Is Intermittent Fasting a SCAM? The shocking truth about the world's most popular diet.

0:00Welcome to Catching Up With The Royals, a brand new show with me Richard Coles. And me, Emily Andrews. Every week we'll be going beyond the headlines, lifting the lid, and what life is really like behind the palace walls. Hello, sir. Good morning. I'm The Sun's new royal correspondent. Oh, he said, look at me up and down. Things are looking up. We'll be diving into the moments everyone's talking about. What does the world owe you if all of a sudden you've handed back your crown? Meghan and Harry can't keep hold of their staff. We'll reveal the secrets of an organisation usually shrouded in mystery and explore defining moments of royal history to see how the past still shapes the monarchy today.

0:38Now, you actually knew Princess Diana. I think one of the ways she acquired power was through that relationship with the president. But before that interview, no one had really spoken and been so open. Was that a game changer? So join us every week wherever you get your podcasts, on YouTube and on Saturdays on 5 as we catch up with the royals. Today's episode of The Unprocessed Truth is brought to you by Vilgain. Now, you may not have heard of them before as they're quite new to the UK, but they are set to have a big impact on the game. As you know, most foods are now ultra-processed and it's taking a massive toll on our health.

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1:57So this company is great and it supports both your health and performance. And we've got a special treat for you today. If you check them out at vilgain.co.uk and use the code UNPROCESSED, you'll get 10 % off your order. Welcome back to the Unprocessed Truth. And this week we are taking on a big topic. I know so many of you are asking about intermittent fasting. Is it legit? Does it really work? Are there any benefits beyond just calorie restriction? what are the common pitfalls we need to avoid and how do we need to do it properly. I'm joined by Natalie Louise Burrows, who's a nutritionist and the clinical director at Integral Wellness.

2:38Thank you for joining. Thank you for having me. You are an intermittent faster yourself, I believe. Intuitively so, yes. Intuitively so. So you're going to get into this in a bit more experience. But I'll start with my experience of intermittent fasting, because like a lot of people who's into their health and wellness, probably, I don't know, maybe four or five years ago, it became trendy and I started doing it. I jumped on the bandwagon and I went from doing, you know, 36-hour hardcore water-only fasts to then more intermittent fasting. And the 36-hour thing, I just couldn't function at work.

3:16It didn't go well with my work-life balance at all. So I kind of stopped that, went to intermittent and found a lot of success, lost almost probably too much weight, didn't enjoy that side of it. And I probably wasn't eating quite enough food, so felt weak at times. And I also played football, so I didn't think it was necessarily great for my performance, interestingly. And then I'd say I've now got to a bit more of a space with it where it's more intuitive, like you say. so if I'm traveling up to London I don't really want to eat breakfast at 5 a.m when I wake up it's a bit weird so then I just get on the train water only or black coffee and then I won't have breakfast till I get to London and that might be 10 30 11 so I've not fully like gone hardcore intermittent fasting till one or two in the afternoon but I've just delayed my breakfast essentially and that I think works for my body I feel good on that but what's your experience what are you doing with intermittent fasting at the moment and give us a bit of the background yeah of course so i think actually i think your experience is probably quite common of how people enter it sort of enter it go a bit too hard try things that are quite extreme like water fasting or pushing beyond that 24-hour period and then coming back to finding something that works better with your lifestyle is where i hope everyone ends up getting to and my experience is probably very similar i was of that craze of sort of juice fasting and going for sort of one to two weeks of only drinking green juice and water, trying to sort of push myself way too far, trying to get myself through to dinner without any meals.

4:50And that didn't work for me at all. And I think back then when I did it potentially, well, yeah, over a decade ago now, we didn't have the level of knowledge that we have on fasting now. And we didn't have the appreciation for how men and women operate differently in this space and why certain people might find this easier than others. And I think that's what we're at least seeing coming out of the research and that's what I hope we can start to then personalize it a little bit so for the individual thinking that fasting or whether we call it intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating we're all sort of skirting around a similar idea of the fact that we won't eat anything across a certain window of time and then we will keep our feeding window to eight or ten or twelve hours however that looks that is for people to then find their own mojo with and find what works for them and that's really what I found.

