What To Do About Extreme Diets on the Internet (Ask Me Anything)

 
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Has your weight started to drift lately?

Do you need quick tips on how to fuel for high-intensity exercise?

Is Carnivore “just a bunch of insecure men performing a caricature of masculinity for other insecure men?”

These are just some of your questions that I’ll be answering in this episode.

Since many of our social media accounts have been shadowbanned, censored, or even deleted entirely, most of these questions came in through the newsletter.

If you’d like to ask me or my wife Alyson a question, don’t be shy, sign up for the newsletter and then reply to any of my emails.

There have been some doozies coming in lately. Some really made me laugh and many others are encouraging. So, whatever question you have about anything, go ahead and shoot it over.

I hope you enjoy this one. I’m answering your questions about:

• What to do about extreme diets on the internet
• Quick tips for fueling for high-intensity exercise
• Importance of rest and recovery for fat-burning
• How to increase definition and reduce belly fat
• Plan and fun way to jumpstart fat-burning
• And much more…

And stay tuned for the next episode of this show where for the first time in many years I’ll be joined by my wonderful and talented wife Alyson to help answer even more of your questions.

Okay, let’s get to this first one.

“Feeling Better Than Ever”

To kick off this special Ask Me Anything episode, let’s start with a question that came in from Austen. Austen says:

Abel, you are the person who made me aware of what nutrition can do for the body.

I started listening to you 10 years ago when I was 19. I bought your book, followed the wild diet, and felt incredible.

As I entered adulthood, college, relationships etc… I strayed away from healthy eating.

When I was 25 I developed high blood pressure, tachycardia, anxiety, insomnia…. I was wrecked to say the least and was put on a beta blocker and got no real help from modern medicine.

I was moving house and came across your book and was immediately reminded how good I felt following your book. I immediately implemented the wild diet again.

Here I am at 29, with normal blood pressure,  off my medication,  and feeling better than ever. I can’t thank you enough for what you do.

– Austen

I wanted to start with this because it’s a comment that I get very often, where people say, “I got your book or I listened to your podcast 10+ years ago or I saw you on the TV show or whatever, and I got really into eating wild, eating clean and exercising and it worked so well for me but then I stopped doing it. Life got in the way. Something happened. I got injured. I got sick or I just didn’t have the time for it anymore. I wanted to color outside the lines and see how that goes for a while.”

Now, that’s totally normal and it happens to most people at some point because doing the same thing over and over, even if it is working, can become a grind.

So it’s important to find a way to make eating clean, exercising, moving, and living well work for you in your own life. And that’s going to change.

It’s always going to be a moving target.

So, for someone like Austen who started listening when they were 19 years old, just a teenager, things are going to be massively different as you’re about to turn 30.

Your body is different, your hormonal state. Even for me when I started this show, I was in my mid-20s and now I am in my late 30s coming up on 40. And things have definitely changed, not just in terms of my body and the way that I feel physically, but also just in terms of interests, passions, and life in general.

There are a lot more responsibilities and things that can get in the way as life goes on and as you have a family or you have more things that you just need to take care of.

And sometimes though you value health as something that’s extremely important to you, it can start to just move a few rungs down because all of a sudden you have people who you care about more than anything, or you have a job where it’s really important to meet this deadline or travel to this place and you make some sacrifices to your health to get there.

Now what’s important about what Austen did here is he felt himself falling off. He noticed that sickness was setting in, even though he’s in his 20s.

And so, Austen, good on you for finding a book that you liked before. It doesn’t have to be my book. There are many great books out there.

But one of the reasons that I wrote The Wild Diet the way that I did is such that if you find it 10, 20, 30 years later you can still read it and it’s going to work.

I mean it’s not really going to be outdated because it’s more based on tradition, and the principles that work are not always the sexy ones or the ones that are going to be coming and going as passing fads on the internet.

But these are actual principles that will help your body get to the state that it wants to be of optimal health and energy and vigor.

And the way that you do that is by focusing on real foods, focusing on protein first, for the most part not being too afraid of fat or healthy grass-fed pasture-raised meats, eggs and that sort of thing.

