What You MUST Eat Before A FAST

Hello Health Champions today we're going to talk  about what to eat before a fast and what is a fast  

how long is the fast well the fast basically  is any time you're not eating so if you eat  

every two hours the time period in between is  basically a fast but when we talk about a fast  

we usually refer to going longer than usual  so anything longer than the usual gap between  

meals is technically a fast and for some people  the longest time they ever go without eating is  

when they're sleeping they eat first thing when  they wake up last thing before bed so they eat  

during 16 hours and then they don't eat for  eight hours so basically delaying breakfast  

is a fast for those people and how does the  body cope with that so other people are more  

adapted to a shorter window they practice what's  called intermittent fasting so they eat during  

eight hours and they fast during 16 hours giving  the body some time to recover and burn through  

that food so that could be that they're eating at  noon and eight or it could be they're eating at  

eight in the morning and four in the afternoon  it doesn't really matter as long as you get a  

continuous fasting window but then the question  is what happens when you go longer what sort of  

fuel does the body use when you're not putting  anything in where does the body find that energy  

and why does that last meal matter or why does it  matter even more what you ate in the week before  

you go into a longer fast and of course there's  a lot of confusion about what to eat if you look  

it up you might find things like you should  eat brown rice and baked chicken you should  

eat cooked veggies like carrots or broccoli or a  tossed salad and of course you have to have some  

fresh fruits for dessert but there's no rationale  about why this would be good to prepare you for a  

fast or if it would they just buy into the idea  that we should eat high carb low fat because  

they have this fat phobia and then that should get  you ready for the fast and someone else said that  

you should eat foods high in protein and fiber  with complex carbs to fuel you through the fast  

really as if carbohydrates can fuel a fast  that's kind of missing the point that the  

benefits of fasting start when you've used  up the carbs so if you load up then you're  

making it harder on yourself to transition and  you're just delaying the benefits of the fast  

someone else said you should have lots and lots  of water before a fast and you should also eat  

fruits and vegetables because they contain water  you should eat fruits and vegetables to give you  

carbohydrates and whole grain and fiber because  fiber keeps you full as if you could eat food  

to get so full that you can carry on a fast  longer that's the opposite of how it works  

so water is very important but it's during a fast  it's a continuous thing that you do there's no way  

to load up water ahead of time that's completely  missing the point and understanding how the body  

works so other people talk about how do you do  the fast you do only water or can you drink other  

non-caloric beverages like sparkling water or  coffee or tea and things like that and someone  

else said that you could have electrolytes on  the one hand or if you're really a purist then  

you should only lick pure pink Himalayan salt like  where do they get this and as if it was some sort  

of of ritual right if a ritual works for you great  if it adds some value But realize that you just  

have to understand what's happening when you fast  how do you prep for it and then you do what works  

for your goals and some people have weight loss  goals some people have goals to reverse insulin  

resistance or type 2 diabetes other people  have religious goals and a lot of people  

who do it fasting and don't have any of the first  reasons they do it for autophagy because autophagy  

is a process in the body that starts to regenerate  better it recycles better you're boosting immunity  

you're activating sirtuins which are survival  genes so when resources become sparse then the  

body becomes much much better at using them  and that's a really good thing so autophagy  

is a big reason but here's what we really need to  understand that everything that normally goes on  

in the body that uses up resources like breathing  and beating your heart and cleaning out your liver  

and replacing cells and repairing things all of  those reactions continue otherwise you would die  

and those reactions use a lot of energy so where  does the energy come from when you stop eating  

where does the body go to find that energy now  and the answer is that it gradually moves into  

using fat as a fuel source and after 24 hours  of not having put anything in then approximately  

