- In today's video, I'm gonna be taking you
through the five most common side effects people get
when they start intermittent fasting.
You're gonna learn why they happen and how you can manage
them if you do get them but make sure you stick around
to the end of the video because I'm gonna explain
how you can pretty much avoid getting any of them
in the first place.
(upbeat music)
Hey Carb Dodgers, my name is Dr. Dan Maggs,
I'm so glad you've landed on my channel
which is all about achieving lasting weight loss
through low carb, real food nutrition and of course,
intermittent fasting which is the topic of today's video.
So let's get started.
Side effect number one is hunger.
Now, this might seem like an obvious one
but it's not quite as straightforward as people often think
so is worthy of discussion.
Now, many people don't even ever start fasting
because they're worried about being hungry,
they think that if they skip a meal, they're just gonna get
more and more hungry until that next meal comes
which sounds unpleasant really but it's not true.
It's important that we understand what drives our hunger.
Pretty much everything in our body is controlled by nerves,
hormones or some combination of the two.
Hunger is no different and the process of digestion starts
before you even put anything in your mouth
and this is why your stomach rumbles
when you see or smell food or even when you hear the sound
of food being prepared.
The signals travel from your eyes, your ears or your nose
down to your stomach where you produce stomach acid
and the hormones that prepare your body for digestion.
This is called the cephalic phase of digestion.
But the cephalic phase response isn't only triggered
by seeing, smelling or hearing food being prepared,
there is an element of it which is a learned response.
If you've always eaten breakfast at 7:30 every morning,
your body is going to start producing
that cephalic phase response just before 7:30
whether the meal comes or not.
The body learns to expect the meals it is used to having
at the time it is used to having them
and if you suddenly decide to miss that meal,
the response doesn't just completely go away,
you're still going to feel hungry when that time comes
but don't worry, that hunger is only gonna last
about 20 to 30 minutes.
Why?
Because the levels of hormones that surged up earlier
eventually go away and you don't feel hungry anymore.
Now you may get waves of hunger coming and going
over the next few hours before you eat again
but the hunger doesn't just keep getting worse
until that next meal and the good news is that
those learned responses can be unlearned
but you are gonna have to ride through
a few of those waves of hunger until your body
unlearns this response.
Here are a few tips to help you with the hunger
when you're just starting out.
Firstly, take it slowly.
You don't have to jump straight in with a long fast.
Start by doing something simple like just missing breakfast.
If missing breakfast sounds like too much then just start
to think about shifting that breakfast
ever so slightly later in the day.
Why not have it during your morning break at work?
Another idea would be to just have your evening meal
a little bit earlier than you normally would
and that extends your fast at the other end of the day.
Secondly, don't be around food, go easy on yourself.
You don't wanna be triggering that cephalic phase response
by surrounding yourself with amazing smelling food
and don't underestimate the power of this,
the brain is very, very powerful.
In fact, I can probably make you hungry
in just a few seconds, just watch this.
(upbeat music)
Did that make you start to feel hungry?
Let me know in the comments down below,
just type hungry or not hungry.
And thirdly, avoid boredom.
Boredom is your enemy, it can lead you to obsess about
and focus only on food.
Do something that distracts you that you don't
associate normally with eating, maybe go out for a walk,
do some exercise.
One really good way to avoid boredom is to subscribe
to my YouTube channel.
Like I mentioned earlier, hunger comes in waves
and those waves last about 20 to 30 minutes,
that's two or three YouTube videos.
Number two is fatigue, brain fog,
lightheadedness, feeling hangry.
I've grouped these together as really they have
the same root cause.
It's one of two things usually,
number one is low blood glucose levels or hypoglycemia
and number two is not really being adapted
to burning fat for fuel.
Let's look at low blood glucose levels first.
It might seem logical that you should have
low blood glucose levels when you're fasting
but hypoglycemia shouldn't really happen.
Your body still needs glucose to function properly
and when you fast or cut out carbohydrates,
your blood glucose levels don't just drop to zero,
there always needs to be some glucose
going around in the body.
