Fasting is the world’s oldest, most powerful biohack – it has been around for centuries, spans many cultures, and is embraced in all religions.
This episode is special to me, it originally aired when my book, Beyond Fasting was released in 2019.
In this interview, Ashley turns the questions on me today, and she digs into why I chose to write a book about fasting, my years-long process of researching and developing my fasting strategies, and I will address some of the most common questions I receive about fasting on a daily basis.
Fasting is a therapeutic tool that can quite literally turn on longevity, turn off disease, and optimize your hormones; but you need a strategy for success. Learn all about how to properly fast in this episode, and I will walk you through key components of my new book, Beyond Fasting.
More about Dr. Pompa
Dr. Daniel Pompa is a global health leader and innovator on a mission to educate practitioners and the public on the origins of inflammation-driven disease, cellular detoxification, fasting strategies, and diet variation principles. Although trained as a Chiropractor, his authority comes from the victory within his own battle, having overcome neurotoxic illness that was rooted in heavy metal poisoning.
- To purchase many of the supplements mentioned on our show, please visit AsSeenOnCHTV.com and use the code CHTV15 for 15% off.
- CytoDetox: total detoxification support where it matters most – at the cellular level.
- CytoDefend
- Dr. Pompa's Beyond Fasting – now released!
- Fastonic
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Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
Thanks to one of our sponsors, CytoDefend. Look, at a time like this, I think that our immune system and keeping our immune system operating now is more important than ever. I can also tell you that I pay attention to the things that keep my immune system on par and healthy. So glad that CytoDefend is one of our sponsors here on Cell TV and it’s a product that I use, my family uses, and hopefully, you’ll check it out. By the way, you can check it out with the link right here below. If you want to try a free bottle, you can actually get a free bottle. Just pay the shipping and I think you’ll reorder after that but check it out.
Ashley:
If you’re listening to this podcast and want to access the amazing CytoDefend product Dr. Pompa just mentioned, please visit, freeimmunity.com. Again, that’s freeimmunity.com.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I am Ashley Smith and today we are changing things up a bit. Today is extra special. We are talking to the most renowned expert on therapeutic fasting and cellular healing that we know. It’s Dr. Pompa himself. Today’s episode will be dedicated to all things fasting and Dr. Pompa’s new book, Beyond Fasting is finally released after much anticipation.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes.
Ashley:
We wanted him to share all about why he chose to write a book about fasting. His years long process of researching and developing his strategies. We will get to some viewer questions that you’ve submitted to us prior to this recording and we’ll save those for the end. I can’t wait to get started. Fasting is a topic that Dr. Pompa quite literally wrote the book on. I’m blessed to introduce Dr. Dan Pompa. Hi, Dr. Pompa.
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, we haven’t done an interview like this in a while. You were so formal. I love it actually.
Ashley:
I know, I know. I had to bring you on like we do all of our guests. Only deserving. Before we really get into it, just moments ago, we received a testimony from somebody who went through your seven-week program that’s in the book. She was so excited and this testimony is just amazing. I just wanted to read just a little part of it. She suffered from chronic fatigue. She had extreme exhaustion, loss of voice, migraines, low immune system and weight loss resistance. Just due to using some of the strategies in your book, she has completely transformed her health and turned it around. It really has not even been all that long. She just went through your book and—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I’ll post that on my Facebook actually. It was put on my wife’s Facebook just this morning literally. The woman tried everything. I mean, when you read this, it’s long but when you read it, your heart will break for her because she had a lot going on beyond even weight loss resistance. She followed the book exactly, Beyond Fasting and that’s what did it for her. Anyway, so she was kind enough to write that whole thing.
Oddly enough too, I literally just got this testimony right before I got on. I clicked on it because I was looking for a different email. This was a gal and I’ll just paraphrase it as well. She said she just wanted to follow-up. She just got new blood work from her arthritis doctor. She’s five months off Humira. She had an autoimmune condition. Almost a full year now with no inflammation and excellent labs. Thank you so much for your help and your information. Anyway, both of those.
Ashley:
That’s amazing and the book has really only been out for a few weeks and the testimonies are already starting to pour in. You’ve been coaching people through fasting for a really long time and you have your Facebook group, Fasting for a Purpose. It’s almost 30,000 strong at this point and growing. That’s amazing. You’ve decided to put it all into a book. Let’s backtrack just a little bit because we do have a lot of new viewers and listeners and even though people who have been around for a long time might need a refresher. How did you get into fasting and what got you here?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I was into fasting in the 1990s when it wasn’t cool at all actually. I joke and say, it was me and some Natural Hygiene Society people. Fasting was what we had in common and I loved it. I went to seminars. I went to clinics that just focused on fasting. I read all of a guy named Herbert Shelton’s books. It was funny because although I was very into fasting and that was the world at that time that was into it, they were very into just vegan diets and I wasn’t. There was definitely a separation. The thing that I loved about fasting was just I loved the innate intelligence of the human body. That’s what fascinated me. Even drove me into chiropractic school. The body has a wisdom to heal.
