6 Intermittent Fasting Protocols for Fat Loss, Mood, Energy, and Improving Your Overall Health

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So a couple months ago, I was out with some friends and we were talking about a bunch of stuff, and then the topic of intermittent fasting came up and they kept going on and on and on about how it was making them feel better. And so I kept like, putting one nacho in my mouth after another as I was listening to them talk about how they've lost weight and they just feel more alert. I'll admit I was curious. And. And I asked my friends, all right, so what is this thing that you're doing and how exactly do you do it? And my friend turned to me and this is how they said it. Basically, Mel, when I wake up, I don't eat my first meal until about 11am I'm like, that's it? You don't eat Breakfast, you start eating at 11am and they said, yes. And I said, well, look, if it can make my pants feel a little looser and my brain a little sharper, I'm in. I decided, you know what, Mel, let's just dig into this because you've got questions about it. Like for example, how exactly is intermittent fasting different from dieting? Is it healthy? Is it true what the headlines say, that it can melt body fat, that it can increase your focus, that it can decrease anxiety and depression, and does it really help you live longer? Well, according to one of the world's leading researchers and experts on this topic, Dr. Mindy Peltz, bestselling author, she says the answer is, yeah, it can help you do all that. And it's even more exciting than that. Check this out. The research is so compelling about this as a health protocol that the New England Medical Journal recommends this as a frontline intervention for treating depression, cardiovascular disease, obesity issues like dementia. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. In fact, there is so much, much mind blowing and amazing and empowering information about this free protocol that you can use that I've decided that we gotta break this conversation with Dr. Mindy into two parts, into a masterclass about fasting and the science around it, and a step by step guide about fasting protocols and how you can use them so that they unleash your body's natural ability to heal itself and become healthy, healthier. This is part one. And Dr. Mindy is gonna start off with the significant, irrefutable research and documented benefits of fasting as a health protocol. She's gonna teach you about the two different energy systems in your body and how fasting helps you tap into both of them. She's gonna walk you through the six different kinds of fasting protocols and their specific research backed benefits. You're gonna understand why nothing that you have tried in the past has helped you to get control of your health. You're gonna realize you're not the problem and you're gonna be empowered because you're gonna know more about how your body functions and you're gonna be so motivated and equipped to try this zero cost fasting protocol for better health in your life. We will cover in part two, specific fasting protocols for women. So if you have tried intermittent fasting and you didn't see anything happen, or you tried it and it worked for a little bit, but then nothing happened, it's probably because you followed the wrong protocol. You were doing it the way that the dudes need to do it. And that is not gonna work for you if you identify as a woman. All right. Please help me welcome Dr. Mindy Peltz, who has transformed the lives of millions of people with her free videos and best selling books and all of her research to adopt a healthy fast. And today she's told all those clients of hers that are Olympic athletes, Academy Award winning actors, and Silicon Valley CEOs to step aside because she has got an appointment with someone way more important. And that's you and me, baby. All right, Dr. Mindy, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast.

Oh, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

I can't wait to dig into this. And let's just start with the basics. In the simplest terms, what is fasting?

Fasting is a healing state you put your body in that you can only get there by avoiding food for a certain period of time. And when your blood sugar goes down, what ends up happening is you trigger all these healing responses. So it's in the absence of food, the body heals. Fasting will burn fat, will supercharge, your brain, will kill hunger, will improve your sleep, will take away chronic pain, and will slow down aging. It's the most miraculous tool that your body's ever been built with. It's incredible, huh?

I don't think I've ever heard anybody describe it like that. That when you go without food for a certain period of time, it impacts blood sugar, which then triggers all of these incredible, well documented and researched health benefits. You are clearly absolutely so passionate about this. Why are you so excited about fasting?

Oh my gosh, that's such a good question. On a big level, we need a health tool that everybody can do and everybody can afford. I'll share a story with you. During the pandemic, I was brought on to talk to a group of high school teachers. The principal asked if I would come on and talk about the immune system and things her teachers could do to improve their immune system. And when I went on, I talked about food and supplements. And at the end of the whole zoom call, one of the brave teachers raised his hand and he said, I hear what you're saying. I can't. If I'm looking at a jar of peanut butter in the grocery store and I'm supposed to buy the one with the right oils $8 more than the one with the bad oils, and that's $8 I do not have. And then another brave teacher raised her hand and said, I get up at 4:30 in the morning and at 3 in the afternoon. I am exhausted. So the best place for me to go is through the McDonald's. Drive through. It's just an easier tool for me. And what I realized after that conversation is we have to have a tool that works for everybody's health, that everybody can do. The busiest executive, down to the person who's living paycheck to paycheck. And when you look at it through that lens, fasting is the tool. That's why I'm so passionate about it. We only have 12% of Americans that are metabolically fit. So what are we going to do? How are we going to help these people? And fasting is the quickest door into this healing state.

Dr. Mindy, I'm so glad that you're here. You used a term, metabolic something, that fasting puts you in a Something something. I didn't even follow that word. What were you talking about?

The best way to look at fasting is our body has two ways to make energy. One is when our blood sugar goes up. I call that the sugar burner system. And one, when the blood sugar goes down, it will switch over into the second second energy system called your fat burning energy system. It's very much like a hybrid car.

Okay.

The only way you get into this fat burning state is by avoiding food for a certain period of time. This is called metabolic switching. So our body is meant to switch into the fat burner state and then switch out into the sugar burner state. And it should be switching in and out of these two states all day long. When we look at people who have poor metabolic health, they're not switching, they're not getting over into the fat burning state. They are staying in the sugar burner state. So they're never getting the healing mechanisms that can happen over there.

