Dr. Uzma Jafri is a Family Physician Board certified in FM and Geriatric Medicine. She runs a mobile private practice and concurrently did that while working nights as a hospitalist in a busy medical center. The shift work and stress of the job, as well as running out of space on her metabolic dance card, left her at her highest weight in 2016 when she realized she had to practice what she practiced on her patients at long last. Having never before struggled with weight and newly learning that whatever she had told her patients in the past regarding nutrition was defunct, Dr. Jafri had to go “back to school” to put all the pieces together that she always referred out to RDs and diabetic educators and apply it in her own life. As a practicing Muslim, fasting had always been a part of her life, and using it in conjunction with a ketogenic lifestyle, she easily shed 32 pounds in 3 months and kept it off. The science of fasting made sense to her as a person of faith, but it only made sense to her as a physician once she settled on learning more about obesity medicine.
In this episode, we break down the science and feasibility of fasting. Is it safe? How do you start? What actually happens to your body and blood sugar when you begin fasting? If you've been curious to start, check out this episode!
Connect with Dr. Uzma Jafri:
https://mommyingwhilemuslim.com/
https://www.instagram.com/mommyingwhilemuslimpodcast
Connect with Sugar Solved:
https://www.instagram.com/sugarsolved/
Dr. Uzma Jafri is a Family Physician Board certified in FM and Geriatric Medicine. She runs a mobile private practice and concurrently did that while working nights as a hospitalist in a busy medical center. The shift work and stress of the job, as well as running out of space on her metabolic dance card, left her at her highest weight in 2016 when she realized she had to practice what she practiced on her patients at long last. Having never before struggled with weight and newly learning that whatever she had told her patients in the past regarding nutrition was defunct, Dr. Jafri had to go “back to school” to put all the pieces together that she always referred out to RDs and diabetic educators and apply it in her own life. As a practicing Muslim, fasting had always been a part of her life, and using it in conjunction with a ketogenic lifestyle, she easily shed 32 pounds in 3 months and kept it off. The science of fasting made sense to her as a person of faith, but it only made sense to her as a physician once she settled on learning more about obesity medicine.
In this episode, we break down the science and feasibility of fasting. Is it safe? How do you start? What actually happens to your body and blood sugar when you begin fasting? If you've been curious to start, check out this episode!
Connect with Dr. Uzma Jafri:
https://mommyingwhilemuslim.com/
https://www.instagram.com/mommyingwhilemuslimpodcast
Connect with Sugar Solved:
https://www.instagram.com/sugarsolved/
[00:00:02] Rebecca
Welcome to the Sugar Solve podcast where we're demystifying health one gram of sugar at a time. From eliminating excess sugar to cutting back on carbs, diving into keto, or becoming a devout vegan, today's diet landscape can give you a sugar crash just thinking about it. Sugar Salt is here to demystify all the nutrition and health trends you're bombarded with on a daily basis, bringing you unbiased insight, research and real world experiences from experts in the field of medicine, nutrition, health and wellness. You'll gain knowledge and clarity around the base trends in health and nutrition and leave each week feeling empowered to make informed decisions in your own life to optimize your diet and personal wellness for longevity, long lasting energy immunity, improve focus and performance that will leave you feeling better day in and day out. The truth won't be sugar coated here today. We'll be speaking with Dr. Uzma Jafari, who is a family physician board certified in FM and geriatric medicine. She runs a mobile private practice and concurrently did that while working nights as a hospitalist in a busy medical center. She is a wealth of knowledge on the topic of fasting and ketogenic diet, and we are going to break down just what fasting is and is it for everyone to do. Welcome back to the Sugar Solved podcast. Today, we'll be speaking with Dr. Uzma Jaafari. Can you give us a little bit of background about yourself?
