Fast-5 Fat Loss - Part 2 Of The Bert Herring Interview

I’ve been posting interviews lately from various Intermittent Fasting authorities.  There’s the Brad Pilon series (Parts 2 & 3).  Then the Martin Berkhan Leangains interview.  And here you’ll find the second part of the series of posts dedicated to my discussions with Bert Herring about Intermittent Fasting for fat loss and his Fast-5 diet.

But I also wanted to throw in a link that deals more with the day-to-day side of fasting.  Richard Nikoley, of Free The Animal, posted a comment to this Intermittent Fasting post recently, and as a result I was treated to a little tour of his blog.  I thought you would find this link to his blog interesting.  This guy is writing about being in the trenches and doing the business of fasting.  It’s a fun read, take a look.

And without further ado, please enjoy the continuing conversation with Bert Herring, author of Fast-5.  You can download the full audio file from the first post of the Fast-5 interview.

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Adam: Having the eating window completely open and free to eat according to your hunger, do you find most people will come to some kind of balance eventually? Because I would imagine when you start out you end up overeating in the window. Would that be safe to say?

Bert: Some people do and some people don't. One of the reasons that the daily schedule works well for people is that there is a lot of social eating, particularly during the evening. The window allows for that on a relatively routine basis.

People tend to overeat at first, but then they begin to trust their bodies and find that their appetite drops. After either a few days or a week or two of what I call compensatory overeating, that passes and they eat according to appetite and get into a curve where it's comfortable, predictable and very sustainable.

Adam: That makes sense. I wanted to ask you about hunger. I think any one that's tried fasting, will probably be a little bit more familiar with the different types of hunger that exist. You tend to experiment with it a little bit when you're fasting. You discussed certain categories in your book; can you just talk about that a little bit?

Bert: Yes, I refer to two types. One that's called somatic hunger. "Somatic" just means "of the body". The other is limbic hunger. Limbic hunger refers to the limbic system of the brain which is where your instinctive behaviors are.

The reason I make that separation is that there's hunger behavior when a person is driven to eat despite whatever they might feel in the rest of the body. The somatic hunger refers to the sensation of discomfort in the belly.

One of the things I became aware of, that's why I did my study on this, is that many people go through the behavior of eating and are driven to eat, and I had seen myself doing this, even if they had a conscious recognition that they were not particularly hungry.

And certainly a conscious recognition that the fat storage was certainly ample on fuel. So they knew they didn't need the food, they weren't necessarily feeling hunger in their belly, but it was still a compulsion to eat. So that's what I call limbic hunger. The somatic hunger is the crampy, uncomfortable feeling in the belly.

Adam: Interesting. It's driven a lot I would imagine by emotions, boredom and social aspects play a big role in driving those hungers. I liked in the book how you said that just shutting it off completely, just throwing the switch, helps you overcome that urge to eat.

Instead of saying, "Well I can just have a little bit of this and a little bit of that", which turns into a lot of something you didn't mean to eat in the first place.

Bert: That's one of the keys of any fasting regimen success, I believe. It's a lot easier to just not eat than to eat a little bit, because of the instinctive response that we have apparently acquired. When our bodies realize that food is available, it is a drive to eat more than what we need of it, so that we have some stored for later.

Adam: Which was probably very useful a couple of hundred thousand years ago.

Bert: Absolutely, because all we had for a refrigerator was what we could store in our bodies.

Adam: Exactly. Another thing you talk about in the book which has become a bit of a buzzword lately in a lot of circles, is ketones. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about ketones, what they are, what ketosis is. Address some of the people that say ketosis can be dangerous and things like that.

Bert: I think that the people who say that ketosis can be dangerous are confusing it with ketoacidosis which is a condition associated with diabetes which really is dangerous, where the pH of the blood is altered from [garbled]... It a dangerous state, but it doesn't have anything to do with ketosis which is the state of having a normal level of ketones in the blood.

Somebody who eats frequently may have no ketones in the blood, but as soon as fat starts to become the source of fuel then ketones can be found in the blood and they are what the body uses as fuel when it is drawing on fat for that fuel supply. So it is an alternative to glucose that the body can use as fuel. It is the currency of energy.

