Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
A podcast about practices to promote healthy lives featuring experts, businesses, and clients: we gather to share our stories about success, failure, exploration, and so much more. Our subscription episodes feature some personal and vulnerable, real-life stories that are sensitive to some of the general public.
Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Fasting isn't just about not eating—it's a powerful tool for transformation.
Fasting represents a powerful yet frequently misunderstood pillar of health that extends far beyond simply skipping meals. Drawing from both ancient traditions and modern science, this episode explores the multifaceted nature of fasting as both a healing practice and a potential risk when approached without proper understanding.
My personal journey with fasting began in childhood through religious practice, but transformed dramatically when I faced a cancer diagnosis that required radical dietary changes. After losing 80 pounds through strategic fasting and nutritional protocols, I've learned vital distinctions between beneficial fasting and potentially harmful deprivation. The timeline of physiological changes during extended fasting reveals both opportunities and dangers—from the initial clarity and energy of ketosis to the potential organ damage of extreme protocols.
Most importantly, this episode challenges the prevalent "miracle cure" narrative surrounding fasting. When I adopted a methionine-restricted diet to starve cancer cells, I inadvertently created a dangerous zinc deficiency that could have compromised my entire treatment approach. This cautionary tale underscores why personalized, knowledgeable approaches to fasting matter more than dogmatic adherence to any single protocol. Whether you're considering intermittent fasting, extended water fasts, or fasting-mimicking diets, you'll discover practical guidance for harnessing fasting's benefits while avoiding its pitfalls.
Ready to explore fasting as a transformative health practice? Subscribe for just $3 monthly to access exclusive content that goes deeper into specific fasting protocols for different health goals. Your support not only helps create better content but contributes directly to funding my ongoing cancer treatment.
Intro for podcast
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Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we're going to dive back into the idea of fasting for health and we're going to talk about some different types of fasting and fasting for specific purposes, specific purposes. And just to kind of jump back to the beginning of fasting, it's, you know, an age-old technique for health and it's been used for all kinds of reasons you know, from spiritual to physical. There's claims that fasting can cure just about any kind of disease. It can do everything from reducing inflammation, losing weight, helping your brain, correcting your gut health. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. But let's just sort of look at some different types of fasting and why and I'm going to get specifically into some of my fasting protocols that I'm using to cure my cancer and I believe it's been extremely helpful, and we'll go deeper into this in future episodes.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to talk about with fasting. I believe fasting is truly a pillar of health. I really didn't include that initially as I figured, you know, we got sleep, we have food, we have emotional well-being, stress, stabilization, exercise as kind of primary pillars and as much as it would sort of be in the range of diet. I don't believe it's really diet because it's the lack of diet. It's intertwined. Anyhow, fasting can be anything from intermittent fasting. It can be fasting from specific foods, it can be fasting from activities. It can be fasting from just about anything. Removing something from your life is fasting, and so I want to look at sort of the timeline of what happens during a fast. You can fast. You know there's references in the Bible of you know 40-day fasts, and I know people that have done that, of you know 40 day fasts and I know people that have done that. And I also want to talk about you know the truth of all this. It's not just all. Fasting is good for all people, and with this podcast, again, my goal is to find truths that we can rely on, and, more than me trying to tell you how to fast, I want to share information that I've learned and hopefully you will look into it and do your own research and figure out what's the best way to fast for you.
Speaker 1:I have fasted, you know. I grew up, was raised Catholic, and so my first introduction to fasting was during the month of Lent and you were supposed to give up meat or you were supposed to decide something that you wanted to give up, and the idea was that you take something that you enjoy and you sacrifice that and that's, you know, your spiritual gift to God. And you know, in exchange you get blessings. And you know, especially when you go back from a fast, there's nothing so good as the first bite after you fasted for a while. So that was my first experience of it and I learned a little willpower. I learned what it felt like to exercise that and to do something hard, and so there's definitely benefits that I learned from an early age about it not that I was into it by any stretch and then fast forward to maybe not that long ago, seven or eight years ago, when I began my weight loss journey and my journey to health. I discovered some plant medicines. I discovered information. You know, I discovered some plant medicines. I discovered information.