100 percent of the energy you make come from body  fat all right that's of course is the purpose and  

if you eat a bunch of carbs then you just delay  that transition into using body fat but is your  

body used to that in other words is your body fat  adapted or metabolically flexible does it know how  

to start burning fat when you stop putting carbs  in so if it's not then no problem your body will  

figure it out eventually it's just going to take  a whole lot longer and the biggest issue is that  

you're going to be miserable in the time being  it's going to give you a lot of discomfort until  

your body gets adapted So eventually your body  is going to start burning fat because it wants  

to survive but the more you can prepare it to do  that the more comfortable that transition will  

be and of course you want to be nice to yourself  so how do you prepare your metabolism to burn fat  

well first we have to understand what happens when  the body burns fat and what body fat is because  

body fat is stored as triglycerides almost all  dietary fats including animal fat and plant fat is  

triglycerides and fat is not all fat people think  of this as fat we hear it's nine calories per gram  

Etc but that's just not how it works and  there's very very few people who are aware  

of this and how the body Burns through this fat  and where we get a little bit of carbohydrate so  

a triglyceride has a glyceride or glycerol  backbone and then it has three fatty acids  

which are pure fat so these Wiggly things  are fat and this backbone is not but this  

is stored together when we break this apart we  can use the fatty acids for energy as burning  

fat but this glycerol backbone we can put two  glycerols together and make a glucose molecule  

so there's three carbons in glycerol there's six  carbons in glucose and this is a beautiful thing  

because now we get fat but we along with the  fat we have stored a little bit of something  

that can turn into glucose so a fatty acid here  has about 16 to 18 carbons these squiggly things  

at every angle every Bend there's a carbon and  the way we store it the way animals store it  

is on average with 16 to 18 carbons and that  size fatty acid weighs about 270 grams per  

mole and mole is just a really big number don't  worry about it but we have three of those fatty  

acids so in one mole of triglycerides one  mole really large number of these molecules  

we have 810 grams of fatty acids we know that fat  has nine calories per gram so once we burn through  

that we have 7 300 calories but then we also have  the glycerin glycerol and that is 92 grams per one  

mole of triglycerides this is going to turn into  glucose which has four calories per gram so that  

gives us 370 calories so now we add up 370 plus  7300 we get 76.70 and we divide to see 370 divided  

by 7670 is about five percent so we can make five  percent of energy from glucose out of the stored  

body fat and out of dietary fat too the fat is  7 300 calories which is 95 of the energy so when  

we're fasting once we're using almost all or close  to a hundred percent of energy from body fat then  

we get into a steady state where body just keeps  doing what it's doing and that is it's a stable  

line of about 95 of our energy from fat and  approximately five percent of our energy from  

carbohydrate from glucose and we probably burn  like a half a percent or one percent of protein  

if we go long enough but the body doesn't want  to use the protein so it makes a bunch of growth  

hormone to spare that protein so that we have  the protein to preserve the muscle so we can go  

and work still so the way you really prepare the  way you eat before a fast is to eat macros that  

give you a metabolism similar to what you're  going to be doing when you're fasting it's  

not rocket science and coming to think of it I  think there's a diet that's kind of like that  

I've heard about that when when you eat really low  carbohydrates and and really high fat I think they  

say that it should only be about five percent of  calories from from carbohydrate what's that called  

uh oh that's right the ketogenic diet and that's  where you eat about five percent of your calories  

from carbs 20 from protein and about 75 percent  from fat and when you eat that way you're very  

close to mimicking the metabolism of fasting it's  not exactly like that because when you're fasting  

you're getting five percent from the glycerol but  if you're eating a little bit of carbs which you  

can it's not a bad idea at all then you're getting  the five percent of carbs plus what you're getting  

from glycerol so it's not exactly that but it's  really really close the basic principles of fat  

burning and metabolic flexibility are there  and also your dietary protein these 20 percent  

a lot of that is going to go to building tissue  but the excess that doesn't fit or that you eat  

extra is going to become glucose so you're  going to have a little bit more and if we if  

we look at that it would look something like  where you're starting off and you're almost  

at the level of 95 and then after the meal as  you process through the meals you're using up a  

little bit of glycogen and then while you're using  glycogen your body is switching to fat burning so  

your fat goes up and then you're right back at  this 95 and your carbs again they're going to be  

a little bit higher than five percent which is not  a problem don't be terrified of it just realize  

how much you need and then as you're using up the  glycogen as that's running out and becoming less  

available carb burning goes down and now you're  back down to the five percent so this would be  

