Weight loss in the US is a billion-dollar industry. Gin Stephens, followed plenty of weight loss trends over her life. In 2014, Gin Stephens, now a New York Times bestselling author, and retired from her teaching career, found the solution. She calls it a healthy lifestyle with a side benefit of weight loss; Intermittent Fasting (IF). She has been living the intermittent fasting lifestyle since 2014, has lost over 80 lbs and the maintenance has been easier than she ever imagined. She now has four books and two podcasts sharing this journey with others. 

When I first heard Gin it riveted me. I listened to her narration of “Fast, Feast, Repeat” and knew that many of you would want to hear from her as well. 

Personally, one of the best choices I ever made was to let go of dieting, and love the skin I’m in; so the last thing I want to do is to get folks jumping on a diet.

When I hear Gin share, it makes sense that this is a lifestyle, not another diet. The term “fasting” previously worried me folks were unhealthily starving themselves. For myself, it would make me think of a blood sugar roller coaster; rather than getting off that roller coaster. Learning about IF turned my thinking on its head—it’s teaching your body how self-sufficient it is so that it isn’t seeking that next snack and you aren't starving. 

Join us to learn what intermittent fasting and a clean fast is (and why this makes all the difference), how frequent snacking isn’t the solution you’ve been told it might be, some of the health benefits of intermittent fasting; including autophagy, regulating glucose (concerns about Type 2 Diabetes?), and its ability to get at your fat stores. 

Connect with Gin

Website: ginstephens.com

Books: https://www.ginstephens.com/get-the-books.html

Episode Timeline:

[04:45] Your body’s metabolism

[06:40] Autophagy and its benefits 

[11:37] “The Biggest Loser” study analysis

[14:46] Fasting vs. diet

[16:26] The effects of fasting on the body

[18:00] Clean Fast 

[20:37] Cephalic phase insulin response

[25:08] Intermittent fasting and eating window

[27:29] How fasting heals your relationship with food

[32:14] Some benefits of Intermittent Fasting

[34:50] Gin’s self-care

[36:04] Grit Wit – Take Away -flavors triggering the release of insulin

[41:01] How to reach Gin Stephens

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Gin Stephens 0:00

Diets are easy in contemplation, but hard in execution. Meaning, every diet we ever started, we're so excited, it sounds like we're gonna be able to do it, but then when we actually try to do it, it's really hard. Easy in contemplation, hard in execution. Fasting is the complete opposite. It is hard in contemplation, but easy in execution. Like it sounds like, you're going to be restricting yourself for 16 hours a day, you're not eating, oh my lord, I'm going to be hangry I'm going to just waste away to nothing. It's going to be awful. But in reality, you start to feel so much better after your body adapts to the clean fast, and your fat adapted, you're running on your stored fat for fuel, you have great energy, and then in your daily eating window, you get to eat the food that makes you feel your best.

Shawna Rodrigues 0:47

Welcome to The Grit Show. Growth on purpose. I'm your host, Shawna Rodrigues, and I'm happy to be here with you as your guide for all of us growing together as seekers and thrivers.

Shawna Rodrigues 1:03

Gin Stephens 1:59

Shawna Rodrigues 2:54

You are now addicted to podcasting. Just like I am.

Gin Stephens 2:56

Well, I've been there for a while. I was doing three, three podcasts. And I'm like somebody's got to get up. Yeah, so now I'm down to two. Well, one of them comes out twice. So I still have three episodes a week that I'm recording, but I love it. Because, you know, I'm a retired teacher, I love people. And this way I get to connect with people all the time.

Shawna Rodrigues 3:17

That is a perfect plan. I love that. And there are so many things. Again, there's so much to talk about with Gin. And she has numerous books that she will talk more about at the end as well. So you can get to know her better and get to hear them and listening to her books. I listened to one of her books, so you get to actually hear her talk about them. So that's a bonus.

Gin Stephens 3:34

Yeah, I will read them to you.

Shawna Rodrigues 3:35

Yes, she will read them to you. And there's everything from the book because I got to read the or listen to her read, Fast. Feast. Repeat. And then I purchased it because it is so good. And I wanted to definitely have it for reference. And she gives you all of the reference articles in the back, which is a good reason to buy it. So I have those reference articles. But we could talk about everything from mindset, to food quality, to the role of hormones and appetite correction, problems with calories by individuality, health plans, like there's so many things we could talk about. But I really want us to kind of start with the whole point of the fact that really, when you talk about intermittent fasting, it is more of a way of living. It's a health plan with a side effect of potentially losing weight and the fact that this concept about how constantly eating because again, I'm one of the people like everyone else that I've stopped dieting for years now, but have definitely heard that I just need to snack and snack and keep my metabolism up. But there's some problems with that thinking.

Gin Stephens 4:34

Yeah, there are.

