--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited that you're here. Welcome to this extraordinary masterclass and step-by-step guide into the science and the application of intermittent fasting into your life as a tool for healing and for improving your health.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, we're about to jump in to the step-by-step part and how you get started. We're going to also talk about the different protocols for fasting for men and women and why this is extremely critical that you understand and follow. But for the sake of bringing everybody into the tent and so that we're all starting on the same page, if this is the first episode that you're listening to with me and Dr. Mindy Peltz about intermittent fasting, I want you to keep on listening.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to let you know that when you're done with this step-by-step guide on how to start and the protocols to follow and what you can expect, there is another resource for you. The episode just before this one is an in-depth analysis into the 101 of intermittent fasting and all the science and research. So let me just summarize a few key takeaways so that we're all starting with the exact same information.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Number one, intermittent fasting is a health protocol whereby you focus on periods of time where you're eating and periods of time where you are not eating. The purpose of intermittent fasting is to use periods of time where you are not eating to help you switch between the two different energy sources in your body. We learned all about this in part one from Dr. Mindy.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You have an energy source that is all about sugar and calories and energy that happens when you eat, and then you have a second energy source that only turns on after an eight-hour period of not eating anything. Dr. Mindy calls that your fat burning energy source. So what we learned is that you are designed to switch between these two cycles, kind of like how you have cycles of sleeping and cycles of being awake. You have a circadian rhythm cycle. If you're a woman, you have a menstrual cycle. The human body runs on cycles and rhythms and your eating is no different.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Fasting is a way for you to be very intentional not about what you eat. That's why this is not a diet. Diets focus on what you eat. Fasting is a protocol that focuses on when you're eating for maximum health benefit. We covered all of that in the first masterclass. We also talked about the six different types of fasting. The six different types are just a matter of how long you are fasting for and the different health benefits and reasons why people fast for different periods of time.
--:-- Mel Robbins: In this episode, we're going to focus on the first type of fasting, which is what you've probably heard of, intermittent fasting, which is when you intentionally do not eat for between 12 and 16 hours. Just so that we're using the same kind of language, that means if you were to stop eating at nine o'clock at night and then sleep through the night, sometime between 9 a.m. and noon is when you would have the first thing to eat because that means that from 9 p.m. until 9 a.m., you have been fasting for 12 hours. When you fast for a minimum of 12 hours, you unlock really incredible health benefits. That's all you need to know. You now know everything that you need in order to step into the step-by-step guide.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's what we're going to cover. Dr. Mindy is back. Office hours are open, people. She is here to grab your hand and help you implement a fasting protocol today. We're going to cover the four questions that you need to ask yourself to determine what type of fasting you want to do and why you're going to do it. Second, we're going to do a quick start guide. How do you get started? Like seriously, how do you actually get started? And when should you start this? We're going to talk about what you can expect when you try this for the first time, day one, day two, day three. We're going to talk about what you can expect to experience in terms of results.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Most importantly, we are going to dive deep, deep, deep, deep into the difference between fasting with men and fasting with women, because there is a profound difference. This is not being talked about enough. It's critical that you listen to the difference. We're going to unpack that today and you're going to learn a lot. This stuff is so fricking cool. So without further ado, please help me welcome Dr. Mindy Peltz. She is an incredible expert about fasting and the benefits. Dr. Mindy, welcome back. Let's get started.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So first, let's start with you. How do you fast, Dr. Mindy?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, so I have gotten to a point where I love fasting so much, I have to really make sure that I eat. But I like skipping breakfast. That's my jam. So I get up in the morning and I drink a cup of coffee. I have a full fat cream in my coffee and I'll probably eat my first meal around noon or one o'clock. Like you, family is incredibly important to me. So we usually eat dinner as a family, seven or eight o'clock at night. You can build this around your family's desires too. So I sit down with my family, we eat dinner, we're done at eight, my first meal will be noon or one.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Now, outside of that, and we can talk about hormones if we want to go down that path, but if I feel like I'm off, you know, yesterday, I was like, I had been in Hawaii. I hadn't really been eating the way I wanted to eat. And I'm like, I need to go into a longer fast. So I dipped into 18, 19 hours. So I'll use it as a tool depending on what my body needs. And then once to two times a year, I'll do a three-day water fast. I do that to get rid of the cells that are not serving me, to slow down aging, to increase stem cells. So it's like a cellular cleansing that I do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So when you're in the period of the cycle where you are not eating, you're in the fasting period, water's okay?