welcome back to the healthy bit my name is henry and this is where we talk practical and everyday
ways to stack healthy habits that you can change your life and try to do things step by step from
cooking to also exercise and movement and mindset if you enjoy this show please do share it with
your friends, like, leave a comment. It really helps boost the show and gets the listeners up.
So yeah, please do that. And for today's healthy bit, we're going to be talking about my journey
into fasting. This is something that I've started doing and a bit of an experiment on myself. So it'd
be really good for me just to share what I've been doing and then hear your thoughts, Hayley,
as to whether I'm going about it the right way and what's actually happening.
Absolutely. Before we start, we should just say that anyone, if they're thinking about
trying to do fasting or wondering what it is and just not sure if they should be doing it,
just always consult with a medical professional if you're thinking about doing it, especially if
you have any underlying conditions and particularly if you're female or trying to become pregnant or
any fertility issues. So Henry is healthy and able to go through the fasting process. And
So let's dive into how you've been finding it, Henry.
Before we do that, though, what caused you or made you think, right, this is what I want to do?
Where did it start?
Well, good question.
I guess I've always been a bit of someone who's into kind of maybe fads and I like trying stuff, a bit of an experimenter.
So for me, fasting is something that I, you know, the wife and I got off and listened to podcasts together.
So we've been on a car journey and it's, you know, someone, some doctor from America talking about fasting and all these benefits and stuff.
And I've, you know, kind of been tuning in a little bit.
And I'd never really thought about it beyond like, oh, that sounds interesting.
But I'm always hungry.
So why on earth would I want to fast?
And then probably about six months ago or so, decided I think I was just in a bit of a bad space.
But I was probably, you know, picked up some bad habits.
I mean, I work in a bakery.
There's temptations all over the shop.
And I do like a glass of red wine and a beer.
And, you know, maybe was having a bit too much.
so I thought well actually maybe I use a fast as a bit of a kind of a bit of a reset you know
it's a kind of like well it's a hard stop and then I can kind of assess it I started um well
actually the first fast I did was quite a long one I did a 36 hour so I think I'd had a bit too
much crumble on a Sunday night probably um you know had some friends over and had a bit of wine
I was thinking oh this is this is not a great start to the week and um and so I've actually
let's have a bit of a reset. So I'll do 24 hours. And actually, as I got into it, I was like,
I'll just keep going. So I ended up doing, I think I got to two days, Tuesday dinner that I then ate.
So that was, yeah, Sunday night from about five to Tuesday, so 48 hours. And actually,
you know, it was fine. Like I probably the first day was the hardest. And then by the second day,
didn't really feel hungry. I was drinking a lot of water, still drinking a lot of coffee. But
yeah it felt felt okay and and uh and then by the time i finished the fast you know we had a
a nice dinner i think we had like a ramen or you know something along those lines and uh and actually
it felt good and the thing i found for it was that it was a good uh it kind of it was a bit of a
reset and i was kind of like right i'm gonna try and get back into a good swing so stop eating you
know picking up bits of bread or donuts or whatever's lying around the bakery um you know
try and rein in the the alcohol which you know can um you know particularly if you're busy and
you're working hard and it's just, you know, there's a bottle of wine in the fridge, you know,
it's very tempting. And, um, and, uh, so I found it was quite good as a bit of a reset.
So that's why I did initially. And then it became a bit of a thing that I would start doing it every
Monday. I would do like a 24 hour one. So I'd finish, you know, dinner on Sunday, we'd have
like a late lunch and then just not eat. And then I found missing breakfast and then missing lunch
was actually quite easy because I could just power through them at work. You know, I could just,
you know, not look at those things.
Don't go to that part of the bakery
where there's lots of shuncles
and then come home and then cook dinner
and have dinner with the family.
And that seemed kind of quite achieving for me.
So I started doing that.
And then I kind of got a bit more into it.
I was like, oh, this is fun.
So then I started skipping breakfast.
And again, I found that I could wake up,
don't eat breakfast, just, you know, have a coffee
and then wait till lunchtime.
So I guess that's like a little short term.
fast. But then I had a podcast just before Christmas and the lady was saying, I can't
remember her name, I should remember it, but she was saying that it's better to fast at
the end of the day rather than the beginning of the day because of your digestion and actually
it's, you know, every mouthful, I think it was like after five is worth 10 in the morning.
So she was like, if you can do that, try and actually have a good breakfast, have a good
lunch and then not eat dinner. That one I found a lot more challenging. I think possibly
because it doesn't fit into family life so well like you know we like to sit together as a family
and it's maybe a bit weird if it's like why is dad not eating whereas you know and i wouldn't
want to kind of instill like weird eating habits into my you know my teenage daughter of my young
son so actually i found that one a bit more of a struggle so i've only done that a couple of times
and um and yeah but that was difficult okay so that's kind of how i've been doing it and and
And I don't know, like, I mean, I kind of feel fine.
