Data Driven Fasting Manual

Intermittent fasting has helped many people lose weight, lower their blood glucose, and
reverse type 2 diabetes without the hassle of tracking their food.
But, sadly, for many others, fasting does not provide the results they had hoped for.
When we get ravenously hungry, we usually reach for energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods that
quickly undo all the benefits of our sacrifice and deprivation.
To ensure long-term success, you need to find your minimum effective dose of fasting. You
need to learn to stretch that stretches your body just a little, but not so much it rebels and
traps you in an endless restrict-binge-restrict cycle.
More isn't always better. You need just enough restriction to ensure you're moving towards
your goal at a sustainable rate, but without waking your inner lizard brain.
Data-Driven Fasting (DDF) 'gamifies’ the process of fat loss using a few simple measurements
to guide your progress. You can personalise your eating schedule to achieve your goals by
measuring what matters and ignoring the rest.
Data-Driven Fasting is a powerful, time-proven tool that has guided thousands of people
toward their fat loss and blood glucose goals without tracking calories or using a rigid, one-
size-fits-all fasting window.
We are thrilled with the results from the thousands of people who have used Data-Driven
Fasting to optimise when and what they eat.
To learn how to leverage the insights from your blood glucose to guide when and what to
eat, read on!
Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 1

Contents
Is Calorie Counting the Best Way to Lose Weight? ................................................................................................... 8
Many people try calorie counting using apps like MyFitnessPal. But sadly, very few people achieve
the long-term success they had hoped for. ................................................................................................................. 8
Counting Calories Can Cause Disordered Eating .....................................................................................................11
Your Appetite Has Been Hijacked ...................................................................................................................................12
What Is the Best Fasting Schedule For YOU? .............................................................................................................13
What Is the Best Refuelling Schedule for You? .........................................................................................................14
What Happens When You Run Out of Fuel (or Fast for Too Long)? .................................................................15
Why Fasting Fails for So Many .........................................................................................................................................15
How Your Body Uses the Food You Eat .......................................................................................................................18
Your Personal Fat Threshold .............................................................................................................................................23
Why Are Blood Glucose and Insulin So Important? ................................................................................................24
Why It’s More Important to Manage Your Basal Insulin Than Your Bolus Insulin ......................................26
What Happens to Glucose and Fat When We Eat? ..................................................................................................29
How To Use Your Blood Glucose Monitor to Lose Weight ..................................................................................32
How To Use Your Blood Sugar Meter as A Fuel Gauge .........................................................................................32
Hunger Training: How to Lose Weight Using Your Blood Sugar as A Fuel Gauge .....................................33
The Research Behind Hunger Training .........................................................................................................................34
Why Did We Create Data-Driven Fasting? ..................................................................................................................36
Data-Driven Fasting Challenge .............................................................................................................................................37
Data-Driven Fasting Program ................................................................................................................................................39
DDF Glossary ................................................................................................................................................................................41
DDF QuickStart Guide...............................................................................................................................................................42
The Purpose of DDF .............................................................................................................................................................42
Baselining .................................................................................................................................................................................42
Hunger Training .....................................................................................................................................................................42
Your Personalised Trigger ..................................................................................................................................................43
Stages.........................................................................................................................................................................................43
Your Fuel Gauge Lines .........................................................................................................................................................43
Progressive Overload for Your Metabolism ................................................................................................................44
WHEN to Eat............................................................................................................................................................................45
Your Main Meal ......................................................................................................................................................................45
WHAT to Eat ............................................................................................................................................................................46
What To Focus on in Each Stage .....................................................................................................................................45
The End Game ........................................................................................................................................................................47

Maintenance ............................................................................................................................................................................47
If In Doubt ................................................................................................................................................................................48
The Data-Driven Fasting App ................................................................................................................................................49
How Do I Record My Blood Glucose Values? ............................................................................................................49
How Do I Record My Biometrics? ...................................................................................................................................51
How Do I Record My Meals? ............................................................................................................................................52
How Do I See the Meals I Have Recorded? ................................................................................................................52
How Do I See My Biometrics? ..........................................................................................................................................53
Your Diary .................................................................................................................................................................................53
How Do I Edit the Values I Entered? ..............................................................................................................................54
How do I change the target rate of rate loss? ...........................................................................................................54
Does It Matter If I Measure In mg/dL or mmol/L? ...................................................................................................55
How Can I Add My Trigger Value to My Meter? ......................................................................................................55
What Is The ‘Upper Limit’ On the Hourly Glucose Chart? .....................................................................................56
Can I Reset My Trigger? ......................................................................................................................................................57
What Happens if I Can’t Reach My Trigger?...............................................................................................................58
What Are the Milestones in The App? ..........................................................................................................................58
How Do I Get the DDF App? .............................................................................................................................................59
What Makes DDF Different? [FAQ Part 1] .......................................................................................................................60
1.1 How Is Data-Driven Fasting Different from Other Popular Fasting Methods? ......................................61
1.2 How Is Data-Driven Fasting Different from Calorie Counting? ...................................................................62
1.3 Are There Any Added Benefits from Extended Fasting? ................................................................................62
1.4 How Is Chasing Your Trigger Different from A Fasting Window? ..............................................................65
1.5 What Is An 'Extended Fast'? How Long is Too Long? ....................................................................................66
1.6 How Is Data-Driven Fasting Different from The Fast-Mimicking Diet? ....................................................66
1.7 Would Waiting a Little Longer Be Better? ............................................................................................................66
1.8 Could Extended Fasting Harm Your Healthy Appetite Signals? ..................................................................67
1.9 Will I Be Getting Enough Autophagy with Data-Driven Fasting? ...............................................................68
1.10 Why Do People Do More Than One Challenge? .............................................................................................70
Getting Ready for the DDF 30-Day Challenge [FAQ Part 2] ......................................................................................72
2.1 When Is the Next DDF Challenge? ..........................................................................................................................72
2.2 How Do I Join The DDF Challenge? ........................................................................................................................73
2.3 What Do I Need to Buy?..............................................................................................................................................73
2.4 Would A Continuous Glucose Monitor Be Better? ...........................................................................................75
2.5 How Should I Adjust My Medications When I Start Fasting? .......................................................................76
2.6 Will DDF Work If I Have Type 1 Diabetes? ...........................................................................................................78
2.7 Should I Check My Ketones When Fasting? ........................................................................................................78

2.8 I’ve Been Doing OMAD/ADF/EF. What Should I Do in Baselining?............................................................80
2.9 Tips for Blood Sugar Testing .....................................................................................................................................81
Tracking Your Progress [FAQ Part 3] ..................................................................................................................................83
3.1 Are My Blood Glucose Levels Before or After I Eat More Important? .......................................................83
3.2 How Quickly Will I Lose Weight with Data-Driven Fasting? .........................................................................85
3.3 Should I Track My Weight When Fasting? ...........................................................................................................86
3.4 How Often Should I Measure My Waist? .............................................................................................................86
3.5 What Are Optimal Body Fat Levels? .......................................................................................................................87
3.6 What Is the Best Blood Sugar Level for Weight Loss? .....................................................................................89
3.7 How Do I Find My Personal Fat Threshold? ........................................................................................................89
3.8 What Is the Best Way to Measure Body Fat? ......................................................................................................89
3.9 Can I Lose Fat and Gain Lean Mass at The Same Time? .................................................................................90
3.10 Do I Have to Check My Blood Glucose Before Every Meal? .......................................................................91
3.11 How Do You ‘Build Your Fasting Muscle’?.........................................................................................................91
3.12 Do I Need to Track Before Every Meal or Every Day? ...................................................................................92
3.13 What Are Ideal Blood Sugar Levels for Weight Loss? ...................................................................................92
3.14 Does the DDF App Have a Lower Limit for Blood Glucose? .......................................................................93
3.15 Will I Lose Too Much Lean Mass When I Fast? ................................................................................................95
3.16 Should I Record My ‘Pre-Meal Blood Sugars’ When I Don’t Eat? ............................................................96
3.17 When Should I Check My Waking Blood Glucose? ........................................................................................96
3.18 How Often Do I Have to Test My Blood Glucose? .........................................................................................97
3.19 Will DDF Work With OMAD? ..................................................................................................................................98
3.20 What If Blood Glucose Testing Is Getting Too Expensive or Painful? .....................................................99
WHEN to eat [FAQ Part 4] .................................................................................................................................................... 100
4.1 When Should I Test My Blood Glucose After Eating? .................................................................................. 100
4.2 How Can I Integrate Data-Driven Fasting into My Daily Routine? .......................................................... 103
4.3 How Many Meals Per Day Should I Eat? ............................................................................................................ 103
4.4 How Do I Stop Snacking at Night? ...................................................................................................................... 104
4.5 Eat 'Breakfast' Like A King........................................................................................................................................ 105
4.6 If My Blood Glucose Is Below My Trigger When I Wake, Should I Eat? ................................................ 106
4.7 How to Use Your Hourly Glucose Chart ........................................................................................................... 106
4.8 How Can I Plan Ahead With DDF?........................................................................................................................ 108
WHAT To Eat [FAQ Part 5] ................................................................................................................................................... 109
5.1 Can You Eat Whatever You Want With DDF? .................................................................................................. 109
5.2 Front-Load Your Protein to Hack Your Satiety!............................................................................................... 111
5.3 Why Am I Not Losing Weight? .............................................................................................................................. 111
5.4 Plan What You Will Eat Before You’re Hungry ................................................................................................. 114

5.5 What Should You Eat After Fasting? ................................................................................................................... 115
5.6 Will Coffee “Break My Fast”? .................................................................................................................................. 116
5.7 Electrolytes and Fasting ............................................................................................................................................ 117
5.8 How Much Protein Do I Need? .............................................................................................................................. 118
5.9 Will ‘Too Much Protein’ Raise My Insulin Levels and Stop Me from Losing Fat? .............................. 119
5.10 How Should I Break A Fast? .................................................................................................................................. 120
5.11 Can I Drink Alcohol While Fasting? ................................................................................................................... 120
5.12 Should I Eat Less Protein If I Have Diabetes? ................................................................................................. 121
5.12 Aren’t Meal Choices Important Too? ................................................................................................................ 122
5.13 Do I Need MCT Oil or Butter During a Fast (Aka 'Fat Fasting')? ............................................................ 122
5.14 Do I Need Protein When I Fast? ......................................................................................................................... 123
5.15 Does DDF Work Best with A Particular Diet (e.g., Low-Carb, Keto, Vegan, Plant-Based) ............ 124
5.16 What If I’m Above My Trigger but REALLY Hungry? .................................................................................. 125
5.17 How Can I Use My Glucose to Guide How Much I Eat? ........................................................................... 125
5.18 How Can I Use My Glucose Trends to Guide WHAT I Eat? ..................................................................... 125
Winning The Mind Game [FAQ Part 6] ........................................................................................................................... 129
6.1 Quantified Mindful Eating ....................................................................................................................................... 129
6.2 The Psychological Impacts of Data-Driven Fasting ....................................................................................... 131
6.3 Hunger Is Not the Enemy ........................................................................................................................................ 132
6.4 Progress Over Perfection ......................................................................................................................................... 132
6.5 Three Steps Forward, One Step Back .................................................................................................................. 133
6.6 Follow the Trend, Ignore The Noise .................................................................................................................... 134
6.7 Fasting Can Be Stressful ........................................................................................................................................... 134
6.8 What If I 'Fall Off the DDF Wagon'? How Do I Get Back On? .................................................................. 135
6.9 DDF May Test Your Emotional Resolve .............................................................................................................. 136
6.10 DDF and Dopamine Fasting ................................................................................................................................. 136
Understanding Your Unique Metabolism [FAQ Part 7] ............................................................................................ 138
7.1 What Is A 'Good' Trigger Value? ........................................................................................................................... 138
7.2 What Is the Optimal Blood Sugar Level for Fat Burning? ........................................................................... 140
7.3 What Is a Healthy Waking Glucose Level? ........................................................................................................ 140
7.4 What Is Dawn Phenomenon? ................................................................................................................................. 142
7.5 How Does ‘That Time of The Month' Affect Blood Glucose for Women? ............................................ 143
7.6 Why Does My Blood Glucose Fall After I Eat? ................................................................................................. 145
7.7 Why Would My Blood Glucose Rise After a Low-Carb, High-Protein Meal? ...................................... 146
7.8 Will Fasting Help My Gut Health? ........................................................................................................................ 146
7.9 How is DDF Different from Zoe or Day 2? ........................................................................................................ 147
7.10 What Is the Glucose Ketone Index (Or Dr Boz Ratio)? ............................................................................... 149

7.11 Will Data-Driven Fasting Help Me Lose Weight If I Don’t Have Diabetes? ....................................... 150
7.12 How Can I Optimise My Sleep with Intermittent Fasting? ....................................................................... 151
7.13 How Much Should My Blood Glucose Rise After A Meal? ....................................................................... 152
7.14 Do I Need to Worry About 'Insulin Toxicity'? ................................................................................................ 153
7.15 How Long Will It Take to Train My Hunger? ................................................................................................. 154
7.16 What If My Blood Glucose Rises Again Before I Eat? ................................................................................. 155
7.18 Why Is My Waking Blood Sugar the Highest of The Day? ....................................................................... 156
7.19 Why Do I Get Cold When Fast?........................................................................................................................... 157
7.20 Why Do I Get Headaches When I Fast? ........................................................................................................... 157
Troubleshooting [DDF FAQ Part 8]................................................................................................................................... 158
8.1 Does Insulin Resistance Make It Harder for Me to Lose Weight? ........................................................... 158
8.2 Would Data-Driven Fasting Be Appropriate If I’m Active? ......................................................................... 159
8.3 What Should I Do If My Waking Blood Glucose Is Not Dropping? ........................................................ 160
8.4 What If My Blood Glucose Doesn't Drop Below My Trigger for The Whole Day? ............................ 162
8.5 Should I Fast When I’m Sick? ................................................................................................................................. 163
8.6 Is My Blood Glucose Meter Accurate? ................................................................................................................ 163
8.7 How will fasting affect my sleep? ......................................................................................................................... 163
8.8 Why am I Gaining Weight When I Eat More Protein? .................................................................................. 164
8.9 Is My Thyroid Stopping Me from Losing Weight? ......................................................................................... 166
8.10 Don’t Try Too Hard! ................................................................................................................................................. 166
Other Things That Affect Your Blood Sugars (Other Than Food) [DDF FAQ Part 9]..................................... 168
9.1 Many Things Affect Your Blood Sugars ............................................................................................................. 168
9.2 How Does Sleep Affect Blood Glucose? ............................................................................................................ 170
9.3 Should I Exercise?........................................................................................................................................................ 170
9.4 How Does Exercise Impact Your Blood Glucose Levels? ............................................................................. 171
9.4 Is It Better to Exercise Fasted? .............................................................................................................................. 173
9.5 How Can I Use My Glucose to Optimise My Workout Fuelling? ............................................................ 173
9.5 Why Does My Glucose Rise When I Don’t Eat?............................................................................................... 177
9.6 Can I Fast When I’m Stressed? ............................................................................................................................... 178
Moving On… [DDF FAQ Part 10] ....................................................................................................................................... 179
10.1 How Long Can I Do This For? .............................................................................................................................. 179
10.2 Maintenance Mode .................................................................................................................................................. 180
10.3 What Should I Eat During Maintenance? ....................................................................................................... 181
10.4 Should I Switch to Maintenance or Keep on Chasing My Trigger Between Challenges? ............ 181
10.5 Pause Mode ................................................................................................................................................................ 182
10.6 Should I Do Another DDF Challenge? .............................................................................................................. 183
10.7 When Is the Next Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge? ..................................................................... 184

10.8 Should I Do DDF Or the Macros Masterclass First? .................................................................................... 184
10.9 How Do I Get the Free Food Lists? .................................................................................................................... 184
10.10 Nutribooster Recipe Books ................................................................................................................................ 186
10.11 Cronometer .............................................................................................................................................................. 188
10.12 Free 7-Day Nutrient Clarity Challenge ........................................................................................................... 189
10.13 Nutrient Optimiser ................................................................................................................................................. 191
10.14 Join our Community! ............................................................................................................................................ 191
10.15 Follow Optimising Nutrition ............................................................................................................................. 192

Is Calorie Counting the Best Way to Lose Weight?
Many people try calorie counting using apps like MyFitnessPal. But sadly, very few people
achieve the long-term success they had hoped for.
• Most of us live unpredictable lives filled with family dinners, work lunches and
impromptu parties that make it impractical to weigh and measure everything we eat.
• While we can be disciplined most of the time, it’s those occasional meals, when your
calorie-tracking app isn’t looking, that sneakily undo all your hard work.
• Even if you could weigh and measure everything you put into your mouth, the
nutrition data in your app doesn’t precisely match the foods you eat.
• Your body doesn't 'burn' foods in the same way that calories are measured in a bomb
calorimeter (pictured below).
• Calorie-tracking apps don't account for the thermic effect of food, which varies
depending on the degree of processing and macronutrient profile.
• Any theoretical calorie target calculated by an online macronutrient calculator is an

inaccurate ‘guesstimate’.
• Your energy expenditure naturally adapts and changes from day to day. Your
metabolism is incredibly complex. The energy you use each day is influenced by
many factors, including,
o your muscle mass,
o exercise,
o stress,
o activity,
o age,

o overall health, and
o sleep.
• Eating is primal and instinctual. Your appetite ensures that you seek out the nutrients
you need. When you restrict calories, the part of your brain that governs your
survival instincts (i.e., your amygdala, also known as your ‘reptilian’ or ‘lizard’ brain)
perceives a starvation threat and responds to this ‘dire emergency’. Your body
responds by slowing your metabolism and driving up your hunger to ensure you eat
more next time you have access to food.
• Despite your best efforts to limit the amount you eat, if you consistently fail to
consume the nutrients your body requires, you can expect a hostile takeover by your
‘lizard brain’ as it hijacks your appetite.
• If you try to maintain a fixed calorie intake, ignoring your healthy hunger signals on
some days and eating more than you need on others, there is a real risk that your
natural and healthy appetite signals will become dysregulated.
• When you slash your energy intake by simply restricting calories without changing
WHAT you eat, your body quickly adapts to ensure your survival and:
o your metabolic rate slows,
o you produce less heat,
o you feel less energetic, and
o your involuntary activity grinds to a halt to divert energy to your heart, lungs,
kidneys, brain, and other organs essential to your survival.

While energy is always conserved, the factors on both sides of the ‘calories in vs calories out’
equation are incredibly complex and beyond our ability to precisely measure or manipulate,
even with the latest smartphone app or activity trackers.
While we would like to believe that our conscious brain is always in control and that we can
use our willpower to eat less and move more, most people are unsuccessful at self-imposed
starvation over the long term.
Prolonged fasting and very low-calorie diets eventually panic our 'lizard brain' into wresting
hunger control from our neocortex, rescuing us from what 'Lizzy' perceives as a starvation
threat.
But fear not! Data-Driven Fasting not only guides you, using the insights from using your
blood sugar as a fuel gauge, to get to know, and event make friends with, Lizzy. Data-
Driven Fasting shows you how to tame your lizard brain by giving it exactly what it needs,
precisely when it needs it.
Data-Driven Fasting is like a lullaby for a restless Lizzy—singing your inner lizard back to
sleep, reassuring it that it will receive what it needs, so that you can relax into a new routine,
optimised just for you, and thrive!

Counting Calories Can Cause Disordered Eating
If you’ve ever tried tracking calories, you already know that your lizard brain doesn’t like to
relinquish control of your appetite to a ‘smartphone’ app.
Eventually, frustration and anxiety mount when we discover that all the time and energy
we’ve invested in tracking everything we’ve put into our mouths has failed to yield the
results we’d hoped for.
Sadly, chronic food tracking can cause many people to become neurotic. A 2017 study
looking at people diagnosed with eating disorders found that 75% of participants reported
using MyFitnessPal. Disturbingly, 73% of MyFitnessPal users said their use of the app had
contributed to their eating disorder.

Simply trying to count calories to stay under an arbitrary target is a recipe for failure. The
simplistic manifesto of ‘eat less, move more’ drives many dieters into a futile cycle of restrict,
binge, restrict, binge, repeat. Without consideration of how your complex metabolism and
appetite work, calorie tracking is as archaic as using an abacus.
Your Appetite Has Been Hijacked

Sadly, our natural and healthy hunger signals have been hijacked by our modern food
environment, including:
● an abundance of highly processed foods that contain both refined carbohydrates and
fats — this combination of macros is rare in nature and drives us to overeat, much
like we once instinctively did every autumn to build our fat stores for winter survival,
● 24/7 food availability 365 days per year,
● cultural cues that lead us to associate food with fun, affection, pleasure, social
gatherings, and popularity, rather than the source of the nutrients we need to thrive,
• food advertising and marketing campaigns that promote snacking and eating, and
● ‘bait and switch’ artificial colourings, scents, and flavours that trick your appetite into
falsely believing processed food products contain the nutrients you need.
These factors contribute to the burgeoning ‘Frankenfood’ marketplace that perpetuates

overeating and weight gain. This change in our food environment has driven the ‘diabesity’

epidemic that, according to the World Health Organisation, now affects more than 422
million people.
What Is the Best Fasting Schedule For YOU?

While fasting continues to grow in popularity, there is still plenty of confusion about the
ideal routine. Is it:
● Michael Mosely's 5:2 Diet,
● Hugh Jackman's 16:8,
● Bert Herring’s Fast Five,
● Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat,
● Ori Hofmekler’s Warrior Diet,
● Valter Longo's Fasting Mimicking Diet,
● Alternate Day Fasting,
● Multi-Day Extended Fasting, or
● One Meal a Day (OMAD).
After experiencing some success, many people become passionate about their favourite
fasting routine, enthusiastically proselytising the version that worked for them. But what
about you?
● How do you know which fasting plan is right for you?
● How do you know if it’s working?
● How can you fine-tune your routine to optimise your results?

● How do you know your chosen schedule won’t lead to bingeing, thus negating all
your arduous work?
● What if you feel ravenously hungry, but it’s not ‘time to eat’ according to your chosen
fasting approach?
What Is the Best Refuelling Schedule for You?

Imagine your best friend told you that the best time to put fuel in your car was at 10 am on
the first Saturday of the month.
But they drive a hybrid hatchback, have a 20-minute commute to work, and walk everywhere
on the weekend.
Meanwhile, you drive a pick-up truck, have a two-hour commute to work, and sometimes
drive to the beach on the weekends.
Following the refuelling schedule that your friend swears by will leave you out of gas and on
the side of the road! The only sensible way to decide when to refuel is to go by the fuel
gauge on YOUR truck.
Just like fuelling your car, there’s nothing magical about someone else’s eating schedule that
means it’s also going to work perfectly for you.
You’ll get better ‘mileage’ by dialling in your fasting routine based on your fuel gauge (your
blood glucose) than you will by filling up on someone else’s clock-based schedule — no
matter how well theirs works for them.
Data-Driven Fasting helps you optimise your refuelling schedule to suit your unique
requirements and goals by giving you an immediate insight into when your body’s fuel
gauge is ‘full’ and when is it is flashing ’empty’.

What Happens When You Run Out of Fuel (or Fast for
Too Long)?
While you don’t want to fuel up too often, you also don’t want to let the tank go dry and find
yourself in an emergency, broken down on the side of the motorway.
After being pulled to safety by the tow truck, from that day on, you will always make sure
your fuel tank is filled to the brim so you never have that experience again.
This is not unlike what happens to most of us when we dabble with extended fasting (e.g.,
OMAD, ADF, multi-day fasting etc.).
While we think more deprivation is better, we don’t account for our survival instincts
intervening to ensure that we eat more than we need to, just in case we subject ourselves to
another extended fast.
Studies in rats who press a button to get food show that, when food is consistently available,
they will only press the button when they need food. However, when the food supply is not
consistent — when the button doesn’t yield food every time they press it — they go into a
frenzy of button pressing, whether they need food or not, to account for the unreliable food
availability.
This is not unlike how we behave when scrolling Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. If every
post was what we wanted the first time, we would quickly be satisfied, put down our phones,
and do something more productive.
But when we see a great post, we get a dopamine hit, followed by a dopamine deficit which
drives us to keep scrolling until we find something we love as much as that first post. The
result is that we end up scrolling for way longer than we needed to, living in the hope of
getting the same satisfaction as we did from that first hit.
To address this, Data-Driven Fasting uses your blood sugar as a fuel gauge to empower you
to know precisely when and what you need to eat. Once your body learns that it will get
what it needs when it needs it, Lizzy goes back to sleep, content there is no emergency.
Why Fasting Fails for So Many

Many people fast for days but still aren’t lean. It’s not that hard to do a multi-day fast,
especially if you carry a lot of stored body fat.
You may have seen people claiming to feel fantastic and bragging to everyone on Facebook
about their high ketone levels after days of not eating. However, you’ve also likely seen
others complaining about lack of progress as their weight yo-yos up and down. They lose

and regain the same few pounds repeatedly, with worsening body composition, often with
fat gain and loss of precious muscle.
Many fasting programs promote the idea that you can build your ‘fasting muscle’ with more
willpower and progressively longer and longer fasts. Unfortunately, many ‘by-the-window’
fasters only succeed in waking Lizzy, who responds by turning a silent or softly whimpering
hunger into a screeching aria of unrequited ‘starvation’, which is unscientifically known as the
‘Godzilla response’.
When Lizzy rampages after excessive bouts of fasting, most handlers don’t successfully tame
it with grilled chicken breast and broccoli. Instead, they offer their favourite comfort foods as
peace offerings.
Unfortunately, emergency comfort foods tend to include highly processed, energy-dense,

nutrient-poor foods like cakes, chips, peanut butter and ice cream that quickly undo your
fast by refilling both your glucose and fat fuel tanks.
‘Any fool can fast, but only the wise man knows how to break a fast.’
George Bernard Shaw
Extended fasting advocates like to point to the benefits of extended fasting and alternate-
day fasting in rodents who experience all sorts of benefits. But keep in mind that you’re not
a giant mouse in captivity.
• One mouse day is equivalent to approximately forty human days. So, to be sure you
get the same magical autophagy benefits that we see in rodent studies after three
days, you would need to fast for 120 days!
• The other difference is that rodents get the same rat chow day in and day out. But
free-living humans can choose to eat whatever they want when they refeed. No
matter how disciplined we think we are, what and how much will change when our
blood glucose levels are low and we feel we are starving!
Unfortunately, people who regularly fast typically get less of the protein and micronutrients
they require to prevent cravings, achieve satiety and optimise their health. Over time, they
risk becoming skinny fat, with an increase in body fat and a decrease in muscle mass. This
unfavourable exchange lowers their metabolism and worsens their metabolic health.
As shown in the survey below from our Data-Driven Fasting Facebook Group, many people
report numerous challenges with popular fasting protocols. The most common being
continually losing and regaining the same weight over and over. When we saw these
widespread issues, we knew we had to design a more effective fasting and feasting routine
to help people get the results they were hoping for.

The bottom line is that there is nothing magical about fasting that eliminates your need for
nutrients from the food you eat. Lizzy will always work to ensure you get the amino acids,
minerals, vitamins and energy your body requires, regardless of how much willpower you try
to exert with your conscious mind.
The ‘secret’ is to find a way to get just enough restriction to achieve the benefits of fasting
without pushing so hard that Lizzy wakes up and undoes all your hard work.
Small changes that lead to new sustainable habits that lead to long-term health outcomes
are always better than short-term fixes that leave you rebounding, ridden with guilt because
you ‘failed’ again.

