Intermittent Fasting Series 1 - What's Intermittent fasting with Special Guest Paige Davidson

 

Hi everyone I’m Andy from Foco Academy, and today I have a special guest and her name is Paige Davidson she's an intermittent fasting and mindset shift coach. Hi Paige, how are you?

 

Paige Davidson: 

Hey Andy i'm great how are you today.

 

Andy Nam: 

I’m awesome, so both me and Paige recently finished a lower inflammation live longer summit back in February and she was one of my guest speakers and, of course, she talked about intermittent fasting. 

In today's episode, I want to let people have a better understanding what intermittent fasting is. So Paige, why don't you explain to everyone here what's intermittent fasting and how it can benefit people.

 

Paige Davidson: 

Okay, the first thing I want to say about intermittent fasting is that it is not a diet so many people hear intermittent fasting and they think that this is just one now the long line of diets that i've looked at or heard about. And so many of us are over diets, I don't know about you Andy, but I am over diets so I want people to understand, right up front that intermittent fasting is not a diet. Diets look at what you eat and you know, tell you what to eat, you know they have list of good foods and bad foods and you should eat this and, on this day, you have to eat that.

 

Intermittent fasting is so different, intermittent fasting is looking at when you eat. So when you think about intermittent fasting you're looking at eating in a pattern of time, so every day you decide when you're going to eat your food,you're going to eat your food you're going to drink any beverages that have you know.

 

Anything like coffee with cream or a glass of wine or a beer or a hot chocolate in a beverages and any foods, you have within a period of time, each day and you're the one that says what that period of time, yes and that's called your eating window.

 

So you're eating window every day, is when you eat your food. And then outside of that eating window is your fasting time and when you're fasting you're not eating. Okay? So either you're fasting or you're eating, there's no in between.

 

Sometimes I hear people say they're dirty fasting ,meaning they have coffee in there, you know with cream or a little bit of water with lemon in it.

 

That is not a thing, sometimes people want to say dirty fasting is the thing, but it's not. So you're eating your food or you’re fasting.

 

And while you're fasting there are five beverages, that you can have as much as you want to have, and they will not hurt your fast, they will not break your fast. Anything else, that you can drink will break your fast.

 

So those five things are plain black coffee, no cream, no sugar nothing added.  Plain water, no flavored, no lemon ,nothing in that.  Sparkling water like San Pellegrino or Perrier unflavored of course, plain green tea and plain black tea. So you just look at it, as you know, two periods out of the day, one period you're eating that’s your eating window and then, when your eating window is closed.

 

For example, that we call it being closed or or is over your fasting and during your fast that's called a clean fast when you have those five beverages that are approved for fasting Andy.

 

Andy Nam: 

Great so my understanding is  like you said, fasting is not about dieting and a lot of people nowadays , there are just so many different types of diets out there, like Atkins diet, there's the keto diet and there you know you can be vegan, you can be vegetarian there's the Paleo Diet. They have just so many different diets out there.

 

But you can incorporate these diets with intermittent fasting. Is that correct for my understanding, so you can eat those diets in the eating window.

 

Paige Davidson: 

Absolutely, one of the greatest things about intermittent fasting is it gives you the power to decide what is best for you and your body.

 

You know there's a thing called biodiversity, but there's no one right way to eat for every person. So Andy you may do keto and it may work beautifully for you, I may try keto and it doesn't work for me at all, or I could  eat carnivore, and somebody else trie carnivore and it would just make them sick, but for that person plant based works phenomenally.

 

And so the way we eat in our window is 100% up to us, and part of this process is sort of experimenting and seeing what foods work for us and the beautiful thing about intermittent fasting is when you're eating within that window of time which could be 10 hours eight hours six hours.

Three to four hours, it just depends, we'll talk about that at a later time, but when you're in that eating window you eat, however you want to eat, you can follow a diet like keto or carnivore plant based.You can do no specific diet and you can just eat what you want.