My mouth is sort of on the floor and my mind is spinning like a treadmill right now. One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you is because I'm fricking confused. I think everybody's, like, super confused. Do I eat this? Do I eat that? Do I exercise? What kind of exercise is it? Peptides? Is it this thing? Is it that thing? Am I counting calories? Just tell me what the hell to do. You just simplified it into two systems where your body is either creating energy that you get from the food that you're eating, or it's creating energy from the stored fat that you're burning.

Bingo. You got it. It's literally that simple.

And you're gonna teach us today different ways that we can utilize this tool of fasting in order to switch between these stages, that your body needs to either be gaining energy from food or gaining energy by burning the stored fat in your body. And your body needs to be switching between these two modes in order to be healthy in order to thrive. Oh, my gosh. I think I am starting to get something that I totally did not get. And we're only, like, two minutes into this.

Yes, this excites me, because this is what I'm trying to do, is teach people about their bodies. We have given all of our health power away. We give it away to medications, to supplements, to doctors, to the culture.

We.

We give it all away. But we forgot that innately inside of us is this incredible wisdom. And because we didn't get an owner's manual when we were born, we don't understand it, and we've made it very complicated.

Why did it get so complicated to simply understand the way that our bodies work?

What did the cave people do? If we go back to our primal days, they didn't have door dash. They didn't have a refrigerator. They didn't have a pantry. Food was not a given. So in the morning, when they came out of the cave, they had to go find food. And sometimes that food was really easy to find, and sometimes that food was not easy to find. Our innate human body had to have another fuel source that kicked in in the absence of food. That made our mind sharper, our energy increased, made us focus more, made us happier, made our immune system stronger so that we could go find food to survive. And then once we found food, we were meant to eat. It's called feast, famine, cycling. But we have so much access to food now. I can sit on my couch, and I can pick up my phone, and I can have food delivered to my front door. It's so incredibly convenient that we've just tossed away this other energy system. And that's what I'm asking people to bring back.

And what I found so compelling in your extensive research and in the work that you do is that you're basically empowering us to bring back something that our body needs, which is the ability to switch between these states of consumption and a state of deprivation where you restrict the eating in a very intentional way so that you trigger all of this amazing programming in your body to burn fat to bring up energy. And we're gonna get into the health benefits. We're gonna get into the how. We're gonna get into the different types of fasting and the different benefits. And the difference for Men and women. But I would love to start with how the hell did you even get into this?

I became incredibly fascinated with food at a very early age. This is actually a funny story because the first research I saw of Dr. Osumi's work. So Dr. Osumi is a Japanese scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and physiology in 2016 for a term called autophagy. So autophagy is that when the cells sense that blood sugar and nutrients have gone down, it triggers a healing response inside the cell that makes the cell stronger.

Hmm.

His study came out in like, you know, 2014. And so I was studying that and then the intermittent fasting craze started. And I thought, oh, okay, go without food for 13 hours. I could probably do that one day. Let me try it one day. And the first day I tried it, it was horrible. I was like, why am I doing this? Like, I'm suffering. But then I was committed. Cause that's my personality. It's like, well, let me try it another day. And let me try it another day. And each day I tried it. And what was happening is that I was not only noticing that my perimenopausal body was changing. Like, you know, I was 43 at the time. That was 10 years ago. And like, you know, the belly fat was starting to accumulate, the brain fog was starting to kick in, the exhaustion at 3 was starting to happen, the cognition and focus issues were starting to appear, and all of that went away just within like three to four days. I noticed at 3:00 clock in the afternoon, I'm like, on the third day of intermittent fasting, I was like, wait, why am I not tired? Why am I not crashing? And then I just kept going and going, and pretty soon I figured out, wow, this second fuel source is called a ketone. And we can get into this in a moment. And ketones are 50% of the fuel for your brain. So if you're not actually dipping into the fat burning energy system, making ketones, you're depriving your brain of 50% of its fuel source. And I gave my 43 year old body that fuel source back. And when I did, my brain came back online, my energy came back online, and I kept my weight where I wanted it to be because it had to burn fat in order to make a ketone.

Okay, I think I just heard.

A.

Collective gasp from every single woman in the 194 countries where this podcast is syndicated. And all go, wait, did Dr. Mindy just say she started using fasting when she was 43. To address Brain fog, to melt belly fat, to get her energy back to basically combat the symptoms of perimenopause, which is a hormone change for women, all at zero cost by simply paying attention to the metabolic cycles in your body that are designed to operate a certain way. Is that what you're saying, Dr. Mindy?

1,000%. This is why when you ask me why I'm so passionate, I'm like, it's free and your body does it and all you've got to do is train it to stay in this fasted state. When people ask me why I'm on a mission, I'm like, because our bodies are brilliant. And when you look at the perimenopausal woman, she's suffering and nobody's giving her answers. Let's start with a healing mechanism that that already exists and teach her how to dip in and out and metabolically switch to help her hormonal challenges. That's where the discussion needs to start.

