Intermittent Fasting for Women - How to Fast Like a Girl with Dr Mindy Pelz

9:31AM May 30, 2023

Speakers:

Angela Foster

Dr. Mindy Pelz

Keywords:

women

oestrogen

progesterone

carbs

glucose

hormones

cycle

fast

fasted state

book

realise

day

mindy

hours

phase

protein

lifestyle

amazing

workout

sudden

And then outside of that the biggest one that I think we're just not talking enough about is that as oestrogen drops, you become more insulin resistant. Which is why I feel like women over 40 really need to know how to fast.

I feel friends. In today's episode, we're going to be talking all about fasting and specifically how to fast like a girl, because the rules are different for men and women. And if we really want to optimise the health of our hormones, as well as our longevity alongside our energy, we need to understand how to do it as a woman. There's no one better to help you do this than my guest today. Dr. Mindy pelts. Dr. Mindy is a renowned holistic health expert. And she's a second time guest on the show. She is one of the leading voices in educating women about their bodies. She's on a mission to start a women's health revolution. She knows everything about how to fast like a girl. So without further delay, let me introduce you now to the wonderful Dr. Mindy pals. So Dr. Mindy, I am so excited to have you back on the show. I've been really really looking forward to this I love your new book fast like a god, it's been so needed. A very warm welcome to the show.

Oh, thank you for having me here. And thank you for that intro. I've been blown away at how the world is received this book. And I agree it was really it was a conversation that was needed. And I just love that women are stepping into it and using it and talking about it. So yeah, thank you for those kind words.

It's amazing. I think so many women after everything you do on YouTube, and all your channels, they've been waiting for this book. And I have to say it's brilliant, just all the little like protocols that you have at the back for questions. And I want to dive into those with you in a moment around, you know, different kinds of autoimmune conditions and things like that. But let's start at the top with Can you explain for listeners? What are the different phases of fasting and the benefits of each when we go from kind of 12 hours to 24? And upwards?

Yeah, I think what what isn't being discussed in the fasting world? Is that why fasting works, is it so you're tapping into a whole nother energy system a whole nother metabolism. And we I can't believe that we've gone this long in human existence without this conversation. But when we like for years, I would have women that would come into my office and they would say, Oh, my metabolism is slow. Well, what does that really mean? And when I started to dive into the research, I realised that when you go without food, you're tapping into a fat burning metabolism that you cannot tap into when you're eating food. And the longer you stay in that fat burner metabolism, the more healing happens. So in the book, I laid out six different levels of time levels of fasting that will contribute to healing and it ranges. Everything from 12 to 15 hours, which is our intermittent fasting. That's what most people know is intermittent fasting where we see growth hormone go up, we see inflammation come down, we see some ketones start to be made. And in that phase, we with ketones, it's going to repair the brain, it's going to kill the hunger hormone. Growth hormone is going to start to bring you know, slow down the ageing process help you burn fat, and everybody benefits from lower inflammation. But the longer you stay there, so you go into 17 hours of fasting now you're stimulating a toffee g where the cells are cleaning themselves up 24 hours you're resetting the whole gut. So I found this one clinically to be so helpful for women who had been on birth control for many years. For my patients who had SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, leaky gut syndrome, a lot of the gut challenges that affect people today if I threw a 24 hour fast at them, I started to see their guts repair 36 hours became my fast for the stubborn weight loss. The people in my clinic that just couldn't lose weight no matter what I had them do. If I threw a 36 hour fast at it, we saw that all of a sudden they it unstuck their weight loss efforts. 48 hours based off research and what we've seen clinically will reset your whole dopamine system, help improve moods and then 72 hours of fasting really resets the whole immune system. So the longer you stay in that fasted state, the more healing happens. And that's what I tried to lay out in the in fast psycho girl is, here's the science. Here's the application. Now you apply it to your hormonal needs.

detoxification is so important now more than ever, with the number of toxins we are exposed to daily in our food, water, personal care products and environment. No matter how careful we are, it's impossible to totally get away from the chemicals. And we also have to think about detoxifying the toxins we produced through cellular respiration and clearing excess hormones like oestrogen. Our skin is one of the key ways we detoxify. And that's why I love to include sauna as part of my weekly routine. But going to a facility with a sauna can be time consuming, and investing in one yourself has been expensive in the past. That's why I love Bong chargers sauna blanket. It has so many benefits from raising your heart rate to that a physical exercise, so you burn calories whilst you relax, you can burn up to 600 calories in just one session. The sweating helps flush out heavy metals and other toxins and the infrared light which heats the body directly rather than the air around you mean you get the same benefits at a lower heat. On charges sauna blanket is easy to set up taking less than a minute. It heats up rapidly and you can enjoy a session for 30 to 40 minutes whilst relaxing, reading watching TV or even meditating. So you can truly stack your hacks on charges Sona blanket is also low EMF compared to other brands on the market. And it's the quickest on the market to heat up. So it's an easy thing to fit in. When I'm not working out in the morning, you'll find me meditating in my bond charged on a blanket with their red light therapy mask on my face boosting collagen while I relax and bond charger giving listeners of this podcast 20% of their sauna blankets, red light therapy devices and other wellness products. Bond charge ship worldwide in rapid time with free shipping on every solar blanket and 12 months warranty. Simply go to bond charge.com forward slash Angela and enter code Angela 20 at checkout that's B oncharg.com. Forward slash a n g e l a and use code Angela 20. To save yourself 20%. Yeah, amazing, amazing. I love the way you've done that. And I want to dive into kind of each of those when we look at the gut health side of things. And you say that within 24 hours that gut can start to repair people that are listening to this who have you know, things like bloating? SIBO? Maybe they've got you know, they oscillate between kind of needing the loo desperately then being really constipated. What can they expect? And how would they approach it from a gut health perspective? How often would they need to do it? And would they just do it for that 24 hour window?

