Never Fast the Week Before Your Period! The Shocking Science About Intermittent Fasting & Women’s Health

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And welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited that you're here. Welcome to this extraordinary masterclass and step by step guide into the science and the application of intermittent fasting and into your life as a tool for healing and for improving your health. Now we're about to jump into the step by step part and how you get started. And we're gonna also talk about the different protocols for fasting for men and women and why this is extremely critical that you understand and follow. But for the sake of bringing everybody into the tent and so that we're all starting on the same page, if this is the first episode that you're listening to with me and Dr. Mindy Peltz, intermittent Fasting, I want you to keep on listening. And I wanna let you know that when you're done with this step by step guide on how to start and the protocols to follow and what you can expect, there is another resource for you. The episode just before this one is an in depth analysis into the 101 of intermittent fasting and all the science and research. And so let me just summarize a few key takeaways so that we're all starting with the exact same information. Number one, Intermittent fasting is a health protocol whereby you focus on periods of time where you're eating and periods of time where you are not eating. The purpose of intermittent fasting is to use periods of time where you are not eating to help you switch between the two different energy sources in your body. We learned all about this in part one from Dr. Mindy. You have an energy source that is all about sugar and calories and energy that happens when you eat. And then you have a second energy source that only turns on after an eight hour period of not eating anything. And Dr. Mindy calls that your fat burning energy source. And so what we learned is that you are designed to switch between these two cycles. Kind of like how you have cycles of sleeping and cycles of being awake. You have a circadian rhythm cycle. If you're a woman, you have a menstrual cycle. The human body runs on cycles and rhythms. And your eating is no different. Fasting is a way for you to be very intentional, not about what you eat. And that's why this is not not a diet. Diets focus on what you eat. Fasting is a protocol that focuses on when you're eating for maximum health benefit. And so we covered all of that in the first masterclass. We also talked about the six different types of fasting. And just so you know, the six different types are just a matter of how long you are fasting for and the different health benefits and reasons why people fast for different periods of time. In this episode, we're gonna focus on the first type of fasting, which is what you've probably heard of intermittent fasting, which is when you intentionally do not eat for between 12 and 16 hours. And just so that we're using the same kind of language, that means if you were to stop eating at 9 o' clock at night and then sleep through the night sometime between 9am and noon is when you would have the first thing to eat. Because that means that from 9pm until 9am you have been fasting for 12 hours. And when you fast for a minimum of 12 hours, you unlock really incredible health benefits. And so that's all you need to know. You now know everything that you need in order to step into the step by step guide. And so here's what we're gonna cover. Dr. Mindy is back office hours are open people. She is here to grab your hand and help you implement a fasting protocol today. And here's what we're gonna cover. We're gonna cover the four questions that you need to ask yourself to determine what type of fasting you want to do and why you're going to do it. Second, we're going to do a quick start guide. How do you get started? Like, seriously, how do you actually get started and when should you start this? We're going to talk about what you can expect when you try this for the first time. Day one, day Two, day three, we're going to talk about what you can expect to experience in terms of results. And then, most importantly, we are gonna dive deep, deep, deep, deep into the difference between fasting with men and fasting with women. Because there is a profound difference. And this is not being talked about enough, okay? And so it's critical that you listen to the difference. And we're gonna unpack that today, and you're gonna learn a lot. And this stuff is so fricking cool. So without further ado, please help me welcome Dr. Mindy Peltz. She is an incredible expert about fasting and the benefits. So, Dr. Mindy, welcome back. Let's get started. So first, let's start with you. How do you fast, Dr. Mindy?

Yeah, so I have gotten to a point where I love fasting so much, I have to really make sure that I eat. But I like skipping breakfast. That's my jam. So I get up in the morning and I drink a cup of coffee. I have a full fat cream in my coffee. And I'll probably eat my first meal around noon or 1 o'. Clock. You know, like you, family is incredibly important to me. So we usually eat dinner as a family, you know, seven or eight o' clock at night. You can build this around your family's desires too. So I sit down with my family, we eat dinner, we're done at 8. My first meal will be noon or 1. Now, outside of that, and we can talk about hormones if we wanna go down that path. But if I feel like I'm off, you know, yesterday I was like, I had been in Hawaii. I hadn't really been eating the way I wanted to eat. And I'm like, I need to go into a longer fast. So I dipped into 18, 19 hours. So I'll use it as a tool, depending on what my body needs. And then once to two times a year, I'll do a three day water fast. And I do that to get rid of the cells that are not serving me, to slow down aging, to increase stem cells. So it's like a cellular cleansing that I do.

So when you're in the period of the cycle where you are not eating, you're in the fasting period. Water's okay, water's okay. What else is okay?

