Fasting

Longevity

What Should You Eat Before You Fast?

Fasting & Longevity Summit 2.0

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&nbsp; <h6>David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS</h6>
One of the most common questions I get is what should I eat before I fast? And this is a really important consideration. And it's important whether you are doing an intermittent fast, maybe like a 16 hour overnight fast, or an 18 hour overnight fast, or if you're doing a three or 4 or 5 day water fast, no matter how you're looking at fasting, you should always really consider the food that you're consuming in your last meal before you start your fast. And the same rules really apply. So what I'm talking about here applies whether you're doing a five day fast, whether you're doing a three day fast, whether you're doing a 16 hour overnight fast, maybe even just maybe, you're a beginner and you're just doing like a 12 or 14 hour overnight fast. These rules apply. Or if you're doing, you know, a 30 day fast or something, you know, something crazy that's, you know, going above and beyond these rules apply. So first thing I always look at when I'm looking at meals is protein. Protein really helps stabilize your blood sugar. And it's super important for insulin sensitivity. And that's really key. You don't want the last meal you eat to spike your blood sugar and create blood sugar dysregulation. This is what a lot of people do wrong is they they're like, well, I'm not going to eat for a while, so I'm going to go out with a bang, right? I'm going to go for, you know, my big hurrah. 

And I'm going to have, you know, this, I'm going to have a whole pizza, right? Or I'm going to have a big bowl of ice cream when I'm, you know, finished with my meal that sets you up for fasting failure because that is going to throw off your blood sugar. It's going to create big insulin spike. Your blood sugar is going to drop down. You're going to get reactive hypoglycemia. You're going to have a lot more cravings. And fasting is going to be a lot harder to be successful at. So please don't do that. Instead, eat a really healthy meal. Prioritizing protein 30 to 50g of good quality protein, maybe more. If you know you're very active, you have a lot of muscle mass. You might need more. Okay, most people find somewhere in that 30 to 50 gram range to be great, and they feel really satiated when they do that. Again, it's just going to really depend on your activity level, your muscle mass, you know, your overall weight, right? So somebody that's, that's a little bit smaller, not as active 30g can be, can be wonderful for them. Somebody that's a little bit larger, more active. Maybe they exercise that day 40 50g, maybe even more. Especially if you know you're a young athlete you might need more than 50g. 

So but that's where we start 30 to 50 plus grams. You're not going to go wrong if you do more than 50g. Even if your body doesn't need it, you're not going to go wrong. It's going to help with stabilizing your your blood sugar. It's going to help with insulin sensitivity, and it's going to help you just feel more satiated during the fast. So don't worry about that. Just make sure you prioritize it. Number two is healthy fat. Now healthy fat is critical, but you can also overdo fat if your body doesn't digest and break it down effectively. So this is why the caveat here I say 15 to 30 plus grams. Now we look at protein. Protein has four calories per gram. So the average individual, like a big meal for most people is somewhere around 700 800 calories, maybe a thousand calories. So 30 to 50g, you're looking at 120 to 200 calories from that. So it's not a huge proportion of, you know, if you're eating a very large meal. Healthy fat, 15 to 30g fat has nine calories per gram. So if you're looking at 30g of fat, that's 270 calories right there. Now for some individuals, that's no problem. Like for me, I can easily eat 30g of fat. In fact, I'll eat. You know, my body is able to tolerate 1500 calories in a meal. My digestive system is good. I have, I'm very active. My muscles are pulling, nutrients out of the bloodstream pretty quickly, and so I feel good when I eat. You know, a good, solid meal like that. I typically need about 3000, 3500 or 4000 calories a day just to maintain my weight. 