Yeah, you know, clinically, what I did is I would throw every once in a while I'd throw a 24 hour fast. So I would say anywhere from every once every couple of weeks to once a month depending on how severe the gut problem was. Now, if somebody had an autoimmune condition, or they had SIBO SIBO, especially, because there's no supplement out there that any functional medicine doctor will tell you is like the tried and true SIBO supplement. But what we've seen is that if you throw us a 24 hour fast, you're killing the bacteria that is in the small intestine. And so when you reintroduce food, there's less there to agitate for bloating. So I to answer your question, it really depends on the severity of your gut condition, once a week is great, or once a month, but it really depends if you're preventing or you're trying to fix a gut problem.

And he talked later in the book actually about the use of probiotics, prebiotics, polyphenols, which are really helpful as well that we can come on to with let's look at the menstrual cycle because you do this really really well the hormonal stages before we move into kind of perimenopause and all the disruption Can you talk us through those stages because I found it I loved it the way the manifestation stage the power phase Can you can you talk us through those?

Yeah, so for starters think you know I I wanted to name them in it and so that women understood what they represent. Because when I first started learning hormones, I was like follicular luteal, like it's just confusing. Every woman knows ovulation, but they don't you know, the names are too technical. So I and I also like to make everything fun. So as like, Okay, well, the power phase is when our hormones typically are at their lowest and specifically, the first power phase is day one to day 10. And that's when you go from a low hormone place to oestrogen building. The reason I call it the power phase is because I wanted women to understand that is the time to power up on anything if you can power up on fasting you can power up on workouts. You can get away with less sleep like you are powerful during that time, like oestrogen is very much an extroverted hormone. So she, she's going to be the life of the party. She's going to be the one that's like, Yes, let's go for a 10 mile run. Yes, let's do a three day fast. She doesn't care if cortisol goes high. And so that first 10 days of our cycle is when we can lean in to some of these health habits that we've accumulated over the years that we know keep our weight where we want it, keep our mind where we want it. You can go into those extreme behaviours, day one through day 10.

You know, I love that phase. Can I say like my knee? Yeah, I'm so resilient, right from as soon as my period begins. That's it. Like, I feel more resilient. I see it on my trackers on my HRV. Like you just said, There, you can manage with less sleep. And I'm like, Yeah, I'm in the green on my whoop, and everything. And then yeah, kind of shifts later on. But yeah.

It's so funny to hear you say that, because that is exactly how I have felt over the years, and a lot of women feel, but we never had a language to put to it. So and I think that might be one of the reasons women are resonating with this book so much is because now they're finally like understanding themselves. So I love talking on language. Yeah, exactly. And then the other thing I just want to point out about these 10 days is this is where you want to keep glucose and insulin low. So women that have PCOS, this is an emerging problem, like it's the most common hormonal condition for cycling women. And you are going to want to keep insulin down in order to keep those symptoms of PCOS down. So you want to keep glucose down. This is a great time to go keto. This is a great time to again to push your workouts to push a little longer fast. Do it in those 10 days.

That is super interesting. Because Oh my glucose tracker and I have PCOS, I was diagnosed with resistance. So I've been like spent the last 20 years trying to manage it. And I noticed that I'm very sensitive. I have to work a bit harder to control my blood glucose at that time. Yeah, for sure. Crazy, right? Yeah, this just all lines up. It's amazing.

I know, like, like I when I looked at the science, and then I matched the science of fasting to the menstrual cycle. And then I took that information and applied it to my patients. I just started to see trends, I started to see things working with that first power phase. One interesting thing is a lot of my patients that were struggling to get pregnant for years, when I took them through what we're talking about right now all of a sudden they would get pregnant, because now you're living in accordance with what your hormones want. And those first 10 days oestrogen wants glucose and insulin low. And then you know, and so how do we go about getting glucose and insulin low, more fasting, more keto, more working out, the you know, their aerobic type of working out. That's how we can manage glucose. And it's really it's fascinating once you really dive into what the needs are of each one of these horses.

Um, we're stronger at that point, right? If I look at my when I'm lifting the last few weeks, because now I'm kind of just crossed that middle section. I was I was moving up in my weights. And then when I went this morning, I was like, Oh, it's just starting to feel a bit harder. It's so true. Like, it's just yeah, it's like clockwork, it's amazing. Yeah, it's

crazy. So So then when we go into the ovulation window, I called it manifestation. And the reason I wanted to call it that is because I think as women, we have villainized our hormones forever. We're like, Oh, I'm hormonal today. And we haven't really embraced how these hormones really serve us. And when you look at day 11 To day 15, when an egg is going to be released, you have oestrogen at her peak, she's the highest of the whole of your whole cycle. You have testosterone comes roaring in highest at have ever added at during your cycle. And then you have a little bit of progesterone. So what this means for you is during this strange little four day window, is that you're going to notice you're mentally clear, because that's what oestrogen gives us that real clarity. You're also verbally like, I don't know if you've ever had this maybe as a podcaster. You have those moments where you say something and you're like, hey, that was that was actually pretty good.