'Focus on real foods, protein first.' - Abel James Share on X

And dialing down the processed foods, especially the grains and sugars that are absolutely pervasive in so many foods, not to mention the industrial oils, the vegetable oils, fried foods and all sorts of things that are going to muck you up when you go out to eat or you just eat at some regular cafeteria, or god forbid you find yourself eating at some hospital somewhere, which are well known for having the least healthy food ever.

So I’ll just kind of cover off on this one by saying, if you’re out there and you’ve fallen off the wagon, or something worked well for you in the past, know that you can go back. There’s a road map.

And yes, it’s going to take work. It’s going to take some time.

One of the mistakes that I see people run into at the beginning when, you know, you have been healthy or athletic in the past and then you decide that you’re not so anymore and you want to get back to that way.

People want results right away, myself included. We’re all guilty of this.

And so, you know, sometimes you’ve put on 20 or 30 pounds over the past couple of years—and that’s very common by the way and not that big of a deal, even if it’s a little bit more than that, and then you decide, “Okay, I want to get back in shape.”

Don’t let this be you, where all of a sudden you’re doing three times a day workouts like you did back in high school when you were on the football team, or when you did CrossFit and you were completely intense a few years ago, or something like that. You’re doing these three times a day workouts and you’re absolutely out of gas by day 3 or the first week, and you just can’t maintain that level of effort and it’s making you hungry and it’s making you tired and you’re not catching up on sleep.

Don’t try to get too much in too early.

When it comes to your body composition, it’s really important to focus on weeks or even months at a time.

So when you do get serious about eating real food again and focusing on your diet and nutrition plan and working some exercise in, then make sure you’re not trying for too many results too quickly and then you get frustrated and quit. That’s the last thing you want to do.

It’s much better to kind of ease into this.

Try doing some of the things that work.

Focus on the foods that fill you up. Once again protein. I’ll just keep saying that. But meats and protein go a long way.

You don’t need to be afraid of them, especially in moderate quantities, even if you’re looking for body transformation and to lose a few pounds.

These can be some of the most powerful tools for you to get to the next level.

So good on you Austen for finding your way back.

Any of you who have old Wild Diet books that are floating around, pop those out. Try a few recipes again and see if that helps you get back on track, as well.

What To Do About Extreme Diets on the Internet

Okay so this next question made me laugh when it came in and the person who asked wanted to remain anonymous, so I’m of course going to honor that. They say:

Hi Abel, I have a question. 

What do you think about carnivore? 

On one hand, they do appear to have a lot of scientific proof backing up their claims, and anecdotal evidence that people do well on the diet.  

On the other hand, it looks like a bunch of insecure men performing a caricature of masculinity, for an audience of other insecure men.  

As a female viewer I can’t tell if this is a legitimate diet with a PR problem or a dumb guy thing, especially with how easy it is to “find” scientific proof for any health claim you want to make.  

Is there any legitimacy to the claims that vegetables are bad for you, or is this actually just a clown show of insecure guys chomping on testicles to prove how manly they are?

This is an excellent question. Thank you so much for asking.

If you do want to hear me answer in any great depth about the carnivore diet, go back to past episodes of this show. I have a few Ask Me Anything episodes where I talk about it a bit, and I’ve talked about it as well with Dr. Shawn Baker recently who I had on the podcast, and a few others.

But I’ll just start by answering like this. It appears that in the past few years the carnivore diet has gotten a little bit out of hand.

Some of the people who have risen to the top, at least in terms of views on TikTok and social media, these people have been exposed for basically being hopped up on steroids.

And it’s at ridiculous levels of popularity, but I believe only because it’s the most extreme version of eating meat.

In the same way that vegan has been popular, and saying “no” to all meats is extremely popular on the other side.

The state of the internet and social media today is something that could definitely be lamented, and you’ve heard me complain about it before, but basically it rewards gimmickry, it rewards intentional viral kind of clown shows, like you mentioned, where people are setting up these videos almost as shoots.

And it’s not reflective of reality, the chomping on testicles, the eating only liver, the eating all sorts of raw eyeballs and stuff like that.

Yes, here and there it can be kind of interesting, and we’ve done many of those things ourselves, but that is not the point of what we do and it’s not why what we do works.

