transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:01] Are you struggling with food confusion or diet brain when it comes to what to eat in your eating window? Do you know that you need to make changes, but you don't know where to begin? I'm excited to announce my new Eat Like a Grown-Up program. It's a 52 week learning journey that helps you finally build a peaceful, confident relationship with food without dieting, guilt or overwhelm. And it's only available in the new Fast Feast Repeat app. Join me in the app for The Grown-Up Year, 52 Weeks to Listen, Play and Nourish. Each week, you'll watch a short video lesson and download a simple practical mission designed to help you listen to your body, play with your food in a joyful way, and nourish yourself with calm intention. You'll learn how to move past emotional eating, understand your hunger cues, make meals deeply satisfying, and you'll fall back in love with real food, all while connecting with a community that's growing right alongside you in the app. If you're ready for transformation that unfolds gently but meaningfully over time, this is where it begins. Go to app.fastfeastrepeat.com to join, or you can find the Fast Feast Repeat app in the App Store that works with your phone. Along with the Eat Like a Grown-Up 52 Week program, you'll find an ever-growing library of intermittent fasting resources as well. Go to app.fastfeastrepeat.com to join us, or download the Fast Feast Repeat app today. Welcome to Intermittent Fasting Stories. I'm your host, Gin Stephens, author of the New York Times bestseller Fast Feast Repeat, as well as the book that started it all, Delay, Don't Deny. I lost over 80 pounds thanks to intermittent fasting. After learning how to delay my eating, rather than denying myself the delicious foods I want to eat. Now, who's ready to hear an inspirational Intermittent Fasting Story? That's why we're here. So let's get excited to talk to today's guest. Hi, everybody, welcome to episode 515 of Intermittent Fasting Stories. Today, I'm here with Mathilde. Mathilde is from Geneva, Switzerland, or that's where she lives now, and she works for a non-profit foundation. She is also a teacher and an intermittent fasting coach. French is her first language, her English is excellent. Welcome, Mathilde.

Speaker 2:
[02:36] Thank you, Hi Gin. I'm happy to speak to you, to talk to you today.

Speaker 1:
[02:40] It's really nice to talk to you. You're a familiar face to me because you've been in the Delay, Don't Deny community. And I know that you are passionate about sharing intermittent fasting with others. And I love that.

Speaker 2:
[02:54] Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1:
[02:55] Well, you know, I like to start by asking, what brought you to intermittent fasting? And when was that?

Speaker 2:
[03:03] Okay, so yes, I knew that you were going to ask me. July 2019, I was in my yoga, on Facebook, on my yoga group. And one of the posts was, how do you manage your weight? And for some reason, I checked the comments. And most of the comments were intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting, intermittent fasting.

Speaker 1:
[03:28] I love that.

Speaker 2:
[03:28] And I was just like, no way, not for me. Because to me, fasting was what my dad did every year. During summer, he would go to a yoga center and fast for three weeks with no solid food and only carrot juice with ginger and olive oil. I hope you will listen to that episode.

Speaker 1:
[03:55] Oh, gosh.

Speaker 2:
[03:56] And so over the year, at the beginning he would lose like 20 kilos and put on 25 back. And then after a couple of years, he would only lose like 15 and put 25 back.

Speaker 1:
[04:13] Wow.

Speaker 2:
[04:13] Kilos, huh? Kilos. And now he's 79 and he's 79 years old and he's big. And he's had problem with his weight for his whole life. So that was what fasting was to me. Like, what's eating? So I was just like, no way I'm going to fast, no way. And so, but somehow in the comments of that same post, someone said, read Delay, Don't Deny from Gin Stephens. And for some reason, I don't know how nor why. I downloaded the extract on my Kindle.

Speaker 1:
[04:48] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[04:49] August, I'm in a vacation doing a trip with the kids that are quite young. They're like nine, nine. And because I have twins and an older one, nine, nine and 11. And one night, they're asleep and I have nothing left to read. And I'm just like, okay, what am I going to read on my Kindle? And I have the Delay, Don't Deny on it. And I'm just like, okay, I'm going to start reading it and we'll see.

Speaker 1:
[05:16] Right.

Speaker 2:
[05:17] And it really changed my life.

Speaker 1:
[05:19] I love it.

Speaker 2:
[05:20] Yeah. By the time I was back from that vacation, I had read Delay, Don't Deny. I was in both for the Facebook groups, the advanced one and the first one. And also I had read Feast Without Fear and Digging Deeper.

Speaker 1:
[05:36] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[05:37] And yeah, when I came back on August 20th from those vacations, I did my first 20 hours fast. And that was the beginning of the journey.

Speaker 1:
[05:49] I love it. Circling back to what you thought fasting was, you know, from your dad's experience, he was just basically doing a low-calorie juice cleanse, really, for three weeks. And he was living on juice.

Speaker 2:
[06:04] And he's still doing it.

Speaker 1:
[06:06] It's really no surprise. You know, you mentioned that early he would lose 20 kilos over the three weeks. And then the more times he went back, he lost less. So we know that when you're doing a low-calorie diet like that, especially one that extreme for so long, is slowing down his metabolism. Of course. Is he not open to intermittent fasting at all?

Speaker 2:
[06:26] I gave him twice your book.

Speaker 1:
[06:28] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[06:30] Told him to read the manual.

Speaker 1:
[06:34] Right.

Speaker 2:
[06:34] And yeah, no, he knows better.

Speaker 1:
[06:36] Okay. Well, you know, my dad wouldn't do it either, so.

Speaker 2:
[06:40] It's not that he's not open to it, but it's just that it doesn't, like, he doesn't understand it the way he should.

Speaker 1:
[06:47] I understand. I get it. So when you started, did you need to lose weight at the time?

Speaker 2:
[06:54] Okay. I had been on a diet all my life, but I had only a couple of pounds to lose because, yeah, I was maintaining and I've always eaten well. But I started following diets, not being on a diet, but following diets as young as 13 years old. When I crossed the benchmark of 50 kilos, and I remember that I was 13, I just thought I had to lose weight. For some reason, somehow, I might have seen my mom and my grandmother on a diet all the time, and that was the thing to do.