[00:01:38] Uzma
Yeah, so I always start with I'm a mom of four and I practice medicine on the side in my free time, whatever that looks like. But I'm board certified in both family medicine and geriatric medicine. I've been in practice for over a decade now. And yeah, I live in the Southwest. I'm originally from the South, so hot and hotter is kind of the way I go. And growing up, I think nutrition was probably not the most important thing, ironically. And so as an adult, it always catches up to you like you run out on your metabolic dance card for room to continue eating, as my roommate described in medical school like three year old, and start realizing what the consequences are of what you put into your body, especially when you're somebody who's kind of the face of health and like you're supposed to be putting that out. You need to start practicing what you preach and practicing what you practice.
[00:02:30] Rebecca
So what made you fall into this line of medical practice? What was that point where you were like, Oh, wow, I really want to pursue this as my career.
[00:02:38] Uzma
For medicine in particular. I don't know a time that I didn't want to be a physician, but it was I had wanted to be an ob gyn and do high risk pregnancy for a very long time because I found it really challenging. And you're taking care of two patients essentially. But yeah, I didn't want that lifestyle. And then going through medical school, I like liked everything. So family medicine made a lot of sense to me. But going through, I also knew that the elderly was a very vulnerable population and a marginalized community, really, especially when it comes to health care disparities for sure. We talk a lot of shop about Medicare and taking care of the elderly, but we don't actually like boots on the ground do it. So that's where my interest in geriatric medicine sparked. So after I graduated from family medicine, then I did a year and a half training in geriatric medicine, which worked out great because where I live, it's like seniors abound. So I really, really love it. And nutrition plays a huge role in the health of my patients and a lot of what I talk to them about.
[00:03:38] Rebecca
So I guess backing up. So what has been like you said, you kind of grew up not eating so well, whatever, but what is your diet like now? What is your relationship with sugar? Have you ever fell into these fad diets or struggled with your weight or anything like that?
[00:03:52] Uzma
No. You know, luckily, even though I grew up like very meat and potatoes, meat and starch family, I never struggled with my weight. My family, well, I had certain family members who said I was too big for a girl, but I was always like 90th percentile on the growth curves because I happen to be a tall person. I was always a tall child. I was always in the back of the school photographs, not because I was bigger, I was taller, and I never saw my body as problematic. I researched a lot about anorexia and bulimia in middle school to the point that my volleyball coaches were worried about me, like, why are you reading all of this? And I was like, There's got to be a way to control this. Like, how do people, like, not see what their body actually looks like? You know, like, why do they have such body dysmorphia? Where is that coming from? Is there any way that we can harness this to control it and fix them and prevent this from happening to other girls my age? Because I did have friends who struggled with eating disorders as well, and I just couldn't wrap my brain around not loving your body, because while there were family members that were very particular about, hey, you need to be really skinny before you got married, so that after you get married and have kids, you can blow up and it's fine because then nobody cares.
I didn't think that was necessarily true and I had a whole contingency in my family who was like, You're perfect, you're beautiful. There's nothing wrong with your body. Carry on. So I never really struggled until I had four kids. And then there was a period of acute illness in my family, and that's when I really began to emotionally eat. I've always been an emotional eater like period since I was a kid. If there's a problem, a sleeve of Chips Ahoy will solve it, or like a big glass chocolate milk will fix it. But that catches up to you when you approach 40 and your body just can't process it anymore. So that's kind of what happened to me.
[00:05:42] Rebecca
Now I know that you have some interesting perspectives on fasting and even the ketogenic diet, so if you kind of break it down, like what is fasting and is it something that is good for everyone? I mean, there's so much you hear about it now, but is it really safe necessarily for anyone? Is it a good way to maintain your weight or try to lose weight?