Speaker 1:My father died and he was obese and diabetic and had heart disease and it was you know. He was a very unhealthy person and he was a physician, a surgeon, and I thought, you know, when that hit me, I was like holy cow. You know, that's my future if I don't do something about it. I was 50 pounds overweight, easily and, you know, had a very stressful life that, in my opinion, ultimately manifested into this cancer that I have. And so after my father passed, my son, who I'd been fairly estranged from, said to me at the funeral he says, you know, life's too short, we should get together. And I started thinking about that. We did, we got, you know, spent some time together and sort of built a relationship and all of that.
Speaker 1:And then I was listening to an audio book, dr Gundry's the Plant Paradox, and I didn't even know what it was about. When I got it it just seemed like a cool title and I'm into plants so I didn't think it was what it was. But that was sort of another one of those you know still small voices that have followed me and guided me. And as I started listening to this book and it was so weird because I almost didn't listen to it because it was such a horribly narrated book it sounded like a robot was reading it and by the time I figured out what it was, I was like, oh, this is interesting. You know these plants' defense mechanisms and lectins and all these things.
Speaker 1:And then at one point I started getting into the idea of fasting. And then I discovered Dave Asprey and his whole intermittent fasting protocols and I began to explore deeper and deeper into health and as I changed my diet and started removing sugars and carbs from my diet and going down sort of a paleo sort of route, switching between that and the keto sort of thing, but anyways, I started incorporating intermittent fasting and that was actually critical to my initial weight loss and, mind you, I was motivated because I had a large bet with my daughter that one of us was going to lose 20 pounds before the other and I smoked her. But the fasting had a lot to do with it and I began going to like an 18-6, started at 12-12 and then went to an 18-6 and then I started to do 24 and at the same time I was, you know, starting to work with the plant medicine, sitting in the teepee with peyote, and I remember one time I did a three-day fast 72 hours prior to the ceremony, and I remember being so hungry when I got started.
Speaker 1:And anybody who has known me for any length of time knows that my relationship with food has been severely unhealthy. I love food. I'm a glutton. I eat way too much. I eat all the wrong things. I spent a life. That was I was fooling myself because I've been so active and I have a fast metabolism that it didn't show I was skinny, strong, running up and down ladders, you know, hiking, doing whatever, eating just crap food and doing you know everything wrong. But because of my activity and my genetics and my age I got away with it for a while and fast forward a little bit.
Speaker 1:And I can remember sitting in this teepee ceremony. It's an all night long singing and praying and drumming and it's a powerful experience, but it's grueling if you're doing it right. And I spent the whole night on my knees in a reverent position and I can remember feeling so strong. I remember feeling so strong and I was sort of taken aback by that because I was in the weakest state of my life. I'd never done 72 hours prior to that and I was sitting in there going wow, I have this amazing experience of strength right now and I feel like I could do this forever. And when I finally broke fast, it was one of the best tasting meals you know in the morning we have in this, in this tradition, we have a little it's the breakfast with corn meat and fruit and oh my goodness, how was it so good? And that's when I really sort of wakened up to the notion of what that was and I had notions of going on a vision quest. I never did that yet. I may do that one day, but that's more extensive fasting, but anyways, yeah, moving forward.
Speaker 1:You know fasting for purpose is, you know, a lot of things happen during this. So I want to talk about sort of what happens if you decide you think you're going to do a long fast, a 40-day fast or something like that, and maybe to consider what's it going to do to you as well as for you, and so this is sort of a timeline of what can happen during fasting. And you know, when you begin a fast, you're going to begin just getting hungry right off the bat, begin just getting hungry right off the bat and, um, I think that that's one of the things that you get the most out of it to. You know, hunger and thirst is are just basic needs and we cater to them. You know, know quickly. All the time. There's snacks everywhere, you know candy and chips and cookies and whatnot, and I think that we feed ourselves for reasons other than being hungry, and I think that's one thing that fasting does for you is you become aware of what hunger really is. You know we eat for comfort, we eat for stress relief, we eat for you know we eat when we're angry, we eat when we're happy, we eat for all kinds of reasons except for that. So let's just look at, say, you're going to do a water fast for 40 days.