I have all the respect for that. I even raised my kids with that philosophy. If we can just remove the interference, the body knows what to do. I got my life back that way. Fasting harnesses that innate intelligence. When you’re in a fasting state, the intelligence the body just knows what to do and all the magic starts to happen. So much science today we’ve learned what that innate intelligence is doing. Back in the ‘90s, when I was super into it, we didn’t know. We just knew that magic happened when we fasted. Today’s sciences shed some lights on why fasting is such a miracle thing.
By the way, it’s the oldest therapy known to man. I would still say, the most powerful therapy and yet underutilized. I’ll say this as well, that I believe that we’re genetically programmed to fast. Unfortunately, we’re not. Unless you get the flu or your body absolutely forces you to fast, because it wants to recover, we’re not fasting and it’s a shame. In my last seminar that you were at, I cited studies stating that because we’re not fasting, we are programmed to fast. That not only are we aging prematurely but we are not basically resetting our DNA and this is leading to diseases today. I cited studies that showed that. Fasting is something that’s been all the way back then.
By the way, another story. My wife was basically—they were telling her she had some cervical dysplasia which it looked like cancer and she fasted for 11 days. That was way back when in the ‘90s too. That was one of my first experiences as well to realize—as a matter of fact, they said, you’ll be back unless you do this. We didn’t do that. She fasted and the fact was is, we didn’t go back.
Ashley:
Yeah. That’s a great point. Our innate intelligence really is obvious when we are sick with the flu and we just naturally don’t want to eat. It’s really the only time humans are just simply not interested in eating. Animals too, pets, they just know when to stop eating. I don’t know why people don’t make the connection that for long-term disease like the things that grow really, really slowly in your bodies, why wouldn’t do the same. Fasting is simply not eating. You wrote a book that’s over 300 pages. What is it about just not eating that can fill 300 pages of a book?
Dr. Pompa:
See what’s on that plate, ice. You can eat ice.
Ashley:
Yes. One of the meals you’ll enjoy.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the thing. You don’t just run a marathon meaning that if you did that, I guess, you could. Some people could just run a marathon. However, your results would not be very good. However, if you train for the marathon, your results are spectacular. I’m not recommending running a marathon but it is a good analogy. The book is really what we do and what I train my doctors to do. It’s part of my fasting and fasting strategies, my diet variation which are all in the book. All of that is part of what we do as a group of doctors to really help a lot of people. We would not be able to fix and help the people we help without these fasting strategies.
That seven-week program that’s laid out there is what we do as a group of doctors to get the results that we need during a fast to really transform lives. Again, it’s one thing fasting but you have to understand that fasting is a stress. If you adapt to a stress like exercise, you get stronger better. If you don’t adapt to the stress, you actually can get weaker. Again, you want to work up to the fast to maximize the results of the fast and to make it easier. When you follow the program, it makes the fasting easier. It ensures that you adapt to the fast and therefore get the results that you probably have read about fasting. Many people struggle because they’re violating some varied principles. It also tells you what to expect during the fast. How to break the fast. It does give you a whole seven-week program on how to maximize those results.
Ashley:
You’ve seen people who have—they’ve never even thought of missing a meal before and you’ve seen them go through this program and they say, wow, that wasn’t bad. That actually was fairly easy because—
Dr. Pompa:
When you follow that program, it is much easier. If you just fast, again, not only will it be harder but you’re not going to get the results. Arguably, you might get negative results. The point is, that’s why we wrote the book.
Ashley:
That’s a good point, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, absolutely. I wrote the book because people need to know. I mean, this is what we’ve been doing for years. Many, many years of studying fasting and I finally put down all of my little tricks in the chapters.
Ashley:
Yeah. If it was simple enough that if someone was just on a standard American diet and they were addicted to carbohydrates and sugar, if it were easy for them to just start fasting, you wouldn’t need to write a book on it and train your doctors to coach their clients. You really have to get to that place.
Dr. Pompa:
I mean, if we had a perfect health and a perfect, normal environment and so many people weren’t hormonally challenged, you can just fast. I mean, the American Indians, believe me, they could just fast. The tribe that I talked about at the book that I met in Africa, they could just fast because they were extremely fat-adapted. They were able when they’re not eating to immediately switch over to fat as a fuel source. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for most people today. I mean, even if you are a really healthy person, you could just fast. If you follow that seven-week program, you’re still going to increase your results. There’s all kinds of little things in there that everybody needs to hear but most people need this to get the results.
Ashley:
Absolutely. Let’s talk about the seven weeks so we can just walk people through so they would know what to expect. Week one is the week that people might—when they’re afraid to start this whole program, week one is really just easing them in. What do you have them do on week one?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, okay. Week one, chapter one. I mean, that’s how easy it is. Look, we want to maximize the results of the fast and make it easy so we right away, day one, we get these amazing results of the fast. In the book, I talk about the seven benefits. One of which is called autophagy, where the body, when you’re not eating, it will start eating because it needs nutrition. It needs energy. It will eat all of your bad cells. Then it stimulates the stem cell and that stem cell will create a new cell.
Literally, we renew ourselves during a time of fasting. That’s one of the amazing benefits. I said we’re programmed to fast as well as turn off bad genes. The stressors in life, toxins in life, emotional stressors turn on bad genes. Now we have symptoms and conditions that we get diagnosed for that we don’t like, but those genes were triggered. Fasting is one of the most powerful ways to turn them off. Again, we’re programmed to fast to turn off bad genes.
Oh, and it resets our gut. A lot of people are trying to fix your gut by just throwing bacteria at it, probiotics. Not so simple. My doctors would all tell you the real way we fix the gut is by these fasting strategies that I talk about in the book. When we look at the benefits of fasting, and there’s others we could get to later.
We want to become fat-adapted to maximize this autophagy. Typically, most people wouldn’t enter into where the body starts eating the bad cells until later, day three, day four of a fast. If you become fat-adapted going into the fast, you can start this autophagy process day one. What does it mean to be fat-adapted? This is all in chapter one. What it means, you’ve heard a lot about ketosis in a ketogenic diet. Now once you get to chapter three and four, you’ll learn that I’m not recommending you stay in this ketosis like many people are saying today. I talk about my diet variation strategies that we implement as well.
The fact is that cells can only use two things for energy, sugar or fat. When we become fat-adapted, we’re shifting the cell over to be very efficient at using fat. As a matter of fact, 95% of the energy then comes from fat. What happens when you’re not eating? Someone who’s stuck as a sugar burner, well, they either give you cravings you can’t resist because I need energy. I need sugar. Then you break the fast or the fast is so hard that you just can’t emotionally handle it, either one is bad. Or it will do one more thing, it will break your muscle down into sugar. One of the criticisms of fasting, oh, you might lose muscle. Not if you shift over to be fat-adapted.
When you go into the fast fat-adapted, when you stop eating, your body starts immediately using its fat. Now I’m very lean, so are you, but we still have about 50,000 stored calories of fat in our body that we could go a month or more without eating and our body would burn that fat. We want that. When you become fat-adapted, your body will go after the bad cells first on day one. We don’t want to enter the fast stuck as a sugar burner because then you will go after muscle or you will end up with too many cravings and break your fast and have all these emotional tangles in your brain. Step one, become fat-adapted, get yourselves using fat as energy and you go into the fast with no cravings. Autophagy getting rid of your bad cells. That’s the point of chapter one.
Ashley:
Wow. Just briefly, becoming fat-adapted, what does that mean exactly as far as what are people going to be eating? Are they just going to start incorporating more healthy fats into their diet if they’re not used to eating a lot of fat?
Dr. Pompa:
To become fat-adapted, we first off, to get the cells to shift from a sugar burner to a fat burner, we want to lower the carbohydrates to a point, and we teach you how to do this in the book, to a point to where it has to start going for the fat. Eventually, it does. Now that may take two or three weeks. We talk about that in the book and even some strategies to make that happen faster. Even, we tell you how to test, so you know when you become fat-adapted. There’s some simple tests you can do so you know.
All right. Once that fat adaptation happens, one of the first things is you go, oh my gosh, I can think clear and I have lasting energy. Even without a test, you know when that process happens. Here’s the best part, and you helped contribute to this and so did some others. We have all the recipes. We have all the foods to eat, foods not to eat. Yeah, you want to start bringing in—lower the carbohydrates and bringing in healthier fats into the diet. Of course, we don’t have time to go into that. That’s why you need the book. We have all the food lists and what to do and how to do that.
Ashley:
Absolutely. A lot of people can benefit even people who are vegetarian. It’s not a high protein approach in any way.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s not. It’s not. You can actually do it on any diet really.
