Gin Stephens: Intermittent Fasting to Sharpen your Mind as an Author, Writer, Creative Artwork

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Write the Book Inside You

Gin Stephens: Intermittent Fasting to Sharpen your Mind as an Author, Writer, Creative

March 10, 2024 • Caryl Westmore

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Host: Caryl

Guest: Gin Stephens, Author & Intermittent Fasting Advocate

Bullet Points:

Introduction to Gin Stephens:
- Bestselling author of "Fast. Feast. Repeat." and "Delay, Don't Deny."
- Over 500,000 followers in her Facebook groups.
- Her books offer insights into staying fit and healthy for a lifetime...especially pertinent for authors, writers and creatives.
Gin's Transition from Teacher to IF (Intermittent Fasting) Expert:
- A 28-year teaching career transitioned into leading the intermittent fasting (IF) movement.
- Personal weight struggle until her late 40s, leading to IF as a sustainable solution.
- Lost over 80 pounds since 2014 and has maintained weight, even through menopause.
Intermittent Fasting Explained:
- IF is not about what to eat, but when to eat.
- It taps into fat stores for energy, improving metabolic flexibility.
- Gin suggests starting with an eight-hour eating window, like 12 pm to 8 pm.
Benefits of IF for Creatives:
- Fasting leads to ketone production, providing mental clarity and enhanced focus.
- Autophagy during fasting contributes to cellular cleanup and overall health.
- Writers and creatives can benefit from prolonged focus and energy from IF practices.
Gin's Writing Process and New Book "Cleanish":
- Gin authored her latest book while fasting, leveraging mental clarity from ketosis.
- "Cleanish" promotes mostly clean eating and living, stemming from her son's reactions to food additives.
Clean Fasting Goals:
- Aim to keep insulin levels low to encourage fat burning.
- Avoid anything sweet-tasting during fasting to prevent insulin spikes.
- Stick to plain water, black coffee, and plain tea to maintain autophagy.
Gin's Impact and Community:
- Hundreds of thousands have been influenced by her books and millions by her podcasts.
- Encourages others to share their stories, create content, and engage in the IF lifestyle.
Final Thoughts for Creatives according to Gin:
- Embrace the imperfection in the creative process.
- When it comes to writing your book: "just do it"—don't let the pursuit of perfection hinder progress.
Connecting with Gin:
- Find more about Gin and her work at www.ginstephens.com
- Explore the IF community for support and guidance in IF practices.

Closing Remark:
Gin Stephens' journey from a teacher to a fasting advocate exemplifies the transformative po

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Caryl: Our guest today is Gin Stephens, an accomplished author, podcaster, and a prominent figure in the intermittent fasting community. At one point, she amassed a following of over 500,000 people in her Facebook groups. She is the writer behind the New York Times and USA Today bestselling book "Fast. Feast. Repeat." as well as the Amazon #1 bestseller in the weight loss category, "Delay, Don't Deny," both advocating the intermittent fasting lifestyle. Today, we'll delve into these works, along with her latest publication, "Cleanish," to uncover the essential strategies they offer for maintaining fitness, health, and success, which are particularly beneficial for us as writers and creatives aiming for longevity in our careers.

Welcome, Gin.

Gin: Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. I love to talk about intermittent fasting, but I also love to talk to writers. That’s one of my favorite kinds of things to do. I loved to talk to Joanna Penn when I was on her podcast and I'm glad to be here with your audience because, you know, I was a teacher for 28 years and I taught elementary school kids. I love to talk to people who create things.

Caryl: I was going to ask you to give us the 30,000-foot overview of your life from teaching to now. But let's... Let's start with the key moment when you had the a-ha of how you were going to stop yo-yo dieting. Like so many people who are probably listening, from all walks of life, so many of us have struggled with our weight for decades. I'm 52, and from the time that I first went off to college and gained the freshman 15 until I was in my late 40s, I struggled with my weight. I would yo-yo up and down. And I always thought there had to be an easier way and I was in search of it. You know, I was always looking for the magic diet, you know, the magic food combination that would work. What I discovered over time was it wasn't the magic of what you eat, though that is important, but when you eat can make a really huge difference and that is intermittent fasting. It's not a diet, of course. It's about when you eat. What you eat is totally different. But with intermittent fasting, we just change when we eat and it does so many amazing things in our bodies. So it was 2014 when I really got the wake-up call. I had some photos from a trip that I'd taken with my family and I was obese. I was 210 pounds and I was like, "I've got to get off this roller coaster of ups and downs." And I had been dabbling with intermittent fasting over the years since I first heard of it in 2009. But I never did it consistently enough or correctly or long enough to make it really stick so my body could get adapted. So I was just so desperate there in 2014 that I'm like, this is going to be the time. You know, I went on to lose over 80 pounds and hit my goal in 2015. And in 2022, gosh, it's going to be, what, seven years that I have been maintaining my weight, which is remarkable, even as I've gone through menopause. So intermittent fasting is what I searched for for all those decades when I struggled with diets. It's the only thing in my entire life that ever worked and allowed me to maintain a healthy weight range long-term. And that's really what we're all looking for.

Could you explain, just briefly, what it is and what it isn't?

Gin: Yes, well, first I'll start by saying what it isn't. So many people hear the word fasting and think it's going to be like this horrible restrictive thing, and it's going to be hard. There's a great saying: Diets are easy in contemplation and hard in execution. We've all found that to be true. But intermittent fasting is hard in contemplation but easy in execution. So we think it's going to be so hard. One of the misconceptions is that you're going to be over-restrictive, it's going to be hard, you're not going to be able to do it. What really was hard was those low-calorie diets where you tried to eat all day. But with intermittent fasting, the most common approach, time-restricted eating, is that other word for it that they use in the scientific journals. And you're basically putting all of your eating into a window of time. We call that your eating window. A great place to start is an eight-hour eating window. Like perhaps you open your eating window at noon and you close it at 8 p.m. So for the other 16 hours of the day, you're fasting clean. We'll get into that in a few minutes, I'm sure. During the fast, some amazing things happen. Your body finally has the ability to tap into your fat stores for fuel thanks to the clean fast so you don't have that hangry, hungry feeling that you might have had, like if you had your little tiny diet breakfast, and then your tiny diet snack, like in the diets of the past, where you're starving all the time. It's totally different with intermittent fasting. Your body's like, "I know how to fuel myself when I'm in the fasted state." That's what our bodies are meant to do. We become metabolically flexible. And so you can access stored fat during the fast. So that's what being metabolically flexible is all about and that's our goal. Over time most people if weight loss is your goal, you may want to have a shorter window than eight hours. So if someone's listening right now, it might be like what eat in a period of time less than noon to 8 p.m. But that's what I do. I open my window in the late afternoon I usually have a hearty snack and then later I have a very satisfying dinner I don't restrict any foods that I love to eat. Every day I eat foods that are delicious until I'm satisfied. And at 52, I feel better than I did in my 30s.

So you're burning stored fat for fuel while you're fasting. And tell us about that fourth word for the Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Gin: