Eve Mayer
You are at the beginning of an exciting journey. You may be tense and eager, ready for the gun to fire so you can launch toward the challenge. Or—if you’re like most of us who’ve battled weight and health challenges for years—you might be anxious about what lies ahead.
Desperation and self-doubt are some of my most familiar companions. They sit next to me, invisible to the rest of the world, whispering words of discouragement softly into my ear. They remind me that I have failed at eating better and getting healthier for most of my adult life. They snicker at my hope and laugh at my thoughts that this time might be different. Self-doubt nags at me, asking: Why would I ever think I can fast if I haven’t been able to stop shoveling massive amounts of food into my mouth for decades?
It’s time to stop thinking this way. No matter how many calorie-restriction diet plans you’ve tried in the past . . . yes, you can do this.
Remember: you are not the problem. You’ve simply been fed incorrect information for years. But with the right knowledge, your body can heal itself. In fact, it may be even easier than you think because it’s possible your body and mind are not as broken as you suspect. Like me, you may discover that beneath the extra weight, you are healthier than you could ever imagine. This is why a plethora of people who fast heal their type 2 diabetes, resolve their high blood pressure, or go off their medications with shocking speed. My father is a case in point.
When my dad saw the success that my husband and I had with fasting, he decided to give it a try as well. He reduced his sugar intake (although my mom told me he was still eating ice cream or cookies at least once a week) and cut down on breads, pasta, and potatoes. He followed an easy fast, skipping breakfast most days and reducing his snacking, and he lost fifteen pounds the first month.
About three weeks in, Dad felt so dizzy that he had to stop driving. He went to his doctor, reported his dizziness, and said he’d been fasting. He then explained to the doctor that he had lost weight, and that while his blood pressure had improved, he was still taking his prescribed blood pressure medicine.
The doctor told him to stop fasting immediately but to continue eating healthy, reduced portions. The doctor also felt that it was very possible he might have vertigo, so he prescribed another medicine and suggested that my dad see a specialist to help resolve it.
My mom was worried about my dad, but she was skeptical of the doctor’s diagnosis of vertigo. It seemed suspicious that her husband had suddenly developed vertigo for the first time in his life. She felt that it was more likely that the fasting and changes in diet had to do with his dizziness. It turned out she was correct. Because of his fasting and low-carb diet, my dad’s blood pressure had gone down fast, in three weeks. That meant he was currently taking more medicine than he needed and was becoming dizzy because of it. My dad cut his blood pressure medication dosage in half and continued with his new way of eating and fasting. Over the next week, his dizziness was gone, and he decided to cancel the appointment with the vertigo specialist. He also left the vertigo pills unused in the cabinet.
In a few more weeks, after carefully monitoring his blood pressure three times a day and losing a few more pounds, he was able to cancel his blood pressure prescription completely, as well as to get down to 229 pounds for the first time in twenty years.
How did he accomplish this huge, life-changing feat? Because he’d set a powerful goal from the very beginning. My dad loves to ski more than anything in the world, yet he hadn’t hit the slopes for many years due to his high blood pressure and extra weight. He told himself that if he could get his weight into the 220s, he would go skiing. Now he’s planning his trip!
If you are out of the habit of goal setting, it is time to get back in the groove.
Many people feel comfortable putting everyone else in their lives first when it comes to setting goals. They make a goal that their sixth graders will get on the honor roll this semester, or that their spouse will get a raise by the end of the year. When did we get so busy helping others that we forgot to take a moment to consider what we truly desire?
Now is the time for you. You are reading this book to discover how your body, mind, and life can be changed when you incorporate fasting. Start by deciding what you want to gain by fasting. The answer can be anything at all.
When I began this journey, I had only one goal. I wanted to be hot again!
Before I started fasting in my mid-forties, the last time I felt good about my body was when I was eighteen. It was beyond time for me to wear a two-piece bathing suit again. Was I vain? Who cares? I was doing this for me, and my vanity drove me toward my goal. After a few months, I got down to 195 pounds (a thirty-pound weight loss), and I wore that two-piece bathing suit. I felt better about myself than I had in more than two decades.
