Today I am chatting with Adam Martin. Adam, commonly known and referred to as The No Breakfast Guy is an Amazon Best Selling Author with his Book "Start Late Stay Light” and has been a practicing Exercise Physiologist for the past 15 years. Over the past decade and a half his successful Exercise Physiology clinic has helped 1000's of people from olympic athletes to returning war veterans, recover from major injuries and surgery to return to normal and help them live their best life.
5 years ago Adam became interested in the world of fasting, in particular the great breakfast myth, and after extensive research, authored “start late stay light” and have since helped people all over the world via introducing the “no breakfast lifestyle” into their eating routines and free themselves from the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Key points addressed were
- The reason for his core philosophy behind his book Start Late Stay Light in which he advises clients skip what was once universally considered the most important meal of the day, breakfast
This series features conversations I conducted with individuals who have dedicated their research, businesses, lifestyle, and health to various forms of Fasting and the science of Fasting. This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. Patricia Kathleen Podcasts
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:00] In this episode, I speak with exercise physiologist, weight loss specialist, fasting coach and author Adam Martin. Key points addressed were the reason for his core philosophy behind his book, Start Late Stay Light, in which Adam advises clients Skip. What was once universally considered the most important meal of the day breakfast. We also discussed how being known as the No Breakfast guy has informed Adam's current investigation into health and what future studies ought to be done in regards to mental health and fasting. Stay tuned for my fascinating talk with Adam Martin.
[00:00:43] My name is Patricia Kathleen, and this series features interviews and conversations I conduct with experts from medicine and science to health and humanitarian arenas in an effort to explore the world of fasting from a variety of angles. This dialog is meant to develop a more complete story about the information, research, personal stories and culture in and around the science and lifestyle of fasting. If you're enjoying this podcast, be sure to check out our subsequent series that dove deep into specific areas such as founders and entrepreneurs. Vegan life and roundtable topics. They can be found on our Web site. Patricia Kathleen BCom, where you can also join our newsletter. You can also subscribe to all of our series on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Pod Bean and YouTube. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation.
[00:01:35] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. I am your host, Patricia. And today I am elated to be sitting down with Adam Martin. Adam is an exercise physiologist, weight loss specialist, fasting coach and author. You can find out more on his website about everything we talk about today. The no breakfast guy dot com. Welcome, Adam.
[00:01:53] Thank you so much for having me on.
[00:01:54] Absolutely. I am excited to unpack everything. We're going to climb through your Adam's book and a lot of his core principles. And we are also going to get to everyone's favorite part of the show, which is our rapid fire questions, where we take questions that all of you guys have written into us. I'm looking for people in Adam's expertize to answer. But before I get to that, for everyone who is new to this show, we I will read a quick file on Adam to give you kind of a platform of where he is coming from. Before I ask him to go further into that, before I do that, however, a road map for today's podcast and the line of inquiry that we're going to be following. As I said, I'll first have Adam described the personal professional's academic story as it pertains to fasting and his narrative there. And then I'll ask him to define some terms. And these are all very for us. And I think it's best to know how he himself defines terms that we all find wrote in the community. However, everyone tends to come at them a different way after we do that. I'll turn to the core tenants of Start Late. Stay late. I'll talk to him about the audience that he was thinking of as he wrote it, as well as some of the core philosophies and structures behind it. And then we'll turn to, as I said, these rapid fire questions from our audience. And after that, we'll wrap everything up with key pieces of advice that may have for those of you who are looking to contact him or get involved, perhaps emulate some of what he's doing. As promised, a quick bio on Adam. Adam Martin is commonly known and referred to as a no breakfast guy. He's an Amazon best selling author with his book Start Late, Stay Late and has been practicing exercise physiologist for the past 15 years. Over the past decade and a half, his successful exercise physiology clinic has helped thousands of people from Olympic athletes to returning war veterans, recover from major injuries and surgery to return to normal and help them live their best life. Five years ago, Adam became interested in the world of fasting, in particular the great breakfast myth. And after extensive research authored Start Late, Stay Late and has since helped people all over the world by introducing the no breakfast lifestyle into their eating routines and free themselves from the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I know we're gonna get into that as we unpack your book as well, Adam, but before we get to that, I'm hoping you can kind of draw a narrative as to what your career trajectory and academic and personal kind of encounter was with fasting prior to writing your book and launching this philosophy of your no breakfast guy.