[00:06:04] Uzma
So it's really funny growing up and even I would say maybe in the last ten years as a physician, I would hear because my religious tradition is Islam and we practice fasting. And so I remember in Ramadan, in the doctor's lounge, physician getting really upset at those of us who were observing Ramadan and fasting that, oh, that's completely unhealthy. And you absolutely shouldn't do that. Well, lo and. Behold in the last five six, I would say about that long, five, six years, maybe a little bit longer. Intermittent fasting is now the rage, and now everybody wants to do it like high fat. Everything that we were taught not to do is now like, okay, that is maybe it's a fad, but I'll go back and rewind to what is fasting. So fasting is any voluntary withdrawal of food, water or both for a prolonged period of time. Now, medically, you're considered fasting if you've gone 8 to 12 hours without either of those. And for anybody who's had any kind of procedure, like you've had to be under sedation, colonoscopy, even something as simple as dental procedures for kids, we ask that you be NPO or nothing per OSS, which is Latin for nothing by mouth after midnight, because ideally by the time your procedure gets done at about eight in the morning, I know we ask you to come at five in the morning and start doing a bunch of paperwork, but the actual procedure will start probably around 8:00. And so the reason for that is to empty gastric contents. And so if during the anesthesia procedure or during an intubation procedure where your airway is being protected, there's no reflux of fluid into your lungs because that could cause a complication. So in some way, shape or form, people have experienced fasting in that way.
[00:07:37] Uzma
If you've ever gotten a lab draw, our cholesterol readings, our sugar readings are dependent on the time that they're drawn. And how long has it been since you ate? Which is why we want you to get your labs done earlier in the morning. So I think at some point people understand that concept of fasting. How is it different than starvation? Starvation is involuntary, right? You're not choosing it's being thrust upon you or forced upon you in some way, shape or form. So there is dry fasting and wet fasting. And dry fasting means you're withholding both water and food, which is typically what's done in a lot of religious traditions, particularly in the Muslim tradition. And it's done depending on where you live. That particular dry fast is done from sunrise to sunset. So again, based on how much sun you have, that's how long you're fastest. So there are areas in the world where you're fasting up to 19 hours a day, which is pretty significant, and there are accommodations for that. But most religious traditions will allow a fast where you can take liquids or juices. You can even do like a fruit fast where you're just doing fruits or juices and water. And that, I would say, is a little bit safer if you don't know what you're doing. Dry fasting can be very dangerous if you don't know what to look out for. It's probably not for everybody. But I think what fasting, which includes intermittent fasting in most cases, those can be done very safely by pretty much anybody. Arguably, the only times I would say fasting would not be safe would be with somebody who has a history of an eating disorder, particularly anorexia, because that may trigger past behaviors that were problematic and pathologic for them.
[00:09:12] Rebecca
So when it comes to like intermittent fasting, let's say someone's interested, they want to try this out and they want to see how they feel. Is there a way that someone should be like easing into it, like starting out with like a shorter time frame? Like, let's say they skip breakfast, a lot of people say, Oh yeah, I skip breakfast, I'm fasting. But that's not necessarily the case, right?
[00:09:29] Uzma
It depends on your timing. Again, 8 to 12 hours without food is considered not fasting. So if you think about it, if you are sleeping, what you're supposed to be sleeping 8 hours a day minimum, then when you wake up, you've been in a fasting state essentially. Right? Because we could get your labs at that point. We could do a procedure on you at that point. So that is a fasting state. So if you have now skipped breakfast and you're not going to eat until lunch now, that means you're not actually snacking on anything food based. You can have your liquids, you can have your tea, you can have your water to your heart's content, but you're not actually having food. So now if you had 1:00, you're doing I think that's a 16 hour fast right there, which is pretty significant. And if you're somebody who is fasting for either an autoimmune condition to decrease inflammation in your body, to decrease some of those inflammatory markers that your doctor may be checking for, which ideally would also reflect clinically in your symptoms and decrease some of those. If you're trying to do that, that's really awesome. If you're trying to lose weight. Even a 16 hour fast has been shown to be effective in that to some point, most people do hit a wall. You want to do a minimum of 16 hours of it's weight loss that you're trying to do. And if you're trying to prolong anti-inflammatory effects fasting, then you want to also do them longer than 16 hours. Again, we're talking about what fasting situations.