Speaker 1:
[07:34] Did you grow up in Switzerland?

Speaker 2:
[07:36] Yeah, Geneva. But we're very influenced by the French culture. Eating well, for sure, but also looking good.

Speaker 1:
[07:45] Right.

Speaker 2:
[07:46] Being slim and French women.

Speaker 1:
[07:49] Absolutely. That's what we think about. There was even a book that came out. Did it come out in the 80s, maybe, the 90s called French Women Don't Get Fat. Do you remember that one?

Speaker 2:
[07:59] Yeah. No, I've never read it, of course. No.

Speaker 1:
[08:02] Right. It was French Women Don't Get Fat. The author of that book, it really stuck out to me. I'm like, how are they over there eating this delicious food, not gaining weight? But she talked about how she grew up in France and then came to America and put on a lot of weight in America, eating like Americans.

Speaker 2:
[08:19] That's exactly what happened to me.

Speaker 1:
[08:21] Really?

Speaker 2:
[08:21] Because in 1996, I was 19 years old. I spent six months in the States to learn English. At my friends, I put on 25 pounds in six months.

Speaker 1:
[08:36] That's exactly her story. Then she went back home, started eating like she used to, and lost it, right?

Speaker 2:
[08:44] The miracle of, yeah, my experience, totally.

Speaker 1:
[08:48] Yeah, exactly. I remember reading that, but I could never make that work out. For me, I tried. I was like, well, I'll just do what she did. I couldn't do it.

Speaker 2:
[08:57] No, but portion sizes are way bigger in the States. Also, the food is different. The taste of it is different. You would love Switzerland because it's chocolate and cheese.

Speaker 1:
[09:08] Oh my gosh, I would absolutely love it. I know I would. It sounds fantastic. But yeah, you're right. Our food is different. I even think more than just the fact that it's ultra-processed, like our wheat is different. We have all of the chemicals that we use in processing glyphosate. Also, people know it as Roundup. We hear of people who in America can't eat wheat, but then they go to Europe and they're fine with the wheat.

Speaker 2:
[09:34] They're fine, yeah. It's very different, and also the way we make it. My grandmother used to cook with tons of butter and cream, and yeah, and she was not fat. She had geriatric diabetes at the end of her life. So, you know, and she was like eating garlic and cream and butter. And she was from south of France.

Speaker 1:
[09:57] Love it. We call that the French paradox for so long, like how? But, you know, if you think back, y'all were not snacking all the time. You weren't eating this. So, growing up, what, how did you structure your meals and what did you eat?

Speaker 2:
[10:12] Mostly, and my kids still do it, we come back for lunch every day at home. Lunch at home. So breakfast, lunch and dinner at home. Mostly home-cooked meal, sometimes restaurants, but not that often, to the grandparents. So one of my grandmother was Italian and the other one was from South of France. So yeah, that culture of good food and lots of food and everything. We would play outside, but that and I was like I was doing ballet, dancing.

Speaker 1:
[10:45] Right.

Speaker 2:
[10:46] But not that much. I like I've always been slim and trim and athletic.

Speaker 1:
[10:52] But you mentioned that you always, once you hit that 50 kilogram mark at 13 years, and culturally, being slim was so important, and you'd seen it be important to your mother, you'd seen it be important to your grandmother. You dieted, you didn't snack, I'm guessing. You had your breakfast, your lunch, and your dinner, and you were mindful of your food. So how did dieting look for you over those years before?

Speaker 2:
[11:16] So I was mostly following a plan for a couple of days. At 19, I stumbled in a magazine program that looked a lot like Weight Watchers.

Speaker 1:
[11:25] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[11:26] Points to count, and I would follow it for a couple of days, thinking I was on a diet. Well, when I was in the States in 96, I did one diet that I'd never heard mentioned on the podcast, Scarsdale.

Speaker 1:
[11:42] Scarsdale.

Speaker 2:
[11:43] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[11:43] I've heard of it. I don't know the details of that diet. Is that a low carb?

Speaker 2:
[11:48] Yeah. It's the first time I heard ketones. So I guess it's a low carb.

Speaker 1:
[11:52] Yeah. I thought so.

Speaker 2:
[11:53] Apparently, it was big in the States, like you had restaurants having Scarsdale's menus.

Speaker 1:
[11:59] Probably so. It was the 90s, you said? When were you here?

Speaker 2:
[12:02] Yeah. 96.

Speaker 1:
[12:03] 96. Okay. 96. That sounds right. I never followed the Scarsdale diet.

Speaker 2:
[12:10] I did. And I didn't like it because low carb is not for me. I'm like you potatoes and carbs. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[12:18] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is not for me either. And I am reading the Bible in a year this year. We'll see if I get through it, but it's still early January right now. But I was just reading like when God created, it's early, we're recording this on the 7th of January, so I'm still in Genesis. But God created the grains for man. I'm like, yeah, he did. And then we messed with them and made them weird, but that's a whole different story. Anyway, I enjoyed reading that in the Bible, maybe. Since I love my high quality grains. But yeah, so for us, I didn't feel well doing low carb. And it felt very restrictive. I don't like to restrict anything. I don't want to be low fat. I don't want to be low carb. I don't want to be low calorie.

Speaker 2:
[13:00] But I did Weight Watchers for many years, especially after having my kids. So they were very close in age because they're 20 months apart. And one girl and then twins, boy and girl. So like three in less than two years. I was very busy, but I had to manage my weight. So I followed Weight Watchers. I remember leaving my oldest at France. She was, I was still breastfeeding because you can breastfeed and follow Weight Watchers. Well, at least at the time. And I left her with a friend to go to one of the meeting. And she was very, very tiny. And so I paid that subscription to Weight Watchers for years, really. And I would do it, lose the weight, get to my goal of 125, about, maybe 27, 127, I would say. And get to my goal. And that was it.

Speaker 1:
[14:00] And you're done. So how tall are you?

Speaker 2:
[14:03] One meter, 68.

Speaker 1:
[14:05] Thank goodness for Google. So one meter, so 168 centimeters.

Speaker 2:
[14:09] 168, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[14:10] Okay. And then see, here's the thing. Thank goodness. You're five and a half feet. So like five, six. Yeah. Yeah. Five, six. All right. So that's slim. That's a slim, a slim body size.