Ashley:
Yeah, which is helpful. Okay, so they spend a week getting fat-adapted. Like you said, sometimes you just know. Testing is great but sometimes—not even sometimes. You just know when you’re burning fat for fuel because you have this brain clarity. A lot of people say the number one thing they notice is their brain fog is gone. You just are so clear-headed. You can focus and work long hours without eating. That’s an amazing perk. Once they get to that state, what happens in week two, chapter two?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, week two, chapter two. Again, I said, it may take two to three weeks for someone to adapt but we still step you along week by week. That’s what’s nice.
Ashley:
You don’t move on until you’re ready.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, right. You can do this in two weeks but really, each lesson can happen in a week and that makes it really easy. Okay, so when we look at studies on anti-aging, it’s very clear. When I say anti-aging, yes, age slower but really, it’s age without all of the diseases that we attribute to aging. I mean, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, all of it has become common in this country. I wouldn’t say it’s normal but it has become common. It’s not normal at all. That’s the point. However, we can avoid that.
Again, I visited a tribe that doesn’t have these diseases. They do a lot of these principles and I learned a lot from them. When we look at studies on living long healthy without disease, there’s one thing, only really one thing that holds up, eat less. When we look at and understand eating less, if you eat less, just cut calories long-term, your metabolism goes down. It doesn’t work long-term. It works short-term. What I talk about in this chapter is eat less by eating less often.
One of the first things that we do is we just cut out all of your snacks. We talk about eating basically in a smaller window, yes, but we talk about just eating three meals a day. Then we start squeezing your eating window down a lot like these very healthy cultures and tribes do. Why are we doing this? Because again, we’re looking at what we’re doing in the fast. We’re getting your cells used to burning fat when you’re not eating. If you’re eating all of the time and you’re eating five, six meals a day—and by the way, in the book, I cite that most people, if you ask how many times a day do you eat, they say, oh three times. Actually, it’s not true. They eat between 8 and even 21 times a day. Meaning, every time you put food in your mouth, it’s a meal and you raise glucose and insulin, glucose and insulin. You’re always challenging your body, utilizing its energy in this simulation of food. It’s not good.
You want to live longer. Eat less by eating less often. We start squeezing your eating window down. Now that means you’re fasting. You’re starting to get your body used to using its fat during a fast, when you’re not fasting. By the way, we can almost jump to week three at this point because now we take it a step further. We squeeze your window down and now we just have you eating perhaps two meals a day. Once we get you into this state of what we call intermittent fasting, now we’re extending your fasting time even more. What are we doing? We’re getting the cells stronger. Basically, I call it—in the book, I call it metabolic mitochondrial fitness. The mitochondria is where you burn fat and make energy, not to confuse anybody.
What happens is, when we squeeze in the window and force it to go longer without food and longer without food, what happens is, it gets stronger and stronger. It gets more fit and more fit. When we go into the fast, it’s fit. It’s ready. It adapts to the stress. You get the maximum result. You get the maximum autophagy. I love to say this is that, bad cells don’t adapt. By stressing it, by basically bringing in this eating window, what’s happening is we’re gaining healthier mitochondria, healthier cells, preparing us for the fast. Intermittent fasting then is something we evolve you into. That means we can even get you fasting for 20 hours a day. Not every day. We’ll get there. When we do this, we’re preparing the cells.
Ashley:
What constitutes an intermittent fast? What’s the shortest amount of hours that you would consider an intermittent fast?
Dr. Pompa:
Again, it could even be a 24-hour period where you just literally eat one meal. I give a lot of different strategies. In that testimony you read, it’s in my head because I just read it. My wife read it to me actually this morning. It was posted on her Facebook. The woman was down to eating in a four-hour window. She made a great point. She said, “It’s not for everyone, and Dr. Pompa in his book basically give you a strategy on where to start.” Now she has her kids doing it. Her kids eating window is much wider. She had such health benefits from it that she transitioned that into her family as well.
To her point, she didn’t start with eating in a four-hour window. She started with one of my other strategies where you just keep bringing the window in. Yeah, it’s something that you work up to, but it can be—and there’s strategies in the book where you have certain days of the week where you literally fast for 23, 24 hours. That’s when you really start noticing that your body starts digging into those really fat stores that you haven’t touched for years.
Ashley:
I’m just going to take this to another point for a second but a lot of women are probably listening who are questioning, can I do this? I have a thyroid condition or my hormones have been very erratic due to either period menopause or menopause or they have adrenal fatigue. Is this something that they can do if they’re struggling a little bit?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Now you go into the next—actually, it’s funny you asked a question right here because you go into the next chapters. The next chapters, especially chapter four are dealing with that very topic. Many women listening, and men, but probably more women, they go very low carb. It works for a little bit or it doesn’t work at all and they struggle. Then intermittent fasting, they hear all these amazing results, but for them, fasting doesn’t work. Enters the next chapter and in chapter four, we really—I dig very, very deep into this topic of diet variation, feast-famine cycles.