Many of them are good people and friends of mine at this point and I’ve had Dr. Shawn Baker on the podcast, as well as a number of other people who eat carnivore, and it should be known that many of them are much more level-headed than what you might find on the advertisements for carnivore products that you find all over the internet, paid for on social media.

Thankfully in the past few months some of the worst offenders in terms of misrepresenting the carnivore diet and ancestral principles have been found out.

Some of you may have heard about the self-appointed “liver king” who supposedly ate all of this raw liver and raw meat and that’s what made him so ripped and muscular, even in his 40s, pumping iron all over the world. When in fact he was pumping himself full of steroids and probably needs a new liver because of all of the junk that he was on, costing over $10,000 a month, as I understand.

There have been all sorts of exposés on this. I’m not going to get into it in any particular detail, but it is representative of what happens on the internet today where the crap rises to the top on TikTok and on most social media because it’s rewarding extremism.

And if you want long-term results from your diet and nutrition strategy most people don’t get there through being extreme because over time you find that it’s all about balance.

'If you want long-term results from your diet and nutrition strategy, most people don't get there through being extreme because over time you find that it's all about balance.' - Abel James Share on X

Now, there are a lot of level-headed carnivores out there and even Dr. Shawn Baker and a few others talk about though they call themselves carnivore, it’s only like 80% – 90% carnivore.

I say “only” but it’s not 100% carnivore. It’s not.

A lot of the people out there who are getting great results from going carnivore are not just chomping on raw testicles and eyeballs and liver all day.

It’s more about a hardcore elimination diet and the people who I’ve seen it work for, or at least work well for, are those who are kind of in a place from a dietary perspective of confusion, where they know that it’s not working, whatever they’re doing. If they’ve tried paleo or ancestral principles, wild, if they’ve tried going vegan, if they’ve tried going low-calorie, low-fat, whatever it is, it hasn’t really worked, the pounds have come on, maybe autoimmune issues. They’ve done it by doing that and sticking to that course.

So trying out an extreme elimination diet where you’re getting rid of all plant foods completely or at least the vast majority of them has helped, it seems, quite a few people, and I remain in touch with many of them.

Now, is that because meat is the absolute best food out there raw meat and eyeballs and testicles and liver and heart and organs? I don’t think so.

You’ve heard me say how important meat and protein can be for reaching your optimal health and body composition, and I stand by that.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be raw. In fact, if you are eating raw meats there are a lot of other issues that you’ll run into, like parasites.

And also, the way that your body digests raw meat is different than the way it digests cooked meat. You typically get more calories out of cooked meats and cooked vegetables, as well.

So we’ve waffled back and forth about how many veggies and how many meats we’re eating in the community as well as in our own life, and I’ve found that we can be really successful by eating a lot of meat and not too many vegetables.

We can be really successful by eating a lot of vegetables and not all that much meat as well.

It’s more about how balanced and strategic your dietary approach is, whether you’re getting your macros right and all the rest of it.

So I would, to answer your question, I would say that the carnivore diet scene while it is ridiculous and some of the people who are pumped up with steroids and being exposed for taking a bunch of steroids and professing that it’s their eating of raw liver that’s getting all of these results, when in fact they’re just taking tens of thousands of dollars worth of drugs and all of that.

I’m glad that’s being exposed. That’s, of course, a performance and a show and a lot of it is disingenuous.

People have been asking me about some of the most popular people in the carnivore space for a long time, and I typically bite my tongue and I don’t want to have any ad hominem attacks at least coming out of my mouth, whether they be warranted or not.

Because we see these fads come and go. We see the viral gimmicks come and go.

And I would imagine now that some of the worst offending carnivores who were hopped up on steroids have been exposed, now you’ll see that fad kind of start to tank back down, just as many other fads have come and gone over the years.

Now, would some people get some good results from eliminating plant foods, fiber and what have you from their diet for a period of time?

I would say the answer is probably yes.

I’ve even had some people on the show in the past who have eaten nothing but bacon for a month and had great results, lost weight, their biomarkers improved.

I’ve also had people on the show who have eaten only potatoes for more than a month and had great results doing that.

So I think it’s more about trying out an elimination diet and I would encourage everyone to try that at some point.

