i'm human and I've made some gigantic mistakes when it comes to intermittent fasting i've learned a lot over the last decade but even in the last year I feel like I could massively refine how I fast to get more out of it i want all my fans of fasting to drop a quick comment down below for the algorithm it helps these videos tremendously youtube is playing the game where they want comments and engagement so drop a comment on all the videos that you watch from me just drop a comment say hello engage i do read a lot of those so drop a comment and if you haven't already hit that subscribe button for daily videos now the first thing that I've been making a mistake with is I haven't been eating enough eggs on my fasting days i know that sounds kind of cheeky and kind of funny the reality is when you're trying to get as much nutrient density as you possibly can in a short period of time eggs are really going to be quite the answer now here's the problem that I would face is a lot of times I would fast through the morning so by the time afternoon would come around eggs weren't really on the menu i would kind of like put them out of my mind because they're a breakfast food right i mean I eat eggs all the time but in reality it's just easier to eat them in the morning because it's how we're conditioned right so a lot of times I would break my fast a certain way and then eggs would just never make it into the equation and then I look at the actual nutrient value of eggs what we're getting out of fat soluble vitamins and the other different minerals and all kinds of different well the most abundant amino acid source on the planet i mean we're looking at really good quality stuff here so that's my first gigantic mistake is just not eating enough eggs cuz my mind wasn't thinking breakfast for lunch which leads me to my second gigantic mistake which is one that I think people could really learn a lot from it was my norm to skip breakfast like skipping breakfast became my normal intermittent fasting thing and when that became a norm I never reaped the benefits of fasting through other periods of time but it also just made fasting an easy norm and this is going to sound like something I've said all the time because it is fasting should be a shock to the system it should be an anomaly it's not just a way that you want to eat every single day that's a great way to reduce calories but it's also a great way to slow down your metabolic rate so by skipping breakfast it was just too convenient and it became normal so then I started just switching it up saying "Okay I'm going to skip breakfast and tomorrow I'll skip dinner or mix it up." not letting it become the norm very very very important thirdly that leads me to chronically lowering calories this is a mistake that I continued to make for almost a decade and it's the biggest issue that people face in my opinion chronically low calorie and chronically low protein it is why people like Dr peter Aia Dr ronda Patrick have sort of abandoned fasting like they've abandoned fasting in literal interviews that I've done with them where they've talked about I am not a fan of fasting anymore i don't agree with that i don't agree with fasting being problematic i agree with fasting when it's done too much and done too frequently and you ultimately end up in this lower caloric state that's going to slow down your basal metabolic rate that's going to slow down your G-flux that is a problem so I have to make a concerted effort to eat enough during my eating period and I promise you I assure you you will have better body composition if you can get enough calories in and enough protein in during your actual eating window the fourth gigantic and this is a gigantic mistake that I've made with fasting and I even have to apologize for some of my early content where I thought from a fat loss perspective this would make sense but there's newer studies that have come out with my good friend Dr mike Ormsby over at Florida State University even he talked to me about this that was focusing on doing cardio on my fasting days now not to be mistaken with fasted cardio i still roll out of bed and do cardio in a fasted state but on my fasting days days where I fast for 18 20 hours i was a fan of cardio because it made sense you're in a more sympathetic tone you're in that more fight or flight so it would make sense let's add some fat burning to the mix let's go ahead and do some cardio and if you are really overweight that could work that could help you it's not going to not work it's still beneficial like the deeper in a fasted state you are the more fat you're probably going to oxidize the problem is that I was neglecting the resistance training on the fasting days so fasting days from a muscle preservation standpoint are probably the most important days to actually do resistance training and less important to do cardio those days what you gain out of additional fat loss on a fasted training day like fasted cardio day is not worth the muscle loss that you would potentially have but the resistance training on a fasting day is going to be a net positive over what you would get out of fat loss if you were to just do cardio point is if you really weigh it out doing fasted resistance training on a fasted day on a fasting day is going to preserve the muscle and ultimately lead to more fat loss later on and Dr mike Ormsby's research talked about this saying that