Speaker 2:
[14:25] Weight Watchers worked, right? But of course, when you stop it. So in 2018, it was the last time I really followed it. Got to my goal weight in June. And then when I found out about Intermittent Fasting through Delay, Don't Deny, it was in 2019. And I was weighing, I was getting close to 140 pounds.

Speaker 1:
[14:52] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[14:55] Yeah, I was looking for another solution.

Speaker 1:
[14:58] You were not overweight, but you were higher than your set point where you like to be. At the 125 to 127, 140, you're a good 15 pounds above where you felt comfortable in your body. And you looked to me like you're small boned.

Speaker 2:
[15:14] Not that much.

Speaker 1:
[15:15] No? Okay. You're petite. Part of you I can see. I can understand wanting to get there, but you were probably tired of counting points by that point.

Speaker 2:
[15:25] I was very unhappy. I would cook meals for my kids and cook a different one for me, use low fat cream for my meal and do theirs with a whole cream. It was complicated and always making sure I was following what I was supposed to do. It's no freedom at all.

Speaker 1:
[15:45] No, and it's just making different meals. I think probably so many listeners can relate to that. I think I told this story maybe in Delay, Don't Deny, but I've certainly probably told on the podcast. We were going to my stepmother, my dad's a long time ago in the 90s for spaghetti. It was going to be spaghetti. I brought a little tiny 220-calorie, low-calorie spaghetti with me. She never let me live that down, but that's sad.

Speaker 2:
[16:14] It is, it is, and it's no fun.

Speaker 1:
[16:17] No.

Speaker 2:
[16:17] And it's not the way, and I love eating. Eating is fun, and eating is enjoyable, as you say. So yeah, really, it was no fun.

Speaker 1:
[16:27] No fun at all, and the food is just not as delicious when you're trying to make it diet food. Like my little box of 220-calorie spaghetti was not what I wanted to be eating. I wanted to be eating the spaghetti they had with the cheese on there and all of that. So the diets fail because they're miserable. So when you started fasting, you started right away with what?

Speaker 2:
[16:48] 24. Full diet brain on, full diet mentality. I've kept weighing every day. I think I've weighed myself every morning for my whole life. And I still do it because now I just love the data. Full on, my first fast on August 19th, 2019, 20 hours. And I never looked back. In September, my sister was getting married. And I remember asking on the Facebook group at the time, how am I going to do it? We have a brunch on Sunday and the party on Saturday. And the answers I got were, have fun.

Speaker 1:
[17:28] I was just like, no way, I can't.

Speaker 2:
[17:30] I can't. So I was like, three weeks into it.

Speaker 1:
[17:35] Yeah. And did I answer you?

Speaker 2:
[17:38] Yeah, have fun, enjoy it.

Speaker 1:
[17:40] I couldn't know if I did because back then, we had so many people in those groups. In 2019, we had hundreds of thousands of members. And at one point, we had like a thousand posts a day. And I'm not making that up. I had a hundred moderators. You all know that Intermittent Fasting changed my life. But do you know what else changed my life and also helps me eat like a grown up? Meal kits. And my favorite meal kit hands down is Marley Spoon. I've been using Marley Spoon since 2020. And it's because I love to eat real food with high quality ingredients. And Marley Spoon comes through for me every week. Meal planning and grocery shopping were always my downfall. I'm busy. But Marley Spoon has done the planning for me. I simply choose the recipes I want to eat from over 100 options each week. And Marley Spoon sends me the recipe cards and the ingredients in just the right proportion for the recipes. So I don't have any waste like you do when you're buying ingredients at the grocery store. Last night, I had a black bean and rice bowl with mango salsa. And it was delicious and satisfying. If you're doing the 30 Plants a Week Challenge, along with the rest of us in the Eat Like a Grown-Up program, this recipe had 10 different plant foods. And it was delicious. If you're in a hurry, there are some 20-minute options and also some prepared meals that make it even easier to eat like a grown-up. If you're ready to give Marley Spoon a try, they're offering a great deal to my listeners. You'll receive discounts over your first five boxes that add up to substantial savings. This year, just track your way to eating well like a grown-up with Marley Spoon. Head to marlyspoon.com/offer/ifstories for 45% off your first order plus free delivery. That's right, 45% off your first order and free delivery with Marley Spoon. Go to marlyspoon.com/offer/ifstories. Spring is finally in the air and I've been doing a little spring reset in my closet. Just as Intermittent Fasting has made me into a food snob, the same is true about my wardrobe. I'm focusing more on quality over quantity. But like you, I don't like to overpay. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, their clothes fit my body and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Quince uses premium fabrics like 100% European linen, organic cotton, and super soft denim with styles starting around $50. And that same focus on materials carries over into their accessories, like their leather bags, which are made from 100% hand-woven Italian leather and look way more expensive than they are. My favorite dress from Quince is their 100% organic cotton poplin-tiered maxi dress. I have it in Navy and in Hudson Stripe, and I always get complements when I wear them. Refresh your spring wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/ifstories for free shipping and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. Go to quince.com/ifstories for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com/ifstories.

Speaker 2:
[21:20] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[21:20] We were helping with it. So I couldn't see every post.

Speaker 2:
[21:23] No, but you did. You did answer.

Speaker 1:
[21:24] I tried. I tried to answer as many as I could. But we had post approval on, and we were just doing what we can. It was quite a production behind the scenes in those days, and no more of that. But I'm glad that I was able to answer you. But you're right. Your sister getting married was a special occasion.

Speaker 2:
[21:42] Exactly. But I couldn't think about it that way because I was so much in my diet mentality, in my diet brain thinking I have to control everything. One day after maybe six weeks, I was in my shower. And I remember looking at myself in the mirror and going, oh, all that, those efforts for so little progress. I'm not sure I'm going to keep fasting. It's just too hard and too much. And then I told myself, go to a hundred days, fast for a hundred days, and then you'll decide.

Speaker 1:
[22:18] Right.

Speaker 2:
[22:18] And at a hundred days, I probably was fat adapted and or maybe I even was before. But then I never looked back.