Whole30 is an elimination diet.

The Wild Diet to some degree could eliminate entire food groups, depending on how strict you want to be. If you find that dairy doesn’t work well for you then you don’t have to include it.

Now, some carnivores eat dairy.

Dairy is kind of a processed food that works better for some people than others. It’s better for bulking than for leaning out.

But this is a long-winded way to answer your question.

The carnivore diet, if you’re interested in it, I would encourage you to do your research and find people who aren’t completely full of it, because there are a lot of people who know that extreme antics on the internet are the things that win.

And paying for cheap words like “carnivore” on the internet also is a way to get ahead if you’re using paid traffic, which is unfortunately the way that a lot of fads and trends come and go these days.

It’s from marketers not from health people.

So if you want to be balanced and you want to keep it balanced and you want to keep at it, then I would say experiment.

But you don’t need to bend over backwards trying every new fad and trend that’s out there, because at some point it’s kind of just more of the same.

We’ve heard this all before.

Quick Tips On Fueling For High-Intensity Exercise

Okay let’s move on to the next question from Eric. He says:

I’m a biker (bicycle)… I’ve had a great experience with the wild diet and have shed 20 pounds incorporating your clean eating, intermittent fasting, wild diet approach to food intake.  Do you have advice for my diet/food/energy intake as my riding and training increases in intensity.  

Thanks,

Eric

Eric, this is a really interesting question.

Many of you probably don’t know this, but when I was coming up in middle school and high school I used to race cross-country mountain biking, not downhill but cross-country.

And I did a heck of a lot of mountain biking and road biking, as well, after that.

But being a runner—that’s been my main sport for most of my life—I found that when you’re biking it’s easy to feel like you’ve really expended yourself and used up and burned through a whole bunch of calories that you didn’t actually, if that makes sense.

If you’re out there on a run, you’re using your whole body, you’re using your legs, you’re not going to cover as much ground, but you’re using your whole body, burning through a lot of calories, especially when you’re running marathons and things like that. So that’s kind of my frame of reference.

My runs now are more like 5-10 miles or something like that, but if you compare that to riding a bike going for tens of miles, even a hundred miles, yeah, you’re going to have to fuel for that, but not the same way as other sports.

So I would encourage you to fuel enough, but don’t get too carried away because there’s this weird psychological thing that happens at least to me when you’re covering a lot of ground on a bike it feels like you’re exercising more than you are.

So if you’re doing sprints if you’re doing intervals on your bike then it’s important to refuel your muscle glycogen and you can get away with refueling with some more carbs, you know, and then if you go and cover some serious ground if you’re talking a 30-mile, 50-mile or 100-mile bike ride and you’re really putting some effort in and you’re not just coasting along, then yes then go ahead and refuel.

But for most people out there who are going out and biking, it’s kind of like the Fitbit effect.

I remember that I’ve talked about this a few times but I get a kick out of it. Because when Fitbits came out and a lot of these trackers that count your steps that you wear on your body, people who wore them it turns out tended to gain weight.

And the reason for that, is because it’s showing you how many steps you put in over the course of that day, so if you put in 10,000 steps, 15,000 steps and you’re looking at a pie and you’re a little bit hungry later in the day you’re like, “Oh, I just put in 15,000 steps today of course I can have this extra donut, of course I can have this giant sub, or this piece of pie or cake, or whatever it is and get away with it because I’ve done my work for the day. I’m being healthy.”

And so, as long as you’re not overestimating, you’re going to be absolutely fine.

I sometimes use step trackers and for my runs I use a GPS watch. I’ve worn a ring to help track sleep and activity and that sort of thing on and off for years, so it can be very useful.

But you have to remain strategic about it.

So for bicycle riders, skiers, walkers, runners, and people who participate in all these different sports, as long as you’re fueling for your sport strategically and you feel, I would say, the way that you measure that is by if you’re under fueling then you’re not eating enough the day of your exercise, whether it’s before or after or some combination of that, you’ll start to feel poor the day after that.

So typically if I undereat, I don’t pay for it for a day or two, that’s when you really feel bad is your next workout.

So keep that in mind as you fuel for bike riding.