Yeah, it's a great question. Mineral water is okay as long as it doesn't have a sweetener. NutraSweet is not okay because NutraSweet can spike insulin. So just point on there. Coffee's okay, tea's okay. Anything that Won't spike your blood sugar. Black tea. Sometimes I'll go have a black tea, iced tea. That is yummy. Green tea, all of that is fine. It just, you can't have a sweetener in it.

Gotcha. What about like bone broth? Cause I see people like sipping broth during fasting cycles.

Yeah, because it has protein in changes the healing response. So it's great to break a fast with. But it's not the type of fasting that I'm talking about. The type of fasting I'm talking about has your blood sugar staying low. Bone broth can increase your blood sugar.

Do you have any hacks, any shortcuts, any things that you want rapid fire for the person listening? If you're gonna take on intermittent fasting, which, why on earth would you not? After everything we've discussed, what are the hacks and the shortcuts to really get started in a fast, successful and supportive way when you're doing it for yourself for the first time?

Let me give you three hacks that are simple. And I also want to go back to what you said before because I want women specifically that are listening to this. When things are confusing to us, especially when they come to healthcare, we tend to reject them. I'm going to ask you not to do that. I'm going to ask you to become curious about them. What we are discussing here is natural rhythms of your body and nobody's taught it to you. So I would love to come back and make sure that we don't lose women in this conversation because we need to embrace our natural rhythms. So I'll put that there. First hack. The easiest way to get into this is to start looking at your 24 hour period as when are you going to eat and when are you not going to eat? What's your stop time at night and what's your start time in the morning? Figure that out. Second, we brought up the coffee. A hack for the coffee that is amazing is putting a little bit of MCT oil in your coffee. Let me tell you why. Yes, let me tell you why. It moves you quicker into fat burning and helps you make ketones and turns off the hunger hormone. So if you're wanting to fast a little longer and you're struggling, put a little bit of MCT oil. It's what we've seen has worked for millions of people. MCT oil specifically has the ability to turn off the hunger hormone. Put it in your coffee in the morning.

What the hell is MCT oil?

It's one aspect of coconut Oil that has this therapeutic benefit that turns off hunger. It's just nature made it. It's a part of coconut oil.

How much? Cause I once tried this with a bunch of dudes, and I think they poured, like, I don't know how much, but we then went on a hike. And let me tell you something. Oh, yeah, she already knows what I'm about to tell you guys. Within about 100 yards, after about 45 minutes of drinking, what turned out to probably be like a lose shot of MCT oil in my coffee doubled me over with cramps. And I had raging diarrhea almost instantly because they gave me too much. I don't know if it was like a joke, but how much we talk in here, Doc?

Yeah. Oh, my God, it's so good. I'm so happy you said that. Cause that does happen. Half a teaspoon to a teaspoon. You don't need very much.

Okay. And can I put my full fat creamer. No sweetener in with it?

Yes, you can.

Okay, got it. All right, so that's hack number two, everybody.

Yeah, so that's hack number two. Okay. Hack number three. If you don't feel good in this fasting window, which I just wanna call out that in the beginning, it will be a little uncomfortable, and that's okay. Cause the body will figure out how to respond. So in that discomfort, maybe it's a little bit of like your brain's not quite coming back online. Try a little sea salt. Just a little bit of sea salt. Like you can. You can. You can put it in your coffee if you want it. And you're going to ask me the amount, I'm sure. A pinch. A pinch of sea salt. We have found that even the nutrients that you can find in a high quality sea salt, like a Himalayan sea salt or something, that's a really good one. It can have magnesium, it can have a little bit of potassium, a little bit of sodium, and it makes you feel better. In the fasting window. There are a lot of products out there you can do it with, but all you gotta do is go to the grocery store and find some sea salt.

Well, I am addicted to Element, that LM LNMT stuff. I love them. They're a sponsor of this podcast. I drink it every day. And I'm assuming that's not breaking the fasting protocol.

No. We're big fans of Element too.

Okay.

And our community is obsessed with Element because a pack of Element in your water, in your fasting window, is a game changer for how you feel in the fasting window.

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 wanna 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 fast 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, which will go into your baby. So we want to keep fast under 15 hours for nursing women. And then the third one that comes up a lot is people who have any kind of eating disorders or food challenges that would be triggered by going into this fasted state.