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Water's okay.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What else is okay?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, it's a great question. Mineral water is okay as long as it doesn't have a sweetener. NutraSweet is not okay because NutraSweet can spike insulin. So just point on there. Coffee's okay. Tea's okay. Anything that won't spike your blood sugar, black tea. Sometimes I'll go have a black tea, iced tea that is yummy. Green tea, all of that is fine. It just, you can't have a sweetener in it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Gotcha. What about like bone broth? Because I see people like sipping broth during fasting cycles.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah. Because it has protein in it, it changes the healing response. So it's great to break a fast with, but it's not the type of fasting that I'm talking about. The type of fasting I'm talking about has your blood sugar staying low. Bone broth can increase your blood sugar.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Do you have any hacks, any shortcuts, any things that you want rapid fire for the person listening? If you're going to take on intermittent fasting, which why on earth would you not after everything we've discussed? What are the hacks and the shortcuts to really get started in a fast, successful, and supportive way when you're doing it for yourself for the first time?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Let me give you three hacks that are simple. And I also want to go back to what you said before, because I want women specifically that are listening to this. When things are confusing to us, especially when they come to healthcare, we tend to reject them. I'm going to ask you not to do that. I'm going to ask you to become curious about them. What we are discussing here is natural rhythms of your body and nobody's taught it to you. So I would love to come back and make sure that we don't lose women in this conversation because we need to embrace our natural rhythms. So I'll put that there.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: First hack, the easiest way to get into this is to start looking at your 24-hour period as when are you going to eat and when are you not going to eat? What's your stop time at night and what's your start time in the morning? Figure that out.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Second, we brought up the coffee. A hack for the coffee that is amazing is putting a little bit of MCT oil in your coffee. Let me tell you why. It moves you quicker into fat burning and helps you make ketones and turns off the hunger hormone. So if you're wanting to fast a little longer and you're struggling, put a little bit of MCT oil. It's what we've seen has worked for millions of people. It's MCT oil specifically has the ability to turn off the hunger hormone. Put it in your coffee in the morning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What the hell is MCT oil?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: It's one aspect of coconut oil that has this therapeutic benefit that turns off hunger. It's just nature made it. It's a part of coconut.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How much? Because I once tried this with a bunch of dudes and I think they poured like, I don't know how much, but we went on a hike. Let me tell you something. She already knows what I'm about to tell you guys. Within about a hundred yards after about 45 minutes of drinking, what turned out to probably be like a lose shot of MCT oil in my coffee, it doubled me over with cramps and I had raging diarrhea almost instantly because it gave me too much. I don't know if it was like a joke, but how much we talking here, doc?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah. Oh my God. It's so good. I'm so happy you said that because that does happen. Half a teaspoon to a teaspoon, you don't need very much.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. And can I put my full fat creamer, no sweetener in with it?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yes, you can.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. Got it. All right. So that's hack number two, everybody.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah. So that's hack number two. Okay. Hack number three. If you don't feel good in this fasting window, which I just want to call out that in the beginning, it will be a little uncomfortable and that's okay because the body will figure out how to respond. So in that discomfort, maybe it's a little bit of like, your brain's not quite coming back online. Try a little sea salt, just a little bit of sea salt. You can put it in your coffee if you want it, and you're going to ask me the amount, I'm sure. A pinch. A pinch of sea salt. We have found that even the nutrients that you can find in a high-quality sea salt, like a Himalayan sea salt or something that's a really good one, it can have magnesium, it can have a little bit of potassium, a little bit of sodium, and it makes you feel better in the fasting window. There are a lot of products out there you can do it with, but all you got to do is go to the grocery store and find some sea salt.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I am addicted to Element, that LNMT stuff. I love them. They're a sponsor of this podcast. I drink it every day. And I'm assuming that's not breaking the fasting protocol.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: No, we're big fans of Element too. And our community is obsessed with Element because a pack of Element in your water, in your fasting window is a game changer for how you feel in the fasting window.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And one thing I'd like to do before we jump into a little bit more of the protocol of the options with this, of how to get started, of what you can expect is who is fasting an option for? And who would you say shouldn't consider it or at least need to get a sign from a medical doctor before they do?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah. Thank you for asking this question because I really want to make sure that people are very safe with how they use this tool. What might shock people is that for prediabetes, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, it's incredible for. But I highly encourage you to bring your doctor on this journey with you. I can't tell you the number of doctors that have flooded my YouTube channel. I leave the science there so they can understand it so that they can be in collaboration with their patients.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: So to answer the who is it not for, I think that's the most important thing to say. It is not for the woman who's pregnant. This is not your tool if you're pregnant. If you're nursing, as I go through the different healing mechanisms that happen, you need to keep your fast very low because fasting can start to create a detox reaction. All the toxins that you're detoxing will go into your breast milk, which will go into your baby. So we want to keep fast under 15 hours for nursing women. And then the third one that comes up a lot is people who have any kind of eating disorders or food challenges that would be triggered by going into this fasted state.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Great. Thank you for that. Can you walk us through the first time you fast, how shitty you might feel? Like what to expect and how long you need to stick with it in order to move through that phase?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Great. Because I can't wait to learn how shitty I'm going to feel when I try this. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But we're going to take a quick pause, hear a word from our sponsors. We love our sponsors because they allow us to bring you this world-class groundbreaking information at zero cost to you. And of course, that's perfect because fasting is zero cost as well. Stay with us. We'll be right back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins and you and I are back with Dr. Mindy Peltz. She is the fasting phenom, and she is now about to tell you and me what we can expect on our first day of fasting. Are we hangry? Are we bitchy? Are we bloated? What's happening? What do you want us to know, Dr. Mindy?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: I think it's important because if you hear this, you get all excited, you come out of the gates, you try it, and then you don't feel good, you're going to reject it. Let's use a sprained ankle as an example. When you sprain an ankle, it doesn't feel good, but the body's healing. When you have a fever, it doesn't feel good, but the body's healing. So the first time you put yourself in this fat-burning healing state, everybody will feel something different. Some people will feel not so great, but the good news is the not so great usually only lasts the first couple of times.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And what is not so great? What are you referring to? Is you going to be like headache, moody?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, you can be a little moody. Moody, brain fog. Some people will notice even we've seen people have rashes, like the body pushes out. That's extreme, but the body will push out the bad stuff. Some people might get a little bit of constipation. Some people will get a little bit of diarrhea. The body is getting rid of whatever's not serving it. So it is a little bit of a detox. As that comes out, you might have some feelings of like, yeah, I'm not feeling great yet. I'm not buying this thing yet. But here's what happens is the body is building you stronger. So honor that that's a temporary symptom as your body moves into this healing state. It usually only lasts anywhere from a day to three days. Most people, I would say 50% of the people don't even notice that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Women need a different fasting protocol than men. Why?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: So this is the heart of why I do what I do. When the fasting craze came out, everybody got excited about it. And then women started to see they were losing their periods, their hair was falling out, their anxiety levels were going up, and some of them started gaining weight. So what happened was the media grabbed that and said, hey, intermittent fasting is not okay for women. So I dove into the research because all those women poured onto my YouTube channel. And I examined the needs of two different hormones, estrogen and progesterone.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Women follow what I call a hormonal hierarchy. The hierarchy looks something like this. At the bottom are our sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. Those hormones are strongly influenced by insulin. When insulin goes up, we can throw our sex hormones off. Insulin is strongly affected by cortisol. So when our stress goes up, we become more insulin resistant. But above cortisol is the best hormone on the planet, which is oxytocin. When you get more oxytocin, and the only way you can get oxytocin is through connection to other people. When you get oxytocin, you bring cortisol down. When you bring cortisol down, you become more insulin sensitive. When you become more insulin sensitive, now you're going to balance your sex hormones. That is how a female body operates when we look at it in a hierarchy system.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Second thing I want to say is that men have one hormone. It's called testosterone. Testosterone for a man works off a 24-hour day light cycle. Men get testosterone pulsing in every 15 minutes around that. Testosterone then goes up into the brain and converts to estrogen for a man. So a man can fast. Testosterone loves when a man fasts. And a man can fast pretty regularly and not mess up that hormonal cycle.