I know that something to do with that maybe it helps like cells regenerate I think she was saying throwing out the trash whatever that means But yeah I found it easier than I thought And actually it helped me to kind of like
kickstart or kind of, you know, like if I am going to make bad habits, actually,
you know, a bit of a reset. But anyway, that's what I've been doing.
Okay. So with my obviously physio hat on, it sounds as if you kind of got into it and thought,
right okay i i can do it so i'm going to do it every monday you said and then so now moving
forward are you planning to um because there's so many different ways of fasting isn't there there's
um there can be like 24 48 hour fast there can be the the 12 12 fast where you eat within 12 hours
then you don't eat anything for 12 hours like intermittent fasting so which when are you going
to try are you going to try and stick to a one particular version because otherwise my concern
for you, Henry, is that your body's not going to know what you're doing to it.
No, fine.
What's your plan?
Well, I think the easiest one is missing breakfast. So that one,
so essentially waiting until 12 o'clock. So rather than having breakfast at 8am when I wake up,
so I've had dinner. We try and eat around about 5, 5.30. We try and eat quite early anyway,
because it's nice to eat with the kids. I think that's a really good kind of social habit and a
a good one for families. Eating together, I think, is really important. And that's why I'll always,
you know, I think you look at things from multiple different angles. And actually, for me,
eating together as a family, super important. Breakfast is very hectic because it's like,
daughter's got to catch the bus, son's got to get to school, my wife's, you know, running around.
So actually, we don't sit down together for breakfast. So it's quite easy for me to miss
breakfast and the kids not be like, oh, why are you not eating? So that's an easy one to miss.
And then I'm at my desk, you know, I've got email, spreadsheets, customer calls, whatever it is.
So powering through to lunchtime is quite easy.
Like it's not that much of a chore.
And then I can just have a good lunch and then have dinner.
So for me, that would be, yeah, like, I guess like an 18 hour fast.
And actually the thing I learned was breakfast.
I'd never really thought about this, but it's break fast.
You're like, oh, so I now have my, I break my fast at lunchtime.
I felt quite smug when someone told me that.
That seemed like a good little bit of trivia.
So that's probably the one that I can do the most consistently.
But then I also do quite like breakfast.
You know, I quite like a bowl of yogurt in the morning or, you know, an egg or porridge or whatever it is.
So I don't know. I mean, yeah.
What would you recommend?
I mean, is it good to do it as a kind of, you know, to be very perspective and be like, well, this is the way I'm always doing it?
Or is it good to kind of throw in different things and shake it up a little bit?
yeah so i i would say your body really likes consistency so whatever whatever plan you kind
of do and and that's that's the hardest bit um in terms of people trying to keep to like something
consistent and actually doing it well um that will achieve better results for your body rather than
sort of skipping around from one like say one fad to another or trying to do something randomly
and i think you have to consider sometimes when you look at some of the research behind fasting
a lot of it's been done in animal studies and so you you have to kind of question okay
that there's some fairly good well quite good research probably in animal studies you know
how good is it in humans and there are these different types of fasting and I think if you're
overweight or you're an animal then I think fasting's probably quite good because obviously
it works for weight loss and they they think there's this metabolic health benefit to it
I think if you're as a human and I think the fact that we need nutrition and vitamins and everything
in I think there's more evidence probably or strongly suggesting that the intermittent fasting
is a better more sustainable way to do it especially if you're healthy and you're able to do that but
also for the benefits if you are overweight so like you say having your meal quite early in the
evening and trying to eat your food within like an eight hour window within the day yeah and then
the rest of the time you're really not snacking having things at night time and it doesn't really
matter how that that time scale works in the sense that if you're somebody who likes to eat
it's not great for your metabolic and your gut health to to kind of eat late and then go to bed
like you should give your stomach and your digestive system a rest before bed that that
has benefits in itself so but if someone says like well i do eat at seven o'clock then you want to try
and get your fasting hours overnight time and maybe delay when you have your breakfast but if
you can the benefits are usually sort of coming in when you can eat earlier in the evening and then
have your breakfast as sort of at that point that eating late i i really feel that now because what
kick-started my last kind of big fast so i did a 48 hour one just before christmas i went and
stayed with my little brother in see i think he lives in stoke newington up in london and um and
there's loads of fantastic uh turkish restaurants they're like turkish barbecue i can't remember the
name but they start these like open charcoal grills and they've got all these wonderful meats
it smells so good and there's smoke billowing out and we'd been to the pub and probably had a couple
of pints of guinness because it was you know christmas christmas time up seeing my brother
and um and anyway we went to this restaurant and it was busy and so we had to wait probably an hour
for a table so we didn't end up eating until maybe nine o'clock and then this you know this enormous
a pile of meat,
loads of rice,
loads of salad,
loads of grilled flatbreads.