[00:04:26] You're certainly one, as you kind of alluded to, for 50 years now, I've been an exercise physiologist, and so most of my career was actually around, as you say, kind of helping. It will kind of come back from injuries and whether that be an Olympic athlete, the weekend warrior mom of two kids or a returning war vet, that was kind of my mainstay for a very long time. And it wasn't really until about five years ago where my sister's health was deteriorating at a rapid rate due to her struggles with obesity. And I understand fat loss. And, you know, obesity is an issue around the world. But it wasn't my passion. It wasn't when my kind of interests lie. But my mother got me a call one day and said, look, you've got to help me. You don't my daughter, your sister out. You know, something's got to change with that kind of thing. And so I said, look, she just has to eat less and move more. You know, just very simply, I don't know how else to kind of help her out. But mom was I know something something different has to be said than just that. And I could hear a different tone in her voice than I'd heard before. When we say, look, I think Sarah needs to lose some weight, he kind of thing. And so I took it upon myself then to just do a little bit of research. I'm good, I better help than just tell her eat less and move more, which is kind of, I guess, the normal narrative that kind of you hear so much these days. And just in that, I kind of came around the world of fasting throughout my research there. And I'd always been and had told all my clients up until that point of the message of breakfast is the most important meal a day. You must start the day with that. If you're not, you're much more likely to be overweight. You're not setting yourself up with enough energy and all those things that we do here and that kind of myth, that breakfast being that most important holiday. And so it just interested me from a standpoint. It was something completely different to what I'd ever come across for my entire career, my academic life in university, and kind of just all of that kind of story that it had been told to me my entire life. And so I thought just out of interest, all kind of go down that rabbit hole and see what was there. And so in that rabbit hole, I came across the different a couple of different ideas. And there was five to which Mike Mosley was kind of the guy at the time. He's from the UK. He's a doctor in the U.K. So. So what's these five? Two and. Oh, that's interesting. He's telling people not to eat a whole lot for two days and then eating normal on other days and then going further into that came around the world of breakfast might not be the most important holiday. And that's that's what really grabbed me. This idea of kind of going without food for a whole day, twice a week, and then having quite normal eating for five other days, that just didn't seem sustainable to someone like my sister. And I just thought my sister was probably the I guess the general population of people who were having issues with obesity and telling them to go without food for an entire day was kind of just something that might be too far, too far. And for them, this idea of just kind of getting rid of the morning meal, it seems more sustainable should there be something that was of interest to it. And so when I went down that kind of idea, that breakfast might not be the most important to the day, I looking at some research that was being done in kind of some of the stories that were being told, I then came around where that kind of idea came from. And as soon as I found that out, as I hang on, if the guy who invented breakfast, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's, was the guy who invented the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Well, of course, he's going to say that because he's trying to sell a product that he's a breakfast cereal. So I then kind of thought, OK, there's more to this. Let me kind of find out more about where that all came from. And so I guess that was kind of my entry into the world of fasting. And I then on that day myself just said, I'll give this a go myself. I'm a scientist. I like to kind of test my hypothesis. It's not just a he'd do this. And so I started doing myself. And actually, I'm not as hungry as I thought I would be. I'm not gonna die. I'm not losing all my energy. I'm not losing any mental clarity. All these different things that you hear that if you miss it, this is what's going to happen. So I just suggested it to my sister and said, look, mom said that we've got to try and help you out with your with your wife. You're clearly a bit unhappy at the moment. You want to try and change some things around. Your health is deteriorating. Let me try this and choose. I know what else. I've tried everything else, so why not? So it was good to see that everything else in the past that she had tried and for many people out there a week, in two weeks or whatever it might be, they jump off the wagon. That's unsustained. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm not saying results. But in two weeks time, I hadn't heard from my sister to say this is garbage, only get healthy. So I just gave her a call and said, hey, you going to go see it? Great. I'm down a couple kilos and I'm feeling all right. But, you know, this is what always happens. And in another week or two, I'll probably feel that this isn't. But again, another two weeks went by, another month went by, a couple of months went by and keeping in close contact or over that time, she just kept on losing weight and she was feeling better. And this whole no breakfast thing was really working well for I thought this is great. And that that time I was talking to clients in my clinic who have nothing to do, as I said, had nothing to do with weight loss. But a lot of these clients might kind of just had I could probably lose a couple of key lessons because I was talking about my sister. They're like, oh, that sounds great. Should I give it a go? And so I thought, why not? And so I was kind of almost creating my own kind of little case study kind of report of clients and my sister and things are that numb to kind of wrap that all up. About a year later, my sister had lost over thirty five kilos. My mom then jumped on to that to kind of help support her mom, lost twenty five kilos and then clients after client after client were losing weight and feeling good. I was I'm not someone who needs to lose weight but I felt very energetic and I felt great. And his whole no breakfast idea that been, you know, sorry. The whole breakfast is the most important of the day kind of idea. I've been told my whole life was showing out to just be completely false in my own kind of little world of people who I started doing it with plus myself. And so there is something a bit more to this. And someone just randomly said, one of my clients, it you should run a book about this. And if you talk to my twelve English teacher, my final year, they would say that I was the last person to ever write a book because my English skills are terrible. I've got terrible grammar and my kind of wrong fighting capability. Terrible weather. Why not? Maybe I could put this story together and kind of, you know, go a little bit deeper in the world of Flossie. And so I then went deep into it after that. And yet, as you said, I wrote my book and I wrote it purely just to kind of put together something that my sister could hang on to and let you know this is what you've done so far and this is how well you've done. That's all I've basically kind of did it for. I didn't mean to kind of then be sold around the world, but I kind of came around the world have been out of kind of find a publisher when we pitched the idea and the publisher said, I love the idea, let's do it. And we put it up is just as an Amazon book from Sale there. And it became an Amazon bestseller. It kind of really launch me into this world is kind of being a FETLOCKS special. So those are certainly nothing I anticipated that my career would go to and I still run my sights physiology clinic. But I tend to deal a lot more these days with referrals from GP is coming and with Type two diabetes, obesity and different conditions around that. I still say, obviously, people coming back from injuries in that kind of side of it. But a lot more of my Korina, I was spent helping people lose weight and introducing the idea that breakfast isn't the most important meal today and how it might be out to help you kind of the time, the results and kind of feel better and live a better life.
[00:11:54] Nice. Yeah. Let's climb into it. You kind of dropped us into some terms that want to get into first of all, when you are encouraging people to skip breakfast. It feels like you're already kind of introducing what's called like a 16 eight or an 18. You know, I mean, you're introducing this idea of elongating the natural fast, which is when we go to sleep at night. And I'm wondering if you knew that when you came to it or was it just kind of like breakfast seems like the most opportunistic meal to skip. I mean, you said you came into, you know, wondering who even said. I think largely we could look at our food and wonder how much of it marketing has actually fulfilled. You know, this idea, what we really think we need in this world and breathless as the most important meal of the day, certainly is the champion of that. But I'm wondering if you identify it as a completely separate category or if you do tend to get into moments of a 16 eight where you're you're fasting for 16 hours and eating for a chunk of eight, or if you don't look at it that way and how your book introduces these cycles.
[00:13:00] I think in the beginning, a lot of people like rules, like we like to kind of have something that we can kind of work by in a framework that we can kind of go by.