And also keep in mind, like which muscles you’re training up and how much weight you want to put on your body because when it comes to running and biking and some other sports like that, it’s about power to weight ratio, and slimming down even getting rid of some of your musculature can help get better times.

So I hope this answers your question to some degree, Eric, because it can get complicated.

But I’ve seen a lot of people make the mistake of over fueling because they’re putting so many miles in.

And don’t forget, too, that cross training can be really helpful.

So if you want to avoid injury and really work on your form, then make sure that you’re doing some element of cross training.

And check back to the past episodes of this show where I’ve talked about mountain biking and correct form a few times.

You can click here for an episode on mountain biking, and you should see some even more specific advice come up for you.

Overcoming Food Addiction

Alright, this next question is from Dana, she says:

Hi Abel, did a little driving the last few days (I always do plenty of driving) – but this time your podcasts came through my Bluetooth- and boy am I glad!

I started listening from the beginning of my downloads- and the last one I heard today just before arriving back home was just what I needed. It was Dr Vera Tarman and the food addict episode- I NEEDED TO HEAR IT – I need this help…I’m sorry to say – but I’ve let my circumstances affect me in several negative ways – and need to know where to start to end this obsessive addiction that seems to be taking over?

I just hit 207 on the scales and have several aches and pains – the worst is my lack of energy and the adverse emotional impacts and my negative attitude- I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THE SITUATION IVE GOTTEN MYSELF INTO!

I’m a busy rancher and my job requires me to be fit and active – most all of my tasks are physically demanding in one way or another! I’ve got to turn it around!!!!! My everything depends on it!!!

I’m downloading the materials from your Wild Diet System that I just signed up for and I’m listening to Dr Tarmans food junkie book

Any other advice to help me get going would be greatly appreciated!!

Sincerely 

Dana

Well firstly, Dana, thank you so much for being a rancher and helping the people.

You know my brother and his partner are long-term farmers at this point and the lifestyle is very, very work intensive and difficult and we need you folks out there doing it. And we’re very grateful for what you do.

So thank you for that and let’s just start right there.

But the Dr. Tarman episode in particular is very specific about food addiction, and she’s one of the most strict people from a nutrition perspective who I’ve even had on this podcast.

I would encourage anyone who struggles with food addiction to go listen to that episode. Dr. Vera Tarman is absolutely wonderful.

But it is an interesting question, because for some people moderating intake isn’t that difficult, or at least it’s not as much of a challenge as it is for other people.

So we could talk about alcohol this way—and some members of my family are like this—where they have decided that it’s not good for them, can’t even touch a drop of it. It is kicked out of their life forever, hopefully.

And then there are other members of my family and friend group and myself as well who are better able to moderate drinking alcohol and that tends to apply as well to sugary foods.

You know it’s almost like a personality type thing where some people do seem to have more addictive personalities. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But even that said, for me, for my wife Alyson as well, we kind of have this straight edge mode, where all the way up through high school I did not have any alcohol or drugs or anything like that. And so that’s kind of a mode that we have. My wife, as well, has that mode.

And so from time to time, we kick alcohol out, we kick sugar out, and we get really clean and strategic with how we’re eating and how we’re exercising and all the rest of it.

But no matter how well you can moderate we all get carried away sometimes, and it’s important to snap back to this kind of straight edge mode where you can go and eat clean and do the things that you know will work for you and serve you long term.

For some people, eating just a square of chocolate leads to the next one and leads to the next one.

Same thing with a slice of cake or pie or even drinking a little bit of milk. It sets off these sugar cravings for some people and then it just sends you down this horrible path.

So one thing that can be really helpful for those of you who do struggle a bit more with food and sugar addiction is if there’s any way you can get these processed foods and sugary foods out of your sight to get them out of your mind, which means don’t buy them in the first place.

If there’s Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer, your brain knows it and it’s going to be craving it at your worst moments, at your lowest moments when you’re out of steam, usually at the end of the day or in the evening.

This happens to everybody.

So if you can, during your streak of eating really clean and trying to get back in action, don’t have that stuff around.

Fill up on meats, veggies, the simple but delicious and somewhat boring things, the plain things that you know will serve you for the long term. Because it doesn’t take many ice cream sundaes to add up to something that’s going to totally destroy your results, make you feel terrible, disrupt your sleep, and all the rest of it.