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Women, we operate off a 28-day to 30-day cycle. Our hormones pulse in in days. Estrogen comes in the first 10. Testosterone comes in in the middle. And progesterone comes in at the end. So we have to fast according to this cycling of these hormones. It's a different rhythm. It's a monthly rhythm, not a daily rhythm.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Estrogen loves when you fast. So if you, for the menopausal woman who is losing estrogen, you will die when you see how effective this is for bringing estrogen up to a more age-appropriate level. You're never getting your 25-year-old estrogen back. But your 55-year-old age-appropriate estrogen will thank you for building a fasting lifestyle.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Progesterone actually doesn't want you to fast. If your blood sugar goes down too much or you raise cortisol too much, you will tank progesterone. And check this out. We all know this. We just didn't have words for it. What do we crave? When we had a cycle, what did we crave the week before our periods?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, my God. Everything. Ice cream, alcohol, pizza, pasta, pretzels with pimento cheese dip. Am I getting too personal here? Help me out. Nachos. I crave freaking anything.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Exactly. Because progesterone is asking you to bring your glucose up. So we crave, I'm going to cycling women right now. We craved carbs before our period, not because we were undisciplined. We craved carbs before our period because we needed glucose to be higher. That internal mechanism inside our body increased the craving of carbohydrates so that we had enough resources to make progesterone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Whoa. And so what does the intermittent fasting protocol do for a woman who is in her menstrual cycle?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: So in a 28 to 30-day cycle, every woman's different. I want to point that out. We all cycle differently, but have different lengths. The first 10 days is when estrogen's building. We know this as the follicular phase. In Fast Like a Girl, I call it the power phase, which means that you can power up on all of your workouts, your fasts, anything you want to power yourself up on.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: About day 10 or 11, we move into ovulation. This would be the second phase. In this phase, I called it the manifestation phase because we can manifest whatever. You can manifest it maybe, but you also have estrogen at her peak. You have testosterone at its peak. You have a little bit of progesterone. So it makes us very mentally sharp. It makes us beautiful. Our hair curly. Our skin look great. And we have motivation and drive because of testosterone.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Then we come out of ovulation. Our hormones dip. We have a five-day window. You can go back to powering up on all your lifestyle tools. But the week before our period starts around day 20. I call it the nurture phase because you're supposed to nurture yourself that week. You need to bring glucose up, and you need to rest and bring cortisol down. That's the hormonal rhythm that women follow in a 28 to 30-day period.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Once a woman bleeds, we go back to estrogen building. You can go back to fasting. You can go back to working out incredibly hard. All the rhythms change according to the rhythms of those hormones. So if when women got ahold of the fasting craze and they just fasted all month long, they started to tank progesterone. Progesterone only comes in the week before our period. That's her debut. She comes in that week before and says, hey, everybody, we got to shut cortisol down and we got to increase glucose. As women started to pick up fasting, they were ignoring that. They were muscling through this new, and I'm going to put in air quotes, diet because they thought of it as a diet. The more months we did that, the less progesterone we had.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Is that why women in the beginning were losing hair and why they were having all this negative side effect from intermittent fasting?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: That's right. So progesterone is the hormone that will also shed the uterine lining. So we weren't making enough progesterone. So the lining wasn't shedding. So we started to notice a lot of women notice spotting and things like that. Anxiety went up because progesterone is the hormone that calms us. And our hair started falling out because over time we were starting to restrict calories more and more and more. So it's throwing the thyroid off.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. So let me just see if I can bottom line this. When intermittent fasting was first introduced, like so many things, the dudes were talking about it and they were only talking about it as it relates to men and weightlifting and that kind of thing and carb cycling. We've heard all this shit. And no one took into account women's hormone health. Just like women have not been included in medical studies because of our hormone health. This is yet another example of where women have been left out of the conversation and where the science has been applied to everybody without consideration of how it actually impacts a woman during her cycle.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What you're here to say is that intermittent fasting is an enormously important protocol for all women. And women have to handle it and introduce this protocol differently because of our hormone cycle, period full stop. So how do you do this as a woman? Because after I heard you talk about intermittent fasting once we started talking about the research, I like freaking I in I am not going to eat after nine o'clock. This woman is not putting shit in her mouth until noon. Like I am down. I'm doing the 90 days. This seems like a no freaking brainer based on body function and health. Like I am in and sold. When you then went hair loss, this, that, hormone cycling, I'm like, oh shit, this is complicated. I don't know if I can do this and I don't want to lose my hair. So how do we simplify this in terms of how an intermittent fasting protocol should be introduced by women in their lives? How do you want to handle this?