Well, I can tell we are just getting started and we're gonna pick up right where we left off after a very short break to hear a word from our sponsors. They bring this to us at zero cost. So let's take a listen and I'll be waiting for you when we return. Don't go anywhere. How about we say hello to the all new Alexa? The shortcut that makes your life feel so much smoother. Need last minute concert tickets? Craving your favorite restaurant takeout? Alexa remembers what you love and makes it all happen. You don't need to type, dig through apps or repeat yourself. Alexa has got it. Alexa works with Echo, Fire TV or any compatible device and brings more of what you love to to you right now. Ready? Whenever inspiration strikes. Amazon.com NewAlexa you know, for a couple years, Chris, my husband, has been saying we need to get a rowing machine. Now I rode in college. That is one heck of a workout. And so I looked into it and we decided to get a hydrow rowing machine. And now I remember why I miss rowing so much. I sit down, I start rowing and I'm gone. In Miami, Scotland, Lake Lucerne. The locations are stunning and the instructors. You don't have to row alone. You got real Olympians and world class athletes who feel like friends and boat mates. They're funny, motivating, great storytellers. And before you know it, you're done. After just 20 minutes on the hydro, your heart's pumping, my body's stronger, I feel amazing. So will you. Here's what I love about it. Hydro works out 86% of your muscles with one seamless motion, twice as effective as running or cycling. And for me, not as hard on the knees or the bladder. And with the largest library of rowing workouts in the world, there's always something new. Whatever your goals are, Hydrow meets you where you are and pushes you further. This holiday season, train smarter, not longer. Head over to hydrow.com and use code MEL to save up to $600 off on Hydro Rower during this holiday season. That's hydrow.com code MEL hydro.com, code MEL. A new year is coming fast, and you know what that means. Fresh start, clean slate, no excuses. But if you want next year to feel different, you gotta do something different. The good news is it's never too late to make a career pivot, go back to school, and take charge of your life. Purdue Global is Purdue's online university for working adults. Different paths, different schedules, and they meet you where you are with the support you need. Start your comeback today at purdueglobal. Edu. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins and I am here with Dr. Mindy Peltz, who just blew my mind, basically because she's talking about a natural healing mechanism inside your body. It is called fasting. And she is on a mission to get our brilliant bodies to turn on your natural healing, fat burning, cleansing capabilities. How freaking cool is that? Dr. Mindy, I can see why you' so passionate about fasting. Can we talk about women specifically, though? Like, particularly when it comes to hormonal changes? Because women around the world, we see these questions coming into the inbox. We're in 194 countries with this podcast. We can't figure out how to work with our bodies to help it do what it needs to do. And it seems like it's because of all the hormone issues that we're facing from when your cycle begins to perimenopause to pregnancy to menopause. It's so fricking complicated that every single woman I know, I don't care if she has a PhD public high school degree or a PhD in biology. We're all like, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Is it this diet? Is it that diet? Should I do this? Should I do that? But when I think also about fasting, I think about the fact that globally, it is a part of many cultures and religious practices and ceremonies and has been historically, since the beginning of time.

So when I first understood the healing mechanisms of autophagy, I spent a couple of years, like 2030 hours a week, just every possible study I could find. And do you know that most of the studies were coming from people who practice Ramadan? Because with Ramadan there's no food from sun up to sundown and they do it for 30 days. A lot of the research stemmed from that spiritual practice. Hippocrates, the founder of modern medicine, he has many documented statements about just take food out of the equation and the body will heal. So yeah, it goes way back. This is not a new innovative tool. This is something we've been using for years to heal ourself. But we lost our way because we live in a food addicted culture. And if I'm going to be really opinionated here, who profits from fasting? Big Pharma doesn't. Big food doesn't. Nobody profits from it.

That's true.

This is what actually I've had to deal with in putting fasting to the world is every little negative thing about fasting gets so much media attention because the only person that wins when they fast is the human that does it. They're not spending any money.

Well, it's true. Who is paying for the marketing campaign to say, you don't need to eat that much, you don't need to buy this thing, you don't need to try this diet. And one of the things that I found very convincing about your work is the amount of studies that you cite. And I know that in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019, they reviewed more than 85 studies and they had a definitive declaration about the power and the documented research backed benefit of introducing intermittent fasting. Can you please explain that to everybody listening?

Oh my God, that's the best study. I'm so happy you brought that one to the surface because when it came out, the first thing I thought was, oh my gosh, the New England Journal of Medicine, that is like the medical world's hero. And the way they looked at it was, and they went even as far as to say it should be the first line of treatment for these conditions, diabetes and metabolic challenges. They talk about neurological conditions like dementia and Alzheimer's, you know, the things that are destroying our neurons in our brain. Well, hello, this is happening. Let's talk about Alzheimer's. It's happening to more women than men. They go on to like wound healing and energy systems and they even gave a protocol in that study. It's one of the greatest studies. It got a moment in time and then it went away. We stopped citing it.

What's interesting about it is it actually said that Intermittent fasting should be used as quote, the first line of treatment for obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, neurodegenerative brain conditions, cancer. And that intermittent fasting has anti aging effects and nine cellular healing benefits. Can you explain how the fasting protocols are not a diet?

If we look at it as a diet, then we are going to see it as a trend and then we're going to see it as something we're either done right or done wrong. So we have to take it out of the diet culture. And here's why it's not a diet. You can take any food style you want and you can put it in what I call an eating window. A really interesting study was eight to 10 hours of eating, leaving the rest of the day for fasting can actually overturn poor metabolic health. So if you are eating at McDonald's or you're, you know, maybe you just don't want to think about your food, that you can actually overturn the metabolic damage that that diet does if every day you eat that food within eight to 10 hours. So you're leaving longer for healing. So it's not a diet because you're not manipulating the type of food you're eating, you're just changing when you eat.

Okay, I wanna make sure that that landed for you listening. Okay, so what you're saying is that based on the research, the reason why a fasting protocol is not a diet, Because a diet focuses on what you're eating and it focuses on calories and it focuses on a specific intake of food and the type of food. A fasting protocol, many of them are neutral in terms of what type of food you're eating. Because a fasting protocol focuses on windows of time when you eat and windows of time when you don't. Am I tracking correctly?

You've got it. And I wanna share one really quick story because I feel like this really was the perfect examp of what I'm saying. Last summer I had a man come up to me that was over about 300 pounds and he said, I need your help. And I said, tell me what's going on. He's like, I'm food addicted. I've tried every diet, I've tried to change my food. I can't do it. And I'm wondering if fasting can help me. And so I dove deeper and the man was drinking about 12 sodas a day.