I started intelligent. Yeah, I actually sound

like I don't talk. So that's oestrogen, she helps you with mental clarity. She gives you verbal processing, and verbal skills. But then testosterone gives you motivation and drive. It does a lot more than just libido. And progesterone keeps you up a little bit of progesterone during this time so it keeps you calm. So you Yes, you can manifest a baby if you want to during that time. But your creativity is at its height. Your ability to resolve conflict is at its best. You You are literally in your hormonal glory during that time. So what lifestyle do we need to match to ovulation? And this is where the research says, Keep fasting around 15 to 17 hours, don't go crazy, because you don't want to bring cortisol up too much, because you've got progesterone there. And you should really focus more on foods. So you're going to want to bring your glucose up a little bit more, and you're going to want to focus on liver and gut health. Because one of the part of the conversation of hormones that is not being had is that there's many aspects to be able to use a hormone, you've got to produce it, you've got to be able to break it down, and then your cells have to be able to receive it. So there's three steps. Well, when we look at the manifestation phase, this ovulation window, we've got to go, Okay, I now have all my hormones coming in. How am I going to support the breakdown and the use of those, and that we can do by switching our attention to the liver and the gut? I think if there was ever a time for us to get off alcohol, it would be during this manifestation phase because you need your liver to break down oestrogen can

deplete detoxify the excess, right? Because, hey, I noticed that this is where I can get breakouts in the middle here.

That's right. And if you do, that's a sign that you're you're not breaking it down as well. So your body's pushing it out through your skin. Yeah, so if you get breast tenderness if you get bloated during that time, that's all a sign that you're your body's struggling to break these hormones down.

And that's exacerbated in women like me with PCOS where you've got kind of higher androgens and

yes, yeah, yeah. So you would it would behove you to focus a lot on those three P's that I talked about the poly phenol, the probiotic and prebiotic foods, and really support the liver with bitter foods, arugula, radicchio, dandelion greens, those are that's what I want women to turn to in that manifestation phase. So we can break those hormones down. Food is a is going to be more of your tool than fasting during that that four day window. And then you're going to see that not only you're going to get rid of oestrogen, clear it out of your system, so it doesn't, you know, turn into cancers. And it's also gets recycled out of you. But you're also going to be able to move those into your cells a lot easier, so that you can actually use them for what they were made for. So yeah, so that's, that's a manifestation phase. And then you come out of ovulation or manifestation, and your hormones dip again. So the other thing that I really want women to understand is that when the hormones come in, we have we have a certain set of behaviours and personalities that we can that we, uh, no pun intended, we flow with as as these hormones come in. But then we have moments where the hormones drop. And when the hormones drop, we get a little bit like, oh, like, don't feel so good. And it could be mood, it could be energy, it could be sleep, but coming out of like, manifestation phase around day 16, we have another drop. And in those drops, you can help yourself by fasting a little more going into a little more keto. So I called it the power phase two, because I felt like this is another time you can power up on longer fasts, you can power up on more of your keto diet, it's a great time to go into more of those habits again,

I found most people most women are feeling during because some women will say that they experienced that drop, right? And they kind of feel a bit low. There's a blip kind of there's a black tribulation, and other women are like, actually, I'm continuing to feel strong and they can train and I'm curious what you found with with all the women you've worked with, and it's

such it's such a good point of all the phases that I mapped out in the book. That's the one that's the most variable. Yeah. So is that if you're struggling to clear oestrogen, a lot of women will say they don't feel well in that in coming out of ovulation. Which is why I think focusing on the liver and the gut is important. So you're clearing that out.

Women could be different month to month right then so some women feel great one month and then the next month. Yeah,

yeah. Right. I mean, and this is what again, I'm so happy you pointed that out, because these are the conversations we need to have because there's a lot of women that don't understand themselves. They're shaming themselves. They're frustrated with their hat with why they can't lose weight. They're frustrated with why their moods are going off, when in reality There's a lifestyle that we need to match to all these different phases of our menstrual cycle.

So, so yes, so we got past manifestation, yeah, God, yeah.

Manifestation the hormones drop, you can power up on your fast you can power up on keto. But here's here's the real like AHA of the whole metro menstrual cycle. And that's that about day 20 day 19. I call it the nurture phase, your body is building progesterone, and everything has to change at this moment. So if you're looking at your HRV, you probably see your HRV go down at the week before your cycle. If you're looking at your glucose, and you have a glucose monitor, you're probably noticing that your glucose is going up. Despite your your you're doing the same health habits you did the rest of your cycle. Well, there's a reason for this. Progesterone wants you to chill out. Progesterone wants you to not push through your workouts Don't push your diet habits. You don't push your social calendar, don't you know you this is a time. That's why I called it the nurture phase. This is the time we need to nurture ourselves. And when we push through that last week before our cycle, we ended up coming into the beginning of our cycle with heavy cramping clots with our our menstrual cycle, we struggled the first couple of days of our cycle mentally. All of that is because we didn't nurture ourselves the week before our period. Progesterone needs glucose higher progesterone needs cortisol down. Progesterone has a totally different way about her that we just aren't discussing enough.

So in this phase, then when we're looking at glucose would we expect to see like if you're using a CGM, you'd expect to see it slightly higher. And with that no something to worry about.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, I can't tell you how many women freak out when they put CGM is on and they're like, wait a second, I'm doing the same thing. But glucose is going higher. And this is this is the thing that like, think about how amazing your body is, is that your body knows that it needs more glucose to be able to make progesterone. So during that week, it makes you more insulin resistant so that you can bring up glucose levels. You'll see that on your continuous glucose monitor. But what else does it do? It causes us to crave carbs. So how many of us have credit have this insatiable hunger and carb craving before our cycle starts? And we and we bitch and moan about it. We're like, oh, all I want to do is eat carbs. I can't fast I don't really feel like working out. Like I just want to stay home. I want to eat chocolate. Yeah. That's what progesterone is meant to be. And that's okay. Right? Like it's free. Once you know that. It's like crazy. It's crazy that we complain about that. But that's that's literally what progesterone wants, she wants glucose higher. She wants cortisol low, she needs magnesium from chocolate. So she's giving you these signals. And we've just been blowing through those signals. And then we get all these adverse symptoms, like our cycle is really painful. We, you know, we feel really bloated, or anxiety ensues. And we and we don't realise that it's just because we went against progesterone needs.