Which brings us to the next point.

With such a work-intensive lifestyle like ranching, sometimes your results will depend on how well you’re sleeping and your general stress level.

This happens to us when we’re on the road moving rigs around.

We’ve moved from one state to another many many times and it comes with a whole lot of stress, getting sick and things like that when you’re run down, you can’t exercise, it’s easy for the pounds to come back on.

So make sure that you’re being good to yourself and you’re giving yourself some amount of rest, relaxation, recovery and self-care.

This becomes more and more important as the years tick by and the more you feel like you don’t need it or you don’t have time for it, the more you probably actually do need it right then.

So right here I see you Dana talking about how, “I don’t have the time for the situation I’ve gotten myself into.”

That’s a sign to me that you just need to take a little bit of time, if you can, to get your goals straight.

Write down exactly what you’re looking for, what you want, instead of focusing on what you don’t want.

And if you can, go into Dr. Tarman’s book more and listen to the people who have struggled with food addiction, who have gone on these very extreme diets, elimination diets.

Eating all bacon for a month, eating all potatoes for a month and nothing else, eating all meat and water for a month or even longer.

This has helped a lot of people, but mostly as a learning experience to say, “I can do this, I can lose weight doing ridiculous things. I can have fun. Or I just do not have to think about food anymore. I only need to shop for this one food.”

I’m not going to discourage anyone from trying that out, but I’m also not going to say that chomping on raw testicles and eating raw liver only for the rest of your life is the answer because it’s definitely not.

'I'm not going to say that chomping on raw testicles and eating raw liver only for the rest of your life is the answer because it's definitely not.' - Abel James Share on X

So once again it’s all about balance.

And I would encourage you to look at a few past episodes of this show if you want more information about it.

One is from Eliza Kingsford about food addiction.

We also have Dr. David Perlmutter where we talk about what sugar really does to your brain.

Dr. Cate Shanahan who helped Dwight Howard conquer sugar addiction.

Let’s see what else. Melissa Urban of Whole30, Elle Russ, Michael Fishman, and Andrew “Spudfit” Taylor.

These are all great episodes for you to explore if you’re looking to stay away from the food addiction type issues.

These are people who have struggled with it personally and also found a way through it. So go take a listen there.

Okay, we have time for a couple more here today.

How To Reduce Belly Fat

This next one is from Randy. He says:

Good Day Abel,

I really enjoyed your podcast today and wanted to get more information on transforming my body.  

I am a African American male 67 years old.  Right now my weight went up to 197 and of course all to my mid section.  

I have been cycling keto and doing fasting however I seem to be going up in weight.  

I would like to have more definition and a reduction of belly fat.  

I do work out everyday and do weight training 4 times a week.  Also whatever products you have that you recommend I will purchase ASAP.

Thanks so much for your help.  I truly connected with your energy and wanted to get in touch. 

– Randy

Randy, that’s really sweet that you say that you connected with where we’re coming from, and we’re happy to help. We really are.

So sometimes when people start cycling keto and doing fasting and working out all the time, they don’t get results like you.

And it’s like, “What’s happening? I’m doing everything right.”

But there are so many variables in a person’s life that it’s not always about doing more work and getting results that way.

Sometimes it is about doing less or just readjusting some other parts of your life.

So if you’re 67 years old, you’re looking to lose body fat but you’re already weight training four times a week and working out every day, I would ask, what’s your rest day look like?

Do you take rest days? What does your sleep look like?

And if the answer isn’t awesome, then instead of working on extra workouts and trying to do more, diet harder and workout harder, I would say, actually, especially as you’re approaching 70, try to do a bit less.

Focus on recovery.

Focus on reducing your workload and your general stress level.

And sometimes the more that you workout, like I mentioned before, the more you want to eat.

And overeating fat on keto is something that’s very common.

You can even overeat protein and meats and that will turn those meat proteins into sugar in your body through a process known as gluconeogenesis.

So it’s something where you can get carried away overeating fat or protein, even if you’re working out a lot, and cycling keto and doing all this stuff, you can be gaining belly fat, especially if your stress is out of whack or your sleep is out of whack.