Oh my gosh.

Now it would have made sense for me to say, hey, could you give up your soda? But he just told me he was food addicted and I also asked him, why do you need to be healthy? And he said, I need to stay alive for my wife and my kids. It was a beautiful moment. So I said, okay, Todd, here's what we're gonna do. The first month, you're gonna eat all your normal food. Whatever you wanna eat, we're just gonna compress it. And we started with a 12 hour eating window. First month he was eating buffalo wings, he was drinking soda. The first month, just by compressing his food into one eating window for 12 hours, he lost close to 25, 30 pounds. Somewhere in that range, he didn't change. He was still drinking 12 sodas.

Why does compressing food into a 12 hour window but not changing what you eat? Why does this protocol trigger weight loss?

So we'll go back to our two energy systems. Okay, let's use him as an example. He was eating food that was raising his blood sugar, and then when it would come back down, he would eat again. So he would just go up and down and up and down. In this one energy system. When I had him leave a longer period for fasting, what happened is he would go up and then he would come down, and then he would metabolically switch into a healing state where we would see that his insulin and his glucose levels, they didn't accumulate because there was a pause, there was a moment where his body got to just relax and not feel another wave of sugar come. And in that relaxation, what ended up happening is the body could repair. So he left time to repair from the damage that the diet was doing. And after a year, he has lost close to 120 pounds. I talked to him about a month ago. His diet has completely changed. He's off sodas, he's eating healthy. And now he has one goal. He wants to feel proud to stand next to his family and in their Christmas card photo. That's his goal.

That's freaking awesome. How does following that protocol for a month or two with your current eating habits change the kinds of food choices that people start to make?

So there's, well, I'll say three major mechanisms that are going on. First, let's go back to our sugar burner system. When let's say I eat a hamburger, fries and a soda, my blood sugar has spiked, and as high as it spikes is as low as it'll go. And in that crash, I'm hungry again, the body gets another hunger signal. And so you get hungry every couple hours because of the quality of the food that you're eating. So what ends up happening is if we can allow a longer period where the body's healing. Then in that down moment, it switches into a healing state and that craving stops. So that's the first thing. And the second thing I wanna say on that is when you're in the fat burning state, when you switch over, you make a ketone. A ketone goes up into the brain and it turns off the hunger hormone. So I knew that his eating was going to create more and more and more hunger. People who are food addicted are hungry a lot, even though they're eating a lot. So when I got him to switch over, we stabilized his blood sugar, we helped him make a ketone. The ketone went up into the brain, turned off hunger. So that's number one. Number two is there's massive changes to the microbiome. So when you go into a fasted state, you start to change the diversity of of the bacteria in your gut. And this is another mind blowing moment. Our cravings are often because of these bacteria in our gut. Candida is a great example. It's a fungus that lives in the gut and it makes you crave sugar and carbohydrates. And so when you learn to go into these fasted states, you change that whole diversity of your microbiome. And then with the change in the microbiome, the bad bacteria go away that are causing the food cravings. So those were the two. And then the last one I'll say is we repaired his cells so they weren't inflamed anymore. And so his cells were finally getting some sort of nutrition. This is why it works.

And I also love that it's zero cost and it doesn't require you to change what you eat. We're talking about when you eat. And we're gonna get into the how. But there's so much more research that I wanna unpack with you. But let's take a quick pause. Let's hear a word from our sponsors. When we come back, we've got more from the amazing Dr. Mindy on the science of intermittent fasting. Stay with us. Do not go anywhere. This episode is brought to you by Apple Watch. Here's the truth about January. You come in blazing new year, new goals, new promises, and then real life shows up. Schedules get messy, motivation dips, and most people quietly bail on their resolutions before the new year even really gets going. That's where Apple Watch can help. Whether your goal is to move more, stay active throughout the day, or build better habits, Apple Watch keeps the focus on progress, not perfection. It nudges you. It reminds you. It celebrates the small wins that create momentum long after January ends. With tools like the workout app, pace alerts and activity rings, you get motivation in the moments when it matters most. Apple Watch is built for one mission in 2026. Not quitting because staying committed isn't about doing everything right. It's about showing up again tomorrow. Find out more at apple.com applewatchseries11 iPhone 11 or later required this time of the year is chaotic, stress is high, treats are everywhere, and you're crashing by 3pm if you want to feel sharper, more focused and beat the cravings, it's time to get to know your glucose with Lingo. A real time glucose wearable for you. Staying in a healthy glucose range isn't one size fits all. It's normal to fluctuate. What matters is learning your patterns and building habits that work for you. You see how your glucose responds to what you eat, how you move, even how you sleep. I mean, here's the thing. One in three adults are living with prediabetes and most have no idea. But tuning in early and making lifestyle changes can transform your health for today and tomorrow. Get to know your glucose today with Lingo designed for you by Abbott. This holiday season through December 31st. Use code MEL10@hellolingo.com to get 10% off a lingo plan. Purchase one use per customer. This offer cannot be combined with other offers, US and Puerto Rico only. The Lingo Glucose system is for users 18 years and older not on insulin. It is not intended for diagnosis of diseases, including diabetes. Individual responses may vary. The Mel Robbins Podcast is brought to you by Sheridan Hotels. You know what's the most overlooked hotel amenity? The lobby. Usually it's just where you check in and check out, but that's all changed with Sheridan's lobbies redesigned as a place to work, relax, recharge. The community table doubles as your co working space by day, your team's hangout spot at night. Need quiet? Duck into a soundproof booth with coworkers, reserve a tech enabled studio space and the All Day Cafe and more by Sheridan fuels you for all of it. Sheridan the World's Gathering Place part of Marriott Bonvoy book now via sheridan.com. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins and I'm here with Dr. Mindy. You and I are learning the extraordinary research around intermittent fasting and how to use it for maximum health benefit. And already what we're learning is just a game changer. I can't wait to try this, but there's a little bit more that you and I need to learn. So, Dr. Mindy, let's jump back in. I want to ask you something quickly because when you say the fasting protocols also stimulate this keto thing going up to your brain, and that's a good thing. Everything seems to be labeled keto. And so I wanna make sure I'm not misunderstanding, because if I hear that keto's good, I'm gonna go into the grocery store and be like, ooh, look at that candy bar. It says keto. That must mean it's good for my brain. And so you're like, what is keto friendly food mean?