Shawna Rodrigues 4:35

And I would love for us to talk about starting with that because I feel like a lot of my listeners and people like, that's what we've heard and if anything that's not helping things. So let's talk about why that's not necessarily a good way to do things.

Gin Stephens 4:44

Well, it's funny, we've all heard that, you know, eating frequently boosts your metabolic rate and it's not a lie, but it's misguided. Let me explain why. It's founded on the fact that when you eat, your body boosts your metabolic rate. But here's the thing, your body boosts your metabolic rate but not so much that it is greater than the amount of the food you just ate. Does that make sense? The math doesn't work out. You know, you're eating to boost your metabolic rate but you're putting in more fuel than your body burns because of that fuel you just put in. You know, if you over eat, we know from the research, overfeeding, they call it in science. Overfeeding boosts metabolic rate. But we also know that overfeeding makes you gain weight. So, the end goal is not, you know, we want to boost our metabolic rate. The goal is for anyone who has excess fat on their body, is you want to tap into that fat, and you want to use it instead of just storing more. So, frequent eating leads us to store more, you know, and I just thought of an analogy, if you think about, if you've ever had a newborn, that around a newborn, they eat around the clock. They are literally eating every two hours, at least mine did. Mine did more than a day. They went to see their mom every two hours. But think about when you're a newborn, they're like, literally, that's the period of their time when they're growing the quickest. Eating frequently is growth promoting. And now that we are adults, we're not trying to grow anymore. So if we eat frequently, while we will still keep growing, unfortunately, we're not growing taller, we grow out. And so you have to know what your goals are. If you want to gain weight quickly, eat frequently. If you want to lose weight, don't eat frequently.

Shawna Rodrigues 6:26

Yes. And that whole concept too. I know that one of the things you talked about is the cleaning your house. That if you constantly have stuff coming in, which comes to the stuff around. Is it called autophagy? Is that how you call it?

Gin Stephens 6:37

Autophagy. You did it. You nailed it.

Shawna Rodrigues 6:39

I nailed it. Let's talk about autophagy, Gin. I love it when you talk autophagy to me.

Gin Stephens 6:45

Autophagy literally means auto-itself, -phagy is like eating. So it's like self eating. Like your body is eating itself, which sounds really scary but it's not. It's not eating the stuff you need because that would be really done. Like, your body is not going to eat your heart, muscle, or, you know, your needed muscles, right? It's going to eat the old junky stuff. So if you're not eating, your body has to look around, it has time to clean up. It's like, Alright, well I got these junky proteins over here that are made to be broken down, like an old junky cell part. And so your body can work on that damage stuff because it happens. All throughout ourselves, we have old junky parts that need to be recycled. And when we take a break from eating, autophagy is upregulated. And so we can deal with those, that old junky parts. And as we get older, autophagy generally down regulates with age. And so, you see that as we get older, our bodies break down, it's harder to repair, healing takes longer. But if we add intermittent fasting, we have more time during the day when we can have that cellular cleaning, that cellular housekeeping, autophagy is upregulated, helps us theoretically stay young longer, I know that my body heals quickly. I'm 53. And you know, I credit that to my body having time every day to do the necessary repair that it needs to do.

Shawna Rodrigues 8:06

Yes, and you do not look 53 at all.

Gin Stephens 8:09

Thank you.

Shawna Rodrigues 8:10

You look fabulous for 53. That's incredible. And so that concept, I think that you mentioned somewhere else was about how like, if you're having a house party all the time, we never have time to clean the house if people are coming in, well, every time.

Gin Stephens 8:22

That's like eating all the time. If you wake up first thing in the morning and eat breakfast like most people do, because we've been told, you know, after reading a book, that like, as soon as the foot hits the floor, you need to be eating within 30 minutes. I mean, that's a lot of pressure right there. What? You're gonna die? No, but you start eating then and then you have snacks, frequent snacks, and you keep going. Your body is constantly at that point, just dealing with what you're putting into it.

Shawna Rodrigues 8:47

Mm hmm.

Gin Stephens 8:48

Also, it traps you in that blood sugar rollercoaster where you're putting in something and then your blood sugar goes up after you eat and then it goes back down. And then your body's like alright, that blood sugar went down since some more fuel in. So you're constantly getting the signal to keep eating because you're hungry, because that fuel is coming and going coming and going. And again, you never need to tap into your stored body fat for fuel. And we want to get ourself into that.

Shawna Rodrigues 9:14

Yeah, you do. Yes. Yes. And I do, I want to, there's so much things to talk about.

Gin Stephens 9:19

The audio book is 14 hours. So, you know that.

Shawna Rodrigues 9:22

I know. We're not gonna get to that. Y'all need to get the audiobook that's all there is to it. Or you need to get the book and certainly to the podcast.