How Your Body Uses the Food You Eat
Our bodies have adapted to store and use a wide range of fuels to maximise resilience in any
context. The fuel we use to produce energy can come from the food we have just eaten or
the fat stored in our bodies.
The table below shows the relative oxidative priority of alcohol, ketones, glucose and fat in
your body (adapted from Oxidative Priority, Meal Frequency, and the Energy Economy of Food
and Activity: Implications for Longevity, Obesity, and Cardiometabolic Disease by Cronise et
al., 2017).
Some fuels are more challenging to convert into usable energy than others, and the losses
are higher. This is known by several names, including,
• the thermic effect of food,
• dietary-induced thermogenesis or
• the specific dynamic action of food.
While these distinctions are typically ignored in our simplistic discussion of ‘calories in vs
calories out’, they profoundly affect how our bodies use the food we eat, how much we eat,
and how much of it we store as fat.
While we continuously burn a mixture of available fuels, our body prioritises the use of fuels
that it can’t store very much of.
• Any energy available from alcohol, like from a glass of wine, will be used first.
• Ketones are generally only present in our blood when glucose and protein are low, so
they are used as an alternative to glucose.
• ‘Excess protein’ is next in the oxidative priority line-up and is burned after alcohol and
ketones. But keep in mind that most of the protein we eat is used to maintain and
repair numerous critical body functions, including muscle protein synthesis. As a

result, we don’t typically overeat protein because it’s incredibly satiating. Most
people struggle to eat enough protein, let alone more than we need!
So, your body’s remaining dominant fuel sources are carbs and fats. While the body likes to
keep some glucose in its bloodstream, having too much reduces the amount of fat it can use
as fuel from either your diet or your body stores.
Counterintuitively, people carrying a lot of body fat primarily burn glucose at rest. So, when
we measure their respiratory quotient, or the ratio of CO2 exhaled vs the oxygen consumed,
we find that they’re working overtime by trying to burn off the glucose that’s ‘backed up’ in
their system. Because of this excess glucose, they cannot access as much of the fat stored in
their body.
Because you can only store about five grams of glucose in your blood (about a teaspoon’s
worth), a little dietary carbohydrate can quickly change your blood glucose levels. This is
especially true if your fat and glucose storage tanks are already full and can’t easily absorb
the excess energy coming in from your diet.
While we can convert sugar to fat (through a complex and highly regulated metabolic
pathway known as de novo lipogenesis), the fat in our diet is stored most of the time while
our body works to burn off glucose first. Any leftover dietary fat is easily stored as adipose
tissue for future use.
It’s not that fat is a better fuel source than carbs. While carbs are better for explosive bursts
of activity and fat is more compact and better for storage, both are simply energy sources
that your body can use. Our satiety analysis indicates that reducing either carbs or fat aligns
with a similar reduction in energy intake.

Directly after eating carbs, your glucose levels quickly rise and register on your
glucometer. The key thing to understand here is that:
• Glucose essentially ‘floats on top’ of the fat in your bloodstream and your adipose
tissue.
• You must first deplete the glucose in your bloodstream before your body can access
your fat stores.
Understanding the oxidative priority of various fuels is the key to successfully burning the fat
and glucose in your bloodstream in order to finally burn the fat on your body.
Your body’s fuel tanks are separate but interconnected; you’re always burning a mixture of
glucose and fat. As you deplete the glucose in your blood, it’s refilled from the glycogen
stores in your liver and muscles (glycogen is the fancy name for the body’s stored form of
glucose). As glycogen is depleted, your body turns to the fat in your blood for energy. Once
glucose and fat are depleted, your body can finally use its stored fat.
glucose in the blood
liver glycogen
free fatty acids in your blood
body fat

You can think of your available fuels as though they are stacked up on top of each other in
your various fuel tanks, as shown below. To burn stored body fat, you must first deplete the
alcohol, ketones, glucose, and fat in your bloodstream and liver.
The image below shows how our blood glucose and liver glycogen stores change over time
when we don’t eat.
When we go without food, we deplete the glucose in our blood and then draw down our
liver glycogen. Rather than encouraging you to fast harder and for longer, Data-Driven
Fasting teaches you to fast smarter by delaying your meals just long enough to allow your
blood glucose to drop below what is normal for you.

This technique fosters sustainable, long-term progress towards your goals without pitting
Lizzy against your conscious brain in a colossal battle over appetite control and perceived
starvation.
Instead, your body gets the nutrients it needs while glucose is progressively drained from
your liver and blood, and your body turns to stored fat for fuel without triggering the all-
too-common binge response resulting from extended fasting protocols. It’s a win-win for
you and Lizzy!
As shown in the diagram below, most have our blood glucose tanks (blood and liver) filled to
the brim. This is not just because we are consuming too many carbohydrates. It’s simply
because our downstream fuel tanks are also full. So, the energy effectively ‘backs up’ in our
system. Hence, we see elevated blood glucose.
When we wait a little longer to eat, we allow our body to use the glucose in our blood and
then the glycogen stored in our liver. Then, so long as we’re not eating in excess dietary fat,
we can access the fat that most of us want to lose in our blood and body.

For more detail, see Oxidative Priority: The Key to Unlocking Your Body Fat Stores.
Your Personal Fat Threshold

Our bodies store each respective fuel in varying quantities and use them in different ways.
Body fat is your largest fuel tank. However, it can still become full and overflow.
For reasons we don’t yet fully understand but are undoubtedly linked to biological and
lifestyle factors (i.e., ethnicity, diet, inflammation, activity levels, and biological age), some
people reach their Personal Fat Threshold at lower body fat levels than others.
As a result, most people develop Type 2 Diabetes after gaining significant excess body fat.
However, others are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes while still relatively lean.
You may have heard the term ‘TOFI’ (Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside) used to describe
people who carry their fat subcutaneously in the adipose tissue under their skin, like the guy
on the left in the image below. In contrast, others store excess fat inside and around their
organs as ‘visceral’ fat, like the guy on the right.

Body fat acts like a sponge, soaking up the excess energy. But just as a sponge can only
absorb so much water, there is a limit to how much energy your body fat can hold before it
overflows into other places it doesn’t belong (like your liver, pancreas, heart etc.).
The amount of fat your body can comfortably store on the ‘outside’ of your body (i.e., your
adipose tissue) is known as your ‘Personal Fat Threshold'. Once your body exceeds its
Personal Fat Threshold, blood glucose levels start to rise as excess energy ‘backs up’ into
your bloodstream, measured as elevated glucose levels, ketones, and free fatty acids.
If stored energy levels continue to rise, visceral fat is deposited in and around your vital
organs. While external fat stored as ‘muffin tops’ or ‘jelly bellies’ makes us cringe and reach
for the latest pop-culture diet book, it’s our internal and invisible visceral fat that’s the most
dangerous to our health.
For more detail, see Personal Fat Threshold Model of Insulin Resistance, Diabetes and
Obesity.
Why Are Blood Glucose and Insulin So Important?

Maintaining healthy blood insulin is a big deal. When someone exceeds their Personal Fat
Threshold, they risk developing Type 2 Diabetes and all the other diseases related to energy
toxicity and metabolic syndrome.

You may have heard that elevated insulin and blood glucose levels correlate with many
burgeoning modern diseases, including:
• heart disease
• stroke
• Alzheimer’s disease
• type 2 diabetes
• high cholesterol
• high blood pressure (hypertension)
• abdominal obesity
• non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
• polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
• endometriosis
• neuropathy
• cataracts
• depression
• gout
• atherosclerosis
• gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)
• obstructive sleep apnoea
• cancer

However, the key thing to note here is that insulin and blood sugars aren’t the fundamental
problems. The real issue is not insulin toxicity but rather energy toxicity.
The main action of insulin in your body is to stop all your stored energy from flowing into
your bloodstream at once. The more energy you have in storage, the more insulin your body
needs to produce to hold it back.
Once you learn to eat in a way that allows you to lower your glucose and body fat
sustainably, your body will no longer need to produce as much insulin.
For more details, see What Does Insulin Do in Your Body?
Why It’s More Important to Manage Your Basal Insulin

Than Your Bolus Insulin
Unfortunately, confusion and misunderstanding abound regarding the role of insulin in our
bodies. Optimising our blood glucose, insulin, and body fat is not as simple as reducing our
intake of carbohydrates to achieve more stable blood sugar levels.
Insulin is a powerful hormone secreted by the pancreas. Its most well-known role is to
facilitate the movement of glucose from the bloodstream into your cells, to either be used as
energy or stored away. The graph below from the Food Insulin Index Data shows how
different foods raise our insulin levels after eating (postprandial).
Notice that pure glucose (black line) quickly drives insulin up, then returns to baseline after
two hours. In contrast, foods like milk (containing a combination of fat and carbs) have a
small initial spike but keep insulin levels elevated beyond the two-hour mark.
The more significant but often overlooked role of insulin is to function as a dam, holding
back your stored energy while dietary energy is coming in through your mouth.

Monitoring insulin dosing of people with Type 1 Diabetes using insulin pumps gives us
fascinating insight into the actual magnitude of ‘basal insulin’, which is required to stop your
body from disintegrating — regardless of whether you are eating or not. In contrast, bolus
insulin refers to the increase in insulin levels after eating.
In people on a standard Western diet, basal insulin makes up about half their daily insulin
dose. However, basal insulin can be 80-90% of the daily insulin requirement for people
adhering to a low-carb diet.
A recent study of people with Type 1 Diabetes showed that when insulin wasn’t taken:
• dietary glucose raised blood sugar in the first three hours or so, while
• dietary fat initially lowered blood glucose in the short term but then caused a
significant rise after three hours.
So, rather than focusing on carbs vs fat or fasting for days at a time, you need to find a
sustainable way to reduce the amount of energy coming in from your food to allow your
body to reduce the amount of energy you’re holding in storage and thus reduce your insulin
levels across the whole day.
Because the amount your blood glucose rises after meals is closely related to what you eat,
many people think managing their blood glucose levels after meals is their end goal. They
mistakenly believe that super-stable, flat-line blood sugars will improve metabolic health and
fat loss.
Unfortunately, this misguided thinking leads some to swap carbs for more dietary fat and
less protein. This often results in a nutrient-poor, low-satiety diet that drives the pancreas to
increase basal insulin levels and thus total insulin across the day.

Simply swapping carbs for fat in an effort to pursue flat-line blood sugars and lower insulin is
a bit like measuring the volume of water in the ocean by measuring the height of the waves
at the beach.
The real solution is to reduce the area under the curve of your insulin and glucose levels
throughout the entire day, not just after you eat! As shown in the image below, dietary
carbohydrate governs the short-term rise in glucose, but dietary fat prevents your blood
sugar from dropping for longer.
The only way to get your blood sugars to drop below what is typical for you and access your
stored energy is to progressively dial back the energy from fat and carbs in your diet and
wait to eat until your body needs more fuel.
Data-Driven Fasting uses the insights from your blood sugars to guide you to fine-tune
when, what and how much you eat. Before long, you learn to select higher-satiety foods that
empower you to manage your appetite, enabling you to eat less and use stored energy for
fuel.
Once you solve the energy toxicity problem (i.e., excess stored energy), insulin toxicity and all
the other downstream issues related to your metabolic health will look after themselves.

What Happens to Glucose and Fat When We Eat?
In a recent study (Hall et al., 2020), NIH researchers fed participants a 75% fat or a 75%
carbohydrate diet for two weeks. They tracked blood glucose continually and tested free
fatty acids present in the participants’ blood after meals.
The chart below shows how free fatty acids change after a low-fat meal (plant-based low fat
- green line) vs a high-fat meal (animal-based low carb - red line). Fat in the blood decreases
more after a high-carb meal as the liver (controlled by insulin) slows the process of ‘lipolysis’
(the release of stored fat) until all incoming dietary energy is exhausted. Once our bodies
clear the carbs, stored fat is again released into the bloodstream.
The following chart from the same study shows that after eating a high-carb meal (plant-
based low fat - green line), blood glucose levels rose for about an hour and then fell back
towards the baseline, while a low-carb, high-fat meal (animal-based low carb - red line)
elicited a much flatter glucose response. Interestingly, participants lost slightly more weight
on the low-fat diet, despite their higher glucose and insulin levels.
Unfortunately, dietary advice promoted by some keto advocates (i.e., reducing carbs and
protein and increasing dietary fat) only manages the symptoms by stabilising blood glucose
after meals; it won’t necessarily help you lose body fat or reverse insulin resistance.

As shown in the chart below from our analysis of people using Data-Driven Fasting, there is
no correlation between a smaller blood glucose rise and a healthier waist-to-height ratio. So,
while overfilling your glucose fuel tank with more dietary carbohydrates than your body
requires is not a great idea, switching carbs for fat to achieve more stable blood sugars
doesn’t help address the root cause.
The charts below show that body fat (assessed by the Body Mass Index or BMI), insulin, and
blood glucose have a strong positive correlation. Therefore, the higher your body fat, the
higher your fasting blood glucose and insulin across the day is likely to be.

So, the only meaningful way to reduce your insulin and fasting blood glucose levels and
reverse Type-2 Diabetes is to reduce the amount of stored body fat you are carrying.
If you’re interested in learning more about this, see:
• How to use a continuous glucose monitor for weight loss (and why your CGM
could be making you fat), and
• How to lose weight using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and Data-Driven
Fasting.

How To Use Your Blood Glucose Monitor to Lose Weight
When you don’t eat for a while, your body begins to use up the fuel available in your
bloodstream.
As these supplies are depleted, your liver releases glucose to maintain stable blood sugars.
As glycogen stores are exhausted, your body uses a process known as ‘gluconeogenesis’ to
convert protein and even fat to glucose to refill your liver. This critical process ensures that
you always have some glucose available for explosive activity if required!
It’s only when your glycogen stores are depleted—but not entirely exhausted—that your
blood glucose starts dropping, and you finally begin pulling energy from stored body fat.
Now, it takes less insulin to ‘hold’ your fat in storage. Well done, you!
Whether you’re eating a high-fat or a high-carb diet, the key to burning stored body fat is
having blood glucose levels return below your baseline before eating again.
How To Use Your Blood Sugar Meter as A Fuel Gauge

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a simple but precise fuel gauge for your body that could be
used to tell if you:
● needed to eat (refuel) now,
● are craving those yummy leftovers in the fridge just because you know they’re there,
● are reaching for food to soothe your emotions or relieve boredom, or
● are only eating out of habit (because it’s ‘breakfast time’).
A blood glucose meter is as close as it gets to having a fuel gauge to instantly help you
understand if your hunger is real.
Unlike an Ouija Board, your glucometer never lies. It can honestly be your new BFF if fat loss
and healthier metabolic biomarkers are your long-term goals.

Maintaining blood glucose levels in the healthy, non-diabetic range is crucial to your overall
metabolic health. However, to date, our analysis of hundreds of people who have used
Data-Driven Fasting shows that:
● many people who have some experience with fasting, low-carb, or keto diets have
very stable blood glucose already, and
● manipulating your diet to achieve even more stable blood glucose does not
necessarily lead to more fat loss or improved metabolic health.
To lose fat, you need to manage your blood glucose level before you eat. With Data-Driven
Fasting, you will learn to use a glucose meter as a fuel gauge to lose fat without pushing
your body too hard.
Data-Driven Fasting uses your personalised blood glucose as a ‘trigger’. When you feel
hungry and think about eating, you simply check your blood glucose to validate your hunger
and see if you need to refuel.
• If your blood glucose is above your trigger, simply wait a little longer until it drops
below this point.
• But if you’re starving and still above your trigger, you can focus on meals with protein
and nutrients with less energy from fat and carbs because you know you currently
have plenty of fuel in your bloodstream.
Yes, it’s that simple!
Waiting until your blood glucose drops below your trigger ensures that your fasting routine
achieves a long-term negative energy balance by using the energy in the bloodstream.
As a result, you gain all the benefits of fasting, like increased insulin sensitivity, improved
blood glucose levels, weight loss, fat loss, and autophagy, without waking your survival
instincts and triggering an unhealthy binge-restrict cycle.
Hunger Training: How to Lose Weight Using Your Blood

Sugar as A Fuel Gauge
We designed Data-Driven Fasting to help you fine-tune your eating routine and find the
minimum effective dose of fasting required to get the results you want.
Data-Driven Fasting is founded on the belief that you must first deplete both the glucose
and fat in your bloodstream before depleting your stored body fat. You make this magic
happen by measuring your blood glucose levels and confirming they’ve dropped below your
trigger before you eat.

Although there’s nothing wrong with going 24 or 36 hours (i.e., skipping a whole day)
without food, you’ll sacrifice the benefits of fasting if you make poor food choices when you
eat again.
While some people believe that you can eat whatever you want, so long as you do it in a
specific “window”, the reality is WHAT you eat when you refuel is critical to ensuring that you
get the nutrients you need in the long term. If you find yourself reaching for ice cream, cake,
peanut butter or pizza after your fast, chances are you’d benefit by being a little less
ambitious next time.
The Research Behind Hunger Training

We use a process known as ‘Hunger Training’ to ensure that the time you spend fasting
doesn’t awaken your reptilian instincts and lead to poor food choices when you eat again.
‘Hunger Training’ is an exciting approach that has had some fantastic outcomes in recent
studies.
In her 2012 book, The Glucometer, Angela Ross recommended simply delaying eating if your
blood glucose is above 5.0 mmol/L or 90 mg/dL.
Note: mmol/L are the metric units for blood sugar, while mg/dL are the imperial units used in
the USA. To convert mg/dL to mmol/L, divide by 18.
A 2016 study from the University of Otago in New Zealand (Adherence to hunger training
using blood glucose monitoring) found hunger training extremely effective, with obese people
losing 1.5 kg on average over two weeks. Notably, the study also found it was more effective
for people to have a personalised blood glucose trigger rather than simply reaching ‘optimal’
blood glucose levels before eating.
In the subsequent study, published in 2017 by the same group (The Effect of Different Types
of Monitoring Strategies on Weight Loss: A Randomized Controlled Trial), lead researchers
tested hunger training against:
● daily weighing,
● calorie tracking with MyFitnessPal, and
● counselling sessions.

Hunger training using a personalised blood glucose target was the only scenario where
people lost weight. Everyone else gained weight!
People did OK when they simply tracked their weight, which appears to have made them
more aware of their eating. However, the best outcomes were achieved by study
participants who used Hunger Training with their pre-meal blood glucose levels to validate
their hunger signals and verify their actual need for food.
Counterintuitively, participants using the MyFitnessPal app saw the most significant increase
in weight of the four approaches tested.
It seems that people lose touch with their true hunger signals when they outsource their
satiety to a ‘smartphone’ app. The study also found that depression, anxiety, and stress all
worsened for participants who used MyFitnessPal.
Tracking blood glucose is empowering. It provides immediate feedback on whether you

need to eat now or wait a little longer. Validating your need for food based on your blood
glucose gives you a greater sense of control and empowerment. But most importantly,
hunger training allows you to reacquaint yourself with your healthy hunger signals.
When you see high blood glucose numbers, you can immediately think back to your last
meal and understand how your unique metabolism responds. You quickly learn which meals
keep your blood glucose higher for longer and learn to avoid them in the future. Conversely,
you also learn which meals keep you fuller for longer and allow your blood glucose to return
below your trigger sooner.

This sets you up for long term success once you reach maintenance. Participants in various
studies and our Data-Driven Fasting Challenges find they can reasonably accurately predict
their blood glucose based on their hunger cues, particularly as their blood glucose starts to
decrease to healthy levels.
Hunger Training enables us to retrain our understanding of hunger based on our body’s
actual need for fuel, and eventually without the need to be guided by our blood glucose
meter.
Why Did We Create Data-Driven Fasting?

While this research is fascinating, we realised that some improvements needed to be made.
So, we created a comprehensive system for sustainable weight loss and long-term
maintenance, with several improvements to previous methods, as detailed below.
● Correctly identifying your initial pre-meal blood glucose trigger is critical to the
effectiveness of the Hunger Training process. In Data-Driven Fasting, we use your
average blood glucose before you eat — calculated based on three days of
baselining — to establish your personalised trigger.
● When you move into the Hunger Training phase, you only need to let your blood
sugar drop a little lower than your current average (rather than meeting some
arbitrary target).
● As you start to delay your meals a little, you will progressively drain your stored
energy. Before long, you will find it easier to reach your initial trigger as your body
adapts and you deplete your excess energy stores.
● To ensure you continue to make progress, the DDF app updates your trigger based
on the average of your past seven days of tracking. Continually updating your target
ensures you continue to move toward your goals, but not at such a fast clip that you
wake your reptilian instincts and end up in a rebound binge.
● During the first week of Data-Driven Fasting, you will learn how your blood glucose
responds to the food you eat.
● Once you have achieved your goal, you can decrease the frequency of tracking to a
level you find sustainable while still using your weight and blood sugar as a guide to
prevent weight regain.

The Data-Driven Fasting Challenge
The Data-Driven Fasting 30 Day-Challenge will guide you to optimise your eating routine to
align with your unique metabolism, preferences and goals.
We will show you how to manage your blood glucose, optimise your health and burn body
fat!
The Data-Driven Fasting 30 Day-Challenge will guide you through the following phases.
Baselining
• Identify your blood glucose trigger that you will use to validate your hunger.
Your current foods & meals
• Learn how the foods and meals you currently impact you and which ones:
o spike YOUR blood glucose,
o crash your blood sugar and leave you ravenously hungry,
o leave your blood sugar and insulin elevated for days?
o make you feel satisfied, or
o allow your blood glucose to return to baseline so you can eat again sooner.
• Develop a shortlist of foods and meals that you enjoy and work for your unique
metabolism.

Hunger Training
• Delay eating until your blood glucose is below your trigger to ensure that you only
eat when you need to refuel.
• Progressively deplete your blood glucose and burn more of your unwanted body fat.
Kerb Your late-night binging
• Use your waking blood glucose to identify if you are eating too late.
Main Meal vs Discretionary Meals
• Anchor your eating routine with a Main Meal to ensure you get the nutrients your
body requires.
Optimise your routine
• Use your blood glucose data trends to optimise what and when you eat.
What you will get
• A structured 30-day program with daily lessons to guide you to optimise YOUR
fasting routine.
• The Data-Driven Fasting app to track your data and guide your progress.
• 190-page manual, complete with detailed instructions and answers to all the
frequently asked questions.
• A workbook to reflect on your learning during the challenge.
• A supportive community forum where you can share your journey and ask lots of
questions.
• Weekly Live Q&As where you can ask all your questions and get extra support.
Cost
• USD$37
When
• We are running eight Data-Driven Fasting Challenges per year.
• Check out our event schedule here to see when the next round starts.
Join
• Join the next Data-Driven Fasting Challenge now.

Data-Driven Fasting Program
Most people love the group challenge environment. However, we found that some people
prefer to take things at their own pace. So we created the Data-Driven Fasting Program.
The Data-Driven Fasting Program has all the features of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge,
including group support where you can ask your questions and the DDF app, but without the
weekly Live Q&As.
The Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Program will guide you through the following phases at
your own pace.
Baselining
• Identify your blood glucose trigger that you will use to validate your hunger.
Your current foods & meals
• Learn how the foods and meals you currently impact you and which ones:
o spike YOUR blood glucose,
o crash your blood sugar and leave you ravenously hungry,
o leave your blood sugar and insulin elevated for days?
o make you feel satisfied, or
o allow your blood glucose to return to baseline so you can eat again sooner.
• Develop a shortlist of foods and meals that you enjoy and work for your unique
metabolism.

Hunger Training
• Delay eating until your blood glucose is below your trigger to ensure that you only
eat when you need to refuel.
• Progressively deplete your blood glucose and burn more of your unwanted body fat.
Kerb Your late-night binging
• Use your waking blood glucose to identify if you are eating too late.
Main Meal vs Discretionary Meals
• Anchor your eating routine with a Main Meal to ensure you get the nutrients your
body requires.
Optimise your routine
• Use your blood glucose data trends to optimise what and when you eat.
What you will get
• A structured program with daily lessons to guide you to optimise YOUR fasting
routine.
• The Data-Driven Fasting app to track your data and guide your progress.
• 190-page manual, complete with detailed instructions and answers to all the
frequently asked questions.
• A workbook to reflect on your learning during the challenge.
• A supportive community forum where you can share your journey and ask lots of
questions.
Cost
• USD$37
When
• Join the Data-Driven Fasting Program now and start today!
Join
• Join the Data-Driven Fasting Program now.

DDF Glossary
• BG – blood glucose (same as blood sugar, but more technically correct).
• BS – blood sugar (same as BG, but more frequently used)
• DDF – Data-Driven Fasting
• EF – extended fasting or not eating for days at a time
• LBM – Lean body mass. This refers to everything other than fat mass that makes up
your total body weight, like bones, water, muscles, and organs.
• Lizzy – the personification of your lizard brain (survival instincts based in your
amygdala) that does battle with your conscious brain or prefrontal cortex.
• Macros – Macronutrients, or protein, carbs and fat
• MC – Macros Masterclass or Micros Masterclass
• NO – Nutrient Optimiser
• NSV – non-scale victory
• NutriBoosters – our suite of optimised recipes embedded into Nutrient Optimiser.
• Nutrient density – the content of essential nutrients per calorie.
• OMAD – one meal a day
• P:E – protein: energy ratio
• Protein % - the percentage of your total calories that come from protein.
• PSMF – Protein Sparing Modified Fast
• Satiety – Fullness per calorie
• TMAD – two meals a day
• TOM – time of the month, menses or period
• Trigger – the blood sugar that you need to get below to eat in DDF, calculated by the
app
• Window – a strict and rigid time-based approach to intermittent fasting
• WOE – way of eating

DDF QuickStart Guide
This Data-Driven Fasting QuickStart guide will give you a high-level overview of the process
we guide participants through in the 30-Day Data-Driven Fasting Challenges.
The Purpose of DDF

• Validate your hunger using your blood glucose as a fuel gauge.
• Retrain hunger signals to align with your need for fuel.
Baselining
• Test glucose before every meal and snack you usually eat.
• The DDF App (that we use in the Data-Driven Fasting Challenges) will calculate your
initial premeal trigger based on the average of your pre-meal glucose.
Hunger Training
In Hunger Training, you play a ‘get to know you’ game with your inner lizard brain.

You will learn to tame Lizzy, and find out what makes her happy and content. Before long,
you will find that she goes back to sleep when you give her WHAT she needs WHEN she
needs it using your blood glucose as a guide.
• If you’re not hungry -> don’t test.
• If you feel hungry -> test your BG to validate hunger.
o If BG is above trigger -> wait.
o If BG below trigger -> eat.
o If BG is slightly above trigger AND hungry -> prioritise protein and nutrients
by focusing on fuel with less energy from carbs and/or fat.
o If BG is significantly below trigger -> allow some carbs to replenish, but not
overfill, your glucose fuel tank without gravitating to fat+carb comfort foods.
• When you test your blood sugar, reflect on physical symptoms and sensations that
indicate you’re hungry (e.g., stomach rumbling, mental exhaustion, can’t think
straight, light-headed or feeling cold).
• Over time, you will learn to calibrate your physical sensations of hunger with your
blood glucose levels and understand your true hunger signals.
Stages
This table outlines the stages of the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge and when you
need to test your blood glucose.
Stage Goal pre-meal after meal waking
Baselining Establish trigger yes yes yes

Hunger training Wait to refuel until BG ≤ trigger yes
Eating Window Ensure you’re not eating yes yes
too late
Meal skipping Skip meals if BG > trigger yes
Consolidation Establish your new sustainable yes
routine
Your Personalised Trigger

• After five days of Hunger Training, the Data-Driven Fasting App will recalculate your
new trigger based on your average pre-meal blood glucose over the past seven
days.
• Progressively targeting a lower trigger will stretch you, so you continue to move
toward your goals without pushing you to the point of breaking.
• The maximum your trigger drop is = 0.5% per day. However, if you’re not able to
meet your trigger consistently, it won’t lower.
Your Fuel Gauge Lines

• Wait until BG is less than your current trigger to eat.
• If post-meal BG is above the ‘upper limit’/full line -> reduce food quantity and/or
processed carbs.
• To reduce the time between meals -> reduce dietary fat.
Progressive Overload for Your Metabolism

• The descending trigger is a crucial part of the DDF process. It’s like a progressive
overload workout for your metabolism, designed to stretch you without breaking
you.
• We don’t reach our goal all at once, but rather by small doses of stress (fasting) and
recovery (nutrient-dense eating).
• If you are hungry and your BG is below your trigger, eat!
• Waiting longer typically leads to excessive hunger, poor food choices, rebound
bingeing, burnout, and unproductive feelings of guilt and failure.
• You only need the minimum effective dose to progress sustainably over the long
term.