5:43I found that I don't have to think about it anymore. I found that for me what was important is making sure I gave a really good window overnight so that I wasn't eating on the cusp of going to bed and this is such a common thing that I recommend for people. I was actually able to digest my food while I'm still awake in the evening. Then I go to sleep. I have a good eight hours sleep. I wake up in the morning. I'm able to start getting ready for my day and then I consider having breakfast fast and that for most people is a really good place to start is that overnight fast and then start thinking about how that might be adopted in the day as well because i guess we're trained into this world of like we wake up we eat breakfast and i know so many people ask me like what do i do when i get up and go to the gym at 6 a.m like what should i eat being before the gym and my response is just like well why would you eat it's like a bit early and you don't need the energy but people think they do so they're like wolfing down some porridge and then going to the gym at 6am like why do we do that it's quite different for everybody that's individual i think it's going to depend on where you start with start on so if we talk about the gym if we also talk about how that might migrate into what somebody's day might look like so for the gym for men they might actually find that training they can manage fasted and that's not going to be a problem for them truth is across all of this conversation fasting is easier for men men manage skipping breakfast a lot easier than women do okay and so please let's try not to treat women like men and let's try not to put wet men in women's brackets either we are very different yeah so men might be able to go to the gym fasted and be fine maybe you've got a little bit of bcaa's or creatine in your water and you find that that works for you great for women particularly women as they're moving through more of their sort of perimenopause menopausal years having a little something before you go to the gym is going to be quite beneficial and then actually if we were to look at elders also classed as geriatrics but i think elders is much kinder elders is polite they might also find when thinking about bone density and sarcopenia muscle health that also making sure they take something on before going to the gym means that they're not breaking down muscle for the energy and they really are using the fuel they're given yeah so different stages of life different sexes matter um so for women if women are thinking okay well that's me perimenopause menopause what am i eating then we want to be thinking about the fact you don't need to eat a meal you just need to eat a small something a lot of people don't want much at that point in the morning so whether they're going to do something like having a very small protein shake so just water and a little bit of protein powder doesn't have to be the full volume you'd normally have but just a little something to get you going maybe it's a couple of bites of a banana and a little bit of peanut butter it can be that small it doesn't have to be your official breakfast but it just means you're not going on nothing and that we're seeing that in evidence to be quite supportive but you're saying you're intermittent far then you're a woman so so how do you manage it in a way that you can get the benefits as being a woman yeah so intermittent fasting for me is very different if i'm heading to the gym first thing i actually have the joy of usually getting to the gym at around 11 which is also quite a beneficial time now i have the luxury of the fact that I can manage my diary to do that on the days that I want to go to the gym or I go a weekend 11 o 'clock is a really nice time we're actually from a cortisol perspective cortisol is really playing on our side as a quick way of understanding what that might look like if you're unwell you wake up feel really awful in the morning by about 11 o 'clock you're sort of going oh actually I think I'm okay and then you start crashing again at sort of three four in the afternoon and that's that sort of moving with the cortisol wave of its natural peak and trough in day so I tend to try and go with that wave at the gym if I can as well at about 11 o 'clock and by then I've had my breakfast I've digested it well and I can go if I was going to go first thing in the morning I would eat something very small but actually if I look at intermittent fasting in general for me I am thinking not only about that overnight fast which as I say I really encourage everyone to think about eating dinner digesting properly and then going to bed benefit on your sleep is so fundamental and sleep is so important to your overall health that that actually stop eating early is really important even though it's really not talked about in intermittent fasting no and i think that's really key quite often people's lifestyle doesn't allow them to stop to stop their dinner till sort of eight o 'clock and actually it would be quite key to try and work on that and i really do encourage a lot of people to work out how they can move their dinner earlier particularly for women where delaying breakfast is not a particularly beneficial option yeah so having breakfast within one to two hours of waking is really where we should be trying to aim for for women um but that then means if you want to reduce your eating window you're going to have to bring dinner earlier potentially dinner well aiming for around six okay and that does feel quite early compared to the days when i used to have to commute all the time and actually even then me and my husband have had to work quite hard at making sure we prioritize coming home and prioritize eating straight away even if maybe my laptop needs to be picked up again at some point um it does take a bit of a shift to do that but the benefits are huge we feel so much better feel much more digested we actually also sit down and spend more time to each other rather than oh gosh it's eight nine o 'clock and i've got to rush some dinner and then i'm rushing to go to bed and that's not the mood you should be in at that time of night and then other side as I say give it one to two hours as you're waking up to then think about eating food if you're not hungry as a woman I'd be questioning whether we have got some dysregulated nervous system sort of are we working on a bit of a stress response and that's reducing our appetite definitely think we need to have quite an honest conversation with ourselves about that and then during the day where I also think it's really key is to think about not eating in between meals.

