 My favorite intermittent fasting hacks to help you lose weight. But Dr. G, I can't do fasting like you do. You know, I hear it all the time. But I'm here to tell you you can do intermittent fasting. I'm today going to give you five insider hacks to help make fasting easy and and actually enjoyable. That means no hang green. No headaches and all the benefits. OK, here we go. First of all, you don't jump into the deep end of the pool for fasting. I've told you over and over and over again. I've written about it in almost all of my books that the vast majority of Americans cannot do time restricted eating, skipping one or two meals right off the bat, because most Americans are insulin resistant, metabolically inflexible and as much as you would think you could burn fat for fuel instead of sugar, quite frankly, you can't and you will fall flat on your face and you will get a headache. You will get hangry. You will get weak and you will give up. Don't do that. What you want to do is get in at the shallow end. Now, what do I mean by that? Anybody can do this and I'm going to hold your hand. If you eat breakfast at seven o'clock every morning next week, you're going to eat breakfast at eight o'clock in the morning. Anybody can wait one hour from their regular time to start eating breakfast. Do that all week. Take the weekend off. Enjoy yourself. Go back to whatever routine you do on the weekend. The following week, you're going to eat breakfast. And remember the word breakfast is break fast. You're going to eat breakfast at nine o'clock instead of eight o'clock. And you're going to do that all week. And then for a reward, you get the weekend off. The following week, if you're doing OK, we're going to have break fast at 10 o'clock. Now, some of you can make it to nine just fine, but then 10 o'clock it's a little tough. That's OK. Go back nine thirty. Try that. Well, wherever we can get you to continue to expand when break fast starts up to eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock on a weekday basis. The more benefits you're going to get. And like all the studies have shown, the more we can push breakfast farther into the morning. Even till noon, the more weight you're going to lose and the more health benefits you're going to get. So that's go in the shallow end. Don't dive into the deep end. Second trick, and this may be the best trick there is. There's a fascinating theory called the gut centric theory of hunger. And I've written about this in my books. There have been some beautiful studies that have been done in China that proves this to be true. For years, we've thought that hunger pains are caused by either an empty stomach, that makes sense, or by actual hormones that are gut neurons secret to tell our brain. Hey, it's time to eat. Well, with the discovery of the human microbiome ten years or so ago, we now realize that there was a third participant in all of this. And that is the gut microbiome wants things to eat. And they send signals to your brain that they're hungry. In fact, we now know that bad bugs in your gut actually hijack your brain. To have you find the foods they want to eat. And that's simple sugars and fats sound like the American diet, right? On the other hand, good gut bugs like prebiotic fiber. And the results of the gut centric theory test is you could take people who were on a seven or 14 day water fast. That's all they got was water. Give half the group a hundred calories of prebiotic fiber a day. Now, a hundred calories is not a hundred calories because we can't digest prebiotic fiber. But your gut bugs can. And what they found was that the people on these water fasts who got a hundred calories of prebiotic fiber that they didn't absorb but fed their gut microbiome had absolutely no hunger. Now, how do you do that? Well, it's really easy. There are tons of prebiotic fibers on the market. Give you an example. I'm a huge fan of basil seeds. They have a huge amount of prebiotic fiber. You can view my episode 219 with Zen Basil and find out how easy it is to put a tablespoon of basil seeds in a glass of water or in whatever. Put some allulose sweetener if you want to make it flavorful and you will be shocked what a full feeling your gut will have. Now, the idea that this stuff expands and swells up and fills your stomach, believe it or not, is not the reason you feel full. It's the gut bacteria eating the fiber that send messages to your brain. They said, hey, we got everything we need to eat. You don't have to go looking for anything else. It is just one of the best tricks I have ever discovered. And there are plenty of other wonderful prebiotic fibers out there to do the same trick. Third hack, drink a polyphenol rich powder supplement. Polyphenols, it turns out, are also beloved by gut bacteria as a prebiotic fiber in and of themselves. And one of the benefits of these polyphenol rich powder drinks that are readily available, I bet you can think of several right off the top of your head that might have my name associated with them, these feed good gut bacteria, but they don't stop your fasting. They do not break your fast. It's a great way to keep going, feed the good bacteria and not have to worry about breaking a fast. Fourth hack, MCT oil, medium chain triglycerides. Now, medium chain triglycerides, as most of you know now, are not absorbed like any other fat that we eat. In fact, they're absorbed directly through the wall of our gut into our intestinal bloodstream and are taken directly to the liver. Do not pass, go, do not collect $200 where they're converted into ketones. Now, if you've been paying attention or reading my books, you know that the vast majority of majority of us who are insulin resistant or metabolically inflexible, when we stop eating, we cannot make ketones. Ketones are a way of keeping our brain happy and our muscles happy while we're fasting until we start producing free fatty acids from our fat cells. So MCT oil is a hack to get around this metabolic inflexibility that most of us start with. So just putting some MCT oil in your coffee, along with, hey, dissolve some prebiotic fiber in it, that will kickstart your own production of ketones without breaking a fast. It will not have any impact on fasting. And it's another easy way to ease into this process. Again, just getting your feet wet rather than diving headfirst into the pool. Finally, another one of my favorite tricks is have some healthy Coke. You may now know that I was the originator of the idea of having a healthy Coke, which consists of balsamic vinegar and sparkling water, my favorite is San Pellegrino, to mix those two together and you will get a Coke-like experience. Now, why should you do that? It turns out that balsamic vinegar and other vinegars, for that matter, are loaded with postbiotics. And these short chain fatty acids actually are converted, not only into ketones, but can also be used as fuel by your brain and your other tissues. Now, here's a trick. Some people say, I really don't like the vinegary taste of balsamic vinegar. Do yourself a favor. By the thicker varieties of balsamic vinegar might be a little bit more expensive, but there's one that's really cheap that I love that I use personally. It's Napa Valley Naturals Reserve balsamic. It's easy to find. If you can't find it in any place else, it's on Amazon. Try it. It's thick and rich and delicious and will make your healthy Coke really taste great. Having that in mid morning while you're kind of slumping will really perk you up if you really want to have another tablespoon or so of MCT oil, then you can do this. If you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Gundry podcast, you're definitely going to want to see this one. About 30 percent of all the fat in these cheeses are medium chain triglycerides MCTs. And you know how great MCTs are for your health.