WHEN to Eat
• If pre-meal BG is higher earlier in the day and hungry -> prioritise foods and meals
with a higher protein % (i.e., prioritise protein and reduce energy from carbs and/or
fat) at your first meal.
• If pre-meal and post-meal BG higher later in the day -> eat more satiating meals
earlier.
• If waking BG is not lowering -> try finish eating earlier in the day.
Your Main Meal

• After a week of Hunger Training, you can adopt a Main Meal that you can eat
regardless of BG (e.g., family dinner or before or after exercise).
• You don’t need to test your BG before Your Main Meal.
• All other meals and snacks become Discretionary Meals that you eat if BG is less than
your trigger.
What To Focus on in Each Stage

The table below summarises the various stages that we will guide you through in the Data-
Driven Fasting Challenge.

Stage Limit Action When to progress
1. Stabilise < 30 mg/dL or 1.6 Reduce processed carbs When BG rise after
blood mmol/L rise after to achieve healthy meals is < 1.6 mmol/L
glucose meals glucose stability. or 30 mg/dL
2. Meal One Main Meal with Reduce the number of When average meals
timing one Discretionary times you eat per day. per day is less than 1.5.
Meal (OMAD+)
3. Protein % Slowly work up to Increase protein % by When you have
40% protein. reducing dietary fat until reached goal weight,
weight loss re- body fat, waist: height
commences. or waking glucose.
WHAT to Eat
• Once you are comfortable using your BG to guide WHEN to eat, you can use your BG
to guide WHAT to eat.
• If BG is above trigger and you are hungry -> go ahead and eat a protein focussed
meal (this can be particularly useful in the morning when most people have elevated
BG due to Dawn Phenomenon).
• If post-meal BG is typically below the upper limit -> progressively reduce your fat
intake to allow your BG to return to below baseline sooner.
• When pre-meal BG is significantly below trigger -> allow some fast-acting carbs to
bring your BG back up into the normal range to avoid binging on fat+carb comfort
foods.

• It will be hard to fail if you give your body optimal nutrients when you know you have
plenty of fuel onboard.
The End Game

The hourly glucose chart from the DDF App shows what a healthy blood glucose chart could
look like after some experimentation with what and when to eat. That is:
• Lower premeal trigger,
• Most glucose values under the upper limit (i.e., 30 mg/dL or 1.6 mmol/L above
current trigger),
• Lower waking glucose, and
• Similar premeal and post-meal values across the day.
Maintenance
You can transition to Maintenance Mode in DDF app if:
• You reach your goal (e.g., waist: height less than 0.5 and waking BG is less than 100
mg/dl or 5.6 mmol/L),
• The process is becoming overly stressful,
• You are becoming overly food-focused,
• You are struggling to reach your trigger,

• You are feeling overly hungry, weak, cold, depressed, lethargic, or
• You notice changes in libido or monthly cycles (for women).
You can always restart baselining, find your new trigger, and recommence another round of
Data-Driven Fasting when you feel you are ready or at the start of the next Data-Driven
Fasting 30-Day Challenge.
If In Doubt
• Don’t try too hard.
• Don’t overthink it.
• Follow the process.
• Less is more.
• Progress over perfection.

The Data-Driven Fasting App
We’ve designed the DDF app to be simple and self-explanatory. But this section of the FAQs
gives a high-level overview of the DDF app.
How Do I Record My Blood Glucose Values?

• Click on track -> glucose
• Use the drop-down box to select before meal, waking or after meal, then enter your
glucose value.
• If you test but choose not to eat, you can untick the ‘did/will you eat?’ slider (so the
value won’t be included in your trigger calculations).

• Reflect on and record your hunger level in the app (1 - not hungry, 5 – extremely
hungry). Before long, you will start to calibrate your sensations of hunger with your
blood sugar level.
• Feel free to make notes about how you feel at the time to provide context.
• You can also note ‘events’ such as stress, exercise, fatigue, poor sleep or pain, which
can affect your glucose levels.
• By default, the date and time will be set to now, but you can change the date (e.g., if
you want to enter historical data from your meter) and the time by clicking on the
little clock below the calendar.

How Do I Record My Biometrics?
• Click/tap on track -> biometrics and select the value you want to record (e.g., weight,
body fat or waist).

How Do I Record My Meals?
• Click/tap on track -> meal and upload a photo of your meal.
• You can name/describe your meal and note how much it raised your blood sugar and
how full you felt after the meal.
• Before long, you will develop a shortlist of your meals that you know work for your
blood sugars and help you feel full while flagging the ones that don’t work as well for
you.
How Do I See the Meals I Have Recorded?

• To see the meals you have recorded, go to navigate -> meals.
• You can sort the meals by satiety or glucose rise to see which meals you should
prioritise or avoid based on your response to those meals.
• Before long, you will have a short list of foods and meals that you know you enjoy
and work for your metabolism.

How Do I See My Biometrics?
• Go to navigate -> insights to see your progress charts (e.g., weight, waist, blood
sugars) and milestones.
• You can change the charts that show by going to profile (click on the little person
symbol in the top right) and then hiding the charts you don’t want to see.
Your Diary
• Reflecting on your DDF journey and journaling your thoughts, feelings and learnings
can be a powerful way to reinforce your learnings.
• You can make notes in Your Diary in the DDF app. Simply go to navigate -> diary.

How Do I Edit the Values I Entered?
• If you made a mistake, you can go to navigate -> history and then click on the three
dots on the right of the value to edit.
How do I change the target rate of rate loss?

• You can change the target rate of weight loss by going to your profile (click on the
person symbol on the top right) and changing the rate of weight loss in the drop-
down box.
• Changing the target rate of weight loss simply changes that green line on your
weight chart, which gives you a projection of where you’ll be in a couple of weeks.
• While your weight can jump around from day to day, seeing a trend line through
your data can help you see the long-term trends and where you’re going. When
people get a glimpse of where they could be, they are encouraged to continue.

• Changing the target rate of weight loss won’t change your trigger calculations.
• We suggest you start with 0.5% per week (easy). If you find your weight is dropping
faster after a couple of weeks, you can dial up the target to 1.0% per week to match
your actual progress.
Does It Matter If I Measure In mg/dL or mmol/L?

• The DDF app will identify your location and choose the right units for your country.
• As a general rule, people in the US measure blood glucose levels in mg/dL (imperial)
while the rest of the world uses mmol/L (metric).
• To convert mg/dL to mmol/L, simply divide by 18 (and vice versa).
• To change your units manually, click on the little person in the top right corner of the
app, go to account and use the drop-down box to change your BG units.
How Can I Add My Trigger Value to My Meter?

• If you’re using the Contour Next One meter, you can set up the app with your trigger
and upper limit.
• Go to My Care -> Target Ranges and enter your current trigger as the ‘low’ and your
upper limit (i.e., trigger +30 mg/dL or 1.6mmol/L) as the ‘After Meal or Overall High’).
• Now, when your glucose is below your trigger, the meter will flash red, and if your
post-meal glucose is above your upper limit, it will flash yellow.

• When you log a glucose value, you can tag it as before or after a meal using the app
or the meter.
• You can also go to My Reminders in the app and set up a reminder to test your blood
sugar one hour after a premeal reading.
What Is The ‘Upper Limit’ On the Hourly Glucose Chart?

• The upper limit line on the hourly glucose chart in the DDF app is set at 30 mg/dL or
1.6 mmol/L above your current trigger.
• The primary goal of DDF is to simply wait until your blood glucose is below your
trigger before eating. However, it’s also helpful to dial in what and how much you eat
so blood glucose returns below baseline more quickly.
• If your post-meal blood glucose during baselining goes above the ‘upper limit’ line,
it’s a sign that you overfilled your glucose tank.

• If your glucose rises and remains elevated, it’s a sign that you’ve overfilled your fat
fuel tank, too.
• You can think of the upper limit and your trigger as ‘lane lines’ to guide you by:
• not surpassing the upper limit after you eat, and
• falling just below your trigger before you eat.
Can I Reset My Trigger?

During each round of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge, your trigger will progressively
ratchet down – it won’t go back up. But if you click on the three vertical dots in the top right
of your trigger value, you can:
• reset your trigger – to revert your trigger to what it was at the end of baselining,
• restart DDF baselining – to restart the three-day baselining period to get a new
trigger value,
• maintenance mode – to use your blood sugar to maintain your current weight, or
• pause mode – stop your blood sugar from decreasing but remain in Hunger Training
mode in the DDF App.

What Happens if I Can’t Reach My Trigger?
If you have a party or a big weekend where you overeat, you will likely need to wait a little
longer and/or modify what and how much you eat to catch up and reach your trigger.
Before long, you will learn to think twice before overfilling your fuel tank again because you
are now aware of how long the excess energy takes to clear from your system.
Similarly, you may find it is hard to keep up with lower trigger later on if you try too hard too
early and wait longer than you need to. People who push too hard in the first couple of
weeks tend to find it hard to sustain in the final weeks of the challenge.
The Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenges have been structured to allow people to take a
few weeks off between each challenge to practice maintaining their weight. We have seven
challenges per year, with a few weeks' break in between each to allow people to recover and
practice maintaining their weight. You can see the full schedule of DDF Challenges here.
At the end of each Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, you can switch to ‘Maintenance
Mode’ and restart baselining at the start of each challenge to find your new baseline trigger.
Learning to eat in a way that maintains your weight is an important skill in your weight loss
journey. It’s impossible and rather unhealthy to always be in weight loss mode. The
Maintenance Phase will allow you to track less frequently. The DDF app will also give you a
higher pre-meal trigger to use to check whether you need to refuel.
What Are the Milestones in The App?

Celebrating small wins along the way is important. The milestones in the DDF app highlight
successful small steps along the journey to your goal.

How Do I Get the DDF App?
We use a web-based app that functions seamlessly on your phone or computer in the Data-
Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge. But before you go looking, you won’t find it on the Apple
Store or Google Play.
Once you join the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, you will be invited to join a
Premium Content section of our Optimising Nutrition Community.
Everything you need to get started is detailed in the Getting Started Guide, including setting
up the app on your phone.

What Makes DDF Different? [FAQ Part 1]
Since we started the Data-Driven Fasting Facebook Group in May 2020 and throughout the
Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenges since then, we have received a LOT of questions
from people trying to make sense of their blood glucose.
As people hesitantly began learning the hows? and whys? of blood sugar testing, we fielded
the same questions so often that we developed an extensive array of Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQs).
The essence of Data-Driven Fasting is simple and works best when you don’t overthink and
second-guess it. All you need to do is follow the guidance from your blood sugar meter.
But tracking their blood glucose tends to make people curious and full of questions. As a
result, we’ve worked hard to answer them to provide a deeper understanding to empower
you to comprehend your fascinating metabolism and tweak the process once you have
mastered the basics.
Feel free to use this exhaustive compendium as a searchable reference (Ctrl+F) as you chase
your trigger in the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge.
Once you understand the various things that can affect your blood sugars, you’ll be able to
‘hear’ the signal from your blood glucose and ignore all the noise. While the details may
appear complex, our ultimate end goal is simplicity.
Once you become acquainted with your true hunger signals and make peace with your
survival instincts, you will no longer need to rely on your blood sugar meter as a crutch.

Be patient! It’s allowed to take some time. You will reach your goal much faster if you follow
the process and don’t stress or try too hard.
1.1 How Is Data-Driven Fasting Different from Other

Popular Fasting Methods?
Most approaches to fasting encourage you to not eat for days at a time in the hope of
reducing insulin and driving autophagy.
In contrast, Data-Driven Fasting focuses on the long-term trend with shorter bursts of
restriction driven by personal intuition to ensure your blood glucose and weight are moving
in the right direction.
Like any intelligent fitness training routine that balances exercise and recovery to ensure
beneficial adaptations, Data-Driven Fasting ensures that short periods of energy deficit are
balanced with nutrient-dense feeding to achieve long-term progress. It’s much easier to
maintain your diet quality if you don’t push to the point that you are ravenously hungry. By
balancing bouts of fasting and nutrient-dense feeding, we optimise the long-term trend to
move towards our goals.
Rather than adopting an arbitrary eating window that may (or may not) work for someone
else, Data-Driven Fasting enables you to fine-tune your eating routine to your unique
metabolism, schedule, and activity levels, which vary from day to day.
Rather than focusing on open-ended deprivation, DDF shows you precisely when you need
to eat. Rather than “Data-Driven Fasting”, many people have suggested it should be called
Data-Driven Eating Using Your Blood Glucose as a Fuel Gauge.

1.2 How Is Data-Driven Fasting Different from Calorie
Counting?
Managing calories in vs calories out sounds simple, but it is incredibly difficult to implement
successfully over the long term. The reality is that all calories count, but only if you can
accurately count ALL the calories (which we can’t!).
Tracking is inaccurate, our energy needs change over time, and our lizard brain often finds a
way to trick us into eating more. Our subconscious survival instincts also don’t like to be
controlled by an external force for too long which can prompt psychological disorders to
develop.
Data-Driven Fasting respects the conservation of energy by using your blood glucose as a
fuel gauge to guide your meal timing to ensure that you are in a negative energy balance
and moving towards your goals.
Data-Driven Fasting not only uses your blood sugars to ensure you are achieving a negative
long-term energy balance while still getting the nutrients you need when you eat. This
practice helps improve satiety and avoid overeating when you don’t need fuel.
1.3 Are There Any Added Benefits from Extended

Fasting?
While there may be benefits of extended fasting, there are also potential downsides. Not
many people enjoy abstaining from food for days on end, and it can be hard to fit into a
regular family routine.
Even the most respected fasting gurus admit we don’t know what length of fasting is
required to achieve the theoretical benefits or the minimum effective dose to produce
meaningful results. Is it 24 hours? Or 36 hours? Three days? Seven days? Or maybe 14 days
to get the full benefits of autophagy?
Unfortunately, extended fasting does little to teach you to eat well when you do eat and may
lead to reduced diet quality, increased fat gain, and muscle loss over the long term. If you
cannot control your food quality when you eat again after fasting, you are trying to fast for
too long and are unlikely to be making sustainable long-term improvements.
The good news is that most of the benefits of extended fasting can be achieved by dialling in
your daily meal routine by prioritising nutrient-dense food choices when you eat to ensure a
long-term energy deficit that leads to optimal body composition. Data-Driven Fasting
guides you through optimising meal timing and enables you to focus on getting the
nutrients you need with a sustainable routine over the long term.

While there is plenty of talk about the benefits of fasting for autophagy, cancer, and
Alzheimer’s disease, very few studies are available on humans to validate these theories.
There is some research on autophagy in rodents.
However, mice aren’t tiny humans. One day for mice is equivalent to around 40 days for
humans. Therefore, the equivalent of a 24- or 36-hour fast in a mouse would kill many
people as they starve to death. Another key difference is that, while rats get the same chow
no matter how often they eat, humans have the liberty to eat whatever we want when we’re
hungry to replenish our energy stores quickly.
You will see plenty of posts on social media detailing the specific times you need to fast to
get certain benefits. Meanwhile, the experts in the field still don’t understand the optimal
length of fasting to achieve the benefits of autophagy. What we do know, however, is that
all the conditions we are most concerned about are vastly improved by achieving and
maintaining more optimal body composition.
As shown in the charts below, the relative risk of a range of cancers increases with Body Mass
Index (from Quantitative association between Body Mass Index and the risk of cancer: A
global Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies: Obesity and cancer risk).

The images below (from Waist-to-height Ratio Is More Predictive of Years of Life Lost Than
Body Mass Index) show that our overall mortality risk increases with a higher BMI.
Many people ask, “How many days should I fast?” But what you really need to know is, “How
can I optimise my normal eating to ensure that I am moving towards an ideal body
composition and staying below my Personal Fat Threshold over the long term?”

For more details, see:
• Nutrient-Dense Foods and Recipes for Cancer Patients, and
• Can Longevity Be Bought in a Bottle? Thoughts on David Sinclair’s Lifespan.
1.4 How Is Chasing Your Trigger Different from A

Fasting Window?
Rather than a rigid window of time where you eat whatever and as much as you want (or
can), Data-Driven Fasting guides you to eat when you are hungry and refuel only when your
body needs it.
If you eat more than you require, you will simply need to wait longer until you can eat next.
You quickly learn not to overeat so you can eat again sooner. While limiting the amount of
time spent eating is beneficial, many people manage to consume a lot of energy in a short
window, especially if they choose energy-dense lower protein foods.
When guided by their blood sugar, most people progress with Data-Driven Fasting with two
separate meals per day. In addition, most people find it much easier to get the protein and
nutrients they need with two meals a day compared to one meal a day (OMAD) or more
extended fasting regimes.
We see many people who transition from OMAD to two meals a day in DDF find they have
increased energy levels, greater satiety and their weight loss restarts after stalling out.
With DDF, we encourage you to ensure your meals are truly ‘window worthy’, so they
provide you with the nutrients you need to maximise satiety. Meals with less fat and carbs
will help you return to your trigger and increase satiety per calorie.

1.5 What Is An 'Extended Fast'? How Long is Too Long?
While you may be able to go for weeks without food, it may not be the best way to achieve
your long–term goals (e.g., weight loss and improving your metabolic health).
For the many people who eat all day, a couple of hours may feel relatively 'extended'. Data-
Driven Fasting will guide you to dial in your daily eating routine. Most people land on a
regular eating schedule with multiple meals each day.
There is nothing wrong with going 24 or 36 hours without food so long as you make good
choices when you refuel to ensure you are getting the nutrients you require. Nevertheless, if
you find yourself reaching for the peanut butter, nuts, cream, pizza, or other goods, after
fasting, chances are you’ll do better if you are a little less ambitious next time.
1.6 How Is Data-Driven Fasting Different from The Fast-

Mimicking Diet?
The Fast Mimicking Diet attempts to provide a small amount of nutrients while reducing
protein during a multi-day fast. Developed by Valter Longo, the Fast-Mimicking Diet stems
from a plant-based belief system that animal protein is bad.
In contrast, Data-Driven Fasting is more like a Protein Sparing Modified Fast, which prioritises
adequate bioavailable protein and more nutrients per calorie during the limited feeding
opportunities.
Maximising nutrient density (i.e., getting all the essential amino acids, vitamins, minerals and
essential fatty acids you need with fewer calories) will ensure that your body gets what it
needs during weight loss to optimise mitochondrial function, prevent the loss of
metabolically active lean muscle mass and minimise cravings.
For more details, see Secrets of the Nutrient-Dense Protein Sparing Modified Fast
(PSMF) Diet.
1.7 Would Waiting a Little Longer Be Better?

When they start with DDF, some people wonder if waiting a little longer to get a value that’s
a few extra points below their trigger would be better. If a little deprivation is good, then
more must be better, right?
However, the aim of DDF is simply to validate your hunger and induce an incremental
progressive overload on your metabolism by stretching it a little bit further each time to
ensure adaptation and recovery.

Recovery is a critical but often undervalued component of any beneficial (hermetic) stress. In
DDF, the recovery component is nutrient-dense, high-satiety eating. You don’t want to push
your hunger too far to the point that you sacrifice diet quality when you eat again.
We’re all impatient and want rapid results but pushing too hard too early tends to wake your
lizard brain, and you end up eating more than you need to and making poorer food choices.
Trying too hard in the first week will make it much harder to make consistent progress in the
final weeks of the challenge.
In the first few days of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge, all you need to do is to learn to
wait until your blood sugar is below what is typical for you. We want you to get into the
habit of testing when you feel hungry and to record it in the DDF App. Once you master the
basics, the intensity ramps up as your trigger drops to push you a little more each day,
building on your new skills that you developed in the first week.
So, if you’re hungry and your blood glucose is below your trigger, you’re good to eat—
there’s no need to be in a hurry or try too hard! In the first few days you will learn to
eliminate unnecessary snacking and find an eating routine that works for your life and
metabolism. It’s important that you get into the habit of testing your blood sugar to validate
your hunger before it gets more challenging.
As you log more pre-meal glucose values below your current trigger, your trigger will
decrease to ensure you are continually moving towards your goals of fat loss and optimised
blood glucose. If you do this consistently, your trigger will continue to drop. Don’t be in a
hurry!
1.8 Could Extended Fasting Harm Your Healthy Appetite

Signals?
Many people who have tried extended fasting have reported resultant challenges after losing
touch with their healthy appetite signals.
Although we can push through hunger, this often leaves us unable to stop eating when we
have had enough food. Your survival instincts are on the alert for starvation again, so your
appetite ramps up to make sure you eat more to ensure you never run out of fuel again.
Your body LOVES routine. It can be useful to compress your eating window to give your
metabolism and digestion time to rest while repairing and using up your energy stores
without continually being topped up. However, there is a risk that your lizard brain will get
confused if you subject it to extended periods of fasting or irregular meal timings that are
out of sync with your healthy appetite signals and need for food.

If you go out and eat a big meal late on Friday night, sleep on Saturday and Sunday, and
then go back to work on Monday with an early breakfast, your body gets metabolic jet lag.
Your circadian rhythm is affected by exposure to light and your activity and eating patterns.
This rhythm helps to calibrate the schedule that your body follows to regulate its sleep/wake
cycle, release hormones, and cue hunger.
It is ideal to eat most of your calories earlier in the day when the sun is up and your body is
primed to use the energy. Regardless of whether you practice early time-restricted feeding
(eTRF) or one meal a day (OMAD) at dinner, your body prefers a regular eating schedule.
Similarly, your healthy appetite signals can become confused when you skip eating for days
on end and then eat to satiety on others. As you push through hunger on some days, you
tell your lizard brain that food is scarce and to eat more than you need to the next time you
eat to ensure that you have enough food for the next self-inflicted famine.
Hence, we strongly recommend you develop a regular eating routine guided by your blood
glucose, not by some arbitrary time on the clock that may have worked for someone else’s
lifestyle.
1.9 Will I Be Getting Enough Autophagy with Data-

Driven Fasting?
While there is much talk about autophagy (i.e., self-eating or the body’s way of cleaning out
old and damaged cells), when we don’t eat, there is very little understanding of the actual
length of fasting required to achieve an optimal amount of autophagy.
Even the most brilliant fasting gurus admit that we don’t know the length of fasting required
to achieve benefits or the minimum effective dose of fasting to achieve meaningful results.
Do you need 24 hours, 36 hours, three days, seven days or even 14 days to get the full
benefits of autophagy?
Unfortunately, studies on yeast and worms in a Petri dish aren’t the same as humans living in
the real world, who also need to be robust and resilient to survive into old age.
Research by Valter Longo has shown that cycles of 48-hour fasting produce benefits in mice.
However, mice aren’t tiny humans. One day for a mouse is equivalent to 40 human days. The
equivalent of a 48-hour fast in a mouse (i.e., 80 days) would kill most humans.
We don’t see any fasting studies on autophagy in humans because they would be impossible
to do. The reality is that we know very little about autophagy in humans!
People often refer to the case study of Angus Barbieri, who fasted for 392 days and came out
thin and healthy. However, they fail to mention the ten young men in their 20s who died
after not eating between 46 and 71 days in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike.

Autophagy occurs all the time, to some extent. However, it is particularly active when we are
not overfed and in a negative energy balance over the long term. Too much autophagy can
be harmful if you lose precious lean muscle mass when you fast and don’t get enough
dietary protein.
Over time, this cycle can worsen metabolic health. Common symptoms of extended fasting
without adequate nutrition that can lead to weight loss plateaus include:
• loss of lean mass,
• hair loss,
• fatigue,
• dysregulation of healthy hunger signals,
• adrenal dysfunction,
• thyroid disorders, and
• an inherently lower metabolic rate.
While we know little about the benefits of autophagy in humans, we know that achieving a
more optimal body composition, body fat percentage, fasting blood glucose, and waist to
height ratio are highly correlated with a reduced risk of dying of any cause.

Cumulative small bursts of autophagy followed by nutrient-dense refeeds are more
beneficial than occasional multi-day fasts followed by energy-dense, nutrient-poor bingeing
that immediately reverses all the benefits of your self-inflicted deprivation. Data-Driven
Fasting ensures you get regular doses of autophagy as your critical metabolic markers (i.e.,
body fat, blood glucose, insulin, etc.) move towards optimal.
1.10 Why Do People Do More Than One Challenge?

Some people join their first Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge and wonder why there are
so many people repeating the process. If it works, why do people need to come back again
and again?
Here are a few responses to this question from people who have done more than one
challenge:
• To continue to lower my trigger. (Katie)
• When the momentum of the challenge ends, you can slip back without the support
and interaction. Emotional eating is still a problem for me. (Hazel)
• I’m still working on the mental aspect of accepting the inevitable if I don’t start
working on it and improving blood sugars. I purchased the Unlimited Membership
with the second round, so all the future challenges are free – so I keep coming back.
(Linda).
• It's not that it's not enough, but that one learns more with each subsequent
challenge. (Trish)
• There’s so much to learn about myself and how my body responds to different foods,
meal timings, and exercise that I am still iterating. This is my third DDF challenge and
won’t be my last. I seem to have an easier time with DDF than I ever had with

WeightWatchers, keto, or any other time I’ve attempted to make lasting lifestyle
changes. Probably because it gives me a window into my unique self. (Tim)
• I’ve lost thousands of dollars chasing my weight-loss dreams with programs that
don’t work for me. With DDF, I have no excuse. I’ve never known personal data about
myself. Now I feel in control of my weight loss. (Tara)
• I like the accountability to myself. It's easier to slip up when I don't acknowledge that.
I have made good progress with both DDF and the Nutritional Optimisation
Masterclasses. I still have a little way to reach my goal, and then I must learn how to
maintain it. Maintenance is the hardest part for me. So, I will be back to progress,
learn and consolidate. (Tammy)
It’s encouraging to see that, after experiencing the first round of the Data-Driven Fasting
Challenge, we’ve had more than two thousand people join as Data-Driven Fasting Unlimited
Members!

Getting Ready for the DDF 30-Day
Challenge [FAQ Part 2]
This section addresses many of the most frequently asked questions about preparing for the
Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge.
2.1 When Is the Next DDF Challenge?

We run seven 30-Day Data-Driven Fasting Challenges per year in our Optimising Nutrition
Community. The dates for the upcoming challenges are:
• 9 April 2022
• 11 June 2022
• 23 July 2022
• 27 August 2022
• 1 October 2022
• 5 November 2022
To see the full events schedule, you can join our community join the Optimising Nutrition
Community here and see the full events schedule (including our Macros Masterclass and
Micros Masterclass) here.

2.2 How Do I Join The DDF Challenge?
You can join the next round of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge here. Once you do, you’ll
be invited to join the next DDF Challenge and get access to all the materials, so you’re ready
to start.
2.3 What Do I Need to Buy?
Blood glucose meter
In the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, you will use your blood glucose to optimise
your intermittent fasting routine. If you don’t already have one, some nifty high-tech yet
cost-effective blood glucose meter options are available. Given that you will be using your
glucose to guide your meal timing, accuracy is important.
A great option in terms of features and accuracy is Contour Next One, which comes with a
smartphone app to help you analyse your data. It’s everything you’d hope a modern blood
glucose meter would be!
You can even program the app to give you a happy flashing green light when you are below
Your trigger. You’ll get a nice dopamine hit from the green light rather than those less-than-
optimal comfort foods!
Test Strips
Test strips are often sold separately. You will need at least 100 test strips for the Data-Driven
Fasting 30-Day Challenge and up to 200 if you want to test more regularly.

Many people are a bit squeamish about measuring their blood sugars initially, but once they
start, they love seeing the data and want to test more! This is great initially, but after the first
week or two, we encourage people to use the minimum dose of testing required to validate
their hunger and live their lives rather than worrying about the minor fluctuations in their
blood glucose.
Bioimpedance Scales
To get the most out of the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, we recommend using a
bioimpedance body weight scale that tracks your body fat.
Most modern digital scales will do this. There is a range of options that have various features.
Many people find the Renpho a great option in terms of consistency and value for money.
For more info, see What do the numbers on my bioimpedance scale mean (and how can
I manage them)?

Tape Measure
Your waist-to-height ratio is an excellent indicator of your overall metabolic health. We

recommend measuring your waist each week. A simple tape measure is an excellent
investment.
2.4 Would A Continuous Glucose Monitor Be Better?