Adam: That is great. People need to hear that, because there is just a lot of confusion surrounding it. All it is is just an alternate fuel source.

Bert: Correct.

Adam: Great. Would you give us an idea...? Do you use Fast-5 for yourself regularly?

Bert: Yes.

Adam: Do you have any recommendations during those five hours? If you want to be optimal, what kind of things do you recommend eating?

Bert: Well... The same kind of things that someone's mother or grandmother would tell them to eat, lots of fruits and vegetables. The more we can get away from processed food, I think the better off we are.

An approach that avoids contaminants and pollutants would be best, but, in our typical society's way of eating, it is hard to get away from everything. So, I don't approach anything religiously or with absolute rules but the more fresh vegetables, the more fresh fruits, we can have I think the better off we are, with a balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

I don't see any reason to establish very rigid lines with that, because people are different with different preferences. To have any kind of successful eating plan means to have one you can stick with and that means having some stuff in it that you just enjoy, even if it is only once in a while.

I think that is a lot easier to adopt than something that has hard and fixed rules about this and that.

Adam: Sure, that makes sense. My friend Brad talks about obsessive-compulsive eating which is what I think you are alluding to when you have such strict rules that you cannot enjoy something with friends or enjoy a little treat from time to time. That makes a lot of sense.

Bert: I think that just the fact that something is forbidden in some diets may make it somehow more attractive. So, if nothing is forbidden, you have it when you want it and you do not have it other times. It does not have any special lure or attraction about it.

Adam: Sure, it just becomes more reasonable. OK. Good. One thing I wanted to talk about. Some people will report feeling listless or dizzy or fuzzy often during their fast. Often this is more when they first start trying fasting as well.

It seems pretty unlikely that it would be low blood sugar. Most people say, oh, I have got hypoglycemia, or something like that, but if you measure blood sugar, it does not seem to be varying that much. Do you have any theories about what that could be from?

Bert: Well, I think it is a process of adaptation to the alternate fuel supply of ketones, but what exactly people are feeling, I don't know. It may be fluctuating hormone levels, but what you said about the hypoglycemia is absolutely correct.

If people check their blood sugar, it would be very unusual for someone to actually have low blood sugar at that time, but it seems like half the world says that they have hypoglycemia so they can't do it.

It's a very common myth, but a very entrenched one. And, it's one that people frequently refer to when they consider fasting and say; 'Oh, I can't do that.' In fact, if they check their blood sugar periodically, they'll find that it's not a problem.

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Stay tuned for part 3...

Comments

[Greg at Live Fit]

I've tried intermittent fasting, intermittently. It usually starts as hunger pains which fade over a few hours. Then the hunger goes away for quite some time. Haven't done it in a while, but I might give this a shot again soon.

[Adam Steer]

Greg,

Thanks for dropping by. I just checked out your blog. The post on being a perfectionist really rang true. I totally relate to that competitive spirit...

Let me know if you give IF another try. I'd be interested to see how it goes.

Cheers,
Adam

[JLL]

Nice interview. I agree with the hypoglycemia thing; it's just an excuse for many people. The body adapts to a fasting routine very quickly in my experience.

I've been doing intermittent fasting for about 9 months now. Most of it has been 24 hours of fasting followed by 24 hours of eating, but currently I'm experimenting with 16-18 hours of eating followed by an eating window of 6-8 hours.

[Lillea Woodlyns]

I had a lot of light headedness during the final hours of my fasts when I first started doing IF for 24 hrs or more. At first it scared me.

But then I read that this can happen when you're first starting IF and it isn't blood sugar dropping - that you're safe - and right away my fear went away and that alone made a difference in how I handled the state even if bodily it was the same feeling the first few time.

I discovered that when I felt light headed during the final hours of the fast, exercising a bit helped! Just a few body weight kinds of exercises. Now I will sometimes sprint when the fat burning feelings start.

I think that most people who experience light headedness, etc. will stop IFing before they complete at least three 24 hr fasts, which is too bad.

Recently I amazed even myself - I ended up doing a fast that was close to 40 hrs because I didn't feel like eating (strange for me!) and overall was feeling SO good and energetic. I really enjoyed the state I was in when the fat burning was likely the highest. I made myself break the fast, but wow, that was really neat.