In this video, I'll help you choose which method of fasting is right for you.
When most people begin fasting, they base the method that they're going to use off of
a blog post they read, maybe the latest video that you watched like this, or even maybe
what their friends are doing, what their family members told them about. But the truth is,
is the fast thing that you should be doing is the fast thing that's right for you that's
based off achieving whatever health goal it is that you're trying to accomplish and that's
what I'm going to really help do in this video is point you in the right direction and help
you do the proper fast for whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. So, stick around
to the end, but before we get started, I'm Dr. Zyrowski and welcome to the channel. If
you're new to the channel, it's a pleasure to have you here. Be sure to subscribe, hit
that notification bell, and join our notification community so I can help you excel your health
and your life.
Now, when we look at fasting, as I mentioned, it's all about your goals. A lot of people
are just doing it based off whatever camp they fall into or whatever it is their family
members are doing. But we really want to be very accurate as to how we're choosing our
fasting method, because for one, we want it to be sustainable and we want to be using
it for a long period of time. And then, you know, the other thing is that we really want
to make sure that we're accomplishing our health goal efficiently. Otherwise, we're
just going to give up. We're going to quit and be like, it's not working. It's not doing
what I want it to do. And I find this all the time with patients where they just, they
do it for awhile and was like, “Wow, that was fun, but it didn't really do much for
me, so who cares?”
So, let's go ahead and talk about these fasting methods. So, 16 and 8, this is where I like
to start now with 16 and eight. This is kind of just the general fast that most people
are doing. This is the go to in which I use in my own personal life. This is the to go
to in which I use in my patients' lives. So, if you're someone who has never fasted before,
one of the things you want to do is start with 16 and 8. Even if that sounds a little
bit daunting to you, you're a little bit timid to jump into a 16 and 8 fast, start with like
a 12 hour fast and then do a 14 hour fast. And you're going to realize like, oh, that
was pretty seamless. That was pretty easy. Cause you know, naturally I didn't necessarily
feel like eating breakfast in the morning and then push it to that 16 hour. You're going
to fall into it pretty easily. Now when we look at 16 and 8, you have to think – think
at the back of your mind this whole time, when you're watching this video, what is it
I'm trying to accomplish because that is what's important. First of all, I'm thinking weight
loss. 16 and 8 is really good for weight loss. When we look at all the people who are just
trying to maintain a healthy weight, you naturally put your calories into a shorter window. You
have a much lesser chance of overeating and coming into that huge calorie surplus, which
is going to cause you to gain fat. I mean, 16 and 8 works really well for this. So not
only maintaining a healthy weight, but also just weight loss in general. And then prevention
is the next thing. Let's say that you're a completely healthy individual and you just
want to maintain good health because you see how the statistics are starting to show up
with all these people are getting a heart disease and cancer at fairly young ages and
you want to prevent that, 16 and 8 on a regular is awesome. Anti-aging benefits. I mean the
studies show time after time that if we eat a little bit less, if we aren't grazing all
day, we're putting our meals into a shorter window, it essentially has a huge anti-aging
benefit to us. And so, there's a huge amount of research around this. And then just maintenance,
which we'll talk about more with like some of these conditions and how it circles back
to this and how you just kind of balance between some of these fasts in just a moment, but
just maintaining that healthy lifestyle. You know, when we talk about longevity and having
just an abundance of life and not only having a good quantity of life, but quality of life
fasting is really at the forefront of doing this. It's so seamless to add into you into
your daily lifestyle.
Let's talk about one meal a day because with this one meal a day, it's kind of in a funny
place where it falls into two categories. You get some of the benefit that you'll start
to get with these longer fasts, these three to five day fasts, but you also get the benefit
that you're going to receive from the 16 and 8. So then at this point it's kind of a judgment
call, alright? So, how do I go about navigating this and how do I teach my patients to navigate
one meal a day versus 16 and 8? So, what I like to do is I like to do about two to three
days of 16 and 8 and about two to three days of one meal a day. So, what does that mean?
And you know, okay, well, is it two days or is it three days - which is it you're probably
asking. Well, the truth is, is that in order to make it sustainable, we move it around.
We bounce back and forth a little bit. And the other thing too is I let like whatever
is going to naturally happen, I let it happen. There's some days where it's like, I don't
have time to grab meals. So, one meal a day naturally happens. And then there's other
days where I'm hitting a hard workout, 16 and 8 is the better one for me. Now, what
I find personally is that one meal a day consecutively just puts way too much stress on my body.
You know, maybe it's the exercise, maybe it's the work that I'm doing, maybe it's being
very active. I don't know. But basically, what happens if I'm doing one meal a day,
too many days in a row, my body doesn't like it. I start to not be able to sleep well at
night. It starts to make me not feel well. So, I don't even do One Meal A Day consecutively.
I do One Meal A Day, 16 and 8, One Meal A Day, 16 and 8, then 16 and eight and move
forward from there.
Now here's the thing. My fasting method is not your fasting method. What I want you to
do is look at these two methods right here and go, okay, how can these actually fit me
in sustainably working in my lifestyle? And you don't even have to include One Meal A
Day if you don't want. You can just stick to this. So, I like about two to three days
of this. This is my main go to. I like to throw in some One Meal A Day here and there,
but I don't do it too often because it disrupts my sleep patterns, it causes too much stress
from my body as I mentioned. And so that may be the same for you. Some people can and get
away with doing One Meal A Day seamlessly and it feels pretty good to them. So, it really
just depends on lifestyle and everything in between.