When we're not consuming glucose or things
that can turn into glucose, our liver can make glucose
from other things such as fat and protein.
Your body should turn to alternative energy stores
to provide that glucose as well as increase fat burning
and increased ketone production.
So why can we get hypoglycemia when we're fasting?
Remember what I said about hormonal responses
being conditioned?
If your pancreas is used to spitting out a load
of insulin every morning to cover the amount of glucose
from that bowl of cereal that you have every morning,
then the day you decide to not have that bowl of cereal
in the morning, your pancreas is still gonna spit out some
or be it less insulin into your body and that
could cause you to become hypoglycemic.
It shouldn't happen because your body should kick in
and produce glucose from other sources but it does happen.
Hopefully, this will underline the importance of people
who are taking medication that actually
lowers blood glucose, things like insulin,
why they should do fasting under medical supervision
because it can result in a pretty severe hypoglycemia
and that can be life threatening.
The same is true for blood pressure.
Fasting can lower your blood pressure and often does
and that can cause lightheadedness.
So people who are taking blood pressure medications
may need a dose adjustment before they start fasting.
The other reason you may experience this side effect
is because you're not yet fat adapted.
At this early stage in your fasting career,
you may be unable to mobilize your own fat stores
to compensate for that lack of food.
The fatigue, brain fog and lightheadedness might just be
that your body isn't used to mobilizing energy
from its fat stores yet, you're not yet metabolically
flexible enough to switch between burning carbohydrates
for energy to burning fat and ketones for energy
but don't worry, that comes with time.
So what do you do if you're getting these side effects?
Well, firstly, you could just break your fast early,
just remember there are no prizes here.
If you're really struggling with this symptom,
then just break your fast early.
Remember, you can just pick things up a day or two later,
it's a marathon, not a sprint.
And secondly, maybe avoid intense exercise.
Very often, I see people who are very motivated
about changing up their lifestyle
and they not only start intermittent fasting,
they start pretty intensive exercise at the same time,
often when they're not used to doing intensive exercise.
And whilst I'm a big fan of training when fasted,
it might not be the best thing to do early on
in your fasting career, particularly if you're
just starting out doing this kind of exercise.
Take things slowly and change one habit at a time.
Number three is a change in bowel habit.
Now changes in your bowel habit happen when you change up
your diet any which way.
I'm sure many of you will have experienced this
when you've traveled abroad or even to just a different part
of the same country.
And now these changes can go either way,
constipation or diarrhea.
When you start fasting, you're likely changing
several things that's gonna have an impact
on your gut bacteria and everybody's gut bacteria
responds in its own different way to those changes.
How can you go about minimizing these symptoms?
Well, usually it just comes down to fluid and fiber
and this is for both constipation and diarrhea,
it helps with both to keep hydrated, it helps to keep
lots of fiber in your diet as well.
And if you're still struggling, then your pharmacist
can probably advise you on some medications to take
in order to help whilst you ease into this transition.
You may need to watch your coffee intake
when you're intermittent fasting.
If you're suffering with diarrhea, it might be
that you're consuming too much coffee.
People often drink a lot of coffee when they're fasting
because they think it's an appetite suppressant.
Now I haven't actually found any hard scientific evidence
that that is the case but nevertheless, a lot of people do
so if you are suffering with diarrhea,
just be mindful of your coffee intake.
By the way, I made a video all about fasting and coffee
called does coffee break a fast and you can check that out
by clicking the link up here.
Number four is heartburn or GORD or GERD or acid reflux,
whatever you may call it,
there's loads of different names for it.
Remember that cephalic phase response
that I talked about earlier?
Well, it's that again, it's producing stomach acid
despite there not really being anything in your stomach.
For some people, that can be enough to trigger a heartburn
and coffee again, a lot of people find drinking coffee,
particularly black coffee on an empty stomach
can induce heartburn so again, you may need to be careful
with your caffeine intake.
And of course, you can always see your pharmacist
who may be able to advise about some over the counter
remedies for heartburn.
Number five is feeling cold.
Now this appears to be one of those side effects
that you either get or you don't get.