I want to simplify it right here. And I really appreciate you highlighting this because we've lost our way, and the ketogenic diet is now commercialized. Here's the simple thing. Just eat nature's carbs. Don't worry about low carb, high carb. Let's focus on nature's carbs.

What are those?

What did nature provide us? Vegetables and fruit and things that are coming from the ground. Just because it got less carbs doesn't mean it's good for you. So let's talk about the quality of carbs. And the more we can look at our carbohydrates and say, did the earth provide this? Did this grow from the earth, or was this made in a lab in a warehouse somewhere? So let's start there. That's the first thing. And then the second thing is I like. I mean, my approach to getting these ketones is through fasting. I think we're gonna keep losing our way. If we're debating low carb, high carb, you know, calorie counting. Let's put that aside for a moment, and let's just know that we have to go through periods where we are not eating so that we can make these ketones that our brain desperately needs. So I don't know if that helps, but that's the way I look at it.

That helps a lot. Because I think if we can continue to beat the drum as you're listen to Dr. Mindy and me as I try to really wrap my brain around the simplicity of this. If you can keep coming back to the distinction between what you're eating versus when you're eating and that the protocol around when you're eating is what we're talking about. We're not talking about calorie restriction. We're not talking about disordered eating. We are talking about a protocol that has profound research that you are doing in Order to activate healing and health responses. 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 off from a medical doctor before they do?

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. 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 fasts very low because fasting can start to create a detox reaction. And all the toxins that you're detoxing will go into your breast milk will go in, which will go into your baby. So we want to keep fasts 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.

Great, thank you for that. This is gonna sound like a dumb question, but maybe we should talk about the types of fasting, because, for example, I woke up and I have not had breakfast yet.

Nice.

But I am drinking coffee with milk in it. So does technically that mean I'm fasting? Is coffee allowed? Is it only water? Like, what are you doing when you're fasting?

It's so funny, Mel, because this is the most common question.

I really.

Yeah. What about my coffee? Like, everybody's in until we get to the coffee topic. And then they're like, wait a second, I was in and now I need to know about my coffee. Okay, so let me explain this. In order to get into the fasted state, you need your blood sugar to start to decline. So your body registers that there's no nutrients, there's no blood sugar increase for anywhere from an 8 to 12 hour period.

Oh.

So at 8 hours, what happens is the body starts to metabolically Switch over into the fat burning state. For some people, that switch will happen quickly, and 10 hours in, they're into the fasted state. For others, it usually takes about 12 hours. So if your cup of coffee doesn't spike your blood sugar, you're good, you're golden. It's what you put in your coffee that is going to affect that. Right, so creamer, creamer stuff that makes.

It taste like candy.

Yeah, exactly. You got it. Creamer, Creamer is not going to be great. Sugar is not going to be great. We're not talking. You get to walk in and drink a frappuccino and you're still in a fasted state because it has coffee in it. It has to not elevate your blood sugar. Typically, a full fat cream won't, because fat stabilizes your blood sugar. So your example, if it's coffee with full fat cream, you're probably pretty good and you're staying in that fasted state.

Got it. Okay. So I've only heard of intermittent fasting. See, I thought all fasting was intermittent fasting. I didn't realize until I looked at your research that there are six different types of fasting, because there are six different lengths of time that you can fast for a health benefit. And so could you walk us all through the different lengths that you can fast and what each one of them produces in terms of a healing or health benefit?

So the first one is intermittent fasting. It starts about 12 hours without food, and the window is about 12 to 15 hours without food. You're gonna see your glucose levels come down, you're gonna see inflammation come down, and you're gonna start to see growth hormone kick in, which helps you burn fat and slow the aging process. The next window is 17 hours. This is where autophagy kicks in. Autophagy is your body's own internal repair system. So your cells are going to get rid of things inside the cell that don't work anymore. They're going to repair cellular parts, and they're going to actually kill cells that might be going rogue like a cancer cell. So the 17 hour mark starts this autophagy process. 24 hours is the gut reset. This is where intestinal stem cells inside your gut start to be produced. Repairing any leaky gut situation, repairing and getting rid of bad bacteria, changing the whole environment of your gut. So it's great for anybody who has been on antibiotics multiple times, has had a lot of been eating poor food for a long time, is constipated, and needs to repair that gut. Go 24 hours and we'll see a dramatic shift. 36 hours is the fat burning reset. That's long enough for your body to go find the food it stored years ago in fat. So all fat is. Is your body stored excess somewhere? And it did that to save your life. It didn't wanna store it around your organs, so it stored it around your belly. At 36 hours, you are sending a signal to your body to go burn that and to get rid of it, of that storage. 48 hours, you reset your whole dopamine system. I call it the dopamine reset. This is where all of a sudden you get new dopamine receptor sites that are going to make you increase happiness. Those receptor sites will be there long after the 48 hours. And then 72 hours is the immune reset. This is where we can get rid of stagnant parts of our immune system, specifically our white blood cells. We can get rid of them and new white blood cells will kick in and serve us in a bigger and better way.

