Your Body Wants to Heal—Learn How to Get Out of Its Way

https://www.youtube.com/@AHealthyAlternative

Instagram-https://www.instagram.com/a.healthy.alternative/

https://www.ahawellnessacademy.com/The-DR96-blitz

Chris James, founder of A Healthy Alternative, shares his transformative journey of losing 90 pounds and reversing chronic health conditions through fasting and natural approaches to health. He reveals how fasting can be used as a fundamental therapy for weight loss, disease reversal, and emotional healing.

• Fasting as a multi-layered healing approach that promotes hormonal regulation, stem cell production, and prevents loose skin during rapid weight loss
• Long-term fasting (beyond 10 days) can trigger emotional and mental detox, releasing stored trauma and balancing energetic states
• Proper preparation before fasting is crucial, including opening elimination pathways and gradually transitioning to higher water content foods
• The liver is the master detoxification organ, and using castor oil packs can help break up sludge and improve liver function
• Regular hydration and eating water-rich foods like cucumbers are essential for proper elimination
• Community support dramatically increases success with fasting and dietary changes
• The body naturally seeks homeostasis—our job is simply to remove obstacles in its way

For a free seven-day fasting prep guide that can help you lose 7-12 pounds, find Chris on Instagram @ahealthyalternative and send him a DM asking for the prep guide.

Chapters

• 0:48 Meeting Chris James
• 3:37 The Power of Fasting for Weight Loss
• 7:03 Emotional Detox Through Long-Term Fasting
• 9:57 Elimination Pathways and Liver Health
• 15:00 The Truth About Hydration
• 20:20 Building Community for Lasting Change
• 26:34 Key Takeaways and Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:25

Hi, how are you? This is Dr Demarex Maria Grossman, and this is the Mindfully Integrative Show, and today we have a wonderful guest. His name is Chris James. He has a wealth of knowledge in he calls his group health alternative health as well, and talking about losing weight on an extreme level I believe he has said that it's about a hundred pounds that he has lost himself and others that he has helped do this and other ways of just kind of thinking outside the box, and that's the way I think. So I really love that he's going to be on the show and to kind of give you another perspective on your health. So thanks so much, Chris, for being on the show and kind of tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Well, thank you so much for having me. And yeah, so I started a healthy alternative about eight years ago, maybe eight and a half years ago, so we're coming up on our ninth year. It's pretty exciting. And the reason why I created the platform was because I found that, you know, I had health issues, as many people do. One of the main issues I had was like an infection, and it was an infection in my urethra, so it felt like it was like an itch you couldn't scratch. And, of course, I got all the testing done. I mean, they gave me all the tests, they gave me all the drugs. I remember I went to a specialist and the specialist was every two weeks giving me a different drug and it would help a little bit with the irritation and then it would come right back. And I remember him saying on the last visit he was like, hey, you know what? Maybe it's dietary what you're dealing with. And at the time I had already been researching, you know dietary strategy and you know just alternative health, and it just clicked when he said that it clicked and I decided to dive feet first into alternative health.

Speaker 2: 2:15

I actually come from a background where my grandmother, at the age of 60, decided to change all of her wellness practices. She was on the traditional standard, you know medical side of things, right. And then she just went all healthy, all natural, all wellness, and she started teaching those things to me very young. But I never tapped into it until I started to get sick myself, right. And so I created the brand and now we've got a huge community. We help people lose weight, reverse disease naturally. We teach them how to you know how to play with their diets, figure out what makes sense for them, and it's really successful.

Speaker 1: 2:56

What have you for yourself? You said you lost around 100 pounds. Is that correct?

Speaker 2: 3:01

I lost about 90 pounds.

Speaker 1: 3:02

That's a lot. That's a lot. I lost about 70, you know, but it was a combination of things.

Speaker 2: 3:15

That's a lot. I lost about 70, you know, but it was a combination of things. So what was your? I mean, what was one of your most important key factors in that weight loss? Fasting to lose the weight. And then the second factor would be I used a liver and gallbladder flushes to keep the weight off, but fasting has become a tool that I use holistically for pretty much everything.

Speaker 2: 3:39

I believe that fasting is one of those things that you can use to help with whatever element you have, whether it's weight loss or even type 2 diabetes.

