Feel Better Through Fasting with Laurie Lewis

george grombacher 0:00
My left leg This is George G. And the time is right. welcome today’s guest strong, powerful. Laurie Lewis. Laurie, are you ready to do this?

Laurie Lewis 0:08
I’m ready. Let’s go.

george grombacher 0:10
Let’s go. Laurie is an intermittent, intermittent fasting coach and author. She’s a certified health coach, helping others to lose weight and feel better. Lori, I’m excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work and why you do what you do.

Laurie Lewis 0:27
Well, seven years ago, I was not in good shape. I feel like perimenopause and menopause pushed me down a dark hole. And if for any man who’s listening right now, and you’re like, well, this conversation isn’t for me. Guys, guys, every guy knows a woman. And every woman is gonna go through this. So it affects us hormonally, emotionally, physically. I mean, I was a hurtin pop. And if we wind the clock even further back in my early 40s, mid 40s, I felt amazing. I was fit and strong I was, I felt like I was at the top of my game running marathons, healthy eater for 20 years. And again, perimenopause, and menopause, hit me hard in all the possible ways. And then suddenly, I went into menopause and gained 50 pounds. So every part of me ached, I had brain fog and memory loss, and it was just, you know, hurt and pop. And the thing that was the hardest was, mentally, I felt like I needed to surrender to or succumb to some belief, which was, oh, maybe it really does. Maybe it really is all downhill from here. Maybe it does get worse and worse, until lights out. But somewhere, I mean, I was despondent, but somewhere, I was like, No. And so it certainly, you know, we all want to look good in our clothes, and you know, feel our best. But for me, it was really a survival feeling of, I’ve got to figure out how I can feel better. And one night, I was home in Colorado, where I grew up visiting my mom, and I googled the same thing I always have, you know, help me menopausal, hormonal, whatever struggling want to feel better. and up popped these words, intermittent fasting, which is basically eating in an eating window, eating in a constrained amount of time, taking the 24 hour day and dividing it however you please, between the fasting hours and the eating window. And I stayed up all night and read about it. I was familiar with, like long term therapeutic fasting, but I never knew you could implement it daily practice. Kind of like sleep. And so I started that very same day. And that was six years ago. And here I sit, I’m a I’m 60 years old. My biological age is 40. I have no more aches and pains. I lost the 50 pounds, I’m on no medication. And every aspect of my health is optimized, and I actually feel better and better every day. And then to top it all off, I get to help other people do the same, which I mean, I’m living the dream.

george grombacher 3:27
super powerful. Well, I’m I’m really, really glad that you didn’t just resign yourself to the way that you were feeling.

Laurie Lewis 3:34
I couldn’t. I’m really grateful that the answer came. And and I like to say, George, you know, what is the most counterintuitive way to have more energy. And that is to stop eating for right now. Fast, clean drink, plain unflavored water, maybe a black coffee, and wait until later to eat and figure out for yourself. What is the best ideal eating window for you your physiology, your goals, your fitness, your lifestyle, your family, your job, you figure out that eating window, and everybody who finds that sweet spot for themselves of fasting clean and having an eating window will have a brighter, more prolonged, higher energy. And I don’t know about you, but every buddy I talked to wants to feel better and what they say the way they say they want to feel better is to have more energy. So wait until later to eat.

george grombacher 4:41
super powerful. I’m going to ask you a personal question. You can choose to answer it or not. What is your what is your current weight? 50 pounds is a lot.

