Better Is Better: Fasting For Fat Loss - Part 3 of the Fast-5 interview

This is the last of a three part series covering my interview of Bert Herring, author of the Fast-5 Diet. The book outlines Bert's particular take on using fasting specifically for fat loss. But there are other nuggets and insights in our conversation that are extremely interesting. You can download the complete audio file on the first of this series of Fast-5 interviews with Bert Herring.

Enjoy!

Adam: You touched on hormones here, and that's a good segue into my next question, which is, just because everyone is looking for fat loss, usually you hear about the fat loss benefits or the fat loss aspect to intermittent fasting but, more and more there is a lot of evidence coming out that there are significant health benefits to fasting.

Can you discuss any of those benefits and how we get them from fasting?

Bert: Well, the benefits that are typically described, I think you are referring to the ones that are seen in animal studies. Since the 1930's and 1940's, those animal studies in all levels of animals have indicated longer life span and healthier life span for animals that have a reduced calorie intake.

But, the research gets confusing because if you limit an animal's food supply and then supply it daily or every other day, it tends to eat it all in one sitting. So, you get a combination of both the calorie restriction and a longer fasting period.

It can be very difficult to tease out one from the other in these studies, unless the study has taken that into account and either portions the calories into multiple servings for the animal to avoid a long interval without any food, so a fasting interval. So, the data is strongly for calorie restriction and/or intermittent fasting as the way it is.

Adam: It's hard to differentiate.

Bert: Yeah, the research nowadays is starting to differentiate that, but until recently it would seem that as much as an eight percent decrease in calorie intake could have some longevity benefit, but the scientists, when they observed the animals, would notice that they would eat this portion, the restricted portion, all at once.

So, they also would have that long fasting interval. So, what causes what is still being teased out? But they both seem to have benefits. Some people think you can't get one without the other.

In my experience with the Fast five form, which I'm actually a little bit reluctant to call intermittent fasting, because some people would say that intermittent fasting is a longer interval, but there's no definition for intermittent fasting.

I would also call it a widened interval schedule of eating. That would encompass anything that's longer than our typical three meals a day routine. The benefits in animals are clear, but because humans live so long, there aren't any lifetime studies done on humans. And probably on monkeys.

Adam: What happens in the body to the way we use insulin and lepton when we fast? Is there any effect on insulin resistance or lepton resistance, things like that when we're fasting, or sensitivity?

Bert: The typical response is an increased sensitivity to insulin. This just means there's less of it. There's some implication that insulin is associated with aging, so that's a good thing, the less insulin you have around.

It's not a direct connection to aging, but it seems to be that it heads you in the right direction towards a longer, healthier life. That's a suggestion. I don't want to say that's a hard and fast scientific fact.

Adam: Sure. That's very interesting. You also mentioned...

Bert: If I could go back to that for a second...

Adam: Excuse me?

Bert: There is so much, so much is being studied right now about the hormone relationship with fat that just a few years ago, nobody was even looking at fat as the complex organ that it is. It used to be thought of as a storage silo and nothing more.

And now it has become this very complex organ that, in people who are obese, is by far the largest organ in the body. And so, it turns so large it can become chaotic and sort of get things out of control.

Adam: Yeah. I've even heard people suggesting that it should be labeled as part of the endocrine system.

Bert: Oh, definitely. Yes. It is a major endocrine organ and, I don't know if you happened to see the articles in the paper today about brown fat.

Adam: Yeah, it's all over the place.

Bert: It is and I'm told recently people had generally disregarded even the existence of brown fat in adults. And we're finding out that it's really there and in people that are still active. When I was in medical school, it was just disregarded as gone by the time people were even children, it was only found in infants supposedly.

Adam: Sure.

Bert: So, no, it's still there and it's still active and it probably has a hormonal communication with the brain and white fat and it's all a very, very complex system.

Adam: Right. Yes. Lots to discover there. You talked in the book about ATL, which I had not really run across before, and probably a lot of people haven't heard of. Could you just talk briefly about that?

Bert: Well, it's fat-digesting enzyme that's in the fat cell.

So, digestive fat, it gets activated and my thought, that I was talking about in the book, was that it may take some induction where repeated usage of this enzyme to establish the levels that are needed to produce the amount of ketones and release the fat as fuel as one needs to become comfortable with the longer interval between eating.