When we look at studies, and I cite them in the book. When we look at low-fat diets, high-fat diets, ketosis, all the different diets, there’s one that shines superior. It is basically varying the diet. Meaning, we said, look, I’m in the camp of keto, paleo, vegan, vegetarian. Everyone likes to basically camp in their diet but the fact is, varying the diet is where the magic is. There’s reasons for that. One of which the body has to adapt. Again, if it adapts, it becomes stronger. It adapts by something called hormone optimization.
The reason why people struggle to lose weight or use fat as energy is because they’re not hormonally optimized. This strategy of diet variation and feast-famine cycles, which I’ll explain in a minute, is a strategy that breaks through that and gets you to adapt and hormonally optimize. Now that your hormones are better and your cells hear them better, you actually start using fat. This is a breakthrough strategy that again, we’ve done this for years. I’ve taught these principles for years. Really nobody else is actually teaching them but the point is, is that even during the week, feast days for the women that you mentioned are actually as important as the fast days.
In the book, I talk about my 5-1-1, where we have a day where you actually purposely eat more. You remind the body it’s not in a starving mode because if it thinks that, it will start holding on to every bit of its fat and then nothing works for you. We have to remind it it’s not starving by giving feast days. Sometimes a couple of feast days a week works better for some people. Then we also throw in the fast days. That’s called feast-famine. In the studies that I mentioned, when they compared diets, when they did feast-famine—and in one study in particular, they went basically a famine day where they just ate maybe 500 calories then the next day, they eat standard American diet. They didn’t even eat a healthy diet. Fast day, famine day, fast day, famine day. It actually worked better than all the diets.
I actually interviewed that scientist and I said, “Why?” She said, “Because what happens is, it forces the body to adapt to the changes.” The bottom line is, when we change diets, when we add feast and famine, what happens is again our DNA is set up for that. The body adapts via hormones. That hormone optimization is why, I believe, is why it actually works best for weight loss and to become fat-adapted. To your point, thyroid conditions, adrenal problems, hormone problems, you need more feast-famine. That’s the magic for you. Chapter four and five really just blow that wide open for you.
Ashley:
That’s great. Once you get through weeks four and five where you’re really starting to flex the eating windows and the feast-famine cycles, week six is the very magical week of entering into a five-day water fast, right?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. We do that. By the way, I’ll say this too. In the book, in that last chapter that you mentioned is really a strategy also ladies for doing this strategy even monthly. Of course, I even talk about how to do the strategy seasonally. That’s there. Even five days of feasting a month right before your cycle actually is transformative for women who struggle on low-carb or fasting states. It changes hormonally their whole month. That’s how good this strategy works. Actually, you did a great graph for the book because we talked about how to put in a partial fast where we just decrease calories for five days in the month. That’s called a partial fast. There’s a whole section on the book on how to partial fast.
By the way, folks, you have a choice of what fast you do in the book. I educate you on the different fasting strategies so you don’t just have to do a five-day water fast. You could actually do a five-day partial fast. The partial fast is decreasing calories for a very limited time. Anyways, five days a month partial and then five days a month feasting, especially right before a woman’s cycle, transforms hormones.
Again, for all the reasons that I said, it forces this adaptation. By the way, ladies, if you notice the week before your cycle, you typically have cravings. That’s because you actually need higher glucose levels and insulin levels actually to make certain hormone transitions. There’s reasons for that. We’re giving in to that strategy in that chapter. Okay, yes, you’re right. Now it brings us to the fast.
Ashley:
Yes, the fast. Yeah. It is a little bit choose your own adventure. It’s not just a water fast. Some people even start with a partial fast and they think it was great but the next time, maybe they want to try a water fast. It’s not always something everyone wants to jump into. You did mention briefly a partial fast is just lowering your calories. There’s a few different options. You can do your own with your own food or there’s kits you can buy, The Fasting Mimicking Diet by ProLon.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. ProLon’s one. If you have more digestive issues, we teach you how—in the book, we teach you how to design your own partial fast. You can keep it to the foods that you know you do okay with. Then, of course, we lay out the water fast in its entirety on how to do that and evolve into that. In that chapter now, we break it down on what you do ahead—obviously, what to do in preparing for the fast. What happens each day: Day one, day two, day three and there’s a reason for five days. Years, I’ve done five-day fasts because typically, we start seeing people just break through on day four. We wanted them just to have one more day where they finally break through where their body’s just in that healing mode.