If we're gonna start with the first type of fasting, and that window of time is 12 to 16 hours. And let's just say that anyone listening to this is so passionate about this topic and so excited to try it. Could you just say, okay, you're done listening to this podcast. You decide that you're gonna introduce fasting and that it's safe for you to do so. Do you count the 12 to 16 hour window in intermittent fasting? The moment you go to bed? Do you count it when you stop eating at night? Is the period of time when you're sleeping considered the fast? Like, can you just, like, put me at the starting line for how you even do this?

Yes. It's the moment that the last piece of food goes in your mouth.

Okay.

And this includes drinks, too. So your wine at night, I mean, it's like the mouth is done.

Okay.

You can have water that starts the clock.

Okay. And it's the easiest way to start by starting the clock at night. So you're going to bed at 9 o'. Clock. 9 o' clock is the beginning of this 12 to 16 hour window.

Yes.

And the time that you're sleeping counts in the fasting. Now, with the 12 hour window, this is intermittent fasting. What is the health benefit of doing this kind of fasting as a protocol?

So the first thing is you'll make this ketone. So you're burning fat.

Okay.

Okay. So we start to see inflammation come down.

And why is that helpful?

When. When inflammation is high, you are blocking nutrients from getting in the cell. And if we just put it in the terms of what you might feel, this is your aches and pains, this is your brain fog. This inflammation is when we're starting to see like swelling of our body parts. And this is why we don't feel good. This is why we move stiffly. Our thoughts are congested because of this inflammation. So in that window, we're starting to see the inflammation come down. The third thing is we're seeing growth hormone kick in. Growth hormone we stop getting after 30. It's a hormone that helps us burn fat and slows down the aging process.

What's its name? What magical thing is this?

Yeah, agreed. Right?

Yes.

I know. Your own body makes it, but you don't get it after 30, so you have to go make it yourself. And one of the ways you can do it is by intermittent fasting, 12 to 16 hours.

Wow.

If you do that on a regular basis, you are, this is the anti aging piece. You are actually slowing aging down because you're stimulating this hormone that turns down the aging process.

Amazing. I want to make this so easy for somebody to do. So if you go to bed at 9pm and you sleep and you wake up, you know, let's just say at 7am You've already taught us that the eight hour mark is when you typically tip into this metabolic switching. So at around 5am, you've been sleeping for eight hours, you are now in this state where you've switched over into what you call the fat burning state. This is the state where you are using the other system. If you then wake up at 7am, you're now 10 hours into this. And to do intermittent fasting, you then wouldn't start eating until somewhere between, if I'm tracking the math right, 9am and 12pm Noon. Is that right?

You got it.

Okay, great. So if you go to bed, Everybody, at 9:00am at night, by the time 5:00am Hits you, you, my friend, have switched your metabolic state. Good job. And if you continue this protocol to somewhere between 9am and 12pm, you now are unlocking all of this health benefit because you are not only getting this growth hormone, you are sending this ketone thing up to your brain, which will give you more energy and it also helps you lose weight.

Yeah. Because the only way to make a ketone is by burning fat.

Oh. So at the eight hour mark, while you're sleeping and dreaming everybody, you've now just popped your body into the fat burning stage. Is this why you can lose belly Fat by doing this protocol.

Yes.

Shut up. Just tipping my body into this other cycle of fat burning would do a big help in helping me burn that fat.

You got it. Cause the only way you make a ketone is by burning fat.

Wow.

One last thing I wanna say about a ketone, okay. Is that when it comes on.

It.

Shuts that hunger hormone down, but it also upregulates or it makes, let's keep it simple. It makes a neurotransmitter called gaba. So when GABA comes on, it calms you. People who go into fasted states, they'll tell you how calm they feel. I mean, I traveled home yesterday on a flight and I hadn't eaten in about maybe 18, 19 hours. I thought on the plane, I was like, I'm so excited to go home and eat. I can't wait to see what kind of food I have at home. And by the time I got home, I wasn't hungry. And I had this really calm, beautiful feeling in my body. And I was like, oh my gosh, I got GABA right now. So when you hit that 12 to 16 hour window, you would think you're gonna go be like crazy and manic. But because of the production of this ketone, the opposite happens. The hunger turns off, you get more focused, you get calmer, and now your body's ready to repair for you.

Now, is this a protocol that you just introduce into your life? And this is just how you roll through life. So this is not like you try it today and then you do it another day where you want some, like, sharper thinking. This is actually a cycling that you're gonna be doing.

Yeah, yeah. I call it a fasting lifestyle. Build yourself a fasting lifestyle.

Well, if you really think about it, between the fact that we go through a cycle of being awake during the day and asleep at night, and you go through a cycle of circadian rhythms. You're talking about doing this kind of cycling that your body is designed to do, like other cycles in order to unlock health benefits. Like, if I kind of think about it that way, so much of your body is designed to turn on and turn off and be in balance, and this helps you get back to it. So the next type of fasting is one that you do for a 17 hour window.

Yeah.

So what is that type of fasting and what are the benefits?

So as you move into that 17 hours without food, your body's so smart that it goes, huh, okay, food's not coming, nutrients aren't coming. So I better make sure that the inside of our cells are working properly. So it's a state called autophagy. And what the cells will do when they sense that there's no influx of nutrients or glucose, which is sugar, they start to turn within and eat the bad parts of the cell. Things that are not working, they will start to consume that. Autophagy basically means self eating. So it's like an internal cellular detox. So this is another place where the anti aging piece comes in, is that you've now asked your body to make itself better when you hit that 17 hour mark. And so it will repair mitochondria and all the internal body parts of the cell so that it can be stronger for your survival. That's what it's doing. We are programmed to stay alive. And so at 17 hours the cells start to become better versions of themselves. And if there's a cell that is not good, like cancer cells, it will actually kill that cell at 17 hours and it will get rid of that cell because it's a weak member of the survival team. The greatest study ever done on women was done on women recovering from breast cancer. When they fasted as little as 13 hours every single day, they saw that they had a 64% less reoccurrence of breast cancer.