 

Now Andy when I say eat what you want, what does that bring up for you, what do you think about when I say you can eat what you want, during your eating window.

 

Andy Nam: 

When you say eat what you want, then I will go into my cravings. When i'm thinking about cravings, for some people, they may donuts,  maybe muffins maybe even chips. My kryptonite food is chips.

 

Yeah, so does that mean, I can eat whatever I want in that eating window and i'm going to eat just bags and bags of chips.

 

Paige Davidson: 

That's a great question, so with intermittent fasting what you want to do is you want to focus on meals and maybe a snack. So say, for example, if I have an eating window of six hours, then I probably will have two distinct meals and possibly one snack.

And that's it.

 

Your eating window is not a license to graze and to pig out and to eat everything that you can think of that you, you know you ever wanted, that when you're on a diet, that you couldn’t eat.

 

You have to think about what your goal is for doing intermittent fasting. A lot of people it's just for the health, a lot of people it's to lose weight.

 

And so, you know as well as I do, Andy, that you know our choices have to match our goals. 

 

If we want to, if we want to reach those goals, so I lost 110 pounds through intermittent fasting.

 

And sometimes I make choices that were super healthy, most of the time I did, sometimes I have a sundae or I had a donut or I had a couple of glasses of wine, you know again you're in charge, but you have to be responsible.

 

And you have to be accountable.

 

And you know part of this process is learning to be empowered to make good decisions for yourself and I like to follow an 80 / 20 rule.

 

Where I eat 80% of the time, I choose good whole healthy natural foods, I stay away from processed foods as much as possible.

 

Stay away from processed sugars as much as possible and then 20% of the time i'll have a sundae or i'll have a couple of cookies you know it's just balance. 

 

So that's a real packed statement saying you can eat what you want, and you know, the biggest takeaway really is learning what your body likes, learning what foods work really well for you.

 

What foods make you feel good? So if I eat pasta and I love pasta, but I know pasta gives me stomach upset but I eat it anyway, because I love it.

 

Eventually i'm going to decide, well, I could eat that if I wanted to. But I think i'm going to choose not to have that because I just don't feel well when I eat that so there's a lot to that statement, you can eat what you want.

 

Andy Nam: 

I love about that. I love what you're talking about, you know, what you're eating what you want, and then even just backing up just a little bit you talked about you know each person is a bio-individual and I, I totally in with that you there. Because everyone is different, you know we have different biogenetic make up, we're different by the foods that we were introduced to when we're growing up and we're very different by our environment, what we're exposed to. So yeah some people may work better eating more of a carnivore diet or vegetarian diet, keto diet, whatever it  may be, and I love what you said about that.

 

It's great to just try different foods and see how you feel because I think that's important because a lot of people may have in their head, they may like the taste of the food or they like how it looks, how it smells but they don't really think about how they feel after it, and I think that’s, that's huge.

 

Right it's a very important.

 

Paige Davidson:

It is huge and I love the fact that we have all of this time that we're fasting and that really gives us space to think about what we're doing, to think about the choices that we're making and to really pin down how we feel when we eat certain foods, because when we graze and eat all day long.

 

You know something they make us feel unwell, but how do you know, how do you narrow it down and decide what what I ate that made me not feel well when you're eating all day long.

 

And so, when you're eating within your window, you know, you know what you eat very specifically, you know you will be able to tell exactly what I had to do it.

 

Again it's something, maybe I don’t feel well, then I can kind of narrow that down and say you know I didn't feel great when I eat that last time, and even though I love that food I just don't feel that great. So what can I eat that I love, that makes me feel really good.

 

Andy Nam: 

That that's great I really thought about, that's really great advice, because, like when you  got such a short window when eating regardless if it's a six hour, eight hour, ten hour and like like you said we'll go over a little bit about the specifics on intermittent fasting on our next episode.

 

 But, since this is a short window at specific times on each day, you're going to remember what you eat because you want to be eating something that you can be happy with, obviously.