Laurie Lewis 4:51
Yeah. You know, that’s interesting. I could choose to answer that or not. There are a lot of questions that one of the reasons I hesitate. I have to answer not because it’s personal, because I tell anybody anything. But because either in our society or human nature, we have we, our brains, our comparison machines, and so we push ourselves. If we think that someone’s an expert or someone’s a guru, we think that we should do what they do. And it’s just a big comparison game. And what I’m all about in my coaching is total customization tuning in to what’s right, for each individual, which has nothing to do with me. So I’m five, three, and whatever a normal range of weight is for a woman as five, three, that’s what I weigh. And, yeah, I mean, it’s I told the truth of my driver’s license. I don’t want to say it here, because I want each individual to discover that your body is the boss. And if we can, through fasting, discern, you know, have this beautiful reverence and relationship and communion with our body. That’s, that’s a beautiful way to live. And so whatever the number on the scale is, it’s kind of a range rather than a one number. And wherever people feel strong and bright and flexible and good in their clothes, and your doctors happy because your numbers are good. That’s what we’re after.

george grombacher 6:30
Yeah, amen. I totally agree. It’s just, it was just super impressed. That’s like,

Laurie Lewis 6:36
half half your body. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.

george grombacher 6:40
It’s a substantial amount. So you, you stay up all night, you learn all about intermittent fasting and you say, Okay, I will do try anything to start feeling better to snap out of this funk. Yes, there’s a lot more that goes into it. So I’m oversimplifying

Laurie Lewis 6:57
things, just like that. It was That’s it? Did you start feeling better

george grombacher 7:01
immediately as you were losing weight you felt better all of it.

Laurie Lewis 7:06
That is so cool that you asked that because okay, it took 15 months to lose 51 pounds. But I felt better in three days. And what I did was I just decided well, I don’t mind black coffee. It’s not going to kill me and you know plain water plain unflavored water I just aimed till noon, why not? You know, just aim till noon. Now I recommend now for people that you just decide yourself this is how you start. What time am I going to stop eating today and there’s no right time everybody decides if it’s three o’clock four o’clock 10 o’clock midnight, I don’t care, add 12 hours you know, drink plain water go to sleep wake up tomorrow you added 12 hours and at the 12 hour mark. You could choose to put whatever you want your coffee or and eat some breakfast. But for me, I decided to wait till noon and three days of fasting about 16 hours a day. I remember standing in my mom’s kitchen and I had the thought there I am all like whatever it is to feel like yourself when you haven’t felt like yourself it’s it’s a grounded I don’t clear alertness. I just was like oh there I am. So took it was three days and I felt better. And are there moments where you know hunger. I trained my clients to be able to discern between hunger alerts like your body thought of food or growling stomach you know, it’s just a hunger alert. And real hunger there is there is such a thing as real hunger versus a hunger alert and people learn pretty quickly what the difference is and when we can consciously and deliberately put our body into I call my fasting hours my repair hours that hours of healing and repair deep cellular repair burning fat feeling our brain on ketones, normalizing blood sugar normalizing blood pressure, reversing thyroid, you know on an auto immune challenges like everything. So when I’m in a fasted state, I’m in my repair hours, and then eating is fun just later.

george grombacher 9:25
I think it’s great. So there are so many different benefits to to fasting. You mentioned cell cellular repair. You’re just you’re giving your chance your body a chance to to do these repairs. There’s all different kinds. Is it also a function that I’m consuming less calories, or does that not play into it?

Laurie Lewis 9:48
So people it’s an it’s kind of like an obvious conclusion to draw, right? If you’re eating and fewer hours and you’re eating less food, but not necessarily one of the amazing things So that happens is was coined by Dr. Burt Herring is a phenomenon called appetite correction. So, through a daily fasting practice, you or you and your body will be tuned in and a conversation together about how much food it needs today. And so some days you’re hungrier, some days are less hungry, but your body is also communicating to you. I’m satisfied you, people who are intermittent faster start to have the thought, I’m done. And people who eat all the time don’t have that thought. So our body actually knows when it’s received the right amount of nutrients today to fuel it well, and some days, it’s less, some days, it’s more, and we start getting the communication. So regarding calories, or quantity of food. There have been studies done where they’ll have two different groups, and they eat the exact same amount. And one group can eat it as ad libitum, they will as they please. And the other group has to consolidate it to an eating window. So they’re eating the same. But something that’s incredible for the eating window people, the people who are fasting and then eating later, they are happier throughout the day. Because if you’re eating little tiny amounts of food, the body never reaches satiety. So we’re always experiencing Where’s I want more food. But when you’re fasting and eating and an eating window and your body’s feeling on your own body fat, that’s an unlimited resource that we actually feel really well. And so then when you squish all your food into an eating window, you’re also experiencing satiety. And so the people who eat and an eating window were happier. And they lost more fat. So somehow, I didn’t experiment once I was like, how much food Am I actually eating, because I’m so tuned in to my actual hunger and my actual satiety. And each day, I eat different amounts of food that I didn’t know what the quantity was. So I downloaded an app for two weeks, I tracked every day what I was eating in my eating window. And some days it was 2500 calories, and some days it was 800. But that didn’t have anything to do with the calories would have had to do with was me tuning in to what my body needs today and stopping eating when I’ve reached satiety.