So for me, it's no issue. But for a lot of other people eating 200 plus grams of fat in a meal, maybe they don't have a gallbladder, maybe they have a sluggish liver that can make them feel nauseous. They just don't feel as good. They need smaller meals, maybe 500 calories or something like that. So that's why we want a tighter this up. And so that's why I say 15 to 30g 15 at the minimum grams of healthy fats, 30, 15 to 30. Usually in that range you're going to do good for some individuals. If you have a larger appetite, you can certainly do more than 30g. But try to watch the feedback your body gives you. If you feel a little bit nauseous, you have acid reflux after the meal. It may be because you went too heavy on the fats. Now by healthy fats, what I'm talking about are things like avocados, extra virgin olive oil or olives in general, coconut oil or coconut butter or coconut milk, grass fed butter, yogurt, organic yogurt could be grass fed meats, right? Obviously, you know, a good fatty piece of meat, it's going to have the protein as well as the fat in there. So you want to take in consideration all of those things and buy this right here. When you're counting these grams, when you start doing this and you do this for a few meals, you really get an idea of how much grams of each are in the particular meal that you're eating. 

So it doesn't it's not like you need to do this the rest of your life, but in the beginning, you want to have an awareness of, okay, how much protein am I getting here? How much fat am I getting here? And then you can kind of titer to where you feel best somebody that does not have a gallbladder. Maybe they had the gallbladder removed or they just just don't feel good when they're eating fats. They might need to reduce the amount of fat. That's why I said 15, maybe 15, 20g or 30g, you know, depending on how well you're digesting those fats. But again, trying to get it from those good healthy sources, maybe a little bit of nuts and seeds. Not a huge fan of getting fats from nuts and seeds in general because they're more pro-inflammatory. Omega six is an our body that can be tough on the digestive system. So I'm a big fan of the fat sources I already talked about. And of course you want to avoid the really damaging fats. Things like canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, safflower, cottonseed, peanut oil. We want to avoid those. Those are very inflammatory for our body and will not set us up for a good fasting experience and said, really try to focus in on your grass fed butter, your avocado, your extra virgin olive oil, your coconut fats, things like that that are much better tolerated and less they're less likely to cause inflammation in the body. Third thing here is polyphenols. And one way to think about that is colors. So we know fruits and vegetables come in a wide range of colors. And kind of the more colorful ones, the the reds, the purples, the oranges, the yellows, they're rich. 

And as well as the greens, they're rich in things called polyphenols, which help feed our microbiome. And the more well-fed our microbiome is, the more post biotic nutrients, which are very healthy and anti-inflammatory for our body that those bacteria are now going to produce. And again, that's going to reduce inflammation in the body. That's going to set us up for healthier bowel movements. And it's going to also support us to have less cravings when reading a lot of sugars and processed foods and less polyphenols, we create a microbiome that sets us up for cravings that actually will trigger more cravings, more sugar cravings, more carb cravings, and cause us to have a lot more struggle if we're trying to do a fast. So getting the polyphenols again helps to reshape the microbiome in such a way that we have less cravings, we're able to burn fat more effectively, create ketones, and have less inflammation in our system. So that's really key. And fiber goes along with that. So fiber we're going to consume with the polyphenols you don't need like an extra fiber supplement. I don't recommend that. I recommend just getting the fiber from fruits and vegetables right. Getting your fiber from good quality fruits and vegetables, things like avocados, olives they have fiber in them. Green leafy vegetables have fiber. If you're eating fruit fiber in there, if you're eating cucumbers, if you're eating, you know, all different types of things. That's going to have the fiber that you need. You really don't need to count out how much fiber you have. If you just have some plant based polyphenol, colorful plants, in your meal, along with the healthy, the healthy proteins and healthy fats like I talked about. That's good. That's what you want to do. Number five, this is really to help support your digestive system and and to support your microbiome is some sort of fermented food or beverage. This could be something like apple cider vinegar. Could be sauerkraut, could be kimchi. Could be pickles, could be organic yogurt. Unsweetened of course. Right. No added sugar in it. That's what we want to do, you know, definitely want to avoid any sort of added sugar. 

So I'm not a big fan of like having a full kombucha right before you fast either, even though that's fermented. So technically it would be in this category. There's still a lot of sugar in there, and that sugar is going to throw off your blood sugar and create more cravings the next day. Or, you know, whenever your fast starts getting beyond, let's say, ten hours, you're going to start to notice more cravings. So what we want to do is stick with low sugar fermented foods. Again, I mentioned a whole bunch of them. I really like apple cider vinegar. I love sauerkraut, so just taking like a little bit of sauerkraut, putting it on your plate with your meal. The fermented, these fermented foods and beverages have post biotic nutrients so already metabolized compounds that are anti-inflammatory for your gut so they help reduce inflammation in your gut. And the less inflammation you have in your gut, the healthier the overall microbiome is going to be, and the less cravings you're going to have. They also have enzymes. Some of them have probiotic in them. They have other other nutrients like sauerkraut has something called vitamin U, which is really powerful anti-inflammatory. It helps our body detoxify bad estrogens, helps us detoxify, you know, a lot of harmful compounds, parabens and phthalates. 

So having, again, sauerkraut or pickles or, or apple cider vinegar, it's going to help the sourness of it helps to activate our digestive juices. So our stomach acid pancreatic enzymes are our digestive enzymes as well as our bile flow. So we digest the meal more effectively. But then also on top of that, it also has these kind of compounds that help reduce inflammation in our system. So you don't need a whole lot with apple cider vinegar. You can just take like a tablespoon, put it in, let's say four ounces of water, a little bit of water that you drink before your meal and that helps prime your digestive system. You can also take, let's say, two tablespoons of, fermented vegetables like sauerkraut or kimchi and have that on your plate. You can have, you know, one medium to to a large pickle with your meal. You might have a half a cup of yogurt to add more protein, to add more healthy fats. Again, this should be an organic, unsweetened yogurt that you're consuming so you don't have any added sugar. You don't want the growth hormones and antibiotics that are in the the conventional yogurt. 

So a good organic yogurt that will add, protein, healthy fats, as well as the probiotics, enzymes and post biotics to support your microbiome. So really good stuff right there. That's what we're looking at again, protein, healthy fats, trying to get a lot of colors in our meal that's going to provide the fiber, the polyphenols and then something fermented. If you do that you set that up right. You're going to have great fasting success. Your blood sugar is going to be stable. Your body's going to be burning fat, creating ketones, which help your brain feel really good. So a lot of people will say, When I'm fasting, I feel really energetic, mentally clear, really creative. That's the ketones, this byproduct of fats that our liver creates that can cross the blood brain barrier, get up in the brain. They reduce inflammation in the brain. They're a great fuel source for neurons, and they really make you feel great when you're when you're fasting. And you get that when your last meal is very blood sugar stabilizing, just like I talked about. So if you want to get the best results with fasting, make sure that you follow what I talked about in this video. And you can also feel free to share this with other people with your friends or family members so they can understand more about this as well. Hopefully you got it. Got a lot out of this and we'll see you in a future video training. Be blessed.

Dr. David Jockers is a doctor of natural medicine and runs one of the most popular natural health websites in DrJockers.com which has gotten over 1 million monthly visitors, and his work has been seen on popular media such as the Dr Oz show and Hallmark Home and Family.
Dr Jockers is the author of the best-selling books, “The Keto Metabolic Breakthrough” by Victory Belt publishing and “The Fasting Transformation.” He is a world-renowned expert in the area of metabolic health, fasting, brain health, inflammation and functional nutrition.
He is also the host of the popular Dr Jockers Functional Nutrition podcast which has been consistently ranked among the top 50 health and fitness podcasts and has been the #1 ranked nutrition podcast in the world.
Dr Jockers lives in Canton, Georgia with his wife Angel and his twin boys David &amp; Joshua and his daughters Joyful &amp; Shine.

What Should You Eat Before You Fast?

David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS

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David Jockers, DNM, DC, MS