 

And you also mentioned about the 80 / 20 rule, which I think is brilliant because a lot of people they either going to be like you said, they're going to graze all day long and eat whatever they can in that window or they're going to go o man, I just have to eat so healthy and stay on this diet and when doing the 80 / 20, it is great as you eating 80% as healthy, as whole foods, as you can well with the least amount of processed foods.

 

But that 20% you still allowing to, I don't want to say reward yourself, but you know to to feel that you're not being deprived.

 

Paige Davidson: 

This is your life, and we have social engagements and we have birthday parties, and we have you know special events and nobody wants to, nobody is going to do anything that makes them feel left out or excluded.

 

We really have to be realistic and so um, you know those kinds of things and occasional piece of birthday cake is a part of life.

 

That's living life with your family and your friends and and the thing that I like about the 80 / 20 rule is that when I have those 20% foods, I can them make the decision that i'm going to have that piece of birthday cake, I have it, I own it.

 

 I enjoy it I don't feel guilty about it, I don't beat myself up about it, because that is part of my process, it is perfectly okay.

 

For me, to have that piece of cake I’m not doing anything wrong i'm not a bad person, I’m not cheating when I have that piece of birthday cake, and so it gets me some really nice peace of mind.

 

When I have those types of things because it's okay to do that, on occasion, and you know I mean you can eat them as much as you want, but if you have a goal.

Whether it's to be healthy, whether it's to improve your health numbers, or whether it's to lose weight and you know you have to eat, for your goal.

 

And so that really is something that's kind of a mantra that I have you know, and if i'm wanting something i'll think about. Okay, when I had a 20% food as it's been a while, and if it's not been very long. Then I’ll say. I’ll say okay now, you can have that one cake it's your decision.

 

But is that moving you closer to your goal or or is it moving you further away from your goals, what I asked myself, you know so am I moving closer to my goal or further from my goal by making that choice.

 

Andy Nam: 

That is great, I can totally see your whole mindset coaching coming in and remember Paige is a mindset shift specialist and I think that's important because a lot of people they feel so guilty, you know when when they think that they cheated right, but allowing this a 20 /80 window.

 

You know, you don't have to feel guilty just own it, you know as long as it's only 20% and 80% of that you know  you eat healthy foods, I think it's okay. You know that you have to sometimes just own it, accept it.

 

Everyone needs to live right? We need to, we need to be able to eat the pizza or eat that cookie once in a while, as long as it's not our main food groups.

 

So I think that is amazing Paige. Why don't you tell us all the health benefits of intermittent fasting because you mentioned a little bit about weight lost, a little bit about getting better numbers, or better health. Why don't you go over a little bit more detail on the all the benefits of intermittent fasting. 

 

Paige Davidson: 

Almost universally, pretty soon after people start practicing intermittent fasting, they notice that they have this amazing energy, and I know you and your wife are Intermittent fasters. Did you notice that, do you notice that when you're intermittent fasting you have amazing energy Andy?

 

Andy Nam: 

Oh for sure for sure.

 

Paige Davidson: 

Okay, and that's that's just about a universal thing that  people experience and what about brain fog. Have you ever experienced brain fog before, especially before you know you started intermittent fasting we just didn't think you could think right, you just felt like you're in a fog, it took you a while to figure things out and we hear lots of people talk about having brain fog.

 

And really when you start intermittent fasting, that brain fog clears up,it just clears up. 

 

I have people come up to me and that know i'm an intermittent faster and asked me about my skin, what they asked me is what my skin care products are. Because they say, oh your skin is beautiful, what do you use? 

 

I don't use any thing really, i'm very haphazard i'm afraid to say, I hate to say it, but i'm very haphazard about all of that, you know route skincare routine, some women go into the bathroom to get ready for bed and it's an hour later.

You know when they emerged because they’ve got all of that stuff, I don't do all of that, but people cannot believe when they hear that i'm 59.