Speaker 1:
[22:28] Right. I love that. You were having the doubts and it was feeling hard. You may not have been fat adapted yet, but give yourself till a hundred days. And I love that because once you've lived it long enough, you have the daily habit. You don't want to stop.

Speaker 2:
[22:48] No. And then you feel good doing it. And it's also the reason why. So I've been at my goal weight for since what, February 2020. And then we had COVID and everything. But I've been at my goal weight for six years. And I've been in maintenance for six years with no problem. My line is, how do you call that? My weight.

Speaker 1:
[23:12] Your trend.

Speaker 2:
[23:13] Yeah, my trend is going up and down, up and down, up and down. Sometimes I lose weight. Sometimes I gain weight, but like no stress, with no stress at all. I know what to do. My pants, after summer, I can put my jeans back on, no problem, without even thinking about it. And that's the freedom of it.

Speaker 1:
[23:33] It really is. It really is. You know that, first of all, even if they do get a little tight, you have the tools. Tighten up your window a little bit.

Speaker 2:
[23:42] They don't even get tight.

Speaker 1:
[23:45] That's awesome. How old are you?

Speaker 2:
[23:47] I'm 49.

Speaker 1:
[23:49] Okay. Just checking in there. 48.

Speaker 2:
[23:53] Yeah, 48.

Speaker 1:
[23:54] 48. After menopause, it got a little more challenging. I have to be more mindful than I was before. But I had many years before menopause and then now I'm on the other side. But I do have to be more mindful now. At the end of the summer of 2025, my pants were tight. I got my jeans back out. They were tight. But now they're loose.

Speaker 2:
[24:16] You just shrunk a little bit your window.

Speaker 1:
[24:19] I did. For me, it's at the point where it's not window length anymore for me because I just naturally fall into, I don't even really pay attention, honestly. I know I'll open sometimes after two. Right now though, it's 235 and I haven't opened yet. But at some point after two, I open whenever that is and I close when I've had enough, whenever that is. But probably around five, some days maybe four, maybe one day it's six. I don't really pay that much attention for me though. Food choices. It still comes down to food choices. Like I had a lot more ice cream this summer. I had a lot of people visiting. Took them all to my favorite ice cream place.

Speaker 2:
[24:58] But you had fun and that's the most important thing, without guilt.

Speaker 1:
[25:01] I had no guilt, zero guilt. No, and I wore all my flowy summer dresses. They felt great. I felt wonderful. Then I put my jeans on when it cooled down. I'm like, all right. But I just tightened up my food choices and that was it. Now, like I said, they're loose again. From, I guess, September through January, I've just been mindful of food choices, been through the holidays. Everything still is great. Mindful over the holidays.

Speaker 2:
[25:28] Which doesn't mean that you did not eat anything, that you did not ever eat ice cream again, that you got rid of all the sugar you have at your place. I eat chocolate every day.

Speaker 1:
[25:41] I had ice cream two days ago.

Speaker 2:
[25:43] See?

Speaker 1:
[25:44] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[25:46] I had fries last night.

Speaker 1:
[25:48] So good. But I didn't have a lot of ice cream. I had a little tiny brownie. My friend had, we had a, like I said, recorded this in January. My college went to a bowl game, Go Wake Forest. We won the Duke's Mayonnaise Bowl, which is hilarious because I love Duke's mayonnaise. That's my favorite mayonnaise. But my friend made little brownies and I inherited them after the game. I was like, all right, I microwaved it, put a little tiny ice cream on there. It was fabulous. No guilt at all. But I'm not having as much ice cream. And also when I was taking my friends out for ice cream all summer, it was a big surprise. At an ice cream shop, you know how they are.

Speaker 2:
[26:22] And sometimes you said no or did you?

Speaker 1:
[26:25] No, I never said no. I said, we're going to the ice cream shop. It was like different people visiting. It was really good.

Speaker 2:
[26:31] I would not eat sometimes, very often. I'm taking my kids out. We were in London last week and we were in a mall and shopping and the kids went, we want to try Chipotle.

Speaker 1:
[26:45] Chipotle.

Speaker 2:
[26:47] It sounds different in French.

Speaker 1:
[26:49] I bet.

Speaker 2:
[26:50] I was like, okay, let's go to Chipotle. And they had their burrito and I just sat with my bottle of water because I was not hungry.

Speaker 1:
[27:01] Right? You're like, this is not what I want to eat right now. Yeah. No, I absolutely do that as well. As you know, there'll be plenty of times I go places with people and don't eat it. I'm like, that doesn't look window-worthy for me.

Speaker 2:
[27:12] Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[27:14] That's what you decided. And I don't love Chipotle. Nobody tells Chipotle that. I've only eaten there maybe once.

Speaker 2:
[27:20] I've actually never tried it.

Speaker 1:
[27:22] I think I did it once. And I was telling Sheri, for anybody who doesn't know, she's my co-host on Fast Feast Repeat. I know you know Sheri, but I was telling Sheri that I went to Chipotle. Hello Sheri. And she said, then you didn't do it right. If I didn't like it, I didn't do it right. And I'm like, you're probably right. I didn't know what to get.

Speaker 2:
[27:39] So I will try it once.

Speaker 1:
[27:41] Maybe. I don't know. I wasn't impressed, but I probably just didn't do it right. Like she said. You got to learn those things. But it's really, if you're going out to eat in America, it's not one of the worst places you could go, because you can assemble a healthy meal at Chipotle versus a lot of places.

Speaker 2:
[27:58] Good food.

Speaker 1:
[28:00] So I've got nothing against them. I just need somebody who's like a pro to tell me what to get.

Speaker 2:
[28:05] What to put in it.

Speaker 1:
[28:06] Yeah, exactly. Now I thought I could figure that out, but apparently I didn't. But you were in London with your kids, and you kept probably to your normal eating window length, right?

Speaker 2:
[28:15] Absolutely. Even for New Year's Eve, because we were in London, we celebrated.

Speaker 1:
[28:20] Oh, fun.