Gin Stephens 9:28

You need the audiobook first and then you do need the paperback so you can go back to find the parts you need later. That's really how I intended the book to be. It's like a resource guide.

Shawna Rodrigues 9:37

Yes, no, definitely. And that's why I was like, Okay, now I'm getting that. Like, as soon as I finish the audiobook, I said, now I'm getting this, so that I have it. So it was very, very valuable that way. So I love the concept too of talking about like the fact that diets don't work. I think that I've been fortunate because I was on that roller coaster where a lot of people are on and my mom was definitely, she was on, every time I turned around growing up, she was on diets. And I think that I hated dieting because my mom was always on diet. But I got stuck on that same roller coaster until I finally heard the study that talked about how that the biggest indicator of weight gain is diets.

Correct. The biggest indication of future weight gain is past diet history. 100% true.

Yes. And I think that's why I said, Forget this, I'm gonna start like appreciating my body as it is, and working on loving myself and where I'm at, and bought my wedding dress for where I'm at. And this is good. Like, that's what finally got me off of that. But there was, instead to be able to feel like there was a way that I could be healthy, and be happy. And with that, like, you know, change. So, exercise, I do not lose out with exercise, but that is actually a thing. And so like, I know, it is a thing.

Yes, my DNA, I had my DNA analyzed. And yeah, it actually said, your DNA indicates you're not a person who is genetically likely to lose weight from exercise. That's the thing.

I heard, so she talks about her DNA in the book. And I think we have the same DNA, like we talked about, like all those things. I was like, Oh, this is me. Like, the car, all of those things. Yeah. So definitely, I connected with all of that. And so we're doing that, like, it's important for people to realize that diets don't work. And there's this whole piece about the Biggest Loser study that I hadn't heard of that study. Can you share more about that? I hadn't heard about that until you talked about it.

Diets work, but they don't work long term, right? They're a short term solution. And it has to do with, you know, metabolic adaptation. And you know, how I talked before about, if you overfeed, your metabolic rate goes up and response to that? Well, if you under feed or over restrict, your metabolic rate goes down in response to that. And so that's the cycle you get. And you know, we can go back to the Biggest Loser study that they did. And they followed these people who had been on The Biggest Loser show. And they, you know, they successfully lost like, I mean, these people lost like massive amounts of weight, because they were over restricting. And they were doing all this working out. And so they really were just putting their body through and they would lose like, I'd be disappointed if I only lost five pounds in a week or something. I mean, that is not a reasonable rate of weight loss. But we watched it every, I remember tuning in every week, everybody wanted to be like these people. And what they found when they went back and followed up years later, the biggest losers who had successfully lost the most weight, and especially the ones who had been able to keep it off better than the others, had the slowest metabolisms of all. Their new metabolic rate was about, I can't remember exactly the number might be 500 calories a day, lower than would be expected for their size, based on, you know, we have, we can make formulas based on here's how big you are, here's how many calories it should take to maintain that body size. Their resting metabolic rates were like 500 calories lower than they should have been. And it's because their body downregulated. And so all the ones who were fighting tooth and nail and managing to keep it off the best had the slowest metabolic rates of all, so they literally had to eat less. So if they had never gained the weight, lost the weight and had been at this weight. Let's say they wait, I'm just going to make up a number 170. Let's say someone weighed 170. They'd never gone up or down. They just had always been 170. Someone who had been through the Biggest Loser process gained all the weight, lost all the weight. Now there are at 170. They can eat 500 calories a day less than that another 170 pound person who had never been through that.

That is so significant.

Yeah, very significant. And I'm just throwing these numbers out. Those are not the actual numbers. I just made those up. But I'm just, for illustrative purposes. But the ones who had higher metabolic rates were the ones who were not going to keeping the weight off because they just ate more. So, over restriction slows our metabolic rates and overfeeding speeds up our metabolic rates. So, the solution, I remember when that first came out, we were all like, well, it's hopeless then. Because if you're going to lose the weight, that's really had the news was all like, that's how they told the story back then, well, you can lose the weight, but you're not going to keep it off because you've ruined your metabolism. Why even try and I remember that's really how a lot of us felt. But the beauty is fasting is different.

Yes, and that's a beautiful thing. And I think that it helps us level of, of understanding because I remember friends who've lost weight and you see them eating carrots and you hear people saying like, they must eat other things because eating carrots, they should be losing more weight. No, they're not losing more weight eating just carrots because the fact that it takes the can't even eat the carrots. It's so much less.

Right? Because their metabolic rate isn't just

that they had to eat so much less to maintain their weight than you to maintain your weight because of what that does. So the understanding of others is just like so much more deep than just the calories in, calories out, the people have tried to program into us for so long. There's so much more complicated than that. And we can't make it simple.

Can I take a minute to explain why fasting is different cuz I think that's important.

Yeah, we need, that's what we spend time on. This is why this is so important. Yes.