[00:13:09] And I think having some sort of framework that says these amanat ours be that six day night, eight, six or whatever it might be, can work for people in the beginning. But what I started define when I was giving that as a kind of guideline for people in that I was sitting there watching the clock at 11, 59 and thinking, okay, I can't eat until 12. And now at Schraub I can eat. And kind of being too, you know, hell bent on just kind of following the time and kind of getting away from the idea of just listening to your body more. I think this day and age, because we have so, so readily available access to food and anything really that we want at any point in time, we've lost that ability to kind of really listen to ourselves. Am I actually hungry? Yes, I'm doing these 18 six, and that means I should be eating at twelve o'clock because I stopped eating at a certain time last night. I don't think that just because it's twelve o'clock doesn't mean that you have to eat. Just because you can. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you have to do something. And so I got away from the idea of kind of putting a timeline on it and kind of trying to help educate people in kind of what is true hunger. And you're not going to die. And it's not the world's ending kind of problem. If you do feel hungry that we go through these natural cycles where our hormones are going to tell us that we are hungry, but that doesn't mean that we have to race out and get something straight away. And so hunger is something that I use. This kind of analogy all the time is hunger comes in waves, just like waves rolling into the beach. And that just because you start feeling hungry, hunger, hunger doesn't just take the olding. And if you kind of if anyone comes down in the end, it's possibly that 24 or 48 will be on. You understand that these waves happen and they're very tied into our kind of rhythms of life, both circadian rhythms, then kind of our usual eating habits. And so most people can probably relate and say, look around twelve o'clock, seven o'clock at night, and then in the morning, if they are breakfast, Seyda, they have these spikes of hunger. And that's just because of our hormones. But they're very easy to change in over, you know, only over a very short period of time. Whether that be a week or two weeks, people can change those kind of hormone regulations and kind of how they happen in their body quite, quite easily. And you'll find that those hunger cues that we have a lunch time or dinner time can very quickly kind of be put out completely different if you start to just listen to your body as a true. Am I truly hungry or am I just bored at the moment or have I just been on a big run and I'm just actually hungry because I've just done a peep out of exercise or whatever it might be? We can actually start tapping into that rather than just time. And so the idea of no breakfast is just skip the morning meal and then when are you next hungry? Is that at ten thirty today? Because you had a really busy day and you ran a marathon yesterday, maybe gonna be a bit hungry earlier, but maybe you had a complete quiet day yesterday. And obviously in the world we're now with Kovar going around and we're a lot more sedentary at the moment. I'm finding a lot of my clients are eating now until three or four o'clock in the afternoon because it's just they're just not hungry because we're not moving as much. And so I get away from the idea to add to your question of time and just skip the morning meal. It's not important and just eat when you are next hungry.
[00:16:18] So in that, are there tools that you give your clients or that you advise when and to help them identify hunger as opposed to thirst like you're talking about, as opposed to boredom? Do you have techniques and tips and tricks? How do you how do you get into tapping into what true hunger is?
[00:16:37] I kind of give it that five minute rule. I know a kind of Ijaw saying the five second rule, if you drop something on the floor, pick it up quick enough kind of thing.
[00:16:45] So it's just that kind of if you do feel that kind of urge of I think I could eat something now to put that to the test for five minutes. So. A glass of water and go and get yourself distracted by doing something else. Whatever that might be, if you're currently working at your computer. Get away from your computer and go and take the dog for a walk around the block. Or if you know whatever, you might be watching TV. Maybe it's something to do with you've just seen an ad for your favorite chocolate bar and it's just sparked something in your head. I could eat something, whatever it kind of might be. Just distract yourself from that situation for a couple of minutes. Have a glass of water. If after five minutes you are still hungry and you've distracted yourself from that scenario. Then sure, maybe you are actually not more so truly physically hungry rather than just emotionally hungry. And then at that point, maybe kind of look at having something depending on kind of where you are and what you kind of doing, kind of fulfilling that need at that point.
[00:17:40] How often do you find that clients that you have that you refer to kind of skipping breakfast and seeing how they feel? Go on to say that they've continued to skip more and go on to this this like I've skipped practice and lunch. Some days like this kind of encourages itself with the message.
[00:17:57] I in the beginning, when kind of doing more around the kind of idea of 16 and eight and having very strict rules around time, I found that people kind of stuck to those rules because they were kind of rules that govern their life by kind of thing. And I wouldn't go and just start extending that or kind of flirting with the idea of maybe going into, you know, one meal a day and different things like that. But with the idea of telling people just skip the morning meal and eat when you are next hungry and using some of those keys that we just spoke about before, I find that a lot of people, most of my clients who have different parts of their life and obviously that depends on how stressed they are at work or what's going on at home and just have different wives. And most of them will say that, you know, each day isn't the same. It's not like every single day at 12:00, I'm eating lunch. It just it kind of fluctuates from day to day. And a lot of them will, you know, if they're having a very busy day at work and they kind of sat at the computer all day. We'll get to the end of the day. I just realized, oh, I didn't do anything today. And I've just kept myself nice and productive. And it's now dinner time, so I'll get ready for dinner. So I do find that with as strict rules around it, that most people tend to float between kind of having one or two meals a day and it just suits them better to kind of, I guess, their their life at that particular day.
[00:19:12] How do you find a difference between when you because you're still working with clients, do you find a difference between men versus women? Is it just more of an age group? What is there are there any key factors that kind of differentiate different clients and how they perform with skipping breakfast, not particularly between genders?
[00:19:31] I haven't found a difference between men and women.
[00:19:34] I will say, though, women, depending on where they are in their cycle, it will certainly definitely play a role into that. So as it coming into having their period that I will definitely find a lot of clients and I'm very open with my clients. And I say that from the very beginning. I need to know when they things are going to die. I'm just like you, a doctor, like you wouldn't go to a doctor and just go completely. I say, I don't want to tell you about any of my kind of things that are going on in the background. So, you know, I have a very open relationship with a lot of my clients. And so I find that, yeah, with females especially, that just around that time when a period is coming on, they tend to find themselves feeling more hungry more often. And I'm completely okay with that. And I work that into their program that we might be doing, whether that's around their training or in their 80s in that kind of banking, in some extra food around that time and allowing for that over kind of month cycle and understand and educating them and letting them understand that this is normal.
[00:20:32] You should be feeling hungry at this time. And we're got to back off your training because you're gonna probably feel a less kind of inclined to want to exercise at a high intensity. But then, like about a week to two weeks time, you feel less hungry again, but you'll feel much more productive and you want to have more energy. And although so we just work that only today. But on a whole, it's not a whole lot of difference off than between men and women. And so, yeah, I just kind of guides that client by client. Really nice.
[00:20:58] Interesting. Yeah. There's a doctor based out of the San Jose San Francisco area in California, in the United States, top Dr Mindy Pelt's. And she speaks in depth to the hormone fluctuation around a woman's cycle, as well as she approaches menopause different times in her life and the different forms of fasting that can inhibit or prohibit, you know, a lot of different benefits ever. So that's interesting. And you're the first person I've heard that's kind of incorporated that into his advisory work, which I think should be looked at by a lot of people. We're going to move in to our rapid fire questions.
[00:21:35] We have a lot of people who really want to exercise physiologists, a weight loss specialist to kind of answer these questions themselves. I will just go ahead and post these to you. And what kinds of fasting have you yourself tried? And if you do go beyond the no breakfast, which kinds do you prefer to like in? On a monthly or yearly basis.
[00:21:56] So I've tried pretty much all of them. So if you've read about it, I've probably given it a go. I tried skipping dinner and kind of the more Skydeck rhythm type fasting lifestyle.
[00:22:08] Looking at the five to, you know, having a very restricted calorie diet, which technically isn't fasting because you are still eating something, but they still kind of wrap it up into kind of fasting world. Obviously, the whole no breakfast and skipping it, but then moving into the also. Oh, man. So one meal a day and basically just stacking all of your calories into one meal, and that's usually around dinner. And then I've also flirted with extended fasting. So my longest fast today is 60 hours.
[00:22:38] And I on my own podcast, interviewed some guys who did a 40 day fast, one of which was 20 days with no food whatsoever. And then I moved into two days of only juicing and fruit and things like that. But then those one of those guys actually went on to do a 40 day no food fast. We just which is extremely kind of extreme on that end of the scale. Certainly, I'll say very openly here that I don't think that that is something I would ever advise to any anyone. Not necessarily for any reason other than there's just no need to do it. I don't think you need to go through that kind of suffering to kind of get some of the benefits that they were proposing would come from that. But certainly, I think a two or three day fast is something that a lot of us can benefit from from a mental standpoint. There's definitely some physiological benefits that, you know, they're starting to research on. And I don't want to sit here and say on someone who would be giving you clarity on what that research is. I'm certainly looking at it and kind of trying to understand it myself. But as far bit of people out there that can kind of talk to the physiological benefits that might be coming from an extended two or three day fast. But personally, I certainly try and do one of those maybe every I say couple of months, you know, every quarter or so, just as kind of as I said for me, as a mental kind of reset, sometimes I could just be I'm just getting into life and it's just kind of, you know, I'm just a bit busy and hectic and I just kind of need one big reset. It's a really good place to kind of put me mentally because going two or three days without food, it's not easy. Yeah, there's certainly times in that that it gets very challenging. But I think challenging yourself and doing things that do put you out of your comfort zone, I think in all aspects, whether that's fasting or whether that's, you know, trying to do your first marathon or whatever it kind of might be. I think he's always a very good thing, not only physiologically, but I'm certainly looking much more these days to the kind of mental health benefits that that can play out and whether that can then help. Someone had a physical benefit because of the mental benefits it has. So, yeah, I think myself, I've certainly tried most of them and I certainly recommend them to a lot of my clients as well.
[00:24:43] And so, yeah, so really quickly, we didn't go over it. Do you consider fasting a fasted state to be juicing? It's largely accepted in the United States when we talk in the fasting communities that if you're consuming calories, you're not in a fasted state. But you mentioned, you know, people doing just fasting and things like that. What is fasting to you?
[00:25:02] I'm with you there. It shouldn't include any color. So if and I know people say that if it's under 50 calories, there's no insulin response.
[00:25:11] Therefore, you're still in a fasted state and things like that. But I go to the letter of the law as if fasting is zero calories. And so I even go to the point of no coffee on black coffee and herbal teas and things like that. I say have no calories. They say no calories, but they are do minimal calories. And so purely, when I am in a fasted state, I am in a completely fasting state. And water is the only thing that I will have. But again, you know, there's greater reason people can kind of play with that area, what they like. And at the end of the day, it's kind of what what works best for you. That means you need to have a coffee because you want that boost from caffeine or whatever it might be, then so be it. But yet, personally, on zero calories is a to say anything else. Now, you're not technically fasting now.
[00:25:56] What is some of the misconceptions? The most common misconceptions that you run into that people have regarding skipping meals or fasting around skipping breakfast?
[00:26:05] It has to be, I hear all the time. But I will die. I will absolutely starve if I don't have the morning meal. And I always just kind of just go back to the point is, if I have a gun to your head and said you don't eat today, I guarantee you you'll get to lunchtime or beyond because there is a there's a far bigger consequence to you not having that meal, whereas if you just don't skip a meal, you just feel there's no real consequence. If I had something in the morning. So people like to catastrophizing that kind of idea that if I skip that morning meal, but I find very quickly with most people who are open to the idea, like, you know, people might coming. I don't know. I'm a bit nervous about this and kind of skipping raffish. I've eaten my whole life. And normally when I get to the office at 9:00, I'm very hungry. I understand that idea. And if you if it's. Something that you've done for your entire life. If you're 30, 40, 50, 60 years of age and you're only coming to this idea of skipping breath. Now, of course, those first few days I'd be first week or first couple weeks might be challenging. But as I said earlier on in this podcast is that our hormone regulation is something that we can manipulate quite, quite easily. And the hunger hormone is definitely one of those ones we can manipulate quite easily. And so I find that most clients lose that misconception very quickly once I give it a try. So that's definitely the main misconception. And the other one is that there's been too many correlation based studies which are on the bottom run of kind of studies. Yes, they serve a purpose, but, you know, cause a correlation isn't causation. And so too many studies have been done, say he's a population of overweight people and then they serve them. Are you someone who skips breakfast? And a lot of them tend to do actions that are unhealthy for them, be that not exercise much. They might smoke, they might drink and all these other things. Plus they don't eat breakfast. And so they up breakfast was the reason why you're overweight. And so that's a correlation they're making. And so a lot of misconceptions around that is that if you skip breakfast, that you're much more likely to be overweight, which is just not the case. And so that's another one that I hear all the time. But very quickly dispel when people kind of come to me and they start losing weight and saying results, I'm like, oh, my God, I was told that I would you know, my body would store body fat if I didn't have breakfast. And so that's probably they're probably the two biggest ones and two biggest kickbacks I get from when people are starting out in these kind of world.
[00:28:33] Absolutely. A lot of people wanted to know from someone of your expertize and background. There is a lot of athlete there are a lot of athletes that receive a great deal of benefit in recovery from extreme sports and distance runners and things like that, particularly that I've spoken with that have come to fasting for some of the repairing and healing properties and fasting states with autophagy or antiinflammatory measurements from even two, three, four day fast. And for you personally, what is the greatest health benefit that someone receives from fasting outside of weight loss?
[00:29:09] It kind of alluded to it before, but I'm really going into the world of kind of the mental health.