Continuous glucose monitors (CGM) are quickly becoming the most sought-after biohacker
toy, and here are a few options available.
The Dexcom is the gold standard for Type-1 Diabetes management, and it sends a reading
to your phone or other devices every five minutes. The Freestyle Libre (used by NutriSense
and Levels Health) is cheaper but requires you to swipe the reader (or your phone) across
your sensor. A CGM is great if you already have one, but not necessary for Data-Driven
Fasting.
Keep in mind that CGM sensors are not painless to insert, and you will have to change them
every week or so. CGMs are also not cheap over the long term, especially if you don’t have
insurance coverage!
While you can calibrate the Dexcom with your glucometer, you can’t calibrate the Freestyle
Libre. Most people find that the Libre reads significantly lower than an accurate glucometer
by around 10 mg/dL. People also often see different readings when they change sensors,
which throws out the consistency and accuracy of the data, which is important for Data-
Driven Fasting.
The ultimate goal of Data-Driven Fasting is to retrain your appetite by checking blood
glucose when you feel hungry and before you eat. If you can see your current blood glucose
all the time, you’re more likely to eat even if you’re not hungry because your blood glucose
dropped below Your trigger.
Excessive focus on minimising the rise of blood glucose after meals often leads people to
low satiety high-fat foods that will slow fat loss from their body. Unfortunately, more stable

blood glucose does not align with lower body weight or healthier waking blood glucose.
That’s why we focus on reducing your pre-meal blood sugars in Data-Driven Fasting, which
allows you to reduce your insulin and blood sugar across the whole day.
Focusing excessively on your blood glucose rise after meals can drive people to eat more
low-satiety, nutrient-poor, high-fat foods. While fat does not raise your blood glucose much
in the short-term, excessive dietary fat will stop your blood glucose from returning to below
Your trigger as quickly.
Your liver will release glucose from storage into your bloodstream to keep your blood
glucose stable. Your blood glucose may even rise in anticipation of food. Some people get
confused when they check their CGM when they’re hungry and later find that their blood
glucose has risen by the time they have prepared their meal and are ready to eat.
Remember, the goal is to verify your hunger with your blood glucose. If you can see your
blood glucose in real-time, you may be tempted to refuel because your blood glucose
dropped below your trigger — even if you’re not hungry.
There are also benefits in the slight hassle of doing the finger prick and recording your blood
glucose before eating. Taking a moment to check your blood sugars works as a pattern
interrupt to ensure you are hungry enough to eat. After a couple of weeks, you will only
need to check your blood glucose a couple of times a day.
A CGM is great if you already have one or you’re a cashed-up biohacker data geek, but it’s
not necessarily better for Data-Driven Fasting. We’d rather you avoid the confusion that
seeing your blood glucose in real-time often causes.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out:
• How to use a continuous glucose monitor for weight loss (and why your CGM
could be making you fat),
• Glucose Revolution by Jessie Inchauspe (the Glucose Goddess): Review, and
• How to lose weight using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) and Data-Driven
Fasting.
2.5 How Should I Adjust My Medications When I Start

Fasting?
As a general rule, you should continue taking your medications throughout the DDF
Challenge.

Many people are on metformin (or berberine), which can help reduce blood sugars, which is
a symptom of Type 2 Diabetes or insulin resistance). However, In the DDF Challenge, we
focus on your pre-meal blood sugars to address the root cause (excess body fat).
Medications such as injected insulin will help manage the symptoms of Type 2-Diabetes like
elevated blood glucose but will do little to reverse the underlying cause (energy toxicity).
If you take any diabetes-related medications (e.g., injected insulin, sulfonylureas or glipizide
that encourage your pancreas to produce more insulin), you should pay particular attention
to your blood glucose as you extend the time between meals.
Many people find they can progressively dial back their diabetes medications as they
continue with Data-Driven Fasting. However, this needs to be done progressively and
carefully.
Work with your healthcare team to adjust your dosing to ensure that your blood glucose
doesn’t go lower than you feel comfortable (e.g., below 4.0 mmol/L or 72 mg/dL). Not only
will you feel unwell below this level, but you will also want to eat anything and everything
until your blood glucose returns to normal.
Because insulin works in your body to hold body fat and glycogen in storage, injecting
insulin to reduce blood sugars can make it harder to lose unwanted body fat. Excess injected
insulin causes your body to hold fat and glycogen in storage, making you hungrier. As your
blood sugar reduces and your body starts to burn off your excess body fat stores, you may
need to dial back your basal and bolus insulin.
A predictable routine is critical, even more so if you take diabetes medications. If you
radically change your eating pattern by skipping a whole day of eating or engaging in a
multi-day fast, your insulin needs will plummet, and you will risk low blood glucose
(hypoglycaemia). In contrast, Data-Driven Fasting will guide you to make incremental
changes to your eating routine, which will allow you to dial back your medications slowly.
During this transition period, it may be prudent to dial back your insulin dosing and allow
your average blood glucose to run a little higher to avoid lows. Once your glucose variability

reduces, you will be able to tweak your insulin dosing to maintain lower average blood
glucose.
2.6 Will DDF Work If I Have Type 1 Diabetes?

Data-Driven Fasting has been heavily inspired by watching my wife Monica’s closed-loop
CGM-insulin pump system that adjusts insulin dosing based on blood sugar data from her
CGM.
Many people with Type 1 Diabetes have great success with the Data-Driven Fasting
approach, with significant reductions in weight and insulin requirements.
It doesn’t make sense to eat if your blood sugar is high and if you have plenty of energy
already in your bloodstream. However, you can ‘cheat the system’ and rapidly bring your
blood glucose down with injected insulin.
Rather than injecting more insulin to bring your blood sugars below Your trigger, Data-
Driven Fasting will encourage you to wait a little longer to eat.
2.7 Should I Check My Ketones When Fasting?

As you fast for longer, your blood glucose will tend to decrease. This is because your blood
ketones (BHB) increase as your body starts to burn stored fat for fuel. The chart below shows
how blood glucose and ketones change during a seven-day fast - blood glucose trends
downward as ketones rise.
However, you don’t need to be measuring ketones to check that you are burning body fat. If
your blood glucose is progressively decreasing, you will be using more fat for fuel.

It’s also important to note that, over the longer term, you don’t need high ketones to be
burning body fat! As your metabolic health improves, you will likely see your ketone levels
decrease as the energy in your bloodstream from fat, glucose, and ketones all decrease.
As shown in the chart below from Optimisers in our Masterclass, people tend to see their
blood ketone values increase for a few weeks. But after that, they continue to decrease as
they continue to lose weight.
Ketosis is simply an alternative pathway to fuel your brain and vital organs when you don’t
have enough oxaloacetate from carbohydrates and protein to burn the fat in the Krebs cycle.
Virta’s study results also show blood ketones are initially elevated in the first few weeks
before returning to baseline as people lose weight and reverse their diabetes.
As with many things, more is not necessarily better when it comes to ketones. Blood ketones
(BHB) that we measure are the storage and transport form of ketones. On the other hand,
your level of breath ketones (i.e., breath acetone or BrAce) is a better indicator of whether
you are burning ketones rather than forcing them to build up in your bloodstream. If your

goal is to understand if you use ketones for energy rather than storing them, tracking your
breath acetone may be more helpful. But again, you don’t need to worry about ketones to
confirm you are using body fat if you are chasing a lower premeal blood sugar.
While there has been plenty of excitement over keto in recent years, tracking your blood
ketones is unnecessary and doesn’t provide you with actionable data because there is no
way of knowing if the ketones are from your body fat or the fat in your diet.
Sadly, tracking ketones often leads people to consume more fat than they require in the
pursuit of ‘optimal ketosis’. Ketone test strips are also expensive. So, unless you are curious
because everyone else is doing it or you have some excess cash to burn, save your money
and skip the blood ketone testing!
2.8 I’ve Been Doing OMAD/ADF/EF. What Should I Do in

Baselining?
There are some nuances to the DDF process depending on previous eating habits.
Some people come to Data-Driven Fasting because their One Meal a Day (OMAD), Alternate
Day Fasting (ADF), or Extended Fasting (EF) routine has stopped working for them. Stalling
out on longer fasting routines is common due to a slowed metabolic rate and a loss of
muscle mass due to inadequate protein intake.
While it is possible to get your protein requirements in one meal, it is not easy. More
frequent eating is less stressful for your body (i.e., less cortisol and less digestive hassle).
Many people find their weight loss restarts when they get more than one meal a day.
As a minimum, we recommend hitting the minimum daily protein shown in the table below
in the lead-up to the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge. You can track your intake in
Cronometer to check. If you want to dial in your macros, you may find our Macros
Masterclass useful once you’ve completed one round of Data-Driven Fasting.

height (cm) height (inches) female protein (g) male protein (g)
150 59 56 76
155 61 60 81
160 63 64 86
165 65 68 92
170 67 72 98
175 69 77 103
180 71 81 109
185 73 86 116
190 75 90 122
195 77 95 128
200 79 100 135
205 81 105 142
210 83 110 149
If you have been undereating protein for a while, don’t be surprised if your body weight
goes up a little until your muscles hoover up the protein they need. However, if you look at
your waist or body fat, you may find that they’re decreasing in number.
Remember, metabolic health is not just about having a lower body weight. This is
demonstrated by the before and after photo of the same person at the same weight but with
vastly different body composition.
2.9 Tips for Blood Sugar Testing

● While most people use their fingertips to test blood sugar, they can be very sensitive.
You can get blood from any less sensitive location, including the sides of your finger
or the outside of your forearm, which is less sensitive. You may get slightly different
values when you test on different fingers or parts of your body. This is not an issue so
long as you are consistent.

● Make sure you have a sharp lancet (they hurt less). You don't have to change it all the
time, but try a new lancet if you feel it's hurting more after a few weeks.
● Some meters like the Contour Next One will allow you to add more blood if you
don't get enough the first time to avoid wasting a strip.
● You only need enough blood to get a test result, so dial back the lancet depth to
minimise discomfort but still get enough blood.
● Make sure you don't have food on your fingers when you test.
● Having warm hands and being well hydrated will also help. Try shaking your hands to
bring more blood to your fingers first.
● Before you prick yourself, it’s a good idea to rub your skin a little bit to mobilise the
blood. This allows you to have a lower setting on your lancet and potentially less
discomfort.
● If you get a blood glucose reading that is significantly different from what you
expected, you can retest again. After that, just accept it and move on.
● There are many other places where you can test your blood sugars (e.g., forearm, side
of your finger etc.) that are less sensitive than your fingertips.
● If you don’t initially get enough blood, you can push down with the lancet to get a
little more blood without pricking again.

Tracking Your Progress [FAQ Part 3]
This section of DDF FAQs addresses the most common questions that arise when people
start tracking their blood sugars in pursuit of weight loss, reduction in body fat, diabetes
reversal or improved body composition.
3.1 Are My Blood Glucose Levels Before or After I Eat

More Important?
Most people focus on limiting the rise in their blood glucose after eating by lowering
carbohydrates and sometimes even protein. However, it’s the average of your blood glucose
across the whole day that really matters. And as you will see, the most effective way to
reduce your average glucose across the day is to manage your glucose levels before you eat.
The period after you eat is only a tiny portion of the day. High-fat meals that only cause a
slight rise in blood sugar after eating can keep blood glucose elevated for longer. Thus,
increasing fats may not help you achieve a long-term reduction in your average blood
glucose across the day, nor will it help with fat loss or reduce your insulin levels.
As shown in the diagram below, while carbs raise blood sugars and insulin over the short
term, dietary fat will keep your blood sugars elevated over the longer term and prevent them
from falling. Thus, to reduce the area under the curve of insulin and blood glucose, you
need to dial back fat and/or carbohydrates and wait a little longer to eat until your blood
glucose drops below what is typical for you.

Modifying your diet to reduce the rise in blood glucose after you eat is only one step in the
journey. Delaying meals until your blood glucose is below Your trigger ensures your average
blood glucose decreases and your stored body fat is used for fuel.
In the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge, we will guide you through the following steps to
achieve this:
1. Dial back refined carbs to achieve non-diabetic blood glucose variability. Your blood
glucose should not rise more than 30 mg/dL or 1.6 mmol/L after most meals.
2. Fine-tune your meal timing using Data-Driven Fasting to continue the fat-loss
journey.
3. If you are not achieving weight loss or your waking blood glucose is not decreasing
with a Main Meal and a Discretionary Meal, look to increase your protein percentage,
food quality, and nutrient density by reducing the foods that provide the most fat in
your diet.
Step Limit Description When to progress
1. Stabilise blood < 30 mg/dL or 1.6 Reduce processed When typical BG rise
glucose mmol/L rise after carbs to achieve after meals is < 1.6
meals healthy blood glucose mmol/L or 30 mg/dL
stability.
2. Meal One Main Meal Reduce the number of When average meals
timing/intermittent with one times you eat per day. per day is less than
fasting 1.5.

Step Limit Description When to progress
Discretionary Meal
(OMAD+)
3. Increase protein % Work up to at least Slowly increase protein When you have
by dialling back fat 40% protein. % (by reducing dietary reached goal weight,
fat) until weight loss body fat, waist:height
re-commences. or waking glucose.
3.2 How Quickly Will I Lose Weight with Data-Driven

Fasting?
The rate of weight loss with Data-Driven Fasting can be quite rapid if you can wait until you
are below your pre-meal trigger to eat most of the time. Nonetheless, we’d rather you form
consistent habits than compete for the top of a short-term weight-loss leader board.
Greater compliance will lead to faster weight loss. However, it’s critical to find a sustainable
routine rather than pushing so hard that you find yourself bingeing due to excessive hunger,
which will derail your long-term progress.
As shown in the chart below, some people lose more than 1.0% of their weight each week.
However, if you’re consistently losing more than 0.5% per week, there’s no need to try
harder.
For more details, see:
• Results of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge – January 2022
• Results of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge – October 2021

3.3 Should I Track My Weight When Fasting?
You don’t have to track your weight every day. Because the amounts of water and food
change in your gut, your body weight can change daily. While knowledge is power, some
people find that tracking their weight AND blood glucose simultaneously becomes a mental
struggle.
Some people love all the data and find daily weighing keeps them accountable. However,
others find the data is too much effort to collect. They may overthink the day-to-day
fluctuations, which can lead to burnout.
It’s ideal to track your weight each morning to see the trends. But if you find this to be
challenging, you only need to log your weight once per week to ensure you are making
progress over time.
3.4 How Often Should I Measure My Waist?

As shown in the chart below, a waist-to-height ratio of less than 0.5 indicates that your
metabolic health is approaching optimal. Your waist measurement doesn’t change quickly, so
you only need to measure it weekly. We recommend you track your waist circumference
each week on Sundays.

Measure your waist just above your belly button at the narrowest point of your abdomen, in
line with your elbows. The precise location and whether or not you choose to suck in your
gut or let it all hang out don’t matter too much.
Given that our goal is to track long-term progress, all that matters is that you measure
consistently.
3.5 What Are Optimal Body Fat Levels?

Your pre-meal blood glucose will continue to decrease as you reduce body fat levels to
below your Personal Fat Threshold. Your blood glucose meter can provide an insight into
whether you are carrying excess fat, regardless of your weight.
A bodybuilder may still be healthy despite having a high Body Mass Index (BMI) so long as
they are not carrying too much fat. But even bodybuilders can gain too much fat in their
pursuit of strength and see their blood glucose rise. Being strong doesn't necessarily mean
you have excellent body composition or metabolic health.

Data-Driven Fasting is a great way to ensure that someone looking to gain strength doesn’t
gain excessive body fat that will compromise their health.
As you reduce your body fat levels to fitness and athlete levels, you will find that your blood
glucose naturally starts to decrease towards optimal levels.
Description Women Men
Essential fat 10-13% 2-5%
Athletes 14-20% 6-13%
Fitness 21-24% 14-17%
Average 25-31% 18-25%
Obese 32+% 25+%
The pictures below show what this looks like visually.
Aside from losing body fat, it’s also important to do whatever you can to gain lean mass (i.e.,
muscle) through exercise activities like resistance training. It’s your lean mass that is
metabolically active and 'burns calories'. Like a fuel-efficient race car or sprinter, resistance
training will help increase your power-to-weight ratio, so you use energy from food more
efficiently.
People who lose excessive amounts of lean mass during fasting often find it extremely hard
to sustain their weight loss because their metabolic rate has slowed. They must maintain a
VERY low-calorie intake to avoid rebound weight gain.
As mentioned in this video by Dr Ted Naiman, morbid obesity and Type2 Diabetes are on the
opposite side of the spectrum from a lean and muscular bodybuilder.

While it’s not necessarily healthy or sustainable to have extremely low levels of body fat,
many of us need to move in that direction by losing body fat and gaining lean muscle mass.
3.6 What Is the Best Blood Sugar Level for Weight Loss?
Generally accepted fasting (i.e. first thing in the morning) and post-meal blood glucose
ranges are shown in the table below. Once your waking blood glucose is below 100 mg/dL
or 5.6 mmol/L, you can rest assured you are under your Personal Fat Threshold and minimise
your risk of diseases associated with energy toxicity and metabolic syndrome.
fasting after meal HbA1c
mg/dL mmol/L mg/dL mmol/L %
Normal < 100 < 5.6 < 140 < 7.8 < 6.0%
Pre-diabetic 100 – 126 5.6 to 7.0 140 to 200 7.8 to 11.1 6.0 to 6.4%
Type 2 diabetic > 126 > 7.0 > 200 > 11.1 > 6.4%
3.7 How Do I Find My Personal Fat Threshold?

The only way to find your Personal Fat Threshold is to lower your weight to the point that
your waking glucose is in the normal healthy range when you are weight-stable. For some
people, this may be at a waist-to-height ratio of 0.5, while others may need to go a little bit
lower.
Once you reach your goal weight, you can switch to ‘Maintenance Mode’ in the DDF app. If
you regain weight in the future, you can restart the process to get your waist and glucose
levels back in this range.
3.8 What Is the Best Way to Measure Body Fat?

Tracking your body fat percentage helps ensure you lose fat rather than precious and
metabolically active lean muscle mass. The last thing you want is to lose muscle and end up
looking like a fat skeleton with a low metabolic rate that has to maintain an extremely low-
calorie intake to keep weight off!
There are many ways to measure body fat. None are perfectly accurate, but they’re still
helpful to track progress.
● A DEXA scan is the most accurate but expensive and inconvenient, so you are unlikely
to do it regularly.

● The Navy Fat calculator is surprisingly accurate and aligns with DEXA scan
measurements. It is based on your waist, hip, neck, and weight measurements.
● The most convenient way to measure body fat is through bioimpedance which can be
measured with most modern scales. These may not be as accurate as DEXA but will
ensure you are heading in the right direction over the long term.
If you look leaner and healthier, you probably are. In our Macros Masterclass, we use your
body fat and lean mass measurements to dial in your macronutrient balance using our Smart
Macros Algorithm. However, body fat measurements are not critical for Data-Driven Fasting.
Your waist measurement and selfies will be adequate if you don’t already have a
bioimpedance scale.
3.9 Can I Lose Fat and Gain Lean Mass at The Same Time?
While most people tend to drop lean muscle mass when losing weight, we have seen several
people manage to gain lean mass while losing fat mass if they significantly increase their
protein intake.
The best ways to minimise the loss of lean mass while losing weight are:
● consuming enough dietary protein,
● resistance training to tell your body to maintain its muscles, and
● getting good sleep, resting adequately, and reducing stress.
See Secrets of the Nutrient-Dense Protein Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF) Diet for more
details.

3.10 Do I Have to Check My Blood Glucose Before Every
Meal?
While some people love ALL the data, we have designed Data-Driven Fasting to allow people
to use the minimum effective dose of testing and tracking to maximise long term
sustainability.
In the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, you can identify your ‘Main Meal’ that you
know you eat at a regular time each day, like dinner with your family or a protein-packed
breakfast. You can then use your blood glucose to decide whether you eat at other times
throughout the day (i.e., ‘Discretionary Meals’).
But remember, while you can lie to your calorie tracking app, you can’t cheat on your blood
sugar. Once you come back to it, it always tells the truth based on what you have been
eating. So, it’s always ideal to track your premeal blood sugar as often as you can. This
allows you to take evasive action before things get out of hand.
3.11 How Do You ‘Build Your Fasting Muscle’?

Lots of people talk about ‘building their fasting muscle’ as if they just need to do it longer
and harder to get more benefits. But sadly, the majority of people go too hard too early and
burn themselves out before developing a sustainable routine that will provide long-term
benefits when it comes to fasting and exercise.
To develop a successful fasting routine, you should ensure you are doing the right exercise
at the right time, not overdoing it, recovering adequately with nutrient-dense refuelling, and
getting the minimum effective dose by measuring your progress. We strongly believe it’s
crucial to build Tiny Habits and celebrate small successes yielding sustainable lifestyle
changes that lead to achieving your ultimate goal.
Data-Driven Fasting provides a systematic approach to ensure you address these critical
elements to ensure long-term sustainable success.
● By measuring your waking and pre-meal blood glucose across the day, you ensure
you are doing the right exercise by finding the right balance between delaying your
first meal and finishing eating earlier.
● By prioritising high-satiety nutrient-dense food, you maximise your recovery from

fasting, so you are ready to fast again sooner.
● Waiting to eat when your glucose falls just below Your trigger ensures you are
getting the minimum effective dose without overdoing it to the point that you will
binge due to rebound hunger.

● By tracking your blood glucose, weight, and waist measurements, you will ensure you
are making progress and rewarding yourself for your effort as you progressively
lower Your trigger.
3.12 Do I Need to Track Before Every Meal or Every Day?

You don’t need to log every meal for Data-Driven Fasting to work. However, you will get the
most benefit from measuring more often to guide your routine and learn about your unique
metabolism, especially when you start out. After a while, you will build new habits and get a
better appreciation for your true hunger signals.
You may want to lock in your Main Meal and only test before Discretionary Meals. If you are
on holiday or can’t test for a few days, you can pick up where you left off without feeling like
a failure.
You will quickly find out if you have overfilled your fuel tanks while you weren’t tracking. If
you have already drained a little bit of your excess fat stores, it won’t take as long to catch
up to your trigger.
3.13 What Are Ideal Blood Sugar Levels for Weight Loss?
There is no absolute value that corresponds to fat burning. You are constantly using a
combination of fat and glucose. As your blood glucose drops, you will be using more fat. If
you are not overdoing dietary fat, the fat you are burning will be from your body.
The chart below shows a compilation of pre-meal vs waking glucose values from people who
have completed the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge showing that a lower premeal
blood glucose correlates with a lower waist to height ratio. As you chase a lower premeal
glucose level in the challenge, you should expect to see a reduction in body fat and your
waist circumference.

The charts below show how premeal glucose (in mmol/L and mg/dL) corresponds with
waking glucose, a critical metabolic health marker.
3.14 Does the DDF App Have a Lower Limit for Blood
Glucose?
Some people see their blood glucose start to fall quite quickly when they begin Data-Driven
Fasting and wonder how low is too low and if the DDF app has a lower glucose limit.
While the DDF app doesn’t have a lower limit for blood glucose, your body does.
The chart below shows the range of blood glucose values we see in people undertaking the
Data-Driven Fasting Challenge. Some people see their blood sugar levels below 70 mg/dL or
3.9 mmol/L. However, most people will have reached their weight loss or body fat goals
before they reach this point.

Once you reach a waist to height ratio of less than 0.5, a waking glucose of less than 100
mg/dL or 5.6 mmol/L, we suggest you transition to maintenance unless you really want to
get super lean and drive your body fat to potentially unsustainable levels.
This is not recommended, particularly if you are feeling particularly food focussed, weak or
tired. If you feel unwell (e.g., overly lightheaded, weak, etc.), you should eat.
Because Data-Driven Fasting guides people to delay or skip their meals rather than fasting
for days at a time, we don’t tend to see people having the same issues that are more
common with prolonged fasting or aggressive dieting.
While these values are much lower than what passes for ‘normal’ in a world that is awash
with diabetes, there is no issue if you are not taking medications that further decrease blood
glucose (e.g., injected insulin) and feel OK.
As you chase your premeal blood glucose trigger, your body will adapt to using fat rather
than glucose to fuel. So you’re much less likely to be symptomatic at a lower blood glucose
level.
But if it’s getting hard, we recommend transitioning to Maintenance Mode in the DDF app
until your lizard brain settles down and you are no longer food-focused. You can always
jump back into another round of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge when you feel you are
ready.
The break between challenges is an integral part of the process to allow your body to find a
new homeostasis and allow their blood sugar to be refilled from the stored energy in your
body and a little bit more food. So don’t be concerned if you find that your new trigger is
slightly higher than where you left off at the end of the last challenge. While your glucose
may not fall much more as you chip away at your trigger for 30 days, you will continue to use
your stored energy for fuel.

3.15 Will I Lose Too Much Lean Mass When I Fast?
While many people simply focus on weight loss, loss of metabolically active lean mass (i.e.,
your muscles and organs) is an unfortunate reality for people maintaining a long-term
energy deficit.
Encouraging people to fast for extended periods and telling them that nutrients and protein
don’t matter, and then saying that they shouldn't binge when they refuel is like taking
someone to the top of a mountain where the air is thin, making them hold their breath for
longer than they ever have, and telling them not to gasp when they take their next breath.
If you want to build strength and resilience in anything, you need to increase the intensity at
a sustainable rate (i.e., progressive overload) while ideally using some form of measurement
to ensure you are making incremental progress and progressively adapting.
Data-Driven Fasting encourages people to track their body fat in the DDF app, using at
home bioimpedance scales to understand their long-term trend in fat loss vs lean mass.
While bioimpedance scales are not perfectly accurate, tracking changes in body composition
over time can still be helpful and cost-effective. You should also introduce some form of
resistance training to signal to your body that you want to grow and maintain muscle despite
losing fat.
If your lean mass is trending down faster than you would like it to or your body fat
percentage increases, you can review your diet to ensure you are consuming adequate
protein. If you’re interested in dialling in your macronutrient balance, you can try our Macros
Masterclass as the next step after you finish the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge.

3.16 Should I Record My ‘Pre-Meal Blood Sugars’ When I
Don’t Eat?
If you test and decide not to eat, you can uncheck the ‘did/will you eat?’ box in the DDF app
(as shown below).
You may find you take a few extra blood glucose readings while waiting for your blood
glucose to drop below your current trigger, especially in the first few days of Hunger
Training.
In time, you will learn how your hunger symptoms align with your blood glucose without
having to go to the effort of testing until you are actually hungry.
3.17 When Should I Check My Waking Blood Glucose?

While you can track your waking glucose every day in the DDF app, you only really need to
do it:
• during baselining,
• in the final three days of the challenge, and
• during the eating window stage (days 11 to 17).
Other than these times, feel free to skip checking your waking glucose if it’s a hassle or if you
find it confusing.
In terms of the time of the day, it should be taken before you eat or drink anything. Some
people like to take it before getting out of bed, but you don’t have to. We suggest you
integrate it with your morning routine of going to the toilet, weighing yourself, taking your

morning blood sugar, and making your coffee or tea. All that really matters here is
consistently integrating it into your routine rather than the exact time.
3.18 How Often Do I Have to Test My Blood Glucose?

For the most part, you should only test your blood glucose to validate hunger before eating.
This could be as little as twice a day, or even less if you identify your Main Meal regardless of
your blood sugar. We also like you to test your post-meal glucose during baselining and
your waking glucose at the start, during, and end of the eating-window stage.
The table below shows the recommended minimum effective dose of testing and tracking
that we recommend during the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge. Additional blood
sugar readings are optional. Some people like all the data, but we eventually recommend
adopting the minimum effective dose of testing to guide your eating schedule.
day stage waking pre-meal after meals weight body fat waist
1 x x x x x
2 baselining x x x x x x
3 x x x x x
4 x
5 x
6 x
7 hunger training x
8 x
9 x x x x
10 x
11 x x
12 x x
13 x x
14 eating window x x
15 x x
16 x x x x x
17 x x
18 x
19 x
20 x
21 meal skipping x
22 x
23 x x x x
24 x
25 x
26 x
27 consolidation x
28 x x
29 x x

day stage waking pre-meal after meals weight body fat waist
30 x x x x x
3.19 Will DDF Work With OMAD?

While we usually find people settle on a schedule of three/two or two/one meals per day,
DDF will also work with one meal a day (OMAD). If you are comfortable skipping full days of
eating, you can treat your one meal a day as your Discretionary Meal and simply log your
pre-meal blood glucose when you eat it. If you can’t reach your trigger for a day during your
usual mealtime, you could choose to skip it and wait for your blood glucose to come down
tomorrow.
However, keep in mind that food quality becomes even more critical with OMAD. So you
should do what you can to maximise food quality and nutrient density to ensure you get
what your body needs long term. For example, our analysis has shown that we are able to
consume a lot more calories per day on a higher fat, lower protein diet that is more energy-
dense.