actually resistance training the muscle triggers an oxidation of fat long after the resistance training session and this has to do with all kinds of signaling from the muscle stress itself to trigger more fat oxidation which leads me to number five i wasn't focusing on parasympathetic activity i was only focusing on the fight orflight adrenaline sympathetic tone that allows you to burn fat what I didn't realize is that you can get more out of your fasting if you are properly recovered i liked to push it all the way nose to the grindstone be in that fight or flight which a lot of people that fast do it makes you feel ready to go right you're ready to fight that's kind of the idea of fasting problem is you do that day in and day out you don't realize that your sympathetic tone is not as strong your true adrenaline punch you're getting out of that fast is diminishing diminishing diminishing diminishing if you really look at it as almost yin and yang almost black and white where it's like I need to be on and I need to be off right i need to be on and you need to have that balance if you are on too much right if you are too yin or too yang depend you know how you look at these things you're out of balance right so when you look at fasting you have to be on and have that sympathetic tone and then you have to be able to relax eat more move a little less on those days and try to bring your basil down so that when you do fast it's actually doing something that's a shock to the system the sixth one is I didn't focus on micronutrition now I talked about the eggs but when I used to fast a lot I cannot believe how many days I must have gone without actually getting micronutrition in without getting adequate nutrients because I was just getting protein in but I wasn't actually getting a lot of things and at the time I wasn't eating as much red meat so I wasn't getting stuff from there it was like a lot of chicken fish and like coconut oil and some eggs and like it was very bland in a way and what I've realized is that that was contributing to all kinds of different muscle cramping and issues there so now I either take a multivitamin which I have no problem taking a good quality multivitamin or I just focus on nutrient quality which sounds kind of boring but focus on getting nutrientdense foods even the shakes that I use I'll use whey protein shakes and then I'll use like the Sunw Warrior Active Protein i talk about that one a lot because that has more in it it has different varieties of protein sources and it has enzymes it has probiotics and it has different varieties of even plant-based proteins which is the focus of Sunwarrior so I feel like I'm getting nutritional value so that's why for years I've been talking about it for 7 8 nine years that I use Sunwarrior on the days that I'm fasting often times because I'm getting more than just protein personally it doesn't mean that I'm against whey i use whey a lot but I use both i use whey protein and I use plant-based not because I'm a plant-based guy but because I like the benefits from the nutritional value that I'm getting with certain plant-based proteins sun Warriors realistically the only one that I recommend in that case so I put a link down below if you want to try them out that's a 20% off discount link so 20% off in the top line of the description underneath this video for their active lines the best tasting plant-based protein that's out there but don't think of it just as your only protein source think of it as more of a multivitamin type shake in a lot of ways so that link is down below a very big one very very very very big mistake that I made that I only corrected recently was focusing on gut mucosal layer and gut barrier integrity i focused a lot on the microbiome i've always been a fan of that but the more that I've learned the more that I've realized that we don't know diddly squat about the microbiome other than just having a diverse microbiome is pretty good like we are just scratching the surface of things what we do know more about is our gut barrier and what we do know is that when you fast you actually temporarily degrade the gut mucosal layer this is normal you have a weakening of it and then it rebuilds shortly after you eat food and then rest again so the first meal that you eat I've talked about this before is very important because your gut mucosal layer might be a little weakened so you have a chance of increasing inflammation because more particles can slip through the weakened protein junctions in the gut so what you want to focus on is really paying attention to getting things like collagen getting things like bone broth getting in things like glutamine for the gut i know some people don't like glutamine you don't have to take it but the evidence is strong on gut barrier integrity so now I say okay when I break my fast is this something that could be hard on my gut okay am I going to go straight to protein or maybe I'm going to have a little collagen first am I maybe going to have a little bone broth first right that might be the best way to go because I don't want to compromise my gut barrier integrity that's probably the first it is the first line of defense really between the things we eat and what ends up in our body the next one is I wasn't being as clean with some of my fasts as I could be what would happen is if I was doing more fasting but a little more frequently what would happen is I