george grombacher 12:31
Nice, yeah, appreciate you clarifying that. Thank you. So we human beings have a tendency to do things non sustainably unsustainably, we get out of debt and get back into debt, we lose weight, and then gain weight. So we sort of yo yo through life, and I can white knuckle it and clench my teeth and run through a wall. But that’s not sustainable either. How do you help your clients to? I don’t know if it’s a dress mindset or create a more compelling future and this fits into it. You understand what I’m asking?

Laurie Lewis 13:09
I do. I love it. Human beings are not designed to sustain things over time. And we, we love to feel motivated. And then when motivation wanes, we think something’s wrong with us. Or we question like, oh, I guess I didn’t really even want that anyway. And then with regards to our health and feeling well, you know how many people George say to me, they’re like, oh, intermittent fasting, I did that I’ve never felt better. And I’m like, Oh, what happened? There? Like, oh, I went to Disneyland, or, you know, I went through a stressful time in my life, and I never really got back to it. Or people will say, it didn’t work for me, oh, boy, do I want to talk to those people. Because then we just need to figure out what didn’t work and and figure out See, every human beings body is designed to be at some point in a fasted state, at least you’re sleeping seven or eight hours. And that, you know, some people do wake up and drink sweet drinks or eat something in the middle of the night. But most so if a person can even get into a 1212 schedule, 12 hours of fasting clean, which is plain unflavored, water plain unflavored, black coffee, plain unflavored, bitter, black or green tea, and of course, person’s medications as prescribed. If a person can get into a 1212 schedule that has shown that they’ll at least increase their lifespan, like Yeah, that’s great. But if a person can have a little bit of a longer fasting each day and a bit of a shorter eating window, and figure out for themselves, their own sweet spot, they are going to feel a lot better going through life. And I just actually forgot if I answered your question.

george grombacher 14:57
Yeah, well, I think just From my experience, it’s important for me to connect. A perceived sacrifice or a direct sacrifice, like just losing weight for the sake of losing weight, or cutting spending for the sake of cutting spending is not going to be sustainable for me, it needs to be in service of something that I’ve decided really matters being healthy enough to chase my kids around at, you know, 50 years old, or whatever the case may, may, may be. So,

Laurie Lewis 15:27
yes, how do we keep things going over time. One is the initial motivation of I feel better right now. The second would be a longer view, which is what I want to do long into the future. But the a huge challenge that we face in our society with a society of abundance is that we have food around us 24/7. And we have become a culture of people who solve our emotional challenges. With food, I don’t know many people who don’t say I’m an emotional eater, everybody, that is their self perception. And it’s probably true. And so one of the things about intermittent fasting That’s so incredible is the process of having an eating window alone, helps people start being more mindful about when they’re eating and why they’re eating it. In my initial calls with people, usually, I engage in a relationship for a year, because it really does take that long to change a mindset and change habits and change motivation. And, and but people will realize in very short order, oh my gosh, I never noticed how when food is in front of me, it’s suddenly in my face, or how I’m eating for no reason. Or I’m just constant. We’re not a grazing animal. And yet, we’re constantly grazing. And so when a person can, it takes a lot for human beings to change habits. I mean, in mostly in our culture, also, we screw up one time, and we think, well, I already screwed up, I might as well just throw in the towel. So there’s all of this, it’s mostly mindset, that over time, we get to adjust together. And I do believe that people do better with itty bitty tiny incremental changes, rather than big sweeping pendulum swings of extremism, which again, is the world that we live in.