Say that again.

When women who had breast cancer went after they had traditional treatment, started to build a fasting lifestyle of 13 hours. So this isn't even full autophagy we're talking about. They had a 64% less reoccurrence of that cancer coming back.

That's incredible. What you're almost describing as a healing response when you use this protocol is that there is a natural, almost like chemo inside you effect where your body in that resting period of being able to recover from a cycle of eating, this protocol of not introducing new nutrients allows the body to weed out all the crap that's there. This autophagy state of fasting protocol of 17 hours, that would be as if you were going to bed at 9pm that's the last time you ate and you didn't start eating again until 1pm and is this something that people that if you're going to do this autophagy fasting, is this for only periods of time? Is this something that people do as their fasting protocol forever? Or is this something that you start with intermittent and then you bump it up to get this little effect? Or is this for people that have disease, like who's doing autophagy?

It's really personal preference. And here's the beautiful thing is once this is why it's not a diet, fasting gets easier the more you do it. So what I have experienced is that people will love the way they feel at 15 hours and want to go longer. You know, if you can go longer, go longer. Now I will tell you from the community of millions of people that we've been taking through these fasts that most people use autophagy fasting, like after a vacation where they've overdone it, their food, if they want to detox without supplements. So people do lean into it for healing their body in a deeper way, like a cellular cleansing when there has been an overabundance of poor lifestyle choices.

I read in your work that autophagy fasting can also increase your sex drive.

Well, so as growth hormone goes up, what we start to see again is that as the body starts to go into this healing state, what will end up happening is there'll be an increase in hormones. Estrogen's a big one, and we can talk about that in a moment too, which of course is going to increase your libido.

And I also read that this is a great protocol based on the research, if you feel like a cold coming on. Oh, yeah, you would think it would be the opposite, but that actually doing the autophagy protocol of a 17 hour fast, this is a great, zero cost, well researched, homeopathic way to activate your body's ability to fight a cold. Why is that?

So we go back to autophagy. That intelligence inside your cell is going to get rid of anything that doesn't serve it. So if there are bacteria and viruses in there, it's going to push those out. It's like, hey, the party's done in here. I need everybody to leave. And I want to point out one of the greatest studies again, I found during COVID that I just wanted everybody to know. Viruses don't have their own energy system, so they have to live off of yours. So when they come into a cell that's a sugar burner, they have a party, they can gain momentum, they can live off that sugar and replicate. When they come into a cell that is in a state of autophagy, they die, they can't replicate. There's no fuel source for them.

That's pretty cool.

It's amazing.

All right, let's talk about the third type of fasting, which is a 24 hour window. And this one you call gut reset fast. Can you talk to us about that at 24 hours?

This was a study out of MIT, we see that the cells inside your gut start to repair themselves. We call those stem cells. They are intestinal stem cells. And so what happens again, let's go back to why the body does this is you've now gone 24 hours without food. So it needs to repair the digestive system, get rid of the bad bacteria that don't serve you and increase the good bacteria and change that environment for your survival. So intestinal stem cells get made at 24 hours. And I don't know if, you know, stem cells are thousands of dollars right now. You can get them injected into you or you can get them free by learning how to fast.

And the next one is fat burner fast, 36 hour fast. Is that even safe not to eat food for 36 hours?

Absolutely. The research that I show on that one is that at 36 hours without food, followed by 12 hours of eating done over a 30 day period, they saw that there was a significant change in belly fat. Specifically.

Okay, let's break this down. Cause everybody just was like, hold on, belly fat? Wait, what was she talking about? Okay, so the protocol was, and this was a study that you're citing that the protocol was for 30 days straight you would do a cycling where you didn't eat for 36 hours and then you would eat for 12 hours and then you'd go into another 36 hour window of fasting protocol, then another 12. And you did that 30 times in a row.

Yes.

Okay. And then belly fat melted away. And hold on, I gotta ask a question. How do you manage not being a complete bitch? Cause I get really angry when I'm hungry.

That's why you don't start with a 36 hour fast. You start with a 12 hour fast and you train yourself.

Gotcha. Okay.

Just like if you wanted to run a marathon, you don't just throw your running shoes on and just go 12 miles.

True, true.

So you have to train. You start with the lower fast. And I just. So I don't lose people. I want to point out that what we've seen in my community is that sometimes all it takes to unstick your weight is 136 hour fast. It has this metabolic like switch it makes on burning fat. Because you're training your body to go find what it stored years ago. Go find the glucose you stored years ago. Go find the toxins that are in there. Go find that. I have another fuel source that you have prepared me for this day. I'm asking you to burn that fuel source now.

Got it. Okay. But we Start is what I'm hearing by training ourself with the intermittent fasting protocol, which is what I laid out by saying, stopping eating at 9, start eating back between 9 and 12pm and of course you can shift that window by stopping eating at 7pm and then you move it up. Okay, got it. The next Fast is a 48 hour fast, which you call a dopamine reset fast. What is that and how does the science work here?

So that was a study that I found that showed 48 hours without food reset our dopamine system. And it did that by improving not only the way in which dopamine is made in our brain, but but it opened up more dopamine receptor sites, so there was more availability for dopamine to get in to our cells for us to be able to experience the benefits of dopamine.