Your goal is individual to your wants and needs—and it is vitally important to your success. Reaching your goal may not be fast or stress-free, but nothing worthwhile ever comes easily. Picture your fasting skills as a muscle you must exercise, rest, and grow. Some days you’ll flex that muscle with ease. Other days are going to be a challenge. It’s during those times that focusing on your goal becomes important. When you’ve had a few difficult days in a row and find yourself wondering, Is this worth it?, it’s your goal that will remind you why you are on this journey—and that you are worth it.
Over the course of my journey, my goals shifted. As I gained more confidence with fasting, learned new techniques, and lost more weight, I began recognizing how much easier it was to keep up with my husband and my eleven-year-old daughter. For years, I’d suffered from allergies, recurring upper respiratory infections, and bronchitis, but I stopped getting sick. I didn’t need to constantly take medicine for my respiratory issues. I stopped getting headaches every other day. My teeth also got healthier—much to the shock of my dentist.
Feeling so much better and seeing numbers on the scale that I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager—and with less work than I’d ever put into weight loss before—was a bewildering experience. But I realized I was on to something, so I set an even more challenging goal. Knowing that body composition (the percentage of body fat in relation to muscle) is as critically important to good health as weight, I decided that I wanted to reduce my body fat percentage by 5 percent.
This road can get bumpy sometimes, so I want you to create one very specific goal—or, if you must, no more than two—that will help keep you motivated. I’m sure you want to achieve many things, but limiting your focus to the one or two most important goals will help you keep your eye on the prize and lessen your chances of getting overwhelmed. The amazing thing is that once you accomplish just a few small goals, you’ll find that some of your other hopes start to come to fruition, too. For example, maybe your goal was to go from an A1c level of 7 percent (diabetic) to 6 percent (prediabetic). One of the unexpected side benefits could be that the tingling in your toes—which had been a constant nuisance—stops. Or that, suddenly, you’re able to walk up a flight of stairs without losing your breath.
Your goals should be clear, specific, concrete. For example, an unclear goal would be “I want to be more active” (active how and when?) while a clear goal could be “I want to walk a 5k.”
Once you’re clear about what your goals are, I want you to write them down in three places. You can keep your goals on a piece of paper in your top desk drawer at work, scribble them on your mirror at home, type them into your phone, or make them your computer screensaver. Every time you come across your list, read it out loud three times, adding the words “I will” at the beginning of each goal. You can also say them silently in your head.
So often, we put aside what we want for “just one more day” until the “one more day” stretches into months and years. Keeping your goals in the front of your mind and reminding yourself of them daily will help reinforce them.
Megan Ramos
You can’t just name your goals; you also need to create a plan to achieve them, and then follow through with your plan. So, what makes us get up and take action to make our dreams a reality? Motivation. It is the force that moves us from being stuck or stagnant to doing something proactive. As a health educator, I’m here to explain how to do that.
There are two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation means that what drives a person comes from within, and that their desire to perform a specific task is in accordance with their belief system. Eve’s desire to “get hot” and “feel hot” is an example of intrinsic motivation. Other examples would be to feel better, have more energy, and reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes.
In extrinsic motivation, an individual’s stimulus is external, even though the results will still benefit the individual. A classic example of extrinsic motivation is money. In this case, that might mean reducing healthcare costs or becoming more focused and efficient at work to achieve a promotion. Goals and the motivations behind them are as relative and dynamic as the people who set them, so it doesn’t matter if your objective is extrinsic or intrinsic. What matters is that the goal is powerful to you.
As an educator, one of my primary intentions with each client is to identify what motivates them. Are they sick and tired of feeling sick and tired? Are they struggling to pay for their medications? Or do they want to simply feel better in their own skin? I spend time getting to know everyone I counsel and figure out what makes them tick. Once I understand that, I use it as leverage to help inspire them through their journey.
Sometimes I meet a client whose motivation isn’t in alignment with their lifestyle. For example, one woman told me she wanted to lose weight so she could enjoy more time with her family. Unfortunately, she said the only time she had to connect with her family was during mealtimes—and she was going to be skipping meals! I worked with her to find other opportunities to spend time with her family, and, after a few months, her fasting habits stuck.
Our motivation for weight-loss success can often be derailed by bad habits or life’s unexpected curveballs. When things are stable, we’re able to fast successfully and be mindful of our sugar intake. When life is chaotic, we tend to fall back into our deeply ingrained old dietary habits.