Great, thank you for that. Can you walk us through the first time you fast, how shitty you might feel, like, what to expect and how long you need to stick with it in order to move through that phase? Yeah, great, because I can't wait to learn how shitty I'm gonna feel when I try this. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. But we're gonna take a quick pause, hear a word from our sponsors. We love our sponsors. Cause they allow us to bring you this world class groundbreaking information at zero cost to you. And of course that's perfect because fasting is zero cost as well. Stay with us, we'll be right back. When our daughter Kendall moved into her first apartment, she called and she's like, mom, I need help. I have no furniture. I have no clue where to start. I live across the country from you, like a five hour plane ride. What do I do? So we jumped on FaceTime and started scrolling through Ashley.com together. We found so many styles that we loved. And boom. Beautiful couch, great price point. And now I don't need to worry about her. I also added an end table, a coffee table, a lash. I mean, if you love the look, you should love the whole look right together on Ashley.com, we could build the perfect space and I could give her the support I wanted to. When she moved into her place, she ended up falling in love with the clean lines and soft fabric of the sofa from the Alyssa Court collection. I just feel so grateful. Big shout out to Ashley.com you took what was a stressful situation into a really incredible experience together. Visit your local Ashley store or head to Ashley.com to find your style. Most security systems I'm just going to say it. They're too late. The alarm goes off after someone breaks in, and by that point, the damage is done. Windows broken, doors kicked in. You're already in cleanup mode. Simplisafe flips the script. It's not just about catching bad guys. It's about stopping them before they even touch your door. First, SimpliSafe's AI powered cameras detect potential threats outside. Then live agents step in, talking to the person through the camera and making it clear you're on video. And the police will be called if you don't leave. Simplisafe can even trigger a siren or a spotlight. A warning loud enough to make anyone think twice and to give you peace of mind you deserve. That's how you stop a crime before it starts. And you're not stuck with any commitment either. No long term contracts or hidden fees. And you can cancel at any time this month. Only take 50% off any new system. This is one of the best prices you will ever see for Simplisafe. Don't miss it. Hit simplisafe.commel again, that's simplisafe.commel and lock in your discount. There's no safe like SimpliSafe. Want to know one of my Go to Gifts masterclass? Yep, Masterclass. It's one of the best gifts you can ever give. Last year I got an annual membership for my daughter, Sawyer. She started with Esther Perel's class on relationships. I'm not exaggerating when I say it opened up a completely new conversation for both of us. Personal, professional, family, all of it. See, Esther says one sentence and you're like, okay, that explains my last three relationships. That explains why I'm always fighting with my mother. That's what I love about the Masterclass platform. The instructors do not hold back. They share the kind of insights you only get from people who've lived it, practiced it, researched it, and refined it for years. You can listen in audio mode while you're on a walk, watch lessons offline, even knock out a few sessions while dinner's in the oven. Flexible, practical, it works. Memberships start at just $10 a month and they come with a 30 day money back guarantee. Masterclass always has great offers during the holidays, sometimes up to as much as 50% off. Head over to Masterclass.com Melrobbins for the current offer. That's up to 50% off at Masterclass.com MelrobbINS Masterclass.com MelrobbINs. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins and you and I are back with Dr. Mindy Peltz. She is the fasting phenom and she is now about to tell you and me what we can expect on our first day of fasting. Are we hangry? Are we bitchy? Are we bloated? What's happening? What do you want us to know, Dr. Mindy?

I think it's important because if you hear this, you get all excited, you come out of the gates, you try it, and then you don't feel good. You're gonna reject it. Let's use a sprained ankle as an example. When you sprain an ankle, it doesn't feel good, but the body's healing. When you have a fever, doesn't feel good, but the body's healing. So the first time you put yourself in this fat burning healing state, everybody will feel something different. Some people will feel not so great. But the good news is the not so great usually only lasts the first couple of times.

And what is not so great, what are you referring to? Is you going to be like headache moody.

Yeah, you can be a little moody moody. Brain fog. Some people, you know, will, will notice. Even we've seen people have rashes, like the body pushes out, that's extreme, but the body will push out. You know, the bad stuff. Some people might get a little bit of constipation. Some people will get a little bit of diarrhea. The body is getting rid of whatever's not serving it. So it is a little bit of a detox. So as that comes out, you might have some feelings of like, yeah, I'm not feeling great yet. I'm not buying this thing yet. But here's what happens is the body is building you stronger. So honor that. That's a temporary symptom as your body moves into this healing state. And it usually only lasts Anywhere from a day to three days. Most people, I would say 50% of the people, don't even notice that women.

Need a different fasting protocol than men. Why?