Speaker 2: 3:47

With whatever element you have, whether it's weight loss or even type 2 diabetes.

Speaker 2: 3:54

Even though I don't look at it as a cure-all, it's a fundamental therapy that you can use to uplift the body holistically.

Speaker 2: 3:58

You're going to get better hormonal regulation, you're going to get stem cell production, you're going to get a more younger, youthful appearance, the lines of your skin smooth out, and then, when you're talking about losing 100 pounds, one of the main things people are afraid of is loose skin. So we do teach what I consider rapid weight loss techniques, but they're non-conventional. So it's very healthy because we allow the body to determine how quickly the weight comes off, and what we do is, we support the body through fasting and opening up the elimination pathways so that you could get the benefit that the body wants to move towards homeostasis. And so what I learned through my personal experience and also, I hope, I helped my two brothers, my sister, even my mom, and then we went on to help you know other people but we learned that with with long term fasting, you can actually tap into deep autophagy where the body will start to repair you know the damage and a lot of that extra loose skin and stuff.

Speaker 1: 5:10

The body will eat it up. Yeah, yeah, what, um, what's your longest fast that you've had? Like I was telling you, I do 12s and 16s and 24 hours, but I don't really do long ones. I've only done like a three day one and but what's your, what's your uh fast? What kind of how many days?

Speaker 2: 5:31

So my longest water only, I think, was 13 days, and then I did what I call a hybrid fast for 30, for 30 days. So that's where I did dry fasting water fasting and juice fasting wow, that's a lot.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah that one that was probably challenging it's, it's, it's challenging but also spiritually good, like I feel. Like that some people tell me they, you know, know, when they get to another level, then they are able to like it becomes.

Speaker 2: 5:52

What I've learned about fasting is that there's different, it's like an onion, so you can. You can peel back that first layer, and that first layer is incredible. You can get, um, you know, hormone, hormonal regulation. You can get um, better, better insulin. Um, you know, you hormonal regulation you can get better insulin, you could reduce insulin resistance, you can lose lots of weight.

Speaker 2: 6:20

You can get human growth hormone Stem cells. It's great. The first layer is great. When you get to the second layer, you start getting to this emotional or this mental detox where you know we hold trauma from childhood or just from different experiences we have, and we typically look at talk therapy as like the, the gold standard for dealing with that type of stuff. But I learned that through long-term fasting the body will naturally release energy. So I noticed, around 10 days you'll start to get like an emotional and a mental detox, and so the way it looks is you'll start crying for no reason, or you'll feel angry for no reason, or you'll feel really happy for seemingly no reason. And I find that what that's doing is the body is balancing the energetic state and I actually so.

Speaker 2: 7:11

I told you that I had an infection and that was one of the main reasons why I started fasting. It really wasn't for weight loss. That came and I didn't even realize that I was going to lose that much weight. But another thing was I was depressed, impressed. I broke up with my girlfriend at the time. I broke up with her six years prior, but this was like the one that got away. This was like the one that I thought we were going to get back together and get married and all of that. And so there was a lot of emotional energy entangled in that and it was depressing me and I didn't realize it and I couldn't build healthy relationships with new women, and so I started approaching fasting originally for that, and then I found out that after day eight, going into day 12 or so, that my depression started to lift naturally. I just felt so good and I felt so clear. And it's like this. I've been dealing with this for six years. You know it's crazy.

Speaker 1: 8:15

I feel like I mean I don't do as long as fast that you have, but I will fast in the sense of what I put into my body. If it it may not be to an extreme of like zero, but sugar in itself. If, like you know, you take a lot of that junk out, that in itself like changes the perspective and then putting it into a fast and it's done safely, I mean I think that is quite effective. And I think what you're saying in the longterm, if people can do it, you know, smartly, and if they feel you know, I think the main things that come up right here is like nutrient deficiencies, but I mean I think that those can be eliminated at some point if you put good stuff back in. What do you think? Because you obviously are guiding a lot of these individuals.