Speaker 2:
[28:21] And my sister, Fest, as well. She was one of my first. Yeah, exactly. Because I told her, during COVID, she was really having a hard time keeping her weight stable. I told her, just fast. And she was like, yeah, but I love my oranges in the morning, after running, having my oranges. And I said, just have your oranges. But later on, and fast. And she did, and she lives the intermittent fasting lifestyle now. And her husband as well, my mom as well.

Speaker 1:
[28:54] I love it. So many people. It feels so good to know that people you love have also embraced the magic of intermittent fasting.

Speaker 2:
[29:02] Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's, my mom is the reason why I started coaching because she doesn't speak English and there's nothing in French valuable in term of clean fast. I actually invented, because of you, translated clean fast to jeûne pure because it's pure fast instead of clean fast.

Speaker 1:
[29:25] I like that.

Speaker 2:
[29:25] Yeah. Clean fast was not very nice. It was a little bit clinical, you know, like in a hospital, like clean.

Speaker 1:
[29:34] You know what? I love the terminology, pure fast. I like it better than clean fast, darn it. Why didn't I start calling it that from the beginning? Now it's too late. But the pure fast sounds, if you have a clean fast, then people think, well, then we must have a dirty fast.

Speaker 2:
[29:48] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[29:49] Right. And we know there's really no dirty fast. You're just not doing the pure fast. But I guess you would have pure fast and un-pure fast, I guess. If we had called it pure fast, then everybody would be saying, I'm doing the un-pure fast.

Speaker 2:
[30:00] Yeah, it's true. But yeah, so I did in French, jeune pure, pure fast.

Speaker 1:
[30:05] Love it.

Speaker 2:
[30:06] But I've been banned from so many Facebook group because of this. So annoying. They don't get it.

Speaker 1:
[30:12] They don't get it. I got banned early on. It was a Facebook group that was inspired by Jason Fung's work or something. I definitely got banned from that one because I said I ate carbs. Then I got banned from another one because I was talking about the clean fast. It wasn't called the clean fast yet. I think it was before I wrote Delay, Don't Deny. But they banned me for saying that it was more than just calories. They're like, banned.

Speaker 2:
[30:37] Then you have nothing. You can't do anything. You're just banned.

Speaker 1:
[30:40] You're banned.

Speaker 2:
[30:41] That's too bad because A, I could teach you something if you would only listen.

Speaker 1:
[30:47] Yeah. So funny. That was one reason why I started my own Facebook groups. I'm like, well, I can't go out and tell everybody everything because they don't want to hear it. But I can have my own place where I'm telling people and they can either follow it or not follow it. But here we're going to do this and there won't be the confusion.

Speaker 2:
[31:06] It was a nice place, your Facebook group.

Speaker 1:
[31:10] It was a nice place. You would just not believe what went on behind the scenes, like I said, with a hundred and something moderators. They were amazing people and I'm grateful for every one of them. But not everybody always answered things the same way I was. So I would have some fires to put out and things going on. People were not always happy.

Speaker 2:
[31:28] Five hundred thousand people you had.

Speaker 1:
[31:30] It was five hundred thousand combined members between the groups that I had. So it was a lot and I couldn't see everything. People would get mad at me based on something that I didn't even know what happened because a moderator or whatever told them something and maybe it sounded snarky but they didn't mean it to. Anyway, it was just the day I left Facebook was like one of the happiest days of my life.

Speaker 2:
[31:50] I understand.

Speaker 1:
[31:51] Yeah. And it was scary to leave Facebook, leave something so big that I had built. It was 2021. So it's been, wow, it's been five years since I left Facebook. But I said, you know what, if this is what ends it all, I don't care. I'm ending it because I can't live like this anymore. But the community, and you've been part of our Delay, Don't Deny community that's off of Facebook, and you have been just a really great support in there.

Speaker 2:
[32:17] Thank you.

Speaker 1:
[32:17] Over the years.

Speaker 2:
[32:18] And I love it. I wish I could spend more time in it. It's nice and really to your listener, if you start fasting, please join the community because it's just so nice. It's a nice community. People are nice to each other. Yeah, and you have good tips and I love what you do.

Speaker 1:
[32:36] Thank you. And I do reply to every post there. Yes, you do. Unlike Facebook, I do. I reply to every post. And for anybody who's listening, go to ginstephens.com/community. Gin is G-I-N, Stephens with a B-H. And you can find us there. But the thing about it is the difference between Facebook is everyone who joins, first of all, they had to type in ginstephens.com/community, so they've heard of me. They don't just wander in out of nowhere, they have some knowledge. So that's what has really made the difference. It's a great group of people who have the knowledge. And so people give each other really good advice. And we have so many longtime pastors who are there and who just love to support each other.

Speaker 2:
[33:19] Yeah, and share their experience, which is easy.

Speaker 1:
[33:23] It is.

Speaker 2:
[33:23] Yeah, and because we're so happy. It's not even something we have to do. It's something we want to do. Because to me, I can't say for the others, but to me, Intermittent Fasting has just changed my life so much that I want to share that and I want people to live that too.

Speaker 1:
[33:42] It's true. And I appreciate all of the members there. Of course, I appreciate the new members, the members who are struggling or floundering or having a hard time. But what I really, really appreciate is the experienced and seasoned Intermittent Fasters who stay around and support the community. Because it's one thing to hear me say something, but when you hear five other people say, yes, this is how it was for me, they're just regular people. I'm just a regular person too, but you know what I mean. Where they're helping each other.

Speaker 2:
[34:10] Yeah. And other than you are trying to convince people.

Speaker 1:
[34:16] Right. And really, I don't think it's my role to convince you. What will convince you is doing it.

Speaker 2:
[34:23] Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[34:24] Nothing convinces you more than living the clean fast lifestyle.

Speaker 2:
[34:27] For at least 100 days.

Speaker 1:
[34:29] Right. I think 100 days is smart. Absolutely. And then you don't want to go back.

Speaker 2:
[34:34] No, never.

Speaker 1:
[34:35] So you said that intermittent fasting has made your life better in so many ways. Tell me about some of those. I could guess.

Speaker 2:
[34:42] Yeah, everything is easier, for sure. Because instead of having to plan meals and think about what I'm going to eat. Am I hungry? Yes, no. What do I want to eat? This, that. Can I eat it? Yes.

