Joe Rogan - Doctor Explains Benefits of Fasting

exercise that you do I'm sure you almost have a voracious appetite. I mean I do but nothing like what I used to mean I fast pretty much every day. Are you doing 16 hours? What are you doing? Depends so when I'm in I split my time between New York and California when I'm in New York it's absolutely one meal a day no ifs ands or buts because it's just the schedule is such that you know I'm seeing patients in the morning and afternoon and I don't want to do I don't want to waste time to eat. What are you doctoring? That's a good question I mean I trained as a surgeon and did cancer surgery but I my practice is based on longevity so it's sort of how do you apply nutrition, exercise, sleep, stress management, endocrinology, lipidology, supplements, hormones all that stuff like how do you engineer how to make somebody live longer is my clinical interest. So yeah so in New York I eat one meal a day so it's basically like a 22 hour fasting window and then I'm feeding within a two-hour window. Wow. When I'm here it's about this well I mean yesterday and today it's the same like you know today has just been kind of a busy day you know I won't eat till dinner tonight but my short fast would be 16 hours where I would eat. That's a short fast. That would be a short fast. That's a long one for me. Really? Dude you got to get in touch with your evolutionary self. I had this discussion with a friend this morning because he was saying to me he can't do 16 hours. Well he's a pussy. You just told him. No but I said you got to understand if our ancestors couldn't function when they were hungry we wouldn't be here. So it's not just that starvation a short-term adaptation to starvation is necessary it's probably beneficial. In other words you know during these short periods of deprivation of food you know we get just a little bit more epinephrine and norepinephrine we just get a little bit sharper a little bit better. I can't even remember what it's like to eat three meals a day it's been so long. Really? How long have you been doing this? I mean I've been doing crazy shit for 10 years nutritional wise like I spent three years in ketosis where it was just one day I was in ketosis for three years. Lots of fasting but I think intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding probably at least five years. And for people listening what are the benefits of that? Well I mean if we're gonna be it really technical we have to be clear that I think a lot of the benefits are overstated and a lot of the benefits are things that we've only studied in animals. So there's a guy named Sachin Panda at the Salk Institute in San Diego who's I think one of the world's experts on time-restricted feeding but you know for example a 16-hour fast in a mouse produces unbelievable results. If you take a group of you know certain types of mice or strains of rats or other rodents and you in a 24-hour period deprive them of any nutrient for 16 hours but then for eight hours let them eat whatever the hell they want they can't gain weight. So and the reason we think is that it once you give a long enough period of time when the animal can ramp up its like the enzymes in the liver that are responsible for fat oxidation I mean they just basically become fat burnt I hate that term fat burning machine it's so overused but they basically just become unbelievably efficient at metabolizing fat. So we have to be careful though when we extrapolate that because you and I have a very different metabolism than a mouse like a 16-hour fast to a mouse is much longer than it is to us. So I don't know if those benefits would extend. Also it's not entirely clear that time-restricted feeding will produce the longevity benefit that we see in other sort of fasting or fasting mimicking types of diets. So for me what it comes down to is I mean honestly it's just an easier way it gives me a much more liberty with what I eat during my feeding window I don't have to be nearly as restrictive when I'm feeding if I have that period off it just just in terms of like my physiologic response. Secondly there's a convenience thing like I kind of hate being tethered to eat. I like knowing that hey if I get into a pinch like I don't have to eat right now. If I'm sitting on the airplane and they're serving dog shit I don't have to eat. I can wait another five hours until I eat. I also just feel much more steady in my energy levels. I kind of vaguely remember like ten years ago when I was kind of like eating a normal diet how I always had this lull in energy after lunch like there was the post lunch pre dinner I just don't feel good like not that I feel bad but like I'm not sharp I'm not in my A game and I don't even remember what that feels like anymore which is not to say feel great all the time but I definitely don't have that vacillating energy level. Yeah I've said that to people when I eliminated most carbs from my diet you know and I have a friend of mine who talked to his trainer about that and his trainers like you're crazy eat bread eat pasta don't listen to him like no don't listen to him like just just Google it that stuff's fucking terrible for you if you want to eat carbohydrates get it from fruits you know get it from some natural sources but just if you have a trainer that's telling you to eat bread get a new fucking trainer because it's just it's not what you need it's nothing wrong with eating if you want to occasionally and in small doses but when I eliminated most of that stuff from my diet I felt the exact same thing I felt that mid-day nap desire go away and they're just the fogginess about like you at the end of the day like oh god I'm fucking tired and then I'd have to drink a cup of coffee to get ramped back up again and this is like never-ending cycle of having this insulin spike and then this crash and that is that's from carbohydrates it's from refined carbohydrates and you know having too much fucking sugar in your body and everybody does it so all right so this will be funny for your so so Google my name and just put like Peter Atiyah fat and you know you're gonna see a picture of me when I was a swimmer because all this time we were talking about me swimming you're assuming like I'm a fit dude I was fit but fat dude fit but fat fit but totally fat and this is eating oh non-stop carbs look there there I am see on the left there well I wouldn't say you were fat I would say you got you got a little paunch on you I don't know wait wait there's another picture after I swim across Lake Tahoe go to that that one right there yeah got a little gut there fella yeah I don't know it's like you're boozing it up yeah but it's also the way you're sitting down stood up for a picture on Instagram might look okay I was definitely you know probably what maybe 30 pounds heavier Wow but but bought you know body fat was much greater and what were you eating oh I mean I probably went through three or four bottles of Powerade a day because you know training all day and you know every post workout was a carb refeed and so you're in sort of this vicious glycogen dependent state yeah and people that it's it's crazy that there's so many folks out there that are living their life that don't even understand that this is a process they're going through they just think this is eating an exercise this is what happens but it's not your body lit if you shut up cut that off push it away enter into a completely different food source just change the way you you eat your body will change and that that just that concept people that sounds like horseshit it sounds like what are you saying you're you're what are you offering some miracle cure you're no I'm saying you will change the dimension of life that you operate in it will change because you won't be the same person you won't like who you are is dependent upon a lot of things but one of them is how much energy you have how you feel whether you're crashing if you change the way you eat you change the energy you have you change the way you feel it'll change your behavior it'll change your choices it'll change your ambitions it'll change your potential I mean there's so many things that will change