[00:29:14] I think mental health is a huge issue around the world these days, and I can only talk to the statistics in Australia. But I mean, in particular, it's about 10 people per day, but eight main per day commit suicide in Australia every single day. And that's just it. It's a number that you shouldn't exist in. So I'm not saying that skipping breakfast and fasting is going to solve that issue, but I'm very interested in kind of how mentally we can help people. And I think fasting because it is a challenge and it said a challenge that is kind of word I can use best. It's a it's a challenge. It isn't a stress to the body that we already have these days. You know, we all live very stressful lives and we kind of I'm surrounded by stressful things going on all the time. But I think if you're kind of acutely stressing yourself in a guided way, I think that that can be a very big benefit to you. And it can certainly start to focus your mind away from the areas that you might be kind of dealing with at that particular time. And so I've certainly found that the mental health benefits for people. Right, from people who might be going through some depressive states or anxiety issues or things like that. Again, this is not a cure. And I really want to kind of be upfront with that. And I don't want someone who's sitting who's depressed. My call I'll just start skipping breakfast and that'll cure me from my depression. That's not the case. But I certainly think that there's some benefits to the mental health aspect. Our health look go far beyond weight loss. And I tend to find that people having issues with weight loss and who have big issues, obesity, 20, 30, 40, 50 kilos overweight, there's usually some sort of mental health issue that's going to tap alongside that, whatever that might be. And so if I kind of get away from the idea of you just need to lose weight and we kind of get back into the world of like, why are you unhappy? Why are you making these decisions around your health and wellbeing that, you know, don't make you happy? Let's talk about that mental health and let's clear your mind. Let's get to kind of more focused on something else. It tends to flow on to a having a flow on effect of helping with that loss anyway. And so I'm really starting to do myself, but also work with that that mental health space.
[00:31:23] Yeah, absolutely. I think it's uncovered uncharted territory as of yet as well. And adding weight loss is always fun for people to focus on with any new thing. But definitely, you know, for thousands of years with philosophers and people with the mental aspect as people who listen to this podcast as the reason why I came to fasting as a bit of an academic junkie and I was looking for that mental clarity edge and things like that, you know, fasting has always been tossed around and it's just got a lot like a time. Stamp on it. And if it's used right, I think it's better than any cup of coffee or possible horrific drug or a chemical that you can put in your body to kind of really clarify the brain's activities and things like that and agree more. We had a lot of people that have written in about resources that you look towards. So Web sites, even people who are, you know, influencers, doctors, boards, a different expos, conventions, where do you kind of go to to glean your current information and kind of stay current with the fasting community?
[00:32:30] I'm probably gonna be a bit off topic for you on that question.
[00:32:35] I don't tend to do a lot of kind of reading in the fasting realm kind of exclusively anymore. I'm much more looking kind of to nutrition in kind of how to aid nutrition and kind of when we are eating. I've kind of spoken for years about kind of the idea of kind of skipping breakfast and flossing and things like that. And so for me, my kind of topic is now kind of, well, fasting is just something you should be doing if you're coming across me and my information these days. It's something you're probably already interested in. You probably done your reading. So now what's important is I think feeding and people kind of forget that feeding ourselves is a very important thing. And so we shouldn't forget that, not just kind of focus on the fasting side of things. And so I look to people who are talking some sense and have some science and research around them, around the nutrition side of things. So someone like Dr. Spencer at Wolski, who is in the States as well. Alan Aragón. Allen Aragón is probably the most prolific research person I've ever come across. I've been lucky enough to have him on my podcast, and it was one of the best half an hour's I've ever been out to have. It was just great to kind of hear people want that. I'm a scientist myself, and so I come from a science standpoint and I want to know that the person I'm speaking to or kind of going to is is presenting their information from some sort of research. And science is flawed. Absolutely. And a lot of people like to kind of say, oh, look at the holes in that research. Yes, I understand this for was in it, but it's what we have. And I think it's the best thing we have. And we can't just sit there and listen to our favorite influence just because it's an opinion they have. I stay well away from people who are just opinion driven. Sure. Have your opinions. But you're going to be at a back that up somehow. And so you're looking to anyone. And I just kind of rather than, say, a specific person, I know I listed two people there, but I would just kind of when you are looking to kind of do any research, you kind of look to people. Is it? Don't be afraid to ask them a question. Is I have you got research to back up what you've just said? And if that person's says I just find it yourself or it's not something I can get to now or, you know, I don't have research for it, then I'd be second guessing what you're reading or what you're hearing from that person. And that's kind of the, I guess, the point of view I'd like to get across and kind of answer that question of who to look for. Kind of what I look for. And that's kind of where I come from.