So this is the heart of why I do what I do. When the fasting craze came out, everybody got excited about it. And then women started to see they were losing their periods, their hair was falling out, their anxiety levels were going up, and some of them started gaining weight. And so what happened was the media grabbed that and said, hey, intermittent fasting is not okay for women. So I dove into the research because all those women poured onto my YouTube channel and I examined the the needs of two different hormones, estrogen and progesterone. Okay, so women follow what I call a hormonal hierarchy. And the hierarchy looks something like this. At the bottom are our sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. Those hormones are strongly influenced by insulin. When insulin goes up, we can throw our sex hormones off. Insulin is strongly affected by cortisol, so when our stress goes up, we become more insulin resistant. But above, cortisol is the best hormone on the planet, which is oxytocin. When you get more oxytocin, and the only way you can get oxytocin is through connection to other people. When you get oxytocin, you bring cortisol down. When you bring cortisol down, you become more insulin sensitive. When you become more insulin sensitive, now you're gonna balance your sex hormones. And that is how a female body operates when we look at it in a hierarchy system. Second thing I wanna say is that men have one hormone, it's called testosterone. And testosterone for a man works off of 24, four hour day light cycle. Men get testosterone pulsing in every 15 minutes around that testosterone then goes up into the brain and converts to estrogen for a man. So a man can fast. Testosterone loves when a man fasts. And a man can fast pretty regularly and not mess up that hormonal cycle. Women, we operate off a 28 day to 30 day cycle and our hormones pulse in in days. Estrogen comes in the first 10, testosterone comes in in the middle, and progesterone comes in at the end. So we have to fast according to this cycling of these hormones. It's a different rhythm and it's a monthly rhythm, not a daily rhythm. Estrogen loves when you fast. So if you for the menopausal woman who is losing estrogen, you will die. When you see how effective this is for bringing estrogen up to a more age appropriate level, you're never getting your 25 year old estrogen back, but your 55 year old, age appropriate estrogen will. Thank you for building a fasting lifestyle. Progesterone actually doesn't want you to fast. If your blood sugar goes down too much or you raise cortisol too much, you will tank progesterone. And check this out. We all know this. We just didn't have words for it. What do we crave when we had a cycle? What do we crave the week before our periods?

Oh, my God, everything. Ice cream, alcohol, pizza, pasta, pretzels with pimento cheese dip. Am I getting too personal here? Help me out.

Nachos.

I crave fricking anything.

Exactly. Because progesterone is asking you to bring your glucose up. So we crave. I'm going to cycling women right now. We craved carbs before our period not because we were undisciplined. We craved carbs before our period because we needed glucose to be higher. And that internal mechanism inside our body increased the craving of carbohydrates so that we had enough resources to make progesterone.

Whoa. And so what does the intermittent fasting protocol do for a woman who is in her menstrual cycle?

So in a 28 to 30 day cycle, every woman's different. I want to point that out. We all cycle differently, but have different lengths. The first 10 days is when estrogen's building. We know this as the follicular phase in fast like a girl. I call it the power phase, which means that you can power up on any, all of your workouts, your fasts, your anything you want to power yourself up on. About day 10 or 11, we move into ovulation. This would be the second phase. And in this phase, I called it the manifestation phase, because we can manifest whatever. You can manifest a baby, but you also have estrogen at our peak, you have testosterone at its peak, and you have a little bit of progesterone. So it makes us very mentally sharp. It makes us beautiful, our hair curly, our skin look great, and we have motivation and drive because of testosterone. Then we come out of ovulation, our hormones dip. We have a five day window. You can go back to powering up on all your lifestyle tools. But the week before our period starts around day 20, and I call it the nurture phase because you're supposed to nurture yourself that week. You need to bring glucose up, you need to bring and you need to rest and bring cortisol down. That's the hormonal rhythm that Women follow in a 28 to 30 day period. And once a woman bleeds, we go back to estrogen building. You can go back to fasting, you can go back to working out incredibly hard. And every. All the rhythms change according to the rhythms of those hormones. So if when women got ahold of the fasting craze and they just fasted all month long, they started to tank progesterone, okay? And progesterone only comes in the week before our period. That's her debut. She comes in that week before and says, hey, everybody, we gotta shut cortisol down and we gotta increase glucose. So as women started to pick up fasting, they were ignoring that. They were muscling like we often do. We're muscling through this new, and I'm going to put in air quotes, diet, because we thought of it as a diet. And the more months we did that, the less progesterone we had.

Is that why women in the beginning were losing hair and why they were having all this negative side effect from. From intermittent fasting?

That's right. So progesterone is the hormone that will also shed the uterine lining.

Okay.

So we weren't making enough progesterone, so the lining wasn't shedding. So we started to notice. A lot of women noticed spotting and things like that. Anxiety went up because progesterone is the hormone that calms us. And our hair started falling out because over time we were starting to restrict calories more and more and more. And so it was throwing the thigh right off.