Speaker 1:
[34:57] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[35:00] To me, it brought a lot of freedom and yeah, it's just way easier. Also, of course, energy. So I think I'm like 23 hours fasted right now. Because of course, I was not going to eat right before this interview. Of course, I was going to do it fasted just because it's the way to, that my mind is sharp. So it brought me a lot of mental clarity as well. Also, the focus back on my sensation and on what my body needs. It has helped a lot. Okay, so to identify what food was good for me, what I wanted, what I needed.

Speaker 1:
[35:43] So you're able to listen to your body.

Speaker 2:
[35:45] Much better.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[38:25] One summer, I spent my summer eating candies, you know, like the acidic ones. I would have candies every day, sour, like sour heads and stuff like this. And I was just like, okay, but that's probably because my body needs it. And I would eat one or two and that would be it. And I spent the whole summer eating them. And then once one day I stopped, I didn't want them anymore. And I've never had any since then.

Speaker 1:
[38:52] So funny. It is funny how we can go through those seasons of wanting something and we're like, all right, I'm done with that. I enjoyed it and now I'm done.

Speaker 2:
[39:00] Yeah, that's it. And there's no big deal at all. And I enjoyed it without feeling guilty.

Speaker 1:
[39:07] And you were eating, and they're small candies, and you were having like one or two?

Speaker 2:
[39:12] Or the lasagna, the flat ones.

Speaker 1:
[39:14] Okay. Are they stretchy?

Speaker 2:
[39:17] Yeah, and they're sour.

Speaker 1:
[39:19] Like a taffy?

Speaker 2:
[39:20] I don't know and probably not the same brand.

Speaker 1:
[39:23] But taffy is like a style of candy. It's a little bit squishy. Can you stretch it?

Speaker 2:
[39:28] Yes.

Speaker 1:
[39:29] Okay. So to me, it sounds like a kind of sour taffy. You were just having it and that was it, and no guilt. We've been made to think that is sugar, sugar gets a really bad rap. We know that sugar is like empty calories, but it's not the only thing that's empty calories. There are a lot of foods out there that are empty calories. And if you're able to eat some sugar and your blood sugar is fine, it doesn't cause you to binge at all. I think we crave sweet things as humans. And so that's just part of being a human.

Speaker 2:
[40:02] Yeah, and I eat chocolate every night. But it's true that I'm more of a cheese person. If I have to choose between cheese and dessert, I would always choose cheese. Or both.

Speaker 1:
[40:12] Me too. I haven't been on a cruise since 2019, but often at the end of the dinner, they always have dessert, but they would have a cheese plate on the dessert menu. And I would very frequently get the cheese plate instead of the sweet dessert. And it's just a beautiful way to end the meal.

Speaker 2:
[40:29] It is.

Speaker 1:
[40:30] Maybe I'm French in like a prior lifetime, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[40:33] You have to come to Geneva. You'll love it.

Speaker 1:
[40:36] I know that I would. The food just sounds amazing. So what other differences are there between the food culture here and there?

Speaker 2:
[40:46] Well, when I get to the States, I love American food, of course. It's a bit more, the food we eat is very like the French food. There's more work into it. We have veggies with everything. It's better balanced nutritionally. That's a word I can't pronounce. Nutritionally.

Speaker 1:
[41:07] Yes, nutritionally balanced.

Speaker 2:
[41:09] Better the plates and the food is better done than in the States where a hamburger would be your meal. If you would go to a restaurant and have the plat du jour, which is the meal of the day or the dish of the day, it would be protein and veggies and some carb for sure. But it could be French fries, but also some other things, mashed potatoes and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1:
[41:40] But it's less processed than the American version. Now, I actually this weekend when I was in Charlotte, North Carolina for the Duke's Mayonnaise Bowl, we ended up eating, delayed until two o'clock, spent some time in Charleston. I mean not Charleston, Charlotte, spent some time in Charlotte and went to a, I guess a French bistro kind of a place. Since it was a Saturday, they had brunch till the afternoon. And I had the best omelette I've ever had. It was just perfect. It had tarragon on there, but it was a ratatouille omelette. It had ratatouille on top. And just the bread, you can tell, was homemade.

Speaker 2:
[42:17] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:17] That they had made it. And these potatoes, it was perfect. And so I know I would like to eat in France.

Speaker 2:
[42:22] Yeah. And see the ratatouille, it's a mix of veggies and it's something we eat.

Speaker 1:
[42:27] It was on top.

Speaker 2:
[42:28] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:29] It was the omelette of the day. Ratatouille on top and the flavors, and the omelette was just perfect. In America, most places that have omelettes, I don't really like them because a lot of times it's like egg out of a carton. You ever even seen that?

Speaker 2:
[42:42] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[42:42] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[42:45] Even experienced the egg without the yolk.

Speaker 1:
[42:50] Yeah. But this was just perfect and it was delicate and it was just cooked perfectly anyway.

Speaker 2:
[42:54] I was very excited. Yeah. We eat a lot more seasonal. It's coming. We would not find strawberry in December in Switzerland, but it's coming asparagus in December. Yeah. But we eat mostly seasonal food, which means that during winter, it's a lot of spinach, leeks, and potatoes, and soups.

Speaker 1:
[43:20] That sounds great. My body craves that. I've noticed over the years that my body, as an intermittent faster, naturally wants to do that. Like it naturally wants different things. Like as soon as the weather gets warm, I'm eating hummus all the time. I'm buying hummus, eating hummus, and then as soon as it gets cold, I'm like not really interested in the hummus.

Speaker 2:
[43:41] And real food.

Speaker 1:
[43:41] Kombucha, same thing. Yeah. I don't want a salad in the winter. I just don't. But I would like my spinach cooked, or some sort of greens in a stew, or a soup that has beans, or maybe some sausage.

Speaker 2:
[43:55] And much more hearty.

Speaker 1:
[43:59] Hearty. Sticks with you. But yeah, I've noticed that like I haven't, you know, you've heard me talk about my cottage cheese and frozen cherries, or I've been eating frozen grapes. I haven't had that in months.

Speaker 2:
[44:10] Yeah. We would never even find the frozen grapes. I wish I could try that once.

Speaker 1:
[44:16] Well, I just buy regular grapes and freeze them.

Speaker 2:
[44:18] Oh, you freeze them.

Speaker 1:
[44:19] Yeah. What you do is you just go buy regular grapes, wash them, I pull them off. Yes, I pick them off. And you don't have to do anything special. Like I have a friend who was doing it, and she put them on a tray and froze them on the tray. No, I just rinse them off, wash them, and then I put them in a container in the freezer, and they're fine. They don't stick together. You just make sure they're not sopping wet. Dry them off a little bit.

Speaker 2:
[44:45] That's right, but next September.

Speaker 1:
[44:47] Okay, when it's warm.

Speaker 2:
[44:49] Yeah, exactly. I just told my kids not to buy some grapes for New Year's Eve because it's not that season.

Speaker 1:
[44:56] Season? No, and I have zero desire. Like, I could not keep them in the house over the summer. I ate so many of them. And then as soon as it got cold, like I still have some left from when it was warm, and I'm like, I have no interest in that.

Speaker 2:
[45:10] And next summer, probably.

Speaker 1:
[45:11] I'm sure I will. I'll be eating those again. Exactly. So I think we're supposed to eat seasonally, and we're supposed to listen to what sounds good and have the savory foods when it's cold outside, we need to warm ourselves up. It just makes sense.

Speaker 2:
[45:26] Yeah, made from whole food, but whole also. Cream, for instance, really. Because cream is our sauces, is a big part of the French cuisine. Yeah, made out of like real cream. Right. And it's good.

Speaker 1:
[45:41] It's so good. When I experimented with being whole food, plant based, I know that my body does really well with whole food, plant based, but you just can't, I can't. I've never been able to replicate that creamy thing.

Speaker 2:
[45:54] No, and again, it's a replication. It's doing as if it was, but it's not.

Speaker 1:
[46:00] Yeah, but it just isn't the same.

Speaker 2:
[46:03] That's the only setback I had because of Intermittent Fasting, is that I stopped drinking my milk in my coffee, my latte, every morning, and so now, I don't digest lactose as well as I used to do.

Speaker 1:
[46:17] Oh.

Speaker 2:
[46:19] But it's no big deal. I take when I want to have some milk, if I'm having a cold chocolate milk with the kids or something like this, when I open my window, just take two lactase pills and then it's okay.

Speaker 1:
[46:36] Yeah. That's the enzyme that our bodies produce. Most people, 75 percent of people stop producing the enzyme as adults. They're for babies, right? Then as they get older, they stop producing them. 25 percent of the population continues to produce them.

Speaker 2:
[46:53] I had them. Yeah, me too. I had it until I started fasting and I stopped drinking my lattes.

Speaker 1:
[47:00] As much. As we get older also, I think our bodies just produce less of certain things, just in general. Yeah. That probably makes sense. You mentioned that you are an intermittent fasting coach and you started with your mother. Tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2:
[47:15] My aim was really to help people to live an intermittent fasting lifestyle, understanding the whys, the reason why you should clean fast, and it takes time. To help them pass those first three months and get to that point where you never want to stop again.

Speaker 1:
[47:39] Right.

Speaker 2:
[47:39] Also get rid of the diet mentality, which is very, very, very strong in Europe, because you have to be slim.

Speaker 1:
[47:47] Right.

Speaker 2:
[47:48] So you have to be on a diet. So yeah, that's why I created the Mathilde, which is the Mathilde's Fast.

Speaker 1:
[47:56] Love it.

Speaker 2:
[47:57] I became a certified health coach in nutrition through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition.

Speaker 1:
[48:06] Which I went through their program, their health coach program. It is a great program. It is.

Speaker 2:
[48:12] It is a great program. It is thanks to you. I had heard it on the podcast that you did follow it. And then I followed nutritionist class in Geneva. And that was just diets. They were teaching and training people to become nutritionists and to give diets to people. Like you eat that many calories and you do that and you do that. So I was just, okay. So I did it and I really did not like it. But I have the title. I needed the title. Yeah, so now I'm a nutritionist and I can coach also people. But what I do is intermittent fasting. And I've created an app in which I have a six-week program, which is called Jeune et Jolie. And it's really to start in six weeks and to learn everything you need to know about intermittent fasting.

Speaker 1:
[49:10] I love it. And it's in French.

Speaker 2:
[49:12] It's in French. It's in French. I have one program for him and one program for her. But some things are not for men, but mostly for women. But the thing is, it's the same thing for, I mean, intermittent fasting works the same.

Speaker 1:
[49:30] Right.

Speaker 2:
[49:30] For both women and men. But sometimes, women, we have more diet brain, and it's harder also to start losing weight.

Speaker 1:
[49:39] It can take us longer. That's exactly right. So I know you said that you started weighing, you weighed the whole time. Because, and also back in 2019, I don't think I was telling people not to. I don't think I did. I don't think I started telling people to stay off the scale for the first month until Fast Feast Repeat came out. And that was 2020. When you're working with your clients, do you have them weigh the whole time or do you have them wait?

Speaker 2:
[50:06] No, I tell them like you do, not to wait for the first month at least. But some don't even listen to it.

Speaker 1:
[50:13] They don't. They don't listen.

Speaker 2:
[50:15] Like I did. I can show you my old mud. Look at that. It started August 2019 and yeah.

Speaker 1:
[50:26] And there she's showing me her graph, everybody. It's a great, it's just a graph of maintenance. It's that ups and downs. Looks like an EKG or something. Exactly.

Speaker 2:
[50:36] My goal weight plus two kilos, minus two kilos in the Happy Scale app. And it's just easy.

Speaker 1:
[50:44] So you've got like a five kilogram range that you fluctuate within, but you pretty much stick around the middle of that. I think that's important. I'm gonna calculate this exactly. So a five kilograms to pounds is about 11 pounds. So you fluctuate within about an 11 pound range and it's really easy for you to dial it in. And I think that's really important because there's so many people who think that goal weight is a number.

Speaker 2:
[51:13] Number, no. Yeah, no, it's also very valuable to my clients to see that because yeah, sometimes it goes up and yes, I've been stressed. So it goes up or sometimes I'm stressed and it goes down. But I know the reason why and I'm not stressing over it.