Well, fasting is different even if you're eating the same exact amount and you're, I'm a big fan of not counting calories and I have a whole section about that, and fast VGP, which you heard. But let's say for example, someone had the same amount of calories, and they ate, it spread throughout the day versus eating it in a shorter period of time in an eating window. Your body is going to be responding very, very differently depending on how those calories are coming in. Like, if you're someone who's eating throughout the day, let's say you're following a 1200 calorie a day diet, because that's what your doctor said to do. 1200 calories a day, that's the number I always tried to do back in my calorie counting diet days, and you're spreading out those little amounts of food all day long. Well, 1200 calories a day is not very much, it's not going to fuel your body well. And so the goal is, you're going to make up the rest of that from your fat stores, right? That's the goal of diet, except now you're eating just a little bit for breakfast, and a little bitty snack, and maybe a little 100 calorie snack pack, no little tiny diet lunch. And it's not enough fuel for your body. But because you're eating frequently, your insulin is high, we can talk more about that in a few minutes. And why that's important. You're keeping your insulin high, because food is coming in. And your body is not really tapping into your fat stores very well. You are not well fueled during the day, you're not putting enough fuel in, and your body is not able to tap into your fat stores very well, because you're eating so frequently. And you're not well fueled. You start to feel hangry, it gets harder and harder as time goes on. And then eventually, you started having the urge to binge, which we've all done on those low calorie diets. And then you like quit, and now your metabolism, and if you stayed on it for a long time, is slower than it was when you started, so you gained the weight faster than you lost it. And now you're heavier than you were before. But fasting is different. Because after your body adapts to fasting and the clean fats, which we can talk about in a few minutes. After you're adapted, now you're fasting, you're not bringing in the food, you're fast and clean, your insulin levels go down. Insulin is a storage hormone. And when insulin goes down, your body is able to get to your fat stores efficiently. So now during your fast, all of a sudden, your body can get to your fat stores. And so you're fueling yourself from your fat stores. So you feel really good. And then let's say you have I don't know, a five hour eating window, whatever you end up with, let's say you're going to eat those same 1200 calories, then. I mean, that's still not enough fuel for a whole day's worth of work, right? 1200 calories is not enough to fuel an adult body. But your body was also fueled by the fat calories that you as excessed from your own body. So your body is well fueled, as opposed to when you spread those 1200 calories out over the whole day and your body was not well fueled. The difference is you're fueling yourself from within from the fat you already have.

Mm hmm. And that makes a big difference.

And then your body, it doesn't need to down regulate, because your body's like there's plenty of fuel here. No problem.

And that's also when it comes into the whole concept of the clean fast. It becomes so important when you're doing this. And that's something that I never even thought about, about what this insulin, the play of insulin and why fasting clean and we're talking about that not the eating part, this is all about the fasting part. Can you talk more about why it's important to do that and the whole role of insulin, and why it's important to do it so that it can actually access your fat stores and make this big impact?

You know, probably most of your listeners like me, we just think of insulin as like, oh, you know, my dad's a type two diabetic. Yes, to inject insulin, right?

Yeah.

You just think of insulin as something with diabetes. Or if you have type one diabetes, your body doesn't make insulin, you have to inject it to keep your blood sugar down. What we don't understand is that insulin is like I said a minute ago, a storage hormone. It's also the big fancy science word is anti lipolytic. And anti means against, lipo is fat, lipolytic burning. So it's anti fat burning. If you have high levels of insulin circulating throughout your body, your body is not able to get to your fat stores very well. And they're just like, basically locked away. And that's when you start to get hangry because you've got all this fat on your body, but your body can't get to it because your insulin levels are so high. If that's not the natural state of how our bodies work. If we are in starvation, like in the past, like a famine, there's no food, people can't eat because there's nothing literally to eat. Like I'm talking about hundreds of years ago, our bodies have to be able to tap into our fat stores so we don't die. But in our modern world with diet sodas and all the things that we have you they might be zero calories, but they cause our bodies to release insulin in response to the sweet taste, we're keeping our insulin high, high, high, plus all the snacking that we're doing. And so we can't get to our fat stores because our insulin is high. I know everyone's heard of insulin resistance and all the metabolic problems that people are having now but the root of them is chronic high levels of insulin based on the signals that we're sending with, with something always coming in. So one thing we really want to do, as I've said is keep our insulin low, so we can tap into our fat stores for fuel. And we do that by not introducing any flavors into our mouth, that make our brains think that food is coming in.

Which is such a wild concept. Because again, like when you think of fasting like that, like blew my mind, like the first time I heard you speak was wait a minute, what? Like, when we drink, we just don't eat. But it's about flavors, which is like, right, what makes it the claim fast, which is a whole different concept, right.