[00:10:52] Rebecca
And how does someone eat around these times. So let's say they do fast now, should they? Some people would think, oh my gosh, I'm going to be so hungry. Like when I break that fast, what does Breaking the fast look like? Should they be eating this massive meal to like make up calories? Like if we take the average 2000 calorie a day, kind of like baseline, should people still be eating like a deficit of calories if they want to lose weight or should they be eating enough, then where they're going to feel satiated so that with their next fast, like the next day, if they do this daily, like how does that work out? How do you manage that?
[00:11:28] Uzma
So a quick and. That I'll offer because as somebody who practice intermittent fasting and continues to do it. When I was doing fasts, I would not eat anything after 7 p.m.. All right. So then what that meant is I would not eat until lunch the following day. So if you calculate that, that is an 18 hour fast, very easy. So if you after dinner, you don't eat until lunch the next day. That's easily an 18 hour fast right there. Now, when you open it, an 18 hour fast is not that significant. I know it sounds like a lot, but you could basically eat your regular meal and not have a problem. You do now have with an 18 hour fast, you have a six hour window to eat. And so what you want to do is make up your calories in those 6 hours. You don't have to have it right at that opening meal. Right. So kind of space it out. The goal of this is to keep your insulin from spiking. You want to have insulin as moderated as possible because we find that insulin resistance and eventually type two diabetes, which is a result of insulin resistance, is because we keep going like this throughout the day when we're sipping on our Starbucks. You know, the what is the venti? That's the large and we're sipping at it throughout the day.
[00:12:39] Uzma
Our insulin is spiking and as a result, we keep having sugar crashes, right? Every time your insulin goes high, it's sucking up your sugar and then you crash again. You get really tired. Well, then I need some more sugar to go up high and then you just keep doing that. The goal with the fasting is you just have those 6 hours in the day where your insulin is going to spike it all, but even then you want to minimize it, so you don't want to have spikes in that six hour window. Let's do it at the beginning and let's do it at the end, at your beginning meal of the fast when you open it and at the closing. So your 6 p.m. dinner or whatever you're going to have if you're going to go longer, 24 hours of longer, a fasting, it's not really a re feeding syndrome that you have, especially because it is a wet fast, right. So re feeding syndrome is something that we noted happened after we had taken over the concentration camps in the Holocaust and after the Holocaust. And we realized you can't just give everybody all that they want to eat because they will have feeding syndrome and it can be fatal because it causes electrolyte balances. But a handful of nuts, a small salad to open a longer or an extended fast over 24 hours.
[00:13:42] Uzma
That's ideal because you're not going to have a lot of stomach cramps. And the longer you go fasting, the less hungry you are. So it's currently Ramadan right now and I am fasting and all day you're fantasizing about all kinds of food and I'm going to eat this and I'm going to eat that. Will you take three bites and you're full, you're done. All you really want is water, because that's what the body is craving. You know, it's trying to avoid dehydration. And what I tell my patients is, you know, not eating food is not going to kill you, but not drinking is going to kill you because dehydration shuts down your organs when you don't eat. I mean, we've all watched Survivor. Nobody on there dies when they're not having their three meals a day. They can live off of slugs. They can live off of leaves. They can live off of all kinds of things, even without food, as long as they stay hydrated. And that's what's really important, because your body is super smart, and if it doesn't get sugar, it's going to start burning your fat. And that's what we all want is to burn the fat. And what that does then is increases your muscle ratio. And so you do actually get stronger when we start looking at actual macros in our bodies.
[00:14:45] Rebecca
So that's what people say when they promote fasting because it allows your body to kind of take a break from doing this work, this digestive work in the stomach, and then it can work on other things. So I know that it also when you're fasting, it's going to affect like your hormones and all of that and it does reduce inflammation. So how does that actually work? Is that like right away? Like the moment the first day I start fasting, all of a sudden my body's going to go crazy and start like fixing other things or does your body start to get used to it? And it takes a while. Like you have to be fasting for a good amount of time for a few weeks before you actually start seeing and noticing different changes and how you feel.