And interestingly, Food plays such a big part there. I just want to clarify with the glucose because I know people will be freaking out if they're wearing a CGM, and it's going to go higher. What is an acceptable range before? It's like no, actually do you know what Now maybe you're just indulging in too many sweets and stuff? Where Where can you expect it to be within that range? kind of the beginning of the month versus the second half?

Yeah, I think you'll see it go what we that we see in my community is it goes about five to 10 points higher, and this is an again, American turmeric and isn't it so yeah, so like fasting glucose is 70 to 90 milligrammes per deciliter, I'm not sure the translation.

Yeah, this would be like sort of for four to five, four and a half to five.

Yeah. So in your fasted state, you might see it, let's say you're at 4.0. You might see it go up to 4.1. And what typically, it's just a subtle increase. But what I'm watching women do is that they're like, wait a second, what did I do wrong? Why am is my glute fasting glucose so much higher? So it's in that fasted state you'll see it just go up a little bit.

And so in the in the US equivalent, what would that be?

It would be like, your fasting glucose would probably go to one 95 or 100? In that fast in, in

fact, yeah, so that's probably Yeah, sort of nudging towards five for us. Okay, we can look that up actually and put it in the show notes. Okay, so let's on that bit because I think this is really important for premenopausal women like myself, this is where progesterone is going down, you're trying to manage the whole thing. And I always say when I've interviewed like yourself, Dr. Stacey sims or experts at this time, this decade in your 40s is quite a busy time, right for women there. They've kind of excelled often in their careers. They've got children they're raising, they might have ageing parents, there's so much going on. And so cortisol is naturally going up and it is through these hormonal changes. How can they optimise for progesterone? Is it going to be kind of showing their self love eating more carbs? Is that going to help to extend because a lot of women will complain? My cycles really shortening now, you know used to be 28 days now it's kind of inching towards 2324 Sometimes 21. And then they get the clotting the heavy bleeding.

Yeah, it's such a good conversation. And I'm smiling because I'm like, Oh, my heart to all the peri menopausal women out there. Like, you know, my heart just goes out to you. Because I think when we go roaring into our 40s, we don't realise what's about to hormonal really changed for us. So the first thing we have to realise for Peri menopausal women is the lifestyle you did it 30 is not going to necessarily work for you at 40. The diet and exercise plan that kept you in great shape at 35. Doesn't do this have the same effect at 45. So what one of my big visions for women is that at 40. As we see that the ovaries are going into retirement, or sex hormones are going to kind of get a little wacky, that we start to look at our lifestyle differently. And I wrote a whole book on that it'll it'll come back out in June. It's called the menopause reset. And it's really five things that every woman should do after 40 to be able to flow no pun intended with with the changes of their hormones. And so with that in mind, the biggest thing that Peri menopausal women should know is that in the beginning stages of our 40s our oestrogen is going up and down. So what that means to us is that we're going to have days we feel completely normal, and we're gonna have days where we feel horrible. And when oestrogen goes low, a couple of things happen. Hot flashes, so hot flashes as a dramatic drop of oestrogen. We're also going to see that our skin our hair, oestrogen really produces collagen. So we're gonna see all of a sudden the wrinkles show up and the hair changes, our nails change. And so much of that is because oestrogen is doing this up and down. We also are going to notice that oestrogen at her peak, our brain is very mentally clear, we can handle a lot of stress. And then the next day, we can't handle stress at all because oestrogen has dropped. And then outside of that the biggest one that I think we're just not talking enough about is that as oestrogen drops, you become more insulin resistant, which is why I feel like women over 40 really need to know how to fast. And the best way to do that is follow what we just said, the fasting cycle I just mapped out. The challenge is what happens if you have a 60 day cycle. And that is where it gets very nuanced and very individualised. And I can only share with you the way I did it through my Peri menopausal years, which is when I tracked everything, so I had everything tracked on an app. And when all of a sudden it became day 35. And I didn't it didn't appear that my cycle was coming. I used my hunger as as a insight into what I needed to do. So I'm pretty much one of those people that can eat my first meal about 12 or one o'clock, when all of a sudden I was hungry at nine in the morning, my brain went okay, progesterone, my is my body needs more progesterone to be able to shed. So I'm going to need to make sure that I switch over into a higher carb meal and bring down my fasting window. So there becomes a lot more of an art during that time if your cycle is, you know, every 60 days or some women is every two weeks.

One of the many benefits of being part of my membership, the female bio hacker collective is that you get to ask my special podcast guests your questions, and my members have the wonderful opportunity of asking not to Mindy pals, there are questions in relation to fasting, optimising around the menstrual cycle, and perimenopause and a whole lot more. If you'd like to be part of an amazing community of women and get your questions answered alongside monthly live masterclasses, biohacking toolkits and live challenges with me and my team, then head over to www dot female bio hacker.com. To Learn more at www dot female bio hacker.com. To learn more. Yeah, so when it's lengthening, I can kind of see that what about women when they're getting this kind of, it's shortening a little bit because what I've noticed actually, in that situation, and with women I work with is sometimes if they're pushing really, really hard, like they're going, they're doing an early morning fasted workout, then they're doing the school run, I've been guilty of this, I've walked the dogs, I've done all these different things. And I haven't refuel postworkout. Actually, that seems to affect my cycle. Whereas if I actually make intentionally Then refuel post workout, somehow, and I've noticed this with other women, actually, then the cycle lengthens out again a little bit now that that's presumably to do with the progesterone because you're supporting it.