I never really experienced getting cold
during a fast before but loads of people
report this symptom to me.
And what people are often worried about is that
it's their metabolism shutting down and that they're
going to some sort of starvation mode and what we know
is that this absolutely isn't true.
In fact, it's quite the opposite, your metabolism
often speeds up when you're fasting.
Now there seems to be loads of theories out there about
why this happens, the only thing I can find
in terms of fairly hard scientific evidence is a study done
a couple of years ago involving mice and this study
links hypothermia in mice to a chemical
in the brain called orexin.
Now orexin is probably something I'm gonna speak
quite a lot more about on this channel in the future
because it is a chemical that is linked with fat metabolism
but all you need to know for now is that there is quite
a lot of difference between people in the amount of orexin
in their brains and that might be why some people get cold
when fasting and other people don't.
Now, of course, this study was only done in mice
and it may not translate over into humans
but if it is the cause of it, then drinking coffee
can stimulate orexin production
so you might be able to try that.
Now I'm very aware that I've just told you
that coffee consumption may cause diarrhea and heartburn
so there might be a bit of balancing this
with the other symptoms.
The other solution of course, is you could just wrap up warm
and talking of wrapping up, that is just about it
for the main symptoms that people get
when they start intermittent fasting but I did promise
at the beginning I would take you through some of the steps
you can take to reduce or even eliminate
all of the above symptoms happening in the first place.
Start slowly.
Now I've already kinda mentioned this one earlier on
in the video so I'm not gonna spend a long time on this
but I see people going about their lifestyle changes
like a bull in a china shop, they start exercising,
they start dieting, they start fasting,
they stop drinking alcohol, just stop,
stopping and starting stuff all at the same time.
Habits are built over time, pick one thing at a time
and build on that, that is how we achieve
long term lasting changes.
Secondly, get nourished.
If you're coming from a diet that has been
nutritionally poor, then you may well be deficient
in certain vitamins and minerals, particularly
if you've been following a kinda standard high energy,
low nutrient kind of standard diet.
If you start fasting before you are well nourished,
you're gonna make it a lot, lot harder on yourself.
Eat real food.
This is one of the core principles of this channel,
focus on nutrient dense, unprocessed food, things like fish,
particularly salmon and sardines, eggs,
the yolk is very, very nutrient dense
and the white of the egg is also full of protein,
meat and not just the muscle of the meat,
I'd really like you to consider things like liver
and other organ meats.
A great place to start with this is making your own patty,
it's really, really easy and there is a great recipe
for it on my website.
And of course green leafy vegetables.
There is a reason why kale is associated
with healthy eating, it's full of nutrients.
Now I could go on with this list but you can just google
nutrient dense foods if you wanna find out more.
And if you want to take things a step further
and really ease your transition into intermittent fasting,
then eat a low carb, real food diet.
Why low carb?
Because switching between a high carb diet and fasting
is really, really difficult.
A low carb diet will basically put you
in the same physiological state as fasting anyway,
you're gonna have low insulin levels,
normal blood glucose levels, raised glucagon levels
and if you're low carb anyway, when you start fasting,
then you're going to already be used to burning fat
as a primary source of fuel for your body,
you're not gonna get those insulin spikes like you did
so you're not gonna go hypoglycemic,
your body is gonna be used to mobilizing its fat stores
in order to provide you with energy
and so you won't feel that hungry.
When you're well nourished and burning fat and ketones
as your primary source of fuel, you'll often find
that you wake up in the mornings just not feeling hungry
and so that transition into intermittent fasting
is completely seamless because you don't wanna eat anyway,
it's almost accidental.
Well I hope that has given you a bit of an insight
into both why people get symptoms
when they first start intermittent fasting,
how you can go about managing those if you do get them
and also how you can potentially completely avoid
those symptoms in the first place.
If I've missed anything,
if you think there's another symptom that I've missed,
then please let me know in the comments down below.
If you've enjoyed this video, then I'd love it
if you give it a thumbs up.
Don't forget to subscribe to my channel
and I will see you in the next video.