[00:15:19] Uzma
Your body's super smart, so you're having cell turnover like every second. So there's no set period when you're going to notice that. I will say that when you first start your fasting, certainly when you start pulling the carbs and the processed sugars out of your diet, you know, a lot of people decide to go cold turkey off of sugar and we call it keto flu. When you've pulled your carbohydrates and it can take 3 to 7 days sometimes and you feel like a truck ran you over and that's because your body is crashing. It is so addicted. Remember that the same receptors that respond to cocaine respond to sugar in your brain. So you are in chemical withdrawal. All of that refined and processed sugar being withheld. It leaves you lying on the couch and really grumpy and cranky in some cases. Now, for some people who are probably a little bit more fat adapted or not as insulin resistant, it won't be as long. When I first got into keto as somebody who dipped her chocolate chip cookies and chocolate frosting. Yeah, I was down for a week and I was cranky as heck, you know, because I was very sugar addicted. So once that is over. Sure. You. Feel like garbage. But your body is learning in that time. Like I'm not getting it. Where do I have to go next? If I don't have sugar to burn, I got to find fat.
[00:16:38] Uzma
Where am I going to find it? And so she's going to start burning those sources of energy in order to give you a little bit of pep. Once she's got that into gear after that, 3 to 7 days is over. I mean, you're high flying and you can already notice the anti-inflammatory benefits. You're going to notice a lot of mood elevation, if not stabilization. For those of us who struggle with any kind of mental health disorders, anxiety, depression, what have you. You're going to feel better. I would never say stop your medications without your doctor's supervision and definitely don't try fasting or even something as simple as pulling carbohydrates without talking to your doctor first, because you want to make sure that you know what your baseline labs are and then how that's going to change in the next three months, six months, one year. Because a lot of times people don't talk to their doctors and they'll do something like eat or the they'll do something like paleo or something completely fad that I don't even know about. And then you present to your doctor and it's like your lipids are off the charts and you're, you know, the doctor's worried because maybe you're a heart patient and, oh, your cholesterol can't be that high.
[00:17:35] Uzma
And then if you share with them, oh, I did this, I started this, and I'm noticing, like, I have more clarity, I have more focus. My joints don't ache as much. I have more energy. I don't have that 3 p.m. crash anymore where I need to make a Starbucks run or go down to the vending machine. I feel good. Why are you looking at the number? And then you can talk about what foods you've been choosing and maybe make some substitutions so that you can continue this way of eating in this lifestyle that is making a difference for you. And to that end, I do want to mention that when we talk diet, when we talk fad diets, particularly when I'm talking to my patients, I think everything works on any kind of caloric restriction. And remember, even fasting is a caloric restriction, right? Because now you've you've limited the hours that you're going to be eating in the day. And so naturally, probably not going to take in as many calories. Any kind of caloric restriction is going to work and help you lose weight. But you want to choose what's best for you, what's sustainable for you, what's easiest for you to do, and what's safe is for you to do and that you would discuss with your physician first.
[00:18:37] Rebecca
So on that talk of kind of how like keto plays in with fasting, let's say someone they're worried about losing muscle when because obviously if you're not eating, your body is going to be using all the fat. But then what if it starts using the proteins, all of that, like if you eliminate carbs and now that's not in there for your body to utilize as fuel. Some people are worried about muscle loss and stuff like that when they're fasting. Is that something people really should be concerned about or is there a certain when you start a fasting like forward diet, is there a certain way you should be eating or there are certain types of foods that you should build your diet around instead of going like full keto when you're fasting and having all these like high fat, high protein foods, is it okay to still be eating more of this normal diet? Like, can you still be fasting but then still have all your carbs and stuff? Like what's the best way to structure a healthy diet while also including fasting?
[00:19:29] Uzma
So if you're going to be fasting and you're worried about protein or muscle mass loss, I wouldn't worry because that's going to be in a prolonged starvation state because your body wants to burn sugar first and because it's really easy, super easy to burn sugar. It takes a lot less energy for the body to do that. When she doesn't have that, then she's going to go fat and you have a lot of fat on your body. You could have a year's worth of meals off the fat in your body. Most of us come on, we live in America and that's our diet. Is in some ways a blessing, in some ways a curse, right. Because we have access to all these things. Protein is the very last thing that's going to go. In all likelihood, you're going to be pretty sick by the time you get to that. So you're not going to burn it. Now, for people who are like bodybuilders will often do something like this where they'll go on a very strict fast before and they'll what it does is it decreases their water weight. You lose a lot of water when you are restricting your carbohydrates. And so it gives them that flatter edge and more trim and refine when they're doing their competitions and they continue their workouts. So in a fasting state, you can continue your workouts. I would say that if you're somebody who's a runner, I wouldn't say go run in the middle of summer at one or 2 p.m. when the sun is at its highest. I would say choose either the hour after the morning time when you wake up, when it's still cool outside and the sun is really early on the horizon. Let go run then, or an hour before your planned fast opening. If it's a 16 or 18 hour fast and it's earlier in the day, can you put that off until like the very end of your fast, your eating window is closed and then do it at that time? That would be awesome as well because then, you know, if you're doing it at the close of your eating window, you're going to be asleep in a couple of hours. So you've gotten your workout out of the way. You take a hot shower, you go to bed, it's all good. And then it gives you time to regenerate your muscle and rest your muscle overnight. So that's good. So working out is completely okay. Again, you would have to talk to your doctor if you need. You talk to a trainer to see what do I need to adjust if I'm not able to tolerate the same kind of workouts that I did pre fasting, are there any adjustments that I can make? So I feel good and I continued to feel good during my fasting period. And then what was the second part of your question?
[00:21:45] Rebecca
How do you actually structure a good, healthy, nutritionally balanced diet while you're implementing the fasting components?
[00:21:52] Uzma
Yeah, so it would be like the my plate, right? So you want half of it to be hearty vegetables, maybe some fruit. But I would rely mostly on your vegetables because that's where your nutrients are. Fruit. A lot of people will argue and have said to me in my clinics as well, like, Oh, but I don't eat sugar, I just eat fruit. It's like, no, but a mango has like two days worth of sugar in it. Like you can't have that much. So getting people to understand that your body doesn't know the difference between artificial sugar and regular sugar to the body, it's all carbohydrates. So it doesn't know what's natural and not it knows what's simple and complex because a simple it can burn fast. The complex, it takes a little bit longer. So a quarter of your plate is complex and a quarter of your plate is protein. So if you can stick to that and continue fasting, then there's really not very much modification that you have to make outside of that. You don't have to go keto, you don't have to go Atkins. Atkins is actually something I don't like that much because I've seen so many people overdo it with the protein and too much of anything is bad. So if you're keto and you're doing a lot of animal fats, that's not good either. That's not really doing a good clean keto. You want to rely on plant based fats because those are healthier. We know that animal fats are like heavily processed and heavily chemical injected. So unless you're really getting like organic free range, all of that good stuff, grass fed, then animal proteins are not your best bet. And then with Atkins, if you're overdoing protein, you can actually fill your kidneys by getting excess protein because your kidneys are filtering those and at some point you can overload it and your kidneys will fail.
[00:23:25] Uzma
And it takes us I've been lucky so far. I've always been able to reverse that. And it turned out it was somebody who was doing Atkins and they were doing the protein shakes and everything. So it really does matter what you put into your body, which is why I'm saying and stressing so much. Get your doctor to clear it. But if you stick to a myplate, there's not really much that you have to do. You know, pick a complex carbohydrate, don't make corn or potatoes your go to complex carbohydrate. Like, do like sweet potatoes, you know, some starch, your vegetables will be fine. But the dark leafy greens you really can't go wrong with because that's where your iron is. That's where a lot of your potassium is. That's how you can replenish any stores that you might have diminished a little bit during your fasting window. And then a good healthy protein, if you can stick to an animal based protein that's really a plant based protein, that's really awesome. But be careful with the plant based proteins as well. If you are trying to do low carb or lower carb, a lot of those meat substitutes can be just as high carb because they have like maybe a lot of corn byproduct in there or some kind of filler that is very high in carbs. Soy is not necessarily an awesome thing, especially if you're a Perry or post-menopausal woman. You want to be careful with the soy products as well. Again, leading to hormone dysregulation that's already happening and that can worsen during those periods in your life.
[00:24:44] Rebecca
I feel like fasting is such a great way for I know a lot of people struggle with like snacking and they're just they're constantly snacking. But then I feel like the more they snack, the more they're going to keep doing that. But then that also is like, Oh, they think they would never be able to fast because they're always hungry like that. So again, I guess there is that kind of like body learning period where people have to kind of wean off of that. And you're actually going to, I guess people snack because they think they'll have that energy, that focus and stuff because they have that quick energy. But when you have that long, steady state of sustained blood sugar, there's no spikes and stuff because of the fasting that kind of does the job without the snack.
[00:25:21] Uzma
Yeah, yeah. And it's a lot of it is because in the medical community, you know, we taught things like because we were taught to teach, oh, if you're diabetic, you need to have many, many small meals throughout the day. And I always thought that was so weird because I was like, We're giving people insulin and we know insulin makes you gain weight. Like we know this. There's very few people who don't gain weight when they're given insulin. And it's because as a hormone, what it's doing is it is pulling sugar out of your body, but it's also releasing fat, you know, your fat stores. And that's not good. And every time you eat a small meal, your insulin is spiking, your sugar is dropping, then you get tired. Oh, how do I get myself a pick up? Let me have another snack. I need another small meal that my insulin goes up. And so you're still just regulating your natural insulin. So of course, with that kind of persistent dysregulation, your pancreas eventually gives out. The beta cells that are producing the insulin with time are just going to say, go kaput. And now you have to have exogenous insulin injected into you in order to replace everything you lost because you've been busy giving it up to this thought of I have to have snacks throughout the day when you really don't. Because our prehistoric ancestors did not snack throughout the day because they didn't have trail mix and they didn't have like they didn't even have fruit very easily accessible. Right. That was something that was discovered later. So these people fasted throughout the day until you found your big mammoth or whatever animal there was and you slaughtered it and you ate that for days and then you would continue to fast until your next big feast. So this fasting and fasting is actually our natural rhythm that we have lost through industrialization, modernization and overconsumption of everything. Right? From social media to food to you name it, we do it.
[00:27:09] Rebecca
So I always like to get everyone's take on speaking of natural things of sugar substitutes, but not fun to the artificial ones, but stevia erythritol ones that are considered natural and zero calorie, zero sugar. Some people are like, Hey, yeah, they're great. Use them in place, especially for people who are on those low carb diets. But are they safe to use? Can you use them when you're fasting? Can
you put let's say you're going to have some black coffee, but you need to sweeten it up with like a drop or two of stevia. Is that okay to do when you're fasting or does that totally just break your fast because there's something extra added in there?
[00:27:44] Uzma
So I'm not going to say that totally messes up your fast, but technically that is breaking a fast. Now you're not fasting anymore because you have introduced a carbohydrate and the whole point of the fasting window is that you don't have the carbohydrates in that point because the goal of fasting is not to let insulin spike and insulin will spike with some of those sugars, even the natural ones. Monk fruit has been shown to have the least like spike, the lowest spike. With insulin, it'll go a little bit, but not enough to throw you out of if your goal is ketosis. I know a lot of people care about being in ketosis and what that really means is your fat adapted. So now your body's primary source of fuel is fat and that's what she's going to burn every single time, which is awesome for those people, especially who have that midsection fat. That puts them at high risk for metabolic syndrome and all kinds of badness from cardiovascular to you name it. So if you have to have it, I would say save it for when you have your eating window. Don't do it in your fasting window. There are alternatives that will not spike your insulin. There are sugar free flavorings to things like for myself personally, use a coffee flavor that is sugar free and that doesn't spike your insulin. That's what goes in my coffee. But if I'm having tea, it's going to be without sugar. Because once you are fat adapted, you're really not going to miss the sugar. And if you try to have it again, everything tastes incredibly sweet and your teeth actually hurt. That's when you know your fat adapted and you don't need those ketosis strips and all of that paraphernalia to prove that you're fat adapted.