Now science has now shown that day four, we see this max autophagy happening where your body is getting rid of all those bad, nasty cells that are misbehaving, driving inflammation, making you feel not well. Then day five, something magical happens. You get the maximum rise of stem cells. In the book, I talk about how to measure your blood level ketones and glucose levels in a ratio to find out when you actually hit what we call max autophagy.
It’s fun because you’ll be able to see—I crossed into max autophagy, what we call this target range 1:1 ratio on day two or three, whatever it is but you’ll be able to know when that happens and it’s pretty cool. That’s why we do a five-day fast because we know we hit this maximum autophagy and stem cell creation. Again, that’s whether you’re doing a partial fast or a pure water fast. Either one, you’ll know when you enter that range.
Ashley:
If somebody’s feeling amazing at the end of day five and they know they’re max autophagy and they are just flying, they’re just so clear-headed that they feel amazing, should they still end their fast at the end of day five?
Dr. Pompa:
Look, I’m a fan and I discuss this as far as the benefit that we’ve learned of multiple five-day fast as opposed to the risk of not knowing when to stop a fast because there’s signs like what’s your tongue color? Does your hunger come back? Did you stop losing weight? I discuss more extending fasting beyond five days in the book. I think people who have a lot more bodyweight can do that but there are some other risks there.
One of the recommendations is a multiple five-day fast is really the magic. Whether it’s doing a fast every other month, four a year, two a year, even one a year is transformative for people but multiple fasts is I think the safest option. Again, you always check with your doctor during fasts. I cite that in the book. The bottom line is, certain extended fasts even longer, can be as you’ll read in the book very beneficial for some people.
Ashley:
There can be too much of a good thing with anything. Even with your running analogy earlier, people can run way too much where they just run themselves literally into the ground. In between two extended fasts, how long would you say is optimal to wait, a minimum?
Dr. Pompa:
Are we talking five-day fast or you mean…?
Ashley:
Yeah, a five-day fast.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, okay. Some people, we do a fast once a month for a period of time. Again, those are typically people who have the body stores to do that. Believe it or not, we use fasting as even a strategy on how to gain weight for people. If someone who’s very frail is fasting, believe it or not, can be a strategy. I talk about that in the book as well. What happens is, your body gets rid of the bad cells in the gut which could be why you can’t gain weight and the bad muscle cells that aren’t recovering. I challenged one of my sons to do this because he wanted to gain muscle. I won the bet because his body ate the bad muscle that wasn’t recovering. I’m sure it’s assimilation and his gut got better.
A month later, he had gained more weight than he lost during the fast and more weight than when he started because the body will start recovering. It will actually gain new cells. Remember, autophagy, the body gets rid of the bad cells but it replaces the bad cells with new cells, muscle cells that now have the ability to recover faster. Now the body starts to gain muscle. Even some bodybuilders now are utilizing intermittent fasting as a hormone optimization. Again, a strategy to gain weight. We don’t think of fasting—we appreciate it for weight loss, of course, as your testimony there you read but not weight gain.
The point is, is that some people can do multiple fasts every month for a period of time and get a benefit. Some people, it’s better to spread them out, give their body a time to replace those cells. Maybe they need two months between fasts, maybe three or four. Sometimes we’ll do a partial fast, a water fast. Next month, partial fast. Next month, water fast. Sometimes we alternate. Again, it depends on the strategy but there’s some ideas in the book as well.
Ashley:
Yeah, and that’s a testament to the innate intelligence. Again, your body does what it needs to do. If you need to gain weight or lose weight or maintain your weight and just approach maybe some cells in your body that are creating disease. Your body just knows what to do really.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.
Ashley:
Yeah, that’s great. Week seven is my favorite week. I think it’s a lot of peoples. What happens after the fasting? We’re not done. What happens then?
Dr. Pompa:
I think I started that chapter with warning, don’t blow it now.
Ashley:
Right. It’s my favorite but it’s also a little—yeah, you have to be very careful.
Dr. Pompa:
Warning. Yeah, because the fact is, is you are still in this—you just went through all of this autophagy, getting rid of the bad. Now your body is in this renewal phase with all of these new stem cells. The worse thing you could do is stress it. When all of a sudden, it hits all of this food in its stomach. It can’t digest it. That stress could shut off that stem cell formation and healing. We don’t want that, right?
Ashley:
Breaking a fast is as important as fasting itself.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, and I have watched so many people destroy it. First of all, your microbiome has changed which is a really good thing because one of the benefits of fasting is it resets your microbiome. Your HCL is low, so we don’t day one, just start eating meat back in the diet. It can’t break it down right away. We wait a few days. Then we also don’t want to just go right back to the same caloric intake. Your body just doesn’t have the enzymes ready yet. Your microbiome, all your bacteria are lower, good ones and bad ones.