Okay, so let me just see if I can bottom line this. When intermittent fasting was first introduced, like so many things, the dudes were talking about it, and they were only talking about it as it relates to men and weightlifting and that kind of thing and carb cycling, and we've heard all this shit and no one took into account women's hormone health. And just like women have not been included in medical studies because of our hormone health, this is yet another example of where women have been left out of the conversation and where the science has been applied to everybody without consideration of how it actually impacts a woman during her cycle. And what you're here to say is that intermittent fasting is an enormously important protocol for all women, and women have to handle it and introduce this protocol differently because of our hormone cycle period, full stop. And so how do you do this as a woman? Because after I heard you talk about intermittent fasting, once we started talking about the research, I'm like, fricking I'm in. I am not gonna eat after 9 o'. Clock. This woman is not putting shit in her mouth until noon. Like, I am down. I'm doing the 90 days. This seems like a no fricking brainer based on body function and health. Like, I am in and sold. When you then went hair loss, this, that hormone cycling, I'm like, oh, shit, this is complicated. I don't know if I can do this, and I don't wanna lose my hair. So how do we simplify this in terms of how an intermittent fasting protocol should be introduced to by women in their lives? How do you want to handle this?

Yeah, let's make it super simple, please. Okay. Don't fast the week before your period. If you're a cycling woman, just don't fast the week before your period. Oh, you can do all the other fasts now in the book and fast like a girl. I give you lots of options. I gave you a whole fasting cycle. But for this conversation, just don't fast the week before your period.

Wow. Okay, so you just go back to normal eating, like, just eating whenever you want.

Yeah. Eating when you gotta eat breakfast. If you chose to take breakfast out, eat whenever you want and bring up your carb load. But I'm gonna ask you to not do it in a box of pizza or a tub of ice cream. Let's do it in some, you know, what I call nature's carbs. Let's do it in fruit. And potatoes and sweet potatoes and vegetables. Tons of vegetables. Tropical fruits, bananas. Those are great for progesterone. Chocolate. Chocolate's amazing for progesterone.

You know what's interesting is I wonder if this is why so many of us just bounce with our weight. Like, I've got this question from Jodi. Cause we've got a bazillion questions from listeners. When we told everybody we were gonna tackle fasting and we were gonna spend a lot of time talking about women and hormones and protocols for women to. Jodi writes in how do I change the fact that I get down to my goal weight and then all of a sudden I gain it back? I'm constantly up and down and beating myself up. And I'm not sure if restriction of sugar and flour is the only way. I don't know if the real ticket is something else for lasting change. I'm super healthy. And then all of a sudden I eat a whole pizza or I eat a batch of cookies, and next thing you know, the same ten pounds comes on and off. And then worse, how do I feel about myself when I'm in this cycle? I just need a formula that will work. And what I'm wondering is, this is probably what you see with women who either are just trying everything under the sun. I'm gonna try the peptides and I'm gonna try this thing. I'm gonna do whole 30, and then I'm gonna do that thing and I'm gonna try this thing, but none of it's working. Or they try fasting, but then they're bouncing all over the place because of our hormone cycle. And so what you're saying is, start with intermittent fasting and then pay attention to the week before your period starts and give yourself grace and eat nature's carbs. And then the day you get your period, you go back to your intermittent fasting protocol. Is that correct?

You got it. You got it. That's exactly correct.

What do you do if you're on the IUD? So my daughters are on the IUD, and with a lot of the IUDs, you don't get a period. So how do you figure out when that part of your cycle is?

Yeah, yeah, I have the same issue with my daughter. You know, here's what I'm gonna say. And this is the best gauge that we have. And I don't wanna confuse people, okay? But this is what we've been using is if you have no sense of. Of when your period is coming, use the moon cycle.

What the hell does that mean?

Use the way that the moon waxes and wanes.

Okay? But like, you break it down for me because is this also what. We met women in perimenopause who have really weird cycles. And those of us that are like, bye, bye with the period, okay, so everybody listening. If you either don't have a cycle or you're on birth control, that compromises your cycle, or you are peri. Or you are menopause, full monty, you are going to follow the fucking moon. So when. What shape is the moon in, Dr. Mindy? When I'm doing the intermittent fasting protocol.

So the first thing I want to point out is it's not a coincidence that the moon has a cycle that's 28 to 30 days, and we have a cycle that's 28 to 30 days.

Because we're magical. That's why.

Exactly. You have totally nailed that one. Exactly like. So let's just acknowledge that, okay? First day of your period, when you start bleeding would be the first day of the new moon, okay? Ovulation would be the full moon, which is when we're wickedly powerful.

Yes, ma'. Am.

In fact, I keep saying, let's just put all the ovulating women in one room, and they can solve all the.

World'S problems as long as we're intermittent fasting. So if you're gonna start the intermittent fasting protocol for maximum health and healing benefit, regardless of where you are with your period or not getting one, you are gonna start with the new moon, which is that super thin sliver of a. Where the hell is the moon? Moon. Okay. And that's gonna be the beginning of your intermittent fasting protocol. And you are going to stop fasting protocol while the moon is near its full moon phase. Is that what we're doing?

