionally great. So you have to find the fasting program that you can stick with that works the best for you. I don't care which of the three it is. This program, my lessons will help you decide for yourself. But just remember, I'll leave you with this, practical beats perfect every time. Okay, choose your own adventure. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.