As a matter of fact, we utilize this breaking the fast to inoculate with new bacteria and really change that dysbiosis that may be occurring. We want foods that are re-inoculating to the bacteria. Help basically your good guys come about and be stronger because all your bacteria are lower, all your enzymes are lower. Therefore, we just can’t throw a bunch of calories at it as well. We break it with a partial fast which keeps the healing going even after the fast. Again, we lay it out. This is what you do day one, day two, day three. Everything is in there on how to break it.
Ashley:
Yeah, there’s a lot of strategies. There’s exactly how many calories to eat on day one, day two, day three. There’s some great food lists and recipes. There’s tons of beautiful recipes in a fasting book which is pretty cool which is pretty—
Dr. Pompa:
Which is awesome, just don’t read them while you’re fasting.
Ashley:
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
Just so you know, for different body sizes, our recommendations are very different. The book lays it out if you’re 200 pounds versus 100 pounds. How you break the fast calorically, will be very different.
Ashley:
Yeah. You would think it wouldn’t be hard to stay within a small bit of food after fasting but some people once they start eating again, they just can’t stop. You really have to—a lot of people start fasting in the evening and then they end their fast in the evening so they can just eat a small meal and go to bed. Sometimes if you eat too early in the day, you just want to keep eating all day.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s true. It makes it a little bit harder. Put it this way. If you have a plan, you’ll be successful. If you don’t have a plan to break your fast, you’re—it’s not going to go well. Have a plan. The book helps you with that. Have a plan.
Ashley:
Yeah, a plan is great. Because of your Fasting for a Purpose group, we see people all the time. You just did a group fast about a month ago or so. It was tens of thousands of people that did this fast with you. Everyone did so well. Then there’s the few who went through the fast and they just broke it the wrong way. They just ate just way too much or they ate pizza or way too much meat and protein.
Dr. Pompa:
What happens is your inflammation goes like this. What happens then, you start just killing your stem cells that you just created. Don’t do it.
Ashley:
Yeah, absolutely. That is great. I just love that everything is just so well packaged in this book. It’s so easy to read. It’s just mapped out. You can really go week by week. One question we typically get is during the fast, can people still drink their bulletproof coffees? Can they still take all their supplements?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. The most frequent asked questions are in the book. That’s one of them. Yeah, look, during a water fast, the answer’s absolutely not. The only thing that I would say—and again, if you’re on certain medications, you have to check with your doctor. You have to stay on the medications maybe. Here’s the thing. You have to check with your doctor because you need way less of certain medications so caution. Yeah. We don’t even like taking supplements during the fast to push the body. Now there are a few like certain electrolytes. There’s exceptions.
If someone’s releasing a lot of toxins because of the autophagy process, BIND can be a life-changer and savior, so with Cyto. We call it the fasting trio and those three supplements are in there. In a water fast, we want people just to water fast. There’s some electrolytes like taking in sea salt that’s helpful. On a partial fast, you can take some supplements and get away with a little more because you’re eating some food. We’re not relying strictly on the innate intelligence like a water fast. That’s why we don’t want to push the body one way or another on a pure water fast. I still recommend no caffeine. You could do a decaf tea because, again, caffeine would push you a little too much.
Now in the intermittent fasting state, I tell you how to know. Meaning, that if you’re going to fast 15 hours or 20 hours when we talked about that in the earlier chapters, three. I tell how to know if your coffee is actually working for you. There’s a way to test for that utilizing glucose levels. You can check that out because your coffee may or may not work for you during intermittent fasting but we definitely don’t want it during an extended fast.
Ashley:
Yeah, that’s great to know. Everyone always wants to ask, can I still have my blank? If it’s a water fast, it’s only water and a nice, rich mineral salt as well is also—could be important. People want their apple cider vinegar and stuff like that and typically—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, right. Can I drink lemon water? See, the problem is, when you’re doing just a water fast, we want to rely completely on the innate intelligence in your body. Lemon water, now we’re forcing a more acid gut. We don’t want to do that. We don’t want to push the body. We want it to do its thing. That’s the beauty of a water fast. I think that’s why water fasting to me is still the most powerful because we’re relying completely on the innate intelligence. Partial fasting, still major benefits. We still don’t want to push the body too hard.
Ashley:
Right. If it’s stimulating your digestion, a lot of times, if you’re putting something like lemon water in your mouth, you’re creating enzymes in your saliva and you’re really turning on your digestion.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s right. In a water fast, that’s not good. In a partial fast, you could do lemon water. Not a big deal because you’re already eating other foods. Again, if it’s water, it’s water.