So let's just make it simple. Let's say intermittent fasting. You're gonna fast 12 to 15 hours.

Okay?

Day one, starting the new moon till about day 21.

Perfect.

And then at 21, you switch out and you stop fasting for a week. And then the minute the new moon comes in, you start fasting again.

That's fantastic. And so that's very clear. And I want to underscore why this matters. This matters because women are very different physiologically, hormone, chemically, like, all of it. For men, the system operates differently. And you also have to be responsible for the fact that we run in a network of hormones that are different than people who are born male. And so I want you to understand, this seven day window where you're not gonna be following a fasting protocol is because of your metabolic health and your hormone health. And that's why we're being very specific about this. Now, I want to ask one more very specific question. For those of us in menopause who no longer are going through a cycle, is our 30 days, 21 days on, seven days off.

You can just take that 30 day reset and match it to the moon.

Great.

And you will start to see your cycle come back on. Unless you're a menopausal woman. So there's apps. Let's start there. You just pick up an app and just find the new moon. It's not that hard to find.

Okay, Just Google New moon this month.

Yeah, I can tell you the app I use is called Moonly.

Moonly.

Okay, Moonly. And look at where the new moon is. That would be day one of your cycle.

Okay.

In my book, in Fast Like a Girl, I have a 30 day fasting reset.

Got it. You're gonna follow your menstrual cycle. If you Have a regular period. If you are not sure because of birth control or other reasons when your period is happening, you're gonna follow a 30 day protocol. We will link to resources with all the shownotes. You can find them@melrobbins.com podcast. You're gonna follow a 30 day protocol and you're gonna begin day one on the day of the new moon.

For simplicity's sake. Yes.

Okay. All right. Great. That's amazing. I am so excited by this conversation. And we gotta hit pause real quick so we can hear a word from our sponsors. They are bringing this content to you at zero cost. So let's take a listen but don't you dare go anywhere because we will be right back with more of this masterclass on intermittent fasting when we return. Outdoit with Intuit QuickBooks. It's the trusted end to end solution that businesses rely on. QuickBooks provides a team of AI agents and trusted experts. So doing it yourself no longer means doing it alone. Their payment agent gets you paid faster. Their customer agent secures more sales and the accounting agent automates and categorizes transactions. Get your critical business jobs done with QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. Looking ahead means you gotta be making choices and decisions that push your life forward. One of the biggest decisions, finding a car that's gonna take you there. Cars.com makes it simple. With up to 50,000 cars added daily and more than 2 million possibilities to choose from, you'll find the car that fits where you're headed. Because wherever life takes you next and whoever you're ready to become, there's a car for that on cars.com visit cars.com and start exploring your next possibility. Today 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. I am here with Dr. Mindy. She is a renowned expert on the science of intermittent fasting and we are unpacking epic everything that you need to Know, and what I love most, Dr. Mindy, is how simple you are making this. Okay, so you have an example with a story of a woman named Bridget who followed this protocol. Could you share that story with us?

Yeah. So what was interesting about Bridget's story is that she did what most of us do. We exercise more and we eat less to lose weight. And she's what I call a rushing woman. She was CEO, like, had a very, very busy lifestyle, tons of family was in, you know, engaged in her family engaged in work. And all of her tools that she was using to keep her weight where she wanted to be were failing her. So she found. Right, sounds familiar. So she found fasting, and she started to fast. And in the first moment that she found intermittent fasting, it was like a miracle. Like, her brain came back online, she started to drop weight, and she was all of a sudden like, wow, I'm supercharged for this rushing woman lifestyle. But she didn't know to cycle it. So 30 to 60 days into this miraculous lifestyle, the opposite started happening. She started gaining weight, she started losing her period, completely everything we've been talking about. So she was a patient that I figured out. She was one of the women. I figured out, like, oh, there's a rhythm here. I need to find Bridget's rhythm. And so in finding Bridget's rhythm, I found every other woman's rhythm, which is this idea that you gotta step out of fasting because of this hormone, progesterone. And once we found her rhythm, it. It was her tool to do everything she wanted at her age.

Can we just say, fuck you, progesterone? Can we just say that right now? Have to complicate things for us? You have four steps to determine which of the six fasting protocols is the right one for you. What are they?

Yeah, I call it building a fasting lifestyle. So the first step is, what are you trying to do? You know, this is what keeps coming up in this conversation. The one size fits all protocols that we give, whether it's diet or medication or whatever, it works better for a man than it works for a woman. It doesn't work for humans in general. We need to find our own personal path. But you might. Let's use you as an example, Mel. Maybe you decide, hey, I need to repair my gut, so I need to make sure that I train myself to get into that 24 hour fast, whereas somebody else might say, God, my weight is so stuck, I gotta throw some 36 hour fasts. So make sure you know what you're doing. Second or what you want to do. Second thing is you gotta cycle your fasts. We already talked about that.