Speaker 1:You start out with your first three days and you know you're going to deplete your glycogen. So first of all, you know your glucose present in the blood. You're going to burn that off right away. And then you have these stores and you've got glycogen reserves held in your liver and your muscles and that's good for you know. One to two days and then you start losing water and so when you are burning glycogen it attaches to water in the body. So when you start burning that, it starts to. You know you start dropping weight pretty quick in the first few days because a lot of it's water.
Speaker 1:And then you get some hunger pangs. You start to really feel hungry but at the same time you can start to express some clarity. You know our mind is always cluttered with everything and we're constantly feeding it sugar and we're giving it dopamine from feeding it sugar and all these things and it's just this constant chatter and clutter and a lot of it's food and sugar related. So once that starts to go away I know I do a lot of people end up with um, with some clarity. At one point you start to produce ketones because once you burn through the glycogen, you start consuming your fat and so when your body starts consuming fat, it produces ketones. And they say that can give you some mental clarity.
Speaker 1:But the other thing that can happen is you can get mood swings. You can start to feel angry or hangry if you want, and those are things that you've got to be prepared for if you're going to fast. It's not all just fun and games. It's not all just glory. You've got to walk through this and then you start to transition into ketosis and so you know your ketones start to replace glucose as your primary sugar. But when you get into ketosis, especially initially, you get really nice stable energy. It's a really powerful feeling because everything is sort of like you feel like you're you're superman, because you know you're not eating. But you got this energy. You're starting to lose some real weight and you feel good. The energy isn't like a surge of energy like sugar gives you, but it's just a good clean. Keep it on going and you start to not feel hungry so much. You start to adapt to this. You start getting more focus. Apparently, the brain is better or more efficient at using ketones. It doesn't like it as much it loves glucose, but apparently when it starts burning ketones, it doesn't like it as much, it loves glucose, but apparently when it starts burning ketones, it's it's a little better. Um, your mood changes can start to stabilize because you're not going through this sort of withdrawal phase. Um, you start to adapt a little bit. Um, and it's, it's good.
Speaker 1:This is maybe the best part for me for fasting. The thing is is you got to be careful because your electrolytes can get off whack. So when you're not eating, you got to make sure you're getting your minerals in, because you're depleting yourself. Every time you pee, every time you, you know, take a crap, every time you sweat or cry or whatever, you're losing minerals. That's what that saltiness is, and so you've got to make sure you're bringing in some minerals for some reason or another, otherwise you start to have some real problems. And sodium, potassium, magnesium, they can really start to get out of balance and that can cause serious health problems. So don't mess around with your minerals. You can start to get a sense of calmness and reflection and that's where really the spiritual side really can start to get.
Speaker 1:Then you get into day 15 to 21,. And I haven't been to this place and I don't know if I'm going to go there or not. But this is where for me. And I don't know if I'm going to go there or not, but this is where for me, and we'll get into more specific purposeful fasting in future episodes. But for me I cannot get to a point where I start to deplete my muscles and once you get past, you know, 15, 21 days, you've probably burned through most of your fat, unless you were seriously obese to begin with. Most people, you're 10, 15 pounds overweight. Well, you don't eat for 15 to 21 days and you come to find out you don't have much of that left and the body's pretty efficient at recycling. So the next thing it gets done when it, when it is finished with the fat, it starts going after your muscles, taking them apart, and once that happens your immune system can be affected.
Speaker 1:You know, they say the first three days after 72 hours. It sort of resets your immune system, sort of resets your gut biome. But when you still start going further and further without anything, it ends up affecting it negatively and you know you get autophagy starts to happen, you're sick and weak cells start dying off and there's all kinds of you know, good things that can happen. But if you don't have the body for it, if you're not capable physically of handling this, you can cause all kinds of problems. They say that your emotional responses can get more and more because you're now depriving yourself of something you need every single day for the most part, and now you've gone weeks without it and it gets to you. You get fatigued, you're longing for food all the time, every day, and whether you're paying attention to that or not, it wears on you. And then you get all the way. If you're going to make it to 40 days, you can really have, you know, organ failure. You can really have problems and it's not for everybody. I really think that.