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, let's make it super simple.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Please.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Okay, don't fast the week before your period if you're a cycling woman. Just don't fast the week before your period. You can do all the other fasts. Now, in the book, in Fast Like a Girl, I give you lots of options. I gave you a whole fasting cycle. But for this conversation, just don't fast the week before your period.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Okay. So you just go back to normal eating? Like just eating whenever you want?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, eating when you got to eat breakfast. If you chose to take breakfast out, eat whenever you want and bring up your carb load. But I'm going to ask you to not do it in a box of pizza or a tub of ice cream. Let's do it in some, you know, what I call nature's carbs. Let's do it in fruit and potatoes and sweet potatoes and vegetables, tons of vegetables, tropical fruits, bananas. Those are great for progesterone. Chocolate, chocolate's amazing for progesterone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You know what's interesting? Is I wonder if this is why so many of us just bounce with our weight. Like I've got this question from Jodi, because we've got a bazillion questions from listeners when we told everybody we were going to tackle fasting and we were going to spend a lot of time talking about women and hormones and protocols for women. Jodi writes in, how do I change the fact that I get down to my goal weight and then all of a sudden I gain it back? I'm constantly up and down and beating myself up. And I'm not sure if restriction of sugar and flour is the only way. I don't know if the real ticket is something else for lasting change. I'm super healthy. And then all of a sudden I eat a whole pizza or I eat a batch of cookies. And next thing you know, the same 10 pounds comes on and off. And then worse, how do I feel about myself when I'm in this cycle? I just need a formula that will work.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What I'm wondering is, this is probably what you see with women who either are just trying everything under the sun. I'm going to try the peptides and I'm going to try this thing. I'm going to do whole 30 and I'm going to do that thing. I'm going to try this thing, but none of it's working. Or they try fasting, but then they're bouncing all over the place because of our hormone cycle. So what you're saying is start with intermittent fasting and then pay attention to the week before your period starts and give yourself grace and eat nature's carbs. And then the day you get your period, you go back to your intermittent fasting protocol. Is that correct?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: You got it. You got it. That's exactly correct.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you do if you're on the IUD? So, you know, my daughters are on the IUD and with a lot of the IUDs, you don't get a period. So how do you figure out when that part of your cycle is?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, yeah. I have the same issue with my daughter. Here's what I'm going to say. And this is the best gauge that we have. And I don't want to confuse people. But this is what we've been using, is if you have no sense of when your period is coming, use the moon cycle.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What the hell does that mean?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Use the way that the moon waxes and wanes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. But like you break it down for me. Because is this also what we met women in perimenopause who have really weird cycles and those of us that are like, bye-bye with the period?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Okay. So everybody listening, if you either don't have a cycle or you're on birth control that compromises your cycle or you're peri or you are menopause, full Monty, you're going to follow the fucking moon.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what shape is the moon in Dr. Mindy when I'm doing the intermittent fasting protocol?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: So the first thing I want to point out is it's not a coincidence that the moon has a cycle that's 28 to 30 days. And we have a cycle that's 28 to 30 days. Because we're magical bitches. That's why.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, exactly. You have totally nailed that one. Exactly.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Like, so let's just acknowledge that. Okay. First day of your period, when you start bleeding, would be the first day of the new moon.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Ovulation would be the full moon, which is when we're wickedly powerful.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yes, ma'am.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: In fact, I keep saying, let's just put all the ovulating women in one room and they can solve all the world's problems. As long as we're intermittent fasting.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: So if you're going to start the intermittent fasting protocol for maximum health and healing benefit, regardless of where you are with your period or not getting one, you are going to start with the new moon, which is that super thin sliver of a where the hell is the moon moon.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: And that's going to be the beginning of your intermittent fasting protocol. And you are going to stop fasting protocol while the moon is near its full moon phase. Is that what we're doing?