 

And that is because of intermittent fasting and you know, i'll just quickly tell you the reason that happens is that you have this amazing thing going on with your skin. And when you intermittent fast, during your fasting time, human growth hormone is released in your body. I mean it really gets kicked up and so that, you know that , that causes that turnover itself and that you know, new cell production and so that's where you get that effect from this, you know this amazing skin that we hear a lot of people talk about that.

 

And what else what are some of the things you've had Andy

 

Andy Nam: 

Well, you know I want to go into a little bit deeper  about the human growth hormone because I don't think people  talk about that much because you mentioned you are 59 or obviously you don't look over 50 now. You look amazing right.

 

Paige Davidson: 

And I wasn’t fishing for a compliment, but thank you.

 

Andy Nam: 

You know what people don't realize is human growth hormone, in your body, it naturally produces that, and you have a lot of that as a kid.

 

That's why you know you, you bounce back, this is good for energy to, but it also gives you that   brightness in your skin, that youthfulness but as we get older our human growth hormone start depleting.

 

And it's great that you're talking about the whole intermittent fasting side of it when you're not eating is when your body is actually producing it on its own is bumping it up so it's a great way to almost, like you said to help you to look a lot younger and you know, rather than trying to hide you're looking old, you're actually becoming younger from the inside out.

 

 I love that you brought that up because a lot of people don't think about that. What is one benefit and how about looking and feeling younger.

 

Paige Davidson: 

That's exactly it, because people have  called intermittent fasting, you know the anti aging way to eat, because you literally are aging in reverse, you know.  You're losing weight and you're feeling amazing you've got this bright energy, you have this glow and vitality to you that people notice, I mean it's something that people notice. 

 

And even if they don't know i'm doing intermittent fasting. They will they will comment on how much energy I have and how young that i'm looking, I look like i'm aging in reverse and so that's that's intermittent fasting.

 

Andy Nam: 

That is great, and I think a lot of people should look into that just for that reason alone and you know a lot of people don't realize that you can talk about all these different diets and you know, there are so many.

 

They look for the silver bullet to look younger with all these creams and lotions and potions that they're putting on their face hoping that they can make them look younger, this is free.

 

Paige Davidson: 

Yes, expensive, I was going to say all of the potions, and I mean i've looked at those things, I can't afford those things but I can afford intermittent fasting because it is free.

 

Andy Nam: 

Exactly exactly, and you know with intermittent fasting and i'm sure we can go into this a little bit further down, but I just wanted to give a little bit more sneak peek of the added benefits when you're going a little bit more extended interment fasting when you extend to two or three day period, and can you tell us a little bit more, you know, maybe even about you know, like autophagy

 

Paige Davidson: 

Yeah absolutely, so autophagy sounds like a big scary word but autophagy is a natural process that everyone's body goes through.

 

And it's a process that the body uses to clean it’s cells out okay. So cells over time, build up junk and and particles and I can't explain that that scientifically what is all in those cells.

 

But, I can just say it's junkie and it bogs us down and through autophagy, again, as I said, it's a process that happens when we're not eating.

 

So when we're sleeping, autophagy happens if you sleep long enough.

But autophagy doesn't kick in until you've been fasting, for you know for a while it's different for different people.

 

But that's that's one reason, when later on, we get into the length of your window, it will depend on your goal right If you want to improve your health and, if you want to seriously lose weight, then you want to fast, as long as possible, because the longer you fast, the more autophagy get ramped up.

 

And so cleaning out yourself this autophagy is what really gives us so many health benefits, and I will tell you that when I started intermittent fasting I needed to lose weight, off course, but it wasn't to lose weight.

 

Because I will honestly tell you, I did not believe my sister when she told me, it was not a diet.

And I was like no way that sounds like some crazy diet.

 

But when she explained to me that, through intermittent fasting you can reduce inflammation in your body. That got my attention because at that moment, I was suffering from plantar fasciitis on one foot and Achilles tendonitis in the other foot and those are inflammation driven conditions.

