 Question is from Cam the lamb. Is intermittent fasting ever a good idea when wanting to lose weight? No, we talked about, we did a whole episode on why fasting is a terrible way to lose weight. Not with that focus. Yeah, exactly. Now, keep in mind, can you lose weight by, let's change the word from fasting to not eating. Can you lose weight by not eating? But yeah, that's what happens. This is kind of a byproduct. That's what happens when you don't eat, you lose weight. Is that a good tool and method to losing weight in terms of the kinds of behaviors that you develop in terms of the relationship that you encourage yourself to develop with food? Terrible, terrible. Models have been doing this for decades. Yeah, exactly. Now all of a sudden it's healthy now. Because we threw a name on it, backed it by science and showed some things with growth hormone and neurogenesis and now we're like, oh, it's fucking healthy for you. Now everybody's like, no, this shit, these skinny ass models have been doing this for years where they fucking don't eat all day long and they have carrots for dinner. And now all of a sudden you're like, what are you doing, Greta? Like, oh, I'm fasting. And biohacking. Yeah, exactly. No, no, no, no. Starving yourself to try to lose weight. Now here's what ends up happening. Forget about the physiological effects and the results. Yes, if you don't eat, you lose weight. Okay, let's get that out of the way. But let's talk about what ends up happening psychologically or behaviorally. You end up encouraging this restrict binge model of nutrition where I don't eat, I don't eat, I'm restricting myself, I'm losing weight, I'm losing weight. And now it's time to eat. Now I'm off the diet and then when you're off, you're off. It's a complete reversal. It's a symptom eruption and it looks like binging. It actually encourages that type of behavior. The only people that should be using fasting are people who use it for overall health and wellness and people who have good relationships to food. If you have issues with food, especially if you have issues like anorexia or bulimia, even if it's been in your past, even if you think you're past all of that. Fasting, you are at- Avoid it. Yeah, it's like you're a recovering alcoholic who's like, yeah, I haven't had an alcoholic drink for two years, I'm gonna go get a job at a bar or I'm gonna go be a wine tester now for the rest. Terrible, terrible approach. Do you guys have a favorite type of person you like to teach it to? Oh yeah. Like when you think about like, I have a type of person that I like to teach. Oh, six meal a day kind of person. I was that guy. Yes, so I think somebody who understands macros counts really well, they break up their meals four to six times a day, they're religious about that, they're good, they're great and they're in shape, they're healthy, they're all those things. I love to teach them intermittent fasting. I love to introduce them to, hey, it's okay, we can not eat for 12 hours straight and you're not gonna lose most of your mind. Because their relationship to food is the opposite. It was mind blowing for me. I came from the, I had a, my body image was about, I thought I was too skinny. So I was always trying to gain weight and put muscle on. So I was literally afraid of skipping a meal. In fact, I would get so irritable and angry when I missed a meal and I thought it was because I needed to eat but in reality it wasn't, it was a psychology. It was because now that I, oh shit, it's been five hours since I've had my last meal, I am thinking in my mind that muscle is eating itself, that my body is metabolizing its muscle and I'm gonna lose gains. Oh no, I need to feed myself type of deal. The first time I did a fast, I fasted for 24 hours and the fact that I didn't lose any muscle, the fact that my performance didn't decrease and that I felt okay, it blew my mind. It shook up my whole world. All of a sudden I broke that chain that I had connected to food. No longer did I, I realized that no longer do I have to carry protein bars with me everywhere I went that I had to eat every two hours. I had a similar experience but I, being on the athletic side of the spectrum, not as neurotic about what I was eating in terms of having to have a very regimented schedule but more just an excess amount of surplus, right? Because it was all about how I was feeling energy wise and how that was translating to the field and so very much dependent on these big meals, constant big meals and so to now take that away and understand what hunger actually feels like was a totally different experience and also just the social elements and everything involved with it for me to just step away from it was just a very unique thing to go through. So that's my favorite person to talk to. Then I have my least favorite person to try and teach it to or I will avoid teaching it to and that's a fat loss person. Someone who comes to me and they say, Adam, I want to lose weight and my girlfriend or my friend is doing intermittent fasting. Can we try that? I say no and I won't let them try that at least not at the beginning because almost always and you've heard me talk on the show before my diet philosophy, like when I have a client that wants to lose weight I don't restrict food at the beginning. I've had way more success by introducing more good food into their diet than by restricting and taking away because most people that have a weight problem that struggle with weight loss have already done the yo-yo dieting and already have that relationship that Sal was talking about, the binging and then restricting the binging and the restricting. So I don't want to encourage that by teaching them intermittent fasting. Now I will allow them to do that down the road maybe six months after we've been training together and we've built up their metabolism and they're eating more calories than they've ever ate before. And I'll say, hey, this Friday, let's do a fast. And I prefer that over the most popular model of intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting has become so trendy that it's this every day everybody does it. It's a, oh, I don't eat till two every day. It's just, it works for my lifestyle. Like that's fine, if it works for you, I get it. But that's not how I like to coach to it. If I introduce somebody who is originally their goal is to be weight loss, one, I won't teach them at the beginning how to do it. I first want to introduce all the good foods. I first want to build up their metabolism to where they're eating more calories and more food than they ever had before. And then when I introduce fasting, I want to do it like one day. It's one day and it's like intermittently. It all say, hey, this Thursday or whatever coming up, we're not going to eat all day long. It's an all day fast and it's not a window fasting. And it's not something I want them to do every day. It's just, I want to be able to show them they can have this and see how you, and then they also talk to them about how they feel. The best health effects that come from fasting actually happen after 24, 48, 72 hours. It's the long fast and even longer. There's long fast that they've studied that show tremendous health benefits. The health benefits you get from not eating 12 hours a day every single day are not the same. And a lot of these studies show that. There's some benefits for some people, but I will say this. Some people experience hormonal issues if they consistently and constantly fast every single day. You see testosterone lower and men. You see these progesterone estrogen imbalances in women. Women tend to be much more sensitive to consistent, frequent type of fasting. It's the infrequent longer fast that I found have the best benefit and the science supports it. So what I like to do is I like to a couple times a year or a few times a year, I'll do a 72 hour fast. And that's where you get the anti-cancer benefits, the anti-inflammatory benefits. I get to detach from food. So I get to practice the ancient spiritual practice of detachment when it comes to food for 72 hours. That's where I see some of the benefits. But before even look at fasting, there's so many other things you can tackle before you go there. Like you need to learn how to just eat better in general, learn how to eat your more balanced macros, not overeat, pick better foods, those kinds of things before you go into not eating at all for your health.