Hey, guys, welcome to this week's episode and today's guest, we've had him on the show before, but it's always nice to have him back on. He was actually on for our original podcast, right, Chris?
Yes, ma'am. It's good to be back.
Yes. And he actually helped launch our podcast. He's an amazing personal trainer here in Virginia Beach. And he is actually the person who introduced me to intermittent fasting. So I'm so grateful for him and he's helped me so much in my fitness and weight loss journey. So welcome, Chris Sykes.
Thank you. I appreciate you having me.
So for our listeners, do you remember the first time you telling me about intermittent fasting at the gym for the first time?
I do. I remember you had been a little frustrated for a couple of weeks, and I just happened to watch a YouTube video on fasting for the first time. And I remember I watched a whole bunch of it one day. I think I happened to be training you today after a couple of days after that. And I told you about it. You like I'll try anything right now.
At this point, I get frustrated with a bunch of other diets. And so I remember I told you during a workout one time, and I think you researched it yourself and then. There must be the phrase awesome.
So in my second edition of my book, which we just launched and is out now waste away, I talk about people if they don't have to deprive themselves when it comes to food, but everyone needs to decide for themselves what are their red light yellow and green light foods, which means like what are foods that are your red light? Like you just you feel terrible when you eat this or you just don't like it, or yellow light foods where you go. I don't feel great when I eat this, but I don't feel terrible. Do you have any foods like that for you or can you pretty much eat anything, Meyera, like foods or anything like that to be gluten.
So like pasta in a bread. So I have like a telling style like lasagna and garlic bread, those that combination right there.
But I think also that the most of anything I would say that in new products goes to.
Dare you to try to limit, but you don't deprive yourself of it myself, but I know, I know if I have to say let's say if I had it for lunch today, I'll I'll be a lot more strict in a time or vice versa.
Gotcha. So I like to ask all my guests that come on my show, walk us through the day and the life of Chris, so like, what is your eating window where you normally eat? And what did you eat yesterday and what times did you eat it yesterday?
Usually my eating window usually opens up around 1:00 or 2:00 o'clock. So I train till around seven or eight o'clock.
So I usually get a later eating window so I can eat after I come home from training in the evening. So yesterday I think I eat around two thirty three, so anywhere between one thirty and three. I started eating yesterday. What we have yesterday is the question. Oh I had some rice, I tried some vegan food. Actually yesterday was interesting. It was supposed to be sweet and sour like a chicken and rice type dish. And it was, it was interesting.
That's funny. So you start your eating window around 1:00 and when do you end it?
Usually after I get home. So usually like around I would say nine thirty ten depending on when I get home, usually around 8:00.
So I'll eat probably around nine, eight thirty nine and then that'll be my less so like one to nine.
Like an eight hour an average year.
OK, and then I want before we start into the questions, I want to share some amazing testimonials of intermittent fasting that I read and I want to ask you about them. So this one says for the newbies out there, I have one instrumental tip that made intermittent fasting work for me and made it a true lifestyle. Don't deprive yourself if I just follow that one tip. When I started, I would have been at my goal weight a lot sooner. I would find myself quitting intermittent fasting at times because I was depriving myself. And what finally worked for me was to eat what I like to eat.
I don't count macros, I don't eat Mac, I eat mac and cheese and I eat it until I'm full. And even though it might be slow weight loss, it's still sustainable, which is huge for people because I'm able to do intermittent fasting for life. And it's not just because I'm lucky.
Even though we have even though we have different body types and I'm going through menopause, my daughter in law is also doing the same thing with awesome results. I have seen posts of so many people ready to give up because they are finding intermittent fasting, hard to stick with, give it a couple of months doing intermittent fasting your way and I guarantee that it will change your mind. So with that being said, what do you think about this? Like, you know, we're getting a lot of emails of people saying, you know, I'm losing more weight when I'm not eating as clean. So like when I'm like, oh, I got to eat salads, I got to eat this.
People are saying I'm not losing as much weight. But the minute I'm starting to eat, you know, chicken and mac and cheese, I'm starting to lose more weight because I'm not depriving yourself.
I've been through some similar like, well, when when I first started, at first I thought the same thing. And I noticed over the month, as the months go on that we saw a cleaner. I didn't have to just just looking at the Leena's, I didn't have as much success. But I know there was some days I just ate.