11:33And that's also a type of fast that people seem to ignore. So we often tend to go from being a bit of a grazer to suddenly trying to do this time-restricted eating. And the extreme or the distance between the two can actually make us feel quite groggy. And that's why for me, if you can get that nighttime fast in, 12 hours, 14 hours, get comfortable with that, and then actually start making sure that you go from breakfast to lunch and lunch to dinner with a decent four to five hours or whatever that looks like in between your body's really starting to adapt to time without food in a really comfortable manageable way if you're doing time restricted eating but within that eight hour window you're grazing we're not really getting anywhere and this is really cool when we think about metabolic flexibility if we want to latch on to some of those real benefits of fasting so many people will do it for weight loss but actually do we want to latch on to not just thinking about weight but also thinking about the deeper health benefits well so the calorie bros will tell you intermittent fasting is bullshit and it's just calorie deficit is that true or are there other benefits there are definitely other benefits to fasting i think the idea that if you were to restrict your calories into a calorie deficit but graze all day the okay might you lose weight yes if we look at chemist biochemistry from a food perspective yeah there's some evidence that you might still lose weight but from my perspective this isn't just about weight loss this is about gaining greater health so i'm looking at well what could we do to also make sure you're metabolically healthier and gaining more metabolic flexibility through making sure you're not grazing all day even if it is in a calorie deficit even if it is in a time-restricted eating will have greater benefit from you.

13:22And I've had personal experience with that. When I was working in corporate, I would restrict my calories. I would use an app to track everything I was eating, but I would just graze continuously. And I am miles better and healthier now, being much more in tune with my eating window and eating three meals a day or sometimes two meals a day, not grazing and not tracking a single thing that I eat, but focusing on nutrients. So I'm not saying that there is no merit in what we appreciate about energy and energy out, but there's much more merit in understanding proper metabolic health. And also really core to all of this is also nutrient sufficiency in the body as well.

14:04And that's something I worry people go into fasting with low nutrient status, and then they restrict nutrients further through trying to fast for maybe hopefully weight loss benefits i think we've just got to think bigger and we've got to care for our bodies in a different way interesting we can still use the same approach where we fast but can we do it where actually we're trying to reach metabolic flexibility not just trying to cut down on calories yeah and can we do it with a longer site in mind rather than just can i fit into a dress in the next month well and you do it in a way that protects your sleep and make sure you're optimizing your sleep which is fundamental so what are some of the other things people should you know integrate into their fasting if they're thinking about it like what about electrolytes what about other hacks of timing that can make it easier because it is essentially a stress on the body right yeah and it really can be and i think that's also something really important to point out that if you are experiencing a lot of stress in life then starting to restrict food into certain windows is probably not the one for you that's not your low hanging fruit pick a different health goal to work towards probably managing your stress a bit better or getting enough sleep and enough hydration while you are very stressed because when we're stressed we lose a lot more electrolytes we rinse our hydration a lot quicker hence everything begins to dry out we often feel it in our mouth a lot more so that would be then your goal don't start trying to restrict nutrition when that's happening in your body because your adrenals are just not going to be keen on you doing that.

15:41I guess if you're looking at then starting to manage some of these windows with some of the tips that we've shared today, then definitely think about your hydration. Water can be taken in at any point of the day and doesn't disrupt the fast. Electrolytes, a good electrolyte balance can be really helpful. And a lot of people are filtering their water now, understanding whether you're filtering out all the minerals and you need to re-add them back in, you know, really appreciate what you're doing um and actually even sometimes just adding very minimal amount of electrolytes to people's water can can do the world of difference for them so it might be something that's worth trying titrating with and listening in on to how that feels i always have to do black coffee or green tea or something like a herbal tea because otherwise i'm just done like i need something to keep me going because i don't stop like i'm not just having a nice fast at home chilling out on the weekend i'm like at work running around london or doing something so you can have teas coffees no issues yeah as long as there's no milk yeah so black tea black coffee herbal tea not a problem um caffeine isn't a challenge we're breaking fast from what i understand there is some question around things like lemon water whether that potentially takes you out of ketosis for a short period of time interesting but i think the reason we're not quite settling on whether this is a yes or a no is because there's argument to say you enter back into ketosis quite quickly and i think that's where depends how much lemon you squeeze in your water as well yeah i mean do i personally recommend everyone drink lemon and hot water first thing in the morning i'm not really sure what the argument is for doing that i don't particularly um agree with this idea that you're helping to flush through the body i just think our body's a bit smarter than the fact it needs lemon water to be helped and if you like the taste and you're hydrating first thing in the morning crack if that's just what you genuinely enjoy of course crack on please make sure you protect your teeth please don't swill things around your mouth but that goes for most things that we drink and we eat don't swill things around your mouth and with anything whether it's a black tea a black coffee a lemon water i think dentists tend to recommend you give it a good half an hour before before or after you brush your teeth yes because of sort of embracing and and doing that as well so yeah just a couple of things to remember but if we're adding things like milks or sugars or collagens or things like that to our teas or coffees that will then break the fast so we really are looking for quite plain versions yeah and so we've got to talk about autophagy glad i said that right it's a complicated word um but that's obviously one of the benefits it's talked about a lot of why you would bother doing fasting beyond just weight loss and calorie deficit and whatever else you're doing it for what is it real can you explain what it is yeah It is real.