This is why it’s so important for me to understand what is motivating a client to make a change. If someone is trying to improve their health so they can be around to see their grandchildren grow up, for example, that motivation is a great way for me to help them stay inspired or get back on track. If that client reports having a lot of energy while they were babysitting their grandkids, I remind them of their motivation and help them create positive associations with fasting and their goal.
I use two tools to help motivate me. The first motivating tool is a photo of myself wearing a bikini while hanging out with my friends in Miami Beach on my twenty-first birthday. I carry this picture around because—as much as I say my goal is to be happy and healthy—like Eve, I also want to look good. Am I ashamed of that? Not at all! I also carry around the blood test results that diagnosed me with type 2 diabetes. This piece of paper scares the hell out of me, and I’ve used it dozens of times over the last nine years to prevent myself from eating an entire large pizza alone after a bad day.
Years ago, I was diagnosed with a very, very early stage of cervical cancer. Fortunately, I required minimal intervention, and three months later it was like a bad dream. But, at the time, it was very real and deeply frightening. When I get to a place where my usual goals aren’t providing sufficient motivation, I recall the feelings I had during this dark time in my life, and I think about how many cancers are associated with obesity.
After I started sharing this strategy with clients, I was surprised at how many of them were also motivated by fear. Maybe they’re not concerned about a cancer diagnosis, but they might worry about a trip to the hospital because of mild chest pains, a diagnosis of prediabetes, or a hereditary family condition. For example, a client named Rose once came to us after a terrible medical scare involving her hip. At forty-nine years old, Rose was 5 foot 3 and 180 pounds. She underwent a total hip replacement, and during her long, painful recovery she put on weight, topping out at 201 pounds. Four months after her surgery, Rose was stretching, and her hip socket came out of joint. A specialist was able to repair it, but he said it was a terribly difficult process. “Why?” she asked. He responded, bluntly, “Well, you’re short. But also because of the weight.”
Rose never wants her hip to be a problem again, so she’s now following a keto diet and doing 36-hour fasts when she can. She’s down to 160 pounds and wants to lose 20 to 25 more. Best of all, she says she’s had no further hip problems, and her orthopedic surgeon is thrilled!
Another tool I offer clients when they’re losing sight of their goals is visualization. You can visualize positive events, like what the outcome of your goals would look like in real life (for instance, spending more time with family or lying on the beach in a two-piece bathing suit). You can also visualize negative outcomes, like your doctor delivering the news that you’ve been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Whether you’re imagining happy or sad experiences, visualization engages your senses and your emotions in a powerful way that can help you keep focused on your goals.
When I look at my old blood test results, I don’t just look at the numbers for motivation. I try to recall how I felt when I got those results. What did my doctor’s face look like when she gave me the bad news? How did it feel to hear the disappointment in her voice? My body still remembers the chills down my spine, the tears forming in my eyes. That’s enough for me to push through a fast when I’m tempted to eat a bag of pretzels.
One of the biggest struggles I have with clients is that they often have too many goals, and because of that, they want to dive into a fasting program before they’ve had a chance to prepare for it. For example, they may want to lose 150 pounds, stop taking their medications, reverse their type 2 diabetes, and avoid the Alzheimer’s diagnosis that runs in their family. These are wonderful goals, but they can’t all be achieved at once, no matter how hard you try.
I help clients prioritize their goals by asking two questions: “What is going to kill you first?” and “How strong is your fasting muscle?” Most are aware that they need to lose weight in order to reverse their type 2 diabetes, which will result in a reduction in the number of medications they take every day. If they don’t beat that, they’re putting themselves at a high risk for metabolic-related cancers and Alzheimer’s disease. Therefore, diabetes is the disease that may kill them first, and it’s what they need to focus on first and foremost.
But these eager clients can’t and shouldn’t dive into something as intense as an all-day fast. Many of them haven’t fasted longer than twelve hours for a blood test before, so fasting for twenty-four hours straight, right off the bat, isn’t going to be an easy task. With priorities, you can focus, which may help an impatient person proceed into fasting slowly. For example, you may choose to skip breakfast two nonconsecutive days a week, then increase the frequency bit by bit.
As Eve said, I encourage you to write down a list of your goals and prioritize them. The most successful people concentrate on one thing at a time, and they know that trying to do too much at once will inevitably lead to failure. You don’t want to take chances on your health, so be patient and consistent. If you are, you will reach your goals.