So that was my last meal of the day. A couple of nights to eat six, eight to three slices. I've eaten mac and cheese. I've eaten chicken and fish, and I've eaten all these things. And I've noticed that I still I get great results on those days. I mean, I think is more I think is more of the. You're filling yourself up and you're satisfied eating the food that you want, so so instead of depriving yourself eating. So he decided to this day is not afraid to take us salad from us. You're starving all afternoon. You're more likely to get off track that day after day after day because you because you can only take so much discipline in your mind before you just like energy before you use it. So I think the way the woman described it, as I wrote in that she says she's taking a little bit of her food, but she's not overindulging.
She's just eating. So she's full stop. And I think portion size is a big thing, but I think I saw similar results doing the same thing. She's eating what I wanted and just keeping my eating window straight.
Yeah. I think another thing is, is that what happens is with salads like especially like if you went to like Applebee's or you went to like California Pizza Kitchen, like there is a the California Pizza Kitchen salad, I was asking one girl, you know, she was struggling with what she was eating and we were kind of coaching her through and she said, you know, I've been eating this California pizza kitchen chicken salad with DeJohn balsamic vinegar at the full size every day. And she's like, I'm just not losing any weight. And so I looked up the calories in this California pizza kitchen, chicken salad, even though I'm not proposing counting calories, this salary, the full size has thirteen hundred and twenty calories.
Ninety four grams of fat, seventy five carbs and fifty five grams of sugar. And here's a full McDonald's meal with a soda.
You know those stats right there. You can just go get a Big Mac meal at McDonald's and have a Coke on the side.
And you had the same amount of macros as that salad that looks healthy, sounds healthy. Yeah.
I mean, think about the amount of fat, the number of carbs, the amount of sugar. And this this lady was thinking, oh, my gosh, I'm really doing something. But these salads, if you think about it when you go to these restaurants. Yeah. You put in her mind she's that's not what she wanted. She did this because she thought she was being good.
And that's the big thing. She's exposing herself to eat the salad, which is mentally draining her because she doesn't want to eat it. She wants to eat something else. So she's mentally draining herself every day to force a salad, which is in actuality, you know, sabotaging her results. And she doesn't you know, she so is both mentally sabotaging is physically sabotaging her result and where she can go eat what you want and get way better, you know, probably better mako's because you can't eat a smaller so you don't eat a smaller portion because it's more food. So mentally and physically.
Let me read this one, it says, I started intermittent fasting in June of twenty nineteen, I've lost 20 pounds. I started working out three times a week. I now I work out more than eight. I haven't worked out more than eight times in four months. I'm doing squeaky clean fast and my windows range from four to eight hours with a few longer ones thrown in. I eat and drink whatever I want, but I definitely stop when I'm full. I love this way of life. I'm no longer taking any medication for acid reflux or any other medication either.
You got to to what did you say?
She worked out eight times in four months or eight times and she says, I haven't worked out more than eight times in four months. So like two times a month maybe at most Kanagawa results.
That's what I tell everybody. You know, if that's working for her and she's seen the results, she want to argue with the results. You know, other people might have to do other things. But I know a couple of workouts, a couple of workouts a month is working for. She's eating what she wants. It sounds like she has a good portion control. So she has good discipline when she gets full stop. And that stuff is so. So I think that's a key from what it sounds like from the email. But as beautiful, I mean, that's the whole point of fasting to get the results and be able to satisfy your taste both.
So one of the things that we're going to now move into is Quito and the low carb kind of phenomenon, and I will say this, I feel like I just saw a girl who, you know, said to me, this is if I can have a dollar for every time I heard this, I would just be rich.
But the girl was very heavy. She was probably I would say probably around three hundred and fifty pounds. And so and I talked to her and she was like I said, well, you should read my book.
And she's like, well, I just have really learned that the only way for me to lose weight is for me to do the Atkins diet or the keto diet and not to be mean. But she said three hundred and fifty pounds.
That's right.
It's not working for you like that is so delusional, those test results, you have to let the results talk to you. So you've been doing Atkins in Quito for, let's say, a year or two. You started at three fifty, maybe yo yo around a little bit. When you first started that, you lost a few pounds. You know, you did it for a week or so, if you will, from three fifty to forty three. Fifty three you and it's a year or two later then obviously you need to change some things. It's not working.
But what's interesting to me is her exact words were.