We have something called the cephalic phase insulin response. And that's in our brain. And whenever we taste something, it sends messages to our brain that something's coming in. And so if you taste something sweet, your brain says, I know what that is. That is some sort of sugar, it's glucose. It's something, it might be, and think about how we developed as humans, it was honey or fruit or whatever. And we taste that, we know it's coming in. And you're going to need insulin to manage that hit of sugar or honey, or whatever it is. So your body goes ahead and pumps out some insulin in response to what it knows is coming in. But now imagine that you're actually just drinking a Diet Coke. Your brain doesn't know that that's zero calories, your brain just taste the sweetness. And they actually did some fascinating studies with rats, where they severed the nerve that sent signals to the brain so the rat could no longer taste the sweetness, no more insulin response. It's the taste that matters.

Yes.

So we don't want to taste anything that's sweet. All those water enhancers, everything, you know, the flavor of this and flavor of that. If your body thinks a sweet treat is coming in, it is keeping your insulin high. And you know, I think about that when I go to Costco now. And I'm in the beverage department, I mean, there is part of the obesity epidemic right there. And even though it has zero calories, it is not doing our bodies any favors metabolically, because it's keeping our insulin levels constantly escalated, which is definitely not what we want.

Yes. And that's such this new way of thinking. And so if you are going to drink beverages while you're on a clean fast, which is important for this to actually work and for things to actually access your fat stores, that you actually need to be having things that have a bitter taste. And so it needs to be a tea that's a black tea or green tea or coffee.

Green tea or coffee, black coffee. Yes.

Yeah, anything else? And it was just such a different way of thinkin and I'm like, wait a minute, what about my lemon sparkling water? Just lemon in my water. What? Can't I have one?

No. I mean, I actually felt that recently, it was a couple months ago, it was time to open my window. It was while we were moving. And I was at a restaurant. And I ordered my dinner. And I hadn't had anything to eat yet. And I'm like, I'll just have water with lime. I'll drink that. And so the server brought my water with lime. And I started drinking that, but I hadn't had anything to eat yet. And so I actually felt my blood sugar crash and I was suddenly starving. Like, I was like, I've got to eat right this minute or I'm going to die. And now that I know what happens, obviously my body said, oh, here it comes. You know, the citrusy deliciousness, pumped out some insulin, lowered my blood sugar, crashed it, I actually felt it.

Yes. And that's part of the part of what that is, is to make it easier to fast, if that makes sense. For folks that like, the fact that you're having the lemon with your water, that you're having the diet drinks, that you're having all of these other things actually makes it harder to fast.

It does.

Because it makes you hungry, and it makes you want the food because your body's like, oh no, there's supposed to be calories with that. It can be the colors that go with that.

Yeah. And now your blood sugar could crash and you're suddenly starving. And it's just keeping you from getting into your fat stores. And if you're fasting, you want to get the benefits of the fast. Otherwise, it's going to be like the effect of a low calorie diet, right? If you're not fasting clean, you're not able to tap into your fat stores effectively. And your metabolism is going to pay the price of that. So

yes. And so there's two things I want us to like touch on next. One, I want to talk a little bit about why I love listening to you talk about all of this and kind of your background that connects to all of this. And the other thing is to kind of define why intermittent fasting if folks aren't familiar with it, because I don't think a lot of my listeners are, that is not scary fasting. Because again, like, 5, 10 years ago, I had friends that didn't eat for a week, and that was just crazy.

That's not recommended. Don't do that.

And it was like, I'm never doing that. It's crazy. Don't do that. Don't do that. But intermittent fasting, like when you learn about these numbers, but these numbers actually, they can be like 12 hours of not eating. So, sometimes just not snacking at night and eat it first thing in the morning like, you don't

exactly,

it should be, really just getting healthier and letting your body clean out a little bit. So, let's talk with this numbers. And then let's talk about your background just to touch. So talk about the numbers a little bit and what intermittent fasting means. And we probably don't have time to get into like the deeper stuff in the book that talks about date.