It was all very indulgent
and delicious.
And so all of this kind of like
smoky fatty but then a lot of carbs as well because there was a lot of flatbreads And so we ate too much the portions were too big and then went home
So we were probably still eating at like 10, 30 and then went home and kind of a little
bit tipsy, but not by no means drunk.
And I went to sleep and I just, I had like the cramps in my stomach overnight were just
horrendous.
And it was a real kind of like, you know, eating late for me is just killer.
I can't do it anymore.
Like I used to, you know, probably five years ago, that would have been no problem.
But, you know, I'm obviously getting old.
And I think also I'm just so used to eating dinner at like five o'clock, you know.
So it's, yeah, so I do, yeah, that kind of eating late.
Yeah, it's a dangerous one.
And I think the reason why fasting works quite well for a lot of people,
especially I think if their main driver is weight loss,
is the fact it is a form of just calorie restriction.
I think that has, it's an easier way to do calorie restriction
than probably most other diets because you know you're not supposed to eat
and if you can't put it in your mouth, you're not going to be digesting it.
So it is quite a good strategy if you are overweight.
But for someone like yourself, Henry, who's probably a healthy weight,
you're a healthy individual generally,
and those kind of smaller stackable healthy habits
are something that you need to think about longer term because the deficiencies i know when we work
with nutritionists um we're always worried about what you're missing out on if you're do you know
for a full day especially if you're active um and if you're athletic and you want to be doing
exercise then fasting really isn't a good choice for somebody really because they're going to
cause an issue for their musculoskeletal system and they're going to be a calorie deficit and
and that's not good and actually that then you sort of start kind of causing a bit of a stress
and then the cortisol levels on your body could could increase and it's all multiple kind of
impact on on the system so it's just trying to think kind of carefully about you know what what
is it that i want to do what is it that i'm going to get from it is it is it you know can you keep
it up um is it something you want to keep up whereas the food eating in a smaller window i
I think is so technically I've been doing that probably all my life because I tend to always
eat breakfast quite early and then we'll always have tea. We've always had like the dinner tea,
whatever you call it, depending on where you live in the country. We'll always have eaten our last
meal of the day by half five, six o'clock and then I don't ever have supper. So it's not like
I have anything extra, like it's tempting. Sometimes you say, aren't you doing something?
you think well i could just eat something but i i try not to because that importance of giving
the digestive system a rest a rest yeah it is interesting because you and especially like we
kind of mentioned about differences perhaps in females and males you don't really want to be
if you're if you're a female there is a bit of a more of a stress on the system and the
physiological changes and the differences between men and women are quite vast so in ladies it can
even slow down their metabolic rate because okay what the body's like thinking right we better
conserve our energy because the human body is designed for reproduction so it changes in the
sense that if okay if we're thinking about fertility and thinking about trying to get
pregnant or anything else because we've worn that way and that's evolution then that can be
significant in the sense that it can impact on the metabolic system not always in a great way so
So there are some other advantages for certain conditions.
If you've got like polycystic ovaries, it's supposed to be quite good with reducing the insulin sensitivity,
which basically means your body's reaction to glucose and things like that.
But it is quite a complicated system.
And for me personally, I'd like to see more evidence from human studies proving that it is indeed as good as it says.
I mean, there are a couple, but then you have to question how good that evidence actually is.
So even if there is a research study saying it's good in humans, you have to criticise the methodology of it and say, OK, well, how strong is that evidence really?
because if you're particularly, if you're older,
if you're like a geriatric person or somebody who's in the older years,
it's probably not a good idea to fast
because we're always telling older people to try and keep their energy levels up,
to try and keep them active and to keep them a bit more bulky
if they fall over to reduce the risk of falls and fractures.
Yes.
Yeah, I think it depends on the individual, doesn't it?
And why you're doing it and what you're going to do moving forward.
So do you think you'll carry on with the kind of intermittent fasting is kind of what you've described, isn't it, Henry?
Well, I think you nailed it when you said that for your point of view that you've pretty much always done it.
And I think for me, like my discipline is I'm always hungry.
So like, you know, if I'm walking past, you know, and there's the peanut butter jar, it's so tempting just to open up and have a spoon.
And there's a little bit of chocolate or a bit of fruit or I'll have an apple before bed.
But, you know, like my default is just to keep eating because I just, I like food and I like eating.
So I think for me, being a bit intentional of like, oh, no, I'm doing, I'm doing a fast.
I've had my dinner.
I've had, you know, I've had a screen full of yogurt afterwards.
You know, I'm not going to eat until lunchtime.