--:-- Mel Robbins: So let's just make it simple. Let's say intermittent fasting. You're going to fast 12 to 15 hours. Day one, starting the new moon till about day 21. Perfect. And then at 21, you switch out, and you stop fasting for a week, and then the minute the new moon comes in, you start fasting again.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: That's fantastic, and so that's very clear.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to underscore why this matters. This matters because women are very different physiologically, hormone, chemically, like all of it from men. The system operates differently, and you also have to be responsible for the fact that we run in a network of hormones that are different than people who are born male. I want you to understand this seven day window where you're not going to be following a fasting protocol is because of your metabolic health and your hormone health and that's why we're being very specific about this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, I want to ask one more very specific question. For those of us in menopause who no longer are going through a cycle, is our 30 days, 21 days on, seven days off?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: You can just take that 30-day reset and match it to the moon.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Great.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: And you will start to see your cycle come back on, unless you're a menopausal woman. So there's apps. Let's start there. Just pick up an app and just find the new moon. It's not that hard to find on an app.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, just Google new moon this month.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah, I can tell you the app I use is called Moonly.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Moonly, okay.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Moonly. And look at where the new moon is. That would be day one of your cycle. In my book, in Fast Like a Girl, I have a 30-day fasting reset.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it. You're going to follow your menstrual cycle if you have a regular period.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: That's right.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you are not sure because of birth control or other reasons when your period is happening, you're going to follow a 30-day protocol. We will link to resources with all the show notes. You can find them at melrobins.com slash podcast. You're going to follow a 30-day protocol, and you're going to begin day one on the day of the new moon.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: For simplicity's sake, yes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. All right. Great. That's amazing. I am so excited by this conversation and we got to hit pause real quick so we can hear a word from our sponsors. They are bringing this content to you at zero cost. So let's take a listen, but don't you dare go anywhere because we will be right back with more of this masterclass on intermittent fasting when we return.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. I am here with Dr. Mindy. She's a renowned expert on the science of intermittent fasting, and we are unpacking everything that you need to know. What I love most, Dr. Mindy, is how simple you are making this. Okay, so you have an example with a story of a woman named Bridget who followed this protocol. Could you share that story with us?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah. So what was interesting about Bridget's story is that she did what most of us do: we exercise more and we eat less to lose weight. And she's what I call a "rushing woman." She was a CEO, had a very, very busy lifestyle, tons of family, was engaged in her family, engaged in work. And all of her tools that she was using to keep her weight where she wanted to be were failing her.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Sounds familiar.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: So she found fasting, and she started to fast. And in the first moment that she found intermittent fasting, it was like a miracle. Her brain came back online. She started to drop weight, and she was all of a sudden like, "Wow, I'm supercharged for this rushing woman lifestyle." But she didn't know to cycle it. So 30 to 60 days into this miraculous lifestyle, the opposite started happening. She started gaining weight. She started losing her period completely — everything we've been talking about. She was one of the women I figured out like, "Oh, there's a rhythm here. I need to find Bridget's rhythm." And in finding Bridget's rhythm, I found every other woman's rhythm, which is this idea that you have to step out of fasting because of this hormone progesterone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can we just say, "Fuck you, progesterone"? Can we just say that right now? It has to complicate things for us.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: You have four steps to determine which of the six fasting protocols is the right one for you. What are they?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, I call it building a fasting lifestyle. The first step is, what are you trying to do? This keeps coming up in this conversation. The one-size-fits-all protocols that we give, whether it's diet or medication or whatever, it works better for a man than it works for a woman. It doesn't work for humans in general. We need to find our own personal path. Let's use you as an example, Mel. Maybe you decide, "Hey, I need to repair my gut," so you need to train yourself to get into that 24-hour fast. Whereas somebody else might say, "God, my weight is so stuck, I have to throw in some 36-hour fasts." So make sure you know what you want to do. Second, you have to cycle your fasts. We already talked about that. Third, you have to cycle your food. We haven't talked much about that. *Fast Like a Girl* goes way into how you look at different foods. And fourth, let's stop doing health on our own. Let's do it in a community. Women thrive on oxytocin. We're getting oxytocin right now talking to each other. As oxytocin goes up, it calms cortisol. When cortisol goes down, you become more insulin sensitive. And when insulin gets regulated, now all your hormones regulate. So oxytocin for a woman is a powerful hormone. When she goes into a fasting lifestyle and does it on her own, she misses that oxytocin moment. When she does it in community, she actually amplifies oxytocin.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How do you do that? How do you do it in a community?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Well, we did for years, and we still do it — something called a Fast Training Week on my YouTube channel, where I would take five days and lead the whole world through these different weeks. So that's still there. We do three-day water fasts all the time in community. Grab *Fast Like a Girl* and do a book club with a group of women. Do it together. One thing I do with my girlfriends: we do challenges all the time together. It's like, "Hey, for the next 30 days, I'm going to do this." And then they're in on it, and now we're doing it together in a community.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. I love the idea of doing it with someone else because whenever I've taken on a health challenge, just having a buddy that I'm texting with is critical. And I love that you're explaining that there's a scientific, research-packed health benefit to all these reasons. I want to ask you a question from Becky, who DM'd us and said, "I'm studying this fasting info. This is super helpful. I want to know good, bad, or different if there is one of your fasting plans that I can do that's a little bit more flexible."
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Let me explain it this way. Take your eating window and move it wherever you want. If you want to eat with your family dinner at seven o'clock at night and be done by eight, and your eating window is eight hours, then your eating window opens at noon and you start eating from noon to eight.
--:-- Mel Robbins: See, this is why this is so great. She is asking a question that shows how we've all been trained to calorie restrict and to focus on what we're eating. And she's like, "I'd just like to know if I'm fasting, is there a day a week I could have my comfort food for lunch?" And what you're saying is if you adjust the window, yes, because you know that you're playing with a cycle of on and off.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Exactly. So just figure out when you're going to stop eating the night before so that the window opens up right around lunchtime. Maybe you're going to a great brunch on Sunday morning and the brunch starts at 10 o'clock. Don't deprive yourself. That's when your eating window opened. So at 10, you start, and by six, you're done. Just move that eating window around to match your lifestyle. That's why people are sticking with this type of lifestyle — because you can match it to the other parts of your lifestyle that are important.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Does a fasting cycle for women reduce muscle? Do these things work together? Because I want to be clear. I want to make sure people understand that they have to do what works for them, but this isn't necessarily conflicting advice.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: I a thousand percent agree that muscle and protein are incredibly important and we need to prioritize them. When you're fasting, in the fasting window, your body breaks protein down. It's not a bad thing. Your body is getting rid of stored sugar in that muscle, so it breaks it down. When you start to eat, now you need to up your protein. You need to make sure that you get enough protein so that you have enough amino acids — those are the nutrients in protein that build muscle. Where this falls apart is if you start to fast and then you open your eating window and you forget to include protein in your diet. You didn't give the fuel source to the muscles that it needed. So make sure when you eat, eat. This is a big thing. Eat good quality food. If you want more muscle, you have to eat more protein.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Got it. Love it. We did not dive deep into the extensive amount of research that you do have about the kinds of food that you're eating and the impact it can have on a fasting protocol as a lifestyle. I want to give one little tip though to everybody, because you say that there are three foods that from a fasting perspective, if you focus on simply limiting these three foods, it's going to help the fasting protocol of when you're eating and when you're not a lot. So what are those three foods?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: The first one is good oils, not bad oils. Good oils are avocado oil, olive oil, sesame seed oil, walnut oil — there are a lot of great ones.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What are the bad ones? Give me the list.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: The bad ones are canola oil, cottonseed oil, corn oil, partially hydrogenated oils, safflower, sunflower oils. And they're everywhere.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why are they bad?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: They cause your cells to inflame, to swell. When your cells are swollen, your brain is swollen, your joints are swollen, your belly is swollen, and your cells are not able to pull in nutrients and hormones. So let's just get those foods out. Done. Let's change the oils. Delete. Gone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. Second one.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: We've already talked about it: nature's carbs, not man-made carbs. The breads, the cakes, the cookies, the pastas — can we limit those? Can we get those out of the diet? Even if they're organic, even if they're gluten-free, they should still be fairly minimal. And can we bring fruits and vegetables and potatoes, even wild rice, quinoa? Let's bring those back into the diet and make those the highlight.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Great. And the final one?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: The last one is toxins. This is your NutraSweet, your Splendas that a lot of people go on diets with. This is your artificial colorings. This is the nitrites that we put in. Anything that has been made by humans is going to destroy cellular health.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Basically, this is how I think about it, Dr. Mindy. If I look at an ingredient list on a package and I either can't pronounce it or it doesn't look like something that I would see on a label at a farmer's market, it's probably not that great for you.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Yeah. And best yet, buy something without a label.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you know what my mom always said? She said, "If you just stick to the perimeter of a grocery store — you go fruits and vegetables, to the deli, to the dairy, and typically to the bakery — you're good." So now that we know the three foods that we need to avoid, can we talk about the ways in which you break a fast? I know you say there are four ways that you can do it when you're doing it for the first time. Can you walk us through how you do that?