Right. There's a lot of different ways to do it. So you really just, we have something in our community called tweak it till it's easy. And there's a chapter called that in the book. And there's so many ways you can structure your intermittent fasting lifestyle. And the way that you start on day one is not the way that you're going to be doing it on day 50, or day 500, or whatever. So basically, most people who did intermittent fasting have what we call a daily eating window, and you don't start off with what you're going to end up with, because you have to build up to it, it's kind of like, couch to 5k, you don't just get off the couch and run a 5k, you have to build up for it. And that's the same thing with fasting, you have to build up your fasting muscle, you might start off with, for example, 16-8, that would mean for 16 hours a day you're not eating, and you eat all of your food in an eight hour period. And that's just as simple as skipping breakfast and starting at lunch. That's not scary. So many people told me that's how they naturally would have been or used to be before society told them, they had to eat breakfast. So they're like, are you telling me I do not have to force myself to eat first thing in the morning, hallelujah. And then from day one, that's easy for them to do, because that's how their bodies naturally wanted to be. So I ended up most days, my eating window is probably an average of around five hours at this point. Sometimes it might be six or eight. Sometimes it might be three, it just depends on my schedule for the day. But I think most of the time, it's probably around five hours a day. And it sounds really like harsh and restrictive and scary. And there's a saying that I love I'm not sure who invented this saying, or who said it first. But diets, were that we're so used to, diets are easy in contemplation, but hard in execution. Meaning every diet we ever started, we're so excited, it sounds like we're gonna be able to do it. But then when we actually tried to do it, it's really hard. Easy in contemplation, hard in execution. Fasting is the complete opposite. It is hard in contemplation, but easy in execution. Like it sounds like, you're going to be restricting yourself for 16 hours a day, you're not eating, oh my lord, I'm going to be hangry, I'm going to just waste away to nothing, it's going to be awful. But in reality, you start to feel so much better after your body adapts to the clean fast, and you're fat adapted, you're running on your stored fat for fuel, you have great energy. And then in your daily eating window, you get to eat the food that makes you feel your best. You know, my book is, Fast, Feast, Repeat, we're feasting, where we're enjoying our eating window, and we're nourishing our bodies well, and we feel amazing, and it's not restrictive at all. And that's the thing that we hear over and over from people. There was somebody in my community today, I think she's on day 100. And she was reflecting on day 100. And she talked about how much food freedom she's feeling, and how she thinks of the fast. I think she used the words, a sacred time, you know, for her body to do what it needs to do. And then she nourishes her body well during the feast, and she's in the stage where she is trying to heal her relationship with food. And so many of us need to go through that phase where you know, you've been like guilty because you ate a bite of a doughnut or something. And then you get to the point where fasting heals your relationship with food so that you're able to look at that doughnut and eat it without any guilt. And then eventually, maybe you look at that doughnut, and you're like, I don't even like doughnuts. And so now it empowers you to connect with your body and realize, what do you really want to eat? Maybe it's the brussel sprouts, not a doughnut. And the first time that you realize you would rather have brussel sprouts than doughnuts you're like, who am I? But fasting really allows us to connect with ourselves and lose that diet brain we call it that we built up for all these decades.

Yes, yes. And we just had an episode here on The Grit Show of somebody talking about intuitive eating. And I feel like these two things actually go so well together and there are people I need to apologize for that didn't want to eat breakfast and I'm like, You need to eat breakfast. It is okay to not eat breakfast. It is okay to not miss meals. But our society is sad, like no small snacks, put food in somebody's mouth, and then they're hangry. Like, instead of us finding our ways to intuitively find what our body needs. And yeah, fasting isn't a bad thing. We just need to find a way to do it right. So our bodies

that's the whole, tweak it till it's easy chat. Your body knows, what your body needs. If you're over restricting, your body will tell you. That's the thing. Promoting you starving yourself, you might just think that's what it sounds like until you actually live it. They're like, Oh, this is less like starving myself than anything I did before. And just to speak to intuitive eating, I tried so hard before I did intermittent fasting. I tried so hard. I read all Intuitive Eating books. And you're supposed to ask yourself, am I hungry? Unfortunately, the answer was always yes. And I got up to 210 pounds following the principles of intuitive eating. And that is what got me to 210 pounds because I was so disconnected from my hunger and satiety signals. And I did that for years and never reconnected but intermittent and fasting has reconnected me with my hunger and satiety signals. I talked about that in the appetite correction chapter of Fast, Feast, Repeat and the science of when that happens. But I am now what I would call myself to be an intuitive eater within my structure of my daily eating window. And I don't like make myself wait, because I'm struggling out. No, this is the time of the day when I feel best when I eat later in the day. That is how I feel the best. I really wish the intuitive eating community would understand how intermittent fasting can work together with them.

Yeah, that they can go together.

They're not quite there yet. I think that, you know, it seems like they're opposite. But they're not.

Yeah, that they can be joined together. And that's what I want. Yes, that we're definitely a toolbox, and these are good tools for you to have in your toolbox. So I want them to say that.

I'm an intuitive eater now within the paradigm of my eating window. Because if I got up in the morning and started eating at 7am, or something, I would feel terrible. And my body intuitively now knows not to do that, right?

Yes, exactly. So I love that you are not a doctor. And we don't say that you're a doctor. And these are like medical recommendations or anything like that. But I love your perspective because you are to me, very academically focused, you have a background in teaching children. And now you're an adult educator, and you've taken courses in health coaching type stuff. But your perspective is great, because you look at all of the science and do a great job and you listen to her book or read her book about giving it to you in a way that we can make our decisions. She offers us the studies in a way that's very relatable and very easy to connect to. And you need to make the decisions for yourself, of what you're going to do. But you do a great way presenting information so that people can consume the information, understand, you can get the opposite somewhere else if you look.