Before resorting to skipping full days of eating, we recommend you increase your protein %
to at least 40% (by dialling back dietary fat and carbohydrates). Once you do this, you’ll find
yourself fuller after each meal and able to eat two more times a day while still losing weight.
For more details, see Low Energy Density Foods and Recipes: Will They Help You Feel
Full with Fewer Calories?
3.20 What If Blood Glucose Testing Is Getting Too

Expensive or Painful?
While using your blood glucose is the most powerful way to understand if you need to
refuel, you may find testing becomes expensive, too painful, or hard to do consistently. If you
find this is the case for you, there are several options:
● Make sure you wait until you are hungry to test. Over the first week or so, you will get
a feel for when your blood glucose is lower. Testing will become less of a novelty, and
you will test less frequently. If you’re only eating two or three times a day, you only
need to be doing two or three tests.
● It's ideal to have regular mealtimes rather than eating haphazardly based on blood
glucose. After a few days of Data-Driven Fasting, most people find they eliminate
snacking and drop back to a regular schedule of two or three meals a day.
● In the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, we guide people to lock in their Main
Meal (the meal you eat regardless of blood glucose) and treat other meals as
discretionary based on your blood glucose.
● If you typically have three or four meals per day and find your blood glucose elevated
before eating one of those meals, skip that meal and don’t test until the next meal.
● While tracking waking glucose is helpful to ensure that you are not eating too late, it
can also be confusing when your insulin levels drop, and you are losing weight
despite a rise in waking blood glucose. Feel free to skip the waking blood glucose
testing if that is the case. You can always recheck your waking glucose once you are
weight stable.

WHEN to eat [FAQ Part 4]
This section of the DDF FAQs explains how your body uses the food you eat and how your
glucose and fat fuel tanks interact.
4.1 When Should I Test My Blood Glucose After Eating?

In Data-Driven Fasting, testing 1 – 2 hours after you start eating will be fine. Given that the
main focus is on premeal blood sugars, you don’t need to stress about the exact timing.
After you log a few post-meal blood glucoses, the trend in your hourly glucose chat will give
you an understanding of whether you need to dial back your carbohydrate intake to manage
hunger when your blood glucose comes back down. The rate your blood glucose rises and
falls after a meal will depend on what you are eating and your unique metabolism.
As shown in the chart below, blood glucose rises quickly after a high-carb, low-fat meal
(green line), while it will increase more slowly and incrementally after a high-fat meal (red
line). If you’re curious, you could test before and then one, two and three hours after you eat
to see when your blood sugar peaks with the meals you typically eat.

In DDF, all we are trying to do is:
● find which meals raise your blood glucose the most to determine which ones you
might need to avoid in the future,
● identify when you are most insulin sensitive vs insulin resistant to optimise meal
timing (e.g., if your blood glucose rises the most at night and less in the morning, you
might benefit from shifting your meals earlier), and
● understand if you need to worry about carbs raising your blood glucose or if you
should just be focusing on more satiating nutrient-dense foods and meals.
You don’t need to be too concerned unless a meal raises your blood glucose by more than
1.6 mmol/L (30 mg/dL) AND your blood glucose rises above the normal healthy range, and it
takes a long time to drop below your trigger. If this is the case for you, you should consider
eating less of that meal next time.
While the blood glucose rollercoaster is bad, flat-line blood glucose should not be your goal.
Stable blood glucose levels are a symptom of good metabolic health. Striving for near-linear
blood sugars does not necessarily equal a healthy metabolism. While we can achieve stable
blood glucose with a low-carb, high-fat diet (i.e., symptom management), reversing diabetes
and improved metabolic health requires reduced body fat levels.
While higher-fat foods will cause a smaller rise in blood glucose initially after meals, you
need to balance adequate nutrition with stable blood glucose. As shown in the chart below
from our analysis of 125,761 days of data from 34,519 people using Nutrient Optimiser, very
high-fat foods tend not to be as nutritious.

In terms of satiety, people tend to consume fewer calories when they reduce the energy from
fat in their diet. While you don’t need to swing from one extreme to another, working your
way from where you are now to 40% dietary fat may be helpful if you want to lose body fat.
When testing your blood glucose after meals, keep in mind that:
● fast-acting carbs will raise your blood glucose quickly. However, they may also come
down quickly,
● high-fat meals will help you achieve more stable blood glucose, but they may stay
elevated and delay when you are ‘allowed’ to eat again,
● meals that have a similar proportion of fat and carbs with low protein (e.g., cookies,
croissants, milk chocolate, etc.) will fill both your fat and glucose stores and keep your
blood glucose elevated for much longer, and

● nutritious foods and meals that contain a higher percentage of protein will give your
body what it needs with less energy and allow your body to draw down on its fuel
stores.
4.2 How Can I Integrate Data-Driven Fasting into My

Daily Routine?
As you progress with Data-Driven Fasting, we encourage you to fit your eating schedule
around your regular work and family routine. For example, if you typically eat dinner with the
family, then you ideally wouldn’t skip that meal. Dinner could then be your Main Meal, and
you can treat the other meals as Discretionary Meals.
4.3 How Many Meals Per Day Should I Eat?

As you use your blood glucose to guide your progress, you should find that you quickly cut
back on discretionary snacks.
Our analysis found that people tend to eat fewer calories when they eat two meals per day.
We tend to choose more energy-dense foods when we’re ravenous, so we often eat more
with one meal a day than two. It is also easier to meet your vitamin, mineral, and protein
needs if you spread your food intake across two meals rather than trying to get it all in at
once.

Many older or less active people find that alternating between one and two meals a day
based on their blood glucose guides them to long-term success. However, if you’re active or
trying to build muscle, more meals may be required.
You don’t have to jump to two meals a day immediately. However, you may settle on a
manageable routine of one/two or two/three meals per day. Many people who previously
stalled out on OMAD find they feel a lot better and restart their weight loss when they settle
on a routine of two meals per day rather than one.
If you find that two meals per day are still not working for you, we suggest you decrease the
size of those meals rather than skipping full days of eating unless you can ensure you can
avoid eating energy-dense, hyper-palatable foods after not eating for 36 hours!
If you find you are not losing weight with less than 1.5 meals per day on average, we suggest
you review your food quality and work to increase the satiety value of the food you are
eating (i.e., increase protein and reduce foods higher in energy from fats and carbs).
Nutrient-dense meals ensure you get the nutrients you need when you eat to feel more
satisfied and less likely to overeat.
4.4 How Do I Stop Snacking at Night?

One possible scenario with Data-Driven Fasting is that you will eat a big dinner, check your
blood glucose in the morning, and find it is above your trigger. You then decide to delay
eating until your blood glucose comes down in the afternoon or before dinner.
However, you may find you are even hungrier later that evening and find yourself losing
control and bingeing again. This is particularly a concern if you see your waking blood
glucose trending up.
If you are reaching for energy-dense foods because you are too hungry after not eating all
day, we recommend having a more substantial, protein-focused meal earlier in the day, so

you are less hungry at night. You can also increase the amount of energy in your dinner, so
you’re less likely to be raiding the fridge later.
Another option is to lock in an earlier Main Meal that you will eat every day. You can then
use your blood glucose trigger to decide if you will eat the other meals.
Our data analysis suggests that we tend to eat fewer calories if we spread our food out over
two meals rather than compressing them into one. However, if you find that OMAD works
for you, that’s fine as long as you get adequate nutrients (particularly protein) in your narrow
eating window. Many people alternate between one and two meals per day as their trigger
lowers.
If you find you are averaging less than 1.5 meals per day, you should review the quality of
the food you are eating. You can use our Free 7 Day Nutrient Clarity Challenge to review
your current diet and find some new foods and meals that align with your goals.
You should also increase nutrient density and protein % by dialling back foods that add the
most dietary fat to allow your body to use stored body fat. Instead of jumping from one
extreme to the other, it’s better to slowly increase your protein percentage towards 40% or
more of your calories for maximum satiety and fat loss while minimising loss of precious lean
mass.
If you’re interested in pursuing this, we recommend trying out Macros Masterclass to tweak
your balance of protein, carbs and fat to continue your journey after the Data-Driven Fasting
Challenge.
4.5 Eat 'Breakfast' Like A King

While you don’t have to have ‘breakfast’ first thing in the morning, it appears to be ideal to
front-load your calories towards your first meal of the day, if possible, rather than eating
your biggest meal right before you go to bed. This is known as early time-restricted feeding
(eTRF).

Not only are you more insulin sensitive earlier in the day, but you are also more likely to use
the food you just ate to fuel your activity rather than storing it while you sleep. So, if your
schedule allows it, try to eat most of your food when the sun is up and emphasise more of
your energy at your first meal to synchronise your eating with your circadian rhythm.
If you are finding you are overeating at night and your waking blood glucose is not coming
down, it might be worth locking in a protein-focused Main Meal earlier in the day, even if
your blood glucose is still above Your trigger.
4.6 If My Blood Glucose Is Below My Trigger When I

Wake, Should I Eat?
No. Especially if you’re not actually hungry.
The goal of Data-Driven Fasting is to eat when you are hungry AND require fuel - not just
when your blood glucose is below Your trigger.
If you are above your Personal Fat Threshold, you will likely see more elevated blood glucose
in the morning. However, some people find that their blood glucose is below their trigger
when they wake and wonder if they should eat.
Even if your blood glucose is below your trigger when you wake, you should wait until you
are hungry and your blood glucose is below your trigger.
If your blood glucose tends to rise through the day, locking in a protein-focused Main Meal
earlier when you feel hungry and then using your pre-meal trigger for other discretionary
meals may also help.
4.7 How to Use Your Hourly Glucose Chart

Your hourly glucose chart in the DDF app can give you a LOT of insights.
• Think of the trigger line as a sign that you are running LOW and need to refuel.

• You don’t want your BG to go too far below your current trigger because your
hunger will drive you to eat anything and everything (at the expense of food quality).
• As you slowly chase a lower trigger, you will continue to sustainably deplete your
glucose stores over time.
• When you eat, you don’t want to see your BG go above the ‘upper limit’ FULL line.
This is a sign that you overfilled your glucose and (or) your fat fuel tanks are full (i.e.,
adipose tissue on your bum and belly), and fuel is backing up in your system. Try to
reduce or avoid foods that boost your post-meal glucose above this threshold.
Reducing processed carbs will help here, but don't simply swap them for dietary fat if
you want to lose body fat.
• If your pre-meal values are higher in the morning than later in the day, you should
prioritise fuel from protein and nutrients rather than fat or carbs in the morning. This
is because higher % protein meals tend to help your BG to go down rather than up.
Conversely, you could add more carbs to your first meal if your pre-meal values are
lower earlier in the day.
• If your waking BG is high, you should consider 'closing your window' a little earlier
and (or) eating a little less late at night. However, keep in mind that waking BG can
go up initially as insulin lowers and you start to release stored energy. In time, it will
settle down as you chase your trigger.
• If your trigger starts to stabilise at a lower level and weight loss slows, try to dial back
dietary fat to allow your body to use stored fat. In addition, focusing on protein and
nutrients when you eat will help you manage satiety.
• After a while, you will start to see the long-term patterns in your metabolism and
when you need to refuel. In the example below, we can see that the lowest blood
glucose is in the afternoon. Hence, this would be the ideal time for a solid meal,
perhaps with a few more carbohydrates. However, when blood sugars are higher
earlier in the day, a protein-focused meal with fewer carbohydrates would be ideal.

4.8 How Can I Plan Ahead With DDF?
In the first few days of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge, you will use your blood glucose to
delay meals and decide when to eat. Later, you will learn to lock in your Main Meal with
Discretionary Meals based on your blood glucose.
If your blood glucose is consistently above your trigger today, then it will be a safe bet that
you should plan for one less meal tomorrow. Before long, you should fall into a new routine
that you can follow most of the time, regardless of your testing. You can use your testing to
ensure that what you are doing is working for you and decide if you need to refine it further.

WHAT To Eat [FAQ Part 5]
Data-Driven Fasting initially helps you solve the WHEN to eat side of the nutrition equation.
You can make a lot of progress just by waiting until your blood glucose gives you the go
ahead to refuel. But eventually, WHAT you eat will become the limiting factor on your health
quest.
Understanding how the food you eat affects your blood sugars can be helpful to dial in your
food choices. By giving your body precisely WHAT it needs WHEN it needs it, you can
increase satiety, get off the blood sugar rollercoaster and deplete the excess fuel in your
system, lose unwanted body fat and eat again sooner!
This section of the DDF FAQs details how you can use the insights from your blood sugar to
dial in the WHAT to eat side of the equation.
5.1 Can You Eat Whatever You Want With DDF?

We don’t care what foods you eat… but your body does!
Measuring your pre- and post-meal glucose levels gives you powerful insights. You can
imagine you are playing the detective in a mystery game as you try to understand what
foods and meals work best for you.
Your goal is to find a shortlist of foods and meals that you enjoy that will also allow you to
reach your trigger sooner and stay off the blood sugar rollercoaster.

You can make a note in the note in the DDF app of which meals and foods work for your
body and the ones that don’t.
To help you find your shortlist of foods and meals, you can reflect on your blood sugars after
each meal:
1. Sharp rise (more than 30 mg/dL or 1.6 mmol/L) and rapid blood glucose drop.
o High carb, low-fat foods that raise your blood sugar quickly are not
necessarily bad, especially if they fall again quickly (i.e., a small area under the
curve glucose response).
o But if the 'BG rollercoaster' leaves you feeling tired and ravenous once your
blood sugar comes crashing down below your trigger, reducing these foods
might be a good idea. You can save them for times when your blood sugar is
significantly below your trigger to bring it back up quickly without resorting
to energy-dense carb+fat comfort foods.
2. Slow rise (more than 30 mg/dL or 1.6 mmol/L) and no significant fall.
o Foods that raise your blood sugars and keep them elevated for a long time
tend to be a combination of fat and carbs.
o These foods will keep your blood sugars and insulin elevated for a long time.
As a result, you will not reach your trigger again for many hours and will be
using less of your stored energy.
o These foods are not ideal for fat loss or improving your metabolic health and
hence should be limited or avoided.
3. Slight rise (less than 30 mg/dL or 1.6 mmol/L) followed by a steady drop of blood
glucose over the next few hours.
o Foods with less fat and carbs and more protein and fibre tend to provide
greater satiety per calorie and allow our blood sugars to remain lower and
more stable.

o Add this food to your shortlist of foods that you can use regularly. They will
provide greater satiety per calorie and allow you to eat more regularly while
still losing weight.
4. Blood glucose falls after you eat!
o Higher protein % meals will often cause blood glucose levels to drop after
you eat them.
o These foods provide the protein your body requires with minimal energy from
fat and/or carbs and maximum satiety per calorie.
o These foods are a great way to “hack” your blood sugars in the morning when
you feel hungry, but your blood sugar is elevated due to dawn phenomenon.
5.2 Front-Load Your Protein to Hack Your Satiety!

Our data analysis shows that people who eat more protein at their first meal tend to eat a lot
less throughout the day. Trying to limit how much you eat through the day, especially
protein, tends to leave most people at risk of overeating at night.
Do what you can to ensure your first meal is 'hearty' with plenty of protein (e.g., steak and
eggs, not a Bulletproof Coffee or a croissant). You could try eating a robust breakfast when
you feel hungry (even if your blood glucose is slightly above your trigger) and a small lunch
or skip lunch it to have dinner with the family if and when your blood glucose drops.
Or maybe you have coffee — black, or with just a dash of milk or cream — and eat a larger
meal in the middle of the day followed by a moderately sized family dinner after work.
Unlike fixed meal plans, the possibilities are endless. You can be flexible to fit around YOUR
schedule.
We want you to identify the routine that suits you and allows you to move towards your
goals. Try to find a routine that works for you, allows you to eat in a controlled manner, and
prevents you from ravenous late-night hoovering of everything in the fridge.
For more detail, see Does More Protein at Breakfast Help You Lose Weight?
5.3 Why Am I Not Losing Weight?

If you are eating one or two meals a day and waiting until your blood glucose drops below
your trigger but are still not losing weight, you’re likely still loading a lot of calories from fat
into fewer meals.

Food quality becomes even more critical when food quantity is reduced. Don’t
underestimate your reptilian instinct’s ability to outsmart your conscious brain to keep you
alive, especially when you’re effectively trying to starve it!
The good news is you can tame your lizard brain by reverse-engineering your diet to give
your body what it needs, so Lizzy stays asleep and doesn’t step in and undo all our discipline
and hard work.
If you push your body too hard, your cravings for energy-dense foods will increase to enable
you to get more energy in the compressed eating window. To understand if this is the case
for you, it may be helpful to track your food intake for a few days in Cronometer to check the
macronutrient split of the food you are eating.
Our satiety analysis of data from Optimisers shows that foods and meals that contain a
higher percentage of protein are tough to overeat. People who get a higher protein % (by
dialling back energy from carbs and fat and prioritising protein) experience greater satiety
per calorie and more effortless weight loss.

Some people refer to this as ‘fuel pulling’ (where you pull glucose and fat from your body
rather than your food), a Low Energy Diet, high protein:energy ratio or a Protein Sparing
Modified Fast.
It’s much easier to consume a lot of energy in your meals if they contain a lot of carbs and
fat with less protein and fibre. This is the basic formula for modern junk food. Given the
opportunity, your body will always choose the low–protein, energy-dense foods that allow
you to consume more energy and store more fat for the coming winter.
As shown in the chart below, more energy from fat and processed carbohydrates (and less
protein) corresponds to a higher energy intake.
Sadly, many people who fast choose to refuel on foods with a higher percentage of energy
from fat, believing eating ‘fat to satiety’ will lead to body fat loss. Unfortunately, our data
analysis indicates this approach makes it easier to consume more energy. If you want to use
the fat on your body as fuel, you may need to progressively dial back the fat in your diet.

You can learn more about the process we guide people through to dial in their
macronutrients to align with their goals in our Macros Masterclass here.
5.4 Plan What You Will Eat Before You’re Hungry

When we’re ravenous, we always gravitate to what is quick and easy. So, it’s important to
plan what you will eat before you get hungry for the best results.
If you test and decide to delay your next meal, take a moment to imagine what you will have
when you eat next.
Because you are not fasting for days at a time, you will be less likely to impulsively
congratulate yourself with a pizza or a doughnut because you think you’ve 'earned it'!
Plan to eat nutrient-dense foods with plenty of protein to maximise satiety to avoid having
to wait too long to eat. You can also reflect on what you ate that is keeping your blood
glucose elevated for so long.
Any diet that works over the long term tends to supply adequate protein while minimising
easily accessible energy from fat or carbs. When eating, your goal should be to get adequate
protein with fewer carbs to drain your blood glucose stores and less fat to allow your body
to use your body fat stores.

5.5 What Should You Eat After Fasting?
What you eat is just as important as when, how much, or how often you eat.
If you fill up on food that is energy-dense and nutrient-poor, your body will crave nutrients
again sooner. So, when you eat, do whatever you can to maximise nutrient density to ensure
you are getting the nutrients you need with fewer meals and less energy.
To help with this, we have developed a range of printable .pdf food lists to help you optimise
your diet that you can access in our Optimising Nutrition Community platform here.
If your blood glucose is still elevated, we recommend the Blood Glucose & Fat Loss food list.
However, if your blood glucose is relatively stable, you can go straight for the Fat Loss food
list.
We have also created a series of NutriBooster recipe books optimised for a range of goals.
The table below will help you find the right recipe book for you. Click on the name of the
book in the table to learn more.
Approach Ideal for
Low Carb & Blood Glucose Use these if your blood glucose is consistently elevated (i.e.,
they rise more than 1.6 mmol/L or 30 mg/dL after meals).
Blood Glucose and Fat Loss Ideal for anyone with elevated blood glucose and body fat to
lose.

Approach Ideal for
Fat Loss Ideal for rapid fat loss by quelling hunger and cravings due to
nutrient deficiencies and supplying adequate protein to
prevent muscle loss.
High Protein:Energy Ratio Use this if you want to attack your body fat aggressively
without losing muscle by maximising satiety.
5.6 Will Coffee “Break My Fast”?

Many people enjoy a coffee or tea in the morning and delay their Main Meal until later when
they are hungry, and their blood glucose drops below their trigger.
Your morning cuppa doesn’t need to count as a meal (and you don’t need to test your blood
glucose), so long as you’re not adding hundreds of calories worth of milk, butter, cream,
sugar, or MCT oil.
While there is plenty of debate over whether coffee or artificial sweeteners will break your
fast and whether water alone is more optimal, you need to find the balance between optimal
and sustainable for you. Many people find themselves with headaches if they suddenly slash
their caffeine intake. So, if you want to reduce your caffeine intake, it’s best to scale back
slowly.
Most studies find that caffeine has a positive effect on metabolic rate and fat loss and
stimulates the release of stored energy from the liver. In fact, bodybuilders often use caffeine
as a ‘fat burner’. However, if you’re not sleeping because you are drinking too much coffee
too late in the day, you should stop earlier in the day or cut back.
Some people who test their blood glucose in the morning around their regular cuppa see
their blood glucose rise. However, it’s difficult to discern whether this is due to regular

morning circadian rhythm effects like when your body releases cortisol, adrenaline, and
stored liver glycogen to boot up your system for the day, or if it’s the coffee itself.
If you really want to find out if coffee is spiking your blood glucose, you could test your
sugars before and after you consume caffeinated coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and water at
the same time of the day. If you see a similar response at the same time regardless of what
you drank, it’s likely the Dawn Phenomenon rather than the coffee.
However, given that the goal of Data-Driven Fasting is to achieve a long-term negative
energy balance, the slight rise in glucose around your coffee should not be of concern as
long as your coffee contains minimal energy. Any change in insulin or blood sugar that
occurs in the morning around your coffee is not going to impact your fat loss goals if it
doesn’t contain a significant amount of energy that will stop your body using your stored
body fat.
So, rather than wondering, ‘Will this break my fast?’, you should be asking, ‘Will this allow me
to achieve a negative energy balance that will lead to fat loss and lower blood glucose?’
5.7 Electrolytes and Fasting

An adequate intake of electrolytes like sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium is
critical, especially when eating less and losing weight. One of the many functions of insulin is
to help your kidneys recycle electrolytes in your body. When insulin levels decrease, you lose
stored water in your body as well as electrolytes.
You may feel light-headed or experience muscle cramps if you do not have adequate
electrolytes on board. Often what we experience as 'hunger' is actually a craving for minerals!
While many people find adding mineral salt to their water, drinking bone broth—or even
pickle juice—is not only helpful, but it’s also critical to ensure you are getting essential
minerals other than sodium.
If you’re interested in supplementing these harder to find minerals, we have created an

Optimised Electrolyte Mix with the optimal amounts and ratios of sodium, potassium,
and magnesium that many people have found helpful.
One problem with mineral salts is that you can quickly reach your ‘gut tolerance’, or the
amount your body can physically absorb at a given time, so you still may not be able to get
the amount you need from supplements. As always, it’s ideal to obtain your nutrients
(including minerals) from food.
To determine whether you need more minerals in your typical diet and determine
which foods and meals you need more of, you can try our Free 7 Day Nutrient Clarity
Challenge.

5.8 How Much Protein Do I Need?
Protein requirements depend on your lean mass and activity level.
While 0.8 g/kg LBM is an absolute minimum to prevent deficiency, we tend to find people do
better in terms of nutrient density and satiety with closer to 1.8 g/kg LBM or ideally 2.2 g/kg
LBM. These higher levels of dietary protein help to prevent loss of muscle during rapid
weight loss and support muscle growth and recovery after training.
In percentage terms, we find people achieve better satiety and fat loss when they slowly
work up to 40% or more of their energy from protein. However, rather than simply eating
more high protein foods, this is attained by consuming adequate protein while dialling back
easily accessible energy from fat and carbs. We recommend you slowly dial up the protein %
of your diet. You only really need to increase your protein % if your current way of eating is
not yielding weight loss.
You can use our macro calculator to see how much protein you need, and you can track your
intake in Cronometer for a few days to see what you are getting from your current diet.
If you want to skip the calculations, the table below shows what 1.8 g/kg LBM looks like
(assuming 15% BF for men and 25% for women).
height (cm) height (inches) female protein (g) male protein (g)
150 59 56 76
155 61 60 81
160 63 64 86
165 65 68 92
170 67 72 98
175 69 77 103
180 71 81 109
185 73 86 116
190 75 90 122
195 77 95 128
200 79 100 135
205 81 105 142
210 83 110 149
If you find you are not hungry, you don’t need to worry so much about your absolute protein
intake (in grams) so long as your protein percentage is higher than 40%. Once you reach
your goal weight, you can bring back some energy from fat and carbs.
If you need some more guidance after the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge, you can try
out Macros Masterclass, which will guide you to tweak your macros to help you
sustainably move towards your goals.

5.9 Will ‘Too Much Protein’ Raise My Insulin Levels and
Stop Me from Losing Fat?
Refined carbohydrates raise insulin more over the short term, protein raises insulin over the
medium term, and fat raises insulin and blood glucose over the long term.
While most people typically focus on short-term changes in insulin after eating, our overall
insulin production across the day is more closely related to total calorie intake and body fat
levels. Insulin can be thought of as the ‘anti-entropy hormone’ that stops your body from
falling apart. The bigger we are, the more insulin we require to hold our bodies together.
Insulin regulates the release of stored energy from the liver while energy is coming in from
our mouth. Someone with Type-1 Diabetes will essentially disintegrate as all of their stored
energy flows into their bloodstream if they do not inject insulin. However, for someone who
has a functioning pancreas, the insulin produced by their pancreas is largely a function of the
amount of fat on their body or how much energy they need to keep in storage.
While protein does elicit a medium-term insulin response, it is also the most satiating
macronutrient. Prioritising adequate protein allows us to eat less over the long term, reduce
body fat levels, and subsequently require less insulin across the day.
Remember, satiety is about getting a higher percentage of protein rather than simply
consuming more protein. To achieve this, you can progressively dial back the energy in your
diet from fat and carbs.

Many people in our Macros Masterclass find that they are already getting the protein they
need; they just need to slowly dial back their energy from fat and/or carbs while making an
effort to prioritise protein.
5.10 How Should I Break A Fast?

Many people experience gut distress and diarrhea when they eat after fasting for several
days and have to eat particular foods to acclimatise their digestive system to eating again.
However, multi-day fasts are not the goal of Data-Driven Fasting. We simply want to
optimise your day-to-day eating routine so you can consume high-quality, nutrient-dense
food to satiety without digestive issues or bingeing when you refuel.
It’s always ideal to ensure your first meal of the day has plenty of nutrients and protein. If
you still need it later, you can top up with some extra energy. Many people find their blood
sugars are lower later in the day, so protein with a little more carbs is often ideal in the
afternoon while focusing on protein, which comes with fat, is ideal at your first meal.
5.11 Can I Drink Alcohol While Fasting?

Alcohol tends to decrease blood glucose, and alcoholics often have very low HbA1cs.
However, this is not necessarily a good thing.

● Due to oxidative priority, your body must burn off the alcohol before glucose and fat,
so you will down-regulate the release of glucose (and fat) into your bloodstream until
your body clears the alcohol it cannot store.
● You should also be aware that alcohol will have a greater impact if you have no other
food on board.
● We tend to make poor food choices after drinking a significant amount of alcohol
that will keep our blood glucose elevated for longer.
● At seven calories per gram, alcohol is energy-dense (for reference, fat contains nine
calories per gram and carbs and protein yield less than four calories per gram).
● Alcohol often comes with plenty of carbs and other yummy things that are easy to
overdo.
● While alcohol initially knocks you out, you don’t get into REM sleep as quickly
because your metabolic rate is elevated to burn off the high-octane energy from
alcohol. So not only will you feel dehydrated and have a hangover, but you won’t get
a great rest either.
● Alcohol is similar to sugar, refined grains, or oils in the sense that it is effectively
empty calories. Alcohol contains lots of energy with very few nutrients, so it won’t
help you on your quest to maximise nutrient density.
5.12 Should I Eat Less Protein If I Have Diabetes?

