Seven Types of People Who Should NOT Be Fasting

The widest do-not-fast list in the archive

This 2017 video is Joe's fullest statement of who his method is not for — seven categories, broader than the short list of exclusions he settled on in later years. Everything here is his own guidance, delivered without formal medical framing beyond his advice to consult authorities and get blood work.

The outright exclusions

Pregnant or nursing women head the list: someone else depends on them, and Joe says any deficit ends up hurting the child — a point he calls common sense that no authority disputes. At the other end sit the anorexic and chronically underweight, some of whom email him wanting to fast "for the headspace." His answer is no — at most a day or two a week with calories made up elsewhere — because at very low body fat, he claims, fasting begins "cannibalizing your internal organs." He widens the warning to body image generally, including overweight people chasing an image they can never normalize to.

The conditional cases

Diabetics get the longest treatment. Joe claims most type 1 diabetics cannot fast at all: a liver that does not produce glucagon cannot raise blood sugar, so a faster burns through reserves and risks fainting, coma, or death. Most type 2 diabetics can fast, he says, except the very severe; the self-assessment he asks for is whether you run high sugar or low, with medication the usual cause of diabetic hypoglycemia. He adds a safety warning: habitually pushing past hypoglycemic symptoms builds tolerance to the warning signs until you faint without notice, possibly behind the wheel.

Anyone with a diagnosed nutrient deficiency — anemia especially — should fix it before prolonged fasting, and Joe recommends a blood panel before any major dietary change, whether through a doctor or a walk-in lab. People with hypotension, tachycardia, or other serious heart trouble need to rethink fasting entirely, though he distinguishes the ordinary racing heart some people get while fasting, which he claims potassium, magnesium, calcium, and zinc taken together can set right — a supplement remedy he offers for healthy fasters only.

The lifestyle cases

Two groups are excluded by choice rather than physiology. Those unwilling to give up pure junk food — Cheetos, KitKats, sweet soda as the whole meal — will spike blood sugar and starve themselves of nutrients and satiety; Joe did not start out eating healthy and does not require it, but his floor is "no complete junk food — other than that, the world is yours." And people bent on very high physical performance may simply need to eat more often: stacking heavy activity on a fasting deficit forces the body into stress, and Joe says there is no harm in concluding OMAD is not right for that lifestyle.

The closing frame is characteristic of the era: fasting is a tool to make you better, not something that should consume every aspect of your life.