george grombacher 17:37
Yeah, yeah, it’s all about small bites. And there’s that’s a bit of a pun here. Yeah, it’s all about no bites, during certain hours, till later, stop fighting,

Laurie Lewis 17:46
delayed gratification. You know, you mentioned delayed gratification. I don’t think you use those words. But human beings, they have countless studies on human beings and waiting till later to have what you want. And people who can delay gratification are, in fact, happier people. So I’ve seen no downsides to putting deliberately consciously putting your system your body into a repair state for a good chunk of every day, and waiting till later to have delicious, nutritious food that you’re excited to eat later. And it’s just as a win win in all domains.

george grombacher 18:27
Yeah, well, I certainly couldn’t agree more. I loved how you likened it to sleeping and having rituals around that about, mmm, my just making assumptions that it’s probably wise for us to have a pretty similar pattern of what time we go to sleep, what time we wake up. And if we’re doing that, it’s going to be a lot easier to have rituals and patterns about adhering to this window of feeding. If it’s 12, and 12, or 16, and eight. The more things you can incorporate and make it into your life, probably the more success you’ll have.

Laurie Lewis 19:05
Absolutely, I do think that in the beginning, it’s helpful for people to have a set fasting hours and a set eating window just because when we’re creating new habits, it’s really good to have them the same every day. And yes, regarding sleep, for sure, there have been enough sleep studies and research to show that it is more healthful for us to have a set sleep time every single day. The difference with intermittent fasting is you can ultimately once you get in the habit of it you know you wake up every day and you know you’re a person who eats in an eating window. That’s just how you relate to yourself that you can decide each day when it’s going to be so you look at your you know what your day holds and and decide am I going to have a shorter eating window? Is it going to be early is it going to be later is it Gonna be longer. Sometimes people who have a set eating window, let’s say they open their eating window at one. But then suddenly today, it’s one and you’re not hungry, don’t eat. So what I recommend people do, then it’s like, okay, normally I would eat now, but I’m not hungry. So then it’s like, well, if I don’t eat now, when will I eat, and then you want to know, you know, kind of look over the next few hours and see what your day holds. And make sure you don’t get caught in a situation where you’re not feeling great. Have food on hand that you love. And I’d see if I didn’t eat now, when would I open my eating window, and make sure that’s gonna work for you. So it’s not rigid? And yet, it’s really important that a person hold it hold their fasting hours in high regard, like you would your sleep. For sure.

george grombacher 20:53
Love it. Well, Laurie, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you?

Laurie Lewis 21:01
Thank you, Georgia. It’s great being here. My business is called Fast forward. And so my website is fast forward. wellness.com. And I love it when people go there. And you can download a free checklist. If people are like, Okay, I want to get back into it, or I wanna start this and check it out. So I recommend if people are starting it newly or if you’re getting back into it, that you practice this for at least a month, because that first month is the adjustment period for the body. And so give it a month and write me and ask me any questions. Let me know if you want to have a chat if you if you start doing it and you have questions and you’d like to be in one of my group live programs. I work with people that way, or I work with people one on one for a year. Around the World. I have people in Kuwait and New Zealand and Europe and so it’s really a joy for me to help human beings feel better and better. Love it.

george grombacher 22:05
If you enjoyed this as much as I did show, lower your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to fast forward wellness.com And check out all the great resources Laurie has on the site. Download your that checklist and give it at least a month and give yourself grace. So just because you slip up, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just get back on your program and stick to it and start feeling better for goodness sakes. Thanks good, Laurie.

Laurie Lewis 22:32
I love it. Thank you, George.

george grombacher 22:35
And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai