How to Customize Intermittent Fasting to Lose Weight and Lower Blood Sugar with Marty Kendall

In this engaging episode, Marty Kendall discusses the revolutionary concept of Data Driven Fasting (DDF) and how it offers a personalized approach to determining when and what to eat. By utilizing glucose levels as a real-time fuel gauge, DDF guides individuals towards nourishing their bodies in a way that optimizes metabolic health and weight management. Marty delves into the pitfalls of long fasting periods, the importance of validating hunger signals, and the role of glucose in regulating dietary habits. Explore how DDF empowers individuals to make informed choices about their nutrition, leading to sustainable lifestyle changes and improved overall health.

Key Takeaways:

• DDF shifts the focus from strict fasting regimes to personalized eating patterns based on individual glucose responses.
• Understanding hunger cues and validating them using pre-meal glucose levels can enhance satiety and prevent overeating.
• Protein-focused meals can help stabilize blood sugar and support weight loss efforts by depleting stored energy effectively.
• Marty emphasizes the significance of balancing nutrient intake with energy consumption to promote metabolic health and efficient fuel utilization.

Resources:

Free DDF 101 Course
Join Marty's Mighty Networks Community for Access to All Programs
Blasphemous Nutrition on Substack
Work with Aimee
Photography by: Dai Ross Photography
Podcast Cover Art: Lilly Kate Creative

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Transcript

0:00

Hey Rebels, welcome to Blasphemous Nutrition. Consider this podcast your pantry full of clarity, perspective, and the nuance needed to counter the superficial health advice so freely given on the internet. I'm Aimee, the unapologetically candid host of Blasphemous Nutrition and a double degreed nutritionist with 20 years experience. I'm here to share a more nuanced take. On living and eating well to sustain and recover your health. If you've found most health advice to be so generic as to be meaningless, We're so extreme that it's unrealistic, and you don't mind the occasional F bomb. You've come to the right place. From dissecting the latest nutrition trends to breaking down published research and sharing my own clinical experiences, I'm on a mission to foster clarity amidst all the confusion and empower you to have the health you need to live a life you love. Now let's get started.

Aimee: 1:00

In today's episode of Blaphemous nutrition, I invite Marty Kendall to return to the podcast to discuss data driven, fasting a methodology he has created to help people better understand their body's glucose, sensitivity, and optimize feeding and fasting cycles to their biology, rather than relying upon these arbitrary fasting hours set by influencers. In this conversation, we discussed the benefits to finding your personalized glucose triggers. The benefits and drawbacks to CGMs and what people, including myself discover when they go through his data driven fasting course. If you're interested in DIY in your own personal glucose trigger, be sure to check out the link to his free course, which I've included in the show notes for a more handheld and customized approach, as well as to weave in what to eat alongside, when to eat. You can reach out to me for customized care or join one of Marty's online group programs. For specific information and support in finding your personalized macros, micros, and glucose trigger. I've been successfully integrating these concepts into private practice with clients for a couple of years now and it is absolutely thrilling to play a part in helping those with diabetes, reach hemoglobin A1C levels back into non-diabetic ranges as well as normalizing the blood sugar levels of those with pre-diabetes and dramatically reducing their risk of chronic disease down the road. Additionally implementing these tools helps people lose weight by focusing on nourishing their bodies and understanding their physiology better. It is just so much healthier than what we've been told to do our entire lives. All the info you need to learn more will be in the show notes. Let's get onto that interview.

3:02

You

Aimee: 3:05

Marty Kendall, welcome back to Blasphemous Nutrition.

Marty: 3:10

Hey, me. Great to chat, mate. Always fun. We had a riot last time.

Aimee: 3:14

Yeah, we did. Couldn't, couldn't quite get enough of it.

Marty: 3:18

And we're back.

Aimee: 3:20

And we're back. So today, I want to, I want to talk with you a little bit about data driven fasting. Um, and, you know, is it, which essentially answers the question when to eat. In a very personalized targeted way. And that's what I love about this is it's not a random, arbitrary fast for this long, your eating window is this long, right? Like you've really figured out how to tailor it to the individual.

Marty: 3:52

Yeah, it's not really fasting. That's the secret. That's the dirty secret of dietary fasting. We, designed it as the. Cure for people who are fasting for too long and thinking more is better. And you know, I'm not making progress with 16 eight so go to 24 and then omad and then extended fasting and all of a sudden they're at this point they're eating for that they're not eating for days at a time and then they've lost touch with their hunger and satiety signals more importantly and when they eat again, They can't regulate how much they eat, or even what they eat, and I know when I was trying the extended fasting thing, you end up You know, you give yourself a lot of leeway to eat whatever you feel like at that point because you're just so darn hungry, your survival instincts kick in and you're eating the peanut butter and the honey and everything together that tastes so good and is energy dense and you might have fasted for a week, but you're not getting protein or nutrients at that point. So if that keeps on going. You're going to get to the point where you might be skinny. You might even be skinny fat. You might be obese with less muscle because you're just not getting the protein and nutrients you need at that point. So, yeah, after watching my wife's CGM all the time and, uh, now my son's Closed loop insulin pump system as well with two type 1 diabetics in the family just made a lot of sense to use your glucose as a fuel gauge to tell you when you need to refuel and to validate your hunger. And yeah, about five years ago, blog post, few people found it, started using it and it just blew up and my life changed since then. So yeah, it's been really popular. It's been fun.

Aimee: 5:33

So, so essentially. You're, you've done a bait and switch where you teach fasters to eat by marketing data for fasting.

Marty: 5:44

Yeah, yeah, that, that, that is the dirty secret. I've done a bait and switch to try and get people to nourish their body regularly. Like most people come from extended fasting to DDF and end up eating, you know, two or three times a day and making progress with their weight loss. So it's like they love it because it just. frees them from not eating for days. People like eating. People want to eat. There's something nice about eating with your family and, you know, the feeling of eating and nourishing yourself. And people want to do that. They don't really want to not eat for days at a time, especially if it leads them to, or a metabolic health condition. Cause they've lost lean muscle mass and yeah, that is a thing in the long term and for the majority of people who are doing fasting and a lot of them are the postmenopausal females who lean mass is really critical. It's really hard to rebuild once you lose it. yeah, getting the protein on a regular basis, the nutrients is really critical. So yeah, that's how. Our passion to just, you know, go well down. You don't need to not eat for that long. Maybe you need to not eat everything and anything all the time, but we can help you find that balance. And there's no one right, perfect fasting regime that works for you. I mean, it's like, yeah, your friend comes and tells you that you should refuel your car at, you This time, every third Tuesday, it's always work for them. And it's crazy to refuel your car with the same routine that works for your friend. There's a unique routine for you based on your fuel gauge. Because they've got

Aimee: 7:26

the family van and you've got a mini Cooper.

Marty: 7:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or vice versa. They've got the little Mini Cooper and just, you know, ride their bike to work and just drive to the beach on the weekends. And yeah, and you're driving the Range Rover. That's a big gas guzzler. It's you've got different bodies, different metabolisms. You need different foods and your glucose is that it's the most variable. fuel source in your body that shows up in your blood, that signifies the fuels in the rest of your body, which is really fascinating. So once your body fat is depleted, your glucose comes down because you really, your glucose is the backup of all the fuels in your system into your bloodstream that you can measure quite easily.

Aimee: 8:09

Right. Right. You know, I would see this, you know, I've seen this before with people who get excited about fasting or they read some of the, some of the books or,, watch YouTube videos from people promoting, fasting and, and they'll start off and it looks great and everything's fine. And then just as you said, right, they end up fasting themselves into a corner. Where by time I'm seeing them, they're doing OMAD, fasting 20 hours a day and often also exercising on top of this. And then having these chronic injuries that they can't quite cover from, which is limiting their activity. And then their weight loss stops and they're panicking. And you have to re educate them on how to eat and the importance of eating. for your question. And, depending on how long they've been in that position, even though they may want to eat because not eating worked for a while, they're afraid to start again.

Marty: 9:10

They're afraid of food.

Aimee: 9:11

Yeah. And especially with, you know, if they have a history of extreme dieting, they've already done that rebound weight gain so many times.

Marty: 9:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and definitely the, the fasting themselves into a corner is a good analogy because so many people, I just started seeing on Instagram about a carnivore diet to the tune of yesterday and carnivore, you know, it's a magical diet that, uh, now lean and, uh, it, uh, carnivore is great and gets you tons of bioavailable protein, but the point is that online nutrition communities become very dogmatic and belief based and once you've bought into fasting and fasting is magical and can do no wrong and all I need to do is not eat, yeah, you can back yourself into a corner where it's It's hard to get out of. And at that point, those people who have done extended fasting for a very long time, lost a lot of lean mass, probably a bit skinny fat, they just need to nourish their body with enough protein and then look at when to eat and dial things in. So, yeah.

Aimee: 10:22

And so, how do you Why don't you explain to our listeners how, how they know where their fuel gauge is at, at any given moment.

Marty: 10:35

Yeah, it's personalized. There's a personalized glucose trigger. So all we do, we've got a data driven fasting app that they record the glucose before they go to eat. Every time they eat for three days, and just the average of that pre meal glucose is their blood glucose trigger going forward. So, from then on, you just try to wait until you're below that glucose trigger, so you feel hungry, you go, Hmm, I feel hungry. Do I feel hungry enough to test my glucose? Yes, no. If yes, go test. I mean, that's a bit of a A patent interrupt in and of itself, which is handy because most people it's a bit of a hassle. It's not really that painful. Once you've done it a few times, most people are afraid of it, but it's actually quite painless, especially if you do it in your forearm where I do. Um, but, but just considering, am I hungry? Why am I hungry? Am I eating for every other reason? Um, can. stop you from just mindlessly snacking and mindlessly eating in front of the TV. Um, and then you validate your hunger. If you're below your glucose trigger, definitely time to refuel, go ahead and eat. So that's the, the cool thing. It gives permission to people to eat and, and that it's not fasting for longer is better. Sometimes you definitely need to, to eat cause your glucose is low and your other fuels are low. You need to refuel. And if you waited for longer, you'd probably. Get into a point where your survival instincts, your Aimeegdala, we call it Lizzy, your lizard brain comes in and makes you eat anything and everything. So if you fasted for too long, um, you, you end up overeating. So we want to catch that point just before there where you're depleting your fuels in your body. But you haven't gone for so long that you're going to make poorer food choices. So your glucose helps you do that. And then going forward, if you make good progress and your average glucose before you eat is decreasing, that trigger will continue to drop over the coming 4 weeks of our data driven fasting challenge, um and just helps. continue to push people just a little bit, but not too much that they back themselves into a corner again. And, and just like in the gym, you don't lift the heaviest weight. You don't try to deadlift 300 kilos in the first day. You start small, you build up. Same sort of process with progressive overload for your metabolism, but at the same time you need a break. So after four weeks, we take a break, give yourself a week or two to eat normally again, come back and start the process over again. So you're not always, um, depriving yourself and you get to learn to eat. Normally for a little while to maintain your weight and then go again. So, yeah, it's just really cool. We got 10, 000 people in our community and we've got a million million, data points of premium glucose that give me a whole lot of interesting stuff to analyze to see that. Your pre meal glucose is the most important thing you can manage. Right. It's super cool. It's fun as an engineer to have all the data to understand how metabolism works.

Aimee: 13:51

I bet. I imagine too, with the, FDA in the United States approving, CGMs for over the counter use now without a prescription,

Marty: 14:01

uh, that's

Aimee: 14:01

coming this summer, reportedly, you can get CGM in the States over the counter.

Marty: 14:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Aimee: 14:06

that will definitely reduce the barrier to entry that, that people have.

Marty: 14:11

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. CGMs are interesting. Like for my wife and my son, who've got type one diabetes, definitely a no brainer. And especially if you're on a closed loop insulin pump system, CGMs can be unpredictable., you need to calibrate them. Every time you change the freestyle, you need to recalibrate, we can't calibrate the freestyle They're more expensive. So in Australia you can buy them over the counter, but nobody does.'cause it is like$150 for a transmitter and$120 per sensor that lasts for, for 10 days. So, wow. I'm all, I'm all for biohackers, paying cost price, but they're priced as medical devices, so for our purposes in data driven fasting, we just say use a standard old glucometer that you can get over the counter any time from your chemist or Walmart or wherever, and an accurate glucometer for our purposes is better because it's more accurate and you're not always watching the little squiggly line on your CGM, which can drive a lot of people mad and every time they sneeze, and

Aimee: 15:20

Just like weighing multiple times a day,

Marty: 15:22

same

Aimee: 15:24

psychological mind mess.

Marty: 15:28

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Definitely. Um, yeah, so just, it's, it's, it's not about knowing your glucose every moment. It's about validating your hunger before you eat. Am I hungry? Am I hungry enough to test? Am I below trigger? Yes, I'm good to eat. You're giving yourself permission to eat. And if you're above trigger then, you might want to change what you eat. You want to, Focus on protein and nutrients and dial back the energy, because you know, you've got plenty of energy in your bloodstream. yeah, CGMs are great. and it's good that people are, paying more attention to their glucose and metabolic health. And your glucose is the most important thing, but a lot of the time, You know, like anything we devise acts to satisfy what we think is the issue and people try to achieve flatline blood sugars. So you've got glucose goddess saying close your carbs with fat and you know, fat and carbs is donut, cookie, croissant, peanut butter, all the yummy things that we overeat. So it's a

Aimee: 16:33

terrible idea. Keeps the glucose levels higher for longer,

Marty: 16:38

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, you've tamed you've stabilized the glucose Which is in some contexts a good thing, but you've done it the right wrong way. So Yeah, she's got millions of followers Going, yeah, I can tame my glucose by adding fat to my carbs and it's so yummy and I'm gonna lose weight because it's healthy. And it's like, no, no, no, no. You've, you've created the donut. You've changed your, you've created the donut diet. Let's, if we focus on our glucose before we eat, primarily everything else falls into place. Once you drain your excess fat and glucose, then your glucose becomes more stable. Your weight and glucose comes down. Because you're losing weight and improving your metabolic health and everything falls into place. You're not just taming the CGM, which you can do easily by, Excluding all carbs and even protein and just drinking fat, you'll have a stable CGM, but the glucose will be high, your waking glucose will be high, and everything else will be, all your markers will be messed up because you're just overloading with excess energy.

Aimee: 17:48

With, with individuals who have a high degree of insulin resistance and chronically high glucose, how, do you have a sense with all of the people that have gone through DDF? Roughly the amount of time that it takes for those individuals to start seeing some results because they tend to be fairly weight loss resistant. And that's

Marty: 18:13

a funny term, but, um, I never quite understand what weight loss resistance means. It just means I've tried every diet and none of them worked. but yeah, we see really good progress with people who start with a. a higher glucose, their trigger will fall really quickly. They get a lot of real confirmation that they're on the right track because they can see their numbers moving quite quickly. So say there's their premium glucose trigger starts at 200, it'll drop down to a hundred in four weeks quite quickly. And once they clear the glucose from their system, their body gets on with using the fat. So the oxidative priority, you've got to clear the glucose from your system. Your body as the highest priority because you've got no place to store that extra glucose. So the body just churns through the glucose as you wait just long enough to be tapping into the glucose and then the body starts burning fat. The body doesn't turn to fat, but you know, your metabolism turns to the fat on your body to, to drain that next once you've started to clear the glucose. So yeah, they make quite Rapid progress. Obviously, if you've got a lot of weight to lose, it'll take a few months to get there. But, yeah, people with type 2 go really well with structured process to eating, structured, uh, regime.

Aimee: 19:37

Yeah. Yeah. that's what I've observed as well, that, for individuals with type two diabetes, they are able to bring their blood sugars down to levels, which their physicians find quite impressive.

Marty: 19:49

So, yeah, there's a lot of, doctors after seeing the patients use DDF, recommending it to their other patients, which is really encouraging. yeah. And insulin resistance is really just, to me, we demonize insulin a lot of way, in a lot of times. And we say we blame obesity on insulin resistance, but the fact is that if you're insulin resistant, you're. Fuel tanks are just over full and as soon as you start eating in a way that provides satiety you get the nutrients you're craving with, without excess energy, your body is only too willing to offload it quickly and that weight loss can happen quite quickly if you're on a diet. Your body fat is filled up like a balloon and your insulin is working overtime to try and hold back all the excess energy in your body, where it becomes hard to lose more weight. People who are really weight loss resistant is that bodybuilder trying to get on stage in a bikini or speedos. 8 percent body fat to get from 8 to 5 is a herculean effort to get from 45 to 40 percent body fat is a whole lot easier. It, it definitely, the process works and it's just a structured way to solve the question of, am I really hungry? Do I really need to eat? And, what do I need to nourish my body with? Can

Aimee: 21:20

you talk a little bit about the Don phenomenon? Because this is something that, you know, having done. DDF recently with you like my blood sugar is always, you know, at air quoting here pre diabetic levels when I wake up in the morning, um, you know, between between like 101 and 104.

Marty: 21:43

Yep.

Aimee: 21:43

And it didn't, it doesn't, for me, it doesn't matter if I have carbs at night, if I don't have carbs at night, if I, even if I end up eating so little that I wake up in the middle of the night hungry, I will still have a high glucose level, you know, what's considered high. However, I may drop down, you know, into lower levels during the day.

Marty: 22:07

Uh, yeah, I wouldn't. For someone like you, who's athletic and maybe on a lower carb diet, um, 100, 104 isn't really that high. Um, I suppose, Couple of points there, but to explain dawn phenomenon, it's just your body booting up in the day. So overnight, you go into rest mode, recovery mode, your glucose is low, your body wants to store all the energy and just give your body a rest. But from 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning, a few hours before you start to wake up, the cortisol kicks in, the glucogon kicks in, And pushes more energy into bloodstream. So as soon as you hit the ground, you're ready to hit the ground running. so you're well fueled for the day and that's dawn phenomenon. People who are insulin resistant type 1 diabetics who aren't well controlled will see a higher dawn phenomenon. But at the same time, People on a lower carb diet tend to have higher glucose in the morning and lower later in the day. They seem to trend down. And often athletes like yourself who are active, it just seems the body wants to hold enough glucose in your body, even if you're on a low carb diet to be ready to run at any stage to run away from a line. So for you, who is very active and runs a lot, your body's probably maintaining enough glucose in your system to To be ready for that. so yeah, 101, 104 isn't really a big concern if your body composition is where you want it to be,, your waist to height, body fat, those sorts of things. Um, yeah, so probably not a big concern. Big stress, but for those people, who see a high dawn phenomenon, they're hungry sometime in the morning. It doesn't have to be what's typically called breakfast at 6am, but if they get hungry at 9, 10, 11 o'clock and their glucose is above the current trigger, then it's definitely a good idea to have a protein focused meal at that point. And as you said, your glucose drops and then when you're hungry again, your glucose is, is, you know, is down. So the worst thing is to start the day with a mocha and croissant and it puts this, puts your blood sugar on a rollercoaster that's hard to get off and you're hungry more often and not satiated. So protein. At your first meal is a great hack, especially if your glucose is higher than you want to be.

Aimee: 24:38

For sure. For sure. And I, on mornings when I'm not getting up and preparing for a run, you know, which includes quite a bit of carbohydrate. If I do have a higher protein, lower carbohydrate breakfast, and then I test my glucose, you know, an hour later, it's like it's dropped by 10 points. Right. Yeah.

Marty: 24:57

Yeah. Yeah.

Aimee: 24:59

It's a little,

Marty: 25:01

little bump of insulin from the protein. Uh, you know, usually protein and glucagon balance each other out to achieve flatline blood sugar. If it's a little bit higher than it needs to be, then the protein seems to balance out. Bump up the insulin and help you lower the glucose levels. Whereas if you didn't eat, it might keep drifting up till one or two o'clock in the afternoon. And then people are waiting for too long. And then if your first meal's at two and your next meal's at eight and you've, If first meal wasn't big enough, you're going to be super hungry at night and overeating. So that's why we say, yeah, definitely if you can, when you're first hungry, eat earlier, eat a protein focused meal, and you're less likely to be binging later at night, which is on the less optimal food choices. Usually

Aimee: 25:55

I did notice that too. And there was, there was one morning while I was doing a DDF where I was in a hurry and I ran out the door, I had just had coffee. And then I was at a coworking space and I ordered like a little cortado, right? So more espresso, just a little bit of milk, and I hadn't had anything. And I get home at two o'clock. I'm famished. And so, you know, I'm in D, D, F, so I take my glucose and it's like 107 and, and I have what's going on and oh, and you know, my immediate thought was my body responds so strongly with I imagine cortisol due to the caffeine in my system. Yep. Right. And then the cortisol is just like, you know, let's make sure, there's a lot of glucose in the blood because someone's, someone's going in for a fight.

Marty: 26:43

Yeah. And that's how coffee works. It sort of bumps the cortisol, um, and glucagon to push a little bit more energy into your system. So you feel more energized and that's, that's okay. We're not going to tell everybody. Yeah. Who does DDF that they have to stop their coffee. We probably, our membership would probably plummet, but you can manage that. You don't have to avoid, coffee. You just understand that first thing in the morning when you have your coffee, usually your glucose might be a bit elevated due to dawn phenomenon and the coffee. And at that point, the protein focused breakfast is a great idea. We try to encourage people to not add a ton of calories to the coffee. You don't want to be adding the MCT oil or the butter or the sugar and milk that we tend to load. You know, when I went to America, it's crazy. Everything you can get that's called coffee is just this sickly sweet milkshake. And it's like, oh, wow. I just can't, I love coffee, but I couldn't tolerate. The thousand calories that add to the drink. It's like, wow, it just, it's, it's insane. the palette is just so sweet in America compared to Australia.

Aimee: 27:55

Well, everything gets a little, a little, just a little dab of high fructose corn syrup. Everything, you know, spaghetti sauce, everything has got sugar in it. yeah, I think it's one of the things that, that, When clients start reading labels, they are absolutely stunned, that everything, salad dressings and, and pasta sauces and things that they would expect to be healthy, even the organic ones, right, have, oh, well, they just put organic sugar in there instead of high fructose corn syrup, but it has been sweetened.

Marty: 28:29

Yeah, it's crazy that the pallet just keeps on moving, your bliss point keeps on moving away and have to keep on chasing it to make it a little bit more seductive than the other products to market share.

Aimee: 28:41

Yeah, it's pretty. Where will

Marty: 28:42

this all end? It's a bit dystopian.

Aimee: 28:46

I think the writing's on the wall. It's just a matter of when and how bad it's gonna be.

Marty: 28:51

Yeah, surprising it's not happening quicker, really.

Aimee: 28:54

Yeah, yeah. It's, it is a testament to, I guess to, the system feels desperately fragile and yet it does continue to, to hold on. So,

Marty: 29:11

Yeah, but then when people test their glucose, it's the real reckoner. They go, Oh, I didn't understand what that food did to my glucose. It rose more than 30%. It's definitely not a good food for me. And I'm going to, Oh yeah, this food and this food works for me. I can work out what works for me. And this meal allowed me to eat sooner because it dropped my blood sugar like you found. And yeah, I'll definitely keep that in rotation. So it's very quickly people develop a personalized. Short list of meals that they know work for them that are safe and they go. Okay. I read the label. I realized that they've added tons of high fructose corn syrup to those baked beans or that organic. Magical healthy thing that said healthy, healthy, healthy on the label, but it wasn't because it's got all this added stuff that tastes good. So I'd buy more. And

Aimee: 30:03

one of the things I really like about that too, is that it is very personalized, you know, some people will have. A very strong glucose response to say, yams, but perhaps not rice or, you know, I was really surprised at how little something that is, vilified as being extremely high carbohydrate food, a banana. I had a banana and it was just like. My body's like, yeah, whatever. It didn't even know

Marty: 30:32

that the whole foods will digest more slowly, which is great. It's got the fiber with it. It takes longer to pull apart than the ultra processed foods that are designed to hit your system with different types of carbs and different types of fat all at once to overdrive your dopamine. yeah, but it definitely, that's where CGM is really amazing because it just. You instantly know that that food doesn't work for you and if, if, you know, one of the type 1 diabetics in the family accidentally get the wrong food. You know, it's not, it's real Pepsi, not diet Pepsi, you instantly know on the CGM, you know, it's, it's a real ready wreckner of does this food work for me, but for athletes who are active, they're going to have, they're going to be below the personal fat threshold and the glucose they eat will go straight into the fuel stores rather than backing up in the system. But for people who are. Above the personal fat threshold, insulin resistant, obese, you know, or however you want to frame it. The glucose is going to back up into the bloodstream and show instantly. But that, that reverses once you drain your fuel tanks, once you drain the liver glycogen and the fat in your adipose tissue, and then eventually everything you eat just goes straight into storage rather than backing up into your bloodstream, so you see a smaller rise after you eat.

Aimee: 32:05

I'm curious with the CGMs, um, I had the benefit when I was working in a metabolic clinic to to test out one for a month and to see both how cool the technology was and also the shortcomings of the technology. for instance, something like, taking a shower, going for a run in the cold. anything that changes the temperature of the skin would then have a very immediate impact on the sensor being able to read glucose levels or over overshooting, overestimating glucose levels. are the, are the ones that your, your family is using? Are those better? Are those better? Are they, do they have higher quality CGMs for those who. Need it, or is the tech is the technology across the board still new enough that these problems persist.

Marty: 33:00

Yeah, the freestyle is just, you just stick it on, and I usually can't calibrate it with the app, so, um, I think with some apps you can calibrate the freestyle, but with the Dexcom, which is used for type ones typically, you can calibrate it so after a day or two it's much more accurate after you've done two or three blood sugar. tests to, to bring it into line with the actual blood level, but it can take a little while. They try to calibrate them, so they're as accurate as possible when you stick them on, but they're not yet. Amazing. And every, that's the problem with the freestyle in data driven fasting, because every time you change a sensor, it's out by 10 points. So if your, your trigger was 90, and then you put on a new, um, CGM, freestyle CGM, that's now reading 110, because it's miscalibrated, then BDF goes out the window and you have to wait a long time for your trigger and yeah, it's like, no, just use a glucometer. It's simpler, cheaper and doesn't do your head in. The CGMs read interstitial fluid, which is the glucose around your muscle, which for exercising athletes may be more useful because you're understanding the fuel that's near your muscle. But for deciding when to eat, you sort of want to understand, The blood glucose, which is closer to your liver, which is closer to your stomach, which is, comes from where your food came from. Um, so yeah, that's where testing blood is a more accurate thing. Indicator of do I need to eat now rather than the interstitial fluid, which is lagged by 15 minutes. So if you want to net want to know, do you need to eat now that the blood is more timely rather than waiting for the, The interstitial fluid to catch up 15 minutes, half an hour later. yeah, we're trying to catch that point where, yeah, I feel hungry. My glucose has dropped and. Glucose can sort of go along happily where your liver is. Fueling your blood really consistently and nicely and it gets to a point where it starts to get depleted and the glucose can drop. Um, so yeah, that that's the perfect point. We want to catch it if you can.