Speaker 2: 8:58

Right. So that's that's obviously a major concern and I think that number one preparation is extremely important. So earlier, you know, I talked a little bit about when you start fasting, you want to open up your elimination pathways because you have to imagine the body's going to release toxins. So one thing that you can experience is what we call fasting detox symptoms and the long-term fasting those detox symptoms can get more intense. So by prepping we usually do a week-long prep where we it's a gradient we take you from like a standard American diet, we reduce the frequency that you eat, we increase the high water content foods because you gotta, you have to hydrate well in order to do fasting properly, to move the toxins out of the system. And and then we take you off of solid food for a short duration of time and we do what we call juice feasting and it's where you take in your daily caloric intake in juice format and it helps the body kind of get used to getting nutrition from liquid versus dense solids and then also like, if you're a coffee drinker, things of that nature it helps you begin weaning off of that, because that can be very difficult. You know fasting and you know like coming off of a caffeine withdrawal, and so by doing that preparation, it makes going into the fast easier Now, as it relates to like nutrition.

Speaker 2: 10:28

So the cool thing about fasting is, you know, just imagine your system is really gunked up. There's mucus, there's inflammation, there's synthetic material in your system, so you're beginning to clean that. Clean that up Well, it really makes the body ready to receive nutrition. So a lot of people have nutrient deficiencies even though they're eating every day, right? Well, with this technique, you can clean the system up and you can prime the body to absorb nutrition more efficiently. So now, when you start to eat, you do what's called a refeed, you do intentional eating after your fast, and then the body will absorb nutrients better. And, of course, we also recommend, you know, getting out in the sun.

Speaker 1: 11:09

Oh, the normal lifestyle measurements like a sun, sleep, hydration.

Speaker 2: 11:15

Exactly when you do all of these things together, it makes fasting extremely safe. It's more than safe, it's hyper-beneficial. And then, of course, we say you're going to build your fasting muscles, so we don't start you off with 13 day, 20 day fast. Yeah, you know what I mean.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Yeah, I'd love you to talk about the elimination pathway, because I've learned that in integrative health and in functional medicine, I'm integrated, like the elimination pathway you know, with the liver and the gut, and I'd love you to just take a brief moment of what that is so that someone can understand, because I think people think that if they just drink and juice, then they're fine and then they don't realize that the like what exactly you're doing for your body, cause, like you said, you were talking about a detox of sorts and sometimes people just don't understand that and I feel like it really needs to be like highlighted you know as much as you can, you don't have to go your full thing, cause I want people to reach.

Speaker 2: 12:12

Yeah, Well, you know the liver. It's very common now that, whether you drink or not, whether you're young or old, that you have a fatty liver Like it's a super common thing, right.

Speaker 1: 12:22

It doesn't have to be drink, it's food. It's like junk.

Speaker 2: 12:27

It's the junk food. And the liver is extremely important. I look at it as the master detoxification organ for the body. It's the center of your immune system, and what happens is the liver has all these little spider web, kind of like tunnels and pathways, that get all blocked up. Mucus, bile, sludge just gunk, it gets all gunked up, and so when the liver starts to become low functioning, well, you're not absorbing properly, you're not, you're not, um, you're not, you're not eliminating properly, and so, um, it's important to focus on the liver. That's one of the areas that we, that we really focus heavy on, and it's super simple. Like, one of the ways that you can, you know, help the liver is by doing a castor pack, where you do a castor oil pack.

Speaker 2: 13:19

You know, castor oil is a deep penetrating oil. It has the ability to kind of go into those cavities in the liver, those small little tunnels. It'll break up the sludge and then the liver will upregulate and you'll get better functionality, you get better absorption out of it. I think that's like the best place to start. Obviously, the gut is extremely important but you know, through fasting the gut does begin a healing process Most of us have it.

Speaker 1: 13:47

That makes a lot of sense. I mean the, uh, the castor pack. Are you saying orally or are you taking um topically, putting the castor pack that eventually will absorb in this?

Speaker 2: 13:55

Right. So so, as you've got like hexane-free castor oil, it's going to come in a glass jar. You can take it orally, but I'm talking about using it above the liver. So you put it on a cloth it's kind of like a cloth pad and you wrap it around the liver and you put like maybe a tablespoon of it on the castor pack and you fall asleep and it'll penetrate into the skin, into the liver. If you take it by mouth, it's great, but it acts more like a laxative, and so if you, if you know and that's that's great too I mean, people don't have good bowel movements.

Speaker 1: 14:31

Oh yeah, oh my God, I just had a patient the other day, just come over. I'm like right day, I mean I wish people. Even I wish people would know. I mean, you're gonna tell them too um detoxification is pooping, partially like that for sure you know what I mean. Like I'm like, you know, it's almost like people don't want to talk about it, but it's like that is part of the process here, you know it's a huge part of it yeah, so I'm gonna tell you.

Speaker 2: 14:57

I'll tell you my story. My, my sister, has terrible, um, bowels, terrible. I went to go visit her when I very first started teaching you know these, these alternative methods, and I was sitting down, I'm you know, you know, talking. Hey, when's the last time you had a bowel movement? Oh yes, been probably like almost four days and I and my jaw the test that's how I feel about it.

Speaker 2: 15:21

Like, really, four is a lot that's insane and I asked her what's the longest you'll go without having a bath? She said she'll go a week sometimes I.

Speaker 1: 15:31

I've heard I've had patients and friends tell me that, and I and I'm the same way. I'm like what, how?

Speaker 2: 15:36

is that possible. I don't know Cause you're eating every day, Right, so well, this is great. So if, if someone out there, if you're not having a bowel movement every day, you know you've got a problem you've got to, you've got to work on now.

Speaker 1: 15:51

What is something right? We haven't even talked about right, yeah, right.

Speaker 2: 15:55

Right, right, like that, that's in general, like you would change so much about your health just by having regular bowel movements. Now what's one really good way to to attack that is hydration, lubricated well, but also getting water into the cells. If your cells are really inflamed, if your gut is inflamed, yeah, your bowels aren't going to move well. So one thing I recommend is having a glass of water, usually cold, steeped with like lemon or lime, overnight and you just drink that first thing in the morning before you start your daily habit. 12, 16 ounces, whatever morning before you start your daily habit. You know, 12, 16 ounces, whatever. That will aid tremendously. But it's important to hydrate throughout the day, right? Not just depend on that. I'm sure you know this. Most people drink like a 16 ounce bottle of water maybe a day.

Speaker 1: 16:49

Oh, for real. For real, I mean like my, like my gauge is at a minimum half your body weight would be great in ounces. But for me to even get them to do like two water bottle, like you said, like 16 to 20, is like pushing it for some. What I'd like, at least half their body weight. But that is like me, that's me asking for, like the world. So maybe 20 to 32 ounces I'll get.

Speaker 2: 17:15

Yeah, yeah and it's, and then and then it's not even consistent, but it's like we're eating chips which are dehydrating. We're drinking coffee which is dehydrating. You know, it's like we have all of these habits we're drying ourselves out, we're not drinking water, we're not eating our water. That's my big thing. It's like, if you have hydration issues, focus on eating your water. Cucumbers are amazing sources of water.

Speaker 1: 17:40

That's a great point. That's a great point, sensible and sensible losses of why, when you're taking in what your body needs and it's like what is, are you yourself I didn't ask this before Are you yourself a vegetarian or a vegan, or or do you still eat proteins?

Speaker 2: 17:55

So I don't eat. I don't eat meat, but I do like I do a. I do what I call alkaline for the most part. So there's certain fruits and vegetables that I eat. I usually make everything from scratch. I do eat out still, and I do still have cheese from time to time, but what I've done is I've reduced my dairy tremendously, like I used to eat it pretty much every day, and now it's like sometimes I order a salad and I forget there's cheese.

Speaker 2: 18:23

You know it comes on the salad because they put cheese on everything oh yeah, they do yeah yeah, unless you but to to your point here, like I don't, I don't think that meat is the is the devil. I think that if you source your meat well, I usually recommend, if people want to do meat carnivore or whatever, source your meat well, make sure that you're getting high quality meat. I still personally don't recommend eating a ton of meat. That's just my personal recommendation. But people do what they feel is best for them. But if you do that, you get better quality. Before I stopped eating meat, I get better quality. Like before I stopped eating meat, I went to a local farm. I'm here in Texas. I went to a local organic farmer. I bought a whole bunch of meat and over the course of a year you know, I had in my deep freezer, I'd eat that meat and I noticed it cooked differently, it tastes different and it digested differently.

Speaker 1: 19:13

Yeah, so that I mean that makes sense because it's it's high quality and what you're putting in, I, I, you know, I know there's different takes on vegan versus carnivore when it comes to your you know the way your health is, so I think it varies for me with that. I don't think that's a one size fits all um.

Speaker 1: 19:32

I've personally seen. But I do think your take on how people have to detox and change their perspective on what is going into their body, that is like paramount, like that makes so much sense. Um, because I think that, uh, people are just misguided or they're just not, like I don't know if it's just they're afraid or just you know we're, so there's so much readily available junk or crap and then people just don't know what to do, like to make their life a little bit easier. So, on your, with your group and your support group, do you give people a lot of recipes and options and community to connect with you to you know to help and guide them into different pathways? You know and help and guide them into different pathways.

Speaker 2: 20:17

So what we do is I think we're the only group that does this we host large fasts, we have these huge challenges. So I have a team of coaches and we do live coaching. We have core content so you can digest that on your own time, where we'll kind of teach you more in depth about the process, the fasting, and then, yeah, we'll go into. You know what you need to be eating on during the preparation, what do you need to be eating during the refeed, and what we typically do are rolling fast. So we'll have, you know, a period of time you know whether it's two days or three days where we'll do a type of fast and then we'll have a period of time in between where we'll do a refeed and then we'll go back into fasting and we'll do that over the course of a couple of weeks. And what it does is it gives you the benefit of fasting, it gives you a nice break in between, so you're not pushing yourself too hard, but it also gives you an opportunity to interact with different foods so that you can learn, because you know a lot of people.

Speaker 2: 21:17

The reason they struggle with what to eat is because they eat for taste Right, and I don't have a problem with that. I think we should enjoy what we eat, but a lot of us have been programmed to think that eating healthy is boring or it's bland or it's whatever, and so I want to encourage people hey, let's try this recipe, no-transcript. Your body will digest well and so it makes it so much easier to you know. Move forward towards health.

Speaker 1: 22:05

That's really no, I think that's a great point, cause then, you know, people are like oh, I'm so used to the salty, the sweet or the I don't know whatever the, you know umami flavors that they want, and they're not realizing that you know you can still get those options on the even. For me, I might. You know, I could always take a pointer here and there. I mean, you're blessed. I've had to change an overhaul a lot of things and I, you know, I feel like I tell people it's a lifelong thing, you know, and it's not something that just goes away.

Speaker 2: 22:32

But sometimes people are always like oh, you know interesting thing about that when I talked about some of the layers of fasting one of the things that happened when you perform longer fast is you start to discard your cravings. So probably.

Speaker 1: 22:54

I wasn't that many days, but you are so right. You're sugar right and you're salt and you're whatever. I have to have a hamburger, I have to have a drink, whatever people think it was a candy bar for me, right, right.

Speaker 2: 23:05

And so so, the longer you fast the body, start the chemical constituent. You remember the saying you are with what you eat, right.

Speaker 1: 23:13

Yes.

Speaker 2: 23:14

So the chemical constituents of the food products that we're eating. They stay with us, they're imparted into our blood and then, when you start fasting, you'll experience these enormous cravings, even for foods you haven't eaten for years. I was experiencing cravings for Sloppy Joe my mom used to make me Sloppy Joe when I was adolescent and so when you fast, you start to let that stuff go and you can actually eliminate cravings. And what that does is it makes it easier for you to change your habits. You can still reabsorb those foods if you continue eating them, right, but you know that mental thing that makes you, oh, I got to have this. You can discard that and it makes it much easier to change how you eat.

Speaker 1: 23:57

I could not agree more with what you're saying. I feel like there's an additional component to this and obviously, obviously you have a community of us that behaviorally they get past right the craving. How can you reel them back in, you know? Or is it the community itself that is helping along and guide, or coaches and groups helping guide along, or some of these need more assistance.

Speaker 2: 24:22

The the incredible. So we have a platform. It's called AHA Communities. It's kind of like our own little personal Facebook and within that group we have what's called the PAC calls. So they're peer accountability calls. So this is literally people in the community. It was like, hey, we want to volunteer to help other people. Community is so important.