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: The first thing to break a fast with is really easy: broth. This can be vegetable broth, it can be bone broth. Broth is a good entry back into food. The second thing that I encourage people to break a fast with is actually fat. Fat will stabilize the blood sugar so that you don't boomerang back into eating a ton of food. So make sure you eat a good fat. My personal favorite is an avocado. I usually break my fast often with an avocado. With that fat, I also encourage that people look at a probiotic-rich meal. This is like a sauerkraut, a kefir — something that has good bacteria in it to replenish your microbiome. Once you've done that — you've done the broth, you've done the fat, you've added some probiotics in — then bring protein back in and make sure that you're eating enough protein to start to build muscle. Those are the biggest considerations: making sure that you take care of your digestion, you take care of your blood sugar, you take care of your microbes, and you take care of your muscles. That's what all of those foods will do.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We've covered a ton. There are a couple things I want to say. Number one, we are absolutely going to have you back because I'm super curious about everything that you want to say about eating and specifically eating for women's health and how that impacts your natural healing and health systems in your body. Second, I know we're going to get a gajillion — that's a technical term — questions. So I am inviting you listening, go to melrobbins.com slash podcast. You're going to find a form. I would love if you have follow-up questions, I would love to bring Dr. Mindy back. And I mean it because I feel like there are so few female doctors getting the airtime that they deserve, and the information that you are sharing with patients, getting to a broader audience in a simple, tactical, applicable way — I want to make her expertise available to you listening more so that we can really make sure that this zero-cost, profoundly researched and documented tool that you have within your body is being used by you for maximum health and healing benefit because you deserve that in your life. Dr. Mindy, you are freaking awesome. I have loved every second of this. I am now through my fasting window too, so I am going to go face plant a salad with some steak on top. I love you. I can't wait to have you back, Dr. Mindy. Thank you for explaining all this to us and giving us the gift of healing and health at zero cost. You freaking rock.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: Thank you, Mel. And thank you for supporting women and for supporting a free health tool like this. Again, this is where we're stronger together. When we unite our missions, our passions, we teach, we do it from a loving place, everybody wins.
--:-- Mel Robbins: A thousand percent. So thank you.
--:-- Dr. Mindy Pelz: You're welcome. Can't wait to have you back.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. That was so cool. I'm so excited. I cannot wait to hear your questions, to have her back. Most importantly, thank you for spending the time. And the reason why I'm thanking you is because I'm thanking you on behalf of your future self. What you just learned is a zero-cost tool that helps you unlock the extraordinary power of your body to heal itself. It helps you tap into decades and decades of research that you can benefit from. And the thing that I love the most, you don't have to add anything. We're going to simplify it. You're just going to watch when you eat, and then you're going to watch these amazing results happen, and you deserve that. Already, I love you. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to take control of your health, take control of when you eat, and to take control of your life. I'll talk to you in a few days.
--:-- Mel Robbins: [Voiceover] This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist. And this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