Yeah, yeah, I am. So I'm 53 right now. And I swear I was going into menopause at 45, I started to get spotting. So the first thing to know is that if you're spotting, that is a clear sign that progesterone needs your help. So progesterone has to peak to a certain level in order for the whole uterine lining to shed. So when I started to spot, I made sure that I brought my glucose up, I didn't fast, I nurtured myself a lot more. And then I noticed that I went from like a week of spotting to maybe two days to spotting and then my period would come. So you can look at that as as a as a sign. We could also look at the continuous glucose monitor we talked about, you're all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, why is my glucose higher? Or HRV? Why is HRV lower? These are all signs that progesterone is trying to show up. And so let's bring carbs up. And let's bring fasting down and then you'll see that that the cycle starts. Now, if you're every two weeks, once you bleed, you go back to this idea. Okay? Bleeding is happening. So I need to bring oestrogen back up now. So now I go into keto. Now I go into harder workouts now I go into more fasting. So I call it the personalities of these hormones. You got to like sort of read them a little bit different. Until someday, I keep hunting for the person who could create this. We got to have a CGM that tells hormones.

Yeah, it'd be amazing. When that'd be amazing would be amazing. Yeah. But we don't have that yet. We don't have that. Yeah. So we have to work with this. And what about hormone therapy alongside this? Is that something you recommend for women?

So here's my experience in my community and with my own self with both HRT and BHRT is that it's not the cure all. So what happens is that women end up going roaring into did I lose you? I didn't lose you for a moment.

Just a second. Yeah, no, he stayed with me actually. Okay, okay.

Women go roaring in to their 40s. All of a sudden, their moods go crazy. Their sleep goes crazy. They gain weight, and the first day thing they think, is okay, I must be going into menopause. Let me go get some some hormone therapy. And there is a massive learning curve with both bioidenticals and traditional HRT. It's not as simple as throwing a patch on and life changes. And so the first thing is, you've got to be very patient with yourself. You have to understand how to the art of, of what hormone is going to work best for you. Which you know which edition of which hormone is going to work best for you. Like, I use myself as an example. I tried going in with oestrogen first made me crazy made me like literally mentally spin. I was like, no, no, I don't want to do that. Then I went into progesterone made me cry all the time. And then I was like, okay, that's not working. And then I found my door into hormone therapy was through testosterone. And once I stabilised that, I could go back to the other two. But that took that took me working with several practitioners and understanding myself. So it's um, I'm a fan of hormone therapy, but I also want you to understand that it made there's a learning curve for you and there's no one size fits all. The other part of that conversation that I wrote I really, really can't emphasise enough is you are going to still have to clean up your lifestyle, you still are going to have to learn how to fast like we're talking about, you're still going to need to learn how to go high carb and low carb, you're still going to need to work on repairing your microbiome. You may need to detox and you're going to have to learn how to how to not keep being that rushing woman where you're just pushing, pushing, pushing all the time. And what's interesting on this something I've been thinking a lot about lately, is a conversation I had with Dr. Daniel Amen. I brought him on to my podcast. And I asked him, Tell me tell me why so many women are mentally suffering after 40. And what he said blew me away. He said, because we weren't women weren't meant to live that long. I was like, What, whoa. But if you think about it, we're primal. Go back to the to the primal days, we didn't live into our 80s and 90s like we're doing right now. So when we look at that, and we look at like Alzheimer's and dementia happening to more women than men, we have to start to realise that lifestyle is key. We have to switch our lifestyle in this modern world, we are pushing ourselves too much. So more mindfulness, more relaxation, more nurturing needs to happen as we move into those Peri menopausal years. Otherwise, it's going to be you're going to really struggle and throwing a patch on you is not going to be the end all be all result that you're looking for.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And being so successful yourself and having gone through that. How have you juggled it? How have you given yourself that time? Because, yeah, published two books. You've got amazing success. You've got a massive community. You've got kids, how have you juggled it all? Yeah,

that's a great question. All of my close friends were here right now they'd be like, we keep telling her. So one thing that I've done is just give myself a lot more grace. So you know, the 30 year old version of me was hard on myself, and really pushed myself to be able to perform and build the career that I've built. The 53 year old version of me, allows myself more downtime gives myself more grace, when it comes to a I made a mistake, or I didn't show up in a certain way. So a lot of it is in my self talk. The second thing is I totally reorganised my day. So I used to get up in the morning and just bolt out of the door, go to my office work a 10 hour day. Now I actually get up, I meditate. I spend time in gratitude. I have a hyperbaric oxygen chamber in my house, I go into my chamber, I really take the first two days as me time, or first two hours as meantime. Yeah. And then the other thing I would say is that I've learned to lean it. You know, I loved keto for so long in my 40s I'm now embracing carbs, and doing a lot more carb loading. And I'm finding that that's helping a lot. So I've really just given myself and if I don't feel like working out oh my god, my workouts have dramatically changed. I you know, I was a competitive tennis player. In my 20s or late teens and early 20s. I played on a collegiate collegiate tennis. And I was constantly that woman who pushed through all the time, every workout was incredibly hard. Oh, my workouts now are like weightlifting, walking and yoga. And I've really switched that in so you know, that need to always be working out and an extreme I don't do that anymore. So I just I just keep reminding myself that more nurturing is going to hormonally helped me a lot more. Oh,

sure. And I love what you said about the mental piece and giving yourself more grace because you know we've done kind of six rounds in the boxing ring most room before you've left the house right? It's threatened we're doing it to ourselves. So that's right the other thing I found is you know and I've seen this literally move my HRV using a tracker in real time is micro habits make a difference if you do five minutes of breath work one minute it still makes a difference it doesn't have to be a whole like yoga class or something like that does it you can kind of you just them in

you just nailed my next book. That is exactly what my next book I'm currently writing is about what happens to the female brain after 40 So the menopause reset was really about the brain and the body and here's the lifestyle you should change you can you can lean into this next book is going to be exactly that micro habits. How do we Eat when all of a sudden we're anxious, realise that it's not the people around us, it's not our husband, it's not work. It's not our kids. It's not the ageing parents, even though all of that plays into it. But we can sit down and do a five to 10 minute breathwork session. And we can start to neuro chemically change ourselves so we can show up better. Or I've even had moments where anxiety peaks, and I go garden to get my hands and dirt and I get sun on my body. And I do it for a half hour and all of a sudden, I can feel myself shift.