Speaker 1:You know, for me I was always sort of a zealot, you know. If I discovered a thing I was like, oh, let's see how far I can push it. But with fasting I've, I've pretty much. I think the most I've gone is, uh, four or five days, about four days, I think, um, and I feel that that does for me what I what I need, and I may go longer in the future, but for me right now, um, with my methionine-restricted diet and I live in basically a fasting-mimicking situation we'll talk about that as well, and there's evidence that shows a fasting-mimicking diet can be just as effective as water fasting and I think for me it's a whole lot more sustainable and I think I'm getting the most out of it this way and stabilized my weight and everything.
Speaker 1:But for me, with having cancer, cancer loves and is addicted to a precursor amino acid called methionine and it's found in all protein sources and high levels. So meat products, dairy products, dairy eggs, all of that stuff, even a lot of vegetables and legumes and things. There's a lot of foods are high in this, in this, and to restrict it's very difficult. There's not a lot of of foods that are low in methionine, naturally, so you. So we supplement with this enzyme. But the point is, with fasting, if I let myself get to the point like, I've lost 30 additional pounds, so now I'm 80 pounds lighter than I was when I began this journey. I'm too thin right now. But the point is I've depleted my fat stores. I have very little fat stores left and if I fast too much right now I'll start tearing into my muscle. Well, guess what Muscle is full of methionine. So I could literally cause me more harm fairly easily by fasting too much right now.
Speaker 1:And it's important because there's all kinds of books and people telling you you know, you just need to do this, you need to do that. And it might very well be that those people were able to accomplish what they wanted and they saw the results. But my guess is they probably don't understand all of it. They probably don't understand all the implications. There's very few one-directional solutions and I can assure you this that all of these miracle cures, this one fruit, this one thing, it might have helped this one person, but there was probably a lot of contributing factors that they didn't factor into it. And to advocate for one thing being this one way and to sell you is frankly irresponsible. And that's part of what I'm here to do is to show you the other side of things and hopefully not bring fear to you, but bring discernment and take the time, do the work. Bring discernment and take the time, do the work, learn the other side of the story. Just because we want something to be this panacea, this silver bullet, inadvertently you could do more harm than good.
Speaker 1:So a perfect example of this is when I shifted to this low methionine diet. It turned me into a frigging vegan and it's misery for me. I love my meat and protein and all of that, but I don't get to eat it right now. And guess what? As a result, I deprived myself of zinc. I was zinc deficient and all the doctors I'm working with nobody caught it. It just happened because I'm being very diligent and I have another doctor that I'm working with, getting additional resources from, did a test and said oh, you're zinc deficient. And guess what? When you're zinc deficient, it shuts off your immune system's ability to recognize a tumor. And even if you were to go and get chemotherapy, it wouldn't work the same because you're deficient, and it wouldn't have the response. You'd get way more negative side effect and you'd get way less positive. And so I've now compensated for that because I did my diligence. I'm now on a zinc supplement because I'm not going back to eating meat and dairy until I'm cured of this.
Speaker 1:But whoa, what a wake-up call. You know, and so you know. I just want to caution you. My story is not just do this and you'll get that. My story is learn what you need.
Speaker 1:And so, with fasting I have a lot to talk about fasting and we'll do multiple episodes about this I think it's one of the most powerful tools that you could possibly use, and even if you just deprive yourself of one item that you like start with sugar, maybe bread you'll start to get benefits from it and you'll get internal benefits and you'll get external benefits, and it's not everything for everybody. It's not a blanket. It's not go harder and get more. It's learn it. Titrate yourself, try a little bit so much good can come from fasting. But just be responsible and be wise so that we can be healthy and consider coming aboard and sharing your experiences with us.
Speaker 1:I love to hear other people's fasting stories and we're going to continue talking about this, so I want to thank everybody who supported the Healthy Living Podcast. If you're interested in going deeper, we have subscriber episodes that are available for as little as $3 a month and if you do support the show this way, it helps us produce a better show and ultimately, if we get enough subscribers. It'll help to contribute to the costs of my cure and cancer and I'll be around a whole lot longer to help a whole lot more people and, if not at least talk about it, share it, listen to more episodes and, above all, let's share the knowledge, find some truth and let's get healthy together. Thank you and have a great day.