Aimee: 35:24

With data driven fasting, what would you say is the thing that tends to surprise people the most as they're going through the course? I

Marty: 35:34

suppose the foods that raise the blood sugar initially, and then for a lot of people who come from a keto background, that fat keeps the glucose elevated for a very long time is the second big surprise. A lot of people are well aware that. The carbs are bad because they raise your glucose, you want to limit carbs, so they'll just fuel with fat and then they find that the extra added oils and dressings are keeping their glucose elevated for a very long time, so they have to wait a long time and you don't see that or believe that a lot of the time until you start doing it, testing yourself and you're, oh, wow, the leaner protein, nutrient dense meal, Allows me to eat again sooner just because it contains less energy, depletes my fuel tank sooner, and I can eat again sooner. So, yeah, there's a lot of misconceptions in low carb keto sphere that, fat is nearly a free food because it doesn't raise insulin. As much as carbohydrate, but over the longer term, it keeps glucose and insulin elevated for, more than two hours that we've got data for. It just keeps on going depending on how much you ate. It's going to keep you from tapping into your stored fuel on your body.

Aimee: 37:00

Awesome. Yeah. One of the things that I didn't expect was the increased connection to my own hunger and satiety because I, I mean, I'm, I'm a nutritionist, right? So I'm always thinking about food and fueling and nutrients and it's, I'd forgotten that I had forgotten about the hunger aspect, especially when I think about the mileage I put in each week, food for me is very much about fueling and,, taking some of those glucose readings and seeing oh, I'm not actually, I feel like I should perhaps be at like, you know, 80, 85, 86, and my glucometer says I'm, 97, that's like, wow, let me see if I can hold off a little bit more,, and just having that, that pause between the first rumble, the first thought of food, and then immediately satisfying that impulse. But, you know, like tapping the brake and just be like, well, let's see what happens here. Let's just see what happens. You wait a little bit longer.

Marty: 38:13

It can just be a pattern interrupt to think a little bit more deeply about your hunger. And we call it hunger training, where people. Observe the hunger, they notice the true signs of hunger, they validate it with their glucose and then you get to the point where you don't need the training wheels anymore because you're tapped into your true hunger signals. But in terms of athletes, it can also be a real, um, Excellent tool for people who are fueling a lot of activity, especially during the event and during training, they can see, hey, my glucose is dropping, I'm starting to bonk, I definitely need to eat more, even for the, um, marathoners, they need to drop in a glucose gel earlier rather than later if they're doing a marathon. An Ironman triathlon and that can help them fine tune the fueling. Most people are not doing Ironman triathlons or running for more than two hours. They're just eating normally after they, they do their workout is a good idea. But, yeah, the glucose can be a powerful guide if you use it intelligently.

Aimee: 39:20

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything, that we haven't spoken about yet regarding data driven fasting that you want our listeners to be aware of?

Marty: 39:34

it's just a ton of fun, and it's, it's a simple process initially, but once you start diving into your own glucose, a lot of questions come up and we've tried to unravel all those. We've got a 230 page manual that goes through all the different scenarios and answers to all the questions that people ask. So I went to town on that to write that. All the answers, so I can just point people to them, and that becomes a real user guide for your metabolism once you start trying to peek under the hood and understand your glucose response to fuel and activity. It just becomes fascinating and, you understand exactly how to fuel your body and, why you are or you aren't getting the results you want. So, yeah. And the community is great. That's the other thing I'd love to plug, doing it with a group and with, we generally have about six, 700 people that do it together in each challenge eight times a year. And um, yeah, it's really good to do it with other people because when other people are doing it alongside you, you keep going, you keep doing it. You feel like you're not this crazy testing your blood sugar at work by yourself. You're part of the club. I am so good at that person. So yeah, it's cool to do it with other people and it just works. It's a simple way to dial in. What you eat and when you eat and we've got the macros and micros masterclasses that we talked about last time. If you want to take it to the next level, but that involves tracking food and most people don't want to do that. So DDF is a really simple way of understanding your fuel tanks and when you need to eat, when you don't need to eat.

Aimee: 41:22

It is. That is another thing I appreciate about it because food logging is, Deeply triggering for some people and you know as we alluded before you can also take glucose testing to that level as well where it becomes a bit, emotionally pathological, uh, But it but it is really nice to simplify the process of determining when to eat, and just Putting what to eat on the side, or if you already know for you, what is good for you, then like one fact checking it with your glucometer, like, is it clearly what is right for me? And then not having to focus that much detail on the, what to eat instead. Just yeah.

Marty: 42:10

Yeah, that's cool. And, and yeah, validating and understanding your hunger I think is, is the biggest thing and just being hungry enough, to eat and once you understand your true hunger, you understand satiety as well, when you're full, when you've had enough and then it becomes less of a, you know, binge deprived cycle that tends to go on and on. So you just find that right balance that works for you based on data. Yeah.