So last night, I think yeah,

nature is amazing. I think one of the things we don't give enough hormonal credit to is our lifestyle. We just haven't really looked at our lifestyle as a healing tool for our neurochemical system. And that's what I'm trying to change for the world.

Amazing. I can't wait for the next book is it's funny you say that because you know, everyone always thinks I need a device or an app to do something. And the other day I was I just went outside and unwell in the morning, the sun was coming up. And I was doing some breath work with nothing and you can hear the birds. And just hearing the birds is such a different experience than when you try and do something guided and I think yeah, we kind of need to go back to life how it was almost. Yeah, I love I was

recently we were on I took about two and a half weeks and went to kawaii and just we got a really nice Airbnb that looked out over the ocean, my husband and I. And I literally made myself I know that sounds like Oh, well that that hat couldn't have been that torturous. But I made myself for hours, just sit on the deck and watch the waves. And the idea for me was I had been on this book tour. And it was like You need to calm your nervous system down. You need to rebalance your Horrell whole neuro chemical system. So sit here, look at nature stop doing. And I think as we get over 40 We need more moments like that. And and and what often happens in those 40s To your point is we the responsibilities are huge. We have the ageing parents, we have the kids that are maybe teenagers or maybe they're going off to school, and the stress goes up, but we don't change our lifestyle to meet the demands of that stress. And now we have a worse menopause experience than need be.

Yes, such a good point. I have some questions from my community. Before we get there. You talked about carb loading you're having you're not wedded to keto you're doing some more carb loading. Can you just clarify that is that for women post menopause is that like how obviously you've mentioned more carbs in the second phase of the cycle towards the end? Can you kind of clarify how carbs play a part? Because I think so many women fear the carbs, right?

Yeah, well, so the first thing to know is that if you're a cycling woman, ovulation, or what we call what I called manifestation, week before your period, or what I called nurture, those are great times to lean into more carbs. So if you have a cycle that track it, bring your carb load up. For me, that means somewhere between 102 100 net grammes of net carbs. So when you look at net, understand that's total carbs minus the fibre. So that's a lot of carbs if you're eating fruits and vegetables, if you're eating cakes, and pastas and cookies, that's not that many carbs. So be smart about what carbs you're, you're you're using. And I like it during those times just to bring those that carb level up. I think the carbs that really work well for hormones, my favourite one is a sweet potato, sweet potato, right? It's like my favourite, potatoes, squashes, but also tropical fruits, citrus fruits, like glumes these are great when those hormones are high. So that's when I say high carb, I don't, I don't mean sit on the couch and then eat a box of pizza and a tub of ice cream. I mean, lean into what nature has provided you so that you can make the hormones that you need or help those hormones in those moments. Now where I am now 53 I'm seven months without a period. So I'm moving into that postmenopausal phase. So I just have to really read my signals and when I bring carbs up is usually when I'm not sleeping well. So the next day I'll I'll bring those nature's carbs up. If all of a sudden I get a lot of aches and pains because as progesterone goes away, you can have a lot more musculoskeletal pain and then anxiety. So when all of a sudden and the anxiety that happens in perimenopause and menopause is not like mental anxiety as much it sometimes is bought Yeah,

anxiety, where your heart rate and things like that. Yeah,

heart rate pounding sitting on the couch and you're like, I need to go do something I shouldn't be sitting here. That's where bringing carbs can coming up. Now I'll share with with you something that I just discovered this week and researching for my next book. So that's super interesting is that carbs when they go up, they actually help make serotonin. So and you need more serotonin because as you lose oestrogen, serotonin is a precursor or oestrogen is a precursor for making serotonin. And so a couple studies I found and we're experimenting on it in my community, and I would encourage anybody listening to experiment with this is that your protein is best had in the middle of the day, and the carbs are best at the end of the day. And the reason for that is carbs will take a precursor called tryptophan. And tryptophan is found in a lot of meats. We know it from like, well here in America, we know it from Thanksgiving and Turkey. Everybody goes, Oh, I'm so tired after that. But tryptophan will convert into serotonin. So if you have meats earlier in the day, and then at the end of the day, you have carbs, those carbs will actually take tryptophan and escorted into the brain and converted into serotonin

and X. Xe doesn't it and sort of shuffled across. That's amazing. Yeah,

it's like a taxi. Exactly. It totally shuttles it across. But what this is a big premise of the next book is that as we lose these hormones, we don't need to lose the neurotransmitters. But oestrogen is a precursor for serotonin and dopamine. And progesterone is a precursor for GABA. So one of the things as we get deeper into menopause, we need to think about is what tools do we have to be able to keep those neurotransmitters up, so we don't go into a really dark menopausal or mood state. So

important, right? Because that serotonin gets moved into melatonin and helps you sleep as well. That's right. And a lot of women can't see right? That's right. What do you have for protein as well like alongside so like protein and carbs, for example, in your evening meal, and put them together?

So again, this is like hot off the press and I'm experimenting so have your community experiment it's literally several studies, I found that carbs alone give the highest serotonin lift, carbs with protein give a little less carbs with fat give a little less protein by itself gives no serotonin left fat by itself gives no serotonin left. So what I see as the right mechanism is carbs or protein earlier in the day, carbs later in the day, by themselves. And that the way you would look at that is that would be a serotonin lifting day, if it works for you, and you want to do it every day. Great. But the way I look at it is follows sudden you're depressed, you're anxious, throw a serotonin lifting day in there, where you're doing the protein at lunch, and then you're doing the carbs at dinner, keep them separated.