[00:29:15] Rebecca
So wow. So if there is one major take home point that you want our listeners to come away with or something, they should give a try and try on themselves. What would that be?
[00:29:26] Uzma
I think an easy way to see if you are game for fasting is skip breakfast. I know we grew up hearing that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Well, the bacon industry taught us that because they figured out like, hey, we have all this excess like pig fat. What do we do with that? We make bacon, we sell it to the masses. So it was a way to sell their product, you know, don't buy into it. The grain lobby also, they're the ones that lobbied in the seventies. We have all this excess grain that for some reason we were told to create and we're not shipping it overseas to feed starving people. We're not shipping enough of it. Let's sell it to our own people and tell them that their cardiovascular risk will decrease when in fact, in the last 30 years, cardiovascular events have increased in our population. Obesity, diabetes have all increased in our population. Why? Because eat more grains people. So you don't need any of those things in the morning. Try skipping the breakfast. Keep yourself well hydrated. I think a good rule of thumb is when you wake up, have a liter of water like literally before you reach work, have a liter of water before lunch, have another liter of water because to live you need at least three liters of water. Where I live, we need four because I live in a desert climate is super arid. So, you know, you're losing moisture from the biggest organ in your body all day long and that's your skin. So if you're in any kind of air conditioned environment, you need to replenish that. So if you can have two liters before lunch, hey, lunchtime comes around, see if you're hungry.
[00:30:52] Uzma
And that's a trick to as adults to learn. Am I actually hungry or was I just taught that these are the times you eat and these are the times you need to eat? Those were rules that were taught to us that aren't really rules. Those are made up social norms. So if you don't feel hungry, don't eat and see how long you can extend that fast and then see what the scale does, you can check it on a day to day basis. If that doesn't mess with your mental space or you can do it once a week, whatever your choice is with the scale. But I would say start with not eating the breakfast. See what happens, see if you feel hungry. If you aren't, don't eat, extend it but keep drinking. Don't forget that third leader at the end of the day, if you can get a fourth in, kudos to you, but you'll be peeing all night. See if you can extend it. If you can't eat your lunch, see how you feel. Do it for a week. If it's not sustainable, don't do it. Do what you can do sustainably, religiously, without losing accountability to yourself and track how you're feeling so you can take all of this information back to your doctor and say, Hey, I'm actually sleeping more, or I'm actually I have energy to exercise more. Or instead of lunch or instead of breakfast, I'm going to go take a walk in the morning or take a jog in the morning or bike in the morning. Do something active to replace what I thought all these years that my body needed. But it really it just needs to move.
[00:32:08] Rebecca
I think we're going to have to have you come on for another episode. We are such a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much.
[00:32:13] Uzma
Oh, yeah, you're so welcome.
[00:32:15] Rebecca
Can you tell our listeners where they can find you? I know you have your own podcast so you can give that a shout out.
[00:32:20] Uzma
Yeah. So I am co host of Mommying While Muslim podcast where we talk all things Muslim-American and raising our children. And that's at Mommying While Muslim podcast on Instagram. We have a Facebook page of the same name, but I would encourage anybody, you don't have to be Muslim to be in the Facebook group. We have a lot of non-Muslims in there. That is our largest audience actually when we give our surveys out. So that's really funny. But it is Mommying While Muslim all squished together and that's our Facebook group. If you want to find us and we'd love to see you, come listen to us.
[00:32:49] Rebecca
They're awesome. I'll have all that in the show notes. Thank you so much.
[00:32:53] Uzma
You're very welcome.
[00:32:57] Rebecca
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Sugar Solved podcast. As always, if you like what you hear. Share it with a friend. Leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player and tune in next week for another episode of the Sugar Solve podcast, where we demystify health and nutrition one gram of sugar at a time.