The only diet that works for me is the keto diet, and she's sitting here at three hundred fifty pounds, but in her mind, because she does see it go down when she puts it in her mind, it's working for her, even though she's still at that highway. So let's jump into the list our questions. This one's from Kim in Newport Beach. She says, I'm fifty seven years old and trying to lose weight. When I was younger, the Atkins diet was super popular and everyone was doing it. Now, the keto diet is big and I don't know much about either diet. What is the difference and how much fat, protein and carbs does each diet have? Well, before we answer this, I do want to say I don't suggest you going on the Atkins and diet. I personally suggest that you do intermittent fasting, but I think it's good to talk about.
I do think not having massive amounts of carbs is a good idea. I mean, I feel the same as you if I'm eating like bread and lasagna and you know, that just you don't feel good.
You're just just ways down. But Chris, talk to answer that question for her.
Talk to her a little bit about what is the difference between the Kaido and the Atkins, what al-Qaeda is so similar that they both try to just cause basically to almost zero.
So Atkins is a little more strict in Atkins. I think Atkins gives you around 50 and counteractions.
Well, they when they Atkins starts what what Atkins does, they start you really low.
They say under 20, under 20 kilo gives you a little bit of room, they give you about 50. So if you think about 50 grams of calves, you're talking about like a one like one.
And that could be like one candy bar, maybe one and a half potatoes. So so that's basically your cost for the whole day. I know the Ketel Focus a lot more on getting high fat content to Atkins's moderate fat, moderate protein and Quito's pretty much moderate protein. Like big differences, Ketel focuses more high fat. So that's going to be an energy source as well. That's well, that's basically the jokes that we make, that our energy sources are going to burn fat all day by not having any carbs in your body and with all the people that I have interviewed that are thin.
I would say probably a good majority of them said, you know, some of them would say, you know, I do when I've gained a little bit of weight, I, I just bring back the carbs a little bit, like I kind of tighten up just a little, but I still eat like instead of, you know. Half of a potato instead of one whole potato might eat half of potato or whatever it is that they were used to. They were still eating it. They never deprived themselves. They might come back and then others would say, I don't a lot of them would say, I just really don't pay attention to the carbs. I eat what I want. If I'm starting to gain a little bit of weight, I just take the portion sizes down a little bit.
I personally am a person of interest more than me myself. I do the same thing like I eat what I want. And then if I notice maybe one week I'm going to get a little out of control. Just is you just trim in a little bit usually.
OK, I just need to narrow down because I mean, maybe I don't need to eat carbs, but two meals in a day, my ability to eat because both meals, I need to just worry about my snack and I'll get some healthier snacks and or anything like that.
All right. Jenny in Iowa says, I've lost 10 pounds doing intermittent fasting, but lately it's like I can't shake any more weight off. I've pretty much hit a plateau over the last few weeks. And so I've been thinking about trying the diet. But one of the things I love about intermittent fasting is that I'm not depriving myself from anything I'm eating. I love the philosophy of not depriving yourself from foods. If I go to keto, I feel like I'm going to revert back to deprivation. I'm just in a slump and I need something to get me out of it.
What should I do?
Jenny in Iowa, I heard a big thing is first. First, how long have you been doing intermittent fasting? So he says he lost 10 pounds is how long she's been known. There's only been a month. And that's a great result. It's been a month and a half, two months as great results. So obviously, one gave it time so she can also look after eating Lindow. Maybe she's doing six and eight.
And, you know, like we talked about it before, women tend when they want to lose weight, they tend to have to get a shorter eating Wimbledon God. So a woman for the most part, it seemed like four to six hours has been the key of the magic time and window for women.
So I would tell her she's not doing that now. Try to go four to six hours with her eating window, give it more time. She can also try out one meal a day, which is just one big meal.
Every day that you just eat that, get yourself up and dance for the rest of the day. And I think she'll see her results start moving into.
Yeah, I agree. I think one meal a day, if I do one meal a day, it really kind of stirs things up for me and even one meal and a very, very small snack so that once I do eat that one meal, I'm not ravenous. That is really the magic sauce for me to kind of trim down when I need to lose a few.
And I do that about three or four days a week. I don't I didn't even do it on purpose. But I have one big meal. I have that my first meal.
And a lot of times I'll just drink a protein shake eight, nine o'clock and I'll go for the day. I'm 200 pounds. So it's not like I don't feel like you're going to become the skinniest person in the world. If you're a man or a woman that works out, your strength is important and you know what you mean is the most important.