Awesome. And these would be again, the whole food fibre sources of carbs, right. So we're not kind of spiking is not a reason to go and get a tub of ice cream.

That's right. That's what I

would just clarify.

Yeah, otherwise, you're gonna make yourself more insulin resistant, you're going to have a whole host of problems. So yes, thank you for pointing that out.

And what about post workout? Do you think we should be refuelling? Once we say we've done a strength session hit session? What happens there? Do you break the fast and refuel?

Yes, I think especially women over 40 Because you have to fight for more muscle. When you break your your when you when you are a post workout meal immediately following a workout should be protein. And it needs to at least be 30 grammes of protein because that stimulates amino acid receptor sites that will help the muscle grow stronger. So I think you know, we got in the workout world, we got really obsessed with carbohydrates. I think we need to become obsessed with protein. And that protein is what's going to help us build muscle not just the act of lifting weights builds muscle, but the act of bringing protein into your diet will build

muscle. Yeah. And that 30 grammes is essential, isn't it to stimulate? Yeah, I love that. You said that because I'm always banging on about it. I think that people get bored of me. So I have some some questions here. Question from Lauren. She's asking, how do we understand the balance of fasting with the issue of sarcopenia. So losing days of protein intake to stimulate autophagy? What's the situation and how can we kind of maximise the benefits of both and minimise any downside.

So the formula that I've seen for sarcopenia that I think is well there's two formulas that is really great is that you go into your weight workout your heavy weights in a fasted state. Now I know Stacey Sims disagrees with this idea. But this is what I've seen work in my community across 1000s of women is go and lift weights in a fasted state. Now, the reason that I say this is because you want muscle, when you're lifting weights, you're breaking muscle down. If you go in in a fasted state, you're getting rid of the glucose in that muscle, and the weight lifting is there to force the muscle to grow stronger. So even though you're breaking it down, it will rebuild itself stronger. That's the whole purpose. That's why you're sore. That's the whole purpose of weightlifting. Then immediately following that, you want to make sure you get somewhere between 30 to 90 grammes of protein in your post workout meal. Now, if you take it one step further, the research shows that now once you've opened up your eating window, if you're doing 12, every two hours, another 30 grammes of protein, and then two hours later, another 30 grammes of protein, then you're actually starting to build the muscle stronger, and it's a cellular process called mTOR. So if you don't want sarcopenia, as you age, a stop doing chronic cardio, and turn to weightlifting, be make sure that you're going in your post recovery meal is a high protein meal, and then see, could you look at every couple of hours really increasing? Or giving yourself another 30 gramme dose of protein? That's how you're going to start to build muscle?

And what about if you're doing the fast I think what she's worried about here, because I know she works out a lot is if she's doing, say, a three day fast, for example, does she need to worry about the fact that she's not having any protein for 72 hours?

No. And if you're doing three day, don't be work, don't be working out. So you could go for gentle walks, but don't stress your body in and by working out hard. But what we see is that yes, in 30 days, it's going to appear as if your protein has or as if your muscle is shrinking. But all that think of it as a muscle detox your muscles, just getting rid of all the stored sugar and mate, you're making your muscles more efficient. So when you reintroduce food, you're gonna want to make sure you do one of two things. One is this make sure every meal you're getting between 30 and 90 grammes of protein, and then make sure that you're eating enough protein, and I like a pound to a pound and a half of protein, or a gramme to a gramme, or half a protein for every pound of body weight you want to be

so so not 90 grammes in one setting. When you say 30 to 90? Yeah, you mean like dosed? So 30 and then 30? again later? Yeah, the

research says that. If you go over 90 grammes of protein in one meal, it'll now turn to glucose, and that's going to turn to fat. So I like to keep women between 30 and 90. You can go more than 30 if you want. But a lot of women aren't even getting to 30 grammes in one meal. Yeah.

Yeah, 90, I didn't realise you could go up to 90 without turning that does seem a lot. I've been doing fasting a lot. And I was doing 3672 hour fast every few weeks for about five months. And I did 100 hour one and coming off. I had a real issue with hair loss, anxiety and burnout. And when I did my dash tests, my hormones were on the low readings. What apart from testosterone? What can I do to kind of reset.

I mean, this is this was the whole premise of the book was you got to know make sure you're I don't know what age she is. But she's got to make sure that she's fasting at the right time of her cycle that that scenario actually was was me in my mid 40s. When I discovered all this is I loved keto. I loved fasting. I just did it all month long. And then hair started to thin, I lost my cycle anxiety went up, and I realised that I wasn't supposed to do it all month long. So make sure that you're pulsing those fast in and out. Now the hair loss and like heart palpitations. One of the interesting things I've noticed, just in watching now, like millions of women do this is that we're a mineral and it's actually people. It's not just women, it's men too. We are a mineral deficient world. And a large part of that is because our soul soils, especially here in America, our soils are so deficient of nutrients. So like they say that the broccoli you eat today has like 10 times less neutral. additional value than the broccoli you ate 2030 years ago because of how depleted the soils are. So when we go into a fasted state when the heart's palpitating when the hair is falling out, that's just a sign you're incredibly mineral deficient. So make sure that you're bringing minerals back in when you eat, or in a fasted state, you could do minerals, you could do like an electrolyte powder, as long as it doesn't have stevia or anything in it that will help to bring the minerals up while you're fasting.