So there are other things that you can look at if you think that you’re doing everything right.

Usually there are a few blind spots.

So the way that I try to work through those blind spots is by self-tracking, wearing a device that can track your sleep, track your activity, look at your heart rate to see if that’s recovering effectively after your workouts while you’re sleeping and while you’re at rest.

These are really important for troubleshooting and going to the next level.

But just know, I would say, the quick answer to your question here, Randy, is don’t always assume that the answer is working harder and working longer because it’s just not.

And sometimes we need to tap the brakes and let our foot off the gas a little bit to get to that next level.

So be good to yourself.

Don’t forget, I forget this all the time—my wife and I just took a couple of self-care days that we really needed to take care of ourselves.

And I get frazzled. When that happens, you know, my life goes off the rails too. So make sure that you’re doing that.

Adjusting Your Intermittent Fasting Window

Okay, so I just got a warning message from my computer that I’m almost out of hard drive space, so I’ll just go ahead and answer this last quick question from Carrie here. Carrie says:

Thank you for this.  

I bought your Wild Diet cookbook years ago and I love it. I have been using the lumen tool also to detect fat burning states and times of day.  

I typically feel more hungry first thing in the morning and I am not really hungry around dinner time.  

If I am going to eat carbs, I am trying to eat them before 4pm so that I can be in fat burn when I wake up.  

I am intermittent fasting, does it matter if I just eat breakfast and lunch and then maybe a salad or veggies if I am hungry in the evening? 

I am going through menopause and my metabolism has changed.  

Thanks,

Carrie 

Carrie, this is an excellent question, because a lot of people who preach the intermittent fasting lifestyle say that you have to do it this way at 16/8, and that means that you can only eat from this hour to that hour. That’s not how it works.

Fasting in general is great because you can do it in so many different ways.

Whether you want to take one or two days out of the week and have a low-calorie day, or just not eat for 24 hours, you can do that.

A 16/8 style fast works really well for me.

Sometimes even doing the one meal a day, or only eating for about 4 hours or even 2 hours a day can work for some people.

But for most women, it seems to be that more fasting is not better, and so you do want to have some amount of the day where you’re going to be eating and enjoying your food and relaxing, as well.

Because more fasting is definitely not always the answer.

So if you find that you’re hungry in the morning and you enjoy eating midday as well, that’s going to work best for you for the most part.

And it’s going to be different for everyone.

I typically don’t eat until around noon or later and I do something like a 16/8 fast most days, and I’ll have a lunch or a late lunch and then usually an early dinner.

And making sure that you get your carbs in earlier in the day can help, especially if you’re eating some quantity of them and then burning them off.

But eating some carbs later can also work for some people as long as you don’t get too carried away with them.

And you don’t want to be eating too close to when you go to sleep because then you’re digesting all night. It can interfere with your sleep as well.

So for you, Carrie, if you feel good eating your bigger meals earlier in the day, especially the carbier meals, go ahead and keep doing that.

And yes, of course, if you feel like you’re doing well eating veggies in the evening, then that’s going to work well too.

You don’t have to fast every day.

When you feel like eating, I would encourage you to do so as long as you’re choosing the healthier options—you’re going for the fibrous non-starchy veggies in the evening, that’s going to be a great option.

Carrie, thank you so much for that question, and I hope that helps.

Plan To Jumpstart Burning Fat

Alright, one more question from Mike. He says:

Hi Abel, 

I’m so happy that I signed up for another Wild Challenge.  It has really helped me to jumpstart my plan to lose some fat.  It also showed me some valuable lessons to help further my progress.  

I started the plan at 205 pounds and ended it at 194 pounds.  

On the low sugar plan, I was eating a lot differently than I normally do.  

Usually I don’t have oatmeal, quinoa, sweet potato fries, and brown rice when trying to lose weight.  I really enjoyed the meals that included these foods.  

I also tend to eat a lot more meat when losing weight, but with this plan, meat consumption was low.  

I did enjoy the meals, and did see results, although I did notice my hunger was higher than when I’m following a diet with higher amounts of meat.  

I had to really plan out my meals because I was in the kitchen a lot more than I normally am.  

I’m very comfortable in the kitchen, but I usually prepare meals that are simpler and get more creative during the weekends when I have more time.  

This aspect wasn’t easy as I would have to get up earlier to prepare meals, and make sure I did some food prep to be ready for upcoming meals.  

This was a benefit though as it taught me to be thinking several days ahead about food prep.  

Normally I will only plan out around 5 days in advance of dinners that we will eat, but on your plan, every meal and snack is already planned.  

There is lots of benefits to doing that and I’ll be adopting this for my own meal plans.  

One thing I was curious about is on the low sugar plan, am I in a fat adapted state?  With the higher amount of carbs, I’m guessing that I wasn’t, but if not, is the weight loss happening more because of the low sugar state as opposed to being fat adapted and using fuel from your fat stores?  

The app was very easy to use and fun to use for tracking. 

It motivated me to do some meditation, which is normally not part of my routine.  I also enjoyed the aspect of not only tracking for myself, but in doing it more so in a community.  

Some of my new habits that have formed, water with lemon and ginger in the morning, occasional meditation, and herbal tea before bed.  

Thanks for all that you do! 

I’ll be looking forward to more challenges!

Mike

Mike, firstly congrats on shedding 11 pounds in two weeks. That is no joke.

Yes, preparing meals ahead of time can be very useful.

I’m glad that you built that new habit of meditation.

And you mentioned that you’re eating differently from normal, especially with those carbs, like brown rice and oats.

And it’s important not to be afraid of carbs.

A lot of people get very carried away with whether it’s keto or carnivore or whatever the thing is. You can go a little too hardcore into it when you look at the typical bodybuilding diets.

And diets for athletes to slim down and go for that good power to weight ratio once again—oatmeal, brown rice, white rice and these other clean burning carbs have been included as part of the plans for a long time and many people get great results.

They can increase your hunger, but sometimes that’s a good thing, especially if you’re working out a lot and you want to rebuild some muscle, get some fuel into your glycogen stores again, build some mass maybe.

This is really important and you don’t have to get rid of all carbs forever.

I certainly enjoy my oats from time to time, especially around my runs and my lifting days.

So it’s more about avoiding the blood sugar spikes and if you’re exercising, that’s one of the best ways to avoid those spikes, your tolerance for incoming carbs becomes much more favorable on those exercise days.

So I would say on the days that you’re not exercising, then going low carb can be very helpful. And sticking to the plans that don’t have as much of the oats or the brown rice and that sort of thing on those days that can be useful.

But on exercise days, hitting some of those carbs can be really great.

But there’s a big difference, I will say, between potato chips or french fries and brown rice.

Depending on how it’s fried or with oils and things like that, not all food is equal even if it’s called the same thing.

So if you’re eating fried rice that’s fried in vegetable oil, it’s going to be completely different as far as your body’s concerned to that steamed hot rice with no oils on it, or just a little bit of butter or eating a rice that’s full of resistant starch because it’s been heated and then cooled.

So there are a lot of factors there, but I would say more experimentation is better.

And if you feel good switching things up from time to time, go ahead and do that.

It’s good to get rid of even foods that you really enjoy and work well for you just to make sure that you are still eating somewhat seasonally, cycling foods in and out so that your body doesn’t become too used to them or even develop some sort of sensitivity or allergy to these foods that typically would work well for you.

So keep experimenting.

Thank you so much for listening to the show. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.

Quick note before you go…

I hope you enjoyed this one.

Since many of our social media accounts have been shadowbanned, censored, or even deleted entirely, most of these questions came in through the newsletter.

If you’d like to ask me or my wife Alyson a question, don’t be shy, sign up for the newsletter and then reply to any of my emails.

There have been some doozies coming in lately. Some really made me laugh and many others are encouraging.

So, whatever question you have about anything, go ahead and send it over.

I’m looking forward to doing more of these.

As a thanks for signing up for our newsletter, I’ll send you some recipes for low-sugar cookies and treats as well as meal plans to help you get started and get results as quickly as possible.

Thanks so much for listening and we’ll see you in the next episode.

Do you have a question you’d like answered?

Drop it here, and we may feature your question in a future AMA episode.

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