would just get kind of lazy with it i'd have coffee which is fine i'd have tea i might even pop some supplements and things like that and that's fine it doesn't break a fast but what I've realized now and this might ruffle some feathers but I think some people will really resonate with as a matter of fact in the comment section let me know if this resonates with you even if it doesn't resonate with you let me know drop a comment down below because it it really helps a ton for the algorithm and helps the video get up there and also hit that subscribe button so what's interesting is that from a purity standpoint there's a lot that fasting does and I mean purity in the sense that you're not just abstaining from food you're abstaining from all kinds of things right and it's the control it's the mastery that you get out of that it's the the one thing you can have an element of mastery of in this world of like illusion of control right so it's very refreshing and when you're constantly trying to tweak your fast to get more out of your actual fasting state it gets really convoluted so what I realized is that you know what maybe on days that I fast once or twice a week I'll just drink water maybe I'll even take a fast from caffeine that day and I know it's not as fun but the thing is is like I focus on the purity aspect a little bit more which I think is really important and some people may not like this but I even occasionally dry fast for 18 hours it's not that big of a deal but some people could see it as extreme so exercise caution consult with a physician whatever you know you've got to do the reality is is that occasionally I will just say you know what I'm going to go 16 18 hours i don't really need to drink water if I'm not heavily exerting myself there's a purity aspect there too they do that with Ramadan and all kinds of things the next thing is I realize the difference between intermittent fasting and intermittent caloric restriction this sounds like nuance but it's actually quite different a lot of times when people intermittent fast they just do intermittent caloric restriction where they skip one meal and then you know they just occasionally have periods of time where they're intermittently restricting calories when I focus more on intermittent fasting it makes it so that the days that I'm not fasting I'm eating actually a bit more than I would on a regular day right so like fasting maybe I'll consume 2,000 calories hypothetically on a non-fasting day I might consume 4,000 right i compensate for the day that I didn't eat as much and that is an important thing because otherwise you just end up in calor intermittent caloric restriction whereas I want intermittent fasting think of it like that you can even do a little Google research on it and figure out like what is intermittent caloric restriction versus intermittent fasting this next one is more a trick that I learned see I was always trying to find ways to stay hydrated during my fast maybe it'd be more electrolytes which I'm still a fan of right but maybe it would be all these other things i've realized that if I have a little bit of glycerol like if I have a couple tablespoons of glycerol the morning or the evening before a long fast like a 24-hour plus fast I stay hydrated glycerol draws water into the muscle cells so you actually remain hydrated quite well now it's a little bit of a gimmicky trick but it's legit okay who is it uh Derek from More Plates More Dates he always talks about glycerol not only do you get a big muscle pump from it because you're drawing water in but for hyperhydration endurance athletes use it but for fasting it's not really talked about and it's highly effective so try it out try a couple tablespoons of glycerol before you start your fast make sure it agrees with your stomach and then drink some water and you might find hey like I am hydrated throughout my fast better another really big mistake big big mistake is I didn't listen to strength and energy as a barometer i would muscle through low energy i would muscle through low strength because the fasting was a hormetic stressor occasionally that's fine in the moment that's fine but if week over week over week your energy is down and week over week over week your strength is down that's telling you something the goal here isn't to run ourselves into the ground so if you find your strength getting lower you need to eat more or you need to potentially fast less i mean in a sick and twisted mind of myself sometimes I would be getting weaker so I would think that I'm not pushing it hard enough i'm getting weaker so I must be out of shape i'm getting weaker so I must push harder because maybe I'm maybe I'm just inflamed and I'm just not healthy right now and I'm not not doing enough you could see how you end up in that conundrum right the reality is that probably just needed to fast a little less so I could get more so focus on strength and energy as your true barometer your body doesn't know what a calorie is your body knows what energy is so focus on that the important takeaway from all of this is that fasting can become an obsession and if you treat it like your entire life it will become an obsession treat it as if it's how you would roll through survival occasional eating occasional stop eating right as the great Bradley Pon who wrote the book Eat Stop Eat would say eat stop eat as always keep it locked to hear my channel