 

I didn't even know that.

I did my research, I found out that there is legit deep research that has gone into this, a breadth of research and and it is clear.

 

That autophagy heals inflammation in the body, so I started fasting and I jumped right in when I heard you had to do quite a few hours to get that benefit I jumped in at 19 and 20 hours, and that was hard.

 

I tell my clients to go in more slowly.

 

But I was desperate, I needed to get out of that pain and so two weeks after I started, just two weeks, I was not limping out of pain anymore.

 

Now I still had pain, I wasn't cured suddenly after two weeks, it was reduced enough so that I could walk normally and I had been limping. It had been debilitating, I was close to not being able to do my job.

 

Because I had to do a lot of walking so that felt like just a miracle to me and I thought i'm going to keep this up.

 

And so I continued and after about three months, I still had pain and I just wanted, I just wanted out of that so I thought you know I did my research, I found that if you do, if you do have some longer extended fasting.

 

I get way more autophagy benefits.

 

Andy Nam: Good.

 

Paige Davidson: 

And so, at three months I added in a 43 hour fast every week, along with my regular fasting and that did it Andy!

 

About five and a half months after I started intermittent fasting I was 100% cured from those conditions, 100%, it was gone and it has not come back.

 

And that that clearly healed my inflammation, but I want to go further with the inflammation because there are so many diseases that we always have called lifestyle diseases that's confusing. People don't know what that means, when they you know you say, well, you have that, because that that's a lifestyle disease.

 

None of us knows what that means, what did I do to cause myself to get diabetes. What did I do to cause  myself to get Alzheimer's or have a heart attack, I mean you know we clearly know we didn't eat well. That’s  really all we know.

 

What we know now is that inflammation is a driver of all of these diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks um you know, hypertension, all of these things, you know even though these conditions that I talk about are not fatal but they're terrible.

 

They're all implicated in having inflammation driving them and, and we know that intermittent fasting heels inflammation in our body, and so I will always do it, you know inflation i'll always do intermittent fasting.

 

I’ll always do intermittent fasting for the rest of my life.

 

And this will surprise you Andy, but it really does not have anything to do with weight

 

It is because of that inflammation.

 

I can, I can practice disease prevention with consistent daily intermittent fasting. And both of my parents  had   dementia.

 

My mother had Alzheimer’s disease and my father had Lewy body dementia and I will tell you that they're horrible diseases and it's heartbreaking and you know I want to reduce or totally cut my risk, you know, for having Dementia, and so I know I have proven that that you can heal inflammation with intermittent fasting and so that's why I will always do it, I will always practice it for the rest of my life.

 

So autophagy is what causes all of those improvements, those deep improvements in health and disease prevention.

 

Andy Nam: 

That is great, because a lot of people, you know, like you said autophagy, what's that,  is such a complicated, you know scientific geeky word.

 

When you talk about autophagy, it’s great because, like you said, inflammation is something that happens to everybody. Like i'm sorry everyone's gonna have inflammation, it is a lifestyle disease, it is how you live, your life.

 

What you eat what you're exposed to, your genetics, it's a little bit of everything and everyone is a bio-individual so everyone's can be affected differently, but like what you said was really good it does take over a period of time.

Right, so since it takes over a period of time, a lot of people don't realize when they do eventually start having symptoms for Alzheimer’s or diabetes like, well why did it happen to me? Well it's because you didn't realize it was happening over a period of time and you're getting more and more inflammation and once it gets to a point, inflammation gets so much it's almost like over spilling a bucket and that's when things start happening. 

 

And like you said autophagy, this is great, because when you have inflammation, you have all these bad things happening inside your cells.

 

Right, you're almost getting these these bad cells fighting your good cells and autophagy is the body's way of eating all these bad parts of the cells, which quells down inflammation. So like you said, it's great because inflammation is something that you do not want in your body, you know, unless it's acute from a cut, or something, then that makes sense, right.