That's just one possible explanation of why it takes a few days to get used to a regimen like Fast-5. But whether that's the key, I can't really say, it's just one of the possibilities.

Adam: Right. So, basically, until you can ramp up your ATL, you're not really seeing enough ketones to fuel the system. Is that correct?

Bert: That's my thought, yes.

Adam: OK.

Bert: Most people who start Fast-5 have the first few days go pretty easily and then they get to a bumpy spot on the third or fourth day and then, after that, it's smooth sailing.

So there's something that's changing during that time and, until more research is done, we won't know exactly what it is. But, it could be that ramping up with the enzyme use.

Adam: OK. That's really interesting. Just, I forgot to ask this earlier, you suggest a five o'clock PM until 10 PM eating window. Is that just solely based on convenience that's what seems to have worked best for people as far as social eating and things like that? Or is there another significance to that?

Bert: Well, when I started out to doing Fast-5, when I was doing sort of accidentally, that's the schedule that I wound up with.

But, also, when I was writing the book, the book is for - it's intention - it's intended to make it the most accessible form of intermittent fasting that I can manage to offer somebody to make it as easy to pick up as possible.

For just the ordinary person, not necessarily a fitness-oriented person, but just somebody who's trying to change their life and get rid of fat. And so, I wanted it to be as compatible with an everyday, ordinary, typical Western world kind of lifestyle as I could.

And so, much of our eating is social. I wanted to allow for that in that most of that social eating is in the evening and I know a lot of people like to eat or snack when they're watching TV. And so, I didn't want to say that this was just, you know, you can only eat for one hour and that would make it more difficult, more socially problematic to manage.

And so, since the 19 hours seem to be enough, I didn't have any reason to make it any more austere than that because that's good enough. And that's what I wanted to put out there for people to try.

Adam: Good. And so, if people's schedules worked better with four until nine or three until eight or whatever, that's fine, that's a personal choice?

Bert: Right.

Adam: OK.

Bert: I pointed out in the book somewhere, I believe, that it's the 19 hours that matter. It needs to be about that long. For some people, a little less is OK; for some people a little more is what it takes.

Adam: OK.

Bert: And then, so once people get into it, I encourage them not to go by what's in the book, but go by what works for them. And that's something I call the study of one and everybody should do a study of themselves and see how to best integrate such a plan.

Because, what matters isn't what's in the science books or the journals or what the studies say, it's what works for a given individual.

Adam: Sure.

Bert: And if eating pancakes at noon works for somebody, I'm not going to argue with that, it works for them. And in our life and culture, just staying on a normal, a perfect weight for height it's the challenge.

And so, I don't make rules about what particular people do. I encourage them to experiment and try to fit this into their lives in some way that just works for them.

Adam: Great. OK. Have there been any significant breakthroughs in what we know about fasting since the book came out? Since Fast-5 came out?

Bert: I wouldn't say there have been any breakthroughs, there certainly has been a whole lot more interest and I think that's good.

As you probably know, that things keep seeming to change for several weeks and probably months after this kind of a diet change, and so I would like to see studies done that look at the changes over those several months. But so far, the longest studies have been six to eight weeks.

Adam: OK.

Bert: And I don't think that's quite long enough for all the changes to settle down.

Adam: OK. Yeah, that would be interesting to see. Now where can people go, I'm going to put a link on my blog to find Fast-5, but is there anywhere people can go other than that to find you and your book and get more information about Fast-5?

Bert: Well, it's on the website. There's a free, downloadable version on the website and they can get it from Amazon.

Adam: OK So, it's - what's your website?

Bert: It's Fast5.com, FAST, hyphen, numeral 5, and then .com.

Adam: OK, great.

Bert: And the book has been translated by volunteers into French and Thai.

Adam: Oh, OK. Great. That's good to know as well.

Well, thank you so much, Bert, for taking the time to talk to me and to people that read my blog. I wish you the best of success in spreading your message. I think it's a positive one and I hope people enjoyed listening to you talk about this. Thank you very much, Bert.

Bert: Well, I appreciate your interest. Thank you.

Adam: Alright, thank you.
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