Some people mistakenly try to achieve perfectly flat-lined blood glucose by reducing
carbohydrates and even protein. Unfortunately, this often ends in overeating low-satiety,
nutrient-poor, high-fat foods, which leads to increased energy intake, weight gain, and
insulin resistance!

More dietary protein will be converted to glucose if you are insulin-resistant and have
elevated blood glucose (via gluconeogenesis). The net result is that you will have less
protein available for muscle protein synthesis.
To make up for the protein lost to glucose, your appetite will increase, and you will consume
extra energy to get the protein you need. For this reason, it is crucial for people with Type-2
Diabetes or any degree of insulin resistance to prioritise dietary protein.
5.12 Aren’t Meal Choices Important Too?

WHAT you eat is arguably more important than WHEN you eat. Food choices also play a big
role in how long your blood glucose takes to return to baseline.
● High-fat foods and meals will keep your blood glucose stable after meals. However,
high-fat foods and meals tend to provide fewer nutrients and satiety per calorie, so
you will likely consume more calories.
● Meals with more fast-digesting non-fibre carbohydrates will initially raise your blood
glucose. But they may also return to below baseline sooner because they are hard to
overeat and are burned off more quickly.
● Foods that contain both fat and carbs with low protein will fill both your fat and
glucose fuel tanks and prompt you to eat more. Hence, they keep your blood glucose
elevated for longer.
● Foods with a higher percentage of protein are harder to overeat and won’t raise
blood glucose significantly. In fact, they may reduce them! Your blood glucose will
return to below target more quickly.
Data-Driven Fasting works best when paired with nutrient-dense. During Hunger Training,
it’s important that you reflect on which meals tend to keep your blood sugars elevated for
longer and identify the meals that you enjoy that allow your blood sugars to return to below
baseline more quickly.
5.13 Do I Need MCT Oil or Butter During a Fast (Aka 'Fat

Fasting')?
No. Adding nutrient-poor, low-satiety refined oils or fats will be counterproductive if your
goal is body fat loss, insulin sensitivity, improved body composition, nutrient density
optimisation, or diabetes reversal. For reference, Bulletproof Coffee has the lowest satiety
and nutrient density ranking of the thousands of recipes we have analysed.

5.14 Do I Need Protein When I Fast?
As shown in the chart below from Quantitative Physiology of Human Starvation: Adaptations
of Energy Expenditure, Macronutrient Metabolism and Body Composition (Hall, 2012), your
body will use approximately 400 calories per day (100 g) of stored protein in the early stages
of extended fasting. Over time, this decreases to 250 calories (60 g of protein) per day as it
adapts.
While protein requirements slowly decrease during extended fasting, the amount of lean
muscle mass you will use for fuel is still insignificant. If you fast for a couple of days every
week, you will need to make up for protein across the week to prevent long-term loss of lean
muscle.
After not eating for a while, your body increases your appetite to seek food to replenish
calories and nutrients, particularly protein, to ensure your muscles don’t waste away. If you
do not prioritise protein when you refuel, your appetite will step in and ensure you consume
enough calories to get the protein your body needs.
This is likely the main reason so many people lose and regain the same weight when they
attempt extended fasting without paying attention to food quality. It can be challenging to
get adequate protein without excess energy in the long term when extended fasting forces
us to gravitate to energy-dense food. Regardless of how long you choose to fast, nutrient-
focused refuelling (especially protein) is critical.

5.15 Does DDF Work Best with A Particular Diet (e.g.,
Low-Carb, Keto, Vegan, Plant-Based)
Data-Driven Fasting will work with a low-carb or low-fat diet. Low-fat foods may raise blood
glucose quickly, but they will also return to baseline more rapidly than a high-fat meal.
Foods high in starch like potatoes are hard to overeat if they are not combined with added
fat (e.g., chips or cookies) that increase palatability.
• Many people find they achieve the lowest pre-meal blood glucose on a low-fat diet
with whole foods.
• Conversely, low-carb foods cause a smaller rise in blood glucose after eating but may
cause blood sugars to remain elevated for longer.
As shown in the chart below, reducing either fat or carbohydrate in your diet will similarly
impact satiety and how much you eat.
The problem comes when we consume low protein foods combining fat and carbs together.
These hyperpalatable foods tend to be easy to overeat and will keep your blood glucose and
insulin levels elevated for much longer. It will then take longer for your blood glucose to
drop back below your trigger.
If you wanted to mix it up and get more variety in your diet, you could alternate between
low-carb and low-fat meals. Many people find keeping their carbs for later in the day when
their blood sugars are lower while prioritising protein (which tends to come with some fat)
earlier in the day to be an extremely helpful strategy.

5.16 What If I’m Above My Trigger but REALLY Hungry?
If you are above your trigger, it’s ideal to wait. You know your body has enough fuel on
board! But if you are REALLY hungry and just above your trigger, the DDF App will suggest
you can eat but prioritise protein and nutrients and limit fat and carbs.
It’s hard to go wrong if you limit fuel when you’re above your trigger and only refuel (with fat
and carbs) when your blood glucose is below your trigger.
5.17 How Can I Use My Glucose to Guide How Much I

Eat?
There are many reasons we feel hungry, but out conscious brain doesn’t always understand
exactly what our body requires. But the good news is, you can use your glucose as a fuel
gauge to help decipher what fuel and how much you need.
• If you’re hungry and your BGs are elevated, then it’s likely you don’t need carbs, but
rather protein (which tends to come with some fat). If your blood sugars are
elevated, you can see this as a sign that your fuel tanks are full. You should try to eat
a smaller meal rather than an all-out feast.
• If you’re hungry and your blood glucose is much lower than normal for you, then it’s
definitely time to eat. Giving your body some carbs may help to quickly bring your
blood sugars back up and can quickly smash your cravings.
5.18 How Can I Use My Glucose Trends to Guide WHAT I

Eat?
It’s been fascinating to see how different people with different dietary patterns and routines
have different glucose patterns that can give precise data-driven insights into what to eat at
different times of the day.
Low carb pattern
People who follow a lower-carb diet tend to have higher glucose in the morning and lower
glucose levels in the afternoon. As you can see in the example chart below, few post-meal
glucose values are above the upper limit. People from a lower carb or keto diet background
typically don't need to worry about dialling back their carbohydrate intake.

Counterintuitively, higher waking glucose can be managed by dialling back fat in the
evening. Excess energy from fat can cause all your fuels to back up in your system overnight.
So, in the morning, you see a higher waking glucose and possibly even rising waking glucose
throughout the morning due to dawn phenomenon.
Rather than delaying your meals until the afternoon, it’s often ideal to prioritise protein
(which typically comes with some fat) and fewer carbs in the morning. This usually allows
blood glucose to drop back down quickly so you can eat again sooner.
In the afternoon, when blood sugars are lower, it’s ideal to swap some fat calories for carbs
to bring glucose back up a little before bed (but not so much that you would boost blood
glucose above the upper limit).
Alternating between protein+fat in the AM and protein+carbs in the PM tends to allow

people to stabilise their blood sugars across the day. They can also have a more varied diet
that is potentially more nutritious while staying out of the carb+fat danger zone that leads to
overeating.
Lower fat diet pattern
People on a lower-fat diet tend to see lower waking glucose and higher glucose values
during the day, particularly in the afternoon, as shown in the example hourly chart below.

The first step here is to dial back the excess carbs that are overfilling their glucose fuel tank
while prioritising protein for increased satiety. Converse to the low carb profile, people
following a lower-fat diet may do better with more of their carbs in the morning when they
are more insulin sensitive and less at night, particularly if they see their pre-bed values going
well above their upper limit line.
Mid-afternoon pattern
Other people, like the chart shown below, see a distinct dip mid-afternoon dip, indicating
that this is the ideal time for them to have their largest meal based on their unique routine
and metabolism.

Balanced profile
Finally, the hourly chart shows what we believe to be a pretty ideal hourly glucose chart, with:
• Most post-meal values under the upper limit line,
• Lower waking glucose, and
• Fairly similar premeal values across the day.

Winning The Mind Game [FAQ Part 6]
The ultimate goal Data-Driven Fasting is to guide you to understand your true hunger
signals and get to know Lizzy. Not only will you learn to tame it by giving it what it wants
when it needs it, but you will also learn to listen to it and trust your appetite signals and
respond more appropriately.
6.1 Quantified Mindful Eating

If you want to leverage the benefits of the Data-Driven Fasting process, you can make notes
in the DDF app to record what you are learning and incorporate it into your future routine.
By reflecting on your physical sensations of hunger, you will start to learn what your body is
trying to tell you. Once you learn to decipher the messages Lizzy is giving you, you will no
longer need to rely on your glucose meter to guide want and when you eat.
When you feel hungry and think of eating, rate your hunger. Then, take a moment to
imagine what your blood glucose might be if you tested it based on your physical symptoms
of hunger (e.g., grumbling tummy, weakness, light-headedness, etc.).
The most common symptoms of hunger include:
• rumbling/growling stomach,
• feeling food focussed,
• feeling mentally fatigued or not being able to think straight, or
• feeling lightheaded.
Some of the more extreme symptoms of hunger can include:
• nausea,
• headaches,
• feeling cold, tired or lethargic, and
• not sleeping well.
Before you eat, you want to be hungry but not starving to the point that you binge. After
you eat, you should feel full and satisfied, but not completely stuffed.
Reflecting on your hunger signals and calibrating them with your need for food is a central
component of Hunger Training. In the DDF app, you can rate how hungry you feel on a scale
of 1 – 5 (not hungry to extremely hungry) before recording your blood sugar.
Before long, you will understand the factors that can influence your blood glucose (e.g.,
exercise, stress, and hormonal changes). If you are hungry and your blood glucose is below
your Personalised Trigger, go ahead and eat. There is no need to be a hero! If you are not
overly hungry, you are less likely to overeat and more likely to make better food choices.

6.2 The Psychological Impacts of Data-Driven Fasting
The ultimate goal of Data-Driven Fasting is to become more attuned to your hunger signals.
While testing your blood glucose may sound like a hassle, a tiny amount of pain and
inconvenience from blood glucose tracking is not such a bad thing. It forces you to be more
mindful and question whether you need to eat. It also interrupts habitual mindless eating
and adds a quantitative check to see if you need to refuel.
While many people find that calorie counting harms their mental health, Data-Driven Fasting
helps you feel empowered and puts you in control of your hunger and appetite with a
precise fuel gauge.
A little bit of measurement gamifies the intermittent fasting process as you wait for the
green light on your blood glucose meter. There is a little bit of luck because of the many
factors that affect blood glucose and a bit of skill involved with juggling your eating routine
and food choices. However, aside from looking and feeling great, the grand prize is excellent
metabolic health.

6.3 Hunger Is Not the Enemy
With Data-Driven Fasting, your goal is to become more acquainted with your hunger rather
than fear or ignore it.
You will grow to understand your hunger by giving it some attention until you understand it,
and it will become your friend. While extended fasting can lead to dysregulated hunger
signals, Data-Driven Fasting helps you better understand your true hunger. We want you to
make friends with your inner lizard brain in time.
As your blood glucose stabilises, your body will become more comfortable with a small
amount of hunger. Soon, that little bit of hunger will no longer be uncomfortable. You will
‘train’ your appetite and hunger as your body becomes comfortable with a lower energy
level in your bloodstream because it has learned to trust that you will regularly provide it
with quality food.
6.4 Progress Over Perfection

Remember, your goal should always be progress, not perfection! You don’t have to be
militant about not eating if your blood glucose isn’t dropping and you feel ravenous. You
only have to log premeal blood sugars below your trigger more often than not to make
progress.
If you have a bad day, that’s OK. You don’t need to beat yourself up over it. You will always
learn something if you pay attention to how your blood sugars. Your blood sugars and the
DDF App will give you a clear direction on what you need to do to catch up.

The goal of Data-Driven Fasting is to be below your trigger more often than not before you
eat. If your blood glucose is slightly above your trigger and you’re ravenously hungry, then
don’t be afraid to eat.
Your glucometer is a tool to empower you with knowledge about whether you need to
refuel, not to make you feel like a failure or wracked with guilt. Using your blood glucose as
a fuel gauge tells you if your hunger is real and you need to refuel. The process will be more
sustainable if you don’t lose your mind trying to be perfect in the first few days and weeks.
You should approach this as a curious student, eager to learn how your body responds to
food. Data-Driven Fasting will help you realise the impact of those 'bad days'. Before long,
the 'bad days' will become less frequent. You will learn that overeating and poor food
choices will have a downside in the future, so you will learn to moderate your meals today.
Feel free to take a break if you feel you are becoming obsessive or the process is consuming
too much time or mental energy. While some people love quantifying everything, others can
quickly become overwhelmed. We have designed Data-Driven Fasting to minimise the
cognitive load as much as possible to maximise sustainability so you can keep going until
you reach your goal.
If you feel ravenous, grumpy, light-headed, cold, you can’t think straight, you have a report
due or an important meeting to attend, don’t be afraid to eat. You can always catch up again
later. Your blood glucose will guide you, so you don’t need to stress.
6.5 Three Steps Forward, One Step Back

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself ‘backsliding’ occasionally. Weight loss is rarely a linear
process. It’s also natural to follow a fasting and feasting cycle that ebbs and flows with the
varying needs of your body.
It’s normal and healthy to want to eat more sometimes, especially if you have been
restricting a little too much. It may take a few days to get back to where you were, but you
should be able to deplete your glucose stores more quickly than last time because you have
already burned off some excess fat.
If you find yourself particularly hungry, there is no need to be ashamed of eating to satiety.
However, you will iron out the bumps in your routine and ensure a long-term trend towards
your goals as you follow the guidance of your premeal trigger.

6.6 Follow the Trend, Ignore The Noise
As you start tracking, you will quickly learn that biometrics like weight, blood sugar and body
fat can bounce around from day to day. This noise can be confusing, so try to stay focussed
on the long-term trends.
While there may be many day-to-day variabilities, you should see a long-term trend as you
wait for your blood glucose to drop below trigger. As blood glucose decreases, weight and
body fat will follow.
While it’s helpful to track body fat to ensure you’re losing fat and not precious lean muscle
mass, you should be aware that body fat data can be even noisier. But, as you chase a lower
pre-meal trigger by delaying or skipping meals, you will see your weight and body fat trend
down.
Try to follow the recommendations given by the DDF app without overthinking the process.
Accept that there will be some days when the data doesn’t go your way for no apparent
reason. You are free to use your brain to decide whether you need to eat even if your blood
glucose is above your trigger.
6.7 Fasting Can Be Stressful

A little bit of stress can be beneficial (i.e., hormesis or eustress). While your body likes
consistency and routine, complete stagnation and monotony lead to weakness and atrophy.
So, you need some stress to grow, but not so much you break.

For millennia, the four seasons (e.g., autumn, winter, spring and summer) forced our bodies
to go through periods where different amounts and types of food were available, thus
forcing us through natural bulking and cutting phases. Any good workout routine involves
periods of progressive overload interspersed with rest and recovery.
Too much stress beyond the point that we can adapt and recover (i.e., distress) is not good
and forces our survival instincts to take evasive action. Data-Driven Fasting ensures our
eating routine is punctuated by just enough stress to keep our body moving towards our
goals.
6.8 What If I 'Fall Off the DDF Wagon'? How Do I Get

Back On?
Most of us can’t help swinging to extremes, from exuberance to disappointment.
We desperately want to make progress, so we push hard with ambitious hopes of overnight
success. But then, our survival instincts kick in, and we can end up rebound bingeing.
Afterwards, our initial instinct is to go even harder with more resolve and willpower, driven
by guilt and renewed determination. But even that only lasts for so long before Lizzie kicks in
again.
If you want to get off this all too familiar restrict-binge cycle, it’s better not to punish yourself
after you ‘fall off the wagon’. Just get back to chasing your trigger.
If your glucose is above your trigger for a few days, you know you have plenty of fuel
onboard and only require nutrients and can simply prioritise protein and nutrients. If
possible, try to have one less meal than usual each day you remain above your trigger until
you catch up to your trigger again.

6.9 DDF May Test Your Emotional Resolve
Because it was important to run away from lions and other dangers in the past, we tend to
weigh negative data more than the positive. Sometimes negative data drives us to feel like a
failure, so we try harder and fail harder when Lizzy rebels and has to step in to keep us alive.
The good news is, eventually, with a bit of community support and self-love, most of us learn
to relax. Any significant achievement is usually built from a culmination of small positive
actions. Eventually, as you persist and push through the frustration, you will learn to trust
the process and chip away at the small changes that lead to big wins in the long term.
6.10 DDF and Dopamine Fasting

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter released to drive us to action and want to do something.
It’s fundamental to our survival to ensure we eat, learn, have fun and reproduce. We feel
good when we elevate our dopamine levels. We become focussed and driven to take action.
In recent times, we have created a range of novel ways to continually keep dopamine
elevated, with endless social media, caffeine, drugs, porn, YouTube, Netflix and engineered
hyperpalatable comfort foods.
But regardless of how many dopamine-inducing things you inject into your life, your body
continually works to find balance. Your hypothalamus cannot continue to secrete infinite
amounts of dopamine. Eventually, the things that bought you pleasure will no longer bring

you as much pleasure, and you will find pain and discontent in new areas of your life that
were once fine. This is because you have moved your dopamine (or hedonic) set point.
Dopamine also drives us to seek our food. This is fundamentally a good thing. Without
dopamine, we would starve and forget to reproduce.
Food with energy from fat stimulates dopamine because your body needs it. Similarly, foods
with energy from carbs also stimulate a healthy level of dopamine. But our modern food
system has designed foods that combine fat and carbs in a way that stimulates more
dopamine than any food in nature ever did before, so we eat more of these foods.
We can also use these ‘comfort foods’ to elevate dopamine to alleviate sadness and low
dopamine created in other areas of our life. The reality is, sometimes we need to work on
those areas rather than turning to food for comfort. Or perhaps we’re just so overstimulated
by everything that nothing stimulates us anymore, including quality food?
Data-Driven Fasting leverages the power of dopamine in our life by gamifying the fasting
process. You get a positive dopamine hit when you see a great number on your glucose
meter and get a reaffirming message from the Data-Driven Fasting app. You can become
motivated to improve the numbers that will fundamentally improve your health. But at the
same time, by delaying your meal just a little, you are resetting your dopamine levels and re-
sensitising your dopamine receptors rather than always treating your dopamine deficit with
food.
When you eat all the time mindlessly, food stops tasting as good. But once you learn to wait
until you need to eat, food will start to taste good again, especially the food that is good for
you because it contains the nutrients you require to thrive. You will no longer need to
consume foods designed to overdrive dopamine, and you will be able to stop when you’ve
had enough.

Understanding Your Unique Metabolism
[FAQ Part 7]
Your body is a fascinating and complex organism that adapts to the stresses of any new
environment to keep you alive. By exposing yourself to bursts of stress like Data-Driven
Fasting, your body can adapt to thrive.
When you start out with DDF, all you need to do is follow the process without overthinking
it. But as things progress, a little bit of understanding can be a good thing, too. This section
of the FAQs covers the many questions that often arise as people start tracking and taming
their blood sugars.
7.1 What Is A 'Good' Trigger Value?

We find it interesting to see how we compare with everyone else to understand how far we
must go to catch up with others.

The charts below show pre-meal trigger values during baselining vs waking glucose (in
mmol/L and mg/dL). As you manage your pre-meal trigger value, your waist, body fat, and
waking glucose levels will follow.
While the average trigger value during baselining is 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L), you can
continue to delay your meals as you chase a trigger value down to 4.0 mmol/L (72 mg/dL) or

even lower if you feel OK. However, most people will have reached a healthy weight and
body fat level before they get below 4.0 mmol/L or 72 mg/dL.
7.2 What Is the Optimal Blood Sugar Level for Fat

Burning?
You are constantly burning a combination of fat and glucose. We tend to burn more glucose
when doing an intense activity and more fat during rest or during lower-intensity activities.
But if you have a lot of glucose in your system, you won't be burning as much fat because
your body must burn through the glucose first because of oxidative priority.
Counterintuitively, when we measure respiratory quotient, we find that people who are
obese and insulin-resistant tend to primarily burn glucose at rest despite having a lot of fat
in storage.
As you wait until your glucose drops below your Personalised Trigger before you eat, you will
ensure that you are burning more fat at the end of each fasting period.
As you slowly lower your premeal trigger through repeated cycles of short term ‘fasting’ and
nutrient-dense feasting, you will be burning more fat and less glucose as you drain excess
glucose backed up in storage.
As the glucose in your blood and glycogen in your liver drop, your body will turn to fat for
fuel. Therefore, as long as you are not supplying excess dietary fat, you will be burning body
fat when your glucose levels are lower.
7.3 What Is a Healthy Waking Glucose Level?

While most of us focus on weight and body fat, being below your Personal Fat Threshold is
arguably more important. But how do you know if you are below your Personal Fat
Threshold?
As you can see from the chart below (from Association between fasting glucose and all-
cause mortality), the lowest overall risk of dying from any cause aligns with a fasting glucose
between 80 and 100 mg/dL (4.4 to 5.6 mmol/L).

If your waking blood glucose is in the optimal range, it means:
● you are insulin sensitive,
● your insulin levels are low,
● your body fat can absorb extra energy from your food, and
● you do not have excess energy backing up into your bloodstream.
It’s important to note here that a lower waking glucose isn’t necessarily better. Very low
waking glucose (e.g., below 76 mg/dL or 4.2 mmol/L), while rare, tends to correspond to
anorexia, poor immunity and fragility.
It’s also important to note that waking glucose is just one of the parameters that you can use
to gauge your overall metabolic health. Counterintuitively, people on a lower-carb diet will
tend to see higher waking glucose levels and lower glucose levels during the day, while
people on a high carb diet will tend to have lower waking glucose and higher glucose levels
over the day.
Body fat and waist:height ratio are also useful markers to understand your overall level of
metabolic health. Below 25% body fat for women and below 15% for men is a great goal,
while a waist to height ratio of less than 0.5 is ideal. Again, pushing significantly below these
levels may not be healthy or sustainable.

You can track your waking glucose in the DDF app as a marker of metabolic health. However,
it’s not critical to the DDF process and does not affect your trigger. Keep in mind that you
may see your waking glucose increase initially as insulin drops, your stored energy is
released, and you start to lose weight. Later, you may see your waking glucose stabilise at a
lower level once you switch to Maintenance Mode.
Waking glucose isn’t something you can easily “hack”. Lower waking glucose follows as you
chase a lower premeal glucose trigger, lose body fat and improve your overall metabolic
health.
7.4 What Is Dawn Phenomenon?

Your body clock (i.e. circadian rhythm) is closely tied to your eating, sleeping, activity, and
light exposure.

As your body prepares to wake in the morning, melatonin decreases while cortisol and
adrenaline rise. Your body releases glucagon from the liver to increase the glucose in your
bloodstream, so you are fuelled and ready to bounce out of bed and start the day.
This increase in glucose is stimulated by glucagon and is usually balanced by insulin. This
duo ensures your blood glucose is regulated and doesn't rise too much. People with Type-1
Diabetes typically see their insulin requirements the lowest overnight, with a rise a few hours
before they wake up as their liver pushes out glucose to start the day.
People with some insulin resistance may find that their blood glucose increases more in the
morning due to what is known as the Dawn Phenomenon. While some rise in glucose in the
morning is normal, increased insulin resistance means that the glucose released from the
liver is not balanced adequately with insulin to stabilise blood glucose.
There is no need to eat immediately if your blood glucose is high in the morning, especially if
you are not hungry. But when you do start to feel hungry, rather than waiting until your
blood glucose is below your trigger, you can choose to have a higher protein meal.
Prioritising protein earlier in the day often causes blood glucose to fall, and you can eat
again sooner, rather than waiting all day. As you draw down on your excess fuel, you will
start to see your waking blood glucose come down and a smaller rise due to the dawn
phenomenon.
7.5 How Does ‘That Time of The Month' Affect Blood

Glucose for Women?
Females of reproductive age should be aware that cravings, blood glucose, and insulin
sensitivity vary throughout the month.
Women with Type-1 Diabetes find their insulin requirements increase in the days leading up
to their period before dropping once menses commences. Insulin requirements rise after
ovulation until a few days before menses commences. This largely follows the variations in
progesterone.

Cravings, water retention, and associated water weight gain also increase in the days leading
up to menstruation. So, you may need to be more gracious when waiting for your blood
glucose to drop if it’s ‘that time of the month’. You need to understand that your body is
preparing for a possible pregnancy and craving more energy and nutrients, particularly
protein.
You may want to accept a slightly higher trigger value or default to your regular eating
routine and just eat when you are hungry during this time rather than fighting the process
too much.
The DDF app will allow you to log ‘menses’ when you log a pre-meal trigger value. This will
give you a temporarily elevated trigger, so you don’t have to battle with your trigger
unnecessarily during this time.
For more discussion, see What to Eat for Each Phase of Your Monthly Menstrual Cycle.

7.6 Why Does My Blood Glucose Fall After I Eat?
Some people are surprised to find that their blood glucose drops after they eat. This is not
cause for concern but rather a positive sign that you are metabolically healthy or not
overeating carbohydrates.
Because glucose and fat stores in your liver are depleted after an overnight fast, many
people see their blood glucose drop after their first meal. Any energy they eat goes to
replenish the stores in their liver rather than backing up into their bloodstream.
When you eat a higher protein meal, your pancreas secretes some insulin to enable you to
use the amino acids to repair muscles and organs, make neurotransmitters, and a host of
other functions. Glucagon is also released by your pancreas to balance insulin, as shown in
this chart (from Marks’ Basic Medical Biochemistry).
For someone below their Personal Fat Threshold, this balance of insulin and glucagon means
that blood glucose will remain stable. Blood glucose may even decrease, which is an
indication that you have plenty of spare capacity to absorb the meal you just ate, and energy
from your meal is not overflowing into your bloodstream.
Testing your glucose response to a high protein meal can be a useful measure of insulin
resistance vs insulin sensitivity and whether you are above your Personal Fat Threshold. If
you see your blood glucose drop after a high protein meal, then you know you’re reasonably
metabolically healthy.
Conversely, if you see your blood glucose rise, you know you have some level of insulin
resistance. However, the solution is not to avoid protein. Instead, you should reduce carbs
and fat while prioritising protein to decrease your body fat levels below your Personal Fat
Threshold.

7.7 Why Would My Blood Glucose Rise After a Low-Carb,
High-Protein Meal?
Someone who is insulin resistant or has diabetes has (i.e. insufficient insulin to maintain
stable blood glucose). This person may see their blood glucose rise after a high protein meal
as glucagon kicks in to tell the liver to release stored glycogen. Insulin is also released to
keep blood glucose stable.
If someone is insulin resistant, their insulin does not work effectively, and their blood glucose
is not suppressed. Therefore, insulin-resistant people can see a rise in blood glucose after a
high protein meal because they have insufficient insulin to simultaneously metabolise the
protein and suppress glucagon release from their liver.
Some people see this rise in glucose and think they should avoid protein to maintain stable
blood glucose. However, this may make things worse. If you are insulin resistant (i.e. Type2
Diabetes) or your pancreas is not producing enough insulin (e.g., Type-1 Diabetes), you will
likely lose protein through gluconeogenesis. If this is the case for you, you will likely benefit
by focusing on a higher protein percentage to ensure you don’t end up having to overeat to
get the protein your body needs.
If you are insulin resistant because you carry excess body fat, the solution is to focus on
foods with a higher protein percentage to increase satiety. This will enable you to lose body
fat without losing too much lean mass.
If you are already lean (i.e., waist:height ratio less than 0.5) and you see elevated blood
glucose after a low-carb, high-protein meal, then it may be helpful to talk to your doctor to
get your fasting insulin and c-peptide measured. This will help you understand if your
pancreas can produce enough insulin to rule out Type-1 Diabetes or MODY (Maturity Onset
Diabetes of the Young).
For more details, see Why Does My Blood Sugar Drop (or Rise) After Eating Protein?
7.8 Will Fasting Help My Gut Health?