[00:34:56] Nice. Absolutely. My final question was about machinery. A lot of people write in asking about ways and levels and things to measure. So there's there's ketones. There's glucose levels. There's all these different things and machinery that people who get into your fasting or try to utilize it for a myriad of different reasons try to keep control of all these different levels.
[00:35:18] What would your advice be for a client that was trying to garner a sense of levels and what those levels mean or apparatus that you need to buy from the simple ketone strips all the way up to, you know, um, glucose measuring armbands that you can get?
[00:35:32] I hope I'm all right to say this, but I have a thing called the scale of shit that matters.
[00:35:37] So at the at the very bottom, you know, it's obviously the thing that holds up all the foundations that hold up the rest of our house. And as we go up that scale of shit that matters, it gets less and less and less important. And I think to the athlete who's trying to get to a gold medal and AIDS point zero, one second difference to allow them from being a bronze medal Bullis to a gold medal. So, you know, someone at that extreme end, they're already doing all of those foundations. They're exercising well. They're watching their stress levels. You know, all of their food and their nutrition is completely itemized for that. They're doing all of those foundations that those little scenes of. Where's this level of my blood sugar? Where's my recovery at? Where's my lactate? Fresh. All of those different things that you can measure actually make a difference for that person and for their result at the end. But I think the majority of people that know ninety nine point nine, nine percent of the population, they're just not doing the fundamentals and they're worrying about this one percent thing that could make a difference for one percent. But you've got to put in all this effort just to get that one percent. You can get 85 percent of your results if you're wanting by just sticking to these fundamentals and those fundamentals being to make sure you getting in enough protein. I find a lot of people just aren't getting any any in anywhere enough protein out there. And that comes from both people who eat animals and who don't eat animals. So whether your Vegan or not, people aren't getting enough protein. So certainly get enough protein to help with muscle protein synthesis or, you know, building lean muscle tissue and maintaining, especially when you're weight loss face, but also looking to getting in enough calories. I think a lot of people kind of scared of calories. I hear that word and go, oh, my God. Calories are the enemy. If I eat something, that's where I put on weight. Our body needs fuel, and so we need to be fueling it enough. And the other big one that I say right is at the bottom of that foundation to kind of build you sleep. People just don't pay enough attention to their sleep. And so make sure you're getting, you know, seven to nine hours sleep every single day. And that's quality sleep if you can get those things right. You won't ever have to worry about ketone strips and watching your blood sugar levels and things like that. But if you do that, all right. For a year and you're seeing some great results and you want to kind of flirt with other ideas of how could I get an extra kind of benefit from what I'm already doing here, then sure. Going down some of those routes where you can actually measure something and always use the term. If you measure something, you can track something, you track something, you can make a difference with it. And so if you wanted to make a difference in it, you need to be out to say, well, where's my starting point? Where am I now? That's when you could start going down those realms of trying different things. You could kind of actually test where those levels are at. But I'd say for most people listening to this podcast, and I'm just presuming your audience, but the same as my audience as well, is it just forget all of these things and kind of put your efforts into the things that are going to give you the best return for your value, and that is the city's or any nutrition, your sleep on your protein intake.
[00:38:29] Yeah, I concur. I think it's sleep is when people just don't speak about enough. It's you know, it's it's huge on the list with every psychotherapist I have talked to. But outside of that, I agree. Well, we are out. I want to say thank you so much for giving us all of your information and your early morning in Australia today. I really appreciate you giving us your time and your expertize at all.
[00:38:52] Thank you very much for your time. And yeah, hopefully something I've said has been its value to your audience.
[00:38:56] I have no doubt. And for those of you listening, we have been speaking with Adam Martin. He is an exercise physiologist, weight loss specialist, fasting coach and author. You can find out more about everything that he does as well as his book Start Late, Stay late on the, you know, breakfast guy dot com. And thank you for giving us your time today. I appreciate all of you. And it's so we speak again.
[00:39:18] Next time, remember to stay safe, eat responsibly and clean when you do eat and always bet on yourself.