Yes.

The third thing, you gotta cycle your food. So we haven't talked much about that. Fast, like a girl goes way into how you look at different food. And then the fourth is, let's stop doing health on our own. Let's do it in a community. So, you know, women thrive on oxytocin. We're getting oxytocin right now, talking to each other. And as oxytocin goes up, it calms cortisol. When cortisol goes down, you become more insulin sensitive. And when insulin gets regulated, now all your hormones regulate. So oxytocin for a woman is a powerful hormone. So when she goes into a fasting lifestyle and does it on her own, she misses that oxytocin moment. When she does it in community, she actually amplifies oxytocin.

How do you do that?

How do you do it in a community?

Yeah.

Well, we did for years and we still do it. Something called a fast training week on my YouTube channel where I would just take five days and we would just, I would just lead the whole world through these different weeks. So that's still there. We do three day water fasts all the time in community. Grab fast like a girl and do a book club with a group of women. Do it together with a group of women. One thing I do with my girlfriends, we do challenges all the time together. It's like, hey, for the next 30 days I'm going to do this. And then they're in on it and now we're doing it together in a community.

I love that. I love that. I love the idea of doing it with someone else. Cause whenever I've taken on a health challenge, just having a buddy that I'm texting with is critical. And I love that you're explaining that there's a scientific research packed health benefit to all these reasons. I wanna ask you a question from Becky who DMed us and said, you know, I'm studying this fasting info. This is super help. Want to know good, bad or different? If there is one of your fasting plans that I can do that's a little bit more flexible.

Let me explain it this way. Take your eating window and move it wherever you want. Like if you want to eat with your family, dinner at 7 o' clock at night and be done by 8. If you're eating window is 8 hours, then your eating window opens at noon and you start eating from noon to 8.

See this is why this is so great. Because she is asking a question that shows how we've all been trained to calorie, restrict and to focus on the what we're eating. And she's like, I'd just like to know if I'm fasting, is there a day, a week I could have my comfort food for lunch? And what you're saying is if you adjust the window. Yes, because you know that you're playing with a cycle of on and off. And so just figure out when you're gonna stop eating the night before so that the window opens up right around lunchtime.

Maybe you wanna. You're going to a great brunch on Sunday morning and the brunch starts at 10 o'. Clock. Don't deprive yourself. That's when your eating window opened. So at 10 you start and by 6 you're done. Just move that eating window around to match your lifestyle. That's why people are sticking with this type of lifestyle, because you can match it to the other parts of your lifestyle that are important.

Does a fasting cycle for women, does it reduce the muscle? Do these things work together? Because I want to be clear, I want to make sure people understand that they got to do what works for them. But this isn't necessarily conflicting advice.

Exactly. So I 1000% agree that muscle and protein are incredibly important and we need to prioritize them. So when you're fasting in the fasting window, you're gonna break protein down. It's not a bad thing.

Okay.

Your body's getting rid of stored sugar in that muscle, so it breaks it down when you start to eat. Now you need to up your protein. You need to make sure that you get enough protein so that you have enough of an amino acid. Those are the nutrients and protein that build muscle. So where this falls apart is if you start to fast and then you open your eating window and you forget to include protein in your diet, you didn't give the fuel source to the muscles that it needed. So make sure when you eat, eat, this is a big thing. It's like, eat good quality food. If you want more muscle, you gotta eat more protein.

Got it. Love it. We did not dive deep into the extensive amount of research that you do have about the kinds of food that you're eating and the impact it can have on a fasting protocol as a lifestyle. I wanna give one little tip, though, to everybody, because you say that there are three foods that, from a fasting perspective, if you focus on simply limiting these Three foods that it's gonna help the fasting protocol of when you're eating and when you're not. A lot. So what are those three foods?

Yeah, the first one is good oils, not bad oils. Okay, so good oils are avocado oil, they're olive oil, they're sesame seed oil. There's a lot of great ones. Walnut oil. Yeah.

What are the bad ones?

Yeah, let's give me the diets. The bad ones are canola oil.

Oh.

Cottonseed oil, corn oil, partially hydrogenated oils, you know, safflower, sunflower oils. And they're everywhere. They're everywhere.

Why are they bad?

They cause your cells to inflame, to swell. They cause your cells to swell. And when your cells are swollen, your brain's swollen, your joints are swollen, your belly's swollen, and your cells are not able to pull in nutrients and hormones. So let's just get those foods out. Let's change the oils.