Oh, definitely.

But I love that your background that you have this a way that you connect with people. It's your life too. You've lived this, you look for this, and you found this. And that's what you're sharing this right thing that's worked well for you and found that it's worked well for millions, probably at this point of other people.

Well, yeah, a lot of people but you know, I'm a teacher that's I'm trained to redeliver content to people that is my gift. And so it's just a different kind of content. And, you know, it's very much started with me just telling my story. And my very first self published book, Delay, Don't Deny, it was after I lost 80 pounds. And by the time I wrote that book, I had kept it off, it was over a year at that point. But now it's been, this is my ninth holiday season that I'm going through as an intermittent faster, and I've maintained my weight since I lost it. So from 2014 until today, I've never had a period of time where my clothes no longer fit me because I've gained weight back, right? You know, I've had seasons where my honesty pants got a little tight and that I needed to tighten up my eating window. But it's no big deal. Intermittent fasting has given me the tools to know that I can keep my weight at a healthy range for the rest of my life. And I know also that I'm going to age well. And that is my goal, you know, I'm 53 now, I want to be 73, and still, you know, able to swim in the ocean and walk on the beach and climb up three flights of stairs and do what I want to do. Hopefully, I'll be getting down on the floor with some grandchildren at one point. And, you know, and living a life as someone who is strong and healthy. And I know, you know, just based on like my waist measurement, I know my waist measurement, you know, our waist to height ratio or waist to hip ratio, they're very good indicators of our metabolic health. And, you know, my waist size is very healthy. And I know that that is an indication that things are really good on the inside as well. And that really inspires me moving forward, being inspired by how I want to be in 20 years, 30 years, 40 years.

Yes. And I think that's the thing with intermittent fasting is the health benefits we've talked about, like so the diet, there's more in her book to about that around diabetes. And

oh, did you see the study that came and was in the news yesterday? They did a study and they, it was in a medical journal. I haven't read the study yet. I just had seen several articles people are talking about it, reversed type two diabetes.

Really?

Yeah, it was like a study that actually showed it. So that's really exciting. Intermittent fasting reversed type two diabetes in the participants in this study, which is so exciting, which it makes total sense. Now you understand why? Because they're fasting and their insulin goes down. And now their body is no longer having to over produce insulin. And so it makes sense when you look at the mechanism of action.

Yes. And

just you would predict is going tho happen.

Yes, exactly what you predicted from what you've already shared in your book. And just the fact that talking about with the patients that did intermittent fasting without having to have surgery to take away excess skin because of the way that the autophagy works. There are so many health benefits that we can't even have time to get into them all. Like you guys, you need to see the book. It's very, very exciting and very interesting all the information based on this, but I know that we are getting short on time. So I want us to get to our self care piece we do each episode. We have our guests share with our audience, what they do for self care because it's a big focus on here on The Grit Show. So what do you do for self care, Gin?

Well, I am a very early morning riser. So I like to get up and I'm the only person up in the house and I make myself some coffee, black coffee. And I love to go sit, we live at the ocean now. So I love to when it's not too cold, and even if it is a little cold, I like to go sit on my back porch, which overlooks the ocean, bundled up, watching the sunrise with my black coffee in the morning. And you know, you hear the sound of the ocean and my cat comes and gets in my lap. And we're out there and watching that sunrise. And that time is just very precious to me.

Oh, I love that. That's beautiful. And we also for each of our guests as a thank you for being here, we actually have a series of coloring books on The Grit Show. We have one that's the Vintage Mermaid and Magnificent Ocean and one that's You've Got This, which is quotes. So you get to choose which one you want. And we send you a copy of a coloring book. Which one would you like?

Oh I feel like I have to pick the ocean, right?

Well, you know, after what you said, I kind of was thinking you might. So yeah. So we will get your address, and we will send you a copy of that as a thank you for being here today. And we also always have something we send for our listeners something that they can kind of apply and take away with them. And I wonder if this thinking around, you know what insulin is doing for our bodies in the sugary drinks and that type of thing. If that's something to kind of take away or what your thoughts are something they can take away and start applying today that comes from what you've read in the studies that they can be helpful for them.

Honestly, we don't have a study like this, but I think we should. But based on what we know, I think that if every person, man, woman and child in the world, instead just switched their beverages. That's all they change. If all people drank in the world were plain water, or plain sparkling water, black coffee, plain tea if that's all we drank, I think we would see an amazing difference in the health of the world.

Yes.