18:24It's a really natural process to happen in the body, whether it's autophagy, autophagy, potato, potato. I don't know which one it is, but that process is a very natural biochemical process. It should take place within our bodies. So cells should develop and live and thrive and then die, recycle and clear out the body. That's all very natural and there's nothing to be worried about. there was such interesting research in fasting for its benefits on longevity did it actually support the body in clearing out these dying and you know clear out recycle these dying cells quicker and there's been some really positive evidence to say that it can help that along and i think we're if we're just to take that into something that's quite sort of easy to understand and to gain a bit of um sensibleness around it if you give the body periods of rest where it's not having to focus on digestion which is a massive effort for the body to break down food it's got to go from mouth to south that's the whole digestive process it's got to engage the gall bladder the pancreas the liver there's a lot going on there if you give the body periods of rest you give it an opportunity to utilize the fuel that it's got that helps with metabolic flexibility but that also helps with cells being able to use and clear as the functions that they're meant to be doing yeah so the science in this i think is really interesting and definitely those who are specializing in longevity get really excited about this aspect and i think for some people working on and this is not my area at all but for some people working in areas like cancer and that they find it quite favorable to support those sorts of processes so it's it's definitely one to so it doesn't happen if you don't intimate and fast it will happen anyway the body will naturally be doing that anyway because that's a very natural process to go through what we see is a slight improvement in the support of your body in enabling that natural process it's the same as the fact the body should naturally be able to switch between fuels yeah using glucose versus using fat but if we continually snack and graze the body doesn't need to switch into fat burning mode because it's got easy access glucose yeah all the time yeah so if you allow these fast to take place overnight between meals you naturally reduce you know you've processed your food you've used up all that glucose in that meal now your body if it wants energy needs to tap into the fat that is available within storage if unless you give the body that opportunity that's what everyone wants to burn fat right absolutely you want to burn it one because a lot of people want an aesthetic external look absolutely there's some health benefits to that too but we want to do it as well because it does enable really great metabolic health so we should really all be able to walk around town without snacks in our bags and without worrying about where our next meal is going to come from it's an interesting concept about resting letting the body rest to allow it to do these processes because essentially we think of as rest as good we get tired we work hard and then we sit in front of netflix and watch something with some popcorn or some crisps or whatever and actually that's not rest for our body is based on what you're saying because it's got to process and digest all that food yes there's certain areas of your body that will be resting in that moment but not so your mind might be resting i mean your body never rest technically does it because your heart's always pumping your liver's always working your kidneys are always functioning so the body actually never technically ever rests but i guess when we're thinking about resting at the weekend we're probably thinking about more nervous system rest but it is worth thinking about is your nervous system getting true rest because potentially if we are forcing a fast then actually the adrenals are not going to be enjoying that and i think for me the biggest thing if somebody's wondering if they're ready to enter some of this is not only to think about starting really sensibly around that nighttime fast where can i move dinner to where can I move breakfast to to create an evening fast and then thinking about in between meals but actually is to also think about where's my health today am I actually nutritionally complete is my status of nutrition good have I got good amounts of electrolytes in my body good vitamins and minerals or have I really not been looking after myself particularly well recently not eating particularly well and therefore my body is going to be starting off under par let's get ourselves up to a good nutritionally complete state let's actually at least help our nutritional status and then let's allow ourselves to move into being a bit more flexible being fasted at certain periods i worry about this depletion on top of depletion yeah well and it's also about take it easy and start with what works for you and your schedule so if you're going to start with something don't go hardcore 36 hour fast maybe just move your dinner from 8 p.m to 6 p.m start there and see what difference it start there yeah do one thing one thing really simple yeah and i think that's what the man who started a lot of this conversation dr michael mosley named his podcast wasn't it one thing yeah just do one thing so i think we can very much take that for this exactly and you