It easy then to just be like no I not doing that And then I not tempted And so I think for me you know obviously there is the kind of the health benefit of you know obviously you know whether it you lose a little bit of weight or you feel a little bit you know sleep better or you know I don feel
quite so heavy or lethargic. But yeah, I think for me, it's more actually the kind of the routine
and being intentional about something means that I'm not tempted to just have another one. And I
think, you know, for me, it seems to, it seems to work. And actually I have, I have, I don't know
if you can tell, I have lost a little bit of weight.
And particularly over Christmas, like it was easier to navigate
because I, you know, I was probably a little bit pious occasionally
and maybe some of my family members were like,
oh, stop being so, you know, virtuous
and turning down that second bowl of trifle or whatever.
But like, it gave me a bit of a strategy to kind of, you know,
not overindulge too much at Christmas,
which, you know, normally about this time of year,
people are feeling pretty, or I, you know,
I know in the past that, you know, I feel like my kidneys are about to fall out.
And, you know, I've put on a load of weight and feeling fairly miserable about myself.
And so from that point of view, it's been quite positive.
So I think, yeah, that kind of intermittent one and missing breakfast feels to me sustainable.
The one thing I would say is when I do finish, what I try and do is have for lunch,
have like a really good lunch.
So I'll always, so I'm at work.
So quite often I'll, we have a microwave.
so I often make scrambled eggs, maybe have an avocado, a little bit of watercress. I quite like
a tin mackerel I've got into and so that's quite good. So I do a little squeeze of lemon on it,
you know, and the tins are great because I can buy 10 and just keep them at my desk. So,
you know, it's kind of, so I try and have quite a kind of a protein heavy diet when I break that
fast, but with some, you know, with some good fats and some, you know, plenty of greens and
that seems to sustain me and it's kind of, you know, it doesn't, whereas what I don't do is have
three pieces of toast and a cake.
I don't know.
So that seems working.
But when you're breaking a fast,
is there certain types of food usually
or is it always having a protein?
Yeah, making sure that one,
yeah, you have enough protein.
But I think people get a little bit obsessed
about just making it all about protein.
Like protein kind of steals the show at the moment.
And it does come back down to it doesn't have to be really complicated or a fad of one.
You know, it's like our body needs so many different minerals and so many vitamins and so many different food groups.
Why do we focus on one? Like it needs to be balanced.
So you mentioned a really great balance kind of lunch there.
So as long as you're sort of feeling like you're satisfied and you've eaten enough food in the sense that you've got your protein and you've got your dairy
and you've got your vitamins and you've got your minerals
and you've got your watercress
and all these different nutrition coming into it,
then that's great.
And I think the fasting can change people's habits
to make better choices.
And it sounds as if you've made better choices
as a result of the fasting
because you're being more considerate
about what you're putting in.
And I think if you can keep that up,
then whether you call it fasting or not, Henry,
it's still a better lifestyle for you
and you're going to feel better for it
you're going to feel healthier your body's going to thank you for that because it's going to have
a better impact on like you say you're going to feel better you said you've lost a bit of weight
it's going to be better for your you know hormones and your testosterone levels it's
going to be better for your muscles and reducing any kind of visceral fat fat around the organs
and and if you're active and you're not snacking and you're not filling yourself up with um sugary
sort of anything to spike your blood sugars through the day then you're going to keep more
of a consistent energy level and that's what we should all really aim for is eating so that we
don't have these crashes in in in our kind of energy levels and our sugar levels and keeping
consistent so yeah it sounds like it's been a positive change for you henry yeah so far
yeah exactly and yeah it can be it can be really good because it can actually have an impact on
on your kind of hormonal health as as a male i think it's it's more forgiving i think the impact
of fasting on on a male and it does have that insulin impact so that it's less sensitive so
your response to sugar if you do eat it is is better so it doesn't kind of get all out of whack
and so yeah so i think for men it's um it's not a bad idea but i think the i'm still on the fence
It's about the long, prolonged fasting, especially if you're active and you're running your bakery and, you know, you don't want to be deficient and then lose nutrition because it's the impact in decades to come that you'll be like, oh, why did I do that?
Because then you don't want sarcopenia, which is muscle wastage because you've not had enough calories and protein.
Nice. Well, it feels to me like fasting is something that you're kind of seeing on social
media, hearing about it, you know, people are talking about it. And, you know, this is my kind
of little foray into it, but, you know, for that big subject and we can talk about some other things,
you know, on another episode. And also I can give an update to see whether I'm still doing it or,
you know, what else I've learned from it from a kind of personal experience.
absolutely we'll check in with you next time as well Henry and see how you're getting on
brilliant thanks Ailey and uh thanks for listening and remember to yeah share it with your friends
and uh leave us a comment and yeah I hope you enjoyed this episode of the healthy bit
see you next time everyone