Chris James | "A Healthy Alternative" | Ep. 999
TOM ROWLAND PODCAST
LISTEN NOW ON ITUNES, SPOTIFY, OR WHEREVER YOU LISTEN TO PODCASTS
Video goes live at 11:00 AM every Wednesday for Full-Length Episodes
“I Helped My Brother Lose 100 Pounds in 90 Days” – Chris James on Fasting, Healing, and No Loose Skin
Every now and then, I meet somebody who has actually lived the experiment they’re teaching.
Chris James is one of those guys.
He’s the creator of A Healthy Alternative, a fasting-based wellness community that’s grown into tens of thousands of people learning how to lose weight, reverse symptoms, and feel good in their body again — without surgery, drugs, or gimmicks. A Healthy Alternative+1
In this episode of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Chris walks me through how he helped his brother go from around 420 pounds to losing 100 pounds in just 90 days, why loose skin didn’t show up the way you’d expect, and how a decade-long mystery infection in his own body disappeared when nothing else worked.
If you’ve ever been curious about fasting — or wondered whether it’s safe, sustainable, or just another extreme diet — this conversation will give you a grounded, real-world look at what’s possible.
Chris’s Brother: From 420 Pounds to 100 Pounds Lost
Chris starts with family.
His brother had crept up into the 400s, with young kids at home and a future that was starting to look painfully short. Like a lot of us, he tried the usual “traditional” weight-loss stuff and hit a plateau almost immediately.
That’s when Chris stepped in. He’d already been experimenting on himself — fasting, changing his diet, and seeing weight loss show up almost as a side effect of trying to fix deeper health issues.
Together, he and his brother started running what he describes as “science experiments”:
Long water fasts
Different fasting lengths (10 days, 14 days, 21 days)
Simple refeed periods with mostly whole, alkaline foods
The wild part?
His brother dropped 100 pounds in about 90 days.
No surgery. No medications. Just structured fasting, better hydration, and a different relationship with food.
The Infection No Doctor Could Solve
Part of the reason Chris went all-in on fasting is because he felt like he didn’t have another choice.
For almost 10 years, he dealt with a stubborn infection in a very uncomfortable place — his urethra. He went from a general practitioner to specialists, took every pill they could throw at him, and kept coming back with:
“We don’t know what this is.”
At one point he was even told maybe it was “all in his head.”
At the same time, he was quietly studying natural health — alkaline diets, fasting, and how food might play a bigger role than he’d ever imagined. When his specialist finally said, “Maybe this is dietary,” it was like the last door closed and forced him to walk through the one he’d been circling.
He went all-in:
Switched to 100% alkaline foods
Started water fasting
Drank a gallon of distilled water a day
Quit drinking and partying and “locked in”
Within months, that infection that had hung around for a decade was gone. So were his heart palpitations, thinning hair, and brain fog. The only real change? What he was putting in — and not putting in — his body.
Distilled Water, Cellular Hydration, and Why You’re Still Thirsty
One of the most interesting parts of the conversation is Chris’s take on water.
He makes a distinction between what he calls “bulk water” — the regular bottled and tap water most of us drink — and the structured, cellular water our bodies actually use well.
Fasting, especially with distilled water, seemed to change the way his body handled hydration:
His energy went up even while not eating
His skin got softer and more hydrated
His brother’s electrolyte imbalances actually improved, instead of getting worse
Whether you agree with every detail or not, it’s hard to ignore the results he and his community are seeing as they combine extended fasting with intentional hydration.
Autophagy, Loose Skin, and the “Fasting Shrink Week”
Everybody wants to know about loose skin.
If you’ve ever watched a weight-loss show, you’ve probably seen the same story: huge transformation, followed by surgery to remove extra skin.
Chris noticed something different happening with longer fasts. Between days 14 and 21, weight loss would slow way down, but his brother’s waist would drop inches in a single day. He calls it the “fasting shrink week.”
Later, he connected that to autophagy — the body’s process of breaking down old, damaged cells and recycling them into newer, healthier tissue.
When you combine:
Extended fasting
Better hydration
Time for autophagy to really kick in
…the body doesn’t just burn fat; it also seems to remodel old tissue. For his brother, for Chris, and for a lot of people in his community, that’s looked like dramatic weight loss without the hanging, loose skin you’d expect.
Training While Fasted, Pain Disappearing, and Less Inflammation
We also get into performance.
I’ve had my own experience with short fasts — 60 hours or so — where aches and pains just… disappear. Wrists that usually bark at me during pushups and cleans stop hurting. My stretching routine suddenly feels easier. I can go deeper in every position.
Chris has seen the same pattern over and over again:
People fast
The inflammation drops
Old nagging issues calm down
Flexibility and energy actually go up
He talks about his brother doing “fasted lifting,” building strong, supple muscle while fasting five days a week and eating two. The muscles looked “normal” at rest, but when flexed, the strength was shocking for his size.
It’s a very different picture than the usual “you’ll lose all your muscle if you don’t eat every 2–3 hours” narrative.
From Family Experiment to a Global Fasting Community
What started as a family group on Facebook accidentally went global.
Chris’s brother originally set up a group just so their family could share what they were learning about fasting. He accidentally made it public, people started finding it, and it grew into a community of tens of thousands of members sharing stories, data, and results. A Healthy Alternative+1
From there, Chris launched:
The A Healthy Alternative YouTube channel
A large Facebook community for fasting support
Guided fasting challenges with hundreds of people at a time
Coaching programs built from real-world experience, not theory
Now he’s looking at the next level: physical wellness centers that combine fasting support, testing, and education with gardens where people can eat real food, touch the earth, and actually change their environment while they change their body.
If you have questions or suggestions for the show you can text Tom at 1 305-930-7346 or contact Tom through email: Podcast@saltwaterexperience.com
You can follow Tom Rowland on Instagram @tom_rowland
Learn more about Tom’s Television show http://www.saltwaterexperience.com.
The Tom Rowland Podcast is presented by Star brite!
Clean and protect with Star brite, a leading manufacturer of appearance, maintenance, and performance chemicals and accessories, serving the marine, RV, automotive, powersports, hardware, and home care industries for over 50 years. Headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and with its manufacturing plant in Montgomery, AL, the company produces “Made In The USA” products, including its flagship ethanol fuel treatment, Star Tron Enzyme Fuel Treatment.
Check out Star brite’s Website Here: https://bit.ly/TomRowlandPodcast
This episode has been brought to you by Waypoint TV. Waypoint is the ultimate outdoor network featuring streaming of full-length fishing and hunting television shows, short films and instructional content, a social media network, Podcast Network. Waypoint is available on Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Android TV, IoS devices, Android Devices and at www.waypointtv.com all for FREE!
Join the Waypoint Army by following them on Instagram at the following accounts
@waypointtv @waypointfish @waypointsalt @waypointboating @waypointhunt @waypointoutdoorcollective
Find over 150 full episodes of Saltwater Experience on Waypoint