Yeah, I found that actually. And it's interesting isn't even like, despite eating Brazil nuts and things like that. My selenium was really low when I did hair, mineral tissue, testing my potassium, and that affects heart rhythm as well alongside Mike. Yeah, we have Barton on the show. And yeah, it's all about minerals. Yeah, Boston, Scott. So another question from Amalia. She's asking as a menopause. postmenopausal women, how can I use fasting with my with the lunar phase? She says, Please tell her I'm spreading the love of her latest podcast to all the young women. I know. My daughter is 25 years old. Thank you for the opportunity to ask Dr. Mindy a question. Oh, my gosh,

I love that. Yeah, that's amazing. And all my postmenopausal women out there, I what I love, and I hear it in the comments, I've hear it when I'm at conferences, is that they're teaching their daughters this. That's how we're going to change I'm

gonna be teaching mine. Yeah.

It's just how we change the health problems that the 20 and 30 year olds are getting I'm, I'm blown away when fast like a girl came out how many 20 and 30 year olds don't have a cycle? How many of them are not able to get pregnant? I mean, it is a huge problem. So thank you for teaching the younger generation, because that's what we really need to do. Now to answer her lunar question, I'll try to make it as simple as I can. The first thing to understand is that, as humans, we are very in sync with nature. And I know we like think of this as woowoo. And you know, all the grounding, like everybody's going out and walking on the ground barefoot. Like, we tend to think of this as extreme. It's not extreme, we have completely lost connection with the earth and with nature as a healing tool. So for my menopausal women, what I'm trying to do is help us bring our connection to the earth back, because it's going we don't have anything else to map to. And when we look at the lunar cycle, for most, if we went back to the primal days, if we had some kind of record of history, we would be able to see that most women started their period on a new moon. And most women actually had ovulated at the full moon. So I like I have on my on my phone, an app that tells me where the moon is. And when the moon is new, then I go into those first 10 days, I fast more, I go keto, then I add, you know, as I'm approaching the full moon, you know, the day 11 day 12 of the moon of the lunar cycle, now I bring my carbohydrate level up. And then as the moon is waning, and I'm going into the back half, especially when I'm like when there's when it's about, you know, seven days from the New Moon starting again, I look at that as the time that progesterone needs to be built. And I go in and I start doing the principles of progesterone. So

that because you know, one of the things I was thinking, what when I just lose my cycle, like, do I lose that kind of femininity, and that touch? I love that that's exactly what I'm gonna do. Yeah, yes to come. That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah, it's, it's been really fun. I, you know, the first time I said it, I thought everybody would be like, You're crazy. And then when I dove into blue light, you know, part of why we don't all cycle together is because of our exposure to blue light. Whereas if you go back to the primal days, we didn't have that exposure. And so women were more in sync with that with what with the lunar cycle. So we're just taking this ancient healing strategy and this ancient tool and we're bringing it to the modern world is really cool.

Perfect, very cool. And then a couple of questions around adrenal function and fasting but I think you cover that really well between the two books in terms of SOC cycling around the menstrual cycle in fast like a girl and then the menopause reset, which you say is really relaunching in a few months time.

Yeah, it so Hay House bought it and then I added a sleep chapter which is amazing, like literally all my hacks for sleep we put in there and It'll come back out in June. So yeah, so between those two books, hopefully now this is why the third book is needed because the mental health of women over 40 needs to be discussed a little deeper. But my hope is that it'll be a trilogy that women can use to sort of understand wherever they are, how they can adapt their lifestyle. My My passion is, let's use our lifestyle as a healing tool. Let's stop suffering. Let's stop thinking medications are only solution. Let's get back to our lifestyle. That's how we heal ourselves.

I agree. I always thought that one last question. 511 used to talk about it on your YouTube channels. And that was she didn't see it in the book, Marty didn't see that enforced like a girl. Do you still advocate that for postmenopausal women? I think it's because this was a different book, right? So

yeah, yeah. And it just got too confusing. So I mean, teaching this in general, is can be confusing. So if you're listening to this, and you're like, Oh, my God, hang with it, you'll understand it. So I just didn't put the 511 in there. Because I was like, I don't want to I don't want to confuse everybody. But what the 511 is a really good if you don't want to map to the lunar cycle, for the postmenopausal woman 511 is phenomenal. And that's where five days a week you intermittent fast at whatever your comfort level is. So 1517 hours, whatever feels like effortless to you, one day a week, I want you to stretch her fast. And the reason for that is we want to apply a little bit of a hormetic stressor on your body, so it can build itself stronger. hormetic stressors are just this just a good stress, just a little bit of a stress. So you might go set, you know, 1819 24 hours, women that are struggling to lose weight, you may throw a 36 hour fast in there to try to unstick that way. And then one day a week, you don't want to fast you want to you want to bring glucose up you want to mind progesterone. And I found that that weekly schedule works really well for postmenopausal women.

So two choices 511 or the lunar or just to change between the two. Thank you so much. I mean, we're reading fast like a girl as my bio hacking book club in my membership. So everyone has the coffee. We're sharing it, we're studying it. Thank you so much for coming on. But where can people find you? I think everyone needs to going by fast like a girl. That would be my recommendation. And I can't wait for the third book. But please share, where can people come and connect with you? Dr. Mindy,

you can go to my website and everything's there. I always say that my passion project is YouTube. This is where I kind of bring my new science and the new things that I'm doing. I have a podcast where I love having really good discussions with people. And then I tie it always into hormones. So you get and if you forget all that just go to Dr. Mindy Pels, but I'm kind of everywhere right now. So dive in. There's a there's a world of information there.

Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show again. It's been such a pleasure and you've said so much. Thanks again.

Thank you, Angela. Appreciate you.

Thank you for listening to today's show and for your interest in health optimization for high performance. If you're new to my podcast, you may be interested to know that you can get a free health score and report complete with personalised recommendations on how to optimise your sleep, nutrition, fitness and resilience in the top link in the show notes below. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Links to everything we talked about are also in the show notes and if you enjoyed today's show, please subscribe for more