I really think the rise of the obesity epidemic, I mean, there's so many things that you could link it to. But like I can remember before we had Starbucks when people were not always carrying around a latte. I call that a hot milkshake. And people are like constantly, when I was a teacher, I remember seeing people in the hall of that school from all day long, carrying around their hot milkshake and sipping on it all the time. So we're basically keeping ourselves in that constant state of something sweet coming in our mouth all the time. And when we're not drinking something, or chewing gum, or popping breath mints. And so if we just let our bodies rest from constant flavor coming in, I think it would be astonishing what we would see. And you know, the diet sodas aren't doing you any favors. It's not just the calories that are the problem. It's artificial sweeteners are maybe causing even more confusion because no calories actually come in and now your body is even more dysregulated.

Yeah, and I think not realizing that part of our, that hangry rollercoaster that we're on and being hungry all the time and wanting stuff that that's actually part of that cycle. I never would have thought of that because I do always I reach for drinks when not reaching for food as a substitute when I'm not doing that food and I feel like it's adding to my roller coaster. And the diet drinks because a lot of friends, I don't drink diet drinks beacuse I don't like the aspartame, but I drink sodas instead. Or I'm drinking the sparkling waters or I'm drinking the other thing right always looking for something to drink or yes a flavor.

But if you see what I've got. I've got that topo chico with no flavor. It's just sparkling water. And it's very refreshing. And in the glass bottle. It's so bubbly.

So bubbly and I love it. I love it. Yeah, we're looking, we grabbed club soda the other day when were out there, and it was funny, we're like, which one is it? Tonic water or club soda?

Don't drink tonic water.

Don't drink tonic water. Well, even the gum and dentists tell you how the gums and the mints and all those things that you don't think that you're doing. And it's actually hard to start thinking about not doing that. So we've just start because again, we just listen to the book, we're just starting to like change our thinking around these things. And it's a lot to change your mind around that and start looking at how much you're doing that and noticing how much you're adding in it and it's a lot.

It really is a lot.

You're actually turning on insulin every time you're putting those things in your mouth.

And people, the black coffee, I'm just gonna say for vitalist and who's like, well I could do it cause if I can't drink coffee black, can I just put a little cream in there? No, you cannot and I don't care how many YouTube videos you find that tell you you can but they're wrong.

Yes, maybe they're creative that they can get like, so we got some sweetener at like some door that was like the MCT oils. I didn't even know what the point of that was until I read your book was talking about the MCT oils being like a friendly option like everyone wants to seek and that's where they make the money which is what, that's one of the other bonuses is there's no money to be made. It's free. It's free.

No this oil stuff in your coffee again, it's, do you want your body to burn oil that you put in your coffee cup or do you want it to burn the fat on your body? I mean it's really a no brainer. And cream in your coffee might be delicious but cream is nature's perfect food for building a baby cow. All dairy, all mammals feed their babies dairy, but it's definitely not fasting.

Yes. It's not, it's not. You can have it during your window and then finding the tea are complicated because I was gonna be like the first time I heard you speak I wanted to ask you like so what about my peppermint tea? But then when I heard the book, I can't have my peppermint tea.

You can in your eating window if you love it.

Yes.

Our favorite, like I talked about in the book is EMTEA.

Yeah.

E-M-T-E-A. That sounds crazy. But just a mug of plain hot water might sound like a mug of sadness but it's really like a hug and a mug. You just want that ritual of having something hot and soothing. And hot water and a mug is very soothing.

Yes. And at restaurants is actually what I prefer. I already did that. Sometimes it's warm to hold. We get better at restaurants. And I feel more confident. But can you give me a warm cup of, other words, I'm still in my fiance's cup of coffee or something to hold on to. So yeah, yeah. So we're almost at a time. Tell people where to find you. Where's the best place to find you? Because we have podcasts. We have books, we have. What's the best place to find you, Gin?

Well, if you go to GinStephens.com, everything is linked from there, Gin is G-I-N. Stephens is with a PH. GinStephens.com. I have an intermittent fasting community that you can get to from my website where I love to interact with intermittent fasters from all over the world. I used to be on Facebook, but I left Facebook because it's got a little toxic. You know, how that can be. So our community is a paid community, but it's like 9.99 a month. So it's not any big deal. But you get to interact with me if you're on the community. I have my podcasts anywhere you listen to podcasts, Intermittent Fasting Stories is what I would start with. And you could just start with literally any episode. They're all going to inspire you. And then the Life Lessons podcast if you just want to hear cool stuff.

That is amazing. We will definitely have all that in the show notes. You guys can be sure to be able to find her. Thank you so much for taking time. Everyone, you need to learn more. This is amazing. I'm very excited about it. It's life changing.

Yes.

Thank you so much for being here today, Gin, we appreciate you.

You're welcome.

If you're interested in getting your copy of one of our coloring books, just Google the Color of Grit, or look it up on Amazon. We also have downloadable pages available. You can find more about that on our website, thegritshow.com. Self care is most important. After all, you're the only one of you that this world has got and that means something.