While it can be hard to adjust to solid food after fasting for multiple days, many people find
that intermittent fasting improves their digestion and gut health. As we eat more than we
need more often than we need to, our gut struggles to keep up, and we get indigestion and
bacterial overgrowth.
Conversely, when we eat less, we give our stomachs a chance to rest. The excess ‘bad
bacteria’ (e.g., Firmicutes) associated with obesity die off as they are not continually overfed
with nutrient-poor inflammatory foods. The ‘good bacteria’ (e.g., Bacteroidetes) associated
with healthy body weight can flourish.

7.9 How is DDF Different from Zoe or Day 2?
There is a technological arms race to create a patented system to provide personalised
nutrition recommendations based on the analysis of your poop.
Zoe is a technology start-up company spearheaded by Professor Tim Spector that seeks to
provide personalised nutritional advice based on analysis of the gut microbiome. To get
your personalised nutritional prescription from Zoe, you send your ‘poo in the post' to their
lab for analysis (USD$350, plus USD$59 for app access after six months). You also test your
glucose (using a CGM) and fat response to standardised low-fat and high-fat muffins. While
the well-funded Zoe team are publishing fascinating data powered by complex Artificial
Intelligence algorithms, this level of testing and analysis is potentially excessive for most
people.
Day 2 is a similar service that provides meal recommendations based on your stool analysis.
Their work is based on a 2015 study Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic
Responses which identified that people could have markedly different glucose responses to
the same food. Therefore, they hypothesised that they could design a diet to stabilise blood
sugars based on a complex (and patented) analysis of your gut bacteria.
There is no doubt some interaction between your blood sugars, body weight, and
microbiome. However, the relationship between the three is incredibly complex. It’s
impossible to tease out correlation vs causation and determine how to use this data to guide
dietary choices. The experts haven't yet defined what a ‘good vs bad’ microbiome profile
looks like, let alone what you should eat to make yours better.
No matter how much data or computing power is applied to the task, we may never reach
the point that anyone can tell you what to eat by looking at what goes down the toilet.
Without an intelligent application of a fundamental understanding of how your body uses
energy from your food, particularly how your glucose and fat fuel tanks interact, we risk
paralysis by analysis and falling victim to garbage in – garbage out (GIGO).
As shown in the figure below from the Zoe PREDICT 1 study, despite the hype, your gut
microbiome is NOT a strong predictor of your glucose or fat response to food. Instead, meal
composition, genetics, meal context, and current blood sugar levels have a more significant
effect than your microbiome.

What we can see from the PREDICT1 study data is that:
• the macronutrient composition (i.e., the mixture of carbs, fat, and protein) of food has
the most significant impact on your blood glucose response to a meal, while
• the amount of fat already in your blood has the most significant impact on the rise in
the fat in your blood after you eat. In other words, if your system is already full of
energy, there is nowhere for the extra energy to go.
This aligns with our understanding of how our glucose and fat fuel tanks work in our bodies.
If your fat stores are full, any excess fuel cannot be absorbed, backs up in the system, and
overflows in your bloodstream.
If you eat in a way that gives your body the nutrients from the food that it needs to function
and attain a more optimal body composition, your gut bacteria will likely look after itself as it
continually adapts to the food you feed it.
While there will always be some variability in your glucose response to the foods you eat, our
analysis of the Food Insulin Index data gives us a solid understanding of factors affecting our
short-term insulin and glucose responses to foods. We have used this understanding to
identify foods and meals that will allow you to stabilise your glucose to healthy levels.
Rather than prescribing a meal plan and recipes designed for someone else, the DDF app
allows you to track your glucose response to the foods you eat to empower you to create a
shortlist of meals that you enjoy eating that work for your unique metabolism.
In the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, we use simpler, less invasive, and more cost-
effective biometrics to guide your dietary choices:

• If your blood sugars after meals rise by more than 1.6 mmol/L (30 mg/dL), the DDF
app will guide you to reduce your intake of processed carbs until your blood sugars
stabilise.
• If your waist: height ratio is > 0.5 and your blood sugars are in the healthy range after
dialling back carbs, you will also likely need to cut back on your fat intake. This
allows blood sugars to drop more quickly after meals and eat nutrient-dense meals
again sooner.
Not only will your blood sugars and body composition improve as you stop eating too much
too often, but your gut microbiome will become healthier too.
7.10 What Is the Glucose Ketone Index (Or Dr Boz Ratio)?

The Glucose:Ketone Index (GKI) was developed in 2015 by cancer researcher Professor
Thomas Seyfried to track cancer patients' metabolic health fasting for prolonged periods.
The GKI is simply your glucose (in mmol/L) divided by your ketones (also in mmol/L). More
recently, Dr Annette Bosworth has popularised the Dr Boz Ratio, which is glucose (in mg/dL)
divided by ketones (in mmol/L).
The GKI is based on the belief that if glucose is low and ketones are high, insulin levels will
be low, and you’re in good metabolic health. But conversely, if your glucose is high and
ketones are low when you fast, then your insulin levels are likely high. This indicates that you
have some level of insulin resistance that you need to attend to.
The problem, however, comes when people don’t differentiate between endogenous ketones
that are made from your body fat when you’re fasting vs exogenous ketones that are from
the fat in the food you just ate, added MCT oil, or ketone supplements.

The vast majority of benefits that are often attributed to ketosis come from the energy
deficit. If you are jamming in thousands of empty calories of nutrient-poor fats to raise
ketones to get a higher GKI or Dr Boz ratio, then you will be driving up insulin levels as your
pancreas has to work overtime to hold the added energy in storage.
The good news is, you will likely be producing plenty of ketones from your body fat if you
chase a lower pre-meal blood glucose. So, you don’t need to worry about wasting money
measuring ketones because they don’t give you any guidance about what or when you
should eat.
Hence, we strongly recommend you skip the expense and confusion of testing ketones and
focus on pre-meal blood sugars that give you actionable data.
For more detail, see Is the Acetone:Glucose Ratio the Holy Grail of Tracking Optimal
Ketosis?
7.11 Will Data-Driven Fasting Help Me Lose Weight If I

Don’t Have Diabetes?
Data-Driven Fasting will work for most people trying to lose weight, even if they don’t meet
the criteria for diabetes.
While Type-2 Diabetes is diagnosed when you have a fasting glucose of greater than 125
mg/dL or 7.0 mmol/L, you can use Data-Driven Fasting to drive your pre-meal trigger down
to much lower levels (e.g., 70 mg/dL or 3.9 mmol/L). As you do this, your weight and body
fat levels will follow.
The one scenario where Data-Driven Fasting may not be as effective is when people have
been on a high fat, low protein ketogenic diet for a long time. These people may already

have very low blood sugars, which don’t vary much after eating but still have a lot of fat to
lose. Our Macros Masterclass tends to be more effective to help them fine-tune their
macros to suit their goals (e.g., prioritise protein and reduce fat to facilitate fat loss).
7.12 How Can I Optimise My Sleep with Intermittent

Fasting?
Not eating too late in the day seems to help us sleep better. According to Professor
Matthew Walker in his book Why We Sleep, we don’t enter REM sleep while burning off a lot
of energy from a late dinner.
This survey of Oura Ring users shows that not eating too late is by far the most beneficial
'hack' to ensure sound sleep based on their quantitative data.

Don’t be surprised if you find you sleep more soundly as your blood glucose decreases
because your body is not working so hard to process excess energy overnight.
On the flip side, it’s also good not to be too hungry when you go to bed. If you find you
wake up through the night because you are hungry, you may need to eat something a bit
closer to bedtime. A little carbohydrate at your last meal may be beneficial to raise glucose
into the normal range to ensure your body doesn’t think it’s starving overnight.
Your body prioritises burning off alcohol, which can keep your metabolic rate elevated. So,
try to avoid too much alcohol later at night. Similarly, protein requires a lot of energy to
metabolise, so it’s ideal if you don’t try to consume your full days' worth of protein just
before bed. In contrast, carbs and fat are metabolised more easily (i.e., they have a lower
Dietary Induced Thermogenesis) and thus will give you a better chance at a sound sleep.
7.13 How Much Should My Blood Glucose Rise After A

Meal?
Data-Driven Fasting primarily focuses on blood glucose before meals to ensure you are
reducing the excess energy stores in your body. As insulin sensitivity improves, waking blood
glucose and post-meal blood glucose should also decrease.
If you see your blood glucose rise by more than 30 mg/dL or 1.6 mmol/L in the one to two
hours after you eat, it means that you likely ate too much or too many carbohydrates at that
meal. You should either avoid that meal or eat less of it in the future. Your glucose tank is
already full, so you don’t need more carbs.
Many people find their blood glucose rises more after dinner, which is an indication that
their energy stores are being overfilled. As a result, they may benefit by reducing the size of
their dinner and prioritising larger meals earlier in the day when their energy tanks are not as
full.
You can use the hourly glucose charts in the DDF app to tailor your meal choices and routine
to avoid having the majority of post-meal glucose values above the upper limit line (i.e., 1.6
mg/dL or 30 mg/dL).
Once you master this, you can focus on your pre-meal blood sugars and delay your meals to
reduce your Personalised Trigger.

The rise in glucose after you eat is more a reflection of what you ate. On the contrary, your
fasting blood glucose and your glucose before meals indicate your metabolic health and
whether you are over-fuelling throughout the day.
7.14 Do I Need to Worry About 'Insulin Toxicity'?

Many people focus on insulin toxicity as the 'root cause' of diabetes and metabolic disease.
Hence, they see reducing insulin as the end goal. However, if you are part of the 98.5% of
the population with a functioning pancreas that is not injecting insulin to manage Type1
Diabetes, your body won’t produce more insulin than you need to keep body fat in storage
when food is coming in from your mouth.
When someone with Type-1 Diabetes accidentally injects too much insulin, their liver will
reduce the release of energy into the bloodstream, and their blood glucose will drop quickly.
This causes them to feel ravenously hungry, and they will be driven to eat anything and
everything to bring their blood sugar levels back up.
However, unless you are either a Type-1 or insulin-dependent Type-2 diabetic injecting
insulin, high insulin levels do not cause overeating or obesity. The reverse is true: high insulin
levels cause overeating and obesity. Therefore, rather than worrying about ‘insulin toxicity’,
we should focus on managing energy toxicity and insulin will look after itself.
The Carbohydrate – Insulin Hypothesis simplistically assumes:
carbs -> insulin -> fat storage

However, it is a little more complex than this. It’s critical to understand the true cause-and-
effect relationship. Rather than addressing the symptom of high insulin, we need to focus our
effort and attention on the root cause. A rise in insulin is simply the response to increased
body fat. It is not the cause! Instead, the real cause is:
low satiety, nutrient-poor foods -> increased cravings and appetite to get the nutrients
we need -> increased energy intake -> fat storage -> increased insulin
Hence, the solution to managing diabetes, blood glucose, and insulin levels and dodging the
complications of metabolic syndrome is:
high–satiety, nutrient-dense foods and meals -> decreased cravings and appetite ->
decreased energy intake -> fat loss -> lower insulin levels
By managing your pre-meal blood glucose by waiting to eat until you need to refuel, you will
reduce your body fat. In turn, insulin levels will reduce.
We designed Data-Driven Fasting to keep things as simple as possible by shifting your

primary focus to blood glucose before meals to draw down on glucose and fat stored in the
body, subsequently reducing your insulin levels across the day.
For more detail, see:
• What Does Insulin Do in Your Body?
• How to Reverse Your Insulin Resistance.
7.15 How Long Will It Take to Train My Hunger?

People with elevated blood glucose tend to have dysregulated hunger signals and find it
hard to judge their true hunger. So, monitoring blood glucose is a great way to train your
hunger if you are overweight or have elevated blood glucose.
Many fascinating studies (e.g. Training to estimate blood glucose and to form associations
with initial hunger) have shown that people can learn to predict their blood glucose from
their sensations of hunger.

After several weeks of testing blood glucose, people can get a good feel for their blood
glucose when they are truly hungry based on their symptoms, like their stomach rumbling,
changes in energy levels, becoming food focussed or mental fatigue.
When you log your blood glucose in the DDF app, it’s critical to take a moment to observe
your hunger and log your current hunger level. This moment of self-reflection is critical to
help you calibrate your hunger signals going forward.
Once you can predict your blood glucose and rate your hunger based on your symptoms,
you will be able to wait until you are hungry to eat. From there, you can wean yourself off the
measuring and rely on your hunger signals.
For more detail, see Hunger Training… How to Use Your Glucometer as a Fuel Gauge to
Train Your Appetite For Sustainable Weight Loss.
7.16 What If My Blood Glucose Rises Again Before I Eat?

The goal of Data-Driven Fasting is to validate your hunger using your blood glucose.
If your blood glucose is below your trigger when you feel hungry, you have successfully
depleted the glycogen in your liver and have started to burn body fat. You are ready to
refuel again!
When they test again before they eat, some people have found that their blood glucose may
have risen while preparing their meals. It is perfectly normal for your body to release
glucose into your bloodstream:
● when it anticipates food is coming,

● as part of the normal process of maintaining stable blood glucose, and
● if it gets stressed by low blood glucose and hunger.
The ‘secret’ here is not to test again. Go ahead and eat if you are hungry and your blood
glucose has dipped below your trigger.
This is one of the downsides we see with people using continuous glucose monitors, as it can
provide more data than necessary.
In Data-Driven Fasting, we want to use the minimum effective dose of measurement to

ensure you move progressively rather than become overwhelmed and give up before you
reach your goal.
7.18 Why Is My Waking Blood Sugar the Highest of The

Day?
If you have plenty of stored body fat, your body will release it as energy overnight into your
bloodstream, even if you follow a lower-carb diet.
Your body can make glucose from protein and even the fat you eat and the fat on your
body. So, if you have excess energy stored in your body, the glucose you’re consuming from
food will back up in your system and overflow into your bloodstream.
Making sure you are not overeating too late may help decrease waking blood sugars.
However, reducing your body fat levels to more optimal levels may take some time. To do
this, you need to keep chasing a lower pre-meal blood sugar by delaying your meals. You
also must ensure you are eating nutrient-dense, high-satiety meals when you do eat.
Counterintuitively, people on a higher fat diet often see higher blood glucose levels in the
morning, particularly when they eat more fat at night. If your waking glucose is elevated,
you could experiment with eating less fat and perhaps in your evening meal when your
blood glucose is lower. Over time, by using your blood glucose to guide what and when to
eat, you may find that your blood glucose levels become more consistent across the day.

7.19 Why Do I Get Cold When Fast?
Interestingly, some people find that one of their symptoms of lower blood sugar is being
cold. This is because when your body has less fuel available, it slows the amount of energy it
uses to save energy.
You should take this as a sign that you are hungry and ready to eat. If there is food
available, your body won’t let you be cold and miserable for too long before your appetite
kicks in and you wake Lizzy.
If you feel cold regularly, you should ensure you are getting adequate protein when you eat.
Not only does protein help you maintain your precious muscle, but it also produces more
heat as you digest and metabolise it (i.e., the thermic effect of food).
7.20 Why Do I Get Headaches When I Fast?

As well as energy, your body stores toxins in your body fat. As you lose weight, these stored
toxins will flow into your bloodstream and need to be processed and excreted by your
kidneys. People who fast for extended periods can get bad headaches due to these toxins,
which overload the body and often drive them to stop fasting and eat again.
If you find you are getting headaches, you should make sure you are drinking plenty of
fluids. Some electrolytes (e.g., salty water or our Optimised Electrolyte Mix recipe) can also
help when your body excretes electrolytes when your blood sugars drop. However, with
Data-Driven Fasting, most people find that headaches are minimal because they are losing
weight at a sustainable rate so their body can process the toxins.

Troubleshooting [DDF FAQ Part 8]
This section of the Data-Driven Fasting FAQs answers questions that arise in the challenges
as people troubleshoot their journeys towards optimal weight and metabolic health.
8.1 Does Insulin Resistance Make It Harder for Me to

Lose Weight?
There is a common misconception that being insulin resistant or having Type2 Diabetes
makes it harder to lose weight.
However, the opposite is true.
We become insulin resistant because we are obese.
We are not obese because we are insulin resistant.
This distinction is critical.
People who can gain a massive amount of weight are often highly insulin-sensitive and have
normal blood glucose levels. This is even true for someone with much higher body fat levels
before they develop diabetes.
Lean people are typically much more insulin sensitive, meaning they can quickly gain weight
in the form of both muscle and fat when they eat. Weight loss generally slows as someone
becomes leaner, and hunger increases to prevent starvation.

It takes a massive amount of discipline and self-restraint for bodybuilders to diet down for a
competition. Bodybuilders regularly deprive themselves of calories to become leaner,
despite having high calorie demands to support their exercise. After the show, many of them
subsequently regain weight due to a massive upregulation of appetite. Their fat cells are
primed, like an empty sponge, to soak up all the energy they can get.
As a general rule, someone who is obese is more likely to be insulin resistant and have
excess energy flowing into their bloodstream and elevated blood glucose. However, it’s
harder to gain more body fat (at least compared to an ultra-lean bodybuilder) because their
adipose tissues are already much fuller.
However, once they drain the excess energy from their bloodstream and give their body the
nutrients they require without excess energy, they will be able to lose body fat. It’s likely that
their pancreas is struggling to keep up with insulin production to hold their excess energy in
storage. As they lose body fat, their insulin levels reduce, and they regain insulin sensitivity
and healthy blood glucose levels.
8.2 Would Data-Driven Fasting Be Appropriate If I’m

Active?
One of the biggest challenges for active people is getting enough fuel to recover and grow
without eating so much that they add excess body fat. This becomes even more difficult if
someone wants to include fasting in their routine. Our daily energy requirements and
appetite vary depending on the amount and type of activities.
Intermittent fasting can be a valuable tool for active people to manage their body
composition. Data-Driven Fasting is not just for overweight people or those with Type-2
Diabetes. We have seen the process be incredibly effective for people at both extremes of
the spectrum of age or metabolic health.
It’s valuable to refuel if your blood glucose is low to avoid getting too hungry, where you
become susceptible to bingeing later. However, given that your blood glucose is closely tied
to body fat levels, using your blood glucose as a fuel gauge also enables you to curb your
appetite.
In contrast, other fasting methods often leave users with a raging appetite and feeling
entitled to eat unlimited amounts of energy that leave them gaining fat despite all their hard
work.
When you are active, your body will crave more energy for recovery and build muscle and
your liver releases stored glucose to fuel your activity. Your muscles become inflamed and
demand glucose to help with the refuelling and repair process.

If you see your blood glucose elevated after a workout, you can flag it in the DDF app, which
will give you a slightly higher trigger so you can still eat. Another strategy is to time your
Main Meal before or after your workout.
If your blood glucose is trending up rather than down when you’re well-rested and
recovered, it’s a sign you are over-fuelling and need to dial things back in to avoid gaining
excess body fat.
8.3 What Should I Do If My Waking Blood Glucose Is Not

Dropping?
Your waking blood glucose is a key marker of metabolic health and an indicator of whether
you are holding excess stored energy. We have found that lower pre-meal blood glucose is
strongly correlated with lower waking blood glucose.
If you are achieving a negative energy balance, draining your excess glucose stores from
your bloodstream, and losing body fat, you should also see your waking blood glucose
trending downward over the long term.
However, there are several reasons that your waking glucose may not be dropping:
Scenario 1 – Eating too late
When waiting for your trigger, it’s possible that we can push our last meal back so late that
we end up overly hungry late at night. As a result, it might not be a surprise that your
waking blood glucose remains elevated if you are still digesting your meal from the night
before. While many people find it easier to eat later in the day, you should work to
personalise your fasting approach to suit your lifestyle and preferences.
However, plenty of studies, like this one, show that people who eat most of their food later in
the day tend to have worse metabolic health. Although it’s good to wait until your blood
glucose falls below baseline before eating, holding off as long as you possibly can may not
be the solution.
Instead, the best way to manage this may be to start the day with a nutrient-dense, protein-
focused meal regardless of your blood glucose and to finish eating earlier. You can then
treat your other meals as discretionary based on your blood glucose.

Scenario 2 – Stress and poor sleep
Stress and poor sleep will have an impact on your waking blood glucose. High stress levels
can also trigger comfort eating less optimal foods. Higher waking blood glucose levels may
indicate that you need to better manage your stress levels.
If your blood glucose levels are abnormally elevated due to stress, you can tick the relevant
boxes in the DDF app to get a slightly higher trigger for 24 hours so you can still eat.
Scenario 3 – Low protein percentage
People who have body fat to lose but eat a lower protein percentage may see minimal
variability in their blood glucose after meals. However, their body still releases plenty of
stored energy into their bloodstream overnight, which can cause elevated morning blood
glucose. Prioritising a higher protein percentage by reducing dietary fat and carbs provides
greater satiety. In time, this will help with fat loss and lower waking blood glucose.
Scenario 4 – Your weight is in freefall!
As you wait for your pre-meal blood glucose to drop below Your Personal Trigger, your
insulin levels will plummet to allow stored energy in the form of glucose, ketones, and free
fatty acids to flow into your bloodstream. If you have fat to lose, this is a good thing as you
will use stored energy. Despite eating less, you will have plenty of fuel in the bloodstream.

If your waking blood glucose is higher but your pre-meal blood glucose, weight, waist and
body fat are all trending down, you simply need to be patient. Expect insulin levels to drop
and ketones to rise over the first couple of weeks of weight loss before levelling out when
your weight stabilises again.
If other markers like waist, weight, and body fat are moving in the right direction, you should
expect to see lower waking glucose once you switch to maintenance mode and your weight
stabilises. This is because your body has less energy to hold in storage, and waking glucose
thus becomes lower.
If everything else is moving in the right direction, we suggest you stop testing your waking
blood glucose during the challenge and simply focus on pre-meal blood glucose until you
transition to maintenance. Once your weight is stable, your waking glucose will be a more
useful indicator of metabolic health than while your weight is in freefall.
8.4 What If My Blood Glucose Doesn't Drop Below My

Trigger for The Whole Day?
As you start to make progress and burn through excess glucose stores, your body will start
to find a new normal. Some days, you may not see your blood glucose fall below your
trigger and wonder if you’re allowed to eat at all that day.
This is where you can fall back to your Main Meal and Discretionary Meals. If your blood
glucose is above your trigger despite still feeling hungry, you can choose to eat one less
meal than usual that day. For example:

● If you usually have three meals, you can choose to have two.
● If you usually have two meals, you can drop back to only Your Main Meal.
We don’t recommend you try to skip full days of eating as you risk becoming overly hungry
and bingeing on less optimal foods when refuelling.
If your blood glucose is slightly above your trigger, the DDF app will suggest you focus on
nutrient-dense foods with a higher protein percentage if you are hungry.
8.5 Should I Fast When I’m Sick?

Sickness, infection and inflammation can affect your blood glucose. People usually see their
blood sugars rise when they are sick. Your body may need more food to recover from
illness. You may also lose your appetite while your body takes some downtime to heal.
You can take a break from testing your blood glucose and follow your regular eating routine
when you're sick. Listen to your appetite signals and eat when hungry. You can always pick
back up where you left off with Data-Driven Fasting once you recover.
8.6 Is My Blood Glucose Meter Accurate?

Some people are bemused when they take multiple tests and find they are slightly different.
This causes them to question the accuracy of their meter.
Others take multiple tests with multiple meters and get confused when they get different
readings. In this case, you should find one accurate meter and stick with it. Your trigger will
adapt to you and your meter, so it doesn’t matter how it compares to other meters.
There’s no harm in taking another measurement if the number you see on your meter isn’t
what you expected or outside of your normal range. Measurements can sometimes be less
accurate if you didn’t get enough blood initially and had to add more to get a reading.
However, keep in mind that no measurement is perfectly accurate. We recommend you

don’t continue taking multiple measurements and second guess the numbers.
While there will always be variability with any measurement, you can still use the data to
force the trend in the direction you want. If you feel starving, you are free to override the
blood glucose trigger.
8.7 How will fasting affect my sleep?

Many people find their sleep improves when their blood glucose starts to stabilise.

Not eating too much or too late enables your body to rest, repair, and recover rather than
working all night to store the food you ate just before bed.
Getting adequate protein is critical to provide amino acids like tyrosine and tryptophan.
These compounds are the precursors to melatonin, which promotes healthy sleep cycles.
It’s important to remember that as you get leaner and move towards the other end of the
spectrum, your sleep may worsen. This often results because your body perceives starvation
and releases cortisol and ketones to keep you alert to survive. Insomnia and poor sleep
could indicate you’re going too fast with your dieting or that you’ve gone too far in your
weight loss.
Most people who have dieted down to very lean levels find their sleep deteriorates. Not
sleeping well is not sustainable and can even be counterproductive to weight loss. Sleep
deprivation can trigger cravings for energy-dense food, as your body does whatever it can to
get to a more comfortable body fat level.
If you find you are not sleeping well, it might be wise to back off for a little while and be
more gracious with yourself. Try switching to Pause Mode or Maintenance Mode in the DDF
app until you feel OK. You can always come back when you are ready.
8.8 Why am I Gaining Weight When I Eat More Protein?

Some people are perplexed when they see the weight on the scale increase when they start
eating more protein. However, at the same time, their body fat and waist measurements are
decreasing.
If you currently don’t eat a significant amount of protein because you are following a high-
fat keto diet or some form of extended fasting, your body may be starving for adequate
protein. When you give it more protein, your appetite may temporarily increase for high
protein foods as your body uses it to rebuild your muscles and organs.

While this may result in a temporary increase in scale weight, you can rest assured that your
body finds it very hard to convert protein to body fat. Before long, your appetite will settle,
and you can get on with losing body fat once your body has obtained protein.
Remember, your goal is not just to lose weight but rather to lose fat without losing too much
muscle. Muscle is denser than fat. If you are tracking using bioimpedance scales, you want
to see a trend toward reducing body fat rather than just only weight loss.

A simple waist measurement and how your clothes are fitting will give you a good indication
of whether you’re gaining muscle or fat with your increased protein.
See What do the numbers on my bioimpedance scale mean (and how can I manage
them)? for more details on how to make the most of your scales.
8.9 Is My Thyroid Stopping Me from Losing Weight?

Many people who have excess stored fat and metabolic syndrome have some level of thyroid
dysfunction. However, similar to insulin, this is often a result of obesity rather than the
cause.
Your thyroid is a central governor of your metabolism. Like insulin, your pituitary gland will
ramp up the production of thyroid-stimulating hormone to rev your metabolic rate if you
have more energy to burn off.
If you are taking medication for your thyroid, you should continue to have your thyroid-
stimulating hormone (TSH) monitored by your health care team and adjust your medications
as required.
As you lose weight and reduce your blood glucose, your body won’t need as much thyroid-
stimulating hormone to keep your metabolism elevated. Thus, your TSH levels may decrease.
Many people have had to decrease their medication to accommodate their normalising TSH
levels as they progress with Data-Driven Fasting.
It’s also worth noting that consuming adequate micronutrients like selenium, iodine, niacin,
histidine, and tyrosine is critical to healthy thyroid function. Hence, prioritising nutrient-
dense meals from whole foods is also a crucial part of the equation.
If you find your blood sugars are low and stable and your weight loss has stalled later in your
Data-Driven Fasting journey, an occasional small bolus of carbs can boost thyroid function
and metabolic rate to restart weight loss when your blood sugars start to bottom out.
For more details, see Metabolic flexibility: How to Give Your Body What it Needs When
It Needs It.
8.10 Don’t Try Too Hard!

Don’t try to push your blood glucose too far beyond your current trigger by waiting too
long.
You want to feel a little hungry - not STARVING! - before you eat. Otherwise, you will be
more likely to overeat at your next meal, and you will have to delay your next meal even
further until your blood glucose falls below your trigger.

Data-Driven Fasting is a tool to ensure you are achieving an energy deficit over the long
term. Not surprisingly, it will become more challenging if you force a more significant energy
deficit as your lizard brain fights back to ensure you survive.
Your long-term goal with Data-Driven Fasting is to find a sustainable routine that allows you
to move towards a goal like weight loss, fat loss, lowered blood glucose, or insulin sensitivity
over the coming weeks and months.
Data-Driven Fasting helps fine-tune your eating schedule, retrain your appetite and hunger
signals, and build long-term habits. If you push too hard, your body will always find a way to
compensate to survive.
You only need the minimum effective dose of fasting to move toward your goals at a
sustainable rate. Not only will this be easier to do, but it will also give you a better chance of
long-term success.