Delete. Okay.

Gone. Okay. Second one, we've already talked about it. Nature's carbs, not man made carbs. The breads, the cakes, the cookies, the pastas. Can we limit those? Can we get those out of the diet? Even if they're organic, even if they're gluten free, they should still be fairly minimal. And can we bring fruits and vegetables and potatoes, even like wild rice, quinoa. Let's bring those back into the diet and make those the highlight.

Great.

And the final one, the last one, are toxins. So this is your nutrasweets, your Splendas that a lot of people go on diets with. This is your artificial colorings. This is the nitrites that we put in. Anything that has been made by humans is going to destroy cellular health.

Basically. This is how I think about it, Dr. Mindy. If I look at an ingredient list on a package and I either can't pronounce it or it doesn't look like something that I would see on a label at a farmer's market. Probably not that great for you.

Yeah. And best yet, buy something without a label.

Well, you know what my mom always said? My mom said if you just stick to the perimeter of a grocery store, you know, you go fruits and vegetables and to the deli and to the dairy and typically to the bakery.

You're good.

So now that we know the three foods that we need to avoid, can we talk about the ways in which you break a fast? I know you say there are four ways that you can do it when you're doing it for the first Time. But can you walk us through how you do that?

So the first thing to break a fast with that's really easy is broth. This can be vegetable broth, it can be bone broth. Broth is a good entry back into food. The second thing that I encourage people to break a fast with is actually fat. So fat will stabilize the blood sugar so that you don't boomerang back into eating a ton of food. So make sure you eat a good fat. My personal favorite is an avocado. I usually break my fast often with an avocado with that fat. I also encourage that people look at a probiotic rich meal. This is like a sauerkraut. This can be a kefir, something that has good bacteria in it to replenish your microbiome. Once you've done that, where you've done the broth, you've done the fat, you've added some probiotics in. Then bring protein back in and make sure that you're eating enough protein to start to build muscle. So those are the biggest considerations is making sure that you take care of your digestion, you take care of your blood sugar, you take care of your microbes and you take care of your muscles. That's what all of those foods will do.

We've covered a ton and so there's a couple things I wanna say. Number one, we are absolutely gonna have you back. Cause I'm super curious about everything that you wanna say about eating and specifically eating for women's health and how that impacts your natural healing and health systems in your body. Second, I know we're gonna get a gajillion. That's a technical term question. And so I am inviting you listening. Go to melrobbins.com podcast. You're gonna find a form I would love. If you have follow up questions, I would love to bring Dr. Mindy back. And I mean it because I feel like there are so few female doctors getting the airtime that they deserve and the information that you are sharing with patients, getting to a broader audience in a simple, tactical, applicable way that I want to make her expertise available to you. Listening more so that we can really make sure that this zero cost, profoundly researched and documented tool that you have within your body is being used by you for maximum health and healing benefit. Because you deserve that in your life. Dr. Mindy, you are freaking awesome. I have loved every second of this. I am now through my fasting window too. So I am going to go face plant a salad with some steak on top.

Perfect.

I love you. I can't wait to have you back. Dr. Mindy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for explaining all this to us and giving us the gift of healing and health at zero cost, you fricking rock.

Thank you, Mel. And thank you for supporting women and for supporting a free health tool like this. I mean, again, this is where we're stronger together. When we unite our missions, our passions, we teach, we do it from a loving place, everybody wins 1,000%. So thank you.

You're welcome. Can't wait to have you back. Okay. That was so cool. I'm so excited. I cannot wait to hear your questions to have her back. Most importantly, thank you for spending the time. And the reason why I'm thanking you is because I'm thanking you on behalf of your future self. What you just learned is a zero cost tool that helps you unlock the extraordinary power of your body to heal itself. It helps you tap into decades and decades of research that you can benefit from. And the thing that I love the most. You don't have to add anything. We're gonna simplify it. You're just gonna watch when you eat, and then you're gonna watch these amazing results happen. And you deserve that already. I love you. I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to take control of your health, take control of when you eat, and to take control of your life. I'll talk to you in a few days. Okay, you ready? Here we go. Mindy, how did it or when did it or why did it or. Good. Okay, I'm trying. Aim. I'm trying. Is that a new sentence? Hold on a second. Let me just see. Okay. Ooh, that's a jump seat. Oh, great. We're done. Oh, my God. Well done.

Pew.

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 by 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. Between going to your doctor, paying your bills, and finding a specialist, healthcare can feel complicated. That's why Optum is building digital solutions to connect the people and the processes that make healthcare better. It means transparency into what your benefits cover. It means coordinating care between your doctors and the systems you use to manage health. It means simplifying healthcare. That's healthy optimism. That's Optum. Learn more@optum.com.