Speaker 2: 24:50

When I did my first fast, I did it with my brother. Had I not done it with my brother, I don't know if I would have lasted as long, because you get scared, you get nervous, you don't know what's going on. But when other people are having similar experiences or they can convey what they experienced, it kind of puts you at ease. When you're trying to change your diet and your family at home is like, nah, I'm going to keep eating Doritos and whatever, and you feel alone. You have a community. That's like, well, I'm experiencing the same thing. And then what's really cool is sometimes they get together in real life. So they meet online and they have these little groups. They get together. They go for walks and they have these little groups. They get together, they go for walks, they go to different restaurants, they cook together, and so that community helps you stay on track. It's just like anything else.

Speaker 1: 25:32

If you want to learn how to be a pilot, you probably should spend time with pilots right, the group that you spend time with is really kind of a representation of what kind of individual you want to.

Speaker 1: 25:42

You know people, what surround yourself with, certain people, right, what are they saying, Like the amount of people you can tell what you are you know I I think that it's we've put in a lot of good insights here that I think people need to touch base and learn a little bit more about what key points would you like or something you'd like to take home for those to know about, and then how can they reach you? Because I'm going to put your information in the show notes.

Speaker 2: 26:10

Okay. So I would say that your body was actually built in a way to lean you towards homeostasis, right. Your body naturally wants to be healthy. So if we can understand that we're putting obstacles in our body's way, our body naturally is going a direction. All we have to do is remove the obstacles and we will naturally go the right direction with our health. We have to use our logical mind. I think there's a lot of propaganda, there's a lot of manipulation through, you know, the fast food chains, the different manufacturers. We have to be willing to understand, like what is natural, what does the body want? Pay attention to how your body feels when you consume different food products. I used to eat ice cream. Chocolate chip cookie dough is my favorite thing in the world. I would buy it every week and it would give me the bubble guts it would make me feel really gross yeah.

Speaker 2: 27:05

You know, and I ate it anyway, right? So, so we know what's not good for us. Our body will tell us. If you give it the resources to heal, it will begin moving that way. If you guys want to try fasting, I highly suggest do a preparation first. As a matter of fact, what I'd like to do is, if you guys if anybody's on Instagram you can find me at a healthy alternative, ahealthyalternative If you just simply in my DMs, just DM me and ask, hey, can I get the prep guide? I will give you guys a free seven-day prep guide that will help you. And the cool thing about the prep guide is, even if you're not doing fasting the prep, we people lose anywhere from seven to 12 pounds just doing our prep, our fasting prep.

Speaker 1: 27:50

That's awesome. That's awesome.

Speaker 2: 27:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:52

I believe it. I think that I mean, I haven't even seen it, so I can't wait to. You know, check it out and you know, just put on. I'm going to put it in the show notes. But also I just I think people just need to have like a perspective differently instead of this, you know, um, standard american stuff and and just it's not just about losing weight, right, I mean, that's the other part of this. Like it's not just about losing weight, it's about like a whole, a whole, a whole approach right, definitely a lifestyle thing.

Speaker 1: 28:19

Yeah, yeah, um, I really appreciate you being on and um, um, I feel like that we could dive into this more Um and there's plenty more to discuss. So when you have so many great topics and so many things that you talk about, um, you're an expert at a hundred pound loss but reversing that um disease and you know um breaking free of like that food addiction, I think is like super important. I think that conversation is needed. Do you find yourself now that you've kind of have this way, not say you've never have any health issues, but have you modified? For the most part been pretty good and on a pretty stable?

Speaker 2: 28:55

I don't get sick anymore. I used to. I used to get sick um, winter salts, solstice and summer solstice, like I would get sick. I don't get sick anymore. I have no issues with like allergies Literally like it's. I just have no problem. And also I resolved I used to have like a heart palpitation and I was like in the back of my head I'm like I'm going to have a heart disease one day, like something's going to be wrong with my heart one day. That fear is completely gone. So it's not even just about reversing the issues you have currently. It's like having a better outlook on the future. I just I feel like I'm going to have a great you know quality of life as I, as I get older.

Speaker 1: 29:38

And the longer span, whatever that is for you, and I think that that's important. I think it's not just about living to like X. Y Z but as living this time that you are here on this earth the best quality, Absolutely. Thanks so much for being on and maybe we can touch base and reach out again to another show. So thanks so much and I appreciate your time.

Speaker 2: 29:59

Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 30:01

Thank you guys for joining in on the Mindfully Integrative show and make sure you find a mindful way every day.