Fasting Tips for Women | Dave Asprey

You keep asking, is fasting harmful for women? The truth is women should fast differently than men. And there's a whole chapter on this in my big book on fasting called Fast this Way. With every study ever done on the differences between women and men, and women often get left out of the fasting conversation and a lot of older research. The truth is that the female body is designed to support childbirth and lactation, which means that you're more likely to be sensitive to dietary changes at your cellular level. Your body's operating system, I call it the meat operating System, is governed 4F words in order, and one of them is fertility. What that means is that if there's not enough food, as in not enough calories or not enough nutrients, your body knows at some subtle level that it's not safe to make a baby, even if you don't want to. And a significant number of women who over fast report that they have a hard time going to sleep. They feel anxiety, they get adrenal fatigue, they have irregular menstrual cycles. And there's a study that showed two weeks of over fasting, even just intermittent fasting, shrunk ovaries, disrupted sleep and shut down the menstrual cycle in female rats. And it turns out there is a time, a magical window, where you don't want to fast very much, or if you're fasting, you want to eat bigger meals, and that is the week before your period. This is when you have a higher appetite and it's not a great time for longer fasting. Your follicular phase, days 8 through 14, is where you can fast for longer periods and get the benefits. So here's a summary of fasting tips for women. Specifically, number one, start slow. There's a study that shows three 12 hour fasts a week is when the benefits start to kick in. You don't have to do it every day. You could also do an intermittent fast that's powered by MCT oil, butter and danger coffee. And the reason you would do that is that it gives your body extra ketones so you don't feel hunger and you can power through the fast. It's very different, but it is still a fast. You also want to make sure you get enough carbs during your fasting window. The reason for this is that if you're keto and doing intermittent fasting, it's more stress on your body, which might be more than you need to improve. And the final thing, get enough minerals and electrolytes, your body's dumping salt when you're fasting, so you need to have sea salt or better yet, full on electrolyte powder, including magnesium and potassium in your liquids while you're fasting. The other thing is, don't overdo exercise while you're fasting. If you're going to fast, fast, exercise at the end and then eat and eat. Eat a lot. You'll feel so much better. Go to the link in my bio and join in my free fasting challenge. I'll teach you everything there is to know about intermittent fasting.