when you have eaten in the FED state  says you're processing through the  

food you're still going to be close  to 95 because you eat mostly fat then  

you're using up some glycogen and  then you are using gluconeogenesis

and of course when you're using the body fat  only then all of this is gluconeogenesis this  

five percent glucose is coming from a source  other than glucose and that's really all there  

is to it if you want to prepare for a fast and  you know that this is what's happening when you  

are in a fast you're burning only body fat 95  fat 5 calories then the foods you eat to prepare  

should be similar which is a low carb or a  ketogenic diet and of course if you are carb  

dependent then you want to go a little bit longer  on a low carb diet to become fat adapted before  

you try this again you could go cold turkey just  jump into the fast and your body will figure out  

how to burn fat but you're kind of be miserable  in the process so on the last video I did on  

fasting I had a viewer ask a question that they  really believed in it but they were asking what  

about those people who get physically ill when  they go more than three to four hours without  

a meal and when people hear about that they hear  physically ill something must be seriously wrong  

they're thinking does that person have a disease  is there a condition a name condition they must  

have something and the answer is no they they  don't but chances are someone would want to  

make up a disease so here's one I made up it's  called idiopathic energy piniosis syndrome so  

idiopathic means they don't know what caused it  which is most disease energy of course is what  

it sounds like penia is lack of something osis is  a condition and syndrome is something they add to  

make it sound more interesting so this is a lack  of energy a condition that causes lack of energy  

that we can't figure out and then we ADD syndrome  to it but of course there is no such thing we just  

have to understand how does the body normally  make energy so the number one reason people  

would get physically ill is that they've trained  their bodies to depend on carbohydrate so as soon  

as you cut that carb out as soon as you don't top  off your carbs and your blood sugar every two to  

three to four hours the body has no idea what to  do and they get sick so of course the degree of  

illness differs between different people and some  people have a harder your time with it but all  

you really have to do is to untrain the body and  this is going to take a different amount of time  

for different people but your body knows what  to do you have an innate intelligence that has  

the ability to adapt so if you stop depending on  glucose and you train it into more of a low carb  

high fat diet then gradually your body will learn  to use fat and the second reason that people get  

physically ill it usually doesn't happen after  three to four hours but as you go in longer  

fasting what happens is that you can lose fluids  and electrolytes and how does that happen well  

as you stop eating carbs your body initially has  a certain amount of glycogen stored which binds  

water as you stop eating carbs your body is going  to use the carbs in the glycogen and as you use it  

up there's nothing to hold that water in because  the glycogen acts like a sponge and now there's  

no sponge so the water is released so you lose  fluid but fluid and electrolytes follow each other  

so as you're losing fluid you're also going to  lose some electrolytes and some people get in  

trouble because they're losing electrolytes and  now they're just drinking more and more water  

but with doing that they're just flushing out more  electrolytes so you need to take them together the  

second reason is that as you cut back on carbs as  you go into fasting eating no carbs your insulin  

will drop and high insulin levels will tend to  cause the kidneys to reabsorb more sodium so  

as your insulin drops your kidneys reabsorb less  which means you're losing sodium and we just said  

that sodium and electrolytes go with water so as  you're losing sodium you're losing more water so  

if you want to try fasting or if you have tried  fasting and you want a game changer and this  

has been reported to me by many many people is  then you want an electrolyte powder you want a  

complete setup of electrolytes but you also want  some trace minerals because electrolytes that's  

like the four or five minerals that we need  in large quantities that relate mostly to the  

fluid balance but we also use trace minerals we  have about 70 of those that we need in tiny tiny  

amounts and those also get lost with the loss of  fluid and they're super super important long term  

most people are deficient as it is but then if you  really want a game changer then you also want to  

have something in that product with some metabolic  support something that can help you regulate blood  

sugar and even better if there's something that  helps you with healing because you put your body  

in a fasting state which is essentially a healing  State now if you can improve conditions to support  

the body a little extra then you can get even  more out of that fasting so I made a product  

just like that it's called you light and you can  go to uvexia.com to try it out or you can just  

click the link below if you enjoyed this video  you're going to love that one and if you truly  

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