know i think the other thing i'll take away from this conversation is like listening to your body and doing what works for you because i've tried to be hardcore and not eat anything during a full day of work and that just does not work because my body's busy and stressed and using its brain all day so it needs some fuel probably but then actually maybe skipping breakfast for me because I'm a guy works and that just works naturally better with my body and I eat dinner early I eat dinner at about six o 'clock as well because I've got kids yeah I don't like it if I work late and then eat late it doesn't feel good in my body then how I sleep and everything else so what about all these confusing terms people throw around the 5-2 diet the 8-16 like what does it all mean yeah it's a good question and really it's just multiple different words for the same sort of thing it's about trying to help somebody find their rhythm for fasting so the 16-8 is taking the 24 hour that we have in the day splitting it into 16 hours of fasting and eight hours of an eating window and there's different variations like that i tend to say to people cut it down the middle and start there do 12 12 then maybe go to 14 10 and work your way through don't just launch from a grazer into 16 8 makes sense 5 2 is obviously what michael mosley wrote a lot about and that's thinking about taking the week so if you find working on a day-to-day basis isn't right for you you might find actually working across a week works easier so you take two days of the week where you would limit your calorie restriction to 800 calories and then the other days you would keep it within what would be a more natural maintenance calories what people have got to try not to do there is binge and can treat completely swing the other way on those but that's really what everyone's got to be cautious of when it comes to restricted eating and i would say that anything around time restricted eating has to come with a really healthy approach to it and it has to come from a point where your body is ready to take it on so this just goes back to start low and slow and steady and do what works for you so adapt the plan to how it fits best into your lifestyle and listen to your body essentially don't keep slogging it if it feels wrong if it's not working if you're miserable stop rethink you've got to tune in and listen good advice okay so last quick fire questions for all the naysayers who say intermittent fasting doesn't work what would you say to them uh well one doesn't work on what if it's not doesn't work on weight loss i'd say that's potentially because we are still over consuming i'd also say potentially of weight loss if you're still grazing throughout those eight hour window then we've got a bit more of a metabolic flexibility issue so i think we've got nutrient deficiencies to consider metabolic flexibility quality of sleep good hydration and your stress levels as well as the fact of what food you're actually eating so there's nuance always nuance always nuance and then okay lastly if people are going to take away one thing from this conversation and they want to start intermittent fasting what would your advice to them be please do start with thinking about that overnight window when you're going to sleep your body should be fasted but not just fasted for the eight hours that your head is lying on that pillow yeah you should be eating dinner and being awake for a good two three hours after dinner not grazing not snacking not needing anything but just digesting you should also be able to wake up and have a good hour or so before you're needing to eat something or before you encourage your body to start eating something start there and work from there and then my next step would be get good three solid meals in a day but fast in between your meals and if that's your starting point that for some people can be life-changing without needing to go any further take it low and slow take it easy step by step no late night snacking in the cupboard please yes not a good idea and if you have to put all that in the bin it's not a bother it's not a waste of food when it's things that don't have nutritional great nutritional value for you anyway we'll drop it off at a food bank you know there's really easy ways of starting to clear our cupboards if we're wanting to make these changes or you just eat it all and then don't buy it again i'll let you just have one last binge and then don't buy it again but that's my trick i just don't buy it so it's never in my cupboard so i never eat it and it does work for me thank you that was really interesting a short sharp episode on what intermittent fasting is and why people might want to try it and how they want to adapt it to their life so it can actually be beneficial to them but lastly as we always ask everyone what does health mean to you Natalie?

28:08Health means to me making the most of the life that I've got if there's one chance for me to enjoy this life I want to do it in the healthiest way possible and I want to wake up and go to bed feeling good if life feels like a slog my health isn't in the right place so it becomes the focus so that I can live my life to the greatest potential and have the most fun amazing what a great way to end the podcast that is so simple we just want to feel good and have a good time absolutely thank you for coming on thank you for having me

29:05Thank you.