And that study also showed that it lowered anxiety levels.

Yeah. Cause now you've got dopamine.

Yep.

You've got ketones which are making gaba. So dopamine is motivation, GABA is calming. And so at 48 hours, you have now created new receptor sites for dopamine, so you have more availability to pull dopamine in. And you're calm, so you're calm and motivated. Why would the body do this? In my cave person days, I have to become more focused, more calm, more motivated to go find food when I'm 48 hours in to no food. So it's a primal switch that our body clicks in in the absence of food at 48 hours. Now I will tell you what we've clinically seen is that when people reintroduce food, not only do they enjoy food more, which is obvious, like you haven't been eating for 48 hours, of course you're gonna enjoy it more, but that they notice happiness levels are higher for weeks following 1:48 hour fast. And we have seen that we have a community of millions of people that we have asked to share their stories and we just collect the data. And that is a pretty consistent one.

That we see, I would imagine though, for anybody on any kind of medication, like a antidepressant or an anxiety medication or something for ADHD or anything else you would want, want to talk to your doctor about the protocol of how this works while you're on prescription medication, but again, you just go back to starting with the training of the tool of intermittent, which is 12 to 16. The final one that you reported on is this immune reset fast, which is for more than 72 hours. That sounds pretty damn extreme.

You know what's really funny is that everybody says that until they try it, okay? And then they try it and their life changes.

Okay? So tell me what's going to happen in my life if I start the intermittent fasting protocol as my lifestyle of eating, cycling, and then I go and do a 72 hour immune reset fast.

So that the immune reset was based off of a scientist out of USC who discovered that at point, some 72 hours, the whole immune system reboots itself. And he studied people going through chemotherapy, and he found that one of the problems with chemotherapy is that it completely wipes out the whole immune system and then there's no. The immune system's very low afterwards. But if he put people in a 72 hour fast before they go into chemo, while they're in chemo, after chemo, around the chemo, that there was a re energizing of white blood cells so they didn't have that depletion afterwards. We're back at the stem cells at 72 hours. Your body makes stem cells. Stem cells are cells that can go anywhere in your body and repair. What Valter Longo saw was that they repaired white blood cells. But what we're now people are witnessing is that it also repairs, you know, chronic injuries. It repairs neurons in the brain that have been degenerating. It repairs whatever you need it to repair because the body's that smart. Once it gets stem cells, it finds what you need repair on, not what I need repair on.

Wow. Can you bottom line this. What are the four ways that a fasting protocol helps you heal naturally?

So you click on an intelligence inside your body that you can only get in the absence of food, and that intelligence will start to bring inflammation down. It will start to get rid of the bad parts that are slowing the healing response. It will increase the power of the batteries of your cell called your mitochondria. So it starts to repair you in a way that we have seen nothing repair a person before.

Unbelievable. What is the fasting protocol that is gonna help me lose belly fat?

Well, it will be.

Bring it on, woman. Come on now. Don't hold back. Dr. Mindy.

It's a million dollar question.

Yes, it is.

It's the million dollar question. Start with intermittent fasting, okay? Just get yourself somewhere consistently 12 to 15 hours, and over time, you will lose belly fat.

Like, how much time we talking?

Give it 90 days.

90 days of an intermittent fasting protocol of eating in basically a 12 hour window. And I got 90 days to see the menopause Middle. All right, I'm gonna try it.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So what is the type of fasting that you and I should be doing if we wanna fight brain fog?

Well, all fasting is gonna help with brain fog. It depends on how inflamed your brain is. So all the fog is is that there's fluid around your brain. That's. It's like a swelling of your brain. Most people will see that swelling of the brain go down with as little as 12 hours of fasting. But the longer you stay in a fasted state, the more the inflammation goes down and the more you make something called a ketone. Ketones will go up into the brain and repair injured brain parts. So it really depends on how much damage is in the brain, but it can start as little as 12 hours.

Okay, Dr. Mindy, my head is spinning. I got so many questions. But here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna hit pause in the conversation right now so that everybody can take all of this incredible information and let it digest. That's not upon you guys. But seriously, there is a lot that you just learned. And then what we're gonna do is, Dr. Mindy, we're gonna have you back on the very next episode. Because here's what I wanna know now. And I'm sure you listening wanna know this too. How do you get started with fasting? What does that even look like? And what are three hacks that you can use to make this easier? And most importantly, there's a massive important difference between the protocol that you follow if you are born male and the protocol that you follow if you are born a female. This has to do with your hormone cycles. And we're gonna learn all of that in the next part of this incredible series that we're doing with Dr. Mindy. So don't you dare go anywhere. Please share. Share this if you got value out of it. And you get your butt right back here for the next episode, because we are going to set you up with the step by step guide to getting started and implementing all of this amazing science into your life. And in case nobody else tells you, I want to tell you I freaking love you. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to make small changes and to leverage this incredible research to unlock the healing and healthy systems in your body which will help you create a better life. Alrighty. You heard Dr. Mindy. My fasting window's closed. I gotta go eat and I'll talk to you in a few days.

Okay?

I gotta hop into place here. All you need to know right now is that. Oh, wait, I should start over. Do we say hacks? How does this end, this thing? Or do we cycles? Or. I think hacks was at the beginning. Brain. Frog. Frog. See, I need to fast. Cause I can't even say the damn word. Brain. Fog. Reduce. Brain. Frog. Frog. I keep calling it frog. Gaba.

Do you know what GABA is?

Doesn't GABA have something to do with your hunger?

No, it's.

See, don't ask me.

Okay? Don't worry. Sorry, I don't mean to put you on the spot.

I'll take a test and fail on my own show for everybody. Great. Okay, great. Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. 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, Stitcher.