 

Paige Davidson: 

Acute acute is a good thing.

We need to make sure people understand that and that acute inflammation is when you cut yourself or you know, have an injury, then that those tissues are going to become inflamed.

Okay, and that's what you want that's the body healing that injury, but that is short term, short lived acute inflammation.

 

What we're talking about is that insidious silent chronic inflammation that we have in our body that we don't even know it's happening.

 

And it happens over years, and so, by the time you're pre diabetic, by the time you're diabetic you have had this inflammation problem for 10 to 12 years or longer.

 

So that's that's why you know, that's why intermittent fasting is not some diet that you go on and off, it is the way to eat is the way to manage your food, it is something you do consistently every day.

 

And over time, that is how you fight that inflammation through consistent, long term or expressed oautophagy.

 

Andy Nam: 

That is awesome so let me just summarize from, from you know what you talked about today is the benefits of intermittent fasting.

 Well, first of all, What is intermittent fasting you know.

 

To summarize intermittent fasting, you have an eating window and fasting window and during the eating window, regardless of what that window is going to be and we'll talk about this in the future episode is you eat responsible for that eating window at 80% and 20%.  Like 80% as healthy as possible and 20% maybe fudging a little bit not not going too crazy.

 

 And you're fasting for the rest of the fasting windowl.

 

And then, for the benefits of course you know, depending on how long the intermittent fast it's great way to lose weight, you're going to have better clarity, you could have you know more clarity in your thinking, to have less brain fog so you'll be more productive work, obviously.

 

Right and that's a huge one especially everyone sitting at home right now working right, you can have more energy I think that's a huge one because a lot of people have crashes during the day.

 

Right so you're gonna have better energy, better mental clarity and then you're also going to start quelling inflammation.

 

You're gonna have more beautiful skin, look younger from the inside out. I think that's a huge one, to be honest, to me, that one's worth doing already just for anything else right?

 

On top of that you’ll have autophagy, I think that autophagy is very important for extended inflammation,  with extended intermittent fasting, we can start even maybe reversing some of these chronic conditions.

 

I’m sure we can talk about that in a future episode.

 

But this is great!

Thank you so much, page, for you know letting people know first of all, what interment fasting is because I know that term is being thrown around so much.

 

Paige Davidson: 

It really is and it's it's having the word diet attached to it, which just really kills me.

 

And I think it's because I was guilty myself and thinking that at first, and so i'm on a mission, I need to make sure that people know that this is not a diet, you are in charge, you eat what you want, you make your own decisions, you are empowered to make those decisions for yourself.

 

Andy Nam: 

That is perfect, remember everyone it's not a diet and it's safe for anyone to do.

And it's you know, I think it's simple but not easy, but I think it's a very simple way to reclaim back your health to take back your lifestyle to maybe lose a few pounds.

 

So thank you Paige for today.  On our next episode Paige will be going to share how to do an easy step to ease into intermittent fasting. Because a lot of people think there's no way I can only eat in a certain window I like eating throughout the day and you know i'm sure we can talk a little bit about the benefits of why you need to shorten that window and why grazing throughout the day may not actually be a good idea.

 

Paige Davidson: 

Definitely get into that you know that advice that doctors have all I have given us eat every two or three hours keep your metabolism up you know we're going to talk about why that is not correct.

 

Andy Nam: 

See everyone, you can't miss the next episode. We're going to be talking about this around the same time, next week.

 

But I think it'll be very exciting , for anyone that wants to start intermittent fasting, at  least now you know what it is what the benefits are, and you know we're going to work with Paige and she's going to give you the little step by step, you know little step by steps to ease you into intermittent fasting and you know get you back on our journey to better health.

 

Paige Davidson: 

Thank you Andy thanks for having me.

 

Andy Nam: 

Thank you, Paige i'll see you next week.

 

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