Beginning Fasting (What to Expect) | Jason Fung

i'm going to share with you five things that you need to be aware of before you start fasting and how to take care of them stick around to the end where i'm going to share with you melissa's fasting regimen and her top tip the first thing to be aware of is headaches or dizziness and it's not very clear why people get headaches but i had it myself when i started to fast turns out it's very common as well it's thought that perhaps they're you're not getting enough salt when you're fasting most of us are eating a fairly high salt diet so when you go to fasting oftentimes the salt intake goes way down and that might give you a bit of a headache other people will notice dizziness so they'll feel a little bit light-headed or not quite themselves the good news is that this usually is self-limited after the first two weeks or so the headaches and the dizziness will go away but there's things you can do to make it better one of the easiest things to do is to increase your salt so you can take a pinch of salt under your tongue or some people put salt in water and then just drink that if you are okay with taking some of the fasting variations you could try bone broth in which case you can put a good amount of salt in or sugar-free pickle juice that often helps with the headaches the second thing people will usually notice is a change in their bowel habits with fasting most of the time it turns out to be constipation but it's not really constipation constipation is when there's a lot of stool that needs to come out but it's not coming out so it's very uncomfortable fasting is a little different bowel movements will usually slow down significantly but that's because there's less going in therefore there's less coming out and so you may notice if for example you're used to having a bowel movement every day you might only have it two to three times a week and that's entirely normal you shouldn't feel uncomfortable but if you do then you can take some laxatives there's a lot of over-the-counter products magnesium supplements such as milk of magnesia the other thing we often recommend is psyllium husk and this is just a form of fiber you mix it in a glass of water for example let it soak in a bit and then you drink it it bulks up the stool and helps with the bowel movements by giving more bulk occasionally some people notice the opposite so instead of having less bowel movements they notice watery stools or even frank diarrhea this usually happens when you start fasting and it's thought that this is caused by the body trying to get rid of water when you don't eat your body's insulin levels go down and insulin tends to make your body hold on to water so when you're fasting you will tend to get rid of water some people notice that they urinate more but other people will notice more water coming out of their colon which might mean more watery stools there are several things you can do about that and here psyllium husk may also work as it goes down it soaks up some of the water and makes the bowel movements less watery the other thing you could do is try taking less water intake while you're fasting and very often it will go away after a few days as your body gets used to it the third thing you might notice is trouble sleeping during fasting insulin is going to go down but your body doesn't shut down it actually ramps itself up with the increased levels of noradrenaline and this gives you so much energy that a lot of people feel that they can't sleep so what you need to do is to take that into account if you're not sleepy then don't try and force yourself to sleep if you normally go to bed at 10 o'clock and you're just not feeling tired don't just lie there and force yourself to bed anyway the best thing is to wait until you are tired and before you go to bed also maintain good sleep hygiene try to relax before you go to bed maybe some meditation turn off the screens don't watch tv don't read your ipad maybe read a book do some meditation just sit and relax you could also use something like blue light blockers or relax take a bath do some epsom salts which contain magnesium as well and that's often very calming before you go to bed if you're getting up earlier than usual that's okay it's this extra energy that's being liberated by the fasting because your body now has access to all that energy contained in your fat stores and that's a good thing number four heartburn when people don't eat sometimes the acid in their stomach comes back up into their esophagus so stomach acid in the stomach is okay your stomach's supposed to deal with that but stomach acid goes back up into the esophagus causes burning and can cause serious problems called acid reflux as you're losing weight you may have a problem with the reflux but once you lose the weight it should get better so what can you do in the meantime increasing the amount of acid might help so adding some lemon juice to your water or apple cider vinegar and water can often help and it sounds really counter-intuitive why would taking some acid help with acid reflux isn't too much acid the problem in the first place the increased acid like from the lemon juice which is relatively mild or the apple cider vinegar actually stimulates your stomach to contract and push things through the other side so that they don't just sit there and go back up so that's a natural way to try to take care of the heartburn the other thing you could do is take some over the counter antacids in severe cases you can talk to your doctor about medications as well if it persists then there might not be anything to do but limit the duration of fasting and it's okay you can do shorter fast more frequently or you can take smaller meals and try to make up for the weight that way number five blood glucose this is especially important if you're taking medication for type 1 or type 2 diabetes most of the time when people fast their blood sugars are going to go down as their body uses that glucose in the blood as a source of energy if you are taking medications to lower your blood sugars on top of the fasting then it may go too low and that's a potentially dangerous situation so be very aware that you need to talk to your doctor before you change your diet in any way and that includes fasting the other thing that surprises people sometimes is they notice that their blood glucose actually goes slightly up during fasting and they might not understand why this is again due to the counter regulatory hormones when you don't eat your hormone insulin goes down but other hormones including growth hormone and norepinephrine go up they energize the body they help keep the lean mass in but the other thing is that they help push the glucose that's in the storage out into the blood as a source of energy if you have a lot of stored glucose your blood glucose may go up think of it this way if you don't eat and your blood glucose goes up where did that glucose come from it could only have come from the storage sites in your own body which is your liver so you're simply taking the glucose that's stored away in the liver and pushing it out into the blood when you eat again it'll just go back but either way it needs to be burned off for you to lose weight and get your blood sugar down and get healthy here's three more bonus tips for you if you're just starting out one try a low carbohydrate diet prior to fasting if you get your you body used to using fat as a fuel well fueling yourself on body fat is no different number two try to stay on that same diet and don't deviate if you eat a lot of say junk foods on the weekends it may be harder to get back into fasting during the weekdays number three fast consistently that allows your body to get used to what you're doing melissa used a fairly steady regimen of alternate daily fasting in order to lose weight she did between 36 and 42 hours either two or three times a week as it fit into her schedule a 36 hour fast is more than a full day of fasting so if you ate dinner on a monday you would not eat all of tuesday and not eat again until wednesday this is a great strategy because you get the two sleeping periods where you're getting the fasting almost for free and your body has gone through all of its glucose and now it's just burning fat even when you sleep her best tip that she has is that hunger comes in waves and it will pass and this is really important i stress this again and again because hunger is probably the number one problem that people worry about melissa anticipated her hunger and kept busy she used a lot of sparkling water and she kept listening to fasting podcasts and reading articles about fasting to keep her mind occupied instead of thinking about food that's great work melissa and you're doing amazing that's it for this week i hope you enjoyed this if you learned something then share it with your friends maybe they might learn something maybe it may help them and if you enjoyed it please do me a favor and hit that like button below you know the one that looks like this i'll see you next week

Channel: Jason Fung

Views: 690,715

Keywords: fasting what to expect, fasting, intermittent fasting, weight loss, fasting tips, jason fung fasting, dr fung intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting benefits timeline, weight loss tips, intermittent fasting tips for weight loss, how to fast for weight loss

Id: k8AkF9_hLow

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021