Speaker 1:
[51:32] We've been through stressful times in our six years. You've had stressful times in your life. I've had stressful times in my life and you didn't stop fasting.

Speaker 2:
[51:41] Not at all and COVID was the most stressful of all of it. Although I loved it because I knew my weight was not going to be a problem because I was fasting.

Speaker 1:
[51:51] Right. You had found it and you already had your solution. Yeah. That's awesome. Even though it was stressful, you stuck to intermittent fasting as your lifestyle and never even considered stopping.

Speaker 2:
[52:01] Never, ever. For Christmas, my rule and it's just because in the window app that I keep using, because since my first fast, I've been using the window app and now also the other one, EasyFast, but you break your strike if you fast for less than 12 hours.

Speaker 1:
[52:20] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[52:20] My rule, my hard rule is never ever ever fast less than 12 hours. So Christmas and New Year's Eve, I fasted for 12 hours and one minute.

Speaker 1:
[52:32] Oh, love it.

Speaker 2:
[52:35] And even this year. But with no guilt and I spent a week in London and I came back and I was maybe less than a pound over the weight I had before I left. So yeah, really. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[52:47] And you all said one thing that Intermittent Fasting does for us is it reconnects us with our hunger and satiety signals in such a way that even when we give ourselves a longer window like that, we are better able to hear that we've had enough and less likely to maybe overeat like we did in the past.

Speaker 2:
[53:03] Yeah. Or when we do overeat, because sometimes I do overeat, then I'm stuffed. Okay, I'll do better tomorrow. That's it. That's it. Right.

Speaker 1:
[53:15] Is there anything that you struggle with?

Speaker 2:
[53:17] Maybe drinking enough water during my fast. Sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm thirsty. I should be drinking a little bit more.

Speaker 1:
[53:24] Well, I would let that go if I were you then. You don't need to worry about that. I really think that we don't need as much fluid intake while we're fasting because so much of the fluid is for digesting and all of that. So I think that if you just drink when you're thirsty, that's enough. That's it.

Speaker 2:
[53:42] And I'm never aiming at a certain amount of water or coffee or whatever.

Speaker 1:
[53:49] Yeah. I think that's been overhyped, the whole idea of having to drink a certain amount of water or whatever. I can't believe. There's some saying, I don't know if you've heard this one, but the saying is, if you're thirsty, it's already too late.

Speaker 2:
[54:02] But why would your buddy do that?

Speaker 1:
[54:05] Wait a minute though. Every other signal tells us, like, I think we can trust it. Anyway, that's just me.

Speaker 2:
[54:14] I agree, 100 percent.

Speaker 1:
[54:17] So you know that I have my new Eat Like a Grown-Up prize.

Speaker 2:
[54:20] And I'm a member. I gave myself that present for Christmas.

Speaker 1:
[54:24] Well, I'm glad you're there for anybody who's wondering where to find that.

Speaker 2:
[54:26] Amazing.

Speaker 1:
[54:27] I'm glad you like it. It's app.fastfeastrepeat.com. And the app is spelled A-P-P. Someone was looking for it and she emailed me and she's spelling it just A-P. But it's app, like an app, app.fastfeastrepeat.com. And you can also find it in the App Store for your actual phone. And I'm so excited about what I'm seeing going on in there. I've only, you know, been there for about a month as of today.

Speaker 2:
[54:52] Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 1:
[54:53] Well, thank you. The school teacher in me really came out.

Speaker 2:
[54:56] We can see that.

Speaker 1:
[54:57] Yeah. I've so enjoyed developing. It's really like a curriculum. It's a year long, the Eat Like a Grown-Up program. And so it's my love. I've missed doing that. But what does eating like a grown-up mean to you?

Speaker 2:
[55:10] That's a hard question. It means the eating, being free to eat whatever you like, whenever you like, and choosing and deciding what you want to eat and when you want to eat it. Making your own choices because you are grown-up and you decide. Yeah. And that's deciding the quality of the food you want to eat. And if sometimes you don't want to eat well, it's fine. But you decide, you get, you have the last word.

Speaker 1:
[55:44] Autonomy. Yeah, exactly. It's basically, I think so too, it's having autonomy. You know, like it's not to eat like a grown-up diet.

Speaker 2:
[55:50] No, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[55:51] It's giving you the autonomy to figure out what works for you and what doesn't and how you want to feel. You know that if I eat too much sugar, I get restless legs. I don't like that. I can choose to, I usually choose not to.

Speaker 2:
[56:05] And sometimes you might want to break your rule because you want to. It's that freedom and that's true autonomy.

Speaker 1:
[56:13] I love that.

Speaker 2:
[56:14] To decide your own rule and do what others tell you to do.

Speaker 1:
[56:19] Exactly. So we are almost out of time. What would you tell someone just starting out with intermittent fasting or what do you wish you knew when you first started?

Speaker 2:
[56:28] Get rid of the diet brain.

Speaker 1:
[56:31] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[56:32] Brief. You got this. IF is the answer. It's your answer and it's going to work. Just give it time. Let the magic work and it will work.

Speaker 1:
[56:45] Right. Tweak it till it's easy. Tweak it till it works. We can do it. Well, thank you so much for being here today. I really loved talking to you.

Speaker 2:
[56:55] Thank you, Gin. It was a pleasure.

Speaker 1:
[56:58] Do you have an Intermittent Fasting Story to tell? Email me at gin at intermittentfastingstories.com and I'll add you to the lineup. That's gin at intermittentfastingstories.com. The world wants to hear your story. That's it for today. Remember, I may have a doctorate, but I'm not a medical doctor. So don't use anything you hear on this podcast as a substitute for medical advice. Please always check with your doctor or health care provider if you have medical questions. I'll talk to you next week, Fasting Family, where we will hear another inspiring story. Have a great week and fast on. Intermittent Fasting Stories is edited, mixed and mastered by Resonate Recordings. To learn more, visit them at resonaterecordings.com or email them at hello at resonaterecordings.com. Intermittent Fasting Stories listeners will receive a free offer if you mention that you heard it on the podcast.