Ashley:
Not to call you out, but there are purists like you who you don’t even love brushing your teeth on a water fast because it’s—
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No, it’s true. Because again, the flavor can stimulate digestive enzymes. Then it stimulates the gut. That potentially could make you hungry. I like to just run with it completely.
Ashley:
Yeah, exactly. If somebody doesn’t feel comfortable going the five days or they can’t make it the five days, would you say just say see if you could go even a day or two or three and they’ll still get benefits from that?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly. Just do better next time. Again, the more fasting you do, the better. It’s like fitness. The more workouts you do, the more fit you become. The more fat-adapted you become, the more you practice these strategies, the healthier cells become. Bad cells don’t adapt. You get more new cells. Yeah, there’s no failure; just do the best you can.
Ashley:
It really is like a muscle, absolutely. Now who shouldn’t fast would you say?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I mean, obviously, pregnant women, nursing women. Your mouth could dry up so those definitely. I would say anorexic shouldn’t fast because there’s a psychological thing with food going on there. No bulimia. Bulimics I would not fast. There’s certain conditions. Again, certain diabetics can in fact fast but check with your doctor. You’re going to need a lot less insulin.
Ashley:
Then you also earlier in the conversation mentioned children. What would you say—children obviously are a little bit—they’re a lot different but they shouldn’t be eating all hours of the day and night and snacking every three minutes? What would you say—
Dr. Pompa:
That’s a US thing, a United States thing, right?
Ashley:
Absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
We think in this country that children need snacks every two hours through school. Snack time, this time, snack time.
Ashley:
Ridiculous.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the fact is that the teachers and the parents would make the argument. Yeah, but the moment I give Johnny the snack, he gets with it again and his behavior gets better. Of course, you’ve trained the dogs. Okay, I need the food. The fact is, they’ve already become sugar burners. They need sugar, they need sugar, so they need snacks. Kids should in fact, easily be fat burners. When they’re not eating, they should be burning their own fat but now we’ve trained their cells to only want sugar, sugar, sugar.
The fact is, kids can and should go longer periods without food. Again, they don’t have to go as long as an adult. They’re growing. No doubt, they should in fact eat more but you want to do it in at least three meals. Some kids even do it in two meals instinctively. They get up. They’re not hungry. They eat a big lunch and a big dinner. No problem. They’ll end up with the same amount of calories at the end of the day than the kid who ate four meals. The child who eats two meals. That’s a fact. They’ll end up with the same amount of protein. The child who ate two meals had more time at autophagy fasting, getting rid of bad cells. That’s the point. When I saw the tribe in Africa, the kids were doing the same thing the parents were. They ate one longer meal a day in three or four hours. They didn’t run around eating all day. That just didn’t happen.
Ashley:
Right, yeah. I mean, kids also have that innate intelligence as well where a lot of them, they don’t wake up hungry. They don’t really want a big breakfast and we force it upon them. Just our culture is like, you have to eat the minute you wake up and eat all day. They are strategies that can help the entire family which is great.
Dr. Pompa:
You can choose your eating window. I talk about that in the chapter on intermittent fasting. You can shift it for what works for your schedule or your family’s schedule. You’re not boxed into one eating window. Choose your window.
Ashley:
Yeah, absolutely. This has been a great conversation. I think we got through everybody’s questions which is great. Thank you so much for doing this. We’re really excited about this book and it’s been a long time coming. You can all order it at beyondfastingbook.com. I’ll put some links in the show notes as well. Yeah, we’re excited to see what you come up with next, too. I know you have some other ideas floating around your head. That will be great.
Dr. Pompa:
Thank you.
Ashley:
Yeah. All right. Thanks again. See you later, everyone.
Dr. Pompa:
All right. Thanks, Ashley.
Ashley:
Okay, bye.
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, I want to tell you about one of our sponsors, CytoDetox. Look, podcasts cost money. There’s a lot of production going around this but we are grateful to have CytoDetox as one of the sponsors. It’s so easy for me to talk about the product because myself and my family use it constantly as we practice what I preach. For over 15 years, I have talked about and taught doctors and the public about cellular detox and I’ll tell you, Cyto was a breakthrough. Cyto was a breakthrough for us and its changed so many lives so we’re grateful that they sponsor Cellular Healing TV. It makes sense, doesn’t it? They should.
Ashley:
If you’re listening to this podcast and want to access the amazing CytoDetox product Dr. Pompa just mentioned, please visit detoxoffer.com. Again, that’s detoxoffer.com. That’s it for this week. The materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only and they’re not to be considered as substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you would like to purchase some of the supplements mentioned on the show, please visit the site, asseenonchtv.com and use the code, CHTV15 for 15% off. Again, that’s asseenonchtv.com. Use the code, CHTV15 for 15% off. As always, thanks for listening.