Now let's talk about this three to five-day water fast. Okay. Because as I mentioned,
I like to do these two to three days and then this two to three days, and I also take one
day where I just do a full three meals. I like to do that. I think that, you know, creating
this, what I refer to as metabolic confusion, where you're not just patterning your metabolism
with the same fasts every single day. I think that works really well. I've seen it. My patients
get better results that way and I've seen it in my own life. So, give it a try if you've
never done that. Do a little bit of everything.
Three to five day fast. These are awesome. Now, if you're someone who's suffering from
a condition, the three to five-day water fast are really powerful. Why are they powerful?
Because it's like hitting the reset button. What the research shows is like hitting that
reset button. And if you're facing a condition, it really helps just promote that healing
process in the body. So autoimmune issues. Now, there's a lot of people suffering from
these issues. If we think of all the people who have gastrointestinal issues, all the
people who have problems with thyroids, people who have problems with arthritis and just
all of these autoimmune conditions, they're really spiraling out of control today. And
as your immune system starts to just have a whole bunch of dysfunction, you start to
have sensitivities to all of these foods that you're eating. You start to become very sensitive
to your environment where not only maybe are you reacting to hair products and different
things that you're putting on your body - which you don't want to put those chemicals on your
body anyway, you gotta be careful with that stuff - but you're starting to just interact
or have a negative interaction with almost anything that touches you because your immune
system is just on high alert. Doing this three to five-day water fast just hits that recently
button and it helps balance things out. It works very well. And for me personally, I
find that if I'm not doing these lessons, I say that I just get busy and I forget to
do these fasts, I find that like some of these things start to spiral out of control for
me. It's almost like my body requires it, which is really interesting. And as I age,
I find that I become more sensitive and need this stuff even more.
And so next it’s going to help with inflammation. So if we think back to inflammatory conditions
like heart conditions, cancer, or people who are suffering from arthritis, like I just
mentioned, the three to five day water fast really helps shut down that inflammatory cycle
in the body. It really does a good job at that. As a matter of fact, I have a couple
of different genetic snips that basically show that I am someone who is highly prone
to developing inflammatory problems in my body. So once again, I find that these three
to five-day water fasts are really essential for me cause I feel like I get this buildup
of just negative health over a period of time. And then I do that three to five-day water
fast and all the symptoms that started popping up and some of these weird things, they just
go away and rewind themselves.
Next, it's going to really help with the insulin resistance. If you're someone who has insulin
resistance, sometimes doing these fasts like this are almost never necessary. It's almost
like a necessity in order to start unwinding that negative pattern with the metabolism
and the inflammatory issues within that whole complex there. And so, insulin resistance,
this is highly beneficial for.
Now, I want to say this too. If you have some of these different conditions, it's always
good to work with a doctor to work through reversing these conditions using fasting,
because you may be on medications. There's a lot of different, complicated things that
can come up. And so, working with a doctor is highly beneficial if you have a condition,
but of course the fasting is beneficial too. And let me tell you, if you're working with
a doctor that is not using fasting as a method to help you stay healthy and promote longevity,
then you may want to consider the doctor you're working with because the thing is is that
if you're not utilizing this stuff right here, which isn't based off my opinion, which isn't
based off the opinion of people who are in the holistic realm, it's based off of research.
If they're not using these types of methods, it's like, what are they doing? They're totally
missing the boat on some of this. I mean, this is some of the just bare bones things
that things that you can do on a daily basis to promote health.
Cardiovascular conditions. When, like I said, we talked about inflammatory conditions in
the heart. We're talking about blood pressure issues, cholesterol issues, I mean, you name
it. When we look at fasting, highly, highly beneficial, the research really backs that
up. And by the way, with insulin resistance, if you want to learn more about one of the
best nutrients you can use to help reverse insulin resistance, I'll put a video right
up here. That's very powerful. And I'll also put it in the description below. I want to
mention that because it's important for people who are trying to reverse this issue naturally.
And I do understand that a lot of people who follow this channel have this issue.
Neurodegeneration. Neurodegeneration is also a problem for a lot of people - Parkinson's,
we're looking at Alzheimer's. The research shows that these three to five day fasts,
these longer fasts are highly beneficial for unwinding these patterns, these neurodegenerative
patterns. And so, when we look at fasting in general, like I said, this is something
that is just like low lying fruit as to how you can improve your health. When we look
at this three to five-day, water fast it’s really great for hitting the reset button.
One of the other things too, that these are great for is people who are obese. Obesity
is a major reason you would do this kind of thing.
So, three to five-day water, fast, monthly or bimonthly. I don't like it when people
are doing them too often. I think it's a little bit dangerous. I think you can have some negativity
that comes out of that. You know, too much of a good thing is not a good thing. So, you
do this monthly to bimonthly and then you come back and you've leaned back on these
two fasting methods right here because they're great for prevention of these types of things
and they're great for maintenance. And then that's how you can kind of navigate fasting.
Let me know in the comments section, what type of fasting you're doing and what kind
of schedule you use. Because as I mentioned, it is the right schedule for you. It's not
the right schedule for me. Some people may never come out of 16 and 8. Some people may
just be right in the One Meal A Day pattern. And then some people may do a three to five-day
water fast maybe every four months, but I explained the patterns that I use personally.
I explained the ones that I use with patients, and I know what works when it comes to this
stuff. So, let me know which ones you're using here and then give this video a thumbs up.
And then lastly, check out this video over here that's going to talk about all the ways
that you can make One Meal A Day super easy.
Here is something that's incredibly important to understand. One Meal A Day is highly beneficial
when it comes to losing weight, but here's one of the key factors. If you're not doing
this right here, then you're wasting your time.