Don't think that is going to take away. They've not being able to maintain muscle mass and manliness by doing.
All right, Michelle in Shreveport, I really enjoy listening to the podcast and one of your past episodes, I heard a guest talking about KAB cycling. I don't 100 percent understand it, but I do know that you alternate your carb intake. How often, though, is it is it daily? Is it weekly? And how does it help you when you've hit a plateau with losing weight? Also, how does carbs cycling work with your protein intake and your workouts?
So the core of cycling, what people have done so that this was only like, look, the only carb obviously the pleasing thing I tried before, intermittent fasting.
So basically carbs, like when you have one low day, 20, 50 grams, of course, then the next day they say, let's say Monday you have a low carb day, maybe Tuesday you work out hard. You've got a trainer. On Tuesday, you have a high. You have, you know, your regular amount of cars on 50, 200 grams of carbs or whatever it is. The fishermen are so busy, you just alternate. So you might have four low carb days in a week and you might have three regular days a week. So that's basically cycling, whereas people do that for the same reason. Do I think you don't know. They figured they cut the carbs down, will lean out or lose some weight.
That's basically targeted at the other question.
And the problem with it is, is that I've seen a lot of people are like, oh, today going to be my high carb day and then a bunch of cars. Then the next day, like today is going to be my high carb day again, you know, and it just gets crazy.
And you can't go you can't go crazy with the heart. And it's like I said, it's a specific amount, like it might be 200 grams of cars on your high.
They don't go out and get four or five hundred. And you see from the macros, you just read about the salad. It is real easy if you're eating out to get over to 300 grams.
Of course, real quick, if you think it's my heart, probably I can do what I want to do.
And you see so slow down a lot by going too far in your heart causes.
Yeah. All right. It's this one's from Samantha in Bakersfield. I've been doing intermittent fasting and I've been having great results, but I'm noticing that I have a few problems. Like I'm always cold and sometimes I'm constipated. Also, I feel like I'm famished by the time my fasting window ends, when it's time to finally eat, I end up eating so much more than I normally would. Do you have any tips to help with these problems?
Me personally, when it's done in my office and it's time to eat and I'm starving.
If I can drink like this, if I can have a little snack like even one banana protein shake, anything just a little bit tiny snack that takes the edge off.
So I'm not going crazy. No, I'm not looking like Cookie Monster in a bunch of cookies when it's time for me to eat. So. So what?
I like the hunger. A snack that you always say it's time for a hunger snack.
That's all it does is get you a little snack, whatever you enjoy. It could be Greek yogurt, almonds, things like that.
Eat that first, wait a few minutes and then go eat mood.
And what you'll notice is that your appetite and your forces will be a lot more under control because you don't have that overwhelming edge of hunger.
It's funny, I, I actually have this in my my second edition of my book because I was like when I saw my mom this last time that she came down to visit, I was like, I'm adding this to the book. But literally, my mom has a little Ziploc bag in her purse and it has like raw walnuts, raw almonds, just different things.
And she literally every time, like, my sister will be in the car and my son will be in the car and she literally sounds like one of those people that's like, you know, those people are like popcorn, peanuts, you know, those people at the kids. That's what she does. She has these little bags and she just starts taking them out of her purse. It's almost like clockwork, like around 11 thirty. She starts to get hungry and she's like walnuts, almonds, cashews, and she's like her. One thing is that she always says that is you have to have a hunger, a snack about an a half an hour to an hour before you eat because it calms you down. Because if you're going into that that meal, ravenous, it's not going to be pretty.
When I was a kid, I always said, you know, your eyes are bigger than your stomach. I remember my grandparents used to say that to me. So it's the same thing, you know, when you're starving.
But everything was good. I can eat, replace it. If you go to a buffet and you just kind of hungry, no time to eat, ready to eat. You can just eat one plate before the nice good night. Nice sizable portions of everything and still still throw yourself open to do food. But you're not going crazy.
Yes. And another thing that I would suggest in is magnesium for the constipation for this person. Because wasn't she saying she's. Yeah, so she said, I'm noticing that I'm cold, I'm constipated, and I'm famished by the time I eat so fast. Are you cold? Like if you go a long time without fasting, do you get cold?
Sometimes that happens to me, too, especially when I'm almost seems to have the mood. I'm like guzzling water there on the face. And I do. I've felt some of some things.