Aimee: 42:40

I think one of the things too that I appreciate about the group is that, uh, there's that, that, that caution at the start, like, don't, don't wait too long, even if your glucose is higher than your trigger, it will, it will bite you in the back end, right? Yeah. When that lizard brain goes off, it's so much harder to control the runaway beast. So.

Marty: 43:04

Yeah, definitely.

Aimee: 43:05

And having that. That warning at the onset and then I think most people have that first hand experience at some point through DDF where it waited too long or something happened. I think it takes the, it can help take the emotional judgment

Marty: 43:23

out

Aimee: 43:24

of what is essentially a biological occurrence. Right. And we've been taught through diet culture to be ashamed because it shows our lack of willpower because you know, this, that, and the other. But when you have that, that feedback from the mindfulness of watching your blood sugar, having a target, but getting ahead of yourself. and having that, having, basically wanting your target to be lower before your body is ready for it to be lower. And then having to get schooled and like, just let your body do what it needs to do. It's a process. Yeah. And

Marty: 44:09

that's, that's what we have to tell people all the time is don't rush. Don't try too hard. And when people try too hard, they, oh, my trigger's dropping and it's great. Tried too hard, ended up in a binge, and now my glucose is elevated. It's an incremental process, and there is no failure. There's just learning experience, and if you have a big blowout weekend where you overeat, you go, Okay, it's gonna take me a few days to deplete that extra fuel from my body. I understand. Next time I'll be more cautious when I go to a party and won't overdo it. And because I know how my body works. And like you said, there's no judgment because it's just data. That's how I feel my body. And my, I love my body because it's trying to keep me alive. My lizard instincts are trying to keep me alive. It's not about failure. It's not about, I'm a bad person because I wanted to eat a donut. I wanted to eat the donut because I tried too hard to be good. So. Yeah, it's just finding that, that balance without judgment, using data.

Aimee: 45:13

Yeah, the body tends to really not respond well when we try and push it too hard.

Marty: 45:18

No, no, that's a good thing. That's why we're still here because It's

Aimee: 45:22

true.

Marty: 45:23

Our prefrontal cortex would have wanted to be, I thought, to be super lean and athletic, etc. But we have a break and we have a survival instinct that keeps us alive, which is a good thing.

Aimee: 45:38

Yeah. One more time, where can people find you if they want to look for you on DDF?

Marty: 45:43

Yeah, there's heaps of stuff out there, we've got a free Data Driven Fasting 101 course that people can check out. Use the app, try the app, which you'll find when you Google DDF. And we've got our amazing community that's just clicked over 10, 000 people. 10, 000 optimizers who are on the same path and trying to help each other. So if you go to the Optimizing Nutrition website and go to the member login section in the top right, you'll get to that and you'll, you'll be one of us and have a whole ton of fun with the little club that's all testing the blood sugars and trying to maximize satiety and get nutrients from the food they eat rather than supplements. Yeah, it's great community. Yeah. It is. And it's super cool that you hang out and encourage everybody and say, this is the best thing ever. I love it. This is the thing I should have been taught in nutrition school that nobody taught me with. I'll say that with my dying breath.

Aimee: 46:43

I'm just glad. I'm just glad I, I found it, you

Marty: 46:49

know,

Aimee: 46:50

yeah, that's, that's so

Marty: 46:51

cool. Thanks Aimee for all your support and, uh, yeah, getting the word out there.

Aimee: 46:56

Always. Always. Happy to have you again. Thanks

Marty: 46:59

Thank you. Thank you. Chat soon.

47:03

Any and all information shared here is for educational and entertainment purposes only and is not to be misconstrued as offering medical advice. Listening to this podcast does not constitute a provider client relationship. Note, I'm not a doctor nor a nurse, and it is imperative that you utilize your brain and your medical team to make the best decisions for your own health. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked to this podcast are at the user's own risk. No information nor resources provided are intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Be a smart human and do not disregard or postpone obtaining medical advice for any medical condition you may have. Seek the assistance of your healthcare team for any such conditions and always do so before making any changes to your medical, nutrition, or health plan. If you have found some Nuggets of Wisdom, make sure to subscribe, rate, and share Blasphemous Nutrition with those you care about. As you navigate the labyrinth of health advice out there, remember, health is a journey, not a dietary dictatorship. Stay skeptical, stay daring, and challenge the norms that no longer serve you. If you've got burning questions or want to share your own flavor of rebellion, slide into my DMs. Your stories fuel me, and I love hearing them. Thanks again for tuning in to Blasphemous Nutrition. Until next time, this is Aimee signing off, reminding you that truth is nuanced, and any dish can be made better with a little bit of sass.