Other Things That Affect Your Blood
Sugars (Other Than Food) [DDF FAQ Part
9]
As you progress through your Data-Driven Fasting journey, you will start to notice how
different things other than food influence your blood sugars.
A deeper understanding of these various factors will help you to better interpret the number
you see on your meter.
9.1 Many Things Affect Your Blood Sugars

As noted by the author of The Complete Guide to Fasting, Dr Jason Fung, back in 2016, when
we were initially developing the ideas around DDF, many things can affect your blood
glucose, such as stress, exercise, illness, and hormones.

Tracking your blood glucose is a powerful way to ensure you give your body what it needs
when it needs it. However, it’s helpful to be aware of factors other than your food that can
affect your blood sugars.
The intent of Data-Driven Fasting is to use your blood glucose as a guide. Don’t be hard on
yourself if you feel compelled to eat before your blood glucose drops below your trigger.
When this happens, try to be mindful of the other factors like exercise, stress, mood, and
hormones (e.g., that time of the month for women) that can affect your blood sugars.
Remember, you only need to log a blood glucose below your trigger more often than not
to make progress. Your blood glucose can also highlight other areas of your life that need
improvement, like stress and sleep.
If your blood glucose is a little high, you know you still have plenty of fuel onboard and that
all you need is nutrients. So, if you are hungry and choose to eat, try to prioritise nutrient-
dense foods and meals with a higher protein percentage.
This will allow you to draw on your body’s stored fat and glucose while providing the
nutrients you need to function optimally, prevent cravings, and preserve precious lean
muscle mass.

9.2 How Does Sleep Affect Blood Glucose?
Getting good sleep is essential, especially when it comes to managing your cortisol and
waking blood glucose. Don’t underestimate the power of a good night’s sleep to stabilise
blood glucose and help manage your appetite!
We tend to sleep better if we’re not over-full or too hungry. So, try not to eat your largest
meal, or only meal for the day, just before you go to bed. If you do, your metabolism will be
elevated through the night as you burn off the energy from dinner or that late-night snack.
At the same time, you don’t want to be too hungry. Ketone levels rise once your glucose is
depleted to ensure you are alert and energised to go out and hunt rather than lie down and
sleep deeply.
If you start to notice your blood glucose is elevated after not sleeping well, do what you can
to improve your sleep hygiene by limiting blue light from screens after dark, having a wind-
down routine, and allowing enough time for sleep.
It’s also worth noting that high-protein meals will keep your metabolism more elevated than
carbs and fat. Thus, it’s ideal to front-load your protein earlier in the day and top up on
energy later (if required) when your blood sugars are lower.
9.3 Should I Exercise?

Resistance training is critical to send a signal to tell your body to maintain your muscle
during weight loss. However, keep in mind that your blood glucose may go up or down
when you exercise. You should, therefore, only use your blood glucose as an indicator of
when to eat after your blood glucose has settled down.

If you typically feel hungry around your workout, you could choose to eat your Main Meal in
the morning just before or after your workout, regardless of your blood glucose. Ideally, this
should be protein-rich to support recovery. You can then treat other meals and snacks across
the day as Discretionary Meals and only eat them if your blood glucose is below your trigger.
If you notice that your blood glucose is abnormally elevated after exercise, you can flag it in
the DDF App to get a slightly higher trigger for the day.
While lower-intensity exercise can lower blood glucose levels, keep in mind that intense
exercise can increase them. Although your post-exercise glucose levels may be higher than
your trigger, it’s OK to eat quality food when you’re hungry after your workouts. In fact, it’s
often ideal to eat after exercise when you first feel hungry, even if your blood sugar is still
above your trigger, rather than waiting to the point you are ravenous because your blood
glucose has plummeted.
9.4 How Does Exercise Impact Your Blood Glucose

Levels?
Taking a moderate paced walk or doing some low-intensity exercise can deplete your blood
glucose.
Exercising at a lower intensity when you can still breathe and talk easily will burn more fat
and lower your glucose. Resistance training helps build metabolically active lean mass,
which increases your overall metabolic rate.
Both resistance training and low-intensity exercise have their place, but they will affect your
blood sugar differently. Meanwhile, higher intensity exercise will cause a release of stored
energy from your liver and you may see blood glucose rise.

If you do intense exercise, your body will release glucose into your bloodstream to fuel the
activity. This is not a problem, but it’s just something to keep in mind when testing your
blood glucose.
People often don’t feel hungry after exercise because of this elevated blood glucose.
However, if you feel hungry after your workout and your blood glucose is still artificially
elevated, don’t be afraid to eat! You may find that eating your Main Meal before or after
your workout helps you avoid more intense hunger later in the day, which often leads to
poorer food choices.
If you do a heavy workout like high-intensity interval training or intense weightlifting that
depletes glycogen stores, don’t be surprised if you find yourself hungrier later in the day as
your body tries to refill your glucose and fat fuel tanks. We suggest you use your blood
sugar levels to experiment with your meal timings to ensure you refuel before your blood
glucose gets too low and you end up in an all-out binge.
It’s virtually impossible to accurately calculate calories burned during exercise. It’s also easy
to overeat due to increased hunger after your workout. However, once the glucose surge has
settled down, your blood glucose will give you a good idea of whether you are over or
under-fuelling over the long term.

To cater to the effect that exercise has on blood sugars, you may find it helpful to have your
nutrient-dense, high protein-focused Main Meal around your workout. You can then use
your blood glucose trigger to determine other Discretionary Meals during the day once your
blood glucose normalises. When you log your blood sugar after a workout in the DDF app,
your trigger will temporarily increase, so you can go ahead and eat even if your blood sugar
is elevated.
9.4 Is It Better to Exercise Fasted?

If you want to burn body fat, have plenty of glucose on board, and are not hungry, exercising
in the morning before you eat a great idea. However, if you want to perform explosive
exercise, run faster or lift heavier, you don’t want to have low blood glucose before your
workout.
9.5 How Can I Use My Glucose to Optimise My Workout

Fuelling?
Your blood glucose can give powerful insights to help you decide when and what to eat
around exercise. CGMs have even been banned in cycling competitions due to the potential
performance advantages.
Even if you’re not an elite cyclist, you still want to keep your blood glucose in the normal
healthy range to maximise performance. Overdoing carbs can cause sharp rises that lead to

glucose crashes later. Similarly, you also want to avoid running out of glucose (known as
‘bonking’).
Outlined below are some scenarios to show how you can optimise your workout selection
and fueling to align with your goals to enable you to leverage the insights from your glucose
monitor.
Lower Intensity Short Duration Exercise
Low-intensity exercise is a great way to lower glucose at any time.
One of the primary observations from many people who have tried CGMs is the importance
of being active throughout the day to lower glucose.
If your blood glucose is elevated, a gentle walk is a great way to bring it down at any time of
the day, e.g.:
• in the morning before you eat when your blood glucose is elevated due to the dawn
phenomenon, or
• after a meal to blunt the rise in glucose after you eat.
Lower intensity exercise mainly uses fat, but it will also slowly deplete your blood glucose.
The good news is that if you are using your glucose to guide when you eat, you will be able
to eat again sooner because you have used the excess glucose in your system.
If you want to get technical, your goal is to keep your intensity low enough to stay below
your “lactate threshold”. This is the intensity at which your body can use the lactate
produced for energy without it building up to higher levels in the blood.

But unless you’re an elite cyclist, you’re probably not testing your lactate or VO2max. You can
also use a heart rate monitor and keep your heart rate under 180 minus your age. This is
also known as “Zone 2” training.
But the most practical way for most people to monitor intensity is to monitor their breathing.
For example, if you can still carry out a conversation with complete sentences and breathe
through your nose, you’re in Zone 2 and will deplete rather than raise your glucose. Likewise,
if you were talking on the phone, the person on the other end would know you’re exercising,
but it wouldn’t hamper the conversation.
You could potentially go all day and not get tired at this lower intensity. And possibly, more
importantly, you can get up the next day and do it all over again without being overly tired.
This pace may initially feel slow, but in time, as your body learns to oxidise more fat for fuel
rather than glucose, during exercise, the speed and power you can produce at a lower
intensity will increase.
You don’t have to go all out if you're new to exercise. Monitoring your step count on your
phone can be a great way to start. If you look at your phone and find your current average
step count is 2000 per day. Next week, aim for 3000. Once you can consistently do that for
a week, aim for 4000 each day.
If you’re curious, you could check your glucose before and activity the activity. You should
see it drop slowly but not so low that you get ravenously hungry afterwards.
Short Duration High-Intensity Exercise
Once your body has mastered using fat for fuel at a lower intensity, more intense exercise
such as resistance training or high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a great way to build

strength and aerobic capacity. But your body will need some glucose to fuel your more
intense activity.
Unless your glucose is lower than normal for you before your workout, you don’t need to eat
before an intense workout. Your body has plenty of stored glycogen that it can release to
fuel your activity. If you test your glucose, you may see a rise in glucose during your
workout.
However, you need to be ready for the crash in glucose afterwards. If you use a ton of
glucose in your high-intensity workout, your muscles will be depleted afterwards and suck
the glucose from your blood into your muscles to refuel.
Rather than insulin ‘pushing’ glucose into your cells, this process uses your GLUT1 glucose
transporters (i.e., non-insulin-mediated glucose uptake). Waiting too long to eat after a
workout can lead to lower blood sugars than your body is comfortable with and intense
cravings for energy-dense foods to quickly replenish the energy deficit created by the
workout.
So, you should be ready with a robust, protein-focused meal after your workout that will
blunt your hunger and give your muscles what they need to recover and grow. If your blood
sugars are lower than normal for you, you can use some faster acting carbs to bring your
blood glucose up into the normal range and keep Lizzy at bay.
Longer Duration Low-Intensity Exercise
If you’re doing very long duration activity (e.g., triathlons, marathons etc.), it’s essential to
train your fat-burning metabolism with lower intensity exercise and get used to having lower
glucose levels. This training style means that, when it comes to performing, you have plenty
of glucose in reserve for the intense efforts. While you may be able to use mainly fat for the
majority of an event, competitions are won and lost in the sprints at the end. Having some
glucose in reserve is critical.
When it comes to fuelling your activity, fast-acting carbs that raise your blood glucose levels
excessively can lead to crashes later. So, it can be useful to monitor your blood sugars
before, during and after exercise and ensure that your blood sugars are not rising excessively
(e.g., by more than 30 mg/dL or 1.6 mmol/L) after you eat or crash below your normal level.
Evening out your fuelling by finding the balance of fat and carbs that suit your activity and
metabolism can lead to more stable and sustainable energy levels. If your blood sugars
don’t rise excessively, you can afford to fuel with more fast-acting carbs. But if you’re not yet
as metabolically flexible as a Tour De France cyclist, you may need to lean towards more fat
to ensure a steadier flow of fuel.

Of course, if you find yourself with lower blood sugars towards the end of the activity, some
fast-acting carbs can be helpful. This is why endurance athletes are constantly pounding
gels and bars during the event to refill their glycogen stores quickly to prevent bonking.
You can find the fuelling regime that works for your metabolism and training with some trial
and error. While most high-performance athletes require tons of fast-acting carbohydrates,
many people who compete in more extended duration events have found it is more useful to
lean towards a higher fat diet to maintain more stable energy and less dependence on in-
race fuelling.
Once you’ve trained your fat-burning metabolism, you can throw in carbs and fats to fuel up
on race day for the best performance.
9.5 Why Does My Glucose Rise When I Don’t Eat?

It may seem counter-intuitive, but your blood glucose after meals or upon waking can
increase as you start to lose weight, particularly if you don’t have great metabolic health and
(or) have a lot of weight to lose.
If you are overweight, your body has a lot of stored energy to unload when you don’t eat for
a while. So, given the opportunity, your body is eager to dump your stored energy in the
form of glucose and fat into your bloodstream to make up the difference.
You should see your waking blood glucose trend down over the long term, especially once
your weight is stable. However, many people see their waking blood glucose drift up a little
in the short term. They also find their blood glucose can increase during the day, even if
they haven’t eaten.
This is not cause for concern. Your body is just releasing stored energy from its fuel reserves
into your bloodstream. You can see rising glucose when you don’t eat as a sign that your
body is releasing stored energy, so you don’t need to eat now.
If other health markers like body fat, weight, and waist are moving in the right direction, then
there is a good chance you will be in a much healthier position long term once things
stabilise.
Rather than trying to fast for longer, which can cause your blood glucose and ketones to rise
even more, it’s ideal to find a sustainable daily eating pattern. Eventually, you should see
your blood glucose levels fall, and your body fat levels decrease as you deplete your liver
glycogen.

9.6 Can I Fast When I’m Stressed?
The extra adrenaline and cortisol from stress can cause your blood glucose to rise, regardless
of what you eat (or don’t!). Stress can also cause your lizard brain to awaken, and you may
eat for comfort to prepare for an emergency like during a famine or to run away from a
predator.
Aside from waiting to eat, you can lower your blood glucose by doing what you need to
relax and de-stress. Breathing exercises, meditation, a walk in the sun, sleeping in, a hot
bath, and journaling are powerful and free ways to calm your mind. Don’t be surprised if
actively managing your stress helps you lose weight!
Many people find they get the best results with Data-Driven Fasting when they relax, don’t
overthink the process and stop trying quite so hard to manage the outcomes. Trying to
understand every nuance can lead to increased stress, which is counterproductive.
In the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, we encourage people to relax and follow the
process. It’s only four weeks of your life! If it doesn’t work out, you can always go back to
what you were doing before.

Moving On… [DDF FAQ Part 10]
As we head towards the end of the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge, many people start
to ask about what’s next and what they can do to dial in WHAT they eat (rather than just
WHEN).
We’re big believers in keeping things as simple as possible to allow you to master one new
skill at a time. If in doubt, it’s better to keep things simple rather than becoming
overwhelmed. However, eventually WHAT you eat becomes critical.
While DDF has really taken off, we’ve been working to help people solve the ‘WHAT to eat’
puzzle at Optimising Nutrition for the past five years.
This final section of the DDF FAQs will give you some ideas that you can implement once you
feel you are ready to take the next steps in your journey toward Nutritional Optimisation.
10.1 How Long Can I Do This For?

You can follow Data-Driven Fasting until you achieve your goal. For example:
• a waist-to-height ratio of less than 0.5,
• a body-fat level of less than 15% for men or 25% for women, or
• as waking glucose of less than 100 mg/dL or 5.6 mmol/L.
As shown in the chart below, a pre-meal trigger of 4.5 mmol/L or 80 mg/dL corresponds with
a waking glucose of about 4.9 mmol/L or 90 mg/dL, which aligns with the lowest risk of all-
cause mortality.

But if you have a long way to go, you may not reach your goal in a single four-week DDF
challenge. We recommend you transition to Maintenance Mode if:
• You reach your goal,
• The process is becoming stressful,
• You are becoming overly food-focused,
• You are struggling to reach your trigger,
• You are feeling overly hungry, weak, cold, depressed, or lethargic,
• To take a break until the next round of DDF Challenge, or
• You notice changes in libido or monthly cycles (women).
You can always restart the process when you feel you are ready or when the next round of
the Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge rolls around.
10.2 Maintenance Mode

Long-term weight loss can get hard after a while. Therefore, it can be beneficial to take a
‘diet break’ to ‘practice maintenance’. When you’re ready to activate maintenance mode,
click on the three dots on the right of the DDF app home page and select ‘maintenance
mode’.
Maintenance mode will give you a slightly higher pre-meal glucose trigger (10 mg/dL or 0.6
mmol/L above your final trigger) that will help you maintain your current weight.
If you weigh yourself at least weekly, the DDF app will provide you with an updated
maintenance trigger.
• If your weight drops by more than 2%, your premeal trigger will increase.
• If your weight starts to trend up, your premeal trigger will lower.
• If your weight goes up by more than 4%, we recommend you jump into the next
round of the Data-Driven Fasting Challenge to dial things back in again.

Learning to maintain your weight is also a skill that many find harder than the weight loss
process itself. Hence, it can be helpful to continue to use your blood sugars to guide you as
you set out on this new phase. You can think of it as having trainer wheels at your new
lowered body weight.
Maintenance does not mean you eat anything and everything. Instead, you are practising
eating in a way that enables you to maintain your weight. During maintenance, you may be
able to focus a little more on the WHAT to eat side of the equation without worrying so
much about eating less frequently.
10.3 What Should I Eat During Maintenance?

Maintenance Mode will allow you to eat more often and/or in larger quantities. Therefore,
what you eat initially shouldn’t change too much. However, if you are finding you’re still
hungry, you can bring back some more energy from carbs and/or fats.
But be careful about reverting to hyperpalatable carb+fat comfort foods. Most people find
these foods hard to eat in moderation. Once you start and tell your body that these foods
are available, it can be hard to stop, and you may find that you quickly undo all your hard
work and be back where you started.
10.4 Should I Switch to Maintenance or Keep on Chasing

My Trigger Between Challenges?
If you haven’t lost a lot of weight and are easily meeting your trigger at every meal, you may
want to keep chasing your trigger between Challenges. However, if it’s starting to get hard
and you’re feeling overly food-focused, tired, cold or mentally exhausted, we recommend
taking a break and practising weight maintenance until the next round. It’s important that
you don’t push your body to the point that it’s hard not to rebound.

It’s normal for your premeal trigger to be slightly higher after re-baselining at the start of
each round of the challenge. As shown in the chart below from Julia’s 18-month DDF
journey, your premeal trigger will fall during the first few rounds but then finds a lower level
that it is comfortable with. Periods of maintenance between challenges allows your glucose
stores to replenish at this new normal before starting again. Even though your trigger may
not continue to drop further, you will continue to lose weight as you repeatedly chase your
trigger in successful founds.
10.5 Pause Mode

We designed ‘Pause Mode’ for people who want to take a break from chasing a lower trigger
but don’t want to see their trigger go up for long-term maintenance. Pause mode would be
ideal for a quick break between Challenges, especially if you are not finding the process too
challenging (yet).
To activate Pause Mode, go to Quick Actions (three vertical dots) and select ‘Pause Mode’.
Later, when you’re ready, you can then restart Hunger Training at the same trigger without
having to re-do baselining. If in doubt, we suggest you transition to maintenance between
challenges rather than continue to chase a lower and lower trigger, which can get very
difficult and frustrating after a few months.

10.6 Should I Do Another DDF Challenge?
Many people have found they love the community support in the Data-Driven Fasting 30-
Day Challenge. After one challenge, they feel they are just starting to get the hang of the
process and want to keep going.
The DDF process is quite simple, but retaining your habits and finding a new groove can take
some time to master. If you sign up for a single challenge, you will access the DDF app for
45 days.
If you are already a DDF Unlimited Member, you will get an email inviting you to join the
next challenge group at the end of each challenge. Going forward, we plan to run at least
seven DDF challenges per year. You will also be invited to a DDF Masters group where
people can ask for support beyond the challenges. We are building a supportive community
of people who have mastered DDF to help newcomers who join in the future.

10.7 When Is the Next Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day
Challenge?
The growing Data-Driven Fasting community is extremely exciting! More and more
Unlimited Members are coming back for subsequent rounds of DDF to continue their
journey and help newcomers find their way. You can check out the full schedule of
upcoming events here.
10.8 Should I Do DDF Or the Macros Masterclass First?

Data-Driven Fasting is a great introduction to kick start your weight loss journey by dialling
in WHEN you eat. However, WHAT you eat eventually becomes the limiting factor.
DDF is relatively simple, whereas the Macros Masterclass and the Micros Masterclass require
that you track your food for four weeks to guide you to dial in your meal choices. So, the
DDF Challenge is an excellent starting place for most people, especially if they already have a
blood glucose meter.
You should only bring out the big guns once you have exhausted the simplest options. But
when you’re ready, the Macros Masterclass and the Micros Masterclass are excellent options
to help you fine-tune WHAT you eat to help you move towards optimal.
10.9 How Do I Get the Free Food Lists?

We have created a wide range of nutrient-dense food lists tailored towards different goals
that you can access in our Optimising Nutrition Community here.

• If your post-meal BGs are typically below your upper limit and do not rise more than
30mg/dL or 1.6 mmol/L after meals, we recommend using the Maximum Nutrient
Density or Fat-Loss food lists.
• If you are still working to stabilise your blood sugar to a healthy range, you should
choose the Blood Sugar and Fat Loss food list.
Each food list is organised into groups (e.g., plants, animal-based, seafood). The foods at the
top of each list are ranked the highest for each goal. We recommend you work through
these food lists and find foods you want to incorporate into your daily routine. You will find
some you like and others you don’t.

10.10 Nutribooster Recipe Books
After publishing hundreds of articles about nutrient density, satiety, and optimising blood
sugar and insulin levels, we finally realised that we needed to make it as easy as possible for
YOU to implement in your kitchen if Nutritional Optimisation was going to become a
movement.
When everything is optimised using artificial intelligence and big data these days, why
shouldn't you be able to optimise the nutrients in your food? Our ambitious goal was to
reinvent and revolutionise the recipe genre by spotlighting essential micronutrients using a
data-driven approach.
To bring this to fruition, we created a series of recipe books tailored to a range of goals. To
help you decide, we have prepared this table with a brief description of each book and who
they are most suited for.
Goal Appropriate for
Designed for rapid fat loss by providing optimal satiation from

Fat loss adequate protein to prevent muscle loss and decrease hunger and
cravings stemming from nutrient deficiencies.
Maximum nutrient These are the most nutrient-dense recipes available!

density

Designed to stabilise blood sugars and maintain weight on a

Low carb & blood
nutritious low-carb diet. Ideal for someone with diabetes or
sugar
anyone who enjoys eating low-carb.
Designed for someone with elevated blood sugars and body fat to
Blood sugar & fat loss
lose.
Designed for someone looking to gain muscle without increasing

Bodybuilders
excess body fat.
High protein:energy Designed with a high protein:energy ratio for aggressive fat loss.
Designed for someone who enjoys eating ketogenic but does not
Nutritional keto
require therapeutic ketone levels.
Designed for people who require therapeutic ketone levels for

Therapeutic keto
specific conditions (e.g., for epilepsy, dementia, or Parkinson's).
Plant-based These are the most nutrient-dense plant-based recipes available.
Vegetarian These are the most nutrient-dense vegetarian meals.
These are the most nutrient-dense, low-carb vegetarian meals

Low carb vegetarian
designed to stabilise blood sugars.
Designed to help you maintain your body weight by optimising

Maintenance
nutrient content to live a healthy and energised life.
These are the most nutrient-dense pescatarian recipes (i.e.,

Pescatarian
vegetarian plus seafood).
Egg-free The most nutrient-dense meals without eggs.
Dairy-free The most nutrient-dense meals without dairy.
Egg & dairy-free The most nutrient-dense meals without eggs or dairy.
Designed to support activity or growth while optimising nutrient

Athletes & bulking
density.
These are the most nutrient-dense meals that contain meat (i.e.,
Meat
beef, pork, chicken, etc.).
Recipes designed to prioritise nutrients like iron, selenium, zinc,

Immunity potassium, vitamin A, C, and D that support healthy immune
function.

Designed for someone with cancer that needs less glutamic acid
Cancer (weight loss &
and methionine while maximising nutrient density and satiety to
nutrient density)
promote fat loss.
Designed for someone with cancer that requires less glutamic acid
Cancer (weight
and methionine while providing enough energy to maintain a
maintenance)
healthy weight.
Designed for someone with cancer that requires less glutamic acid
Cancer (weight gain) and methionine while providing plenty of energy to support
weight gain after or during cancer treatment.
10.11 Cronometer
While DDF solves the energy balance equation without food tracking, paying attention to
your macronutrients and micronutrients is also helpful to help you dial in WHAT to eat to
reach your goals. Similar to tracking your blood sugars, tracking your current eating habits
for a period can be valuable to see if you are giving your body what it needs.
Cronometer allows users to see their macronutrient intake (carbs, protein, and fat) and their
micronutrient intake (vitamins and minerals). Cronometer has a paid (Gold) option, but the
free version is fine for our purposes.
If your glucose is dropping, but you do not see the fat loss you want, we recommend you
slowly dial up your protein % by dialling back dietary carbs and fat.
We tend to see the best fat loss and satiety results when people work towards 40% protein
or above. However, you don’t need to jump there immediately. It will be more sustainable if
you progressively dial it up. For example, if you find that your current protein % is 15%, then
try increasing it to 20% next week. If the scale still isn’t moving, try 25% the following week.
You can see your protein % in Cronometer by tapping on or mousing over the ‘consumed’
circle (shown on the left below) in the app or on the computer. We will guide you through
this process step by step in the Macros Masterclass, where the Smart Macros algorithm in
Nutrient Optimiser will help you tweak your macro targets based on your progress each
week.

10.12 Free 7-Day Nutrient Clarity Challenge
Nutrient Density is central to everything we do at Optimising Nutrition. However, there is no
‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to solve the puzzle of what food YOU need to prioritise to improve
the micronutrient profile of your diet.
To help you understand what foods and meals you need to focus on, we created a 7-Day
Nutrient Clarity Challenge.

At the end of 7 days of tracking, Nutrient Optimiser will calculate your micronutrient
fingerprint (see example below) and identify which foods and meals you need to focus on to
get more of the nutrients you are currently getting less of.

10.13 Nutrient Optimiser
Nutrient Optimiser is the DDF app's BIG brother. We have been working on this for three
years, trying to make it as powerful and simple as possible. If you have already done the 7-
Day Nutrient Clarity Challenge, you will already have a login. If not, you can complete the
Quiz at https://nutrientoptimiser.com/ to get set up.
10.14 Join our Community!

If you want to dive a little deeper into our world, we’d love you to join our free Optimising
Nutrition Community here. After growing a fantastic community on Facebook over the past
couple of years, we decided it was time to set up our own space away from the noise of
social media.

All our future challenges will be run here. You will also get a stream of recipes and other
inspiration to help you continue your journey towards optimising your nutrition.
10.15 Follow Optimising Nutrition

In addition, we also have many resources that you can check out.
Follow
• Podcast
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest
Facebook Groups
• Optimising Nutrition
• Data-Driven Fasting
• NutriBooster Recipes

• Nutrient Optimiser
Free tools
• Food Lists
• Macro calculator
• Food-nutrient analysis search
• Best foods for each nutrient
• NutriBooster
• 7-Day Nutrient Clarity Challenge
• Nutrients for Health Conditions
Products
• NutriBooster Books
• Data-Driven Fasting 30-Day Challenge
• Data-Driven Fasting Program
• Macros Masterclass
• Micros Masterclass
• Nutritional Optimisation Masterclass
• Big Fat Keto Lies (Book)

Data Driven Fasting Manual

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Data Driven Fasting Manual

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Intermittent fasting has helped many people lose weight, lower their blood glucose, and

reverse type 2 diabetes without the hassle of tracking their food.

Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 1

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• Any theoretical calorie target calculated by an online macronutrient calculator is an

o your muscle mass,

Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 8

o your metabolic rate slows,

o you produce less heat,

o you feel less energetic, and

Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 9

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Your Appetite Has Been Hijacked

● 24/7 food availability 365 days per year,

These factors contribute to the burgeoning ‘Frankenfood’ marketplace that perpetuates

Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 12

What Is the Best Fasting Schedule For YOU?

● Michael Mosely's 5:2 Diet,

● Hugh Jackman's 16:8,

● Bert Herring’s Fast Five,

● Brad Pilon's Eat Stop Eat,

● Ori Hofmekler’s Warrior Diet,

● Valter Longo's Fasting Mimicking Diet,

● Alternate Day Fasting,

● Multi-Day Extended Fasting, or

● One Meal a Day (OMAD).

● How do you know which fasting plan is right for you?

● How do you know if it’s working?

● How can you fine-tune your routine to optimise your results?

Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 13

What Is the Best Refuelling Schedule for You?

Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 14

Why Fasting Fails for So Many

Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 15

Unfortunately, emergency comfort foods tend to include highly processed, energy-dense,

George Bernard Shaw

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• the thermic effect of food,

• the specific dynamic action of food.

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glucose in the blood

free fatty acids in your blood

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Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 22

Your Personal Fat Threshold

Data-Driven Fasting Manual Apr-22 page 23

Why Are Blood Glucose and Insulin So Important?

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For more details, see What Does Insulin Do in Your Body?

Why It’s More Important to Manage Your Basal Insulin

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