Yeah, that's that's a good idea to just have. Like I have a lot of like I know this is random, but I will drink a lot of like hot water with like a splash of lemon or just hot water in general and put like some fresh mint in there and just drink hot water if you're if you're cold. But as far as for the constipation, everyone knows I'm always constipated. But the only thing that really helps me is taking magnesium and doing my castor oil. So I will put in the and it's all about the castor oil packs. Those helped me too.
And I was you know, if you get some type of probiotics. No.
Of gungho, so if you constipated, I mean, you just hold in all that waste in your system.
So you really probably loaded so Simpronto like the way you lose one muscle working out of eating.
So some probiotics might help get the good health going to where you know you that to more readily. I think you do a lot better.
All right, this next one is Betty from Portland, I'm about two months into intermittent fasting and I've heard some of my friends that you can get keto breath while you're fasting. But I don't understand that if you're only doing intermittent fasting and not a keto diet, then how is that even possible? And that's where people I think it's funny that they have a misconception that Kitto, when you do this, is what people don't understand. When you do intermittent fasting, you are going into ketosis, even though you're not eating a Akito diet, actually are going into ketosis. So that's where people kind of they don't understand that. Talk to people about that for just a second.
Well, it's similar. It goes fast.
And what we're doing with taking a small part of keto, we're doing it day to they're trying to stay there every day and fasting to basically almost always short.
Your body is going to run out of cars to use for energy. That's the whole point of this. And when runs out across the U.S., we're hoping to switch over to fat for energy energy. So just like HITO, just like you told. So we were just taking the small portion of every day. So 16 hours last couple of hours might be. So instead of being 24 hours a day like a regular that as far as a system out of breath.
So it's yes, it can be, because that's one of the good things about this, is that it detoxifies you by anybody can. It's a lot of things as well. With bad thing about that is it could be in your gut. It's picking some things. It doesn't create the smell when your body's basically cleaning itself up. So, again, the probiotics might be able to help because basically your breath is smelling like what is the breath smelling like whatever's going on. You just feel like your breath smells all the time. You can eat anything that makes you think. So basically, whatever is whatever's going on, your gut is coming up and that's what it smells like.
So, again, the probiotics might be the hope is that the oil has also been known to help it a little bit. I would try those two things and see this better. Tokiko, you can't walk around the house, can you?
Yeah. And if you go for a longer, fast, what happens is, you know, those Quito's strips, if you could you could have eaten like pizza the day before.
And then if you did like a, you know, twenty four hour fast or however your body processed all of that, your as your body breaks fat down, the acids called ketones begin to build up in the blood. And so those ketones then leave the body and they go into the urine. So that's why people say like well do you want to see if you're in ketosis? One of the things you can do is if you the presence of ketones in the blood and the urine indicate that a person has gone into ketosis. But exactly what you said, like your what ketosis means is when a person has reached ketosis, their body is burning stored fat instead of glucose. So you could have had pizza the day before, but you could have gone running and done this and done that. And you've burned all that up. You don't have any glucose left in your system. You all you have left is fat. So once you start burning fat now as the body breaks down that fat, the acids called ketones start building up in the blood. So just doing intermittent fasting actually can get your body into ketosis and does a lot of the time you're doing a little bit every day.
That's all. That's the only difference.
So one thing that I would suggest to them is to start taking peppermint oil, peppermint oil. If you buy like just the pure peppermint oil. I've got some great ones on my site.
But literally just taking a few drops of peppermint oil in your mouth is a great way to freshen your breath up and not have to feel like you're going breaking your fast dating tips off here, too.
And, you know, it's crazy subject a little bit. Let me oh, you know what else to get rid of. I just do I do a pest control years and years ago.
If you have mice in your house, you put it wherever the mind set it in your garage. You put peppermint all along like the door of your garage.
Might want an extra tip. I love it pretty well with the mice. We're helping people lose weight. I mean, what else do you got to provide a value here?
Well, it's always fun having you on this show and having me are ever visiting Virginia Beach. We have a lot of listeners everywhere.
You can go check Chris Sikes out. Chris, where can people follow you and your work?
They can go on all social media. You can go it's close. Like close the door green, like the color green and sites like my last name, close green sites on Instagram and Twitter. Or you just look me up on Facebook and it's under Christopher Sykes.
It might be Chris, Chris, Chris Black and all that. We'll put all that in the show. Notes that people can follow you and find out more about you.
And if you have a question that you want answered questions at Chantel Ray Dotcom. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.